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Oral Answers to Questions
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Fleur Anderson)
Although energy costs have come down, they remain too high. Our priority is to ensure access to energy is affordable and secure for consumers. That is why this Government have established Great British Energy, which will operate across the whole UK, including Northern Ireland. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy are working together positively on the GB Energy Bill.
Jim Shannon
It is a pleasure to see the Minister in her place and I wish her well; we have been friends for some time. She will be aware of Northern Ireland’s unique energy profile: we are more heavily dependent and reliant on oil than other nations in the United Kingdom, with some 68% of people in Northern Ireland using oil. Was that taken into consideration when the Government determined to cut the winter fuel allowance? What discussions were had with the Northern Ireland Executive in relation to doing so?
Fleur Anderson
I am aware that two thirds of Northern Ireland’s homes use oil. The decision to means test winter fuel payments was not a decision the Government wished to make, but a result of the Conservative’s £22 billion black hole. In Northern Ireland, the Executive have decided that winter fuel payments will continue to be paid to households where someone receives pension credit. I have checked the figures; in Northern Ireland it is estimated that over 26,000 people could be eligible for pension credit and the winter fuel payment but are not receiving them. I encourage anyone who is eligible, or knows someone who could be, to check and apply if they can.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Fleur Anderson)
Northern Ireland is a great place to live, work and invest. That is something the Secretary of State and I have promoted in our over 120 visits and meetings. Growth is a key mission of this Government, which is why we are supporting UK businesses through securing further investment and through our industrial strategy. The Chancellor will set out the steps this Government are taking to support growth across the UK on 30 October.
Clive Jones
Businesses in Northern Ireland are struggling to operate in a constantly shifting regulatory environment that is deterring investment and decreasing business confidence. It is no wonder that a third of UK businesses want the Government to reduce Brexit-related barriers, such as customs procedures, according to a recent survey by Santander. A starting point would be agricultural trade. Will the Minister update the House on progress in negotiating a new veterinary and plant health agreement with the European Union?
Fleur Anderson
Many businesses have secured excellent deals in Northern Ireland, including EY, which is bringing over 1,000 jobs; Wrightbus, at its bus factory in Ballymena; and Hannon Pharma Link. We are working at pace on a veterinary agreement. We want to reduce checks and the need for checks, doing all that we can to protect the UK’s internal market. This Government have brought in economic stability in place of the economic chaos we saw up until now, and Northern Ireland businesses will benefit from that.
Jerome Mayhew
It is all very well talking about an industrial strategy, but economists agree that increasing national insurance contributions for employers reduces profits, reduces pay and leads to fewer jobs. Does the Minister agree that if the Government decide to raise taxes, perhaps to fund union pay rises, then employer national insurance contributions would be the last tax to choose if they want to support Northern Ireland’s economy?
Fleur Anderson
It is hard to take lectures from the Conservative party on investment and growth. We have had a change election. We will be investing in growth. The hon. Member has only a week to wait to listen to what will be happening in the Budget. In the meantime, we are going at pace. The international investment summit brought in considerable investment for companies based in Northern Ireland. We are moving on with our industrial strategy, Invest 2035. We are investing in skills and getting people into work, and transforming our health services. That is essential so that people will want to come to Northern Ireland because of good health services, and so that they will be well enough to work. All of that is a package for investment in Northern Ireland.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
At last week’s international investment summit, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor announced a total of £63 billion of private investment into the UK economy. What steps are the Secretary of State and the Minister taking to ensure Northern Ireland is at the forefront of this Government’s effort to stimulate the investment that is needed?
Fleur Anderson
The Secretary of State went to the international summit with the First and Deputy First Ministers and they are all working together on this. The Ballymena bus manufacturer, Wrightbus, recently signed a deal worth £100 billion to supply more than 1,000 buses to Go-Ahead. That shows real business confidence in Northern Ireland. We are also focusing on the skills gap. I have met wonderful skills providers across Northern Ireland to talk about how we can get people into well-paid jobs and to achieve faster growth.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
It is good to hear from the Minister about the work being done to close the skills gap. Can she provide further examples of that work and lay out her intentions for the future?
Fleur Anderson
My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of the skills gap and economic inactivity in Northern Ireland. I have met wonderful skills providers across Northern Ireland, such as the Rural Women’s Network, Bolster Community, the Superstars Club, Disability Action Northern Ireland, Ulster University and the King’s Trust. A wealth of work is being done on good skills support, and we in the UK Government want to work with the Northern Ireland Executive to continue to provide support in that area. A reliable, bespoke skills offering is essential to futureproof Northern Ireland’s key growth sectors.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
The Minister talks about growth, but the Mid South West region growth deal, which was paused by this Government, now lies inactive with no direction, and there are reports that much-needed private sector business involvement is now withdrawing. Will the Minister accept that this Government’s handling and pausing of these growth deals was haphazard? Will she apologise to the people affected and enter urgent direct talks with businesses to get this deal back off the ground?
Fleur Anderson
The Secretary of State and I are in constant talks about such deals and with the deal providers. I know the value of these deals not just to the regions affected, but across Northern Ireland. However, the Government face a £22 billion black hole, and it is right that the Treasury considers all options on the table to address that. We will find out more in the Budget next week. The Mid South West and the Causeway Coast and Glens growth deals are being considered as part of the spending review, and the Government will continue to work closely with the deals’ partners and the Executive. The Secretary of State and I will continue to underline the importance of these deals to my ministerial colleagues in the Treasury.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
We look forward to a positive conclusion to those discussions next week. As the Minister knows, both representatives from the Mid South West region growth deal and the Causeway Coast and Glens growth deal are in Westminster today. Will the Minister acknowledge that, in working with businesses and in trying to encourage greater trade within our own country, the appointment of a chair of Intertrade UK was an important first step, but work needs to start, the terms of reference need to be set and businesses need to be able to engage with that body established to support trade within our country?
Fleur Anderson
I agree with the right hon. Member that Intertrade UK needs to get going with its work to encourage investment between all of the regions and nations of the UK. It is very important to set the terms of reference, and we are working with the organisation as fast as we can now that the chair is in their place
Gavin Robinson
I thank the Minister for her reply. She will know from discussions with her Cabinet colleagues that decisions have been taken to delay the agreement on parcels, to delay the agreement on customs, and to avoid taking the decision on UK-wide labelling. Myriad other decisions were also made and supported by this House, including Labour Members, that are required to be implemented from the “Safeguarding the Union” document. She will know about the interface between trade and constitutional politics, so I urge her to engage with the Secretary of State, the Paymaster General and others within the Cabinet to get on and deliver what businesses and the people of Northern Ireland need?
Fleur Anderson
We are not the only Ministers who came into office three months ago to have faced all sorts of decisions that should have been taken by the previous Government. We have taken up those decisions on parcels and on every aspect that the right hon. Member mentions. He is right to raise them, because we do need to work on them to ensure that we protect the UK internal market and that we create the best possible regime for business.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
The statutory instrument for the Northern Ireland pet travel scheme has now been laid. The scheme significantly reduces the requirements associated with the original Northern Ireland protocol and provides a stable and long-term arrangement for those travelling with their pets within the UK.
Jim Allister
When the grip of EU law controls even the movement of our pets within the United Kingdom, is it not clear that we have gone far too far in regarding Northern Ireland as EU territory? For that is the reason for this absurd regulation, which, at the behest of the EU, imposes pet passports if a person wants to bring their pet from GB to Northern Ireland. There is no point the Secretary of State saying that it could have been worse; they should not exist at all. When will this Government get the EU off our backs and liberate the people of Northern Ireland and our pets from EU diktat?
Hilary Benn
As I hope the hon. Gentleman is aware, Northern Ireland pet owners will not face any checks and will not be required to hold a pet travel document. In discussing this matter, there is an obligation on him and all of us to ensure that we present the facts, so that people are not unnecessarily troubled.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
The Executive’s draft programme for government acknowledges that policing numbers in Northern Ireland are at an all-time low, a situation that Chief Constable Boutcher has described as dangerous. The draft programme commits to increasing numbers in line with New Decade, New Approach. Is the Secretary of State convinced that the budget sustainability plan is sufficient to achieve that aim?
Mr Speaker
Well, I think we will wait then. Let us move on. I call Dr Lauren Sullivan.
Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
Where were we, Mr Speaker?
I welcome the publication of the Northern Ireland Executive’s budget sustainability plan—a positive and necessary step towards sustainable public finances—and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has agreed with the Northern Ireland Finance Minister that discussions over a long-term fiscal framework for Northern Ireland can now begin.
Dr Sullivan
Does the Secretary of State agree that to ensure sustainable finances the Northern Ireland Executive need to take steps to reform the NHS and public services?
Hilary Benn
I share my hon. Friend’s view. As the House will be aware, people in Northern Ireland face the longest waiting lists in the whole United Kingdom, and all Governments, including the Northern Ireland Executive, have to balance the money coming in and the funds that they can raise, and take decisions about public service reform. I am very encouraged by the recent event organised by the Northern Ireland Health Minister, which Dr Bengoa, who produced a report on reform in Northern Ireland, returned to Northern Ireland to attend, because there is now a commitment to take forward that process.
Deirdre Costigan
What impact does the Secretary of State think that the UK leaving the European convention on human rights would have on the sustainability of Northern Ireland’s finances and devolved government?
Hilary Benn
Given that the European convention on human rights is one of the foundations of the Good Friday agreement, I am frankly astonished that anyone who aspires to lead His Majesty’s Opposition should suggest that our country should leave the ECHR. It would be utterly irresponsible.
David Smith
I commend all those who worked to re-establish devolved government earlier this year at Stormont. It is now vital that the Northern Ireland Executive ensure that they have sustainable finances. Does the Secretary of State agree that revenue raising by the Northern Ireland Executive has an important part to play in delivering financial sustainability and stability to Northern Ireland?
Hilary Benn
I do. Indeed, raising £113 million was part of the deal that the last Government put in place as part of the £3.3 billion package that led to the restoration—well, that followed the restoration of the Executive. That includes delivering a balanced budget in the current year, and I am very encouraged by the statements of the Northern Ireland Finance Minister in that regard.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The budget sustainability plan is commendable, but does the Secretary of State agree that our public services are in crisis? Our roads are crumbling, we have the longest health waiting lists in the whole of the UK, and our schools need investment. Northern Ireland needs to be in receipt of a fair long-term funding allocation, based on Treasury needs. Will he confirm to the House that he is making the case for that to the Treasury for the people of Northern Ireland?
Hilary Benn
Northern Ireland’s greater spending needs are recognised. The Northern Ireland Fiscal Council was established to answer the question of what that additional funding should be, and it came to the conclusion that the figure should be 124%, which will be met this year in respect of the budget. The interim fiscal framework also said that if further credible sources come along suggesting that the figure should be different, the Government would undertake to look at that. But nothing takes away from the Executive’s responsibility to manage the budget that they have, and to take decisions, including on reform.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the budget resources for the Northern Ireland Justice Minister are extremely short and that we are not able to recruit enough Police Service of Northern Ireland officers, and has he had any discussions with the Justice Minister about resolving that problem?
Hilary Benn
As the hon. Member will be aware, decisions about the allocation of the Northern Ireland budget rest with the Northern Ireland Executive. Funds go to the Justice Minister, who then decides principally how much to pass on to the policing board for policing costs and how much to deal with the justice system and the prisons, which are also under pressure. I recognise the pressure that PSNI officers face, not least because I met a number of those who were injured in the recent disorder.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
It is very generous of you to call me again, Mr Speaker. The Executive’s draft programme for government acknowledges that policing numbers in Northern Ireland are at an all-time low, a situation that the chief constable has described as dangerous. The draft programme commits to increasing numbers in line with New Decade, New Approach. Is the Secretary of State convinced that the budget sustainability plan is sufficient to achieve that aim?
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, as we discussed just a moment ago. I recognise the pressures on the PSNI, but it falls to the Executive to decide how much to allocate, from the funds available to them, to policing and other public services in Northern Ireland. If they wish to allocate more, they are in a position to do so, but it involves making a choice.
Alex Burghart
The Secretary of State is of course right that policing in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter, but national security is not. If we look at policing numbers right now, which are at an all-time low, we are reminded that his party’s manifesto made explicit commitments to improving public services in Northern Ireland. Will the Government commit to ensuring that policing in Northern Ireland is sufficient to keep the people of Northern Ireland safe and maintain national security, and to protecting the additional security funding of £32 million a year that comes direct from His Majesty’s Treasury?
Hilary Benn
On the latter point, the hon. Gentleman just has to wait a week to see what the Budget produces. I simply say to him that the PSNI, the security services and others do an outstanding job in protecting the people of Northern Ireland from terrorist threats, and we should all support them in that endeavour.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
The budget sustainability plan highlights that Northern Ireland has been systemically underfunded, with the fiscal council estimating an annual shortfall of between £300 million and £400 million since 2022. Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Executive reported a £559 million overspend between 2022 and 2024. What measures are the Government taking to address Northern Ireland’s immediate budgetary pressures, ensure long-term financial stability and equitable funding, and, crucially, guarantee sustainable public services?
Hilary Benn
In addition to the £3.3 billion package that followed the restoration of the Executive, the Executive gained £185 million in July when the main estimates were published. In order to avoid having to repay the debt that the hon. Member refers to, they have to put their finances on a sustainable path, deliver a balanced budget, and raise the additional £130 million revenue to which they committed when the deal was done. The fiscal council’s view is that 124% is the right funding.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
The Government are committed to implementing the Windsor framework in good faith, and to protecting Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market. We continue to take forward policies set out in “Safeguarding the Union”, including most recently the establishment of the independent monitoring panel and the publication of guidance under section 46 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
There is some concern regarding the supply of medicines to Northern Ireland. The British Generic Manufacturers Association says that there is an “absurd situation” in which there will be shortages due to the bureaucracy of the “UK only” labelling required for medicines going into Northern Ireland. The Government say that they are relaxed that the deadline will be met. Is the Secretary of State relaxed about the continued supply of medicines coming into Northern Ireland?
Hilary Benn
It is really important that the medicines that are required continue to be supplied. The industry has had quite a period in which to make arrangements to ensure that the labelling rules are met. I hope that, in the time available, those companies that have not done so will do so.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
Having carefully considered the results of the consultation with industry, the Government decided not to proceed with the introduction of mandatory “Not for EU” labelling in Great Britian from 1 October 2024. Instead, we will take the powers necessary to apply “Not for EU” labelling in the future, if that is required to secure supplies in Northern Ireland.
Sammy Wilson
The result of the Northern Ireland protocol, signed by the previous Government, has been to create an economic border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and the imposition of EU law, which has created a problem for the supply of goods to Northern Ireland. When in opposition, Labour supported the idea of food labelling as a way of avoiding an interruption in the supply of food goods from GB to Northern Ireland, so why have the Government reneged on that promise, and what will be the trigger for its imposition if needed?
Hilary Benn
The consultation on UK-wide labelling led the industry to say that such labelling would impose huge costs on industry, and therefore on consumers, through raised goods prices. The aim is to ensure that goods are not delisted in Northern Ireland. That is why we are taking a power to ensure that if there is any evidence of that happening, the labelling requirements set out in “Safeguarding the Union” can be applied, including on individual products on a sectoral basis.
Mr Speaker
I did not come back to Josh Newbury after Question 5, so he will ask his supplementary question now.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
Businesses in my constituency tell me that they face increased red tape and costs when importing from or exporting to Northern Ireland. Can the Secretary of State confirm that he is committed to unfettered access for goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britian?
Hilary Benn
I certainly can confirm that, and it is set out in the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South and Mid Down) (SDLP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Fleur Anderson)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her new role as leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party, and I thank her for raising this important issue. Seven women and girls have been killed violently in Northern Ireland this year alone. That is devastating. I have discussed the importance of action on violence against women and girls with the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, and I welcome the Northern Ireland Executive making it a priority in their programme for Government, as well as the new strategic framework.
Claire Hanna
Mary Ward in my constituency became the fourth woman to be murdered in just six weeks in Northern Ireland. It remains one of the most dangerous places in Europe to be a woman, with a femicide rate twice that of Britain. We need to think deeply about the type of society that we have created, and that is manifesting in this way. The recent publication of the Northern Ireland strategy on violence against women was overdue and very welcome. Does the Minister agree that the funding and human resources attached to that strategy must be proportionate to the urgency and the deep roots of the issue? Will she support the Executive as they review the sentencing and judicial processes that are contributing to these very preventable deaths?
Fleur Anderson
My thoughts are with the family and friends, and all those affected by the murder of Mary Ward. Every woman deserves to feel safe. There is what has been called an epidemic of violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland. I join my hon. Friend in welcoming the new strategy. We need stronger action by the justice system and more support for frontline services in order to tackle harassment wherever it is—in homes, schools, workplaces, and on our streets. We need to challenge and change misogynistic attitudes and behaviours. That will need urgent action, and us working together, and this Government stand ready to do that.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
I meet regularly with the Chief Constable and his team to discuss a range of issues. While the Chief Constable has operational independence, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office provides oversight of those powers to ensure that their use is necessary, proportionate and in accordance with the law.
David Davis
At a recent hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, it became apparent that the Northern Ireland police force had been caught surveilling journalists’ telephones on the basis that they had received secret documents from whistleblowers. The reason for the secrecy of those documents was to cover up the embarrassment of the Royal Ulster Constabulary about its handling of the Loughinisland massacre. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the future use of surveillance powers by the Northern Ireland police?
Hilary Benn
I am indeed aware of the background to this case. The original search warrants were quashed and the police investigation was discontinued. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal is currently looking at this case, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment while that is ongoing. The Chief Constable has set up the McCullough review to look at the wider issue, and the right hon. Gentleman may well wish to make representations to that review.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister (Angela Rayner)
I have been asked to reply, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister is in Samoa to discuss shared opportunities in the Commonwealth, including how we work together to deliver economic growth. With increasing threats facing Britain, it is vital that we also strengthen defence, security and co-operation with our allies. That is why today, this Government signed a landmark defence agreement with Germany that will help keep us safe and create hundreds of jobs.
I know the whole House will join me in sending our best wishes to Sir Chris Hoy and his wife Sarra. He is a true sporting legend, and the courage and positivity they have shown will inspire many others. I also send our condolences to those affected by the train crash in Powys.
This morning, I have had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Adam Jogee
For 14 years, my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme had to suffer flatlining wages, in-work poverty, and a bust economy that served nobody. Can I urge the Deputy Prime Minister to use the Employment Rights Bill to turn the page on the last 14 years, give our businesses the support they need, and finally restore dignity, prosperity and opportunity to the good people of Newcastle-under-Lyme?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and welcome him to his place. When this Government took office, we promised the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation—a new deal for working people. We said that we would introduce a Bill within the first 100 days, and we have kept that promise. This is a Labour Government led by working people for working people.
Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
I join the Deputy Prime Minister in paying tribute to the bravery of Sir Chris Hoy—he truly is an inspiration to us all. I also echo her comments about the train crash in Powys.
What is the Deputy Prime Minister’s definition of working people?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Let me start by welcoming the right hon. Gentleman to his new place. Today is our first exchange since he pushed for a July general election, and if his own side has not offered him a peerage, I certainly would have.
The definition of “working people” is the people who the Tory party have failed for the past 14 years.
Sir Oliver Dowden
The Deputy Prime Minister stood on a manifesto promising not to raise taxes on working people. It now appears that she cannot even define who working people are, so I will give her another go. There are 5 million small business owners in this country; are they working people?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not know how the shadow Deputy Prime Minister can stand there with a straight face when it was the small businesses—the working people of this country—that paid the price of the Conservatives crashing the economy, sending interest rates soaring. I think he needs to learn his own lessons in opposition.
Sir Oliver Dowden
I think the whole House will have heard the Deputy Prime Minister disregard 5 million hard-working small business owners. These are the publicans, the shopkeepers, the family running a local café. None of those count as working people to her.
Labour gave a clear commitment not to raise national insurance. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has given its view on this. It says that raising employer national insurance is
“a tax…on working people.”
Even the Chancellor said that raising employer national insurance was a “jobs tax” that will
“make each new recruit more expensive and increase the costs to business”.
So does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with the IFS and her own Chancellor?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I remember what the Conservatives said to business. What was it? “Eff business”, whereas this party held an international investment summit last week, which put about £63 billion into our economy. We are pro-business, pro-worker and getting on with fixing the mess that they left behind.
Sir Oliver Dowden
I think we can take it from that answer that the Deputy Prime Minister does not agree with the IFS, and I suppose it should not come as a surprise that she does not agree with her Chancellor, but does she agree with this:
“Working people will pay…when employers pass on the hike in national insurance”?
Those are her words, so does she at least agree with herself?
The Deputy Prime Minister
What I am incredibly proud of is that this week, this Government brought in a new employment Bill that will raise the living standards of 10 million workers. Would the shadow Deputy Prime Minister like to apologise for the hike in taxes—they are at a 70-year high—that he put on working people, the crashing of the economy and the disaster that he left behind?
Sir Oliver Dowden
The Deputy Prime Minister mentions her policy. Let us be clear: it is a £5 billion hit to the British economy, and that is her own assessment. Following these answers, there will be millions of working people even more worried about the tax rises coming their way in next week’s Budget.
However, as this is our last exchange across the Dispatch Box, I would like to turn to somebody I hope we can all agree is a hard-working person—His Majesty the King. Will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in sending him best wishes ahead of the Commonwealth summit in Samoa? In particular, will she confirm that this Government recognise the unique role played by the Commonwealth, and will she commit to deepening that relationship, so that, under His Majesty’s leadership, we build upon possibly the greatest legacy of the late Queen?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will miss our exchanges—the battle of the gingers, the late nights voting—and in that spirit, I will agree with my right hon. Friend. The King does a tremendous job, and so did the late Queen. The Commonwealth is very important, and that is why the King and the Prime Minister are working together at the moment.
Sir Oliver Dowden
I thank the right hon. Lady for that answer. Our Commonwealth family is brought together by historical and cultural ties—indeed, much like the pair of us. [Interruption.] I will resist the temptation to replicate that. As we look to the Commonwealth’s future, we have the opportunity to deepen our economic relationship. Will she assure the House that the Prime Minister will use the summit to continue the work, begun by the last Government, of building deeper economic ties with our Commonwealth friends and allies?
The Deputy Prime Minister
We talk about economics; the architect of the 2024 Tory general election campaign is doing his victory lap before retiring with the hereditary peers that he fought so hard to protect. He leaves behind a Tory party in utter denial—heads in the sand, refusing to accept their rejection by the British public. Their plan for Britain includes scrapping the minimum wage, cutting maternity pay and tax breaks for the big oil companies. This Labour Government were elected—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Dr Evans, you have got a sore neck; I wish a little that it was your throat.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Tory Members do not like to hear it, but this Labour Government were elected to end the Tory chaos, and that is exactly what we are doing, with £600 more in the pockets of insecure workers, 30,000 new dads given paternity leave and 10 million working people better off. While their so-called leadership candidates argue about what went wrong, this Labour Government are getting on with rebuilding Britain.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for raising what is an emotive subject for Members on both sides of the House. From my work in this area before I was in this place, I know what incredible work this is, and what an honour it is to be there for somebody at the end of their life. Discussions have begun on how to improve access to palliative and end-of-life care, and I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss this issue.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
May I associate myself and the Liberal Democrats with the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks about Chris Hoy, and about all those involved in the train crash?
Our NHS is bracing itself for a winter crisis. One of the causes of the winter crisis every year is that there are thousands of people in hospitals who are fit to go home, but who cannot be discharged because there are not the care workers in place to enable people to recover at home or in a care home. Will the Deputy Prime Minister consider the Liberal Democrats’ idea of an NHS winter taskforce to winter-proof our NHS, end the cycle of the winter crisis, and put to an end the scandal of hospital patients paying the price of the social care crisis left by the Conservatives?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments, and I share her desire to ensure that care workers are given the respect and importance that they deserve. They are critical to solving the problems in our national health service. The Labour party will create a national care service, and we are launching our first ever fair pay agreement for care professionals to boost recruitment and retention. We must get the NHS back on its feet after the disaster of the Conservatives, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will have more to say on that in the Budget.
Daisy Cooper
I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for her answer. We stand ready, as a party of constructive opposition, to work with the Government to fix our social care system. However, a measure that could make it harder for us to keep the carers that we so desperately need would be an increase in employers’ national insurance contributions. Were that measure to go ahead, it would affect millions of small businesses, including 18,000 small care providers. Will the Deputy Prime Minister assure the House that nothing in the Budget will make it harder for vulnerable people to access the care workers and the care that they desperately need?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Again, I will not speculate on the Budget, not least with the Chancellor sat beside me. To reiterate what the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have said, this Budget will recognise that working people of this country and enterprise in this country have been hard-hit by 14 years of the Conservatives. We will rebuild Britain, and we will grow our economy to pay for our public services.
Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I welcome my hon. Friend to his place. He has been a champion for workers at Newton Aycliffe from day one. I know he has met the Transport Secretary, and I can assure him that we are in close contact with Hitachi on operations to secure a sustainable future for Newton Aycliffe. We are committed to a long-term industrial strategy for rolling stock, seeking to support British manufacturing and end the volatility of recent years.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
In the spirit of today’s cross-party working, will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in applauding the brave Labour staff members who travelled across the Atlantic to campaign against Donald Trump?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am loving this love-in; I do not often get it. What I will say to the right hon. Gentleman is that people in their own time often go and campaign, and that is what we have seen. It happens in all political parties—people go and campaign, and they do what they want to do in their own time with their own money.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I pay tribute to those who work with children with special educational needs and disabilities. I myself have my amazing son, who does tremendously well given the challenges he has faced in life. I know from personal experience that the system is just not working for children and families. Future funding decisions will need to be taken as part of the upcoming spending review, but we will work with the sector to deliver our shared mission and restore parents’ trust.
Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Member might not have been in this place—I welcome him to his place now—in the last Parliament, but it was his Government who left the £22 billion black hole, his Government who left us with the biggest housing crisis, his Government who crashed the economy and his Government who saw inflation go to 11%, where pensioners were worse off than they are now.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this serious and important issue. The humanitarian situation in northern Gaza is dire. We need an immediate ceasefire, much more aid allowed to flow in and an immediate release of all the hostages. We have suspended UK export licences to Israel for items that might be used in the current conflict. The Government have concluded that there is a clear risk that items exported to Israel might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. That does not change our position of steadfast support for Israel’s security, but we will always do so in a manner consistent with our obligations under domestic and international law.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. I will ensure that the Minister has a meeting with him. The first job of any Government is to protect their citizens and that includes our children. We will make sure we work across the House to deliver that.
Carolyn Harris (Neath and Swansea East) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
Absolutely, and I thank my hon. Friend for all her work in this area. This Government will boost protections for women experiencing menopause symptoms at work and I am proud that we have appointed Mariella Frostrup as the new menopause employment ambassador. She is a powerful champion who will work with employers across the country to raise awareness and improve workplace support for women, and help them to stay in work and progress in their careers.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Member for her very important question. I am sorry to hear about what Charlie and many other children with special educational needs have gone through. We inherited a really dire situation and many Members across the House have raised this issue. I am sure the Chancellor has heard what she has said about the upcoming Budget.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend and welcome him, and his expertise in the National Crime Agency, to this place. He knows that we inherited an asylum system in chaos. As he rightly says, these are people—women and children. We are putting in place a credible plan to protect our borders and remove those with no right to be here by setting up our border security command, backed by £75 million of investment. We are working with our international partners to target and disrupt the criminal smuggling gangs.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman, the Father of the House, for his question. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is taking urgent action to clear the backlog of cases and reduce the use of asylum accommodation, saving millions for taxpayers. I will ensure that he is kept fully updated as the Scampton decommissioning and disposal process is followed.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for her important question. Let me say from the outset that the pace of remediation has been too slow. I do take a personal lead: seven years on from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it is unacceptable that so many buildings still have unsafe cladding. I am meeting developers, mayors, regulators and national building safety bodies to press the urgency of this work, and I will ensure that action is being taken to make homes safe.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am really sorry to hear the plight of Shropshire farmers. We inherited the flood defence programme in disrepair, and thanks to 14 years of mismanagement and failure, communities are unprotected and families and businesses are forced to pay the price. We launched a flood defence taskforce to turbocharge the delivery and co-ordination of flood defences, and we are investing £1.5 billion this year to scale up flooding national resilience. I will ensure that the hon. Lady gets a meeting with the Minister.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
The Government have delivered on their manifesto commitment to introduce the Employment Rights Bill. It includes a historic fair pay agreement for care workers, which will benefit all those who care for older and disabled adults such as those in my constituency. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that care workers deserve pay and conditions that match the amazing work they do to support our loved ones to have a fulfilling life?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. As a biased former care worker, I will always champion carers and the complex quality and professional work that they do. I absolutely agree that care workers deserve the pay and conditions to match their enormous contribution to our community. I am proud to say that we are delivering that fair pay agreement that will give carers the recognition that they deserve, and I will ensure that those carers are able to deliver the best possible care to our loved ones.
James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I welcome the hon. Member to his place. He is right to advocate for small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. This Government are turning the page on the relationship with Europe, reinvigorating alliances and forging new partnerships rather than reopening the divisions of the past. We will improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU, tearing down unnecessary barriers to trade. That will not involve rejoining the single market and customs union or introducing freedom of movement, but we will make that relationship better.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
Some 27,000 people in the Cities of London and Westminster live in the private rented sector. After 14 years of neglect and delay, they face damp and mould in their homes, and risk no-fault evictions and out-of-the-blue rent hikes. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that the Renters’ Rights Bill currently in Committee will transform the lives of private renters and finally rebalance power between tenants and landlords?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. I am incredibly proud of the Renters’ Rights Bill that we are pushing through Parliament, because too many renters are being exploited by a minority of unscrupulous landlords, unable to challenge bad practices because they could be evicted at any moment. [Interruption.] Opposition Members chunter, but they promised the electorate that and failed to deliver. We will deliver.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I welcome the hon. Member to his place. We recognise the devastating impact that flooding can have. I know that the flooding Minister visited Bedfordshire in September to meet volunteers and residents. We inherited flood defences in disrepair and behind schedule. We have launched the floods resilience taskforce, and when it comes to the planning reforms needed to deliver the 1.5 million homes this country needs, we will ensure that the right infrastructure is in place and that communities are resilient.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
Zoe’s Place, in the West Derby area of Liverpool, is a hospice that provides support to sick children and their families. It has been threatened with closure and has to find £5 million by the end of the year. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that such hospices need to be on a statutory footing and not reliant on charitable funding?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hospice situation in this country has faced significant challenges because of the 14 years of devastation under the Conservatives. The Health Secretary has already raised these issues and knows that this is of importance; I will make sure that my hon. Friend gets to meet him.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister will know that my constituency, and Lincolnshire as a whole, is the breadbasket of Britain, producing 12% of the food consumed across the entire nation, including 30% of the vegetables and 20% of the sugar beet. That is because of the grade 1 and 2 land in Lincolnshire, yet Lincolnshire faces an invasion of giant pylons down the east coast and huge solar developments. Will she meet a delegation of colleagues from Lincolnshire and nearby, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), so that we can establish that energy security must never be a competitor with food security?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Member for his question. He knows that we launched a consultation on the national planning policy framework. We will protect agricultural land, we will ensure that we have renewable energy so we have energy security in this country, and we will get Britain building again.
Independent Water Commission
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the action that this Government are taking to fundamentally transform our water industry and clean up our waterways for good.
Fourteen years of Conservative failure have left our water sector in disrepair. The rivers, lakes and seas that we all love have record levels of pollution. Severe droughts are set to leave parts of the country facing significant water shortages by 2050, particularly in the south-east, and water companies forecast that England will need to find an extra 5 billion litres of water a day to fill the gap between supply and demand by that same year. A rising population and the increasing impacts of climate change are putting strain on the water system. Firmer action should have been taken by the previous Government to ensure that money was invested to fix the water and sewerage system. Instead, they allowed that money to be siphoned off for bonuses while our water infrastructure crumbled.
A secure water supply is essential for every home and business throughout the country. It is the foundation of our economy, our communities and our global security. It is essential to life itself. We use water to cool power stations, and it is vital to our electricity supply. We use water to grow the crops that provide the food on our plate, and we use it to supply our leisure industries. Without a resilient water supply, we cannot build the new homes and critical infrastructure that we need to grow the economy.
Concerns about pollution, water shortages, bill increases and the sector’s financial resilience all point to the need for profound change. The water sector needs a complete reset, with a reformed water sector working in partnership with Government to bring in the investment we need. We need a clear long-term plan to ensure that the sector puts customers and the environment first and can attract investment to upgrade our infrastructure. We need a water system fit for the future. We cannot clean up our rivers, lakes and seas overnight, but we have a plan, and the work of change has started.
On 11 July, I made a statement to the House on the agreement that I reached with water companies and Ofwat to ringfence money earmarked for investment in water infrastructure so that it can no longer be diverted for shareholder payouts and undeserved bonus payments. On 9 September, we introduced the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which sets out new measures, including measures strengthening regulation to ensure that water bosses face personal criminal liability for serious and repeated lawbreaking; giving the water regulator new powers to ban the payment of bonuses if environmental standards are not met; and boosting accountability for water executives through a new code of conduct. Today, I am pleased to announce the third stage of our plan.
Together with the Welsh Government, we are launching an independent commission that will lead the biggest review of the water industry since privatisation 35 years ago. The commission will ensure that we have the robust regulatory framework that we need to attract the significant investment that is required to clean up our waterways, build new infrastructure to address water scarcity, and restore public confidence in the sector. I am delighted that it will be led by the former deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sir Jon Cunliffe, who has decades of economic and regulatory experience. Sir Jon will be supported by an advisory group of experts covering areas such as the environment, public health, engineering, customers, investors and economics. He will seek advice from wider groups of stakeholders including environmental campaigners, consumer champions, water companies, regulators and the public at large.
The commission will conduct a root-and-branch review of the water sector’s regulatory system. It will cover the water industry in England and Wales and the strategic planning framework under the water framework directive and river basin management plans to ensure that strategic water planning across sectors is effective at catchment, regional and national scales. Where housing, planning, agriculture and drainage interlink with strategic planning across the water system, they are also in scope.
The commission will set a new framework for the future. It will not make recommendations that affect the current price review ’24 process, in order to ensure that there is a stable climate for investment as that process concludes. It will be pragmatic and will focus on reforms that improve the privatised regulatory model. Nationalisation of the water sector will not be in scope, because of the high costs of buying out the current owners, lack of evidence that it would lead to improvements, and the long delays that it would cause in the process of cleaning up polluted water and serving customers better.
The commission will make recommendations in the first half of 2025, reporting to me as Environment Secretary and to the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs in Wales. Once it has made its recommendations, the UK and Welsh Governments will respond and consult on proposals, including subsequent legislation. Further details of the commission’s scope, delivery, approach and timelines are set out in its terms of reference, which will be available on gov.uk today.
This Government will deliver an ambitious, long-term and collaborative approach to reforming the water sector, creating a strong new partnership between Government, water companies, customers, investors and all those who work to protect our precious environment. The commission will set the groundwork for the reformed water sector that we want to see. I thank Sir Jon for leading this important work.
This is our opportunity to ensure that our children, and their children, have the chance to create memories that will last a lifetime—to splash about at the seaside, row on our rivers or enjoy a picnic on the lake shore. This is our opportunity to inject billions of pounds into the economy and to power UK growth by attracting global investment into a transformed water sector. This is our opportunity to clean up our water once and for all.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for prior sight of his statement.
Fourteen years in opposition—and this is what the Labour party has to offer. Labour Members have had more than a decade to craft a clear package of policies, listen to campaigners and prepare to govern, yet what they have brought to the House today illustrates no sign of any ambition. This is a sign of hesitation. It is a way to delay the difficult decisions and buy themselves more time. It is part of a growing trend that unfortunately we are seeing consistently from this new Labour Government, across all Departments: announce a review, a taskforce and yet another commission, and hope the public do not notice that really they never had much of a plan at all.
That approach is simply not going to wash with the bill payers. Before the election, the Secretary of State toured the country with campaigners like Feargal Sharkey, promising radical change to the sector. He is now in power, and what has he actually achieved so far? He spent the entire election campaign telling voters that he wanted to put water company bosses in the dock, but we can see from the Government’s announcements on the Water (Special Measures) Bill that it will achieve no such thing, as campaigners and industry experts have already pointed out. Nor will the Bill provide any reassurance whatever for investors. Rather marvellously, the Secretary of State has managed not only to frustrate campaigners, but to disenfranchise investors from any long-term aspirations to invest in the sector.
The Secretary of State says that he has announced a ban on water company bonuses. Hang on: that was a policy that we brought forward in our time in government and that the Secretary of State is now attempting to reannounce and pass off as his own. It was the Conservatives who announced a ban on water company bosses’ bonuses, linked shareholder dividends to environmental performance, quadrupled water company inspections, fast-tracked investments to cut spills and launched a whistleblowing portal for water company workers to report breaches.
It is surprising to hear the Secretary of State claim that his Government are truly serious about this issue, when their proposals are less firm than the measures delivered by the previous Government. He could take real action right now by progressing the last Conservative Administration’s plans for an automatic ban on water company bosses’ bonuses when offences take place. Rehashing announcements already set in motion by the Conservative Government, putting forward policies that will not actually put more pressure on water company bosses and then simply pressing pause on a year-long review will not result in the widespread change that Labour promised its voters.
The Secretary of State acknowledges that the announced review will make no recommendations that affect the current price review ’24 process, meaning that there will be no chance of the Government considering making any significant change until 2029 at the earliest. Will he provide an outline of the timeframe associated with actual recommendations from the review being implemented and put in place? When is any real benefit from this further review, taskforce or commission likely to be experienced, not only for the water industry, in terms of infrastructure improvements, but for the bill payer and the environment? It seems to me that the Secretary of State is just kicking the can down the road with another review, another taskforce and another commission, and removing himself from any of the tough decisions.
The Secretary of State said that the review would have no impact on the price review ’24 process. Will he outline exactly when the positive impacts will come? By my calculations, it will not be until 2029 at the earliest. Will he also outline the impact of the review on the measures proposed in the Water (Special Measures) Bill? What will be done if the recommendations do not sit comfortably with the current proposals?
One cannot help concluding that the Secretary of State is out of depth on this issue, cannot deliver on the tough language that he promised in the run-up to the general election and is now doing nothing more than attempting to kick the tough decisions down the road and into the long grass. This Secretary of State seems to be all bark and no bite.
Steve Reed
Well, that was all a little bit embarrassing, wasn’t it? The previous Government had 14 years in power, our rivers, lakes and seas are awash with record levels of pollution, and that is all the Conservatives have to say. I took action seven days after the general election: I brought the water chief execs into my office, and we agreed that money earmarked for investment will be ringfenced so that it cannot be diverted to pay multimillion-pound bonuses to water chief execs who oversee failure in the water sector, as happened on the shadow Minister’s watch. The commission will reset the sector that the Conservatives broke, and clean up the water that they polluted. It will report to the Government in June and inform subsequent legislation.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
At the weekend, I went swimming in the North sea —probably for the last time this year—having first checked on the Surfers Against Sewage website that there had not been any legal or illegal spills. It is disgraceful that the last Conservative Government left our seas and waterways in such as state, and it is notable that Water UK continuously blames the regulator for not allowing it to raise prices in order to invest further in our system. Will the Secretary of State make sure that we assess the value extracted by the water companies? They have taken billions of pounds in profits and hundreds of millions in bonuses. We need to make sure that future investment adds value and does not take it away.
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. Unfortunately, customers have been left to pay the price of 14 years of Conservative failure to secure investment in our water infrastructure, so it has collapsed to such an extent that Ofwat now recommends eye-watering bill increases. Every penny of that is down to the failure of the Conservative party. Our reset will ensure that that kind of catastrophic failure can never happen again.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. To a large degree, I welcome it—or at least the intention behind it—but water companies dumped 54% more sewage into our lakes, rivers and coastal areas in 2023 than in the previous year. That amounts to 464,000 spills, including many in the lakes and rivers of Westmorland. My constituency is the most beautiful part of England and also the wettest, so water is deeply personal to us.
Does the Secretary of State understand my worry that we might have gone from having a Conservative Government who would not face up to this outrage or tackle it, to having a new Labour Administration who have acknowledged this outrage and decisively resolved to have a jolly good think about it? While Thames Water crumbles as we speak and water companies seek bill increases of 40%, despite such poor performance across the country, does he really think that having a commission is necessary, given the urgent need for action? We have a fragmented, under-resourced and under-powered regulatory system, which allows powerful water companies to play regulators off against each other while our constituents pay the price. Is the solution not obvious? As the Liberal Democrats propose, we should create a new, unified and far more powerful clean water authority.
Does the Secretary of State share my deep concern that the current regulator has to give 25 years’ notice in order to strip a water company of its licence for environmental failure? Will he ensure that this ludicrous protection for failing companies should be replaced by a six-month period of notice instead? We are already more than 5% of the way through this Parliament, and this issue is one of our constituents’ most pressing concerns. Do we have to drag our heels like this?
Steve Reed
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He is absolutely right to point out that last year we saw the highest levels of sewage ever recorded in our rivers, lakes and seas. No wonder the public are so angry, including in his constituency. Tragically, Lake Windermere, an iconic and beautiful site, has been polluted with sewage and agricultural run-off because of the failures of the previous Government.
I have taken action already. We had a reset moment just seven days after the general election, when we carried out within a week things that the Conservatives failed to do in 14 years in power. The Water (Special Measures) Bill is going through the Houses of Parliament right now to ban the payment of unfair bonuses to water bosses. The commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, will look at the entire sector—root and branch—including governance and regulation, which the hon. Gentleman points to. It will look specifically at the point that he has raised, so that we end up with a system of regulation that is fit to clean up our waterways and then to protect them for the decades to come.
Torsten Bell (Swansea West) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and his announcement of this important review. To have Sir Jon Cunliffe, a long-term public servant, running it is very welcome indeed. Will my right hon. Friend say a bit more about how the close working between the Welsh Government and the UK Government will work, because that will be important in determining how this announcement affects my constituents?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend alludes to an important point. Rivers and water catchments are no respecters of boundaries, and it is important that we have a model that works within catchments, including where they cross boundaries, as they do in some cases between England and Wales. The review has been jointly commissioned by the UK and Welsh Governments, and it will jointly report to both Governments. It will seek a better model for structuring and supporting our water sector, so that we can ensure that we clean up all our rivers, all our lakes and all our seas; so that the public can get back to enjoying them; and so that we can bring in the investment to support the infrastructure, which will be delivered at pace, to drive economic growth in every single part of the United Kingdom.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Secretary of State is quite right to point to the role of the payment of bonuses and dividends in bringing us to this point, but he must surely acknowledge that that is far from being the whole story. There are a number of business and accounting practices in companies such as Thames Water that have brought us to the stage we are at today. If he is serious about having a water system that is fit for the future, he has to understand properly what has gone on before. Will he therefore confirm that the commission will be properly resourced with the necessary forensic accounting resource, so that those who have been responsible for the most egregious practices in the past and who now seem to be appearing in other water companies around the country will not be allowed to do the same thing there?
Steve Reed
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for the points that he makes. Of course, he is right. The Water (Special Measures) Bill, with its ban on bonuses, will not be sufficient to reset the sector, although it is an ask that the public are rightly making because of the unfairness of people who are overseeing failure being richly rewarded for that failure. That should not have been allowed to go on under the previous Government, and it will not go on under this new Government.
The reason we have set up the commission is to address the very points the right hon. Gentleman makes about financial and environmental sustainability and viability. I look forward to working with him and his Committee as the commission carries out its work, as we review its findings in the summer of next year, and as we then shape what will be significant new legislation to reset the sector—a reformed sector—in a new partnership with Government to bring in the investment that will finally clean up our waterways.
Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)
I declare an interest as a customer of Southern Water who lost my water supply for five days earlier this year, as did 30,000 of my constituents. As the Secretary of State knows well from his visits to Hastings and to Rye, we have major issues from flooding to sewage to water outages. I welcome the water commission. How can my constituents, particularly volunteer groups such as the Clean Water Action group, have their voices heard, particularly their concerns about ensuring that the regulators have the power and resources to clean up our sea?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is a powerful campaigner for cleaner water. In fact, it is hard to think of anybody who has campaigned harder on the issue. The commission will seek to engage the public at large, as well as a wider group of stakeholders who will be represented on an advisory group, which will include a customer voice. Once the commission has reported, the Government will consult on those findings and that will inform the subsequent legislation that will reset this sector once and for all.
Mr Speaker
Order. I say gently to the Secretary of State that I am here and he should be speaking through the Chair, not to the Member, as he has done for the last two questions. We can work together to get everybody looking the right way. I call Sir Gavin Williamson to set a good example.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
In my constituency we have beautiful rivers, including the great and mighty River Trent and the River Penk. Over the last few years, as more transparent data has become available, we have been able to see the number of sewage discharges going into those rivers. Will the Secretary of State promise the House that looking at how we can reduce sewage discharges into the Trent and the Penk will be at the heart of what the commission does?
Steve Reed
It is always a pleasure, of course, to gaze at you, Mr Speaker, rather than elsewhere in the Chamber.
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The point of the commission is to identify ways in which we can strengthen regulation and operations so that we can bring in the investment, clean up our water sector once and for all, and reduce and remove the pollution that is destroying so many beautiful rivers, including those in his constituency.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on the commission that has been set up today—it is absolutely fantastic. Gower was the first area of outstanding natural beauty in the whole of the United Kingdom, and the bathing waters there are second to none, but some of them are less so. I would like to highlight a campaign I have set up to test the bathing water in the winter season, with my constituents, local business and the Gower Society, because data is key—it is what will drive the improvement of our bathing water. Will he congratulate Surfers Against Sewage, which has been really supportive, and everybody in my constituency who is taking part and taking control?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend represents an incredibly beautiful part of the country in the Gower, and her constituents and the many people who visit those beauty spots will want to know that their children can enjoy the water without risk of contamination from polluted water. Of course I congratulate Surfers Against Sewage and the many campaigners who have pushed for reform. They will be invited to participate in the work of the commission—they have huge expertise. I hope that, before long, her constituents who are testing the quality of the water will start to see improvements until it is pure and crystal clear, as it should always have been.
Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)
The Secretary of State highlights the scandal of sewage in our seas and rivers. Indeed, raw sewage was dumped into our rivers and seas for 3.6 million hours last year. Since privatisation, £72 billion has been paid to shareholders in dividends, while his Department highlights that it would cost £56 billion to carry out the necessary investment, so privatisation has failed as a model for getting the investments in place. Will he therefore confirm that the commission will look at what ownership model for water will be effective in addressing this scandal, including the option of bringing water back into public hands?
Steve Reed
The reason I have ruled out nationalisation is that it would not resolve the problems we face. We saw in the Olympics in France that the River Seine was not able to be used for swimming because of pollution. That is a state-owned water system. We see the problems in Scotland. That is a state-owned water system as well. The problems are those of governance and regulation. Nationalisation would cost towards £100 billion of public money—money that does not exist—and the time it would take to unpick the current models of ownership, during which time investment would be choked off, would see our rivers, lakes and seas filled with even more sewage and pollution, rather than less. I am more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology. I will do what works best as quickly as possible. The commission will give us guidance on how we should change the system to make sure it works for everybody.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
For the last few weeks, I have been conducting independent tests, with colleagues from Bournemouth University, for nitrates and bacteria in the lovely Poole harbour and the surrounding waters. I have noticed, from talking to colleagues, that the frequency of official testing and the number of sites at which those tests are carried out have been reduced significantly by the Environment Agency over the years. Will the commission look at those issues? Will testing and the frequency of testing be included in its work?
Steve Reed
I recognise what my hon. Friend says about Poole harbour. It is, indeed, an incredibly beautiful part of the country. I have visited it several times and, sadly, I have also seen the extent and impact of the pollution. We are making sure that all sewage outlets are monitored through compulsory means, which is not the case currently. The commission will look at how we can improve the testing and monitoring of water quality as part of the strengthening of regulation, which will form a key part of its work.
Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)
The Secretary of State mentioned the importance of drainage in reducing incidents of pollution caused by flooding. Will he therefore commit today, while we await the outcome of the commission, to distributing the £75 million allocated by the previous Government to internal drainage boards, so that farmers in my constituency and others in the River Hull catchment do not have to spend another winter under water?
Steve Reed
Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman is referring to commitments to spend money that did not exist. We are waiting for the Chancellor to announce her Budget from this Dispatch Box in almost exactly one week’s time, and we will find out much more then.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
Last year, sewage was dumped 57 times along the precious coastline of my constituency—the equivalent of 594 hours of sewage spillages. Our constituents are rightly disgusted by this state of affairs. The Conservatives covered up this scandal for 14 years. Will my right hon. Friend tell me what this new Labour Government will do to hold companies to account?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I had the pleasure of visiting Bournemouth West with her, and I saw for myself the impact on businesses and tourism in that part of the world. Parents are frightened to let their kids go in the sea at certain times of day, when the water contamination has reached unacceptable levels. The commission will look at how we can strengthen regulation and governance to ensure that the practices that water companies have got away with over recent years can no longer happen. It will also look at how we can bring in the investment needed to repair our broken water infrastructure, so that we can drive economic growth in every part of the country, including, of course, in Bournemouth West.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
The use of storm overflows in places such as Skegby in Ashfield is absolutely disgusting and it pollutes my rivers, so will the Secretary of State commit to giving the water companies a deadline for ending their use?
Steve Reed
It will be for the commission to look at what we need to do to improve infrastructure and fix the broken system that we have at the moment. We are making sure that every overflow has monitoring on it, so that we know exactly what is coming out of it. We can therefore take action against the water companies that might be responsible.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
In my constituency this week, as well as having sewage in our bathing waters, we have had sewage on the streets in Penryn. The Conservative party cut funding to the regulator in 2015. Will the Secretary of State please confirm that the review will completely reset the role of the regulator?
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I had the pleasure of visiting Truro and Falmouth during the election, and I saw for myself the problems there. It is disgusting to see sewage bubbling up into the streets and even into some people’s back gardens because the sewage infrastructure is so broken after the previous Government failed for 14 years to bring in the investment necessary to upgrade it. The commission will look at how we secure funding and get that infrastructure rebuilt at pace, so that we can improve the situation we are hearing about. It will also look at regulation and the role of the regulator and make proposals as to how we can improve those, so that we have regulation that is fit for purpose.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
In Kingsbridge, in my constituency, the residents are literally wading through sewage, which seeps out of the drains in heavy rain due to a mixture of increased sewage from new houses and ancient culverts that cannot cope. I do not think that those residents will be encouraged by a review and a commission, which will not solve the problems they will face this winter. Will the Minister therefore meet me to discuss the particularly difficult and chronic problem in Kingsbridge? We need to find a solution, because we have not had one for a long time and we desperately need to sort this out.
Steve Reed
I have, of course, already taken action myself. I had the water chief executives into my office just seven days after the general election, and we agreed a programme of initial reforms, including ringfencing customers’ money that is earmarked for investment, so that it cannot be diverted and spent on undeserved multimillion-pound bonuses or dividend payments. We also have the Water (Special Measures) Bill going through the House of Lords right now, which will ban the payment of those undeserved bonuses. It is important that we understand exactly what has gone wrong in the sector that has led to a situation where regulation does not meet the requirements of the public, businesses, the economy or the environment. Key proposals will be coming out of the commission on those issues, and I hope the hon. Lady will welcome them when they come forward.
Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)
Today, a report found that rivers in the east and in London have the worst water quality in the UK, with an alarming amount of chemicals found. Citizen science has played a key role up to now in monitoring the quality of our water, so will the Secretary of State join me in paying tribute to citizen scientists and volunteers and assure us that their voices will be heard in this important work?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The many campaign groups and citizen scientists have had a huge impact on raising the profile of the sewage scandal affecting our country and in pointing to some of the ways in which we can start to fix things. Sir Jon’s commission will have an advisory group with representation from campaign groups and consumers. There will also be wide engagement with the public, both through the work of the commission itself and subsequently, as we work towards the reform legislation that will reset the sector once and for all.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
In the absence of a plan, it is always a good idea to do a review. My constituents are being failed by our local sewage infrastructure—Thames Water is a total and utter disgrace. However, I really welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, because I think I have found an unlikely ally. The Labour Government will force through building on the green belt in my constituency, with a whole host of new houses—a situation exacerbated by the failure of the Liberal Democrat administration in Elmbridge to deliver a local plan. Given the time it will take the commission to report back, and given that these new houses will require more sewerage, does the Secretary of State agree that we should pause and think again about the house building targets until the review has been completed?
Steve Reed
I thought the hon. Gentleman was standing up to apologise for the fact that the Conservative Government did absolutely nothing for 14 years, other than watch the torrent of effluent going into our rivers, lakes and seas increase and pollute them. My hon. Friend the Water Minister would be more than happy to meet him to discuss the issues that he raises in his constituency.
Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)
I welcome the commission announced by my right hon. Friend. Last week, six beaches in my constituency were affected by raw sewage dumping, with two of them—Joss Bay and Stone Bay—experiencing a bad effect on their bathing water quality, but the verdict was that they were still within Environment Agency permitted limits. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the commission will investigate regulatory standards, so that when raw sewage is dumped, there is actually a fine and a punishment for the water companies? I must also make a declaration as a customer of Southern Water and a sea water swimmer.
Steve Reed
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is, of course, a well-known environmental campaigner who stands up for her constituents and for the many businesses, including tourism businesses, that are adversely affected by the appalling state of our waters. It is clear that regulation and governance have been inadequate for a long time. This is a reset moment, where we can finally strengthen those things and deliver the clean water that her constituents, mine and those of all Members across the House expect to see.
Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)
Diolch, Mr Llefarydd. Water is devolved, but we in Wales do not have the full range of powers needed to address this scandal. For example, the Senedd cannot regulate the transfer of water by private companies whose catchment area straddles the border, which of course includes the likes of Hafren Dyfrdwy. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the commission considers the full devolution of powers over water and sewage licensing to Wales to empower the Senedd to set higher targets?
Steve Reed
Diolch yn fawr. The commission is jointly set up by the UK Government and the Welsh Government, and it will report back to both. It will inform the actions that both Governments take subsequently, including looking at infrastructure and how we make catchment areas operate better, particularly when they cross borders, as so many do between England and Wales.
Abtisam Mohamed (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on the launch of the independent water commission. I know my constituents in Sheffield Central will welcome the review. They are seeing a 25% rise in their bills, but that does not make sense to them when shareholders continue to receive profits. Will the Secretary of State provide an assurance that as an outcome of the review there will be transparency, water companies will be held to account and we will reset the focus on consumers instead of company profit?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Consumers must have a strong voice on the commission. They will gain that through consumer representation on the advisory group that will be working with Sir Jon, as the commissioner. She points to the eye-watering level of bill increases already proposed by Ofwat; alas, they are the price of Tory failure. The Tories allowed the water infrastructure to collapse to such an extent that it costs much more to fix it now than it would have cost had it been maintained properly through those 14 years. I cannot undo the damage they caused, but I can draw a line in the sand to ensure it never happens again.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
When the Conservatives privatised water, they created risk-free, money-printing emporiums that could pollute our coasts, including my west Cornwall coast, at their convenience. Although the Secretary of State says that nationalisation is not in scope —one can understand why—to what extent will company governance be in scope? Will it be possible to move companies closer to becoming community benefit societies, or at least to installing a community environmental champion, not in the pay of the company, on every board, to keep watch on the company?
Steve Reed
The hon. Gentleman makes important points. The areas he refers to will be in scope for the commission. I hope he will make his own representations to ensure those points are heard and fully considered before we get the findings in the summer of next year.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
Residents in my constituency have been disgusted by the degradation of our rural waterways across the east of England, as well as by the hollowing out of reservoir capacity across the country. I welcome the new Government and the new Secretary of State’s renewed leadership on these issues, but it is clear that under the previous Government weakened regulation and regulators played their part in facilitating the mess we have inherited. What assurances can he give my constituents that we will be beefing up the regulators and giving them the power they need to take the action we all want to see?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the previous Government deliberately weakened the regulators. They kept regulation too weak to hold the water companies to account and to ensure that we got the investment which could have maintained a better standard of infrastructure and stopped the level of pollution that his and everyone else’s constituents have had to face. We have already taken steps through the Water (Special Measures) Bill to give the regulator more teeth. The commission will be looking root and branch at the role of regulation, governance and the regulator, to ensure we have a system that is fit for the future that will guarantee clean water for decades to come.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
If I heard correctly, at the start of his statement the Secretary of State referred to the River Lugg, which runs through the centre of my constituency. Its catchment has been subject to a planning moratorium for more than five years, because of excess levels of phosphates in the river. The Secretary of State will be well aware that the reason for that is not primarily sewage pollution, but agricultural run-off; more than two thirds of the pollution is from agricultural run-off and only a quarter from sewage. However, the terms of reference for the Government’s water commission essentially make no mention of agriculture, with only a passing reference and nothing specific about addressing that problem; likewise the Water (Special Measures) Bill. With such a narrow approach to addressing water pollution, the Secretary of State will not be able to achieve his aim of cleaning up our rivers and seas. Does he agree that the terms of reference need to be changed to incorporate full attention on agricultural pollution as well as sewage?
Steve Reed
I hope the hon. Lady will look at the terms of reference, which are available at gov.uk. They focus on the whole catchment area of rivers and include agricultural run-off, which accounts for 45% of water pollution. Where there is an interface between agriculture and polluted water, that is indeed in scope for the work of the commission.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement. The contamination and destruction of our waterways, and even of our high streets, as we saw with sewage pollution in Newquay the other week, is an absolute disgrace that the previous Government failed to address. With Pennon Group, the owner of South West Water, paying £112 million in dividends and over £160 million in other finance costs, will the Secretary of State ensure that the independent commission, which I greatly welcome, addresses whether we have effective funding models for our water industry?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is disgusting for people to see sewage bubbling up, and not just in their high streets but even in their gardens, because of broken water infrastructure. We will be looking for a reset so that we can have a water sector that works for customers and the environment, as well as investors.
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
The year 2 pupils of Bishop Tufnell school in my constituency told me how disappointed they were not to be able to swim in the sea on their summer day out last year. As a fellow sea swimmer, I share their disappointment. Winter is coming and there is no time to waste. Pushing the can down the track with this commission is not good enough. Having reviewed the activities in my constituency, I want to know how the Secretary of State will provide a strategic overview that brings together all the different agencies that impact this matter, and not some time next year but before the real issues hit every single constituency around the coast of the country right now?
Steve Reed
I am very sorry for the year 2 pupils at the school the hon. Lady mentioned. I respectfully remind her that she represents the party that sat back and did nothing for 14 years, while the levels of pollution in our rivers, lakes and seas got far worse. That, I venture to suggest, is why those year 2 pupils cannot go in the water.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Sewage polluting Cornish beaches such as those in my constituency—specifically, St Agnes, where Surfers Against Sewage has its head office, Perranporth and Portreath—is yet another Conservative scandal that has damaged our economy and society for years, and that a Labour Government will now have to clear up. Does the Minister agree that as well as the economic damage, the damage to the mental health of those of us who cannot regularly use the sea should not be underestimated? Will the commission consider the mental health benefits as part of its work?
Steve Reed
I had the pleasure of visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency with him during the summer. I saw for myself the impact of sewage in the sea on the beautiful beaches around his part of Cornwall. Of course, it is not unusual for a Labour Government to have to come in and clean up the Tories’ mess, but rarely quite so literally as in the case of sewage in our waterways. He makes an important point about mental health. I hope he will feed that back to the commission because it is important it hears all sorts of views about the impact of polluted water as it considers how we can best clean it up.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
Since I was elected in July, Exmouth and Exeter East has been hit by significant sewage issues. I am sure the Secretary of State will understand that and I have written to him recently outlining some of those issues. Although the commission may bear fruit in future years, there are areas of the country, such as my constituency, that need immediate fixes. Will the Secretary of State meet me and the chief executive of South West Water to ensure that immediate fixes are put in place and maximum pressure is applied, so that we have the fixes we need and do not have to endure another summer like the one we have just had?
Steve Reed
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place and to this House. I hope Conservative Members will engage constructively with the commission, so that he can feed in his views directly. My hon. Friend the Minister for Water and Flooding is happy to meet him to discuss his local issues.
Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)
My constituents do not think that Yorkshire Water is doing a good job. Last year, sewage was discharged into the River Calder 4,125 times. The same year, Nichola Shaw, the boss, chose to take home a bonus of £371,000—or £90 per discharge. We have also had three major flooding incidents in Calder Valley over the past 15 years. Regulations do not cover water companies acting against flooding. Will my right hon. Friend look at the breadth of the current regulations and at what water companies can do about flooding?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Water (Special Measures) Bill, which is currently going through the House of Lords and will soon be in this House, looks at how undeserved bonuses can be banned. The public quite rightly feel a sense of injustice that failure is being rewarded, when clearly it should not be. The points he makes about flooding are well made, and I hope he will feed those into the work of the commission as it starts its work.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
The Environment Agency used to be responsible for monitoring sewage discharges, but for more than a decade now the water companies have had the responsibility for monitoring releases via storm overflows. In the previous Parliament, the Environmental Audit Committee heard that illegal spills may have been 10 times greater than that declared by the water companies. Will the new commission consider removing from water companies the monitoring of sewage discharges, or will it let them mark their own homework, as the previous Government did?
Steve Reed
There has been a wide failure in the regulation of water. That is why I have asked Sir Jon Cunliffe, as part of the commission that he is leading, to look at regulation and the roles of the regulators—not just one of them—to ensure that we have a system that is fit for purpose. We are ensuring that, outside the commission, there is mandatory monitoring of what is coming out of all overflows, including emergency overflows. In the Water (Special Measures) Bill, water chief executives will be required to be open and transparent about the extent of pollution; otherwise, they will face personal criminal liability for the first time.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
In 2024 alone, Hartlepool’s beautiful coastline has been marred by 49 separate incidents of sewage being discharged into our sea. At the same time, the water companies are making billions in profit. Whatever the outcome of the commission, can the Secretary of State commit to putting people in Hartlepool and across the country ahead of profit in cleaning up this mess?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; this sewage scandal affects the entire country, including his constituency of Hartlepool. It is important that this commission focuses on ensuring that consumers and the environment come first, and that we have a water sector that serves their interests primarily. I hope that he will make his points directly to the commission, because they will value hearing from him.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
I was a brand-new parent when South East Water cut off the water for six days for me and for thousands of my constituents. South East Water is 74% in debt—it is the second most indebted company in the land. Its current investment plans rely on taking on more debt, which is then paid for through increased customer bills. Clearly, that is unsustainable not just for the companies, but for the customers because of their ever-rising bills. Will the Secretary of State assure me that this commission will make suggestions for reducing the indebtedness of water companies?
Steve Reed
That is an important point. The commission will be looking at the financial viability of water companies, including their levels of indebtedness. The hon. Member also made the important point about what happens when water companies cut off supplies, because, frankly, compensation to individual households and businesses has been inadequate. That is something that we seek to address through the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which is going through Parliament right now, so it need not wait for the commission.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The village of Upper Tean, which the Secretary of State may remember, has experienced flooding, burst drains, and sewage flooding into rivers and streams, killing them, for many years. And recently residents had to turn out en masse in the middle of the night to divert traffic away when the village was overwhelmed by quite a serious and urgent flood. Following meetings with the Environment Agency, the parish council is looking into developing a flood action group, so that it can provide the resilience and the powerful voice to take action against water companies such as Severn Trent. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the commission will look at how communities such as that of Upper Tean can build the resilience they need and also help them develop a flood action group?
Steve Reed
I remember very well and with pleasure the visit to which my hon. Friend refers. I also remember how distressed residents were to see their homes flooded and their possessions destroyed. Very often their homes were uninsurable, because of where they were located. The commission will consider all those factors. My hon. Friend the Water and Flooding Minister and I are also looking at what can be done separately to tackle the scourge of flooding to better protect communities now and into the future.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I will try to get in as many people as I can, so can we please keep the questions and answers as snappy as possible?
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
The statement from the Secretary of State is welcome, but passionate campaigners in my constituency will be concerned that, when we already know the dire state of our rivers and water courses, a review will potentially push the can down the road and delay the changes that we so desperately need. Will the commission set a deadline by which water companies have to prevent all sewage discharges in sensitive sites, including chalk streams such as the Lavant and Ems in my constituency?
Steve Reed
We certainly know the dire state of our waterways. We also need to know in detail the root and branch reforms required to make the corrections. We will have that from this commission by next summer, and I hope the hon. Lady will take part in that. We need to clean up all of our waterways, including those very important ones to which she refers.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
This weekend, I met the Fillongley flood action group, a small group of brave men and women who, when they receive notifications about floods, put on their waders in the middle of the night and go out and clear a culvert that is not fit for purpose. Will the Secretary of State join me in applauding their efforts? Will he also reassure them that this commission will look across all Departments to see how we can best ensure that those culverts can accommodate the overflow from things such as smart motorways, as I am hearing that the floods have got worse since the M6 was allowed to become a smart motorway. Will it also consider the economic impact on those villages when shops, hairdressers and the local pubs close, sometimes on a permanent basis?
Steve Reed
I thank the residents of my hon. Friend’s constituency and those in other constituencies who are taking action for themselves against flooding. We have already set up and held the first meeting of the flood resilience taskforce, which will be seeking to provide better co-ordination between central Government—where the resources are held—and those local agencies on the ground charged with improving work to protect people from the very damaging effects of serious flooding.
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
Last year, water company bosses in England and Wales were paid £9.1 million in bonuses. That is while Thames Water proposes a 59% increase in customer bills by 2030. Does the Secretary of State therefore understand why many residents in our constituencies have lost faith in the regulator’s ability to control these powerful firms and will he commit to replacing the regulator with one that has some teeth?
Steve Reed
I certainly agree that residents have lost confidence not just in the regulators but in the water system at large, which is why we have set up this commission to look at how we can get regulation that is fit for purpose for the future.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
Diolch, Secretary of State. Monmouthshire must be one of the only constituencies in the UK that did not get a visit from the Secretary of State, but we did get a visit from Feargal Sharkey, which was great. I really welcome the announcement today, especially this new partnership between the Welsh and UK Governments, which, unfortunately, the Conservative Government completely failed to achieve. For example, they brought out the River Wye action plan, which failed to include Wales and had no new money. May I ask the Secretary of State to relook at that action plan, commit to a new one that uses the River Wye catchment partnership groups, the Friends of the River Wye, and all the different civil servants from both sides of the border. Let us then use that group and help clear up the River Wye.
Steve Reed
Diolch yn fawr i chi. I would be very happy to visit Monmouthshire. It is important that we look at the situation with water across catchments, particularly where it is crossing borders between England and Wales. The fact that this commission is jointly commissioned by both Governments and will report to both Governments will ensure that is what happens.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
I am pleased to see action coming forward from the Government on this, but we know that they need to go further and faster on this issue. In North Norfolk, much of the infrastructure dates from the 1970s and 1980s. Then, a just-about-managing approach was taken to construction and clearly it is no longer managing the situation. Can the Minister confirm that this commission will look specifically at directing investment from water companies to infrastructure upgrades as and where they are needed?
Steve Reed
We certainly need fast action after 14 years of absolutely nothing. The commission will point the way to resetting the sector for the future, and will seek to establish a system that will do exactly what the hon. Gentleman talks about.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
Hundreds of residents in Ruislip Gardens and Ruislip Manor in my constituency have been flooded in recent weeks. I have met many of them who have had to move out of their homes. They are frustrated by poor regulation and buck-passing between the water authority and the local council, the flood management authority. This welcome review, after 14 years of dither and delay, is good news for my residents, but will my right hon. Friend assure me and my residents that it will look specifically at the adequacy of governance and accountability mechanisms between flood management authorities and water management organisations, and will he meet with me and my constituents to discuss these issues?
Steve Reed
I have had the pleasure of visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency many times over the past year, and I know what a concern flooding is to people living there. We have already set up a flood resilience taskforce, which will ensure better co-ordination between the centre, where resources are held, and agencies on the frontline, including those to which he refers, to ensure that people are better protected from the impact of flooding. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Water Minister will be happy to meet with him to talk about local flooding.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. If we are short and sharp, we can probably wrap up proceedings on this statement in the next several minutes, with everybody getting in. Jim Shannon, show us how it is done.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Short and sharp—my goodness, what a challenge.
It is great news that accountability will, at last, be at heart of this review. Northern Ireland is in a similar situation regarding water, though it is a slightly different scenario, with a Government-owned operator. Will the Secretary of State indicate how the review can help to deliver a UK-wide water service that is truly fit for purpose?
Steve Reed
It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman. Of course water is devolved in Northern Ireland. It will be for the local authorities there to make their own decisions about how to correct problems in beauty spots such as Lough Neagh.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
My constituency is made up of 21 local government wards. One of them, Bagots and Needwood, was subjected to 3,000 hours of sewage spills in just one year. Can the Secretary of State assure me that, after 14 years of failure from the Conservative party, the commission will leave nowhere to hide for criminal water bosses?
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
As a whitewater kayaker, I spend countless hours on rivers and streams up and down the country, so I know that both the Environment Agency and Ofwat need to be properly resourced if we are to clear up the toxic legacy left in our waterways by the last Government. Can the Secretary of State reassure my constituents that the newly announced independent water commission will look at resourcing to ensure that the water firms responsible for polluting our waterways are held to account?
Steve Reed
The commission will look at identifying a model of appropriate and effective regulation for precisely the reasons my hon. Friend outlines.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
My constituents in North East Derbyshire are rightly disgusted that water bosses received over £41 million in bonuses and other incentives under the previous Conservative Government. Can the Secretary of State assure me that every penny of my constituents’ hard-earned money will be spent where it is needed?
Steve Reed
We have already announced plans to ringfence money earmarked for investment so that it cannot be diverted for undeserved multimillion-pound bonuses, as happened so frequently under the previous failed Conservative Government.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
The chalk streams in North East Hertfordshire and across England are of international significance, but too often these waterways are not just polluted, but running dry. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the commission will look at the regulation needed to bring an end to not only sewage spills, but the over-abstraction of aquifers and chalk streams?
Steve Reed
The commission has a wide remit, and will look at the wider impact of damage to the water system, which got much worse under the previous Government.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
As a coastal city, we welcome the commission. It is vital to sort out sewage and floods. In my constituency, parts of Drayton and Farlington are affected by floods—not from rivers or the sea, but because water pumps up through the drains. While it is not sewage, the water cascades down the streets into houses and shops, forcing holidaymakers to check whether they need to get people to put sandbags out to protect their property. Will the Secretary of State ensure that those types of floods are included in the remit of the commission, and that water companies take responsibility?
Steve Reed
We have also set up a flood resilience taskforce, which is looking precisely at those kinds of problems related to flooding so that we can take action immediately.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
Toothless water regulators have been left up the creek. Can the Secretary of State confirm that Sir Jon Cunliffe will look at scrapping and replacing Ofwat?
Steve Reed
It will be for the commission to look at how we get to an effective and appropriate model of regulation, including the roles of the regulators.
Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
The River Weaver, which runs through the town of Nantwich in my constituency, suffered from a spate of devastating pollution last year, killing hundreds of fish and blighting our beautiful market town. It is believed that the cause of the pollution was slurry dumping from intense agriculture. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the engagement and support that farmers need to dispose of slurry mix in the appropriate way will form part of the review?
Steve Reed
Yes, the impact of run-off from agriculture will be in the scope of the commission’s work.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, had the Conservative party put as much energy into protecting our rivers, lakes and seas as it has into filling its reservoirs of chutzpah, my constituents in Rugby would not be living with the consequences of ineffective regulation, undue profits and unearned bonuses, and that, as in so many areas, the Labour party is clearing up the mess that we inherited?
Police Accountability
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Before I call the Home Secretary to make her statement, I inform the House that the inquest into the death of Chris Kaba has been opened and adjourned. The matter is therefore technically still before the courts. However, Mr Speaker has granted a waiver in relation to the House’s resolution on matters sub judice, so Members may refer to it in the House’s proceedings.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will update the House on Monday’s verdict in the trial of Sergeant Martyn Blake, on the accountability review into police use of force, and on confidence in policing. Chris Kaba was killed in Streatham two years ago. His parents and family of course continue to experience deep grief and distress. A year ago, Sergeant Martyn Blake was charged with murder, and on Monday, the jury returned its verdict and Sergeant Blake was acquitted. It is imperative that the jury’s verdict is respected, and that Sergeant Blake and his family are given the time and space that they will need to recover from what will have been an immensely difficult experience for them during both the investigation and the trial.
For an armed police officer to be prosecuted for actions taken in the course of their duties is very rare, so of course this case has raised considerable concerns for the public and for the police. The decisions made on any individual case, be it by the police, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts or a jury, are rightly independent of the Government, so it would not be right for me to comment further on the details of the case. However, the case has happened against a backdrop of wider and long-standing concerns about accountability, standards and confidence—a backdrop in which police officers and forces have raised long-standing concerns about the way in which the accountability system currently operates, particularly in cases of specialist policing such as firearms and driving, where we ask officers to do incredibly difficult and dangerous jobs to keep us safe, and a backdrop of fallen community confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across the country, with, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said this week, lower confidence among black communities.
The British policing model relies on mutual bonds of trust between the public and the police. For our policing model to work, it is essential that the police have the confidence of the communities they serve, and that officers have the confidence that they need to do their vital and often extremely difficult job of keeping us all safe. Too often in recent times, both elements of that confidence have become frayed. The Government have made it a mission to put confidence back into policing.
As part of that work, I want to update the House on new measures that we will take forward in response to the accountability review and following ongoing work to respond to issues raised by the Angiolini and Casey reviews. That will be a package of reforms to rebuild confidence for police officers and for communities, to tackle the unacceptable delays and confusion in the system, and to ensure that the complexity of specialist operations is considered at an early stage and that the highest standards are upheld and maintained.
Twelve months ago, the previous Government launched a review into the accountability systems for police use of force and police driving. The previous Home Secretary set out an interim response in March, which the Labour party supported, and I welcome his work. The review was not completed by the election, and although we have continued to draw on evidence from police and civil society organisations, we were unable to say more publicly in the run-up to the trial, so today I will update the House.
The accountability review found that the current system for holding police officers to account is not commanding the confidence of either the public or the police. Accountability and misconduct proceedings are too often plagued by delays stretching for years, which is damaging for complainants, police officers and police forces alike. The system has become more complex, with confusion over multiple thresholds for different investigations, and a lack of clarity, especially on specialist capabilities.
There are also wider concerns about the misconduct system. The focus when things go wrong can end up being entirely on the decisions of the individual officer, so system failings such as poor training, unmanageable caseloads or wider force practices are not sufficiently considered or followed up, meaning that too little changes. At the same time, as we saw following the Casey and Angiolini reviews, in cases where someone is not fit to be a police officer, it is too hard for forces to remove them, and communities feel that no one is held to account. The public must be able to expect that when officers exceed the lawful use of their powers or fail to meet proper standards, there will be rapid and robust processes in place to hold them to account. Police officers who act with integrity and bravery to keep us safe each day need to know they have strong public support. If officers lack the confidence to use their powers, following their training and the law, public safety is put at risk.
Let me turn to the policy measures. First, we will take forward the three measures proposed by the previous Government in March to strengthen and speed up the system. We will align the threshold for the referral of police officers from the Independent Office for Police Conduct to the Crown Prosecution Service to that used by the police when referring cases involving members of the public. Currently the threshold is lower for police officers—that is not justified. We will allow the IOPC to send cases to the CPS where there is sufficient evidence to do so, instead of having to wait for a final investigation report. And we will also put the IOPC victims’ right-to-review policy on a statutory footing to ensure that there is an appeal mechanism for bereaved families when a decision is made not to seek a charging decision.
Then we will go further. When officers act in the most dangerous situations on behalf of the state, it is vital that those officers and their families are not put in further danger during any subsequent legal proceedings. We will therefore introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a police shooting in the course of their professional duties, up to the point of conviction. We will also ensure that the highly specialist nature of particular policing tactics and tools is reflected in relevant investigative guidance. That includes ensuring that in investigations of police-driving incidents, evidence from subject-matter experts and in-car video footage is considered at the earliest possible opportunity, and, more widely, that an officer’s compliance with their training and guidance is appropriately taken into account in investigative decision making.
I also have established a rapid review of two specific areas where recent legal judgments have meant that we now have different thresholds for criminal, misconduct and inquest investigations, adding complexity, confusion and delay to the system. In particular, that review will consider the legal test for use of force in misconduct proceedings, and the threshold for determining short-form findings of unlawful killing in inquests. The independent review will be conducted by Tim Godwin and Sir Adrian Fulford, and will report jointly to me and the Lord Chancellor by the end of January.
I have asked for further work to be done on timeliness, standards and misconduct procedures as part of our wider policing reforms. My right hon. Friend the Attorney General has invited the Director of Public Prosecutions to examine the CPS guidance and processes in relation to charging police officers for offences committed in the course of their duties. Following calls from civil society organisations, we will ask the College of Policing to establish a national “lessons learned” database for deaths or serious injuries arising from police contact or police pursuits, so that when tragic incidents occur, there is a responsibility to ensure that lessons are incorporated into the development of police training and guidance, and to prevent the repetition of such events.
To rebuild public confidence in the wider standards regime for policing, we also need to ensure that there is faster progress in responding to the findings of the Angiolini and Casey reviews on vetting and standards. We will therefore take forward in this parliamentary Session previously agreed proposals to ensure that officers convicted of certain criminal offences are automatically found to have committed gross misconduct; to create a presumption of dismissal where gross misconduct is found; and to change regulations to enable chief constables to promptly dismiss officers who fail their vetting—there has been a glaring gap in the system there for far too long. We will go further to ensure that standards are upheld: we will ensure that there is a statutory underpinning for national vetting standards, and strengthen requirements relating to the suspension of officers under investigation for domestic abuse or sexual offences.
Finally, we need wider measures to restore confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across all communities. That must include further work to take forward the Met’s London race action plan, on which action has already been taken, though the Met commissioner and the Mayor for London have made it clear that there is much more work to do. We need progress from the National Police Chiefs’ Council on the national police race action plan. The Government are also determined to take forward further measures, ranging from the introduction of neighbourhood policing to new police force performance standards, to strengthen confidence in policing in every community across the country.
The measures that I have outlined are practical steps to rebuild confidence, tackle delays, provide clarity and ensure that high standards are maintained. For almost 200 years, policing by consent has been the bedrock of British policing. The Government are determined to take the necessary action to strengthen public confidence in the police, and to strengthen the confidence of the police when they are out on the street every day, doing the difficult job of keeping us all safe. Those are the twin goals that we must all work towards. I commend this statement to the House.
Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement, and for the recent Privy Council briefing that I received from her.
I very much welcome what the Home Secretary has set out. I agree with almost all of it and disagree with almost none of it. As a society, we demand that our firearms officers put themselves in dangerous and difficult situations to protect others. Every firearms officer in the UK is a volunteer, and although we rightly value having have a predominantly unarmed police force, we do of course need a cadre of armed police officers across the country.
I have had the privilege of visiting the police firearms training centre in Gravesend, and I have seen at first hand just how rigorous that firearms training regime is—not just in marksmanship, but in the use of judgment. Split-second life-or-death decisions must be made, often in circumstances in which the risk picture is incomplete and the cost of not acting is considerably more severe than the cost of acting. In all our debate and conversation about the use of force by police, that fundamental truth should be at the forefront of our minds.
As the right hon. Lady said, we rightly expect that all officers will act with restraint and professionalism at all times, but we cannot allow circumstances to be created in which officers are disincentivised from being decisive, or become unwilling to take the right action for fear of trial by media or a long period of suspension under investigation.
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for acknowledging in her statement that when my party was in government—under my predecessors and led predominantly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) —we initiated a review of the use of force by police officers and the accountability regime. I am genuinely grateful that, under the Home Secretary’s leadership, the review is continuing. As she says, giving confidence to police officers, so that they can act in accordance with their training and not be penalised for those actions, is absolutely key. Simultaneously ensuring that the public have confidence that police officers still have an appropriate accountability framework is equally important. She made the point that both those aims are being pursued in the accountability review that she is taking forward.
The commitment that such investigations will be more speedy is key. Specifically, it is important that the Home Secretary continues with the Conservatives’ proposal to allow the IOPC to refer cases to the CPS earlier. Prolonged periods of uncertainty undermine the confidence of both police officers and the public they serve. I am pleased to see that the Government are continuing with our reforms to ensure that when police officers act in accordance with their training, and in the line of duty, they are not subject to a lower threshold for prosecutions than members of the general public. I ask the Home Secretary to seriously consider ensuring that training in those roles forms a legitimate part of the defence of officers if and when criminal prosecutions are brought forward.
I particularly welcome the move to introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a shooting. We now know that Chris Kaba was involved with a violent gang, and that Sergeant Blake and his family had—and still have—a well founded fear of violent reprisals. That fear was amplified when Sergeant Blake’s name was put in the public domain.
In the light of the review by Dr Gillian Fairfield, what further recommendations is the Home Secretary minded to take forward? Does she recognise that in the era of social media, all people of public profile, including Members of this House, should be very thoughtful and careful about making public statements when facts are unknown or contested? The police should know instinctively that they will have the backing of both their chain of command and the politicians involved in their governance, at all levels, when they do the right thing at our behest, and that they will be backed by their chain of command even if those actions are not popular or convenient. We have too often seen police leadership bend to inappropriate levels of public pressure.
In conclusion, I welcome the statement from the Home Secretary, and her commitment to taking forward the reforms of the police accountability review. Conservative Members will work constructively with her to ensure that the appropriate balance is struck to reinforce confidence in policing, and the confidence of police.
Yvette Cooper
I thank the shadow Home Secretary for his response. I hope that there will be widespread agreement on both sides of the House on the importance of these issues, which go to the heart of the British tradition of policing by consent. All of us want to know that there is proper accountability for decisions that police forces and officers make, but also that the police have the confidence to take what are sometimes the most difficult decisions of all to keep the rest of us safe.
The shadow Home Secretary is right that firearms officers have to deal with some of the most difficult parts of policing, sometimes having to make split-second decisions in fast-moving and difficult circumstances that none of us would want to be in. Frankly, if any of us were in those situations, we would want to know that there were firearms police officers there to protect and support us.
In the UK, police officers discharging firearms is very rare, particularly compared with other countries. That reflects the nature of our unarmed policing tradition, as well as the professionalism and training of the police, and the different ways in which they manage often very difficult situations, but of course they need to know that when they follow their training and operate within the law, they will have our support for the difficult decisions that they have to take, and will not find their lives upturned as a result. The anonymity provisions are important, and I hope that they will have support from the whole House. The Government want to bring in the presumption of anonymity in the forthcoming crime and policing Bill.
The shadow Home Secretary also raised the issue of training. I want that to be looked at when the investigative guidance is updated; that way, it can be addressed relatively quickly to ensure that issues around police driving and training more widely are taken into account in early investigative decisions before cases are pursued.
On the Fairfield review, we are taking forward further measures, and will look, in wider policing reforms, at how the IOPC needs to work. It is important that we continue to have an independent process. That has to be set against the backdrop of the wider policing reforms that are needed to ensure that we strengthen confidence for both officers and communities. That is how we will maintain for the new generation the proud British tradition of policing by consent.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Mother of the House, Diane Abbott.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
First, I express my sympathy for Chris Kaba’s family and his mother. Whatever he was or did, he was her son, and she deserves our sympathy and respect. I also acknowledge my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who has worked hard to support the family in challenging circumstances. In the past few days there has been an avalanche of information about Chris Kaba, but I say to those who are asking why that information was not made available to the jury: that was the decision of the judge, and they should put their complaints to him.
The Home Secretary will know that over the years there have been a series of deaths at the hands of the Metropolitan police that have led to deep unhappiness and even riots. One death that comes to mind is that of Cynthia Jarrett in 1985, who died of a heart attack when four policemen burst into her house, and whose death triggered the Broadwater Farm riots. Does the Home Secretary accept that nothing could be more damaging for police-community relations than if the idea took hold that in some way the police were above the law?
Yvette Cooper
I thank my right hon. Friend for her points. I know that she has worked on and addressed these issues over many years, and how important she sees them as being. She is right to raise concerns around incidents where lives are lost, and to recognise the distress that will be felt by Chris Kaba’s mother and family. I also recognise the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) has done to support the family in difficult circumstances.
My right hon. Friend makes an important point: at every stage in the process, these decisions have to be for the independent judiciary, the courts and the police prosecutors. Our role in this House is to provide the framework within which those individual decisions are then made, but I also agree that ultimately, all these measures have to have the confidence of communities across London and across the country. If they do not, that proud British tradition of policing by consent is lost, which is deeply damaging for police officers and policing, as well as for all our public safety.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I also thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement.
Any case in which a young person’s life is cut short is a tragedy, and my thoughts are with all those who are impacted by this awful situation. It is crucial that we in this place respect the judiciary and their right to make decisions without political interference. However, a case like this one does not happen in a vacuum—we must remember the wider context. As Baroness Casey said in her review, black Londoners are “under-protected and over-policed”. A huge and radical step is required to regain police legitimacy and trust among London’s black communities. Those findings cannot and should not be ignored, which means working together to rebuild community relationships and trust in the police, something that is vital to the very fabric of policing by consent.
With that in mind, I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to pick up the accountability review. When it comes to firearms officers’ accountability when operating under enormous pressure, ambiguity benefits nobody—not police officers, and certainly not our communities. I would, however, welcome more details from the Home Secretary about how those communities with the least trust in the police, especially ethnic minority communities, will be consulted in this review. These questions extend past the Met, so will other police forces—including my own Greater Manchester police—be involved in the review, and will the Home Secretary commit to commission an independent review of the implementation of the Casey review’s recommendations? Rebuilding trust in the police has got to be our priority, for the sake of our whole community and for ethnic minority communities, and for the officers who are working hard to keep us safe in difficult circumstances.
Yvette Cooper
I thank the hon. Member for the important points she has made. She is right that lack of clarity, uncertainty, and the long and damaging delays that we have had in the system benefit no one, but she is also right to say that part of the sensitivity around this case—part of its long-standing backdrop—is the much lower confidence in policing among black Londoners and the different levels of confidence around race. That was highlighted as part of the Casey review, and it is why the Met police have set out a race action plan, but both the Met commissioner and the Mayor of London have been clear that there is significant additional work to do. If any measures do not have the confidence of all communities that the police serve, that will ultimately undermine the crucial principle of policing by consent.
We continue to work to ensure that some of the measures recommended by the Casey review that have national implications, as well as the Angiolini review, are taken forward as part of this package. Those include issues with vetting and misconduct processes—it is important that we make progress on those measures, as well as on some of the issues that arise from the accountability review. We will also ensure that all communities are involved in the way in which measures are taken forward.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
The fatal shooting of Chris Kaba caused pain to his family and considerable fear and anger, not only in my community but across London. This House must understand that the concerns being raised are not anti-police, but pro-accountability. We must respect our legal processes, and it is extremely rare that police officers ever face such prosecution. The Home Secretary clearly agrees that while police officers work under exceptional pressures, any loss of life following police contact must be properly investigated, so is she concerned by comments from the Metropolitan police commissioner regarding disciplinary processes, including that firearms officers should be exempt from criminal charges over fatal shootings? That would do nothing to rebuild broken trust and confidence, particularly within the black community, who have been disproportionately impacted. Following the Angiolini and Casey reviews, is less accountability the route that the head of the Met should be asking for?
Yvette Cooper
I thank my hon. Friend for her question—as I said, she has worked hard to represent her communities. It is clear that there must be a proper framework for legal accountability for police forces and individual officers. There must always be investigations where there is loss of life following police contact—that is always appropriate. Although we want investigations to take place much more swiftly, all the police chiefs whom I have talked to as part of this work feel strongly that there must be a clear accountability system, which provides confidence to communities and to police officers who make difficult decisions in the line of duty. Police, Parliament and the public will recognise that we need to have the confidence of communities, as well as police officers who are confident that they will be able to do their job.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and for advance sight of it. Although the measures that she has announced are welcome, many of them will take time to introduce. In the meantime, what is she doing to ensure confidence throughout the system, and will she ensure that the Home Affairs Committee is kept updated on progress in making these welcome changes?
Yvette Cooper
I thank the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee for those important points. We are working at pace: we have set out planned legislation in the King’s Speech—the crime and policing Bill—and there are a series of areas where we believe these measures can be taken forward as part of that process. In some areas, we may be able to make progress through regulations; in others, it is simply about changing the guidance. We have set out some timetables as part of the briefing, which will be made public. Everybody who wants more detail on the individual measures will be able to find that information on the Home Office website. This afternoon I will ensure that all those details are sent to the Home Affairs Committee.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). Shortly after the tragic shooting, she organised a meeting with the family of Chris Kaba. No matter what we think about an individual, we must remember that for any parent, burying their child is tragic; I met Prosper and Helen, and the pain in their eyes at what had happened will not leave me. I also pay tribute to our officers across Lambeth and Southwark, who work very hard with our community to build community relations. In our borough, often some of the issues are caused by police officers who come in from outside, but the police officers who know our patch work very hard. Against the backdrop of longer-standing concerns about accountability, and following the Casey review’s findings on the issue of institutional racism, will the Home Secretary continue to hold the Met police to account for their progress on the race action plan?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point: we need to see progress on the Met police’s race action plan, which responds to serious findings in the Casey review. That review raised wider issues as well, but it is essential that that action is taken. Both the Mayor and the Met commissioner have made strong commitments to ensure progress continues to be made, and I know that London MPs will also want to see that action taken. We cannot have reports released without follow-up.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
I very much welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. There is a lot of concern in my constituency about the fact that Sergeant Blake was prosecuted in the first place. We are all conscious of the amazing work of our wonderful police to keep us safe every day, so will the Home Secretary set out in more detail what additional protections will be introduced to ensure that our police are protected as they go about their job of protecting us?
Yvette Cooper
I thank the right hon. Member for his question. Under the reforms that we have set out following wide examination of the different evidence, where there are investigations—and there will need to be investigations in individual cases—they can happen much more speedily. The threshold for referring cases from the Independent Office for Police Conduct to the CPS is no longer lower than it is for members of the public when they are investigated for a crime. That is not justified or appropriate, and it is right that that threshold should be brought back in line.
We also want to ensure that issues of training and specialist capabilities are taken into account at a very early stage in investigations, and we will be revising the guidance for investigations to ensure that happens. The Attorney General has asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to review CPS guidance on charging in cases where officers use force in the line of duty, as I said in my statement. There is a series of areas where we are ensuring that the system can work more effectively, but, crucially, this is about raising confidence for the public as well as for police officers.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. I also send my condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of Chris Kaba, particularly this week while the media are using racist gang tropes to justify his killing.
Some 1,900 people have died in police custody since 1990. The police have protections, while our black communities are over-policed and under-supported. Will the Home Secretary give assurances that we and our communities will be kept safe and that the police, who already have the protections they need, will not be given extra protections?
Yvette Cooper
The framework I have set out is about ensuring a proper system of accountability for police forces and police officers—I think that all police officers will support it as immensely important—for how they use their powers. However, we also must tackle the hugely long delays, and the complexity, in the system. The different thresholds and the concerns that specialist capabilities, such as driving and firearms, are not taken into account at an early stage in investigations, end up with serious problems much later, as firearms officers or other police officers feel that they do not have confidence or clarity about their responsibilities or how they can use their powers. Equally, communities must not feel that they are being let down because they do not have timely investigations, and conclusions and answers, to their concerns.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
Sergeant Blake has gone through two years of living hell for simply doing his duty and keeping the British public safe. Will the Home Secretary join us at Reform UK in commending his bravery to send out a clear message to all our brave police officers that this place has their backs?
Yvette Cooper
Police officers, who do immensely difficult work across the country every day to keep us safe, deserve our strong support. They often show huge bravery in the most difficult circumstances. I have attended the police bravery awards every year for 14 years to recognise and support the work that police officers do, often in the most difficult of circumstances. I think those officers all believe it is important that we have a system in which communities can feel confident in the work that police officers do, and that they as officers can continue to do that work to keep us safe every single day.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the majority of police officers, who go to work and do a decent job. Often, police officers themselves are as disgusted as the general public when misconduct takes place in police forces. Does my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agree that there is a connection between the delays in police investigations, the delays in the criminal justice system and the delays in misconduct hearings, and that these things have to be taken in the round? In my community, we had the case of Dalian Atkinson, who was killed by a police officer who is now serving time in prison after using a Taser. Will the review look at the use of Tasers as part of its work?
Yvette Cooper
We want the College of Policing to be able to set up a lessons learned database to make sure that action is taken when, for example, there are deaths or serious injuries following police contact. Even when such cases are investigated and reforms, measures or recommendations are made, too often those are not followed up and are not actually implemented. As a result, bereaved families can feel badly let down. It is important not only that we have a clear framework of standards, but that when things go wrong, a proper system is in place to ensure that lessons are learned and things can be improved for the future.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am sure most fair-minded people will feel that the Home Secretary has got the balance exactly right, particularly as she has now brought in the presumption of anonymity. May I draw her attention to a surprisingly detailed report by the courts correspondent of the Evening Standard? He seems to have had access to police intelligence reports about a £10,000 reward being offered by gangs to identify, and presumably wreak reprisals against, the sergeant concerned. What is concerning to me is that a Metropolitan police spokesman says:
“This was investigated and protective measures taken. The investigation is now closed.”
I would have thought that, if there were intelligence indicating that a hit was being arranged, the investigation should not be closed until the perpetrators were themselves arrested.
Yvette Cooper
I thank the right hon. Member for that question. It is clearly important that police officers who face threats or risks as a result of the job they do and the difficult situations they find themselves in because of their work to keep us safe have strong protection and support. He will know that I cannot comment on an individual case and certainly not on an individual investigation. Those are rightly independent operational decisions for police forces. However, I think more widely that everyone will want to make sure that officers who do difficult jobs do have the support that they need.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
The balance between ensuring that our police have the powers and tools they need to keep our streets safe and ensuring that they are not above the law is a delicate one. In that light, I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, and indeed the response of the shadow Home Secretary. Does the Home Secretary agree, however, that some of the comments in the media yesterday—and, indeed, from Members of the House such as the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)—are unhelpful? We need to consider all the evidence carefully, in a constructive and calm way, when considering this really important issue, and should not rush to conclusions on the back of media reports.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is an important British tradition that we respect the rule of law, which means that individual decisions are made by the police, prosecutors, the courts and juries independently of anything that the Government do and independently of anything that politicians do or say. We all operate within legal frameworks, as you reminded us at the beginning of the statement, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure all of us would want to respect that, but also to support all of those independent institutions in the complex and challenging work that they do. We can set the framework, but they have to take the individual decisions.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
When I first started my work supporting young people in London to get out of crime and gangs, 75% of violent crime in London was committed by people aged under 30 and people in that age group were four times more likely to be victims of crime themselves. For the police to get on top of this, there must be restored confidence between young people and the police, which has been so eroded in recent years, but we must also invest in community policing, which was cut so much by the last Government. What will the Home Secretary do to rectify those things and to give young people the trust in the police that they need and deserve?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member makes an important point, because often when we talk about trust and confidence for communities, young people, who are frequently those who have the most contact with the police, feel left out of those discussions. It is important that they, too, have confidence in the police to keep them safe. Restoring neighbourhood policing and having back in our communities police officers who know the local area, and whom young people can get to know, is one of the most important and powerful ways to rebuild trust and make sure that everybody has confidence. That is also how we prevent crime and damage in communities.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
It is important that such officers remain anonymous until conviction, and I fully back this statement. As the Home Secretary will know, it is not just the officers facing trial who have to go through intimidation and threats, but their families. Justice is essential, as is protecting our brave officers. Will the Home Secretary join me in acknowledging the huge toll that these policing roles can take not just on officers, but on their families?
Yvette Cooper
I agree. Families often face some of the most challenging burdens and pressures, and we hear from police officers that their concern about the impact on their families often affects them strongly. That is why the presumption of anonymity to the point of conviction is really important to support families, as well as officers.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
First, I put on the record my support and gratitude to all our frontline police officers in the firearms departments for the difficult, challenging and high-pressure work that they do, including Sergeant Blake and his family. There is much to commend in your statement, Home Secretary, so I welcome it, particularly the anonymity for officers facing investigation and the timeline for the review, which is really important.
Two critical words came up in your statement: “confidence” and “accountability”. There is a lot of concern that confidence in the Independent Office for Police Conduct and in the Crown Prosecution Service is falling. In fact, among police officers, particularly those in the firearms departments, confidence is frankly collapsing, and that is not a good place to be. Even the jury in the Chris Kaba case wrote a letter to the judge—they wanted it to be read out, but he decided not to—in which they expressed astonishment and a lack of confidence in the IOPC and the CPS. The point about accountability relates not just to police officers, but to the IOPC and the CPS. Does the Home Secretary still have confidence in the leadership of the IOPC and the CPS, or should that be changed?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Before the Home Secretary responds, I remind Members that when they use the word “you”, they are speaking to the Chair. Please be short and sharp, Home Secretary, so that we can get everybody in.
Yvette Cooper
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The accountability review found that the accountability system does not currently have confidence among communities or policing. That is why we are setting out very practical reforms. It is important that the work of the IOPC and the CPS is done independently of politicians, police officers and communities. They have to take decisions within the law and within the framework that Parliament sets. That is why this review and this announcement are about how we amend that framework so that they can do their jobs.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
Last Saturday in my constituency of Portsmouth North and Paulsgrove, I held a joint coffee morning with the local police to give residents an opportunity to raise concerns directly with officers and to encourage people to sign up to the Let’s Talk platform, which allows Portsmouth police to share information and concerns directly with the public. Does the Home Secretary agree that one way to rebuild public confidence in policing is to restore visible local patrols and rebuild the community policing that has been eroded over many years?
Yvette Cooper
I agree with my hon. Friend. Neighbourhood policing has to be at the heart of restoring or rebuilding the confidence of communities in policing.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I welcome much of what the Home Secretary has said. The police officers we are talking about, including Martyn Blake, are often deployed to protect local communities from violent criminal gang members, as he was doing. Does the Home Secretary agree that for a local MP to describe one such violent gang member as a “well-loved” member of the community, and for the Runnymede Trust to describe as unaccountable a police officer who was subject to a full court hearing and process undermines, rather than builds, community confidence?
Yvette Cooper
It is really important that we have the full confidence of communities in the police and the confidence of police to be able to do their jobs. Decisions on individual cases are rightly for independent organisations, whether that be the courts or the misconduct process, but those have to operate within a framework and it is our responsibility to make sure that the framework is right. It is currently not right and that is why we have set out the reforms within which those organisations need to take decisions.
Jonathan Hinder (Pendle and Clitheroe) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her timely and important announcement. My former colleagues in the police service up and down our country run towards danger on the public’s behalf, pursue dangerous criminals on the public’s behalf and—very rarely, as we have heard today—have to use lethal force on the public’s behalf. Does the Home Secretary agree that if our police officers do not have the confidence to do those things, the law-abiding public will ultimately suffer?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. We must maintain everyone’s confidence—the police must have confidence, as must communities. Ultimately, if communities do not have confidence, policing is undermined, but if police officers do not have confidence, our public safety is undermined, because it means that they cannot do their job. That is why we have put confidence at the heart of our mission for safer streets.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
I, too, welcome the Home Secretary’s statement and plan. Firearms officers are highly skilled specialists, and my constituents are concerned that cases like this one will disincentivise our brave police officers from taking the additional responsibility of carrying firearms. Will she comment on what she is hearing about the recruitment and retention of firearms officers, so that we can reassure the public that armed police officers will be available, should we need them?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member makes an important point. As part of the accountability review, concerns were raised around recruitment and retention, especially from people concerned about the impact on their families. That family issue is so important. That is why we have the presumption of anonymity to the point of conviction and some of the wider reforms, which will, I hope, maintain confidence among communities and police officers.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
An armed robbery was reported at our new Thorne banking hub last week; I send my warmest thoughts to the staff who endured that terrible event. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking the officers who responded to the situation? Does she also agree that public confidence in policing will grow with more patrols in neighbourhoods in the future?
Yvette Cooper
I agree with my hon. Friend that people feel more confident if they know who their local police officers are. That builds a sense of confidence, which also helps to prevent crime.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State very much for her statement and for the confidence that she is clearly putting in her police officers. We all admire their courage and bravery in what they do. Policing is devolved in Northern Ireland, as she knows, but the ramifications of this decision could be far-reaching. Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and this issue was part of our conversation.
Every police officer in Northern Ireland carries a weapon because of the high threat levels from terrorism. Their lives are on the line every day they are on the beat—that is the life of a police officer in Northern Ireland—so it is very important that we recognise the threats. Will the Home Secretary have discussions with the Chief Constable and the Policing and Finance Ministers in Northern Ireland about how we can move forward on these issues to protect our police officers? That is critical.
Yvette Cooper
I thank the hon. Member for the question. Interestingly, some of the accountability issues are very similar or the same for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland, but there are differences in some areas. We have looked at those and I hope that they will be looked at further as part of the ongoing work and reviews that I have raised. However, this is all fundamentally about how we make sure that we raise standards and raise confidence across the board, including for officers and communities.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agree that the overwhelming majority of police officers are a credit to our communities and our country? In my constituency of Rugby, I have always found that the commitment of senior and rank-and-file officers to protecting the public and taking on criminals is matched by their understanding that they must be held to the highest standards. Does she agree that our responsibility as politicians in this House and in our constituencies is to help all involved in achieving both those important and interlinked objectives?
Yvette Cooper
I agree. Police officers across the country do a totally amazing job. It is often a difficult job: they keep us safe, and they have to face difficult situations that none of us would want to be in. They also believe in high standards, which is why so many police officers and police chiefs want to ensure that the system is more effective at rooting out those who badly fail those standards and who should not be serving in the police.
Police officers want to maintain high standards, but they also want to know that where officers are doing their duty to keep us safe and operating in line with their training and the law, they have our strong support. We must ensure that confidence works both ways: that we have confidence in policing and that the police have the confidence to do their difficult job of keeping us safe.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. The hon. Member was not here for the absolute beginning, but she made it just in time for the opening statements, so I will call her.
Nesil Caliskan
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. Building trust and confidence in the police requires time and honest reflection about the challenges, alongside meaningful steps to improve things. Often, when there are high-profile incidents, there is a knee-jerk reaction and a national debate is sparked. Does the Home Secretary agree that we must avoid knee-jerk reactions, that there needs to be a long-term commitment to building trust and confidence, and that trust and confidence are built through effective policing not just for serious violent crime, but for so-called low-level crimes such as antisocial behaviour and theft?
Yvette Cooper
I agree that some of the issues around confidence are actually about the responsiveness of police and about having neighbourhood policing and a local response. My hon. Friend is right. We need to respond to major reviews such as the Casey review and the Angiolini review, which found failings around standards, systems and vetting, for example. We must ensure that everything we do responds to those broader reviews, as well as recognising difficult individual incidents, to boost confidence.
Point of Order
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My constituency of Richmond Park, being both particularly attractive and within easy reach of Westminster, is a popular spot for visits by right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House. In fact, it is so popular with the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) that he has visited twice in the past week. I seek your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker: as the Conservative party leadership contest reaches its exciting final stages, should those of us who are lucky enough to play host to its hustings in our constituency expect prior notification of candidates’ plans to visit?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for notice of her point of order. May I check whether she notified the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) of her intention to raise the matter in the Chamber?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I see the hon. Member nodding. As Mr Speaker has repeatedly told the House, a Member who intends to visit another Member’s constituency other than in a purely private capacity must first make every reasonable effort to inform that Member. That applies whatever the purpose of the visit. I hope that all hon. Members will observe that important courtesy.
Bills Presented
Rough Sleeping (Decriminalisation) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Layla Moran presented a Bill to decriminalise rough sleeping; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July 2025, and to be printed (Bill 111).
Non-Disclosure Agreements Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Layla Moran presented a Bill to make provision about the content and use of non-disclosure agreements; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July 2025, and to be printed (Bill 112).
Palestine Statehood (Recognition) (No. 3) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Layla Moran, supported by Alex Sobel, Kit Malthouse, Calum Miller, Andy McDonald, Ellie Chowns, Mr Alistair Carmichael, Tom Morrison and Andy Slaughter, presented a Bill to make provision in connection with the recognition of the State of Palestine.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July 2025, and to be printed (Bill 113).
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, at today’s sitting:
(i) notwithstanding Standing Order No. 16, proceedings on the Motion in the name of Nick Thomas-Symonds relating to Payment Scheme may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply; and the Speaker shall put the Question necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order;
(ii) the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Lucy Powell relating to Independent Expert Panel not later than one hour after the commencement of proceedings on that Motion; 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; and
(iii) the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Lucy Powell relating to Voting by Proxy (Serious long-term illness or injury) not later than one hour after the commencement of proceedings on that Motion; 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.—(Lucy Powell.)
Infected Blood Compensation Scheme
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
I beg to move,
That the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 872), dated 22 August 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23 August, be approved.
Let us start by reminding ourselves why we are here today. The infected blood scandal is a mark of shame on the British state. The infected blood inquiry’s final report, which was published on 20 May, shed light on the trauma inflicted on thousands of people across the country through no fault of their own. People were given contaminated blood or blood products and contracted HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B, and then for years they had their voices ignored. Those who were affected—the people who loved, knew and cared for someone who was infected—similarly had their voices ignored. That did nothing but compound the trauma for all involved.
The infected blood inquiry’s second interim report, published in 2023, set out 18 recommendations on compensation, informed by Sir Robert Francis KC’s 2022 compensation scheme study. The inquiry was unequivocal that a compensation scheme must be set up immediately.
The regulations before the House are essential for delivering that compensation scheme and getting money to people as quickly as we can. In May, when the now Prime Minister and I responded to Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry, we were absolutely clear. I said:
“One of the most powerful conclusions in this report is that an apology is meaningful only if it is accompanied by action”.—[Official Report, 21 May 2024; Vol. 750, c. 748.]
Today, with the regulations and the compensation scheme, we are delivering that action and taking another step on the road to the justice that has been so cruelly delayed.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
My constituent Alex Robinson lost her father to this scandal in 2006, having been his carer since the age of 13. In her words:
“He never got to walk me down the aisle or hold his grandchildren.”
She is incredibly concerned about getting justice. Can the Minister confirm that my constituent, along with all the families, will receive legal support to ensure that they can make their application to the compensation scheme successfully?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am sure the whole House will join me in expressing our sympathies with the situation that my hon. Friend’s constituent and her family have been through. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority will aim to ensure that appropriate advice and support is available to assist people in managing their compensation awards, in accessing financial services and, where relevant, in accessing benefits advice. Sir Robert Francis KC recommended in his report that legal support be available to people who want to claim compensation; the Government and I have accepted that recommendation. We will work with the Infected Blood Compensation Authority to develop the package of support services.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
One of the report’s recommendations is that charities and support organisations that provide advice to victims and their families be placed on a statutory funding basis. Can the Minister confirm that the Government’s intention is to implement that recommendation?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
If I understand the hon. Gentleman’s intervention correctly, he is talking about the different organisations that already exist. We will consider all the recommendations in the round, but he is absolutely right to highlight the hugely important role of those organisations. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority will look to work with the different support organisations. That is vital.
The scheme is based on the recommendations and principles put forward by the inquiry. In line with those, and supported by advice from the inquiry response expert group, it was updated following the engagement exercise that Sir Robert Francis KC undertook in June with victims and representatives of the infected blood community. The Government have sought to design a fair and comprehensive compensation scheme, which will also be quick and simple for eligible applicants to access.
I turn first to eligibility. The scheme and the regulations define people who are eligible as infected people, in line with recommendation 2 of the inquiry’s second interim report. That covers people infected with HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B, and it includes people directly infected by treatment with blood as well as people indirectly infected via transmission from a directly infected person.
Secondly, the regulations establish a core route for claiming compensation as an infected person. The core route provides for compensation to be awarded under five categories or heads of loss, as set out in recommendation 6 of the inquiry’s report: an injury impact award, a social impact award, a care award, a financial loss award and an autonomy award. Together, they will comprise the total compensation award to infected individuals, or to the estate of any deceased infected individuals, to recognise the wide-ranging harm resulting from their infection.
Earlier this year, the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 established the Infected Blood Compensation Authority in law to deliver the scheme. I am proud to have campaigned with many Members across the House to have delivered that change in legislation; I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) for his role. I am proud that this Government are now delivering on that commitment.
The regulations before the House will provide the Infected Blood Compensation Authority with the legal powers that it needs to begin making payments. They also provide further detail on how it will accept applications and pay awards. The authority, under the chairmanship of Sir Robert Francis, has been working hard to design and implement effective, simple and secure processes that put the infected blood community at the heart of its work.
Last week, the Infected Blood Compensation Authority reached out to the very first claimants under the scheme. The authority is taking a test-and-learn approach that will ensure that it can take feedback on board and improve the service before it opens its full compensation service. I hope that that step provides confidence that we are absolutely committed to driving forward progress to meet our shared intention of beginning payments by the end of this year, as I have previously said to the House. I will do everything in my power to ensure that all those who are entitled to compensation receive it as soon as possible.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I commend him for the way in which he is handling this very sensitive matter; he has got the tone just right. On behalf of a constituent, Mr A, who was infected by being born of a mother who was infected, I have corresponded with Sir Robert Francis KC. If my constituent were here, he would be keen to know that the compensation scheme will cover people in his circumstances, both for their physical and mental distress. For the avoidance of doubt, could the Minister please confirm that those people will be covered by the scheme as well?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Yes. First of all, and I am sure I speak for everyone in the House, I express my sympathies to the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent and his family. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right to raise the case directly with Sir Robert Francis. I urge Members across the House to look up the details of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority on the gov.uk website and point their constituents in that direction—the authority is already setting out newsletters—and to do as the right hon. Gentleman has done and write directly to the authority. On the basis of being infected through transmission from his mother, his constituent clearly fits the category of an infected person under the scheme. He is precisely the kind of person the scheme is designed to help. The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise the case on the Floor of the House today in this debate.
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. This has been a long, long journey for the people who have been affected by this scandal—and that is exactly what it has been. Can he clarify an issue that has been raised about inheritance tax? Given that many payments will be paid to the very elderly, many second generation recipients are worried about inheritance tax. Will they be exempt from inheritance tax? Is that possible?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Yes, the awards are exempt from inheritance tax and capital gains tax. That is precisely how the scheme has been designed. I hope that gives reassurance to the hon. Gentleman.
Let me move on to the points raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, as it is important that I address them. As the Committee noted, the infected blood scandal stretches back over many decades, and access to records, in particular medical evidence, will be very challenging—I acknowledge that. That is at the very heart, as I am sure hon. and right hon. Members will understand, of the challenge of trying to address an injustice that has been allowed to continue for so many decades. Where that is the case, the authority will need to make objective decisions relying on the evidence that is available in order to determine, on the balance of probabilities, that treatment with infected blood occurred. The authority will—I expect it to do this—provide assistance to those who believe that their medical records have been lost or destroyed, and evidencing eligibility will be easier, faster and more compassionate than, for example, one would experience through any court proceedings.
The Committee highlighted the complexity of the regulations. That is why, alongside the publication of the regulations and the explanatory memorandum, the Government published a detailed policy paper in August on how the compensation scheme will operate, setting out what individuals can expect to receive, including case study examples. Additionally, the Infected Blood Compensation Authority will ensure that appropriate advice and support is available to assist people with managing their compensation awards, accessing financial services and accessing benefits advice where relevant, as I set out in response to an earlier intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash).
Thirdly, the Committee raised questions on how claimants will receive payments. As set out in recommendation 10 of the infected blood inquiry’s second interim report, the regulations include a mechanism for electing for periodic compensation payments or a lump sum. That is responding to the wishes of those who have told us that they wanted that option to be available to them. We have also provided an alternative for those currently receiving support scheme payments through the infected blood support schemes. The so-called IBSS route was developed following the recommendations of Sir Robert Francis KC, following his engagement with representatives of the infected blood community.
The clearest finding from that engagement was around the continuation of the existing support scheme payments. The Government have listened, and we have agreed and accepted that support scheme payments will continue for life for those who elect the IBSS route. The route will be available for those who applied to be registered on a support scheme on or before 31 March 2025, and delivered as part of the compensation package. The tariff-based scheme is designed to be fast, fair, consistent and secure. We hope that people will be satisfied that they have been provided with full and fair compensation, as the scheme sets out. However, should that not be the case, the regulations make provision for review of decisions made by the authority and for appeals to the first-tier tribunal.
Mike Amesbury (Runcorn and Helsby) (Lab)
Michael in my constituency will benefit from the compensation, and I commend the Minister and the Government for their swift action. How do we ensure that we maintain trust in the process? Is there an opportunity for victims to review any aspects of the compensation scheme that may not be working?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about trust in the process. The scheme is designed to have a core route, and a supplemental route for particular issues around care claims or financial loss that are not appropriately captured in the core route. There is also provision around review and appeals to the first-tier tribunal, which is important. One of the purposes of having a tariff-based scheme is to try to make it simpler and easier to access, so that the need for subsequent appeals is minimised.
I know that the House speaks as one when it comes to paying long overdue compensation to those impacted by this harrowing scandal. Following the passing of the Victims and Prisoners Act, these regulations are the next substantial step towards getting money to people who rightly deserve it. However, although there has been progress, the work is far from finished. A second set of regulations will provide for other elements of the compensation scheme, including compensation payments to those who are affected and for claims outside the core route. Subject to parliamentary approval, the Government aim for the second set of regulations to be in place by 31 March 2025, to support our intention—as I have previously told this House—for those affected to start receiving payments next year.
There is shared determination across the House to deliver compensation as swiftly as possible and with the minimum delay. I hope that today, hon. Members across the House can agree that these regulations are a significant step towards that.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I thank the Paymaster General for advance notice of the statutory instrument being laid, as he has always given. He rightly reminded the House of the injustice that victims of the infected blood scandal have been subject to—one that has spanned several decades. I hope that we are now in rapid delivery mode. My role is to ensure that the Government are doing all they can to deliver compensation as swiftly and effectively as possible for the infected and affected, following the passage of the Bill under the previous Government.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, it is also my duty to work collaboratively with the Government on this matter, supporting them and scrutinising them where appropriate. To that end, I wish to set out some issues raised with me by representatives of the infected and affected communities. First, I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s second report of the Session, which found the explanatory memorandum to be
“overly complex and technical, while lacking basic information about the policy”.
To some extent, I very much sympathise. This is a very complicated matter. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that this critical information should be easily accessible to all. Can he assure the House that he will do everything he can to ensure that the explanatory memorandum to the second set of regulations will be much clearer in language and in outlining how the policy will work practically? He rightly referred to the detailed policy paper that he published in August, with the case studies and the reference to advice and support, but the implication of what has been said is that an improvement can be made.
On the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, I echo my previous comments in welcoming the Government’s pledge to deliver the first payments by the end of the year. I know that the Paymaster General and I align in recognising the paramount importance of delivering this compensation as quickly as possible. However, currently, there is no defined timetable for when applications can be made and when payments will be processed.
Furthermore, I know the Paymaster General will find it as troubling as I do that groups of victims have previously described meeting the end-of-year deadline as “nigh on impossible”. We need to solve these trust issues. Can he outline the steps the Government and the IBCA are taking to ensure that payments will be made by the end of the year—just 10 weeks away? Can he confirm what proportion of the eligible infected community will receive their payments by the end of the year?
There is a suspicion, of which I am sure the Paymaster General is aware, that achieving payouts for the previously mentioned user group of 20 individuals by the end of the year will be used to technically satisfy the obligation he undertook to get money out of the door by the end of the year. The infected community as a whole will want to know that all of them—beyond the 20—will receive their payments in their bank accounts, and what will be the interval between the end of the year and that happening. Please could the Paymaster General explain how the user group of 20 people have found the new scheme, and how quickly their lessons can be applied to the rest of the infected community? I understand that the IBCA recently confirmed its intention to invite increasingly larger groups of people to test the service before it opens to those who are eligible. Can the Paymaster General confirm when the scheme will open to larger groups? How many will be involved? Will they include all victims, including those affected from the infected estates?
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned issues around the burden of proof. I seek clarification on the proof that victims need to provide. It appears that the burden of proof once again falls to victims, which risks going against the letter and spirit of both Sir Brian Langstaff and Sir Robert Francis’s recommendations. I recognise and am sympathetic to the challenges, given Cabinet Office officials’ advice to me when I was in his position. Locating medical records could be an issue, given that the latest case date specified in the regulations is more than 30 years ago. Can the Paymaster General outline the decision-making process of the IBCA in circumstances where medical records are apparently unavailable? What steps is he taking to ensure that rightful compensation is received when proof of infected conditions is not readily available?
I would like to move on to affected persons. In his report in May, Sir Brian Langstaff made it abundantly clear that both infected and affected persons were to be given interim payments as quickly as possible. I am therefore concerned that part 3 of this instrument defines eligible infected persons but not the affected persons. Can the Minister offer some reassurance to the affected community and confirm that he has not ignored Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendation for the affected community? The affected community are concerned that the Government’s delays in laying the second set of regulations for them means that many elderly parents of infected victims or bereaved partners will not live to see their rightful payouts as affected individuals.
I acknowledge the drafting and timetable challenges, but it will be 10 months from the final report this May to the end of next March without any defined regulations or timetable for making a claim as an affected person. That will distress many in the affected community. I am absolutely sure that the Paymaster General does not think it is fair for those affected people to feel like second-class citizens, but will he explain what processes will be under way between now and the end of March, and will he look to publish, even in broad outline, a timetable for affected communities’ applications and the interval before payments will be received?
I am also concerned that no impact assessment has been published for this statutory instrument. Parliamentary scrutiny from all sides needs to be balanced, and fairer legislation will ensue if we can have maximum information on impact in advance, so that the evaluation process can be better informed. I know the Paymaster General has previously said that the costs of the infected blood scheme will be recognised in next week’s Budget. Can he confirm whether the Government have calculated the impact and cost of the regulations?
I shall conclude by thanking the Paymaster General for his work in this area and his transparency with me. This legislation is very technically challenging and difficult to get right. I have enormous sympathy and respect for him. However, I urge him to ensure that critical information is as readily accessible as possible to all victims, infected and affected alike, bringing as much specificity as possible to the timelines for those different communities to this House as quickly as possible, and outlining the cost of the scheme.
For many of these victims, time is of the essence, which is why we must do all we can to deliver justice as quickly and effectively as possible. I remain committed to supporting the Government where I possible can and asking questions that are as reasonable as possible where answers still need to be provided.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
I am really pleased to see these regulations return to the House. Although there is still much to do, it marks a significant milestone in ensuring that the Government deliver on their promise to work at pace to establish the IBCA and give it the necessary powers to start making compensation payments. As hon. Members have said, we need to do this to ensure that payments are made as quickly as possible to people who have waited far too long for justice already. I thank the Paymaster General for the sense of urgency that has characterised his work to progress this issue to date since returning to Government. I know that in that work he will have been mindful of the many stories of injustice from this long-running scandal.
My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, as my constituency neighbour, will know that my constituents, the Smiths, lost their son Colin to AIDS at just seven years old. Colin contracted it from infected blood from Arkansas prison, aged just 10 months. It emerged during the inquiry that Colin’s doctor knew about the infection risks associated with using imported blood treatments on children, but broke his own NHS department’s guidelines to do so anyway. Not only did the Smiths lose their very beloved son, but because of the stigma surrounding HIV at the time, the family were ostracised by the local community, harassed and abused, lost employment, and even had “AIDS dead” written in black paint alongside their house. That is why we are here today. There are so many stories. They illustrate why this is so important.
When the final report of the infected blood inquiry was published, I said to the now former Minister that the Smiths wanted Colin to be remembered, and for “sorry” to turn into concrete action on compensation, without adding further to the decades of painful delay that so many victims have had to endure.
Progress is clearly being made. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General also knows that there are many questions that come up along the way. A lot of people are getting their information online. I agree that we need more information for affected families such as the Smiths. On their behalf, I reiterate that there is still much confusion among the affected community about what the regulations will mean for individual people making compensation claims. There is a bit of a feeling that compensation for bereaved parents is low. It would be really helpful if more could be done to explain how compensation will be calculated.
It is also important that the Government engage on an ongoing basis with all the many charities who have been involved, as the IBCA has done. We should recognise —a point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan)—the massively important work that those charities have done to help the infected and affected. The charities do a fantastic job, but it is important to know from today exactly how families will be individually supported, and whether they might be offered caseworkers to get them through the process. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will say something about that.
My right hon. Friend also knows that many of those affected, like the Smiths, have waited years for compensation. It is not just about the compensation; it is also about justice, but both matter. My right hon. Friend has announced previously that applications for interim payments to the estates of deceased infected people will open this month. Can he confirm when that will be? Could he also set out whether affected parents who are not the beneficiaries of an estate will be eligible for those interim payments?
The Smiths also understand that those applications should be processed, and payments made, within 30 days. If my right hon. Friend would address that in his closing remarks, it would be great.
The scheme, the system and the framework are clearly very complicated, as hon. Members have said. We should acknowledge that today and do as much as possible to help people through that process.
My right hon. Friend talked about the second set of regulations to enable compensation payments to begin for those affected. Could he say more about the progress of the work being undertaken to that end, when he expects those regulations to be laid, and when he estimates applications will open? I think the date of 31 March was mentioned.
It is vital that once the IBCA begins its work, applications are swiftly processed without unnecessary delay. Will my right hon. Friend talk about the resources available to support that?
My right hon. Friend is obviously aware of the vital work of small charities and support groups to support those affected, like the Smiths. I echo the point raised by the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East that those groups’ resources have been hugely stretched. It would be really helpful to know what funding might be available to enable such groups to continue their important work.
I thank the Minister for his important work so far. I hope that we have future opportunities to keep raising these issues as the process continues, on behalf of those who have waited so very long for this. We need to get it right, but we also need to get it done.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
There are many valuable contributions still to be made during the course of this debate. I just want to remind Members to be mindful, during the debate on the infected blood compensation scheme, that the contaminated blood products group litigation is still before the courts. The resolution relating to matters that are sub judice does not apply when the House is discussing legislation, as we are doing today, but I would none the less invite Members to exercise caution and avoid any unnecessary comments on active legal proceedings.
I now invite the Liberal Democrat spokesperson to speak.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats are glad to see the introduction of this legislation and the establishment of the infected blood compensation scheme. We are glad that it will move the victims of this atrocity, both those infected and affected, closer to long-overdue justice and compensation. Victims and their families have been waiting decades for answers and for recognition of the suffering that they have endured. Liberal Democrats welcome the findings of Sir Brian Langstaff’s report, which vindicated so many of those people affected. We voted last December for the amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, requiring the Government to set up the compensation scheme, and we are glad that this motion establishes that.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
This is a deeply sad scandal. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need reassurance from the Minister that there is adequate capacity to process the applications at pace?
Sarah Olney
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It goes very much to the heart of the remarks that I shall make about ensuring that the compensation scheme established through this legislation is indeed adequate, not just in its resources but in its powers to fully address the magnitude of the justice and compensation that is owed to the families who have suffered.
Although we are grateful that the Government have brought this legislation before Parliament at such an early stage, we want to ensure that these proposals go far enough, and ensure that all those affected get the justice they deserve. The Liberal Democrats will work with the Government to ensure that the provision for fair and proper compensation is implemented as quickly and effectively as possible.
More than 3,000 deaths are attributable to infected blood and blood products, over 30,000 people were infected with hepatitis C or HIV after receiving infected blood transfusions, and many thousands more have been affected by the suffering that has been caused. This scandal is a chilling story of people being failed, not only by the medical professionals who treated them but by the NHS—which should have been responsible for the safety of their treatment—and by a series of Governments whose integrity and diligence should have precluded such an atrocity from ever taking place.
Over the decades when this was happening, children were subject to unsafe and deeply unethical clinical testing. Senior doctors in British hospitals administered experimental treatments while knowing the significant risk of contaminated products, and staff in haemophilia centres across the country used blood products even though it was widely known that these products were likely to be infected, as was so vividly highlighted by the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden).
The scope of the negligence goes far beyond the medical administration; the infected blood inquiry report reveals a culture of covering up. We must ensure that there is transparency in governance, especially given the disregard with which the last Conservative Government treated the public’s trust. The Liberal Democrats support the survivors’ call for a duty of candour on all public officials, as well as the introduction of increased legal protections for whistleblowers. We must do all we can to ensure that we have an honest political culture in which concerns are listened to and questions answered, so that nothing of this nature can ever happen again. We are glad that the report has made public the extent to which people were failed, and that there is support across the House for acknowledgement of the injustices that have been suffered, which this legislation begins to rectify.
However, while we are grateful for the Government’s action in response to Sir Brian’s inquiry, particularly the Minister’s extension of the scheme beyond the initial commitments from the previous Government, we are concerned that the legislation does not go far enough. Financial compensation cannot make up for the years of injustice and the unimaginable distress that so many thousands of people have gone through.
The compensation scheme is an important step in acknowledging their suffering, but I urge the Minister to see it as the first step in the process of compensating victims. We want to see legislation that compensates the children who, without consent, were tested on with contaminated blood but did not go on to develop a disease. We want to see recognition of the family members who saw loved ones suffer, and in some instances pass away, but who will receive no compensation because they were over the age of 18 at the time of infection. We want to see a clear and explicit explanation of the payment bandings that have been set out, and we want to see engagement with the affected community at all stages.
It is vital that the scheme acknowledges the trauma experienced beyond the physical suffering caused by the infected blood. Not only were so many lives cut short or destroyed by the hideous physical illnesses that contaminated blood caused, but unimaginable psychological distress has been caused by experimentation on unconsenting and often unaware patients. We urge the Government to ensure that this scheme encompasses all those who suffered owing to the infected blood scandal, and that any further legislation is developed with the close engagement of those who best understand that suffering.
Our principal concerns lie with the transparency of the calculation of compensation payments. It is crucial that the scheme does not establish a hierarchy of suffering, and I ask the Minister to outline the process by which these tariffs were decided. The compensation for people treated with infected blood products who “self-cleared” hepatitis C is very low, and does not account for the health impacts that they have experienced or the psychological damage that they have experienced. There is also a significant discrepancy between those infected with hepatitis C and those infected with HIV. Although we welcome the initiation of compensation payments, we believe that there must be greater transparency over how they have been calculated. We urge the Minister to engage with the affected communities, and to ensure that there is clear communication explaining how these decisions have been reached.
The complications caused by the decades of defensive cover-up have not only exacerbated the trauma experienced by victims, but affected the estates of those who have died. In the intervening decades, some estates have become contentious and the question of the rightful recipients of compensation has therefore become unclear. In some cases, the compensation could be entailed away from those on whom a person’s infection or death has had the greatest impact. It is vital for the IBCA to have the necessary resources and powers to support victims through the process, to ensure that appropriate compensation is received by all those affected.
The burden of the administrative concerns and queries from affected families is currently falling on overstretched charities. Has the Minister considered the creation of a dedicated unit to deal with inquiries, working alongside the IBCA? We must support the work of these vital organisations—the charities providing support—and engage with them to understand exactly the needs of those affected. The motion sets out the possibility of future legislation, and we hope that the Government will follow up this legislation with vital community engagement. We urge them to ensure, as the scheme progresses, that there are mechanisms in place to enable the concerns of charities, organisations and affected individuals to be heard.
We are also cautious about the structural limitations of the IBCA. Given the many years over which the scandal took place, the six-year timeframe of the authority as a legal entity does not seem appropriate. The equivalent scheme set up by the Irish Government in the 1990s is still active, and it is crucial that the IBCA exists for long enough to ensure that the full compensation scheme and associated processes can be carried out effectively.
The Liberal Democrats are glad to see the introduction of this legislation. We welcome the Government’s swift creation of a compensation body, the IBCA, to implement the report’s recommendations and begin payments to the victims of this scandal. It is essential that people begin to receive the compensation that is so long overdue, and it is vital that that is done in the most compassionate and effective way. While we hope that the Government will go further in ensuring that the affected community are fully engaged and consulted in this process, the infected blood compensation scheme will allow victims, both infected and affected, to move, at last, towards justice.
Let me finally take this opportunity to thank Emily, Eleni, Pipsy, Claudia, Harry and Orlando, who are A-level students in my constituency and have been gaining work experience in my office this week. It has been a pleasure to host them, and they have worked very hard in helping me to put my speech together.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
I have spoken in the House on numerous occasions about this desperately sad scandal, and I have frequently mentioned the number of people who are dying while we seem to have inquiry after inquiry, and ask question after question. The stage that we have reached today is long overdue. The motion goes some way towards allaying my concerns, and the concerns of those who are still suffering as a result of one of the biggest scandals in NHS history.
This is a tragic miscarriage of justice that has destroyed the lives of many individuals and families up and down the country. I have the utmost faith in my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, and I know that he is aware that many people believe that the proposals before us are incomplete and do not go far enough—hence his announcement that, hopefully, the second tranche of compensation proposals will come to the House before 31 March 2025. That is certainly good news. Nevertheless, there are people who are still waiting, and who will be leading a life of uncertainty between now and then, so we must ensure that we step up to the challenge.
This is the first step taken by a Government who have acted within months of taking office, and this legislation is the beginning of justice for those who have suffered for so long. Along with, probably, every other Member present, I have spoken to many campaigners and many infected or affected victims and families, and my good friend and constituent Sean Cavens, who was infected with hepatitis C as a baby, has been a great help to me in this regard. However, we still have many concerns, although I repeat that the progress made in the first 100 days of this Labour Government has been fantastic.
There is still confusion about the impact that the scheme will have on individual claimants. There is also concern that there has been a lack of engagement generally in order to understand and act on potential weaknesses in the scheme; there needs to be far more engagement. I am sure that my hon. Friend, or right hon. Friend, the Paymaster General will take steps to constructively involve the charities and individuals with an interest in this before 31 March next year. That is not just my view; it is the view of individuals and organisations that I have spent hours and hours with, listening to their concerns. The Haemophilia Society and other campaigning bodies have been absolutely fantastic, and very patient in many ways. As the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) mentioned, these organisations really need to be financed from central Government, if that is at all possible. They have used their resources and campaigning finances every which way they can to try to get justice, and now not only are they totally exhausted, but they have exhausted their finances as well.
The core route for compensation has been laid out today, but there are concerns that there is little information on the supplementary routes. My hon. Friend, or right hon. Friend—I keep demoting him; I promise I do not mean to do that—will be acutely aware that many suffering from haemophilia believe that they will need to apply through the supplementary route; I hope that he can give more detail about how that will work in practice.
There are further concerns about the amount of compensation and the compensation period for those impacted by the infection and subsequent death of a loved one. Also, how were the infected victims who will first get compensation chosen? There are more than 5,000 registered, so if 20 are compensated before the end of the year, that does seem to be a drop in the ocean. Can we have a clear timeline, setting out how many claims the Infected Blood Compensation Authority expects to process per month in 2025? As was mentioned, one victim of this scandal dies every four days.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman highlights one of two fundamental elements of the issue—and I thank the Government for what they are doing, which builds on the work of the previous Government. The first element is information for the families and the individuals affected. Clearly, the provision of information will affect exactly what the hon. Gentleman describes: whether people come forward, and whether the rate of payment is maintained at its current pace. The second issue is alacrity. Very often with these things, getting money out quickly matters most, because there is a rate of attrition. Without being macabre about this, some of the people affected will die before they get the money, so alacrity is critical in dealing with this kind of challenge.
Ian Lavery
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have covered a number of the issues that he raises, and will cover more as my contribution continues.
There are other huge issues of major concern; that is being relayed to us by the groups and individuals we have been in constant contact with. For example, they believe that the £10,000 and £15,000 awards for unethical research and testing are far too low. There is no recognition that people with chronic hepatitis C underwent interferon treatment, or of the additional impact that had on their life. There is also concern that hepatitis C payment bandings do not reflect the suffering caused. Bereaved parents and children will receive very low compensation payments if they are not a beneficiary of the estate of their bereaved family member. There is no compensation for the loss, psychological impact and suffering caused by exposure to variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease. The list is endless. I think my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has received a letter from the Haemophilia Society outlining the vast majority of the issues that it wants to raise.
I want to mention the scandal of children being selected for dangerous medical research. Children were given the factor concentrates, despite knowledge of the dangers posed. This is very eerie. It is not British-like. It has been described to me as organised child abuse. The sums of money suggested—£15,000 or £10,000—for compensating victims seem paltry given the horrors that abuse caused. We should think about what happened only a few years ago at Treloar, a school set up basically for haemophiliacs. We have had institutions up and down this country experimenting on children. That does not sound like the UK, does it? They have been experimenting on children, unknown to those children and their families. I simply cannot get my head around this sinister issue. There needs to be a lot more focus on what happened back in the day when this country, and the great NHS, was experimenting on young kids. It is not just Treloar; it has received a lot of attention, but there were other such institutions up and down the country. We need to get to the bottom of this, and the country and the Government need to send a clear message that this experimentation is wholly unacceptable. I know that the Government will look into the issue and act on it with the utmost haste. It is absolutely critical that those who have suffered this injustice—this scandal—for so long get the redress that they sorely deserve.
As we discuss this scandal, we should not forget those who have suffered, such as my aforementioned constituent Sean Cavens, who continues to be an inspirational campaigner on the issue, standing up for those who are unable to do so and all those who, tragically, have lost their life. Every Member speaking in the debate will no doubt mention individuals in their constituency who have been campaigning; they have done a fantastic job, and good on them.
The Labour Government have taken giant steps to address the scandal. I would like to thank personally, and on behalf of the people I have spoken to, my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General and his team, and I urge them to consider the many outstanding issues before this matter comes back to the House on 31 March 2025.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I am conscious of your warning about the sub judice rules, Madam Deputy Speaker, as there is ongoing litigation on this issue, but I hope and believe that nothing I say in my brief contribution will in any way overshadow the prerogative of the courts.
This has gone on for far, far too many years. I have dealt with two constituents in particular, both of whom came to my constituency surgery to explain to me as their Member of Parliament what they had gone through and how it had affected them—and it clearly had, in both cases. I hope the House will forgive me if I judge that it is not right to go through their cases in detail, but they were both extremely polite and eminently reasonable in what they were asking for, and both were deeply frustrated by how long the process had taken. I will send them both a copy of the Government’s regulations and, because they are rather complicated, a copy of the explanatory notes, which I hope they will find to be of as much use as I have. As result of this afternoon’s proceedings, I hope not just that they will be able to achieve some financial redress, to which I am certain they are absolutely morally entitled, but that they will be able to achieve some peace of mind, because it is very clear to me that both those people’s lives have been materially affected by the issue. One of them said to me, “It’s not about the money. I just want to be able to bring this to a close.” I hope that the House will understand that sentiment. If hon. Members had heard it in the way I heard it face to face, I am sure they would have been as convinced as I was.
I want to say a few brief thank yous, because, as we all know, this has been a very long and complex journey—not just for those who were affected by the scandal, but for those who have had to deal with the consequences many years later. This was not the national health service’s finest hour, and it took a great deal of campaigning by many people to get the system to put its hand up and admit that something had gone wrong—in fact, dreadfully wrong. Had it not been for the persistence of some of those individuals, we would not be having this debate this afternoon.
However, someone had to deal with the consequences. I pay tribute to two brilliant public servants: Sir Brian Langstaff and Sir Robert Francis—there were others—who have both, in their own way, had to attempt to exercise what one might call the judgment of Solomon in dealing with this extremely detailed and complex issue. They have both done their country a service.
I also commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) and the former right honourable Member for Horsham, who is no longer a Member of the House. When they were in government, they both attempted to deal with this very complex issue. Having had some private conversations with the former right honourable Member for Horsham, with whom I served on the Defence Committee in the previous Parliament, I know that this matter preyed on his mind and that he really tried to do his best.
My last thank you goes to the current Paymaster General, who is clearly trying to achieve a resolution as speedily as possible and who has dealt with this issue in a very empathetic manner this afternoon. I speak for two constituents, but I am sure that we all have constituents who have been affected by the scandal, and many people across the country will be grateful for the way in which he is evidently attempting to handle it. I wish him godspeed in all his endeavours. This went on for too long and affected too many people but, hopefully, at last, we can collectively begin to put this right and give those people not just redress, but some sort of peace of mind.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I know that a few Members who were not here for the opening speeches have just turned up. If they can make their way to the Chair, I can have a conversation with them about contributing to the debate.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
I am grateful for all the work that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General and this Labour Government have done to move quickly, and to deliver on their commitment to provide compensation to both the infected and affected. Today, we have an opportunity to support the first of those payments being made.
As we have heard from other Members, the infected blood inquiry revealed systemic failures that led to 30,000 patients being infected, and more than 3,000 people have died as a result of those infections. One of these was Jane Fitzgerald, the mother of my constituent Ronan Fitzgerald, who is in the Gallery today. I want to put on the official record the horror that Jane, her family and other victims have suffered. In 1978, when Jane was 17 years old, she had an ectopic pregnancy and was diagnosed with anaemia. Her GP advised her to have a small blood transfusion to make her feel better, and Jane was given just one unit of blood at the Royal Victoria hospital in Boscombe. It was not until more than two decades later that she discovered, at the age of 42, that she had been infected with hepatitis C. Jane and her family sought treatment, but by the time she was able to find a suitable option, her cirrhosis was too advanced. Her infection caused untold physical and emotional damage, and subjected her to numerous indignities, including the stigma related to her condition.
Jane was told on at least two occasions that she was clear of the disease, only to find that her condition had actually worsened. Her condition caused fluids to collect in her abdomen, legs and feet, which required regular draining, and she often spent hours waiting for hospital treatment when there were no beds or equipment to treat her. On one occasion, her stomach split open while she was waiting for treatment, but she was sent home because the hospital did not have the drainage equipment. Eventually, the toxins in her liver carried cancerous cells to her lungs and brainstem. Jane died in 2015, at the age of 54.
Jane was taken away from her family in the worst possible way, and they suffer the consequences every day. Ronan has spoken candidly about the irreversible impact that losing his mother has had on him, and being powerless to prevent her untimely death has affected his mental health and caused him debilitating physical illness. Ronan is a British Army veteran and served in the Royal Corps of Signals, but he was left unable to climb a flight of stairs or even leave bed; he was bed-bound for long periods at the age of just 29. In his mother’s final moments, Ronan made a vow that he would continue to fight for justice for her, and for all the families affected. Thousands more are living with illness and fear, in full knowledge that, even now, somebody dies every three and a half days.
When I first met Ronan, he asked me whether I would be willing to stand up in the House of Commons to speak up for his mother, and for all the other people who have been infected and affected. He has been a stalwart campaigner for the affected children and has strived to ensure that their voices, and the impact of this scandal on their lives, are accounted for. He now co-chairs the support group Tainted Blood-Affected Siblings and Children, representing 400 members. Although he is grateful for the progress that has been made, he has asked me to share his concerns and to be his voice.
The community of affected children have called for the removal of the discriminatory age restrictions that are placed on siblings over the age of 18 who did not live at the same address as their infected loved ones at the point of infection; for affected children and siblings to not be excluded from any heads of loss; and for all infected and affected persons to have equal access to supplementary routes across all heads of loss, whereby they may provide further evidence of their individual circumstances to ensure that compensation reflects the severe impact of this travesty on their lives. Further, payment to estates should be given the same priority as payments to living infected persons. Any process that delays these payments creates the high probability that some elderly affected members might die before the payments are made, given the time taken to process them. Currently, the Government have no safeguards or protections in place should that happen, whereas protections are offered to those living with infections who die before their payments are made. Families have been waiting too long for justice, and they now run the risk of missing out on this justice and the compensation they deserve. The infected blood inquiry report confirmed that Jane was a victim of medical malpractice through the single unit of non-lifesaving blood she was given, and this was covered up for decades.
Today is an important day on the long road to justice traversed by families affected by the infected blood scandal, and I pay tribute to the victims and all the campaigners who have fought so hard. I am grateful that the Infected Blood Compensation Authority has agreed to meet the affected children and siblings. In the spirit of test and learn, may I urge the Government to ensure that all efforts are made to deliver justice to the community and to take their voices into account at all stages of the process?
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
My very first contribution in this place was to raise the issue of the infected blood scandal and its impact on siblings. I raised it in a question, as it had been raised with me directly while canvassing during the general election campaign, and I am glad that we have the opportunity now to raise those issues again in this debate. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches absolutely welcome the opportunity to recognise the victims of this historic failure. The tragedy of history is that we cannot change it, but at least the House now has the opportunity to give victims and their families the recognition and recourse that they have been stripped of for far too long, by learning lessons from this terrible episode and ensuring that history is not repeated.
The administration of high-risk blood transfusions to vulnerable children and adults, carried out by the very medical professionals their families trusted, stands out as one of the most shocking miscarriages of justice in healthcare in our lifetimes. The infected blood scandal has left behind a wake of mourning families forever changed by the loss of their loved ones. Today I share the concerns of just one of those thousands of families. A constituent of mine who lost a sibling to the scandal wrote to me recently to say that he is deeply worried that his 87-year-old mother may not live to witness justice being served through the Government’s compensation scheme. I echo the hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) in strongly urging the Government to go further in the scheme to include the families and siblings of victims who are currently excluded from support because they were over the age of 18 or did not act as carers for the victims. That is a clear exclusion that we need to revisit, and I hope it can be included in further phases of the scheme.
No amount of money can ever make up for the grief, but it is our responsibility in this Chamber to ensure that the British state recognises and begins to tackle historical injustices such as this one with a comprehensive scheme. To ensure that the scheme does that properly, the Government must also ensure full transparency over its progress and open ongoing communications with all those affected. Further administrative delays will undermine this vital work, and that cannot be allowed to happen. I am reassured to hear about the work being done to expedite the claims and to hear the dates for the opening and the first phase of the scheme.
The scheme is not just a financial obligation but a moral imperative. We owe it to the victims and their families to act decisively and transparently. Justice cannot be delayed. When the story of this scandal is told, let today be the first page of the final chapter in which we right a historic wrong, take stock of what it has taught us about the failures of our system and provide, at long last, some level of closure for victims and their families. I thank the Minister again for his work on this issue, and encourage him to continue to refine and develop the scheme to ensure that no one affected or infected is left out or left waiting for justice.
Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)
First, I want to express my gratitude to Members of the House who have elected me as the designated chair of the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood. I say “designated” because we are lacking a Conservative officer in the group, so we cannot register it in the normal way—
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I would be delighted to volunteer to fill that gap for the hon. Gentleman.
Clive Efford
The right hon. Gentleman would be most welcome, and I will pass on that information. I was hoping to tease someone out by saying that! It is an honour and a challenge to follow on from the excellent leadership of my right hon. Friend and colleague, the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson). She will be an extremely tough act to follow. She was forced to stand down from the role because she was appointed to the Government.
I welcome the progress that the Government are making and I welcome today’s regulations. For many, however, the victories that were celebrated when Sir Brian Langstaff made his final report and Sir Robert Francis was appointed to lead the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, were, rather than the beginning of the end, mere milestones on a path with many miles still to go. The fear among many campaigners is that the Cabinet Office, which was responsible for delay and obfuscation over decades, is now back in charge of the compensation scheme.
I know that the Minister is earnest in his wish to see the victims of this scandal given the justice they deserve, and that he understands that we are where we are because the campaigners refused to be silenced. They took on the establishment and won, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham and I cheered them on and promised to deliver for them without equivocation should we get into government.
There has been progress, and we welcome today’s regulations, but for too many the euphoria has been replaced by frustration, leading to anger and a growing fear of betrayal. That stems from the fact that the campaigners feel that they are excluded from the process they brought into being. Decisions that they insisted should not be made without them are being made without the openness and candour the Government are legislating for. The Government have an excellent opportunity, ahead of that legislation, to show what candour means in public office. That is particularly true of how the tariff has been arrived at.
For the campaigners, it is like they have won the war, only to see those they vanquished put in charge of delivering the peace. There is growing unease that this is leading to the same tactics as before: delays, lack of information about how decisions are arrived at and lack of communication from the Cabinet Office. That lack of communication is causing people to look to small charitable organisations for advice, as they struggle to understand the complex compensation process. Will Ministers commit to providing support to those organisations, so that they can continue that work, as was recommended by Sir Brian Langstaff?
I understand that the Infected Blood Compensation Authority is starting to engage with the Haemophilia Society and campaigning groups about the process and technical matters, but there is an urgent need for much more engagement than has happened thus far. We are told that the Infected Blood Compensation Authority intends to settle 20 cases by the end of the year. Why only 20? How will they be selected? The victims call these the Willy Wonka golden tickets. In the meantime, while these 20 cases are completed, another 14 people are likely to die—one victim dies on average every four days.
Justice delayed is justice denied. When Sir Brian Langstaff published his interim report in April 2023, he appealed to the Government to get on with the compensation scheme, because he was alarmed that so many people were dying without receiving the justice they deserved. That makes it imperative that people, whether infected or affected, receive the interim payments without delay. Regulations for those affected by the scandal will not be published until March 2025—yet another year on from Sir Brian’s final report. Yet again, justice is delayed; yet again, victims will die without receiving compensation.
These are people who have suffered unspeakable harm: bereaved parents who lost children; bereaved children who lost parents and suffered bullying; bereaved partners who could not have families or who were advised to abort babies for fear they may have HIV; siblings who were bullied; and siblings who, under the tariff, are currently ruled out because they were over 18. There is so much more.
It is not possible to deal with these cases without understanding each individual’s circumstances and the suffering they endured through so many years. What is needed is a bespoke system that meets individuals’ needs, but that requires far more engagement than is currently happening. The lack of engagement with victims is leading to a lack of understanding about how decisions are reached and how compensation is calculated, fuelling mistrust in the process. Many victims, whether affected or infected, have lost their faith that the full extent of their suffering will be recognised through the compensation scheme. Indeed, some campaigners have concluded that their suffering will not be recognised through the compensation scheme and that they must return to court to get the compensation they deserve.
Those suffering from hep C do not understand why their experiences mean they receive different treatment from those with HIV. That requires urgent explanation. Again, the scale of the suffering needs to be looked at case by case, and there needs to be greater engagement, so that both sides understand the concerns. Why are people with hep C being offered much lower rates of compensation unless they are near death?
Similarly, the additional payments for those experimented on, of £10,000 or £15,000, have been met with widespread derision. My constituent, Mr Lee Moorey, was a pupil at Treloar school. Having read his testimony to the inquiry, I share his sentiments. Will the Minister guarantee that that will be looked at?
We need to remind ourselves of the scale of the scandal and just how many people have died without justice. All along, people have had to fight to get justice, but they will only believe in justice if they have faith in the process. That requires the decisions to be made about them to be made with them. We have to restore their faith in the process. I understand that Sir Brian Langstaff has kept his inquiry open so that he can keep a watching brief. It would be a shame if the Chancellor, the Paymaster General or even the Prime Minister found themselves summoned before him.
Finally, my right hon. Friend promised that there will be a full debate in Government time on the scandal. When will that take place?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the spokesperson for the Scottish National party.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). In me, he has another willing volunteer to assist him in the group, as he knows. He is absolutely right to pay tribute to our former colleague, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who led the group with such distinction and energy in the last Parliament. She was almost personally responsible for ensuring we had the legislative solution to take forward the compensation schemes.
I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who made a significant difference when he took leadership on this issue for the last Government, after years of obfuscation, delay and dithering. The right hon. Gentleman got to grips with the matter and all the campaigners recognise what he brought to the role. I hope that this Minister does the same. We all acknowledge that he has made a good start. The points that the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst makes as chair as the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood are absolutely right. If he continues in that curious and investigatory style, we will continue to encourage the Government to do the right thing by the infected and the affected.
I am happy to say, with a great deal of satisfaction, that we have made significant progress. We are at the point of being able to deliver the scheme, and we will start to see payments to those who have needed support and compensation so badly throughout all these decades. My only slight criticism of the right hon. Member for Salisbury is that it is a pity that we did not get the opportunity to debate the issue in the last Parliament. There was an unsatisfactory statement from the former Prime Minister, who then just disappeared. There was no real opportunity to ask questions properly. I know he made an effort to address some of the concerns, but it would have been good to hear more at that point about how the schemes were being taken forward. The general election created a massive gap, after all the energy and activity that had been summoned up to resolve the issue, but we are where we are.
The final report by the infected blood inquiry was a fantastic piece of work. I pay tribute to everybody involved in it. They went about their jobs diligently and comprehensively, and we ended up with a wide-ranging report that shed a dramatic light on all the things that had gone wrong. It paved the way to create a positive way forward that is now beginning to deliver.
We must remember why we are here: thousands of people were caught up in probably the worst health scandal this country has ever endured. It is a failure of the British state that we ended up in a situation where people, through no fault of their own, contracted HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. When those who were caring for them raised concerns, they were constantly ignored and told, “There’s nothing to see here.” The inquiry was unequivocal that a compensation scheme must be set up immediately. The regulations we are debating today are essential for delivering that compensation scheme as quickly and effectively as possible.
I have been supporting victims of the infected blood scandal for about 20 years, since it was first brought to my attention by a constituent, who died about 10 years ago and is no longer with us. I remember the frustrations of those early years when I was constantly writing on behalf of this constituent just to be stonewalled—to be told that there was nothing to see and nothing further to be considered. It was that reluctance to take these issues seriously that defined those early years.
I said to the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Salisbury, that I hoped we would get some sort of separate investigation into why Members of Parliament were consistently deceived and—I shall say this—lied to by people working in the Department of Health. We were constantly writing letters on behalf of our constituents, and the replies were clearly rubbish. As a recipient of several of those letters from Ministers, I want to know why I was deceived in the way that I was. I pay tribute to Andy Burnham: he recognised this and he actually signed many of those letters as the former Health Secretary. I want to know how this came to his desk and why he actually did this.
The key thing is, as other Members have said, that the groups that are representing the community are properly listened to and are engaged in the construction of the regulations. It is too late for the regulations we are debating, but when it comes to the affected, the representative groups have to be central to the design of the new regulations. I say that because they have real life experience of this matter. They know what the issues are. They have fought for decades to get to this stage to secure this justice and compensation. I know that there is frustration. I saw the Minister screwing his face in response to the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst, but those groups do feel frustrated. They feel that they are being ignored, that their concerns are not being taken seriously, and that they are getting generic general replies from the Minister instead of detailed, proper responses to their issues.
Pete Wishart
I will give way to the Minister if he will explain to me exactly why that is happening.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I just want to say that the hon. Member should read nothing into that facial expression. When I close this debate, I shall talk in detail about the consultation that has taken place. That includes the extensive consultation that Sir Robert Francis undertook during the election campaign—the period between me and the right hon. Member for Salisbury being in office. That was hugely important. The Government have listened and have made significant changes to the scheme. It is not about giving generic replies, as the hon. Member has suggested. The Government will continue to move extremely carefully and listen to concerns, and the Infected Blood Compensation Authority will do the same.
Pete Wishart
I am to grateful to the Minister for his response. I look forward to his summing up, as I know that he will sincerely try to address these matters, but I say to him that all I am doing is reflecting the concerns that I have heard from the groups that I have worked with so closely over the years. There is a sense that they are not being taken all that seriously and that they are not getting the responses and the information that they think are important.
The Minister mentioned Sir Robert Francis. There has been nothing other than glowing praise for the way that Sir Robert has carried out his business. I know that he had a useful and productive meeting with representatives of Haemophilia Scotland where everything was aired and properly discussed. There is absolutely no complaint from anybody in this House about the way that Sir Robert Francis has gone about his business. He has been up and down the country listening to the groups. But there are certain things that only the Minister can respond to, particularly when it comes to policy decisions. That is why I encourage him to hold a debate on them. He has said that he is prepared to do so, which I am grateful for, and that he has perhaps been misunderstood. The community must be given the information and advice that they require.
There are a couple of matters that I hope the Minister will address in his closing remarks. I will not repeat some of the points that have already been raised, as I know he has taken a note of them. Sir Robert Francis proposed an additional autonomy award under the supplementary route for those who had been subjected to the unethical treatment and experiments that have been described. Although that is welcome, it is not clear how the figures have been arrived at, so I would like a little more clarity on that. How have these figures been calculated?
One issue that possibly has not been raised today is those with hepatitis C who were treated with interferon. Early treatment methods for the eradication of hepatitis C had many negative side effects, which were extremely difficult to go through and had a lasting effect on those treated. Is that a group that the Minister will consider?
The future operation of support schemes is also important. The decision to continue existing support scheme payments for life for those who were registered with a scheme before 1 April 2024 was a welcome development. The House will know how important that is to me as a Scottish Member of Parliament, as we had a very effective, productive and useful support scheme that I think will now be concluded and no longer open to new members. I would like to hear a little more on that point.
Sir Robert’s report said:
“The benefits offered by the scheme to eligible recipients for financial and other support services should be no less than those offered by any of the current support schemes.”
I want to know whether that is still the Government’s position. It is also assumed, based on Sir Robert’s recommendation, that all the benefits of the support schemes will continue. It would be good if the Government could confirm their position at an early date so that individuals have clarity on their future entitlements.
Under the regulations, the Minister has the power to make arrangements for the provision of support and assistance to applicants or potential applicants for compensation under the infected blood compensation scheme. Sir Robert Francis has identified three groups to which the Minister might usefully apply that prerogative: IBCA-funded legal representation, IBCA-funded financial support from an independent financial adviser and IBCA-funded legal support to executors of estates where there are complex matters to resolve in determining entitlements and access to an independent mediation service.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) spoke about the need to ensure that representative groups are properly supported and resourced to continue their vital advocacy work on behalf of so many in the community. I would like the Minister to say a little more about the willingness of the Government to ensure that those groups are properly funded. The effort that they have put in over decades—sometimes in a solitary exercise by two or three people—is extraordinary and should be recognised as part of the scheme.
We are looking forward to the next round, and it is important that we go forward. I have queries, which I know the Minister will probably address, about why only 20 people have been contacted, as the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst mentioned. I have no idea why it is only 20, so perhaps the Minister can tell us a little more about the rationale. It is right that the system be tested to see whether it is robust before it is opened to a wider community, but he has to say a little more about why it is those 20.
I am not having a go at the Minister, who I think is doing a good job; I am here to congratulate him and encourage him ever so gently to get moving just that little bit faster. We have had decades of obfuscation, a lack of progress, and people dying as they waited for compensation. This matter now sits on the Minister’s shoulders. We will be watching him and keeping an eye on it. I know that there will be regular updates to the House. Believe me, we will all be here to ensure that he is doing the right thing by the victims.
Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
I congratulate the Minister on the way he spoke to the House. He spoke firmly, with a sense of urgency and great clarity in his use of English, which was very much appreciated. The truth of the matter is that there is a deeply ingrained scepticism in the community we are talking about. Words, in the end, will not count; actions will. Of course, today we are taking significant action on the road.
When we reflect on the views of victims and their relatives, it is hardly surprising that there has been a breakdown in trust. It always seems to be the case that the British establishment’s first reaction when there is a disaster is to close ranks, deny the truth and not listen to the victims. It is only in recent times that victims’ voices have begun to be heard. With disasters such as the Post Office scandal, the policing of the miners’ strike or Hillsborough, the establishment always closed ranks.
The Langstaff report is very clear. First, it says—this goes to the root of the scepticism that people feel—that, from the 1940s, Governments of different parties were fully aware of the scientific opinion that these actions could infect recipients of blood transfusions. Sir Brian Langstaff says that the disaster did not happen by accident. He tries to imagine what it must be like for those suffering the agony of being victims, and then being refused the truth that a wrong had been done by successive Governments.
My constituent Katie has been in touch with my office. Her dad died in the 1980s when she was an infant. Imagine living life with a cloud upon you after losing your father when young, because of negligence by operatives of the state and the cover-up that followed.
The only way we can reduce the scepticism is for the payments to begin to flow through. In the meantime, there is clearly a wish for some reassurance from the Minister today. He has made some of these points already, but I will go back to them.
First, someone who lost her father in the ’80s when she was two will probably struggle to find the appropriate evidence, as she is not necessarily skilled enough to search for it forensically. Langstaff discovered—this is shocking—that documents were destroyed knowingly by the Government of the day because they thought that it might incriminate them. It was an establishment cover-up of some scale. How can victims establish that they deserve justice if documents have been lost or even wilfully destroyed? The Minister mentioned that, but we need to hear more from him about it either today or in the coming period.
Secondly, as other Members have said, civil society groups have the confidence of the victims—the Haemophilia Society is one, but my constituent mentioned Tainted Blood, of which the Minister is probably aware. It would be helpful if the Minister said that he and the Government are open to further conversations with civil society groups, which can speak on behalf of victims. It is important that the victims’ voices are heard, and because those groups have the confidence of victims, those exchanges and that dialogue would be very helpful.
The Minister referred to one of the central requests that have been made. We are dealing with people who do not necessarily have large resources to employ representatives such as lawyers and other advisers. The Minister indicated that the Government are open to victims having their own representatives. However, if the Government are to encourage the appointment of such representatives, it must be clear that they are not appointees of the Government; they must see themselves as representatives of the victims. Otherwise, people will not have the necessary trust in them.
That brings me to my final point. I can imagine the kinds of conversation that the civil service has had with Ministers about this matter over decades: “Minister, you may be dealing with billions of pounds. You have a duty to ensure that every single penny is properly spent, so please exercise care in any announcements you make.” I imagine that those conversations happen on most days. Of course we have a duty to protect money, and very significant amounts will have to be spent to compensate people properly, but equally there is a duty to deliver justice to the people who were treated by state actors in a shabby and disgraceful way over decades. When there is a lack of paperwork and victims are perhaps very ill or dying, how will we secure value for money for the taxpayer while delivering justice for people who have struggled for decades as a result of Government negligence? I leave those thoughts with the Minister and hope that he will address them in his reply.
Like other Members, I hope that as the scheme is rolled out and we establish confidence among the victims, the Government will organise opportunities for the Minister to come back to the House so that we can raise constituents’ questions and establish a more trusting relationship between the Government, who are doing dramatic work on this matter, and the people who have suffered for decades.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have made many fine contributions, some of which have been very detailed. You will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that mine will hopefully be quite simple.
There are two words that I would like everybody to consider: urgency and trust. Those were the words that summarised the feelings of my Burgess Hill constituent Graham Knight when I spoke to him recently. Graham is not sure precisely when he was infected, but he thinks it was probably in 1987 while he was having his appendix removed. It was not until 2002 that he was finally diagnosed with hepatitis C. He told me that every day he has woken up since then has been a bonus. Needless to say, there has been a vast impact not only on his health, but on his professional life, his personal life and relationships and his social life. In 2003, Graham lost his business; the next year, as a consequence, all the family savings were gone.
There has been an enormous impact on Graham’s marriage to Sue. Graham and Sue are fearless, determined, strong people. He told me that before he became poorly they had two to three good years of happy, healthy marriage; I am pleased to say that they are still happily married, but Graham’s hepatitis C has had a profound impact on them in the years since. Graham said that Sue did not deserve that in her marriage, but she has been steadfast and loyal throughout. Graham also has high praise for the team who have cared for him at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals: the care he has received has been incredible.
Graham’s asks are about urgency. He says that there has been a profound loss of trust among the infected blood community, and that nothing—nothing—will restore that trust until the payments are forthcoming. Victims need certainty, because they cannot plan for the future.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Trust and urgency were certainly raised by my constituent John, who emailed me recently following a meeting between legal representatives and members of the IBCA team to get an update. He said that
“big and elaborate apologies are not what is needed, it is what was promised regarding compensation settlements that we want to see actioned without further delays.”
It is clear that my hon. Friend agrees, but I would like to hear her response.
Alison Bennett
I do agree. My hon. Friend is right that ensuring that compensation comes forward is of the utmost importance. I am sure it will be coming forward, but the urgency with which it does so is the key point here.
I end by emphasising the anguish that Graham and countless other victims still hold and carry with them every day. It is deep-seated, and it will not go away until the matter is settled and the payments are concluded. Urgency is now required to right this 40-year wrong.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call Katie White to make her maiden speech.
Katie White (Leeds North West) (Lab)
It is an honour to make my maiden speech, particularly on this critically important debate on the infected blood scandal. I ask the House to allow me a temporary shift in tone, so that I can celebrate the community that sent me here.
Like many hon. Members’ constituencies, the constituency I have the privilege to represent, Leeds North West, is a new seat with a long history. I am sure most Members know where Leeds is, but I describe it as being right at the heart of the UK. I am deeply grateful to the thousands of voters who have put their trust in me, and as I said on election night, regardless of how they voted, I am determined to represent and serve our community in this place.
I begin by paying tribute to my immediate predecessors, both of whom are still Members of this House. I thank the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew) for being gracious and friendly and for his commitment to our community, especially Guiseley, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and his fantastic team for their commitment to our community and to tackling climate change. I also pay tribute to those who came before: Greg Mulholland, Paul Truswell and the late Harold Best, who all have a continued presence in the constituency. Those esteemed gentlemen have all fought for our communities, and I am honoured to stand on their shoulders, but I say “gentlemen” for good reason: I am proud to be the first woman ever to represent Leeds North West, the place where I was born and raised, as were my parents before me. Seeing more women elected to Parliament than ever before matters. It matters to the women and girls across our communities—to Alice in Otley, Navdeeb in Adel and Chloe in Horsforth. We have not had enough female MPs in my home city, but we are making up for lost time. Leeds now boasts the first female Chancellor ever, so there is progress, friends, progress.
Leeds North West has an incredible history. The stunning Norman church in Adel dates back to the 12th century; it is where my parents were married, where I was christened, and where my grandfather lies at rest. Further west is Otley Chevin. Members may not yet have had the chance to visit Otley Chevin, but we would not be here without it. The stone from the Chevin provided the foundations for this very Parliament when it was rebuilt in the 1840s. It should not be a surprise that it is Yorkshire that keeps this House grounded.
In Leeds North West, our feet are always planted firmly on that bedrock, but our eyes remain on the horizon, ready to embrace the future. Our constituency is a vibrant hub of entrepreneurship and creativity, a legacy that continues to thrive today. Abraham Moon in Guiseley, a fabric company established in 1837, still supplies international fashion houses today, while EMIS—which began in the 1980s in Horsforth—now flourishes in beautiful Rawdon as the leading provider of data support to the NHS. We are home to West Yorkshire’s only airport, Leeds Bradford, and I was pleased to meet with Jet2’s chief executive officer Steve just this week to discuss how the aviation sector can innovate to decarbonise. Should Members wish to stop for a bite to eat, they should look no further than the thriving bars and restaurants of vibrant Horsforth. It is a constituency bursting with joyful community fairs and fetes, from Guiseley festival to Yeadon carnival and from Rawdon summer gala to the Arthington and Bramhope shows —that last one comes complete with a human fruit machine.
There is no stronger pride than Yorkshire pride, and our community spirit is a great source of strength. However, as in many places, people are feeling overwhelmed and concerned about their future and that of their children and grandchildren. Many of the people I have met on the doorstep also feel let down—let down by politicians and by the institutions they have put their trust in over decades. The infected blood scandal is the most extreme and harrowing example of such systematic failure: people placed their trust in doctors and the Government to protect them, and that trust was betrayed. I am proud that this Government and this Prime Minister will introduce a duty of candour law to prevent future cover-ups like the infected blood and Post Office scandals.
I also share deep concerns about the other great challenges facing our community. Mental health figures are horrifying. The Global Mind Project has revealed that the UK has the highest rate of mental distress in the world and ranks second worst in overall mental health. People are working harder, yet getting unhealthier and unhappier, and of course, the climate and nature crisis looms.
We need things to change; the country voted for change, and it is change that propelled me into politics. My journey began with the climate crisis. We know that if we get it wrong, we face disaster—particularly for the most vulnerable among us—but if we get it right, we unlock enormous opportunities for our society. In 2003, I joined the local Leeds branch of Friends of the Earth and launched a campaign for the UK’s first climate change Bill. Everyone told me that it was impossible; that it was too ambitious and too radical. There was no way that the Treasury would ever allow a carbon budget—but, friends, they did. We turned that campaign into the fourth most supported campaign in Parliament’s history, with cross-party backing from Members across the House. The last Labour Government turned that Bill into an Act in 2008, under my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband), whom I am honoured to be working with again. Under this Act, Britain decarbonised faster than any other rich country. This Act has now become a global benchmark adopted by other nations—and that, I say to my hon. Friends, is what global leadership looks like.
Why am I sharing this? It is because politics must be about real change or it is about nothing. I want to serve our community, and improve our schools, healthcare and public services. When I think about change, I think about my grandmother, Marjorie Simms. She challenged the status quo. She lived in Horsforth in the1950s. There were not that many women driving then, but Marjorie did. There were not that many women wearing trousers, but Marjorie did. Majorie developed breast cancer, and most parents in the 1950s avoided talking to their children, but Marjorie showed them her mastectomy so they could understand. She died at 43, the age I entered Parliament. Majorie did things differently and her spirit lives on in me. We have seen too much promise and too little delivery in recent years—endless debates about challenges, but a lack of energy for real solutions. Politics should be about action, not just words.
The seeds of change can be seen within our communities. As a Government, our role is to water them and create the conditions for them to flourish. Leeds North West is willing to play its role in full. We have the leaders, we have the ideas and we have the “get stuff done” attitude that personifies Yorkshire—like the students I met recently at Ralph Thoresby and Green Meadows or the cadets in my constituency, who are ambitious about the difference we can make; like the Horsforth shed set up a couple of years ago by ex-teachers based on the national men’s shed model and supporting male mental health, but expanded to include many other vulnerable members of the community; like those from Otley 2030 who decided they wanted to be a beacon of hope and created a living laboratory in the town to create climate friendly and sustainable solutions where people and nature thrive; and like Brian who, after a death in Morrisons car park in Guiseley, set up defibrillators all over the community so that lifesaving equipment is on hand and there is a network of community activists servicing them. Let us not forget the gold medal Olympians in our community—the Brownlee brothers and the cyclist Tom Pidcock—who inspire us all with their dedication and achievements. We are indeed a hotbed of world-class talent.
People in Leeds North West do not wait for change to come to them; they make it happen. They are the doers and the problem solvers, and I will play my role in that same way. I will champion the green agenda by focusing on practical solutions that carve a British path towards a successful green transition. We will leverage our strengths, whether it is world-leading research, supporting our best business minds, or unlocking the public and private investment needed to turbocharge a green economy. I will support the health of our community—mental health, physical health, community health—and I want to support our entrepreneurs and creativity to grow our region. I promise to be a ferocious champion for my community, my beloved Yorkshire and our country, and I will do it with joy. It may recently have become more fashionable across the pond, but I have been measuring with joy for years, and there is always space for a little more joy.
Finally, I promise to listen, learn and reflect. No one has all the answers, but all of us have some of them. I commit to working constructively and collectively. I will endeavour to arrive with curiosity and non-judgment, because if we want to change the way we do things, we must start in this moment, in this place and with these actions.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Having been a student at Leeds, I look forward to an invitation.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Katie White) on an excellent maiden speech, and I have no doubt that Marjorie would be extremely proud to see her here.
I thank the Minister for bringing this motion before the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) graphically illustrated earlier in the debate, the trauma of this shameful scandal goes way beyond physical suffering. Indeed, it has gone through generations as people have sadly passed away from the infected blood that they received. I welcome the Government’s bringing this motion to the House fairly swiftly after the general election, because it is high time that this shameful episode was finally brought—appropriately and comprehensively—to some kind of conclusion.
I am here to put on the record the story of my constituent Philip, who, after 50 years, told me that he wanted his story to be shared publicly for the first time. I met his wife on the doorstep when I was canvassing for the general election, and she asked me whether, if I won the seat, I would raise the issue of the infected blood scandal when I arrived in this House.
Philip was diagnosed with haemophilia B at the age of 11. He said that by the late 1970s, he was probably infected via contaminated blood products, although he was not diagnosed with hep C until the late 1980s. Although very ill, he had a demanding job and a young family, so he kept working.
Philip said:
“The illness and the subsequent aggressive treatment with the then experimental drug interferon was only half the issue for haemophiliacs like me. The world was scared of AIDS and other viral infections and the press and politicians at the time made it worse with doomsday advertising ‘Don’t die of ignorance’. In hindsight this slogan was a cruel irony as we only found out 30 years later that our ignorance was engineered by those in power.
As a haemophiliac I could not discuss or disclose my condition. My boss at the time would not shake my hand or consume food or drink I had prepared. I eventually moved jobs to get away from the ignorance. I continued to keep knowledge of my haemophilia to close family and friends.”
Philip eventually left his job because of fatigue caused by the hep C infection, and even at that point in 2008, he was not able to give the true reasons for leaving to his employer. He said:
“As an infected person, this has had a physical and mental impact on me for decades. The impact of the delays to the compensation scheme on me, my wife and two children as affected people continues.
As a community we have waited over 35 years for recognition, compensation and closure. During that time over 3,000 haemophiliacs have died and more continue to die every week without knowing their families are secure. I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones that has survived, but why are we continually subjected to more stress caused by government deadlines that pass and communications updates that say the same as the last one?
The payment schemes are already detailed, so why is there any further delay? The latest delay is whilst the IBCA test the compensation framework on a small group to check it works. Do the government have any idea how this makes infected people feel? Some of us are guinea pigs all over again.”
I have used Philip’s words because they are much stronger than anything that I could say on this subject. Although I welcome the Minister’s statement and am pleased to hear that some payments have begun, I urge him to ensure that progress is swift and that those who have been affected by the scandal will also receive compensation swifty. We have heard a lot from hon. Members about siblings and the children of people who were infected. Applications must also open for the estates of those who have sadly not survived long enough to outlive this process, which should have been resolved many years ago.
We have talked a lot this afternoon about the feeling of shame that this terrible tragedy happened in the first place. I add my voice to those of others in the House urging swift compensation not only for everybody who has been infected by this scandal, but for affected families, including siblings of loved ones who have died. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) said, trust is the most important thing, so we need to make sure that there is clarity, that people can understand exactly what is happening, that they can find information online and can apply easily, and that once they have applied, they will be assured of swift compensation payments. They will never get true justice, but compensation is the best that we can do in this circumstance.
Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)
There have been many stories told of infected blood in this debate, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale), who told a very similar story to that of the constituent I will talk about this afternoon. These are stories of pain, injustice and, ultimately, state failure.
I come to the Chamber to give the account of my constituent, Brian, and his late mother, Roberta Wilson Murray. In the mid-1980s, Roberta entered hospital to receive treatment for an ulcer in her stomach. Complications in that procedure meant that she required a blood transfusion, and on 13 and 15 July 1985 she received 30 units of blood. Those units contained infected blood, which led to Roberta contracting hepatitis C. At that time, her daughter was just 10 years old, and her son was just six. Even though in that moment Roberta’s life had changed forever, she did not know, because it was not until 2002—17 years later—that she found out her condition. In a routine test for high blood pressure, she was casually but devastatingly informed that she had hep C. Ever since that fateful visit to the hospital, and for the rest of her life, she was in and out of hospital. In July 2020 Roberta passed, just two months before her 49th wedding anniversary with her husband.
For 35 years, Roberta’s health was plagued by a virus that for more than half of that time she did not even know she had contracted. When she did find out, as in other cases that Members have spoken about, she lived with great stigma in work and in her social life. The truth is that the state failed Roberta, and not just in 1985 but at every single step of the way since.
The scandal of infected blood transfused into patients is, as we have heard in this debate, one of the greatest injustices of our time. For more than half a century, tens of thousands of people, including my late constituent, have suffered. They were let down by the very institutions that we are supposed to trust and rely upon most. Nobody would think that in an NHS hospital the treatment that someone was receiving would be a death sentence, but that is what it was for many people. As is so often the case with such scandals, the initial injustice was worsened by the cover-up and obstruction of truth that followed. Whether it is infected blood, the Post Office scandal more recently or the collapse of a stadium, these injustices must never be allowed to happen again.
It is one of the core duties of a Member of Parliament to identify and expose failures in state bureaucracy. That is why it is so important that this Government will bring forward a legal duty of public candour. The pain and injustice that these acts have fostered must never be allowed to happen again, but the truth is that for families such as Brian’s, the damage has already been done. There is ultimately nothing we can do to fully compensate them for the pain and trauma they have endured, but we all owe it to the thousands impacted to make sure that the compensation process is swift, transparent and fair. I am pleased that the Government have made it a priority to get this compensation scheme under way, and it is critical that these measures can pass through Parliament quickly. There can be no more delay.
In that spirit, I ask the Minister to write to me to give an indication of when my constituent and his family can expect to see the compensation they are owed. The Murray family, like everyone else impacted by this horrendous injustice, deserve nothing less.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
I thank all Members for their moving contributions, especially those who have advocated for constituents impacted by this terrible injustice and shared their stories. I welcome the pledge to deliver this important payment scheme swiftly. However, I urge the Minister to look at the losses of those family members who provided care. In many cases, including that of my constituent Debra, who cared for many years for her husband Barrie, bereaved partners and family carers gave up careers, sacrificing pensions and facing many additional costs. Concerns about the care award have been expressed by organisations such as Tainted Blood, which was mentioned earlier. A just care award must take all those factors into account. Will the Minister ensure fair care costs for the bereaved?
Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)
We have heard some incredibly eloquent, moving and substantial speeches today, and I pay tribute to all of them. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Katie White) on a fantastic maiden speech, which was a celebration of women in Parliament, all her work on the climate and, of course, Yorkshire.
In my first few months as the Member for Welwyn Hatfield, nothing has left a greater mark on me than meeting Mike and Diana Blake. The Blake family are victims of the contaminated blood scandal who have been fighting for justice with grace and determination for nearly four decades. As I told the House in July, Stuart Blake, their son, was infected with contaminated blood in 1985, when he was just six years old. Stuart was infected with HIV and hepatitis C. He suffered throughout his childhood and passed away in 2006, aged just 27. Stuart was infected two years before I was born, but 39 years later his parents are still waiting for compensation.
The agonising story of the Blake family will be all too familiar to hon. Members across the House who, as we have heard today, represent constituents who have suffered tragic loss and then seen the state close ranks about the depth of the crisis. As Sir Brian Langstaff concludes in his infected blood inquiry:
“A lack of openness, transparency and candour, shown by the NHS and government, such that the truth has been hidden for decades.”
Those of us who sit on these Benches today can never undo the suffering, but we can speak the truth about the experience of our constituents and demand that long-overdue compensation flows to their families. In that spirit, I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister for the decisive action he has taken since assuming office and echo his recent comments on compensation, when he said
“it means nothing if people don’t get their compensation quickly and efficiently.”
I welcome the news that he expects payments to begin to be made by the end of the year, but echo the calls made on all sides of the House that those who are affected, not just infected, receive their payments as soon as possible.
I would also be grateful for some further clarification on how the Infected Blood Compensation Authority will work with individuals and families to help them navigate the system. Specifically, I want to put on record my request that Mike and Diana Blake are assigned a dedicated case worker, a single point of contact to guide them through the application for compensation and ensure that, after all the years of turmoil, they finally receive what they are owed.
Earlier this year, the Prime Minister said that as a society we had collectively failed to protect some of our most vulnerable people. He was absolutely right. The state failed thousands of families for decades, and whether they were infected or affected, the duration of their suffering is unimaginable. We cannot ever put it right, but this Government will have my support in doing everything in their power to offer compensation and, where possible, some closure to those who have endured so much.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Like others, I welcome the progress on the compensation scheme. Also like others, I would like to draw attention to two of my constituents who have suffered, and continue to suffer, because of the infected blood scandal.
First, there is my constituent who was infected with hepatitis C in 1993, two years after the cut-off date for the infected blood support scheme. As she told me at my surgery last week, her life has been utterly devastated. Her sense of betrayal is felt even more keenly because at the point of her infection all blood should have been tested for hepatitis C by law. She has suffered terrible physical and mental illness for most of her life, including infertility and anxiety from the stigma of her illness—which is why I do not mention her name—and she has experienced an impact on her personal relationships and career.
It was a cruel insult that my constituent, because she was infected after 1991 and was therefore not eligible for the infected blood support scheme, has been unable to access the crucial help that she needs to deal with the impacts I have mentioned. I welcome the removal of those cut-off dates in the new scheme, but I urge the Government urgently to provide proper clarity on how the new scheme will work for her and others like her who were infected after 1991. They need the details of exactly how it will work for them, and when they can expect to review the compensation that they so greatly deserve.
Secondly, I would like to mention the case of my constituent whose mother sadly died from hepatitis C in 1998. In his communications with me, he has pointed out that the information available on the gov.uk website is very confusing, as others have mentioned. He finds it often poorly written, which only adds to his frustration and emotional stress. Understandably, his main concern is that payments to the estates of those who have died from being given infected blood will be deprioritised and not excluded from any heads of loss. As others have pointed out, processes that delay these payments will result in many elderly affected people dying before receiving anything. Can the Government give assurances that siblings and children left behind now and in future will have the compensation safeguarded and will also receive what they rightly deserve?
Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)
Like so many today, I welcome this Government acting to ensure that the infected blood victims receive the compensation that they have long been owed. Not long after being elected, I met one of my constituents who is a victim of the scandal. He was a core participant in the inquiry, and his case is referenced anonymously in the report. Meeting him and hearing his story, about his fight for justice and the impact it has had on his life and his family, will forever remain with me.
As a teenager, my constituent, who was being treated for haemophilia, went in for his annual health check. He was asked to wait outside by the doctor, who he trusted to act in his best interests. The doctor informed my constituent’s father that his son had HIV and did not have long to live. His father was tasked with conveying this earth-shattering news to his son. I am relieved that he has defied the odds and is still here today, but let us be clear that the word “scandal” does not do justice to what happened to these people, who were simply accessing healthcare.
My constituent welcomed the recommendations of the inquiry, the work by Sir Robert Francis and the action that this Government took immediately upon taking office to work to provide swift compensation to those impacted. He further welcomed the statements from the Paymaster General and the Prime Minister, and the acknowledgement that the state, through successive Governments, failed to protect some of the most vulnerable people in this country. That acknowledgment was really important to him, because he and others—all those who have been referenced today and beyond our doors, both infected and affected—have waited far too long for justice.
It is welcome that, following feedback, the Government have made a series of changes, including the regular support payments, new routes for those seeking bespoke compensation claims and packages for those subjected to unethical testing. It is positive that the Infected Blood Compensation Authority has begun the steps to deliver this scheme and ensure that compensation payments are made as soon as possible, and that the payments will start by the end of the year, because victims have already waited too long. As Sir Robert Francis has said, that can provide a credible means of offering significant and, in many cases, life-changing sums to persons infected and affected by this terrible scandal. I thank the Paymaster General for his recent response to queries that I raised on behalf of my constituent, and for the assurances that he gave in that correspondence, which my constituent very much appreciated. Might I ask a final question, though, that my constituent has put to me on the legal fees that those campaigning have accrued? Is there potential for those to be covered, rather than their being covered by people’s compensation payments? Although I welcome the swift action we have taken, we should never, ever have been in this position, and no amount of compensation can ever match the distress and the pain that this scandal has caused, compounded by the long delay in accessing justice.
I will end by reiterating what others have said, because the motion before us is a testament to those, including my constituent, who have fought for decades to bring justice to those impacted. I pay tribute to all of them, as it is their work that has brought us to where we are today. I cannot imagine how it will feel to finally receive the recognition and the acknowledgment of what has happened. It is incumbent on us to ensure that it happens swiftly and provides proper recourse. I hope that, as a result of the action that we are already taking by introducing the Hillsborough law and the wider duty of candour, we can deliver a culture change so that no one will ever have to fight for justice like that again.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I note that time is short. I will get through as many of the points that have been raised as I can, but I say to all right hon. and hon. Members that my door is very much open; please do follow up with a letter to me if there are specific points that you want me to provide a more detailed response to. I would be more than happy to do that.
In this debate we should always start with the victims at the forefront of our minds—what they went through, and how long, unfairly, they had to fight for justice. Several Members have raised the excellent work that support groups do, in supporting victims and providing advocacy for them. The Government will be engaging with those groups. The Government will be asking what more support is required. Several Members asked about that; the Government will take that work forward.
I will try to move through the points on the basis of the order in which they were raised, starting with the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen). He can certainly take my assurance that the Government are in rapid delivery mode. The point he made about complexity is a fair one. In addition to the explanatory memorandum there was an explainer, and there were case studies, published on gov.uk. I know, too, that the IBCA will provide direct support to each individual who applies for compensation. There will be caseworkers to seek to ensure that individuals understand how the scheme works and the choices they can make. Work is under way on the second set of regulations. In drafting the new explanatory memorandum I will take on board the point that was made by the Committee, and by the right hon. Member for Salisbury, and use plain and simple English wherever possible.
I have set out a number of times in the House that payments will be beginning by the end of 2024. A number of Members asked about the initial 20. The reason for that is that the IBCA is adopting a test-and-learn approach. Taking an initial representative group is the best way subsequently to ramp up the process to be as swift as possible. That has been done with the objective of getting money out of the door as quickly as possible. Of course it will now be for the IBCA to build a service that balances speed with ease of use—and of course data security, which I know would be another concern for the House.
On the second set of regulations about the supplemental route in respect of the infected and the affected, I am saying not that they will be laid by 31 March 2025 but that, subject to the vote of this House, I want them to have passed through the House by that date. I want us to move as swiftly as we possibly can.
The decision on the sequencing—the split between the infected and the affected that the Government have adopted in these regulations—was made on the basis that it would allow orderly implementation of the legal framework without impacting or delaying the delivery timetable for payments to the infected and the affected. As I have said, I hope for, and am sure that I will have, the House’s assistance in ensuring that the regulations can be approved by 31 March next year. I may have misunderstood the point made by the right hon. Member for Salisbury about an impact assessment, but the equality impact assessment is on the Government website. As for the question of cost, he has not long to wait now; he will be able to study the Budget Red Book next week.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) has been an extraordinarily powerful advocate for the Smith family. I do not think any of us can ever imagine the pain of losing a child in those circumstances. I hope that she heard my reassurance about the work of charities, and the work that the Government will now do to engage with the groups.
I have been asked a number of times about our next action, which involves the interim payments for the estates of the deceased infected. I promise that the deadline of the end of October will be met, and I will update the House tomorrow during Cabinet Office questions. I have also been asked about further opportunities to debate this issue. I have already promised that there will be a debate this year about progress on the implementation of Sir Brian Langstaff’s 12 recommendations. Compensation is obviously one of them, and I am sure that the House will understand why I am trying to drive that forward as quickly as I can, but the others are hugely important as well, and will be debated in the House.
Ian Lavery
One recommendation was for the establishment of a memorial, or memorials, in all the countries of the United Kingdom. Can my right hon. Friend update me on where we are with that?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I hope to be able to make an announcement about it shortly. I have told the House previously how important I think the memorialisation proposals are, and they will certainly form part of the update that I will give the House before the end of the year.
I join the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), in congratulating the students whom she has had with her and on the work that they did in researching this subject for her speech. What she said about a culture of cover-up was important. What Sir Brian Langstaff said was not that there was some specific conspiracy between individuals, but that there was something far more pervasive, which he described as a culture of “institutional defensiveness”. People and institutions put their own reputations above the public interest, and to tackle that the Government will be pushing forward with a duty of candour. That, in my view, will be a powerful lever that the House can pull for change, but it is not just about a change in the law. It is about leadership as well, and it is about culture and changing the culture, in order to bring about a system in which the public interest is put first and we collectively do all that we can to minimise the chances of a repetition of what has happened in relation to not just this scandal but others, such as Horizon and Hillsborough.
The hon. Lady and a number of other Members asked about the severity bands. The scheme is tariff-based, and the tariffs were developed through the work of the infected blood inquiry response expert group, whose members were appointed by the right hon. Member for Salisbury when he was Paymaster General. They were clinical and legal advisers, assisted by social care specialists. The Government then chose to improve the scheme after the engagement exercise that Sir Robert Francis carried out, as I mentioned to the right hon. Gentleman during the general election campaign.
The comparison between HIV and hepatitis C has been raised. For people infected with hepatitis C there are four severity bands, and they are designed in line with clinical diagnostic markers. Recognised health conditions, for example liver damage, have, therefore, been informed by the work of the expert group. It is correct that in comparison there is a single severity band for people infected with HIV. That is because HIV is a lifelong infection. The vast majority of people infected with HIV through blood products have experienced progression to advanced symptomatic HIV disease, including AIDS conditions, and have died as a consequence of the infection. Those who survived continue to be severely impacted by the infection, and the view of the expert group was that it was disproportionately complex and onerous to disaggregate that category into different experiences, and that contrasted with hepatitis, where there is a wide range of experiences, including both acute infections with long-term limited impacts and very serious and ultimately fatal infections. That is the approach, based on the expert group, that the Government have adopted.
Similarly, on siblings, which several Members have raised, the scheme is based on recommendations from Sir Robert Francis’s framework compensation study. It does not exclude siblings over 18 who may have been carers and provided care.
John Glen
Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that when he assessed the June engagement exercise that Sir Robert Francis supervised, he did not resist any of the recommendations from the expert group that interrogated the scheme—apart from four or five where he thought the Government could do better—and there was no attempt either by the previous Government or his to resist the advice of the expert group who are engaged with the communities?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He took exactly the same approach that I did to the expert group. I accepted, as I told the House, 69 of the 74 recommendations, including, crucially, the continuation of the support schemes. On the other five, there were reasons of simplicity or speed—of getting compensation to people more quickly. I hope the House will take the assurance that there is that imperative to act as quickly as possible.
Sarah Olney
I am exceptionally grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s explanation of how the different tariffs have been arrived at, which aids comprehension. However, will he also explain a little more about what the expert group did to engage with the affected communities so that they can better understand the tariff for themselves?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
As the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) and I have indicated, Sir Robert Francis engaged extensively around the country during the general election. The point the hon. Lady makes about continuously trying to make what is a complex scheme open and transparent is entirely fair and I share the desire to do that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) has constantly been a powerful voice for victims of the infected blood scandal. I have indicated in previous remarks that we will engage with the charities and groups on what more support we can give to them. On the 20 cases, that is about a test-and-learn approach to try to be able to ramp up the scheme and make it operate more quickly.
On the unethical research—an appalling and dreadful practice—the Government have accepted the amount of money that was suggested, but it should be emphasised always that these are not payments in isolation; they are just a part, and in the vast majority of cases will be a small proportion, of the amounts of money that will be paid out.
The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) spoke powerfully, and I echo his words about the former right hon. Member for Horsham, with whom I had a number of conversations about this matter. I know that he was concerned and wanted to drive the matter forward. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford spoke powerfully about the two cases in his constituency and the need for closure, which is a hugely powerful emotion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) spoke powerfully about Jane Fitzgerald. She also spoke about Ronan Fitzgerald, who I understand is in the Gallery today and who is continuing the extraordinary fight for justice in which he has been engaged for so long. My hon. Friend asked a series of questions. If she writes to me with each of them, I will ensure that she receives a response.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), who is back on the Liberal Democrat Benches, raised the issue of siblings, which I addressed a moment or two ago. He is entirely right to highlight the importance of communications and transparency.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) steps into giant shoes as the chair-designate of the APPG, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson) did an extraordinary job in taking this matter forward. He talked about different Government Departments. The Cabinet Office has led on this issue because of the history of the Department of Health in the 1970s and 1980s. That is why I and the previous Paymaster General took on this responsibility. My hon. Friend is right to emphasise that we should continue to engage with the infected blood community; that is a discussion I frequently have with the chair of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, who I know shares my hon. Friend’s desire to do so.
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) asked me about legal support, and we have accepted that it should be provided. He talked about my powers in that regard, which have been exercised. That legal support will happen, and it is hugely important that it does. We want the tariff scheme to be as quick and accessible as possible, and we want people to have that level of support.
My hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) spoke powerfully of people’s scepticism about state institutions. The introduction of a duty of candour is hugely important with regard to not only this scandal, but others such as Horizon and Hillsborough. His point about document destruction was very well made, but one of the reasons for using a tariff-based scheme, rather than having thousands of individual court cases, is precisely that the documents that are available can be treated more sensitively and on the basis of the balance of probabilities.
The hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) spoke extraordinarily movingly about her constituent Graham Knight, his wife Sue and the support that she provided.
It was a privilege to listen to a fantastic maiden speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Katie White), who is the first female Member of Parliament for her constituency. She spoke with great Yorkshire pride and about her constituents understandably feeling let down in the past. She certainly did not let them down today with her maiden speech, which was positive about the way that politics can deliver real change. I am sure it is the start of a very fine parliamentary career. Her grandmother, Marjorie Simms, would have been extraordinarily proud of her today.
The hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) spoke about her constituent Philip, who summed up one chilling aspect of this scandal when he said,
“our ignorance was engineered by those in power.”
It is worth reflecting on that sentence as we look at the changes that we will need to make, beyond ensuring that people receive compensation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) spoke powerfully about his constituent, Roberta, and the stigma that she suffered. He also spoke about the Murray family, and if he writes to me about their specific circumstances, I will ensure that he gets a response.
The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) spoke movingly about family members and carers, and I agree with her about their huge importance. My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) spoke about the Blake family. I think that caseworkers will be hugely important in the work of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.
I note that, understandably, the first constituent the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) mentioned did not even want her name to be mentioned. That is an indication of the ongoing pervasive nature of this scandal.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) spoke for all of us when she said it had taken far too long to reach justice. She is welcome to write to me about the point she raised. I think she was talking about legal fees that have already been incurred, but if she writes to me I will ensure that she gets a response.
Clive Efford
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his answers. Notwithstanding his reassurances, widespread concerns are still being expressed by those who have been affected or infected as a result of this scandal, so will he agree to a meeting with the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, in his Department, to discuss the issues that they still want to raise?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I would be only too delighted to engage with the all-party parliamentary group, and I am sure that if my hon. Friend sends an invitation in the usual way, we can find a mutually convenient date.
My hon. Friend has just referred to the all-party group, and the spirit in which this debate has been conducted is really important. It is crucial that that cross-party approach continues. We are dealing with people who have been failed by the state, and we must acknowledge that. The regulations we are debating ensure that we can finally deliver compensation to those who have fought so hard and waited so long for justice in the most harrowing of circumstances. They deserve nothing less, and I hope that colleagues across the House will join me in supporting the regulations. I commend them to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 872), dated 22 August 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23 August, be approved.
Sanctions: Iran
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
I beg to move,
That the Iran (Sanctions) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 944), dated 11 September 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12 September, be approved.
These regulations amend the Iran (Sanctions) Regulations 2023. The instrument was laid before Parliament on 12 September under powers contained in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, and the measures entered into force the following day. As the Minister responsible for sanctions, I would like to start by setting out the Government’s priorities in this area. Since coming into office, I have been clear that we must have the necessary powers and tools to implement and enforce our sanctions regimes effectively.
The proper implementation and enforcement of UK sanctions is critical to maximising their impact, and this Government are committed to improving the UK’s track record on sanctions enforcement. That is why, on 10 October, we launched the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation—OTSI—which enhanced civil enforcement powers to maximise the impact of the UK’s trade sanctions. These powers include the ability to issue civil monetary penalties for sanctions breaches, and for OTSI to make details of breaches public. There are also new reporting requirements on sectors that are well positioned to find evidence of trade sanctions breaches. We have put in place similar civil enforcement powers for transport sanctions, aligning the enforcement of trade and transport sanctions with our approach to financial sanctions.
I have also brought together ministerial colleagues on sanctions enforcement, and colleagues in the Treasury, the Home Office, the Department for Business and Trade, the Department for Transport and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero are working towards a shared vision of how to enhance it. That will include ways in which we can further support UK overseas territories and Crown dependencies with their sanctions enforcement. We plan to be transparent on what we are doing, and I look forward to updating Parliament on enforcement actions in due course.
The Government have deployed sanctions in innovative and impactful ways, including in the sanctions package we are putting forward today. We have taken swift and decisive action to increase pressure on Russia’s war machine, spearheading a call to action at the European Political Community in July to tackle Russia’s shadow fleet. We have sanctioned 43 oil tankers that were transporting Russian oil, as well as nine liquefied natural gas vessels involved in shipping Russian LNG, including from Russia’s flagship Arctic LNG 2 project, to target the Kremlin’s energy revenues.
We have also enhanced our response to the threat from the Iranian regime, and I will now turn to the details of the instrument before us. It contains measures to deter the Government of Iran from causing regional and international instability, by disrupting its unmanned aerial vehicle and missile industries and its access to items critical for military development. I hope the House will support these important measures today.
The Iranian regime’s development and proliferation of large volumes of advanced conventional weapons, including UAVs and missiles, continues to destabilise the middle east and also prolongs Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. Iran’s use of an unprecedented number of UAVs and missiles during its attack on Israel on 13 April demonstrated how Iranian weapons development and proliferation is fuelling conflict and escalation in the middle east.
The Iranian regime also used hundreds of these arms in its attack against Israel on 1 October, which we condemn in the strongest terms. That attack once more endangered the lives of innocent civilians and escalated an already incredibly dangerous situation, and that cannot be tolerated. In response to Iran’s 1 October attack on Israel, the UK has designated nine individuals and entities involved in facilitating Iran’s destabilising activity. That includes senior military figures and the Iranian Space Agency, which develops technologies that have applications in ballistic missile development.
We are deeply concerned about the prospect of further escalation, and all efforts must now be concentrated on breaking the cycle of violence. At this moment, when tensions are at their peak, calm heads must prevail and all sides must take immediate steps to de-escalate. A regional war is, of course, in no one’s interest. However, this is the latest incident in the long history of Iran destabilising the region, including through its political, financial and military support for its proxies and partners, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and its aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria. We have been clear and consistent that Iran must cease this support.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way. Does he accept that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a key component of the destabilisation sponsored by the Iranian regime? Will he update the House on the Government’s thinking on proscribing that organisation? I think he would find many allies across the House who would be keen to see that happen.
Stephen Doughty
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. We of course recognise the huge threat that the IRGC poses, and we will take the necessary measures to counter it at home and around the world. He will understand that the Government keep the list of proscribed terrorist organisations under careful review, and we do not, of course, comment in the House on whether an organisation may be under consideration.
As I said, Iran is now one of Russia’s top military backers and has supplied it with hundreds of UAVs since 2022, including different models of drones. Russia has used those to target Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and to kill innocent civilians, prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people. In September, Iran supplied Russia with hundreds of close-range ballistic missiles. That is a further escalation of Iran’s military support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and will further enable Russia’s invasion. In return, Iran is receiving Russian military and technological support, enabling it to further develop its military capabilities and enhancing the risk it poses to the region and beyond.
The legislation before us expands the UK’s trade sanctions against Iran, with the aim of disrupting its UAV and missile industry and its access to items critical to military development. It includes sanctions in relation to the items on the Russia common high priority list. The list, which was jointly agreed by the UK, the EU, the US and Japan in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, identifies items that Russia is using in its weapons systems, ranging from semiconductors to machine tools. Those items are also significant in Iran’s production of advanced conventional weapons. As the House will know, there have been many public reports about Iran’s supply of weapons to Russia. Through the instrument, we are therefore prohibiting the export, supply, delivery and making available of those items to Iran.
We are also prohibiting the provision of ancillary services associated with the goods, such as brokering services, technical assistance, financial services and funds. All the items prohibited by our partners in the EU in May are also prohibited by the instrument. In addition, prohibitions will be applied to some items identified by the Ministry of Defence as significant to Iran’s UAV and missile industries.
We have also taken the opportunity to simplify some of the existing trade sanctions on Iran so that businesses are better able to implement them. These trade restrictions complement our existing export controls and sanctions, ensuring that no UK business or person, wherever they are in the world, can facilitate the export, transfer, supply, delivery and making available of these items to Iran without prior authorisation.
I hope that the House will support these measures. I commend them to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. May I remind Members that if they intend to speak in a debate, they need to be here for the opening? It is a particular discourtesy to the House if the Front-Bench spokespersons are not here at the beginning.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
The Conservative party supports the regulations, which extend the Iran sanctions regime to drones and drone technology as well as financial services, funds and brokering services relating to items of strategic concern. However, these sanctions seek to address issues emblematic of a far larger threat. The Government should be in no doubt that Iran’s malign influence is one of the biggest challenges to both global and British security. For decades, Iran has deliberately undermined the rules-based international order, destabilising its neighbourhood and funding terrorism globally, all while brutally repressing its own people and committing a femicide.
For years, the Iranian regime has created asymmetric threats, co-opted existing movements and provided weapons, money and training to its proxies and ideological partners. Be they Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen or Shi’a militias and the popular mobilisation forces across Iraq and Syria, they are terrorist organisations that have no interest in their local people and instead pursue the aims of the ayatollah; hostage captors and committers of the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust; and actors disrupting maritime traffic in the Red sea, a sea link that is vital for the delivery of food and fertiliser to countries facing serious hunger crises in east Africa and south Asia.
As the Minister set out, Iran is now embedding itself in conflict on our own continent, transferring hundreds of attack drones and, as we now know, ballistic missiles to Russia to prop up its barbaric, illegal and unprovoked renewed invasion of Ukraine. They are fuelling a war machine that seeks to dismantle a sovereign democratic state in Europe and enabling the murder of Ukrainians every single day. The Government must now allow Ukraine’s use of long-range weaponry on strategic targets. Escalation warrants a response or further deterrence will be undermined. The invasion of Ukraine is an attack on us all. Iran is that hand in glove for Russia, the perpetrator.
Here at home, there have been numerous Iranian plots to assassinate British or UK-based individuals whom the regime considers its enemies. The UK has had to respond to more than 15 such plots since 2022. We have seen Iranian cut-outs investigated for spreading IRGC propaganda and for glorifying sanctioned individuals and terrorists. We have seen IRGC generals providing radicalising lectures here in our capital city. Even on our streets, we have seen people glorifying organisations such as the Houthis and others who are not acting in defence of Gaza and who are not progressive movements; they are terrorists. Iran has also arbitrarily detained and imprisoned British citizens, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose shocking ordeal proves beyond doubt Iran’s disdain for human rights and human dignity.
As the Conservative Government demonstrated, we can take a muscular approach. We introduced the extensive sanctions regime to disrupt Iran’s hostile behaviour, targeting its decision makers along with those who did its bidding. We imposed measures to help choke off the funding flows from Iran to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as sanctions on Iran’s drone programme; indeed, 400 sanctions were in place on Iran by the time we left office, and in 2023 alone we made 154 new designations. Alongside the US and with support from allies, we carried out strikes against the Houthis in Yemen to degrade their capabilities, aiding and supporting allies across the world. British military personnel and equipment helped to defend Israel from an Iranian attack in April, and we told the regime in Tehran in no uncertain terms that it must rein in its proxies.
When the Government propose measures such as the regulations before the House to counter Iran’s appalling behaviour, we will support them, but we are also very clear that the Government need to maintain the pressure and look at the bigger picture in equal measure to respond to the ever-growing threat. That point takes me on to the strategy that we are pursuing.
We must stop compartmentalising our response and approach to Iran. We need to work out how we will measure success in reducing the threat of Iran to our people and our interests. The Government must do this work. Iran does not currently pursue active and direct confrontation with us, but its threshold for chaos is too high. We must work out how we will reduce that threat. Iran will continue to do as it sees fit—its priority is the survival of the regime, and it has strategic patience—but we need to shape a strategy not in response to Iran, but in the pursuit of our ambitions, protecting our people and our interests. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the USA to lead. We need a new Euro-Atlantic focus, but the UK must decide what our priorities are.
We must also be prepared for fractures within the regime. We must recognise that although Iran rarely changes its behaviour, it has a cycle of boom and bust and we must be prepared for what may fall out. I urge the Minister to take the opportunity to restructure; I recognise that he is the Minister for sanctions rather than for north Africa, but I know that he will take these words back to the Department. It is time for us to rethink our strategy on Iran and move from being reactive to being proactive.
We need long-term thinking on how we restore state control over areas abused by Iranian-backed non-state actors. That includes the implementation of UN resolution 1701 and the removal of Hezbollah military positions from southern Lebanon, with the Lebanese military being able to reassert sovereign control. We also need a strategic approach to the Houthis that prioritises the restoration of proper governance in Yemen, including payment to public servants and protections against Houthi embezzlement of public funds.
Domestically, we must bolster our resilience and protect our society from corrosive Iranian influence and transnational repression, which is extensive. The National Security Act 2023 should be implemented in full as quickly as possible, including the register of foreign lobbyists, which shamefully the Government have delayed. I urge them to put it in place as soon as possible. There is no reason for it not to proceed at speed.
Internationally, we must work with our partners to contain the looming threat of a nuclear Iran. The joint comprehensive plan of action needs revisiting. There is no perfect deal, but the current situation is untenable. The JCPOA is on life support. We need a new Euro-Atlantic approach. Antony Blinken’s comment that Iran’s nuclear break-out time is now one to two weeks should concern us all. It is a nuclear threshold state. We have the agency to disrupt Iran’s malign plans and to lead the international community in doing so if we have the courage to act and are prepared to develop a harder edge. The time to act must be now.
I will be grateful if the Minister answers the following questions. When will the Government proscribe the IRGC? That was a promise that Labour made in opposition, and promises matter. Will he work with allies to ensure that sanctions are international and ensure their effectiveness in curbing Iranian drone development exports? Individual sanctions programmes do not work; they must be done on a multilateral basis.
Will the Minister work to ensure that the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation is pursuing penalties against those who breach sanctions? We have not seen any being pursued when there have been breaches of sanctions around Russia. We must see that happening on both Iran and Russia. Does he agree that in addition to using sanctions, we must buttress Ukraine’s military capability requirements so that it can take down Iranian drones in the skies and match the weapon range of Russia’s armed forces? That means the use of Storm Shadow missiles.
Finally, with proxies such as Hezbollah being degraded, will the Minister commit to working towards freeing captured societies from Iranian influence and helping states such as Lebanon to reassert their independence and state effectiveness? Will he assert in clear terms that the Government condemn all Iranian proxies and will assist good-faith actors in resisting their proliferation, political entrenchment and military expansion and pursue a new UK coherent strategy to protect our people, our country and our interests from an increasingly belligerent Iran?
The Government’s message to Iran at all times must be that its threshold for chaos is too high. They must step back, because the current approach is not working, but that starts with us recognising that we can be in the driving seat and stop reacting to Iran.
Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his speech on this really important issue. The continued instability in the region is of growing concern to many of us, not just because of the immense loss of life but because of the ever-growing security risk for this country. The Government have been clearly leading calls for de-escalation in the region. Does the Minister agree that it is time once again to redouble our efforts with those calls, so that all parties in the region show restraint?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate your earlier guidance and apologise to you and the House.
I rise to speak on behalf of my party in support of today’s measures. The Liberal Democrats have for a long time supported a strengthening of UK sanctions against the Iranian regime, not least in the light of the murder of Mahsa Amini just over two years ago. After Mahsa’s brutal murder by the Iranian morality police, Iranians took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands. Violence was meted out by the Iranian authorities against those brave individuals. More than 20,000 were detained, with women and girls particularly targeted, and ultimately some were executed by the Iranian authorities.
Such behaviour is characteristic of the Iranian regime. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s own human rights and democracy report, in its most recent iteration, labels Iran as one of the worst executers globally. More than 500 people were executed in 2022, including two young offenders. The report also identifies the continued erosion and systematic violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression and belief, the tightening of restrictions against women and girls and, chillingly, the use of facial recognition software to identify those deemed to be improperly dressed.
Just as the Iranian regime sees fit to violate the basic rights of its own citizens at home, its influence abroad is similarly malign, both in the middle east and closer to home. It is Iranian drones—more than 8,000 of them—that have come to Vladimir Putin’s aid and been launched continually into Ukraine since the start of the war. We supported the strong condemnation by the UK and our E3 partners of the news that Iranian ballistic missiles were also now being exported to Russia for use against our Ukrainian allies.
To that end, we welcome today’s sanctions, which extend existing sanctions against UAVs to other goods and technology of strategic concern, from cameras designed for UAVs to microwave amplifiers. We trust that the Minister will keep the list under continual review, not least to ensure that we are preventing the future supply of anything that Russia might seek to procure from the Iranians. Will he update the House on what discussions he or his colleagues have had with E3 counterparts or others regarding the status of the JCPOA? What is the Government’s stance on the JCPOA, given Iran’s seeming disregard for international law?
The Liberal Democrats also urge the Government to go further on sanctions. The past few weeks have served as a demonstration of Iran’s terrible influence within the middle east, and in particular the role of the IRGC. We condemn the barrage of ballistic missiles fired against Israel by Iran’s IRGC at the beginning of the month. The IRGC continues to supply rockets and weaponry to its terrorist proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, who have caused so much death and misery in the middle east. In 2022, security services revealed 10 plots organised by the IRGC in that year alone here on British soil where the intention was to kidnap or kill British nationals or UK residents.
The previous Conservative Government did not proscribe the IRGC. In opposition, the now Foreign Secretary said:
“The IRGC is behaving like a terrorist organisation and must now be proscribed as such.”
I agree, so will the Minister take that long overdue step and proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation? Not only will that have a positive impact in the region, but it will make the Iranian diaspora in the UK safer and more secure. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House have British-Iranian constituents who are deeply concerned about how the IRGC has been able to operate with limited constraints in this country. We welcome any steps forward to strengthen our sanctions regime against Iran, but we will continue to make the case to the Government that the single most effective thing that they can do is proscribe the IRGC.
I have two remaining points. Recalling the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is thankfully now back in the UK with her family following the six years that she spent in prison in Iran, the Labour party committed in its manifesto to introducing a right to consular assistance in cases of human rights violations—a measure that we support. I raised yesterday the case of British-Egyptian dual national Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is being held without consular access in Egypt. Will the Minister update the House on when the right to consular assistance will be introduced?
Alicia Kearns
I would be interested in hearing what difference the hon. Gentleman thinks proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would make. On Alaa Abd El-Fattah, the problem is that the Egyptians do not recognise dual nationality, so a right to consular access would make no fundamental difference. Having led an inquiry on this, I would be grateful if he explained why he thinks a right to consular access would make a fundamental difference in any such hostage case.
Calum Miller
On the IRGC, we believe that proscribing that terrorist organisation, which runs a state in the region, would put considerable constraints on its ability to operate around the world and prohibit many of its actions, including those in the UK and threats against British citizens, to which I referred. I know that the hon. Lady has taken a strong interest in the case that I mentioned—indeed, she mentioned it in the House yesterday—and is also working on the denial of consular access. It seems to me that consular access is a critical role of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. In the case that we are discussing, it is not clear to the family of Alaa Abd El-Fattah that the Foreign Office has made sufficient effort to secure that access in Egypt, and it is in that context that I raise this particular question. I would be interested in the Minister’s response on when consular assistance will be guaranteed to those who have suffered human rights violations.
Secondly, as we use sanctions against those with links to the Iranian regime, we urge the Government to look closely at where those individuals, and others with links to the regime, have stashed their money. Has some of that money been funnelled into London, as is the case with so many other kleptocratic regimes, and will the Minister commit to carrying out an audit so that we know where those assets are—including those that have been entrusted in the name of family members—and can freeze them accordingly? I hope that the Minister will update the House on whether the Government are considering any plans for a third piece of economic crime legislation to close loopholes in the two previous Acts, including by finally delivering a comprehensive approach to the register of beneficial ownership.
Finally, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) has set out how, in this Parliament, the Liberal Democrats will act as a constructive Opposition. This is my first contribution to a debate on legislation as the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, so I put on record that that approach applies as much to the international sphere as it does to domestic policy. We welcomed only yesterday the Government’s measures on using frozen Russian assets to the benefit of Ukraine, which we had called for over many months. We also urge the Government to go further by seizing those assets in their entirety. It is in that constructive spirit that I put forward my party’s proposals for taking further steps on Iran. In that area, too, I urge the new Government to be ahead of events, not behind them.
David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement, which I welcome both for its steadfast support of Ukraine and for its action on Iran.
As we have heard from everyone in the debate, Iran poses a threat to both regional and global stability. The Iranian regime is not just exporting weapons to support Russia’s despicable illegal war in Ukraine; it is exporting terror—we have heard mention of the Houthis and various other groups. It is—and I thank the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) for mentioning this—committing savage repression against its own people. Over 230 people have been executed in Iran in the past few months alone, and I know that the Iranian community in Hendon is incredibly worried about the horrific repression that the Iranian people face.
We know that Iran poses a threat, and we know that that threat is growing, so I welcome the cross-party consensus that the measures make real sense. I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations, and I ask that the FCDO keep a close eye on the threat that Iran poses so that we can take further measures if needed, to back up the Government’s strong action to confront the threat of Iran head on.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I strongly welcome the regulations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and the Minister have made clear, Iran is a malign influence that is fuelling many of the most serious conflicts around the world. There was Iran’s horrendous attack on Israel recently, but there has also been its supply of weapons to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—and particularly to Russia, in its invasion of Ukraine.
We have debated Ukraine many times, and will continue to do so. The Minister has taken a close interest in the issue, and I thank him for his support in opposition—both sides of the House are united in support for Ukraine. The measures will help a little, but the Minister will know that Ukraine is suffering desperately. The casualties, which are being inflicted in part by the weapons that, hopefully, this measure will help to stop reaching Russia, are horrendous, and stopping those attacks is part of President Zelensky’s victory plan. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford that we need to do more to support Ukraine to implement its victory plan, particularly by allowing it not only to shoot down attacks from drones and missiles over its own territory but to attack where they originate, outside the border of Ukraine in Russia.
It is not going to be enough just to stop the supply of weapons from Iran. We know that they are being supplied by other countries, in particular North Korea—and not just weapons, but potentially troops as well. Therefore, I hope that we will look at sanctions enforcement across all the countries that are giving succour to Russia.
I want to touch on one or two other aspects of Iranian behaviour. The Minister knows that sanctions are used to try to put an economic squeeze on countries that have breached international rules, and also to uphold human rights. In particular, the use of Magnitsky sanctions is now well established.
The Minister may be aware that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on media freedom. Iran’s record in that area is terrible: it is 176th out of 180 on the index of press freedom. As RSF—Reporters Without Borders—has pointed out, more than 100 journalists have been interrogated, detained or imprisoned since the start of the protest movement in 2022; 16 remain in prison due to their work, alongside another 19 who were there before.
We are not just talking about within Iran; the Minister will know that the IRGC lies behind the attacks on journalists in London. Iran International has had to have protection and move offices because of a continuing threat by the IRGC against its journalists. I have talked to the management of Iran International and some of its very brave journalists, one of whom was attacked in the streets of London. We are not just talking about Iran International, either. Members of the BBC Persian service continue to be subject to threats and harassment, and their families in Iran are being pressured by the regime to try to reach those journalists.
For those reasons, I echo the calls that have been made already by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford and the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller): the IRGC must be proscribed. That was the view of the Minister’s colleagues when they were in opposition, and it is the view of America and Canada. We await to hear as soon as possible the Government’s decision.
Imposing sanctions is clearly an important part of putting pressure on Iran, but they need to be enforced. One of the benefits of having professional investigative journalists is that they are sometimes able to expose things that otherwise remain hidden. If the Minister has not done so, will he study carefully this week’s edition of The Economist? The Economist has carried out an in-depth investigation of the enforcement of the sanctions imposed by America on Iran, and the way in which those sanctions are being completely bypassed. Apparently, Iran is currently selling 1.8 million barrels of oil per day, almost all of which end up in China. They do so through a whole host of front organisations. Individual components of the Iranian regime, including the IRGC and the Quds Force, are given crude oil to market and they then set up their own front organisations. They use shadow organisations to procure tanker movements; they have banks that support that activity; and as I say, a large part of that oil ends up in China, which is the main purchaser. The money then flows back through that network directly to Iran.
Although I do not necessarily believe that that is done knowingly, The Economist also states:
“London is the world’s sixth-biggest base by number of Iranian-linked entities blacklisted by America.”
As such, I hope the Minister will look carefully at not just tightening the noose around the regime, but making sure that the loopholes that are currently being exploited to get around sanctions are properly closed down, in this country and elsewhere. As I have said, today’s motion is very welcome, but we need to do a lot more.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I welcome the opportunity not just to give my support to the proposal to continue and extend sanctions, but to put on record my condemnation of the Iranian regime and to give my support to the women and girls of Iran, who have been so brave in fighting for their rights in the face of brutal suppression. Sanctions imposed on Iran come as we see increased hostility by groups associated with Iran, or by Iran itself, at an international level. Most recently, Iran’s two direct attacks on Israel this year, which the UK and western allies have condemned as escalatory actions in an already precarious situation, speak volumes about the threat that the regime represents.
One of the purposes of the UK’s sanctions on Iran is to deter its Government, or an armed group backed by that Government, from conducting hostile activity against the UK or any other country. The removal of sanctions should come only when there is evidence that Iran has disengaged from that hostile activity, yet all we have seen is the opposite. Since May 2019, Iran has continued to violate the joint comprehensive plan of action implemented to limit the Iranian nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. Furthermore, it is well known that Iran funds multiple groups across the middle east designated by the UK as terrorist organisations. Those proxies act to destabilise the region as a whole, but Iran’s activities are not limited to the middle east. As has been said in the Chamber already, there have been a number of threats to individuals in the UK emanating from Iran, and as the Minister outlined, it is now providing extensive support for the illegal war in Ukraine—both military and logistical—which is impacting directly on the lives of brave Ukrainian soldiers seeking to defend their country.
As I said at the start of my speech, Iran’s terrorist actions sadly extend to its own people. We know that Iran’s people currently live under a violent, oppressive regime. In September 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, was arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly not complying with the country’s Islamic dress code. Three days later, she tragically died in police custody, sparking a wave of protests across Iran and drawing the attention of the international community. Despite Iranian officials claiming that Mahsa Amini died of natural causes, the widespread protests that followed were a clear response to years of repression, with demonstrators demanding justice, freedom and accountability. The bravery of these protesters cannot be overstated. The Iranian Government’s heavy-handed response was brutal, with the UN fact-finding mission and Iran Human Rights reporting that over 550 protesters were killed by security forces. Those deaths represent the highest death toll seen in any protests since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979, and are a stark reminder of the dangers faced by those who dare to voice dissent.
Sadly, the plight of women in Iran is not limited to the enforcement of hijab laws, but extends to many aspects of daily life, rooted in systemic discrimination that is codified in law. The situation becomes even more alarming when we consider the lack of protection against domestic violence. Iran currently has no law to safeguard women from abuse or femicide, and between March 2021 and June 2023, at least 165 women were killed by male family members in honour killings. That remains an ongoing and disturbing tragedy.
I am also deeply concerned by Iran’s treatment of followers of the Baha’i faith, which the UN has referred to as
“the most egregious forms of repression, persecution and victimisation.”
In February 2022, Iranian authorities allowed only recognised religions to be stated on the new national ID card. In doing so, they deprived unrecognised religious minorities of access to many basic services. Without that ID, Iranian nationals are unable to obtain credit cards, driver’s licences or passports; nor can they buy property, cash cheques or apply for loans. That is clear evidence of serious discrimination against minority groups.
I am proud that, at the 78th UN General Assembly under the last Government, the UK co-sponsored the Iran human rights resolution calling for Iran to eliminate in law and in practice all forms of discrimination on the basis of thought, conscience, religion or belief. Although that was a strong message from international partners, it fell on deaf ears, but the UK Government, alongside allies such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, have made their stance clear.
In September, our Foreign Secretary called on the Iranian Government to end human rights abuses and to cease the use of force to impose the hijab. We should continue to press the Iranian regime to respect the rights of its citizens, and we remain committed to holding it to account for violations through sanctions and international pressure. We must not turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in Iran. We stand in solidarity with the Iranian people, especially the women and other minority groups who are leading the fight for dignity, equality and justice.
Our sanctions regime is an important part of how we stand up for our values and for the victims of the Iranian regime both in Iran and abroad, and I enthusiastically support the motion securing their continuation and expansion.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)
Like all other Members, I rise in support of these important regulations. They of course expand existing sanctions, targeting additional goods and technology related to the Iranian military development and Iran’s production of unmanned aerial vehicles and missiles.
In recent weeks we have all seen not only that Iran has launched yet a further unprecedented missile attack on Israel, which has rightly attracted universal condemnation, but that the UK Government have announced further aid to Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression. As we all know, Russia’s war effort and its breaches of international humanitarian law are supported by the supply of Iranian UAVs and missiles. I agree with those who have spoken that Iran, in both instances, through its supply of UAVs and missiles to various states and non-state terrorist organisations, is prolonging the war in Ukraine and risking the further escalation of conflicts in the middle east.
In a speech to the UN Security Council last month, the Foreign Secretary rightly emphasised the importance of upholding a rules-based international order, especially international humanitarian law. In both those respects, I am sure we can all agree that Iran is a destabilising influence in the region and further afield. As we have heard said so eloquently by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), it also runs a very savage and repressive regime against Iranian civilians.
If we hope to see a more peaceful future, we must ensure that all nations adhere to international law and, where necessary, act to enforce such compliance. Sanctions such as those before us are very important tools that the international community can use to apply pressure on regimes, such as Iran’s, that contravene international law. I am particularly pleased that the Minister outlined how the Government co-ordinated the efforts on these sanctions with international partners such as the European Union, the United States and Japan. It is clear that, if these are to be effective, there needs to be a co-ordinated effort across the globe.
Although I acknowledge that the Government have previously introduced a separate sanctions regime and financial sanctions to encourage Iran to comply with international human rights law, I think it is important to refer to the long-standing concerns about the state’s atrocious human rights record. To echo the words of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, we will all be familiar with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the protests that followed the tragic death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the Iranian morality police for improperly wearing her hijab.
Amnesty International and others have noted grave human rights violations in Iran since these protests, including further suppression of the rights of freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, and the intensification of the Iranian regime’s crackdown on the rights of women and girls. Thousands were subjected to interrogation, arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution and imprisonment for peacefully exercising their human rights—rights that we take for granted in this country.
These are all reasons why we should take a firm approach to any contravention of international law by the Iranian regime, and I would welcome the Minister’s assurances that the Government continue to monitor the effectiveness of sanctions introduced to encourage the Iranian regime to comply with international humanitarian law.
In returning to the dreadful consequences of Iran’s supply of UAVs and missiles to various states and non-state actors across the world, we should also bear in mind that sanctions can form only part of any strategy. As the United Nations stated:
“Sanctions do not operate, succeed or fail in a vacuum. The measures are most effective at maintaining or restoring international peace and security when applied as part of a comprehensive strategy encompassing peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peacemaking.”
The sanctions must therefore fit into a wider approach that the UK takes towards the situation in the middle east, where we also support de-escalation and peacebuilding initiatives as they arise. We must be firm and fair. Where there are opportunities for de-escalation, we must take them, while remaining steadfast in our support of international law and preparedness to sanction states such as Iran that act to undermine it.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
I welcome today’s motion to approve Iranian sanctions; it marks an essential and targeted response to Iran’s growing military threat. By expanding sanctions to cover these additional goods and technology, particularly those contributing to Iran’s UAVs and missiles, we are striking at the core of Iran’s military-industrial complex. That is crucial in disrupting Iran’s capability to continue not just fuelling conflicts in the middle east, but aiding Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Russia’s recent desperate procurement of weapons from North Korea shows that Russia is struggling. By cutting off Iran’s support, we further tighten the pressure on Russia’s war machine, limiting the lifeline that Iran provides and squeezing their ability to continue the brutal conflict in Ukraine.
Since August 2022, Iran has supplied Russia with hundreds of Shahed-136 drones, which have been used extensively to target Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. Last month, the US confirmed that Iran had transferred shipments of Fath-360 ballistic missiles to Russia. Those missiles, with a range of 75 miles, allow Russian forces to conserve their more advanced long-range missiles for other strategic targets. The Fath-360 missiles will undoubtedly be employed within weeks, which I fear could lead to more civilian casualties in Ukraine.
Russia has already deployed Iranian drones to strike critical infrastructure, and the missiles that are being transferred will clearly have a similar role. Dozens of Russian personnel have been trained in Iran to use these systems, deepening the co-operation between the two regimes.
Iran has already shown us its character by striking at the heart of the UK. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), the March attack on the Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati is a stark reminder of the growing threat posed by the Iranian regime to the UK. Over the past 18 months, Iranian journalists in the UK have been under sustained threat from the IRGC, which has targeted reporters and their families in an attempt to silence critical voices. We cannot allow a regime that silences its critics with violence and fear to intimidate those who seek to expose the truth here in the UK.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I really wanted to be here for this debate, but I would have had to be in two places at the same time and I can be in only one, so I apologise for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, I want to put the following on the record. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the suppression of human rights, the persecution of Christians, Shi’as and Baha’is, and the denial of education, jobs and the right even to have a life puts Iran in one of the four top countries in the world where the right to live is suppressed to such levels?
Richard Foord
I am grateful to the hon. Member for pointing that out; he is absolutely right. Not only is there no tolerance for alternative views or beliefs, but Iran was mentioned in the FCDO human rights report in 2022, and on the basis of that report the Liberal Democrats called—and have done for years—for us to withhold arms licences to Iran, most obviously, and also to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Our stance on the export of arms to the region is of long standing and very much in line with the human rights report produced by the FCDO in 2022.
We need to take stronger action on Iranian assets here within the UK. We call for the wider use of Magnitsky sanctions. We should specifically target the relatives of sanctioned individuals who have transferred wealth in order to avoid the measures. In the past few weeks we have witnessed just how easy it is to dodge sanctions on Russian oil. We must cut off those financially supporting Iran from London, blocking their access to the world’s second-largest financial hub. That will help stop the flow of dirty money and ensure that those who support Iran’s military operations directly or indirectly are punished.
I will draw to a close. Will the Minister comment in his summing up on whether the Government will continue to monitor the export of some of the goods we are talking about today, in particular to states that neighbour Iran? With the sanctions imposed on Russia, we have seen a subsequent uptick in the export of machine tools, for example, to some of the states that surround Russia. Will the UK monitor that? We stand ready to support any further steps that will limit Iran’s capacity to cause harm in the middle east and Ukraine. In the face of Iran’s continued support for Russia’s brutal war, these sanctions send a clear message. We must keep up the pressure and not let up until Iran’s threats to global security diminishes.
Stephen Doughty
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. They have made some important points, and I thank them for their wholehearted support for the regulations. It is important that we maintain unity in the House on these measures to tackle these regimes, whether it be Russia or Iran. As I said earlier, these measures represent a step forward in our capability to restrict Iran’s proliferation of advanced conventional weapons, which continue to fuel the conflict we have been discussing in the middle east and to support Russia in its illegal war in Ukraine. We are firmly committed to using sanctions to hold the Iranian regime to account for its malign activities in the UK and elsewhere.
I should point out that we do not just have these regulations. Continuing on from measures under the previous Administration, on 2 September we sanctioned four IRGC Quds Force targets who have a role supporting Iranian proxy actions in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. We announced sanctions against 15 Iranian and Russian targets on 10 September, cancelled our bilateral air service arrangements with Iran Air and targeted those who were involved in a series of actions.
We have consistently raised our concerns directly with the Iranian regime and, indeed, with a range of partners. On 14 October we designated nine individuals and entities involved in facilitating Iran’s destabilising activity. That included senior military and IRGC figures and entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile programme. Those are just some of the examples since this Government came in, but they are among more than 460 Iranian individuals and entities that have been sanctioned due to Iran’s malign activities in the region and internationally. That includes 94 human rights-specific sanctions on individuals and entities, to respond to many of the significant and rightful concerns raised by colleagues today.
Alicia Kearns
It is clear from the tenor of the House—I have to say as a woman that I find it incredibly moving to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) and the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake) speaking so strongly for the women who continue to be raped and blinded by the Iranian regime—that the House is saying that we want to see more effort on this. I would be grateful if the Minister committed to taking that away. I am not asking for him to predetermine what he will do on sanctions, but it is incredibly powerful to hear so many men speaking up for Iranian women, and they need to hear our voices or they will lose hope.
Stephen Doughty
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady’s comments. As she knows, we do not comment on future designations, but I have certainly heard the strong voice across the House today, which reflects the horrific reality for women and girls—ordinary Iranian civilians—under that repressive regime. I thank her overall for her support. She rightly highlighted a series of Iran’s malign actions. I agree with her that those promoting proscribed organisations in the UK should face the full force of the law. That is for our law enforcement agencies, but the Prime Minister and others have made that absolutely clear.
The hon. Lady raised concerns in relation to the foreign influence registration scheme. I assure her that we remain absolutely committed to that. We will further strengthen our national security while maintaining the UK as an international hub for business. Announcements on the tiers will be made at a later stage, but we are absolutely committed to it—it is not going anywhere. We are committed to moving forward with that agenda and I have been discussing it with colleagues across government.
The hon. Lady and others mentioned the JCPOA. Let me be clear: snapback remains an option. We remain in close contact with E3 and other partners, and I will say a little more on that in a moment. I refer her to my previous comments on the IRGC as a whole. She and other hon. Members asked me about the internationalisation of sanctions. Absolutely, this is about working with partners. Are we looking at how we can increase penalties and enforcement? Absolutely, whether that be OTSI or others. Obviously, I cannot comment on future investigations and designations.
The hon. Lady asked about wider UK military support to Ukraine. I point to the very important announcement yesterday, on top of existing commitments. The extraordinary revenue acceleration will deliver an additional £2.26 billion to Ukraine for crucial needs, working with our partners across the G7. I will come on to Lebanon in a moment, but do I condemn all the proxies that Iran is supporting? Absolutely. We have been very clear about that.
Other right hon. and hon. Members made important points. My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Nesil Caliskan) and the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller), rightly referred to issues around human rights and repressive actions within Iran itself. He asked specifically about one case. I know he received a specific answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Hamish Falconer) on that yesterday in FCDO questions. He asked about the wider issues around illicit finance and kleptocracy. These are significant priorities for the Foreign Secretary and me. I assure him and the House that we are working at pace on these issues and will be announcing further measures in due course. He asked about public registers of beneficial ownership and ensuring transparency. I am in close contact with our overseas territories regarding these issues and have made it clear that we expect to see progress at pace. I will make that clear to leaders before the joint ministerial council in a few weeks’ time. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (David Pinto-Duschinsky) rightly referred to the heinous executions and internal repression, although, as I said, I will not comment on further designations.
I thank the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for his kind remarks about the cross-party support we have had for Ukraine. He rightly raised issues relating to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He will have heard in recent days the Foreign Secretary, with his counterpart in the Republic of Korea, state our absolute condemnation regarding DPRK’s involvement in Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. I will certainly take a look at The Economist article he mentioned. We will seek to do everything we can to close down loopholes and ensure the effectiveness of our regime.
The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) made some very powerful points, in particular highlighting the impact on women and girls, and minority groups—that was also touched on by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—within Iran. The Government remain absolutely committed to freedom of religion or belief, and targeting religious minorities or repressive actions against them cannot be tolerated.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake) also highlighted the internal oppression. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) ranged over a whole series of issues, but spoke in particular about third-country circumvention. Addressing this issue is a key priority for the Government. It is one that forms a regular part of my conversations with third countries identified. I have had numerous such conversations in recent weeks and we will, with our allies, continue to do so. We must close down all loopholes and all routes, whether in Russia or Iran, to ensure our sanctions regimes are effective.
Before concluding, let me briefly touch on a couple of the specific themes that came out of the debate. Let me be clear: Iran’s actions in relation to Israel are completely unacceptable. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have been absolutely clear that we stand with Israel and recognise its right to self-defence in the face of Iranian aggression. We absolutely condemn in the strongest terms its attack against Israel. We designated individuals specifically in response to the attack on Israel, including senior military figures and entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
I referred to the JCPOA, but let me be clear that Iran’s nuclear escalation since 2019 has gone far beyond JCPOA limits and is undermining the deal. Alongside our E3 partners, we will use all diplomatic options available to ensure that Iran never develops a nuclear weapon, including triggering the snapback of all UN sanctions lifted under the JCPOA if necessary. I mentioned the actions that we have taken against regional proxies, but let me remind the House that the UK proscribes the entirety of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, and has an asset freeze in place against the entire organisation. We assess Hamas in their entirety to be concerned with terrorism, and therefore proscribe the organisation in full. The Houthis are sanctioned in their entirety by the UK and are subject to a targeted arms embargo.
On human rights, as I said, there are 94 human rights sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities. The horrifically high rate of executions is a deliberate attempt to instil fear and stifle dissent in Iran. As a Government we remain opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, as a matter of principle. The situation for women and girls is truly horrific. We condemn Iran’s appalling treatment of women and girls, including through its repressive policies. We will work with international partners to engage with the findings of the UN special rapporteur on Iranian human rights.
Media freedoms were also mentioned; as a member of the Media Freedom Coalition, we are determined to ensure that journalists are able to do their jobs without fear of retribution. Given the situation for detainees and the historical cases involving Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and others, we continue to believe that British nationals and British-Iranian dual nationals are at significant risk of detention in Iran. British nationals are advised not to travel to Iran, but we do not and never will accept our nationals being used as diplomatic leverage.
Jim Shannon
Again, I apologise for not being here earlier to ask the Minister a question directly. The IRGC is quite clearly the leader of Iran’s private army. It is involved in some of the worst repression, murders and despicable acts across all of Iran. Is it not time to collate all this information and put it together to hold those people accountable for what they are doing, and for human rights abuses in Iran?
Stephen Doughty
I made clear our position on the IRGC earlier, but as I pointed out, we have sanctioned directly a number of individuals involved with that organisation. We recognise the threat that it poses and will take the necessary measures to counter it at home and around the world, but obviously we do not comment on future designations.
The safety and security of the United Kingdom from Iran’s malign actions has been raised on a number of occasions. It was rightly pointed out that the UK has identified at least 15 threats towards UK-based individuals. Our police, intelligence and security agencies have been confronting these threats for many years, but their seriousness has increased in recent months. Let me be clear: we will always stand up to threats from foreign nations, and we will continue to work closely with our international partners to identify, deter, and respond to those threats.
Lastly, on Lebanon, we have been very clear that a political solution consistent with resolution 1701 is the only way to restore its sovereignty, territorial integrity and stability. We have been calling for an immediate ceasefire between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, and a political plan that will enable civilians on both sides to return to their homes. Nobody wants further escalation, and we will continue to work with partners across the region on that.
These new regulations will increase the pressure on Iran’s defence industry. They will disrupt Iran’s production of UAVs and missiles that could be supplied to proxies in the middle east or Russia. We will continue to work with likeminded partners. The regulations send a clear message to the Government of Iran and those seeking to harm the UK’s security and that of our partners: we will not stand idle in the face of this aggression. I commend the regulations to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Iran (Sanctions) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 944), dated 11 September 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12 September, be approved.
Independent Expert Panel
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)
I beg to move,
That, in accordance with Standing Order No. 150C (Appointment of Independent Expert Panel Chair and Members) and for a period of 6 years from 25 November 2024:
(1) Sir Adrian Fulford be appointed as Chair of the Independent Expert Panel; and
(2) Lyndsey de Mestre, Andrew Hoyle and Wendy Williams CBE be appointed as members of the Independent Expert Panel.
The motion, which stands in my name, nominates a new Chair and three new members of the Independent Expert Panel. The IEP was established in 2020 to hear appeals and determine sanctions in bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct complaints against current and former MPs. In 2022 the IEP’s remit was expanded to include hearing appeals from the Committee on Standards. The IEP has eight members, appointed following fair and open competition. The Commission’s report of 9 October sets out the details of the recruitment process. In 2020 the House appointed four members for a four-year term, and four for six years. We are therefore appointing four new members today, to join the four existing members whose terms expire in 2026.
Before turning to the new members, I would like to thank the outgoing Chair, Sir Stephen Irwin, and the outgoing members, Lisa Ball, Johanna Higgins and Clare McGlynn, for their service to the House. With their colleagues, and under Sir Stephen’s leadership, they have created—from scratch—a body that I know is widely respected across the House for its rigour, fairness and independence. Sir Stephen will be especially greatly missed by those who have worked closely with him for his wise counsel, generosity, and commitment to changing the culture in this place for the better.
A measure of the esteem in which the IEP is now held is the quality of the candidates that it has attracted to join it. The nominee for Chair, Sir Adrian Fulford, had a long and distinguished judicial career culminating as vice-president of the Court of Appeal criminal division, as well as being the first Investigatory Powers Commissioner and being elected to the International Criminal Court in 2003. Many in the House will know Wendy Williams CBE from her review of the Windrush scandal, but she also brings her experience as one of His Majesty’s inspectors of constabulary and fire & rescue services. Lyndsey de Mestre KC has extensive experience in chairing professional disciplinary panels covering the clergy, police and the Bar as well as being the Chancellor for the dioceses of York and St Albans. Dr Andrew Hoyle is currently an assistant director in fitness to practise at the General Medical Council.
In combination with the continuing members of the panel, these appointments will ensure that the IEP continues to have the range of skills and experience to ensure that the House and parliamentary community can have confidence in its rigour, independence and fairness. I hope that Members will support the motion, and I commend it to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the shadow Leader of the House.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I will not detain the House long, Members will be delighted and relieved to hear—I can see that is a popular position. I simply echo the sentiments that the Leader of the House expressed. The Independent Expert Panel obviously plays an extremely important role in scrutinising allegations of misconduct, and it is right that there is an independent mechanism to do that, free from political interference.
I add my thanks to the thanks that the Leader of the House has expressed already to the outgoing members, and in particular to Sir Stephen, the inaugural Chair of the IEP. I add my commendation for the newly nominated members. As the Leader of the House has said, Sir Adrian Fulford is an extremely distinguished, very senior member of the judiciary, and the other three members being appointed have extremely impressive professional and legal backgrounds as well.
I particularly add my endorsement to Wendy Williams, who I worked with at the Home Office when I was Minister of State for Police and Crime and she was one of His Majesty’s inspectors of constabulary and fire & rescue services. She certainly discharged those duties with great effectiveness, as I saw during my time as a Minister in that Department. I am only too pleased to endorse the remarks that the Leader of the House has made.
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That, in accordance with Standing Order No. 150C (Appointment of Independent Expert Panel Chair and Members) and for a period of 6 years from 25 November 2024:
(1) Sir Adrian Fulford be appointed as Chair of the Independent Expert Panel; and
(2) Lyndsey de Mestre, Andrew Hoyle and Wendy Williams CBE be appointed as members of the Independent Expert Panel.
Voting by Proxy
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)
I beg to move,
That, for the remainder of the current session of Parliament, the following amendment to Standing Order No. 39A shall have effect:
In paragraph (2), insert “(d) serious long-term illness or injury;”.
Under the Standing Order, Members are currently eligible for a proxy vote in the event of childbirth, care of an infant or newly adopted child, complications related to childbirth, miscarriage or baby loss, or risk-based exclusion from the parliamentary estate. However, the temporary arrangements related to proxy votes for Members suffering from long-term or serious illness expired at the end of the last Parliament. I therefore tabled this motion to reinstate eligibility for proxy votes to Members with long-term illness or injury until the end of the current Session.
Permanent changes to the rules governing the House must be introduced with due care, and it is important for us to ensure that the right balance is struck. Before asking the House to consider making these arrangements permanent, I have asked the new Chair of the Procedure Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith), to provide recommendations on the operation of the proxy voting scheme.
I hope that Members will support the motion, and I commend it to the House.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Once again, I find myself in agreement with the Leader of the House on the substance of this issue. Perhaps it will become a habit; I do not know.
The Opposition support the intention behind the motion. Clearly, if a Member of Parliament has a serious long-term illness or injury, it is reasonable that that Member can still exercise his or her vote even if absent. However, I should like to know how the threshold will be defined. Who decides whether a particular Member has or has not met the threshold, and what sort of evidence will be required? Might it be, for instance, a doctor’s certificate? That may be the kind of question that the Procedure Committee will answer.
I should be interested to know the thoughts of the Leader of the House on those specific practical questions, but in principle we support this change.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I shall not detain the House for long.
I welcome the motion. The House proved itself when Members were experiencing adverse circumstances because of covid and all the associated problems: it stepped up and made sure that Members had the opportunity that they ought to have to use their franchise. It is only right that, in a new Session, this arrangement should be extended for a five-year period. I think we should be demonstrating that ours is a kind workplace, and I think what the Leader of the House said has shown that it is. Some of us are bound to be under pressure sometimes, whatever that pressure may be, and it is good to know that we can go and have a chat with someone who can help us to get through the process. The House enables us to do that, and I commend what the Leader of the House has done.
Lucy Powell
I thank the shadow Leader of the House for his comments and, as ever, I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his attendance and his contribution. I echo what the hon. Gentleman said about the need for us to be considerate and caring, and to allow Members, when they absolutely cannot be here, to continue to represent their constituents by having their votes counted. That is an important principle, which the proxy voting scheme was designed to implement.
The shadow Leader of the House asked some important questions about issues that I have, in fact, asked the Chair of the Procedure Committee to consider further. Requiring notes from consultant-level doctors about reasons for absence is fairly onerous. There are certain illnesses that fall into the category, and questions have been raised in the past by Members and others about how some of those decisions have been reached, so I think it important that we maintain this option. I certainly did not want a situation where a Member undergoing treatment for cancer, for example, was unable to apply for a proxy vote.
I think it right for the Procedure Committee to consider exactly how this should be delivered in the long term, and permanently, to ensure that in circumstances when we would all feel it fair for someone to be eligible for a proxy vote, that person is given one, and that in circumstances when many of us would feel it a stretch for someone to be given a proxy vote, they do not get it. I think we need a short review of the arrangements to ensure that we proceed with confidence and on a permanent basis.
Question put and agreed to.
Business without Debate
Delegated Legislation
NatWest bank closure in Angel Edmonton
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Kate Osamor (Edmonton and Winchmore Hill) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to present a petition concerning the closure of the NatWest Angel Edmonton branch. The closure will significantly impact the local economy as many businesses have relied on its services for years. Additionally, it will further marginalise those who are digitally excluded. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to take action to protect face-to-face banking services, halt the decline of bank branches and ensure banking services remain accessible to all.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the constituency of Edmonton and Winchmore Hill
Declares that petitioners have significant concerns about the proposed closure of the NatWest branch in Angel Edmonton and its impact on reducing access to face-to-face banking services locally and leaving workers at risk of redundancy; notes that the Government is a significant stakeholder in NatWest; further notes that the closure of bank branches especially impacts older and disables people, those who are digitally excluded without access to internet banking and small business owners; and further declares that this can make it harder for many people to manage their finances at a time when millions of families are already struggling to make ends meet.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to act to protect face-to-face person banking services, ensure that the decline in banks can be stopped and even reversed and that accessibility to banking services is kept accessible to all.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P003012]
Antisocial Behaviour: Leyton and Wanstead
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I am grateful to have this opportunity to address the House on an issue of pressing concern in my constituency. Persistent and serious patterns of antisocial behaviour have a profound impact on communities. I will talk about the nature of these challenges, the admirable patience and resilience of my constituents in the face of these issues, the strong leadership demonstrated by our local council and police, and how the Government’s plans will be instrumental in turning the tide.
At the outset, I want to express my gratitude to the Minister for her attention to these matters, her willingness to engage with me last week and her offer of a further meeting to give me confidence that we can make progress on some of the difficult issues that I will outline today. I must also take this moment to commend the exceptional leadership shown by Waltham Forest council leader Grace Williams, Kam Rai at Redbridge council, Superintendent Claire McCarthy and Chief Superintendent Dan Card. They are leading the charge in keeping these issues from becoming even more severe, and I am confident that with continued support we can make real progress.
The problems I am going to raise are the manifestation of 14 years of underinvestment in the police, the decimation of our council services, a funding model that does not recognise the disproportionate population growth in east London boroughs and a criminal justice system that is feeding people back into our communities without rehabilitation.
Turning to the specific challenges, it is essential to understand that antisocial behaviour is more than a series of isolated incidents. It is often concentrated in areas of deprivation and exclusion, such as the Avenue Road estate in Leytonstone. Here, we are seeing a tragic cycle of drug misuse, criminality and social breakdown that threatens to undermine the fabric of our community. Public spaces are being vandalised, bins are being set on fire, and needles and drug litter are being left where children can find them. Users are shooting up and smoking crack in full public view. They are forcing entry to use drugs in people’s front gardens and communal hallways and stairways, where residents have to get past them. Residents are seeing drug users having sex in public spaces or lying unconscious. It is incredibly distressing, particularly for residents with young families. Public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, are becoming unsafe due to open drug use and vandalism. Despite these troubling conditions, the residents of these areas have shown incredible tolerance and dignity.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
First, may I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate? He referred to public parks, playgrounds and main streets as places where antisocial behaviour takes place. It is taking place in my constituency and I want to add to this debate by saying what we did. We had community police officers on the street and we also have an organisation called Street Pastors; it is very active and it involves all the churches coming together voluntarily to try to engage with those on the streets who might cause some of the antisocial behaviour. Those two objectives of more community police and more street pastors seems to have reduced the large number of antisocial behaviour issues in my constituency. I am trying to be helpful in this debate—I always try to be constructive—and hopefully that is something the hon. Gentleman will think about.
Mr Bailey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As he will learn, a number of schemes have aimed to tackle antisocial behaviour in the community. However, the size of the problem tends to bubble up, and I will come on to that.
Residents who speak up for their right to live in peace in their own community face serious intimidation, harassment, verbal abuse and threats. Many have told me that they fear that violence will be next. It is vital that we recognise and appreciate their tolerance. It is not only that residents are enduring such problems; the viability of the estate itself is questionable, and the council’s inability to regenerate the area contributes to their marginalisation. Their lack of opportunities further adds to the problem. Residents tolerate antisocial behaviour with remarkable respect and humility, and a sense of self-worth. However, their patience must not be mistaken for complacency or acceptance. They deserve solutions, and I hope the Minister will tell us how the Government’s approach to tackling antisocial behaviour will provide the framework we need. I am sure that this is something on which the council will continue to actively engage with residents, including at the meeting later this month, so that I can communicate back to them.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He is speaking very powerfully from his experience of deeply troubling issues in his constituency. Other MPs, including me, have experienced similar issues in our own constituencies, and I pay tribute to residents who endure terrible ASB problems. The Government are doing excellent work on this issue, and I look forward to much more action coming forward, such as the introduction of new orders, other powers and more police community support officers. My hon. Friend is right to point to the importance of residents working with local authorities and the police. May I commend the residents in Reading town centre who recently removed several tonnes of rubbish in a massive community clear-up, which is part of the work to tackle ASB in the area?
Mr Bailey
I thank my hon. Friend for his apposite intervention. People in both our constituencies have tolerated 14 years of failure, and 14 years of all our systems and services being significantly eroded. That is why it is imperative that the Minister explains to us how she will go about addressing the issues that are faced, and tolerated, by our constituents.
I know that the Minister will understand just how damaging these issues can be for our communities. When there is a sense that people are damaging others with impunity, fear and mistrust can escalate. I have met the ward officer teams locally, and they are aware of the problems and keen to support the residents affected, but no matter how attentive they are, the persistence of these issues erodes trust in the police, which is already in a bad way across many areas of London. The reality is that few residents attend the ward panels and raise their voices, partly because they are afraid of being seen engaging with the police, and partly because they have little trust that effective action will be taken. Residents have told me that they now feel like drug users have taken over the territory. They are scared to go out at night and almost feel as though they are squatters and intruders, even in their own homes, estates and neighbourhoods.
I am pleased to support the Government’s plans to place 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the streets as part of the neighbourhood policing guarantee. This will be a game changer for Leyton and Wanstead, where our overstretched resources have left communities feeling abandoned. The additional officers have a clear local mandate and will bring a much-needed visible presence to our streets, rebuilding trust and confidence in the police.
I also want to highlight the Government’s proposed respect orders, which will be crucial in empowering the police to take stronger action against the persistent offenders who make life unbearable for the ordinary resident. By addressing the small groups of individuals responsible for much of the antisocial behaviour, we can restore public spaces and ensure that they are safe for families once again. I would therefore be grateful for any more light that the Minister can shed on the respect orders that the Secretary of State has rightly proposed.
In Leyton and Wanstead, we are already seeing positive examples of multi-agency working, including initiatives such as Project ADDER, which focuses on tackling antisocial drug-related crime in hotspot areas. It has been demonstrated that when resources are properly targeted, they can make a difference. Last year, there was an operation focused on the Grove Green area of my constituency. The data shows that it worked, with a steep and sustained 75% fall in drug-related reports in the hotspot area from the peak in the previous year. However, due to its apparent success, the operation was then wound down and the resources were reprioritised. Sadly, I believe that the groups of drug users and the criminals who supply them have not really gone away; they have dispersed to a somewhat larger area.
It may be reported that drug-related offending and ASB in Leyton and Wanstead have not yet increased back to where they were last year, but that is not how it feels to our residents. That is perhaps down to two factors. First, the multi-agency action that has been taken clearly dispersed the activities away from the hotspot around Grove Green to a range of smaller areas, particularly in south Leytonstone. Secondly, I fear that in some cases residents no longer believe that reporting will lead to a long-term solution. We have to change that, so I am engaging closely with all the affected agencies and residents’ groups to try to rekindle the hope that solutions can be found. The success of initiatives such as Project ADDER shows that we are on the right track, but the work must be sustained. The long-term commitment of resources and multi-agency collaboration will be vital in breaking the cycle of addiction and criminality that traps individuals and destabilises communities.
I would also like to address the challenges that we face in reporting and responding to these issues. Too often, the distinction between antisocial behaviour and crime is blurred, leading to confusion about what should be reported and to whom. It is a particular issue where organised criminal networks seem to be involved. Residents describe it as living like they are in “The Wire”, because there is obvious co-ordination between drug users who know each other well. They report users posting lookouts on the streets and in upstairs windows to identify police and ASB teams and cover up the evidence before they can act.
As we know, these gangs do not just fuel addiction, self-destruction and antisocial behaviours. They are also involved in further crimes, including shoplifting, violent robberies and burglaries and the selling of stolen goods alongside the drugs. Residents are understandably cautious about making reports, fearing retaliation; some of our current reporting mechanisms inadvertently put them at risk. We must improve communication channels and ensure that reporting is safe and effective. I know that the Minister is committed to this. I would welcome any updates on how we can better support residents who want to help but fear the consequences.
We must also consider the impact of police abstractions on local communities. The significant amount of officer time diverted to central London for public order duties is placing immense pressure on our local services. In Waltham Forest alone, over 26,000 hours of officer time were unavailable in our neighbourhoods because of abstractions to aid with central policing duties. Whenever there is an abstraction, community response is the first thing to go, because 999 responses are rightly prioritised above all else. In some periods during the summer, some wards had no community response officers because the level of abstractions was so consistently high. Although I fully support the right to peaceful protest in a safe environment, the impact on local policing is unsustainable. I urge the Minister to review the system, especially as our neighbourhoods bear the brunt of such abstractions.
We need to be honest with residents that these problems will not go away unless the resources are in place to sustain multi-agency working over a long time. We need the council to be able not just to identify when a vacant flat has been broken into and used as a drug den, but to take possession, put security in place, make repairs and then get that home to one of the decent families who deserve it and desperately need it. We also need the police to be able to escalate; to focus on organised crime links, when they are there; and to effectively disrupt and break down the criminal forces that trap drug users in addiction, generate antisocial behaviour and create such fear in our communities.
We need to deliver on our commitments to tackle the housing crisis and drive forward economic growth that reduces poverty, creates more opportunities to get on in life and brings hope back to our communities. We need to repair our public services and economy after 14 years of Conservative failure, chaos and destruction. We need to divert ordinary users who are not yet caught up in gangs and ensure that they have multiple consistent, genuine routes to take back control over their lives and seek positive change.
The people of Leyton and Wanstead are resilient and committed to their communities. They deserve a future in which they feel safe in their homes and public spaces. With the Government’s investment in neighbourhood policing, stronger penalties for antisocial behaviour and more targeted approaches to drug-related crime, I believe we can make significant progress. I will continue to work closely with local leaders, the police and the Minister to ensure that we deliver the solutions that my constituents desperately need.
The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) on securing this important debate and on his excellent speech. He is already demonstrating that he will be a doughty champion for his constituents, and I very much look forward to working with him and discussing this important topic over the months ahead.
I know my hon. Friend’s constituency a little and have spent a bit of time there. I know what an attractive part of east London it is, with many shops, restaurants and bars and a strong and vibrant community, so it is really concerning to hear what he says about the levels of antisocial behaviour. It is absolutely right that that is put in the context of 14 years of under-investment in local councils and public services.
Antisocial behaviour affects all our constituencies and has far-reaching consequences. It was good to hear the experiences of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda)—this is happening in everyone’s constituency.
I want to start by saying unequivocally that any form of antisocial behaviour is unacceptable. It is not merely a low-level nuisance; it hits the poorest and most vulnerable communities hardest. If left unchecked, it leads to far more serious offending, which is why cracking down on antisocial behaviour is a top priority for this Government and a key part of our safer streets mission. This Government will ensure that we restore public trust in policing and local partners to tackle antisocial behaviour and create real, impactful change.
I turn to recent trends in antisocial behaviour. The crime survey for England and Wales shows that in the year ending March 2024, 35% of respondents personally witnessed or experienced antisocial behaviour in their local area. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead described in reference to his area, that includes groups hanging around on the streets, vehicle-related ASB and people using or dealing drugs. Those were the most common types of antisocial behaviour reported. Sadly, that figure has gradually risen by 7% in the past decade. We must aim to reduce those statistics significantly through the consistent joined-up work of police and local partners. I was pleased to hear about the local leadership provided by the police and the council in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and how that was working well.
As my hon. Friend will know, this Government have committed to five core missions that seek to address some of the fundamental challenges society will face over the next 10 years. The safer streets mission will tackle serious crime: it will halve violence against women and girls, halve knife crime, and restore confidence in policing and the criminal justice system. It is focused on addressing both harm and confidence in parallel, by taking a whole-system approach.
Tackling antisocial behaviour is at the heart of the safer streets mission. It will rebuild confidence through the investment in neighbourhood police officers, who will be at the forefront of the fight against antisocial behaviour. The past decade has seen a decline in neighbourhood policing to such an extent that many of the bonds of trust and respect between the police and local communities have sadly been lost. We are going to bring back neighbourhood policing, ensuring that thousands of additional officers are out patrolling in our town centres and communities as part of our mission to make the streets safer.
Through the new neighbourhood policing guarantee, we will ensure every community has a named police officer to turn to. We also want to ensure neighbourhood policing is protected. I note very carefully what my hon. Friend said about levels of abstraction and how that can affect neighbourhood policing. We recognise that no single agency can reduce antisocial behaviour alone. Achieving the goal we have set ourselves will rely on the police, local authorities, charities and the health service working effectively together. There are lots of examples across the country where that already happens. Agencies at the local level are best placed to understand what is driving the behaviours in question and the impact it is having, and to determine the most appropriate response.
We will legislate to ensure that antisocial behaviour powers are as effective as they need to be to tackle repeat offending. I reflect on the fact that under the coalition Government we saw a downgrading in the antisocial behaviour powers available to the police and councils. My hon. Friend talked about the Government’s plans to introduce respect orders to help ensure that persistent adult antisocial behaviour offenders are banned from public areas where they are causing harm to communities. These changes are long overdue. I look forward to further addressing the House about respect orders in the months to come.
I want to talk about victims of antisocial behaviour and refer to the recently published report by the Victims’ Commissioner, Baroness Newlove, called “Still Living a Nightmare”. The helpful and insightful report looked at the experiences of victims of persistent antisocial behaviour, and highlighted a number of recommendations for the Government, including on improving the identification of persistent antisocial behaviour, support for victims and improved utilisation of the antisocial behaviour case review.
As we know, the case review gives victims the right to request a review of their case and brings agencies together to take a joined-up approach to finding a solution for the victim. It is vital that we enhance collaboration and communication between statutory agencies to create a holistic approach to dealing with antisocial behaviour. I am carefully considering Baroness Newlove’s recommendations and what more we can do to support victims of antisocial behaviour.
I was particularly struck by what my hon. Friend said about how members of his community do not feel safe to report issues and about how they feel that the drug dealers have taken over their streets and are in control. That worries me a great deal, and it worries me especially that people do not feel safe to report, because reporting on issues is just so important.
I wish to say something about drugs, because my hon. Friend talked a lot about the problems around drugs. Again, tackling those problems is not something policing can do on its own. I recognise that tackling illegal drugs must be a key part of delivering the Government’s mission to make our streets safer. We know from the Crime Survey for England and Wales that people using or dealing drugs is in the top three antisocial behaviour issues that residents most commonly think is a problem in their area. I was particularly concerned to hear about what was happening on the Avenue Road estate.
It is clear that half of all crimes, such as shoplifting and burglary, are driven by drugs, which is why the Government are determined to crack down on antisocial behaviour and drug misuse. The police have a critical role to play in this area. Where individuals are found in possession of drugs, they must face appropriate sanctions. We are working with the police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to support voluntary referrals into treatment. We firmly believe that diverting those who use illegal drugs into interventions such as drug treatment services is key to reducing drug misuse, drug-related crime and reoffending. We support the use of drug testing on arrest and out-of-court resolutions to ensure that individuals who commit drug and related offences are given the opportunity to change their behaviour and to be diverted into meaningful and appropriate interventions.
I was pleased to hear from my hon. Friend about Project ADDER, which we know expanded to Waltham Forest in March this year. He also told us that the police in Leyton are using powers to tackle drug misuse and related offending. Through Project ADDER, police in Waltham Forest are using proactive operations to close county lines and disrupt organised criminal gangs. I also noted what my hon. Friend said about operations that seem to work in one area, but when resources are moved on, people resume the activities in which they were previously engaged, so I am very well aware that we need to address that.
I also note that Leyton is piloting community protection notices, which will include, in appropriate cases, a new mandatory positive requirement for individuals to attend drugs awareness programmes to tackle drug-related antisocial behaviour. That means that the police and local authorities can require that attendance to change behaviour, and if the individual does not attend, that can result in an arrest.
Beyond enforcement, we know that treatment works to reduce reoffending. Giving offenders greater access to treatment services helps to break the underlying causes of their reoffending and increases public safety. We are committed to ensuring that anyone with a drug problem can access the help and support that they need, and we recognise the need for evidenced-based, high-quality treatment. Prevention of drug and alcohol-related harm is vital to saving lives and making our streets safer.
I am delighted that the public health Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gorton and Denton (Andrew Gwynne), is on the Treasury Bench this evening, because I know that he is particularly interested in this whole area of drug and alcohol treatment. The Department of Health and Social Care is continuing to invest in improvements to local treatment services, particularly for children and young people, as well as adults with drug or alcohol problems, to ensure that those in need can access high-quality help and support. In addition to the public health grant, the DHSC has allocated local authorities a further £267 million in 2024-25 to improve the quality and capacity of drug and alcohol treatment and recovery, alongside £105 million that has been made available by various Government Departments to improve treatment pathways and recovery, and such things as housing and employment outcomes, which need to be part of the solution if we are to deal with people with drug and alcohol addictions.
I will conclude by repeating how grateful I am to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead for bringing this debate to the House. Antisocial behaviour is a key issue for this Government, and we have a very ambitious programme to make our streets safer, restore neighbourhood policing—the bedrock of policing in this country—and reduce the misery that antisocial behaviour causes for victims and communities.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft European Forest Institute (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft European Forest Institute (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2024.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Twigg, and to move my first statutory instrument as a Minister. I am pleased to be here with the shadow Minister and others. This order, which I hope is uncontroversial in nature, was laid in draft before the House on 15 May 2024 during the previous Administration in accordance with the International Organisations Act 1968. It is subject to the affirmative procedure and will be made once it is approved by both Houses.
The main legal recourse to grant privileges and immunities to international organisations with a presence in the United Kingdom, as discussed in the main Chamber yesterday, is the International Organisations Act 1968, which specifies the maximum privileges and immunities that may be accorded in the UK to various categories of international organisations. The provisions of the Act are applied to the different organisations by means of an Order in Council.
This order will confer on the European Forest Institute a bespoke set of privileges and immunities to enable the organisation to function and operate effectively in the UK. It does not confer legal capacity, as this was conferred on the EFI in the European Forest Institute (Legal Capacities) Order 2005. The order will contribute to the fostering of closer collaboration between the EFI, its members and the UK Government and will support the establishment of a EFI UK office. I think there is unity in the House on this measure, as it was started under the previous Government. We intend to continue with it to allow international collaboration on forests, which are an important issue for the protection of nature, tackling climate change and our support of biodiversity globally.
In granting these privileges and immunities, we will therefore be able to host an expansion of EFI’s International Partnerships Facility in the UK through the opening of a UK office. The International Partnerships Facility is a global centre of knowledge and expertise that supports policy and governance reforms to improve forest governance and safeguard the world’s forests.
The EFI would host a small permanent London team and draw internationally renowned expertise into the UK. With London a major hub for private sector climate finance, there are opportunities to bring international forest and finance experts together to foster new financial initiatives aimed at protecting the world’s forests and tackling climate change and nature loss, which are major priorities for me, the Foreign Secretary and the whole of the new Government.
This order affords the director, head of office and EFI staff members a bespoke set of privileges and immunities that diplomatic agents of diplomatic missions established in the UK would be entitled to, including an exemption from suit and legal process. However, as was mentioned yesterday, no immunity is conferred in the case of a motor traffic offence or damage caused by a motor vehicle. That is now a standard clause in statutory instruments and treaties providing for privileges and immunities.
The Government consider these privileges and immunities both necessary and appropriate to deliver on the interests and commitments that the UK has toward the EFI. The privileges and immunities conferred will enable its staff to operate effectively within the UK and are in scope of the International Organisations Act and UK precedents for similar organisations. The EFI’s board members and representatives of members are subject to “official act immunities”. Those immunities cover inviolability of official papers and documents, customs provisions and immunity from suit and legal process within the scope of official activities. They also cover the inviolability of the EFI premises and archives, taxes and customs rates and an immunity waiver.
In conclusion, the support for the EFI’s establishment of an office in the UK is a unique opportunity to reinforce the UK’s leadership on international forests and climate policy. The UK has been involved with the EFI for over 10 years, including through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s flagship forest governance, markets and climate programme. Together with the EFI we have supported national policy processes on land-use governance in 17 countries across the three tropical forest basins. The EFI is key to that work and the UK remains committed to the organisation. I hope this can be seen as just an important procedural and administrative matter to enable that work to continue.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time in this parliamentary term, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to the Minister for his remarks. The agreement between the UK and the European Forest Institute was, of course, signed by the previous Conservative Government in March of this year, by Lord Benyon. The Minister will therefore be relieved to hear that we will support the draft order before the Committee today, although I am aware that he and I are finding ourselves in agreement a little bit too much, so we shall see how I feel this afternoon when discussing the Iran sanctions regime.
We are pleased to see key elements underpinning the agreement with the EFI now put on to the UK statute book. Ultimately, it allows the EFI to establish an office here in the UK, and for us to deepen our collaboration with the institute on forestry-related issues. I am grateful to the Minister for his praise of the programme the previous Government ran, which helped to avoid 413,000 hectares of ecosystem loss around the world. At the COP26 summit that we hosted, more than 140 world leaders committed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. Our Environment Act 2021 is helping to drive products derived from illegal deforestation from our supply chains.
I would be grateful if the Minister could provide further detail on how the Labour Government will address the underlying and often deeply entrenched drivers of deforestation around the world, support new forestry and tackle illegal deforestation. Through the draft order, what plans does the Minister have to use the foundation built by the last Government to work with the EFI on forestry-related issues?
We all know that deforestation is environmentally damaging. Not only does it destroy habitats, including the habitats of some of our most treasured and endangered species, but it also hurts biodiversity, depletes our carbon sinks and scars once-beautiful landscapes. Less well known, but just as significantly, it upends the livelihoods of some of the poorest people in the world. Combating that must be central to any UK strategies aimed at addressing deforestation and the resulting impact on migration. I hope the Government will show ambition in this area, not only reaping the benefits of the UK-EFI agreement, but also building on the strong legacy by the Conservative Government. If they do, they will find a partner in us.
Stephen Doughty
I am grateful for the support of the shadow Minister and, I hope, of the whole Committee. I hope that she will also support the Iran sanctions regulations later this afternoon. I am sure we will have a slightly longer debate on those important issues, but I am glad for the support and the common ground on this draft order, which is absolutely crucial to issues of nature, biodiversity loss and tackling the climate change emergency. It comes at an appropriate time, as we are between the biodiversity conference of the parties and the nature COP, and the COP in Baku on climate change. Showing our support for this important organisation is key.
The shadow Minister asked about how this will sit within our wider plans. I can tell her that the EFI has been involved directly with supporting the delivery of the FCDO’s flagship forest governance programme, which we intend to continue. That programme aims at reducing the illegal use of forest resources and ensuring benefits for the poorest people who depend on forests for their livelihoods. With the support of that programme and other development donors, the EFI has established the expertise and stakeholder network on forest governance, deforestation and climate change. That provides guidance to more than 20 countries.
I mentioned the EFI’s International Partnerships Facility. That will be absolutely key in making this work going forward, contributing to our wider work as we modernise our development programme, focus on the sustainable development goals, and tackle issues including the expansion of agricultural crops, illegal logging, land use conflicts, and others that the shadow Minister will know are unfortunately driving the challenges we find in forest environments. I would also point out that the EFI can work very closely with our temperate forest measures, which are already driven forward by my colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. There we could have the international and the domestic coming together for nature and climate change. I hope the Committee will recognise the importance of that.
The EFI is a valuable partner for the UK in delivering our international ambitions on biodiversity loss and sustainable development. A London office that functions fully will serve as a valuable catalyst for bringing together international expertise, and bringing that to bear on forest governance globally. I hope that I have answered the shadow Minister’s questions and given the Committee the assurance it needs.
Question put and agreed to.
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Rough Sleeping
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Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of tackling rough sleeping.
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship today, Sir Christopher.
Night after night in Ealing Southall, people bed down in front of the Quality Foods shop, where a canopy offers some shelter from the rain, although it does not offer much protection from the biting cold. They sleep there all night, wrapped up in cardboard and ragged sleeping bags. Up the road in West Ealing, it is the same story. Indeed, data show that on any night in England in 2023 almost 4,000 people slept rough—a 27% increase on the previous year. It is a daily tragedy for homeless people, and of course it is also intimidating for people passing by and it cannot help but make our town centres less attractive for shoppers and businesses.
I recently visited Southall community college, which is trying to offer its students a good learning environment, but it says that it is hard to do so when there are people sleeping under the college awnings every night who are still there in the morning. The college has decent people who want to help, but they do not know where to start.
Hope for Southall Street Homeless is a fantastic local charity that helps homeless people and those sleeping rough—I recently visited and saw the range of services it offers, from a hot meal to eye tests to a Bollywood movie on a big screen—but voluntary services are straining under the sheer weight of people now sleeping rough. There was a brief respite during covid when the Everyone In programme moved almost all rough sleepers into accommodation, but when the covid crisis was over, the previous Government squandered that opportunity. They refused to learn the lessons and now the numbers are swiftly moving back to the pre-covid record levels of rough sleeping.
Some people might think that rough sleeping is something we just cannot fix—a problem that will always be there—but the last Labour Government reduced rough sleeping by more than two thirds in their first term by taking a cross-departmental approach. I really welcome the new Government’s commitment to doing similar. I hope that the Minister will be able to outline the timeline for a strategy on rough sleeping and clarify which Departments are involved in the new interministerial group.
Rough sleeping has a number of causes, including a chronic lack of affordable housing. That is not surprising given that the previous Government presided over a net loss of 210,000 affordable homes over the last 10 years. I am delighted that the new Government are investing in 1.5 million new homes, creating a new generation of social homes in particular. Our low-wage economy also reduces the affordability of housing. Up till now, renters could be kicked out without a reason. I very much welcome the new Government’s plan to make work pay, which will ban precarious zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire, and our Renters’ Rights Bill, which will ban section 21 evictions, giving renters more rights.
Many of those sleeping rough have mental health problems or substance misuse issues—many have both. They need intensive support, but we know that the NHS is in crisis. The Secretary of State has taken decisive action with a new 10-year plan, but I hope the Minister will ensure that the needs of rough sleepers are taken into account when designing community mental health and addiction services that will help to reduce rough sleeping.
Although we are taking steps to reduce rough sleeping by building new housing, improving renters’ rights, making work pay and rebuilding our NHS, it is all being undermined by the previous Government’s broken immigration and asylum system, which literally creates rough sleepers. In Ealing Southall, many of our rough sleepers are single men in their 60s, although they look even older from their time on the streets. They often come from India originally and do not speak much English, despite having lived here for many years. They might have worked in construction or catering and rented a home, but something went wrong in their lives and when they went to look for help to avoid becoming homeless, they discovered that they did not have the correct visa. They get told they have no recourse to public funds—NRPF—and cannot access housing or welfare support. With no housing benefit or universal credit, some of them end up with no option but to sleep on the street. In some ways, their experience is similar to that of those affected by the Windrush scandal; they get asked for piles of evidence that they did not keep, because they never knew there was a problem with their papers.
Some 3.3 million people in this country have been told that they have no recourse to public funds. That is a massive increase in the number of people being denied access to basic services. Many have the right to services—they just need help to track down paperwork and to make their case—but in a Catch-22 situation, they are not allowed to access help to prove their status. Rightly, this Government have taken on the staff to start assessing claims to ensure that those without a right to remain in this country are removed, but I hope the Minister will consider what can be done to offer advice and support to those people who have a right to live in this country, so that they do not end up homeless.
Many of those with no recourse to public funds status who are sleeping rough have significant health issues, including heart disease and stroke, but they often cannot access the care they need. Local authorities are not aware of their duties under the Care Act 2014, and they worry about spending money illegally. Added to that, of course, local authorities saw their funding decimated under the previous Government, so there is not a lot of money to go around. I hope that the new Government will consider clarifying local authority responsibilities in that regard.
Another growing problem is people coming out of the asylum system and ending up on the streets. The new Government have finally got the system working again after the costly and ineffective gimmicks of the previous Government. Ironically, however, people who are assessed as refugees with the right to asylum in this country are being given no chance to make a life here. Under the previous Government, people granted refugee status were getting as little as seven days’ notice to leave asylum accommodation—eventually changed to 28—but that is still far too short a time, especially as the local housing duty does not kick in for 56 days. I hope that the Government will give consideration to whether it would be sensible to align those timeframes better, whether local authorities can be notified in advance, and whether improved support can be put in place, so that we end the frankly ludicrous situation in which we agree that people are refugees and have a right to be here but turn them out on to the streets.
In Ealing Southall, we also have a significant number of EU nationals sleeping on the streets. For reasons that can include chaotic lives or mental health issues, they may not have submitted their settled status paperwork on time; and now they are stuck in limbo. It is easy to say that they could go home but, as an immigrant myself, I understand how hard it might be to admit that the streets of London were not paved with gold—that they failed to make it. I hope that the Minister will look at simplifying the EU settlement system, offering more advice and support, and a better assisted voluntary return system for those who would consider going home.
A further issue to bring to the Minister’s attention is the chilling impact of the previous Government’s right-to-rent legislation, which has meant landlords wrongly think they need to see a passport before they can rent to someone. Many people born and bred in this country do not have a passport, and the policy is only legitimising discrimination, so I hope that the Minister will consider the impact it is having on homelessness. I am afraid it is not just the asylum and immigration system that is adding to the numbers of those sleeping on our streets; 15% of prisoners were released into homelessness in 2023, and 4,100 people were released from hospital on to the streets.
Money always helps, and I look forward to the Government making provision for tackling rough sleeping in next week’s Budget, but we can make a huge difference to rough sleeping just by stopping policies that create homelessness in the first place. We all want to end rough sleeping, and the new Government’s focus on building affordable homes, making work pay, rebuilding the NHS and strengthening renters’ rights will have an impact, but we will never solve the problem if the previous Government’s immigration and asylum system continues to be allowed to cause homelessness and rough sleeping. The system we inherited is creating destitution by its very design. Not only is that morally wrong; it is a false economy. It just creates a bigger problem that costs us more to fix through acute services, and it is impacting on our town centres.
The new Government have made rough sleeping a priority and committed to a cross-departmental approach. I hope that the Minister will work with her colleagues in the Home Office, and in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that those making up their bed on the street tonight will not have to wait much longer for help to rebuild their lives.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. Well done to the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan); homelessness has been one of the key issues that she has raised since arriving in this place. It is a pleasure to be here, as I said I would be—others are here for the same purpose—to support her quest for betterment for those who are homeless. I also welcome the Minister to her place. It is a pleasure to see her, and we look forward to her contribution. I also welcome the shadow Minister, who is a well-seasoned campaigner and will be able to pick over the issues as well as all of us.
The hon. Member for Ealing Southall set the scene well. It is always with great sadness that I hear the comments of hon. Members regarding rough sleeping across the UK. The hon. Lady set out—I am trying to pick the right words—the desperate scene for people who are homeless and explained what they go through. This is a UK-wide issue, facing all constituencies. I always like to give a Northern Ireland perspective. Rough sleeping may not be as massive an issue in Northern Ireland as it is in other parts of the United Kingdom, including the hon. Lady’s constituency, but it is something we have to raise awareness of, and this debate gives us that opportunity.
I will give some examples of the issue in my constituency, and talk about those who respond. There is a collective responsibility on us all, including Government bodies and all the people who look after individuals who are homeless and rough sleeping to be better prepared to help and support them.
There is almost a stigma around rough sleeping—the idea that those who have no other choice in life have made incorrect decisions to find themselves in those circumstances. I say that respectfully. In some cases, those people might look for solace in things that do not provide it but give them more heartache and pain. I think of substance abuse, which makes it difficult for people to get their lives back on track; the whole thing is a real journey, like being on a train and not being able to get off. That is the reality for some people who rough sleep, although it is certainly not the case for all. Rough sleeping could be due to relationship breakdown, financial circumstances, the availability of housing and so on.
In 2023, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive released figures on rough sleeping. By their nature, these figures are not astronomical from a mathematical point of view, but they tell a story of 45 people who were rough sleeping—a 36.4% increase on 2022, when the number was 33. Although that might not seem like many, that is 45 people who are homeless—rough sleeping—and have nowhere to go, and in many cases, they have no hope.
I want to respond in a small but, I hope, effective way by speaking of those who step up. Of those 45 individuals who required support and asked us to do better, 32 were in Belfast, which is about 15 to 20 miles from my constituency, and a further seven were in Newry. Sometimes the figures might not reflect what is really happening. Why? Well, I mentioned church groups to the hon. Lady before the debate; church groups, individuals and volunteers, including the street pastors in towns in my constituency, are all well aware of what is going on. I thank them for what they do, as they respond directly by meeting and having direct contact with people. They play an important role, which the Minister might mention when she sums up.
We cannot do it all ourselves, but we can do it with others. That is the point I want to make. I ask the Minister how we can work better with street pastors and church groups. By coming through the street pastors, church groups respond to those people who are homeless and rough sleeping. Those people are looked after by the churches directly. They find them accommodation and somewhere to sleep overnight. They give them a meal. They try to get them back into the benefits system where they need to be, because they may even have gone completely off the radar.
The next group that I want to refer to is veterans. One veteran in my town of Newtownards did an overnight sleep-out. He wanted to highlight the issue. I was glad that I was not sleeping out overnight as well, because I think if I got down into that wee tent, I could probably only with difficulty get back out again, but he did it overnight. What was he doing? He was highlighting the issue for veterans. There are so many veterans who are under the radar and perhaps not able to get the help that they need, so this veteran highlighted that.
I say to the Minister that when it comes to veterans as people who sleep rough, we need to remember the horrors of what they experienced in uniform, whether that was in Iraq or in Northern Ireland—it would be in our case, but there are other parts of the world where they fought in uniform, and nightmares of what they went through have affected them. This veteran slept out overnight. I stayed along with him for the photograph and to speak to him and to tell the press what the object of the exercise was—so what are we doing for veterans, Minister? Again, it is a very specific question.
I acknowledge that, compared with other constituencies, we are fortunate that rough sleeping does not seem to have as great an impact, but it is still there. Northern Ireland does have a clear issue with homelessness, though. I have lost count of the people and families who have come to my office looking for help because, for many reasons, they have no home. This information is backed up by Simon Community. I just want to take us from the issue of rough sleeping to the next stage of where we are.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
My hon. Friend is making a very eloquent speech on this matter regarding the importance of churches and street pastors and of veterans. Does he agree with me that many are sleeping rough as a result of mental ill health, and that it is important that we get to the crux of that problem in Northern Ireland and right across this United Kingdom, and ensure that our health service is providing the mental health services required, so that people feel that there are other options?
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which is absolutely critical. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall referred to it in her contribution at the beginning; although this Minister is not directly responsible for the issue of mental health, there is a need for Departments to work better together, so perhaps in her reply the Minister can give us some information about that.
Simon Community has revealed that, in Northern Ireland, 25,000 people are experiencing—to quote its word—“hidden” homelessness. To give an example, there was a young man in my office just a few months back. He had recently broken up with his wife and was asked to leave the family home. Relationships do break up. It is always sad when they do, but that is a reality of life. This young man continued to pay part of the mortgage, as his two children were living at the home. He could not afford a private rental and was severely struggling to get rehomed on the Northern Ireland Housing Executive list, quite simply because he was single and fit and healthy. Therefore, the points system did not enable him to qualify for homelessness points or the points needed to get a property. What did he have to do? He had no choice but to sleep in the back of his work van, and that is what he did up until a few months later, when eventually it was sorted. There are so many single men and women out there who are likely to be on the waiting list for years before they get an opportunity to be rehomed.
The official homelessness statistic for Northern Ireland currently stands at 55,500 people, including 4,500 children. There are so many reasons, but one prevalent issue is that the cost of private rentals is astronomical. People are being asked to pay some £700 or £800 a month, which is just not affordable with the wage bracket and median wage that they have in Northern Ireland. If we do not do more to tackle the homelessness crisis, including the rough sleeping crisis, we will ultimately have more people who have no choice but to sleep rough—that is where they are going. The mental health issues, the issues for veterans, including post-traumatic stress disorder, and the breakdown of family relationships have a direct and collective impact.
This will be my last comment. I still recall times when I was walking through the centre of Belfast and seeing the sleeping bags alongside St Anne’s cathedral. It was always very poignant for me to see that, because here we were in a town that was bustling and busy because of its nightlife, and there were people on the footpath who had nothing. There is more we must do to support people, and that must start by addressing the housing crisis in the United Kingdom and improving the availability and affordability of homes. We must put more emphasis on building sustainable homes and apartments for those who are struggling. We are grateful to all those charities that do so much without ever asking for anything back.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for allowing me to speak in this important debate, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for securing it, and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his contribution.
As I have said in this place before, I spent two years working for a homeless charity in my constituency called Streets 2 Homes. My role was to locate people who had been reported as rough sleeping and help them to find long-term, secure tenancies. This issue is therefore close to my heart, and I hopefully have relevant experience in it.
I will start by talking about some of the issues I have experienced, and then I will suggest a few solutions. I am pleased that the Labour Government have introduced two important Bills: the Renters’ Rights Bill, which will ban no-fault evictions, and the Employment Rights Bill, which will give greater security in work. They will address at least some of the causes of rough sleeping, but there is still much more to do.
First, we need to look at the causes of homelessness. Many of the people I supported suffered from alcohol and drug addictions. All, to some extent, suffered mental health issues, which were either responsible for or caused by their homelessness. In Harlow, we had the added complication that other councils, of all political colours, housed their most vulnerable people in our borough. That meant that, if they were evicted from their accommodation, there was a limit to the amount of support that the local authority could give them. National issues such as the cost of living crisis and the covid pandemic also had an impact on homelessness.
Although I recognise that the previous Government did some work on this issue, including providing Rough Sleeping Initiative funding—I have to declare an interest, because that partly funded my previous role—they put the onus on local authorities, which are already stretched to capacity. That funding is due to run out in spring 2025.
I know the Labour Government will take rough sleeping seriously, and I thank the Minister for attending the debate. We need cross-departmental work to tackle this issue. The National Housing Federation has repeatedly called for more housing, but part of the issue in Harlow is that accommodation that is categorised as supported does not provide sufficient support for the most vulnerable people who need it, which leads to issues with their tenancy, and sometimes results in their eviction.
It is important that the official homeless count does not miss anyone out: women are often missing from the rough sleeper count, and it must also include the hidden homeless. The hon. Member for Strangford made a really good point about them—we used to refer to them as sofa surfers, since they had a sofa to stay on and were not officially rough sleeping, but they were actually homeless and needed additional support.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall is right that we should be proud of the previous Labour Government’s record in tackling this issue, and it falls upon the new Labour Government to tackle the increasing number of rough sleepers in the UK. I believe that the only way to truly tackle many of the issues we face is to be proactive and tackle the root causes of homelessness and rough sleeping.
Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) on securing and ably leading this important debate on rough sleeping.
Rough sleeping blights our communities and ruins lives. Being forced to sleep on the streets has a devastating impact on every aspect of an individual’s life. It is a frightening and isolating experience that no one should ever have to go through, but it affects thousands of individuals every night who find themselves without a safe place to call home, facing the harsh realities of life on the streets. It is sometimes too easy to talk about this issue and reduce the problems that real people are facing to cold facts and statistics, but that overlooks the real human tragedy that this problem causes. I will not do that, and I believe it is vital that we understand not only the problems associated with rough sleeping, but the underlying causes that perpetuate this crisis.
David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)
This is such an important debate and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for securing it. We have had a massive increase in rough sleeping, and it is so important to get to the root cause. I declare an interest in that, until July, I was the chief executive of a homelessness charity in the north-east, where we have seen homelessness, and specifically rough sleeping, spike over the last 14 years especially. Our research found that 94% of people who are rough sleeping have experienced serious trauma. Would my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) agree that we have to get to the absolute root cause of rough sleeping, especially mental health issues, and that very often it is trauma? Also, in her remarks later, could the Minister respond to the need therefore to have a trauma-informed approach when we address rough sleeping?
Andrew Cooper
I agree with that; a trauma-informed approach would benefit a lot of areas of public life, and I bow to my hon. Friend’s greater experience in this area. Rough sleeping is an intractable issue with many diverse and overlapping root causes, including a lack of affordable housing, unemployment, financial instability and family breakdown. Many individuals who find themselves sleeping on the streets are battling complex challenges such as untreated mental health issues, substance abuse and social isolation. Those challenges are often exacerbated by life on the streets, creating a vicious cycle that makes it extraordinarily difficult for individuals to transition back to stable living conditions. To tackle the problem of rough sleeping effectively, we must address those issues.
First, we need to see the construction of more social housing. Secure, affordable and accessible housing is the foundation of a dignified life. It provides not only shelter, but the stability necessary to seek employment, access healthcare and rebuild social connections. That is why I was proud to stand on a manifesto that promised to build 1.5 million more homes over the next five years, including social housing, to ensure that everybody has a safe place to live.
However, building more secure and affordable housing is only part of the solution. It is not enough simply to provide shelter. Simply placing people with complex needs in housing and then leaving them to it is setting many of them up to fail. We must also look to introduce properly funded wraparound support services, which address the needs of those experiencing rough sleeping holistically. That includes providing personalised assistance for individuals struggling with drug and alcohol addiction and mental health issues. By investing in such comprehensive support services, we empower individuals not only to secure a tenancy, but to maintain it, helping them to break the cycle of homelessness, rebuild their lives and foster greater independence and resilience.
We urgently need to see action on this issue, and that is why I welcome the Government’s plan to introduce a new cross-Government strategy to tackle the difficult problem of homelessness. I really hope that strategy will take a comprehensive approach to tackling the root causes of rough sleeping and get us back on track to ending homelessness, so we create a society where everyone has a safe and stable place to call home, coupled with the support they need to thrive.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) on securing this very welcome debate. Epsom and Ewell has proportionately one of the highest numbers of homeless households living in temporary accommodation in England, and it is in the top seven boroughs outside London. That accommodation cost the local council £1.6 million last year. I wonder if she would agree that the lack of social and affordable housing is contributing to the rise in rough sleeping, and that this issue should be a priority for councils in their local plans. I also concur with the many comments made about veterans. As defence spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, I agree that veterans are massively affected by homelessness, and we must support them better; I hope she would agree with that as well.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
Thank you for your chairing the debate, Sir Christopher, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for securing it.
Homelessness is at a record high—we have heard the tragic stories from Members about people across their constituencies who are sleeping rough every night—and it is up 74% since 2010, which is a shameful legacy of the Tories. Like much of the south-east, my constituency is fighting a losing battle, with capped housing allowance rates, ever-rising rents and a shortage of supported housing and single-person affordable housing.
I recently met with Two Saints, a brilliant homeless charity in my constituency that does valuable work on temporary and supported accommodation for adults, young people and people with mental health problems. That visit showed me some ideas for action we could take to meaningfully reduce rough sleeping. Long-term funding is needed urgently to stem the reduction in public funds to address homelessness. For example, extending the rough sleeping initiative funding beyond the spring would provide more money for local authorities to make further strategic plans and tailor rough sleeping services. That would prevent the number of rough sleepers from spiralling out of control.
We also need to tackle the divergence in policy by area caused by the devolution of housing policy; for example, Hampshire county council intends to remove non-statutory homeless support by March 2026, which will leave other councils picking up those services. That will mean roughly £2 million a year being removed from homeless services, and if others do not have the capacity to fill the funding gap, over a thousand people across Hampshire will lose valuable support and be back on the streets. That is just a snapshot of the chaotic postcode lottery in support caused by the confusing mix of levels of government in Britain. We must address that by joining the dots on the national level with a long-term, strategic, cross-departmental approach to tackling rough sleeping and homelessness. We could create a single, ringfenced homelessness support fund, designed to adapt flexibly to local and individual needs.
I really am pleased to be in a Government committed to housing veterans, children leaving care and those fleeing domestic violence. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), I am pleased with the Government’s Renters’ Rights Bill and Employment Rights Bill, and I am also pleased that this Government are focusing on building more houses of all types and more social housing. But as part of that, we must have a proper focus on supported housing and single-person housing. Some 30% of households in Britain are now single person, but our home building currently does not reflect that. That allows for a rise in family homes being made into houses in multiple occupation. We must build the right types of accommodation in the right places. Alongside that, we can unlock access to the private rental sector by immediately unfreezing and restoring local housing allowance to cover the 30th percentile of market rents.
Ending homelessness makes sense morally and financially, but we must be bold and take this opportunity to provide safe and suitable housing alongside diverse support services that wrap around the most vulnerable constituents.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for calling this debate. People sleeping rough often have important things in common. They often have several support needs, such as mental ill health, substance misuse, an offending history, physical disability, self-harm, learning disabilities, experience of domestic abuse, sex work, abuse, neglect and modern slavery—pretty much some of the worst things a person can go through. But they also often do not get the entirety of the services and support they need, when they need them, in the ways they need them.
Frankly, that is the fault of nobody—certainly not the person sleeping rough—except the last Conservative Government. I say that with the immediate and direct experiences of having run a mental health and domestic abuse charity for the five years before I was elected, of setting up and sitting on a homelessness alliance, of chairing a mental health partnership, of being a councillor for 10 years and of serving as deputy council leader in that time. I can tell the House that over the 14 years of Conservative government, this problem got worse and worse.
I want to commend those leading and working in our services, because they are the most amazing, caring, understanding, dedicated people. We have heard from some of those people who are now in Parliament. In my constituency of Bournemouth East, I want to commend Bournemouth Churches Housing Association; St Paul’s Hostel, which is run by BCHA; HealthBus; YMCA Bournemouth; Healthwatch Dorset, which has just produced a fantastic report on homelessness and health; Homewards, represented by the Prince of Wales; WithYou; We Are Humans; the citizens advice bureaux across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; and Shelter.
That goes to show the array of services available in my local area, but the services they lead and the systems they contribute are being held back by forces beyond their control. Underfunding has forced services to narrow and narrow their focus, year after year. As a result, they are meeting a smaller set of needs. Services cannot wrap support around as many needs as they would have done in the past; instead, somebody sleeping rough must engage with a larger set of services. No charity has wanted to narrow its focus, but, left out of pocket, and often subsidising contracts, they just could not carry on delivering services without enough funding.
The result is twofold. First, our third sector’s ability to support clients and contribute to healthcare has been eroded year after year, and secondly, the people needing support who no longer fit the referral criteria for a service will end up being bounced from pillar to post, and people with a combination of issues will always be the exception to somebody’s rule. People who are willing to engage may become distrustful of agencies and refuse services, and that is a particular problem when people who are sleeping rough may, because of their needs, have difficulties keeping appointments.
When people are flying through revolving doors, increasingly distrustful of people and services, and feeling let down, they may experience crises. Without the support they need, that will only set back their health and increase the cost not only to their own health but to services that could wrap around them. Prevention is always cheaper and better than having to treat somebody’s health.
The people in Bournemouth East working in these sectors know exactly what is going wrong, they know exactly what needs to happen, and they know exactly how things could be so much better. They tell me what needs to happen. They are clear that we need sufficient funding to run the services to meet the needs of rough sleepers.
What will that buy? First, it will mean that we have enough caseworkers with the time to care, because a flexible approach is needed to engage people with multiple support needs who may slip through the net of services. People sleeping rough typically benefit from longer-term interactions, and we need to understand that the funding should be available for those longer-term interactions rather than for short interventions.
Secondly, we need funding models that appreciate that work can go at a slower pace to achieve useful outcomes. That means having a system with the clarity, and the time to achieve that clarity, for the people working within it but also for the people accessing support.
Thirdly—and this cannot go ignored—caseworkers who are supporting people sleeping rough need to be at their posts in their organisations for a long period of time, uninterrupted, to develop relationships with the people they support and build trust. If they have to get out of bed worrying about whether they can pay their bills, or worrying about their own mental health, they are not going to be able to provide support to the people who need it the most. That requires taking away the reasons caseworkers may leave the service: not getting paid enough to survive; not being able to develop professionally with the training and new skills that they need; or having their resilience beaten down because they support too many people, their caseloads are too high and the needs they are meeting are so many, so varied and so complex.
I recently visited the Poole campus of Bournemouth and Poole college. I talked to the head, Phil Sayles, and he told me about a chap who had been sleeping rough on the park grass beside the college campus. Every morning, he had packed up his tent to come into the college and learn. His relationship had broken down and he was unable to see his child; his life had fallen apart. But with the kindness and support of the college and the services around him, he was able to start to get his life back on track, and he is now flying. That is one person on one campus of one college, in one town in one part of our United Kingdom; there will be countless people across our country in similar situations.
I commend the Government for moving forward with the endeavour for a cross-departmental long-term strategy. We have ended rough sleeping before, during the pandemic; we can end it again. We just need the necessary political will, and the people who know what the solutions are to be listened to.
Mr Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) on bringing this very important debate to the Chamber. I also congratulate the hon. Members on both sides who have raised important examples of homelessness and the real individual tragedies that people are facing.
As Liberals—both as the Liberal party and as the Liberal Democrats—we have always prized freedom from poverty as our constitutional objective, so it is not surprising that the first piece of homelessness legislation, the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, was pioneered by a Liberal MP, Stephen Ross. Before that, great Liberal legislation introduced the concept of council housing, which led to half a million council houses being built in the ensuing years. Today, though, that duty to homeless people has been weakened and watered down time and again, and we see the heartbreaking results on our streets all too often.
The Conservative Government promised to end street homelessness by 2024, yet we see rising numbers of people sleeping rough. Over 16,000 single households were assessed as sleeping rough in 2023-24, which is almost a 15% increase over the previous year. The crisis is not just about rough sleeping; there are now over 117,000 households in temporary accommodation, including 74,000 families with children. That is shocking and unacceptable in a civilised society. The figures reveal a failure to provide safe, permanent homes for those who need them.
Rough sleeping is driven by several factors, including relationship breakdown; benefit changes, which all too often push people into unaffordable housing; and poor mental or physical health, including substance dependence. Without proper housing those problems worsen, leading to more people on our streets and more strain on public services. Organisations such as Arc in Taunton do great work, particularly with veterans, whom we have heard about from several Members today. However, the Government need to provide the necessary funding for those services to continue. Under current plans, Government funding for the rough sleeping initiative is due to end in March next year, leaving many homelessness services facing a financial cliff edge of their own.
I therefore urge the Minister to ensure that funding is extended in the upcoming Budget to prevent the shocking numbers of rough sleepers that we have seen. I also urge the Government to recognise the general financial strain that local authorities are under, and act to ensure that they have sufficient resources to deliver the requirements of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and to provide accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse.
Ultimately, we need long-term solutions not temporary measures, which is exactly what we set out in our manifesto. We would exempt homeless people from the punitive shared accommodation rate, which means they simply cannot afford to get the housing that they need, and give local authorities the funding that they need to meet the requirements of the Homelessness Reduction Act. We would introduce a new “somewhere safe to stay” legal duty, giving people emergency accommodation and an assessment of needs as of right if they are homeless and need it, and ban section 21 evictions, which we are delighted to see the Government moving forward on.
Because we cannot have Housing First without having the houses first, we want to see the Government build 150,000 new social and council rent homes per year. Homelessness and rough sleeping is not inevitable. It is time we built the homes and provided the services to bring it to an end.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Christopher, so soon after we were engaged on local government matters yesterday. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) on bringing forward this debate—I know her constituency well as mine is nearby—and I congratulate Members on their contributions, which have illuminated not just some of the policy and political angles, but the genuine complexity of the rough sleeping issue.
The measurement of rough sleeping across the United Kingdom commenced in 2010. The last Conservative Government felt that it was a high priority and, consequently, we moved from a situation under the previous Labour Government in which less than a quarter of local authorities measured the number of people rough sleeping in their area at all, to one where all local authorities were required to use a standard methodology to count the number of rough sleepers and indicate the composition of that population.
That measure fed into a number of policy initiatives over those years. We saw a growth in the number of people recorded as rough sleeping on the streets from 2010 to 2017, and then some ups and downs. We saw a reduction from the 2017 peak to the number we see today, with a particularly low figure recorded during the covid pandemic, when the Everyone In policy was rigorously pursued by local authorities across the country.
It is clear that this matter is not simply one of political will. We note that, despite the high priority that Labour placed on it in opposition, the highest increases in the number of rough sleepers on the streets were in Labour-led local authorities, and the most effective authorities at reducing the number were Conservative-led. I see some shaking of heads, but Westminster, Camden and Bristol consistently top the list of authorities with the highest numbers of rough sleepers on the streets.
We also need to note that around 46% of all the people sleeping rough are in London and the south-east. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall provided a graphic description of what she has seen—one reflected on the streets of our capital, in particular. As other hon. Members have acknowledged, it also reflects a complex set of issues that lead to people sleeping rough.
The issue of veterans was a high priority for the previous Government. I have to note the work of the former Member for Plymouth Moor View, Johnny Mercer, in driving forward the so-called Operation FORTITUDE, which set up a direct and guaranteed route out of rough sleeping for any veteran who required it.
Tom Hayes
Will the hon. Member acknowledge that many of the Labour local authorities he was just referencing are in densely urban areas, which, according to research into homelessness, tend to have larger numbers of homeless people? Will he recognise that those authorities, like Conservative authorities, have been significantly starved of funding in recent years, to the point that council leaders, both Conservative and Labour, have been crying out for relief from Government? Will he also acknowledge that, with the starvation of many of our public services, people who are sleeping rough could otherwise often have received support earlier, but because they did not they now have to sleep rough—and that that is the fault of the Conservative Government?
David Simmonds
It is not an excuse. It is clear when we look at the performance of local authorities in that respect, and in particular in respect of the effectiveness of the many measures introduced following the Homelessness Reduction Act sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), that the authorities that were good at everything demonstrated that they were also good at reducing the number of people who were sleeping rough. Those of a more questionable performance standard, however, did not demonstrate that they could step up to the plate, despite being provided with additional resources.
Seeking to make a political point rather glosses over the complexity of the matter, as highlighted by many hon. Members. I will finish my point around veterans. We know, according to the current snapshot, that around 3% of those sleeping rough are thought to be veterans of our armed forces. Providing a specific guarantee, with a freephone number and an online portal, so that accommodation that met their requirements could immediately be found for anybody in that situation, was an important example of how that particular group can be addressed.
It is also interesting to reflect that the snapshot data consistently shows that those sleeping rough tend to be older adults aged over 26; that they are overwhelmingly male, although I acknowledge that female rough sleeping is sometimes hidden; and that the numbers recorded are very small—in some years, zero—for people under the age of 18. That goes to the complexity of the issues highlighted by a number of hon. Members. It is not simply a matter of a lack of supply.
We know about the complexities around addiction, domestic violence, patterns of previous accommodation by local authorities that have ended with difficulties with landlords, issues of settled status—or lack of it—and immigration circumstances. All those factors contribute to the complex set of reasons that affect an individual who should be able to access help from a local authority. Like many other hon. Members, I have sat through homelessness interviews with constituents who seek that help and accessing it can be incredibly difficult when a number of those complicating factors come together.
How is the issue to be tackled? From 2010 to the most recent election, a number of measures were introduced. I refer to the Homelessness Reduction Act, which sought to give both additional duties and powers to local authorities to work with those at serious risk of becoming homeless—not just to prevent rough sleeping but to stop people from being placed in substandard temporary accommodation that did not fully meet the needs of their household.
More recently, we saw the introduction of “Ending rough sleeping for good” in 2022, which was a £2.4 billion multi-year programme aimed at bringing to an end, as far as possible, rough sleeping on the streets of our country. Although that was clearly not a matter of law, it was a significant and important Government programme. Many hon. Members participated actively in the debates on that and brought their views to bear on shaping a programme that included the rough sleeping accommodation programme, with an additional 6,000 units of accommodation aimed at bringing people in off the streets.
As I move to a conclusion, I will share some reflections on my time in local government. The snapshot is beginning to be taken in a consistent way, so we have a reasonably good idea of at least the trends, if not the detail, of the numbers that may be sleeping rough. One of the challenges, however, is that the snapshot always takes place around the same period in autumn. We know that the numbers of people sleeping rough in our country tend to be higher in the summer when the weather is better and that the numbers decrease as winter comes on.
One major factor that the rough sleeping snapshot is not readily able to capture is the availability of temporary accommodation in night shelters and short-term shelters set up, for example, by churches and other charities and voluntary organisations. We know that they are incredibly important for those who have not found assistance for whatever reason in the statutory sector.
My local authorities have contracts with local charities that open up those shelters when the weather begins to turn cold; they staff them and provide beds, heating, food and showers. In the spring, those services are unwound, and that means that some of those people are either back on the streets or, if the service is performed as we would hope, they have been found a pathway into a job and into more permanent housing.
The consequence of that patchwork provision still means that we do not always have a clear idea of the number of people in that situation because they genuinely have nowhere to go on that occasion; many who may have been booked accommodation by a local authority instead choose, typically because of addiction, to be on the streets with others who share their addiction rather than to use that accommodation. That is frequently cited as a major issue with the operation of the Homelessness Reduction Act. This is a complex issue. The numbers overall in our country are small, and they are declining.
Tom Hayes
The hon. Gentleman made valid points about using a street count to determine the number of people sleeping rough. Does he therefore agree that the numbers of those recorded as sleeping rough over the past 14 years are the tip of the iceberg and that the vulnerability, often in urban areas, is far higher?
David Simmonds
That reinforces my point. We have gone from a situation under the previous Labour Government in which there was no counting at all. There was no serious effort to understand the numbers of people sleeping rough on our streets. As a councillor, I was responsible for some of that period for housing and social care; rough sleeping was one of those major challenges that was simply put in the too-hard-to-deal- with box.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
Although I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point—data may not have been gathered before—there has been a 134% increase in homelessness in Yorkshire and the Humber since 2010. Does he not agree that the strategies put in place by the previous Government have not worked? There is now a need to review them and for the new Government to introduce the things we have talked about: homes for veterans and places where people can go as soon as they are in trouble. That would provide the support they require for their addictions and mental health.
David Simmonds
It is also striking that the biggest reduction in homelessness in Yorkshire and the Humber has been achieved by North Yorkshire’s Conservative-led unitary authority. Local authorities have been able—through the Homelessness Reduction Act, the use of their various powers and the resources brought to bear on this issue, including the homelessness prevention grant—to deploy those resources efficiently and effectively. I would not wish for this issue to become purely a matter of politics. The matter is over. The fact is that rough sleeping has been an issue over decades; it has been recorded over centuries, not merely the past 14 years.
David Smith
I repeat my declaration of interest: I have been chief executive of a homelessness charity for the past eight years. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, although homelessness has always been with us, it has increased in the past 14 years—by more than 140% between 2010 and 2018 and by an aggregate of more than 120% between 2010 and 2024? Does he also agree that, apart from Everyone In, which brought about a dramatic reduction, there was an ongoing and consistent increase in rough sleeping under the last Government? Does the hon. Gentleman not also agree that Everyone In—I was part of that response—was evidence of what Government can do if they treat rough sleeping as a public health concern? Does he agree that the lessons were not learned from the initiative and that, since it finished, there has been another spike in the past few years?
David Simmonds
Given the time constraints, that is the last intervention I will take. I agree with some of the hon. Gentleman’s points. The evidence around Everyone In was positive. The way in which it was carried out by individual local authorities varied enormously because they tend to know their population and situation much better than anybody in Whitehall ever would. The flexibility introduced by the Everyone In policy was carried forward in the rough sleeping action programme and is intended to address the issue much more effectively.
Although I do not deny that the statistics show that following the success of Everyone In there has been an increase, and more recently a decrease, in the numbers of people recorded in that rough sleeping snapshot, I would not agree that there has been no attempt to learn lessons. In fact, when we reflect on the debates in which we all participate in Parliament and on non-legislative issues such as the “Ending rough sleeping for good” programme, which was specifically designed to implement the lessons of the Everyone In programme in a more long-term and sustained way, we see no suggestion at all that there was a lack of attention or effort. The question is whether the outcomes fully reflect that.
Let us consider what the Opposition’s asks or challenges might be as the Government reflect on the policy going forward. No recourse to public funds was introduced by the last Labour Government following the expansion of the European Union. They decided, ahead of other countries, to increase the numbers of countries from which people could come to the UK under free movement. The decision was taken because that Labour Government had a concern about the public’s perception of people coming to the UK to access benefits. We know that that was not the case. That is simply not a factor, but that was the reason why that last Labour Government introduced that policy.
The former Member for West Ham, Lyn Brown, did a huge amount of work on this matter in opposition and the Department for Work and Pensions is now looking at it, partly to consider whether those no recourse to public funds measures, introduced in the 1990s, are still the best fit for the situation today, and also to reflect on the fact that there has been a very large increase in the population of our country during that period. A significant number of people came to our country with no recourse to public funds as part of, for example, working visa conditions.
The last Government debated a question that the new Government will now have to consider: whether no recourse to public funds is applied to the extent that it should be and how it should interact effectively with our immigration system. As I have experienced myself, the issue clearly manifests at a local level with people who, for example, have come to the UK to work in an important public sector job or to fulfil vital services. For whatever reason, they have fallen out of that job and are then, because of the no recourse to public funds condition, not able to access benefits. They find themselves in great difficulty. Although from Whitehall’s perspective that should act as a powerful disincentive to staying in the UK, the fact that legislation going back to the National Assistance Act 1948 compels local authorities to provide varying packages of support and, particularly if there are children in the household, to house people, despite the fact that they have a no recourse to public funds condition, creates significant local cost and significant complexity in working through those cases.
My asks to the Government are about the continuation of Operation Fortitude and the 3% of rough sleepers calculated to be veterans who have benefited enormously from having access to it. Operation Fortitude is designed specifically for those from a military background who might have found it for whatever reason difficult to access statutory support; it guarantees the provision of accommodation immediately through access to a freephone number or a website, allowing for people’s different circumstances. That important programme was implemented by the previous Member for Plymouth Moor View, Johnny Mercer. If the Government are to continue with it, that is welcome. If they are not, an effective, appropriate and equivalent alternative should be provided.
On the rough sleeping initiative, I ask the Government to continue to commit to the funding. The programme is under way and funded until spring next year. It has done a huge amount to support local authorities to bring about the reduction in rough sleeping from the 2017 peak. My ask to the Government is that they either commit to continue the policy of the previous Government or announce an equivalent programme that will bring about the same outcome: bearing down on rough sleeping.
Finally, I ask the Government to acknowledge that the rough sleeping snapshot shows an incredibly diverse and variable issue. The Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole local authority has also reported a significant increase in the number of rough sleepers. Members representing coastal towns, for example, have started to describe that issue, which was previously seen as more of an inner city, urban matter. We need to ensure that we have a good handle on what is happening.
When the Minister updates the snapshot and looks at the guidance provided to local authorities about how that snapshot is counted, she should ensure that we build on the effectiveness of the work since 2010 to understand for the first time what is happening with rough sleeping in our country, and try to make it more sophisticated. We need to better capture, for example, rough sleeping households that might include children and are often reluctant to make themselves visible at all to statutory authorities.
We need to ensure that women in particular, who may fall outside the snapshot, are captured more effectively in it, and that those under the age of 18 not travelling with adults in a family, but on their own, are better captured. That group are frequently sofa-surfing rather than sleeping rough, but they still have nowhere permanent and safe to go. They are currently not captured by the data because the system is simply not designed to do that. With those asks, I close for the Opposition.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for securing this important debate on tackling rough sleeping and all colleagues for their excellent contributions, their insight, their expertise and the examples they gave of the great work in their constituencies up and down the country. This is a challenge that we have to tackle collectively.
Homelessness and rough sleeping have skyrocketed in recent years. In England, as we have heard, homelessness is now at record levels. In March, more than 117,000 households, including more than 150,000 children, were living in temporary accommodation. What is more, last year the number of people sleeping rough in England increased for the second year in a row and was 27% higher than in the previous year. Nearly half of all people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn are in London and the south-east. In places such as the London Borough of Ealing, part of my hon. Friend’s constituency, the number of people sleeping rough on a single night increased by a staggering 121% between autumn 2022 and autumn 2023.
Those are not just numbers—behind them, as we have heard from hon. Members, are the stories of people devastated by homelessness and rough sleeping, of people in need who were not given the right mental health support, of vulnerable women sleeping rough on our streets, many of whom are survivors of domestic violence and abuse, and of families having to raise their children many miles from their schools and support networks. The scale of the challenge is huge. That, sadly, is what we have inherited from the previous Government. The scale of the response will need to be cross-departmental, which is not easy, but this Government are absolutely committed to and determined about addressing the high levels of homelessness and rough sleeping. We need to develop and deliver a set of long-term solutions, otherwise the danger is that we take a sticking-plaster approach, as we have seen in the past.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall pointed out, we must ensure that all parts of Government and the public sector work together with organisations in our local communities. We made it clear in our manifesto that we will develop a new cross-government strategy, working with Mayors and councils across the country to get us back on track to ending homelessness once and for all. The Deputy Prime Minister will chair a dedicated interministerial group, bringing together Ministers from across Government to develop the long-term strategy. I am passionate about tackling this terrible injustice and I want to work with colleagues throughout the House to do so, so I am delighted to see the level of interest and the expertise shared with me today and in other discussions. Working with Ministers in different Departments is vital to tackling the challenge. The Deputy Prime Minister and I are already engaging with ministerial colleagues across Government.
It is an absolute scandal that so many people live without a roof over their heads, and that families with children are living without a permanent place to call home. I see in my own constituency and on my visits to homelessness services the devastation that homelessness causes to families and individuals. It is unacceptable that the people affected do not have a safe and decent place to call home, which is why we have to take action to address the immediate challenges as we approach winter. The Government are providing support to local authorities, and I am grateful to the agencies and tiers of Government that are doing work on this issue.
Hon. Members have highlighted the consequences of homelessness and rough sleeping, including the scarring effects of the physical and mental health challenges that people face, and the long-term consequences for families, children and young people. Homelessness can happen not only to those who are materially disadvantaged, but to people from well-off backgrounds, who may be escaping abuse or leaving home as a result of family breakdown and much else. We all know stories of the impact on people who end up becoming rough sleepers. We have heard powerful stories of adversity caused by life events and shocks, which those who end up sleeping rough do not have control over.
There is an impact on children, who are often placed far from their communities in temporary accommodation. That disrupts their schooling and their life chances and opportunities. Too many children spend years in temporary accommodation at a point in their lives when they need space to play and develop, and nutritious food to eat; they need to thrive and access education. Mothers are living in hotel rooms with their children, often sharing a bed with their older children, and do not have access to cooking facilities. The knock-on effect on their health and wider needs is horrific.
The all-party parliamentary group on households in temporary accommodation reported the case of a mother who was placed in temporary accommodation with both her children, who have physical disabilities. She said:
“some places were filthy, with blood-stained walls...where the welcome pack stipulated ‘no weapons allowed’.”
That is completely unacceptable.
To turn that around, we have to tackle the root causes of homelessness and rough sleeping, not just the symptoms. We must put in place lasting solutions. That is why we are bringing together Ministers from across Government to develop the cross-departmental strategy. We are working in lockstep with councils, Mayors and the charity, community and voluntary sectors.
On the support that is being provided while we develop our strategy, the £547 million Rough Sleeping Initiative, which began in April 2022 and runs until March 2025, will continue to support up to 300 local authorities across England. That programme funds a range of vital services, from accommodation and Housing First and outreach staff, to specialist services, including support to tackle physical and mental health challenges, and for those who have left the prison system. The programme also includes training to widen employment opportunities, and provides immigration advice.
The rough sleeping drug and alcohol treatment grant funds targeted services to improve drug and alcohol treatment and provide support to people who sleep rough, or who are at risk of doing so and have substance misuse needs. We are working closely with local authorities to understand the local pressures, and will continue to support them.
Lee Pitcher
In Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme, we have amazing community groups that support, through relationships and connectivity, those who live with or are recovering from addiction to alcohol or drugs. As part of our futures strategy, is there an opportunity to learn from things like the Recovery Games, which happens every year in Hatfield? Tens of thousands of people come along who have formerly lived with drug and alcohol abuse, in the knowledge that there is a community out there who can support them and give them the determination and resilience to thrive.
Rushanara Ali
As I was saying earlier, I am keen to work with colleagues. I have already indicated to officials that as part of our work across Government, we should make sure that Members of Parliament have the opportunities to meet me and feed in their perspectives, insights and powerful examples of what works. Unless we draw on that expertise and the direct experience of those who have faced rough sleeping and homelessness, as well as the organisations working closely with them, we will not address the deep-rooted challenges. I look forward to work with colleagues.
Beyond rough sleeping, hon. Members will have seen from our manifesto our overall commitment to tackling homelessness, crime and domestic abuse, and improving mental health. Those issues can cause rough sleepers and others to experience multiple disadvantage, and are systemic. We must look at them to ensure we deal with the root causes. We need to ensure that services are co-ordinated and able to help people to address their overlapping and interconnected problems. Despite some people coming repeatedly into contact with service providers, and resources being invested, if the work is not joined up, it can often mean that an individual’s multiple needs are not addressed.
The changing futures programme was designed to support people experiencing multiple disadvantage, and it tested better ways of working by considering people’s experiences and obstacles as a whole. In Northumbria, our programme supported a man called Brian. His life spiralled into crisis after two traumatic events and, between 2008 and 2022, his needs escalated. Over those 14 years, he had 3,300 interactions with public services, but now, with the right help, he is turning his life around. That example goes to show that a lot of interventions and work can go in, but it can take a long time and be very challenging. We must look at how we streamline services, ensure that the interventions are effective and get value for money for the individual.
In September, I had the opportunity to visit one of the changing futures hubs in Greater Manchester. It was evident that a strong relationship is vital to ensuring that people receive the right support in the right time. The beneficiaries I spoke to emphasised how important trusted relationships with staff are to their recovery.
David Smith
I again declare an interest: until recently, the church I led had a changing futures hub based in it. It is a simple point, but would the Minister agree that Government services, excellent though they can be, must orientate not towards treating people as issues, but towards having the genuinely joined-up approach across Government, as we have declared will be our strategy? Ultimately, we need to see people as people, who sometimes have multiple and complex needs.
Rushanara Ali
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I absolutely agree with him. That is the spirit in which we want to work and learn from the models that have been effective. Let us not forget that when we look at the journeys of people who have ended up as rough sleepers or facing homelessness, they have been part of our communities. They have often worked in public services. I met a nurse who, after a series of shocks in her life, ended up sleeping rough. People can experience family breakdowns that lead to them ending up sleeping rough. We must ensure that services are focused on the individual needing that support and work around that. I know there are many great examples, including, of course, from the previous Labour Government, as was mentioned earlier, with the work that was done and the ambitious target that was set and achieved. We also need to learn from the work that was done during the pandemic and build on what worked. I am very pragmatic about how we approach this agenda because we are determined to take action, support people and tackle this challenge.
The example of the changing futures programme was striking because of exactly those points about multi-agency working, joining up, and focusing on the individual to give them confidence and give them that back-up by having people assigned to provide mentoring, support, coaching and the rest of it. I know that there are many great examples, including, of course, in our own respective constituencies, and I see, week in and week out, the heroic work that they are doing. It is vital that we continue to help and support them.
More widely, we are taking action to tackle the root causes of homelessness. We are delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation—recognising that the supply of housing is critical—with our commitment to building 1.5 million homes over the next five years. As has already been mentioned, which I am grateful for, we are also committed to abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions, preventing private renters from being exploited and discriminated against, and empowering people to challenge unreasonable increases.
On funding, £450 million of third-round funding has been made available for local authority housing funds to create 2,000 affordable homes for some of the most vulnerable families in society. That will support local authorities to obtain better quality temporary accommodation for homeless families, and will provide safe and suitable housing for those on the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme who have fled persecution.
I also wanted to point to a temporary accommodation project that I visited called the Peony Project, which is run by Depaul UK, a charity that works with adult women who are homeless. It was really impressive and inspiring to see the work that it is doing with vulnerable women. I know that there are many other powerful examples; I see that with the work that is being done by organisations in London and other parts of the country to support women. Projects such as those are critical in supporting vulnerable women, who face particular challenges as rough sleepers.
Amanda Martin
I speak as a former teacher: will the Minister ensure that, during those discussions and consultations, youth provision and the housing of youth is also taken into account?
Rushanara Ali
Absolutely. I hope very much that, as part of the strategy that we develop, we can bring in the different perspectives. And, of course, I mentioned from the outset the consequences on children and young people, children in care and accommodation for care leavers. This is a big agenda and we need to make sure that these elements are built in. I am delighted to see the level of enthusiasm among colleagues, with officials, as well as Government Ministers, including in the Department for Education, wanting to really focus on this agenda as part of the strategy.
A number of other points were made by colleagues in their powerful speeches, and I want to focus on those. I have already mentioned some of the interventions already announced by the Government on 11 September, through the Renters’ Rights Bill. As I mentioned, we will deliver on our commitment to ensuring that we transform the experience of private renters and provide them with better support and protection. The Government are clear that we also need to bring homes to a decent standard, and have extended Awaab’s law to achieve that. We know of many examples of people in poor quality accommodation, and there needs to be a step change in improving the quality of housing. The Government are also clear that discriminatory treatment on the part of anyone carrying out right-to-rent checks is unlawful. The Home Office has published codes of practice on what landlords are expected to do and how to avoid discrimination.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall raised important issues related to the asylum system. We have inherited a total failure across the asylum system from the previous Government. As the Home Secretary told the House on Monday, that included £700 million spent on a scheme that sent only four people to Rwanda voluntarily. We are determined to restore order to the asylum system, so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly.
We recognise the potential challenges that individuals granted asylum may face when they need to transfer to accommodation in mainstream wider society. We have to act to ensure that there is a smooth transition. I am grateful for the points my hon. Friend and others have made. I know local authorities and others in the sector have raised the notice period as a challenge in supporting people to move, once their status has been determined, to avoid homelessness.
Those are the points we need to take into account, working across government, to look at how best to address them, ensuring we do all we can to avoid people leaving the asylum system into homelessness. I have already started discussions with colleagues in the Home Office and will continue to do that.
Tom Hayes
Integrated care boards are expected to have a dedicated focus on reducing inequalities in access to and outcomes from health care in the populations they serve. Clearly, rough-sleeping people are among the health inclusion populations that integrated care boards are supposed to have a dedicated focus on. Will the Minister talk a little about the importance of integrated care boards in supporting the access of people sleeping rough to GPs and dentists?
Rushanara Ali
My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is why the involvement of the Department of Health and Social Care and other relevant Departments is key. Not least, because there are also issues around step-down care, when people leave the healthcare system, whether a hospital or other services.
To respond to the point on public funds, we are keen to ensure we work across government with the Home Office on those issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall will be aware that women form the majority of those being exploited in modern slavery, and they can end up sleeping rough. That is an important agenda. The Home Office has committed to hiring 200 additional staff to process cases. Thousands of vulnerable people will receive faster decisions on their cases, so that they can move forward, while making the process more efficient. Those new employees are being recruited and will be in post in early 2025. Modern slavery is a huge issue. I have seen that through my own work and visits to organisations that do inspirational work to protect those being exploited in that way.
On veterans, no one should leave the armed forces and have to sleep rough. I am grateful to hon. Members for raising that important issue. They will be aware that the Prime Minister made announcements at the Labour conference on our commitment to making changes, to provide the crucial support to ensure that veterans do not sleep rough.
The point has been made about domestic abuse, particularly in relation to women. We recognise that there are particular issues with violence against women who are sleeping rough and their experience is very different; and £9.2 million of funding is available for women-specific rough sleeping services. We will take action, as part of the cross-departmental strategy, to make sure that we continue to provide the appropriate support for women who have been sleeping rough.
To go back to the issue of veterans, more than £8.5 million is being spent on the reducing veteran homelessness programme that has been established. That is part of the agenda to provide support to veterans.
Supported housing is a big issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) mentioned. We are taking action, building on the work done in the previous Parliament to improve the quality of supported housing through the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which was supported by Members across the parties, including Conservatives. There is more to say and do on that; it is a critical area. Hon. Members will be aware that, according to the National Housing Federation, we will need to have a further 170,000 supported housing units to deal with the need by 2040. With an ageing population and the existing need, that is a huge agenda.
Hon. Members raised the important role that charities and community organisations play, and I commend them for the work they do. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the challenges in Northern Ireland and some of the great examples of work. We are keen to learn from the good practices in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, along with city regions in England, about how we tackle this issue.
On trauma, local authorities have made great strides to provide trauma-informed services, and we will look at what more we can do to support them.
In conclusion, this is a really important agenda. It requires comprehensive work across Government. It also requires the expertise and input of colleagues across the House and organisations on the frontline, who have done extraordinary work to protect and support people. I very much look forward to working with colleagues, as well as organisations out there, to tackle the deeply damaging problem of rough sleeping and homelessness.
Deirdre Costigan
Thank you, Sir Christopher, for your excellent chairing of this debate. I also thank the many hon. Members for their contributions.
I regret that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), completely failed to take responsibility for the more than doubling of rough sleeping under the previous Government. He seemed to think it was more important to count rough sleepers than to do anything about them, and he failed to say anything at all about the almost a quarter of a million social homes that were lost under that Government. However, I appreciate his support on looking again at the no recourse to public funds designation and the massive expansion of that, under the previous Government, to 3.3 million people.
I thank the Minister very much for her response. I am delighted that the new Government are focusing on social housing, renters’ rights, making work pay, and rebuilding the NHS. I very much appreciate the cross-departmental focus that this Minister is bringing to this issue, and particularly the leadership from the Deputy Prime Minister, who I think will bring the priority we need to rough sleeping.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of tackling rough sleeping.
Holiday and Second Homes Regulation: Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the regulation of holiday and second homes in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
I am delighted to have secured the opportunity to debate this motion. It is worth emphasising that this is about not the politics of envy, but the politics of social and housing justice. Many people are concerned about the proper provision, allocation and use of property, particularly residential properties, in those areas with a significant preponderance of holiday and second homes. The tourism industry in such areas is vital, but it is important to get the balance right in the usage of properties and how, and which, properties are used in the industry. In such areas there is often a big mismatch between earnings levels and house prices, given the large amount of wealth that wishes to invest in those properties, so we need to ensure a proper balance.
It is also important to understand the distinction between second and holiday homes. Often, in discussions and media commentary, the two are confused. They are two sides of a coin, but in regulatory terms they are significantly different. Some properties flip from one form of regulation to the other, from being second homes operating under the council tax regime to the holiday lettings sector, which operates in the business rates system.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. In previous Parliaments, he has proven himself to be an advocate for those who have such issues. Does he not agree that we need to make the most of tourist potential—as we seek to do in the incomparable Ards peninsula, which I represent—but a fundamental need is to have housing stock available for people to live and raise their children in, without being outpriced by the demand for second homes?
Andrew George
Indeed I do agree, and I am grateful for that intervention emphasising the points that I and many of those present wish to make. Although we are talking about Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly specifically, the subject clearly has wider impact across the country as a whole.
The context is important in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Over the past decade, more than half a billion— £500 million—of taxpayers’ money has been handed out to holiday home owners in Cornwall alone under a variety of different and variable tax incentives available to the holiday lettings sector, such as the small business rate relief system for furnished holiday lets. Perhaps most scandalously, because those properties were entitled to such relief, they were entitled to covid aid as well—£20,000 to each one of them, for no very good reason.
The latest figures in Cornwall show nearly 14,000 second homes and more than 11,000 properties registered as short-term lets, as far as businesses are concerned. The most recent trawl through the larger of the holiday letting websites showed nearly 22,000 active listings. That figure was recorded on an initial trawl, but it does not represent the full scale of holiday lets available.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
In the hon. Member’s discussions with the public, private and voluntary sectors, is there any higher imperative across the whole of Cornwall than dealing with the issue of holiday and second homes? In my experience, there is no higher priority than grasping the challenges we are facing, which impact not just coastal areas, but towns in the middle of Cornwall, because people move from the coast to inland towns.
Andrew George
The hon. Member is absolutely right. On the one hand, we are trying to address the desperate housing needs of local families. We have in excess of 20,000 families on the local housing register, and we know that is merely the tip of the iceberg—the need is a great deal more. On the other, a lot of local families are being evicted from their private rented accommodation to make way for yet more holiday lets. If we do not recognise that, we are failing to grasp the full picture, so he makes a strong point.
I acknowledge that this is an important part of the Cornish economy, but it is worth noting that when one looks for accommodation in places such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the hotel and guesthouse sector is just as—if not more—important, in the sense that it competes with the holiday letting sector without many of the incentives and benefits that the self-catering sector enjoys. For example, many operate above the VAT threshold, whereas those in the holiday letting sector, if they take it down to a single property, do not. Of course, they face many other regulations as well.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that second and holiday homes have a big impact on the hospitality sector, because businesses find it difficult to find accommodation for their staff, especially in places like Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly where there is limited accommodation, which then makes it difficult for them to run their businesses?
Andrew George
That is absolutely the case. As a visitor to the Isles of Scilly, my hon. Friend knows that that is a significant problem, because people cannot commute to the Isles of Scilly to work. It is difficult to commute to work for businesses providing those kinds of jobs in many of the coastal areas around Cornwall, and many people find themselves living in very informal settings, including caravans, because nothing else is available to them.
I will rapidly run through some of the regulations concerned: council tax; small business rate relief; the furnished holiday lettings scheme; holiday business registration, which the last Government proposed, and the planning use class changes. First, on council tax, going back to the pre-history where this all originated, when the Conservatives originally introduced the council tax system—what they called the community charge—they introduced a 50% council tax discount for second homes, because they said second home owners were not using all the services and therefore should not have to pay for them. That was the justification back in the 1990s.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Member mentioned some of the solutions. Would it not be a good idea to consider giving a suite of powers to a local authority so they could pick and choose which of those would suit that local authority and those particular circumstances?
Andrew George
I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention. Indeed, she anticipates something that I will come on to in a moment.
Going back to that pre-history, we managed to make that change under the previous Labour Government. Indeed, I remember well a debate in this Chamber on 9 February 2000 when I raised these issues almost a quarter of a century ago. Chris Mullin was the Under-Secretary of State responding to that debate. I had raised the issue of the unfairness of the 50% council tax system. I had been campaigning pretty much on my own for some time until that point. I made the point to the Under-Secretary that the responses I had received from Government had been complacent. I hope the Minister, who I am pleased to see in his place today, will consider the precedent set by Chris Mullin when, towards the end of his response, he said:
“The hon. Gentleman said that he had received a rather complacent response from the Government, and, indeed, I have here a rather complacent response, which I will not read out. I merely say that the issue was reviewed about a year ago, and at the time there were no sufficiently cogent reasons for a change. I am, however, willing to follow up the point in my Department. Perhaps we can discuss it later.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 112WH.]
Chris Mullin and I did discuss it later, and the policy was changed.
One of the lessons from that is that we can effect change through these debates if Ministers are receptive to the arguments we put forward. I hope the Minister will consider that. The last Conservative Government responded to pressure. A lot of us were arguing very strongly against the way second holiday homes were being treated, although I was outside Parliament during my nine-year sabbatical. They could not withstand that political pressure; they had to respond to it. Indeed, they announced the intention to increase the premium on second homes by up to 100%, to be imposed by local authorities.
Have the new Government carried out any kind of impact assessment on the change in council tax arrangements for second homes? Have they considered whether it would have a counterproductive impact, if it was not married with a suite of other regulatory changes? People might switch from council tax to business rates and use the small business rate system, for example, and pay nothing at all. They may take other options rather than paying council tax.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. To build on the point made by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), does he agree that we need local councils in Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and elsewhere to be given greater powers to ensure that second home owners pay properly towards mitigating the overall impact of those homes on local communities? This is not about banded council tax or business rates; it is about the wider implications, for which we need to perhaps consider changes.
Andrew George
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is not just the housing impacts; it is the wider societal and community impacts property investors have on local communities. I hope that when the council tax increase comes in, the Government will be clear on what local authorities can do. Will the council tax increase provide additional income that local authorities can use to address housing need, or will it result in a reduction in the central Government support grant to local authorities? Cornwall is staring down the barrel of a £100 million deficit, so that issue is very significant. A number of us are making the argument that council tax could go up by 200% or 300%, rather than 100%, in some areas because of the impact second homes are having, in order to adjust things as we believe they should be adjusted.
I have already referred to the impact small business rate relief has had. It has clearly been a major incentive for property investors to invest in holiday lets in areas such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Although the small business rate relief system is due to expire next year, could the Minister be clear about the Government’s plans for the future? There are no doubt pressures from that sector to reintroduce a similar rate relief. Although I do not think that is justified, for very obvious reasons, there are parts of the sector, particularly those holiday lets under an occupancy restriction, that could perhaps be included. We have had a campaign success, in that the last Conservative Government insisted on a 70-day use to justify the rate relief, but that needs to be reviewed.
I hope that the Government will be clear about how the registration scheme will be introduced, and I know that Cornwall council has offered to assist the Government in that. The council has expertise and is keen to introduce the registration system, but it needs to know how the scheme will work, what level of verification and inspection will be required by the council and what income can be raised. It will be an expensive process and Cornwall is offering to be a pilot area, if the Government wish.
Let me turn to the proposed planning use class change, which the Liberal Democrats have long argued should apply to all non-permanent occupancy residences. In other words, second homes and holiday lets should all be within one category, because we believe that the impact is the same on local communities, and therefore the change should apply not only to holiday lets but to second homes.
I hope that the new C5 use class for short-term rentals, which was announced by the previous Government, will be looked at with care, particularly the fact that it appears to fall under permitted development rights. In other words, local authorities specifically have to apply an article 4 direction to avoid a situation where someone converting a property to a holiday let simply announces it to the local authority and does not need to seek permission. I hope that the Minister will look at that issue. In the Liberal Democrats’ view, we also need to look at a sunset clause on those permissions; otherwise, there will be a perverse incentive for all of us to seek planning permission for that use class change in order to get a market advantage or an inflated price within the market. There should be a sunset clause, relating to the end of that usage, ownership or change within the Land Registry.
In conclusion, I will simply say that this is a very important issue in areas such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and—as we can see from today’s debate—in many other parts of the country. A suite of policies and changes need to be addressed by the Government, and many of us across all parties would be keen to work with them to ensure that the balance is absolutely right, and that local housing need is given the highest priority of all.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher, and it is a pleasure to respond to such an excellent speech by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). This is our first opportunity to work together because I was elected after his sabbatical commenced, and I am very much looking forward to working with him in the spirit with which he ended his speech. I know that there is a lot of interest in this area; I have spoken to my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) a lot over the years about this, and I know that there is cross-party interest. I always think working in the spirit of Chris Mullin is a very wise idea, and I think we will work in that spirit. The hon. Member for St Ives certainly will not see any complacency from me and my colleagues. I thank other Members who have contributed to the debate, and I will try to cover the points raised as I go.
From what the hon. Member for St Ives said, as well as the previous debate raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), it is clear that having a high concentration of second homes and/or short-term lets brings significant challenges to those communities—indeed, they may be the biggest challenge, as my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth said. Therefore, they are passionately advocating for effective regulation. I hope this is seen as a virtue, not least because we are a new Government, but those who follow the debates on this issue will know that we are actively considering the best course of action to help local authorities. I will talk about some of the things we are doing now, in the spirit of wanting to ensure that we go further.
I have not read the debate from 24 years ago. I confess to colleagues that as well as watching TV on a Saturday night, I will read old debates; I love the old transcripts. It is amazing to see how some debates evolve, and there is also always excellent content that perhaps one could pass off as their own, certainly if they went back far enough to not be detected—not that I would ever do that, of course, Sir Christopher.
This issue bumps up against a housing crisis with years of low house building, and rising interest rates that have made home ownership unattainable for many people. It is a core mission of this Government to address that challenge. The issue is more acute in places such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly and other coastal, rural and urban communities, where it is exacerbated by the proliferation of second homes and short-term lets. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are undoubtedly some of the most beautiful areas not just in the country but in the world, and are therefore popular choices for tourists. However, that has real consequences for local residents—whether it is high prices relative to earnings, people being pushed out of the choice of home ownership or having to leave their community, a stretched private rented sector with significant pressure on local economies, families and communities, or steadily growing housing waiting lists.
The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) talked about the self-defeating cycle. During the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, her colleague, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), spoke thoughtfully and passionately about the challenge of people going to a beautiful community for a week or weekend, and then going to the pub and not being able to get food because the chef has nowhere to live. These things will eventually impact the quality of the offering and therefore perhaps its attractiveness.
Steff Aquarone
This issue is a problem in many places, but even within places like North Norfolk, there is not even distribution. We have an overall figure of one in 10 homes being second homes, but some villages suffer up to 50%, which has an impact on temporary accommodation for the homeless. Does the Minister accept not just the circumstances but the urgency of the need for these measures?
Alex Norris
Yes, that is right, not least because once we get to that tipping point, the consequences can be profound and rapid. Of course we need action today, and I will speak about that.
One of the many important things that the hon. Member for St Ives said was that this is not about envy; he made a good point about balance. What his community and colleagues’ communities are asking for is a recognition of balance. They want to have a thriving tourist sector, but they need to be a place where people can live and where the consequences of those who make significant profits are shared fairly. It is about finding that balance and we have not got there yet, which relates to his point.
I want to talk about some of the issues and housing demand itself.
Andrew George
I just want to re-emphasise that many people who own second homes in Cornwall make a significant contribution to the local community, and indeed a financial contribution, because they recognise the impact of their privilege. As I say, this is not about envy, and a lot of those who own second and holiday homes are conscious of the impact.
Alex Norris
That is an excellently made point. I always wonder which of these debates attract people watching online; I suspect this might be one of them, and I hope that people have heard that message. We are talking about finding that fair balance, but I am sure we all agree that we have not found it yet.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
Although we can all agree that the politics of envy need not play into this discussion, and that we need a proper licensing regime for holiday lets as the furnished holiday lets tax regime ends, does the Minister also agree that we ought to ensure that the homes coming out of that regime do not end up flying under the radar, and in some cases operating unsafely? We need also to look at mitigation or transitional arrangements for that industry to ensure that bona fide holiday businesses in the sector can continue to operate and we do not produce the opposite effect from what is intended with these reforms.
Alex Norris
That is a thoughtful, well-made point. We must make sure that we have thought things through so that there are not unintended consequences, which could cause significant harm.
I will come to the furnished holiday lettings regime, but I want first to talk about the register, because the hon. Member for St Ives made his kind offer of help from Cornwall. I will certainly raise that with colleagues. The lack of data and the limitations on what the data can tell us can create challenges. We need that registration scheme. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is leading on that, but we are working with it on the process. The Department is working at pace to operationalise the scheme as soon as possible, but it is important first to ensure that it works. To update colleagues, it is currently in the initial phase of digital development, and that is enabling us to test and refine possible options for design and delivery. We know there is eagerness and we will update the House again as soon as possible, but that kind offer has been heard by me and officials.
It is sad to make a debate about beautiful parts of the world about tax, but I am afraid that tax is an important part of this. We have committed to end the furnished holiday lettings tax regime from April next year, which I think will be welcomed. Doing so will take away certain advantages that incentivise short-term, rather than long-term, letting; that is the right thing to do. As the hon. Member for St Ives said, the premium of up to 100% on second homes will come in from next April. It is a discretionary power, but I think local authorities will be keen to use it. The hon. Gentleman talked about going further; he might have to let us have a go with the scheme as it is first before we do that, but we are mindful that the premium is up to 300% in Wales, so we will consider the impact of that. That money can be spent on local services, to address the hon. Gentleman’s point.
We are conscious that colleagues in this place and beyond still think we could go further, and we are looking at the tax treatment and keeping it under review. We will consider the additional powers that local authorities may need, but given that we have novel powers in this space, it is handy to for them to be used.
Perran Moon
Does the Minister agree that the issue of second homes and holiday homes in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly is not uniformly faced across the entire south-west, and that the role of the local authority in dealing with this issue, if they have the powers to do so, is absolutely key?
Alex Norris
Yes, that is very much my world view. Colleagues will see from my time in the Department that my emphasis is on getting the right powers and resources to communities to use in the way in which they know will work best, because colleagues in this room are experts on Cornwall in a way that I am not. I see my responsibility as giving them the tools.
On the concern regarding attempts to game the heightened council tax payment, the system includes criteria on the number of days that the property has been let out for holidays, and we will monitor, and are mindful of, the functioning of those criteria.
The hon. Member for St Ives also asked about small business rate relief. He would not, in the spirit of our new working relationship, want the Chancellor to smite me just seven days before a fiscal event, so I am afraid he will have to wait. He also mentioned people being removed from their homes so that the property can be let out. That is why I am sure we will get significant cross-party support for the Renters’ Rights Bill, particularly for ending section 21, or no-fault, evictions. Finding that balance and giving renters that protection is important everywhere and clearly in his community.
We must also increase supply. The Government have made significant commitments by which we will be measured: on the building of new homes, on unblocking stalled housing, and on building new towns in the fullness of time. We want this country to be a place where people can own their home if they wish and where they do not have to leave their community to do so. I appeal for colleagues to work with their local authority, as I am sure they will, on their local plans to ensure that those plans are thoughtful, sensitive and written with an understanding of the community.
This is an exceptionally important issue, which is changing the character of, and creating challenges in, some of the most beautiful parts of our country and indeed the world. The Government want to work with those communities to find the right balance—that has been the theme of this debate. I have mentioned some of the things we are doing already, and we are committed to working with the hon. Member for St Ives and colleagues across this House.
Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
I did not wish to take time out of this short debate, but I remind Members of paragraph 30 of “Rules of behaviour and courtesies in the House of Commons”, which was issued by Mr Speaker:
“Men are expected to wear a tie”.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Water Companies: Regulation and Financial Stability
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the regulation and financial stability of water companies.
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. It is a real honour and privilege to have secured this debate on a matter of enormous importance to my constituents in Westmorland and Lonsdale and, quite clearly, to many around the room and beyond.
I wonder whether, in the aftermath of the 2019 general election, many pundits or politicians would have predicted that by the 2024 election water quality would be one of the top three doorstep issues, and a subject of discussion here and in the main Chamber within an hour or two of each other, and indeed within the same week as in the other place. That is exactly what has happened, and there are a number of reasons why.
First, leaving the EU meant that we needed to introduce our own legislation to replace what went before. In doing so, people, including MPs, looked under the bonnet, so to speak, for the first time and were horrified to see what was there: the sewage outflows into our rivers, lakes and coastal areas that had been long permitted.
Secondly, the last Government failed to take effective action to limit those outflows, allowing excessive dividends and bonuses on the one hand and inadequate infrastructure investment on the other.
Thirdly, the situation is objectively getting worse. Climate change, higher rainfall, inadequate regulation and failure to invest in infrastructure renewal means that 2023 saw a 54% increase in sewage spills compared to the year before.
Fourthly, and just as importantly, this issue has emerged because community campaigners across the country have resolved that they will not accept this appalling situation and have led the way in holding water companies, regulators and the Government to account. Organisations in our Westmorland communities, such as the Clean River Kent Campaign, Save Windermere and the Eden Rivers Trust—and many more, both in my communities and around the whole UK—have engaged in citizen science, heightened awareness and galvanised public opinion.
The Liberal Democrats have made this issue a priority, too. Water is so important to us that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) spent most of the general election campaigning about it—and, indeed, spent quite a lot of time in it! Having led my party through a previous general election, I know exactly how it feels to spend one’s campaign in deep water, and even, on occasions, up to one’s neck in poop.
I have the immense privilege of serving Westmorland and Lonsdale and being MP for, among others, Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston Water, Haweswater, Rydal Water, Grasmere, Brothers Water, the River Kent, the River Eden, the River Lune, many other rivers, and much of Morecambe bay. For us, water is deeply personal; it is precious to our biodiversity, our heritage and our tourism economy.
Failure to tackle the issue rightly raises passions, but the fault lies in the system. We have an industry financing model and a regulatory framework that are simply not fit for purpose. However, I do not want to demonise the people who work for water companies. Good, competent and decent people work for United Utilities in my community and for other companies across the rest of the country, on the ground and indeed underground. The same applies for those who work for the Environment Agency and Ofwat. They are good, hard-working and professional people working within a system that is badly broken, and that broken system has an appalling impact on communities in the lakes and dales of Westmorland.
I have a few figures to demonstrate the situation, courtesy of the Rivers Trust. Last year in Appleby, combined sewer outflows into the River Eden saw 46 spills. At Kirkby Stephen on the River Eden, there were 135 spills. At Staveley on the River Kent, there were 283 spills. At Tebay on the River Lune, there were 124 spills.
Tim Farron
In one second. At Greystoke on the River North Petteril, there were 146 spills. I could go on, but I will give way to my hon. Friend.
Sarah Dyke
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his excellent speech. Data from Thames Water shows that Glastonbury and Somerton was the 16th worst constituency in England and Wales for sewage overflows. Does my hon. Friend agree that the commission should consider establishing pollution baselines and reduction targets?
Tim Farron
I absolutely agree. That reminds us that, of the over 464,000-plus spills that took place in 2023, most were legal and permitted—and most of them should not have been. We juxtapose this failure with the reality of money leaking out of the sector in the form of dividends and bonuses. Since privatisation, £78 billion has been paid out in dividends and, in the last four years, we saw £62 million paid out to company executives in bonuses.
Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the right hon. Member for giving way. He has a very beautiful constituency in the Lake district and has campaigned strongly on this issue. Would he therefore welcome this Government’s commitment to cleaning up the water industry and that they called in the water bosses within the first week of the Labour Government to say that investment must be ringfenced for infrastructure and not spent on bonuses, and will he be supporting the Water (Special Measures) Bill?
Tim Farron
First of all, I am merely, and happily, an honourable Member, although it is very kind of the hon. Lady to call me “right honourable”. Secondly, we welcome many proposals in the Bill. We have already tabled many amendments in the House of Lords because although we think that the Bill is a step in the right direction, a lot more could be done. I will make more of that in a moment.
It is worth saying, as we are talking about bonuses, that although there was a 54% increase in spills between 2022 and 2023, it did not rain 54% more in 2023 than in 2022; there was no justification for that increase— and yet, the bonuses happen. I have never worked in an industry where bonuses were the norm, but my understanding is that they are paid for success, not as a commiseration for statistically proven and repeated failures.
It is easy to be angry about all this—I am, and maybe it is essential to be so—but it is just as important to be constructive and seek solutions. The depth, seriousness and complexity of this crisis means that the only answers that will work need to be radical and ambitious. Today’s announcement of a water commission, which will consider these things, is welcome, but also a little frustrating. Do we really need to spend the best part of a year stroking our chins and pondering, when what is needed is radical action now? With respect, most of us pretty much predicted the likelihood of a Labour Government two years ago. Did the victory strike them as a surprise? Why were they not ready with a plan to deliver much sooner than this?
I have a similar view, as I have just suggested, about the Water (Special Measures) Bill. It contains many positives, including criminal liability for CEOs responsible for severe environmental failure, but it does not amount to the radical structural transformation that is so obviously needed. The British people rightly believe that they voted for a far more ambitious plan to be urgently delivered. Indeed, those who voted Liberal Democrat absolutely did vote for that, so we are determined to keep our word and fight for that action.
It seems obvious how regulation could be made better. Water industry regulation is fragmented, with environmental regulation done by the Environment Agency and business regulation done by Ofwat. That just does not work.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
To my hon. Friend’s point about the need for a regulator with teeth, West Dorset saw 45,000 hours of sewage released into our rivers and beaches last year. The River Lim last year was declared “ecologically dead”. Does my hon. Friend have a view on whether the regulator should be able to impose fines on the water companies that reflect the damage they are doing to our natural environment?
Tim Farron
I completely agree, and I will answer that point more fully in a moment.
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the conflicting regulatory directives, which sit across all the different agencies that he has just referred to, are part of the problem and should be urgently addressed, without necessarily waiting for the long-awaited review?
Tim Farron
I thank hon. Members for both interventions. First, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello). One problem is that Ofwat has fined three—or maybe four—water companies in the last year or so to the tune of about £170 million, and has collected precisely zero pounds and zero pence of those fines.
Secondly, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths): absolutely—having regulators with conflicting responsibilities and rules is part of the problem. We have two inadequately resourced regulators with inadequate powers being played off against each other by a water industry that is far better resourced and able to run rings around very good people—but very harassed people—with the job of holding them to account.
The Liberal Democrats propose a unified and much more powerful regulator that we would call the clean water authority. That new authority would end the practice of monitoring being done by the water companies themselves—in other words, setting and marking their own homework. Let us put that right. Water companies should be charged the full cost of monitoring, but the monitoring itself should be carried out by an independent regulator so we can be sure that we are seeing the whole picture. Successive Conservative Ministers committed to changing that, but none actually did, so will the Minister commit the new Government to making that necessary change?
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. My constituents in Bicester and Woodstock are deeply concerned that Thames Water wants to hike its prices by more than 50% over the next five years. Just a month ago, I stood in the front rooms of constituents whose homes had been flooded with sewage because of the backing up of foul water drainage. Does my hon. Friend agree that the regulator he proposes, and which the Liberal Democrats support, should insist on and compel water companies to put performance before profit in their operations?
Tim Farron
Absolutely. That would be exactly the case at the heart of our community benefit model, which would be governed by a clean water authority. Profit would not be the overriding motive, and having the right people on board, including environmental campaigners in each area we are talking about, would keep the water companies honest and prevent the outrageous things mentioned by my hon. Friend.
The issue with the lack of reliability of data is key. It leaves us suspicious that the scandal could be even worse than we think. Just last week the BBC reporter that between 2021 and 2023, United Utilities illegally dumped sewage into Windermere for 165 hours, of which 118 hours were not reported to the Environment Agency. According to Environment Agency figures, United Utilities was the best-performing water authority in England in 2022 and, as a reward, it was allowed to raise £5.1 million extra by increasing bills, but—as we saw have now seen from last week’s revelations—United Utilities did not report hours and hours of illegal spill decisions made on the basis of inaccurate information.
When water companies mark their own homework, there are consequences; indeed, there are deep consequences for my communities in Westmorland. Some 7 million people visit Windermere every year, alongside the other 20 million who go to the lakes as a whole. I will state for the record that I happily swim in Windermere and have confidence in its safety in most places and at most times, but on behalf of our local community and especially our local hospitality and tourism businesses, I am deeply angry that the failure of the water company and its regulators to identify and solve these problems is not only beginning to damage our environment, but doing damage to the precious brand of the Lake district. That is why we need urgent, comprehensive, tangible and ambitious action, and why I am very grateful to my noble Friend Baroness Bakewell, who has tabled a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Water (Special Measures) Bill in the Lords to create a special status, with special protections, for Windermere.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
Esher and Walton is a river community. The Thames borders our constituency, and the River Mole, which is a chalk stream, runs through it. The River Mole is one of the most polluted rivers in the country, and a quarter of the sewage poured into is from my constituency. This amounts to a failure that impacts on our health, our environment and our democracy. Why our democracy? Because it means the public believe that our Government turn a blind eye to this outrage and the ransacking of our public utility, therefore neither representing them nor serving their interests. Does my hon. Friend agree that this must not be allowed to happen again, and that we—and the new Government in particular—must deliver clean rivers and get this right?
Tim Farron
I very much agree. Regulation is the key. Welsh Water is not for profit and Scottish Water is publicly owned, yet they both still face major problems with sewage discharges. As my hon. Friend is getting at, there is evidence that although ownership and finances matter, effective regulation is the key, and we simply do not have that at present.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I thank my constituency neighbour for giving way. Does he agree that as well as regulation, commissions and the initiative proposed by his party, there is a massive breakdown of trust within the industry? I spoke to one of the major investors in Thames Water and asked them to tell me the last time that the regulator, the Government and the company’s investors were in a room together, and that had never happened. Among all these initiatives, does the hon. Gentleman agree that getting people together to talk about their different equities and priorities, and how they deliver for the consumer, is also key?
Tim Farron
I agree. Although I also think an urgency is needed that many people who own water companies do not demonstrate, and that is why the Government need to lead—but I do think it is right that we get people together to make things significantly better.
Over the past 33 years, for every pound that water companies have spent on infrastructure and doing their job, 80p has drained away to finance debt and pay dividends. That is an appalling waste of billpayers’ money and water company assets. The separation of operating companies from parent companies, where the regulated operating company racks up huge debts to allow the unregulated parent company to pay huge dividends, has been a disgraceful scam. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) will say more about how that model has done such damage to the customers of Thames Water; suffice it for me to say that that model of ownership must cease. For the regulator to have stood idly by while that has happened is unacceptable, and for it not to step in as similar asset-stripping begins in other water companies is an abysmal dereliction of duty by it and the Government.
What is to be done? I just want our waterways to work and to be clean and safe. I am not convinced that renationalisation would be a good use of public money. It could mean putting taxpayers’ money into the pockets of those who have already made so much money out of them without a single extra penny going to improving infrastructure. We propose a radical move away from the current model: water companies should be community benefit corporations, ensuring that all revenue goes into keeping environmental standards higher and solving the long-term problems of our network. Given that 45% of all water company expenditure has gone on debt financing and dividends, that kind of ownership and governance reform should mean that there is more money available for infrastructure renewal.
Tim Farron
I will give way one final time, because I am running out of time.
Mr Amos
Will my hon. Friend congratulate the Friends of French Weir Park in Taunton for helping to get bathing water status for the River Tone? Is it not a scandal that after £4.25 billion was paid by Wessex Water in dividends, the situation may arise whereby that status is removed because the Environment Agency and the water company will not have enough money to invest in improving river quality over the next few years?
Tim Farron
I absolutely endorse the work of the campaigners in my hon. Friend’s community. Those on the banks of Coniston Water have done the same in our area, raising the bar and the standards under the current regulatory framework, inadequate though that is.
It is clear that Thames Water has more than met the threshold to be taken into special administration, and I suspect that we will hear more about that later. As for the other water companies, the current regulatory framework seems to leave them immune, despite their repeated failure to meet basic obligations to prevent sewage from being dumped in our lakes, rivers and coastal areas, and even on the streets of many of the villages in my communities.
Under the current rules, to remove the licences to operate of the other companies, the regulator would need to serve a 25-year notice. I am grateful to my noble Friend the Earl Russell for proposing a Liberal Democrat amendment in the Lords that would take that ludicrous notice period down to just six months for an environmental failure. I hope the Government will accept that amendment; if they do not, I will table it in the Commons. Our vision is that the new, more powerful clean water authority would have the power to strip all water companies of their licence to operate within six months and then migrate them to the community benefit model. We believe that it is time for the British people to get a clean water system under which they get what they paid for, their hard-earned money is not siphoned off by overseas merchant banks, and their precious waterways are not infected, outrageously, with untreated sewage.
I represent what I would argue is the most beautiful part of England. One of the reasons it is beautiful is that it is also the wettest bit of England. The failure of Governments of different kinds, and the regulators and water companies, to tackle storm overflows was always going to hit hardest in the places with the most storms. That is why we are frustrated that the Conservative Government, who denied that the problem existed, seem to have been replaced by a Government who have acknowledged the problem but have announced that they are going to ponder it very hard for a bit. It seems to me that the problem is very obvious, and therefore so are the solutions. I call on the Government to act ambitiously and comprehensively, and to do so now, without delay.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. Let me make a few housekeeping points. We will have an informal three-minute limit, but if colleagues intervene a lot and we are running out of time, I may have to make a formal ruling from the Chair, which will mean that any interventions add a minute to the time of the Member who is speaking.
Can I just say that when colleagues attend debates in this Chamber, or any other debate, they really should wait for the end of at least the first speech, having intervened, before leaving? The person who left the Chamber is not here to hear that ruling, but I offer it as a gentle reminder for other colleagues. Also, when Members make a speech, they should remain in the Chamber until they have heard two other speakers before leaving.
My final observation from this debate is that if colleagues come in—[Interruption.] Order. Forgive me, but the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Mr Amos) might want to hear this. If an hon. Member comes in halfway through the opening speech, they should not expect to intervene, having not heard at least the introduction and some of the preamble to the substantive points.
I hope that is helpful. I share it from a point of weakness, having myself made all of those mistakes and many more over many years. We will have an informal limit of three minutes to start. I call Grahame Morris.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Pritchard. It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on securing this important debate. There is no doubt about it: his constituency is blessed with some of the most stunning natural beauty in the world, never mind the country, from the fells and woodlands to the Lake district, a UNESCO world heritage site. The illegal sewage dumping at Windermere by United Utilities does not just shame our nation; it should be considered an ecological crime, and those responsible must be held accountable and face the full force of the law.
Although the Lake district is world renowned, I am equally proud to represent a hidden gem: the Durham heritage coast—or, to be precise, the east Durham heritage coast. Our magnificent magnesian limestone cliffs offer spectacular views of the North sea and in the summer the coastal grasslands are alive with rare wildflowers, creating a habitat for the Durham brown argus butterfly and other wildlife. That coastline, once scarred by industrial waste from coal, has been reclaimed by nature, yet now it faces a new threat: sewage.
Sewage overflows, far from being a rare event, have become routine in the water industry. In 2023, Northumbrian Water discharged raw sewage for over 280,000 hours in 46,492 incidents, including into the bathing waters off Seaham and Crimdon in my constituency. The environmental disaster is compounded by the economic abuse by water companies. Since privatisation in 1989, companies such as Northumbrian Water have neglected infrastructure while accumulating staggering debts to pay out dividends.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Ind)
My hon. Friend mentions his local water company. People in Leeds and Yorkshire feel ripped off, and it is no wonder, as Yorkshire Water has just announced its intention to increase prices by 35% by 2030. Does he agree that that is a compelling reason why the water companies should be brought into public ownership, so that they can put public service, the public good and environmental good ahead of the accumulation of profits for shareholders?
Grahame Morris
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Indeed, Northumbrian Water is not alone. Across the industry, financial mismanagement has gone hand in hand with environmental failure. Northumbrian Water alone has built up £3.5 billion in debt while paying out £4.1 billion in dividends to shareholders. That means that 19% of consumers’ bills in my region go towards servicing debt.
I welcome the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Bill. Its provisions to block bonus payments for executives, require annual pollution reduction plans, and improve transparency on sewage discharges are crucial. The tougher penalties, including the threat of imprisonment for those impeding investigations, are a necessary step. But while we are moving in the right direction, I fear that will not be enough to address the scale of the problem. Yes, the Bill strengthens regulation, and it is certainly more robust than anything proposed by the Opposition now or when they were in government, but will it solve the underlying issues? I suspect that the answer to that one is no.
We cannot ignore the fact that the public are already paying the price for this industry’s failure. We pay through higher bills, polluted waters and an industry debt that now exceeds £60 billion. When the sector finally collapses under the weight of its own excesses, it will be the taxpayer who is left to pick up the pieces. I support the public ownership proposals. I think the costs are vastly exaggerated in the context of the scale of the challenge and the liability.
We must take steps now to fix the debt, pollution and infrastructure crises in the water industry, so we need to go further than is being proposed. Blocking executive bonuses is not enough. Without determined measures, the consequences will be higher bills for consumers, more money lost to debt repayment, and an industry that continues to prioritise profit over public good.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Pritchard.
Water is fundamentally a human right; everyone needs to use water at some point. The water companies, all now in private ownership, are responsible not just for the supply of water but, jointly with the Environment Agency, for river basin management, flooding and many other things. The private ownership of water since 1989 has resulted in £78 billion paid in dividends, mostly to foreign-owned companies, many of which do not pay tax in this country. It has resulted in a £60 billion debt collectively and £9.1 million has been paid to chief executives in utterly excessive salaries.
The argument for privatisation was that there would be more investment, and the water would be cheaper and the service more efficient. Well, that has worked out well, hasn’t it? We have massive levels of sewage discharged into rivers and the sea, lower-quality water all over, and less and less investment in many areas.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Ind)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the 285,000 people who signed the petition about renationalisation that I helped to present to Downing Street a couple of years ago, particularly those in the beautiful coastal town of Whitstable, have been badly let down by Southern Water on a daily basis?
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. She put forward an excellent initiative at that time, calling for public ownership of the water industry. I will conclude my short remarks in a couple of minutes by addressing the question of public ownership.
I now want to refer to Thames Water, which covers my constituency and much of London and the south-east. It is one of the biggest water companies, the most indebted and the most inefficient, and it would be interesting to know how it survives. Two years ago, when even the Financial Times called for public ownership of the water industry and said that it was the norm around the world, I am sure it was Thames Water it had in mind.
Thames Water on its own has racked up £14 billion of debt. In 1989, on privatisation, its debt was zero. It has paid out £2.7 billion in dividends and £37 million in what it euphemistically calls internal dividends to its parent companies. The company could require as much as £10 billion to get its infrastructure up to regulatory standards. That would be compounded by the interest payments on its massive debt pile. My constituents suffer flooding and endless traffic disruption because of the lack of maintenance over many years. There have to be endless replacements of short sections of pipework, because there has been no proper planned investment programme.
My call is simply this. I am sure that the Government’s proposed regulatory regime would be better than what we have at present, and it is good that the Secretary of State acknowledges the issues facing the water companies and all of us as consumers around the country. However, I simply say that once more we are into a debate between a regulator and the water companies, who this morning claimed they could not invest because of the regulatory framework.
I think we should go back to the issue of public ownership. I have no idea where the figures given by the Secretary of State today came from; perhaps he can explain that. The reality is that under public ownership Parliament would decide the share value and the amount of compensation paid, which would have to take into account the inefficiency and waste of the companies, and people would be compensated with Government bonds at a fixed rate of interest. That would give us public ownership and control. I do not want an old-style nationalisation; I want community nationalisation.
I will finish by saying that were local authorities, the workers in the industry, local communities and the Environment Agency jointly involved in how the water companies are run, their performance would be a lot better than it is with distant shareholders raking in massive profits from our water supply.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship today, Mr Pritchard.
I genuinely thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this debate. The previous Conservative Government weakened water regulation, let our rivers fill with toxic pollution and allowed companies to pay themselves with huge bonuses while household bills soared, which was shameful.
Many constituents in York Outer are disgusted by that situation. We have the beautiful Rivers Foss and Ouse flowing through our constituency. To watch both of those rivers being degraded is not only unforgivable but bewildering. The mismanagement and lack of regulation by the previous Conservative Government have created a plethora of issues.
I have had constituents writing to me since I was elected about the stench of sewage seeping into Rawcliffe, water pump failures near Haxby and concerns about flood alleviation in Fulford. Although the Tories are no longer in power, those issues are not water under a bridge; they still need to be fixed.
That is why today’s statement by the Secretary of State on the independent water commission is a great first step, and I am also delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister is tackling these issues at pace. At this early stage, my main suggestion is that we must take lessons from other regulated industries and regulatory failures within them when designing the future water regulation system.
When I was at the Bank of England, Sir Jon Cunliffe was highly regarded, so I warmly encourage him to look at the areas where there has been disjoin in the financial services regulator, and we should move to a centralised, smart regulator. For me, that involves looking at scrapping and replacing Ofwat. Perhaps Sir Jon could publish an interim view on that suggestion.
Although it is great to see so many people engaged in today’s debate, it is still frustrating to see that we are here. It is clear to me that the Government are turning the tide against chronic underinvestment in our water industries. Water companies must be regulated properly and the regulators must have the power to regulate the sector adequately, which must be the goal. If we can make that happen after 14 years of Tory failure, we will soon be sailing in smooth waters.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing today’s timely debate, on a day when the Secretary of State has made a statement in the House to announce an independent water commission. As I said during his statement earlier, the promise to fundamentally transform our water industry and clean up our waterways for good is welcomed and celebrated across the House. Our lakes and rivers are national treasures, yet water company executives have been degrading these resources to protect their own profits and shareholders, even while the companies themselves are drowning in debt.
The water system in England is at breaking point and water companies are not being held accountable for one of the worst environmental crises in the UK—the dumping of sewage into our rivers and lakes, and along our coastline. My hon. Friend said in his opening remarks that Ofwat has fined four or five water companies billions of pounds, but currently it has not collected a penny.
The damage done by these water companies is nowhere more apparent than in Chichester harbour, which is a site of special scientific interest and a national landscape but it is in unfavourable and declining condition, and desperately needs ambition to protect it.
The British public pay those companies not only to provide us with clean water but to ensure that there are safe and clean processes for waste water and sewage, while protecting our environment. Storm overflows are supposed to be exceptional, not the norm. During my election campaign, on the doorsteps I saw a real passion among constituents for addressing the problem of water pollution and sewage dumping. It has been a pleasure to meet passionate environmental campaigners across the constituency, such as Friends of the Ems and the group carrying out citizen science on the River Lavant. The Ems and the Lavant are both precious chalk streams. The UK is lagging far behind other European countries in water quality and the safety of our waterways, and our polluted rivers and lakes are becoming an anomaly.
At the time of privatisation, water companies were debt-free. However, over the past 35 years, as inflation and interest rates have risen, the debt burden on UK water companies, including Southern Water which serves my constituency, has grown significantly, in particular because much of that debt is linked to the retail price index. Borrowings across the sector now total about £68 billion and yet, during the same period, water companies have paid at least £78 billion in dividends to shareholders.
Earlier this month, an investor presentation posted on Southern Water’s website revealed that the company is seeking to borrow up to £4 billion from investors to offset £3.8 billion in debt over the next five years. In addition, the company has proposed a staggering 73% increase in household bills over the same period. To mitigate its debt, Southern Water is planning large-scale investment in the Havant Thicket reservoir, which would introduce recycled waste water into a spring-fed drinking water supply through a process called reverse osmosis. The process has never been used for drinking water in the UK before, and is typically found in severely water-stressed landlocked countries. Although the south-east has been designated officially as water-stressed, and we need to see reform to reduce abstraction on rivers such as the Ems, smaller and more environmentally sustainable solutions are available, but they are not being explored, because they cannot be offset against the company’s debt.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
On the water-stress levels in Southern Water—our constituencies share the same water provider—it is worth acknowledging that a fifth of water is lost to leaks. We have just heard that Southern Water is in discussions with a company in Norway potentially to provide water to be tanked over here from Norwegian fjords to deal with future droughts and water shortages. Over a long period, that is an absolute failure to plan, to invest in infrastructure and to provide reservoirs such as the one we are speaking about. It is clearly a failure of regulation as well.
Jess Brown-Fuller
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that we should invest in fixing our existing infrastructure, rather than shipping over large quantities of water, which I am sure is not financially stable.
A company outside the water industry operating in that manner would not be able to get away with it, so why can Southern Water and other water companies? The development of the Havant Thicket would affect not only my constituency, but 18 constituencies across the south of England. Furthermore, it will create a national blueprint for all water companies. The project will cost a staggering £1.2 billion, without any comparable investment in waste-water management, which is sorely needed.
To be clear, I am not opposed to new reservoirs. Portsmouth Water is bringing forward the first reservoir that this country has delivered in 30 years. While public confidence in water companies and the methodology of investment is at an all-time low, however, it is hard to have faith that that company will deliver the project without an impact on residents’ water bills in future. Southern Water’s plan to invest in a huge experimental project as a way to offset its debt is not a sustainable financial model.
Few scandals illustrate the failure of the previous Government as clearly as the state of our rivers and seas. With 3.6 million hours of sewage dumping recorded last year, the system is rigged. It is time to transform this irresponsible industry into an accountable service that truly delivers for the public and the environment.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
We have talked about how disgusting, and what a public health issue it is to have sewage and other pollution pouring into our rivers, but I want to touch on the ecological damage. In Winchester, a chalk stream, the River Itchen, goes right through the heart of the city. Chalk streams are very rare, with fewer than 210 of them in the entire world, and 85% of them are in southern England. Many of them are designated sites of special scientific interest because their ecosystems and biodiversity are unique. I found out recently that the type of Atlantic salmon found in southern chalk streams are genetically distinct from Atlantic salmon in the rest of the world. Chalk streams have taken millions of years to form, and they can be destroyed in just a few decades by companies that are either breaking the law or working within the law but, because there is such a lack of regulation, causing great environmental damage. That is bad for public health, consumers, prices and the environment.
In my constituency, it is frustratingly clear that Southern Water, which is 82% owned by an Australian investment firm, has been prioritising profit over pollution prevention. It is that simple.
Jeremy Corbyn
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the problem is exacerbated by over-abstraction upstream, particularly in chalk streams, which to survive environmentally need water flowing through them throughout the year? Many chalk streams are completely dry for some summer months, and that destroys all fish and all ecological sustainability.
Dr Chambers
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point: it is not simply pollution, but the over-extraction of those environments that is horrendously damaging to chalk streams.
The Liberal Democrats have long been calling for reform to water companies so that they have environmental experts on their boards to ensure they meet their minimum environmental standards before they are allowed to make profits. Putting social and environmental good at the heart of what they do is absolutely necessary to ensure that we are not still talking about how we are struggling with pollution, leaks and a lack of investment in 30 years’ time.
Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Mr Pritchard. Protecting our natural environment is one of the top priorities for probably all our constituents.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on securing this debate.
My constituency of Wokingham contains the Thames, the Loddon, the Emm brook and the Ashridge stream—rivers of varying size but equal beauty. The basic role of a Government is to keep their citizens safe and healthy, and protect the environment for future generations, yet the previous Government’s deference to corporate greed ahead of our waterways will remain a stain on their legacy for a long time.
The Rivers Trust put it clearly in its research:
“No single stretch of river”
in Wokingham
“is in good overall health.”
That is a real scandal.
The Conservatives utterly failed: they were unable to get a grip of this issue and allowed the scandal to persist. They provided no accountability or scrutiny to Ofwat—a regulator that has simply not held the worst polluters to account. Meanwhile, as my hon. Friend said, the water companies have paid out dividends of £78 billion, and yet our rivers are in the worst state they have been in for many years.
I welcome the announcement earlier today of a review of water companies, but I remind the Minister that voters in Wokingham and across the country voted for change on 4 July. The review must reflect that; it cannot be business as usual for water companies. My constituents and many others across the country will not accept massively increased bills to bail out water companies that are paying massive dividends to their shareholders.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this debate on something I know matters to a great many of my own constituents in Chesham and Amersham. The appalling examples of sewage-filled floodwater blighting lives in my constituency are part of a much bigger picture: a water industry that is not held to account by a regulatory system that is not fit for purpose. I therefore welcome today’s announcement of the independent water commission.
As a report published last year by Surfers Against Sewage states, part of the problem is the “severe budget cuts” that regulators have experienced, which have meant that even reported pollution events go uninvestigated and unpunished. Indeed, in 2022, the Environment Agency instructed its staff to ignore reports of low-impact pollution events as it did not have sufficient resources to investigate them. To the extent that that is the case, we get the environment we pay for—but that is only part of the problem. A report published by the previous Government in May this year makes clear that regulators must avoid drifting into unnecessary risk aversion. Internal culture should challenge excessive risk aversion, not promote it. One former employee of the Environment Agency described to me how some of those the agency regulates see it as a toothless tiger.
I suggest to the Minister that fixing the regulatory framework is not the only area worth looking at. There is also a need to make sure we are not creating more problems with our sewage system in the future. At present, our water companies are not statutory consultees on planning applications. Instead of asking whether the existing sewage infrastructure can support new developments, the right to connect means that water companies are required to make it work after the fact. That is surely nonsensical and something the Government can address as part of the work they are currently doing on the national planning policy framework.
I will close by thanking the many campaigners in Chesham and Amersham, including the River Chess Association, the Chiltern Society, Misbourne River Action and others, that have worked tirelessly on this issue. I pay particular tribute to local parish councillors who have found themselves at the forefront of these issues, becoming citizen scientists and experts in a way they never expected. I have been so impressed by their diligence and their dedication to doing their best to help their residents. However, they are volunteers committed to their environment and their communities; they should not be responsible for holding the water industry to account. That is what our regulators are for.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on securing this critically important debate. In my Oxfordshire constituency of Didcot and Wantage, over 90% of water infrastructure is managed by Thames Water—a de facto monopoly. The constituency impacts of the current arrangements are stark. In south Oxfordshire, sewage from storm overflows into water bodies exceeded 11,000 hours in 2023 during 810 spills. Recently, in East Hanney and Didcot, overwhelmed sewage pumps have led to flooding, including with contaminated water.
Thames Water was the worst performer in the country for leaks, leaking 570.4 megalitres a day last year, or more than 200 billion litres in total, equivalent to just under a quarter of its entire water supply. Analysts estimate that Thames Water’s current debt amounts to about 80% of the value of its business, making it the most heavily indebted of the water companies in England and Wales. At the same time, Thames Water has said that its bills need to rise by 59% between 2025 and 2030 or it will not be able to recover from its financial crisis.
It is in that context that proposals for a reservoir in my constituency are causing concern to local residents. Even putting to one side the fact that many are sceptical of the case for the reservoir, there is concern about whether Thames Water can be trusted to competently programme, manage and deliver what would be the second largest reservoir in the country and one of the largest civil engineering projects in the land.
Mr Charters
Since 2020, £41 million in executive bonuses has been paid out by companies such as Thames Water. That is a disgrace that the Conservatives allowed to happen. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that change is needed to stop companies such as Thames Water paying such ridiculous bonuses when their house is clearly not in order?
Olly Glover
The hon. Member has anticipated the next line of my remarks: that it is time for change on bonuses and many other aspects of the current workings of the water industry.
I am pleased to see the Government initiating today an independent review of the water sector, including the question of regulation, but I hope that they will also consider some bold Liberal Democrat ideas, such as setting legally binding targets to prevent sewage dumping in bathing waters and highly sensitive nature sites by 2030, giving local environmental groups a place on water company boards, and introducing a single social tariff for water bills to help to eliminate water poverty in the course of this and future Parliaments.
Thank you, Mr Pritchard, for the opportunity to speak. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. Clean water is a fundamental human right, so the exploitation by our water companies at the expense of the British taxpayer is deeply offensive to me and to my South Cotswolds constituents. It adds insult to injury that the same companies now expect taxpayers to foot the bill for improvements they should have prioritised over CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends. Since privatisation, shareholders have extracted a staggering £85 billion from the water and sewerage system in England and Wales. In my constituency, where the River Thames rises, Thames Water pumped sewage into the River Coln in Fairford for 3,391 hours—the equivalent of four and a half months—in 2022. Incidents that are meant to be exceptional happen on average more than three times a week. Dog walkers no longer feel comfortable walking their dogs along the riverbanks after one dog jumped into the water, got sick and died two days later. Across the constituency, sewage is flooding into houses and gardens and schools. That is simply unacceptable.
We need an ambitious, long-term, financially and environmentally responsible vision for our water industry as an essential—literally vital—public good, and that vision must be orientated towards good, clean water. Back in 2013, I was campaigning for the London super-sewer, paddling around under Putney bridge and looking appalled at the tampons and other solid waste coming out of an overflow under the bridge. It has taken more than 11 years to open even the first section of the London super-sewer. The best time to fix this crisis would have been 30 years ago, but the second-best time is now.
I am not letting water companies off the hook for a moment, but I would like to say that the vision must embody a holistic approach to water management. Housing developers can capture rainwater to reduce run-off. Farmers have a key role to play in keeping agricultural contaminants out of our rivers. We need action to stop forever chemicals from plastics and pharmaceuticals getting into our rivers and streams.
In short, we need to stop the incessant pollution of our natural world. Water connects everything. Clean water nourishes all life, while dirty water pollutes everything it touches—from otters, kingfishers and crayfish to our pets and ourselves. We need to put nature back at the heart of our decision making, as called for in my Climate and Nature Bill. The Liberal Democrats propose transforming water companies into public benefit companies—no more excessive bonuses and no more prioritising shareholders over customers. We would also like to see local environmental groups given a voice on water company boards. Some countries have even granted legal personhood to rivers, including the Whanganui river in New Zealand, the Atrato river in Colombia and the Magpie river in Canada. Potentially, we could have a person representing the river itself sitting on a corporate board.
The time is now to take bold steps to improve water company governance, invest in our infrastructure and protect our precious water resources for generations to come.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. First, I thank my friend the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for tabling this debate. I think it is fair to start my contribution by also welcoming the Labour Government’s statement today in the House. It is certainly a step in the right direction, and we should welcome it and the objectives behind it. The Minister will be glad to know that I am going to give a Northern Ireland perspective. She has no responsibility for Northern Ireland, so I require no response from her, but I make the point anyway, because what has happened in Northern Ireland is very similar to what is happening to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, and I want to make that comment for Hansard.
In Northern Ireland, we have a very different system. Northern Ireland Water is actually a Government-owned company. Though we have a different system, we have the same issues. The Government-owned company says it does not have enough funding and needs a massive uplift to function. Measuring the funding needed to bring things up to scratch feels like turning a tap on—it just seems to run forever and we are never sure we can get to the end of it.
Where are we with this issue in Northern Ireland, and why is it important that we in Northern Ireland unfortunately share the problems that have been identified in this debate? The water and sewerage network in Northern Ireland needs some £1.2 billion in capital investment; that cannot be achieved in the short term. We have approached the Government—though that is a debate for a different day—on Barnett consequentials to ensure that we get the same funding equation as they do in Wales, for example, which would give us extra money to identify the issues. The Department for Infrastructure has indicated that some half a billion pounds has to be found for 2024-25. That is a big target.
The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale underlined the issues. Northern Ireland Water reported a £185 million shortfall in funding. Some 19,000 new properties, or nearly 50% of all applications, have not been connected to the main sewer system, which means that development companies and housing associations have to find the money to do that themselves.
What really annoys me is the large bonuses and the dividends for shareholders. I believe them to be obscene and immoral. The failures of water companies to deliver a reasonable service must be highlighted in this debate. It is important that we understand the nature of this debate and how it affects devolved matters, for different reasons and with different accountability.
The news that United Utilities repeatedly dumped millions of litres of raw sewage into Lake Windermere illegally is shocking, yet we are not really surprised. Only 31% of surface waters in Northern Ireland are classed as having good ecological status. That may be better than in some parts of England, but it is still not good enough.
We must tighten controls, but we must also try to ensure better value for money, as it is clear that the way things are in our water services throughout this great nation cannot continue much longer. When the Minister responds, I ask her for cognisance of the need for a UK-wide solution that includes the devolved nations. When there is crisis and that crisis is developing, it is important to find a solution. We take our clean water for granted in the UK, but we may not be able to do so for much longer unless we give this issue the priority it deserves. That must start today, in this House.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
As the Opposition Front Benchers will know, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson and shadow Minister will get five minutes each and the Minister will get 10 minutes. The debate is due to finish at 4 pm; we were going to put a time limit on speeches, but some Members have left this debate early and some did not speak as long as expected. If Members who have not spoken want to make a brief intervention, you can do so over the next few minutes, but I ask you to please be brief. I think that is fair, given that I hinted at a voluntary time limit and that the debate has been well attended.
Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
I am honoured to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for letting me wrap up this debate, and I thank all the speakers who spoke so well and eloquently about the places they represent and love.
I am the Liberal Democrat MP for Witney and a West Oxfordshire district councillor. Our area is a ground zero for pollution. The Windrush flows through Witney, the Evenlode flows through to the north, and Shill brook flows to the south. All flow into the Thames. All are repeatedly and heavily polluted. I work closely with Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, one of the best advocacy groups in the country, to get to grips with this problem. I have learned a lot from that group and from many of the other parish councils and community groups that work so hard locally, and I am grateful for everything they have taught me.
I will focus on financial stability, or the lack thereof, and on Thames Water, as it is the largest and the most unstable of the water companies. First, I will give some context. Thames Water has six holding companies stacked one on top of the other. Some of them are offshore; some are onshore. The top holding company, Kemble, has £1.2 billion of operating cash flows—that is, money coming in—and £18 billion of debt. Roughly £13 billion of the £18 billion is held by class-A bondholders, and Members will hear a bit more about them. This debt is expensive, and more than a third of all our customers’ bills are being spent on servicing the debt.
In July, S&P and Moody’s cut the credit ratings of the class-A bonds to junk and two notches below that. That action put the company in breach of its operating licence. Ofwat waved some limp celery at Thames Water and did very little. That opens up moral hazard because it means that other water companies and other companies in regulated sectors can do the same. On 5 August, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), stated in reply to my written question that Thames Water’s financial position “remains stable”.
In early September, it became public that various funds, including the notorious Elliott Management, which pillaged Argentina and Peru, had bought large amounts of class-A debt at very discounted prices. On 13 September, the Under-Secretary of State replied to me again, saying that Thames Water “remains stable”. She noted that special administration was an option if any of three conditions were met, with one of the conditions being if
“the company is or is likely to be unable to pay its debts”
—pretty simple. On 26 September, both S&P and Moody’s slashed Thames Water’s class-A debt again. It was already two notches below junk; this time it went down a further five and six notches respectively. The words “death spiral” spring to mind.
A week ago, it was reported that Ofwat is meeting a creditor group representing the class-A shareholders to discuss restructuring the company’s debt. The condition that
“the company is or is likely to be unable to pay its debts”
has most definitely been met. The company’s cash burn is faster than previously forecast, and the company as is will likely run out of cash by December. Its class-A bondholders are desperate to avoid special administration as that would crystallise their loss and result in much of their debt being written off. However, the creditors are now negotiating with Ofwat to inject a relatively small amount of new capital in, cram down the other debt classes, resulting in perhaps a 20% to 30% debt write-down, flip some of their debt into equity, and then sell the company on to another buyer within 12 months, making a huge profit.
If the Government allow such a restructuring, they are effectively rescuing a group of lenders, including vulture funds, not the company. Instead of the bondholders having to write off billions of pounds of worthless debts, the Government will be giving ownership of the company to the vulture funds, which will then flip it at a profit. Such a route is neither sensible nor equitable for the company, the Government or our country. It is a lazy, short-term fix from which the Government can repent at leisure over the course of the parliamentary term. No one will be fooled by the Government claiming that in the short-term the market has fixed it, and no one should be panicked by bankers claiming Armageddon but, in reality, just driving their own agenda.
The special administration regime was set up for exactly this scenario. The Government should make use of it and place Thames Water into special administration, allowing for an orderly restructuring and reorganisation resulting in the sale of a clean company on the open market; whether that is nationally, mutually or privately is, of course, up to the Government, but that will allow a clean company to be in place. To be investable again as a sector, we need a clear regulatory framework that is transparent and enforceable against, where companies that make bad decisions know they will have to take the consequences. That will allow investors to fund water companies’ balance sheets so they can handle the very substantial investment spend that will be required over the next 10 years.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on securing this important debate.
As has been acknowledged by all hon. Members, the UK’s waterways are the country’s lifeblood. When they are in a good condition, it is beneficial not only for the environment, but for public health. It is also crucial for biodiversity and local communities that rely on the waterways—not only for recreational purposes, but for tourism.
The last Government were determined to take a positive stance on improving water quality. To do that, however, we needed to understand the situation that water companies were in. That is why we specifically focused on increasing the monitoring of outfalls from the start, taking a monitoring rate for storm overflows from 7% in 2010 under the last Labour Administration to 100% at the end of 2023. In March 2024, we fast-tracked £180 million of investment that had to be allocated within the last financial year by water companies, with an expected reduction of 8,000 sewage spills in English waterways. We also linked shareholder dividends to environmental performance, quadrupled water company inspections and launched a whistleblowing portal for water company workers to report breaches.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
Does the shadow Minister not feel embarrassed that it was his Government who beggared the Environment Agency and weakened regulators to the point where we had sewage flowing into rivers such as the Tyne and the Coquet in Northumberland? Does he not feel a little bit of guilt about trumpeting his Government’s apparently positive record?
Robbie Moore
I thank the hon. Gentleman for joining the debate; I see that he came in right at the last minute just to make that contribution.
My answer is no. When we were in Government, we absolutely wanted to embolden the regulators with as much power as they required, which is why we specifically linked dividends to environmental performance so that Ofwat had more power to hold water companies to account. Not only that: we increased the amount of funding allocated to the Environment Agency and empowered the whistleblowing portal so that employees within water companies, or indeed within the EA or any of the other regulators, could make their concerns known. In that way, we as the Government—and now the incoming Government—could make proper progress and ensure that proper, positive change was implemented to improve water quality.
The financial stability of the water companies is, of course, a serious issue, and that affects our constituents through not only potential price increases, but performance-related issues. Sensibly, Ofwat expects water companies to maintain a level of financial headroom to manage short-term volatility and shocks to their financial structures, and to meet their obligations and commitments, which are set both by Government and internally by the regulator. Above all else, however, consumers must be protected so I welcome the fact that Ofwat strengthened its powers to improve financial resilience. That includes stopping water companies from paying dividends when financial resilience is also at risk.
The new Government have said that cleaning up England’s rivers, lakes and seas is a priority and to achieve that the Water (Special Measures) Bill has been introduced through the House of Lords into Parliament. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised that that is effectively a reworked version of the policies introduced under the last Government. In the Bill, the Government pledge to introduce new powers to block bonuses for executives of water companies that pollute our waterways —something announced by the last Conservative Government. However, the powers are not quite the promises constantly regurgitated by the Labour party when they were out on the doorstep— they were telling many of their voters that water company bosses would end up “in the dock” if their water company had been falling foul of environmental permitting obligations. The Water (Special Measures) Bill simply does not achieve that. By introducing the Bill, the new Government have frustrated not only campaigners but investors who want to invest in the sector.
Opposition Members spent many a day out on the doorstep also promising that they would take swift and bold action, but as we have seen from today’s announcement of a new commission, a new review and a new taskforce, the Government are just throwing the hard decisions into the long grass and simply kicking the can down the road.
Mr Charters
Does the hon. Member not welcome the Government’s appointment of former deputy governor of the Bank of England Jon Cunliffe? He had that expertise as deputy governor in financial stability. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that we need to look again at the whole system when it comes to the financial instability of water companies that he and his colleagues left behind?
Robbie Moore
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I absolutely welcome anything that will improve the water sector. When I was a Minister in the Department, many issues needed to be addressed. I noticed that the hon. Gentleman commented in his speech that the Minister was working at pace, but the review will take at least a year to implement. I want to ask the Minister, as I did the Secretary of State in the House earlier: when will the positive recommendations from the review be implemented? We know that we are entering price review 2024, which exists from 2025 to 2030, but when is the industry likely to see any positive implications of the results of the commission that has been instigated today?
The Government have also confirmed that they will work with farmers to reduce agricultural pollution. I understand that Ministers have said that that will be through a series of
“proportionate and effective regulations, advice and incentives to deliver improvements”.
Can the Minister clarify how that will roll out? What new regulations does the Department anticipate bringing in? The farming budget is rumoured to be slashed by at least £100 million, so how will the Government incentivise farmers through public money to do the right thing in reducing run-off from fields and from their agricultural activities?
Will the Minister also outline whether any regulatory easement will be applied to water companies going forward? Many Members have raised concerns to do with Thames Water and the like, but I would like to specifically understand whether the Minister, her colleagues or the Secretary of State are looking at implementing a regulatory easement, as the Opposition would not want to see lower standards, the relaxation of environmental permits or a reduction in agreed levels of investment by any water company, irrespective of their financial circumstances.
Sound management of water companies is vital if customers are to receive the high level of service that they expect, and better environmental performance must be driven forward.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. Before I call the Minister, I should say that I allowed the Front Benchers to speak a little longer given that we have some time. If the Minister wishes to take interventions, she can, although she does not have to. I remind her that if she so chooses she can give time at the end—just a couple of minutes—to the mover of the motion Tim Farron.
Before I call the Minister, I hope that the hon. Member for Hexham will forgive my mentioning that it is a procedure of the House—a courtesy—to be in the whole debate and not come in after 65 minutes of a 90-minute debate and then make an intervention. It is not really the way to add to a debate or get the most out of it. I am sure he will take note of that. I call the Minister.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this debate. I will make sure he has time to sum up at the end.
In response to the shadow Minister, I think the Government’s record speaks for itself. Although he might wish to rewrite history, he cannot actually change history. If people want to see what his Government achieved, they just need to look at a storm overflow pipe or perhaps the level of pollution in every river, lake and sea. The public outrage and outcry over this issue is felt by everybody. It is certainly felt by this Government.
The level of pollution in our iconic lakes such as Windermere and in our beautiful chalk streams—we have had debates on this before—is outrageous. It is right that that has become more of an issue as time has gone on. That is a positive thing. We need to value our nature to a far higher level than we ever did before, and change is needed. Indeed, we were elected on a mandate to bring about that change. I am pleased that climate change was mentioned in the debate as well. Our problems will only increase because of our changing climate. Everywhere will perhaps not be quite as wet as the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, but places will certainly be getting to those kinds of levels.
I pay tribute to all the campaign groups and organisations that have come to meet me since I became the Minister with this responsibility. Those people are incredibly passionate and dedicated, often citizen scientists giving their spare time to work on this issue, because they passionately believe in it.
I must mention the wonderful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), the quietly spoken radical. I welcome his support for the Water (Special Measures) Bill. Never let his quiet ways lead to underestimating the secret radicalness within him. I hope that he will contribute to the water review and the consultation. We will welcome his expertise.
I pay tribute to a fantastic new Member, my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters), who is a brilliant local champion. I value his contribution and I share his outrage at the levels of sewage he has seen in his constituency. I agree with the very good point he made: when we look at the consultation, we should look at other regulatory systems to see what works well and at what lessons can be learned, so that we create a system that is effective for the future. I hope that that is something that he, too, feeds into the consultation.
The Water (Special Measures) Bill has been mentioned a number of times. Before it comes to this House, I will organise drop-in sessions for Members of Parliament, who are welcome to talk to me about possible amendments and things that they would like to see in the Bill. I am happy to discuss that. I will of course make time for all the Front-Bench spokespeople to talk to me about it, too.
I have to say, however, that I was rather surprised to hear criticism by Members of Parliament of the idea of inclusion, of consultation with our commission. This Government believe in doing things with people and not to people. I will go so far as to say that the Government are not arrogant enough to believe themselves to have all the answers and expertise, especially with so many experts out there. The Government want to reset our water industry for decades to come and—this is in my DNA and is stated on the back of my Labour party membership card—we believe
“that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”.
This is my philosophy of working with other people—looking at systems of co-production, at how we can create consensus, and at bringing together different ideas and expertise. I was therefore a bit surprised to hear that the idea of consultation and including others should be ignored. In fact, the previous Government had many examples of being arrogant enough to presume that they knew all the answers. Indeed, that Government created systems and policies that have been found to be utterly failing, because they did not listen to what the general public or campaigners were saying.
There is little point to different Members of Parliament talking about how they value the contribution of campaigners and organisations—how welcome those are and how well they have worked with them—when they also say that the ideas and expertise of those campaigners and other people should not contribute to Government policy. Deeds, not words—if we value people’s expertise and contribution, we must let them work with us to shape legislation for the future.
This commission will work with those experts, will value their contributions and listen to them, and will shape something that is fit for the future. It will conclude in June and, after a couple of months of looking at the consultation and Government response, further legislation will be brought forward. Some things will need primary legislation to change, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), understands, but some things can be done more quickly. That very much depends on the recommendations. If primary legislation is required, obviously such things will take longer.
An important point to make is that the Government want to do things in a different and inclusive way. I reach out to each and every one of the people in this Chamber to say: “We want to do this with you.” Yes, there will be different points of view across the Chamber and there will be different ideas about what the right answer is, but let us act collectively on this, not just as Members of Parliament across the House, but as campaigners, organisations and members of all groups, even my mum’s wild swimming group—I am sure they have many an opinion on what the right policy should be. Let us come together to create something meaningful that will command cross-party support and make a difference. That is what we want from this consultation. I will be honest: I am a bit disappointed that people think consulting and working with others is a bad idea.
While I am having a slight moan about things that are slightly disappointing, there seems to be a confused message coming from the Chamber. Members have highlighted that some of the drought plans for water companies are rather, shall we say, extreme, as they involve shipping water over from other countries to deal with droughts, but they also criticised building reservoirs. They cannot do both. If we are going to plan for droughts, we need to talk about building reservoirs and ensure we have the infrastructure we need for the future.
What have the Government been doing? In week one, we got all the CEOs together in a room and talked to them about how we fix the industry. From that meeting, we secured a change to the articles of association, ringfenced funding for vital infrastructure, and new customer panels, and strengthened the protection and compensation for householders. In the week after the summer recess, we introduced the Water (Special Measures) Bill, so in our first 100 days we have hardly been resting on our laurels.
A lot has been said about the independent commission. It is really important that it is independent, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer paid tribute to Sir Jon Cunliffe, whose expertise and financial record are second to none, so is somebody we can work with collectively to produce something really effective.
Robbie Moore
On the commission, would the Minister be kind enough to outline to the House the timings? The PR24 process, which Ofwat is looking at, comes into effect next year and will be in place until 2029-30. Will any positive recommendations from the commission take effect within that price review period?
Emma Hardy
The shadow Minister is pointing out the way we plan and look at our five-year cycle. Whether that is the best way of doing things is a whole other question. The answer is the one I gave earlier: it very much depends on whether things need primary legislation. Some things that change the regulator will not affect the price review framework. The price review framework is based on the amount of money that people will invest in infrastructure, and changes needed for the next five years. That does not mean that things relating to regulation and the rules cannot be changed. I am sure he understands that.
I reiterate the Government’s commitment to driving meaningful, long-term improvements in the performance and culture of the water industry. We want to deliver on our ambition to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas, and the actions I have outlined today are only the beginning. I am passionate about this issue, and am very pleased to be leading on it. In fact, I asked to become the Minister for it, and we do not always get what we ask for in politics. I reiterate my invitation to work with each and every Member here. I think consultation and collaboration are good things, and I hope all hon. Members will embrace that. I look forward to working with them to achieve the goal that we all share: cleaner rivers, lakes and seas.
Tim Farron
I see I have seven minutes—I will do my best not to use them all.
I first want to reiterate something I said at the very beginning of my opening remarks: I genuinely pay tribute to the people who work on the ground for the water companies—it is United Utilities in my neck of the woods—Ofwat and the EA. I think these debates can sometimes sound quite toxic to them. They work hard doing an important job, and they are victims of a system that it is vital we change. I am delighted that others have said the same thing today. I just want to put that on the record—particularly in relation to my local community.
I thank colleagues from all sides for their excellent contributions. They are people who are passionate about their own communities, the waterways in their communities and the voluntary groups working within their communities that are helping to highlight these issues.
I also thank the Front-Bench speakers—the Minister and the Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), but especially my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard), who made an absolutely fantastic contribution. His expertise is something we very much value; the people of Witney are lucky to have him and we are lucky to have him, too.
I will just reflect briefly on the Minister’s comments. I count her as a friend and respect her very much indeed. What she said about collaboration is absolutely right. However, I will make the observation—a relatively neutral observation—that the Labour manifesto was pretty thin across the board. I understand why that was. Maybe for the last two or three years they felt it was their election to lose and therefore the more information they put out there, the more chance they had of maybe throwing it all away. I do understand the politics. However, that does not really justify waiting several months to begin the process of taking action. So, a Government can be collaborative and consult, and take radical action early on. Nevertheless, I took her point and she defended the Government’s position and process on this issue very well.
Our view is simply that we will be and should be a constructive Opposition; we will challenge and we will seek to be constructive as we do so. But I will also say that we are encouraged—at least cautiously—by what we have heard today from both the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Minister herself.
Since I have time left, I will ask one extra thing. It is important that we tackle this issue from a national perspective, but there is also an issue in my local area that I think we can fix. Windermere receives an awful lot of coverage and rightly so. A fifth of the pollution in Windermere comes from septic tanks, including 89 package treatment works around the lakes, all of which could be relatively easily connected to the mains. I wonder whether the Minister would agree to meet me, United Utilities and representatives of the tourism and hospitality industry to see whether we could make that migration, up the standards and do something genuinely useful at the bottom level to improve the water quality of Windermere.
Tim Farron
If the Minister wants to say, “Yes”, she will meet me, I will be delighted to give way to her.
Emma Hardy
In the spirit of collaboration, which I have just spoken so much about, of course I will meet the hon. Member.
Tim Farron
Mr Pritchard, she’s a good ‘un. I thank the Minister very much indeed; I appreciate that.
Finally, I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate, but I also thank you, Mr Pritchard. That might sound a bit smarmy, but you and I go back a long way. I wish that when I first started here I had a Chair of Westminster Hall debates who talked us through the process as well as you have today. I am very grateful to you, and indeed to everybody else who has been here for this debate.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
You will definitely be called first in the next debate, that’s for sure. [Laughter.] You have been here a long time; you know how to work the system. So, there we are. No—there is no system to work; we are neutral in the Chair. But thank you for your kind comments.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the regulation and financial stability of water companies.
Fusion Energy
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of fusion energy.
I want to begin by thanking the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for meeting me last week to discuss this priority issue.
When I stood to be Member of Parliament for Bassetlaw, my commitment to my constituents was to work with others to raise aspirations and generate new opportunities for our young people, so that they no longer have to move away to get a highly skilled job or one that gives them a strong financial future. The STEP—spherical tokamak for energy production—programme provides such an opportunity, and it is my responsibility to do whatever it takes to support the process and ensure a strong economic future for an area that is now consistently described as post-industrial.
Bassetlaw first made international history when the Mayflower pilgrims set foot on the Plymouth Rock and signed what became the American constitution. Four hundred years on, Bassetlaw will make headlines again, after the UK Atomic Energy Authority determined that West Burton, a coal-burning power station currently being decommissioned, will be the site of the first fusion energy prototype plant. This historic decision very much aligns with Bassetlaw’s coalmining heritage. We had seven pits producing coal, taken by local train drivers to power stations including Cottam, West Burton and High Marnham, built alongside the River Trent. We had a workforce proudly geared towards powering the country.
A heritage that was in decline is now providing new opportunities for green energy production. We have good local infrastructure, with railway lines holding the potential to be the preferred route on to the site for goods, construction traffic and workers. Existing licences for water extraction on the River Trent and, most significantly, the connection to the national grid were core factors in the decision-making process for the preferred site.
Even more important was the local public support for a fusion plant. At consultation events run by the local ward councillor, my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), we were told in the no-nonsense way of north Nottinghamshire that it is common sense to retain an energy generation site for future green energy production. The public went further, calling for the other decommissioned power plants to be reused in similar ways. Those positive factors all contributed to the UKAEA’s decision making, and in December 2020 West Burton was selected as the future home of the spherical tokamak for energy production.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this debate forward. In the spirit of positivity and looking forward, is she aware that there are currently no power plants in Northern Ireland and that the Republic of Ireland banned all nuclear power generation in 1999? However, the UK and the US have announced a partnership to accelerate fusion energy, which she referred to. Does she agree that more consideration must be given to extending nuclear facilities and capabilities to the rest of the United Kingdom to ensure that we can all accelerate the fusion energy that she is promoting so well?
Jo White
The focus has to be getting fusion working at West Burton. Should it be successful, it has to be rolled out over the whole of the UK, and Northern Ireland must be a key element of that.
STEP is a Government-funded industry partnership to develop the most advanced tokamak fusion reactor in the world. The outline business case for the STEP programme was approved in 2023, with a full business case to be submitted next year. In November, we will see the launch of the procurement process for whole-plant partners—the major engineering and construction partners that will get the project moving. The intention is to get formal approval for the next four-year phase of development in March, when the proposal passes on to the major projects review group and then the Chief Secretary.
Fusion has been defined as “last energy”—the recreation of the energy generated by the sun and all other stars, in which atomic nuclei collide and release energy. The goal is to produce an inexhaustible source of low-carbon energy and heat, with the objective of supplying electricity into the national grid by the 2040s. We as a Government need to be thinking already about our 2030 ambitions, with fusion taking us into the next and crucial phase of carbon-neutral energy production. That is not just my view: industry experts say that fusion is the solution to meeting the growing long-term global demand for clean energy and holds the potential to be the baseload energy source. The key is that it will be developed by UK industries and then distributed across the world.
I welcome our mission to rebuild wealth through investing in Great British Energy, which is being kicked off across the country—that is game changing, rebuilding our economy and creating wealth through investment in carbon-neutral energy production—but we also need to think about where these ambitions need to take us. The development of fusion power plants will see the creation of new technologies and an energy capacity that will go further than energy generation, including the production of superconducting magnets, hydrogen and a new generation of medical advances for cancer treatment. We are the world leaders in the development of fusion, but the race is on, with the US and China rapidly developing competing technologies and key supply chain industries.
Can the Minister confirm that it is the Government’s intention to ensure that the UK and British industry lead the world on fusion? For the sake of our industrial prospects, job creation and wealth generation, we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball and come in second, third or fourth. Our fusion ambitions cannot be put on the back burner for an undetermined future Government agenda. Fusion power offers the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy for future generations, and we have a responsibility to pursue that agenda today, not tomorrow. It is no use being today’s world leader on fusion if the skills gap widens over the next decade and the best and brightest young minds head to other countries to develop fusion, or if we as a Government dither and prevaricate about making the investment now.
We need to encourage our pupils, students and those already in work to choose a career in fusion and to do so in the UK. We need the Government, the fusion sector, its supply chain and academia to work together to understand the skills and disciplines needed in fusion and to communicate the opportunities. I want to see laboratory technicians and researchers, the best brains from across the country and the world, in our UK labs, and I want the Government to make fusion a No. 1 priority to attract the best global talent.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
My hon. Friend knows what I think about this topic as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fusion energy. I want to highlight the fusion cluster of 200 businesses at Culham, which she has visited. Does she agree that that is a fantastic site and that Ministers should join us on a visit?
Jo White
I very much agree. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East has already been, and I would love for the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), to go too. I want to see what we have at Culham reproduced at West Burton. It is the first step, and it gives us the vision for what could come next.
When we founded the first industrial revolution, it was our red wall areas that led the way, and history is now repeating itself. Do we have the confidence to lead the world on fusion? Do we have the laser focus to make it happen now? Will we have the vision to create the silicon valley of green energy in Nottinghamshire? Although I know the Minister cannot prejudice the outcome of the spending review, will we get the finance from Government to make this whole thing viable? Leaders lead from the front. We have the opportunity—we have the lead. Do we have what it takes to win the gold medal?
We need a coherent training programme and strategy for fusion skills, and a strategic foundation established for UK sector leadership in the decades to come. As the new MP for Bassetlaw, I already have a legacy plan for my constituency. I want to see my young people find routes into fusion, through the supply chains, through the development of new technologies, or through leading the world at the West Burton plant itself. I want to use this unique opportunity to change life outcomes for future generations in Bassetlaw. I want them to be enabled to take all of the advantages through fusion becoming part of the school curriculum and go on to be able to enter the field via vocational or academic training. I want my local businesses to have the opportunities to change their production techniques and provision. They must become key elements of the supply chain. In terms of immediate infrastructure asks, we need commitments for a railway station on site and local road improvements so that we can begin to unlock the full potential of West Burton.
My ambitions are shared by our county council and our new Mayor of the East Midlands, Claire Ward, who sees the potential for the future. We have a shared vision to create a Trent clean energy supercluster, with the West Burton site aligning with three other decommissioned coal-fired power station sites to become the heart of carbon-neutral energy production on a regional scale, with hydrogen, small modular reactors, solar and wind, with 6,000 new construction jobs, 15,500 operational jobs, and a net gross value added gain of £930 million.
The opportunities are cross-regional, stretching into Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and nationwide. I look forward to the continued support and commitment of the Government, and to our stepping up to become the international leaders for fusion and ensuring that fusion is integral to our Great British Energy ambitions. I invite the Minister to visit Bassetlaw to see the groundbreaking opportunities, and to cut the ribbon at our new fusion café, built by the UKAEA with the precise intent to inform and attract our young and inquisitive minds for the big challenges ahead.
I am working in partnership with my community, my council, our elected mayor, the UKAEA, my neighbouring MPs, local businesses, the fusion industry, international partners and the Government to deliver STEP, to ensure that we are the clean energy superpower of the future. We will lead the world in the development of fusion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
It is a pleasure to serve in this debate with you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White), for securing today’s important debate, and for the passionate way in which she spoke about both this issue and her constituency. It was genuinely inspiring—particularly what she said not just about the future of her community but about its heritage. I confess that I did not know the role my hon. Friend’s constituency played in the creation of the United States, but, as I used to say to my school pupils, every day is a school day, so I thank her for that.
It would have been quite a striking debate if my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), the chair of the APPG on fusion energy, had spoken about anything other than his support for fusion, but I welcome his invitation to join his group’s visit. I would say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw that I think there are other Ministers in the Department who might be slightly frustrated if I cut the ribbon rather than them, but I am happy to do so all the same.
I share my hon. Friends’ genuine excitement for this technology, and it is worth taking a moment to think about what we are talking about. The idea that we could produce an almost inexhaustible supply of low-carbon baseload sounds almost too good to be true—particularly as an Energy Minister trying to get us to where we are going to by 2030. It sounds like a fantastic proposition, but after many, many years of a lot of hard work, it is in fact within our grasp.
Fusion creates nearly 4 million times more energy for every kilogram of fuel than burning coal, oil or gas—some of the statistics are staggering, and worth taking a moment to reflect on. It has a huge potential to bolster our energy security and to create thousands of good jobs at the same time, putting it at the heart of not just one of the Prime Minister’s key missions in Government but two: kick-starting economic growth and making Britain a clean energy superpower. What is even more exciting is that this country genuinely has an opportunity to lead the world on this and to become the global home of fusion energy, with all the considerable short and long-term economic gains that come with it.
I thank hon. Members for being here and for their support for this new technology. It is difficult at times, with technologies that are perhaps not so well understood and are at that nascent stage, to keep the debate on them. It is important to have more contributions and speeches like the one we heard about the importance of this technology.
The UK has been at the forefront of fusion energy research and development for more than 40 years, going back to June 1983—I will not tell hon. Members my age, but at that time I was not quite born—in a quiet corner of Oxfordshire, with the world’s largest operational fusion reactor. The Joint European Torus went on to break records and then break them again, with thousands of experts from across Europe playing their part in those experiments. JET closed its doors last year and we are now focused on building a whole new generation of fusion facilities in the UK.
Domestically, the economic opportunities of fusion are huge. The sector already supports thousands of jobs, and our ambitions will see it deliver many more highly skilled roles in future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw outlined, it can also lead to breakthroughs in other areas, particularly in medicine, supercomputing and other green technologies. That is why it is important to attract private sector investment to this project. Some $7 billion has already been raised by global private fusion companies and that figure grows year on year.
It is clear that the UK’s pro-innovation, proportionate approach to fusion regulation is attracting global interest but we want to go further, developing a national policy statement for fusion facilities that provides even greater certainty, encouraging billions more in private investment, driving further growth and supporting thousands more jobs. We are also investing in unique fusion research facilities at UKAEA sites across the country that UK-based firms can access, making it the natural home for fusion development.
Internationally, fusion energy could be transformational, both as a long-term solution to energy security and, in this most decisive of decades, in tackling the climate crisis. This is a low-carbon, safe and abundant source of energy, which does not require huge amounts of land or natural resources for its production. That makes it the perfect power source for nations have relied on imported fossil fuels, or that do not have the capacity to deploy renewables at the scale many will need. Those are the same countries that are most likely to be affected by climate change. In other words, as global energy demand grows—and we know that it will considerably in the decades ahead—fusion energy could be critical to keeping net zero within reach, as well as ensuring that citizens everywhere have access to power.
Other major economies, including the US and China, have realised that there are huge prizes on offer to be the first to commercialise this technology, including economic growth and global environmental leadership. Estimates of that fusion energy market between 2050 and 2100 put it between £3 trillion and £12 trillion. Without the spending power of the US or China, we must be targeted in how we maintain our leadership in this ever-closer international competition. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw outlined, that is where the STEP programme comes in.
Last month, I was privileged to be at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. It might seem odd for a Minister to be privileged to be at the closure of something, but the closure of our last coal-fired power station was a real moment in our energy story—a moment for us to recognise that the transition is well under way. We are now bringing a whole new industry to that part of the world with the creation of the world’s first civil fusion power plant. The aim is for the prototype plant to reach completion by 2040, and that will demonstrate that fusion can be a viable part of our energy mix in the near future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw is aware, it is a hugely exciting opportunity for local people in her constituency, for the wider region and for the whole UK, delivering thousands of jobs directly and in the supply chain.
My hon. Friend rightly referenced the importance of skills development in fusion energy. There is a real opportunity to develop the skills of a next generation of young people working in the energy of the future. STEP will partner with private industry early on in its journey, working closely with engineering and construction companies. The work of identifying those partners is under way at the moment, with an announcement of the shortlisted bidders due in the following weeks. This is about not only maximising our chances of success, but utilising the local skills already in my hon. Friend’s community to breathe new life into an industrial heartland.
At the same time, we will establish a strong fusion skills base and domestic supply chain to support STEP and enable it to compete globally. We are also running an outreach programme to schools in the area to encourage the uptake of fusion-related education, and developing relationships and grants with universities. We want fusion to be a sector that excites and inspires young people, and now is an important moment to unlock that potential.
STEP is a first-of-a-kind programme, and there will, of course, be challenges. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw mentioned a number of the logistical challenges in the local area—we will work through those things together with the local community, and I know that she was involved in the local council for many years as well—but we have a huge advantage: four decades of research, a thriving financial landscape and a world-leading plan, which means that even before a commercially viable plan is delivered, the programme will have already supported thousands of jobs, skilled development and cutting-edge research. Ultimately, whether STEP or a different design is the precise one used to commercialise fusion technology, its development will already ensure that the UK has a supply chain to provide jobs and the recognition that we are in the lead in this technology.
The Government are unashamedly pro-growth, pro-business and pro-innovation, and fusion is a great example of all three. It is such an important part of our plans because it covers all those points, and is a real opportunity for us to make progress and become the global lead in a genuinely transformative technology. That could ensure our energy security, drive huge growth and combat climate change here and far beyond our shores. STEP could, in short, be the UK’s Apollo moment, and I cannot wait to see where the fusion journey takes us.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw is a passionate and enthusiastic representative of the community driving forward this technology, and it is in safe hands. I pay tribute to her commitment both to championing this technology and to her wider community. Together, we can make this one of the most exciting moments in our energy story.
Question put and agreed to.
Paternity Leave and Pay
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered paternity leave and pay.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. My first Westminster Hall debate is being chaired by a neighbouring Member of Parliament. It is a delight to be here.
I know that families come in all shapes and sizes and that paternity leave is not just about fathers. I will refer primarily to dads in my speech, but the points that I will be making relate and apply to all families, of all shapes and sizes. I stand here as a dad, a parent, and an MP who believes that parenthood matters to children, families, employers, the economy and our country.
The UK currently has the worst paternity pay and leave in Europe and among the worst in the OECD. Fathers, if they are eligible—about 20% of them are not—can take a maximum of two weeks’ paid leave, at a maximum rate of £184 a week, which is less than half the national living wage. In 2023, 605,000 babies were born in the UK, yet only 195,000 dads received statutory paternity pay. That is less than one father for every three children. If we contrast that with the 52 weeks of maternity leave and 39 weeks of maternity pay, it is clear that our system needs to be updated for the 21st century.
As a father myself, I do have a vested interest in this issue, but better paternity rights are not just good for fathers; they are good for mums and, more importantly, for children. Last week I was able to speak to a number of parents at an event in Parliament with the Dad Shift campaign, and I heard from several dads about the difference that paternity leave—or the lack of it—had made to their relationships with their young children. I want to live in a society in which children can see both parents as caregivers, but for that to happen, it needs to be possible for both parents to be present during the vital early years. Evidence shows that the physical and social bonds that are set so early are critical for babies as they grow up and for the fathers’ connection to the children in later life. One dad I heard from at the event in Parliament, Simon, suffered from undiagnosed depression after the birth of his child. That was made worse by not having the time with his child to establish and develop that bond.
This is not the 1950s. We can all agree that most men do want to have relationships with their children, especially during the early years, but the law does not reflect that. Another dad I spoke to, George, had a generous employer who gave him more than the statutory pay and leave, and he spoke glowingly about the difference that that had made to his mental health and wellbeing, but also, of course, the balance in the household and his relationship with his child. It was great to hear that a number of employers were going above and beyond the statutory minimum, but as of 2022, 49% of employers provided the minimum statutory paternity leave.
This matter is simply too important to leave to the whim of individual employers. Change needs to start within Government and the public sector. I recently tabled a number of written questions to Departments, asking how much paternity leave their staff took on average. The only Department whose staff took more than the 14 days was the Department for Education. If we look at other Departments, the figure was 9.6 days in the Department for Transport and 7.25 days in the Department for Work and Pensions. The Cabinet Office ranked worst, with 5.7 days. The Government and the public sector should be exemplary employers, but instead they are lagging behind some private sector employers. We need as the first step a signal from the Government and from the public sector as a whole that this is something that needs to be improved.
At the Dad Shift event, I heard from mums and dads about the toll that the segregated system had taken on their careers. Making it easier for dads to look after the kids also makes it easier for mums to continue in their workplace—a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) has made so passionately in the Chamber only this week.
It is morally wrong to pressure women into sacrificing their career for their family, and it is also a massive productivity drain. This Government want to restore growth, create jobs and create wealth. The Centre for Progressive Policy estimates that closing the gender employment gap in all UK local authorities could increase economic output by a staggering £23 billion, and the OECD estimates that three quarters of the gender wage gap in northern and western Europe is down to the motherhood penalty.
How many talented women are we losing from the workforce because they cannot get back into work after lengthy maternity leave? How much better off could we be if both parents could take leave that was short enough not to harm their careers but long enough to support their children? Technically, that is already an option after the changes that took place in 2015 with shared parental rights. However, the Government’s own analysis found that only 1% of eligible mothers and only 5% of eligible fathers took shared parental leave. I heard from one father, Alex, who told me that the system and process of shared parental leave were so complicated to navigate that he paid a third party £50 to complete the forms for him.
Things are about to get better. I am delighted that the Employment Rights Bill had its Second Reading earlier this week; it will mark a massive step forward on paternity leave and pay, expanding eligibility by introducing day one rights to paternity and parental leave, allowing fathers to take paternity leave after they have taken shared parental leave, and facilitating a full review of all parental leave rights. The Government clearly recognise the importance of the issue and that further steps need to be taken to address it.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an issue that is clearly important to so many of us. Does he agree that even if the birth of a child has been straightforward and simple, two weeks, and the paternity pay that goes with it, passes very quickly? If there is a complication in the birth—if the mother becomes ill, for example, or if there are other complications for the child—the two weeks disappear in the blink of an eye. Then parents, especially fathers, go back to work, and fathers feel guilty about not being able to be at home to support that type of need.
Shaun Davies
My hon. Friend makes a powerful contribution. My own brother was born three months premature and my father’s ability to be there was curtailed by the fact that the paternity leave then was simply not generous enough.
The Employment Rights Bill, which I welcome, goes some way towards addressing the eligibility problem, but there is more that we can do. Research by the Centre for Progressive Policy, Women in Data and Pregnant Then Screwed found that countries with longer paternity leave have lower gender wage gaps and lower gender workforce participation gaps than countries such as our own.
Such leave not only needs to be longer; it also needs to be better paid. In line with statutory paternity pay, there should be 90% of earnings for the following six weeks. It needs to be “use it or lose it” leave—in other words, non-transferrable—to encourage take-up. Fundamentally, the root problem is the assumption that there must always be one primary parent. That scenario will suit some families, but it benefits no one to force that choice on everyone. The campaign for fair parental leave and pay is a campaign to normalise co-parenting.
I am making a number of asks of the Minister. I acknowledge his work on the updating of employment rights across the country; he should be congratulated for that. However, we are able to go further and we must not let the good be the enemy of the great. We must applaud the progress that has been made and affirm that we can go further. I ask him to ask his Department to review the rights around parental leave, so that we can have a conversation about it.
This is the moment for our generation of MPs to drag working practices into the 21st century, for the benefit of dads, mums, society and our country, but most of all for the benefit of our children as they grow up. Let us give British children their dads back. Let us be pro-growth, pro-worker, pro-business, pro-children and—importantly—pro-family.
Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)
Like the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies), I recognise that my experience of fatherhood is heteronormative and I appreciate that there are many other forms of families. I will probably end up repeating some of the excellent points put forward by the hon. Member, but since they are very good ones I will not hesitate to repeat them.
My first point is that the paternity system is classist: white-collar workers generally get much better provision from their employers. Some workers get up to six months, if they work in high-demand industries. Contrast that with the provision in precarious industries and the gig economy and for traditional blue-collar workers. They tend to get very little indeed: two weeks’ statutory pay or naught if they are self-employed.
Paternity leave is essential to avoid the woman becoming the default primary care giver. Inequality in the length of parental leave further entrenches inequalities. On maternal health, I highlight that receiving only two weeks of paternity pay is extremely challenging if one’s partner or birthing partner has experienced a traumatic birth, whether that is a C-section or otherwise. My wife went through a 40-hour labour and also a really difficult pregnancy with hyperemesis, and that had impacts on both her physical and mental health. Many other women experienced the same, and the support of their partner is essential at that time. As so many people move around the country these days for work, many people live far away from their families, so having the father or the partner there is essential.
The evidence from other countries is clear: the longer the paternity pay, the better we are at closing gender pay gaps and the less the impact on the career prospects of the person giving birth. I end on a riposte to the previous Government for their shameful response to a petition in the last Parliament on this topic. Rather than extending paternity leave, the Government responded to it by simply exalting the benefits of being able to split the two weeks up and take them at different times. How generous that is! How useful that is cannot be underestimated—I am obviously being facetious. The Employment Rights Bill clearly does not go far enough, but I welcome this debate and the noises from those on the Government Benches that indicate they will consider this issue in the future.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. Before I call Alistair Strathern, I have to impose a two-minute time limit because of the interest in this debate. It may be adjusted later.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) for securing this important debate. For many, parenthood is one of the most exciting journeys of their lives, and one of the most rewarding, too, but speak to any parent and you will be under no illusions that it is also bloody hard work. For too many, it is also work that is split in an unequal and gendered way. We should not shy away from acknowledging the gendered way in which the cost of that imbalance is doled out across society. We should also acknowledge that every child, every parent, every family and every member of society loses out as a result.
In some cases, biological realities drive imbalances that are inevitable. As my partner Megan regularly points out to me, if we do ever have a child together, it will not be me that is likely doing the bulk of the having. But there are others that are entirely in our gift. This debate highlights a really important one: paternity pay.
I have spoken to far too many families, fathers and co-parents across my constituency who have had to make heartbreaking choices over the last few years as a result of the current inequity in parental pay and parental leave—fathers who have had to make the difficult choice about whether to squander their savings, which they could barely afford, to stick around for those crucial early months of their child’s upbringing; or parents who have had to make the difficult choice of taking unpaid leave, which sometimes can be deeply contested with their employer, or depriving the mother of the support they need after a C-section while also going through all the burdens of early parenthood. These are not choices that anyone should have to make, and we must put that right.
I welcome the action that the Government have taken already, particularly their introducing day one rights to paternity leave and pay, but it is clear we need to do more. I look forward to working with colleagues across this House and with the Minister to ensure that, over the course of this Government, we can deliver that change.
James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)
I am the father of two young children, and I would not have missed their first months for anything in the whole world. I am proud to have been recently appointed chair of the all-party parliamentary group for childcare and early education, so I have a big interest in this issue and am keen to work with all parties on it.
I thank the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) for bringing forward this important issue. I hope the lack of turnout of Opposition Members is not a reflection of their lack of interest in this very interesting subject.
When I speak to other parents at the school gates and elsewhere, I am often told of their difficulties accessing paternity leave and therefore sharing parenting equally. With nursery costs spiralling and the wider cost of living crisis, it is time for better paternity pay, and it should be increased to 90% of a father’s salary as soon as possible, so fathers and parents have options.
Development in early years is irreplaceable for children. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in this country, we do not even seem to support two people raising one. Let us increase paternity pay, introduce a dad’s month and widen eligibility for paternity pay. I hope the Government will work on a cross-party basis—I think they have already outlined that they will—to take action.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the omission of the self-employed from eligibility for paternity pay, which rules out a large number of our constituents, is a major issue that needs to be addressed? Hopefully, we can encourage the Government to come forward with schemes to fill that gap.
James MacCleary
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that critical point for the self-employed, who often find themselves excluded. A lot of parents, including very good friends of mine, run their own businesses and have found it very hard to access paternity pay.
This is a critical equality and fairness issue, and I am really pleased that we are talking about it because it is very important to me. I am happy to work collaboratively with Members from across the House to improve paternity pay.
Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
I have spent the last 13 years advising women, in particular, in employment tribunals, and I have advised a lot of women who have suffered maternity discrimination. That was an absolute mainstay of my practice. My comments will be completely heteronormative; that is not to disparage any other family structures.
During the pandemic, for the first time large numbers of women and men were able to work from home. I say that because prior to the pandemic I spent a lot of time advising women on flexible working requests. If they asked to work from home for one or perhaps two days a week, that was habitually turned down. They were told that it was completely impossible; employers would not hear of it. Once men did it, it became absolutely acceptable, and it is now absolutely fine in most organisations for parents of either gender to work from home for one or two days a week.
If women continue to take the overwhelming majority of parental leave, they will continue to take the entire career burden and will be systematically discriminated against for it. This is a widespread issue: 54,000 women a year lose their jobs when they are pregnant or on maternity leave.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
We also have to think about all the women who do not have children but are discriminated against anyway because employers expect them to. Does my hon. Friend agree that to get paternity leave right, we have to ensure that everyone in their 30s and 40s is equally discriminated against because they might go off and have children?
Mrs Russell
I completely recognise what my hon. Friend says. The risk zone for women’s careers starts when they are approximately 25 and carries on until they are at least 45. I have been advised not to wear my wedding ring to interviews because I was likely to be viewed as a pregnancy risk. Until we deal with that—until men take significant amounts of leave and are paid properly to do it—we will continue to face this issue, and women will be systematically discriminated against, as she says, whether they have children or not.
Approximately 12% of employers disclosed in a YouGov poll that they were reluctant to hire a woman simply because she might become pregnant. This is a widespread issue, whether women have children or not. We need non-transferable, “use it or lose it” parental leave for the second parent and we must ensure that that is paid at a rate such that people are actually able to take the leave. Once we have that and it becomes the default minimum—some fathers will choose to take significantly longer—everyone will be a risk, and everyone will be able to have career development. That will change the entire attitude towards maternity leave in our society. As I said, 54,000 women a year lose their jobs when pregnant or on maternity leave. All the women I advised thought they were just individually unlucky but given the volume of them I can say that they were not unlucky—it was systematic.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing this important debate.
It was a pleasure to welcome to Parliament parents, children and teachers from Europa school in my constituency last week. They were all campaigning with the Dad Shift, which the hon. Member has already mentioned, for paternity leave reform. The Dad Shift is calling for dads to be given substantial time that is affordable, so that everyone can afford to take it, enabling both parents to have equality of access to such leave.
The moral and economic case for equal parental leave is clear. In countries that offer at least six weeks of paternity leave, the gender pay gap is 4% smaller and the workforce participation gap is reduced by 3.7%. That shows that supporting parental leave not only strengthens British families, but helps to grow the economy. We Liberal Democrats believe that parents should have greater flexibility and choice over how to manage work with parenting in the first months of their child’s life. Greater equality in parenting will also lead to greater equality in the workplace, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said.
With the forthcoming Budget, I very much hope that the Minister has sought opportunities to influence proceedings and to look for opportunities to improve parental leave. In the longer term, when the public finances allow, our ambition in the Liberal Democrats is to give all families six weeks of “use it or lose it” leave for each parent, paid at 90% of earnings, and 46 weeks of parental leave to share between them as they choose, paid at double the existing statutory rate. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.
Blair McDougall (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Pritchard, for calling me to speak in this debate.
I want to talk about the vision for the role of fathers in society, which other hon. Members have spoken about, and about how achieving that takes not only personal choice by fathers, but cultural and economic change. I feel that point about personal choice very acutely: at a very young age, my father chose not to be part of my life, and I am determined that that should not be repeated in my own family’s upbringing. I am not unusual: for example, nine out of 10 dads will now go to antenatal scans and the birth. Fathers want to be part of their children’s life and they want to be better fathers, but the culture and the economics make that difficult.
On the cultural point, when I was established in my own business, I made the choice to be a stay-at-home father for a period. However, such fathers are excluded from the coffee with the mothers after nursery pick-up and are not part of the “mum bus” WhatsApp chat. That culture continues, however, because of the economics behind it.
The gap between average pay and statutory paternity leave is about £1,000, which is something that parents cannot afford. There is a class element as well, with nine out of 10 households earning more than £60,000 a year able to take their paternity leave, while only two thirds of those earning under £25,000 a year can do so. If we want the cultural change, and that personal choice, to be taken advantage of, we need to deal with the economics and create more generous arrangements for paternity pay.
In particular, I agree with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) that, as well as looking at paternity leave, we also have to give people the ability to take crisis leave. This does not end with those first couple of weeks of changing nappies and going to the pharmacy; we need to have that ability as fathers throughout childhood.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) for setting the scene so well. He is already making a reputation for himself in this House—well done—and I look forward to more debates in Westminster Hall.
Paternity leave in Northern Ireland allows for one to two weeks of leave to be taken. Statutory paternity pay can be paid if someone’s average weekly earnings are £123. People can also get a wee bit more in relation to that, but it is an expensive time for a family and not much support is available. If we were living in Japan, we would not have to worry about it because there they have a year’s paternity leave, but we are not. We are in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so it is very different.
Two weeks’ semi-paid leave is very little when we look at what a woman goes through in the delivery process. Now that we have an increased pension age and more parents are working into their 60s, gone are the days of grandmothers coming to help with the housework and other jobs in the first month of a child’s life. That simply is not a choice available to working grandparents and the pressure on mum is massive.
Another two weeks of paternity leave can make all the difference, especially when we consider that ladies who have had a difficult birth, an infection post-birth or a c-section, as my wife did, are unable to do any heavy lifting and need their husband more than ever. It is all about looking out for the family as a whole. I do not think we have it right when a dad has to go on the sick to ensure that his wife, who is two weeks out from major surgery, is not left alone and almost helpless with their new and totally dependent baby. When my youngest son and his wife had their last son, she ended up with a bad back afterwards, as a result of the pregnancy. That happens, and paternity care would have been great for her.
We need to offer a lot more support at what can be a vulnerable time in the life of the family. I look to the Minister to recognise the lessening wider family support and the need for the little family to navigate the period together, without taking sick leave or feeling guilty for not being in work. It is the most precious time in a family’s life and we in this House have it in our power to do more to take away stress and give little ones the best possible start in life. I know that is what everyone in this House is committed to.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing this long-overdue debate. Previous debates have had a minimal turnout, so it is fantastic to see so many people here. I also pay tribute to the Dad Shift and the original campaigners Pregnant Then Screwed and Joeli Brearley.
Joeli Brearley came up with the pancake test: if we consistently put mums and dads in two different boxes, with mums looking after babies and dads having to go back to work after those first two weeks, when you have just realised that the meconium will eventually stop, it is mums who learn how to feed the child pancakes and dads who do not. It is mums who will get why some days the child wants pancakes rolled up, some days they want them flat and some days they want them with cream. That everyday caring for children is at the heart of being able to look after them, and slowly but surely it ends up being easier for the mum to take the child and to deal with the toddler, and dads get further and further away.
That is why, in the minute I have left, I want to argue in front of the Minister for PaPa—protected and paid leave—which we need for mums and dads in every single relationship. There is a risk that the Employment Rights Bill and the brilliant changes it introduces could entrench the challenges we are discussing, rather than helping us to resolve them. What do I mean by that? I mean that, if we entrench the idea that shared parental leave is the answer to the challenge, we are entrenching one of the biggest crimes against relationships. As the data shows us time and again, it is mums who end up having to look after children and mums who end up having to take that link. That is why in this country there is a motherhood penalty, which means that mums are seen as less committed, less capable, less competent and less worthy of promotion.
Mrs Russell
Does my hon. Friend agree that the idea that “part-timer” is a term of abuse is a shocking concept, and that what we are discussing today could help with that?
Ms Creasy
I completely agree. I was also shocked to hear Conservative Members, who obviously are not in this Chamber today, talking about flexible working as somehow lesser working. When people work flexibly, they do not work less—that is why they end up sending emails in the evening, because they are prioritising their time to do bedtime. They make it work for their family.
This debate is about making things work for families and tackling the inequalities in the workplace. Those inequalities are why we have a gender pay gap in this country—though in fact it is not a gender pay gap, but a motherhood pay gap. There is also a fatherhood premium, but we are showing in this debate that it is not a premium at all, because asking dads to work harder and longer and to be away from their children is not what modern dads want. That is why so many fathers look at flexibility in the workplace when they take on jobs, and that is why this debate matters.
If we want to support every family, it cannot just be the wealthiest who can set the terms on when they get to see their kids and make those pancakes. I therefore urge the Minister to consider an amendment that many of us will be tabling relating to PaPa for dads in their own right, because that will help every member of the family. I said it in the main Chamber, and I will say it again here: having PaPa is good for us, because our economic competitors are doing it, and we have some of the worst rates of paternity leave. It is also good because we can prevent another generation of dads reaching the stage of having teenagers who they have no relationship with, because they have not been there—not just to make pancakes, but to be the best dad they want to be.
Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and to speak as a father of two small boys. In fact, I was lucky enough with both my children to receive paid paternity leave, but frankly that was because I was in a white-collar job that allowed it. With my second child, I would not have qualified for the paid paternity policy, but the good will of my employer allowed me to have that time with my family, which is so important. However, it should not be about the good will of employers.
In this country, we have only 52 weeks of maternity leave and two paid weeks of paternity leave. Ours is the most gendered leave system in the whole world, and the country’s statutory pay offer is the least generous in Europe. Eligible UK fathers can take a maximum of two weeks’ paid paternity leave at a rate of £184 a week. That is simply not enough for families to live on. Fathers are often not even eligible for that, for reasons of not being deemed employees, being self-employed, or not having worked long enough for their current employer. Shared parental leave is a welcome innovation, but too few families feel that they can take it—1% of mothers and 5% of fathers. There are huge barriers of eligibility and affordability, as well as the need for mothers to surrender their time at home so that fathers can take it.
A 2023 TUC study that looked into shared parental leave found that 35% of fathers in a household with an income of under £25,000 did not take it. That shows the huge class element: fathers on lower salaries are not able to take that time. Some 53% of families that do take up the leave struggle financially. We see that self-employed fathers cannot take the time, with about 70% not doing so.
I am pleased that the Employment Rights Bill will give day one rights at work to fathers so that we can give stronger support to our working families in my Livingston constituency and right across the whole country.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. I am afraid that I will have to restrict speeches to one minute because we have a lot of speakers and are running out of time. I remind colleagues that if they intervene on someone, that person gets an extra minute, which eats into the time available. If Members need or want to intervene, and the intervention is accepted, so be it, but just be aware of that.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) for bringing forward the debate.
Very quickly, I will speak from a personal perspective. Eleven years ago, our twins were born nine weeks early, when I had been with my then employer for five months. In the six weeks they were in hospital, I was given three and a half days of leave. One of those was on the day after my wife had a seizure and I had spent the whole night with her in the hospital. In fact, when my wife was told, when our children were 12 days old, that one of them had cerebral palsy, I was at work because the doctors had to tell her during working hours. That shows the complexity of the issue. When my children came home at six weeks, my two weeks’ paternity leave was actually my holiday, because I was not entitled to a penny. I welcome what the Government are bringing forward for leave, but we have to look at the pay aspect and try to get it right, because we cannot repeat some of the mistakes that too many fathers like myself have experienced in the past.
Peter Lamb (Crawley) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on bringing forward the debate. I similarly have an appalling personal experience. My employer was down-sizing, so I was forced to change jobs during my wife’s pregnancy and, despite being open with my employer about the situation, I was completely ineligible for any statutory leave. They were a good employer—they actually happen to campaign on this specific issue—but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people do not have that opportunity. Most people in this day and age do not stay with employers for an indefinite period of time, either through their choice or that of the employer. They cannot be cut out of the system, particularly when 92% of the cost of paternity pay is being paid out of their taxes by central Government in the first place. No father will be operating at peak levels of efficiency under those circumstances. Frankly, we have an appalling birth rate in this country that is dropping, and this is one of the reasons why that is happening.
Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing the debate. I will try to explain my experience in one minute.
A year ago this week, I had my two weeks of paternity leave. Quite frankly, there is an awful lot more that we need to do. I welcome the changes in the Employment Rights Bill, but it cannot be right that a father goes back to work two weeks after a birth if, for example, a mother who has had a caesarean section is still in recovery from that medical procedure and needs support at home. It is not a case of them being able to get up and do whatever they like at that point, so we should change that as quickly as we can.
On shared parental leave, my wife lost a month of her maternity leave so that I could have a month with my baby boy, and that stops parents wanting to take it. It made me think twice about taking it, rather than thinking, “What an amazing privilege it is to spend a month with my baby boy.” Finally, we must ensure that all fathers can afford to take paternity leave. It is a financial penalty to many, and we really need to encourage all parents to be able to take time with their children.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) for bringing forward the debate. I have a declaration of interest: next Tuesday, I will become a father for the third time. Will I take two weeks of paternity leave? No, I will take three, and I still do not think that that is enough. My wife will have a caesarean, as has been mentioned, and the advice to her is clear that she should not drive for six weeks. We live in a rural village where if we do not drive, we do not take the other children to school. It is vital that families have the ability to take a longer time when the health of the woman and the wellbeing of the children is at stake.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
The introduction of paternity leave by the last Labour Government in 2003 was one of those bold, progressive changes that was opposed by some at the time, like the minimum wage that, years down the line, has become a much-valued right. The policy’s opponents said that it would harm business, but actually it supports new dads to manage change and support their child, which means that employers benefit from staff who are ultimately more engaged with their jobs and able to do their work. Although we must not be complacent—I note that one of the Tory leadership contenders commented that maternity pay has gone too far—I hope that paternity leave remains a right that is never taken away. That is why I am pleased that the Government’s Employment Rights Bill ensures that all new fathers can take paternity leave. An extra 30,000 fathers or partners across the country will benefit from that, with rights from day one. It is not just good for new mums and dads, and the children who they support, but essential in helping those children to have the best start in life.
Becoming a parent, especially for the first time, is a daunting prospect, with many new parents reporting poor mental health or even post-natal depression in the period shortly after. Not only is that bad for the adults concerned, but it has an impact on their children. Depression or anxiety is often exacerbated by the fact—
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
This new Government’s Employment Rights Bill will help to overhaul workers’ rights, including by helping 30,000 new fathers to qualify for paternity leave. This will be much welcomed by many families as the statistics show that as many as two thirds of new fathers and partners who qualified for statutory paternity leave did not take it last year. The issue impacts particularly on lower income families or households where the father is the primary earner. Statutory paternity leave in the UK currently allows for only two weeks off, often at low pay that is significantly less than the national minimum wage, which is why the Employment Rights Bill is so vital. It offers greater flexibility for fathers in how and when they will take their leave, which reflects a broader societal shift, and we must support that.
Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)
Time and again, my constituents in Makerfield have told me that having a child in this country is too expensive and exhausting. Mums have said that they have been forced out of their job through long maternity leave, and dads have told me that employers have made it impossible for them to spend time with their kids and support their partners. As other Members have said, only when dads take parental leave will we make maternity discrimination a thing of the past, but we also need a deeper cultural shift. As ever, the Tory party is lagging behind our society, as we have seen this week, because thankfully we no longer live in a world where women make the home and men make the money. Men want to be parents. They want to be dads, and to cook and do the washing. They want to hug their kids when they have had a tough day at school, to tear up when they watch a Disney movie, or to laugh with their kids at my best-known constituent, Hacker the dog. In an age when so many young men suffer from mental health problems and feel that they lack purpose in our society, we must talk about what it means to be a man in a way that is in step with the age.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is about not just all the things he mentions, but the impact on the mental health of the mother?
Josh Simons
I absolutely agree. The support that men can give to their partners is an absolutely vital part of the argument for paternity leave, which is why we need to talk about what it means to be a man in the society that we live in that is in step with the age that we live in. Strength and resilience are qualities that my wife has just as much as me. Care and love are qualities that I have just as much as her. Being a dad is about care, protection and love as well as strength and courage. As men, we must take pride in both.
I very much hope that the Government’s review of parental leave will include paternity as well as maternity leave, and that it will cover pay and duration of leave for employees of firms of all sizes. Every week working parents I represent open the door exhausted and broke, despite loving their kids with all their heart. Better paternity leave is vital to show that we value parenting, kids and family in this country.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry, but there are two or three speakers whom I cannot get in because of the time. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for five minutes, followed by the shadow Minister for five minutes, and then the Minister for eight or nine minutes.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing this incredibly important debate. It is important to parents, children, our whole society and our economy. May I just say that it is wonderful to see so many men here, particularly fathers who have shared their experiences so personally and passionately? It is important that men are at the forefront of this debate, alongside women, to achieve the cultural change that needs to take place.
Parental leave, and paternity leave in particular, is a subject that rarely receives the attention it deserves. As the parent of two primary-aged children in a family where my husband has been the primary carer ever since I returned to work full time following maternity leave, I am passionate about ensuring that every family can have genuine choice in their caring arrangements in the early months and years. When we talk about the early years, the debate often focuses on childcare, because of how difficult it is for families to access affordable and flexible childcare, but that is only part of the picture. The Liberal Democrats believe that parents should have greater flexibility and choice over how to juggle work with parenting in those early few months.
It is important to be clear that, as the hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) said, mothers unarguably have a unique and vital role, and that must never be undervalued. No matter what certain right hon. and hon. Members may think—not those present today, I am sure—maternity pay is far from excessive. It is too low and needs to be increased, but that is a debate for another day, because we are talking about paid paternity leave. As we have heard, paternity leave gives dads a bit more time to form the crucial bond with their children. We know that it is beneficial for boys and girls when they have strong bonds with their dad.
Greater equality in parenting will lead to greater equality in the workplace. At the moment, the imbalance in parenting is a major driver of the gender pay gap. On average, a woman’s earnings take roughly a 40% hit when she has her first child and they do not recover. A man’s earnings, by contrast, barely take a hit. That was why I was proud that it was the Liberal Democrats in government who introduced shared parental leave in 2015. That major step forward gave parents choice over how to share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay between them, but it was just a first step. As we have heard, there is much more to do.
Take-up of shared parental leave and paternity leave remains far too low, and we know that affordability is a key reason why. A poll last year found that 62% of fathers would take more leave if statutory paternity pay were increased. We need a major overhaul to give parents a genuine choice. First, the rates need to rise. At less than half of full-time pay at minimum wage, today’s statutory rates simply are not enough to give parents a real choice. The Liberal Democrats proposed in our recent manifesto that paternity pay be boosted to 90% of pay, with a cap for high earnings. We also called for statutory parental pay to be doubled.
The second issue is eligibility. Unlike maternity leave, paternity leave is not a day one right. I am glad that the Employment Rights Bill will address that but, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), that is not the only barrier. We need to extend rights to self-employed parents, too.
Thirdly, two weeks is simply not enough, as many Members have set out so eloquently. It is well below the average of 12 weeks that we see across advanced economies, and evidence from places such as Quebec shows the importance of a longer period of leave reserved for fathers in boosting the take-up of parental leave by men. That is why the Liberal Democrats have also proposed that one month of paid parental leave should be a “use it or lose it” month for fathers and partners.
The previous Conservative Government made grand promises on this issue. In their 2019 manifesto, they pledged to make it easier for fathers to take paternity leave. In the end, all that amounted to, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) said, was allowing fathers to take their two weeks in two separate one-week blocks instead of having to take it all at once. That was a welcome change, I am sure, but it is hardly the overhaul that our system needs. I hope that the new Government will be much bolder and take up the plans that we Liberal Democrats set out in our manifesto to create a system that gives all families a real choice over how they want to care for their children in those precious months.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing the debate. I also thank the numerous Members who contributed to the debate. I would run through them all—I have written them down—but there are 17 and I am conscious of time, so I will move forward.
I welcome the fact that so many Members have come here to talk about this important subject. Opposition Members want to ensure that employees do not have to choose between a rewarding career and a fulfilling life. Due to reforms that were introduced by the previous Government, Britain now has a vastly improved paternity leave package.
In July 2019, the previous Government consulted on whether the existing arrangements for parental leave and pay were adequate, and whether more could be done to better balance the gender division of parental leave and pay between parents. The consultation sought views on the costs and benefits of reforming parental entitlements and any trade-offs that might need to accompany such reform. The Government response, published in June 2023, set out detailed reforms to paternity leave and pay, fulfilling a previous manifesto commitment to make it easier for fathers and partners to take paternity leave. The reforms included: giving employed fathers and partners more choice and flexibility around how and when they take their paternity leave, as we have just heard, allowing them to take two separate blocks of one week of leave; giving employed fathers and partners the ability to take their leave at any time in the first year after the child’s due date or birth, rather than just in the first eight weeks after birth or placement for adoption; and changing the requirements for paternity leave to make them more proportionate to the amount of time the father or parent plans to take off work, cutting the amount of notice of dates from 15 weeks before the expected week of childbirth to 28 days before the leave will be taken.
Moreover, the previous Government supported the passage of what was then called the Shared Parental Leave and Pay (Bereavement) Bill—a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore), who was at that time the hon. Member for Ogmore—to remove the qualifying employment condition for shared parental leave when the birth mother or adopting parent had died. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bridgend for steering the Bill through Parliament. It provided an important extension of support and protection for parents facing one of the most challenging situations in their lives.
I am conscious of time, so I shall wind up. His Majesty’s Opposition have taken note of the measures proposed in the Employment Rights Bill concerning paternity leave and pay. The Conservative party has always been the party of business, but we have also been pro-worker; getting the balance right is vital. We will therefore closely review the Bill’s provisions as it progresses through the House and will assess them on their individual merits.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing today’s debate, which has been very well attended. I did not think that we would see such unanimity, but there is clearly a fresh view in the House. We would not have had this sort of turnout or this kind of debate in previous Parliaments, but there is clearly a mood among newly elected Members—and of course among older, more experienced Members—for change.
I would reference all the contributions, but we will not have time for that. As always, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), for Livingston (Gregor Poynton), for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis), for Crawley (Peter Lamb), for Makerfield (Josh Simons), for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall), for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), for Congleton (Mrs Russell), for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge), for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies), for High Peak (Jon Pearce), and the hon. Members for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) and for Lewes (James MacCleary) for their contributions. I think that shows that across the nation there is great interest and appetite for reform. Apologies if I did not catch everyone’s contribution.
I will make a couple of points. The hon. Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo), and I think a couple of other Members, talked about the fact that those working in the gig economy and those who are self-employed do not qualify for any paternity leave. Clearly, we have set out in our “Next Steps” document on employment law reform a review of the worker status and self-employed issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton raised, as I would expect her to, the very important points about maternity discrimination. She will know that there are measures in the Employment Rights Bill to strengthen protections against dismissal for those on maternity leave. I cannot continue without mentioning and congratulating in advance my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak on his impending fatherhood for the third time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Telford was absolutely right that this issue is about not just the father’s role, but the wider role in society and the bond between father and child. He talked about his research into how Government Departments had handled the matter. It is fair to say that, as a newly elected Government, we want to see Government being an exemplar of best practice as an employer. He expanded our often-used phrase of being “pro-worker, pro-business” to add “pro-family”. I have no difficulty with that in this context.
The Government are committed to ensuring that employed parents receive the best possible support for their work and home lives. Our plan to make work pay will ensure that there is more flexibility and security for working families. Workers must be supported to work, while balancing the essential ingredients of their wider family life, whether that is raising children, improving their own wellbeing or looking after a loved one with a long-term health condition.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Justin Madders
I am sorry but I do not have time to take interventions.
We recognise that parental leave and pay entitlement, such as paternity leave and pay, play a key role in that balance. It is an important of the lives of parents and children for the parent to be able to take time away from work when their child is born—or first placed, as we recognise this debate covers other arrangements—so that partners can provide support and families can be together for the first time. We know the parental system needs improvement. Hon. Members can look back on previous debates, where it is clearly on the record that Labour in opposition felt that the parental system was in need of reform. I will set out some of the changes we plan to make in relation to the Employment Rights Bill.
As has been said, there have been some modest improvements in arrangements in the last 12 months. On 6 April, changes were introduced that allow parents to take leave and pay in two non-consecutive weeks, at any point in the first year after the birth or adoption of their child, and to give shorter notice for leave periods. That was a move forward but we want to go further. The Employment Rights Bill will make paternity leave a day one right. Currently, parents are eligible for leave only if they have been employed in their job for 26 weeks, by 15 weeks before the baby is due.
We will remove the requirement for a continuity of service condition for paternity leave. That will allow eligible employees to give notice of their intention to take that entitlement, from day one in the job. It will make paternity leave accessible to all employees, including those who may have low job security and low continuity of service, not only those who are able to reach the current set qualifying periods. We believe this measure will bring tens of thousands more parents into scope for the entitlement, meaning that many more families will benefit from protected time off.
We will make other changes to paternity leave to make it more flexible for parents. We will remove the restriction requiring paternity leave and pay to be taken before shared parental leave and pay. Currently, when shared parental leave and pay is taken, fathers lose their right to take any paternity leave and pay that they have not already taken. We think that is creating unintended consequences, and we will remove that restriction in order to provide the flexibility for employees to take advantage of the different types of leave available to them at the moment to care for their child in whatever order works for them and their family. That will also remove the risk that parents will lose their entitlement to take paternity leave and pay by misunderstanding the restrictions. As several hon. Members said, it is a complicated process; I had not realised that there was a cottage industry in completing forms for shared parental leave. That is clearly something we need to consider in due course.
We are making other commitments to improve parental leave. We are going to make unpaid parental leave a day one right. The provision gives an employed parent the right to take up to four weeks of leave per year for their child, unless the employer agrees to more. The maximum leave per child is 18 weeks in total. Currently, an employee must have worked in their job for a year to qualify for that entitlement. The Employment Rights Bill will remove that continuity of service requirement, and regulations will then enable parents to give notice of their intention to take that leave on the first day in a new job. We are very keen on having day one rights for employees in a whole range of areas. That, alongside the changes to paternity leave and pay, will increase flexibility and solidify and enhance economic activity for employed parents. Evidence shows that people who move jobs get wage increases. The current system of employees waiting up to a year for parental leave entitlements when they change employer means that parents are put off seeking new jobs that could have boosted their family income at a time when they need it more than ever.
We also know that the whole parental leave system does not support working families. As Members have said, we have committed to a review of the parental leave system. Inevitably, we will not be able to do that without looking at the questions raised today about how paternity leave and pay work. It is clearly part of a larger interconnected web. The review will be undertaken separately to the Employment Rights Bill, but work on planning for its delivery is already under way.
I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Telford an opportunity to respond, so I will bring my speech to a close. We are listening carefully to the many representations we have heard. Our plan to make work pay is a core part of our Government’s mission to grow the economy, raise living standards across the country and create opportunities for all. It will help more people stay in work, improve job security and boost living standards. The whole approach we are taking will benefit families across the board. It will benefit workers and businesses beyond the important specific interventions we have talked about today. We have a very important package of measures that I am proud to be a part of delivering in this new Government.
Shaun Davies
It has been a fascinating debate, as the Minister says. Most parts of the United Kingdom were covered, and I could say that there is cross-party progressive alliance on the issue. I hope that the Minister has noted that there is a significant amount of support for paternity leave and pay. There is an appetite from people like myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons) to use the Employment Rights Bill as the vehicle for this progressive change, but if that does not happen, engaging with the review of the parental leave system would be most helpful. The statutory minimum is the statutory minimum, and the Government and the public sector should see it as an opportunity lead the country in what fathers should expect in a workplace. I hope that colleagues from the Cabinet Office will take note.
Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I will be very brief. I am a former small business owner—does my hon. Friend agree that as part of that review, we should also be looking at and promoting to small businesses the benefits of adequate family leave and flexible working at the same time to help grow the economy?
Shaun Davies
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s point on small businesses. It is interesting that since this debate was secured, a number of employers have come forward to talk about the steps they are taking and their appetite for taking further steps—they see it as an opportunity to address recruitment and retention issues, too.
I look forward to working with the Minister and thank him for his contribution. I know that there will be further such conversations over the course of this Parliament.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for being very helpful. It was very difficult for you to speak for just one minute, and pretty much everybody did. I congratulate you, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), who I sadly was not able to call, but who seized his opportunity to speak by intervening on the mover of the motion in the last minute. I also congratulate my friend and neighbour, the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies), on his first Westminster Hall debate, which I am sure will be the first of many over the coming years.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered paternity leave and pay.
Written Correction
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Ministerial Correction
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Work and Pensions
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Andrew Western
On the wider points, I will begin with the question of the adequacy of carer’s allowance, set as it is at £151 per week. Carer’s allowance will be increased in April 2025 by the consumer prices index to help ensure that it maintains its value. As well as carer’s allowance, carers in low-income households can claim income-related benefits such as universal credit and pension credit.
[Official Report, 16 October 2024; Vol. 754, c. 883.]
Written correction submitted by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western):
Andrew Western
On the wider points, I will begin with the question of the adequacy of carer’s allowance, set as it is at £81.90 per week. Carer’s allowance will be increased in April 2025 by the consumer prices index to help ensure that it maintains its value. As well as carer’s allowance, carers in low-income households can claim income-related benefits such as universal credit and pension credit.
Written Statements
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Regulatory Partnership for Growth Fund
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The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)
Today I am announcing a new £2.3 million regulatory partnership for growth fund (RPGF), which will help to unlock export opportunities worth nearly £5 billion for UK companies over five years.
The RPGF will help UK regulators work with international partners to remove trade barriers and shape markets in various growing sectors. The Department for Business and Trade will offer grant funding agreements to UK regulators and standard setting bodies in order to undertake targeted, specific interventions to unlock regulatory market access barriers.
The fund builds on the Prime Minister’s call at the international investment summit last week for UK regulators to support the Government’s growth mission, keep pace with emerging industries and upgrade the regulatory regime to make it fit for the modern age.
This will see UK businesses, including in growth-driving sectors, benefit from almost £5 billion of new export opportunities over five years, with trade barriers worth £300 million being targeted within the first 12 months—equivalent to an average of £135 in exports per £1 invested.
For example, the fund will generate new opportunities for the UK offshore wind supply chain to export their products and services globally; enable the UK’s pharmaceutical industry to more easily sell medicines in markets around the world; and improve the process for accreditation of UK education providers to sell their services abroad.
List of organisations to receive funding
Architects Registration Board (ARB)
Operators of UK National Information Centre for global qualifications and skills (Ecctis)
The Food Standards Agency (FSA)
The Law Society of England and Wales
The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (OREC)
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)
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UK and Ecuador: Double Taxation Convention
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
A double taxation convention with Ecuador was signed in Quito on 6 August 2024. The text of the convention is available on the HM Revenue and Customs pages of the gov.uk website and will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. The text of the convention will be scheduled to a draft Order in Council and laid before the House of Commons in due course.
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UK-Germany Defence Co-operation Agreement
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The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)
Earlier today, together with my German counterpart Boris Pistorius, I signed an agreement on defence co-operation between the United Kingdom and Germany. The agreement will strengthen bilateral defence co-operation and will enhance our mutual security. It represents a significant milestone in the defence relationship between our two countries and underscores our shared commitment to maintaining peace and stability in Europe.
This defence agreement builds on the strong foundation of co-operation between the UK and Germany and reflects our shared values and strategic interests. It is a testament to the enduring partnership between our two nations and our commitment to working together to address common security challenges. The agreement will contribute to the security of the Euro-Atlantic region and will help to support the defence industries of both countries by enhancing co-operation in research and technology, and developing co-operative equipment programs. The agreement will also enhance bilateral interoperability between our armed forces, across all domains, and will support us in working together to strengthen standardisation in NATO.
The agreement will provide a comprehensive structure to ensure bilateral co-operation is managed in a holistic and systemic way; a new defence ministerial council will oversee co-operation across the whole of defence, providing greater strategic co-ordination across the breadth and depth of the relationship.
The defence agreement will see the UK and Germany work together systemically for years to come on a range of ground-breaking defence projects. We will jointly develop and procure extended deep precision strike capabilities to provide a conventional deterrent in Europe; focusing on developing new capabilities which far exceed the ranges of our current systems.
In the air domain, we will work jointly to develop and employ uncrewed aerial and offboard air systems, and enhance connectivity, to ensure interoperability between our respective future combat air systems. To enhance our co-operation on land, we will foster a deep industrial partnership between our defence industries and work to strengthen NATO by developing doctrine, uncrewed systems, and enabling capabilities, to transform our land forces.
We will enhance undersea co-operation between the UK and Germany in the north Atlantic and North sea, significantly contributing to the protection of critical undersea infrastructure and sea lines of communications. We will facilitate episodic deployments of German P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft in the UK, and co-ordinate combined and joint anti-submarine warfare operations with ships, submarines, and aircraft.
The UK Government remain steadfast in their commitment to the defence of the United Kingdom and our allies; we are confident that this agreement will contribute to the security and prosperity of both our nations and the wider European region. We look forward to working closely with Germany to ensure its successful implementation.
This defence agreement will serve as the first pillar of a new comprehensive bilateral treaty, which is currently being negotiated with Germany by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and is due to be signed by early 2025.
A copy of the joint communiqué can be found on gov.uk here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-germany-trinity-house-agreement-on-defence.
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Tackling Child Poverty
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Liz Kendall)
Today, the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) and I are pleased to announce that we are publishing, “Tackling Child Poverty: Developing Our Strategy”.
Since 2010, child poverty has increased by 700,000, with over 4 million children living in poverty in the UK, and 800,000 children using food banks to eat. This is a scar on our society, which holds back children’s life chances and damages our country’s prospects. Breaking the link between background and success in life is at the heart of our opportunity and growth missions.
The Prime Minister has tasked us to develop an ambitious child poverty strategy which will be published in spring 2025. This is a shared endeavour across all parts of the UK, and we can learn from action being taken in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Our Government will tackle overall child poverty, assessed by the leading and internationally recognised measure of poverty, but also go beyond that to focus on children in deepest poverty lacking essentials, and what is needed to give every child the best start in life.
Today, our publication sets out how we will develop the strategy which will harness all available levers to deliver a reduction in child poverty this Parliament as part of an ambitious 10-year strategy which addresses root causes including:
Supporting households to increase their income, including considering social security reforms that support people into work and alleviate poverty.
Helping to bring down essential household costs.
Increasing financial resilience by tackling problem debt and helping families manage financial shocks through savings and affordable credit.
Alleviating the negative experience of living in poverty, including through supporting families and the role of public services.
Over the coming months, the child poverty taskforce will hear directly from experts on each of the strategy’s themes including children and families living in poverty and work with leading organisations, charities, and campaigners.
In October, we have invited partners in industry, regulation and the charity sector to share evidence and ideas on options to reduce essential costs for low-income families.
In November, employers, trade unions and think tanks will be invited to discuss options to increase incomes and financial resilience in low-income households.
In December, experts on children’s health, early years and education and representatives from civil society will be invited to share experience and expertise on ensuring low-income families are able to access quality services to tackle the impacts of poverty.
Ministers will take part in engagement events across the nations and regions of the UK, bringing together a diverse range of voices. A new forum of parents and carers living across the UK will be set up to ensure the experiences of children in poverty, including disabled children and those with special educational needs, are included. They will feed directly into the strategy.
Living in poverty not only harms children’s lives now, it damages their future prospects and holds back our country. Children living in poverty are denied the opportunities that should enable them to achieve and thrive. And Britain cannot see maximum economic growth when the talents of so many children are being lost. Our ambitious child poverty strategy will reduce child poverty, tackle the root causes, and give every child the best start in life.
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Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)
My Lords, as is customary at the beginning of each Grand Committee, I advise the Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, which is unlikely, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
UK-US Co-operation on Using Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence
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Lord Goldsmith
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Amendment to the Agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States of America for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence Purposes, laid before the House on 26 July.
Relevant document: 2nd Report from the International Agreements Committee
Lord Goldsmith (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate the International Agreements Committee’s two reports on the related topics of the UK-US mutual defence agreement and the AUKUS agreement. I thank the Government for making the time available for this debate.
I will start with the MDA, which entered into force in August 1958. I am looking forward to this debate, particularly because it includes some new members of the committee; I am very pleased to welcome them to the committee as well. The MDA has been amended several times since it entered into force in August 1958, most recently in 2014. It provides for the exchange of nuclear materials, technology and information relating to nuclear weapons, although it does not provide for the transfer of nuclear weapons themselves. It underpins the UK’s nuclear weapons programme, and as such is a key part of the special relationship.
Despite the MDA being described as the cornerstone of the defence nuclear relationship between the UK and the US, amendments to the agreement in 1994, 2004 and 2014 were not subject to debate in Parliament or a Select Committee report. External stakeholders such as CND and the Nuclear Information Service have raised concerns about the lack of parliamentary scrutiny of previous amendments to the MDA and have called for a debate on the most recent amendments. I am therefore very pleased that we are having this debate today.
The amending agreement should be considered in the context of key developments to the UK’s nuclear deterrent. The UK is currently in the process of modernising its nuclear capabilities and nuclear-powered submarines, aiming to replace its four Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines with the new Dreadnought class from the early 2030s. A programme to replace the UK’s nuclear warhead was also confirmed in February 2020. In March 2024, the previous Government published a new Defence Nuclear Enterprise Command Paper, which sets out the long-term approach to investing in and developing the UK’s nuclear deterrent. The United States is also currently modernising its strategic nuclear capabilities.
The amending agreement should also be considered in the context of particular concerns. Some commentators have criticised the MDA as it risks the UK appearing to become overdependent on the US in relation to developing an independent nuclear weapons programme. However, the Ministry of Defence told us that co-operation with the US is based on the understanding that the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent remains independent.
Turning to the committee’s report, we make two main recommendations: two key conclusions, both related to the unsatisfactory arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny of the MDA. First, we welcome the expectation that ratification of the amending agreement by the US will be completed within the terms of the current Administration and Congress. But we also observe how the thorough congressional scrutiny processes contrast starkly with the inadequacy of our own arrangements.
The US began its process of ratification earlier than the UK. Under the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has the opportunity to review a nuclear co-operation agreement for two periods totalling 90 days of continuous session. That is 30 days of consultation with relevant committees and 60 days during which Congress has the opportunity to adopt a joint resolution of disapproval. The Ministry of Defence has indicated that the period for congressional review has now concluded. By contrast, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, or CRaG, Parliament has only 21 sitting days in which to scrutinise a treaty, take evidence and report on it, and hold a debate.
Considering the MDA’s role in forming the cornerstone of the UK-US defence and security relationship, the committee particularly regretted the lack of sufficient time to take evidence on this important agreement. This is yet another example of the shortcomings of the CRaG regime. Noble Lords may be interested to know that the committee is currently considering and conducting an inquiry into how parliamentary scrutiny of treaties can be improved in future. We have commented on this in previous reports.
In our second conclusion, the committee drew attention to a specific change in the amending agreement, which will potentially reduce the already scarce opportunities for Parliament to scrutinise the MDA. This concerns Article III bis, which provides for the transfer of non-nuclear parts, enriched uranium, special nuclear material and equipment. Article III bis is time-limited and has been renewed on a 10-year cycle since the 1980s. The requirement to approve revisions to Article III bis has also provided the opportunity for both parties to make further amendments to other parts of the MDA. Article 5 of the amending agreement amends Article III bis so that its provisions are “extended indefinitely”, with no requirement for periodic renewal. Given the strategic importance of UK-US co-operation at this critical time in replacing the UK’s nuclear deterrent to maintain the country’s security, the committee is concerned at this reduction in scrutiny opportunities and calls on the Government to commit to providing a report to Parliament on the progress and operation of the MDA every 10 years. That is a critical conclusion and recommendation of this committee.
Having dealt with the MDA, I want to turn now to the committee’s report on the AUKUS agreement relating to co-operation on naval nuclear propulsion, which forms part of the broader trilateral defence and security partnership between the UK, the US and Australia. This agreement has been made under pillar 1. The first phase of the partnership focuses on supporting Australia to acquire its first conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine fleet. Upon its entry into force, it will supersede the current exchange naval nuclear propulsion information agreement, which entered into force in January 2022. That agreement, which I shall call the ENNPI agreement, allowed for the exchange of information to facilitate an 18-month study into the delivery of a conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine capability to Australia. The committee reported on that agreement on 13 January 2022, drawing it to the special attention of the House, and a debate was held in Grand Committee on 17 January.
The new agreement will allow the UK and US to support Australia in acquiring its first conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine fleet from the 2030s. As well as allowing the continued exchange of naval nuclear propulsion information, it will authorise the transfer of material and equipment relating to naval nuclear propulsion, including special nuclear material in complete welded nuclear power units. That will enable UK industry to support Australia in building a trilaterally developed submarine, incorporating technology from the UK, the US and Australia.
The AUKUS nations have released a joint statement detailing the progress made since the announcement of the optimal pathway in March 2023. The specific progress includes: increased education and training of Royal Australian Navy personnel and specialised US and UK schools; increased industry training to build and sustain nuclear-powered submarines; and preparatory activities to build Australia’s capacity ahead of establishing the submarine rotational force-west by 2027—that is, the rotational presence of UK and US nuclear-powered submarines at HMAS Stirling.
The committee welcomes the significant progress made in the delivery of pillar 1 of the AUKUS partnership. Nevertheless, we must also be mindful of some risks, as well as opportunities, highlighted by some defence commentators. For example, Dr Sidharth Kaushal, writing for the Royal United Services Institute, warned against the sale of the Virginia class to Australia appearing as a diversion of capacity from the US Navy and of the need to manage design trade-offs as well as human capital. Similarly, Andrew Dowse, the director of RAND Australia, outlined risks such as public perception challenges in relation to cost, nuclear proliferation and implications for the sovereignty of an Australian submarine fleet.
I will briefly summarise the link between the MDA and AUKUS agreements and why we are debating both reports together today. The AUKUS submarine fleet will incorporate designs and technology from both the UK and US, so the MDA could have a key role in enabling the exchange of nuclear propulsion technology and information sharing between the parties. The AUKUS submarine will be based on the UK’s next-generation nuclear-powered submarine design and will include US technology based largely on the Virginia-class SSN, including nuclear propulsion technology and components, and a common vertical launch system and weapons. The Ministry of Defence, from which we took evidence, acknowledged that although they represent two separate agreements, the MDA added value to the AUKUS trilateral agreement and that, without the MDA, we would not have the ENNPIA or AUKUS pillar 1.
Before I conclude and look forward to the debate, I thank the Ministry of Defence for its co-operation in assisting our scrutiny work. I thank my colleagues on the International Agreements Committee, a number of whom are here, for their hard work and support. I also thank the officials of the committee, who have to work on what I have already identified as a very tight timetable to prepare reports, briefs and drafts for us, a feature to which we must have regard when we look, as I hope we will, at a revision of CRaG. Finally, I thank those who offered us a slot for debate in Grand Committee within the CRaG period. I beg to move.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for both the meticulousness of these reports and for the unfussy, intelligible and lucid way in which he set out the recommendations. I have nothing to add on that level of detail, so I shall take a step back and ponder why these alliances among the English-speaking democracies are the basis of our security.
I take your Lordships back to 9 August 1941, a date which one or two Members of our Chamber will no doubt remember as if it were yesterday. This was the day on which President Roosevelt made the longest walk of his presidency. In a way that is now almost unimaginable, the US media contrived to hide the fact of the President’s polio from the electorate, so he was always pictured standing unaided or seated. However, on that day, walking from the decks of USS “Augusta” to those of HMS “Prince of Wales”, he decided to walk so, supported by his son on one hand and by a naval officer on the other, he made the slow progress to meet the British Prime Minister, while the band of HMS “Prince of Wales” struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever”.
What followed was the most extraordinary demonstration of what binds the anglophone democracies together. It happened to be a Sunday, so the crews of the two vessels were mustered for a joint religious service. Churchill had chosen every detail personally and meticulously, down to the hymns and the reading that the chaplain gave from the pulpit. It came from Joshua:
“As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage”.
Afterwards, exultantly, Churchill burst out, “The same language, the same hymns, the same ideals”, and when he said “the same ideals”, he was not making a general point about being the good guys. Think of the world as it stood in August 1941. The entire Eurasian landmass, from Lisbon to Vladivostok, was under one form or another of autocratic rule. Liberty was thrown back to the alliance of English-speaking peoples. We talk of universal values, but actually almost everything we mean when we say that was a precept overwhelmingly developed in the language which I am now speaking. The things that make the modern world rational, comfortable and pleasant—regular elections, uncensored newspapers, equality between men and women, the ability of different parties to contest without people being exiled or shot, habeas corpus and jury trials—were overwhelmingly the heritage of the English-speaking peoples. Imagine that the Second World War or the Cold War had ended differently. There would have been nothing universal about them then. We tend to be polite, so we gloss over the extent to which these values became universal as a series of military actions by this country and its kindred allies.
I spent 21 years in the European Parliament and was often teased by continental colleagues about this country’s supposed subordination to the United States. They would mock us: “Do you have any foreign policy of your own? Do you always just have to wait for a phone call from DC? Have you become a sort of aircraft carrier for the US?” As patiently and politely as I could, I would explain that, formed by the same history and institutions, when presented by the same problem, we tended to respond in similar ways. We had a shared indignation with injustice and a shared belief in freedom and the elevation of the individual over the collective.
All of us have lived through a period of anglosphere hegemony, where these values have been treated as universal because they have rested on victory in the Second World War and then the Cold War. But permanence is the illusion of every age. There are rival models out there. Thinking back to the debate we just had in the Chamber, I say that a lot of these rival systems have come together from no motive other than a shared hostility to us. It is very difficult to see what the religious fundamentalists of Tehran, the hermit kingdom of North Korea, the imperial and nationalist autocracy of Russia and the still notionally communist state of China have in common, beyond a hostility to western individual and property rights, free contract and all the things that go with them. History rather disproves the idea that we have an automatic advantage—that other countries will feel their way towards our values as they become richer and more educated.
The Chinese model, in particular, strikes me as a civilisational or categorical alternative to ours. Unlike the others, it is capable of export. Plenty of countries out there do not much like us but, through a combination of high technology—facial recognition and surveillance —and the use of notionally private companies such as Weibo, Tencent and Alibaba to act both as proselytisers and spies for the regime, in a peculiar way Beijing seems to have built a model that it can sell. It could say to, for example, Maduro in Venezuela, “If you don’t want to worry about any more elections, here is a way that we can build you your panopticon state, and then we won’t need to worry about having to deal with any of your successors”.
That, fundamentally, has caused our renewed interest in the Pacific and triggered the AUKUS agreement. It was about maintaining a free world based on the rule of law, rule among nations and open sea lanes, against revanchist states that challenge the established order.
I hope we will be able to build on and strengthen the AUKUS alliance. I look forward, in particular, to its expansion. I am encouraged by conversations that I have had with the Opposition in Canada, who are keen to become involved if there is a change of government. Apart from anything else, that would make it much more euphonic; “CAUKUS” works a lot better than AUKUS, which is quite difficult to say.
I feel that our interest in the Pacific region, quite apart from being in tune with our past, is reflective of the critical economic importance of that region. Just as, at some point in the 18th century, the centre of the world shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, in this century it has shifted to the Pacific. Tied as we are by habit and history, kinship and custom, language and law, many of the nations in that region do not have the option of remaining neutral.
Let us remember what we are defending. Beijing has a tendency to divide and rule. We have not really been on the receiving end of very much direct aggression, but Australia has—a complete trade embargo and immense diplomatic pressure after it called for an inquiry into the origins of Covid. I do not think that we could possibly be indifferent between an allied English-speaking democracy and an autocratic state. As long as we still have a song to sing and more to give, I hope that we remain involved in that region. Nothing lasts for ever. The day will surely come when
“all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!”
But I tell your Lordships what: when that day comes, we are going to miss this era through which we pass more than we currently imagine possible.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, even if I feel compelled to correct slightly some of his history. It is not the case that all this is about English-speaking people. The great meetings that took place on various bits of the Atlantic included the Governments of most of what are now continental European countries. They were of course living in exile in London, but subscribed to the same values and qualities that we applaud today. They were, funnily enough, before the establishment of the United Nations organisation in 1945, called the “united nations”.
I will cast that little blemish aside and address the two amended agreements that we are debating today within what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, correctly described as the CRaG process. They are important and deserve to be considered by Parliament; for that reason, I greatly welcome that the Government have enabled time to be made available to do so. They of course relate to Britain’s nuclear co-operation with the US, dating back to the ending of the lamentable US McMahon Act, which cut us off from any process of nuclear co-operation for a period of years after the end of the Second World War; it was very damaging. We are also debating the strategically important AUKUS agreement, which provides Australia with nuclear-propelled submarines.
Your Lordships’ committee, most ably led by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, whose introductory remarks I totally subscribe to, has found both agreements to be strategically sound and in the UK’s national interest. We also found them to be consistent with our international obligations, including under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But—and there are a couple of quite important buts—some significant new issues have been raised, which we hope the Minister will reply to positively when he responds to the debate. Neither affects the treaty with the US, which, in a welcome way, is due to be ratified on its side before the expiry of the present Administration and present Congress.
The first of the buts relates to the CRaG process itself. The noble and learned Lord mentioned the unsatisfactory time limits within which it operates. These are, to be frank, absurdly short and do not allow your Lordships’ committee to subject treaties and agreements to proper analysis and scrutiny, nor to gather testimony. The UK-US MDA, which we are debating today, exemplifies that problem to perfection. It was triggered during the summer and conference recesses and, even though the recess days were taken into account, there was simply no time to organise evidence sessions before we drafted our report. We therefore had only one session with senior officials, for which I express my gratitude; their testimony was extremely useful. No evidence was taken from a Minister, and we had no time to get outside witnesses to come and give different opinions, perhaps, on the treaties that we were looking at. That is no way to handle the ratification of an important international treaty. I really doubt whether any properly constituted democracy permits such a cursory and inadequate ratification review—although no doubt “people’s democracies”, such as Russia and China, would do so with alacrity.
I hope, therefore, that the Minister in the new Government will consider carefully the operating procedures for CRaG documents and will enable them in future to be scrutinised rather more effectively than they are now. I do not expect a response on that point today because, as the noble and learned Lord said, the committee is proposing to put together its considerations relating to the CRaG process in a report before too long.
My second point also relates to parliamentary scrutiny. As a consequence of the decision to eliminate the 10-year review clause in the UK-US MDA—the committee is not objecting to that and the consequent prolongation of the agreement, sine die—there will now be no occasion at all for further parliamentary scrutiny of the operation of the agreement. That is perhaps inadvertent—I am being generous—but is surely a damaging step backwards. One way in which to resolve it would be if the Minister were to state without equivocation at the end of this debate that the Government of the day would bring before Parliament at 10-year intervals a report on the operation of the UK-US MDA so that it could be considered and debated. Such a report would not—I repeat, not—affect the US side, nor affect the maintenance of the amended treaty itself, sine die. It might be said that 10 years is a long way off, but infinity is a bit longer.
I hope that this debate can end in a meeting of minds between the committee and the new Government. That would surely get matters off on the best possible footing.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful that the House has provided time for an important debate that I welcome and we need to have. It is of national importance. I also thank my colleagues on the International Agreements Committee and, in particular, our chair, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who at times has the job of herding cats because it is a formidable group to try and get to agree something. For that, we all owe him a lot of thanks.
Over the past few weeks, there has been much debate over the future composition of this House and, without wanting to go off on a tangent and risk starting an entirely different debate, I feel that the Government, when they consider the future of this House, should first consider what role they believe Members should play. I make this suggestion while entirely supporting the concerns raised by the committee that the amendments proposed provide a significant risk that the UK-US MDA would no longer be subject to proper routine scrutiny. I therefore fully back the recommendations and the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about the need for this agreement to have periodic review.
More widely than that, I put it to the Committee that, in this rather precarious and unstable world in which we live, the CRaG Act 2010 is outdated and the House should be given a greater role in the scrutiny of foreign policy and defence-related matters. I am going to leave the subject of constitutional reform well alone for the time being, but I hope that the Government will today offer the Committee some reassurance on how both the treaty on AUKUS and the amendments to the UK-US mutual defence agreement will be subject to the level of public scrutiny worthy of such matters.
I turn to the AUKUS treaty on naval nuclear propulsion. This trilateral agreement offers the opportunity for the UK to play a leading role in creating a new and much-needed frontier for security in the Indo-Pacific. As I have mentioned in previous debates, the Indo-Pacific region faces increasing tensions, for it is one of the most geographically sensitive areas in the world at this time. It is the duty of the Government to protect our newly forged trade interests in the region, such as the CPTPP and the post-Brexit bilateral free trade agreements that we hold with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the AUKUS treaty will go a considerable way to bolstering the defence capabilities of our allies, while advancing our own security and trade interests.
Further, AUKUS facilitates the opportunity to deepen trade relationships with Australia and the United States, which are two of the world’s most advanced and trustworthy economies. Through the bedrock of collaborative security arrangements, AUKUS will enable stronger economic ties, and there is the real potential to drive emerging industries such as AI and quantum computing.
We must view the AUKUS treaty as a necessary counterbalance in the Indo-Pacific region. It must remain a government priority that we honour the treaty fully to ensure that our allies have the partnership support needed to maintain freedom of navigation, to protect our trade routes on the high seas and to do what we in this island nation have proudly done for centuries: deferring and, when necessary, neutralising the aggressive actions of rogue players who do not conform within the international rules-based system that we must at all times continue to maintain.
We should be proud that, through AUKUS, we are part of the future. There is a real opportunity here to harness innovation and technological leadership that will not only strengthen immediately our security but potentially allow us, alongside our US and Australian partners, to lead the world in naval defence innovation. I hope that the Government will seek ways to empower and inspire young people in this country to gain the necessary skills and qualifications to drive this much-needed innovation over the years ahead.
Beyond security, AUKUS represents a major economic opportunity for the UK’s defence industries, which stand to benefit significantly from this trilateral agreement involving two G7 nations and a G10 nation. As we transfer technology and our knowledge, there will be demand in highly skilled jobs and manufacturing. It is therefore vital that the Government set out the right industrial framework to allow the UK to feel fully the benefits of this agreement. I hope that the Minister will be able to update the Committee on the Government’s commitment to work in this area.
When considering pillar 2 of AUKUS, I am really excited and pleased to see artificial intelligence listed among the eight advanced military capability areas. It is a fast-moving area and it is therefore vital that we play our part in collaborating fully through AUKUS in developing cutting-edge AI technologies, hand in hand with our partners. That said, it also highlights the pressing need for a wider debate on the use and application of AI when it comes to defence and warfare. Although I am sure that there is wide public support for the application of AI when it comes to the optimisation of military supply chains, improvements to navigation, enhancing training and simulation, while, of course, countering AI threats, Parliament must be given a voice and the opportunity, within the parameters of protecting national security, to consider how this technology is to be deployed in the future.
Over the last few years, the Ministry of Defence has been successful in trialling and perfecting laser-directed energy weapons which, with such low running costs, have huge potential to strengthen the UK’s defence capabilities. DragonFire is a symbol of the MoD’s ability to remain at the cutting edge of innovation, and I therefore wonder whether there is scope to see other areas, such as innovating around laser-directed systems, included under pillar 2 in the not-too-distant future.
The United Kingdom remains a leading military and diplomatic power and with this comes a responsibility to shape the evolution of international rules-based systems through our values, by promoting peace, encouraging stability and strengthening the rule of law. It is with this responsibility that the Government must never lose sight of the fact that AUKUS is much more than a defence pact, for it is the affirmation of this nation’s commitment to an open, free and secure world. I therefore wish the Government well in continuing the work of the previous Government in this important space and taking it further. I hope the Minister will reassure us that the next stage of AUKUS will be a key component of our national security architecture, to be more than a pact and, like Five Eyes, develop, expand and gradually bring in our partners to work together. I hope it will go beyond electoral cycles to be long lasting and there for the future.
I turn briefly to the UK-US MDA. The special relationship between the United Kingdom and US has been underpinned by the mutual defence agreement since it was first signed in 1958 and it has been a key pillar of the world-leading role that the UK and US play in promoting peace and security. The amendment and recent renewal of the MDA will ensure that our co-operation can adapt to a changing strategic, technological and legal environment. Against the challenges we face in the world today, such renewals are most welcome. We must strive to do more on joint research and development, particularly in ensuring that we have the ability to innovate so that our nuclear deterrent does not become obsolete as we face up to a future underpinned by rapid technological advance.
With war raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and tensions rising in the Indo-Pacific, the prospects of avoiding the catastrophe of global conflict continue to be strained. That is why agreements such as these must not simply be words on paper but the actions and resolve of the United Kingdom and her allies.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome this debate. I support the ratification of these treaties, which I too consider to be in our national interest, as previous speakers have remarked. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the International Agreements Committee for their informative analysis of these treaties in their second and third reports.
As has been pointed out, the main amendment to the UK-US MDA is to Article III bis, a key provision in the treaty which was added in 1959. It regulates the transfer of non-nuclear components and nuclear materials from the US to the UK and from the UK to the US. This provision historically had a sunset clause, which effectively meant that a new agreement had to be concluded before the expiration of the deadline. Article 5 of the amendment agreement will remove the sunset clause.
In the debate on the strategic defence review, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said that he would explain the reasons for making this arrangement indefinite. I very much look forward to his explanation, with which I suspect to find myself in agreement because it seems to me that an indefinite agreement is appropriate in this context given the strategic importance of our alliance with the United States and in light of the commitments under the AUKUS agreement on naval nuclear propulsion. Moreover, making the arrangement indefinite is consistent with the nature of the co-operation that the MDA, in particular Article III bis, provided for.
In some ways, the sunset clause seemed rather out of place in this kind of treaty because, in reality, terminating the envisaged nuclear co-operation would always have required an agreement between the parties and a staged process. This is reflected in the terms of Article XII, which deals with duration. It provides that the treaty
“shall remain in force until terminated by agreement of both Parties”.
It does not provide for unilateral termination except in the case of one provision—Article II. I also note that Article 13 of the amendment agreement adds some important changes to Article XII on duration that provide precisely for the kind of staged process that termination would inevitably require. Removal of the sunset clause is the right decision and is also consistent with the legal architecture of this treaty. I commend the Government on securing this change.
That said, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, so clearly explained, a consequence of this change is that the MDA will not come to Parliament every 10 years or so. In light of that, I strongly support the committee’s critical conclusion that the Government should provide a report to Parliament on the progress and operation of the MDA every 10 years or so. I hope the Minister can reassure us in that regard.
I also endorse the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Udny-Lister, on the inadequacy of our ratification process, which these treaties have brought into sharp relief.
The other point that I wish to make that relates to both treaties concerns our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I agree with the Government that neither the MDA nor AUKUS would put us in breach of our obligations under the NPT. This is a very important subject and I am grateful to the Government for the attention they have given to it, including in the evidence that they submitted to the committee.
I was counsel for the UK 10 years ago in the case that the Marshall Islands brought against the UK concerning our obligations to negotiate towards nuclear disarmament. That case was brought before the International Court of Justice against all nuclear weapon states. Most nuclear weapon states had an easy way out of that litigation, but we did not take it, because we accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the court. We had to defend the UK’s position, which we did successfully.
Since then, it is fair to say that the international landscape of nuclear proliferation has become far more challenging. The risks of nuclear proliferation are greater, as illustrated by North Korea and Iran. Moreover, crucially, the impatience of non-nuclear weapon states towards nuclear weapon states has grown, as reflected in the conclusion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—the TPNW—which was adopted in 2017 and has already secured 94 signatures and 73 accessions or ratifications. For obvious reasons, the United Kingdom and the United States are not going to become parties to that treaty. The NPT is the only treaty that brings together nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states, and offers us the best chance of managing the risk of nuclear proliferation. However, the NPT will not survive unless nuclear weapon states continue to engage with it. That is a position that I am sure still enjoys support across the political divide. I note that a former senior adviser in arms control in the Trump Administration, Dr Tom Grant, has recently made the case for the NPT in a book entitled Nuclear Arms Control in Peril: Why the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Matters and How to Save It.
Whether we are progressive realists or realists, we need the NPT and we need to keep it relevant. For that reason, I welcome the engagement of the Government with the case made in relation to these treaties concerning our obligations under the NPT.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, AUKUS is of course an acronym for the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are two pillars of defence: first, a conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia, supported by the UK and the USA; secondly, co-operation in advanced capability, including AI.
As a trustee of Policy Exchange, I can say that we coined the term Indo-Pacific as opposed to Asia-Pacific, as it used to be referred to. With the UK’s renewed policy focus on the Indo-Pacific, that is timely. We have joined the CPTPP. We should also join the Quad, with India, the USA, Japan and Australia, making it Quad Plus, circling the world. Does the Minister agree? That would enhance our membership of NATO and Five Eyes, and our security would be greatly enhanced, but—I will come back to this later—we should spend 3% of our GDP on defence. Our Armed Forces—the Army, the Navy and the Air Force—are far too small in numbers of people; I say that as a proud honorary group captain in 601 Squadron of the RAF.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak assured us in March 2023 that an additional £5 billion would be provided by the MoD for the AUKUS programme and that sustained funding would be provided. Can the Minister confirm that? The Government have also said that this would create thousands of jobs here in the UK and in Australia.
Gideon Rachman wrote an excellent article in the FT this February in which he said:
“China has repeatedly attacked Aukus as dangerous and confrontational. Shortly after it was launched, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister at the time, gleefully lampooned the ‘raucous squawkus from the anti-Aukus caucus’”.
He concluded:
“The pact is ultimately a statement of resolve and long-term commitment. It is based on a shared perception of the growing strategic threat from China and Russia as they work together to overturn the current international order. That perception seems more pressing and valid than ever”.
He said that in February, and it is truer than ever now.
The noble Lord, Lord Risby, who led a debate on AUKUS in February this year, referred to AUKUS as a “technology accelerator”. I think that is fantastic, because there is huge potential in enhancing our security but also powering ahead with our innovation and research and development capabilities—all things that this country has always been fantastic at.
When I was president of the CBI, one of my priorities was to promote government, business and universities working together, not just in the UK but across borders. As chancellor of the University of Birmingham, I was very proud when we won two Queen’s Anniversary Prizes, one of them for Rolls-Royce and its work in aero engines. We have seen time and again that when you do cross-border collaboration between two universities—in Birmingham’s case, with Panjab University in India or with Harvard University in the United States—the field-weighted impact of collaborative research is three times higher than if the university does it on its own. Could the Government through AUKUS promote this cross-border, collaborative approach, with universities, government and business working together?
Pillar 1 of AUKUS focuses on supporting Australia to acquire its first conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarine fleet, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said in his excellent opening speech. It does not involve the transfer of nuclear weapons to Australia. Pillar 2 focuses on co-operation in eight advanced military capability areas: artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, innovation, information-sharing, cyber, undersea, hypersonic and counter-hypersonic, and electronic warfare domains.
The UK-US mutual defence agreement, which many noble Lords spoke about, was established in 1958 for co-operation on nuclear materials, technology and defence and is meant to be renewed every 10 years. This seeks to extend naval nuclear propulsion co-operation to all naval vessels, and the proposal now removes the 10-year renewal requirement for Article III bis—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, mentioned—allowing continuous co-operation. We have been assured of the Government’s commitment to transparency and parliamentary accountability within national security limits. However, there are concerns over reduced parliamentary oversight with the removal of routine reviews of Article III bis. That is worrying. Here is a fact: the MDA amendments would lessen routine parliamentary scrutiny. On the other hand, the United States Congress will conduct far more rigorous scrutiny than us over here in the UK Parliament. Do the Government feel that this is a healthy position to be in?
Pillar 1 focuses on Australia’s acquisition of a nuclear-powered submarine fleet, leveraging UK submarine design and technology, with £3 billion allocated over two years. Pillar 2 emphasises developing advanced capabilities—AI, hypersonic and quantum technology, as I said earlier—and enhances interoperability among armed forces. The UK hosted the first AUKUS AI trial in April 2023, demonstrating this military collaboration, which I will come to later.
However, concerns exist about US export regulations impacting co-operation. An open general licence was issued for AUKUS nations as of 1 September 2024, and the Minister, Luke Pollard, outlined ongoing efforts with AUKUS partners to develop undersea capabilities, including launching and recovering uncrewed underwater systems from British and American submarines, integrating this into the SSN-AUKUS design.
The traditional NATO structure was to be a deterrent to Soviet expansion, but with AUKUS members there are huge incentives: for Australia, the concerns over China’s military growth and sovereignty threats; for the UK, to deepen our ties with the United States, enhance military collaboration and expand Pacific exports; for the United States, to maintain military dominance against rising Chinese and Russian assertiveness.
On Australia’s industry capacity constraints, there is scepticism in some quarters in Australia about AUKUS that we continue to need to address. The evolution of AUKUS could yield a new form of plurilateral defence alliance, addressing collaborative military capability needs and the emphasis on flexible investments in inter- operable military capabilities to adapt to geopolitical threats. This also strengthens the UK’s position in global security and military collaboration, and opportunities for technological advancement and military exports, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
For over 65 years, the UK and the US have co-operated on defence nuclear issues. Established as an amendment to the post-World War II US non-proliferation law, the MDA exempts allies from making significant advancements in nuclear weapons from the general ban on exchange leading to proliferation.
I will be absolutely clear about the three amendments. Article 4 makes naval nuclear propulsion co-operation reciprocal, allowing the UK to share technology and information with the US. Article 5 removes the expiry provisions of Article III bis, allowing the MDA to remain in force on an “enduring basis”, which I have spoken about, and eliminating the 10-year renewal requirement. Article 13 ensures that the information, material or equipment shared under the MDA will remain protected if terminated by either party in the future. But no one has mentioned this: a joint nuclear skills plan aims to double apprentices in the sector, enhancing the workforce. We have a Budget coming up. I hope that the Government address the huge flaws in our apprentice system. The apprenticeship levy needs to be reformed wholesale, and with regard to AUKUS. Does the Minister agree?
The review will maintain UK defence ties in the Indo-Pacific, prioritising objectives to create a deliverable defence plan supporting AUKUS. Is this a separate plan? Will it be apart from the strategic defence review or part of it?
As I mentioned earlier, we had a world first as the UK hosted the inaugural AUKUS AI and autonomy trial. This exemplified strong trilateral co-operation in AI capabilities, enhancing operational effectiveness and decision-making speed. Over 70 military and civilian defence personnel and industry contractors participated in the AUKUS AI trial, involving various air and ground vehicles. Milestones included live retraining of AI models inflight and immediate sharing of updated information among AUKUS partners, which is tremendous news.
The reforms will lift export controls, potentially covering £500 million of UK defence exports annually. The UK has issued an open general licence, easing licensing requirements for advanced defence capabilities and technical data among AUKUS partners.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, referred to this: there are discussions about expanding AUKUS to Canada, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand, but I am led to believe that these nations are not yet ready to proceed. Could the Minister confirm whether the Government are encouraging this expansion? US export regulations, particularly ITAR, hinder collaborative defence innovation, posing significant challenges for AUKUS. Could he address that issue?
In 2019, in the debate on NATO’s 70th anniversary, I said that we should spend 3% of GDP on defence. I said that five years ago, and I have been like a stuck record ever since. The MoD is facing funding challenges. Our defence budget today is £54.2 billion. Our spending on defence was higher in real terms in 2010, at £57 billion, than today. That was a golden era for our Chinese relationship and with no threat from Russia and Ukraine. There was not a huge conflict going on in the Middle East, as we have today. We are spending too little on defence.
Our full-time Armed Forces number 192,760 in total—Army, Navy and Air Force combined. I have said this time and again: my father’s army, the central army in India, was 350,000 strong. In the debate on the strategic defence review earlier this month, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said that we have a
“shrinking and hollowing out of our Armed Forces”,—[Official Report, 9/10/24; col. GC 226.]
and the noble Lord, Lord West, said that
“money was the elephant in the room”.—[Official Report, 9/10/24; col. GC 227.]
I concluded my speech by saying that:
“The price of freedom is not free”.—[Official Report, 9/10/24; col. GC 250.]
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, on not only the skill with which he introduced this debate but his patience and skill in presiding over the whole business of producing these agreements. I do not know whether it is realised what a cascade of international agreements and treaties pass through the hands of the committee and our excellent staff. It is enormous and seems to be growing. Some of them are gloriously minimalist, such as worrying about driving licences for British citizens in Portugal after Brexit; I know it is important, but it is very small. Some look simple, but are actually enormous and have vast hinterlands of implications behind them. The words in the treaties may be simple, but what lies behind them is enormously significant for the future of this country.
These two agreements that we are looking at—the MDA and the AUKUS agreement—are definitely both in that second category. I am not sure that that is fully appreciated or realised by the machinery which enables us to have a debate here in the Moses Room. These are giant issues that will shape the entire future of our nation and its safety and security. Neither of them has really been given anything like the adequate time needed to go into the thinking behind them and where they are heading.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, eloquently said, the whole Constitutional Reform and Governance Act process—the CRaG process—really will not do any more, I am sorry to say. Some of us pressed the previous Government and are pressing the present Government on this. In this populist age, if we want our Parliament to perform, be trusted and be able to genuinely scrutinise major issues and acts of the Executive, we have to go back to that Act and reform it. I hope that will be a high priority for the new Government.
At first glance, these two treaties look quite separate from each other, but they in fact overlap, not only in not being given enough time to be examined but in that, together, they raise enormous questions about the pattern of our future war weaponry, defence equipment and entire security stance in a totally changed world in which power has changed, threats are coming from different directions from ever before and in unfamiliar forms. Many people do not seem to be geared towards this entirely new situation.
Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and others said, the MDA takes away the 10-year rule and the chance for Parliament to scrutinise an enormously rapidly evolving world of nuclear weaponry and technology—and, of course, civil nuclear technology as well. I am not sure that Congress in the United States or the Parliament of Australia—or, if there are any newcomers to AUKUS, the Parliament of Canada or Diet of Japan—would put up with this sort of thing. They would not tolerate a truncated, short session after which the Executive carry on as before, which is more or less what happens. This is a very unsatisfactory situation, which is very bad for Parliament and will, I hope, be changed.
As for the AUKUS naval treaty, it is all to do with nuclear marine propulsion—not to be confused with nuclear weapons, of course—for a new generation of submarine vehicles for the Australians. It looks quite small; it is mostly about pillar 1 of the two pillars of the AUKUS treaty but, if you start looking at the implications of AUKUS 1—and indeed, AUKUS 2, which will presumably be covered by the same sorts of agreements in due course—you see that it takes us into a new defence world altogether. It is a vast Aladdin’s cave of new technologies, some of which hardly ever come into the media discussion because they are not understood. Some of them are already being used: there was a gentleman here from Ukraine last week who informed some of us that the military plus semi-private enterprise organisations, which organise the battlefield planning for the Ukrainians on all their fronts, are now also in control of the direction, effects and supply of about a million drones. That covers, if you think about it, the control of their production, maybe in remote spots, their deployment, their decision to go into Russian territory and all the rest. That is beyond what any Government or any military organisation can manage alone. It now has to be managed by a whole series of fascinating new enterprises of vast complexity, all relying on the very latest technologies of every kind, including AI, to see that there is a flow and supply chain of drones, and that they go in roughly the right direction. Of course, they are not always co-ordinated at all, which produces some quite sensitive results.
Nevertheless, we are looking at is an entirely different defence world and, as I said, an Aladdin’s cave of new technology. I have just glanced through pillar 2, which is relevant to pillar 1 and the AUKUS treaty. Pillar 2 refers to advanced capabilities, the areas in which we, the British, are now implicating ourselves, not sacrificing sovereignty in a major way but nevertheless weaving our future defence plans into other people’s—America’s and Australia’s. It is welcome and good, but we should be aware of it in a way that I do not think we are.
First, “undersea capabilities” sounds innocent enough. What that is to do with is whether submarines are going to cut our north Atlantic and Atlantic cables and literally slice off the entire British economy. That is a major consideration, fear and danger. The development of proper undersea capabilities and unmanned submarines in due course, which are also on the list for discussion, is a central part of our national survival.
Quantum technology obviously comes at the centre of this, described by the previous Government as a priority of our defence development. Artificial intelligence and autonomy are obvious ones. Advanced cyber is already going ahead, and then there are hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities, which are desperately needed, as the affairs in the Middle East demonstrate particularly clearly. There is all the electronic warfare and innovation of every kind, in relation to the traditional visions of defence, including tanks, rockets, soldiers, guns, warfare, battleships and so on—all that sort of thing—with electronic co-ordination, in entirely new ways. There is information-sharing, which of course is intelligence, and advanced radar, in which we were once the world leaders—but now of course the Americans have rather taken over, and the Russians as well. They are particularly well advanced in radar. These are areas that are not usually associated in people’s minds with defence, yet this is the defence of tomorrow, and this is where we are being taken by the two treaties that we are discussing today.
It is a very new area indeed. I cannot help feeling how maddened Mr Putin must be when he was talked into going into Ukraine by generals who probably did not have the slightest idea what they were heading towards—the idea that there could be 1 million drones halting all their attack advances and causing chaos, and the idea that they themselves had to invent new technologies in drones, as the Russians have done with some success. That is something that he must regret bitterly now.
Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, was remarking in Foreign Affairs a couple of days ago that the US is unprepared for this sort of world and pattern, and he urged certain changes. Obviously, Russia was completely unprepared and has been caught hopping, and Ukraine has had to invent itself as a new force based on these new technologies, totally different from anything that we have ever known before, even though there are a few relics of the old technologies—like the Battle of the Somme and trench warfare. That goes on, but on top of it an entirely new pattern of hostilities and conflict has emerged, with autonomous weapons driven by gigantic algorithms now dominating the scene.
Putin regrets it, and America may be trying to get ready. I hope that we are ready, although you do not hear much about it, and perhaps the Minister will have a word or two to add to the debate today. I think that we are bright and resilient enough not to fall into the same trap. As long as Parliament is given a chance to speak, and the experts in Parliament—and, dare I say it, the experts in your Lordships’ House—at the right times, we shall be able to keep up with affairs. If the MDA will not allow a 10-year review automatically, so what? We can put down a few Motions and have a debate ourselves every 10 years. Actually, I think we will need one every five years, because these things are evolving so fast.
As I said, we must not fall into the old trap of fighting the last war with the last war’s weapons. It is an entirely new world, and these treaties open the gates to understanding it in a more effective way. To finish, I add—rather impertinently and cheekily, because I belong to a rather defeated party at the moment—that I hope all our new Ministers will remember that they are also parliamentarians.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. I agree very much with his introductory remarks about the huge democratic deficit represented by the CRaG process—remarks echoed by most noble Lords taking part in this debate. Democracy? It would be a good idea; I hope most people would agree. I also agree very much with his concluding remarks that we are in a new world and we need new approaches. What we have before us looks very much like something out of the 20th century, rather than being fit for the 21st.
I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the International Agreements Committee, for their hard and rapid work in preparing the report, securing this debate and introducing it so clearly.
I note that the scrutiny period for the MDA ends on 23 October, which is today, and, for the AUKUS agreement, on 29 October. I might use a hashtag that I use frequently on social media: #NoWayToRunACountry. It would be nice to have more space and time for discussion and thought.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, set out, this debate occurs as the UK prepares to spend, and is spending, an enormous amount of money on new nuclear weapons. I must put on the record the Green Party’s opposition to the huge expense and risks of the Trident replacement programme in a geopolitical environment in which the majority of the world’s countries have backed the UN treaty for a global ban on nuclear weapons. I also note the related context in which the cost of the nuclear clean-up at Sellafield has spiralled to £136 billion, about which the National Audit Office has today expressed great concern. This is on a site where there have been very serious cybersecurity concerns and on which we have yet to find any kind of long-term solution for the storage of nuclear waste.
However, I will focus in particular on the AUKUS agreement, in part because the perspective of the Green Party of England and Wales lines up very much with that of the Australian Greens. We bring a different and widely supported voice to the debate in both our nations. Both our parties are opposed to the agreement, and that gives me the opportunity to draw the Committee’s attention to some important points that should, I respectfully suggest, give the Government and all parties pause.
I note by way of background that, in 2022, the Australian Greens had by far their best ever federal election result, labelled a “greenslide” by the leader, Adam Bandt. It saw the election of the first three Green MPs in Brisbane and a significant increase in Senate numbers, and state-elected representation has continued to grow since then. We are in a time of considerable political change in the UK, the US and around the world.
I also note, as I have previously noted to this committee, that two former Australian Prime Ministers and one former Australian Foreign Minister, who are not Greens, have all opposed the AUKUS deal.
I will begin with a longue-durée view and look over more than a century of Australian and UK military co-operation, which has been marked often by strong, even slavish, support for UK and US actions from the top of the Australian Government, although that has not always been backed by, or first checked with, the Australian public.
My speech might be taken as a balance and contrast to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, not for the first time. First, I refer to the First World War. ANZAC Day on 25 April now marks the contribution of all those who have served militarily in Australia, but was initially founded very much around trying to get more people to sign up to the war, as historian Martin Crotty said, between 1916 and 1918, after the British-led military disaster of Gallipoli that claimed so many young lives, The Prime Minister of Australia, Billy Hughes, tried twice to extend service for conscripts outside Australian shores to feed more lives into the horrors of the trenches. When the flow of volunteers dried up, twice, the Australian public said no, and I note in passing that the Australian Labor Party subsequently split.
On 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Robert Menzies told the Australian people that they were at war with Nazi Germany. That came just an hour after Britain had declared war. While there is no doubt that the Australian public was, and remained, behind the Government, there was considerable concern and doubt, as there had been in the then dominions of Canada and South Africa, about the Australian Prime Minister’s assumption of automaticity. The slavish abandonment of any idea of Australian sovereignty has echoes which I will come back to.
Without doing a detailed trawl through Australian history, I will just stop briefly at the Vietnam war moratorium protests, the first of which took place on the 8 May 1970. These were then the largest public demonstrations in Australia’s history and represented growing resistance from a significant number of Australians to the Government’s commitment to the Vietnam War in general and conscription in particular. On 16 February 2003, more than half a million people took part in protests across Australia against the US-led invasion of Iraq, the largest anti-war protests in Australia’s history. The Committee can see the pattern that I am drawing out here and should perhaps reflect that Australia is, however imperfectly, a democracy and there is a strong chance that public views may eventually influence political choices.
Australian officials believe, and it has been widely acknowledged, although it is extremely hard to estimate the cost of the AUKUS programme over its life, that the long-term cost of the submarine plan is likely to be about 0.15% of Australia’s entire gross domestic product per year, on average. For context, in 2023, that was put as a comparable cost to boosting the resourcing of schools across the entire nation to what was seen to be an essential minimum standard. But the objections are not just about costs. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the Australian Greens’ dissenting report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade’s report on the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023. The dissenting report is readily available, so I will not discuss it at length but pick out a couple of key points. First, it states:
“There are environmental, health, security and social risks associated with every facet of the nuclear industry. These risks disproportionately impact First Nations peoples and their lands.”
I note that the very much unfinished business of the treatment of First Nations in Australia has recently been strongly highlighted. The report then states,
“that the two major parties have worked together to ensure a short time frame on the reporting of this inquiry and not enabled time for public hearings … the Australian public has not been properly consulted on the AUKUS proposal”.
We can see the clear echo here at the complaints that we have heard across this Committee. The report concludes that the deal undermines Australian sovereignty and violates international nuclear safety principles, and notes that Australia’s Defence Strategic Review rejected advice from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Australian Government’s own nuclear safety advisory council, which recommended that an independent regulator have oversight of the programme.
Finally, the report notes:
“The Australian public has rejected … nuclearisation … for nearly a century”.
It might be of particular interest to the Government that the Electrical Trades Union and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, two prominent Australian unions, strongly oppose the development of a nuclear industry in Australia or any end to the moratorium on nuclear power. That is the political context of the AUKUS deal. Noble Lords might think that that presents considerable political risks: they would be right.
I also note that that reflects the conclusion of a report published in the last week by the US Congressional Research Service, which says of the military context that
“the costs … of Pillar 1 could reduce, perhaps significantly, funding … for other Australian military capabilities”.
Crucially, it says that no alternatives were ever considered by any of the AUKUS partners. We come back to democratic scrutiny and consideration. To repeat, this report was from the US Congressional Research Service.
Finally, the timing of this debate all too acutely highlights the geopolitical context, of which our relationship with Australia is a small if significant part. There is the approaching US election, in which there is at least an even-money chance that we will see a second Donald Trump presidency and a risk that, even if that is not the result, we will see that candidate seeking to claim the presidency. I will not get into the details of today’s row, but this is not a politically stable time in US history to be making deals such as either of these. At the CHOGM meeting in Samoa, for which our Prime Minister may just about have landed after 26 hours, he will not be joined by the leaders of India or South Africa, because they are at the BRICS meeting hosted by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Kazan, where the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, is also in attendance. Canada too is sending neither its Prime Minister nor Foreign Minister to CHOGM.
As I said in our debate on the defence review, the UK needs to consider far more than defence in isolation. It needs to consider its place and relationships in a world of multiple security threats—not just the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the threats that China presents with its denial of the joint declaration in Hong Kong and the threats to the democratic entity of Taiwan, but the multiple security threats of the climate emergency, the nature crisis and multiple health threats. I draw attention to an extremely disturbing report in Vanity Fair about the H5N1 virus in US dairy herds and that country’s wholly inadequate public health response.
The agreements we are debating today already look like 20th-century relics, and in future will likely look even more so, sitting dangerously, expensively and unstably in the 21st-century world. The security of our country and the world cannot afford such outdated approaches.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, not least because she has spurred all kinds of reactions in my mind to the “Address to the Australian Parliament” which we have just heard. It is a stretch to say that the decision to renew the strategic deterrent lacks democratic legitimacy in this country, when it was explicitly voted on by the House of Commons in 2016; when the people of this country had a choice, in 2019, whether to elect the leader of one of our principal political parties who had an obvious preference against nuclear weapons; and when, in the 2024 election, her party, under good democratic principles, put before the electorate the prospect of unilaterally abandoning our nuclear weapons and I am afraid the country did not elect a Green Government. The idea that these decisions lack democratic legitimacy is itself an illegitimate argument.
It was also surprising to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, cite the US Congressional Research Service report on the AUKUS pillar 1 deal as an alternative to what is being proposed. I happen to have that report here and was just flicking through it as she was speaking. The alternative proposition that the CRS put on the table is not the absence of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia or, indeed, the downgrading of its defence expenditure so as to reinvest in other worthy projects; it is in fact to contemplate greater dependency on US basing of US-controlled Virginia-class SSNs in Australia, foregoing any sovereign oversight that the elected Australian Government of the day might have. We are here to discuss what is in Britain’s interest, not Australia’s, but I think most of us are convinced by the argument that there is a strategic need for Australia for these types of submarine services and, by pooling our technologies and resources, we will all get a better deal.
My starting point is that I accept that if we are going to have the asymmetric capability that the submarine service represents, we need to continue with our forward order book. The idea that, at some point in the late 2030s, a better, modern class of submarine will replace the A-class attack submarines that we have right now seems to me a statement of the obvious. I accept that there are legitimate debates about the affordability and management of our nuclear programme; these are not new. On 14 October, the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to the Prime Minister about this matter and said, “The nuclear submarine programme seems to me a very doubtful proposition. The cost is prodigious. How many of these are we likely to be able to afford? How soon can we get them? When they arrive, will they already be obsolescent?” That was on 14 October 1957 and the then Chancellor of Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, writing to Harold Macmillan, who fortunately ignored that ministration and the rest, as they say, is history.
So, yes, I think this makes strategic sense. However, for AUKUS pillar 1 to work, and to respond to some of political doubts that will be sowed in the minds of people in Australia, and possibly elsewhere, it is very important that the transitional elements of AUKUS, the so-called optimal pathways between now and the construction of these new submarines, also work well.
We can all use this as an opportunity to note our concerns about the pressures on the Royal Navy Submarine Service at the moment. Open-source reporting has said that some of the times at sea have almost doubled over the past three years, with a combination of difficulties of availability of submarines and retention of submariners, and we are not alone in this. The US is also experiencing difficulties in its new submarine production. Since 2022, the rate of build for the new Virginia-class subs on order has been between 1.2 and 1.4 a year, compared with the two boats a year that had been expected.
The reason this matters is because creating, as it were, the facts on the ground for AUKUS from 2027 requires rotational deployments of one of our SSNs and four of the US SSNs, so availability in the submarine services of the two countries in the here and now is very important for getting this programme under way, as of course is restarting the fuller production pipeline for Virginia-class submarines, so that they are available for the US to sell to the Australians, beginning with the three that are in play. This all needs proper scrutiny, no doubt through the strategic defence review, but it is not something that is simply a late 2030s conversation; it is something that needs careful attention, as I am sure Ministers are well aware, in the here and now.
My final point—and I declare my interest as chair of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—is on the role that UK science and innovation in nuclear naval propulsion potentially has in the maritime civilian sector as well. There is growing interest on the part of merchant shipping and the port sector around the role that new nuclear technologies can potentially play—small modular reactors, non-enriched fuel, non-pressurised reactors for use at sea, perhaps using next-generation molten salt technology, and so forth. In the last 12 months we have seen Lloyd’s Register, Maersk and ABS all producing scoping reports for how small nuclear reactors could be used in merchant shipping, in containerisation. The reason why this matters is because, worldwide, shipping constitutes 3% of greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as aviation, but to date has received less attention in terms of what the green fuels transition will look like for shipping.
I think that it was in 1956 that we were the first country to get a civilian nuclear reactor up and going, and by the mid-1960s there were more nuclear reactors at work in civilian installations in the UK than all the rest of the world combined. As the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, the programme that has been set out around skills development, nuclear engineering and the broader clusters that go around this set of technologies, which are implicit in AUKUS and the agreements before us today, also have profound benefits—spillover benefits, potentially—in other applications, including at sea.
This is an area that will be entirely worthy of investment. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said that money was the elephant in the room. Perhaps to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, when this question is being debated with the Treasury, there is an example that he might call to mind. Apparently, when Lord Mountbatten was having this argument with a different Chancellor of the Exchequer at that point, he produced a 20-inch model of a nuclear submarine, which opened up with a little compartment. During the entirety of the Cabinet committee the Chancellor fiddled around, looking at it, and in the end said, “Okay, how much do you need?”
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
I am grateful to the Deputy Chairman for allowing me to speak in the gap. I had applied in proper form, but alas, there was a misunderstanding in the Government Whips’ Office. So here I am, and I am grateful.
I begin by congratulating my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith. He follows in the proud tradition of my noble friend Lady Hayter and my very good and late friend Lord Morris of Aberavon.
The report on the MDA gives some indication of the importance of the scrutiny role of the committee and, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and others mentioned, of the deficiencies in the current CRaG process—a point also made very well by my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith.
The agreement is absolutely fundamental to the excellent defence relationships between our two countries. The MDA provides for the exchange of nuclear material, technology and information, and the debate is also very timely, in that the UK is in the process of modernising its nuclear-powered submarine and the warheads.
This has been a unique defence and security relationship between us and the US. We have heard quite a lot of history during this debate. The McMahon Act 1946 banned the US from sharing its nuclear knowledge. That was modified in 1958, and co-operation then between the UK and the US was a precursor to the Polaris agreement of 1963.
I noted that in the presidential determination of 16 July recommending approval of the amendment, President Biden stated that it was in the interests of the US to continue to assist the UK in maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent,
“which will further improve our mutual defense posture and support our”
collective interests under NATO. It appears clear, from what we have heard as a committee, that the US will indeed shortly ratify these amendments.
As an aside, many years ago, in 1960, I joined the Foreign Office, and what struck me very forcefully at the time was the excellent personal relationships between members of the US Administration and senior members of the Foreign Office, many of whom had served in the US during the war—people such as Sir Frank Lee and Sir Arnold France—and had built up excellent personal relationships. Alas, I do not believe that those personal relationships, which inspire confidence and trust, exist in quite the same way today.
Pace the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, it may well be that, in the current context, the US might be looking not just at the UK for that special relationship but at France and possibly other countries. France was, of course, upended by the AUKUS agreement and may well be brought in now, in some subsidiary way.
Power relationships and the context of today are very different from 1958 and 1959. I hope that the Government will indicate whether they foresee a possible change if there were to be a change of government in the US following the presidential election.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede) (Lab)
I point out to my noble friend that there is a four-minute time limit to interventions in the gap.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
In that case I end simply by stating—although there is plenty of time left—that there is clearly concern about parliamentary oversight. When the committee met Mr Pitt-Rashid of the MoD, he conceded that the removal of this amendment was “not a great disadvantage”. Surely we would not expect the US to be concerned about our parliamentary procedure, nor should we be concerned about the US. Its removal can be done without difficulty.
I make one point in relation to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame. The question of relying on a Minister to give an assurance is fundamentally different from having an obligation set in statute.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate AUKUS, the MDA and the work of the International Agreements Committee. It has been nothing if not a wide-ranging debate this afternoon. We have ranged through decades of history and travelled the globe, yet much of the debate has been narrowly focused on ourselves and our parliamentary role to scrutinise international treaties.
I very much welcome the opportunity for these discussions. Somewhat like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I will try to give a slight corrective to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. He talked about the Anglosphere and how important it is that these treaties are with our oldest friends, those who speak English. The treaty that has not been mentioned today, either in the Chamber or here, will, I hope, be scrutinised within 21 days from when it is laid. The UK-Germany Trinity House Agreement on Defence was agreed today and will be part of a wider treaty with Germany. As the Foreign Office no longer has such close ties with our American counterparts in the State Department, I suggest that the new Government, to whom I pay tribute, have already done an incredible job at strengthening relations with some of our closest European partners.
That was an aside. However, given that today’s debate has been so wide ranging, an aside to look at another defence co-operation treaty might be appropriate.
I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for presenting not just the reports but the two agreements so clearly. They are legal documents, and his insight and expertise in presenting them to us so clearly is extremely welcome. I also put on record our thanks to the International Agreements Committee and its staff because, as we heard from many noble Lords, the agreements have to be reviewed so quickly.
It is important that we all put on record the one area of agreement, because almost every noble Lord commented on the CRaG process and expressed significant concerns. In the words that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, used, we had an absurdly short amount of time. If we are going to look at international treaties, we need to have the right amount of time to allow the International Agreements Committee to review them and take evidence. This is not a criticism of either the present Government or indeed their predecessor. The CRaG Act clearly needs to be looked at again. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, I am not in any way suggesting that the Government have deliberately chosen not to give sufficient time for scrutiny, but the procedures do not work adequately. If there is one unanimous message for the Minister to take back to the usual channels, it must be that the CRaG Act needs to be looked at, and more time should be given.
From the International Agreements Committee reports and what we have heard in the Chamber, it looks as if Congress has a much better model for allowing scrutiny. Clearly, if there are treaties that need to be decided as a matter of urgency, maybe 21 working days is appropriate, and maybe even fewer days are appropriate if something is being undertaken immediately as a matter of national security. But with the two treaties or agreements that we are looking at today, some more time could have been given, which would have allowed everyone to begin to look not just at the broad parameters of the agreements but somewhat more at their specifics.
There are a few areas that perhaps could be discussed in more detail. In particular, the reports commented on two amendments to the MDA, one of which we have heard about already—the change to Article III bis, and the idea that we will no longer have to have a review of the treaty every 10 years. The noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, very clearly said that it is appropriate that this should now be an indefinite treaty; we should not have to have 10-yearly reviews. But in this Grand Committee yesterday, three of us, in a very small group including the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and me, discussed the Armed Forces Act 2006 (Continuation) Order, which we have to do; under the 1688 Bill of Rights, every year, Parliament renews its commitment to our Armed Forces and agrees to their continuity. While we may not want to renew the agreement every 10 years, the opportunity of at least scrutinising our agreements and ensuring that there is the opportunity for Parliament to review agreements would seem to be appropriate.
Here again there is a question about who we are asking to ensure that there can be regular scrutiny. I am sure that, if the Minister thinks that this is an ad personam request, he will very rightly say that he will commit to do this—and he is an honourable man who would undoubtedly bring reports in the way that we would expect. But we have to accept that a Parliament in 10 years might look very different, and the Government might look very different. We may not have the luxury of having such an open Administration, so having a firm commitment would be most welcome.
One area on which we have not touched at all was another point from the IAC’s report on the MDA, on Article 4, which expanded the treaty somewhat. It was one of the few areas on which the committee was able to take some evidence. We had a slightly strange response, because we heard from the MoD official that it was just about future-proofing and they did not expect very much to happen.
If Article 4 is not going to change very much, why is it needed? Does the Minister think that very much is going to change with this change? One reason for asking now is precisely that, if we are no longer going to review the MDA every 10 years, we need to be very clear now about what we have just signed up to.
On general principles, I need to put on record that these Benches have supported the AUKUS agreement. It is also important to restate the point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, made very clearly in his introductory remarks: this is about an agreement that will allow nuclear-powered but conventionally weaponed submarines. The intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seemed in some ways to elide all the nuclear questions together. While there may be arguments to have an entirely nuclear-free world, this is not about nuclear weapons. It is really important that this does not, in that sense, jeopardise the situation vis-à-vis nuclear non-proliferation.
I thought that I would nevertheless just take the opportunity of asking one question on non-proliferation, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. When we discussed the SDR a couple of weeks ago, she raised the issue of non-proliferation. I have one question for the Minister. Given that we are committed to non-proliferation, there was a period during the coalition and Conservative Governments when the NPT review conferences—the five-year reviews—seemed to keep coinciding with general elections, as in 2010 and 2015, and not very much preparation was done. Are His Majesty’s Government already thinking about the 2026 review conference and will they play a full part? However much we support these vital nuclear agreements—the MDA and nuclear propulsion agreement with Australia —and want firm agreements with our allies in Australia and the United States, it is still important, as far as possible, to look for non-proliferation and de-escalation, particularly at a time when the number of nuclear weapon states, and the threats of using nuclear weapons, seem to be on the agenda in a way that they have not been for decades.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and all members of the International Agreements Committee for their helpful report on the two agreements before us today. I also thank the noble and learned Lord for his very helpful introductory remarks.
I may say that I have discovered two virtues of being in opposition. One is that I am no longer sitting in the position of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, answering all these questions. The second is that, for the first time, I have been able to enjoy the full scope and implicit message of “The Judgment of Daniel”, which made me think that Daniel was a man who came upon a problem, understood the problem, addressed the problem and got on with life. That is very much the prism through which I am looking at the AUKUS agreements.
I remember, when I was a Defence Minister, the efforts that the Government made to reach agreement with the United States and the Government of Australia on the Agreement for the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information, and the significance of that agreement: I felt a frisson of excitement when it was accomplished. It was intended as a temporary measure to facilitate the sharing of information for the purposes of that early 18-month study to determine the optimal pathway. This treaty is the extension of that initial arrangement that we negotiated throughout 2021.
I welcome His Majesty’s Government’s commitment to continuing the previous Conservative Government’s efforts to advance the AUKUS partnership. This agreement therefore builds upon numerous past successes in the arena of international defence co-operation, such as the establishment of NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement, among others.
We should also note the significant progress that has been made on pillar 1 of the partnership. I strongly support such a phased approach to delivery because it sets out clear and robust targets to keep progress on track. To that end, I was delighted that in January my honourable friend the then Minister for Defence Procurement, James Cartlidge, announced that £4 billion of contracts had already been allocated to UK companies for the AUKUS submarines and that in December 2023 the first Australian personnel came to Barrow-in-Furness to improve their knowledge of the production and maintenance of nuclear-powered submarines. These are all positive steps in the right direction.
I make no apology for applauding the AUKUS alliance. It is both strategically important and an impressive reflection of strong defence relationships. The partnership between the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia demonstrates this country’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, helping to combat new and emerging threats. It will act as a guarantor of the defence of our interests and security and support our aim of upholding the international rules-based order.
On this point, the other agreement before us today on the amendment to the mutual defence agreement also contributes to our international defence and security aims. In many ways, as noble Lords will be aware, the MDA between the UK and the United States underpins the special relationship between our two countries. It aids the reliable maintenance of the continuous at-sea deterrent and plays a key role in enabling the necessary exchange of information and technologies required for the AUKUS partnership.
As has been mentioned, the amending agreement removes the expiry date contained within the MDA. The Explanatory Memorandum states that this makes
“the entirety of the MDA enduring, securing continuing cooperation with the US”.
Ensuring continual co-operation with the US is of paramount importance, but I understand why the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and his committee raise the issue of parliamentary scrutiny. That scrutiny matters, as eloquently articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and my noble friend Lord Howell. It would be reassuring—I choose my words carefully to try to help the Minister—and for the benefit of all noble Lords for the Government at least to register that concern and be prepared to explore updating Parliament routinely on the MDA and any related developments.
On the future of the AUKUS submarine building programme, it is appropriate for the Government to update noble Lords further on the steps they have been taking to ensure that the necessary industrial resources are in place and that continuing dialogue is undertaken with our partners to enable the timely progress of the programme.
Finally, as has been indicated, Article XIII states that the treaty on nuclear naval propulsion will extend all the way to 2075. Professor Donald Rothwell, when giving evidence to the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties last week, described this as a “rather exceptional extension”. I do not think there would be much disagreement with that analysis. Given the longevity of this agreement, it may very well be necessary for additional measures to be brought forward to guarantee the flexibility of the partnership with Australia and the United States. We must make sure that these future possibilities, if they occur, are transparent and that Parliament’s scrutiny role is respected. I respectfully ask the Minister to confirm that he is cognisant of that government responsibility and that the Government will endeavour to discharge it meaningfully.
These two agreements reflect and build on the United Kingdom’s important network of defence alliances and partnerships. I look forward to continuing to support the Government as they progress these important issues, but I will rap fingers if Parliament is not kept informed about these issues.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Goldie, for their remarks and contributions to this debate, and their general support from the Front Benches. I will deal with some of the specific questions that they asked as I go through my remarks, but I welcome their support.
Moreover, I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith for his chairmanship of the committee and the reports he has brought forward with its support. One can see how well thought of they are by the presence here of so many members of the committee. I welcome his introduction, and I am grateful for the well-made thanks he expressed to the MoD and officials. I am also grateful to him and his committee for their overall support for the two treaties before us. I welcome the reports, which I have read in great detail, including the appendices.
I will deal with the specific recommendations later in my remarks, but I take what my noble and learned friend said about his committee intending to look at the CRaG process. I have heard the remarks of different members of the committee about it, and I take the point made forcefully and correctly by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, about holding the Government to account on parliamentary scrutiny. I also take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that we are all parliamentarians, even if we are Ministers. It is an important point of principle.
I say to my noble and learned friend that, if I can help in that, by informing ministerial colleagues about the process as his work goes forward, I am very happy to do so. I cannot promise an answer, but I will certainly take it forward because that is the least that he and his colleagues on the committee should expect. I am grateful to noble Lords on the committee for their thoughtful reports, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to our constructive debate.
The 1958 mutual defence agreement underpins the defence nuclear relationship between the UK and the US, forming the basis for our co-operation on the safe and reliable maintenance of the UK’s nuclear deterrent. It is clear that co-operation under the MDA has been of considerable mutual benefit, supporting both countries to maintain operationally independent deterrents. It is in the national and security interests of the UK and the US to continue this long-standing agreement. The Prime Minister has been clear that the nuclear deterrent is the foundation of any plan to keep Britain safe. As our world has grown more volatile and insecure, we are reminded that the cost of our nuclear deterrent is a price worth paying.
That brings us to today. We have confirmed delivery of our triple-lock nuclear guarantee, which will upgrade our nuclear deterrent for future generations, and the crucial role that our nuclear co-operation with the United States will play. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, who mentioned the nuclear deterrent. It remains absolutely central to our defensive posture. We are committed to the modernisation of our deterrent and to the relationship between our countries.
I cannot agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the nuclear deterrent, but I am glad I live in a country where she can freely make those points and campaign for them. I think we all respect her for the way in which she does so. Without being patronising, I want to say that it is important that she continues to make those points and challenge those of us who do not agree with her. The democratic principle that she can make those points and be heard with respect in our Chamber is important.
Our nuclear co-operation with the US is underpinned by the mutual defence agreement, which allows us to exchange nuclear materials, technology and information. Its strategic value is self-evident. The amendment to remove the 10-year renewal provision and broaden the types of information exchanged under the agreement reflects the maturity and trust that characterises our relationship with the United States, while preserving the parties’ rights to agree amendments or terminate the agreement, in accordance with its terms. That is an important point to make.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, for his support for the change to the agreement. It is important for us to recognise that the removal of the renewal provisions associated with Article III bis represent one of the key amendments to the treaty; the other being clarification of the types of information that can be exchanged under the agreement. As noble Lords will be aware, Article III bis, with its associated renewal provision, was first introduced into the agreement in 1959. The remainder of the treaty has endured since 1958. There is no clear programmatic reason in either the UK or the US that has driven this particular renewal period, which at times has varied from five to 10 years. Both the US and the UK agreed that removal of this renewal provision was a priority for this amendment, having regard for the fact that there is no operational or other requirement for it—reflecting, of course, the maturity and trust that characterises our relationship. I will come to the point about parliamentary scrutiny later in my remarks.
Our amendments to the naval nuclear propulsion clauses will consolidate the reciprocal transfer of equipment, information and material that will benefit our fleet. The amendments to the treaty do not impose any additional financial commitments on the UK, nor do they commit us to buying any goods or services from the US. Indeed, the UK’s long-running nuclear co-operation with the US under the agreement has reduced the cost of our nuclear deterrent capability. Recognising the concerns that some noble Lords here and outside have regarding our NPT commitments, I can reassure all noble Lords that all activity under the amended mutual defence agreement will remain consistent with the UK’s obligations under the non-proliferation treaty. Again, I note the support of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, with respect to that. In particular, as other noble Lords have noted—I want to make it clear the Dispatch Box for the Government—there is no movement of nuclear weapons or new nuclear explosive devices under the mutual defence agreement. Further, the agreement does not represent an indefinite commitment to the possession of nuclear weapons by the UK.
We remain committed to the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons in a transparent, verifiable and irreversible manner, with undiminished security for all. In answer to the direct question of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, yes, we are preparing for the 2026 NPT review conference. We understand completely the concerns of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the committee, and as raised by a number of Members, regarding the periodic scrutiny of the mutual defence agreement. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, raised the point as well. In particular, we and I have noted the committee’s recommendation to provide a report to Parliament on the progress and operation of the MDA every 10 years. In principle, we are content to explore how we can satisfy the intent of the committee and a formal government response will be provided in due course. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and other noble Lords, that I will ensure that this happens.
The noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Howell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie raised another important point. I can reassure them, as I have said before, that any future amendments to the mutual defence agreement that fall within the scope of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny in the normal way.
I turn to the AUKUS naval nuclear propulsion agreement and note that a large number of your Lordships recognise its importance. They included the noble Lords, Lord Hannan, Lord Hannay, Lord Udny-Lister, Lord Bilimoria, Lord Stevens and Lord Howell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett, Lady Smith and Lady Goldie, and indeed my noble friend Lord Anderson. Many others mentioned the importance of this.
This recognises the importance of the Indo-Pacific. We have a NATO-first policy as a Government, but the Indo-Pacific remains important to us, through the signing of the AUKUS agreement. I just say in passing that His Majesty’s Government’s carrier strike group will be going to the Indo-Pacific next year, with many of our international partners, as an important statement of our intention to remain relevant in that part of the world and to reinforce the international rules-based order, human rights, democracy, the laws of the sea and so on.
Pillar 1 of AUKUS, which is a trilateral arrangement and will continue as such, will deliver a nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarine capability to Australia. The phased approach of this will culminate in SSN-AUKUS, built and operated by both the UK and Australia. It is based on the UK’s next-generation design and incorporates advanced US technologies. It will bolster our national security as well as theirs, help us reduce costs and equip us with one of the most advanced submarine capabilities in the world, which I think is of immense importance.
The AUKUS naval propulsion agreement provides an essential legal footing for that co-operation. It is a key facilitator upon which we will negotiate a bilateral treaty with Australia that will govern how we collaborate to deliver Australia’s SSN-AUKUS programme. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, and others, this should create major trade opportunities for the UK, with billions of pounds of submarine components expected to be exported from our supply chains, which will benefit us as well as Australia and others. I take the point about the need to develop a skills programme that will allow us to take full advantage of those proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, alluded to this.
Pillar 1 is about Australia, the UK and the United States. Pillar 2 is incredibly important but perhaps less well understood and discussed than some of the other aspects. It deals with artificial intelligence, hypersonics, cyber and all these other technological, modern types of warfare that will take us into the 21st century and are hugely important. There are really important conversations going on, particularly with New Zealand, Canada, Japan and South Korea, about co-operation on pillar 2.
On nuclear non-proliferation, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in particular, that the AUKUS naval nuclear propulsion agreement is fully compatible with our national obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Australia has reaffirmed unequivocally that it does not have and will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons. The agreement does not permit the supply of nuclear weapons to Australia by the US or the UK. On the contrary, it restates legally binding non-proliferation obligations and is fully consistent with the AUKUS partners’ commitment to set the highest possible non-proliferation standards, which the Prime Minister reaffirmed alongside President Biden and Prime Minister Albanese in September.
I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful consideration of these two separate agreements. Our sovereign nuclear deterrent and the AUKUS partnership are two central pillars, as this debate has recognised, of our national security and defence strategies. The Government are committed to strengthening both and building on some of the work of the last Government, to be fair, in establishing AUKUS. The treaties we have discussed today will enable us to do that. The unflinching power of our nuclear deterrent and the unrivalled strength of our military alliances and partnerships are what will keep the British people safe in our more contested and unpredictable geopolitical age. Our investment in our nuclear sector will help create 40,000 new defence and civil nuclear jobs by the end of the decade—highly skilled jobs that will spread opportunity across the UK.
Today, the defence nuclear supply chain already benefits over 3,000 businesses. This is an immense investment in cutting-edge science and technology across the country. Above all, it protects our security, protects what this country and our allies stand for and looks forward to the challenges of the geopolitical age in which we live. I thank the noble and learned Lord for the committee’s reports on these two treaties. I urge the committee not only to support this but to argue the case for it, in this House and with the British public at large. It is a major step forward for our country and our alliances and we should all take credit for that.
Lord Goldsmith (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for participating in this debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said, it has been an extraordinarily wide-ranging debate. I had not expected so much knowledge to come out about Australian politics. I do not know a lot about it, but now I know much more, thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—but obviously noble Lords spoke about the great geopolitical questions that we are concerned with. To the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, I have to say that, with regards to matters of history, I tend to side with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, but he may persuade me one day.
I want particularly to thank the Minister. He has made two personal commitments today for which I am very grateful. One is how we deal with the renewal question, which I shall come back to. The second is what he said about helping to educate his colleagues about the limitations of the CRaG process, which I hope will help us to pursue the amendments which I and others believe are necessary.
I have talked about this issue in the House before. Once upon a time, of course, Parliament did not have any right to look at treaties, unless a Minister chose to bring them. All treaties were made under the royal prerogative, and there was no process for parliamentary scrutiny as a matter of generality. CRaG has changed that, and that is very good, but it is limited. It is limited in terms of time, as noble Lords have said—and it is extraordinary how difficult it can be. When one says from time to time, “I pay tribute to the work of the committee staff and the officials”, it really is the case here. Our committee staff—and our clerk, Rhiannon Williams, is sitting in the Public Gallery—have to pick up these treaties, often at short notice, and find expert evidence that will help us, because we do not necessarily know all the answers, so finding people who can help the committee is very important.
We then need to get a report done in time to meet the CRaG scrutiny period, which is limited, and we depend on the Government. I do not want to be political about this, but this committee produced an important report on Rwanda, which it was actually quite important for Members in the other place to debate, because they are the ones who have the right under CRaG to say, “Don’t ratify this now”. We did not in a sense have a statutory right. But to do that, they needed to have time for a debate, and that was in the hands of the Government. There are issues about time for debates that are also important. That is why I started by thanking the Government for making time for this debate—and I repeat that thanks now. So we will continue to look at the CRaG process and we will come forward with some proposals for reform. I shall take the Minister up on his promise to talk to his colleagues about that when we have formulated precisely what we think should happen.
The second thing is the commitment that the Minister has made in relation to renewal. This was a matter that exercised the committee. On one hand, taking away the 10-year renewal—or, to use different language, the break clause—adds to our security, because it means that there is an evergreen commitment to do those things that the agreement does, and that is a good thing. But, by a sidewind, it takes away parliamentary scrutiny at the same time, which was what exercised the committee. So our proposal that the Government should none the less come forward to Parliament and tell it every 10 years, taking the same period as was in the previous arrangements, is a good way to ensure that there is still some scrutiny.
We will look at precisely what the Minister’s officials come forward with. He has made an in-principle commitment—I understand entirely why that is so. He will not be surprised to hear me say, using the same words that the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, used, that we will hold him, as it were, to account—the Government to account—for making sure that there is a scrutiny which works.
I very much welcome the support for reform that we had from a number of people: the noble Lords, Lord Howell, Lord Hannay and Lord Bilimoria, and others as well, and we will follow that through.
I do not think there is anything more I need to say about this debate. It has been a great privilege. Well, there is one thing I want to say. The noble Lord, Lord Udny- Lister, referred to dealing with this committee as being like herding cats. He said it was a formidable committee, and it is, but that is because of its members’ expertise, talent and experience, not because of any feline qualities that they might have. However, it is a great privilege and a pleasure to chair this committee. It is doing important work, and the fact that we have a debate in which it is not just the members of the committee who came to speak—although it included them—is very welcome. With those words, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Co-operation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion
Lord Goldsmith
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Agreement among the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States of America for Cooperation related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion, laid before the House on 2 September.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the International Agreements Committee.
House of Lords
Working From Home: Public Sector Productivity
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Londesborough
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of working from home on productivity in the public sector.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government inherited a situation where public sector productivity remained 6.4% below pre-pandemic levels. This is clearly unacceptable. Our focus is on fundamental reform of our public services, to drive greater efficiency and productivity. Further details on this agenda will be set out in the Budget and spending review.
Assessments of the impact of working from home on productivity seem—so far—to be inconclusive. The Government are very clear on the benefits of collaborative face-to-face working, in the Civil Service in particular. Studies by the IMF, the University of Manchester, the CBI, Google and Amazon have set out clear advantages to a hybrid working model.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, my Question was prompted by an interesting claim made by the Minister’s colleague the Business Secretary. He said that
“allowing working from home creates a more productive, loyal workforce”.
I suggest that that is a sweeping statement, lacking in hard evidence. This is clearly an area where one size does not fit all. When will we see some credible, data-driven research, across all areas of the public sector, to measure the real impact of working from home on productivity?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I agree 100% with the noble Lord that one size does not fit all. So far, studies have been reasonably inconclusive. Some have shown significant drawbacks to working from home, including a lack of social interaction and the associated mental health impacts that that brings, less progression—especially in the early stages of a career—and less creativity and innovation. But there are also some clear advantages to a degree of hybrid working, including more focused working, the ability to work on confidential issues and some interesting labour-supply impacts, particularly for those with disabilities or childcare responsibilities. So I think the jury is out, but more studies are being undertaken all the time.
Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)
My Lords, is it not the case that the biggest contribution to improving productivity, particularly in central government, would be to control and reverse the ballooning size of the Civil Service? It fell by 21% in the time of the coalition Government, but has since increased by 34%. Is not that uncontrolled growth a contributor to poor productivity? Could the first step be to have someone unequivocally in charge of the Civil Service, instead of the fudged arrangements that are apparently about to be continued?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. The Government inherited a situation where public service productivity remained 6.4 % below pre-pandemic levels, and the ballooning size of the Civil Service—as he described it—under the previous Government may have contributed to that. I do not know the answer to that, but the Chancellor has been very clear that the Government will establish a programme of public sector reform to drive much greater productivity, improving the quality of public services and the value for money that we receive.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government have inherited a rather shrunken Whitehall estate from their Conservative predecessors, where hot-desking had become the norm in a number of departments. Are the Government confident that, if all civil servants turned up five days a week, there would be enough desks for them to sit at?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
No, there would not. One of the benefits of working from home is a much more efficient use of office space. It has a beneficial impact on capital in terms of releasing office space for more productive use, and that is currently what is under way.
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)
My Lords, how does the Minister measure productivity in the public sector?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
There are a variety of measures, as I understand it. The ONS has a fairly standard measure. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right that it is much harder to measure productivity in the public sector than it is in the private sector. Measures that the Government are undertaking, such as increasing the number of GP appointments or reducing waiting lists, increase public sector output and therefore productivity.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, following on from that answer from the Minister, NHS England says that productivity in the NHS has declined by 11% since before the pandemic. At the same time, nearly 40% of the staff in NHS England and ICBs work from home. One of the comments made is that we require managers with experience and training to allow for better management of the flow of patients, so that clinicians who cannot work from home are better able to deliver their services. What is the answer?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am not sure I am going to be able to answer that right now, but, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, in his investigation into the state of the NHS, productivity in the NHS has fallen significantly and is far too low. Improving productivity in the NHS is a key priority. What the noble Lord said about management was really interesting. Emerging studies show that, where workforces are well managed, productivity can rise with working from home. This is a point that the noble Lord who asked the original Question raised in a previous debate on this subject, which I read: the quality of management has a key impact on productivity when working from home.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, although good management certainly makes a difference, there is strong evidence from academic studies that working from home reduces productivity—although there are other benefits. So far, this Government have been coy about publishing office attendance figures for government departments, as we used to do. Will the Minister ensure that the publication of such figures is restarted and that working from home is limited to those areas where efficiency is not compromised?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
This Government have exactly the same policy in terms of civil servants working from home as the last Government: civil servants should be in the office for a minimum of 60% of the time. That is unchanged and those figures will of course be published in exactly the same way. The noble Baroness said that working from home reduced productivity: that is not actually the case, according to many studies. I read one from the IMF recently that said that the positive and negative effects of working from home roughly offset each other, generating no net productivity impact.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
Would my noble friend like to comment on the fact that, as a result of the pandemic, disabled people have been able to access work and all sorts of other things—like this House—more than they had previously? I hope that the Government will factor into their examination of this the fact that there are absolutely positive benefits of working from home for those with disabilities.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I 100% agree with my noble friend. Most of the studies that have emerged so far on this subject suggest that there are very positive labour supply impacts of working from home. They particularly apply to those with disabilities who do not have to commute to the workplace and have their home working environment already adapted to their needs. They also apparently apply to those with childcare responsibilities coming back into the labour market.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, a recently published economic report by Pragmatix has identified the extraordinary gap between urban and rural productivity, including on homeworking, exacerbated by the problem of rural connectivity. Is the Minister aware of some of the local solutions that are now being tried? We are involved in some of those, for example with hosting antennae in church spires and towers and bouncing signals into more remote areas to enable homeworking and to increase productivity. Would he be willing to support some of these important initiatives for the sake of rural sustainability?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
It is an interesting question, and the answer is yes, I would be very willing to look at those impacts. As we have been discussing, labour supply has impacts across the economy. In rural areas, where sometimes it is difficult to travel into work, being able to work from home and the ability to have fast-speed internet connections can make a massive difference, and I would be more than happy to look at those issues.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
Is the Minister confident that working from home is increasing productivity and does he think there is any correlation between the rise in the number of people watching daytime television and the rise in the number of people working from home?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
At no point in any of my answers did I say it raises productivity—just so I am very clear. I will read from the IMF’s report, for the noble Lord’s benefit:
“Classic firm and individual micro studies typically find that hybrid working … has a roughly flat impact on productivity. Working from home benefits workers by saving them from exhausting commutes and typically provides a quieter working environment. But by reducing time at the office, it can also reduce employees’ ability to learn, to innovate, and to communicate. These positive and negative effects roughly offset each other, generating no net productivity impact”.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, are the Government taking into account the effect on customers, and indeed taxpayers? My experience of ringing HMRC was that I was told that the official was working from home and was unable to access the computer necessary to order a tax statement for me. I thought that was odd. I would have thought the infrastructure needed to be in place.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I obviously cannot comment on the particular phone call that the noble Baroness had, but I will say that the same IMF study says:
“Some studies … found large positive impacts, typically in more self-directed activities, such as call centre or data entry work”.
Decommissioned Nuclear-Powered Submarines
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Bryan of Partick
To ask His Majesty’s Government how many decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines there are in Scotland; and how many years it will take to safely dismantle them.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, there are seven decommissioned and defueled nuclear power submarines in Rosyth Royal Dockyard, Scotland. “Swiftsure”, the first vessel being disposed of, is being used as a demonstrator to refine the dismantling process under the Ministry of Defence’s submarine dismantling project. Learning from “Swiftsure” will provide more certainty about the schedule for dismantling the remaining decommissioned Royal Navy submarines. The full dismantling of “Swiftsure” is due to be complete in 2026, achieving the commitment given to the Public Accounts Committee in 2019.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his Answer. My Question happily coincided with information that was released last week, but there remains real concern that not one of these submarines has yet been dismantled. Bearing in mind that one Dreadnought submarine in Rosyth has been out of service since 1980, it will take decades to dismantle the boats remaining in both Scotland and Devonport. Can the Minister say whether there has been any progress in finding a site for the radioactive waste disposal facility which will be essential to progressing this work?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
On all the things that my noble friend mentions there is progress and ongoing discussions, including the waste disposal site, but we are trying to speed up the submarine dismantling programme. Seven submarines at Rosyth are decommissioned. All have been defueled. “Swiftsure” is now in dry dock. That will be fully dismantled by the end of 2026. There are 15 such submarines at Devonport. Four of those have been defueled. However, my noble friend is quite right; we need to speed up the process and we are certainly looking at every way in which we can do that.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the time taken to dismantle the retired submarines. How long will it take to get the new ones?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The noble Lord is right to ask about dismantling. As I said to my noble friend, we are seeking to speed up that process. On the new submarines, if he is referring to the Astute class submarines, seven were ordered, six are already in the water and one is now under construction in Barrow. If he means the successor to the Vanguard class, we expect the first to be in service in the early 2030s. We are making considerable progress, and I hope that answers his question.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, as the noble Baroness’s follow-up question pointed out, there is an accumulation of nuclear submarines that have been decommissioned but are still in Rosyth or Devonport. Are His Majesty’s Government sure that they are safe? Can the Minister commit to ensuring that freedom of information requests are responded to? Apparently, the MoD has not been responding to safety questions.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
On freedom of information requests, if the noble Baroness has any examples that she would like me to look into, she only has to ask and I will certainly do so. Freedom of information requests should be responded to within the timeframe laid down, so I will look at that. As I said, we are looking to accelerate the dismantling programme. I am confident that the processes that we are seeking to put in place will speed that up and that they are safe.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, mentioned the disposal of nuclear material as and when it is eventually removed from the submarines. Can the Minister confirm, perhaps by letter, whether the establishment of a new disposal site—which has been debated for many years and is still no nearer, as far I can tell—will require primary legislation to be enacted? If not, how would the planning process be developed for the future disposal of that nuclear material?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I may need to write to the noble Lord. I usually like to be able to respond directly to questions, but I do not want to get the planning process wrong or give the wrong answer on whether primary or secondary legislation is needed. I will respond to him with a letter to make sure that I am accurate and will place a copy in the Library so that it is available to all noble Lords.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, on 20 May 2021, the Conservative Government published an update on the submarine dismantling project, stating that 90% of the decommissioned submarine materials could be recycled. Is the Minister in a position to confirm that his Government are committed to retaining that target? On the experience of decommissioning HMS “Swiftsure”, which is very well advanced, can he also indicate whether there is any proposal to secure an engineering impact assessment to understand how the process for future submarines might be expedited?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I pay tribute to the work that the noble Baroness did to try to speed up some of these processes. She asked two very pertinent questions. For “Swiftsure”, we retained the 90% recycling target. She will know that once a decommissioned submarine such as “Swiftsure” is defueled, there is an initial phase that takes the nuclear material out. Then there is an intermediate phase, which is followed by dry-docking—which is where “Swiftsure” is—for the rest of the submarine to be recycled. We expect 90% of that to be recycled. The whole point of “Swiftsure” is that it acts as a demonstrator project so that we can learn from how that was done—what worked and what perhaps could have been improved—and then apply that to all the other submarines that have been decommissioned.
Lord Wigley (PC)
Does the Minister recall the late, great Sir John Houghton, who identified the dangers of global warming several decades ago? As an eminent scientist, he identified the potential to generate electricity by reworking some of the nuclear waste that comes from not only submarines but other parts of the Armed Forces. Are the Government investigating that aspect?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
No, we are not investigating that for nuclear submarines. The MoD takes climate change very seriously, and I have recently signed off a submission about fuel and its better economic use with respect to climate change. Right across the MoD, climate change is taken seriously, but on the noble Lord’s specific question about decommissioning nuclear submarines, there is no intention to use them, for example, to go into the grid.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, are the older submarines more difficult to recycle than the Swiftsure class?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
We will understand that more fully once we have finished the demonstrator project with HMS “Swiftsure”.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, the Minister says—it is not his fault—that the new nuclear submarines will not be delivered for another six years, yet the current length of patrols for the Astute class is getting longer. The crews have to cope with long periods of being away from their families and their homes. There is also stress around the recruitment of those crews. How do we square the circle over the next five or six years when, because of the maintenance of the current fleet, the length of patrols is likely to get even longer?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Let me just say to the noble Lord that everything that happens is now my responsibility. If I gave the impression that it was not my responsibility, that certainly was not my intention. I will not evade responsibility for anything.
On the noble Lord’s question, I am not going to go into the operations of our submarine fleet in great detail on the Floor of this House, for obvious reasons. However, the noble Lord makes a point, as he has done here previously, about the welfare of submariners—indeed, the welfare of all our Armed Forces. That is something we take very seriously. We are looking to do all we can to support them and ensure that they are supported in the way they should be. In a few months’ time, or a year’s time, perhaps the noble Lord can ask the same question, and we will see whether we have made the progress we should have done; that will be my responsibility.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, with no disrespect to the important Question asked by my noble friend Lady Bryan, should we not be even more worried about Russian nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines in the Atlantic and elsewhere? Can the Minister give us a complete assurance that we have all the capability to keep an eye on them to make sure that our danger is minimised?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. He refers to our continuous at-sea deterrent. Under every Government, that continuous at-sea deterrent has been maintained. It is a crucial part of our defence of our democracy, of our freedom and against Russian aggression. That policy has been the same whatever the colour of the Government. The previous Government dealt with that and wanted to modernise the deterrent. We will carry on with that. It is an important part of our deterrent posture. Our adversaries should know that, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year, our at-sea deterrent will continue for as long as is necessary.
Lord Kamall (Con)
The Minister said that the MoD is not considering how it could use the material from decommissioned nuclear submarines for generation. Can he say whether that is for technical reasons—that is, limitations of technology—or for other reasons?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I suspect that it is for safety reasons and that it is not the best way of using that material. I am not a nuclear physicist nor an expert on nuclear material, but I suspect that it will be something to do with it being too expensive, not safe or simply not appropriate to do it in that way. Obviously, all that will have been considered and decisions made as a consequence.
HS2: Purchased Land
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Grocott
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have in respect of land already purchased for HS2 north of Birmingham.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are thoroughly reviewing the position they have inherited before setting out more detailed plans in due course. This includes our position on HS2 phase 2 safeguarding and on the land that was previously acquired for HS2’s cancelled phases. Any land acquired for phase 2 that is no longer required will be sold in line with Treasury rules through a disposal programme.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister knows, when Rishi Sunak cancelled the northern leg of HS2, he did so in the full knowledge that substantial sums of money had already been spent. Can my noble friend tell me his estimate of precisely how much had been spent before the cancellation? Further, so that money is not entirely wasted, can he give the House a clear assurance, which I am not sure he gave in his Answer, that the Government will at least protect the route of the line to Manchester, including retaining land that has already been purchased? I am sure he would agree that, in so doing, he will make it much easier for any future Government—this one, I hope—to complete the project, which should never have been cancelled in the first place.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his supplementary question. As reported by the National Audit Office, by March 2024 £2.3 billion had been spent on phase 2 which, as he says, was cancelled by the previous Government. No property on the hastily cancelled phase 2a has yet been disposed of. The Government are carefully considering what to do. He will know as I do that railway infrastructure lasts 150 or more years, so the right thing is to have a considered long-term plan for the benefit of the economic growth, jobs and housing in this country.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, nobody knows better than the Minister the importance of capacity as far as that rail line is concerned—particularly the capacity from Handsacre to Crewe, the legislation for which has already gone through this House. Is there a time limit on that legislation, as there sometimes is on planning permissions, or does that legislation stand good for a Government who wish to concern themselves seriously with a capacity that is so vital on our railways, if we are to shift freight from road to rail?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question, and I recognise, as he does, the capacity limitations of the west coast main line north of Handsacre. There is a time limit; I cannot offhand say what it is, but I can certainly write to the noble Lord. The Government intend to work out what to do and to say what they will do before any expiry of those powers.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
Can the Minister tell the House whether land acquired in this way, where it is to be disposed of, will be offered back to its original owners? Can he comment on interviews that I have heard, where people have been offered the opportunity to buy back the land but at prices considerably higher than they were given when the land was compulsorily acquired from them?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I know there is a process to be followed. I will have to write to the noble Lord to explain that process in detail and on the allegation that people have been asked to pay more for their land when it has been offered back than they were offered in the first place. I will do so.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will know that since the cancellation of HS2, the mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have collaborated in commissioning and producing a report for the construction on a similar alignment of what is referred to as the “Midlands-North West Rail Link” at considerably lower cost than HS2 would be. Can the Minister give the House an absolute assurance that no land will be sold that would be necessary for the construction of that proposed rail link until the Government have had the time to assess it and give it full consideration?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am aware of the report that the noble Lord refers to. It is an interesting report. We recognise the concerns about connectivity between Birmingham, Manchester and the north of England. We will consider advice and engage with the mayors and the detail of the report and give ourselves time to do that before any precipitate action is taken on the land concerned.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that building a modern railway should surely include level boarding, in order to make disability access available to everyone? Does he therefore share my concern that many of the stations planned on HS2 were not to have level boarding? In particular, can he reassure us that the Government’s review will look at level boarding access at Old Oak Common station, which will be a major point on the route?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I am as aware as she is that level boarding is a really important consideration for many people, including those with disabilities. However, even in respect of HS2, it is a complicated subject because there are relatively few HS2 stations and, as it is now configured, those trains will serve many stations on the conventional railway network, at which platforms have been at differing heights for as long as they have been built, in some cases going back to the 1840s. However, the point she raises is really important; the point she raises about Old Oak Common is important, and the point about Old Oak Common is equally complicated, because Old Oak Common will not merely serve the new HS2 trains in their new station—at which level boarding will be relatively simple—but will also serve trains on the conventional railway network on both main and relief lines out of Paddington, which have themselves several different floor heights. We need to crack this problem, and I am very sympathetic to the point raised by the noble Baroness, but it is more complicated than it might sound. I will give her the assurance that she wants that we are actively considering it, because building new railway stations is very expensive and takes a long time and we should try to get it right.
Lord Framlingham (Con)
My Lords, on 31 January 2017 I put an amendment down in this House to the HS2 Bill which, if passed, would have stopped it there and then and saved us all an awful lot of trouble. Some 25 of your Lordships understood and supported me; unfortunately, the Bill that went through resulted in the chaos that we have known, confirming that the project was never a good idea. It is hugely expensive at the expense of the NHS among other things—
Lord Framlingham (Con)
This issue warrants quite a little bit of talking; it is the biggest one and everybody in the country thinks it is nonsense. Here is my question for the Minister: can he please do his best with an impossible task, keep us fully updated and make sure that everybody who has been affected by this travesty gets the fairest possible treatment?
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the Government will correct a long-standing injustice that this has starved the Welsh public purse for far too long? Does he acknowledge that HS2 is an England-only project, and will His Majesty’s Government ensure that Wales receives the £4 billion of consequentials owed to the Welsh Government, as Welsh Government Ministers and the Secretary of State for Wales support?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I doubt the noble Baroness’s allegation about support. It is a serious issue, but it is about the allocation of funding. I have answered these questions before, and the position remains the same.
Ukraine: North Korean Troops
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Robathan
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they regard the deployment of North Korean troops to Ukraine as an escalation of the conflict by Russia.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, it is highly likely that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has begun to send troops to Russia. This is a deeply concerning development that risks prolonging the war and augments DPRK’s already significant support to Russia, including munitions and arms that are being used by Russia in its illegal war against Ukraine. This further illustrates Russia’s growing reliance on third-country support and the deepening military co-operation between Russia and DPRK, which has security implications for Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the wider world.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I doubt anybody in NATO would wish to see a shooting war with Russia, far less, God forbid, a nuclear conflict. The aggressor, Putin, threatens the West throughout with dire consequences unknown if there is any escalation of the war, yet he is now apparently bringing in thousands of North Korean troops to assist him, from an ally in the axis of evil. Putin is already waging war against the West. In the UK, Litvinenko was murdered 18 years ago, we had the Salisbury poisonings and only last month we had the warning from Ken McCallum of MI5 about Putin’s intention to disrupt British life. Will the Minister please go back to her colleagues in the department so that we can further assist Ukraine in defeating the aggressor? In particular, will she lobby for allowing Storm Shadow missiles and other weaponry to be used for attacks on Russia, because the best way to maintain peace in Europe is to defeat the aggressor, Putin?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
Before my noble friend responds, this is called Question Time for a reason. We want short, sharp questions.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend the Chief Whip. With absolute respect for the long experience of the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, and the conviction and passion that he brings to his question, there were several points in there. We have discussed Storm Shadow at length in this Chamber. The only person who benefits from us discussing it in this way is Vladimir Putin. I will not say any more than what I have already said on Storm Shadow, but I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that this is further evidence of Russia’s hypocrisy, as he alluded to, its recklessness and its absolute disregard for international peace and security.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, we read and hear a lot about the military pressure Russia is exerting on Ukraine, but are not the increasing numbers of North Koreans involved in the conflict, along with the widening of the pool of prisoners from which Russia seeks to recruit soldiers, evidence that the pressure is far from one-sided? Does this not underscore the importance of sustained resolve on the part of the West?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The noble and gallant Lord is correct, and that is what we will have. We have gone over this ground very many times, but it is always worth repeating that the defence of Ukraine is the defence of Europe. The consequence of the West doing anything other than showing the resolve that the noble and gallant Lord recommends would be to send a deeply worrying message that we fail to stand up to aggressors such as Putin. That must never, ever be something we can tolerate. We stand united in this House, in the country and with our allies.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, part of the pernicious relationship between North Korea and Russia is the supply of military equipment, but the disturbing BRICS summit, which many of our trading allies are currently attending with Putin, means that there are too many countries supplying component parts that can be channelled through North Korea and end up being used on the battlefields of Ukraine against our ally. Will the Minister ask the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation—a new development that we welcome —to be proactive in ensuring that component parts for military equipment from our trading allies do not end up in Ukraine, and to look at widening our trade sanctions?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Our sanctions regime and the legislation that surrounds it apply to any UK entity, be that in the UK or worldwide, as the noble Lord knows. We will speak to anyone we need to, using any appropriate channels, to try to dissuade others from supplying Russia through whatever means. All anybody supplying Russia with munitions, troops or anything else serves to do, whether they are an ally of ours or not, is prolong this illegal war and the suffering of the people of Ukraine.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, we on this side stand united with the noble Baroness and the Government in our support for Ukraine. Yesterday, it was reported in the Daily Telegraph that South Korea could send lethal weapons to Ukraine after North Korean troops land in Russia. Could she therefore confirm whether the Foreign Secretary was privy to any conversations during his recent visit to South Korea about whether it will provide support to Ukraine?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary recently spoke with his counterparts in South Korea and, indeed, in China. Noble Lords can rest assured that he raised at the highest level all the issues we would want him to raise regarding Russia, Ukraine and China.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that if North Korean troops were deployed in Ukraine or North Korean materiel were passed to Russia, that would be a breach of UN Security Council resolutions for which Russia voted in favour?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It would clearly be a breach. It is deeply concerning, and the most recent reports seem to indicate that it is highly likely, hence the deep concern we are expressing at the moment.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
The effective control of escalation in this conflict appears to be vital. Can the Minister in any way reassure the House that we are a fundamental part of some international mechanism that assesses escalation risk?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Everything we have done has been with a view to avoiding escalation, because that is the last thing we want to see. However, the reports we have had in recent days are a significant step, and we are deeply concerned. So, our approach will be to discuss the implications of this closely with our partners, as noble Lords would expect.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
Will the Minister please reflect on two points made this week at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, which I co-chair? The first was that the young soldier who walked across a minefield in August is representative of many North Koreans who would like to escape from that tyranny. Can we reach over the heads of their armed forces commanders and make sure that they receive messages in Korean, so they know that they are entitled to take up Korean citizenship in the Republic of Korea should they defect? The second point concerns the United Nations commission of inquiry report 10 years ago. It found crimes against humanity by the North Korean regime and called for a referral to the International Criminal Court. That has never been done. When is the United Kingdom going to raise this?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I will give consideration to the last point the noble Lord raised, which is very important. On his point about the young Korean soldier, we have known for a long time that the people of North Korea are not masters of their own destiny and do not make their choices freely and willingly. It is desperately sad that we now seem likely to see further decisions made on their behalf, but not in their interests.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
Does the Minister agree that this very serious recent development reinforces the importance of the UK’s programme for training Ukraine’s troops? Will she give the House an update on that programme?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The noble Lord is right: this is an important contribution that we make and will continue to make. It sits alongside measures announced yesterday—the £2.6 billion additional funding for Ukraine, to be supported by interest on seized Russian assets, alongside the £3 billion per year that the UK has committed to for as long as Ukraine needs it.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, the Minister said in her initial Answer that she thought that the deployment of North Korean troops would prolong the war. When does she think this war is going to end, with or without the North Koreans?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, I only wish I had the answer to that. All I can say is that the way this war ends and the circumstances in which it concludes must be and can only be the decision of the people of Ukraine.
Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]
Wednesday 23rd October 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Armed Forces Act 2006 (Continuation) Order 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Coaker
That the draft Order laid before the House on 20 May be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 22 October
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (Juxtaposed Controls) (Amendment) Order 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint
That the draft Orders laid before the House on 29 July and 2 September be approved.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 22 October.
Government of Wales Act 2006 (Devolved Welsh Authorities) (Amendment) Order 2024
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent
That the draft Order laid before the House on 21 May be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 22 October
Human Medicines (Amendments Relating to Naloxone and Transfers of Functions) Regulations 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Merron
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 29 July and 15 May be approved.
Relevant documents: 1st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the first instrument by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, 2nd Report). Considered in Grand Committee on 22 October.
Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made in the House of Commons by the Lord Chancellor yesterday. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on how the Government will address the crisis in our prisons, not just today but for years to come.
The House has heard me recount my inheritance as Lord Chancellor before. The crisis in our prisons was, I believe, the greatest disgrace of the last Conservative Government. They left our prisons on the point of collapse—a situation that would have forced us to close the prison doors, cancel all trials and force the police to halt arrests. Crime would have gone unpunished, victims would never have seen justice done and we would have witnessed the total breakdown of law and order. The previous Prime Minister knew he had to act. His Lord Chancellor begged him to do so, but instead he called an election.
As I announced to the House on 18 July, we had no choice but to bring forward the release point for some prisoners. Some of those serving standard determinate sentences have seen the custodial element reduced from 50% to 40%, spending the rest of their sentence on licence. They can be recalled to prison should probation staff judge that necessary to protect the public. As we saw over the summer of disorder, these releases could not come soon enough. After the August bank holiday, we were left with fewer than 100 spaces in our men’s prisons. The system was held together only by the heroic work and considerable good will of our prison and probation staff. We were, on many occasions, just one bad day from disaster.
Today, the second tranche of emergency releases takes place, creating desperately needed space in our prisons, but that is not the long-term solution. I will now set out the long-term plan for our prisons, which will ensure that never again is a Lord Chancellor placed in the invidious position that I was on taking office.
This must begin by building more prisons. For all their rhetoric, the last Conservative Government’s record on prison building was abject. They like to mention that, between 2010 and 2024, they built 13,000 places. What they are less keen to admit is that, in the same time, they closed 12,500. In 14 years, they added just 500 places to our prison capacity. In our first 100 days, this Government are already close to matching that. The previous Government promised to build 20,000 new places by the mid-2020s, but by the time they left office they had built only 6,000. They were simply too terrified of their own Back-Benchers, who supported prison building vociferously, as long as those prisons were not built anywhere near them.
This Government will build the prisons that the last Conservative Government promised but failed to deliver. In seeking a lasting solution to our prisons crisis, we must be honest in a way that my predecessors were not. We cannot build our way out of this problem. Every year, our prison population grows by around 4,500 prisoners. This is a question of simple mathematics. To build enough prisons to meet that demand we would have to build the equivalent of HMP Birmingham—which is in my constituency of Birmingham Ladywood—four and a half times over, every single year. To put that in context, in the past 10 years, the last Conservative Government built just three prisons. While we will speed up prison building and build as fast as we can, that pace is simply impossible. For that reason, if we are to address our prisons crisis, we must be smarter about who receives a prison sentence.
Let me be clear: there will always be a place for prison, and there will always be offenders who must be locked up, but we must expand the range of punishments we use outside prison and consider how we punish those offenders who have broken our rules but are not a danger to society. For that reason, today I am launching a review of sentencing. It will have one clear goal: to ensure that we are never again in a position where we have more prisoners than we have space in our prisons.
The review will follow three principles. First, sentences must punish offenders and protect the public. For dangerous offenders, prison will always remain the answer. Punishment and public protection will be the Government’s first priority. There are some offenders whom I will task the review with considering, such as prolific offenders, who account for just one in every 10 individuals, but nearly half of all sentences. Some of them are hyper-prolific offenders, committing hundreds of crimes. I will ask the reviewers to consider whether a longer sentence might punish them better and force them to engage with rehabilitation on the inside.
The second, related, principle of the review is that sentences must encourage offenders to turn their backs on crime—we need both sticks and carrots. I will be encouraging the reviewers to learn from others who have succeeded. In Texas, for instance, Republican legislators faced a problem similar to ours: a soaring prison population; sky-high reoffending rates; and prisons that had run out of space. Working across political divides, the Texans introduced a system of good behaviour credits, where well-behaved prisoners could earn time off their sentence by engaging in rehabilitation programmes. The results were remarkable. Crime fell by nearly a third, reaching the lowest levels in half a century. The prison population fell by over 20,000, and after two decades, the Texans had closed 16 prisons rather than building new ones.
The third principle of the review is that it must expand the punishment that offenders receive outside prison. There are already ways that we severely constrain offenders, limiting their freedom outside prison. Those under home detention curfews are, in practice, under a form of house arrest. With a tag on their ankle and a sensor in their home, they are placed under curfew, generally for 12 hours each day. Should they break that curfew, they can be picked up and, if needs be, locked up.
In some ways, punishment outside prison can be even more restrictive than prison. It is a sad fact that in many of our prisons today, a drinker can all too easily procure a drink. On a sobriety tag, however, with their sweat measured every 30 minutes and a 97% compliance rate, their teetotalism is almost as strict as mine. All of that is just using the technology that is immediately available to us, and used already in this country. I will be inviting the reviewers to consider the technology they have available to them now, and the next frontier of technology, used in other countries but not yet in ours. I believe that the modern world presents us with the opportunity to build a prison outside prison, where the eyes of the state follow a prisoner more closely than any prison officer can.
Moving punishment out of prison for those who can be safely managed there has huge benefits. Outside prison, offenders can engage in work that pays back the communities and individuals they have harmed. The evidence is abundantly clear that those who serve their sentences outside prison are far less likely to reoffend. That cuts crime, with fewer victims and safer streets, and reduces the huge cost to society of reoffending, most recently valued at over £22 billion a year.
This Government believe that crime must have consequences and criminals must be punished. We also believe in rehabilitation—that those who earn the right must be encouraged to turn their backs on crime. This Government believe in prison, but we must increase the use of punishment outside prison too. The sentencing review will be tasked with pursuing those goals.
I am pleased to say that the review will be led by a former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, a highly regarded Minister who served in multiple roles across government. He has rightly gained the respect of both the judiciary and the legal sector, as well as many within this House. I will work with him to assemble a panel of reviewers who will draw together deep expertise and experience in the criminal justice system. The review will take a bipartisan and evidence-based look at an issue that has for far too long been a political football, booted around by both sides. David Gauke will report back with his recommendations in the spring, and I have placed a copy of the complete terms of reference of the review in the Library of the House.
It is right that the review is given time to do its work. As I have noted already, however, the capacity crisis in our prisons has not gone away. When we introduced emergency measures, we believed that they had bought us about a year. But, after the summer of disorder, the next crisis could be just nine months away. For that reason, I announced last week an extension of the sentencing powers of magistrates’ courts, which allows us to bear down on the remand population in our prisons. But we must go further.
While I will not countenance any further emergency releases of prisoners, there are operational measures that I will lay before the House in the months ahead. The first, which I have already referenced, is home detention curfew. This modern form of house arrest curtails freedom and helps offenders turn their lives around. Offenders are subject to electronically monitored curfews, which must be imposed for nine hours a day, are generally 12 hours long and can extend to 16 hours.
As the shadow Lord Chancellor noted in the House in February, the reoffending rate for the average prisoner, which was measured a few years ago, is close to 50%, but for offenders released on a home detention curfew it is 23%. This Government will soon extend the use of that measure, following in the footsteps of the previous Administration, who rightly expanded its use on a number of occasions. We will increase the maximum period that eligible offenders can spend under house arrest from six months to 12 months.
The second measure that we will introduce will address the soaring recall population, which has doubled from 6,000 to 12,000 in just six years. Risk-assessed recall review is a power of the Secretary of State to re-release, on licence, those who pose a low risk to the public, avoiding the long waits they often face for a Parole Board hearing. In the past, the measure was used often: it was used between 1,000 and 1,500 times each year between 2017 and 2019, but its use has fallen in recent years, reaching as low as 92 times in 2022.
Later this month, I intend to review the risk-assessed recall review process, so that lower-risk cases can be considered for re-release after they have been recalled to prison for two to three months, and where their further detention is no longer necessary to protect the public. I should note that this will change only the cases that can be considered for release, with the final decision still in the hands of experienced probation officers and managers.
The final area where I intend to make progress is in the case of foreign national offenders. I share the public’s view that, with 10,000 in our prisons, there are far too many foreign offenders in this country, costing £50,000 each a year to house at His Majesty’s pleasure. It happens to be my personal view that deportation is as good a punishment as imprisonment, if not better. We are currently on track to remove more foreign national offenders this year than at any time in recent years. But I will now be working with my colleagues across government to explore the ways that we can accelerate that further, including working with the Home Office to make the early removal scheme for foreign offenders more effective.
When I walked into the Ministry of Justice for the first time as Lord Chancellor just over three months ago, I encountered a prison system on the brink of collapse. It was the result of the inaction of the last Government, who thought they could dither and delay, and led us to the precipice of disaster. But their failure was longer in the making: they failed to build the prison places this country needs and they failed to address the challenge of an ever-rising prison population.
In July, this Government took action to avert immediate disaster, but the plan that I have set out today does more than that. It will ensure that this Government and our successors are never forced to rely on the emergency release of prisoners again—a measure over which I had no choice, one that I took despite my personal beliefs and one that must never happen again. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement of the Justice Secretary. It is comforting to note that the Whitehall tradition of dusting down old policies for new Ministers is still with us. Of course, there are many matters addressed in the Statement with which I entirely agree. The proposal for a review is certainly to be welcomed, and there are many policy initiatives touched upon that deserve further consideration and ultimately, I hope, some form of introduction, but does the Minister agree with me that one major issue to be addressed at the outset is the practicality and cost of the measures being proposed?
Take a simple example: extending home detention and the use of tagging. The Minister mentioned tags and sensors, but that is a tiny part of that overall programme. When we have, let us say, thousands of offenders tagged, we require more than just the tag and sensor, however sophisticated it may be. Does the Minister agree with me that, for the programme to work, we require real-time monitoring, real-time reporting 24 hours a day and a real-time response—again, 24 hours a day? There is no point in noticing that someone has left home under curfew if we do not check on them for another week. That makes considerable demands on police resources, for example. What will be done to address that issue in the context of these reforms?
If, however, we are going to use some other service, such as the Probation Service, does the Minister anticipate a significant and, indeed, material increase in the provision of that service? I also ask him: is it proposed to use home detention and tagging as a potential alternative to remand, since it is at the end of remand that we find the greatest pressure upon the current prison system? Furthermore, if we are to have a much-extended home detention system, what steps will be taken to monitor and deal with the impact on families of having an offender in their midst for up to 16 hours a day? We know from the experience of the pandemic lockdown of the stress and mental difficulty that can be caused by that sort of situation. We will need more than just experts in the criminal justice system to address that sort of proposal, so I hope that the appointment of the review panel will go further than indicated in the Justice Secretary’s Statement.
We should also consider the victims of crime and the public perception of crime and punishment. If your home has been burgled half a dozen times in the previous year by the same individual, it is somewhat galling to see him walking down the street in front of your house wearing a tag. We have to be able to inform the public as to the effectiveness of the proposals that are being made. We are going to have to educate the public with regard to their effectiveness. There is the further issue of public confidence in the penal system. At present, it is conceivable that a person given a three-year sentence can be released on licence after three months. How does the Minister consider that the public perceive that when it occurs? A further area of education may be required, if I might be permitted to mention it: the education of the magistrates and judges to persuade them that community sentences can have a much more major part to play in our sentencing policy. Will that too be addressed in the context of the present review?
Then there is a question of how the Government will deal with the opposition. I am referring not to His Majesty’s loyal Opposition but to the Treasury—the place where all penal reform proposals go to die. Before we start out on this ambitious project, will the Minister be able to assure us that he has, in principle, the support of the Treasury for the considerable sums that will be required to implement these policy proposals?
There is an acknowledgement in the Statement that we need more prisons. Will the Minister disclose to us the programme for those new prisons? Will he also address the difficult issue of planning, where proposals for prisons seem to be notoriously subject to blocking and delay? Are there steps that the Minister will be able to advise us of to try to circumvent that problem?
We then come to the matter of foreign nationals, who make up about 12% of the present prison population. The Justice Secretary said in the Statement that it was
“my personal view that deportation is as good a punishment as imprisonment, if not better ”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/10/24; col. 200.]
Does the Minister agree with me that this is a completely mad proposition? Foreign criminals, gangsters and drug dealers from safe countries—remember that we can deport foreign nationals only to safe countries—will come here to rob, burgle and create mayhem. Then when caught, according to the Justice Secretary’s policy, they will simply be sent home again, no doubt at our expense. We will become a magnet for foreign criminals. Why would you not come here if that was the policy being implemented? Get caught and go home but get a free ticket to go home—wonderful. Can the Minister advise me who dreamed up this particular policy and how they intend to implement it?
It is clear that penal reform has been overdue in this country for many years. I welcome the idea of the review and the appointment of the former Conservative Justice Secretary to head that review. I hope we can see such a review being carried forward in the very near future. I thank the Minister again for repeating the Statement.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement in your Lordships’ House. Overcrowding in our prisons has been in the headlines for as long as I can remember. Different Ministers have offered various solutions to this problem. No one seems to have looked at overall solutions that could resolve the problem. We are now offered a review by a former Minister and a prison capacity package to solve the present crisis.
We have long called for a review of criminal sentencing. We have asked for reoffending to be cut by taking a holistic approach to rehabilitation and community supervision, including a full range of rehabilitative services. We also believe in implementing a presumption against short sentences of 12 months or fewer to facilitate rehabilitation in the community.
The present proposals offer short-term solutions but do not alleviate the problems or provide the long-term solutions we badly need. The previous Administration had a golden opportunity to set up a royal commission on the criminal justice system, but this was kicked into the long grass. Instead, we have a piecemeal approach to legislation in this field. We need to look at the overuse of imprisonment. This has put us on top in Europe as the worst country in the way we sentence offenders. It is astonishing that we imprison nearly twice as many people as Germany.
There are a number of questions for the Minister. I welcome the proposals to reduce the prison population. We should seriously examine the work of the Sentencing Council. Surely a Minister should put a legislative obligation to take note of the prison population before a sentence is passed. How will the review plan to address concerns about disproportionate sentencing of minority groups and marginalised communities? Would the Minister agree that ploughing more resources into expanding the prison system to hold an ever-growing number of prisoners is far from the most sensible way to tackle crime?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord for their welcome of the review, their excellent questions and suggestions and enthusiasm for what we are trying to do. I will try to answer some of those questions now.
Increasing the use of technology as part of community sentencing is something we should consider very seriously. It is not just about the conventional electronic monitoring and the tag. Other countries have far more advanced technology than we do, including Spain, which is a country I am going to look at shortly to understand what we can learn from them. A lot of it is about the data it collects and the reassurance to victims from that data and how it can support them.
The noble and learned Lord is correct that the more tags we put on people, the more work that creates for others. I have mentioned in the House before that we are recruiting 1,000 probation officers and 4,000 more police officers. But it is not just about recruiting them; it is about training them and settling them into their jobs, which takes time. We need to make sure that we do not rush at it, but one thing I can guarantee is that we are not short of tags.
On the point about remand offenders being tagged in the community, for me this comes back to trust and how much the courts can trust tagging and how effective it is at reducing reoffending. When it comes to offenders being at home for a lot of time during the day, if I had the choice between being in prison or being on a tag at home, I would much prefer to be at home reading my kids bedtime stories and helping them with their homework to being behind a cell door.
I am concerned about highly prolific low-level offenders and what we do with them—the noble and learned Lord raised this. A few weeks ago, I spent two days in Preston Prison, following an officer, Steve, around as he did his job. One thing that was very clear was that a lot of the prisoners he spoke to he had known for the last 32 years that he had worked in that prison. They were coming in and out from when they were young to when they were old men. So, as part of the review, we need to consider whether custody for longer periods is the right thing for them. Public sentiment about crime and what we are doing depends on how good we are at reducing reoffending. When 80% of offending is reoffending, something is clearly going wrong. We need to deal with that, but we need to do so as part of the sentencing review and the other things I intend to do in my role.
On money, we are engaging with the Treasury on the spending commitments needed to progress our delivery plans. But, like noble Lords, we will wait for the Budget, which is not too far away. For me, the priority is protecting the public; that has to come before anything else.
On new prisons being built, one is being finished off in York: HMP Millsike, which will open in the spring. We will publish a 10-year capacity strategy soon. I do not have any further details on the planning proposals yet, but I know we have the willingness to make sure that we can build prisons where we need to.
Finally, I feel that £50,000 a year for every foreign national offender in prison is quite expensive when we could be sending some of them home. But what is important is that we work with our Home Office colleagues to make sure that we process the paperwork as fast as possible.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, we now have 20 minutes of Back-Bench questions. To paraphrase what my noble friend said, can we have questions, not statements, so we can get as many noble Lords in as possible?
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, I completely support the general thrust of the Statement and the principles underlying it. Of course we will have problems with the Treasury—every department does on every occasion—but I completely welcome it, in particular the appointment of David Gauke. That is a very good start to the bipartisan approach, which I have no doubt will be shared by the opposition spokesman, in his usual supportive role.
On a specific point, right now the evidence shows that over half of adults on short-term sentences will reoffend—that is a terrible number. Meanwhile, community orders have a much lesser extent of reoffending: I think the figure is 34%. Can the Minister assure me that why and how that might be replicated will be considered in the review?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. Like him, I am pleased that David Gauke has agreed to chair this review panel. I have worked closely with him—he was one of my trustees at the Prison Reform Trust—so I know not just how capable he is but how enthusiastic he is for prison reform. We will shortly announce the rest of the panel and I am sure my noble friend will welcome them as enthusiastically.
I agree with my noble friend about community sentences for adults who would otherwise have short-term sentences. I have been in prisons for 22 years and I have seen too many people go in and come out no different. We need to use the opportunity when they are in prison to overcome their mental health and addiction problems. When they leave, they need somewhere to live and, hopefully, a job. It is much easier to do a lot of that—when the risks are right—when someone is in the community, not in prison.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I am old enough to remember the promise, under the last Labour Government, to build Titan prisons with 7,500 places—that never happened. Notwithstanding that, the Government are laudably pursuing a policy of tackling violence against women and girls. With that in mind, what specific policies are in place to protect the interests of victims of prisoners hitherto convicted of domestic abuse and sexual assault, who may be released?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The noble Lord will be pleased to know that a victims’ representative will be appointed to the panel. That is important because the voices of victims need to be heard and we will be announcing the appointment soon.
It is a very difficult situation for victims, especially with the recent releases. Often, they expected someone to be released but it happened a few days or weeks early. I believe that the victim contact scheme is important and works very well. We need to make sure that victims engage with it, where appropriate, because they do not in all cases. The latest SDS40 releases were far better managed. We had an eight-week lead-in time, which is not perfect but is better than the earlier ECSL scheme, which was pretty chaotic. It is important that this review considers the victims in every sentence and every line of the report.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, one of the most depressing points in the Minister’s Statement is that the prison population grows by around 4,500 prisoners a year. Do we really have to accept that it will continue to grow? The Statement says it is a matter of simple arithmetic, but have we lost sight of living in a predominantly law-abiding society, with crime cut down to the bare minimum?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
When I first walked into the Ministry of Justice and was told that the prison population goes up by 80 people a week, I thought that was manageable. But when you times that by 52, and then by five, you realise the scale of the problem. There are a number of examples of similar situations where people have done things differently. While we have a big problem on our hands, we need to make sure that it becomes a big opportunity to change things, because something is clearly not working.
I will give noble Lords the example of Texas, where they decided that a number of non-violent and first-time offenders would not go to prison but would serve community sentences instead—a number of other states have done similar things. I mentioned earlier that highly prolific low-level offenders actually went to prison for longer. Texas also introduced good-behaviour credits, an incentive scheme for people to behave in prison. Crime went down by 29% and 16 prisons have closed. So we should take hope from the fact that, if we use the evidence and take our time, we can learn from other examples. However, it will take time for the increase in prison numbers to slow down: these things, unfortunately, do not happen quickly enough.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I greatly welcome the Statement and the Government’s decision to tackle penal reform, which is long overdue. It is absolutely right to put far more emphasis on non-custodial sentencing. If I have any reservations, they are about embarking on another prison-building programme. The problem is that supply creates demand. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that the decision to expand the number of prisons should be reviewed in the context of improvements in non-custodial sentences and their effectiveness, and in the context of David Gauke’s review of sentencing? There is also a case for closing some prisons, even if new ones are to be built, because many are appalling buildings with inadequate accommodation and terrible facilities, and they should go. Perhaps the Minister could also address that question.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
When I walked into Preston Prison, there was a big board next to the governor’s office, with the names and dates of all the governors of the prison from when it first opened. The first governor started working there in 1798; I walked up the same steps that the first prisoners walked up in 1798. So, clearly, we have a problem with lots of old, dilapidated prisons, house blocks and other parts of the prison estate; unfortunately, we need to build new prisons.
It will take time for our reforms to reduce reoffending. It is one of my goals, and I managed to get it into my job title: Minister for Reducing Reoffending. The more we can reduce reoffending, the fewer prisons we will need. Maybe in 20 years’ time we will look to close the prisons built in 1798—but, for now, I am afraid, we need all the space we have got.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his role in introducing this package of measures and look forward to its speedy progress. When I was Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor, I am afraid I was quite unable to persuade my ministerial colleagues to allow me to proceed with anything that remotely resembled this. I hope that, with the changed climate, the Minister can persuade the public that this approach to sentencing will have no adverse effects on the overall level of crime in this country, as one can find other countries to demonstrate, and that this is an altogether more effective system if it actually reduces the rate of reoffending, which ought to be one of the prime purposes of putting a person in prison when they have committed a serious crime.
Will the review in general be so bold as to have a look at the sentencing guidelines with the judiciary, which have tended to produce ever-longer sentences in recent years in response to populist pressure? Would he also consider the number of minimum sentences that have been introduced over the last 20 or 30 years? There is a get-out clause for the judges, in the interests of justice, but it tends to produce high minimum sentences in every case. Should not the judiciary be trusted to look at the exact circumstances of the particular crime and offender, and have this inhibition on their discretion removed? Will the review be so bold as to look at the actual sentencing guidelines?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for the question. When he was having those conversations a number of years ago, I think he was also having some of them with me in meetings outside of his political meetings, as I was talking to him about recruiting offenders. As I mentioned before, there are a number of examples of where crime has come down: Texas, Louisiana and a number of other states in the US. The Dutch model is also something I have followed closely.
The noble Lord is right that reoffending needs to come down. I hope that I can instil the skills I learnt running the family business over the years in the culture, values and organisation of the Prison Service, to help it become better at delivering what we need to do on reform.
On the terms of reference on the sentencing review, I will not go into detail—they are in the Library—but I will give noble Lords a brief summary. Our ask to the panel is that we must punish offenders and always leave a space for dangerous offenders in our jails. We must
“encourage offenders to turn their backs on … crime”—
we want better citizens, not better criminals—and we must expand the range of punishment outside of prisons and focus on technology that curtails freedoms. I am sure that noble Lords will be pleased to know that one of the panel members may well, I suspect, be a Member of this House.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, we will hear from the Liberal Democrat Benches, which we have not heard from as yet.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, perhaps the review could be so bold as to look at the legislation which deals with mandatory sentencing and minimum sentences. The support around the House for community sentences is very welcome, but I think the Minister will agree—and perhaps he will confirm this—that community sentences need providers of treatments for mental health, alcoholism and so on, and all the services which support offenders. Will the review extend to the support for those providers and the whole gamut of what makes up a good community sentence?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the question. Yes, I hope the panel will engage with the whole sector, and there are so many experts who have so much experience. As far as the scope of the sentencing review goes, it will be reviewing the framework around longer custodial sentences, including the use of minimum sentences and the range of sentences and maximum penalties available for different offences and how we administer them. The panel will also review the specific needs of young offenders, older offenders, female offenders and prolific offenders. It has a lot of work to do, and we hope it will do it by the spring.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, there are 1,800 prisoners serving IPP sentences, as the Minister knows. One has been in prison for 12 years for stealing a plant pot; another has been in for eight years for stealing a mobile phone. At the same time, there is no review. When we look at prison places, I look forward to the Minister’s efforts in reviewing this situation, which cannot go on any longer. Does the Minister agree with me that we do not need large warehouse prisons? As the Prison Officers’ Association says, we need something local—something that can be looked after socially in the local area—and that makes sure that reoffending does not take place.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for the question. As for what kind of prisons we need, I think we need a good mix of prisons of all shapes and sizes and in all locations. On IPP sentence prisoners, I am sure the House knows me well enough to know how deeply troubled I am by the state of the lives of IPP sentence prisoners. It is not included in the sentencing review because I feel we are already making good progress, albeit early progress. The IPP action plan is solid and we need to push on fast with it.
I am looking at two things at the moment. One is that 30% of IPP sentence prisoners are in the wrong prison for helping them fulfil their needs to get out of prison. I am also heartened by a dashboard that we now have so we know where every IPP prisoner is and where they are up to with their sentence—it may not sound much, but it is a game-changer for how we can support people to work through their sentence. So I want to make rapid progress. I also reassure my noble friend that, when I was running the family business, I managed to work alongside 30 colleagues who were IPP prisoners and they were absolutely fantastic, and the second chance that they were given was paid back in buckets.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, with sentencing of female offenders, much is made of their vulnerability, their adverse childhood experiences and revictimisation as adults. Judges are increasingly mindful of their roles as primary carers. All this is humane and understandable. Is the sentencing review going to take a similar approach to men? While they must also take responsibility for breaking our laws, many are equally vulnerable and have had many adverse childhood experiences—I think 25% of the prison population has had the experience of being in care—but it is culturally normative to take a far more punitive approach to men.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for the question. While the review will evaluate the sentencing framework and examine the experiences of all offenders, it will be guided by the evidence of what works to keep the public safe and to rehabilitate offenders. I am focused on the evidence of what works both here and abroad. Currently, judges and sentences already take into account the individual circumstances of each case to account for the culpability of the offender, male or female, and the harm they caused, or intended to cause and any aggravating or mitigating factors.
There are three facts that I am sue the noble Lord will know: female offenders make up only 4% of the prison population; over two-thirds of them are in prison for a non-violent offence; and 55% of women in prison have dependent children. What noble Lords may not know is that the average life expectancy for someone who is not in prison in this country is 82; if you are a man in prison, it is 56; if you are a woman in prison, it is 47. So, we clearly have a lot of work to do to support these very vulnerable and often ill people.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, since so many repeat prisoners have drink and drug addictions, are the Government looking at residential establishments outside prison with a probation order, where, if they do not obey at the residential place, they would then go to prison?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
The noble and learned Baroness is correct that drugs and alcohol is a massive problem for people in prison and leaving prison. With 49% of prisoners having drug misuse problems, it is not surprising that in prisons there is a demand for drugs. But when people are out, we need to do all we can to help them overcome their addiction problems because otherwise they are far more likely to be recalled and to offend again. So, I am fan of drug-free wings in prisons and of all the excellent support mechanisms already out there. Residential support centres for women are of far more interest for me in the future, and there are a couple of examples that are already starting to work very well.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to hear the Minister’s Statement and his emphasis that prison is about not just punishment or public safety but rehabilitation. When I did a lot of prison visiting 10 years ago, one of the biggest problems was that, although courses were laid on internally, prisoners were often unable to attend them simply because there were insufficient staff to conduct them from their cells to the courses concerned. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us how that will be addressed. More importantly, what incentivisation will there be for prisoners to take part properly in the rehabilitation programmes?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question. I have walked past far too many classrooms in prisons where there are rows of computers and desks but no one inside. When prisons are 99.9% full, all that the governor can do is get people clean clothes, three meals a day and a shower. Going to a classroom is the last thing on their list, which is a very sad state of affairs.
I am used to incentives. Some noble Lords may have been into the business I used to work in—one of the Timpson shops—and while they may have asked for one key, someone may have tried to sell them two. The reason they do that is not because they are trying to be helpful; it is because they have an incentive. What I know from incentives elsewhere in the prison world is that they can have a very positive impact on prisoners’ behaviour: to engage with their sentence plan, to go to education and to purposeful activity, not to take drugs and to play the game. We are working on this now and I hope to provide more information to the review in due course. It is very powerful; in the new year, I hope to go to Texas with the Lord Chancellor to see for ourselves exactly how we can implement it and just how powerful it can be. That is very important for us to do.
Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill
Wednesday 23rd October 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill 2024-26 View all Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 21-II Second marshalled list for Committee - (22 Oct 2024)
Lord Moylan
“(1D) The relevant franchising authority must consult the Council of the Nations and Regions before making a direct award of a public sector contract to a public sector company for a rail service that serves destinations in two or more of England, Scotland and Wales.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the relevant franchising authority to consult the Council of the Nations and Regions before making a direct award of a public sector contract to a public sector company for a rail service that serves destinations in two or more of England, Scotland and Wales.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, we come now to one of the most important debates in our consideration of this Bill in Committee: a group of amendments on devolution and the powers of local authorities, devolved authorities and combined mayoral authorities in relation to the vision of passenger railway services. At this stage in the debate, I intend to speak only to the amendments in my name—Amendments 12, 13 and 50—although I will offer general support to the others in this group, many of which I have added my name to. I may have more particular comments about them later in the debate when their movers have had a chance to speak to them.
I shall dispose briefly of Amendments 12 and 13, which were intended to be helpful. Indeed, Amendment 12 is still intended to be helpful. It would require the relevant franchising authority to consult the newly established Council of the Nations and Regions, which the Prime Minister has set up, before awarding contracts to a public sector company. We on this side of the House thought that it might be useful for the new council to have something practical to do; I would have thought that considering the provision of railway services is something that would take up a considerable amount of its time and generate a great deal of interesting debate. I shall say no more about this amendment because I imagine that it will be happily accepted by the Minister.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I find myself in a somewhat embarrassing position, so far as this amendment is concerned, in that I agree with a lot of what the noble Lord opposite has said. In fact, had he put his name to Amendment 43—which I will speak to—my embarrassment would have been doubled, because he raises a very relevant point, as far as devolution is concerned, about railway services.
I anticipate—my noble friend will tell me if I am wrong —that Great British Railways will assume responsibility for most of the railway stations in England and Wales in future. Actually, I suspect it is only in England because of devolution in Wales. However, when we look at the present situation, most of them—as I have indicated—are owned by Network Rail, but many are run and owned by train operating companies.
Avanti has come under some criticism in your Lordships’ House over the years, not least from me. Avanti runs and is responsible for stations—not small country stations, but fairly large ones such as Birmingham International, a station that I have used frequently over the years. It is a major station with about a dozen different destinations, as far as trains through that station are concerned, yet it is virtually unstaffed after 10 pm. There is a train dispatcher on the platform, as I understand it, but there are no staff at all either in the booking office or on the concourse. I put it to my noble friend: if the major legislation he refers to goes through next year, what will be the position for stations such as Birmingham International? Will Great British Railways assume responsibility for staffing? If so, we can only hope for an improvement in railway staffing.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendment 16, on devolution of the railway, an issue dear to the hearts of the Liberal Democrat Benches. It is clearly an issue of concern to noble Lords on all sides, given the large number of similar amendments before us today and the debate we are having.
In my maiden speech at Second Reading, I said that there is no one model internationally—public, private or both—that is the perfect way to fund and run a railway, but I did refer to the huge success of devolved rail in London, be it the Overground or the Elizabeth line, and of Merseyrail. One of the greatest concerns I have about the Bill is that we are debating it without seeing the more substantial plan legislation and that we are, in effect, closing off options. I do not want to see devolution taken off the table as a result of this legislation, but that is what it will do. There is no room here for further devolution.
Devolution is not simply a duty to consult in order to allow locally and regionally elected members to make a few comments on the service they would like for their residents: box ticked, job done. It is about being able to run services in a way that serves the needs of local areas and communities and integrates them with other public transport, such as buses and trams. It is about empowering our devolved institutions to have some ownership and a genuine stake in delivering quality transport services locally. It is about that local accountability. That is what is so disappointing about this legislation. Instead of enabling greater local service delivery and accountability, it takes everything back to the department—a “Whitehall knows best” approach.
As a new Member of this House, I was concerned that I was missing something. Surely this Bill would not prevent further devolution supporting local and regional authorities, yet it does. The letter sent to Members by the Minister states that
“this single-purpose Bill does not affect the existing arrangements which allow Transport for London and Merseytravel to procure passenger rail services in their area. It will remain for these bodies to decide how best to deliver those services. Nor does this Bill change the existing role of other local authorities”.
The trouble is that the existing role, the status quo, is not good enough, and that is why this amendment has been tabled.
We want genuine consultation as each franchise comes up, to allow proactively for devolved bodies to come forward and say which lines they would like to run locally, and to support this. Further lines were planned to be devolved in London, such as the Great Northern line out of Moorgate, but with a change in Secretary of State, they were blocked. There are many metro rail services that run in London, such as those by South Western Railway or Southern Railway, that could easily be run by TfL and be part of that comprehensive transport offering in London, properly co-ordinated and branded as one coherent service.
In London, devolution has enabled that joined-up thinking not only on wider transport strategies but on housing and economic regeneration, alongside an additional level of accountability and increased responsiveness. In the first four years of the Overground alone, there was an 80% jump in ridership to 190 million passengers; fare evasion fell from 13% to 2%; the number of delayed trains fell by 11%; and the frequency of service increased on some lines. As we know only too well, the London Overground and the Elizabeth line are always at the top end of performance, according to the Office of Rail and Road.
Let us look outside London. Fellow noble Lords have mentioned Manchester today. Greater Manchester is set to play a key role in delivering the Government’s ambitions for economic growth. In recent years, the city region has had the highest rate of productivity growth in any part of the UK. Despite this success, there is potential to deliver more. Having a modern, fit-for-purpose rail network, integrated with other transport modes, is crucial to delivering economic growth, prosperity and opportunities.
By integrating and embedding rail into Manchester’s Bee Network, the Greater Manchester public transport system will be transformed, delivering a step change for the region. Transport for Greater Manchester and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority want to integrate eight core rail lines into the Bee Network by 2028. This is just the start of their plans: enhancing the current customer rail offer, the greater modal integration, accessibility and enhancements in performance. While this will significantly improve Greater Manchester’s transport offer, their longer-term plans for full local rail integration will require significant change. This legislation will remove full devolution of metro lines as an option. This cannot be the Government’s intention.
It is our belief that all devolved institutions should have a statutory role in specifying and directing rail outcomes and outputs, both services and infrastructure, including being able to run local services as they wish. This needs to be set out clearly in the legislation, and ensuring this strength locally and in our regions will counteract the risk of a centrally controlled service, isolated in Whitehall, not responsive or reactive to local need. We really want the Government to think again on this point. I hope the Minister can assure us in his response today.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
These are my first amendments in this new Parliament. It is a real pleasure to be speaking on transport, which is something I have always enjoyed. I am absolutely thrilled because this is the first time ever in 11 years that the opposition spokesman has signed an amendment of mine. I have four amendments signed, and I am just over the moon about that. I am so pleased that now the Conservatives are in opposition, they see the good sense in what I am saying.
The Green Party has long supported the public ownership of rail, along with other natural monopolies such as the NHS and water. We therefore support the Bill.
I have been told to say that the purpose of my amendments is to probe the Government’s plans on devolving control of the railways, but I do not really want to probe. I would just like the Minister to tell me whether or not he is going to accept my amendments. If he possibly could, I would be so pleased. It would be a highlight of my already very exciting day.
Greens are very keen on subsidiarity: making sure that ownership and power are devolved to the lowest possible and most practical level. This point seems especially important given the emerging devolution agenda. Can the Minister tell me whether rail will be involved in the devolution plans or remain the property of the UK Government, as the Bill currently sets out? My light-touch amendments would at least keep the door open to councils and combined authorities working together to run or oversee the railways within their areas.
There is hope for a public transport revolution under this Government, but the only way we will get people out of their cars and on to public transport is if it is integrated and easy for them to get from where they are to where they want to go—and then back again, perhaps much later at night.
Can the Minister please reassure me that the publicly owned rail companies will work in tandem with transport authorities all over the system to make sure that bus timetables are integrated into train timetables? How is the system being designed to ensure co-operation between different parts of the network; for example, so that buses and trains can run on linked timetables? In a conversation we had some time ago, the Minister said to me that the train line I use on a weekly basis, South Western Railway, is the worst in Britain. Could he expand on that, please? I would be interested to know how it is going to be improved.
As a Green, I would be thrilled to work with the Government on this exciting public transport agenda, and my honourable friend Siân Berry MP raised these points in the other place. I look forward to this particular Minister taking an incredibly practical view of the whole thing and making sure that he is not corralled by the Labour Government into doing things that he knows are wrong.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 34 in my name, which would allow franchises to be led by local authorities. It goes a little further than one of the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Moylan, who wanted partnership boards, and is more in line with what the noble Lord, Lord Snape, wants to do with his Amendment 43.
We need to be clear about what new Section 30C does. Basically, it says that the only people who can run a railway in future are a public sector company owned by a Secretary of State. Unless the Minister is going to repeal that in the forthcoming Bill, it means that for ever and a day, as we have heard, we are going to have a central monopoly for all franchised rails.
My noble friend went to the Labour Party document on transport to inspire his speech. I looked at the document published in March this year, Power and Partnership: Labour’s Plan to Power Up Britain, which pledged to devolve new powers over transport, employment support and energy out of Whitehall. That was followed up by the manifesto promising “landmark devolution legislation” to transfer power out of Westminster and into communities across the UK. So we could have expected the first pieces of legislation in the new Parliament to fulfil that ambition of devolving power out of Westminster, particularly in the field of transport, where there has been significant devolution of powers in rail, as we heard in earlier speeches. Like my noble friend, I was surprised to read in the letter from the Minister—and I got a slightly different wording—that:
“The Government has no current plan to devolve responsibility for further services to local authorities”.
As we have heard, Transport for London has taken over services that used to be run by British Rail, and then by South Western Railway and the other TOCs, and it now runs the Overground. I think that has worked well, and it has enabled TfL to integrate the Overground with the Underground and provide a better service to Londoners.
Outside London, many local authorities have successfully introduced light rail lines. There are 11 light rail systems in the UK. Manchester Metrolink is probably the best known, with 99 stops and 64 miles of track, run by Transport for Greater Manchester. We have also heard about the smaller West Midlands Metro, run by Transport for West Midlands. So local authorities are perfectly capable of building, maintaining and running serious rail systems.
The Minister’s statement seems to preclude the sort of arrangement that works well in London from happening anywhere else. All that local authorities are promised in the letter is a statutory role governing, managing, planning and developing the rail network, but not taking it over and integrating it with the system that they already have.
I think the Minister is in some trouble on this issue. We have had a powerful speech from his noble friend Lord Snape, and there is a feeling in the Committee as a whole that the commitment to devolution is simply inconsistent with new Section 30C as it stands. I do not think this is the landmark legislation that we were promised, so I hope the Minister thinks again about the implications of new Section 30C.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I have Amendment 36 in this group, which has exactly the same purpose as the amendments from my noble friend on the Front Bench and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who has just spoken. All their points and those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, demonstrate the potential value and benefit of having the legislative opportunity for publicly owned companies responsible to devolved authorities to be able to run rail services. If we do not have this, it can be only a public sector company owned by the Secretary of State. I was going to instance examples, but I think we have had so many that it is very clear.
The only difference between my amendment and others is the kind of authority appropriate to own a company which runs rail services. I fixed on mayoral combined authorities simply because of the relative capacity and their importance in the Government’s devolution agenda, and because it might commend that thought to the Government.
From my own experience, not least from being a Member of Parliament in a mayoral combined authority, I think it is increasingly important for the Government to recognise—which clearly they have put at the front of their argument—that the co-ordination of the railways is of the first importance, including ticketing, timetabling, provision of services and so on. In many of these places, as was amply demonstrated by earlier speeches, the co-ordination of transport services and of transport with planning and spatial development is equally important. If the Government go down the path of central control by the Secretary of State for every aspect of rail services, I am afraid that they will severely impede, in many significant areas of the country, transport and spatial development being conducted in the way that we would prefer it to be.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Snape’s Amendment 43 and will speak to many of the other amendments in this group. I support most of the statements that have been made from all parts of the Committee in this debate.
We have been talking about devolution for years. It started off as levelling up—and we can debate whether it was levelling up or levelling down—with the last Government. But the Labour Party has been very keen on what I would call devolution for a long time and has supported the mayors of Manchester, Leeds and the West Midlands in trying to get control of their transport services, as the noble Lord just said. It is equally important to be able to decide what services are provided and who pays for them.
One of the key things which we have been debating for some time is these so-called regional authorities being given a lump sum, if one likes, and told that they can spend it on transport and then be allowed to get on with it—let them decide, on the basis of local elections and local politics, what they want to provide. Everybody’s objective would probably be to see in the north and the Midlands a general quality of service compatible with and just as good as that provided in the south-east, around London. It is not all provided by TfL—although much of it is—and I think most noble Lords would say that it is very good. I do not understand why the Government do not go the whole hog and say that they will give these regions a lump sum, to be negotiated, and let them get on with it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, asked whether Manchester could deliver. The answer is that it cannot deliver if Whitehall is in control. We have quite a serious problem here and I do not know what the answer is, except to say that I am convinced that some of the clauses we are debating tonight are counterproductive to what I thought the Government were trying to achieve.
What is the point of taking certain rail franchises into the public sector and turning them into something else if, next year, a Bill will give them a new franchise or concession? The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has not mentioned the word “concession” yet today, but I expect he will. Concessions are very good in some places, but the key is this: what is the point in making this massive change now and then coming back in a year or two to say that we will let the West Midlands run all local services—it can put them out to tender, and have the money to provide the service with the frequency and fares that it wants—and ditto in the north west and north-east?
We really need to know the final outcome planned by the Government before we can know whether the Bill will be helpful or not. If we make a change now and then another change in two years, the people who will be damaged are the passengers on the railway.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Moylan on Amendments 12 and 13 and I echo some of the great speeches in this group. As my noble friend said, it is right to ensure that, through some mechanism, the nations and regions are consulted, and, crucially, engaged, to ensure that they are brought into the decision-making process so that the service which eventually emerges is as effective as possible.
I am sure some will hark, yet again, that we are calling for more consultation and bureaucracy, but let us be clear: we on this side have always believed in devolution and power to the people. As my noble friend Lord Moylan said, the Government themselves have committed to the concept of devolution when it comes to transport. Therefore, is it not right that we utilise the opportunity to bring the Council of the Nations and Regions into discussions to ensure that we have the best services possible where there is overlap between the nations? Everyone is citing different quotes, but the PM said when the council was created that “we work as one team” and a “partnership”. If it is the view that that is too onerous, as I am sure the Minister will say, then we could at least try to engage the much- trailed but lesser-spotted envoy to the regions.
I support the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as I always do, in his Amendment 43. It calls for the Secretary of State to produce a report on whether a service could be devolved when it awards it to a public operator or renews a private franchise. That is wise and right, and I assume the case for doing so would be to assess the pros and cons for commuters, which we on this side of the Committee believe should be the focus of the reforms.
Supporting this amendment takes me back to what was said on day one of Committee on my amendments, when it was deemed that:
“Amendment A1, to which the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, spoke earlier, would create another bureaucracy”.
Later, this noble Lord hoped that the Minister would
“not get too bogged down in the bureaucratic desires of the party opposite”.—[Official Report, 21/10/24; cols. 433, 435.]
Who was so opposed to putting in a mere purpose clause, lest it be too bureaucratic? Lo and behold it was the one and only noble Lord, Lord Snape, who is now calling for an amendment to include a report when a rail service is awarded to a new operator. I welcome this Damascene conversion from the Labour Benches; I say yes to the noble Lord’s amendment but yes to Amendments A1 and 48A.
Lord Snape (Lab)
Before the noble Lord ruins entirely my career, such as it is, with his praise, I must tell him that he is comparing lemons with oranges. More accurately, what I said last time had nothing to with the devolution of railway passenger services to our great conurbations. I am rather against bureaucracy; it is the party opposite, as far as this legislation is concerned, that seems to be obsessed with it.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
I do not know what the protocol is but I find it novel, if I may say so, that the noble Lord opposes bureaucracy when this side proposes it and yet supports it when it is convenient to himself.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, I too welcome the Minister and the whole debate on the Bill, including notably those Members who have had a previous role in London’s transport. There is obviously the Minister but also the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and—
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
Yes, there was the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, my noble friend Lord Moylan and myself, in the role of adviser to the Mayor of London on transport. Although we have spoken much about how London’s model has improved and can be looked at, I have to highlight that I support my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendments, and particularly Amendment 34 in the name of my noble friend Lord Young with regard to the Secretary of State’s power to award—and potentially their power only to do so.
I recall that in the almost four years that I was the mayoral adviser for London, between 2008 and 2011, there were at least five and a half Secretaries of State for Transport. Sometimes the rotation of Secretaries of State through that important office can be quite hasty. If we are looking to award such authority, power and control to that office, the speed in the potential change of roles can lead to a certain amount of confusion and hesitation, and not even the progress that we would want to see. For that reason, as many others have probably mentioned, I support Amendment 34.
I also support my noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendment 36 on planning. This was a point that I wanted to make. One of the major changes that we made when we came into City Hall in 2008 was to look at developing the London Plan and the Mayor’s transport strategy in conjunction, so that we could understand the potential for investment in transport infrastructure and where we would look for housing and the development that would generate jobs and growth. That is obviously critical to where investment in transport is then made, and there can be an issue if we do not align that strategy with planning; therefore, we have the amendment that my noble friend Lord Lansley mentioned.
There are a number of challenges when we start to centralise thinking about transport planning. It worked better when we worked very closely at a city and regional level, and closely with boroughs as well. Local authorities know very well their requirements and demands. That feeds into the overall stitching together of planning for what transport is required. During my career, I was fortunate to work in organisations such as Transport for London, Network Rail, the Rail Safety and Standards Board and even the Department for Transport. That approach, though it felt fragmented, brought together the complex requirements for transport. Yet whenever the Government—not the previous Government but the one before them—tried to centralise through organisations such as Railtrack, the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail, as it seems they will do now with Great British Railways, there seemed to be a disconnect between what was required and what the large, centralised bureaucracy was trying to deliver. On that basis, I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan around ensuring that there is enough authority and devolution in the Bill.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I support the intention of the amendments in this group. There is one amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Pidgeon, Amendment 16, which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has signed, as I have signed his Amendment 12. Unlike him, I want to talk about devolution in Wales and Scotland, because that issue is very important. Railways cross borders; that point is addressed by the noble Lord’s amendment. I agree with his idea that there should be proper formal consultation with the devolved Governments—by the way, I can assure him that the new Council of the Nations and Regions should have a crowded agenda, because many devolved issues have been building up over a long period.
Let us look at the case of Wales. If, for example, you travel from Cardiff to Wrexham, you find yourself crossing between Wales and England; your start and end points are in Wales, but the middle of the journey is in England. That complexity needs to be built in. Devolution of rail powers to Scotland is pretty clear, but in Wales it is—I hope—a work in progress. I will explain to noble Lords why I say, “I hope”. The Welsh Government do not have powers over rail infrastructure. The operation of the railway in Wales is the responsibility of the Welsh Government, but infrastructure planning and funding remain with Network Rail. This is a cause of considerable frustration; the Minister answered a question about it earlier today.
This frustration is largely because Wales gets under 2% of total infrastructure spend in the UK, while having 5% of the population and more than 5% of the land mass. Our rail systems in Wales are in such a poor state, so there is a good argument that we should be getting more than 5%. The failure to allow Wales the Barnett consequentials of HS2 just rubs salt into the wound, and it is a lot of salt—£4 billion of it. I urge the Government to rethink the situation and the tendency set out in the Minister’s letter, because surely there is no hard and fast rule on this. Back in 2007, the Labour Government of the UK made noises which suggested they were willing to offer Wales control of infrastructure. Unfortunately, at that point, the Welsh Government were not keen to take it on, but I think they would be very keen now.
I am keen that this Bill does not in any way prevent further devolution. Transport for Wales, which is owned by the Welsh Government, is investing widely. Despite problems in mid-Wales, services are improving, and passenger numbers were up 27% in the last three months alone. That is a sign of progress. Can the Minister explain why the Welsh Government might not be considered capable of doing the rest of the job?
As my noble friend Lady Pidgeon has said, Transport for Greater Manchester, which I recently met representatives of as well, is enthusiastic about its success and devolution plans. They spoke to me about the Bee Network, which has lower costs than what went before, higher levels of punctuality and higher numbers of passengers. It is a real success story. They have firm plans to devolve eight rail lines within the next four years. I gather that they may be looking at some form of public/private partnership. That is the sort of thing referred to in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in Monday’s debate.
Can the Minister specifically reassure us that the aims of the declaration of intent that Greater Manchester signed with the previous Government still hold good? Can he specifically reassure us that there is nothing in this Bill that will prevent Greater Manchester’s ambitions being implemented? We on these Benches want to go further. Where Greater Manchester leads, why should not Birmingham, Liverpool or several other places follow? Shutting off the devolution of rail is at odds with the Government’s plans to give local authorities more powers over buses, for instance. It does not sit comfortably together.
I have two pleas for the Government. First, as I said on Monday, I ask them please to leave their options open. Do not close off avenues in the Bill: allow for unexpected events in the future. Secondly, it is illogical to allow open access operators to pick off rail routes, and it is illogical to encourage local authorities to have more control over buses but not to encourage them to fully integrate their local transport services by having control over trains and railways as well.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that the Bill is, in my view at least, narrowly focused on allowing the further public operation of existing franchised railway operations currently in the private sector. Many in this House will know that I was the commissioner of Transport for London when the original Overground was proposed and established. Some of the details of its success are extremely familiar to me and give me a glow of pride and satisfaction whenever anybody mentions them. I was also there when the Overground was expanded—in fact, some Members of this House could have allowed it to expand further but chose to oppose it on the grounds that, for a mayor of a different political colour, that might not suit the then-Government’s aims. I say all that because devolution is really important. I have no intention of closing it off, and neither does the Bill—but it has to be subject to the effective operation of the railway network as a whole. I will come back to that in a moment.
I will speak first to Amendments 31 to 33 and 37 of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Amendment 34 of the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Moylan, and Amendment 36 of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. These amendments would empower the Secretary of State and the Scottish and Welsh Ministers to award contracts to companies owned by various local authorities. Amendment 16 of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, aims to provide opportunities for local authorities to take responsibility for services in their areas before contracts are awarded to public sector operators.
Amendment 46 of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would require another report, this time on whether public ownership makes it more or less likely that further services will be devolved by means of exemptions granted under Section 24 of the Railways Act 1993.
Amendment 50, also of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is another attempt to delay transfers to public ownership, as it makes the establishment of new regional partnership boards the trigger for the provisions of the Bill to come into force. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, mentioned shadow Great British Railways. This is not a statutory entity but a preparation for Great British Railways; it is not a mechanism to do its job in advance of the creation of the body itself.
In line with the spirit of all these amendments, the Government are absolutely committed to strengthening the role for local communities in shaping the design and delivery of passenger rail services in their areas. Our plans for reform will make this a great deal easier for them, because they will need to engage with only one organisation—Great British Railways—instead of having to deal separately with Network Rail and multiple train operating companies.
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, reminded us of the manifesto. We have already made it clear that our railways Bill will include a statutory role for the devolved Governments and mayoral combined authorities in governing, managing, planning and developing the rail network, and there is absolutely no intention to enact rail reform without that statutory role. We are committed to a full and open discussion on that role, and how it will work, as we refine our plans for the railways Bill in the coming weeks, and that will be included in the published consultation.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I would be grateful if the Minister answered a couple of questions arising from the statement he has made, for which I am very grateful. He said that passengers do not want to be confused by different types of services and operators, but from talking to people who have been involved in TfL and Merseyrail, I get the impression that they think they are rather good. I am not sure they would agree that they would be better if they were run from London by some centralised organisation telling the people of Liverpool or Manchester how many trains they can run.
It all comes back to who actually gets the revenue from the train fares and who pays for the trains, which will probably affect what the local mayors can ask for. They might want to see more trains, but if they are going to have to ask central government for an extra train, that will get quite difficult. I do not think the Minister has answered the question of the money that will be saved through this amendment and the new structure. We have not seen how much money it is going to save or how much extra revenue it might generate. I look forward to his comments.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his intervention. I do not disagree with him at all: those railway services are rather good. I did say that I was rather proud of the Overground, and from a distance I still am; it is a rather good service. However, there is a difference. Those services operate very largely within the Mayor of London’s geographical area, and the fares at the extremes do not differ. In Liverpool, I believe, they are wholly within the Liverpool City Region, but if not, the same applies. Consideration has to be given to consistency when the services stretch beyond those boundaries. That has been, and is capable of being, managed well.
The points my noble friend makes about who pays for enhancements—both the revenue costs of enhancements, and of extra trains if they are needed—and who gets the revenue from that are all subjects on which we are in harmonious discussion with the Mayor of Greater Manchester and Transport for Greater Manchester. It is possible to enhance railway passenger services in conurbations and elsewhere without having ownership of them, in circumstances where the proliferation of ownership may well create other costs. In the previous debate in Committee, I referred to the number of train crew depots in Newcastle. My recollection is that there are currently four, all of which have managers, supervisors and clerical staff. That is not the sort of proliferation of basic on-costs that we want to see in the rest of the system.
We are having a very practical discussion in Manchester about the eight lines that the mayor wants to specify. I suspect that, at the end of the day, when we reach an agreement, as I believe we will, the services the mayor wants will be presented as part of the Bee Network. I expect them to look consistent across Manchester, in the different modes that Transport for Greater Manchester controls. That is exactly the same effect as we had with London Overground and Merseyrail. We will have to bridge those gaps without creating further cost and confusing passengers.
Amendment 43, in the name of my noble friends Lords Snape, Liddle and Berkeley, requires the Secretary of State to produce an assessment of whether passenger services could be run by devolved authorities before any contract is awarded to a public sector company or any private sector franchise is extended temporarily by the Secretary of State. As I have said already, it is not our intention to devolve the operation of further services to local government as part of this process. Our intention is to end the failing franchise system and move to a public ownership model, which will then allow us more easily to reduce fragmentation and create a culture focused on delivering for passengers and taxpayers, not private shareholders.
It is deeply important that local leaders have greater influence over what services are run in their areas. That is why we are engaging with them to develop a statutory role for mayoral combined authorities in the rail network, which will become part of the wider Bill. As I have said, further devolution of services risks including fragmentation, but as I have also said, it is not ruled out by the Bill.
I turn to Amendments 12 and 13 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, which require the Government to consult with the Council of the Nations and Regions and the Prime Minister’s newly appointed envoy before transferring cross-border services to the public sector. This amendment is not necessary. The Government regularly engage devolved Governments on cross-border services. Both the Scottish and Welsh Governments are in favour of transferring rail services into the public sector, and we have worked collaboratively with Scottish and Welsh Ministers on the proposals in the Bill. Consultation will continue to take place as further services are transferred into public sector operation.
In addition, the Council of the Nations and Regions has been set up by the Prime Minister to foster positive collaboration with the devolved Governments. Clearly, we do not require a legislative amendment to encourage collaboration when the council exists to do just that, and I am sure that the newly appointed envoy will further facilitate that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to South Western Railway and in particular to the line between Salisbury and Exeter. I am confident that it will get better when South Western Railway comes into public ownership and we can get much closer liaison between infrastructure and operations and their management.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to Welsh ownership of infrastructure. I am not sure that she is right, bearing in mind our experience with the valley lines, in saying that they aspire to own the infra- structure, but the Bill would not prevent that.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, might want to note that Keith Williams, who he mentioned and who I mentioned on Monday, publicly endorsed the rail manifesto published by the Labour Party before the election. I will say no more about that.
With thanks to all noble Lords for this debate, I urge them not to press their amendments to this relatively narrow Bill, but I will reflect further on everything I have heard about devolution today.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I start with a brief apology to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, for not having signed his amendment and assure him that if he wishes to approach me in the corridors between now and Report, some sort of grubby deal can probably be done between us in that regard. My signature is readily available for the many wise things that he has said in this debate.
Lord Snape (Lab)
If we are going to meet to discuss these future amendments, grubby deals or otherwise, better in one of the bars where the noble Lord can put his hand in his pocket.
Lord Moylan (Con)
There is the basis of a grubby deal, I suppose, but I am sure it will be done on an equal, Dutch, shared basis.
The Minister has heard what the Committee has had to say from every corner, and he will know that his response will have left noble Lords on all sides bitterly disappointed. He has promised to combined mayoral authorities, to local authorities and to regional authorities every conceivable aspect of devolution except the right and the possibility to run their own trains, which has been done so successfully in London and, I understand although I have no personal experience of it, on Merseyside. That is now suspended; it is off the table, for a number of years at the very least, on no rational grounds at all. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, so rightly said, we need to know the final outcome now.
For all the Minister’s talk of this being a narrow and technical Bill, its effect, in combination with his letter, is to put an end to the further devolution of rail services to local and regional authorities for the foreseeable future, and that is something the Committee is clearly not willing to accept. There is a fundamental difficulty at the heart of this Bill, and that is the commitment made so fulsomely to devolution, endorsed or otherwise by Mr Williams, whose views seem to be plastic and developing and to respond differently to every telephone call he gets from the noble Lord—it is possibly getting to the point of rent-a-quote from Mr Williams. Despite all the commitments made by Mr Williams and by the Labour Party in its pre-manifesto document on rail services, there is not going to be any meaningful devolution. Those commitments are not consistent with the Government’s other commitment to the single controlling brain. It is a contradiction at the heart of the legislation.
As for the ability of local authorities to commission services, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, so rightly said, it is all a question of money. We promise it for buses, but as we said when we discussed the Statement made on buses—on that occasion too the noble Lord, Lord Snape, was very helpful in supporting what I said —it is all very well telling local authorities they can commission new bus services, but they do not have a bean to do so. It is all very well telling regional authorities they can commission more rail services, but unless we understand, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, who is going to pay for it and who is going to get the fares revenue, it is all pretty meaningless.
It seems to me that the great single brain is already suffering a serious headache and that the paracetamol of devolution may be what it needs to dilute the effects and to take the pressure off that brain. I think this is a point on which the Government are going to have to give some ground, and I certainly think it is one we will debate again when we return to the Bill on Report. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
“(1D) The relevant franchising authority must make an assessment of the steps any public sector company is taking to prepare for driverless trains before making a direct award of a public sector contract to that public sector company under subsection (1A).”
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I must first apologise to the Committee: I was not here for the Second Reading, because transport has never been my top priority in terms of matters that come before your Lordships’ House. Technology has been much more important to me, and it struck me that technology, which is advancing at an incredible pace—its capacity is doubling every two years—affects transport systems almost more than anywhere else.
We think here of the driverless cars that are being trialled at the moment, mainly in the United States, with a certain amount of success. The amount of money that the big tech companies in the United States can put into this means that we are going to get driverless cars within the foreseeable future, and that is going to completely revolutionise the whole business of how our cities operate. The price of taking taxis from A to B is going to come right down, which will affect car ownership. It will mean that people give up owning cars, which are getting more and more expensive, and will rent them for long journeys. At the same time our streets will be much emptier and it may well be, with the introduction of electric cars at the same time, that we reduce the pollution in our cities as well. This is coming whether we like it or not, and we must accept that technology is moving very fast and is going to have an enormous effect.
Driverless cars are tomorrow’s technology. Driverless trains are yesterday’s technology; we already have driverless trains. The Docklands Light Railway, which operates over 24 miles in the East End of London, was introduced in 1987. That is the sort of technology that our new train operators should be thinking of when they start running trains and taking up new contracts. If they do this, it will mean that we can start lowering the costs of operating trains.
I have to say that the history of this is not very encouraging because trains were introduced on new lines on the London Underground, and such was the trade unions’ opposition that those proposals were dropped and they are still driven by operators. This is not encouraging, but we have to look at the whole situation. There will be a lot of opposition to introducing new technology, and the result will of course be that passengers pay much more for travelling by public transport systems operated by people who need not be there.
We have to think now about where technology is taking us in the future. How are the Government going to resolve the conflict with the trade unions, with which to date they have decided on enormous pay increases for driving operators, when in the near future we are possibly not going to need those people at all? Do the Government stand up for the passengers and lower fares, or will they stand up for the wages of train operators who are not actually needed because technology has taken over their jobs?
The same also applies to passenger aircraft—in most airports around the world, ground control can now take off and land virtually any large passenger aircraft. Of course, people feel much more reassured by having a pilot in the seat. On the other hand, I can see the low-cost airlines coming along quite soon and saying, “Well, if you travel in a pilotless aircraft, we will actually lower your fare”. People will then have to decide whether they are prepared to trust the technology.
The basic story still applies: the amount spent on research and development by the big-tech companies is so great that it makes anything that the Government can spend look like chicken feed. At the end of the day, they will iron out the technological problems, and the safety issues will be resolved. At that stage, we will want to see the dividend that comes with that: the cost of travel coming down. The Government will have to decide whether they back the trade unions or whether they want to see cheaper travel for customers.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I will briefly respond to the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and ask both him and the Minister some questions. I will not say that the recent BBC drama “Nightsleeper” should give us cause for alarm—the issues are very different—but the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, possibly the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, and I were heavily involved in the then Automated Vehicles Bill during its passage through your Lordships’ House earlier this year. Some of the questions I will ask now I asked in the debates on that Bill, too.
First, this is not just a question of having no driver, because there has been a push to remove from trains staff other than the driver, whether it is an old-fashioned-style conductor or a train manager. I wonder how on earth the emergencies that cannot be predicted, either by software or by people driving the train remotely, can be resolved. Should those emergencies on the line happen at very short notice and the train has to stop, how are people to get off? This is the point at which I start to talk about those who need assistance. If you do not have any staff on the train, how do you get people off who cannot clamber down and follow the side of the track? The reassurance of having staff on the train in that situation makes me feel confident that, if there were an emergency, I would be able to get off.
The other key role of staff on a train, whether a driver or train manager, is to help when things go wrong. That could include trying to handle people who are behaving very badly, sometimes breaking the law, by alerting British Transport Police. It might include times when assistance goes wrong, such as trains not stopping at volunteer stops. We still have those; there are some between Salisbury and Bristol, where you have to give advance notification if you want to stop at a particular station. As someone in a wheelchair, I would be in real trouble if the train did not stop—and there would be nobody I could notify. Also, if you arrive at a station where there is a planned stop and you were expecting to get assistance, but nobody is there, other passengers would not know how to get the ramp out of the train, and they would not have the keys to do it. I am very concerned about those circumstances. If there are thoughts about having automated trains, the practical side of how passengers interact, particularly vulnerable passengers, concerns me.
Secondly, the Docklands Light Railway is an interesting example, and we see similar driverless trains in many airports around the world. That is fine, but I have some concerns about the concept at this stage. If our railways—the actual rails and their surrounds—are built before the plans for automation, there will be consequences for driverless trains when trees fall down at the last moment and children run across the line. You cannot manage those circumstances without a driver who can pick up an alert, respond, tell passengers to brace themselves and let them know where they need to go for support. For me, this is not about unions; it is about passenger safety. My particular interest is making sure that those passengers—not just disabled passengers but many elderly passengers; look at the demographics—get support from a member of staff on the train.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, and I agree with every word she said. I will be very brief.
The dystopian world that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, outlined is not one that I would have thought would appeal to most people. He mentioned driverless motor cars, but so far San Francisco is the only city, I think, where driverless taxis—confined to a fairly small part of the city—actually work. As we all know, San Francisco is the sort of place that experiments with all sorts of things. Those driverless cars have not really appealed to most other countries, and whether they will do in the future remains to be seen.
The noble Lord says that with driverless cars, the road network will be much less congested. If they are going to be the only way to get around, it is hard to imagine that the road network will be less congested. The roads will be even more crowded than they are at the present.
Returning to the railway network, we have about 12,000 miles of railway, much of which was built by the Victorians. Will we tear up all those tracks to install the necessary equipment to enable trains to be driven without a driver? That is undesirable, as the noble Baroness correctly pointed out. Even trains on a modern stretch of railway line—for example, HS1 has a continental signalling system, which has been introduced on the East Coast Main Line—need a driver, for the very reasons outlined by the noble Baroness.
As for aircraft, I am not sure about the thought of taking off and landing in a pilotless aircraft. If it is ever introduced, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, might find himself sitting in splendid isolation. After all, the crash of two 737 MAX airliners due to computer failure—and one near accident, which was prevented by the pilot in charge—ought to be lessons to us all.
I am afraid of the dystopian world that the noble Lord envisages. A train driver with responsibility for 500 lives behind him—and, in some cases, travelling at over 150 mph, as on HS1—deserves every penny of the £60,000 or thereabouts that the noble Lord and the Daily Mail complain about non-stop.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, I will briefly offer my support for my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom’s Amendment 14A and echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about what services we are looking to deliver when we talk about driverless vehicles, trains, et cetera.
In referring to my register of interests, I recognise that I have spent my entire career with one foot in technology and the other in transport. The two have overlapped, and we have seen great innovation in technology in transport. This takes me back to what we achieved in London Underground and Transport for London: we looked at how bringing in gate-line technology and new systems such as the Oyster card would enable us to rely less heavily on ticket offices. Eventually we removed a lot of them. That was not just because we wanted to get the people out from behind those ticket office windows; we wanted those people, freed from sitting behind that thick piece of glass, to support passengers on the Underground system by providing assistance, information and other services. This is about innovation evolving the service and removing the need for one sedentary type of activity, enabling something else to happen.
When we think about our trains—again, I note the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the kind of support that can be required on a train, especially for long-distance journeys—safety and security are primary. It would also be good if we could have more services, if the food and beverage shop stayed open a bit longer because people are there, and even if somebody is there to help you connect to the wifi, which is always eternally promised but sometimes hard to achieve. Having a greater sense of the passenger experience, focusing on developing the passenger experience by freeing people from the role of sitting in the ticket office and allowing them to do other things, will be of great value.
The main point is that we need to leave space for the design of innovation. It is always hard to tell at the early stages what we will be able to do later with that innovation, but as long as we leave space in the Bill to consider it, we can, I hope, achieve our aim of really improving the passenger experience.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am not accustomed to making speeches on technological matters but, on this occasion, I feel I have some modest qualifications for doing so—although I must say in advance that I do so with a degree of trepidation, because nearly everything I know about driverless trains I have been taught by the Minister. I therefore sit in the uncomfortable position of being subject to not only his correction but his immediate correction the moment I sit down and he comes to respond.
It is possible to get oneself into a tizz about these things called driverless trains when what one is in fact discussing is signalling. When I first got involved in railways, I thought that signalling was a system where arms went up and down and red and green lights flashed, but that is all in the past. Modern signalling is, in effect, a huge computer brain that fundamentally drives the trains. It tells the trains when to go, when to stop and how fast to go in between. Its purpose is to maintain a safe distance between trains as they travel, taking account of the speed and the track’s condition and nature. It is specific to the track.
Although the noble Lord, Lord Snape, will find counterexamples—I am sure that he is right to do so—broadly speaking, it is safer to have the train driven by this great controlling brain than it is to have it driven by a human being. A large number of historical train accidents have been caused by driver inattentiveness. Indeed, in Committee on Monday, it was the noble Lord, Lord Snape, I think—it may have been another noble Lord—who drew attention to one cause of such accidents, driver tiredness, whereas the machine does not get tired. It knows what it is doing. It knows where every train is going and where it is in relation to every other.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke of the person who remotely drives the train. There is not a person remotely driving the train; it is the great computer brain.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
From my experience on the then Automated Vehicles Bill, there is a person who watches various vehicles driving. If there is an issue, they will intervene. That is how reassurance was given, so it is not left only to the computer.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I was going to come to a point relating to that. I am sure that what the noble Baroness said is absolutely correct in relation to automated vehicles but, like automated planes, automated vehicles are very different from automated trains. An automated plane—indeed, any plane—must be 110% safe and known to be safe before it takes off, because if it develops a problem when it is in the air there is nothing you can do about it.
With an automated train, the approach to safety is totally different. Safety is based on fail-safe devices. If the computer brain sees that something is wrong—for example, if it loses a train on the system and does not know where it is—everything is brought to a stop. That is the solution. That is how you guarantee the safety of not only that train but the trains close to it. The trains further down the line are brought to a stop, which is of course not remotely possible when you try to apply a different technology to the air and to automated vehicles. That is the sort of system we are talking about. The level of automation that can be achieved is graded. Level 3 automation, as it is known, requires a driver to be present, although the driver is not actually driving the train.
My noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom referred to the Docklands Light Railway coming into operation in the 1990s. I think I am correct—here, I very much worry that I might have got this wrong and that the Minister will correct me—in saying that the Victoria line, which was introduced in the 1960s, was introduced with automated signalling at level 4. There was a driver in the cab, but they would arrive in stations reading the newspapers. This so disconcerted passengers that a stop had to be put to it and they were told that they could not read the newspaper while they were sitting in the cab, at least not while they were in or coming into a station.
So we know perfectly well that this can be done safely. We know that we can run trains much closer together and provide greater capacity if we have an automated system, because it is safer. That is why, if you go down to the Victoria line today—it benefits not from a 1960s signalling system but from a brand-new signalling system installed in the last few years—you will see the trains coming into the station so fast that the previous one hardly has time to get out before the next one arrives. If you had a driver driving that train, the headways between them would have to be much greater. By comparison, on the Piccadilly line, which, as I have mentioned on several occasions, has a signalling system so decrepit that it is hardly a signalling system at all, you can see how slowly the trains come into the stations. The driver has to conduct himself with great caution whereas, with automated signalling, they will come in faster and stop in exactly the right place. They do not have to make the human judgment that the driver has to make about stopping exactly on his mark; that is what he is meant to do, but it takes time.
I think that everybody who is involved in railways wants to head towards that; it is the direction we want to go in. The question then arises: if you have driverless trains with literally no driver in the cab, how are you going to handle the customers? First, as some people have said, there will be trepidation on the part of customers. I think that will be overcome. Even I have a degree of trepidation; I took some flights over the summer. Not many people realise that the pilot is already pretty redundant in most of the aeroplanes they are flying in. Conscious of this, I was thinking about it when I took off the other day, so trepidation is a factor.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, makes a much more serious point perhaps, which is that services are required for passengers in the train and in the event of an emergency. As I said, an emergency is likely to result in the train being stopped in the middle of nowhere, and possibly stopped long enough that passengers have to be disembarked. Who is going to do all that? Of course the train has to have people on it; it has to have staff on it. Although the Docklands Light Railway has no driver—which, as noble Lords probably know, allows children to sit up front and even adults to fulfil their childhood fantasies by sitting up front—even it has a member of staff on it to deal with the sort of eventualities referred to by the noble Baroness.
There is a sort of fantasy here. I depart slightly from remarks made by some of my Conservative colleagues—not here in your Lordships’ House but in other fora—that this will somehow free the railways from dependency on staff and, therefore, on the unions. It will not, of course, because those staff will have to be present even if they are not in the cab. They will probably be members of the RMT, too, which is not exactly freeing yourself from the trammels of the trades unions.
The general intention behind my noble friend Lord Hamilton’s amendment is an extremely good one. We should be moving, as far as we can, from level 3 to level 4. Over time, it is an inevitability, and the costs involved in doing so will have to be found. The increase in both capacity and safety that will arise from doing so will probably be worth 10 HS2s or HS3s or whatever we provide on the existing lines.
Knowing the Government’s intentions on this will be extremely helpful. Knowing how it will be afforded and prioritised in an entirely nationalised system is something that we would all like to know. I suspect, as on previous occasions, that the answer from the Minister will be that we will have to wait, that he is not going to tell us, that this is a very narrow, technical Bill, that all the goodies are coming down the track in 18 months’ time, and everything else. I hope he is taking account of the fact that the Committee is very concerned about this—that technological change has to be at the heart of the modernisation of the railways and that the Government are going to find the investment capacity to do so. It is a matter of priority and money. Can he tell us about it, please, when he stands up?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, for this amendment, which would require the Secretary of State and the Scottish and Welsh Ministers to consider each public sector operator’s progress in preparing for driverless trains before awarding a contract to that operator. The amendment appears to be of limited practical impact, as it would not require the franchising authority to do anything in light of the outcome of the assessment. That said, I understand from the noble Lord’s explanation that it was intended as a probing amendment, and I take it in that spirit.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his acknowledgement of my small amount of knowledge of railway operation, and that part of it that I appear to have transferred seamlessly to him. I have tried to educate him in that manner and, clearly, he has been a good pupil. I did not try to extend that to his political beliefs because at the time, when I was educating him in the operation of transport, I had no reason to do so. I will have a go at that some other time.
I also know about the operation of the Docklands Light Railway, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, because I was responsible for its operation for nearly 10 years. As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, every train has an attendant on it. They do not sit at the front. People who enjoy sitting at the front—including me—do so instead. More seriously, the attendant closes the doors, to ensure that they are safely closed, and can drive the train if they need to.
The Government have no plans for the rollout of driverless trains on the national railway network. Considerable technological development work would need to be undertaken to make this a viable proposition. There is some practical experience of automatic train operation in the United Kingdom—on several Tube lines and some on the national railway network too, such as on the core Thameslink route running through central London, where this system is vital in enabling the high frequency of service. There is also some limited semi-automatic operation on the Elizabeth line. However, in both cases, it is not truly a driverless system as the operation of these trains still requires a driver to be present while the train is in passenger service, to operate doors and initiate dispatch.
As a practical operator, and a passenger, I am very sympathetic to the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, concerning staff on trains. From my experience at Transport for London, I can say that Tube trains which are automatically driven have a driver because somebody has to close the doors, somebody has to be able to stop the train in an emergency and somebody has to at least attempt to fix it if it goes wrong. On a train with up to 1,000 people on it, it makes sense for that person to have some space to work in and even more sense for them to sit at the front of the train, where they can see where it is going. That is the philosophy which we adopted.
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is correct. The real reason for that signalling system is to enable more trains to run more closely. My erstwhile colleagues on the national railway network still look disconcerted at the thought of one Victoria line train leaving a platform and before the last carriage has departed into the tunnel, the cab of the next one arrives, and the slower that they do it, the closer they get together. That is why you want signalling systems of this sort. That is the reason for the application—not the proposed application but the actual application—of the European train control system on the east coast main line that is currently being implemented. It has been funded by government. It involves several contractors and many UK jobs, and it is done precisely for the purpose of increasing the capacity of the line, enabling the trains to run closer together, and is a very effective business model. As locomotives and trains are fitted with that equipment in the UK, it will become progressively cheaper to equip new lines and it will improve train capacity on all of them.
I suggest that, realistically, the deployment of genuinely driverless trains on the national railway network is a long-term proposition for which passenger safety, practical feasibility and a business case are far from proven. However, there is a range of on-train systems short of driverless operation that can be deployed to improve train service performance and the overall efficiency of the system. These include relatively tried and tested systems such as forward-facing CCTV, which can be used to monitor trackside risks such as excessive vegetation growth; systems to monitor the condition of track and overhead wires; driver advisory systems, which help improve fuel efficiency and punctuality; and more cutting-edge technologies such as the automatic train operation that I mentioned.
Sadly, as a result of the fragmented system that we have, even relatively tried and tested systems have not been deployed systematically across the network. Instead, they have been implemented piecemeal according to the whim of individual operators as they have procured and specified their requirements for new or upgraded train fleets. A clear benefit of public ownership and the future consolidation of track and train within Great British Railways will be the chance to take a consistent approach to the deployment of existing technologies and the development and testing of new innovations right across the system. GBR can set a clear long-term direction for future rolling-stock innovation across the system, with consequential beneficial effects on reliability and the costs of the entire railway.
I will not make specific statements in favour of particular innovations or technologies as part of the debate on this Bill. However, I acknowledge the usefulness of technological development that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, referred to, and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, that innovation and technological development have a significant part to play in delivering the best possible services for passengers at the least possible cost to taxpayers and farepayers. I emphasise that our future plans for the railway are aimed at creating the conditions in which innovation can flourish, within both GBR and the much wider private sector supply chain upon which GBR will depend. On that basis, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to everybody who has contributed to this debate. I point out that my amendment asks for driverless trains, not “staffless” trains. I was not necessarily suggesting that there should be nobody on the train at all. As was pointed out, on the Docklands Light Railway there is always someone on the train.
My noble friend Lord Snape—he is not really my noble friend, but I regard him as a good chum—seems to be a bit reactionary about all this. I would not describe him as a Luddite because that would be rather tasteless, but the technology is coming down the road. It is doubling every two years and will overtake all of us. We might as well prepare for it. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Brinton
“30ZA Statement of accessibility standards(1) When making a direct award under section 30(1A) the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a statement to the effect that they are of the view that such an award will comply with the accessibility standards.(2) The Secretary of State must prepare a statement of the standards that they propose to apply in assessing, for the purposes of subsection (1), that a public sector company meets the required level of accessibility.(3) The principles must in particular make provision for the accessibility of—(a) the service;(b) accommodation for individual journeys;(c) booking platforms and other interactive digital services and systems used in connections with journeys on the relevant franchise. (4) In preparing the statement under subsection (2) the Secretary of State must consult such persons as they consider appropriate, in particular disabled people.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places a duty on the Secretary of State to make a statement to Parliament confirming they are of the view that making an award to a public sector company will meet certain accessibility standards.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the Accessible Transport Policy Commission. The first amendment in this group, Amendment 17, continues the debate that was started at Second Reading on the concerns over the provision of assistance services and trains for disabled passengers.
Also in this group are Amendments 27A, 38 and 39. On Amendment 38, which I support, I just want to point out that the disabled passenger card is very important to disabled people. Scope tells us that the average disabled household faces £975 a month in extra costs and that, after housing costs, the proportion of working-age disabled people living in poverty is 27%. That is higher than the proportion of working-age non-disabled people, which is under 20%.
Travel is a luxury for many, but if they want to buy a ticket in person, and there is no ticket office available at their station, they cannot use their disabled passenger pass with a ticket machine. This amendment talks about other key ticketing issues that we need to address. Amendment 27A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is an amendment on ticketing but does not highlight these specific details that I find inconsistent and confusing. My view is that it may be helpful to have this detail in the Bill for the annual report, because the annual report is also a helpful route to transparency and accountability.
Amendment 39 would require the Secretary of State to establish an independent body to monitor the impact of the Act on passenger standards, and I welcome that too. I hope the Minister does as well.
Amendment 17 in my name—I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for adding their names to it—puts in the Bill a requirement for the Secretary of State to abide by the law in issuing a statement of accessibility standards and confirmation that a public sector company meets the required levels of accessibility. This is about not just the accommodation for individual journeys but the entire service, including booking platforms and any other digital service or system used.
It also includes toilets, which I know appear later on, but let me just say on this subject that I spend my life sitting opposite open toilets because wheelchair spaces are always by the toilets. When they are not very clean, it makes journeys every single day extremely unpleasant, but another effect is that if you are sitting in a wheelchair you become the toilet monitor when either there are people inside it or it is not working. The passengers look at you crossly as if it is your fault that they cannot get in. I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, understands what I am talking about.
Why is this amendment necessary? At Second Reading the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, when she introduced the Bill, spoke about services only in the context of cancellations and disruptions, and there was nothing about the actual experience of the passenger. In the context of Amendment 17, the passengers requiring assistance are not always disabled, by the way. As I said in the debate on the previous group, we have to recognise the demographic change in this country, and a lot of passengers will require assistance in the future because they are getting elderly.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, who, following my speech, in her winding speech said that
“there has been some improvement over the last few years—for example, the new two-hour booking window for assistance and the Passenger Assistance app”.—[Official Report, 7/10/24; col. 1894.]
Neither of those two things is an actual improvement for disabled passengers. Yes, very large amounts of money were spent on developing two apps, and the first is for passengers. When that was being consulted on, all the disability groups and individuals asked for the capacity to be able to buy their tickets at the same time, but it does not permit that.
Why is that important? For some journeys you have to book a seat—a literal seat—when you buy your ticket, for example from Trainline or from a train operating company that you start your journey with. I quite often do journeys from Watford to Euston, Euston to York or Euston to Edinburgh. If I do not go on to the LNER app, I have to get a ticket reserved via the West Midlands app. It is a seat that I cannot use. Anyone who travels on LNER regularly will know that, at peak hours, there are no seats available, yet there is one with a sign above it saying “reserved” that I cannot use. If I have time, I will find the train manager before I board the train and say, “By the way, I have G16 reserved. I am not going to be sitting there”. This is a software problem but, perhaps more importantly, it is a problem of Network Rail and others not listening to the needs of disabled people.
You then have to ring or email the train operating company for that leg of the journey and book your assistance separately. LNER tells me that I should use all the different apps for each leg of my journey, but the whole point of the app was that the passenger should have to enter only one thing. The total irony of this is that behind each of the train operating company apps is one single app. It is an absolute nonsense, and it is all because disabled people were ignored. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, were she in here place today, would remind us that she and many other disability people have championed “Nothing about us without us” for many years, but the rail industry has not yet understood it.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for not being able to be in the Chamber at the start of proceedings at Second Reading. I had a long-standing commitment in my diary that meant I was not able to be here. I also draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests. I chair the commission for accessible transport and I attend some of the Avanti accessibility panel meetings as an observer.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for meeting me prior to the start of this Bill to discuss some of my frustrations about how disabled people are able to use the railway network. I broadly welcome this Bill, and anything we can do to make it better for disabled people is worth exploring. I have lots of aspirations for the various Bills we will see on the railway industry in this Parliament, but my aspiration for the next phase, when I am asked what I want as a disabled person, is just the same miserable experience of commuting as everyone else. I am not asking for any more than that, but it sometimes feels that the way the network is set up makes it incredibly difficult for disabled people.
As much as I used to hate travelling in the guard’s van, at least when I did that as a wheelchair user I was not left on a train. I would like to thank many in your Lordships’ Chamber who came up to me and expressed their disappointment, anger and all sorts of various emotions when I was left on a train just before I went out to Paris for the Paralympics. It was not the first time that it happened and it was not the last: since returning from Paris I have been left on another two trains, but I did not have the energy to post about it on social media. In both cases, the two people who helped me very quickly to get off the train did not have the authority to do so and could have faced penalties within their jobs or even potentially been fired for not being in the position to do so. What has come out of that experience is that a number of disabled people have written to me to explain the issues they face. My feeling is that the failure rate is way too high, and many disabled people do not even try to travel because of the fear of what they expect. Getting on and off a train should be relatively simple, but it is not.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, talked about the booking apps. It is better that it is down to two hours from six, because when it was six hours disabled people needed to know each train company’s operating procedure, and whether it was six hours during the opening times of the call centre or six hours before the train they wanted to catch. I imagine that some of the failures have dropped. I do not think it is realistic to expect disabled people to know every single train company’s process before they book a train. The promises of not just the best priced ticket but the in-person comms would have made a real difference to disabled people being able to travel. Personally, I use five different apps to buy tickets. Prices are hugely variable and, bizarrely, it is sometimes cheaper to use one train company’s app to buy a ticket when you are travelling with a completely different train company and then book it a different way.
I felt the noble Baroness’s pain when she talked about the wheelchair space. It became clear through Covid that the wheelchair space does not appear to be on the booking system as a seat, so when I tried to travel at the back end of Covid, when we were able to, I was not able to count it as a seat. You would turn up at a train station and, even though you booked the wheelchair space, they would refuse to sell you a ticket. Even now, I feel terribly guilty, when I buy a ticket from various different apps, that I am allocated a seat that I have no intention of ever being able to use. It just does not make sense that this is still the case, especially on busy trains and when we are trying to make it easier for everybody to travel.
I am also really worried that the train operating companies and the Rail Delivery Group are forgetting that people have a legal right to turn up and go. When we see posts online or articles written, they are always about booking. If there is an assistance failure, the first question the disabled person is asked is: “Did you book?” If I am on a train and I am not helped off it, booking is completely irrelevant. It is quite annoying that I am asked the question, because I did not magic my way on to the train without anyone else being involved in the process: somebody helped me on and somebody knew that I was on the train. The failure is communication somewhere along the line: people did not look at the app or nobody picked up the phone. I am really worried about the victim-blaming of disabled people. This, again, discourages people from travelling.
We really do need accurate data on failure and how the app is used needs to be properly recorded. I have been told that people who turn up and go are put into the app and the assumption is made that they booked, so although the booking numbers look like they are going up it is not fair to lump the two sets of people in together. We have to be able to accurately measure the number of people who do not know what time they will be able to travel because of work, or because they just do not know. Not everybody can set out their schedules according to what the rail companies would like to happen; I am sure they would like everybody to book two hours before they travel.
What happens when assistance fails? Disabled people are actually just quite tired of complaining. They are constantly fobbed off and told it will never happen again. The train companies are always very sorry, but nothing really seems to happen to bring about change. The Office of Rail and Road following up a couple of months later, asking whether you had a good journey, does not seem the most accurate way to track some of these issues. Quite frankly, I really dislike having to book, but I cannot face having to turn up at a train station and almost feel like I am begging to be allowed on the train. I also have to feel very apologetic: “Do you mind if I get on? Is it possible?” I never expect to get on a train that is leaving within the next 15 or 20 minutes, although I have had some fantastic experiences at Waterloo—and I have had some not so great experiences there. It comes back to how disabled people are made to feel welcome, or not, when they want to travel.
Too often, failures are described as an inconvenience rather than something that can affect people at quite a devastating level. South Western Railway recently posted that if someone books assistance and did not get it, they might be entitled to their fare back. This is inaccurate for a number of reasons. First of all, it ignores our legal right to turn up and go, but just saying you can get your fare back seems a bit weak when, if somebody successfully sued that company, it would be a minimum of £1,200 on the Vento scale for a single failure. Again, disabled people are meant to feel grateful just because they get a few pounds back for what they experienced. There are a number of disabled people who are not particularly liked by the railway industry because they very successfully sue, but they are able to do that because they constantly experience really appalling treatment.
I have always recognised the huge privilege I have, either of being an athlete or from being in your Lordships’ Chamber. I experience way better treatment than any other disabled person I know. Since the failure I had a couple of weeks ago, I now have two or three people meet me off the train. I feel like a member of the Royal Family; it is absolutely wonderful. People ask me if I am okay. I am now shown the app and that I am on the app. I am given the name of the person who is there to meet me. That is lovely: I can welcome them by name when they come to meet me. But this is not real; this is not the experience that disabled people are having.
There is still too much inaccurate information out there about whether lifts are working. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised toilets. We are meant to be told whether they are working on trains; we are not, so it is always a mystery, when you get on a train, whether you can use the bathroom. I already control what I drink before I get on a train to make sure I do not have to use it. These are the things that disabled people just do not complain about because it is too confusing.
The accessible transport policy rules are way too confusing. On the impact of derogations, I have a friend who cannot travel on Northern Trains because he has a mobility scooter. They are banned from travelling on trains in the north-east, as the class 158s have no entrance vestibule and they restrict manoeuvrability into the wheelchair area. ScotRail has a different set of policies about what mobility device you can use on trains. This all has to join up, because you could end up going to Scotland as a scooter user and not being able to leave because you use a different way of getting back.
We need reliable data on assistance fails. I am at the point of believing that we now need significant financial operator penalties for failures. The D50 tickets need to be available online, in vending machines and onboard. Actually, we need more training, because people at some stations do not even know what a D50 ticket is. The failure data then needs to be analysed for failure hotspots, which I know has been done at Euston and has had a positive impact.
The staff app needs to be sorted out. At the moment, as I understand it, not all TOCs use it and there still needs to be union agreement involving the technology payment.
There is loads that we need to do to make things better for disabled people, and I look forward to working with the Minister as we progress the Bill.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)
My Lords, I would like to say that it is a pleasure to follow the two noble Baronesses but actually it is not. It makes me so angry that, week after week, they come to this House and tell us about the problems they have. When they do that they are telling us about not just their problems but the problems being encountered by tens of thousands of people, day in, day out. My Amendment 39 is about the passenger standards authority. If anything demonstrates why we need a passenger standards authority, it is the experience that has just been outlined.
The passenger standards authority is part of a package that will come later and is not part of the Bill, but I want to raise it here because passenger standards are the reason for the Bill and why we are here. As we have been hearing over the past week or so, a combination of fragmentation within the industry, poor tendering and inadequate enforcement has led us to the situation that we are in now, but it seems to me that there is something about an organisational culture that is the complete reverse of being passenger-focused.
One of the problems we are facing is that the way that we measure the performance of train operating companies is legalistic and algorithmic; so on one side of it, you are all right and no action will be taken, but step a little further and action will be taken. For passengers, that feels arbitrary. I would like to hear from the Minister how the passenger standards authority is going to work. How will it hold the operator to account in a way that so demonstrably has not been done in the past? Will it be taking a similar, very measured approach, or can it really get into the nitty-gritty of what makes passenger journeys work?
Of course, that includes punctuality, reliability, ticketing and accessibility, but there is a bunch of other things, as we have heard from noble Lords, such as the provision of consistent, understandable information; trains that are clean and properly staffed and on which people feel safe; some sort of functioning wifi; and the ability to get a cup of tea on a long journey. These things are all part of the passenger experience and should not be that difficult.
Is the passenger standards authority going to have the ability to represent passengers right across the piece? Will it be genuinely about driving improvement, not just constantly having niggles with train operators about whether they are not quite good enough or not quite bad enough? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register.
I support Amendment 17, in the names of four eminent Members of your Lordships’ House. I hope that I will be forgiven if I also say that I declare the interest of having worked with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on these issues and duty of care and accessibility for many decades. In fact, we go back to the point when, as Minister for Sport, I approached the International Olympic Committee to ask it to consider ensuring that all the facilities used by a host city for the Olympic Games should immediately be used thereafter for the Paralympians. That was not just so that we could look at athletes and focus on their abilities rather than their disabilities, but to change the mindset of the population. A lot of what we have been talking about this evening is about changing that mindset. It is about changing attitudes: we cannot simply put in a statement of standards and allow it to gather dust; we must make sure that that statement of standards changes attitudes.
The Government have a great opportunity to include a statement of standards in this legislation. No party has a greater interest in accessibility than any other party. We all passionately agree across the Chamber about the importance of responding to the proposers of the amendment we are debating. This Bill is an opportunity to recognise that and move forward to a new level of recognition and understanding about what should be in a statement of standards.
All train operating companies should be committed to providing infrastructure and rail services to the highest standard of accessibility—that is the starting position—and customer service for all customers and stakeholders. There should be accessible travel policies outlining their approach to providing assistance to customers with restricted mobility or who require assistance, including those with visual or auditory impairments, learning disabilities and non-visible disabilities. This policy should be placed in a statement of standards and should be aligned to other legislation, such as the Equality Act and the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 1998.
Passenger Assist is a national system supported by all train operating companies at the moment. I hope it will be supported in future, because it is vital that we arrange passenger assistance for disabled customers and those with restricted mobility. At present, national technical specifications for interoperability define technical and operational standards to ensure the interoperability of trains, not least into the European railway system, and must include accessibility standards for new stations or major work on existing stations. Let us embed that into a statement of standards. The Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations ensure that vehicles used as rail replacement services are accessible. All involved should implement these standards for all new infrastructure, in addition to adopting innovation and best practice.
Level boarding is an incredibly important issue. All new train fleets being introduced should have a slightly lowered floor height compared with typical trains in the UK and should be provided with a retractable step to close the gap between the train and the platform. This would mean that all passengers should be able to board and alight without assistance, at all platforms, once the long-running transformation in this country is complete and all platforms have been brought into alignment. Let us embed that into a statement of standards.
I shall touch on two other things. The first is persons with reduced mobility national technical specification notices. At present, NTSNs define the regulatory requirements for infrastructure and trains, to ensure accessibility for people with reduced mobility. They include standards for the design, construction and maintenance of railway systems to make them accessible. Braille and prismatic signage at our major stations should be an essential feature and should comply with the PRM NTSNs.
On braille signs, let us take the situation in Wales. Braille signs should be in both languages; they should be in Welsh as well as English, aligning, in that case, with the Welsh Language Act’s commitment to preserving the language. This initiative not only supports the ethos of that Act but enhances accessibility for individuals with impaired vision. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, will agree with that.
Finally, there should be station design toolkits specialising in wayfinding requirements and colour schemes, to ensure consistency and accessibility. That includes principles for signage, fonts and colours, to create a high-quality station wayfinding system.
This Bill provides a unique opportunity to include a comprehensive suite of accessibility reforms and to introduce a standardised and consistent approach to accessibility standards across the railway network. All of us across the Chamber agree on the importance of the subject. Here we have a real opportunity to have a statement of standards of the highest possible quality enshrined in legislation. I look to the Minister and the Government to at least take that away and think about it as an important step forward that would gather support across the Chamber and respond to the worrying concerns that have been expressed by the noble Baronesses in Committee tonight.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a very depressing debate—listening to the terrible problems that many noble Lords have had in using the rail network. It is wonderful that they have been able to expose them so widely. We have heard about them before, but it is depressing that we are in 2024 and they have not been solved already. All this could have been done years ago, without legislation and without any change. It just needs somebody to do it and to take responsibility for it. So the list of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is very good—all the lists are good. There are three things that I hope my noble friend will take forward.
There are three different elements to the GBR responsibility. One is the infrastructure—platforms. One is the trains—level boarding. The other is services—what people do or do not get at the stations. Most important is that the passenger standards authority, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, must be not only comprehensive, strong and fast but independent.
We have to think about how you can be independent of the Government and the railways, and still have credibility. I hope everybody can, but the Government will have to accept something that is independent, rather than something which takes backdoor instructions from Ministers who say, “Don’t get too strong on this, because it’s too expensive”.
We will have to watch this for a long time, but I congratulate other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and exposed this, which should have been exposed a very long time ago.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I believe this is the most important group of amendments today because it has passengers at the core. I have added my name to three amendments because I am so convinced that the comment made earlier about the lack of focus on passengers in the current fragmented rail system has done so much damage to the rail industry.
When things go wrong—and things go wrong all the time—the train operators spend their time deciding whether it is their fault or Network Rail’s fault, instead of concentrating on putting it right for the passengers. To my mind, this is the obvious way ahead. I remind noble Lords that we live in an ageing society and the railway has to operate for all.
Not all disabled people are in wheelchairs. When I get on trains, I watch people who are capable of walking being helped by staff, or by other passengers, to get on the train because it is difficult. It must be made easier. Once it is made easier, you give people confidence; once you give them confidence, they become train passengers much more willingly.
I broaden it even further. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, referred to people who have a visual impairment—quite rightly. I wish to raise the issue of people with hearing impairment. I have 30% hearing. I wear hearing aids, which improve that considerably, but they do not bring me anything like up to normal standard. Unfortunately, one recent Saturday evening I was at Paddington station for over four hours, while no trains ran. Announcements were constantly given only over the loudspeakers. Every time a loudspeaker announcement was made, I had to go up to someone and say, “Can you just tell me what he said?” Of course, people were basically in a panic and they were not doing it clearly. Eventually they gave up and said that no trains would run to Wales at all that evening. But the point I am making is that, over four hours, that situation took no account at all of people who could not hear clearly.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, we have heard some very powerful and moving speeches, based on their own personal experience, from the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson. I feel it would almost be impertinent of me to try to add to what they are saying, given how rich and deep their experience is of travelling on the railways as passengers who are confined to wheelchairs. They also spoke, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and others, of those with other forms of disability, including those affected in their sight and their hearing.
However, if I were to add anything of any great substance, it would probably be along the lines of the excellent speech made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who clearly set out a programme—a challenging and demanding programme, admittedly, but one that should be embraced by the Government and by Great British Railways—for improving the experience of disabled passengers on the railway. It is very important for us to hear what the Minister will have to say in response to that. I know that he personally is very sympathetic to the experience of disabled passengers and the difficulties they have. However, although I do not make this as a personal remark, Network Rail as an organisation has been making similar noises for a long time, yet the difficulties continue—perhaps not always the same difficulties, and there are some improvements from time to time, but none the less the difficulties continue, and here we are today, hearing these speeches. I look forward to what the Minister has to say.
I was interested in the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, in relation to the passenger standards authority. We have heard too little in our Committee debates so far about the role and purpose of that authority. It is promised in the document Getting Britain Moving, but what scope it will have as a strong voice for passengers—that is how it is described—and how it will be much in advance of the existing passenger representative bodies, we have yet to learn. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain his vision for the passenger standards authority. I hope we do not have to have that deferred until we hear about the next Bill coming down the line at us, because I think it is what people want to hear.
I have an amendment of my own in this group. It will not take me a great time to speak to it. It relates to something else that we all want to know about: discount fares. Perhaps I should declare that I am the holder of a senior railcard—I hear a certain hum around the Chamber that suggests, to my surprise, that I may not be alone in that—but there is a multiplicity of other railcards too. If you click the button on the website that says, “Apply a railcard discount to this fare”, you will find a drop-down box containing a whole list of the various railcards that are available. I think passengers want to know that those railcards are going to continue to be available to them in the new system.
One of the difficulties that the Government have—indeed, that we all have—is that we are told, “We’ll pass this Bill and then everything is, so to speak, frozen until we get the next Bill”. As I have said repeatedly, and perhaps I have bored the House by saying it, simply getting the next Bill does not change anything. Change has to follow the Bill, and change is itself very time-consuming to implement. So, even on a good timetable for the Government, we are talking about four or five years before we see change, yet we are getting the impression of life being frozen in the meantime. Hence, we get pleas from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for something to be done about ticketing in the meantime. We all want to know, not just on ticketing but on other matters, what is going to happen in the meantime when, in a sense, no one is in charge because shadow Great British Railways will have been set up but it will have no powers. We will be awaiting Great British Railways and things will not actually be happening.
To come back to my own amendment, that situation applies also to discounted fares. Are they to continue as they are? If they are to be changed—and there may be an argument for change; it may be that a new one has to be added or some have to be deleted, merged or changed in some other way—what would be the mechanism for doing that? I do not mean simply the legal mechanism, because that exists already and it is not being abolished, but who is the driving force behind that? What is the machine that is going to run that sort of thing and make the decisions? We would like to know about all those things. We want some assurance about their continuation but, more importantly, we would like an understanding about the change and the directing mind in this transition period, which could go on for several years.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for the remarks that he has just made. He talks of delay and nothing happening. One of the reasons why I personally am here is that I have been waiting six years for rail reform and, in the end, when I was asked, I volunteered to see whether I could move it forward, because it has taken a very long time. Not much has happened since the timetable crisis of 2018 and the report that Keith Williams wrote.
I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Randerson, for Amendment 17, which is supported also by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I absolutely recognise the need to address the passenger experience, and I know that my noble friend Lady Blake, who took the Second Reading, recognises it too. Improving accessibility on the railways is a key priority for the Government and something that the Secretary of State and I are personally committed to. We know that the assistance that passengers receive too often falls short of what they deserve and what they have every right to expect.
I was going to list a range of areas where things need to change, but I am embarrassed to do so because so many speakers in this debate have listed them themselves. All I can do is acknowledge that I have heard the list quite clearly. We know that we need to do better, and it hurts me that the public service that I care about fails so regularly to look after people in the way that it ought to. I personally—and the Secretary of State is in the same position—will do my best to do differently in future.
Many of these issues are, frankly, best solved under public ownership, as the problems that have arisen are a direct result of the current fragmented system. For example, on the specification of new trains, which the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others referred to, a guiding mind will take an approach to a greater consistency of design and improve the outcomes for disabled passengers.
In addition, it has been explained, more eloquently than I can do, how many apps there are, how weak they are and how they fail to work. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, took me through, and showed me a huge litany of things that are wrong with, a variety of apps, all of which she needs to make quite simple journeys. I am terribly embarrassed by that. Why should we need so many different electronic devices to deliver such a relatively poor service and outcome in such circumstances? That is an obvious case where consistency is desirable. I referred earlier today to not having a proliferation of train operators, and this is one of the reasons not to do so. We do not want everyone inventing their own process; we want one consistent process, designed with the people who use it, not done for them and not delivered to them after it is done. I have heard the experiences of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others of getting something that they wanted but then discovering it did not do what they wanted.
I contend that one of the clearest reasons for the Bill, which seeks to take train operations back into public ownership progressively, is to make those sorts of improvements a great deal easier to deliver in future. Public ownership and control give us the best platform possible to do that. I appreciate the engagement that I have had to date, especially with the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson. I believe I have offered a meeting to both of them— I hope I have, but that is done for me—and we will have that before Report. That is not an explanation; it is more of an apology, but I hope that for now it will allow them to withdraw their amendment.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to this group of amendments. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for his very helpful comments and look forward to hearing from his office about a meeting. I will not go into details, but his comment about poor apps resonates with every disabled user.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for her comments, not just for further experiences of being left on trains but for her key point that nothing seems to change. My noble friend Lady Scott was right to say that this is all about the culture of the organisations in the TOCs. The issue is the culture at the top, not the culture of the staff whom we see face to face, and it is important to recognise that.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for his excellent speech. He is right that all parties do agree on this issue, but why can we not get any change? A new station opened at Thanet Parkway in July last year. Not only do you need lifts to get up to it, but you do not have level boarding and it is not staffed all day. How, in 2023, was that allowed to happen? Pre-pandemic, there was a pilot for level boarding at Harrow & Wealdstone; it was abandoned because the train operating companies could not agree on an order of coaches to make sure that the level part was available.
My noble friend Lady Randerson was right that we have to focus on the needs of passengers, and my amendment in this group focuses on those who need assistance. We need this amendment. We have to be able to hold train companies to account. My problem is that my amendment is for the future; it is not for now. If there are any further delays, we will see yet again no further change. I ask the Minister: what change can we start having in the current poor standards of the train operating companies?
I remind the Committee that bus regulations were transformed in 2016 when a disabled passenger took a case to the Supreme Court. Perhaps we need the same thing to happen now; I hope not. We will return to this on Report but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Hoey
That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/853), laid before the House on 9 August, be annulled.
Relevant document: 3rd Report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for kindly meeting me last week to discuss these regulations and for having a larger meeting with all the Peers from Northern Ireland on where aspects of the Irish Sea border are affected and where Defra has responsibility. I am very grateful for her time and consideration.
I am deeply concerned by these regulations which we are discussing tonight. Part of the reason for praying against this statutory instrument is to ensure that your Lordships genuinely understand just how important they are, not just to Northern Ireland but to the whole of the United Kingdom.
Ever since the broadcast of the recording of the private meeting where Michel Barnier said that the policy was to use Ireland in order to secure the broader Brexit purposes in relation to the United Kingdom, many of us have felt strongly that the people of Northern Ireland are being used as pawns in a bigger game. We have always worried that the European Union would use the imposition of EU standards on Northern Ireland—as a result of the protocol and the Windsor Framework—to pressurise the rest of the United Kingdom not to diverge from EU standards and so miss out on some of the benefits of having a competitive advantage from leaving the European Union.
The regulations before us tonight provide a very clear articulation of this strategy, but in a form of smoke and mirrors. They impose on Great Britain the same entry requirements for rest of the world goods as to the European Union. This is supposedly in order that those goods should be able to move freely from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without the interference of the Irish Sea border, because the whole of the United Kingdom—not just Northern Ireland—has, in this regard, submitted to EU standards for these areas. This is being presented as some kind of trade off: GB submits to EU standards and then the border, for that purpose at least, can disappear.
This is where the regulations before us are particularly telling. Your Lordships might have expected, given this so-called trade off, that the border that has been imposed, dividing our United Kingdom, would be removed to deal with the rest of the world goods, allowing their genuinely free, unfettered movement from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but that is just not the case. Under the terms of these regulations, even with our negotiators agreeing to adopt EU standards, the goods still cannot move freely from Great Britain to Northern Ireland: they still have to cross an international customs border and an international sanitary and phytosanitary border.
Some of your Lordships may say, “But surely they can move now, within the UK Internal Market Scheme”—this new title for what used to be called the green lane. It is true that they can move via what the Government call the UK Internal Market Scheme but it is not what anyone else in the world would call an internal market system and it is certainly not what EU regulation 2023/1231, which defines what our Government have called the UK Internal Market Scheme, calls it either. In the real world, an internal market is defined, as we all know, as a market where goods can move freely without having the expense of having to cross an international customs border and an international SPS border. It is what we used to enjoy in this country until 2021, as goods moved freely from one part of the UK to another.
The process that the UK Government call the UK Internal Market Scheme is, frankly, a deceit because it is anything but an internal market system—rather, it is a means of managing its opposite: the international customs and SPS border that now divides our country into two. In essence, what the misnamed UKIMS—or green lane, as it used to be called—offers is a redistribution of the border burden, rather than its removal. On the one hand, the international customs and SPS border requirements are simplified; on the other hand, you have to submit to additional burdens, such as successfully applying for and keeping trusted trader status and submitting to “Not for EU” labelling requirements. In return for GB submitting to EU standards, the EU is not offering that the border be removed for the purpose of those goods, but rather that the border remains and those bringing the goods be subject to an alternative border experience, but a border experience it remains just the same.
First, you can cross the border only with an export number. Secondly, you are subject to customs and international SPS paperwork. Thirdly, you are subject to 100% documentary checks. Fourthly, you are subject to 5% to 10% identity checks at border control posts, which have already cost £190 million and they are not even half finished. Fifthly, you have to successfully apply to become a trusted trader and keep that status. Sixthly, you have to submit to “Not for EU” labelling.
Another striking thing about these regulations is that they put us in a position of complete dependence on the EU. The regulations make sense only because of a prior piece of legislation, which I have already mentioned: EU regulation 2023/1231. This is not a piece of UK legislation but an EU regulation. It is quite impossible to scrutinise these regulations without simultaneously scrutinising EU regulation 2023/1231, because without it the regulation before us would be null and void.
It is important to note some things about this EU regulation. First, it was passed in June last year, more than two years after we were supposed to have left the European Union, and yet its title makes it clear that it not only applies to the UK but to the UK and the movement of goods within it, as if we are some kind of EU colony. Secondly, in this regulation the EU makes it absolutely clear that it governs the border that divides our country in two, reserving to itself the right to pull the alternative border experience that the UK Government have ridiculously called the UK Internal Market Scheme, and default back to a 100% red lane, if it wishes. This means that while we can pass these regulations today, they could be rendered entirely null and void at any time, not because of a decision of this Parliament but because the EU uses its Article 14 powers.
At the end of the day, these regulations are about perpetuating a deep injustice: the division of our country into two by 27 other countries which have chosen to disrespect the territorial integrity of the UK, not just by claiming the right to make some of our laws but through the imposition of an international customs and SPS border. This disenfranchises 1.9 million United Kingdom citizens in relation to not just one area of law but to some 300 areas. I cannot understand how any Government, past or present, who supposedly support the union could have gone along with this.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and her Motion to annul these Windsor Framework regulations. I understand that these regulations are supposed to make it easier for some rest-of-the-world goods to move to and from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but there are a number of problems with them, one of which I wish to concentrate my remarks upon.
Let me make it clear: continued barriers to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are unacceptable and undermine the integrity of the United Kingdom. The regulations we are debating are based on recognition of the Irish Sea border, an iniquitous imposition upon the people of Northern Ireland emanating from the Northern Ireland protocol, which had no support from any unionist elected representative in Northern Ireland. One might have imagined that if Great Britain submitted to EU standards like Northern Ireland, the border would to that extent be removed, but these regulations do not do that; rather, they build upon a totally unacceptable foundation.
The best way to understand the border to which these regulations relate is to go behind them to the legislation to which they relate and without which they make no sense—EU regulation 2023/1231. That regulation is considerably more honest, in that it does not pretend to define a UK internal market system but simply an alternative international border experience, enabling goods to move from what is regarded as a foreign country, Great Britain, to what it regards as part of itself, Northern Ireland. I sometimes think the Government believe that the people of Northern Ireland are totally gullible and content to believe that a border is not a border if you simply call it by a different name.
Under these regulations, if rest-of-the-world goods enter the United Kingdom at, say, Southampton, being subject now to EU entry standards, they will be able to move freely from England to Scotland or from England to Wales, because it is an internal market. There is no customs border and no international SPS border. But what happens if the business in Southampton then desires to send the goods to the other region of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland? The reality is that it has reached the limit of the internal market for goods and that the goods cannot get to Northern Ireland within the internal market in which England, Scotland and Wales are located. Therefore, we have to leave the internal market for goods, cross an international customs and SPS border, and enter another single market for goods. The goods can leave one internal market for another only by crossing the border, and under the regulations before us there is only the option of using the alternative border experience set out in EU regulation 1231.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, has mentioned what that means. It means having an export number; submitting to customs forms, which although simplified are still forms that you do not have to complete if moving goods within the GB internal market for goods; submitting to international SPS forms, which although simplified are still international and not domestic SPS forms; and submitting to 100% documentary checks and to 5% to 10% identity checks.
Then, of course, people do not get access to this border experience, with the simplification of some forms, without having to pay for it by submitting to the additional burden you can avoid via the other, red lane border experience; namely, the requirement to join and remain part of the trusted trader scheme and to have “not for EU” labels. Does the Minister feel that I have misunderstood the present process demanded under the Windsor Framework? If so, can she enlighten me on where I am wrong?
If the provisions in these regulations are somehow meant to make the border acceptable then the Minister is completely misguided. Protecting the so-called integrity of the market that now exists in Northern Ireland is about protecting the results of our being subjected to a different legal regime from Great Britain’s in 300 areas of law. The laws that call the border into being are laws made by a foreign Parliament, in which we in Northern Ireland are not represented. The border is, therefore, in a very real sense, as has already been mentioned, the border of our disfranchisement. What the Minister must answer is this: is she content to acquiesce with our exploitation or will she stand against this injustice?
The previous Government sold the Windsor Framework by stating categorically that Northern Ireland would attract millions of pounds of additional trade, having what they proclaimed was the best of both worlds. But recently, even Invest Northern Ireland now tells us that there is no actual advantage in reality. Who is telling the truth?
The present situation disrespects the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom and violates the Belfast agreement, which this Government and the House proclaim to hold so dear to their hearts. Rather than removing the Irish Sea border, these regulations help cement it in. I am pleased that all unionist representatives in the other House are supporting the mutual enforcement Bill to be debated on 6 December. Surely it will not be possible to ignore the call for mutual enforcement for very much longer.
To conclude, there is a way forward and I know that my party leader and other unionist colleagues are willing to participate in charting a democratic way forward to restore our rightful place within this United Kingdom. I assure this House that the Windsor Framework and the outworkings of the Northern Ireland protocol are not the answer. I support the noble Baroness’s Motion.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, it is hardly surprising that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted this instrument as likely to be of interest to the House on the grounds that it is
“politically or legally important and gives rise to issues of public policy”.
To that, I would add that it is constitutionally important.
I am therefore grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for proposing this Motion to annul the regulations. Under them, the UK Government will impose EU import laws on certain packed agri-goods entering this country from the rest of the world such as basil, cut flowers, fruit, and certain chicken products from Thailand and China. Not only, therefore, is Northern Ireland to be subject to the EU’s economic and trade laws, or even the lighter-touch version we are told is the aim of the Windsor Framework for goods going there from GB, but so too is the whole of the UK to be under certain EU laws.
The Government say that they want to promote the integrity of the UK’s internal market. That is something they also claim to desire in the new Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. I suggest that one way to do that is to extend the UK’s post-Brexit trade freedoms to Northern Ireland and continue the serious negotiations for revising the 2019 agreement, which combined sticks with carrots. However, the Government intend to do so by imposing EU laws on the rest of the UK by statutory instrument and instead of the UK’s own statutory regime. That sounds to me to be mighty like the Chequers agreement, which was rejected the by House of Commons three times, but piecemeal and by the back door of statutory legislation. Can the Minister reassure me that this is not the case?
The Windsor Framework, which was at least put to a parliamentary vote, is, like most episodes in the complicated history of my native country, Ireland, testimony to the way difficult problems become intractable, and complexities become overwhelming as a result of political interests which want not to resolve them but to the exploit difficulty for political gain. We heard about some of those interests tonight. The Windsor Framework was announced by the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. It was said to ameliorate the obstacle-ridden movement of goods from one part of the UK to another —Northern Ireland. There was much fanfare, many photocalls with the EU commissioner, warm words and a hotchpotch of operational changes to another flawed settlement imposed by the EU on this country: the Northern Ireland protocol.
However, the protocol was not supposed to be permanent. In parts, it made it clear that both parties accepted the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and the integrity of the UK’s internal market. Each party was also bound to best endeavours legally to resolve what was acknowledged to be a temporary arrangement and designed—I fear—to meet the EU’s desire to keep Northern Ireland as a fief subject to EU economic law. By retaining under its laws part of the sovereign UK, the EU violated the Good Friday agreement, whereby constitutional change must be by the consent of the people, and the promise in the 2019 settlement to respect and accept the integrity of the internal market. This instrument under the Windsor Framework therefore has a flawed pedigree.
I did not vote for the Windsor Framework. I did not and do not support the imposition of EU laws on one part of the UK in violation of this country’s sovereignty without a policy of such importance being a matter of primary legislation. It should not be smuggled in the back door to undo the gains of Brexit for most of this country in order somehow to right the wrongs under which Northern Ireland continues to suffer.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my registered interest as a member of your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and of the Government’s veterinary medicines working group.
It will come as no surprise to anybody in your Lordships’ House that I support the Windsor Framework, as I supported the Northern Ireland protocol. Therefore, I do not support the Motion before us to annul this statutory instrument.
I believe that the Windsor Framework was the best means of dealing with the challenges presented by Brexit for trade and goods on the island of Ireland. Before Brexit, goods moved freely across the island, helping to sustain and underpin our economies in Ireland north and south. To take the example of the dairy industry, milk is supplied from farmers in Northern Ireland. It is processed in factories in the Republic of Ireland, and it comes back, either as butter, whey or cheese, and is sold in the north—and vice versa. We have to give that due recognition. This dual nature and, I suppose, the fact of the all-Ireland nature of part of our economy were recognised in the Good Friday agreement, through the three-stranded relationship and the establishment of the political institutions: the Assembly, the Executive, the North/South Ministerial Council, with north-south implementation bodies, of which one was InterTradeIreland, and the British-Irish Council.
Prior to and since the vote on the Brexit referendum, my colleagues in the SDLP and I have always insisted that there was a need for a special status for Northern Ireland due to the unique trading and other relationships on the island. That has not diminished and manifests itself in the Windsor Framework, which exists to manage those challenging trading relationships. Therefore, we enjoy dual access to the UK internal market and to the EU customs union.
Where there are imperfections with some areas of trade, as has been demonstrated by some of the Windsor Framework instruments, they need resolution, not annulment, through dialogue and negotiation between the UK and the EU, as is happening with veterinary medicines—that work is ongoing—otherwise our agri-food industry could be undermined.
Having listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, the mover of this Motion, and the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, I note the desire to challenge every piece of secondary legislation on the Windsor Framework as an attack on the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom. I think this is a little bit disingenuous, because notwithstanding the Windsor Framework and my own political position, Northern Ireland remains within the UK.
This was the view of those people—many who sit on the opposite Benches as well as my colleagues from other parties in Northern Ireland—who argued for the hardest possible Brexit. I say to them: sometimes you get what you argued for. Put simply, it would have been better for us to remain within the EU. I am pleased that my colleagues on the Front Bench in the new Labour Government are working with the EU—via the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers, such as the Paymaster-General—on a reset of relationships, notwithstanding the realities of the situation. I hope that leads to a resolution of all the outstanding difficulties and to less tension and brinkmanship. Through less tension and through negotiation, you can build your economy and good relationships based on collaboration and co-operation.
Yesterday there was a meeting of the Specialised Committee on the Implementation of the Windsor Framework, covered by a joint statement. The joint chairs welcomed the operation of tariff rate quotas for certain agricultural products, and they discussed the intensive work under way in the areas of agri-food, customs, medicines and trade. They noted the importance of
“continued constructive joint working to support those efforts and monitor progress”.
We should all support the Government and the EU in that important work to achieve the full and faithful implementation of the Windsor Framework, and to ensure that wrinkles and challenges are overcome and resolved for hauliers, businesses and the logistics industry. I believe that serves the best interests of all in our communities in Northern Ireland, ensuring that the best possible outcomes are achieved for our economy, society and communities.
The purpose of this instrument on the retail movement scheme for plants is to expand the list of agri-food goods imported for retail into GB from the rest of the world that can move to Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme, an issue referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. This is all achieved by making changes to the entry requirements for importing these goods into GB so that they can align with the EU-derived entry requirements for importing such goods into Northern Ireland. As a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I note that we recognised—remember that our job is purely process driven—that this piece of legislation was likely to be of political interest. That is probably why we are debating it tonight.
It is important to emphasise that the changes made by this instrument will ease the movement of certain goods from GB to Northern Ireland via the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme. In fact, Defra emphasises that the changes made by the instrument were sought by business. Those who argue vociferously against this and other statutory instruments do so, they say, on the lack of proper consultation on constitutional imperatives. Can the Minister, my noble friend Lady Hayman, advise us of the type and nature of the consultation that has already taken place with businesses?
It is important to emphasise that businesses want to see a resolution to all the challenges presented by Brexit and the bureaucracy. They have said to me that they welcome any agreement when faced with the catastrophic alternative of a no-deal Brexit. That is why businesses have been fully co-operative in all these areas of the Windsor Framework. Business and trade in Northern Ireland welcomed an agreement that provided continued access to the all-Ireland market, which many businesses in Northern Ireland relied on. Furthermore, business welcomes a unique solution for a unique place, with trade, social, family and emotive ties with both Britain and Ireland. But it also wants any resolution of the wrinkles in the bureaucracy.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will be brief—I know that most people say that, but I genuinely do want to be. I refer to my registered interests, particularly my recent appointment as chair of InterTrade UK.
Paragraph 107 of the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper states:
“We have therefore already taken forward the steps necessary to enable the expansion of the arrangements permanently to allow at least an additional 26 Rest of World meat and plant products to be covered by the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme. This will include the critical retailer proposal for Thai poultry, as well as Chinese poultry, and a range of cut flowers and herbs, and we will provide the same commitments on safeguards as we have for all existing Rest of World goods covered in the scheme”.
Part 3 of this statutory instrument gives statutory power for the EU-approved poultry meat plants in China and Thailand to be exempted from provisions of animal health law, but EU-approved meat plants in Brazil are not included. This is an important point, although I accept that it is niche. It is especially important for a company that raised the issue with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—namely, Universal Meat Company from Northern Ireland. It imports a significant amount of tonnage from Brazil.
In response to concerns raised, Defra has said that the list of products included in the scope of this legislation was developed with industry stakeholders in the United Kingdom on the basis of factors such as the volumes of trade and the impact on supply chains, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, said. The department went on to list other ways to deal with Brazilian goods. But it would be so much more straightforward if this exemption included those Brazilian plants. In its conclusion, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee indicated the “importance of consulting widely”, which is an important point—I hope the Minister will reflect on that. It is about not just volumes in a UK context but what matters in a Northern Ireland context. That is important.
Given the specific concerns about Brazil and the fact that the factories concerned there are EU approved—it is important to say that—can the Minister proactively look again at this specific issue? The volumes may not be as large as the two countries listed—China and Thailand —in respect of poultry meat in UK terms, but, for Northern Ireland, Brazil is a significant supplier and its absence from this list will impact on the supply chain, consumer choice and customer cost. That is an important point.
Noble Lords are aware that I have been appointed chair of Intertrade UK and, while I await terms of reference from the Government, I intend to closely monitor the impact of statutory instruments. It is important that we have these debates and find out where there are difficulties, such as the one before the House today. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for bringing this Motion to the Floor of the House; otherwise, we would not have had the opportunity to raise what are important issues for suppliers, businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland. It has given me the opportunity to raise this specific concern and I hope the Minister can address it.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I too can be quite brief, but there are a few points I want to register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for the Motion and for her helpful remarks.
These regulations testify to something we always feared: that differential arrangements for Northern Island, in which it remains closer to EU laws and rules, would end up being exploited to restrict our freedom and keep the UK-EU relationship one of high alignment, and that is what has happened. It has become harder to get the gains of setting our own laws in our own interests, and there is a risk that we remain in the political and psychological tractor beam of the EU. And so it has proved.
Ever since the original sin, as I regard it, of the joint reports in December 2017, it has been impossible to entirely undo the agreement about the imposition of EU law in Northern Ireland. The Johnson Government, both when I was responsible and under my successors, tried to water down commitments and made it clear they could not be durable, and eventually did their best to unpick it, culminating in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which was so intensely disliked in this House. But that Bill fell, with Prime Ministers Johnson and Truss, and the Sunak Government, having promised one thing, then did another and agreed the Windsor Framework. This did little to improve the situation in practice, but the big change it did make was that the British Government were now actively committed to defending protocol-like arrangements, and that meant defending EU interests in areas covered by the protocol in Northern Ireland.
What we are seeing happen with the regulations today is what we always said would happen: the easy way out would always be taken, and we would increasingly choose to align ourselves with EU laws rather than go our own way. These regulations mark a new stage in that process. Hitherto, the Windsor Framework arrangements were confined to the GB-Northern Ireland “border”, but now we are also aligning a GB external border with EU laws—admittedly for a limited category of third-country goods. As others have said, including my noble friend Lady Lawlor, it will not end there. The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which is also being considered by your Lordships’ House, has exactly this purpose in mind, and is much more sweeping in what it can do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, pointed out, this pre-emptive legislative cringing to the EU hardly even brings us any benefits. It still does not improve the “border processes” between GB and Northern Ireland, and the same will be true of the product regulation Bill.
As I have said before, these arrangements make little sense unless they are the first stage in a process in which the second stage will be formal adoption of EU laws enforced by EU methods. That is, of course, how you get the paperwork to be eliminated, but at what price? We have the gradual watering down of this country’s democracy still further in favour of laws set elsewhere.
To conclude, there are only three possible destinations from where we are. I have just described one, which is the gradual, further dissolution of UK sovereignty in important areas of the economy. The second is an attempt to make the unworkable work, to constantly offset the complexities and the nonsensicalities of the Windsor Framework by more and more complex legislation, with more and more exemptions and special treatment, creating a bigger regulatory burden and, in practice, separating out Northern Ireland still further. If we go down this road, we will be dealing with more and more unsatisfactory pieces of legislation like this one.
The third route is the one that, one day, must be taken and has been referred to already, and that is the route of mutual enforcement, for the Windsor Framework to be ditched and for UK laws to apply in Northern Ireland, as they do anywhere else in this country. In my view, that is the right way forward. I do not think the current arrangements can or will stand. They are overcomplex, create too many political anomalies and simply will not work over time, and it is only a matter of time before that becomes clear. One day, we will sweep away the Windsor Framework and make this a properly United Kingdom once again.
Can the Minister say which of these three paths she believes the Government are on? What is their approach to the Windsor Framework, and what is the direction of travel?
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for giving us a chance to have this debate. I find myself in a slightly confused frame of mind, in that I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Frost, has just said about the 2017 agreement and its consequences. However, we are where we are. There is as much chance of mutual enforcement becoming an acceptable solution to this crisis as there is of all the European countries and the United Kingdom deciding that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the best way forward for governance—in fact, there is rather more chance for the dictatorship of the proletariat. To tell the people of Northern Ireland to keep on going, that mutual enforcement is somehow a realistic option, is misleading.
On the disfranchisement of the people of Northern Ireland, the truth is that the Assembly will vote on this matter. I know there are those who dislike that. The major change between the Johnson agreement and the May agreement was putting in that there should be a vote in the Assembly on any new arrangements, giving the Northern Ireland Assembly a chance to vote. As for the talk about 1.9 million people being disfranchised, they are not being disfranchised—they are going to get a chance to vote. I understand the objection to the form of the vote, which is by a majority vote, although that is so because trade matters are actually the responsibility of the United Kingdom Parliament. It was a special concession to give a vote to the Assembly on this occasion. In 1938, at the time of the very controversial Anglo-Irish trade agreement, the unionist MPs all accepted it was nothing to do with Stormont; it was a matter for the Westminster Parliament even though they were concerned it was unfair to Northern Irish businesses. A special case has been made for this vote.
In 2017, there was a general election in Northern Ireland. The DUP got 36% of the vote—it is closer to 20% now. The total unionist vote is little short of 50%. When it was agreed in 2019 that the Assembly would have a majority vote on this matter, it was not so obvious what the outcome would be. Today it is, but when that was agreed to in 2019, it was not at all obvious that a majority vote would be acceptance of the Windsor Framework arrangements, as we are all sure it will be now. It was not at all sure, and it was not inevitable.
There is an argument that one reason why the unionist vote has collapsed is the constant putting forward of solutions which are not solutions, like the mutual enforcement scheme. There is nothing at all wrong with it, had it been serious five years ago. We are now three international treaties down the road, and the European Union is not going to change its mind, and Parliament voted by a huge majority for the Windsor Framework. There is more chance of the dictatorship of the proletariat being decided as the way forward for Europe and the United Kingdom than the idea that suddenly people are going to turn round and say, “Let’s try something else completely different”—considerably more chance.
I have made general observations of where we are, and it is with regret that I say some of this because I think mutual enforcement should have been more properly discussed. The 2017 agreement is deeply flawed and set a framework which leaves us with many remaining difficulties which we have to talk about. None the less, this is where we are. I hate to be so simple about it, but it is the case.
Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, I support the Motion moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. The regulations referenced in this evening’s Motion do not deal with the imposition of the large swathes of EU law which impinge on Northern Ireland’s economy. The regulations before us are intended to expand the range of goods—namely, Thai and Chinese poultry, and cut flowers from the rest of the world—that are eligible to be supplied to Northern Ireland from Great Britain under the retail movement scheme. These regulations are not a solution to the long-term problems born of the protocol. In imposing on Great Britain EU standards that already apply to Northern Ireland, these regulations evidence a desire to use that fact to seek to undermine Brexit in the rest of the country.
It is a strange anomaly that although EU regulation 2023/1231 was made after the UK left the European Union, it relates only to the governance of the United Kingdom and not the European Union. The United Kingdom Government have not scrutinised this legislation and have no power to alter it. Is it really acceptable that laws which apply only in the United Kingdom should be made by a foreign entity of which we are not a part?
Far from removing the barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom created by the protocol, the Windsor Framework has entrenched many of these and will impose heavy costs on Northern Ireland/Great Britain trade and damage living standards in Northern Ireland. I know that my time is brief, so I will consider just a few points.
It has been argued that the restrictions on state aid set out in the protocol have been significantly eased by the de minimis regulations introduced on 1 January 2024. Unfortunately, this is clearly not the case, since the United Kingdom Government’s capacity to provide financial support to Northern Ireland’s large businesses remains severely limited. This may have made it impossible for the last Government to provide the necessary funds to prevent the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast going into administration. Can the Minister clarify the position regarding the future operation of the Belfast shipyard, in particular the building of naval ships?
The negative consequences of the United Kingdom fulfilling its commitment to extend the requirement for “not for EU” labelling to products consumed in Britain should not be overlooked. This will cause the isolation of the Northern Ireland market, since the increased cost of providing a small product line with different labelling for Northern Ireland will inevitably disincentivise many British traders from supplying goods to Northern Ireland. Can the Minister explain why the Government have reneged on their commitment to introduce this legislation throughout the United Kingdom?
I warmly welcome the arrival of the mutual enforcement Bill, which I see has now been propelled to Second Reading in another place. Unlike the regulations before us today, the Bill provides a sensible solution. It replaces the Irish Sea border—which violates the Belfast agreement in disfranchising the people of Northern Ireland—with mutual enforcement, which disfranchises no one and restores the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom without requiring border infrastructure on the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border.
Finally, we were informed that the protocol would bring prosperity and untold opportunities for business. To date, I believe that there is very little evidence to show this. I support the Motion.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, this has been a characteristically impassioned debate and, with the notable exception of the very pertinent points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, it has perhaps been rather less about the substance of the regulations before us and more about concerns of identity; but as the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said in his very thoughtful speech setting out the historical context, we are where we are. From these Benches, we welcome the Government stating that they are fully committed to implementing the Windsor Framework in good faith and protecting the UK’s internal market. If the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, pushes her fatal Motion to a vote this evening, we will not be supporting her.
On the substance of these regulations, I can be extremely brief. These changes, which are fairly limited in scope, impact Scotland, Wales and England and are necessary, we believe, to make the Windsor Framework work in practice. It is welcome that the Government consulted with the devolved Administrations of Scotland and Wales and have received legislative consent from both. But, turning to some of the wider issues that these regulations raise following the change of government, this can be seen to be the beginning of a wider debate about our general approach to alignment with or divergence from the EU. We are going to have to debate whether we want divergence for divergence’s sake, which I would argue is the logical consequence of some of the speeches we have heard this evening, or whether we wish to align whenever possible with our European partners where it makes sense to do so. If we wish to align with EU legislative changes as they happen, this inevitably raises questions about the democratic deficit and being a rule taker.
As someone who was very much against leaving the European Union, I think it is worth recalling from time to time that prior to Brexit we had MEPs, a commissioner, Commission officials and Ministers who were all in a position to debate these issues in Brussels before, during and after the legislation was developed by the EU. Now we have to decide whether or not to follow these changes without having any say—but that was the decision taken in 2016. Ultimately, this is about managing divergence with our biggest market and keeping up with changes as they take place within the European Union. The business community, in particular, is keen to have clarity on this. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, I would be very grateful if the Minister could say a little more about what discussions are taking place with the business community on the possible consequences of divergence.
Turning to the democratic deficit, it is welcome that the Liaison Committee of this House is considering establishing a Northern Ireland scrutiny committee. Such a committee could replace the very important work previously carried out by the Northern Ireland protocol committee. But it is also important that we continue to debate many of these issues as fully as possible, including in this Chamber. In that regard, it would be very useful to have a debate in government time on the future approach to the Windsor Framework as well as the wider government approach to EU trade. Can the Minister in her concluding remarks give a brief update on where we are with practical re-engagement with the EU? In particular, can she say a little more about where we are regarding agreements on SPS and on veterinary matters?
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I declare my farming and land management interests as set out in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for introducing this Motion and for raising the key issues for people living in Northern Ireland. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate with such passion and energy and who have candidly shared their deep frustrations.
From the outset, I would like to confirm my personal commitment and that of my noble friends on this side of the House: we are all dedicated unionists. We also remain strongly supportive of the importance of implementing the Windsor Framework agreement, securing the application of British standards for goods which move to and stay in Northern Ireland, and ensuring that the same goods are available for consumers in all parts of the UK. It upholds Northern Ireland’s access to the rest of the UK internal market and safeguards Northern Ireland’s privileged access to the EU single market, which has been a clear demand from businesses in order to protect livelihoods.
Following the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, earlier in this debate, I too hope that the Minister can restate the Government’s manifesto commitment:
“Labour is committed to implementing the Windsor Framework in good faith and protecting the UK internal market”.
I also ask the Minister to confirm that this instrument is consistent with the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper, published in January 2024. In line with the concerns raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and that we have heard today from my noble friend Lady Lawlor and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, I would also like to press the Minister to explain to the House the extent of the consultation undertaken. What is the nature of the parties that have been consulted? How many have been consulted and on what questions? Is it possible to publish the anonymised consultee responses? Has the policy been adjusted or impacted by any of that consultation to arrive at the position we see it in today? If so, whose responses carried the most weight?
In addition, how would the Minister respond to concerns expressed by many noble Lords that this instrument appears to be intent on aligning with EU law and thus has constitutional significance? As is the custom in this House, we on these Benches will not be supporting the fatal Motion on an instrument such as this, but I hope the Minister will listen carefully to noble Lords’ concerns.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for introducing this Motion and allowing us to have such a detailed debate on this issue. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, some with a great deal of passion and energy. I know this is a subject close to many noble Lords’ hearts.
I draw noble Lords’ attention back to the very positive impact that this legislation will have on the union of the UK and on businesses and citizens right across our country. This statutory instrument will enable a broader group of goods originating from the rest of the world to move via the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme from GB to Northern Ireland. This enhances the existing measures in the Windsor Framework, which have already significantly reduced the requirements associated with the original Northern Ireland protocol. The list of eligible goods, which already includes products such as tomatoes, cauliflowers and New Zealand lamb, was designed in collaboration with industry stakeholders across the UK. Recently, I had a constructive and helpful discussion on the Windsor Framework with the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group when I went to Belfast in August.
The Government will keep under review the movement of products from the rest of the world. We need to ensure that we can reflect and respond to industry feedback. My officials meet with businesses on a regular basis to discuss these matters and to support them in implementing the Windsor Framework, which I confirm to the noble Lord we are committed to delivering. This legislation delivers on a key commitment of the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper, which was published earlier this year and which the noble Lord also inquired about. As colleagues know, that provided the basis for the return of the Northern Ireland Executive.
In addition to expanding eligibility for goods from the rest of the world to use the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme, the Government are committed to supporting businesses in moving agri-food goods into Northern Ireland. To that end, since 30 September, the new tariff rate quota solution enables traders to take advantage of UK tariff quotas of over 13,000 tonnes of lamb, beef and poultry every year. As set out in our manifesto, this Government have been clear in their objective to secure improved arrangements for agri-food trade with the EU via a veterinary or SPS agreement. We are clear that we want to continue to simplify this process, as far as possible, to support the UK’s thriving agri-food trade.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. It has been a very wide-ranging debate, as these narrow debates on Northern Ireland tend to be. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I also thank the two GB Lords, as I might call them, the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, and the noble Lord, Lord Frost. In most debates on Northern Ireland it is just Northern Ireland Peers who take part, so their contributions were encouraging and very welcome.
As well as general support, there was at least a recognition that there is an alternative. Mutual enforcement, which was mentioned by a number of Peers, is something that we are going to hear a lot more about because of the Private Member’s Bill in the other place. I welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said about the importance of setting up again some kind of scrutiny committee for what is happening in Northern Ireland.
Also important, perhaps, is a wider debate. I am aware that many Members have been held back tonight, because I did say that I probably would not press this to a vote, so I welcome that there are so many here. As I said earlier, it is very useful for people to understand why many of us feel so strongly about the Windsor Framework and its effects, and not just on Northern Ireland—I reiterate that.
It would be helpful if those who think that the Windsor Framework has been a benefit, because of the dual access, listened to what Invest Northern Ireland said last week. There has been no benefit whatever from any of the so-called joint access because we have lost direct access from Great Britain. So many businesses are not sending things to Northern Ireland any more. But that is for another debate.
I hope that I will not have to have many more of these. However, the consent issue and the vote that is coming up are very controversial. I hope that noble Peers understand how people in Northern Ireland feel about the fact that, on this one crucially important issue, a reason has been found to make it majority voting and not cross-community. Many who support that are doing so for reasons that not many of us in this House would agree with. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill
Wednesday 23rd October 2024
(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill 2024-26 View all Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 21-II Second marshalled list for Committee - (22 Oct 2024)
Lord Moylan
“30ZA Independent financial monitoring of public sector companies(1) The Secretary of State must, within three months of the day on which the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 comes into force, instruct an independent body to conduct monitoring of the financial management of any public sector company with whom a direct award of a public service contract is made under section 30(1A).(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), “monitoring of the financial management” includes the auditing of accounts, the review of spending efficiency, and the making of recommendations to improve cost-effectiveness.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires that the Secretary of State instructs an independent body to conduct financial monitoring of the public sector companies.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I suspect that this will be one of the shorter debates in our consideration of this Bill in Committee, but it is one of the most important. It will be short, I suspect, because this group is rather technical, but it has very great significance, not only for the operation of the railways but for the passenger experience.
There are four amendments in this group, all of them in my name. The first two, Amendments 19 and 20, are closely related. They relate to the very peculiar situation in which we are now going to see the railways operated in this country: that is, that they are going to be practically unmonitored independently as far as their finance is concerned. Compare the railway sector to the water sector or to electricity. These sectors have economic monitoring to ensure that best value is being delivered to the customer. Nothing of the sort is envisaged in relation to our new nationalised railway. There is to be no economic monitoring and no supervision of the setting of fares, and that is what these amendments relate to. One is to do with charges to customers—that is Amendment 19—and the other is to do with the costs incurred by the utility. The railways are a utility, and that is how they are going to be run.
Of course, if they were run by the private sector—as they would be if they were water or electricity—that economic monitoring would cover both the costs charged to the customer and the costs incurred by the operator, because their efficiency would be monitored. As I say, none of that is envisaged here. We are asked to assume that, in public ownership—I am not now talking about a Bill that is going to come to us in 18 months; I am talking about the direct consequences of this Bill as soon as it starts to come into effect and as these franchises move over—the Government are going to set fares in a reasonable way that is not exploitative of customers.
It could be said that that can be assumed because it is not going to be run by the private sector—that the Government are not going to gouge our eyes out, because Governments do not do things like that. But they do. Tell somebody who is applying for an urgent passport at a cost of £1,000 that they are not having their eyes gouged out. Tell someone applying for a statement of their nationality that recognises an existing British nationality who is charged well over £1,000, including each time for their children on top, that they are not having their eyes gouged out—that is several thousand pounds for a family that are already British and simply want to have it recognised, as they are allowed to do, and register as British because they are already British.
We know from experience that Governments are perfectly willing to charge very high fees for their services in order to make a profit. Sometimes, this profit has been complained about—for example, in relation to nationality, not least by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and others on the Labour Benches when we have debated matters such as that.
Who will decide how fares are set, what the logic is, and what the railways’ aim is in setting those fares? This is particularly true in the case of railways, because they inevitably have variable fares. It is part of the nature of a railway that they aim for the highest return they can get from particular passengers; they are then willing, because of the nature of the structure of the business, to take marginal fares to cover marginal costs from other passengers who might pay very little for the same journey because they are willing to go at a certain time or book a certain distance in advance, and things of that sort. Those who do not have that advantage may find themselves being gouged because they need to travel at the last minute or because they are captive customers. Do not forget how many captive customers the railways have. There are not necessarily a lot of captive customers on the long-distance railways, but on the commuter network, especially around London, they are, in effect, captive customers. How attractive to the Treasury to turn the railways into a mill for generating money for the Government, if that is what it wants to do.
I am not saying what the fares policy should be. What I am saying is that there should be some independent monitoring of how it is done so that customers—or passengers, as I must remember to call them, remembering what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, the other day—do not find themselves trapped in a system and exploited. No independent monitor is proposed, so we have to trust either the Department for Transport or Great British Railways. I am not sure which it will be in the long term, but in the short term, over the next few years, we have to trust the Department for Transport to set fares in a way that is not designed to maximise revenues from those who cannot resist paying them.
Similarly, if this were in the private sector, through the setting of charges there would be economic regulation—as there is in the water industry, at Heathrow Airport and so forth—of the efficiency of the costs with which the railways conduct themselves. There is no sign of that either in the Bill. Again, we are asked to trust the Department for Transport to ensure efficiency. Considering how many staff the Department for Transport employed to monitor and shadow the staff employed by HS2 Ltd, I do not regard it as a great guarantor of the efficiency of delivery and the control of costs. There ought to be an independent body to do that.
That deals, as far as I am concerned, with Amendments 19 and 20. We then come to Amendment 23, which is rather different but again relates to something the public should be entitled to know about: the great transfer of pension liabilities that will occur as a result of moving pension responsibilities from the train operating companies to the Department for Transport. I want to be clear about this: I completely understand that the staff are largely currently members of the national rail pension fund and that they will remain members of the same pension fund. The contributions and so forth should not in themselves change simply because of the Bill—I perfectly follow that. The costs will not increase as a result, but the purpose of this amendment is to probe where they will lie in balance sheet terms. Will they be a liability fully on the Government’s balance sheet? What consequence will that have for the national debt? This is something that we should know, because the railway pension scheme is, obviously, one of the largest pension schemes in the country. These are not trivial sums; they are very significant sums in terms of pension funds.
Finally, I have Amendment 25 on lease payments. I will not trespass into this very deeply because a similar amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is due to be debated later, and I know that he is much more knowledgeable about these matters than I am, but it is certainly the case that the lease arrangements that exist for the rolling stock are between the train operating companies and the roscos, the rolling stock finance companies. That is where the lease liability exists. Are these to be transferred to the Government? If they are, where will they sit in balance sheet terms? What balance sheet effect would that have? Therefore, there is the question of public debt.
There are two separate strands to these four amendments. One strand relates to balance sheet liabilities and the effect on the Government’s balance sheet of the measures proposed. We are told that this Bill has no cost implications, but is that true? The other relates to how we ensure that the railways are properly and independently monitored to make sure that the fares they charge are not exploitative in circumstances where exploitation is open to them, that their costs are efficient and that they are efficiently delivered. Simply saying that we should trust the Government or the Department for Transport on this is, I suggest, not a satisfactory answer.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, one of the clear attractions of the new system should be increased transparency. There should be no chance that the new authority would be able to hide behind commercial confidentiality. One public body would make life very much easier in terms of national answerability. I do not agree with the mechanism suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, but he is making a valid point. Can the Minister confirm that the passenger standards authority, the passenger body that is going to be the champion of passenger standards, will have the power to investigate fares and report on problems? I gently point out that the Government will no longer be able to blame the train operators. All the blame will now fall on the Government, and passengers will make judgments based on that. It is therefore important that there is a public way for the Government to explain their decisions in relation to train fares and the fare structure overall.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
First, I briefly note my intention to write to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on his points about public investment that I did not manage to address on Monday. I also intend to address later the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, on Monday.
On fares, there is nothing new here. The regulation of fares has always been by government through its contracts with operators, whether public or private, and as far as this Bill is concerned, that will continue.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
I want just to make the point that, as the Minister well knows, the fare system is so complicated that, in practice, people have not been able to understand it adequately in order to make those judgments, and one of the Government’s aims, quite laudably, is to make it simpler. I also point out that the Minister is talking about regulated fares, and I think about half the fares in the market are not regulated.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. Of course, she is absolutely right. The fare system is far too complex, whether it is regulated fares or unregulated fares. One of the primary purposes of bringing train operations into public ownership is to provide the basis of rationalising that fare system without the associated complications of either compensation to private sector operators or, indeed, their saying that some of the information needed to do that is commercially confidential and hence cannot be used to rationalise the system that nobody understands.
On Amendment 19, the department already holds its public train operating companies to account for their financial management through regular review of their management accounts and business plans, as part of its routine contract management activities. That is equally true in relation to privately owned operators whose costs are funded by taxpayers. This scrutiny supports the monitoring of performance against the Secretary of State’s priority to deliver an affordable and sustainable railway. The amendment refers specifically to the auditing of publicly owned train companies’ accounts. It is already the case that those companies must publish their audited accounts annually, which are available in Companies House, so there is already full transparency of their financial performance and management. The proposed amendment would add little value to the existing scrutiny of their financial performance by DOHL ass shareholder, the Department for Transport’s contracting authority, and their own financial auditors, as well as the public via the public audited accounts. That would be an unnecessary additional cost to be borne by the taxpayer which I cannot support.
Regarding Amendment 20, the department already publishes information on its website about payments made to operators under its rail contracts. The department’s published annual report and accounts also detail the department’s expenditure on each contract, as well as any associated year-end balances in respect of payments made in advance or still due to be paid. The Bill does not change that, so there is no need for the taxpayer to pay for an independent body to report on the same data. As I have said previously, the most significant financial impact of the Bill will be that taxpayers will no longer have to foot the bill for tens of millions of pounds in fees paid to private operators each year for the benefit of their shareholders.
Amendment 23 raises the specific question of whether public ownership will expose the Government to pension liabilities that previously sat with private operators. Under the current national rail contracts, DfT funds the legitimate actual costs of the train operating companies. For example, this includes the net operational costs of running services and the cost of leasing rolling stock and pension contributions.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked a specific question on Monday about how the Office for National Statistics might classify publicly owned operators in future. I cannot, of course, answer that question, as future classification decisions are a matter for the independent ONS, not for me or my department. What I can do is to confirm the current classification of the DfT contracted operators, which are all currently classified as public non-financial corporations, including the four DOHL-owned operators. I can also confirm what has happened previously when a service is transferred from private to public ownership. For example, following the transfer of services into DOHL, the ONS recently considered the classification of TransPennine trains, and concluded that they should remain classified as a public non-financial corporation. That fact that these publicly owned operators are classified in this way, along with the privately owned operators, means that their costs already impact the public finances. For example—and this is particularly relevant to Amendment 25—both private and publicly owned operators’ rolling stock lease payments already come out of the department’s resource budget.
Turning to pensions, I cannot agree with those who assert that the franchising model left responsibility for funding pension liabilities entirely with the private sector. Even under the form of franchising that was in place before the pandemic, pension costs were to a substantial extent a long-term liability for the public sector. First, this is because the franchising system meant the bidder simply priced any changes in costs into their bids at reletting, changing the amount of subsidy payable to the operator or the premium receivable by Government. This meant that the burden of any increases in pension costs arising during the term of the contract would, at the point of retendering, be passed to the taxpayer. Secondly, in the more recent franchise competitions the department was required to share the risk of any adverse movements in pension deficit recovery payments, as that had become a risk that the private operators stated they were unable to bear. The Bill therefore does not materially change the Government’s level of exposure to liabilities.
On the noble Lord’s second amendment regarding pension liabilities, in previous transfers to DOHL the transferring staff have remained within their existing section of the Railways Pension Scheme at the point of transfer. Railways Pension Scheme contribution rates will not change when services transfer from private to public sector operation and, as mentioned a moment ago, the cost of employer pension contributions is already borne by the Government under the terms of the existing contracts.
The noble Lord may also find it helpful to know that the department already reports in its annual report and accounts the employer’s share of the net pension scheme surplus or deficit, the employer’s share of pension scheme assets and the employer’s share of pension scheme liabilities.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, transparency will be enhanced by public ownership. In respect of the question about the passenger standards authority, I am afraid it is too early to say what it will and will not do. That is why we are going to consult about its duties in order to make sure that it represents passengers’ interests in the best way possible.
In view of these observations, noting in particular that the costs of public sector operations are already in the public domain, I urge the noble Lord not to press these amendments.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I may have expressed myself very poorly when I presented these amendments, but I think it is fair to say—I do not mean to sound overcritical—that the Minister has misconceived all of them, or at least the three that I spent some time on. So perhaps the House will indulge me if I simply run through once again the points that I was hoping to make but obviously have not done so very successfully.
I shall start with the remark about pensions. I was not asking the question, “Who funds the pension contributions?” That is an interesting question but one to which I already had the answer, so I did not feel that I needed to ask it. I was asking a specific question about where the balance sheet liability lies, which is a very different question. Are the accumulated liabilities, including unfunded liabilities, now going to score effectively as government debt—the whole package, not the payment year by year? It is the difference, if you like, between the balance sheet and the profit and loss. I have asked a question about balance sheet and the Minister has answered a question about profit and loss. I do not expect to get anything further out of him today but, once he has had a chance to reflect on my comments, he may want to write to me because it is a point that needs to be properly explored and indeed, I suspect, will be returned to in relation to leases when my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham takes the matter up later.
On the question of fares being charged, I take the Minister back to the pre-Covid period when the system under which we operate at the moment was functioning in the way that was expected—Covid of course destroyed and damaged the operation of that system. It is true that not all the fares but a large number of them were set by the Government, but the Government in that case had no interest whatsoever in allowing the train operating companies to make super profits or to exploit passengers who were effectively captive. It will be a different matter when the company operating the trains is a subsidiary of the Department for Transport, and any surplus—we must bear in mind that there are railway lines in this country that generate surpluses—will accrue to the department and therefore presumably to HM Treasury. I put it as a counterfactual question to the Minister: does he believe that, if passport issuance or visa issuance were in the hands of the private sector, the Home Office would allow the private sector to set such outrageously high fees and keep the profits? Of course it would not. The only reason why the Home Office can set such very high fees for a captive audience is that it can keep the profits, or at least they score against the expenditure of the Home Office. It has a financial interest in super returns, which is not true if the super returns are to be retained by the private sector, as was the case under the system that we are currently operating under when it was effectively running. So I do not think the Minister has quite grasped my point.
A similar question arises in relation to costs. He has explained—and I do not deny for a moment—that the department publishes information on what it pays to the train operating companies under its contracts. I am not asking: what do they pay? I am asking: is it efficiently spent? Once it becomes part of the department, there is no interest in demonstrating that efficiency has been achieved if political interests overwrite that. There will be no way of knowing with confidence whether efficiency is being achieved unless there is some sort of independent monitor.
It is possible that having reflected on my closing remarks the Minister wants to take these matters up in correspondence, or we can come back to them on Report. But I think his responses—and I blame myself for this—have failed to understand the points I was getting at. I thought they were reasonably clear but obviously I did not do a very good job. With that, and with the leave of the Committee, I would like to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Moylan
“30ZA Impact on open access operatorsThe Secretary of State must, within twelve months of the day on which the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 comes into force, and annually thereafter, lay before Parliament a report on the impact of the awarding of public service contracts to public sector companies under subsection 30(1A) on open access operators in the United Kingdom.”
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, earlier in Committee we had a debate on the value of open access and I am not proposing to repeat that. But now that the noble Lord has drawn my attention to the biblical text Getting Britain Moving—which I understand is now the Government’s plan for the railways in the country, the Williams review having been set to one side—I will draw attention to what that document has to say about open access.
It too is full of praise. It says:
“Open access has a proven track record in driving competition”—
competition in this context, at least when the Labour Party was thinking about it before the election, was seen as an attractive thing—
“and better passenger outcomes in countries whose services are run predominantly by public operators”.
We will have a service
“run predominantly by public operators”,
and the implication here is that:
“Open access has a proven track record in driving competition”
and has “better passenger outcomes”, so it must be a very good thing.
That is not the impression I get from the debate so far. I have the impression that there is a degree of resistance to open access on the part of the Government. Indeed, there is a qualification, even in this document, on that. It has to add “value and capacity” to the rail network. Who has to be persuaded that it adds value? Here the document says something that rather confuses me. It says:
“The ORR will continue to make approval decisions on open access applications”.
My understanding was that Great British Railways, not the Office of Rail and Road, was going to make decisions about who could run passenger rail services on the network. Clarity from the Minister on what the intention is in that regard would be very helpful.
If it is Great British Railways, we run into the problem that allowing this to happen will result in competition. The whole purpose of Great British Railways —like that of Lord Ashfield, to whom I referred earlier —is to eliminate what could be regarded as wasteful competition.
This contradiction that lies at the heart of the proposition causes me considerable concern. At the root of it is a rather technical question concerning what is referred to as abstraction. The assumption on the part of those who run the railways—and this has been true of the Department for Transport as well; it is not something new, but I have every reason to think it will continue—is that if somebody provides a railway service in competition with the Government, it is abstracting fares income that otherwise would accrue to the Government. So there is a cost to the Government or Great British Railways, depending on where we are in this process, in allowing open access to operate.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, there are of course some excellent examples of open access operators and some very successful ones, but I am a bit sceptical. We have a Government who are so opposed to competition on the railways that even very good train operators, such as Greater Anglia, have to be removed as a priority. I am sceptical that the Government would be keen to encourage further open access operators. I think I drew attention to this in our debates on Monday. I feel it is illogical that the Government are putting an end to the train operators that have fully rounded franchises but will tolerate open access. Open access is, in reality, capitalism red in tooth and claw, in comparison with the role of train operating companies managing the franchises they have.
The Government here are set up as a judge and a jury over open access operators and whether more will be allowed. Can the Minister tell us how the judgment will be made on future open access operators, or tell us with total frankness that we have what we have and are unlikely to get any more?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The Bill before the House is specifically about the ownership of services currently operated under contract to the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers or Welsh Ministers. Transferring and retaining these services in public ownership will not affect open access operators or prevent them running as they do now. It is therefore not necessary, as in Amendment 24, to require the Government to lay a report on the impact of public ownership on open access operators, given that this Bill will not affect the rights of those operators to access the network and run services. I emphasise that as part of the wider railways Bill, any proposed changes to access arrangements and the body that decides them will, of course, be subject to consideration and debate by your Lordships’ House before they are implemented. I beg for some patience in this debate.
Turning to Amendment 27, which requires the ORR to produce an independent report on access, I again reassure the House that under the present public ownership Bill, the ORR will continue its role in relation to access decisions. There is therefore no need for this amendment; an independent function is already in place that will decide on access to ensure there is no disadvantage to non-publicly owned operators. We will set out further detail on GBR roles and responsibilities in the coming months. Given those reassurances and that this Bill does not affect the rights of open access operators to run services, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, once again I am being deflected more than answered. I did not suggest that existing open access operators were going to be closed down. In fact, it says quite explicitly in the biblical document Getting Britain Moving that current
“independent operators (such as Hull Trains and Lumo) … will remain”.
I take it that the existing operators are guaranteed to remain, at least as far as the current terms of their arrangements are concerned.
I find it very worrying that the Minister cannot say whether his long-term vision includes allowing the ORR to make these decisions, or taking it, which I understood is very much the logic of his Bill, into Great British Railways. It simply is not enough to say that this can be deferred. Open access operators that might want to bid for new services—not the existing ones, I grant you—are now going to be entering a period with a very chilling effect, because they will not know whether open access is going to be welcomed in the future. They will not know, when the new Bill comes forward in 18 months’ time, whether they are going to be welcomed or turned away. That is a direct consequence of this Bill and not something that can simply be deferred on the grounds that it will all be wrapped up in 18 months or so.
I find it very unfortunate that the Minister cannot give a franker and more candid answer on the Government’s intentions at this stage. I fear that the effects for passengers of the measure in front of us are therefore going to be detrimental, even in the short term. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Young of Cookham
“30D Annual report of public operator liabilities(1) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament, within six months of the day on which the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 is passed, and annually thereafter, a report on the public sector financial liabilities arising from the award of public service contracts to public sector companies under section 30(1A).(2) The report published under subsection (1) must include details of—(a) rolling stock leasing liabilities;(b) pension scheme liabilities;(c) property leasing liabilities;(d) other financial liabilities such as debt.” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report examining the impact of train company liabilities transferring onto the public sector balance sheet under nationalisation.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, this is not a great time to address the rather arcane subject of what is and what is not public expenditure. But it is absolutely vital to the future of the railways, and this group of amendments is one of the most important in the whole Bill.
Any Government have limits on how much they can borrow, and we discovered two years ago what happens if a Government go through those limits. Within those limits, there is fierce competition between spending Ministers for access to borrowing to fund their projects. That process is probably going on as we speak, with competition between social housing, new hospitals and the rest.
Historically, as I said on Second Reading, transport fared very badly under that system when it was nationalised. Final decisions are made in a star chamber, or equivalent, and as I know from experience, transport gets squeezed. One advantage of privatisation was that a big chunk of investment was shifted off the government balance sheet on to the private sector, and as a result there was a huge increase in investment.
Railtrack was clearly in the private sector. When Network Rail was set up by the previous Labour Government, they were very anxious that it should be a private company and so kept off the PSBR. They devised a rather elaborate form of corporate governance. It was a company, but it had no shareholders. Instead, it had 114 members—some licence holders and some members of the public. That kept it off the books for a bit, but the Treasury was so worried about this that it told Labour Ministers at the time to stop criticising Network Rail bonuses in case the ONS should use that as an excuse to reclassify it. Eventually, reality caught up and Network Rail was reclassified, in 2014. It could no longer borrow what it needed to keep the projects going. My concern is that what happened to Network Rail is going to happen to GBR, and the Government are taking a gamble in setting it up.
When Network Rail was reclassified, it had to divest around £1.8 billion by selling property assets, including retail units and spare capacity on the telecoms network. It deferred renewals works and postponed completion dates. It had to renegotiate a whole lot of contracts. As a result, its underlying costs increased. The question is: how will GBR be classified? It will not have the pretence of a private company like Network Rail; this will be a nationalised industry. The Minister is unable to give any assurance that it will not be reclassified or classified as public sector, as he said in response to my noble friend on Amendment 19.
The Minister has argued that this will not make any difference because the TOCs do not spend capital. I recognise that that was the case during the pandemic and after it, but it certainly was not before. I will not repeat the example I gave earlier of Chiltern, which spent a substantial amount of private capital investing in the railway, including building new stations. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, endorsed that comment.
The Minister has also argued that, because the roscos remain in the private sector—this is an amendment the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, may speak to—the investment in new trains they made during the franchise system, by borrowing money privately and purchasing the rolling stock, will continue to flow. He told us during the first day of Committee, on Monday, that, whatever the position regarding the future nationalised industry,
“it must already apply to the four publicly owned train companies”.—[Official Report, 21/10/24; col. 506.]
He has used those four TOCs ordering new fleets as evidence to support his claim that ordering new trains will continue as before.
However, to compare the present accounting arrangements for TOCs that are now in-house, which the current law treats as being prepared to be returned to private sector competition, with the accounting arrangements that would exist for a permanent public monopoly—which GBR is—is to compare apples with oranges. The creation of GBR will create a completely new system, which will change the way in which the ONS categorises expenditure. Those different accounting treatments will make investment in rolling stock harder, as it will be in competition with other demands for public investment.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 44 requires the Secretary of State, within 12 months of enacting the Bill, to publish an annual report on the relationship between the provisions of the Bill and the leasing of rolling stock to public sector companies. My preference would have been to end the private ownership of rolling stock, but the Bill officer suggested that such an amendment was beyond the scope of the Bill—hence this silly weak amendment that I am putting forward.
The background is that, during Second Reading, on 7 October, the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, laid down the principles of the Bill. She said:
“This Bill will ensure that trains are run for the benefit of the British public, not for the profits of shareholders around the world”.
She added that, by ending the current franchise system for passenger railways,
“the taxpayer will save between £110 million and £150 million a year in fees”.—[Official Report, 7/10/24; cols. 1831, 1833.]
The Government have already said that they will not bring rolling stock back into public ownership. However, the new system, operated by a public company, will still need rolling stock, and the Government have not provided a great deal of clarity on that so far. By leaving the rolling stock in private hands, they will be negating their own principle, which was to deny profits to shareholders around the world.
The Bill will not facilitate public ownership of passenger railway services. Instead, it will facilitate what I call “rent a carriage”. That will guarantee massive profits for rolling stock companies—roscos—which do not build or commission trains but make huge profits. Last year, roscos charged £3.1 billion for leasing out rolling stock and had a profit margin of 41.6%. That is a profit of £1.29 billion in one year, extracted from customers and the public purse. The actual amount which the shareholders have extracted from roscos is likely to be much, much bigger—more of that in a moment.
I looked at the accounts of one of the roscos and it is full of financial engineering. The £1.29 billion profit which it declared for a year is far greater than the savings for the passenger services that the Minister said would be £110 million to £150 million a year. There is no justification for the profiteering of roscos, especially as the payments are guaranteed and in future will be guaranteed by the state—at worst, it can simply print the money—so the risk is very low. The return should be no higher than the yield on any government bond, which is technically called a risk-free rate of return.
The actual returns extracted by rosco shareholders are much bigger than the dividends. Let me illustrate that with quotes from the accounts of Porterbrook, which is one of these companies. It is owned by foreign shareholders: Canadian pension fund manager Alberta Investment Management; Luxembourg-based Allianz Capital Partners; EDF Invest, which is owned by the French Government; and Australian infrastructure investor Hastings Funds Management. Porterbrook’s 2023 accounts show a payment in dividends of £150 million. In 2022, it was £285 million. That is £435 million in dividends in just two years, which is far greater than the expected total saving of £110 million to £150 million for the publicly operated passenger service.
The company also shifts profits through intra-group transactions. In 2023, it paid £154 million interest on its debt, which included £153.5 million to other entities in the same group—not to an outsider, but within the same group. In 2022, it made interest payments of £162.4 million, which included £161.2 million to other group entities. In the absence of additional information, it is hard to know whether such payments are genuine. They are probably not.
Of course, profits are also shifted to avoid taxes. Interest payments give the company a tax-deductible expense, even though the transactions are not arm’s length and may lack economic substance. This company paid no corporation tax in the last two years, dividends are paid to foreign investors, and they did not pay any UK tax on those. This really is organised looting, permitted by the last Government, and I urge the Minister to ask HMRC to investigate these companies. Over the last two years, Porterbrook extracted at least £750 million in returns for its shareholders, or an average of £375 million a year. This is far greater than the £110 million to £150 million which the Government hope to save by ending passenger rail franchises.
I have referred to only one company, which is by no means the largest one, but I am sure the Minister gets the substance of my arguments. Billions of pounds can be saved by ending the role of current roscos in the railway industry. Leasing out rolling stock is effectively a licence to print money. I understand from rail company executives that the useful economic life of a carriage is around 30 years or more. The cost of a carriage is normally recovered through rental or leasing arrangements over a period of five to seven years. This being so, the rental charges of 23 to 25 years are pure profit, nothing else. There is absolutely no economic justification for this. The Government can help by stopping the use of current roscos. They can buy direct from manufacturers or set up a Great British Railways leasing company. All of these options are preferable to the current practice.
I hope that, as a first step towards ending profiteering, the Minister will agree to publish the annual report that this amendment calls for. It should provide data about the returns extracted by shareholders in dividends, intragroup transactions, related-party transactions and various profit-shifting techniques. Of course, my preference is to end this roscos circus altogether.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, I offer my support to Amendment 44 and, beyond that, want to support and reiterate what my colleague has just asserted.
I agree that, consequent upon the Bill, the whole of the rail system needs to be kept under review during the period of transition. The privatisation of British Rail imposed costs on rail users and taxpayers. There were costs that resulted from the disorganisation of the system which might have been alleviated by rational central planning. There were also costs that arose from the profit-seeking and rent-seeking of the agents of privatisation.
Some of the main train operating companies have been paying large dividends to their ultimate owners. These include consortia of foreign banks and foreign national rail companies, as we have heard. The companies that own the rolling stock and lease it to the train operating companies have been deriving large and exorbitant rents. These companies are of course called the roscos.
The three largest companies, Porterbrook, Eversholt Rail Group and Angel Trains, own 84% of the UK’s rolling stock. They were established in 1994, at the time of the privatisation. They acquired their rolling stock at vastly undervalued prices and substantial profits were reaped when they were sold on to subsequent owners. These companies have complicated structures of foreign and domestic ownership. Between 2012 and 2018, the three largest roscos passed on a total of £1.2 billion to their parent companies in the form of dividends. We have heard that this sum has recently become even more exorbitant. The Government appear to have concluded that it would be far too expensive to bring these companies into public ownership.
It should be observed that the era of the roscos has coincided with the demise of our railway manufacturing industry, the remnants of which have now fallen into the hands of foreign owners. This demise has been due, in part, to the activities of the rolling stock companies. Instead of providing a steady flow of orders for new rolling stock, they have often opted to refurbish their existing stock. This has made it unprofitable to manufacture trains in the UK. The train manufacturers are now in foreign hands, and they may decide to retreat abroad.
To avert this, there needs to be a consistent stream of rolling stock replacements, subject to a centrally managed plan. The question is how this can be achieved. Others may have opinions to offer on this matter, but I believe that, when Great British Railways is properly established, it should undertake this task. Great British Railways would not be remitting exorbitant dividends to financial consortia, such as the owners of the existing roscos do, and it would not be paying eye-watering salaries to its executive staff. As a consequence of such savings, it would be able to offer attractive rates of return to funds borrowed from capital markets, which might assist investment in new rolling stock.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friends Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Moylan on their Amendment 42, which calls for an annual statement setting out the liabilities to the public purse.
As I said on day one, the whole rail system is duplicated, messy and costly. Given that this Bill is piecemeal and without the other substantive and necessary reforms, it runs the risk of not fixing the problem but making it worse and costing the taxpayer even more. As has already been noted, in the Labour Party’s Getting Britain Moving document, there is a section titled “Failure is increasing costs”, which talks about the savings to be made. The Government’s September press release hails the Secretary of State as having
“fired the starting gun on rail reform”,
and clearly notes that it will be
“saving taxpayers up to an estimated £150 million every year in fees alone in the process”.
So we will bank that—well, the Treasury will, rather than the taxpayer—but the indication from that is that there will be savings of at least £150 million every year. I am not disputing that figure, but what other savings will there be?
I was reading the other day that nationalisation could be costing the taxpayer £1 billion per year by the end of this Parliament. There is an argument that it is only because of privatisation that we can see what the system costs and what is profitable and what is not. There is a legitimate concern that the cost will once again become opaque, with the passing of this Bill and when it starts to take effect. In assessing the virtue of these reforms, not just from an ideological point of view, the country should know what else it is taking on, not least because it will effectively be the owner or shareholder, not just of the railways but now the liabilities of the companies which will be transferred on to the Government’s balance sheet.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the amendment and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Young, indicate the obvious advantages of nationalisation in terms of greater access to information and transparency; it has disadvantages, which the noble Lord set out, but it also has advantages. The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, was compelling: the evidence and information he gave us illustrated much better than I have heard before the issues that have been referred to—I referred to them on Second Reading and on Monday—regarding the imbalance between the attitude of the Government towards the speed of taking over the train operators and the fact that they are prepared to leave well alone the roscos, which can quite clearly be seen to be exploiting their situation and therefore getting excess profits as a result. I will be very interested to listen to the Minister’s explanation of why that is happening.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, at this hour I would like to expand considerably on my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham’s remarks on his amendment, but I find there is nothing I can add, given how well expressed his argument was technically. I shall say only that I hope the Minister, by contrast to his response to the previous group, will recognise the serious balance sheet issues that arise in relation to lease obligations. I understand that, while the department currently recognises its obligations to the end of the current contracts, most of which are a matter of months or very few years away, when the responsibility transfers to the Government, they will be responsible for the lease payments for the whole of the life of the remaining contracts for the lease of the trains and these will therefore represent a balance sheet liability, not simply an ongoing cost, that may well need to be recognised. I am not, as I say, as proficient in these matters as my noble friend, but I hope very much that the Minister treats that seriously and gives us a proper and robust answer about how this is to be treated.
I shall save the bulk of my remarks for the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, with which, it may surprise noble Lords, I have a great deal more sympathy than they might expect, certainly as far as his analysis is concerned, though not necessarily with his solution of total nationalisation and so forth.
The fact is that there is a very large amount of capital in the world, and a capital is seeking a return. However, this capital is not buccaneering 19th-century capital of the sort that built the railways in the first place; this is not capital that is looking for investments at risk; and this is not capital that sees that it might win a large prize on one investment in its portfolio but is willing to tolerate the total loss of another investment in its portfolio. This is capital that is looking for risk-free returns—or returns that are close to being risk free—but at a rate of return that is considerably higher than it would achieve if it invested in government bonds.
Such capital is to be found throughout our economy—this is a criticism not of the current Government but of the previous Government and of the Labour Government as managed by Gordon Brown—because it is the basis on which funding is now provided to most of our utilities. That is why they all belong to large, foreign—although they are not necessarily foreign, and I do not object to the fact that they are foreign, so I will drop that word—investors who are looking for super returns and are achieving them because the Government are so accommodating towards them.
The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, asked why the Government do not do something about this and why they do not nationalise the roscos as well. That would be a true nationalisation. As I said at Second Reading, this Bill is not really a nationalisation of the railways; as I said in Committee on Monday, it is more like dismissing your chauffeur at the end of his contract. That is all that is really happening. If you are nationalising something, you normally have to pay for it and you normally acquire assets. That is not what is happening here, because the assets are all left in the private sector. The Bill’s headline claim of nationalising the railways—after all, that is the main purpose of this Bill: to get a headline out there quickly—is largely bogus. The main reason that the Government are not acquiring the roscos is that they cannot afford to do so.
There is a second reason that the Government are not acquiring the roscos or going even further—as I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, would—by seizing their super profits and acquiring them at a price that would reflect a reasonable rate of return closer to the risk-free rate of return for the rest of the period of their leases. That reason is that this Government, rather like the previous one, are wholly dependent on that source of funding for nearly every infrastructure project that they want to carry out, be it railways, environmental stuff, net zero and so forth.
In fact, there was a great conclave of these investors only a week or so ago, at which the Government told them what wonderful prospects they would have with their super, close-to-risk-free returns if only they would invest in Britain. It is not that we will get less of this sort of finance that is so objectionable to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, under this Government; we will get a great deal more of it. That is the simple explanation, whatever the Government say, as to why they will not do what the noble Lord would like them to do, and which anybody who values true competitive capitalism would also consider to be moving towards terminating an outrage.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I do not want to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, because I would be here all night picking holes in every point he made in reference to me.
Perhaps I may help the Minister out. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, talked about the liabilities of Network Rail. The composition of government debt published by the ONS includes the liabilities of Network Rail, but the assets acquired with that debt are excluded. That means that the government debt is overstated. In a balance sheet, you will have assets and liabilities. In the ONS approach, only Network Rail’s liabilities are included in the debt. I understand that, for quite a long while, the Treasury has been looking at reconfiguring the composition of public debt, and I very much hope that, soon, it will do the proper thing by either taking off the debt altogether from the ONS numbers or including Network Rail’s assets as well.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to this discussion. First, I should say that the objective of this limited Bill before the Committee remains to unify track and train, to provide better services to passengers, to reduce the cost of the railway and to increase the railway’s income. The phrase I would use to start with is, “We are where we are”.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, referred to Network Rail. I am very familiar with its arrangements post being put back on the Government’s balance sheet. All I can say to the noble Lord is that managing it is and has been a difficult job. However, it has still managed to make significant investment in the railway infrastructure of Great Britain. In some ways, its exposure to being in the public sector did it a great deal of good. I was paid significantly less to chair it than my predecessor was; its chief executive is paid significantly less than any of his predecessors and to my mind, he does a very good job. The organisation is a good deal more frugal than it used to be, yet it still does some very good things in operating the railway infrastructure.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, knows that Chiltern was always an outlier. There was no other plausible large-scale investment in railway infrastructure by a train operating company; certainly, there has been no recent interest in it. If you looked at the owners of the train operating companies now, you would see that their balance sheets simply would not support it.
Of course, the noble Lord knows that I cannot predict what the Office for National Statistics will or will not say. Although the suggestion is that, after six years, LNER was still capable of being put back in the private sector, there was absolutely no evidence that it or Northern, which was in public ownership for four years, was being prepared at all. There was also no move in the previous Government’s department to do so. Nevertheless, there was no change in the status of the public accounts of those companies. The noble Lord may speculate that there might be in future, with these arrangements, but I could equally assert that experience suggests that there will not be.
My noble friend Lord Sikka made a further point about the treatment of the assets and liabilities of Network Rail. I will write to both him and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, about that.
On the other hand, I recognise completely the passion with which my noble friends Lord Sikka and Lord Hanworth spoke about the rolling stock companies. Again, we are where we are. I heard my noble friends’ arguments with interest, but the Government will not buy back the rolling stock companies. Great British Railways will enable a longer-term view of the rolling stock market and it will reduce the margins it needs to make. Everybody is right to say that rolling stock lasts for 30 to 35 years, but a railway that is more accurately able to predict how long that rolling stock should last and where it should be used will reduce the uncertainty of relatively short-term leases. It will also significantly reduce the cost of those leases and will actually enhance competition in the market. We will see how that market evolves over time.
Having said all that, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said that the Treasury would like to redefine what is public expenditure and what is not. I am sure that is the case—it would like to get some liabilities off the balance sheet. The whole point of having an independent ONS is so that the Treasury, led by politicians, cannot adjust the figures and the liabilities to suit its convenience.
What has not come out in this debate is that there is competition between the roscos to supply the wants of the train operating companies. Originally, there were three, now there are four, and there have been two recent entrants. The competition between them has driven down the costs. The Government, who on Monday spent time trying to persuade foreign investors to invest in infrastructure, will have been a little disappointed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, being less than complimentary about the investments that they have made in some important parts of the infrastructure.
Lord Sikka
“30D Review of relationship between provisions of section 30(1A) and the leasing of rolling stockThe Secretary of State must, within twelve months of the day on which the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 comes into force, lay before Parliament a report on the relationship between public sector contracts awarded under section 30(1A) and the leasing of rolling stock to public sector companies.” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on the relationship between the provisions of the Bill and the leasing of rolling stock to public sector companies.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
I am very grateful to the Minister and all the other noble Lords who have participated in tonight’s debate. Let me make it clear that my proposal would not stymie competition among manufacturers. It seeks to eliminate the financial intermediaries that are making 41.6% profit on top of whatever the manufacturers are paid. These roscos do not make trains and they do not test them; they are there simply to make extra profits. Competition among manufacturers will remain.
The Minister has said that the Government do not wish to buy back rolling stock companies. I am not asking the Government to buy back rolling stock companies. I am suggesting setting up a Great British Railways leasing company, so that these intermediaries can be eliminated. That would wipe them out, and my estimate is that it would save probably around £2 billion a year. I refer only to one company, which had taken out £750 million over a two-year period. It would be beneficial to set up a Great British Railways leasing company. However, I hear the Minister’s arguments and will reflect upon them. For the time being, I will not move the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
It is now 10.18 pm. I am unable to get agreement from the usual channels to finish the last amendment, which is a bit disappointing. If I cannot get agreement then we will have to adjourn. In all my years as Opposition Chief Whip, I have never been in a situation where one amendment cannot be finished off.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I understand that there has been agreement with the usual channels. I do not think that the matter is in my hands.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
In this situation, the House will resume. It is very disappointing. Never in my time as Opposition Chief Whip would I have acted like that.