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Oral Answers to Questions
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Jade Botterill (Ossett and Denby Dale) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
Small businesses are critical to our economy and to the future of all our communities. We will bring forward our small business strategy later this year to improve the environment for small businesses to grow. As part of that work, we are consulting widely with small businesses and other stakeholders on the design of the business growth service, which we will launch later this year.
Jade Botterill
Before Christmas, I was pleased to meet some of the many microbusinesses operating in Osset and Denby Dale. They told me that they previously felt that they had fallen through the cracks of Government policy and economic ambition. How will the Minister’s business growth service assist those microbusinesses, as well as broader measures that the Government are taking to help smaller organisations to grow?
Gareth Thomas
I commend my hon. Friend on her support for the microbusinesses in her constituency. We want to get behind all those who are willing to take the risk to set up their own business. They help to make our communities more vibrant, they create jobs, and they generate the tax revenues that make our country stronger. The business growth service will be designed to get businesses quicker access to the support they need from the Government, such as applying for a start-up loan, access to training and management support and help with exports.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his positive response to that question. In Strangford, small businesses are the backbone of the community, and many people in those businesses work from home. The business growth policy may be specific to England, but what discussions has the Minister had with the Department for Business and Trade in Northern Ireland to ensure that we benefit?
Gareth Thomas
The hon. Gentleman has always been a great champion of small businesses in his constituency and in Northern Ireland more generally. We want the business growth service to complement the support that the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh and Scottish Governments already give their businesses, to improve the quality of advice and support available to all businesses in all parts of the UK.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The Government are pursuing the reforms needed to deliver sustained long-term growth. Developed and delivered in partnership with business, we have taken significant steps, including launching a consultation on the modern industrial strategy, establishing the national wealth fund, transforming our planning rules, committing to a 10-year infrastructure strategy and introducing the Employment Rights Bill to boost productivity. We have also added extra protections for small businesses by increasing the employment allowance and freezing the small business rate multiplier.
Jerome Mayhew
I think the Minister may have misunderstood my question; I asked how he would reduce employment costs. The president of the Confederation of British Industry recently said that, because of things like the Employment Rights Bill, employers will be laying people off and will be less likely to employ, and that is before the national insurance tax on employment imposed by this Government. Does the Minister accept responsibility for the increase in unemployment that we are already seeing?
Justin Madders
I think it is something of a stretch to say that a Bill that is not even law yet, most of the provisions of which will not come into force until next year, is driving unemployment already. I quote back to him what the head of the CBI said yesterday about our growth plan. He said:
“This positive leadership and a…vision to kickstart the economy and boost productivity is welcome.”
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
In the week of Labour’s latest reset, how does the Minister reconcile imposing an additional £5 billion of costs on business—on the Government’s own figures—with growing the economy? What was it about the breakfast with the Prime Minister that saw bosses laying off more workers 24 hours later?
Justin Madders
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his question. We believe that a 0.4% increase in the overall pay bill, which is what we have estimated the Employment Rights Bill will mean for businesses, is actually a fantastic return for greater security at work, greater pay, better staff retention, increased productivity, making jobs more secure and family friendly, banning exploitative zero-hour contracts, supporting women in work in every stage of life, providing a genuine living wage, turning the page on industrial relations, and bringing an end to fire and rehire. This is a pro-business, pro-growth, pro-worker agenda from the Government, and we are determined to deliver it.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The Government understand the effects that fireworks can have on animals and vulnerable individuals. Consumer fireworks have a 120 dB noise limit, but numerous low-noise options are available on the market at around 90 dB or below. This year’s fireworks public information campaign has highlighted low-noise fireworks and the importance of considerate use. Additionally, I am meeting businesses, consumer groups and charities at the conclusion of the fireworks season in the next coming week or two to discuss their concerns.
Sarah Owen
Antisocial fireworks keep our constituents awake, cause alarm for pets, and seriously affect people with post-traumatic stress disorder or special educational needs. I know the Minister heard extensively from colleagues, campaigners and charities on this during the Westminster Hall debate on my Bill. Will he meet me to discuss the implementation of the common-sense measures presented in my Fireworks Bill, including lowering the noise limit on fireworks sold to the public, closing the licensing loophole and reviewing social media and online sales?
Justin Madders
It is always a pleasure to meet my hon. Friend and I am happy to do so. Indeed, we will see whether we can get her to come along to some of the other meetings that we are holding with interested groups, some of which she has mentioned.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
May I wish a belated happy Chinese new year to all those who were celebrating yesterday? One beauty of our great country is its diversity, but with that comes causes for celebration throughout the year. My own community in South West Hertfordshire celebrates Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Chinese new year and other events, which often entails the use of fireworks. There is an expectation of fireworks and the noise associated with them at the main events of Christmas and new year, so pet owners inevitably take safeguarding measures then, but given the likelihood of fireworks throughout the year, may I urge the Minister to get on to this Bill quickly, ensuring that we do not stifle the celebrations, but that we do protect our animals and those vulnerable children who may be affected by noise?
Justin Madders
I thank the hon. Member for his question. He is right to recognise that fireworks are used at a number of events throughout the year, but it would be wrong to characterise that as people having to expect that there will be noise. There is now a sufficient number of lower-decibel products on the market for everyone to act more responsibly, and we will be exploring that in our meetings over the coming weeks.
Alan Strickland (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)
Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
This Department and, indeed, Departments across Government are working extensively on developing our industrial strategy, which the Conservative party opposes, but which business and industry welcome. Last month, we launched the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, comprising a very impressive group of the UK’s top business leaders, policy experts and trade union leaders. My right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade attended the council’s inaugural meeting on 17 December. In addition, we are currently analysing more than 3,000 responses to the Industrial Strategy Green Paper from businesses, academics, think-tanks and unions, and their insights and feedback are incredibly valuable as we develop the strategy.
Alan Strickland
I strongly welcome the inclusion of defence in the draft industrial strategy and was pleased yesterday to host a roundtable in Sedgefield with the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry. Many of the innovative small and medium-sized enterprises that we talked to spoke of the struggles that they have with red tape, bureaucracy and contracting with Departments across Whitehall. How will Ministers grab the opportunity of the industrial strategy to remove this red tape, which too often can thwart SME growth?
Sarah Jones
I am really pleased my hon. Friend held that roundtable. It is quite a turning point to have an industrial strategy with defence as one of the sectors; building new relationships across Departments with colleagues who work in defence is a really powerful and important thing to do. He speaks to a wider problem face by a lot of industry when it comes to dealing with Government agencies and Departments. We are working hard to make these things easier, because growth is our priority and we have to break down those barriers.
Tracy Gilbert
It is essential that the Government’s industrial strategy creates manufacturing jobs across the country, including in my constituency. The RenewableUK offshore wind industrial growth plan shows the UK can be a global technology leader in advanced turbine tech, foundations, electrical systems and cables. Will my hon. Friend commit to using our industrial strategy to ensure there is growth in these areas to put British manufacturing at the heart of the clean energy transition?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for her question, for her defence of her constituency and for her ambitions, which we share. I believe the report she refers to came out before this Labour Government came to power. With our new policies and the new drive and ambition from our Secretaries of State for Business and Trade and for Energy Security and Net Zero, we are powering forward with our renewable agenda, and we will make sure that all of our growth driving sectors speak to my hon. Friend’s area and everyone’s area of the country and drive growth across the board.
Sarah Coombes
Manufacturers in my constituency are really excited about the upcoming industrial strategy and all the growth that will bring. However, steel and aluminium businesses in particular are concerned about the upcoming carbon border adjustment mechanism, the gap with the EU, and whether the whole system will be ready for implementation. If we do not get it right, the CBAM will have a big impact on our ability to trade and on growth, so can the Minister assure me she is going to be working with the Treasury to ensure we get this right and that it supports manufacturers in the west midlands?
Sarah Jones
I know my hon. Friend will hold this Government to account on what we are doing and how we are going, and she will push, and already has done, to make sure we are doing everything we can for the industries in her area. The CBAM will be introduced in 2027, and she speaks to concerns that I have heard in conversations around steel in particular, which is very important to this country. That is why we are developing a steel strategy, which will set a future direction of travel for steel, but we are working with the EU and with industry here to make sure the CBAM works and does what it is supposed to do.
Paul Waugh
Andy Burnham’s Atom Valley mayoral development zone is creating a world-class supercluster for advanced manufacturing right across 70 million square feet in Rochdale, Oldham, Bury and Middleton. Rochdale’s Kingsway business park will be home to the SMMC—the sustainable materials and manufacturing centre—a world-class cutting-edge research centre. Will the Minister join me in supporting the SMMC, and perhaps arrange a visit either by herself or the Secretary of State to see what is happening with the jobs of the future in Rochdale?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing to the House the work that is going on for the Atom Valley development zone, which is incredibly important and exactly what we want to see. The Mayor of Greater Manchester is to be congratulated for his leadership in this space as well. I am very interested in the work my hon. Friend refers to, not least because of the critical minerals strategy we are developing and the graphene work that I know will be under way in the manufacturing centre hub, so I very much look forward to talking further to him about what is happening and how we can help.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Why is it that the Government’s energy policy is driving uncompetitive energy costs in absolutely the wrong direction? Sir Jim Ratcliffe has pointed out that the principal threat to any strategy is actually the uncompetitive costs for those enterprises that will have to populate it.
Sarah Jones
This Government inherited very high energy costs from the previous Government, who had taken no action to make our country more energy secure. We are powering through to have clean, green, home-grown energy that will bring costs down and make sure we are secure as a country and not reliant on the whims of global leaders and the price of oil and gas. We will bring those costs down and we will support our industry, which I am afraid the previous Government failed to do.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
Over the past week, the UK Government have committed to support a runway in London, a football stadium in Manchester and a science corridor for Oxford and Cambridge, yet for the past year, Conservative and Labour Governments have failed to act to secure the long-term future of Grangemouth, after INEOS announced the closure of the oil refinery. Despite general election promises to step in and save the plant, why are the Labour Government willing to jeopardise jobs at Grangemouth, the country’s energy security, which the Minister has just spoken passionately about the need to secure, and the wider industrial strategy through this inaction?
Sarah Jones
The hon. Member will be pleased to hear that we have re- established a working group with the Scottish First Minister and the Welsh and Northern Irish leaderships to make sure we are working collectively, because we do not want to take a party political approach to the growth of all our nations. We are collaborating well with the Scottish Government on Grangemouth, where we are working at pace and putting in investment and support. We are working to transition people from North sea oil and gas into the new energies of the future. There is the passport that we published, and we have set up Great British Energy, which will be headquartered in Aberdeen. A lot of work is going on, and we need the Scottish Government to support us in that work. We will work in partnership, because that is what will create good jobs.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
The chemical industry is an important employer in my constituency, with the HEX Group and SI Group employing many people. As mentioned, Sir Jim Ratcliffe is already highlighting the extinction of the British chemical industry. My chemical manufacturers need to ensure that they are buying energy at the same price as manufacturers in Germany, the Netherlands and France. When will they be able to do that?
Sarah Jones
The chemical industry has been suffering for many years because of the previous Government’s economic policies, crashing the economy under Liz Truss and failing to deal with energy prices over multiple years. I have met the chemical industry. It is an important part of our economy, and we need to do what we can to protect it. I am having conversations, and we are building our energy policies. We are building our industrial strategy.
Sarah Jones
Word salad? Gosh. That abuse from the Opposition Front Bench has cut me to the core. The industrial strategy has set out eight sectors that will turbocharge the economy. Across all those sectors lie our foundational sectors, of which the chemical industry is one. We will support that industry in a way that his Government failed to do.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
I will try to avoid a word salad. We have heard from various different industrial sectors how important it is to have stable and predictable energy costs. This month has seen little sun and only intermittent wind, so we have been heavily dependent on imported oil and gas. Are Ministers in the Department for Business and Trade challenging the Energy Secretary over his policies?
Sarah Jones
I am disappointed by the hon. Lady’s approach to this matter, and I am disappointed by the Conservative party’s overall abandonment of previously strongly held views about the need to balance climate change with our economy. It is a fact that we are moving faster towards renewable energy. Last year, 50% of our energy came from renewables for the first time. We are growing them at pace because they are cheaper. Onshore wind is the cheapest form of energy we have, solar is very cheap and floating offshore wind brings us huge opportunities. Renewables will bring our costs down and make sure we are energy secure, and they go hand in glove with growth, as the Chancellor set out in her speech yesterday.
Dame Harriett Baldwin
The Minister’s Government have changed policy to not issue any new licences for domestic oil and gas, so we will become more dependent on imports at times when solar and wind are not working, unless we can increase nuclear generation. It is Nuclear Week in Parliament, so what pressure is she putting on the Energy Secretary to make new nuclear an important part of our industrial strategy?
Sarah Jones
I sit jointly in the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, so the hon. Lady can be reassured that I talk to my colleagues and am working with them. Indeed, I am leading on hydrogen and carbon capture, which is an important part of the mix. We are clear that nuclear is an important part of our future and that the strongest approach to deliver energy security and bring prices down is to have all the opportunities available to us and to build at pace. That is why we are trebling our solar, doubling our wind and supporting big nuclear as well as small modular reactors. She can be reassured that we are putting a strategy in place, which the previous Government failed to do.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
I delighted to tell my hon. Friend that we are working hard on our steel strategy. Immediately after we have finished these questions, I will be going to Sheffield to talk to the industry about future demand. Steel is an important industry for our future, to which we have made a £2.5 billion commitment. We will ensure that we turn around the decline we saw under the previous Government and deliver a steel industry fit for the future.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The steel industry is an important part of Wolverhampton North East’s heritage and must remain a part of our future. Will my hon. Friend outline how the £2.5 billion UK steel strategy and the new steel council will boost competitiveness and secure jobs at Tata’s Steelpark in Wednesfield, which is the UK’s largest processing and distribution centre?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for standing up for her community and protecting her industry. I would be happy to have a conversation with her about the changes she thinks we need to make.
Steel output in the UK fell by 49% in 2021, by 30% in 2022 and by 11% in 2023—what an awful thing to have happened to our industry. We need to turn that around. We do not underestimate how hard that will be, but we are putting in place the money, the policies and the Government dedication to ensure that we support a thriving steel industry.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
We are continuing to work with colleagues across Government to develop a programme that will revitalise the nation’s high streets and support businesses. We will publish a small business strategy later this year, and high streets will be a key pillar of that. We have already committed to continuing funding for business growth programmes such as the growth hub network and announced plans for a new business growth service.
Bradley Thomas
Yesterday, Bromsgrove received the devastating news that it is about to lose both its Lloyds and Halifax bank branches in the town centre. Those banks are a lifeline to many small businesses, particularly those run by independent small entrepreneurs, as well as many residents who use their banking facilities on probably a weekly or daily basis. Does the Minister agree that banking hubs can be part of an ongoing solution to retain banking services in our towns? Will he support my campaign for a banking hub in Bromsgrove? Will he meet me to make that a reality?
Gareth Thomas
I recognise that there will be a lot of concern in the hon. Member’s constituency following that news yesterday. I agree that banking hubs can make a significant difference, which is why we have been quick to roll out more than 100 of them. Plans for another 76 have already been developed and we are committed to rolling out 350 in total. In the spirit of one Thomas trying to help another Thomas, I am happy to meet him.
Sarah Bool
Our small businesses are the lifeblood of our high street and often give young students their first opportunity for a job on a Saturday or in the holidays. However, one of my local small business owners says that she can no longer afford such roles because of the increase in employer national insurance contributions and changes to business rates, among other things. What will the Government do to support our young people into jobs when small businesses are left in that awful position?
Gareth Thomas
The hon. Lady might want to check again with the business she refers to, because, in the most recent Budget, the employment allowance was raised to some £10,500, which will help every small employer’s national insurance bill every year, and should ensure that more than 1 million firms benefit. That is a very practical measure; more broadly, on the point about national insurance contributions, she will know that Labour inherited a very difficult financial situation because of mistakes made by the Conservatives, and difficult decisions have had to be taken.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
Small local businesses in Grangemouth such as pubs, restaurants, cafes, hairdressers and garages all rely on the custom that they receive from the workers of the Grangemouth refinery, but the Government have been very passive in allowing the refinery to close, thus impoverishing the local community. What message do the Government have, first for the refinery workers who face redundancy, and secondly for the small local businesses that rely on their custom?
Gareth Thomas
In her speech yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out a series of measures that the Government want to take to boost growth across the country and benefit every part of the UK, from investing in modern road and rail systems to expanding airport capacity, rebalancing the planning system and driving investment in cheaper renewable energy, and by creating a national wealth fund that can back the new technologies of the future. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the specific concerns he has mentioned, if he thinks that would be useful.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
Falkirk High Street is the beating heart of our district, with recent additions including Barracuda chippy, El Toro Gaucho steakhouse, Greek Theory restaurant and Rock Bottom beer hall. Many Falkirk town centre businesses still raise with me the hardship they have faced because of cost rises and utility, rent and parking increases over a number of years, as well as rental value threshold changes by the Scottish Government, which have contributed to decreased footfall and failing business over a number of years. While I welcome the Government’s commitment to shifting the burden away from the high street, will the Minister outline what further steps he is taking to support my high street, and what engagement he has had with the Scottish Government to support shifting the rate burden away from Falkirk High Street taxpayers?
Gareth Thomas
I referred to the establishment of the business growth service in answer to an earlier question. We are working with the Scottish Government to begin to think through how that service can support businesses in Scotland and complement the support already provided by the Scottish Government. We are clear on the need to reform business rates to support retail, hospitality and leisure businesses on the high street. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend if he thinks there are further initiatives we can take to help small businesses in Falkirk.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
R Young Art Gallery is the last art gallery in Wokingham town centre and a proud feature of our high street. However, political inactivity on business rates reform means that it is on the precipice of closing. I was shocked to learn that it is the impending cuts to business rate relief, with no measures in the short term to provide financial support, that have led the owner to fear for the survival of his business. High streets across the country continue to struggle. What is the Minister doing to ensure that small, independent businesses such as R Young Art Gallery are supported?
Gareth Thomas
One reason why the Conservatives lost the confidence of the British business community was that despite repeated promises to reform business rates, they took no steps to do so. We announced plans in the Budget, back in October, to reform business rates and introduce permanently lower rates for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. The Conservatives were going to end business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure; we have chosen to extend it. We also announced in the Budget that we were looking at what further steps we could take on business rates reform.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
Through increased inward investment, we can innovate, create jobs and deliver on our growth mission to become the fastest-growing nation in the G7. We have wasted no time: on top of the £63 billion raised at our international investment summit, our new national wealth fund has already leveraged £1.6 billion of private sector investment, and we have outlined ambitious plans for planning reform alongside a modern industrial strategy to secure record levels of investment.
Mohammad Yasin
I am honoured to have been appointed as the UK trade envoy to Pakistan. Given the growing financial pressure on UK universities, with several leading institutions announcing job cuts amid the deepening funding crisis, what steps is the Department taking to foster stronger educational partnerships with Pakistan to help alleviate financial pressures in the sector in the UK, while supporting Pakistan’s educational goals?
Sarah Jones
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as the trade envoy to Pakistan. I can think of no one better, and I know he will make a big difference in that role. The Government took the decision to reappoint Professor Sir Steve Smith as our international education champion to ensure that the UK-Pakistan education partnership’s work continues as part of the international education strategy, which is now jointly led by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Education and the Department for Business and Trade. Led by Sir Steve, the UK has worked closely with the Pakistan Higher Education Commission on revising Pakistan’s new transnational education policy. That work will continue, and I am sure my hon. Friend will bring great help to it.
Steve Race
The south-west is home to an incredibly important economy based on defence, food security, space, maritime, and, in Exeter, life sciences and climate tech and research. We are also home to huge green energy potential, utilising floating offshore wind. However, we currently need investment in our port facilities so that the new green jobs will be based in the south-west, not in France or elsewhere. Will the Minister meet me, along with colleagues and the sector, to discuss to the future of green energy generation in the south-west?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I saw the talent and potential for myself when I visited Exeter in September for Great South West’s annual conference. I am visiting the region again in a few weeks, because there is huge potential, huge excitement and huge opportunities to grow. As he knows, there is £1.8 billion from the national wealth fund to invest in our ports. I am very happy to meet him and others to see what potential we can discuss.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
I declare an interest: a family member has shares in a medical company.
In the United States, President Trump created chaos by freezing funding for the National Institutes of Health, and his nominee for US Health Secretary is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. The United Kingdom has the perfect opportunity to seize this moment and make ourselves a beacon for global research investment. Already, Wokingham has many pharmaceutical businesses, such as Becton Dickinson and Hollister. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure we attract global life sciences sectors to the UK?
Sarah Jones
I was in Davos last week meeting representatives from the life sciences industry and talking about the huge potential for growth that we have in the UK. One of the eight sectors we have identified as part of the industrial strategy, is life sciences, where we have huge talent and huge skills. We need to build on that and be really ambitious in what we can deliver. Through the industrial strategy and the work with the brilliant industries we have in this country, we can do just that.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
As the Chancellor of the Exchequer said only yesterday, we are driving forward planning reforms, boosting capital investment by over £100 billion over the next five years, and creating the national wealth fund. We are launching the business growth service and will soon publish our modern industrial strategy, which will be unreservedly pro-business. Business leaders, not surprisingly, have backed those measures.
Sir John Whittingdale
But the Minister will be aware that in the last few weeks the CBI, the Institute of Directors and the London chamber of commerce have all said that business confidence is plummeting. Given the tsunami of national insurance contribution increases, business rates increases and employment cost rises, is it not hardly surprising that confidence is being destroyed? Are the Government, rather than promoting growth, not actually destroying it?
Gareth Thomas
I think the right hon. Gentleman needs to check his sources for comments from business leaders. Only yesterday the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses were making very positive comments about our plans for growth, and last week, interestingly, PwC published its annual survey of global CEOs to reveal that Britain was the second most attractive country in the world in which to invest. That is something that I do not think the party opposite ever achieved.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
Business confidence increases when businesses know that they have the skilled workforce they need in order to grow. We have just had Nuclear Week in Parliament, and it was a pleasure to host Rolls-Royce and its apprentices. Its nuclear skills academy is providing a pipeline of talent, and the same is needed across other industries—from technical skills to creative skills, and from multinationals to small businesses. What cross-departmental discussions have Ministers had about helping businesses of all sizes to provide skills opportunities for our future workforce?
Gareth Thomas
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her support for Rolls-Royce, which is one of our great British companies leading the way in many export markets across the world. Only yesterday I was discussing with the Minister for Skills our plans to reform the growth and skills levy to make it easier for businesses such as Rolls-Royce to recruit apprentices and find the talent that they need to continue to be successful.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I begin by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
When consumer confidence is low, business confidence is low, and nowhere is that more visible than in our automotive sector, with UK car production slumping to its lowest level since 1954. Autocar magazine warned today that the zero emission vehicle mandate
“is currently the industry’s biggest headache, as…consumer demand is not there to meet the stringent regulations which are increasing each year.”
When policy fails, it is sensible to admit it and change course. Will the Minister accept that the ZEV mandate flies in the face of what consumers actually want, and that a radically different path is required to boost business confidence in our automotive sector?
Gareth Thomas
No, I do not accept that, and I would gently remind the hon. Gentleman that the policy to which he has referred was introduced by his party. I recognise that there are many aspects of the Conservative party’s record about which he and his colleagues are probably embarrassed. The Liz Truss Budget—which the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), helped to write—did huge damage to our country and to consumer confidence. The measures that the Chancellor announced yesterday, for example, will drive growth forward, and that is one of the reasons why businesses backed them so strongly yesterday.
Greg Smith
It normally takes longer than six months for a Government to drift that far from reality. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has predicted that just 775,000 cars will roll off production lines in 2025, compared to 1.3 million in 2019. Today’s edition of The Telegraph reports:
“The slump has been accelerated by a slowdown in demand across Europe, particularly by drivers shunning new electric vehicles”.
Why does the Minister persist in a policy to undermine our automotive businesses by forcing them to make a product that people just do not want to buy? Is it not time to get the state out of the way, let our innovators innovate, and boost automotive businesses’ confidence by letting them deliver to actual consumer demand?
Gareth Thomas
The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten the extra investment that Nissan has announced, and the extra investment that has been announced by a number of other car manufacturers. He and his colleagues were very clear in opposing the measures that we took in the Budget, including measures that backed investment in the automotive sector, and they set out no plans to pay for that investment. I gently encourage him to reflect a little further on the mistakes that his party made in government, which have caused some of the problems that we are having to sort out now.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
The Post Office has the freedom to operate the branch network within the parameters set by the Government. We protect the network by setting minimum access criteria so that, in urban and rural areas, everyone has easy access to their nearest post office. Those criteria ensure that however the network changes, services remain within local reach of all citizens.
Rebecca Smith
The community of Plymstock in my constituency saw its main post office close in September 2021, when Morrisons closed more than 80 of its newsagents across the country; the post offices were essentially collateral damage. Despite the best efforts of the community, my predecessor and councillors—including me, at the time—since the Post Office has downgraded the franchise on offer from main branch to post office local, it has been impossible to secure an operator due to the financial unviability of the model. Yesterday, the final local branch announced that it will close later in the year. What is the Minister doing to ensure that sustainable joint post office and banking services replace closing branches in constituencies like mine?
Gareth Thomas
We have supported the Post Office in taking measures to increase sub-postmaster pay, to make it a more attractive profession to come into, in order to deal with precisely the issues that the hon. Member set out. She will understand that I do not have specific knowledge of the issues around the post office in her constituency, but I am always happy to challenge the Post Office on constituency issues, so if she would like to write or speak to me about this afterwards, I would be happy to look at the issue in more detail.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
As the Chancellor announced yesterday, the Secretary of State will travel to Delhi in February to relaunch trade talks with India. Work is under way across Government to prepare for those negotiations as we seek a deal that drives economic growth. An agreement with India, projected to be the fourth-largest global importer by 2035, could provide further opportunities for businesses across the UK and further unlock growth.
Bob Blackman
I thank my constituency neighbour for that update. The previous Government had more than 15 rounds of trade talks with India before the general election, in both India and the UK. Will the Government ensure that we in the UK gain access to the services market in India, which has previously been denied to UK firms? That is the key issue in our negotiations.
Gareth Thomas
If I remember rightly, the hon. Member and I were probably the two most enthusiastic Members of this House for a trade deal with India—me slightly more than him, I think. We are determined to do everything we can to secure a trade deal with India. He will forgive me, I am sure, if I do not give a running commentary on our priorities for those trade talks with India, but they represent a significant prize for the UK if we can reach an agreement. The Secretary of State and the Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security are determined to work extremely hard and do everything they can to reach an agreement.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Although it is appreciated that a new trade deal with India could support jobs and prosperity in the UK and thus drive growth, will the Minister ensure that the talks include discussion of an agreement to the immediate release of my constituent Jagtar Singh Johal from arbitrary detention in India before any trade deal is concluded?
Gareth Thomas
I recognise that this is a significant issue for my hon. Friend. We remain committed to encouraging the Government of India to make faster progress on resolving this case. My right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister raised this case with Prime Minister Modi on 18 November, and we have made clear the need for faster progress towards a resolution.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
The Government continue to support entrepreneurs through, for example, start-up loans via the British Business Bank. We will publish our small business strategy later this year, which will signal a clear, overarching ambition to promote entrepreneurship, and will articulate a new vision for business support, built around the new business growth service that I have alluded to.
Lewis Cocking
Economies grow and jobs are created when individuals are able to take risks and invest in their ideas, so what have the Government done specifically since the general election to help more people in my constituency of Broxbourne become entrepreneurs?
Gareth Thomas
One thing we need to continue to do is make it easier for entrepreneurs in the hon. Member’s constituency and across the UK to access the finance that they need to set up their business. We have given an extra £250 million to the British Business Bank, which will help to ensure that more people have access to finance across the country, including in his constituency. We will publish our small business strategy later this year, in which he will see further measures to support entrepreneurs in Broxbourne and across the UK.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
What specific support is being provided for women entrepreneurs? They are the driving force behind small businesses in my Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes constituency, and deserve all the support that they can get.
Gareth Thomas
I strongly support my hon. Friend’s substantive point. We are backing the Invest in Women taskforce, which was set up to increase the number of female-powered businesses. We are looking at how to increase significantly the proportion of investment going to all-female founding teams; it has been stuck at just 2% of equity investment in the last decade. That is one example of the things we need to change to help women-led businesses realise their full potential.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The Government are investing £1.4 billion, with the North East combined authority, to deliver our shared objectives of economic growth and business support. That includes the development of the local part of the industrial strategy, guiding investment to deliver sustainable economic growth, and delivering support to grow all businesses. In 2023-24, there was £420,000-worth of direct support given to the North East Growth Hub, which provides businesses across the area with practical advice and support to grow and thrive.
Ian Lavery
Yesterday saw full-throated Government support for projects across the UK, but not so much for the north-east. The region was decimated by 14 years of Tory Government, and that cannot be repeated. I accept what the Minister says about what has happened, but what will the Government do to ensure that businesses in my Blyth and Ashington constituency can play their part in the cutting-edge technologies of the future and, crucially, see improved investment, which will create much- needed jobs with good wages and terms and conditions?
Justin Madders
I am at one with my hon. Friend in wanting all parts of the country, especially the north-west and the north-east, to have high-paid, well-skilled, good jobs, in tech sectors in particular, but also in other areas where we can see great advantage for the economy. The local skills improvement plan for the north-east will help, and the excellent facilities at Blyth’s Energy Central Learning Hub are supported by over £6 million of Government funding. That is already developing sector skills in a real-world port setting. With the reopening of the Northumberland line, we have reconnected towns in south-east Northumberland with Tyneside, improving links and opportunities across the area.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
As we have already discussed, the automotive sector is absolutely vital to the Government’s plans for green economic growth, and for growing the economy more widely. That is why, at the Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor committed to ensuring over £2 billion of capital and research and development funding before 2030 for zero emission vehicle manufacturing and its supply chains. We are also consulting the industry to make sure that the zero emissions transition works for the UK’s car industry, and working with the automotive transformation fund and the Advanced Propulsion Centre to make sure that we carry on innovating and seeing the growth of the automotive sector in the UK.
Rachel Taylor
Around 3,000 of my constituents in North Warwickshire and Bedworth work in the automotive sector. I have met representatives of many small and medium-sized businesses that provide engineering and manufacturing services for the sector, as well as Jaguar Land Rover, which has a battery assembly centre in my constituency. A career in the automotive industry should be an attractive prospect to many young people in my constituency. What is the Minister doing to support the sector in upskilling its workforce and providing apprenticeship schemes, so that companies are not left relying on immigration to fill skills gaps?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a really good point. There is a lot of work under way to look at skills across the board, because thus far no Government have had a proper strategy on the skills that we need, and on how we make sure that we train our own people, so that we do not have to rely on immigration. There are examples in the automotive sector of absolutely brilliant apprenticeship schemes that other industries can learn from, and we are working with Skills England. I have regular meetings with colleagues in the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that we crack this nut and encourage people to go into good, well-paid jobs.
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
The Secretary of State and the Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security are at the funeral of the late, great John Prescott. In this place, we remember him.
Yesterday, the Chancellor set out this Government’s plan for growth, our vision for the country and our path to putting more money in people’s pockets, reviving our high streets and supporting thriving businesses that create wealth, jobs and new opportunities. I was in Davos last week with the Chancellor and the Business Secretary, and there was enthusiasm about investing in a country that believes in open and free trade, that is resetting its relationship with the EU, that is forging new free trade agreements and that is creating stability here in the UK economy. It is little surprise that the UK has just been ranked by PwC as the second most attractive country in the world for investment.
We recognise that growth will not come without a fight, which is why we are pressing ahead with our industrial strategy, and channelling support for eight growth-driving sectors of our economy. It is why we are developing our small business strategy and working across all Government Departments to deliver the growth we need. We are supporting the Prime Minister’s plan for change, putting more money into people’s pockets and realising a new decade of national renewal.
Sally Jameson
Yesterday, the Chancellor announced that the Government will work with Mayor Ros Jones and the Mayor of South Yorkshire to reopen Doncaster airport, so will the Minister meet Doncaster MPs to discuss how the Department can meaningfully help? Will she also acknowledge that the growth agenda will be a success only if areas like Doncaster, South Yorkshire and the north are a critical part of it?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I would be happy to meet a group of MPs from her area. The ambition on airport expansion was very clear in the Chancellor’s speech yesterday. We are hungry for growth; we set that need alongside the need to decarbonise our airspace. Yesterday, I chaired a meeting of industry experts looking at how we can turbocharge our decarbonisation of aviation.
I would be pleased to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson), and I agree that we need to grow all parts of the UK to make this work.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
Next week, members of the Public and Commercial Services Union in the Department for Business and Trade are once again out on strike. Does the Minister consider the union’s demands to be reasonable? Will Ministers cross picket lines to return to work?
Sarah Jones
The shadow Secretary of State shows a new-found respect for the trade unions, after the previous Government’s failure to engage with them caused multiple strikes and huge amounts of wasted money. The contract is not directly with the Department, but obviously we work with PCS and all our trade unions. I regularly meet our trade unions to make sure that we have good workers’ rights.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We need to keep questions and answers short and sharp.
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
Sarah Jones
I met Anglo American to talk about Woodsmith just a couple of weeks ago when I was in Saudi Arabia, and it is an important site. I promised to go and see it, so perhaps I can go with my hon. Friend. It is important that the critical minerals strategy we are developing marks a step change from the previous Government’s strategy, which just looked at a moment in time and said, “We need to do a bit more of this, that and the other.” We will have targets, will be driving forward, and will look at our future demand. We are going to look at the eight sectors that we want to grow, consider what critical minerals we need, and think about how to ensure that we have the supply chains to get it right.
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is right that there is a lot of expertise and a lot of tech companies in his patch, and we want to see them thrive. It is for the Government to support that growth, to listen to what the barriers to growth are and to tackle them. Our digital development strategy, the UK’s digital strategy and our AI strategy, which the Prime Minister launched, are all vehicles to support these brilliant industries that we want to encourage. I am always happy to talk to my hon. Friend about what more we can do to encourage more of them on to his patch.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
I commend Charlotte on her business. We recognise that we need to do more to help businesses like hers to be able to export more easily to Europe. That is why the Prime Minister has set out our determination to reset the relationship with Europe. We have made clear our plans to negotiate a phytosanitary agreement with the EU, which may or may not make an immediate difference for Charlotte, but there are other aspects of our plans to reset the relationship with Europe that I hope will help.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for her work supporting workers at Stellantis. I met several of her colleagues and representatives from Stellantis this week, who I meet regularly. We stand ready to talk to them about whatever they need to remain. The consultation finished on 24 January and we await the final decision. She makes a good point about Luton airport, which I use very often because there are very good train links from Croydon to Luton. I should say that there are also good train links from Croydon to Gatwick. We know that the Secretary of State will be making a decision in due course, but the direction of travel on growth and breaking down barriers was clear in the Chancellor’s speech yesterday.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Justin Madders
I can give the right hon. Member that reassurance. The independence of the CMA is very important. That will remain in place and a new strategic steer will be issued shortly that will reaffirm that independence.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
Justin Madders
The experience of the pandemic really brought home that millions of people in this country do not qualify for statutory sick pay. We are determined to deal with that and I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the issue in more detail.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
Yesterday, out of the blue, Bank of Scotland announced that it will close five branches in my constituency, leaving hundreds of square miles of the rural south of Scotland without a single bank branch. While we must work with Link and others to ensure access to cash in those communities, does the Minister share my concern not only that this will leave empty premises prominent on the high street, but that it sends a message that the banks are giving up on rural areas and on those who do not bank online?
Gareth Thomas
I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents will be concerned about the Bank of Scotland’s decision. He may know that more than 9,500 bank branches closed between 2010 and 2023. That is why the Government are determined to ensure the much more widespread roll-out of banking hubs, with a commitment to roll out 350 banking hubs. I strongly suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he get in contact with Link and Cash Access UK to make the case for a banking hub in his constituency. If I can help in any way, I will be happy to consider doing so.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend and I have previously talked about this great opportunity. The rapid development and breakthrough of new AI models such as DeepSeek tell us that we need to go further and faster to remove barriers to innovation and make Britain the most competitive market. We need to be developing the technology ourselves. That is why we have set out our new AI strategy and why we are scaling up our capacity, creating AI growth zones and putting in place every vehicle we can to support the growth of technology innovation in our country, because we will need it in future.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
Our precious high street in Eastbourne is blighted by the dilapidated Debenhams building on Terminus Road, whose owner has left it empty for years, attracting antisocial behaviour and crime. Will the Minister meet me or support me to meet his colleagues from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Eastbourne borough council to discuss how we can use the new high street rental auction powers to force the owner to make that unit occupied again, so that we can regenerate our high street in the sunniest town in the UK?
Gareth Thomas
I have already met the hon. Gentleman to discuss some of the issues facing the high streets in his constituency. If he thinks I am the most appropriate Minister for that discussion, I am happy to make sure that it happens. He may actually want to discuss this particular issue with colleagues in MHCLG, whose attention I will draw to the question, because they and their officials are working much more closely on the implementation of the powers he mentions.
Avian Influenza
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on avian influenza.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Before I call the Minister, I give Members a brief reminder that laptop use in the Chamber is not permitted.
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
Avian influenza is once again posing a threat to both kept and wild birds across the country, and supporting birdkeepers, the public and conservation bodies to manage and prepare for avian influenza continues to be one of our main priorities. Following the detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry and other captive birds this winter, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Animal and Plant Health Agency have stood up their well-established outbreak structures to control and eradicate disease, restore normal trade and assist local communities’ recovery.
DEFRA’s disease control measures seek to contain the number of animals that need to be culled, either for disease control purposes or to safeguard animal welfare, and our approach aims to reduce adverse impacts on the rural and wider economy, the public, rural communities and the environment, including the impact on wildlife, while protecting public health and minimising the overall cost of any outbreak. Our approach to avian influenza considers the latest scientific and ornithological evidence and veterinary advice. Current policy reflects our experience of responding to past outbreaks of exotic animal disease, and is in line with international standards of best practice for disease control.
All birdkeepers are urged to remain vigilant and take action to protect their birds from avian influenza. Scrupulous biosecurity by all birdkeepers at all times is essential to protect the health and welfare of flocks. In response to the heightened risk levels and escalating number of cases, an avian influenza prevention zone, mandating enhanced biosecurity, is in force across England, Wales and Scotland. In addition, mandatory housing for kept birds is in force across the unitary authority of the East Riding of Yorkshire, the unitary authority of York, the city of Kingston upon Hull and all districts in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, North Yorkshire and Shropshire, to mitigate the risk of further outbreaks of disease occurring.
In areas where an AIPZ is in force, it is a legal requirement for all birdkeepers, whether they have pet birds, commercial flocks or just a few birds in a backyard flock, to follow strict biosecurity measures to limit the spread of, and eradicate, the disease, including—when mandatory housing measures are a requirement of an AIPZ—a requirement to keep their birds housed. The need for an AIPZ is kept under regular review as part of the Government’s work to monitor and manage the risks of avian influenza. Together with the devolved Governments, we will closely monitor the need to extend mandatory housing to other areas of the country.
While avian influenza is primarily considered a disease of birds, it can infect humans, although this is a very rare event in the UK and the risk to the general public remains very low. Nevertheless, protecting public health remains of paramount importance, and DEFRA and the APHA work closely with regional UK Health Security Agency health protection teams to monitor the situation and provide health advice to persons at infected premises and those who have been in close contact with infected wildlife as a precaution. As a further reassurance, the Food Standards Agency has confirmed that avian influenza poses a very low food safety risk for UK consumers. Properly cooked poultry and poultry products, including eggs, are safe to eat.
DEFRA and the APHA will continue to work with birdkeepers, who are on the frontline of this terrible disease. Compensation is paid for any healthy kept birds culled. As the House will know, compensation was updated to involve earlier assessment of the number of healthy birds and swifter calculation of compensation. That allows DEFRA to provide earlier certainty about entitlement to compensation, better reflects the impact of outbreaks on premises, and leads to swifter payments to help to stem any cash-flow pressures.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I am sure that the Minister has concluded his remarks. I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Victoria Atkins
This is a very difficult time for birdkeepers and farmers, particularly those whose birds have died or been culled, and all those who have had to upend their flocks and move them inside, given the impact that doing so can have on both the mental and economic resilience of individuals. I thank everyone who is involved in tackling avian influenza, and is working tirelessly to prevent the spread of this disease, including in my constituency.
I thank the Minister for his response. I regret that the Secretary of State has not made an oral statement on this important matter; particularly in the light of the revelation that a farm worker has been infected with avian influenza, I would have thought that the Secretary of State would have thought to update the House. However, we have managed to secure this urgent question, for which I am grateful. On the subject of the farm worker infected with the virus in the west midlands, first, how is this person? Have they recovered, and has anyone else been infected? What are the wider risks to human health?
Elsewhere, one of the largest and most modern egg-laying sites in the country has been affected, with more than a million birds being culled. Given the site’s significant role in processing the UK’s barn egg production, what discussions is the Minister having with the sector to mitigate the impact on supply? Will he please update us on his discussions with the devolved Governments about introducing similar restrictions to those in England? Of course birds, and indeed viruses, do not recognise borders. How is he ensuring that compensation is made without delay, and how much is it costing? Is the Department keeping the scheme under review, including the loss of profit for farmers and the conservation impacts for zoos housing rare and critically endangered species, such as the Bali starling at Battersea zoo, which I visited this week?
We are also concerned by reports that the avian influenza vaccination taskforce has stalled. Is that correct and, if so, why? Finally, DEFRA Ministers—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The shadow Minister is trying my patience. We have a lot of business to get through today, and time limits are there for a reason. I call the Minister.
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for her important questions. First, I reassure her and the House that the individual in question is, in my understanding, making a full recovery, but obviously we want to ensure that no one is put at undue risk. The advice is clear: the only people at risk are those who are in very close proximity. People should follow the guidance and advice.
On mitigating sector supply, my understanding is there is sufficient supply within the system. Although the right hon. Member is absolutely right to raise the point that it was a significant and large producer that was affected, we are confident that supply is secure. On working with the devolved Administrations, my officials are in regular contact, as I said in my opening statement. The situation is being constantly monitored.
The right hon. Member will be familiar with the compensation arrangements because they are the same as when she and her colleagues were in government. They are designed to control the disease, but of course they are also absolutely important to secure cash flow for farmers.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
My recollection from previous bouts of avian influenza is that there were serious problems with delays and with compensation, because farmers who were trying to do a preventive cull of their birds had to wait for an inspection to take place, and if that inspection had not taken place, compensation would not be given. Therefore, some birds died from avian influenza that should have been culled, and some birds did not die but the compensation was not paid. I would be grateful if the Minister updated the House on exactly what the new arrangements for compensation will be.
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will recall the terrible outbreak a few years ago when exactly those questions were raised and, as the shadow Minister, I asked similar questions at the time. The compensation arrangements were changed by the previous Government in a beneficial way, and I am absolutely confident at the moment that the delays we saw before are not happening. But he raises an important point: anyone who has a suspicion of an outbreak should report it as soon as possible, and they should not be concerned that they will suffer detriment from so doing.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
Farmers and vets will remember the 2022 outbreak, which was the biggest we had seen in the UK and which killed millions of birds worldwide, so this new outbreak is of huge concern for three major reasons.
First, there is the impact on animal welfare, not just the birds catching avian influenza and dying or being culled, but their having to be kept inside rather than being free range. Secondly, there is the impact on farmers, their businesses and their mental health. As with any notifiable disease, this is hugely stressful, and it is hugely disruptive to business models. What are we doing to ensure that compensation and support are given to farmers quickly? Thirdly, there is a huge potential impact on public health. While we fully understand that there is a low public health risk at the moment—this is a disease of birds—we have just come out of covid-19. We know that if someone is infected with human flu and potentially gets infected with avian influenza, there is a risk that it becomes more infectious to humans. What discussions is the Minister having with APHA and the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor the genotypes?
Daniel Zeichner
Let me deal first with the second of those two questions. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course there is concern, but I can assure him and the House that the advice from the UK Health Security Agency is that avian influenza is primarily a disease of birds, and the risk to the health of the general public is very low. However, of course we are monitoring it, and genetic testing and sequencing is available to us for that. He is right about the impact on bird keepers and on farmers. It is why the compensation scheme is in place and working. We absolutely recognise the pressures on people and the effect on their mental health.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
Has the Minister assessed the Conservative Government’s underspend of the agriculture budget?
Daniel Zeichner
We have indeed assessed it. Of course, it is extraordinary that that happened. In terms of what we are doing, the system is well resourced to deal with these outbreaks, and we work in a cross-party way on that.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
This outbreak is concerning for the whole of Norfolk, and particularly for the bird-rearers in Broadland and Fakenham, but it highlights the critical importance of the Animal and Plant Health Agency in New Haw, and the plan for its full redevelopment. Do the Government agree that that redevelopment is long overdue, and if so, will they commit to supporting it?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank my hon. Friend—and he is a friend—for his concern. Of course, this is of particular concern and interest to representatives from the east of England, and I share that concern. We have discussed the future of Weybridge and the investment many times before. I gently point out that the Conservative Government had the opportunity over 14 years to make that investment. Over £200 million has been allocated by this Government, and we will continue to make sure that the agency is properly resourced.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I do not think anybody would disagree with the comments by the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) about the redevelopment of the facility at Weybridge, but I suspect that once avian influenza is in the wild bird population, as it is here, even the best facility in the world will struggle to contain it. On disease containment, I remember the absolutely heartbreaking experience of walking along beaches in Orkney and seeing dead body after dead body. Is the Minister engaging with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and other major organisations so that he can at least be aware of the impact on the wild bird population?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, who is absolutely right. We have heard harrowing accounts in this Chamber of the experiences in Members’ local communities—the situation with wild birds is awful. Of course, officials and I are constantly in dialogue with those organisations, but the truth is that in the wild bird population there is not much we can do about it.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
I have one of the UK’s largest egg producers in my constituency. However, the other trend is that more birds are being kept in a domestic situation—hens, geese and ducks. How are the Government monitoring those who are not professional bird keepers and ensuring that such situations are also subject to the necessary control and regulation?
Daniel Zeichner
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The importance of biosecurity cannot be overstressed —that is the way to tackle this. He is also right to say that amateurs and small bird keepers are important, and that is why they were brought within the registration scheme, which is beneficial and welcome.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Scientists at the University of Glasgow found last month that avian influenza can spread to horses without any symptoms. Will the Minister clarify how the Government are monitoring the spread of the virus among other species?
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Lady is absolutely right: we need to be very careful about that. I can assure her that those are exactly the kinds of discussions that I am having with officials. We are tracking that and have the technology these days to look closely at what is going on. I will not go into the expert account on the Floor of the House of how the serotype works, but I am happy to put her in contact with officials if she needs more information.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
I thank the Minster for his update to the House about the spread of avian flu. I want to ask a couple questions. First, as this is happening in cities as much as in rural areas, how are people who live in cities being made aware that they should look out for dead or dying birds so that we can get a more accurate reflection of where it is spreading? Secondly, what discussions has he had with Departments of the Scottish Government to ensure that we have reliable and up-to-date data across these islands?
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Gentleman makes strong points. I think there is general awareness of, and concern about, what is going on. It is important to say to people that, if they have concerns and they see such things, they should report them. On our work with the devolved Administrations, we have a very strong structure that allows all the devolved Administrations to be involved so that we have a consistent framework.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
Again, we rely on the facilities at the Animal and Plant Health Agency, based in New Haw in my constituency, and we thank it for its work. A few weeks ago, I asked the Minister if he would visit the site with me to see for himself the work that needs to be done and the urgent need for massive investment in the site. Do we have to wait until the next urgent question or statement before he will take me up on my offer?
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his invitation. I have had numerous invitations. Last week, I was in Northumberland looking at rural crime, and this week I was at the Fenland SOIL—sustainability, opportunity, innovation, learning—conference. I will add the hon. Gentleman’s invitation to my list.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
For my daughter’s second birthday, I took her to the wonderful Birdland in Gloucestershire, which has hundreds of different exotic and rare birds. Could the Minister please tell me how he is going to support that type of business model and how he is going to keep staff and visitors safe?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his important question. Everything we do to stop the spread will help businesses such as the one he described. Some specific rules and regulations also apply in those particular cases, which I can make available to him if he wishes.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Does the Minister accept that avian influenza represents an existential threat to businesses such as Kelly Turkeys in my constituency? Paul Kelly has called this the covid of the poultry industry. Does the Minister accept that it is likely, as with covid, that the only way forward will be vaccination?
Daniel Zeichner
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. As he will be aware, significant international trade issues are involved, but as we look to a world in which we seem to have more and more of these cases, that is certainly something that we keep under consideration.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I thank the Government for their strong and fast response, which I know will be a big reassurance for lots of the farming communities impacted. May I ask the Minister to provide a bit more detail about the support we are giving not just to those who are directly impacted now, but to those who are understandably very deeply concerned about what this may mean for their businesses over the coming months?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank my hon. Friend for his very important question. I can assure him that an entire apparatus is in place to ensure that all reassurance can be given to the kind of businesses that the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) described. From an animal welfare point of view, we will ensure that everybody involved in the sector has the kind of advice and support that is needed. If my hon. Friend has colleagues who wish to look at the advice, they should look at the webpages available on Government websites, which are significant and thorough. If people need advice, they should not hesitate to come to my officials or to me, and we will point them in the right direction.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for his response to the urgent question. Poultry and egg production contributes significantly to the Northern Ireland economy—it is valued at some £600 million—so it is little wonder that the agricultural community has great concerns. What discussions has the Minister had with the devolved nations, particularly the Northern Ireland Assembly, about putting in place the support that is needed, taking into account that wild bird cases have been found in the last two weeks in Northern Ireland?
Daniel Zeichner
I am, as ever, grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue as it impacts Northern Ireland. We have been developing a UK-wide response to this, and my officials are in constant contact with officials from his Administration. We will ensure that this UK-wide response continues to be in place, because it is very important that we work together on all these issues. I hope in the not-too-distant future to continue my tour of the country, and I very much look forward to taking up his long-standing invitation—not only to Stormont, where I have been before, but to his fishing sector—and the very warm welcome that I know I will receive.
Women’s Health Strategy
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mims Davies (East Grinstead and Uckfield) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on the women’s health strategy.
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to set out our commitment to the women’s health strategy and everything that this Government are doing to fix our broken NHS, clean up the mess that the Conservatives left after 14 years and get women treated on time again.
When we came into office we inherited record waiting lists. The gynaecology waiting list stood at just under 600,000 women. Let that sink in—600,000 women in pain, waiting to be cared for. Almost half the women on gynaecology waiting lists are waiting more than 18 weeks. That is why the Prime Minister kicked off 2025 with our elective reform plan, setting out how we will cut the longest waiting lists from 18 months to 18 weeks. Our new agreement with the independent sector will mean that, where there is spare capacity in the private sector, women will be treated faster for gynaecology care, paid for by the state.
The Government are also committed to rooting out the appalling inequalities in maternity care. We are supporting failing trusts to make rapid improvements, training thousands more midwives for the first time, and we will set an explicit target to close the black and Asian maternal mortality gap. We are piloting a training programme to help avoid brain injury for babies in childbirth and, if successful, we will crack on with rolling it out nationally this year. In October, we extended the baby loss certificate service to help mums and dads who have suffered the heartbreak of pregnancy loss.
Let me also address the issue of women’s health hubs. There was a target in last year’s planning guidance to roll out pilot women’s health hubs across the country by last December. Today, there are at least 80 hubs, and at least nine out of every10 integrated care systems have an open women’s health hub.
Let me correct some fake news. We are not closing these hubs; we are not cutting them. The target to roll them out was in last year’s planning guidance. It was achieved in 93% of integrated care systems, which is why the target is not repeated in this year’s guidance—it has been met in 39 out of 42 areas.
Today, we have slimmed down the number of targets for the NHS so that we can focus on fixing the fundamentals —the system that the previous Government broke. We are instructing the NHS to prioritise: cutting waiting times for operations, A&E and ambulances; making it easier for people to see a GP or a dentist; and improving the mental health of the nation. That will mean around 60,000 women with suspected cancer are diagnosed earlier and treated faster; more than 200,000 extra women will be treated within 18 weeks, as we drive down long waits; and fewer women will be forced to wait 12 hours in A&E. That is the difference that a Labour Government are making to women’s health.
Mims Davies
For too long, a woman’s experience of the health service has been one of being pushed from pillar to post. Crucially, women’s voices have been ignored and responses to their pain, suffering, poor sex lives and traumatic births have been too slow. Overall, women have a sense of being forgotten. Some 2.4 million more women were in work under our Conservative Government. Pain and suffering were affecting too many women and their ability to remain in the labour market, resulting in early retirement or not having their true career potential fulfilled.
We took direct action, crucially, by listening to women’s experiences. We had almost 100,000 responses to our call for evidence on the gender health gap. We appointed Dame Lesley Regan as the woman’s health ambassador, and Helen Tomlinson as the cross-government menopause ambassador to find out the experience of women employed in different sectors. We delivered and funded new women’s health hubs and created joined-up services in the community. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists estimates that removing the requirement of integrated care boards to have a woman’s health hub will impact 600,000 women on waiting lists in England, creating longer waits, disease progression that could be prevented, and resulting in more women attending A&E, unable to work, care or live a fulfilled life.
Labour’s manifesto said that it will prioritise women’s health. Women are now reported to be a lobby group, relegated to being unheard once again. Will the Minister confirm whether it is true that the targets to deal with women’s needs will be dropped? If so, what is her justification for that? Will she be delivering on the roundly welcomed women’s health strategy from 2022?
A total of 1,300 families gave evidence to the all-party group on birth trauma. What are the plans to drive up maternity safety standards across the country? Will there be a response to that? Will Dame Lesley Regan be sacked, will she remain the women’s health ambassador, or will she be replaced, as Helen Tomlinson was, by someone who seems more interested in selling books than in delivering on the ground for women? What steps are being be taken on sex-specific language in health communications and guidance—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The shadow Minister will know that there is a time limit, which she has exceeded. I have been very generous. I call the Minister.
Karin Smyth
I addressed most of those points in my outline statement. I think the shadow Minister wrote her comments when the Opposition thought that we were cancelling things, only to find out that we are not cancelling things. I have made clear our commitment to the women’s health strategy and how we seek to instruct the system at a local level to serve the needs of women and particularly prioritise those waiting lists. As I have outlined, the targets have already been achieved. Unusually, I will give a bit of credit to the other side, because a lot of this was rolled out and it was good practice, and the system still thinks that it is good practice, so sometimes Opposition Members should take a win. We are committed to that, it is embedded in the system, and we look forward to outcomes being improved for women.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
The Committee report on women’s reproductive health, started under our fantastic predecessors, laid out how medical misogyny has left far too many women suffering. Women have been left undiagnosed for debilitating conditions such as endometriosis for an average of eight years—not for treatment, for diagnosis. Black women are four to five times more likely to die during childbirth, and the rate of maternal death in the UK has risen by 15% in the last 10 years. The leading cause of that is suicide, accounting for 39% of deaths in the first year postpartum. Does the Minister therefore agree that women, and women of colour especially, have borne the brunt too often of 14 years of disastrous health policies? How can the Government reverse this trend?
Karin Smyth
I thank the Committee Chair for her question. I think she was congratulating the previous Committee and Chair rather than those who are now in opposition. I was very pleased to witness some of that work when we were in opposition, and she is absolutely right about it. The work of many women Members when in opposition, and, to be fair, of many women in the previous Government, have made sure that issues around endometriosis have risen up the agenda; indeed, we had a good debate in the Chamber recently. We are committed to taking forward the strategy. We think the health hubs, for example, are doing a good job, but there is a lot of learning to be done on them, and we will continue to do that.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
Nearly 600,000 women are waiting for treatment on gynaecology waiting lists in England; the longest waits are leading to preventable diseases progressing and it is one of the worst specialties for long waits. The Care Quality Commission has investigated and reported that 65% of maternity units are not as safe as they should be. That high number could almost be considered a public health crisis, and it has led to the highest amount of negligent payouts due to avoidable injury and even death. This absolutely needs to be addressed.
Many women, such as my partner Emma, have had to fight for years to get just a diagnosis for endometriosis, let alone any treatment, having been told for years that the symptoms are completely normal and do not need investigating. In the Government’s—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I know I am being difficult on time limits, but the Liberal Democrat spokes- person should have one minute in an urgent question, which the hon. Gentleman has already far exceeded. Perhaps he will come up with a question in one sentence for the Minister.
Dr Chambers
Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yes, in one sentence: the Government’s manifesto rightly said that
“Never again will women’s health be neglected”.
Can we have assurances that we will not remove the ICB requirement to have women’s health hubs?
Karin Smyth
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight those long waits. That is why we particularly highlighted gynaecology for attention in the elective reform plan. It is shocking that the last Government left 600,000 women on these lists, and moving back to making sure people wait no longer than 18 weeks will predominantly be helping those women.
The hon. Gentleman is also right to highlight the appalling maternity situation. The Secretary of State and my noble Friend Baroness Merron, who leads in this area, have met many families to discuss their experiences, and we know those experiences are unacceptable. We know there are big issues around staffing, and it is a priority to work with NHS England to make sure that we grow workforce capacity as quickly as possible so that we can be sure that those situations are safe. There are many debates in this place about the issue and we will continue to update the House.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
Under the last Government, five times more research went into erectile dysfunction, which affects 19% of men, than went into premenstrual syndrome, which affects 90% of women. Women are waiting more than eight years for endometriosis diagnoses. GPs are not required to undertake a gynaecological rotation within their training. Women’s health must be put at the head of our agenda. Will the Minister assure women in this country that things will change under this Government?
Karin Smyth
I absolutely will give my hon. Friend that assurance. The situation will change partly because there are more people like her and more women in this place. We have more women across all parties raising this issue and more women in senior positions in the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Crucially, we have women leading in science and research. Dealing with the misogyny around the system and in medical systems is also important for making sure that women lead this work. We want to make sure that the NIHR, which has a strategy to address this issue, rectifies the situation that she outlines.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
The Minister will be aware of the Ockenden report back in 2022, which highlighted the tragic cases of more than 200 mothers and babies who were killed over a period of years at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. Donna Ockenden recently returned to the trust and said that she was surprised and disappointed to hear from those parents and families affected that the trust had not been communicating as well as it should have been and had not been updating the families in a timely manner. Does the Minister agree not only that communication is key, but also that reviews, such as those undertaken by Donna Ockenden, should have the remit to go back to check and monitor the progress of maternity services that are either improving or not?
Karin Smyth
I completely agree with the right hon. Member. Donna Ockenden’s work is hugely valuable, and a lot of faith and trust has been placed in it, particularly by families. I do not know specific dates, but the Secretary of State and my noble Friend Baroness Merron, who leads on this work, have been discussing the matter with Donna Ockenden. I am happy to get back to the right hon. Member with the details.
On the specific point about the remit, I do not know the answer to that question. It is entirely sensible to look at progress and learn from mistakes. I know it is a challenge system, and we have to learn from those areas. If there are specific things to report back to the right hon. Member, I will get back to him, but this issue is absolutely a priority. The Secretary of State is meeting families directly. We know and understand that we have to do much better on this for everybody.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
Having listened to the shadow Minister, I am slightly tempted to suggest to the Minister that our women’s health strategy include provision for the treatment of collective memory loss. The shadow Minister completely ignored the fact that the Tories let our NHS fall into disrepute over the past 14 years.
I want to ask specifically about how our health strategy will deal with treatment and support for young people, particularly young women, suffering from depression and anxiety. That follows a tragic case in my constituency and a coroner’s report last week, which found that our local hospital was not able to support that patient.
Karin Smyth
My hon. Friend is right to highlight some tragic incidents, and I know she will be working hard on behalf of her constituents. We are absolutely committed to the women’s health strategy. Clearly, that will be taken forward as part of the 10-year plan, and it is an important part of that. I met my noble Friend Baroness Merron yesterday and the team supporting that plan to make sure that we understand how those key issues are taken forward.
This is an opportunity, if I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, to say that the consultation on that plan is still open for ideas. We are keen to hear in particular from young people to make sure that we get a true representation. These sorts of things are not often consulted on, so we encourage young people and people who are suffering from depression and mental health issues to contribute their thoughts about the system they face as part of our 10-year plan consultation.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I am sure we all welcome the move to reduce waiting lists and recognise that the women’s health strategy is a 10-year plan. But given the enormous problems highlighted by the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), does the Minister appreciate that, to many women who are having trouble accessing often fragmented gynaecological services, it will seem like a vital facility is about to be lost and that the Government’s promises of “never again” will sound hollow? What will the Government do to reassure all the women who are concerned about this move?
Karin Smyth
I am not entirely clear what the hon. Member is referring to. I have been clear that we are committed to the women’s health strategy, and we will take it forward as part of the 10-year plan. Most of the—[Interruption.] If it was about the women’s health hubs, they are mainly there but in different forms and with different levels of services. We want to ensure that the systems reflect their local population needs. That is an entirely proper way to go about things.
As I said, unusually, we think that many of the hubs, which were rolled out as pilots under the previous Administration, are doing a good job in most areas—although not everywhere, so we want to learn from the pilots. Our commitment is absolutely to women. That is why gynaecology waiting lists are particularly targeted: we had 600,000 women on them. Women should feel really assured about the support that the Government are giving them and their health, to prioritise their health. We are keen to learn more about women’s health hubs. They will be different in different places because they have different populations, and that is entirely in keeping with the direction of travel of the Government.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) for her work in raising the serious health inequalities that women across the UK face every single day. Does the Minister agree that we need more expertise in women’s health issues in primary care settings to ensure early diagnosis and that women get the treatment they need at the earliest point?
Karin Smyth
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about both the work of the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), and the importance of primary and community care recognising, listening to and supporting women through women’s health, as well as making sure that our knowledge and good practice is spread across the team. This is an area where different systems have women’s health hubs using different teams and different technology, and they have different links to secondary care colleagues and specialist colleagues. By listening to each other and working together, they are so good at spreading some of that good practice.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I welcome the Minister coming to the House to answer the urgent question, because the argument she is putting forward seems slightly confused. First, women’s health hubs seem to be working on the whole, and there are lots of them, so why remove the target for everybody to have them if we are already 90% there? Secondly, many of the hubs seem to be doing good work, and best practice is clearly emerging, so why cancel the target for the programme rather than spread that good practice throughout the system? I think the broad question from the Opposition is: why remove the targets specifically relating to women from the Government’s agenda going forward? It feels to many women and to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which has been in contact with me, that that downgrades the status of women in the NHS.
Karin Smyth
I will try to be brief, but this is hard to explain—[Interruption.] No, this is to answer the right hon. Gentleman. Targets in the NHS have not been met since 2015, which was under his Government’s watch but, actually, this target has been met—there are only three places in the country that do not have a hub—so there is no target for them because that has already been met. The issue now is to look at the outcomes from those hubs to see how they are performing. We think, and the system thinks, that they do a good job. That is why they are staying, why we are committed to them, and why we want to learn from them.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Bedford hospital once had a gold-standard home-birth service, but in recent months it has been run down within the wider trust due to unfilled vacancies. Many of my constituents are concerned at the prospect of losing that service, which puts women’s needs and health choices first. Will the women’s health strategy ensure that women can access a consistent midwifery service that provides genuine choice for safe home births?
Karin Smyth
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about maternity services, which are inconsistent and not good enough around the country. It is a source of great alarm for many people. Maternity absolutely remains a high priority within the overall women’s health strategy.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
If you are black and having a baby, you are more than three times more likely to die than if you are white and having a baby. I am sure that the Minister and Members across the House will agree that that is a national disgrace. I was encouraged to hear the Minister mention a target for maternal mortality disparity in her opening remarks, but I would be grateful if she could confirm that the elimination of that disparity is the target and update the House on when the NHS plans to achieve that.
Karin Smyth
The hon. Lady makes the point about using targets. This is something that is a high priority, but it is not happening. That is absolutely why I mentioned it in my opening comments—to ensure that that happens.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
Forty years ago this month, my wife almost died of an eclamptic seizure because a general practitioner had failed to recognise the symptoms of pre-eclampsia. According to the most recent report on pre-eclampsia, four times as many women are dying of pre-eclampsia today than were dying in 2012. That is an absolute disgrace. If men got pre-eclampsia, they would have solved the problem many, many years ago. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Will the Minister assure me and everyone else that the women’s health strategy will focus on pre-eclampsia, and try to finally find a solution?
Karin Smyth
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful case and talks of an experience that he and his wife went through forty years ago, which highlights that it can sometimes take an unacceptably long time to get what is known as good practice through the system and to have that consistency for women and their families across the overall system. We absolutely need to ensure that maternity services understand best practice and that it is rolled out properly across the country.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
In an earlier answer, the Minister rightly talked about the arrangement the Government have over spare capacity in the independent sector. My female constituents and women up and down the land want to know what that actually means in practice: what does that mean for the 260,000 women waiting more than 18 weeks for gynaecology treatment? How many treatments will the independent sector be delivering, and to what timescale? We need to get those women the treatment that they need.
Karin Smyth
The hon. Gentleman can tell his women constituents what I hope everyone across the House will be able to tell their constituents: this Government inherited 600,000 women on those waiting lists, and we are committed—as said in our elective reform plan, which highlighted gynaecology in particular—to getting those waiting lists down from 18 months to 18 weeks in the lifetime of this Parliament.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
I represent almost 40,000 women, and they and the men who love them would invite the Minister to state explicitly that the Government will not draw down their access to women’s health hubs or remove their women’s health targets.
Karin Smyth
I have made that commitment several times from this Dispatch Box. We think the women’s health hubs are working across the country—I do not know exactly how the hon. Gentleman’s hub is working at the moment. Only three areas do not have a women’s health hub, and we expect them to get on with that and have one. We will ensure we have the learning from them across the country.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
The Minister got her tone wrong in dealing with this urgent question. If a Minister turns up late for a UQ, the least they can do is take the questions from the Opposition Front Bench seriously.
Amanda Pritchard, the CEO of NHS England, has said that the health service does not
“always have the needs of women at its heart.”
What message do the Government think scrapping women’s health targets will send?
Karin Smyth
The chief executive is right that the previous Government did not have women’s health at the heart of their strategy, and that is why we do.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV, AIDS and sexual health, may I ask the Minister about the very low take-up of pre-exposure prophylaxis among women in the UK? What steps are being taken to change that? Obviously, there are barriers such as stigma and low levels of information, but does she agree that PrEP should not just be made available in sexual health settings, particularly as we have had the roll-out of opt-out testing?
Karin Smyth
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the work he does in this area. He does an excellent job and makes an excellent point. I do not know the detailed answer to that question—it is not directly my area—but I am very happy to make sure that we write to him.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for her answers. The women’s health survey for Northern Ireland closes tomorrow. Through it, the Department of Health back home is hoping to have a greater understanding of how government fails women. The results of this Northern Ireland-wide project will ensure the Department will be able to find the areas that are lacking, in particular endometriosis support. Will the Minister make contact with the Northern Ireland Assembly to discuss the health strategy and to share the results and the data, so that the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly back home can work better together to make women’s health better across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Karin Smyth
As I hope the hon. Gentleman knows, I think the health needs of women in Northern Ireland and the waiting lists there are particularly problematic, so finding out anything our Department can to do support or share learning across the United Kingdom is a personal commitment of mine. I will absolutely make sure that we do that. I am happy to meet, talk or even visit, which I always like doing.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On this incredibly important issue of the women’s health strategy, and the fact that the word “woman” has been excluded from the updated planning guidance, could you help me understand this? As a common courtesy to both you and the House, when a Minister is unable to organise herself such that she can get to the Chamber on time, is it not courteous to apologise to those of us she has kept waiting before we were able to discuss this important subject?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I thank the right hon. Lady for her point of order. She is, of course, correct that it is courteous to the House for an apology to be made. Five minutes of time was wasted this morning. I think the Minister would like to make a further point of order.
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I absolutely, unequivocally apologise.
Business of the House
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)
I shall. The business for the week commencing 3 February includes:
Monday 3 February—Second Reading of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill.
Tuesday 4 February—Debate on motions to approve the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025 and the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025, followed by debate on motions to approve the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2025 and the draft Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2025.
Wednesday 5 February—Motions related to the police grant and local government finance reports.
Thursday 6 February—General debate on Government support for coalfield communities, followed by a general debate on financial education. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 7 February—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 10 February will include:
Monday 10 February—Second Reading of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
Tuesday 11 February—If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Arbitration Bill [Lords].
Wednesday 12 February—Second Reading of the Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords].
Thursday 13 February—General debate. Subject to be announced.
The House will rise for the February recess at the conclusion of business on Thursday 13 February and return on Monday 24 February.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Before I call Joy Morrissey, I think it appropriate to wish her a happy birthday.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I hope that the House will join me in offering thoughts and prayers for victims and their families following the collision this morning when an American Airlines plane crashed into the Potomac following a collision; but I believe that the Leader of the House will join me in rejoicing at the return of more of the Israeli hostages today.
It is an honour to respond to the right hon. Lady. Serving with her on the Modernisation Committee, I have observed the energy that she puts into bringing this House into the second quarter of the 21st century. We are lucky to have someone so persuasive in her position, someone who really listens to Members. [Hon. Members: “But—”] No buts, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I approach this session of business questions in that spirit. One innovation that would be very welcome would be a commitment from the Leader of the House to providing our dates for Opposition day debates, which we have still not received. Another extremely welcome innovation would be the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero finding time to reply to numerous letters sent by Opposition Members; perhaps the Leader of the House could persuade him to do so, but perhaps she would have more luck with the Chancellor.
As each week passes, our constituents face more and more negative consequences from the Chancellor’s disastrous Budget. Last week the Office for National Statistics revealed that there had been a staggering 47,000 drop in employment in December, the sharpest fall since the pandemic. Job vacancies have also collapsed. The day before the Chancellor’s Budget, in which she launched her attack on British businesses, there were 858,000 job vacancies in our economy; now the number has fallen to just 740,000, a drop of 14% in just two months. I know that she is proud of being the first female Chancellor, but would it not be even better for her to be known as the Chancellor who was brave enough to change course? Because of her Budget, business confidence has collapsed. Because of her Budget, growth has collapsed. Because of her Budget, employment is falling and unemployment is rising. Because of her Budget, UK gilt yields are at an eye-watering level. Because of her Budget, mortgage rates are now rising, despite her promise that she would bring them down.
We have seen a glimmer of hope with the Chancellor’s U-turn on her non-doms policy, which has caused some of the UK’s biggest taxpayers to flee her socialist nightmare. It is a welcome U-turn, but I feel for the Leader of the House and for Labour Members. I cannot imagine that they ever thought they would be explaining why a Labour Government had U-turned on punishing non-doms, but not on punishing pensioners. Will the Leader of the House seek to persuade the Chancellor to be bold, change course again, and spare British pensioners, farmers, businesses, workers and households from more economic pain?
May we have a debate in Government time to explore the many areas in which a Chancellor U-turn would indeed be welcome? If not, will the Leader of the House ask the Chancellor to be bold and U-turn on punishing pensioners, and reinstate their winter fuel payment? Will she ask the Chancellor to be bold and U-turn to spare family farms that have put food on our tables from her tax raid? Will she ask the Chancellor to be bold and U-turn to save businesses that create jobs, wealth and growth in this country from her catastrophic national insurance tax raid? Will she ask the Chancellor to be bold and U-turn on her 1970s-style tax and borrowing spree, to protect the households that now face rising mortgage costs because of her? That is a task that I hope the Leader of the House will agree is in the interests of the House, its Members, and the people of this country.
Lucy Powell
All our thoughts are with those affected by the air crash in Washington DC. The scale of this tragedy is still unfolding, and we send our deepest sympathies to all those involved and those still carrying out the rescue operation.
This week saw the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. No one could ever forget visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, as I did with young people from my constituency with the Holocaust Educational Trust. We must never forget. I join the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) in welcoming the further release of hostages in Israel and Gaza today.
Members will have noticed that Mr Speaker is not in his Chair today. I can assure them that he is not taking up a new acting role on the set of “Emmerdale”. He is instead celebrating the life of another northern legend, at the funeral of Lord Prescott.
I welcome the hon. Member for Beaconsfield to business questions, on her birthday. I very much welcome working with her on the Modernisation Committee. I have found her contributions to be greatly valuable and enlightening, and I know she does a really good job as a Whip and a constituency MP, supporting colleagues across the House. Given her contribution today, she could perhaps give a few tips to the shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), when he returns, because she has taken a very business questions-style approach. I will follow up with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero if there are issues with correspondence.
The hon. Lady raised issues around the economy. I will gently remind her of a few stats. Inflation is down now, thanks to this Government. Wages are growing at their fastest rate in three years. We have created more than 70,000 jobs since we came into office, and business investment is at its highest level in 19 years. PwC has just rated the UK the second best place in the world to invest after the US. The International Monetary Fund and the OECD both predict that Britain will be Europe’s fastest-growing major economy in recent years.
This Government are getting on with the job, and it has been another week of delivering the change that people voted for. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will be introduced today, with real action to tackle small boats and smuggling gangs, in contrast to the Conservatives’ costly Rwanda gimmick. The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill gets its Second Reading next week. Despite promises from the Conservative party, it failed to bring that forward. That important piece of legislation will address the huge cost of fraud in our welfare system.
We have taken major strides to get growth going, taking the difficult, bold decisions that the hon. Lady asked for, many of them on issues that have been raised in business questions over recent weeks. They include the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, creating the UK’s answer to silicon valley; the redevelopment of the huge site around the Old Trafford football ground, which even I can welcome, as a City fan; and, thanks to the tireless campaigning of Mr Doncaster Airport himself, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), and my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson), their airport is set to become thriving once again. We are backing airport expansion across the congested south-east.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) will be over the moon that we are investing in Cornwall’s mineral industry, which he has raised with me many times. We are giving the go-ahead to the lower Thames crossing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) has long championed and raised with me. We are supporting Port Talbot and Teesside through the advanced fuels fund and Wrexham and Flintshire through the advanced manufacturing investment zone. We are building nine reservoirs—the first in 30 years—to provide water for new homes.
We are reviewing the Green Book, to enable better public investment and growth outside London and the south-east. We are taking difficult decisions, some of which the hon. Member for Beaconsfield raised, because we had to fix the foundations to get our country growing again, so that we can invest in the public services that people desperately need and voted for at the last election.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
Brent is known as the reggae capital of Europe. Bob Marley wrote some of his best hits there, and we have Janet Kay and Carroll Thompson, who celebrate their birthdays this week, too. Today, in the Jubilee Room, we will be honouring one of the lead singers of Boney M, Liz Mitchell. As people will know, the band’s hits include “Daddy Cool”, “Rasputin” and “Rivers of Babylon”.
Dawn Butler
I would sing it, but my voice is a little bit croaky today.
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Liz Mitchell? Maybe we should have a debate in Government time about music and how it can be a unifier and bring about community cohesion.
Lucy Powell
I congratulate Brent on being the reggae capital. We can all recognise some of the great hits that my hon. Friend mentioned, and I am pleased that she is hosting an event today in the Jubilee Room for Liz Mitchell of Boney M. I cannot think of a decent pun on “Daddy Cool”, but my hon. Friend is definitely “Brent cool”. I watch her social media and TikToks, and she probably has a glittering career ahead of her in that regard.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
May I echo the words that have been spoken about the unfolding tragedy in Washington DC? My thoughts go out to all the victims and their families.
When I am out and about talking to people on the doorstep in my Chelmsford constituency, the issue of crime often comes up. That is not because Chelmsford is a criminal hotspot—far from it—but because of the often frustrating low-level crime that takes place, which concerns my constituents. They often say that they want to see more bobbies on the beat. They want to see more uniformed police patrolling our streets, making their presence felt, and reassuring the community by building relationships and deterring wannabe criminals. Much of that presence is provided by police community support officers, who work with police officers and share some of their powers. They do genuinely wonderful work that frees up precious police officer time for other and perhaps more complex policing issues. In short, they are very welcome and an important part of our communities.
In Essex there are 99 PCSOs, but not for much longer. Essex police have just announced that they are getting rid of all of them, as they face a £12.5 million budget shortfall for 2025-26. I doubt that Essex police will be the only force to consider such drastic action, and I am sure that I am not alone in being extremely concerned about the implications of that decision. Will the Leader of the House consider asking the Home Secretary to make a statement on the effect on our communities, and on what can be done to salvage the situation before the experience of all these dedicated individuals is lost and society suffers as a consequence?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Lady for sending her thoughts to those affected by the air crash in Washington DC. She, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and I are all members of the Modernisation Committee, and we represent three different parties. It is great to work with her on that Committee, and on the House of Commons Commission. As a new Member, she has really got to grips with some of the difficult issues that we face in this place.
I thank the hon. Lady for drawing attention to the challenges that her constituents face with bobbies on the beat in her area. She will know that the funding for Essex police will increase by £25 million next year, but I absolutely share her view that strengthening neighbourhood policing is vital for tackling crime and antisocial behaviour. We are committed to providing an additional 13,000 neighbourhood officers and PCSOs nationwide, but local decisions are a matter for local police. She can rest assured that after years of cuts to police forces, we are determined to recruit extra officers. I will certainly make sure that the Home Secretary has heard her question, and that she gets a full response about what is happening in her local area.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
Flexible Engineered Solutions International in my constituency is an excellent example of a strong and successful business. It delivers projects in oil and gas, and in renewables. Last week, it hosted clients from Rio de Janeiro, and the Brazilians travelled on the newly reopened Northumberland line. They travelled 5,600 miles, and the new line was the last leg. It was fantastic. Can we have a debate in Government time on the strategic importance of good local transport infrastructure that allows people from places like Brazil easy access to constituencies such as Blyth and Ashington?
Lucy Powell
I am delighted that, after 60 years of closure, the Northumberland line was finally reopened last December. I would have loved to have been a passenger on that train, and to have heard how the conversation between my hon. Friend and the Brazilians flowed—or not, as the case might be. He is absolutely right that vital transport infrastructure, especially in our regions and in constituencies like his, is the bedrock of ensuring economic growth, prosperity, rising wages and good jobs for his constituents. I am delighted to support his call for that today.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I am sure the whole House will express condolences to the victims at the Kumbh Mela in India who sadly lost their lives or were badly injured.
In addition to the business announced by the Leader of the House, there will be a debate in Westminster Hall on Tuesday 4 February on apprentices and Apprenticeship Week. On Thursday 6 February, there will be a debate on open access to rail services, followed by a debate on debt cancellation for low-income countries. On Tuesday 11 February, there will be a debate in Westminster Hall on the cost of energy. On Thursday 13 February, there will be a debate on HIV Testing Week, followed by a debate on the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
After the recess, on Tuesday 25 February, there will be a debate on maternity services, which we have heard about this morning. On Thursday 27 February, there will be a debate on rural crime, potentially followed by a debate on mental health support in educational settings.
We have a veritable queue of debates for the Chamber, so it is a bit disappointing that there will be a general debate in Government time next week. We have debates lined up that will take us through to the April recess. Will the Leader of the House give us an early indication of when the estimates day debates will be held? I ask because we have to consider applications for, and advertise, debates to be held in the week commencing 3 March.
Yesterday, I met representatives from Balochistan, Sindh and the Muttahida Qaumi movement in Pakistan. They recounted to me atrocities too horrible to describe, committed against minority communities. We give Pakistan millions of pounds in aid, money that appears to be diverted away from the communities that desperately need it. Can we have a statement from the Foreign Secretary or the Minister for Development on what will be done to make sure that our aid is concentrated on areas of Pakistan that desperately need it, and that human rights triumph and the money is used effectively?
Lucy Powell
I thank the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee for informing the House of the important debates that his Committee has allocated for the coming weeks. I think we have been very generous in allocating Backbench Business time in recent weeks, and we will continue to be so. We have been doing our best to announce business as far in advance as possible—sometimes three weeks in advance—which is unprecedented in recent times. I will ensure that he is made aware of when the estimates day debates are likely to be.
The hon. Gentleman raises important issues about Pakistan. As he will know from his very good attendance at business questions, the subject is regularly raised with me and other Ministers. The Minister for the middle east, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), has recently raised a number of these matters with the Government of Pakistan, and I think it would make a good topic for an update statement to the House. I will ensure that Ministers have heard that call today.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
Four Carlisle men, Rae Daly Armstrong, Ivan Cooke, William Lewis Johnston and Charles Ross, were among almost 500 casualties from the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit who served in the second world war. The casualty rate for that very small unit was the second highest in the war. When planning the debates and events in this House that will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, will the Leader of the House give particular consideration to that small unit, which suffered such great losses during the war?
Lucy Powell
I am sure the whole House will join my hon. Friend in putting on record our thanks for those involved with the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit and its important work. As she will be aware, we have funding for a huge number of activities to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war. The Minister responsible will make a statement shortly about how that funding will be allocated and what activities will be involved. I will ensure that the Minister hears my hon. Friend’s pleas for commemoration of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit to be part of those activities.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
I thank the Leader of the House for her further commitment to the development of aviation in the south-east, which I am sure will extend to the development of Manston airport in my constituency. It already has a development consent order and is, in common parlance, shovel-ready. During the debate on the Climate and Nature Bill last Friday, I raised the subject of public funding for the Drax power station, an environmentally wholly unacceptable operation. At Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) again raised the issue of Drax and pointed to a KPMG report that suggests that the funding for Drax had been claimed illegally. Can we have a debate on that report and on the funding of Drax in Government time?
Lucy Powell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for welcoming the Government’s commitment to alleviating passenger congestion in the south-east, and for his local airport’s commitment to doing that, which I am sure we all welcome. He raises some serious matters, which were mentioned at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, about the Drax organisation and whether public funds have been used appropriately. This Government take such reports incredibly seriously, and I will ensure that the House is updated in due course.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
I too wish the shadow Minister a happy birthday. In October 2024, people from across Newcastle-under-Lyme came together for the unveiling of a wonderful statue of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Queen’s Gardens. There has been much talk of Heathrow airport in recent days. As our nation will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Queen in April 2026, will the Leader of the House back my calls to rename Heathrow after Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II? What a wonderful tribute that would be to a lifetime of service to the country and the Commonwealth.
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that excellent idea with me. He is absolutely right that we need to appropriately mark the late Queen’s extraordinary 70-year reign in a very big way, given all that she contributed to our public life and national identity. He will be aware that the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee has been set up to consider how best we could do that, and I will ensure that his suggestion is fed into that committee.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Yesterday, I re-established the all-party parliamentary group on freedom of speech. I am sure Members on the Government Front Bench will welcome that, given their recent slight changes of opinion on free speech in higher education. Will the Leader of the House find space in Government time for a broader debate on freedom of speech, given that her neighbour, the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer), is the deputy chairman of the APPG? In addition, will she clarify what she said at the start of business questions about the lower Thames crossing getting the go-ahead? My understanding is that the development consent order has not yet been passed; in fact, it has been delayed twice. That clarity will be important for people in constituencies like mine, who are eagerly awaiting the Government’s actions in that area.
Lucy Powell
The right hon. Gentleman will know that this Government are committed to free speech and to making sure that everybody has the ability to express themselves freely and without recourse. He might want to join my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer), to apply for a Backbench Business slot. We have had a number of urgent questions and statements to the House on those matters, but I will ensure that we are updated.
On the lower Thames crossing, the right hon. Gentleman will know that the Chancellor gave her commitment to that project in her speech yesterday. There is, as always with such matters, the quasi-judicial process that has to be gone through, which is a matter for the Secretary of State for Transport, but I will ensure that he is kept updated on that.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
Today, Lord Ericht has ruled that the consent for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields was granted unlawfully by the previous Government because they had failed to properly account for the effect on the climate of burning the fossil fuels that would be extracted. Can we have a debate on the future of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields and on the UK joining the countries that formed the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend will know that we have been clear that we will not challenge the judicial reviews in this case. We will consult on new guidance that takes into account the Supreme Court’s ruling on environmental impact assessments to enable the industry to secure jobs and invest in the economy of the future. We aim to conclude that by the spring of this year and I will ensure that the House is updated.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
The My Name’5 Doddie Foundation has told me that, aside from funding, motor neurone disease research needs a better regulatory framework to encourage investment into this country and to make it easier for UK citizens to take part in overseas trials. That research benefits not only the one in 300 who will develop MND but those who develop other neurodegenerative conditions, such as the many forms of dementia. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make a statement to the House on that issue?
Lucy Powell
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that issue, because people are still suffering, as are the families of those affected by MND. We need more research. We have some great campaigners, such as Kevin Sinfield, who have raised a huge amount of money. The hon. Lady is right that access to trials and research is critical. I will ensure that she gets a ministerial update on what the Government are doing.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Constituents in the village of Killamarsh in my constituency, a community of just over 9,000 people, do not now have any access to cash—not even an ATM—in the village. Will the Minister grant a debate on access to cash in semi-rural communities and make sure that my constituents’ voices are heard?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important issue for her constituents. It gets raised with me many times in business questions, because access to cash and making sure we have banking hubs in all our communities, which this Government are committed to doing, is critical to thriving market towns and high streets such as those in her constituency. We have already opened more than a hundred banking hubs, and I will ensure that she is updated, including on the banking hub in her constituency.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
A rail freight interchange is being proposed near Hinckley and Burbage in my constituency. Before Christmas, the Planning Inspectorate passed its judgment on it and the then Transport Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), said she was “minded to refuse” the application. However, in an unprecedented decision, the Department extended the call for further information, which closes in a couple of weeks’ time. After yesterday’s speech from the Chancellor, there is growing concern among my community that the project might be greenlighted.
In the light of that, while I know that the Leader of the House cannot comment specifically on that case, will she write to the new Transport Secretary, the right hon. Member for Swindon South (Heidi Alexander), to make sure that all protocols are followed as they are written? May we have a debate in Government time on having a joined-up national strategy on rail freight interchanges and where they are placed?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising what I am sure is a huge issue for his constituents. He is right that I cannot comment on the specifics of the case, but I know that the Secretary of State for Transport takes her quasi-judicial role in such cases extremely seriously and is mindful to ensure that due process is followed in all circumstances. I will raise the issue that he has raised with me with Ministers today. It is vital that we upgrade rail freight capacity in this country. We are now at capacity in many places. Interchanges with other services are vital, and I will ensure that he is updated.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
Yesterday, it was reported that a former constituent of Kensington and Bayswater, Roman Abramovich, owes up to £1 billion in UK tax—potentially a bigger case than even Bernie Ecclestone. Does my right hon. Friend share the country’s anger at people such as Roman Abramovich using complex corporate structures and British overseas territories to dodge tax while others pay their fair share, and will she ensure that time is made to scrutinise whether His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has all the resources it needs to pursue the case and recover as much money as possible for the Treasury?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is right to raise tax evasion, tax avoidance and, in some cases, illegal tax avoidance—industrial-scale tax avoidance such as in the case he raised. Obviously, I will not get into individual cases, but the gap is still too wide. Just a few years ago, the tax gap between what was being avoided and what was being collected was a staggering £36 billion. We are recruiting 5,000 new HMRC compliance officers and aim to close the tax gap over the coming years.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
This week, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation forecasted child poverty levels across England and Wales for the next five years. The results are stark: child poverty rates are forecast to increase in both Labour-run Wales and Labour-run England. However, there is hope and a way forward. Child poverty rates in Scotland, which are already estimated to be the lowest in the UK, are set to drop further, with the SNP Scottish Government’s Scottish child payment recognised as a driving force in that reduction. Can we have an urgent statement from the UK Government on extending the Scottish Government’s approach to child poverty, including the Scottish child payment, to the rest of these islands to ensure that a reduction in child poverty is not confined solely to Scotland?
Lucy Powell
This Government are absolutely committed to tackling child poverty. We inherited a very challenging context from the previous Government. The child poverty taskforce has been set up, and has funding. Its urgent work has begun, and we will publish the child poverty strategy in the spring. The hon. Gentleman mentions the SNP’s plans to end the two-child cap in Scotland, but he will know that there is not a single penny to back that up. It is a promise in the never-never land, trying to make politics out of this issue. I suggest that he takes seriously what we are doing to tackle child poverty, rather than making party political points.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
Rochdale Get Together After Serving is opening a brand-new military veterans and community hub at R-KIX sports centre this Saturday. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking all the local businesses and charities that donated computers, carpets and even new windows for this new hub, which will support job searches and provide skills help? Will she congratulate in particular Royal Navy veteran Adam Trennery on his excellent initiative, which will help all veterans in Rochdale?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Adam Trennery and all those involved in the Get Together After Serving team. It sounds like a really great initiative to support veterans in his constituency. The Government take these sorts of initiatives very seriously, and I thank him for raising it.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
Could the Leader of the House bring forward a statement on smart meters and their roll-out? She may be aware that there was a geographic divide in the United Kingdom in the original roll-out, whereby properties essentially north of the M62 were supplied with data by something called the radio teleswitch service. The service is due to be switched off in June, but over 165,000 properties in Scotland still rely on it, of which 3,745 are in my Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale constituency. It appears that the roll-out of the new meters will not be able to meet the timescale of the switch-off, and it is important that we hear the response from Ministers to that.
Lucy Powell
The right hon. Member raises a very important matter, and I thank him for doing so, because we recognise how important it is to have a smooth transition for consumers away from the radio teleswitch service. I am concerned to hear what he says about that being off track for many of his constituents. We will continue to work closely with Ofgem and the RTS taskforce to ensure that the deadline is met, but I will absolutely ensure that Ministers come to this House regularly and update him and other Members on progress.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
My constituent Clare Rogers came to my surgery after she lost her son to a ketamine addiction. Clare told me of the severe pain and neurological damage he suffered. A crisis of ketamine usage among our young people has become apparent, and we must look to mental health and addiction services because they are ultimately the ones that will treat addiction, prevent relapses and give people a chance to turn their lives around. Will the Leader of the House provide time for Members to discuss this issue, which goes across the Home Office, the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, so that our young people understand the harms of ketamine usage and so that we can put this issue to bed?
Lucy Powell
I am saddened to hear the case that my hon. Friend raises. She is absolutely right that ketamine is extremely dangerous, and the rise in its use across many of our towns and cities is deeply concerning. This issue has been raised with me a number of times in these sessions, so I will ensure that a response is made available for all Members about how the Government are tackling it.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I ask this question of the Leader of the House on behalf of my constituents and neighbouring constituents from Cheadle, because their MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison), is on paternity leave following the birth of beautiful baby Poppy last week. He, his partner Lou and Poppy are all doing well, and I am sure the whole House sends them our very best.
Stepping Hill hospital in Hazel Grove has a reported repairs backlog of £130 million, yet it does not qualify for the new hospital programme. Will the Leader of the House encourage Health Ministers to come to the House to update us with a statement on what the plans are to repair those hospitals that do not qualify for the new hospital programme?
Lucy Powell
I join the hon. Member in congratulating the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) on the birth of his daughter Poppy last week, and I thank her for stepping in to do some cover for him.
I am very familiar with Stepping Hill hospital and can appreciate the state of disrepair it is in and how much it is in need of capital investment. The hon. Member will know that this Government inherited a hospital building and capital investment programme that was, frankly, a work of fiction: it had no money backing it up and deadlines that were never ever going to be delivered. We have now turned it into an actual plan of action for those hospitals, but I will ensure that she gets an update on Stepping Hill hospital and what more can be done.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for her warm words earlier about the work many of us have done to get the lower Thames crossing greenlit by the Chancellor yesterday—something the Conservatives simply failed to do over 14 years.
I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment in the devolution White Paper to a strong new right to buy and maintain beloved community assets. Stone parish council in my constituency has been attempting to purchase the freehold to the Lads of the Village pub for some time. The pub has been an important part of Stone village since 1793, playing a significant role in community life. Despite offers from the parish council at full asking price, the owner has refused to negotiate or sell. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate in Government time about how we protect vital community assets like this one?
Lucy Powell
I take this opportunity to once again congratulate my hon. Friend on all his campaigning and all the times he has raised with me and other Ministers the lower Thames crossing—I am sure he is pleased with this week’s announcement.
I join my hon. Friend in welcoming some of the measures outlined in our devolution White Paper around community ownership and the right to buy, so that communities like his can take on and restore, or bring back to life, vital community assets like the one he describes. I am sorry to hear that the owner of the pub in his constituency is not engaging in the way they should.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Health made a promise to the House that the Government will recruit an extra 1,000 GPs. In a recent statement, he said they have already recruited hundreds of GPs. We have asked for evidence of that claim, but the Minister of State for Care has not been able to provide us with a specific figure. Will the Leader of the House inquire with her colleagues as to whether hundreds of new GPs have been hired, so that we can see what progress the Government are making?
Lucy Powell
The hon. Member is absolutely right that it is vital that we recruit more GPs. We have been left a terrible situation with the NHS workforce. That is why workforce planning was at the heart of our recent 10-year plan for the national health service. I will absolutely ensure that Health Ministers and the Secretary of State for Health regularly come to this House to update us on progress, and I will get him a correct figure, if I can, as soon as possible from the Department of Health and Social Care.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
My constituency has some of Britain’s most beautiful beaches, beloved by swimmers and the local community in Portobello and Joppa. Groups like the Porty Water Collective are fighting hard to protect the beaches from sewage overflows and sewage-related debris washing up on them. The UK Government are taking big, important steps to fix England’s sewage crisis, but in Scotland, water is devolved to the SNP Government, we do not monitor sewage overflows as much as in England, and local groups cannot access what little data there is. Will the Leader of the House allow a debate in Government time so we can solve Scotland’s sewage crisis?
Lucy Powell
The beaches around my hon. Friend’s constituency do indeed sound beautiful, and I am sure he regularly gets his kit off to go for a swim in the sea there. He is right that it is unacceptable that sewage is still flowing into the waters and seas of Scotland and that we do not even know the extent of it. The Scottish Government, as he says, are responsible for Scottish water and should frankly get their act together. We have brought forward legislation that will start to take action on this matter, and the Scottish Government should follow suit.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
King Lifting Ltd is a west country firm that operates mostly mobile cranes across the UK. The company holds a Home Office licence for sponsorship, but cannot employ the heavy crane operators it needs. The work is not for everyone because it involves long stays away from home working on major infrastructure projects, such as wind farms, High Speed 2 and our nuclear sites. Operators qualify as individuals not through the company and must also be experienced. Every time King Lifting advertises, it gets dozens of applicants, almost all from abroad, and the company trains and tests heavy crane operators to meet the UK’s high standards. Please may we have a debate on adding crane operators to the UK immigration skilled workers eligible occupations list?
Lucy Powell
The hon. Member is absolutely right that skills are at the heart of all these industries that are vital to creating the new jobs and industries of the future through our mission to be a clean energy superpower by 2030. The Government want to take more action to ensure that those who live and work in this country have access to such opportunities by having a much stronger emphasis on skills development and work opportunities through reforming the Department for Work and Pensions and jobcentres, but I will have a look at the issue she raises and ensure that she gets a response.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Unless questions are short and answers are on point, we will not get everybody in. I call Mark Sewards.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
Greenhill primary school serves the small Armley and Bramley parts of my constituency. Its excellent work was recognised in its most recent Ofsted report this month, which states that the school has improved rapidly and pupils are safe. I have seen that excellent work at first hand, including through the Solar for Schools programme. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the school for its amazing Ofsted report, and grant a debate in Government time on the need for solar energy programmes in primary schools?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Greenhill primary school for its achievements in that regard. He is absolutely right that schools could do more to provide sustainable energy for themselves through Solar for Schools—a school in my constituency has embarked on that. The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is keen on that issue, and I will ensure that he is updated.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In Kyrgyzstan, President Sadyr Japarov has signed two new laws—the religion law and the amending law—imposing stricter regulations on religious communities in that country. Those laws, effective from this Saturday, introduce more stringent requirements for registration, impose bans on unregistered religious activity and increase state control over religious practices, so freedom of religious belief is impeded. The laws introduce heavier fines for violations, raising concerns about the restriction of religious freedom there. As the climate of uncertainty and fear among believers rises, will the Leader of the House join me in condemning those actions, and will she speak to her Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office colleagues about any policy implications?
Lucy Powell
Once again, the hon. Gentleman raises an important breach of freedom of religious belief—in this case in Kyrgyzstan. I will of course raise that with the Foreign Office and ensure that he gets a full reply about it.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
This week, I visited Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, which is managed brilliantly by Sally Godden and her team, and I met Rugby Artists and Makers Network painters Jan Clark and Aish Magesh, ceramicist Belinda Edwards, and spinner Angela Dewes. Does the Leader of the House agree that any support given to such municipally run galleries, or to creative entrepreneurship such as Art at the Alex—a former pub run by Chris Pegler and Steve Davies—is much needed to allow artists to showcase their talent, strengthen our community, inspire the next generation, boost the local economy and, importantly, make a living through their artistic endeavour, and will there be time for a debate on that?
Lucy Powell
The Government are absolutely committed to municipally run galleries such as the one that my hon. Friend mentions. The culture sector and the cultural offer are at the core of making our towns, villages and cities vibrant places where people want to live and work. I join him in welcoming that.,
Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
In my constituency, the Isle of Arran has been connected to the mainland through harbours at Brodick and Ardrossan for 190 years. I have mentioned before the Save Ardrossan Harbour group, which is fighting hard to keep the ferry sailing from Ardrossan. Although I welcome the new ferry that is currently sailing from Troon to Brodick, I am concerned that fewer sailings are timetabled. I have been made aware of an island constituent who has had to reschedule a health screening on the mainland three times as they are unable to make the journey and return home on the same day. Had the ferries still been sailing from Ardrossan as usual, that would not have been a problem. Will my right hon. Friend grant a debate to discuss the fact that the SNP Government and other stakeholders need to sort out the ferry situation as soon as possible to provide clarity for the people of Brodick?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is a real campaigner on this matter, which she has raised with me a number of times. She knows that the SNP Government have wasted over £5 billion of taxpayer’s money on pet projects, including ferries that did not sail. They have had a massive boost to their budget as a result of the UK Government’s Budget, and their excuses really have run out.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
Kinneil Estate, which is home to a UNESCO world heritage landmark and where James Watt tested his steam engine prototype, attracts thousands of visitors to Bo’ness. Kinneil Museum, which is operated by Falkirk council and supported by the fantastic Friends of Kinneil, provides space to learn about local history dating back to Roman times. It is, however, threatened with closure, which risks damaging local tourism and the preservation of local heritage. Will the Leader of the House allocate Government time to debate the importance of local heritage centres?
Lucy Powell
What my hon. Friend raises is particularly concerning given that it relates to a UNESCO world heritage site. Heritage is of course a devolved matter, but we take it very seriously indeed, and it would make an excellent topic for a debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Questions are getting even longer. I said short questions, please. I call Connor Rand.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a severe progressive muscle-wasting disease that affects around 2,500 people in the UK, including Felix from my constituency. Felix’s mum, Lisa, has told me about Givinostat, a promising new treatment that could be transformative. However, not all NHS trusts are signed up to the early access programme for the drug, even though it is free. That needs to change, so could we have a debate or a statement on Duchenne muscular dystrophy and how we can improve access to treatments for it?
Lucy Powell
As my hon. Friend says, that treatment is free to patients and the NHS under the early access programme, but whether local trusts can cover the cost of administering it is a matter for them. I know that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence aims to publish guidance on the use of Givinostat in the NHS shortly, and we will update the House as soon as possible.
Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)
On 16 January, WHSmith in Stockton announced its closure, putting at risk our town centre post office. I am leading a campaign with local Labour councillors to find an alternative location. Does my right hon. Friend agree that post offices provide vital services for towns such as Stockton, and will she consider a debate in Government time on this important issue?
Lucy Powell
Post offices play a vital role for our communities, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to stand up and call for their services to continue in his constituency. He will know that there is such a debate this afternoon—he may wish to raise those issues then.
Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)
Last week, I received letters from year 5 pupils at St Thomas Becket Catholic primary school in my constituency. They raised concerns about deforestation and highlighted the alarming decline of tropical rainforests by 50% and the unacceptable use of child labour by the industries driving deforestation. Will the Leader of the House allow time for a statement on what progress the Government have made on their pledge of £239 million of funding to halt and reverse deforestation in forest-rich nations, and will she join me in thanking the pupils of St Thomas Becket school for raising that important issue?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in thanking those students—year 5 pupils are often the toughest of audiences. She will know that the UK supports a variety of programmes aimed at preventing deforestation, and we are a major contributor to Brazil’s Amazon fund. I am sure that that would make a good topic for a debate.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Yesterday the Bank of Scotland announced the closure of its Alexandria branch in my constituency. Branch offices are essential to ensure access to cash and face-to-face banking for the most vulnerable and for many small businesses in my constituency. Does the Minister share my concern about the loss of such vital services and recognise the urgent need for the Government to roll out more banking hubs, and will she raise with Government colleagues the need for a banking hub in Alexandria and West Dunbartonshire?
Lucy Powell
Banking hubs are critical to communities such as that of my hon. Friend in West Dunbartonshire. The Government are committed to rolling out our 350 banking hubs—more than 100 are already open. I think that would be an extremely popular topic for a debate.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
This week, the YMCA released its annual report, revealing the devastating cuts to youth services over the past 14 years. Spending in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire has been cut by more than 90% since 2010 and funding is not equitable: in Stoke-on-Trent, spending per young person is 10% less than in inner London. Families in my constituency deserve better. Will the Leader of the House make time to debate the need for adequate and equitable funding for youth services?
Lucy Powell
It is a source of national shame that youth funding decreased by three quarters under the previous Government—one of the deepest cuts made to any public services. There was no real strategy for young people, and we are seeing the consequences of that. The Government are determined to turn that around, and we will work with my hon. Friend to do that in Stoke-on-Trent.
Paul Davies (Colne Valley) (Lab)
I am delighted about the recent announcement at the creative industries growth summit of new funding for West Yorkshire. This funding will enable local leaders to address the specific needs of local creative businesses, which is a priority for Mayor Brabin, and it will benefit towns such as Holmfirth, home to the Picturedrome. Could we have a debate in Government time on what further support can be given to local creative and entertainment venues?
Lucy Powell
Culture and Holmfirth go hand in hand. Many of us of a certain age will remember “Last of the Summer Wine”, filmed in Holmfirth. I recently went to Compo’s chippy, and I can say that it does great fish and chips. West Yorkshire is one of the priority areas for our creative industries sector plan, and we are working closely with the fantastic Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, who is a real leader in this regard.
Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)
This week, I met a constituent, Bradley Price, who has recently taken up a degree apprenticeship with Nuclear Transport Solutions. We talked about the excellent transferable skills he is gaining and the great career options open to him. There is no doubt that high-quality apprenticeships like that can be the right route for so many school leavers, yet it seems from talking to pupils in Rossendale and Darwen that awareness of the range and quality of such opportunities is remarkably low. I welcome the announcement of a Backbench Business debate on apprenticeships, but would the Leader of the House agree to a debate in Government time on raising awareness in schools about apprenticeships?
Lucy Powell
I wish Bradley good luck with his degree apprenticeship. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that degree apprenticeships offer a real career opportunity for many of our young people, and they are still not as widely known about as they should be through careers advice in schools. He raises a really important point, with which this Government wholeheartedly agree.
Andrew Ranger (Wrexham) (Lab)
Wrexham is a thriving hub of business, and the continued investment in the Wrexham and Flintshire investment zone is very welcome indeed. Companies such as Wrexham Lager, Kellogg’s and JCB, among others, are exporting from Wrexham around the globe. However, too many businesses have had to give up on exporting due to the huge increase in costs from red tape introduced under the previous Government. Such things are critical if we are to achieve the growth we want, so will the Leader of the House please consider providing parliamentary time to debate how we can ensure that these businesses get the support they need?
Lucy Powell
I am sure my hon. Friend welcomes—in fact, he has done—the much deserved announcement this week of an investment zone for his constituency of Wrexham. He is absolutely right that businesses face far too much red tape, especially because of the botched Brexit deal by the last Government, and this Government are committed to reducing that.
Claire Hughes (Bangor Aberconwy) (Lab)
Since last year, all parents in England who have experienced the heartbreak of losing a pregnancy have been able to apply for a certificate that formally recognises their loss. An agreement was made in principle with the previous Secretary of State of Health to extend the scheme to Wales, but discussions were paused before the general election. Would the Leader of the House consider writing to the relevant Ministers to ask them to meet me to discuss how this scheme could be extended to Wales, so that baby loss certificates are made available without any further delay?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that really important topic. She is absolutely right that baby loss certificates in England have provided recognition and comfort to many families who have been bereaved by baby loss. I think her call for the scheme to be extended to Wales is absolutely right, and I will make sure she gets some contact with a Minister to discuss it further.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Saving the best contribution to last, I call Sureena Brackenridge.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
In Wolverhampton North East in the past five years, we have lost banks from Wednesfield High Street and all banking facilities in the Scotlands and Three Tuns areas. Can the Leader of the House make time for a debate on banking hubs to keep banking on our high streets?
Lucy Powell
I think that is the fourth time banking has been raised with me today, which just goes to show how vital having access to cash and banking hubs is for communities such as those in Wolverhampton. That is why this Government have committed to opening 350 hubs; over 100 are already open. I think that would be an extremely popular topic for a debate.
Bill Presented
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Yvette Cooper, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary David Lammy, Pat McFadden, Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Secretary Hilary Benn, Secretary Ian Murray, Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Secretary Jo Stevens and Dame Angela Eagle, presented a Bill to make provision about border security; to make provision about immigration and asylum; to make provision about sharing customs data and trailer registration data; to make provision about articles for use in serious crime; to make provision about serious crime prevention orders; to make provision about fees paid in connection with the recognition, comparability or assessment of qualifications; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 3 February, and to be printed (Bill 173) with explanatory notes (Bill 173-EN).
Backbench Business
Proportional Representation: General Elections
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered proportional representation for general elections.
Before I speak on the matter at hand, I note that today is the funeral of one of my party’s and our country’s greatest politicians, John Prescott. I send my thoughts to his family and friends. They include some who would otherwise have been with us today; equally, some of us here would have wished to be there.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time in the Chamber for this crucial debate, and the many colleagues from across the House, and from every nation and region in the UK, who co-sponsored or supported the application. It is right that the House should provide time to consider proportional representation for general elections to this place. Just last month, the House voted in favour of PR for the first time ever, by giving leave to bring in the ten-minute rule Bill on the subject moved by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), who I see in her place.
That historic vote was an indication of the strength and breadth of feeling among Members on both sides of the House that our first-past-the-post electoral system is not working. It is desperately in need of an upgrade, and we need seriously to consider the alternatives. The last time we did so was through the Jenkins commission in 1998, when elections produced results in which the numbers of seats more closely matched the numbers of votes than they do now. My hope for today, and it is one I know many others share, is that Members can explain why so many colleagues and so much of the public at large have reached the conclusion that it is time to think again about our electoral system. In doing so, I want to encourage the Government to be bold and to be honest about how unrepresentative British general elections have become.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful opening speech. Turnout at the general election in July last year dropped to below 60%, which means that two in every five people did not participate. Does my hon. Friend agree that that shows we need change, so that more people engage in our democratic system?
Alex Sobel
Absolutely. The turnout and engagement of voters in general elections should be a matter of concern for everybody in this place and in the country at large.
The truth is that first past the post is failing on its own terms. It is becoming less and less representative and producing more and more random results; there are more outliers and more MPs are elected on less than 30% of their constituents who voted. In reality, some MPs represent constituencies in which perhaps 85% of those they represent did not vote for them. These are the lowest figures since the beginning of universal suffrage. The numbers do not lie, and they can no longer be ignored. The public know it, our parties know it and we in this place know it.
These growing failures of representative democracy—the widespread feeling that ordinary people do not have a fair say over who speaks for them or how they are governed—are feeding the record low levels of trust in politics and faith in democracy, and that should worry all of us. The Government have a responsibility to face up to those problems and address them before the next general election, starting with the launch of a national commission for electoral reform. The 1997 Government were brave enough to undertake this work at a time when confidence in the electoral and political systems was much higher and those systems were less stressed than they are now.
Let me begin by looking at last year’s general election. Most people got neither the party they voted for into government nor the candidate they voted for as their local MP. Labour won a historic majority, and like other Labour MPs whose seats are perceived as safe in the living memory of all party members and probably all parties, I travelled around the country to work in many marginal constituencies where we needed to get votes to win. However, this speaks to the failure not to the success of our system. The 2024 general election was a culmination of years of falling vote share for the winning party, and we—the Labour party—won on just one third of the national vote.
Of course I always work extremely hard for my party to be in government, and I am delighted that almost 10 million people voted for us. However, 19 million people voted for other parties, and we must admit that they are the vast majority of those who took part in the election. They did not get to influence the kind of Government the country has, and it can no longer be acceptable to have a winner-takes-all culture on the basis of a third of the country’s vote. That erodes our democracy.
One of the arguments of supporters of first-past-the-post elections is that people are not really voting for a Government, but just for a local MP. Let us take this at face value. Only four out of 10 voters got the local MP they voted for at the last election, and six out of 10 did not get the MP they voted for. We have a system that ignores those six out of 10 people. We are now in an unprecedented situation where 554 MPs—85% of us—were elected by less than 50% of the voters who turned out to vote. I am one of the lucky few who received over 50% of the vote, so this debate and the changes I am proposing are not of personal benefit to me. Some 266 MPs—41%—were elected with less than 40% of the vote. A few colleagues— I am not sure any are in the Chamber—were even elected with less than 30% of the vote. When most people’s representatives in Parliament do not reflect how they voted, it feeds the all-too-pervasive sense that Westminster is some distant, unresponsive institution in which voters have no real voice.
Like all first-past-the-post elections, 2024 was one in which some votes and areas mattered more than others. A system that forces parties to prioritise small groups of votes in a handful of marginal seats also forces them to neglect large parts of the country—where to go, who to speak to both directly and through the media, and the policies put forward. People in non-battleground seats, which make up the majority of seats at every first-past-the-post election, never have the resources spent on them that are spent on marginal seats. Candidates and activists are directed away from those perceived safe seats to marginals, meaning less contact in those seats. That is usually reflected in the turnout of safe seats compared with marginal seats, as voters are generally well aware of the relative importance of their constituency. It is hugely corrosive to our trust in politics, and we end up with most people and communities up and down the country saying that they feel “invisible to politicians”, to use the words of the Brown Commission. People can tell when they are being ignored. They can also smell unfairness a mile away.
First past the post means that people’s votes are not equal in value. Sometimes, I fear that we in this place are used to that gross unfairness in elections and have become numb to it. But for millions of people, their stake in national politics is the vote that they get to cast in a general election every few years. When they see that a party won 2 million votes and got four MPs, or a party won 4 million votes and got five MPs, it is clear to them that the system is not fair. It drives voters either into the margins or away from voting at all. If we in Westminster are content to say, “That’s just the way it is”, it is no wonder that hardly anyone trusts politics.
Florence Eshalomi
My hon. Friend may be aware that an Electoral Commission poll from 2023 found that more people were dissatisfied with our democratic election system than were satisfied. Does he think that looking at changing our current voting system would make more people feel satisfied?
Alex Sobel
I am coming to that exact point shortly, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising it.
The 2024 general election was a stark illustration of the problems with our voting system, and it is important to understand that it was not a one-off. These problems have been getting worse for decades, and that is set to continue if we keep the system as it is. We have gone from 97% of people voting for Labour or the Conservative party in the 1950s, to just 58% doing so in 2024—a record low. In the first-past-the-post system, that produces hugely volatile and erratic results—electoral chaos theory, as Professor Rob Ford has called it.
Back in the mid-20th century, parties needed close to 50% of the vote to win a majority of seats, but that threshold has been falling to new lows for decades— 39% in 1974, 35% in 2005 and, as I said, one third last year. There is every reason to think that this trend will continue. That a party, even an extreme one, can win a huge majority with less than a third of the vote is not just senseless but dangerous. If we do not address this now, I fear that election results will become even less representative. Governments and MPs will be elected with lower support than ever, and there will be increasingly chaotic and random results. That will drive trust and engagement still lower. That is unsustainable, and I think the Government know it.
Labour’s official policy on first past the post is set out in the final national policy forum document that the party produced in the previous Parliament, which set the policy platform for our manifesto. It stated:
“The flaws in the current voting system are contributing to the distrust and alienation we see in politics.”
I agree, as do almost all the parties on the Opposition Benches. We know that the public agrees—two thirds want the flaws in the voting system to be addressed before the next general election, according to Survation. The long-running British attitudes survey found record majority support for changing to PR, with those who trust politics least the most likely to support change. Are they not the people we need to engage? Just this month, YouGov found that support for PR hit an all-time high, with support for first past the post at an all-time low.
Every single MP in Great Britain has been contacted by constituents in recent days asking them to support PR in this debate. I have received hundreds of emails, even though my name is on the debate. The Prime Minister has made it clear that restoring trust in politics is a key priority, calling the fight for trust
“the battle that defines our age”.
If the Government are to win the battle, they must address our flawed voting system—one they know is driving distrust and alienation in politics, which means that millions of people’s votes do not count, and which most people do not want to continue with. That is why I urge the Government to take this first step by establishing a national commission for electoral reform, as recommended by the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which I chair.
The Government have said that there is no consensus on a new system, but that is exactly why there is a great opportunity to set up a process that begins to build consensus: a national commission to examine the issues that first past the post is causing, and to recommend a fair and democratic alternative.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a good case, though one that I fundamentally disagree with, as he will hear later. He has just outlined his own Government’s position on proportional representation. We have already had an answer on that, so where can he go now? On 2 December 2024, when asked by the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), the Deputy Prime Minister said that this Government would not set up a national commission and would not examine proportional representation any further. What does the hon. Gentleman propose to do to make the Government change their mind?
Alex Sobel
I have just said that the first step would be for the Government to set up a national commission. This debate is the first step for the APPG to try to persuade the Government to set up that national commission. We are on a journey. Not everything the Government announced at the start of the Parliament is what they are still announcing. Change is possible.
The commission could draw insights from the experience of devolved bodies and other democracies. It could allow citizens, as well as experts, to contribute to evaluating the options and finding a way forward that would command public trust and confidence. None of this need distract from Government’s core mission of delivering their manifesto priorities, but it would demonstrate beyond doubt that they are serious about giving a stronger voice to millions of people who feel increasingly excluded from British politics.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
When I was out knocking on doors in my constituency in last year’s general election campaign, lots of people reminisced with me about a previous general election when the Liberal candidate came just 378 tantalising votes short of the incumbent Conservative. They spoke very fondly of that candidate, which might not be surprising, except the election that they were recalling was in 1983—over four decades ago.
I also remember speaking to an elderly, lifelong Labour voter who was lending me his vote for the very first time because he had to do something different. When I thanked him for placing his trust in me, he told me not to take too much from it, because his entire life he had never voted for a candidate who had won. I will always remember that conversation. As I walked away, I said, “Well, we’ll see about that.”
Until last July, for 74 years the constituency of Chelmsford, in its various shapes and sizes over the years, had never been represented in Parliament by anyone other than a Conservative. In fact, it had been 100 years since Chelmsford was last represented by a Liberal—something I am extremely proud to have corrected. It should not have to be this way. I hugely admire the tenacity of that erstwhile Labour voter who lent me his vote, hoping against all the evidence of his lifetime that this time it might make a difference.
No wonder turnout in elections is often so painfully low. Our antiquated first-past-the-post system can be incredibly demoralising, even for a committed political campaigner like myself. Believe it or not, I do not like having to ask people on the doorstep to lend me their vote so that, together, we can game the system to get the change that we want. Would it not better if people could cast their vote in a way that let them set out their preferences? They would know that all would not be lost for them if their first preference candidate did not win, as their vote could be transferred to someone else that they also would not mind seeing elected. The turnout in last year’s general election, as has already been alluded to, was 65.9% in Chelmsford, slightly better than the national turnout, which was a pretty poor 59.7%. In Manchester Rusholme, the turnout was just 40%. But these are dizzying heights compared with the turnout in local elections.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I appreciate that the hon. Lady is talking about a preferential voting system, rather than a proportional voting system. Does she understand that there is quite a big difference between those two options, and obviously today’s debate is about proportional representation?
Marie Goldman
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not think those two things are mutually exclusive. There are preferential systems that can lead to proportional results. In fact, we see that in many places that use preferential systems.
In the election in May 2024 for the police, fire and crime commissioner in Essex, the turnout was barely 25%. So why are people not voting? Surely part of the issue is simply that they do not believe that their vote counts. They do not believe that they can make a difference. Although I do not completely agree with that, I certainly agree that the first-past-the-post system makes it harder.
There are also other things in our electoral system that make it harder, and I do not think that we should be talking about changing our voting system without also talking about them. For example, the introduction of voter ID was supposedly designed to enhance trust in our elections, but the evidence suggests that there have been some other consequences. In the 2024 general election, 4% of people who did not vote said that the voter ID requirement was the reason that they could not do so. Additionally, 0.08% of those who went to the polls were unable to cast their ballot because they did not have the correct ID. Those may seem like small figures, but if we put them into rough numbers, rather than percentages, we can see that, with about 28.9 million people casting their vote, the number of people who showed up who could not cast their vote because they did not have the correct ID was approximately—unless I have got my maths wrong—23,000 people. That is an incredibly high and quite shocking number.
Let us think about that for a moment—23,000 people could not vote because we wanted to stop voter fraud. Of course that might be a good idea if there was lots of voter fraud going on, but the Electoral Commission’s own website says:
“In the past five years, there is no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud. Of the 1,462 cases of alleged electoral fraud reported to police between 2019 and 2023, 11 led to convictions, and the police issued four cautions.”
Talk about a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Voter registration is another area where improvements are needed. Research shows that as many as 8 million people across the UK are not registered correctly at their current address. This affects key groups such as young people, private renters and recent home movers who may not realise that they are missing from the register until it is too late. Although the current system allows for late registration before elections, this puts unnecessary pressure on electoral services and risks leaving some people unable to vote on polling day.
We can see the impact that even small barriers to voting can have. Imagine what would happen if we broke down those barriers and got rid of them. We must recognise that barriers to participation, including voter ID, voter registration and the voting system itself, are dangerous to our democracy. I urge the Government to take the opportunity to fix this and thereby to strengthen democracy and democratic engagement in our country.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
I will be very brief in so as not to repeat the arguments that have already been made in such a good style by hon. Members across the House. I too wish to take this opportunity to put on record my support for electoral reform, to ensure that the composition of our representatives better reflects the wishes of voters and that voters can exercise more choice.
The Labour party has a long and proud history of supporting the objectives of proportionality and choice in other legislatures across our United Kingdom and, of course, in other elections. Until recently, voters were able to offer a nuanced view, utilising the supplementary vote system in mayoral elections. Sadly, that level of choice was rescinded by the last Conservative Government. As the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) pointed out, that was just one step taken by the Conservative party in its Elections Act 2022, alongside the introduction of the need to show identification when voting, which has left many people feeling locked out of voting altogether.
Florence Eshalomi
Another change put forward by the previous Government in the Elections Act was in relation to postal votes, which, again, has disenfranchised many people. Does my hon. Friend believe that if we are to look at electoral reform, we should consider some of the consequences of the changes that were made by the previous Government?
Steve Race
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.
As I was about to say, whether it be the inequity of allowing the older person’s bus pass to be used as ID but not the young person’s bus pass, or leaving out entirely the ability to use a veteran’s ID card or a train driver’s licence, the Act was largely unnecessary and introduced many retrograde measures designed to restrict access to our democracy, rather than to encourage participation.
Paul Holmes
I have a lot of respect for the hon. Gentleman. He says that the Elections Act restricted people’s ability to vote. Can I therefore ask him what measures he would put in place to stop the restricting of genuine voters from voting when their vote is taken away by fraud?
Steve Race
As has already been pointed out, the level of voter fraud in this country was minuscule—
Steve Race
It is not that it is okay, but we have introduced legislation that has essentially restricted many, many more people from voting than otherwise would have happened.
Steve Race
I will make some progress, if I may.
I am pleased that this Government have legislated to allow the use of the veteran’s ID card, and I ask that they look at a wider range of suitable ID, including train driver licences, in any future review. Preferably, though, we should return to the traditional British approach of not demanding ID to have access to a vote.
On the issue at hand, I want to recommend to colleagues the outcome of the Jenkins Commission of 1998, which designed an elegant solution to the issues that our democracy faces when it comes to representation. Jenkins, one of the great social reformers of this place to whom many of us still owe a great debt of gratitude, proposed a hybrid system that kept many of the benefits of first past the post, such as the strong relationship that an MP has with a defined and manageable area, but with additional proportionality through the additional member system. Constituency MPs would be elected through the alternative vote system to add choice into the system.
Versions of that system are now in operation for elections in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the London Assembly, so this is not theoretical and voters understand it perfectly well. This is proof that a Labour Government can and do deliver much-needed social reform and always has.
Although I do not support electoral reform in the sense of pure PR, I absolutely accept that politics is about priorities. This Government have a huge task to do—three things all at once, I believe, which is not something that many Governments have faced before. We must stabilise our public finances, get the economy growing in a sustainable way, and rebuild our public services. That is a mammoth task, but it is what the public demanded when they elected our party with a landslide last year. I can well understand that these issues take priority over time for electoral reform. I do not think that I could look my constituents in Exeter in the eye if I knew that we were spending much time—and it would be much time—in this place discussing how to be elected, rather than addressing their immediate concerns.
As I have mentioned, there is much that we can do to make the current system more democratic and accessible, so I support the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for a commission to look into this issue and find a way forward. Therefore, although I remain an electoral reformer, I also welcome the Government’s current focus on supporting the development of a stronger economy, grabbing the opportunities that are on offer for my region, and delivering jobs and investment in places such as Exeter, while also working and legislating hard to fix our roads, end our homelessness and housing crisis, clean up our waterways and rebuild our health system.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
It is an honour to sit on the fair elections all-party group, which is so well chaired by the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel). It is also an honour to take up this fight in this House with the Liberal Democrats for whom electoral reform has been a central tenet for decades.
In order to be here today, I had to resign my commission in the Royal Air Force where I had, for 23 years, defended our country and our interests overseas. However, I came to recognise that the most crucial way to defend our democracy was to do so here while backing proportional representation. Throughout the 2024 general election campaign, residents across Tewkesbury constituency frequently expressed their frustrations with an electoral system that was certain to condemn them to another five years of the same Conservative Member of Parliament whichever candidate they voted for. Tewkesbury had been represented by my predecessor for 27 years, and it was the view of many residents that Tewkesbury would never experience change because our broken electoral system would see this safe Conservative seat won by the Conservatives at an eighth consecutive election.
Cameron Thomas
No, for two reasons: the Liberal Democrats defied the odds, but there are many other smaller parties who are not adequately represented; and, as I will come to later, 58% of voters across the country did not get the MP they voted for, and that is true even in my constituency.
At the general election, Tewkesbury did see change, but only through the coming together of several unique circumstances, and despite first past the post. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), I was loaned the trust of Labour, Green and Conservative supporters. The general election may have been won by Labour and returned Liberal Democrats in record numbers, but let us not delude ourselves: the country voted tactically in record numbers for whoever would remove the catastrophic, nepotistic and morally bankrupt Conservative Government of 2019.
July’s election brought the briefest respite before frustrations rose once again. This is the most disproportionate House of Commons in British history, with Labour MPs in 66% of seats but with the lowest vote share—some 34%—of any winning party since 1945, and 58% of UK voters did not get the MP they voted for. I have previously described first past the post as “barely democratic”, and these figures vindicate me.
Public apathy towards politics is reflected in a steady decline in general election turnouts since the 1950s, from over 80% to less than 60% in 2024. If we want to arrest this decline, people must feel that their vote matters. The only way to ensure that the next election returns a representative Parliament is to transition to a proportional representation electoral system.
I have occasionally been challenged by those who say that proportional representation would increasingly return hung Parliaments, and would lead to bickering and chaos, rather than functioning government. This challenge falters when those people are presented with the fact that the previous Government and their 80-seat majority were elected through first past the post. Never in the field of British politics was so little achieved by so many. They scrambled from controversy to controversy, fighting among themselves while undermining our institutions and allowing our public services to crumble.
Today, our friends in the United States are living with the inevitable result of their two-party system. Far-right populists have seized the previously conservative Republican party, neutered the media and dismantled many institutional safeguards. We must recognise that we face the same threat, as our Conservative party—the most successful election-winning machine on earth—continues its lurch to the right and brings fringe opinions into the mainstream. It can happen here, and we must have a fair electoral system to mitigate that.
Liberal Democrats were elected in record numbers in 2024 on a pledge to deliver proportional representation. Labour Members want proportional representation, and the public increasingly want proportional representation, so I say to the Government: let us come together and do something historic. Let us put aside our individual and party political interests for the many. Let us do the right thing. Let us change our country for the better and deliver proportional representation.
Andrew Ranger (Wrexham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on something that is fundamental to fixing the foundations of our country. It is worth repeating that public trust in our political system is in crisis. Fewer than one in three Britons believes that the UK is a well-functioning democracy. As has been said, we should be clear that this has not happened overnight. It is a consequence and reflection of a political system that is outdated, broken and in desperate need of reform, which has led to a steady decline in general election voter turnout. The election in 2024 was the second time in history—and the second time since 2000—that turnout fell below 60%, and it has not been above 75% since 1992. Even the Brexit referendum got only a 72% turnout. That is not a great endorsement of the system we have.
Even more concerningly, astoundingly, in a recent survey, 25% of people aged 16 to 25 stated a preference for a dictatorship in place of our current representative democracy, because they believe that the current system does not deliver and that their voices are not heard.
Florence Eshalomi
My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. I have long supported reducing the voting age to 16—a change for which there is cross-party support. Does he agree that if we give young people a say by giving them the vote, they will not have some of those views, because they will feel engaged and involved in the political process?
Andrew Ranger
I absolutely agree and will come on to that later. Young people believe that the system does not deliver, and that their voice is not heard. These statistics should be of concern to us all, regardless of political persuasion, and it is clear that the status quo has to go.
Of 43 countries across Europe, 40 have proportional representation of some kind, including in Scandinavia, where voter turnout regularly exceeds 80%, a level we have not achieved since 1950. Three of these 43 countries are found in the UK: Scotland, Northern Ireland and of course Wales have operated a form of PR since devolution in 1997, and in Wales, for our next set of elections next year, we will move to a full PR system, which I fully support and campaigned for. The Welsh system shows that rather than being something to be feared, PR enhances our democratic system. Voters can head to the ballot box knowing that their chosen party will receive fair representation, in accordance with how they perform. It is time for Westminster to follow suit. It cannot take two more decades for the Commons to catch up. Trust in politics and politicians is at one of its lowest ebbs; the introduction of proportional representation is a crucial step in rebuilding that relationship.
I welcome the measures that the Labour Government are taking to rebuild trust. They are making it easier than ever to register to vote; embarking on significant House of Lords reform; introducing a devolution revolution; and showing clear intent to clean up politics for good. This is fundamentally an argument about fairness. Everyone’s vote should be equal, and should count. Surely for the Government, with their huge commanding majority, now is the time to be bold and brave, and to introduce proportional representation. The first stage would be to establish a national commission for electoral reform, so that the Government can get on the front foot and show that they are serious about addressing our unrepresentative voting system and stemming the rise of disengagement and distrust in politics. It would be an opportunity to bring the public, as well as experts, into a conversation about how voters can best be represented, and to propose a fair and equal voting system, fit for modern Britain, in which everyone’s vote and voice counts.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
As we have heard in this Chamber, trust in politics is very important for a functioning democracy, but sadly the data shows that trust is collapsing. At the last general election, we faced the second lowest turnout in the last 100 years, with just six in 10 people voting. That tells us that far too many people do not think voting matters, whereas I hope we can all agree that every vote matters. That is why I pay tribute to the excellent lobbying group Make Votes Matter for proposing and promoting this issue. It is so important. How can we have a situation where only six in 10 people vote?
We have the most unrepresentative Parliament in living memory. The governing party has about 34% of the votes cast, but 63% of the seats in this great House. What sort of system is that? It is completely unrepresentative. My good party had 14% of votes cast, yet we do not have even a mere 1% of seats in the Chamber. As for the other smaller parties, the Green party had just under 7% of votes cast, but has about 0.5% of the seats in the Chamber. That is so damaging to trust in democracy.
We have 823,000 votes cast for every Reform seat; for the Labour party, it is a mere 23,000 votes for each seat. Voters still come up to me and say, “How does this work?”. People get confused, because as hon. Members have said, we have one system for the general election and another in the devolved nations. Why can we not have a single simple system that we know works, and that is used in so many democracies around the world—a variant of proportional representation? Not only does our system lead to misrepresentation when it comes to seats in the House, but its quirks mean that we have no representation on any Select Committee, despite having 4 million votes—14% of the votes cast. Trust in democracy collapses when something is as patently unfair as that.
This issue is so important, and we know we can do better. It is marvellous that Members from the Labour party recognise that. Indeed, at the Labour conference a couple of years back, its members passed a motion to that effect. Fairness is vital. If we do not have it, we have complete misrepresentation of the views of the people on critical issues, such as immigration and net zero, because we end up with a uni-party approach. It cannot be good for democracy if people feel that all their views cannot be represented. They think, “What is the point of bothering? I will carry on with my life.” We all know that more engagement from many people of all ages—young, medium and old—is vital for a functioning and true democracy.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Members who secured this important debate. I have been debating on this subject outside the House for, unbelievably, nearly 40 years, so I have had some time to assemble my thoughts on it. During that time, I have often heard people argue for or against proportional representation or first past the post based on the immediate advantage for their political party. I urge against such an approach to questions of democracy and electoral systems. One benefit of engaging in this debate for so long is that I have been able to see the political cycle change over time; an electoral system that might benefit a party at one point may work to its disadvantage later. The party that gets a massive boost in seats from first past the post in one election may get a disproportionate kicking from the electorate under another system. The volatility of the modern electorate makes that particularly pertinent.
The core bedrock of support for both major parties is a far smaller group of voters than it ever used to be, and demographic and political change is accelerating that. No party—mine included—should think that the current coalition of voters that it has assembled is here to stay, and that it should design its preferred electoral system around maximising the number of seats that that coalition of voters can win.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
What is the hon. Member’s view on his Government’s proposal to reduce the voting age to 16, given that we were all elected by voters aged 18 and above?
Luke Akehurst
I think that is a different subject to the one we are debating. If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will proceed on the subject of proportional representation.
We do not know how voters would behave if they were confronted with a different voting system. We cannot say that because Labour got 34% of the vote in 2024 under first past the post, it would therefore have got 34% if the 2024 election had been run under a proportional representation system. Voters change their behaviour to fit the voting system. There might also be new parties that would grow under a different voting system.
With tactical voting in its current form, we do not know how many Labour-identifying voters back other parties for tactical reasons in particular seats—the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) mentioned voters who had spoken to her about doing so. We do not know how many supporters of other parties voted Labour for tactical reasons, or what the net impact of unwinding those factors might be on each party.
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my hon. Friend for his long campaign on this important issue. All of us have probably knocked on doors and spoken to voters who have said that they have never voted because their vote would not count. Does he believe that if we had a different voting system, people would be able to see that every single vote at the ballot box makes a big difference to who is elected on polling day? Does he share my concern on that?
Luke Akehurst
I do share my hon. Friend’s viewpoint, and I will come to that later in my remarks. We do not know how much turnout would increase in areas where it is now depressed because the outcome under first past the post appears to be a foregone conclusion. My hon. Friend anticipated the next thing I was going to say.
The current fracturing of the party system, with five parties getting more than 5% of the vote—the number is higher in Scotland and Wales—is probably here to stay. That means there are more marginal seats, more three or even four-cornered fights for marginal seats and more Members of Parliament elected on relatively low vote shares by historical standards. Ironically, that improves the range of viable choices for voters in many seats, and their chances of influencing the result in a meaningful way, because there are fewer safe seats. However, it is trying to pour a multi-party system into an electoral system designed for two parties, so it inevitably leads to more and more disproportional results, where the relationship between vote share and number of seats completely breaks down.
For instance, as has been mentioned, the Liberal Democrats got 72 MPs despite receiving more than half a million fewer votes than Reform, which got only five MPs. I do not blame the Liberal Democrats or my party for seeking to maximise seats rather than votes—that is the game we are supposed to be playing with our current system—but it is difficult to go out to the public and objectively defend such surreal disproportionality. It increases public cynicism about their ability to influence politics.
My motivation for supporting a move to a more proportional voting system is therefore not that I think it will provide an immediate or long-term advantage to the party that I have dedicated my life to campaigning for, and I hope that Members of other parties would not be motivated by assuming that proportional representation will accrue immediate narrow party advantage at Labour’s expense. On the contrary, as a social democrat, my approach to any critical question is based on the core principles of social justice, democracy and equality. That leads me to support a more proportional voting system, just as it leads me to egalitarian and redistributive answers to social and economic policy questions.
We should design an electoral system based not on whether it benefits us as individual politicians or our own parties at a specific moment, but on whether it delivers just and equitable outcomes that can logically be defended. In particular, we should apply the philosopher John Rawls’ theory of justice and try to measure the impact of each electoral system on the most under-represented party and the most under-represented voter, and argue for a system that treats parties and voters as fairly and equitably as possible and that gives voters as equal influence as possible over who represents them and who governs the country.
Mr Mohindra
The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time and has made some valid points, although I may not agree with all of them. Does he believe that to ensure the electorate is fully represented, we need to go to the Australian model of forcing all constituents to go to the ballot box?
Luke Akehurst
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the intervention. I have looked at compulsory voting, which was advocated at one point by Lord Watson of Wyre Forest. I am open to the suggestion, but basically that is about forcing people to vote when we should be trying to enthuse them to vote through both how we do politics and how the system works.
All voters should have equal value wherever they live in the UK, but first past the post condemns millions of voters to living in electoral deserts where just one party dominates all Commons representation. There is no region or nation where that system reflects the diversity of the votes cast, and between different regions and nations it can benefit different parties. We need a system that sends to this place a mix of MPs from each region and nation who represent their political diversity and balance. First past the post privileges and makes powerful a relatively small number of swing voters in a small number of marginal seats, while giving little political power to the majority of voters in safer seats. That distorts our political process. Policies, campaign spending, where politicians visit, where activists travel to, messaging and advertising are all focused on swing voters in marginal seats, while elections in some safe seats can be quiet affairs.
When parties are in opposition, first past the post makes them narrower based. In recent Parliaments when Labour was down to a small parliamentary party, it often appeared to be a sectional voice for big cities and university towns, which was unhealthy, even though we had millions of votes but few MPs in demographically different parts of the country. Now, the Conservative parliamentary party may appear to be dominated by rural interests as its votes in urban areas delivered few MPs. Both situations are unhealthy.
Support for proportional representation is now the consensus position at a grassroots level in the Labour party: polling says that 83% of grassroots members support it, and the vast majority of constituency Labour party members backed it when our annual conference voted in favour of electoral reform. In fact, I think it is the topic on which the largest number of local Labour parties has ever submitted motions.
Mixed Member systems used in places such as Germany and New Zealand prove that the undoubted merits of the constituency system, such as having a voice and champion for a specific geographical area in Parliament and giving voters greater access to us as local representatives, can be combined with a proportional element to produce stable and effective Governments—and, I would say, Governments who pursue the social democratic values that my party stands for. I hope that it will not be too long before the Labour Government align their stance on our voting systems with our guiding values of equality and democracy.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I am a Liberal Democrat, a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections and a sponsor of the debate. It is a genuine delight to see hon. Members on both sides of the House talking about this issue, which is one of the founding principles of my party. I believe firmly, though, that we will bring about the change that our country needs only on a cross-party basis, which is why working on the APPG with the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), who opened the debate, and the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) is a delight. I look forward to working with them to deliver the change that we need.
The case for electoral reform is urgent and undeniable. First past the post is a system that no longer functions as a fair or effective mechanism for translating the will of the electorate into parliamentary representation. It is collapsing under its own weight. The time has come to take the first step in addressing this failure with the establishment of a national commission for electoral reform.
As colleagues across the House have mentioned, the 2024 general election was the most distorted in British history: Labour secured 63% of the seats with just 34% of the vote, while the Green party and Reform UK won almost 21% of the vote between them and received only nine seats. I will disagree with both those parties often and vigorously on different issues, but I defend their right to be represented when a number of people vote for them. Those results do not constitute fair representation; they represent a systemic failure.
The consequences of such an electoral mess are huge. The Electoral Reform Society has shown that 58% of those who voted in 2024 ended up with an MP they did not vote for, and that 85% of MPs were elected with under 50% of the vote, myself included. As others have mentioned, it now takes 24,000 votes to elect a Labour MP but 824,000 votes to elect a Reform UK MP.
Broader trends confirm the growing inadequacy of first past the post. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, voter turnout has fallen from 84% in 1950 to below 60% in 2024 and trust in politics is at an all-time low. A system that continues to distort electoral outcomes so significantly will only worsen this crisis.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
We all recognise that trust is important in politics, and we are responsible for building that trust. One way in which we build trust is by being accountable, and the current system gives us accountability to our constituents within the defined area of our constituency. How would first past the post help build the accountability of a named person—a single MP—in that defined area?
Lisa Smart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for intervening. I think her question was probably about how PR would deliver accountability, not how first past the post would deliver accountability. I very much agree that accountability and the constituency link are really important. I am glad that the debate has not nerded out excessively on which is our favourite form of PR, but there are many systems operating in the different nations of the United Kingdom that deliver that constituency link. I very much agree that that is an important part of our democracy.
PR provides a clear alternative to what we are currently doing. It ensures that seats broadly match votes, that every voter has a meaningful say and that Governments represent the majority of the electorate. We already have proportional representation in the UK, just not here in Westminster. In Scotland’s Parliament, 93% of voters have at least one representative they voted for, while in Westminster that figure stands at just 42% according to the Electoral Reform Society. PR in different forms is already used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as in the vast majority of democracies worldwide, so why not here? Evidence shows that PR leads to higher voter turnout, more representative Governments and more stable policymaking.
For a long time, the question of electoral reform has been viewed as an abstract debate—indeed, with people arguing over d’Hondt versus single transferrable vote—rather than one that is integral to democratic legitimacy. It is neither sustainable nor responsible to continue governing under a system where a party can form a large majority on barely a third of the vote. It is reckless to maintain an electoral model that so consistently produces such wildly disproportionate groups of MPs and leaves millions of voters feeling ignored. If these trends are allowed to continue, it is not difficult to see how turnout will fall further, results will become even more distorted and political instability will grow.
I am a Lib Dem—I outed myself earlier—and I enjoy speaking with and listening to voters. I am also a fan of a bar chart on my leaflets.
Lisa Smart
I am delighted to report that my bar charts have been measured and are accurate to the millimetre.
Luke Akehurst
Does the hon. Lady accept that one of the great advantages of moving to a proportional voting system would be that there would be no need to put any bar charts on any leaflets—it would be highly misleading to do so—that there would be no “two-horse race” graphics or squeeze messaging, and everyone would be able to vote for the party they really wanted?
Lisa Smart
I could not have been more delighted to welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I wonder if he has been listening in to the Hazel Grove constituency Liberal Democrat executive meetings. I agree with the him, though. When thinking about how to vote, I would much rather—as, I imagine, would a number of voters—talk about values, principles and policies, instead of a rather grim-looking canvasser pointing earnestly at a bar chart, worried about who might get in if the vote splits. PR would be better for our politics and better for our communities.
There is widespread and growing support for change, both in Parliament and across the country. A national commission for electoral reform would provide the necessary first step towards finally addressing the failures of first past the post—a step that must be taken well before the next general election. To ignore the urgency of this issue would be to further undermine our democracy.
Governments are not always known for doing things that they do not see as being in their best interest; however, like a number of colleagues across the House, I argue that proportional representation is in our whole country’s interest, and that is why I urge the Government to act. The public are watching, and the demand for fair representation cannot be ignored forever—our democracy depends on it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We have to get everybody in, so we are going to have a speaking limit of five minutes. I call Jas Athwal.
Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)
Although I do not want to upset the camaraderie going back and forth across the Chamber, this is debate, and this is democracy. I am sure we can all agree that no voting system is perfect; we are choosing between imperfect systems. That is a fact. We must decide based on what works best for our country, and PR is not the panacea that everybody is talking about today.
In 2011, we put the question to the British people. They overwhelmingly rejected the alternative vote system, choosing to stick with first past the post.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
On Monday morning, I visited the year 10 citizenship class at St Peter’s school in Bournemouth, where I spoke with several young people, including Ozzie, who was only just born at the time of the last vote. He asked me whether I agreed that too many people feel their vote does not count, that too many younger people feel disconnected from democracy, and that the continuation of first past the post will leave more people—particularly younger people—disconnected from democracy.
Jas Athwal
I thank the hon. Member. The other thing I would like to say is that when we are over-reliant on statistics, it says something. I will come on to statistics as well, if I am allowed.
I have had the privilege of living in my constituency for half a century—more than 50 years. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that Ilford has given to me. A staunch Conservative constituency has now become a staunch Labour constituency, although, over the years, I have seen many MPs from both parties. Of course, that is how the democratic process works.
Like hon. Members across the Chamber, I am devoted to my constituency. Each and every day, I serve my neighbours, fighting for investment in Ilford, representing their views and ensuring that I speak up on the issues that matter most to all of them. Only last week, in this Chamber, I raised the issue of democratic backsliding and human rights in Pakistan, a subject that is incredibly important to many of my neighbours, who have friends and families in the region.
I am accountable to the people of Ilford South, and I take my role and my relationship with my constituents seriously. Under a PR voting system, the personal and local links that I so value with my constituents would be lost. A PR system would make it harder for local concerns to be represented and addressed. It would take politicians away from our communities and hollow out the vital relationships between representative and constituent. The British Academy’s analysis of closed PR systems suggests that under PR, politicians are not beholden to their constituents—the tie is loosened and accountability is degraded.
Mr Mohindra
Like the hon. Gentleman, I come from a local government background. Does he agree that when voting for a councillor, as he was, constituents are more likely to vote for individuals than parties and to do so based on the effectiveness of that individual rather than just the party branding?
Jas Athwal
I think it is about being pragmatic in our response, being pragmatic with our residents, and making the right decisions.
Jas Athwal
I will made some headway, because I can see the clock ticking.
Another key weakness of PR systems is that they almost inevitably create coalition Governments. We know what happens there. No one votes for coalition Governments. Instead, they are created by agreements hammered out in dark rooms, behind closed doors—they are Frankenstein Governments, which undermine the popular vote. When voters cannot predict the consequences of their votes, coalitions circumvent the will of the people, and when creating an effective Opposition becomes an impossibility, democracies fail. Colleagues should be careful what they wish for: they may get a better vote share and better representation, but they may not get better outcomes, which is what is important to our constituents.
It is our duty in this place to protect the democratic process. It is also our duty to effectively govern to the best of our ability, deliver the promises of our manifesto and create the change that our constituents voted for. PR systems create unstable Governments with weak foundations and constant compromise.
We are all too aware of the consequences of Government instability and the impact that can have on people’s lives—promises broken, legislation delayed, injustice prolonged. Look at our neighbours in Europe. In Belgium, the federal elections in 2019 paralysed their political system, leading to more than 500 days of deliberation, compromise and bartering before they finally formed a Government. It took almost two years of debate before a seven-party coalition was created—a coalition nobody voted for. The role of government is to change people’s lives, to legislate and to act. Instead, PR systems grind Governments to a halt. Contrast that with the first 100 days of this Government, though hon. Members sitting on the other side of the Chamber may not like the decisions made.
Effective democratic systems ensure accountability and enable delivery. On those two tests, PR systems fail.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I associate myself with the comments of many other hon. Members today, and thank the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for introducing the debate.
This debate comes at a crucial time. We are in a world characterised by democratic decline and falling trust in institutions. Without public belief in making change through democratic debate, political pluralism and representation from people who listen to them, we have a society vulnerable to exploitation by populist division and tyranny. First past the post adds to these risks. Those who seek to distort our national conversation from outside, using money and influence to pursue their own agenda, can see dangled in front of them the huge prize of what is virtually absolute power if they can achieve the slimmest of margins to reach first place in a volatile system. A two-party system, which first past the post assumes, is, in fact, long out of date.
As other hon. Members have said, the most recent UK general election was the most disproportionate on record. Not only did 58% of voters not receive an elected official of their choosing, but the election was one of the most disproportionate elections to a primary chamber anywhere in the world. People are voting in historic numbers for parties other than the Conservatives and Labour, representing different views across the political spectrum and bringing in points of view from across our island’s different nations, yet this Parliament does not come close to correctly reflecting that shift. We have a Parliament that is highly misrepresentative of the public’s preferences and a Government with a huge majority but only 33.7% of people’s preferences. That seems unbalanced and unrepresentative to me.
I am not here to make arguments that are only in my own self-interest. Proportionality is not the goal here; a better politics is. It is not just parties, but minority groups and the interests of groups who might be ignored, face discrimination or are geographically spread out, and whose interests do not often get a fair look-in when a large majority in this House is elected by only swing voters in marginal constituencies.
Like other Members from different parties, I was for many years a member of the London Assembly, elected under PR to scrutinise and hold to account a Mayor elected within a modified alternative vote system. I came here to this building to give evidence to the relevant all-party parliamentary group of the time in that capacity. I talked about how, as a London-wide member, working alongside constituency Members, my role was often to listen to groups who were not necessarily getting the ear of their constituency Member or the Mayor, and who were trying to highlight issues that were happening to people like them in pockets all around London.
Mr Mohindra
Will the hon. Member explain how constituency casework would be done? As constituency MPs, we all represent a defined area of the population. Is the hon. Member suggesting a two-tier system, where she will instead just sweep up from the constituency MP? Is she effectively asking for two tiers of MPs?
Siân Berry
Yes, exactly. I am describing the different kinds of work that different kinds of Members in the additional member system can do and how that benefits equality and representation. I am not making a party political point at all. I think members from other parties in the London Assembly can give examples of ways in which they have reached out and heard from people in different parts of London who have brought issues to prominence in the Assembly. In the case of the Green party, we can talk about council estate residents, private renters, young people, disabled people and older people, and the way that bringing their voices into the Assembly had a positive influence on the London Mayor’s policies and made him a positive advocate for helping to reduce the number of demolitions, for rent controls, for toilets on the London tube, and for youth services. That is very positive.
Siân Berry
I will press on, because I have one more point to make.
That shows a contrast with the current system for general elections, where people believe that the national politics conversation does not necessarily involve them. We find that millions of people around the country are never canvassed or courted on the doorstep at all. They are taken for granted, and that is really poor. As the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley said, the Members for those seats are called to other parts of the country, when they would prefer to be knocking on doors in their own.
On solutions, we urgently need an independent national commission on electoral reform. I want that done by the Government as soon as possible. The commission should look at how local councils and other bodies can be elected, too. We have an opportunity, presented by imminent local government reorganisation—the creation of combined authorities and potentially very large councils—to shift to a more proportional system, potentially using multi-member wards and the single transferable vote. That is the system used in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. It is incredibly simple for voters to cast their preferences. The election counts are extremely exciting—almost like the final stages of “Strictly”—and it delivers remarkably proportional results. It delivers candidates based on consensus, not division. Importantly, it delivers for many people: not only hardworking representatives in the administration but people whose job it is to listen and represent them from opposition parties. That could help with the potential remoteness of the uber councils that are being talked about. That should be looked at by the commission as well. I will end there.
Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)
I want to start by putting on record that I am a long-standing advocate of a more proportional electoral system for our general elections. My belief is that any system to replace first past the post needs to balance two core features: to preserve the vital link between a Member of Parliament and a constituency; and to consider a top-up mechanism, whereby additional seats are allocated in direct proportion to votes cast.
No model is perfect. As my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Steve Race) said, there is a lot of merit in the additional member system used in Holyrood. I do not want to focus my remarks today on the intricacies of alternative systems, or even the principled argument for reform in too much detail. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) and others have already made that case with conviction and I suspect that others will do so later. I want to focus on how we could build consensus for electoral reform, and what timeframe is both desirable and realistic.
One thing we must avoid is the spectacle of a new Westminster Government winning power and then legislating quickly to change to the system if they believe it to be in their self-interest. We saw a version of that in the last Parliament. The Conservative Government had a minority of MPs in London, but legislated through the Elections Act of 2022 to change the London mayoral system back to first past the post, a system that they believed would suit them well. For Westminster elections, nothing would do more damage to trust than if something similar were to happen. Any suggestion that the winner gets to set the rules of the next contest would be dangerous.
Where does that lead us? I am afraid, inevitably, it leads to a referendum. Speaking as someone who voted yes to AV in 2011 and remain in 2016, it is fair to say that I make the case with some trepidation, but I believe it must be made. If we are to change an electoral system that has been in place for over 100 years, it would require a national conversation and a clear and direct mandate from the electorate. I do not believe there is a mandate for a referendum in this Parliament, but there is an opportunity to build consensus across multiple parties to be ready for the next Parliament. That could be the defining work of the independent commission which has been referenced.
The year 2031 is likely to be midway through the next Parliament. It would also be 20 years since everyone in the United Kingdom was last asked to endorse a change in the electoral system. That referendum was rushed. The alternative vote system proposed appeared to be the first choice of nobody and, I am afraid for those of us who supported it, its rejection by voters was emphatic. Much has changed in our politics since then, but all of us who support a fairer system need to learn from 2011 and seek to build a case for change in a much more considered way. I believe we have the time—the time to build consensus on the best proportional system for Westminster; time to make the case within each of our parties that a referendum is the only way to earn a mandate for meaningful electoral reform; and time to propose a date and make the case for it. It might seem distant today, but 2031 is a generation on from the last referendum and that strikes me as a fair time to ask the question again.
Paul Holmes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is giving a typically brilliant speech—we used to talk to each other in the boardroom of Clarion Housing Group, where we worked together—and his idea of a referendum is interesting. If a referendum were held and the result was 52:48 to keep the current system, would he expect the Liberal Democrats to keep asking that the question be put again and again and again?
Andrew Lewin
That feels like more of a question for our in-office chats from a few years ago. I will not comment on the potential reaction of another party, but I will say that I would abide by all referendum results even though that would be three in three and a pretty bad track record for me.
It is time to propose a date and stick to it. First past the post has endured for more than 100 years. If we are to convince a majority of the public that a more proportional system will better serve their interests in Westminster, as I think it will, six years is not so long to wait. Despite my track record, I remain optimistic that, if we had a referendum, third time around I could finally be on the winning side.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
I thank the hon. Members for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for securing a debate on this important topic.
I will endeavour not to repeat the remarks that have been made so eloquently by other Members, but I must start by also thanking the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) for referring to the question that I asked the Deputy Prime Minister a few weeks ago: that is perhaps as close to fame as I will get in this Chamber. He was right to observe that the Deputy Prime Minister requires persuasion on this point, although hopefully the eloquent and articulate contributions of Members on both sides of the House will help to achieve that and gain her support for the APPG’s request for a national commission on electoral reform.
For me, there are three key arguments in favour of proportional representation. First, there is currently a clear gap between how people vote and the outcome—namely the Parliament that they get, and thus the Government—and they do not necessarily feel invested in the result. Let me address the point made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). The 2024 general election was, probably for the first time, quite a proportional one for the Liberal Democrats in its ratio of vote share to the number of MPs we have. Indeed, if I may be perfectly candid—at the risk of incurring the wrath of my colleagues—in parts of the country where we have more proportional systems, we do not always perform quite so well, so we are certainly not campaigning for this change on the basis of self-interest. It has, in fact, been a very long-standing Liberal Democrat and, indeed, Liberal commitment, and I will say more about that shortly.
Secondly, the current system is not engaging people. As has already been mentioned, turnouts are declining. In 2024, a record low of 58% voted for the two largest parties, Labour and Conservative, while one in three said that they had voted tactically for someone other than their preferred candidate or party member. Indeed, when many voters were telling me on the doorstep that they would be voting tactically for me, I pledged to commit myself wholly, so that I would not have to ask them to do that again in the future, and that is partly why I am here today.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
My hon. Friend speaks of low turnout. I would be grateful for his opinion on whether a switch to an electoral system of proportional representation would be to the deficit of any particular parties in the House, and whether that is reflected in their turnout at this debate.
Olly Glover
There is certainly a clear variation in the representation of parties in the House for this debate. However, I agree with other colleagues who have said that while we do not necessarily know how people will vote if they are given a more proportional voting system, that is all the more reason for us to have one, so that people can feel they can vote with their hearts and not with their heads or, indeed, on the basis of a bar chart of whatever level of accuracy—[Interruption.] I should emphasise that mine are always spot on.
Thirdly, proportional representation would deliver less adversarial and more inclusive and discursive politics, which has the potential to improve policy, governance and tone—things which many people find frustrating in our current system. Parties would no longer be able to govern alone with as little as a third of the vote, and would have to do so with others. That is not a problem but a benefit of moving to a proportional system, because Governments would represent a majority of voters and would have to work together to represent the various platforms of the parties concerned.
The United Kingdom is highly anomalous in retaining first past the post. Very few other European countries do so. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) made a point about coalitions. I hope he is equally condemnatory of coalitions that Labour has had with other parties—for example, the coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament in the late 1990s, and, in Wales, the need to rely on minority support from either the Liberal Democrats or Plaid Cymru at various times.
As for those who scaremonger or are worried about the stability of countries with proportional representation, let us consider some examples from Europe. The hon. Member for Ilford South cited Belgium. Well, Belgium has a better GDP per capita than we do, and, if I may defend a nation that is so often mocked, the only real crime of the Belgians is preferring mayonnaise to ketchup on their chips, rather than their electoral system. Let us consider Norway, a highly prosperous nation that has made wise decisions such as creating a sovereign wealth fund from its precious oil resources, something from which this country would have benefited had we done the same. Switzerland, which also has proportional representation and regular coalition Governments, has the most punctual railway in Europe, and 100% of it is electrified compared to our derisory percentage somewhere in the 30s. Poland, a new democracy with 30 years of the fastest economic growth in Europe, also has proportional representation and coalition Governments. I put it to the House that we have very little to fear, and a great deal to gain.
As I said earlier, the Liberal Democrats and the Liberal party have called for fair votes for a century, and we continue to lead the campaign for fundamental reform of the electoral system. I will go where my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove did not, and say that it is wrong to suggest that preferential and proportional systems prevent individual accountability. The single transferable vote system is highly proportional and also, critically, retains voters’ ability to vote for individual candidates or not, if they choose. I agree with Conservative Members who have described that as an important principle. Reform is needed to address the need for fair representation in politics, and to improve the engagement of members of the public. Not to take action would further erode trust in politics and politicians, and would increase the risk of people voting for more extreme options next time out of frustration with the current system.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for opening the debate so eloquently, and I am grateful for the many excellent contributions that we have heard from Members on both sides of the House.
As a member of both the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform and the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, I consider it a real privilege to be speaking in this debate. Back in 1996 I was a United Nations volunteer in Bosnia, which was holding its first elections after the Dayton peace agreement; I was there to make sure that those elections were free and fair. It was very moving to be involved in ensuring that the postal ballots of people whose lives had been so disrupted by ethnic cleansing were received and were counted. That underlined for me the importance of giving everyone the chance to vote, and to know that their vote counts.
It pains me that here we are, in Britain in 2025, and those things are not true. We have heard many other Members talk about the disengagement with politics today, which I think is reflected in turnouts—not everyone is voting—and we have seen some of that further undermined by the last Conservative Government, who denied people votes through the introduction of voter ID. Independent oversight is also important for free and fair elections, yet the Electoral Commission has again been weakened. Many aspects of our democracy have been undermined, with the result that people do not feel confident that their vote and their voice count. As we have heard, millions have found themselves unrepresented in this Parliament, with six out of 10 voters ending up with a local MP for whom they did not vote.
We have heard today about the extent of tactical voting. I was elected in a marginal seat up in Shipley. We have been told that across the country, one in three people voted tactically. Like the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), I spent a great deal of time on the doorstep trying to persuade people who would otherwise have voted Liberal Democrat, or indeed Green, that we needed to join forces, and asking them please to lend me their vote. While I am extremely grateful to the many voters who did indeed lend me their votes, and whom I now stand here and represent—and, of course, I would love it if they voted for me again at the next general election—I would prefer them to vote for their first preference, as, indeed, would they.
That is true of marginal seats, but we have also heard today that in safe seats many people feel disenfranchised, concluding that it is not even worth voting for the party they would otherwise support because it will not make a difference. Even those who are voting for the party that is winning those safe seats feel that they are under-represented, because if there is a very large majority, many of those votes are still represented by only one person in this place. For all sorts of reasons, people do not feel that their vote counts, and this is breeding distrust in politics. Just 12% of people in this country trust political parties. We have to reverse that. People must feel that their voice counts, and it does not help when political parties campaign only in marginal seats.
I turn to the benefits of PR, for which I am a strong advocate. I saw as a young politics student in Germany how PR led to more stable government. In my work in health and social care, I saw Governments elected under PR in the Netherlands and Germany pursuing long-term strategic policies on key issues such as social care reform, on which there is much common ground between Members from across the House. It was consensual and collaborative politics.
We know that the public do not like the heckling and braying that is common in this place on a Wednesday lunchtime. Some of our best debates are those in which we are in some agreement—for example, on climate and nature, or on violence against women and girls. I hope that with a system of PR, we would have better politics, and that is why I support the establishment of a national commission for electoral reform. The Government could get on the front foot, show that they are serious about addressing our unrepresentative voting system, and stem the rise in disengagement and distrust in politics. We could bring the public with us and rebuild trust in our democracy.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
I thank the Members who secured this debate. They have brought to the House a very important issue that I and many of my constituents care deeply about.
The UK’s history of electoral reform is one of slow, gradual change. There is much frustration now with our politics, and I am sure that soon it will lead to greater demand for electoral reform. British history is full of us taking the right and necessary steps, only for people on the wrong side of history to decry them as the end of the world as we know it. Examples of that are giving Catholics the vote in 1829, making the ballot private in 1872, and granting women suffrage in 1928. When we look upon the past, we laugh at how silly the country used to be. Who is to say that the way we view the past is not the way future generations will view us?
As a young teenager in the February 1974 general election, I was—and continue to be—filled with frustration and a sense of unfairness by our electoral system. The Liberal party won 19.3% of the vote—more than half the votes the Conservatives got—but it won only 14 seats, versus the Tories’ 297. Under proportional representation, the Liberals would have won 123 seats, the Labour party 236 and the Conservatives only 240. This obvious unfairness in our system still drives my personal politics today.
We need to fundamentally change our electoral system. It is undemocratic that under the UK’s electoral system, not all votes count in the same way. First past the post feeds public disillusionment in politics because it leaves millions of people feeling that their votes are irrelevant, just like those in our past. Although the injustice may not seem as obvious as the injustice of withholding the right to vote on the basis of faith, wealth or gender, the system essentially withholds the right to vote based on geographic location. With so many voters now so disillusioned with the first-past-the-post system, will the Minister commit to being on the right side of history, and deliver the change in our electoral system that the nation really needs?
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
I thank those who secured this debate on a really important issue. I hope all of us here are committed to the fundamental principle that we should have a functioning, representative democracy; and that elections should reflect the will of the people, and endow this place with the democratic legitimacy to make laws and form Governments that govern the country in the best interests of the people.
Principles are tough, but we have to stick to them. I am conscious, as I argue in favour of proportional representation and electoral reform, that had there been a different system in the election last year, the natural consequence would have been more Members in the mould of the hon. Members for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), and for Clacton (Nigel Farage). We have to take the rough with the smooth and accept that legitimacy is important, and that the will of the people should be reflected in the number of seats that parties secure in this place.
Members have very ably made the point that the system simply does not reflect the will of the people. At our most recent general election, 58% of people who voted ended up with an MP they did not vote for. Some 554 Members of this House were elected with less than 50% of the vote. The trajectory is that turnout is declining, and the legitimacy of this place will inevitably start to decline as well. Decades ago, parties used to need close to 50% of the vote to win a majority; last year, the Government secured 34% of the vote. It is possible that there will be Governments in the future who secure even less of the popular vote.
We have known that this system is failing for many, many years. It has been discussed historically a number of times—we had the Jenkins commission; there was a royal commission in 1910; and there was a Speaker’s Conference in 1917. In fact, the Representation of the People Act 1918 was where we got closest to reform. Not only did it secure votes for women, but the initial draft of the Bill legislated for an alternative vote in single-Member constituencies and PR in multi-Member constituencies. Of course, single-Member constituencies are relatively new; for the majority of the history of this place, we had multi-Member constituencies.
As Members can tell, I was looking back through the history of how PR has advanced, or not, in this place. I was very taken with an argument made by Herbert Fisher, a Liberal President of the Board of Education 100 years ago. He had a florid way of speaking, but I thought I would repeat his words:
“I see before me and around me prosperous and popular heroes of many a stricken electoral field, members who have entered into every home, subscribed to every fund, and by a thousand and one meritorious processes have acquired what is known as the ‘intimate touch’ with their constituencies. It is very natural that such hon. Members who have laboriously perfected themselves in the polite art of electoral intimacy should be unwilling to see any relaxation or change of system.”—[Official Report, 13 May 1918; Vol. 106, c. 66.]
It is natural, when we have been put in this place by a system, to be reluctant to change it. We need to be bold and make the case for electoral reform, even though the system we want to replace is the one that got us here.
Sadly, a century on, we have made very little progress. I am glad that the debate is being held today, and I endorse the arguments made for a national commission. We are so behind other countries in this respect. It has been pointed out that we are in the minority of democratic countries in having a first-past-the-post system—130 other democracies use PR or a mixed-Member system. I hope that through this debate and the hard work of Members who continually raise the issue and call for a commission, we can eventually put a proposal to the people of this country, so that they can ultimately make a decision. I was very taken by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), who talked constructively about how we get to that point. I hope that the decision will be taken to adopt PR—the system that is, in the words of Churchill, when it comes to addressing
“constitutional injustice…incomparably the fairest, the most scientific and, on the whole… in the public interest”—[Official Report, 2 June 1931; Vol. 253, c. 102.]
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
How we vote and how we select who governs this country is, by nature, a topic of huge national significance, and one that is too often pushed to the sidelines. I have been a member of the Liberal party, now the Liberal Democrats, since I was 17. Fighting for a fairer system of electoral representation is key to my political mooring and my party’s fight for a fairer democracy for the British people.
I am the mother of four children. I have one daughter. She is as clever as she is beautiful. Last year, she produced a report on voting systems across the world, including in Russia, South America, Africa, America, the European Union and here. Her analysis showed incontrovertibly that proportional systems are much fairer, including for women, those who are disabled and those from an ethnic minority. This is not just about the bar charts or the figures; it is about real fairness. In the most recent election, we saw a Government elected to power on the lowest vote share for over 20 years, with the lowest proportion of the electorate’s support since 1918. Just 20% of registered voters cast their ballot for the Labour party. Four out of five voters either voted for somebody else or did not vote at all.
One of the so-called merits of the first-past-the-post system is that it is designed to deliver a clean winner, but this is illusory. Reaching back through the annals of British electoral history, we see that 1931 was the last time a governing party secured over 50% of the vote share. The towering majorities secured under our system were delivered not on the basis of a representative vote, but through the quirks and idiocies of a flawed system. When first past the post does not deliver a towering majority, it delivers exactly the sort of instability that it is designed to avoid. Did the 2017 election produce a clear winner, leading to a strong and stable Government? The former Member for Maidenhead could answer that one for us.
For too long, the parties of red and blue have taken the British people for granted. In last summer’s general election, Labour and the Conservatives returned their lowest combined vote share in the age of universal suffrage, yet their combined seats still dwarf those of all other parties in this place. Some 57.8% of voters had to settle for an MP they did not vote for, including my constituents. That hardly seems right or fair. The evidence of a broken system is clear for all to see. What on earth has happened to true majority rule?
Another argument in support of the first-past-the-post system relates to its simplicity. I agree that our democratic process should be simple, but what is simpler than people being able to vote for the party that they believe in, rather than feeling that they have to vote tactically? The system is not fair, and it is not proportional. I and my colleagues in my party will continue to fight hard to raise awareness about its unfairness, not because it is the politically expedient thing to do—as has been pointed out, we did rather well under first past the post at the last general election—but because it is the right thing to do.
If anyone’s argument against a fairer electoral system is that they might disagree with whom the British people vote for, I would ask them to consider why they make such an argument—because it is not out of service to the British people.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), and the hon. Members for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) and for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns), for securing this debate.
As Members have mentioned, we met thousands of voters face to face in the general election campaign, and by far the most depressing conversations I had were with the many people who had lost trust in our Government institutions, our politicians and our democratic process. I absolutely do not think the voters are to blame for that loss of trust, which is partly due to the last decade, in which a chaotic Government lurched from crisis to crisis; to corruption scandals; and to the decline of local services. That drove a lot of people to opt out of the election, resulting in the poor turnout figures to which Members have referred—the lowest for 20 years. I do not think that is because of apathy; alienation from our political system is a fundamental threat to our democracy.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Steve Race) that we should not for one minute think that electoral reform alone will solve this issue. The central task of this Government is to deliver rising living standards, rising wages and improved public services. That will help restore the electorate’s faith in politics, and faith that the Government will deliver on things that people care about.
Mr Mohindra
How does the hon. Gentleman think his party is doing on those criteria?
Joe Powell
We have record levels of investment, record rises in wages and the fastest-growing economy in Europe. The upgrades from the International Monetary Fund and the OECD speak for themselves.
The issue that we are focusing on today, fixing our democratic plumbing, matters too. The Prime Minister said that restoring trust in politics is the
“battle that defines our age”,
and I believe that we can earn that trust by ensuring that people feel heard and have a say in decisions that affect their lives.
Joe Powell
I will make a bit of progress.
We need to ensure that the voice of the people matters. That is the foundation of my belief in electoral reform: if done right, with appropriate models for different levels of government, it can help to rebuild faith in our democratic system so that we do not end up being more polarised, with more alienation, which leads to extreme politics and populism.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) that today is not the time to go into models, but I think we can retain the constituency link and expand choice, as in the Australian model, which gives local winners a degree of preference from a majority of the voters in their district through ranked choice voting. An excellent analysis from Lewis Baston on Sam Freedman’s website explains how the Australian model could be appropriate for us. It is easily understood and encourages engagement across the spectrum, beyond the swing voters that otherwise become the predominant focus of elections.
Although I support electoral reform for Westminster elections, there is a straightforward policy change that the Government should consider immediately: restoring the ranked choice voting system for mayoral elections. That system worked perfectly well in London and other mayoralties, because it allows voters to express preferences and ensures that winners have broad support. Its removal was a regressive and self-interested step—it failed in London—by the previous Government, who actively tried to reduce voter choice and participation. I hope the Government will consider restoring that system in any future elections Bill that is being discussed.
Finally, I will briefly address another threat to our democracy that the APPG for fair elections is focusing on: the role of foreign billionaires in distorting political discourse, and the risk of overseas donations into our politics. There are still far too many loopholes in our electoral financing rules, leaving us vulnerable to foreign interference. I hope the Government will consider implementing reforms to address these serious issues in any future elections Bill, because if we are serious about defending democracy, we need transparency and safeguards against those with deep pockets who seek to warp our democratic institutions.
Our current system is failing to command public trust. That is the foundation of my belief in electoral reform. If we continue down this path, we risk losing something far greater than individual elections; we risk losing people’s faith in democracy itself. I am confident that our Government will deliver on their key missions, which will go a long way towards restoring the public’s trust and confidence, but our democratic plumbing matters too, and it is time for an upgrade.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
As the Member of Parliament for St Austell and Newquay, I represent a constituency that exemplifies the rich diversity and complexity of political identity in Britain. I will use it as a geographical case study for today’s debate.
From the fishing communities of Mevagissey and the supposed surfers’ paradise of Newquay, which is actually quite a multifaceted town, to the clay country villages near St Austell, many of my constituents share a Cornish identity but are also shaped by a complex mix of cultural, social and economic factors. Such diversity should be reflected in our politics, but that is often not the case under first past the post. The current electoral system obscures the complexity, oversimplifies the intricate patchwork of overlapping political identities, and denies many voters the choice to express them.
Too often, our electoral system functions to maintain and reinforce rigid political boundaries that do not always reflect the nuanced and diverse beliefs of our communities, which entrenches social division rather than fostering the kind of constructive, consensus-building politics that we need in modern Britain, and which we in Cornwall are quite used to.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
May I put it to the hon. Gentleman that the opposite is the case? Our system requires coalitions to be formed. Political parties are broad coalitions in order to overcome that disadvantage and get over the electoral hurdle. In systems that are proportional, parties can secure electoral representation and be much more choosy about their ideological base, in the expectation that they will still get sufficient parliamentary representation. As a consequence, parties make their coalitions after an election, stitched up around a programme that nobody voted for.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
Following up on that point, does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in our current system, people vote for what can actually be very loose coalitions? Our electoral system forces us to have very large coalitions in order to form a Government, but voters do not know which parts of those coalitions they are going to get after an election.
Noah Law
Both the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) raise important points about the imperfections in all systems, and about being mindful that coalition building is a feature of all systems.
In St Austell and Newquay, my constituents are as diverse in their perspectives as they are in their daily lives. Many feel a deep-rooted connection to Cornish culture, heritage and even nationhood. Socially and economically, they navigate very different realities. Some are tied to the rural economy, others are engaged in tourism and trade, and many have livelihoods shaped by the seasonal nature of coastal life. Others have stronger ties to the industrial economy, which is seeing a much-needed resurgence—in some ways, that means that having a Labour MP in the area is long overdue.
Although Cornwall is, in many ways, a conservative part of Britain, we have a shared belief in fairness, economic justice and the principle that hard work should be rewarded. These shared values must be reflected in our system. The consensus building we do through this patchwork should be the by-product of a system rather than simply the result of the good will and shared values we have in Cornwall.
Under the current system, many voters feel that their vote fails to express those nuances, which can lead to disengagement, disillusionment and a sense that the political system does not serve them. Moreover, the political boundaries fostered by the first-past-the-post system make social integration more difficult, often deepening ignorance, polarisation and division. Sadly, a winner-takes-all system does not encourage dialogue or co-operation, but entrenches an adversarial style of government in which short-term victories are prioritised over long-term solutions.
By contrast, a more proportionate system would ensure that political views are not distorted or diluted in the same way. It would allow for greater plurality, meaning that every vote carries more weight, no matter where in the country it is cast. Moving to such a system would enhance our democracy and ensure that Parliament better represents the broad spectrum of views held by the electorate.
Just because I deny the primacy of first past the post, it does not mean that I think change should come overnight, without serious discussion or without being the democratic will of the British people. The electoral reform we seek is a significant undertaking and must be done in a way that strengthens rather than undermines our democratic institutions. If we truly believe that every vote matters and that politics must reflect the diversity of this country, we must be willing to have that serious conversation.
The political identity and plurality of St Austell and Newquay deserve recognition in our electoral system. No matter their chosen industry, cultural identity or economic status, my constituents should have confidence that their votes are represented and included in our democracy—one that acknowledges the full spectrum of views in our community.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and all members of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections for securing this important debate.
It has been an exciting few months for the cause of fair votes in Parliament, and I am pleased to see Members of so many political parties advocating proportional representation in today’s debate. At the end of last year, I was delighted that a Bill I had introduced to this House, calling for the establishment of proportional representation, was voted through to Second Reading. I thank every single Member who backed that Bill. It was the first time that Parliament voted in favour of PR, and I am determined that we will achieve that goal in this Parliament.
But I must also express my disappointment. Despite the Bill receiving the House’s express support on First Reading, it has not been given parliamentary time to allow it to progress through the legislative process.
Sarah Olney
People across the country are fed up with first past the post. The 2024 election was the most disproportionate in history, with the Government winning two thirds of the seats on one third of the vote—the second biggest majority of seats for any Government since the second world war on the lowest share of the vote ever recorded for a winning party. I think we can all agree that such distorted results are not healthy for our democracy.
Sarah Olney
It is no surprise that we are seeing record levels of disillusionment with the political process, with citizens becoming increasingly disengaged. This is reflected in the fact that turnout at the 2024 general election was the second lowest since 1918, at just under 60%. More than 40% of registered voters in the UK thought so little of the political process that they did not think it worth expressing a preference for one candidate over another.
Trust in politics will not improve if the public keep getting Parliaments that do not represent the balance of votes cast. This Parliament is the one that least represents how the country voted of any in history.
Sarah Olney
There was no Back-Bench speech from any Member of your party, and you will have your opportunity in a minute.
Sarah Olney
Your Back Benchers could have spoken in this debate.
There are many urgent and pressing challenges facing the UK today, but it is essential that the vast majority of its citizens actively support the mechanisms by which decisions are made to address them. Increasing levels of disengagement threaten our ability to respond both to immediate challenges and to long-term issues.
The Liberal Democrats believe, and have always believed, that a fair voting system is the essential bedrock of a functioning democracy. Democracy has proved to be the most effective and enduring of governing systems because it relies on a broad base of support across the population. A faulty voting system that delivers a majority Government on a minority vote undermines democracy and its ability to deliver effective government. In the face of growing worldwide threats to democratic Governments and institutions, the UK urgently needs to reassert the value of participative democracy as an essential component of peaceful and prosperous societies.
I am glad to know that support for electoral reform comes not only from Liberal Democrat Members but from across the House. I am pleased that Labour Members, in particular, agree that we need proportional representation, after their conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of PR two years ago. More importantly, recent polling shows that a majority of the British public is now in favour of scrapping first past the post and moving to proportional representation.
I welcome the establishment and the work of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which launched last year with the support of more than 100 MPs. Its report, “Free But Not Fair”, highlights many of the structural issues that have led to the decline of public trust in politics and engagement with elections.
I thank everybody for their contributions. The hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) is not in her place, but she made some important interventions. This issue may come under her remit as Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, so I hope she will consider giving it more attention.
I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Members for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas), for Hazel Grove, for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) and for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for their excellent contributions. I was particularly struck when my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham talked about how, in the past, we discriminated by wealth, gender and religion in selecting who could vote, whereas we now discriminate by geography. That is one of the key things we would overcome by replacing our voting system.
The Liberal Democrats share the pain of the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice). In 2017, we won 12 seats with 7.5% of the vote; in 2019, we won 11 seats with 12% of the vote; and in 2024, we won 72 seats with 12.2% of the vote. Just because, by some miracle of first past the post, we now have a proportion of seats that represents our proportion of votes, it does not dilute in any way our support for a more proportional voting system. I am glad we have the support of the hon. Gentleman and his Reform UK colleagues.
We must take urgent action to protect democratic processes and institutions in the UK from threats both here and abroad. We need to listen to the warning bell sounded by the general election that the citizens we seek to serve, and who must abide by the laws we pass, are becoming disenchanted with the political process. If we want to continue to be a beacon of democracy across the world, we must ensure that it serves its purpose both in giving a voice to the people and in delivering prosperity and stability. We cannot do the latter if we fail at the former.
First past the post is a broken and unfair system. Last summer, the Labour party won a landslide election victory, securing 63% of seats in the House of Commons in return for just 34% of the vote. This system leaves millions of voices unheard and creates a divisive, adversarial political climate, where collaboration is discouraged and accountability is often sidestepped. The Liberal Democrats have long championed proportional representation, advocating for a voting system where every vote truly counts. We must modernise our electoral system, creating a fairer process to engage voters, listen to the needs of constituents and rebuild trust in politics.
Winning a vote in Parliament for my Bill creates a historic precedent: for the first time, MPs have backed a proportional voting system in the Division Lobby. It would be an outrage were this Bill not given the opportunity to progress further through the House and to become law, so I urge the Minister to schedule an opportunity for the Bill to be read a Second time, in Government time, and to offer Labour MPs a free vote on the Bill.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
I am grateful to Members from all parties for their thoughtful and interesting contributions to the debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important discussion and the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for introducing the debate in the way that he did.
For us as a nation, this is an important discussion to have. We may not recognise that we should be proud of the peaceful and democratic way that we govern ourselves, despite our various, often heated, disagreements, as hon. Members might have seen earlier in the debate. Unlike the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), I am not afraid—
Rachel Gilmour
I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. It does at least show that he has some sense and knowledge of what democracy means.
Paul Holmes
I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for that wonderful intervention. Members should know that she and I are very good friends.
Unlike the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, I am not afraid to stand up for the courage of my convictions and for the arguments that I will make. Unlike Members of the Liberal Democrat party, I am prepared to take interventions and have a genuine debate,
Sir Desmond Swayne
May I interrupt this community lovefest, and ask my hon. Friend to reflect on the experience of Israel, where tiny religious parties are perpetually in government, exercising disproportionate influence and influencing policy in a way that is at variance with the wishes of the majority?
Paul Holmes
My right hon. Friend is correct that there is a vast and quite radical system that elects the Israeli Government, where a number of extreme politicians on both sides of the aisle—
Paul Holmes
No, I will not. I will finish responding to my right hon. Friend.
Paul Holmes
Well, I have not finished making my point yet and I intend to do so. The electoral system in Israel elects people from extreme wings, from both sides of the aisle, who have a disproportionate impact on the policies and outcomes of the Israeli Government.
Paul Holmes
Not at the moment, as I will make some progress.
Over the past several hundred years, our country has undergone myriad complex and contentious reforms that have revolutionised our systems of governance. Those changes have often been made in a piecemeal fashion over many centuries, from Simon de Montfort’s Parliament of 1265, in which representatives from towns and the shires were summoned together to discuss matters of national concern, to the great Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867, permitting the expansion of suffrage, to the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, which extended the franchise to all persons, male and female, over the age of 21. Those evolutionary changes have allowed us, as a country, to forgo frequent domestic upheaval and civil wars, which are a feature of other less stable systems.
I know I am in a minority of one this afternoon—apart from the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal)—but the Conservative party has long championed first past the post as the fairest and most effective way to elect representatives—[Interruption.]
Paul Holmes
I say to the hon. Lady, who intervenes from a sedentary position, that my colleagues in the Conservative parliamentary party are out in their constituencies, campaigning and standing up for their constituents, not focusing on a debate about an outdated system that will never last.
The Conservative party has championed first past the post as the fairest and most effective way to elect representatives, ensuring clear accountability, stable governance, and a direct link between elected officials and their constituents. Indeed, we continue to do that even after our historic and momentous defeats of 1997 and 2024. The party has continued to support first past the post, as evidenced by the submission to the Jenkins Commission in 1998, because we believe the way to win elections is to gain the trust of the public, not to gerrymander the system when things get tough.
Voters have already shown their preference for first past the post, as shown by the decision made by 13 million people who voted against the proposals set out in the 2011 voting system referendum. I know this is not popular among the parties in opposition, but I believe we should respect the results of referendums.
Paul Holmes
Let me just finish this point. Some 68% of people voted no in that referendum, so the result should be respected for at least a generation, as the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) said in his thoughtful contribution. In 2011, the alternative vote was supported by a majority of voters in a mere 10 of the 440 local counting areas.
The debate raises some pertinent questions for other Members. Only seven months after they won a resounding and historical vote in a landslide victory under the first-past-the-post system, Labour MPs suddenly want to do away with the system that has provided them with their victory, and smaller parties want to gerrymander the system because they did not get as many seats as they wanted. Perhaps that is because Labour Members are already struggling at having to work directly for the constituents that put them in their places, because they are suffering from the biggest and most profound instance of buyer’s remorse since this Government took office.
I say gently to the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry), who outlined the possibility of a two-tier system where members can pick and choose what they focus on for their constituents, Members of this House elected under this system take on every issue for their constituents. My constituents in Hamble Valley have a direct link to me, and I will not pick and choose what issues I take up. Members in this House generally do not do that; we stand up for our constituents on all the issues that they think are important in this country and in their constituencies.
In a debate about our electoral system, the Liberal Democrats have once again shown that they are not worthy of having the word “democrat” in their name. They once again outlined that they have an opposition to voter ID, which guarantees safe and fair voting systems in this country and stops people from being able to take votes from people who are genuinely entitled to vote in this country, and they outlined that they now want to gerrymander the system to get more votes themselves.
I gently say to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson that she said that a lack of turnout meant the results of the election were not as valid as they should be. She is entitled to that opinion, which is perfectly reasonable, but her Bill on proportional representation passed with the votes of 62 MPs in this House, out of a total electorate of 650 MPs, by a majority of two. Taking her proposition, does that mean her Bill is less entitled to pass than other Bills because of the turnout of MPs voting on that outdated proposition?
Under proportional representation, direct accountability is often lost in the complexities of coalitions and backroom deals. Advocates of PR stress the need for the party share of the legislature to mirror the share of the popular vote, but that is the wrong test. It is more important to look at the share of the vote and the share of executive power. Over time, PR leads to a highly disproportionate relationship between votes cast and the share of executive power, which is unhealthy for democracy. First past the post ensures the brutal and efficient removal of governments when a ruling administration loses popular support, and they are rightly booted out and replaced with a new government facilitated often by a clear mandate from voters.
Richard Tice
That is most generous of him. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that almost all other major democratic nations across the world use PR? Does that not prove that far from being outdated, it is contemporary?
Paul Holmes
If the hon. Gentleman is seriously suggesting to the House that just because other people do it, we should follow suit, then he needs to go away and think about his policy proposition again. This country —[Interruption.] Let me finish the point. This country has elected more stable Governments than most European nations have under proportional representation. That is a proud and long-standing convention of this country and of this House of Commons. I suggest to Members from across the House that that is why the Conservative party believes and this House should believe in keeping first past the post as we go forward in other general elections.
Paul Holmes
I am spoilt for choice and I do not have much time left. I will give way to the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) and then to the hon. Member for Shipley.
Claire Young
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman remembers how many Prime Ministers there were between the last election and the one before, and whether voters knew what they were getting at the start of 2019.
Paul Holmes
I think that is a relatively lazy argument about the internal machinations of the Conservative party and is not concerned with our electoral system. I give the hon. Lady the point that it was not a good time within my party, within this country and that period of office, but it concerns the way parties elect leaders and not the electoral system for the public.
In relation to proportional representation not allowing parties from different wings to be elected, if we look at an example from 2009, in European elections under the PR system, the British National party won two European Parliament seats with 6% of the vote. In the rare cases in which the BNP won local government seats, such as in Barking and Dagenham in 2006, its support represented 35% to 50% of the popular vote in the winning wards. First past the post, by contrast, acts as a safeguard against extremism in ensuring that only candidates with broad support can win. That helps preserve the political stability and moderation that are hallmarks of our parliamentary democracy.
When coalition Governments are formed, it becomes difficult for voters to hold any one party accountable for their decisions. Blame for unpopular policies can easily be shifted between coalition partners, which, given how things are going for them, I know might be appealing for Labour Members. However, that erodes trust in politics, whereas first past the post provides clarity. Voters know exactly which party is in charge and can hold it to account at the next election.
It is also the case that under a party-list PR system, which was previously the European Parliament’s system in Great Britain, there was no direct accountability, with representatives dependent on a party patronage system. How many voters actually knew the name of their European Parliament Members when we were in the European Union? I would hazard that there were only one or two well known MEPs and one of them is still close by.
I think the choice for us is clear, although I know that I am undoubtedly in the minority this afternoon. First past the post ensures strong and stable governance, clear accountability and an electoral system that is easily understood by the public. It prevents small, unrepresentative parties from wielding disproportionate influence and upholds the direct link between MPs and their constituents. The British people have spoken in favour of first past the post and we should respect that decision. Members in other Opposition parties should learn and take it from us: we know that you cannot keep asking the same question over and over and expect a different response. The first-past-the-post system has served the UK well for generations. It delivers clear outcomes, stable Governments and a direct link between voters and their representatives. If we were to move to a PR regional-based system, that link would be lost and MPs would be scrambling and fighting to take on their constituents’ casework. We can just imagine the mafioso-style turf wars such a system would generate. To scrap those sensible and time-honoured demarcations would be terrifically reckless and fundamentally unnecessary and would do our electors a disservice.
We should not trade a proven system for one that prioritises theoretical fairness over practical effectiveness. The challenges we face as a country demand strong leadership, clear accountability and a system that works for the people. Even though I do not like the result, the Labour Government won that mandate under the system we have. First past the post has provided that Government and we should stick to that, allowing the British people to have a system they fundamentally understand and fundamentally believe in.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) in his wide-ranging comments talked about the vote that was held on 3 December 2024 relating to the Elections (Proportional Representation) ten-minute rule motion. He mentioned rightly that the ayes won by two votes, but in fact, the number of votes cast were 138 ayes and 136 noes. He mentioned that only 62 votes were cast and I am sure he would like to correct the record.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
That is a point of debate and not a point of order. I call the shadow Minister.
Paul Holmes
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am perfectly willing to correct the record and apologise to the House. However, that was still a minority of the 50% that would be required under the system that the Liberal Democrats are advocating.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)
I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for opening the debate and by congratulating the Backbench Business Committee and the key Members on securing this debate.
The UK’s democratic system and institutions are strong and are rightly held the world over as a strong example of democracy. I know as someone who was born in another country that the UK’s democratic system has provided inspiration, even though as we have heard many hon. Members believe more work needs to be done in some areas. In defence of our democratic system, I reiterate how much our system and our democracy is cherished. Whichever side of the argument Members are on, it is vital that we work tirelessly to protect our democracy, which faces different kinds of threats in the current climate. Indeed, I hope we will all work together in that endeavour to make sure that we protect the integrity of our system, our institutions and our precious democracy.
How we select our representatives in Parliament is of fundamental importance and Members quite rightly have strong views. The choice of voting system is central to that concern, as we have heard in the many speeches made today, and how votes are cast goes to the heart of our democracy. I, for one, am incredibly proud to have been the first person of British-Bangladeshi heritage to get a democratic mandate in our system in 2010. That democratic mandate must never be delegitimised, even if we believe that there should be a different system. Whatever Members’ arguments, whichever side of the argument they are on, whichever system they believe we should adopt or whether they believe we should retain the current system, it is absolutely vital that we do not delegitimise the democratic mandate that this Government, or any other Government in the past, have been given to serve this country and the people who have voted for us.
Mr Holden
The Minister makes a broader important point about the mandate that individual MPs feel when they are elected to this place. Does she agree that that individual mandate—our names are on the ballot paper—is strengthened under the first-past-the-post system? Does she also agree that that means that our electorate can single out MPs, which could not happen under a party-list system, in order to remove them?
Rushanara Ali
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the importance of the constituency connection. Hon. Members have made important contributions about alternative systems, outlining their merits and limitations. Each of those systems has its pros and cons, and that has been strongly and powerfully debated by many hon. Members today. I respect those strongly held views on electoral reform.
I know that colleagues will be disappointed, and I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news when there has been a general love-in during the debate across the parties, bar some exceptions, but at this time the Government have no plans to change the voting system for elections to the House of Commons. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am getting unlikely cheers; I am not used to being cheered by Conservative Members. As has been pointed out, the first-past-the-post system, while not perfect, provides for a direct relationship between Members of Parliament and their local constituency. A change would require a national conversation and referendum. The Government’s focus and No. 1 priority, having won the general election and secured a mandate, is to kick-start our economy, create the growth that is desperately needed, and improve living standards, our NHS and public services, to serve the people of our country.
Members have put their arguments across eloquently, and I respect those arguments. As others have pointed out, we had an opportunity to change the voting system in the 2011 referendum. Unfortunately for those who are proponents of such a change, that referendum was lost. The processes that underpin our elections are of paramount importance and changes cannot be made lightly; however, I stress that we are not averse to changes to, and innovation in, our democracy. We must continue to monitor all aspects of our electoral system, and ensure that it runs effectively and adapts to the modern challenges that we face as a democracy.
As we set out in our manifesto, we are seeking to make changes, including our commitment to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. We are continuing to assess the voter identification policy in order to address any inconsistencies. I am pleased that we were able to add veteran cards to the list of accepted documents last year; our veterans community will be able to use them to vote in polling stations this May. We are continuing to consider whether further improvements to policy can be made. I am conscious of the contributions of some hon. Members about the exclusion of legitimate voters. It is crucial that we ensure that people are not disenfranchised, while ensuring that there are not abuses of our system.
As I mentioned, the Liberal Democrat party, in coalition with the Conservative party, secured a referendum on AV in 2011, with considerable cross-party support from Labour Members. The proposal was rejected by 67.9% of votes. While I recognise the strength of feeling, I have made the Government’s position clear. Hon. Members asked whether the Government have any plans for a national commission on electoral reform. At present, we do—we do not. [Laughter.] That was not a Freudian slip. Some hon. Members asked about the London mayoral election and police and crime commissioners, following the changes in the Elections Act 2022. The Government currently have no plans to change the voting system for those polls. Like a number of policies, we will keep these matters under review.
A number of hon. Members suggested that the first-past-the-post system is contributing to a decrease in turnout, and pointed to the low turnout at the last election. It is on all of us to think carefully about the drivers of low turnout, which will be a range of factors. We all have a responsibility, as elected representatives, to work with our parties and communities to promote engagement, particularly among young people. We will work with colleagues to promote that democratic engagement, and ensure that young citizens are active citizens from an early age.
In order to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley enough time to wind up the debate, I will address just one other point. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) spoke about foreign interference in relation to funding. Foreign money has no place in UK politics, and it is vital that we protect our democracy from those who seek to interfere in UK elections through illegitimate political donations. That is why we committed in our manifesto to strengthening the rules around donations to political parties. We will work with Members across the House to ensure that we protect the integrity of our democracy.
Cameron Thomas
I invite the Minister to join the APPG for fair elections. She will see that there is a very clear correspondence between first past the post and the lack of engagement over time.
Rushanara Ali
I thank the hon. Member for his invitation, and welcome him to send us information. He knows that I cannot be a member of the all-party group, but I recognise and commend its work. Having been a member of and chaired many all-party groups during my 14 years in opposition, I recognise the importance of their work.
I thank hon. Members across the House for their important contributions to the debate, expressing strongly and deeply held views about a really important subject: the future and nature of our democracy. Whichever side of the argument we are on, it is vital that we always maintain our commitment to working together to protect our democracy, and that we work tirelessly to strengthen our democracy.
Alex Sobel
I will be brief, because we have had a long and thorough debate. I thank everyone who took part in it, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), who cut a lonely figure in opposing a change to the voting system. I thank him for his bravery in the face of such opposition; it is a shame that we could not have had more Members speak against changing the voting system, as so many spoke in favour. I thank the Minister for committing to work with the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which I chair, and I will follow up on that.
Let me make just one substantive point, because I feel that there may be a lack of understanding about something. I am well aware that we had a referendum on the alternative vote system in 2011. The alternative vote system, which is used to elect the Australian Parliament, is a preferential system, not a proportional system, so we have had a referendum on preferential representation but we have never had a referendum on proportional representation. I do not see why we need to wait a generation, as has been suggested. I certainly do not think that we need to have another referendum on a preferential system, but we need to consider, as I laid out in the debate, a commission to look at the failures in our electoral system, and whether we should move to a more proportional system.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered proportional representation for general elections.
Local Post Offices
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of local Post Office services.
I am grateful to everyone for attending this debate on a Thursday afternoon on post offices and their vital role in all our communities across the country. Post offices have long been at the heart of our communities. They provide essential services, support local businesses and serve as vital socioeconomic lifelines, but in too many areas across the country, including my constituency, we face uncertainty over the future of those post offices and are already seeing the erosion of far too many.
Post offices contribute an estimated £4.7 billion annually to the UK economy. According to the Post Office, their presence generates an additional £3 billion in spending for the businesses that surround them. In a town like Wellington in my constituency, a post office could add around £1 million to the local economy. Small businesses across the country rely on post offices for banking, cash deposits and parcel services. Nearly a third of small and medium-sized businesses use the post office at least once a week.
Of course, the benefits of post offices are not just economic; they remain a lifeline for many, particularly older and more vulnerable people, who rely on post office services to access their pension, send mail and parcels, pay bills, and stay connected. I hear from many of my constituents how much they value our local post offices, and that those post offices provide far more than just postal services.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member on bringing this important debate. My constituents are served by Crown post offices in Brixton and on Lordship Lane in east Dulwich. Both those town centres have effectively seen the withdrawal of high-street banks. Would he agree that the erosion of high-street banking services places an even greater emphasis on the role of post offices, and that the Government need to intervene to stop the further round of Crown post office closures if we are to see the banking hubs commitment met across the country?
Gideon Amos
The hon. Member is absolutely right, and I will emphasise that point later, because the destiny of banking hubs is wrapped up with that of post offices. Post offices are the nucleus of a town centre, and once they are gone, it undermines the town centre.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
Following on from the intervention of the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), I represent Tiverton and Minehead, a very rural constituency. Dulverton is a classic example of what we are talking about. The farmers used to come down from Cutcombe market, after they had sold their cattle and sheep, and deposit their money in a bank or post office in Dulverton. We just about have a post office there, but no banks. Does my hon. Friend agree that post offices and banks are two sides of the same coin?
Gideon Amos
I agree with my hon. Friend. I will comment on that aspect of banking later.
I pay tribute to the friendly and hard-working staff in my local post offices on Station Road and in Staplegrove, and in other post offices throughout the constituency. The North Curry post office, with its amazing postmistress, contributes every year to the “Christmas in the Square” event for the village charity and has raised £1,500. These are real community institutions. Their being in our villages and communities, where they offer a warm, friendly welcome and act as a community hub, is important to many people and must not be undervalued.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The hon. Member makes an excellent point, and I think the nub of his speech is that post offices are not just a banking facility or just a post office; they are a real community hub. I think about the ones in my constituency that I have visited recently—in Ramsden Bellhouse, on Whitmore Way in Basildon or the brand new one on Billericay high street. That is exactly what they are: places where the entire community comes together.
Gideon Amos
The right hon. Member is quite right. I know Billericay and its post office, and I certainly support his remarks. Post offices are simply too important to be lost, and we have to ensure that they are not lost in towns like Wellington and Taunton, and elsewhere across the country.
Too often, there are deep concerns about the future of local post offices. Today’s announcement about changes to the Royal Mail universal service obligation adds to that uncertainty, creating further pressure on an already fragile network. It is disappointing to see that obligation weakened, with potential knock-on effects on the viability of post offices. That makes it even more important that post offices continue to play a role all throughout the week, in selling stamps and providing postal services, even if deliveries are being cut back.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for taking my intervention and for the points that he is making. In response to a question I asked, the Government said that more than one in 10 post office services are not provided in what people would recognise as a post office. Some services are provided out the back of a van for a few hours a week, but they are still held up as complete post office services in the figures on post offices and how many people access them. Does he agree that we must provide complete post office services in all the communities that need them?
Gideon Amos
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. There is a risk that the statistics are somewhat skewed by the fact that a parcel drop-off point or a van that visits occasionally may be considered post offices.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way to a number of Members during his important speech. On the proposal to replace Crown post offices, does he agree that franchised post offices are no substitute? In fact, that is a huge risk. WHSmith, which often takes on the franchises, announced this week that it is closing 17 of its high street branches. The move to franchises could be one step away from the complete loss of post office facilities.
Gideon Amos
Indeed. I think the hon. Member had read the next sentence of my speech, which was about the post office branch housed in WHSmith on Fore Street in Taunton. That business is potentially up for sale, which poses risks. The loss of such post offices would leave a huge gap across the country, particularly in county towns like Taunton. In the course of his work, will the Minister get concrete assurances from WHSmith that post offices in its stores will be retained following the sale? It is important that the Government get assurances from WHSmith on that point.
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. The distinction between Crown post offices and franchised post offices cannot be drawn heavily enough. In my constituency, we lost Crown post offices in Newton Abbot and in Dawlish, and the one in Teignmouth—which I believe is the last in my constituency; all the rest are franchises—is now under threat. Does he agree that the franchise system can provide a useful service but is absolutely no substitute for the full Crown post office service, which must remain?
Gideon Amos
I agree. I am sure that the Government will say in due course that, whatever its exact business model, a viable post office is what matters, and there would be some truth in that, but a secure post office, established for the long term, is what really matters.
The worries we hear from across the House and the country are not without foundation. We have seen worrying closures across the country. Notably, as has been mentioned, there was a recent consultation on the closure of 150 post offices. The loss of branches means that fewer communities can access vital services. House of Commons data shows that the number of post offices is rising overall, but in the south-west, which has lost more post offices than any other region in England, it is falling.
Wellington in my constituency lost its post office in 2019, and we can see the damage caused by that loss. Wellington is not a small town; it has 15,000 residents and is growing fast. Its population has grown by a third over the past two decades according to census data, and around 1,500 new homes have been built there in recent years. It also has a proud history as the home of Fox Brothers & Co, which has been manufacturing the finest flannels and fabrics for over 250 years and also owned its own bank—the Fox bank on Fore Street was the last bank in the country to issue its own banknotes. It is unacceptable for such a town to have no main post office. Losing the post office in 2019 has been a real blow. One constituent told me that he finds it
“totally baffling why Wellington Post Office was ever closed”.
It is particularly difficult for those without access to a car to visit the nearest alternative at Rockwell Green, a village several miles away. If they do, residents often find that the sub-post office is oversubscribed, with queues out the door. As a small village post office, it was only intended to provide for small numbers, and when it is open, parking has become a bit of a nightmare.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I was very pleased to support the hon. Gentleman’s application to the Backbench Business Committee for this debate. Does he agree that Crown post offices are one of the last bastions of the civil service in local communities, as they are not centralised? They provide good jobs in places like Wellington in his constituency, and they give support to communities that often have an older population. They have an expertise that franchises simply cannot provide.
Gideon Amos
The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and I am extremely grateful to her for helping us to secure this debate. Post offices act as hubs for a whole range of services, and they could arrange for a range of other public services, and often do, which is why a secure, proper post office is so important.
As I say, the nearest post office to Wellington is some miles away and very difficult to access. As hon. Members can imagine, there was great relief when Wellington residents were told that they would be getting a new hub opened by an organisation called the Post Office, staffed by staff working for the Post Office, and that there was to be a logo outside the building with “Post Office” written on it, but they were disappointed to find, when they went inside the building, that it was a banking hub that does not provide any post office services. Frankly, people feel misled and let down. Will the Minister instruct the Post Office to review the case for granting Wellington post office the status of main post office? I am convinced from discussions with franchise holders that that would be enough to secure one for Wellington.
As we can all see, in this case, there is an obvious and straightforward solution: we should allow banking hubs to offer postal services. There is no fundamental reason why they cannot. They already have post office tills and post office systems. They are run by postmasters and postmistresses, and staffed by post office staff. The one in Wellington even has two banking desks and space for a third desk, presumably awaiting a post office counter. That would be a very good use of the remaining space in a building with “Post Office” written above the door. Perhaps most importantly, having spoken to post office staff, I know that they would be very keen to offer such services in banking hubs.
The issue lies simply in such arrangements not having been included in the agreement on banking hubs between the banks, which fund them, and the Post Office, which provides those services. It is not a hugely complex problem. With a bit of effort and ingenuity, which I am sure the Minister and the Government have, this could be overcome, and the system could be made hugely more efficient. There are 76 banking hubs in the UK, and in this way we could significantly increase the provision of post offices at very little cost. Will the Minister ask his Department to develop incentives for banking hubs to offer postal services, especially given that they all have the “Post Office” logo outside the door, even when they do not provide any postal services.
To conclude, post offices are vital hubs in communities throughout the country, particularly for those in need and at risk of exclusion. The loss of the post office in Wellington, such a significant market town, has really hit the town centre badly. I know hon. Members will have their own examples of the importance of their local post offices to their communities. I look forward to hearing their speeches, and maybe to intervening on them. It is vital to ensure that substantive towns and communities such as Wellington do not lose their post offices altogether. In short, post offices are too important to be left to uncertainty. The Government must act now to safeguard these vital institutions, ensuring that towns, such as Wellington and so many more, do not remain without essential services. I urge the Minister to take tangible steps to secure the future of post offices before more communities are left without them.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I am imposing an immediate six-minute time limit so that everyone can get in.
Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)
I commend the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on securing this important debate. I think that most Members and most people are pro-post office. After all, post offices are part of the fabric of our nation. Many Members of my age were brought up on Postman Pat and his black and white cat. It would not have been the same without Mrs Goggins at the local post office.
The Leighton Buzzard post office first opened its doors at its current location near All Saints church back in 1887. We all recognise that a lot has changed in the last 137 years, and since Postman Pat hit our screens in the 1980s. I used to queue at the post office to get my car tax. Emails have transformed how we communicate. TV licence sales have moved online or to phone or direct debit. What has not changed is the way that post offices foster a sense of community pride. Half of UK consumers say that their local post office creates a sense of belonging and community identity. An Association of Convenience Stores survey ranked the post office third for having a positive impact on local communities.
Post offices also drive footfall to our high streets because when someone goes to the post office in the town centre, they often spend money elsewhere. More and more, post offices support e-commerce, and they are important to small businesses, half of which use them at least once a month. Increasingly, they are a vital means of accessing cash.
Since 2015, my constituency has lost 60% of its bank branches. In recent months, two more high street banks, Lloyds and Halifax, have left Leighton Buzzard town centre. In September, when Halifax announced its closure, it was explicit that it expected the post office down the road to take up the slack. Whether that will be possible is a question I will turn to shortly.
I was proud to stand on a Labour manifesto that committed us to strengthening the post office network. I welcome the Government’s £37 million investment to support post office branches, along with the £20 million boost to sub-postmasters’ pay and the plans to publish a Green Paper seeking public views on the future of the Post Office. This all comes at a critical time.
The 100-plus-year-old Leighton Buzzard post office is a Crown post office. The desire of the Post Office to move to a fully franchised model is not new. It has been on the cards for some time, but it is causing understandable concern for local people who deeply value the service that their post office provides, for all of the reasons I have outlined. I welcome the expressions of interest in taking on those Crown branches. Although not all of those applications will be viable, it is encouraging that third-party operators are willing to step in, potentially integrating retail elements to make these branches more financially sustainable.
However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) mentioned, the recent announcement by WHSmith, which hosts around 200 post office counters, has raised concerns about whether third-party takeovers truly are a long-term solution. I would be grateful for the Minister’s views on that. I would also be keen for him to explore with the Post Office whether there is merit in treating Crown branches where it owns the freehold of the building differently from those where it leases the premises.
Let me turn briefly to the related issue of postboxes. Some new developments simply do not have them. That means that someone who lives in Bidwell West would have to go on a half-hour hike to post a letter. The law states that residents should be within 500 metres of a post box, but that is simply not happening. Perhaps the Minister might raise that with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, to ensure that housing developments include post boxes as standard. After all, letters are vital for a thriving postal service.
The Post Office is a national institution. It brings essential services to countless communities, whether sending a parcel, withdrawing cash or topping up an electricity meter. It supports local businesses, high streets and local identity. Yes, it must change, but it must not wither. Local people must enjoy a first-class service.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
In September 2021, Plymstock post office closed. It was part of the collateral damage of the closure by Morrisons of more than 80 newsagents. It was a legitimate business decision no doubt, but it highlights the issue of the post office franchise model. Those businesses just disappeared from the high street. What followed was a public petition, which I started. There was huge public disappointment, as older populations are used to using cash. The postmistress of the next nearest post office wants to retire, which leaves just one bank with one cash machine. The next nearest cash machine is 10 or 15 minutes’ walk away. Importantly, this was the loss of an anchor at a shopping centre that is vital for the local community.
Working closely with the Post Office and local businesses, we sought to secure a new post office, but it is a challenge to make the franchise business model work. That will be even harder now with the employer increased national insurance contributions that businesses face. I raised this matter with the Minster today and he gave me a helpful answer. He mentioned the increase in the sub-postmaster pay offer, but there remains the issue that we are not replacing closing post offices on a like-for-like basis.
Plymstock had a three-counter model, which the Post Office has offered to replace with a local franchise. It is offering just £15,000 to £18,000 a year to run that service within an existing or proposed business. We have to add on to that rent, business rates, staff, and set-up and running costs, because, at the moment, there are no businesses on the Broadway, where the post office was located, able to take on that service.
There is also a challenge with the franchise model, in that it is often not possible to tag on additional services at the beginning that would make the business more profitable. For example, passport processing is not always offered at the start, and those extra services can often be the difference between a business model that will work and one that is unsustainable.
Ironically, on 22 May, the day the general election was called, I met again with the Post Office—some three years later—to discuss the issue. The Post Office raised with me the statistics on what was needed. It thought that the use of a post office in the area would increase over time, but it would not take into account the fact that a neighbouring postmistress was seeking to retire. Therefore, the data showed that the area did not need anything more than a post office local. All it took was a tiny bit of horizon scanning to realise that there would be that need and that demand shortly. We got stuck in a Catch-22 situation. The Post Office reassured me that it had further people interested in running the post office, but, nearly one year later, nothing has come to fruition. The fight continues.
As has been mentioned by other hon. Members, there is the option of banking hubs. The work of the Conservative Government to trailblaze this modern solution for communities has helped remarkably, and I am sure that we will hear lots about that this afternoon.
David Mundell
To reinforce the point that the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) made, there is a real concern that communities that are looking to have a banking hub do not have a functioning post office in the way that we would understand it. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that the arrival of banking hubs is actually the opportunity to put a post office back into those communities as well?
Rebecca Smith
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. I think that all of us in this Chamber will agree that having a post office within these banking hubs is vital. We have seen 76 hubs open across the country in the last few years. Clearly, there is an appetite and a need for them, but it does not make sense to the public, as has been alluded to, that they can pitch up to these places with a post office sign outside, but they cannot even buy a stamp inside. I do hope that that can be rectified.
The other challenge is that an area cannot have a banking hub while a bank is still present. Perhaps that is the silver lining to yesterday’s announcement that the Lloyds bank in the same location, on Plymstock Broadway, is closing in November. That will be a massive hit, as it has the only cash machine for the entire community. However, as I have been saying to my constituents, perhaps the silver lining is that we will see more banking available and, if the Government heed our calls today, that future post office as well. Perhaps we have to circumvent the system to get what we want. It would mean that we can now explore a banking hub and retain those banking services.
Clearly, there is a long way to go. I am sure that there are Members in the Chamber today who have secured banking hubs. I am told that it takes a big fight, but most of us are here because we are campaigners. Within an hour of the announcement of the closure of the Lloyds bank, we went out to the press, and we will do all we can to get a banking hub. However, I want to be able to reassure my constituents that this will solve the lack of a post office as well, so I do hope that we can see that policy change. There is a long way to go: we have to secure a venue, an operator and that policy change to see our post office services return.
Since I shared the idea yesterday, there has been huge local interest. People are really getting the idea of a banking hub—they are on board; it is what the community wants. I have had two conversations already with potential operators, one of whom I know runs a service in a neighbouring constituency and is doing a really good job there. So we have the interest; we have businessmen and women who want to do this. They have not been able to deliver it on the franchise model, but it seems that they can deliver it on the banking hub model.
We want to see this idea delivered, because even the shopping centre knows that, in order to get the footfall for all the other local businesses, having a bank and a post office for access to cash is vital. Even the local library needs that cash access, and if it is not available, there is going to be a problem. Local people need these vital services and amenities, and that is why we need to secure a banking hub.
I say to my constituents, particularly those in Plymstock, that they have my absolute commitment to fighting for this. I would add that we have some fabulous small community post offices in our villages; it is not all a bad news story. The Newton Ferrers shop, for example, has a fabulous post office counter, and attempts are made right across our constituencies to deliver these services for our constituents. However, where there is a problem like the one we are facing today, with closing banks and closing main branches, we do need to step up and take action.
To close, I will ask a few questions of the Minister. I have highlighted the reality of the current post office offer and, as I said, it is not all bad. He has kindly said that I can share some details about my constituency with him, which I will do, but I think it would be good to get the answers on the record in the Chamber. Does the Minister accept that downgrading a service from a main branch to a franchised local service hinders the replacement of post office services? Will he explore the fact that the current Post Office dataset does not allow for what will happen in the future? If a retirement is coming down the road, we should be able to business-plan around that and at the moment we cannot. Can the Minister reassure the House that he remains committed to delivering banking hubs, and say whether will they will incorporate postal facilities so that we can deliver for our constituents?
Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing today’s debate. This is an important issue for constituencies across the UK, as has been highlighted by contributions from all parts of the House, but it is a particular concern to constituencies like South East Cornwall, which faces the potential closure of our Liskeard post office. If that were to go ahead, it would not just be the loss of a shop; it would be the loss of a vital service at the heart of our community. As the daughter of a postman, I know just what a hard and important job it is that they do.
For many people in rural areas like mine, the post office is more than a place to send letters; with the loss of high street banks leaving only one provider, the post office has become a financial lifeline, ensuring that residents—especially older residents or those without online banking—and small businesses can access cash and essential services without having to travel for miles. Without a clear alternative in place, that represents a real challenge. For many in rural areas like mine, reaching the next nearest branch is simply not practical. If these closures continue, we must ensure that further banking hubs are established so that rural communities are not left behind.
Driving growth is a key aim of this Government and I welcomed the £28 million investment in Cornwall outlined in the Chancellor’s statement yesterday. Long-term growth cannot happen without the basic services that underpin our local economies, and Labour was elected across the UK in rural, coastal and urban areas alike because people want practical solutions after 14 years of decline. They want to ensure that communities are not cut off from essential services, and I look forward to working with our Government to achieve that.
My goal is to make the lives of local residents in South East Cornwall easier and more prosperous. That means protecting local services, ensuring accountability and delivering real opportunities for growth in towns like Liskeard. I urge the Government to ensure that rural communities are not left stranded and to guarantee access to essential banking and post office services, as I am sure they will.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on taking the initiative to secure time for this debate and on the way in which he opened it.
We are all familiar with the old maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I have lost count of the number of post office debates I have taken part in over the years, and it seems to me that as far as post offices are concerned, the maxim that has governed the thinking of Governments of all colours is, “If it ain’t broke, keep reforming it until it is.”
The fundamental problem is that there has been an incoherence of approach within Departments. On the one hand, we have heard—I suspect we may hear similar things from the Minister today—Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box saying that the post office is a brilliant institution and it can be the front office or front desk for Government services in communities across the country. The next day, we will have another Minister standing at the Dispatch Box telling us that access to Government services will become digital by default. Unless we decide exactly what role we expect our post offices to perform in our communities, we cannot be surprised when they fail to thrive and then wither in the way that they are doing.
It is more than 20 years now since the Department for Work and Pensions thought it could save money by driving people away from getting pensions and other benefits from their local post office. Doubtless that was a saving for the Department for Work and Pensions, but it has just meant that the Department for Business and Trade or whatever we call it these days has had to put more money in through Government subsidies. I hesitate to predict the future in politics at all these days, but one day, when we have finally turned the key to lock the last post office in the country, some bright spark in Downing Street somewhere will come up with a policy paper saying that we should have a hub in every community where people can access Government services and meet their postal needs, their banking needs and all the rest of it, and in that way we will end up reinventing what we have reformed to the point of destruction.
The Post Office and how it interacts with the sub-postmasters has not always helped in that respect, including the innovations that it has brought, such as the pick-up and drop-off initiatives. In my constituency, it is not the sub-post offices that are given the contract to do the pick-up and drop-off points. If the Post Office at the heart is not able to support sub-postmasters at the frontline, we frankly cannot be surprised if they start to fail.
In particular, I want to talk about the Post Office’s approach to the closure of Crown branches. We see that in my constituency, where the last Crown post office in Kirkwall is listed for closure. The way that has been done by the Post Office has been nothing short of a disgrace. It has been totally lacking in respect for its employees and the communities that the post office is there to serve. At a time when we might have hoped that the Post Office would want to demonstrate a change of culture—for reasons we have debated often enough—we see it still behaving in this way in my community. It makes me think that all the fine words about changed culture at the top of the Post Office are simply meaningless weasel words.
I have seen similar situations before. We lost the Crown post office in Lerwick in Shetland a few years ago. It was taken out and folded into a local newsagent service. For all the promises given about maintaining services, in fact the community was left with a much inferior service at the end of the day, despite the best efforts of the newsagent who got the contract. If we are to see these changes in Kirkwall, we need to know first of all that the same range of services will still be available as there are from a Crown post office. That includes vehicle licensing, currency exchange and passport checking—all those things should still be available.
Just as important as the range of services is the question of the physical infrastructure. People want a stand-alone post office to offer a level of service of the sort they get with a Crown post office, especially when we are encouraging banking into them. That is a highly personal service for many people. They do not want to be doing that next to somebody buying a tin of beans and their weekly paper. The size and availability of any post office that is to replace the one that the Post Office wants to close in Kirkwall is critical. We do not want people queueing around the block at Christmas when the post office is at its busiest, standing in the rain, sleet and snow to get their postage done. The size, the range of services and the quality of service have to be at the heart of anything that comes from the Post Office by way of revision. That is the basis on which we in my community will be judging any proposals that it comes forward with.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
I was pleased to support the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) in securing the debate. It was not the first time I helped him as, in a funny quirk of fate, I house sat for him more than 20 years ago— I think it was 22 years ago, but he is welcome to correct the record if I have got the dates wrong.
I thank my London Bridge post office manager Priya and her dedicated team, including Clive and the Communication Workers Union members whom I am proud to serve. They in turn support and serve the London Bridge and Borough High Street community in extremely busy circumstances with massive footfall. That is why there is so much concern about the branch, as demonstrated by the petition to save the London Bridge post office started by London Bridge and West Bermondsey councillors Emily Hickson, Sam Dalton and Sunil Chopra. Hundreds of people have already signed that petition, which is on change.org, should anyone want to add their signature.
I went to the branch two weeks ago to meet the team and saw for myself how busy and loved it was. My constituent Mary—a lovely older lady—was there paying her rent at the time, but it is not just old ladies using post offices. This post office demonstrates how a diverse range of post offices is affected across the country as this branch is hugely busy and serves a massive and vibrant business community at Borough Market and around London Bridge. Of course, it also has London’s fourth-busiest train station right on its doorstep, providing commuter customers on Borough High Street.
I visited specifically because of the question mark over the branch’s status. I thank the Post Office for answering some of my questions and for joining me on that visit, but it is disappointing that the branch is in that position, not least because we have a new ministerial team, Government Ministers have stated that there will be £50 million of additional funding and there remains a commitment from the Government to ensuring that every community has access to a post office branch, which is incredibly welcome.
I am proud to have stood and won last year on a manifesto that said Labour would look for ways to strengthen the network in consultation with sub-postmasters, trade unions and customers. I am glad that the Government formally recognise that
“The UK-wide Post Office branch network is an essential part of the UK’s economic infrastructure, supporting high streets”
and “businesses”. That is incredibly refreshing after years of mismanagement and mixed messages from mixed Ministers from two different parties since 2010.
It is really useful to see the Minister in his place. We may disagree on one issue during the six nations, but he has been a massive champion of post offices and has said on the record that the Post Office should do more when it comes to providing banking services. He has been a doughty champion for the Co-operative party and a champion of post offices having a broader banking and financial footfall, whether that be through a credit union or banking. I hope to hear more from him on those issues. Like posties, he now has to deliver in office as a Minister. [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] Thank you.
I hope that we will hear when the Green Paper will be published. I think the aim is by the end of July. I hope that it will cover Link and the access to cash campaign, which is already part of that discussion, and that there will be space to talk about the future of business rates for post offices and whether there could be a community interest exemption.
I want to flag up a couple of concerns about how the London Bridge branch has been handled by the Post Office. It has an incredibly small team of less than 10 full-time equivalent, and they are incredibly busy, but they have met every target set by the Post Office, including a currency transfer increase last year of more than 20%—we are talking about millions of pounds there. The team have taken on additional services where possible, but those services they have lost have been the responsibility of the Post Office nationally and not the local branch. Sadly, they feel blamed for national Post Office failures.
Rent is also not the local branch’s responsibility; it does not determine the rent that it pays for its prime Borough High Street location. It is disappointing that the Post Office did not seek a rent reduction in 2020. I saw how, during the covid crisis, rents for commercial and residential premises fell for the first time in the 20 years I have lived in the borough. However, the Post Office failed to negotiate or seek a reduction. That is not the responsibility of the individual staff, who feel they are now being held culpable for a failure that sits elsewhere. It is hard to imagine an equivalent site locally that would be cheaper. If the branch moved away from its high street location, it would lose business and commuter footfall, which could reduce turnover. Those making decisions need to be mindful of that.
As was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), there is a lack of respect shown to customers and the workforce in the handling of this. Specifically on this site, the Post Office website said that an alternative provider was available on Blackfriars Road. Well, the Post Office shut that post office two years ago this month. It was supposed to reopen—the Post Office said it had bidders for it last summer—but, since my visit two weeks ago, the Post Office has now stated that it will not reopen the Blackfriars Road site at all, which is a massive disappointment for many in SE1 and the local area. The failure to communicate that—again, not a local responsibility—shows a lack of respect. The Post Office is supposed to follow principles of community engagement in how it handles these issues, but that has not been the case in Blackfriars. It must not happen again.
For people worried about that specific site, I want to flag up that there is a lot of interest in running it with an alternative provider. However, that must not come at a loss of services or a loss of rights for the workforce that the state picks up down the line, and all costs must be taken into account. When more is known—we think that will be in April—I will organise a public meeting with local representatives of the Post Office, the CWU and others, which I will advertise as soon as I can for everyone worried about this great community asset.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on securing this Backbench Business debate. I also thank Nik Frost and Emily Pidgeon from my office for doing the research for this and other speeches that I have made in recent days.
We all know that post offices are critically important assets to our communities. I know that your own post office in Romsey is under threat as a main hub, Madam Deputy Speaker; I know you do not have the ability to voice that, so I shall do so on your behalf.
I am lucky enough to represent seven post offices in South West Hertfordshire. In my first term as a Member of Parliament, Chorleywood port office was closed, having shut in 2019—not for reasons decided by headquarters; there was a local issue—and it took several years before that post office was brought back online. I thank the retailer Lord’s for incorporating the post office into its retail area to ensure that my community could continue to access the excellent services offered by the Post Office.
During the global pandemic, we saw how critical community assets and community spirit were to the health and wellbeing of our residents. They are the unsung heroes of our communities. Most post office staff will see their regulars on a frequent basis, and will quickly identify it if they have not been seen or do not look well; while not professionals like pharmacists, opticians or GPs, they are a set of eyes and ears on how their customers are doing.
Through various announcements, recently and over the past few years, we have seen the demise of high street banks. I am a former furniture retailer, and it still makes me sad that our high streets are not what they once were. Post offices are one of the few beacons left on high streets up and down our country; while there is an absolute draw to online retail, and I am a free marketeer, I know that if we do not continue to support our post offices, we will live to regret it. We must protect the assets that we really care about, and I include the post office in that.
I know that my community cares about this as well. When Croxley Green post office was under threat, I got a lot of correspondence asking me to be proactive. Fortunately, the Post Office decided to stop its plans to review that particular post office, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. I know from colleagues that their inboxes are filling up with concerns from constituents about what they value. It is the silent majority who will be adversely affected if we do not speak up and support our post offices.
I fully support the move towards banking hubs. It makes sense to ensure that communities are drawn to critical assets such as our post offices. It is my understanding that the agreement for the Post Office to provide banking hubs ends at the end of this year. I urge the Minister to reassure the House that if that is the case, he will look into it, and ensure that the Post Office quickly gets into negotiations with retail banks to ensure they are viable. With more and more people having less access to cash, the Post Office remains one of the few community hubs in areas where our constituents can always go and get cash out.
It is not all easy for the Post Office: I do not want to get party political, but post offices will now have a £45 million additional bill because of the national insurance jobs tax, and there has been a significant increase in business rates within the estate. While the drive for technology is important, the Government, in my view, need to look at how they can support places like our post offices to ensure that they remain commercially viable. I can assure the Minister that he will have my support if he is able to do so.
Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this timely debate. I was glad to have the opportunity to support him in doing so.
Hon. Members have described very powerfully the closures that are happening in their constituencies. In my constituency, the last remaining post office on the historic King’s Road is threatened. It is a long time since the King’s Road heyday of the swinging ’60s, when “Please Mr Postman” was first a hit. Unfortunately, since then the number of post office branches, on what is a very long road, has dwindled and there is now only one left. Shockingly, it is one of 108 directly managed branches across the country that the Post Office is planning to shut, 32 of which are in Greater London. The Post Office says that it is doing that to save money. I hope it is not doing it to pay for the costs of resolving the Horizon scandal. We will perhaps find out over time.
Meanwhile, we have a King’s Road post office that offers a buzzing, full service to lots of customers. There are regular queues—every time I go in there I have to wait 10 minutes to be served—and people love the staff. They tell me how worried they are at the possibility of it closing and how incredulous they are that it could even be considered. They depend on it. There simply are no other options nearby. All sorts of people go there.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) mentioned, it is particularly older and disabled people who rely on post office services for bill payments and access to cash, and they are the most worried. Around the corner from the post office, there is a number of sheltered accommodation and retirement housing blocks. The people who live there will be disproportionately affected. On hearing what was planned, I immediately launched a petition and was not surprised to get 1,000 signatures in a very short space of time. Many other people have got in touch with me to express their disappointment, dismay and concern.
I met Post Office management in early December and left them in no doubt about the anger and shock in the community. They said that the King’s Road post office was losing money. They also said that they might consider franchising it to a retail partner or an independent postmaster, but that no decision had yet been taken. Naturally, I asked to see a full, detailed analysis of the figures. They very kindly responded that they would let me have that in the new year, which we are now in. I will be seeing them again next week and pressing them to provide that analysis.
I expect to see not just the financial reasons for any decision to close the post office on the King’s Road, but a detailed impact assessment on how the change would affect the community and what steps would be taken to mitigate it. The number of customers matters, of course, but so does the type of customer that the post office serves. I have touched on this, but we cannot just brush aside the needs of older and disabled people: people who do not feel comfortable banking online, people who prefer to use cash. We cannot let some people feel that they are seen as less important, because they are not less important. We cannot let them feel they are left behind. They must not be left behind. We need to find a solution that serves the needs of everyone. That is why it is so important to me that the Post Office consults genuinely and authentically with the local community about the change. I will be seeking clarity on that as well.
Finally, I will try in the meeting to get clarification on the Post Office’s thinking on keeping the King’s Road post office open by franchising it. I have heard the concerns that hon. Members have expressed about franchising, but if it proves to be the only option—we are a long way off that—I intend to pitch in and do all I can to make it a success for my constituents.
When we lost a major post office on North End Road in the Fulham part of my constituency, I worked very closely with the local council to support a new franchisee. I was delighted to open a new post office on North End Road last year. It is a franchise, yes, but it provides a seven-day-a-week service from 9 in the morning to 9 in the evening. It provides a full range of services—even newspaper delivery, which does not happen very much. I was there just last week. It is thriving and very popular. People feel well served. That is good news for the people of Fulham, but I cannot help wondering why the Post Office management have to go down the franchising route. Why are directly managed branches so much more expensive to run than locally franchised branches? Perhaps the Minister can shed some light on that; I will be asking the Post Office.
I am delighted by the work that the Government are doing, and their determination to revitalise our high streets. I welcome the money that has gone into the Post Office, and I welcome the proposed increase in postmasters’ pay. I look forward to seeing, later this year, the Green Paper setting out options for the future of the Post Office, but it would be helpful at this stage to have clarity about the Government’s long-term aims. Is one of them to maintain a thriving network of post offices? I do hope so. Will banking services feature in the Green Paper? Some interesting ideas have been raised here today.
I can reassure my residents in Chelsea that I will continue to work with them, with the Post Office and with the Government to fight the closure of the King’s Road branch, and to ensure that no one is left behind.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
I join others in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing the debate, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for timetabling it.
As many Members have pointed out, post offices form a vital part of our local communities and high streets—millions of people depend on them—but in my Oxfordshire constituency, which contains many villages, they are under threat. These post offices are community hubs which play host to a number of services that are essential to local people and small businesses, particularly in rural areas. They provide vital human contact, and offer information and support for people who might otherwise be isolated, especially given suboptimal rural transport links. Just this week Karen Forman, a postmistress in Blewbury, told me that she had not only been contacted about many postal matters, but—this is relevant to what was said by the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer)—had been contacted about a lost cat and a lost bunch of keys, and had helped someone to locate a bank card.
As other Members have noted, many post offices are facing rising operating costs, and the services that they offer do not generate much revenue—an estimated 1.7p per transaction—which makes it hard to keep the lights on. We could do a great deal more to support our community branches. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), post offices can provide vital local services, but only if they are properly supported and invested in, and are staffed appropriately. Could we, for example, make more use of post office hubs? Could they help people who are digitally excluded to book medical appointments on the internet, or provide services such as printing? Of course, we also need to secure justice for the wronged postmasters—and the flawed Horizon system is still being used—as well as giving more support to the people who have been neglected as a result of that scandal.
The post office network and the hard-working postmasters and postmistresses are in dire need of our support in villages such as Blewbury, and many more in my constituency and those of other Members.
Maureen Burke (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this very timely debate on the future of post offices. Sadly, few of us have come here today with positive experiences; instead, alongside our constituents, we are concerned about the declining presence of post offices in our communities. In recent times the Post Office has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, with no worse example than the Horizon IT scandal—a shameful, unforgivable wrong done to 900 postmasters, which undermined public faith in the service.
However, public faith in the Post Office has been betrayed in other ways too. The recent speculation on the future of directly managed branches has caused genuine panic and concern to my constituents. I appreciate efforts by the Post Office to reassure people that no formal decision has yet been made, but I fully understand why so many of my constituents believe that closure or service reduction is inevitable. So many post offices have already shut their doors across the UK as the directly managed branch model has been replaced, and that shift towards franchising has left many communities fearing that the post office is no longer a permanent fixture in their high streets or shopping centres. That is because what was once a simple public service has increasingly had its future decided by profitability, rather than the needs and demands of the community, and yet for my constituents, the post office is more than just a place to send parcels and letters; it represents a trusted and valued institution. That is why the Post Office has been around for nearly 400 years.
When Post Office officials emailed me to say that directly managed branches were flawed because they had “no retail offering”, it felt as though there was a disconnect between those who use the service and those who manage it. The No. 1 duty of the post office should be to provide a public service. Whether retail offerings are available in addition should be a secondary consideration, not something motivating the closure or outsourcing of these branches.
Given the news that WH Smith, which manages around 200 post offices, is looking to sell all its high street stores, the franchising model ought to be reviewed as a matter of urgency. I was already concerned about the future of our post offices, but this news only compounds my fears. As with the directly managed branches, my thoughts are with those employed in the WH Smith branches, who will be feeling anxious about what this news means for them. Post Office officials have confirmed that they are in talks with relevant trade unions regarding the ongoing consultation, but I sincerely hope that those are genuine discussions and that the concerns of the workforce are listened to carefully.
In an area such as Springburn, which already has a high unemployment rate, it would be unacceptable for local jobs to be lost. The Springburn Crown post office is the last directly managed branch in my constituency. It occupies a space in Springburn shopping centre, which is well connected and well used by people across the north-east of Glasgow. I recently met the community group Spirit of Springburn to discuss the future of the Crown post office. The community are rightly worried about what closure would mean and raised with me their concerns about the detrimental impact it would have on not just Springburn but the wider north-east of Glasgow. They reminded me that not long ago, the Springburn area had four bank branches. All those branches have now closed—a familiar story in constituencies across the UK, as the last Government presided over 9,500 bank branch closures. Those closures caused massive damage to our high streets and shopping centres and made banking much more difficult for too many. When those closures occurred, the post office was always designated as the place for people to continue to access their bank. In fact, when Lloyds bank announced yesterday plans to close its own high street stores, it said that people should go to the post office to continue using banking services, but how can people do that if there are no local post offices left?
The reality is that Springburn Crown post office really is the last bank in town, and now even that is at risk. It is profoundly unfair for my constituents to find themselves in this worrying situation, and they deserve urgent reassurance that Springburn post office will not close. That is the appeal I am making to the Government today, and it is also the case being made by the local community. Indeed, the vice-chair of Spirit of Springburn, Emma Porter, has written to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade to do just that—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Lady will recognise that she was on a time limit, and in order to accommodate all the other Members who wish to speak, I am going to reduce it to five minutes. I call Matt Vickers.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I thank the Members who brought this important debate forward. For generations, the local post office has been the beating heart of our towns and villages. That is certainly the case in Stockton and Thornaby. It has been more than just a place to send and receive mail; it has been a cornerstone of community life and a trusted space where people access essential services, stay connected with loved ones and support their businesses. Yet today, we stand at a crossroads. The pressure of modern technology, financial constraints and shifting consumer habits have placed our post offices under real threat, and all those challenges have been made so much worse by the Government’s national insurance tax raid and the slashing of business rates relief.
There are threats to the future of the post offices in Stockton and Thornaby. In Stockton, our post office has changed location over the decades but has been ever present and ever valued. It was hoped that a franchise in a retailer could protect its future, but the impact of the national insurance tax raid and the slashing of business rates relief are forcing retailers across the country to close stores and axe jobs. In Stockton and Yarm, the impact is compounded by the Labour council’s introduction of short-stay parking charges.
Retail is one of the most important sectors in the country. It is the largest private sector employer in our economy and often sits at the very heart of our communities, and it is the biggest social mobility driver around. In the last few weeks, however, we have seen fantastic retail giants, including Sainsbury’s and Tesco, axing jobs and killing opportunities. In Stockton, we have heard the sad news of WHSmith’s closure. The store has hosted the post office, but it looks set to close its doors as a result of the Government’s war on high streets. I have met representatives of the Post Office to share my concerns about the impact that the closure will have on so many of my residents, particularly the elderly. The current post office is not due to close until May, and it has committed to working with me to look at alternative franchisees and locations in the town. I am delighted that a number of potential operators have already shown an interest.
In Thornaby, the situation remains concerning but unclear. The local postmaster has a lease, but the community were recently shaken when a planning application went forward for a Pizza Hut to take the post office’s place. The community spoke and put forward their objections, and the application was rejected. There are fears of an appeal. I have engaged with the post office and the town centre as recently as this morning, and hope remains that we can find a way forward.
The post offices in Stockton and Thornaby are essential. Their closure would not simply mean the loss of a building; it would mean the loss of convenience, social interaction, footfall in the town centre and economic stability for many. Given the recent announcement that NatWest is closing its Stockton branch, our post offices are absolutely vital to our local towns. I am determined and hopeful, and will do everything I can to keep our post offices’ doors open in Stockton and Thornaby.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this debate, which, as is shown by the number of hon. Members wishing to participate, is incredibly timely—not least because later today, coincidentally, I will present a petition to the House about the potential closure of Chester-le-Street post office in my constituency of North Durham.
Chester-le-Street is one of the 115 Crown post offices at risk of closure following Post Office Ltd’s announcement that it is reviewing the future of its directly managed branches. This is worrying not only for those who are employed in those branches, but for the many people who use post office services, and for the high street—in Chester-le-Street, we would say the “front street”—businesses that rely on the footfall and passing trade that post offices bring.
The post office in Chester-le-Street has been at the heart of the community in North Durham since 1936; indeed, it is one of only a tiny number of post offices that bear the cypher of King Edward VIII. Chester-le-Street has lost most of its high street banking branches in recent years, so it is more important than ever that this vital hub and delivery office remains open and accessible for my constituents. Over 650 people have signed the petition that I will present later, which calls on the Post Office to ensure that the Chester-le-Street branch remains open.
The Post Office’s corporate website rightly describes the corporation as
“an anchor of UK communities for centuries”,
and says that it is
“driven by a strong social purpose: to be here, in person, for the people who rely on us.”
I could not agree more. We must ensure that in Chester-le-Street and the other places that hon. Members have mentioned this afternoon, post office branches remain open “in person”—to use the words on the Post Office’s corporate website—on our high streets and in our town centres, so that they can provide the services that local people rely on.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Wherever we grew up in the United Kingdom, we all remember the post office and our parents imbuing us with the sense that it was one of the things that we could rely on and trust in a changing world. There are many reasons for that, one of which is the long-serving and always interested staff. In rural areas—Boston and Skegness has many rural areas—post office staff are important in helping people in villages, small towns and communities, particularly the elderly, the disabled and the vulnerable, to use certain services. When we were growing up, we did not have the digital devices we have now.
In the many brilliant contributions today, we have heard that post office staff know their customers. They know who is healthy and who might be struggling. If someone does not appear on their regular day, at their usual time, they might say, “Where is Mrs Smith?”. That is massively important in our communities. This is not just about money; it is about the asset value of post offices in our communities. We and all the post offices on the frontline have been let down by decades of mismanagement.
In Boston, WHSmith has a post office franchise, and yes, it is closing, which has caused great consternation. Sadly, WHSmith has not been well managed as a retailer. People are concerned that the replacement will be much smaller, and they cannot understand why services are being withdrawn. If we are trying to make post offices more viable, surely they should have more services, not fewer. The operators and owners of the post office in Swineshead cannot understand why services such as the sale of premium bonds and fishing licences, or the payment of tax and national insurance to HMRC, have all been withdrawn. That makes the post office less viable.
All our communities, towns and tiny villages are different, so surely we need to be massively flexible, whether we have a stand-alone post office, or one in a franchise, a library or a village hall. I was delighted when there was a pub in the village hall; maybe we could have a post office in a pub. I digress, but Members can see my point.
Post offices are the most important part of communities, and it is the elderly and the vulnerable who need them most. That is why I hope that the Government, given all their challenges, remember that this is not about the money. It is about the asset—the community hub of the post office.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this debate. Members across the House have spoken eloquently about the importance of their local post office, particularly at a time when high streets across the country are suffering. Shops have closed, and banks have left or are leaving the high street. The post office is usually the remaining thriving hub of activity on the high street.
Last year, residents found out from media reports that the future of Westbourne post office was uncertain. There was no prior consultation, and no input from those who use it daily. Many of them wrote to me with their concerns about the loss of such an essential community asset, and I share their worries about the possible loss of such a popular and well-used service.
At the end of November, we launched a petition to save this much-loved post office. To date, more than 2,200 people in the area have signed it. As part of the petition, I asked people to share what they love so much about the post office and what it means to them, and I have been inundated with messages from local residents. It is essential to businesses that use its services, and to the disabled and elderly, who need it for banking, paying bills and accessing government services. It always has a queue coming out of the door. It has been described as a lifeline and the heart of the community. I will read out a few of the responses I received, to give the House a sense of the importance of our post office. One reads:
“It is an essential service for so many in the area. I am disabled and I can’t travel further to deal with the things the Post Office helps with. It’s nearly always busy, with queues out of the door. To remove it is sheer madness”.
Another response reads:
“The Post Office has been open since 1910 and is an essential part of Westbourne village. It serves as a vital resource for elderly residents like me, who may not know how to use the internet and no longer have any banks in the area”.
Another person said:
“As a manager of a local charity shop, the post office is integral to our day to day running as provides banking opportunities and enables us to send stock. We use it for stationery and supplies. It’s a vital part of the community”.
That is just a snapshot of the responses I have received from different sections of the community. They show that the post office is not simply a business; it is an essential for many people who use it.
I have heard from the Post Office that no decisions have been made yet about the future of the branch. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), I have heard that the branch is losing money, but I have not seen any evidence of that. I know a franchise model is being explored, which may have benefits. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) for raising the issue of WHSmith. We are concerned locally about the franchise model because our branch of WHSmith has just closed in the town centre, not far from the post office branch. Understandably, there is scepticism locally about relying on that model, when we have just seen the loss of a post office, with no plan to replace it, despite the high demand for its services.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to the Post Office, the financial support that has been outlined, and the forthcoming Green Paper. That shows that the Government understand the importance of post offices to communities. In his closing remarks, I hope the Minister can reassure us that there will be no impact on the quality of services that communities get, and that he is exploring all options—for example, the possibility of providing services, including banking services, through hubs, or offering Government services in post offices to make them viable and keep them in communities. I reassure my constituents in Bournemouth West that I will continue to fight for the post office in Westbourne, and the ones in the town centre.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on securing the debate. Having asked for a post office debate at business questions only two weeks ago, I was delighted when he secured this one.
In rural areas, such as my Thornbury and Yate constituency, post offices provide vital services that enable people to live their life. Since 2015, over 6,000 bank branches have closed across the country, making it harder for people to access their cash and use banking services. Many have been reassured that they can still access those core services through their post office, but now even that is at risk.
I agree with the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) on the importance of post offices to e-commerce. When I made my recent visit to my local sorting office, I was told that the Royal Mail is now a parcel delivery service with a sideline in delivering mail. Obviously, post offices play an important role in e-commerce and, in doing so, support local businesses.
The recent news that the Post Office was looking to close 115 Crown post offices was a huge blow; one of those post offices is in Yate. Residents tell me that it feels like a done deal, not a proposal open for discussion. When I met the area manager, although she said that no decisions had been made, there seemed to be a strong leaning towards moving all post offices to the franchising model, with all the risks that hon. Members have already mentioned.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
Raynes Park has an important high street in my constituency. There are no banks in Raynes Park, so our solitary post office is a vital lifeline, allowing residents and businesses alike to access banking, bill payments and traditional postal services. However, it is one of 115 Crown branches at risk, and my constituents are very concerned about the uncertainty. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should be giving assurances now, to provide communities with peace of mind, particularly the old and digitally excluded?
Claire Young
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, having seen the anxiety that the threat of closure is provoking in my constituents.
Yate post office is very busy; there are often significant queues of people waiting to access services. It is rather unusual, because it shares its space with the local sorting office, which operates from the second floor of the building. The quality of service would be negatively impacted if it were squeezed into another existing business. Yate and Chipping Sodbury have also lost several banks on the high street, with many people being told, as I said earlier, that they could rely on the post office instead. Now, even that is at risk, with Yate listed by the Post Office as one branch it is seeking to close. Residents are rightly angry about that, with more than a thousand signing my petition to keep the post office open.
Sadly, it is not just the Crown post offices that are threatened with closure. We recently had confirmation that the post office in Cromhall is set to close, due to the closure of the village shop in which it is based. That means that the neighbouring outreach branch in Tytherington, which is overseen by the same sub-postmaster, is also at risk. The sub-postmaster told me how the post office at Tytherington is busier than the one in Cromhall, fuelled by the fact that nearly all the banks in nearby Thornbury have closed. Indeed, Lloyds has added itself to the list today. Tytherington post office also has strong support from customers using Royal Mail services for businesses, as it has a sizeable free car park, making it convenient for them to bring their parcels, letters and banking to the post office counter. Despite that, the Post Office refuses to allow the Tytherington branch to become a stand-alone site, and that is causing huge concern for residents.
The Tytherington branch is well supported and is an essential service for residents, many of whom do not have private cars. There is no public transport in the village, meaning that the loss of the post office would leave some people utterly cut off. The post office is based in the thriving community shop, which is run by volunteers and also provides a vital service to the local community. In the wake of the news, a grassroots petition supporting the post office in Tytherington has gained more than 800 signatures in just over a week. However, the Post Office said to me that it would not review its decision because,
“In the area there is a Main Post Office at Thornbury and a Local branch at Alveston—both are within 3 miles of Tytherington.”
That is completely tone deaf and ignores the lack of public transport. What are those without cars meant to do?
The Post Office has said it is keen to explore a new outreach service and the possibility of a new branch, but all that will take time, especially as it is contingent upon finding a new sub-postmaster to do it. It even admits that it is likely the branch will close before an alternative can be found. That means that in just a few weeks’ time, no immediate service will be available in the village. I will do all I can to make sure we secure a post office service at Tytherington and in Yate.
In closing, I ask the Minister: does he agree that relying solely on the franchising model of post offices carries risk and that there are benefits to preserving the stand-alone offices? Will he also commit to supporting community outreach post offices based in thriving community shops?
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this debate. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) has already summarised a lot of the excellent contributions from the Government side.
It is clear from today’s debate that we all know that post office branches are essential to our local communities and the local economy. It saddens me that this Government inherited a Post Office in such a precarious position. Having discussed the matter with senior Post Office staff and the Minister, I know that the organisation is facing serious financial challenges, and I am grateful for the engagement of the Government and the Minister on the issue. That forms the backdrop to the announcement that the Post Office is considering the future of the remaining 115 directly managed branches, which has been referenced countless times today, with a franchising model being considered for them.
I remain especially concerned about the future of the Morley post office on Queen Street. Morley sits in the heart of my constituency. It is a town of around 50,000 people and one of the key locations that people come to for financial services and shops. The directly managed branch is vital for my constituents and for those who rely on the services that it provides, and I have been looking for certainty that it will remain on the high street where it belongs. I know the strength of feeling from my constituents, as more than 2,500 people have signed my petition to keep the branch open. It is clear that after the closure of many bank branches across Morley, the post office is a lifeline for those who need it. The numbers back that up—it is not just my testimony. While other directly managed branches have seen a 34% drop in footfall since 2019 because of the pandemic, the Morley post office is only 3% down. We use our post office.
A word on bank branches and banking hubs: I have been actively pursuing a banking hub for Morley town centre, especially with the recent news that NatWest is due to pull out of the town this year. NatWest even pointed to the post office on its way out and said, “Don’t worry—you have that service there,” despite the threat of closure. I have been in touch with Link, one of the organisations that determines which areas gets banking hubs, and it tells me that Morley does not yet meet the criteria for a banking hub because we still have one branch left. While I have many questions about the criteria, we will have to save them for another debate and another time.
While Morley does not meet Link’s criteria, and while I continue to have those discussions with Link, we cannot have a situation where my post office closes. Thankfully, the continued operation of Morley’s post office will not prevent us from securing a banking hub in future, so there is no reason why we should not do everything in our power to keep the post office open, and that is exactly what I am doing. As I stated, the branch is very much in demand. It is used by local businesses that trade on our high street. Business owners such as Castlepoint, which owns and operates Morley market, have contacted me directly about their concerns about the branch closing.
Post Office research shows that three in 10 SMEs use a post office once a week, whether to post parcels to customers or deposit their cash takings. Losing this branch, which is surrounded by so many businesses in Morley, would make us all worse off. I know that the direction of travel for the Post Office is to move towards the franchising model that we have heard so much about today, and I remain hopeful that a suitable postmaster will be found to take over the branch, but I am also clear that the branch should remain on the high street. Having it in an accessible place in Morley town centre is very important for both residents and businesses, and I will continue to make that case as strongly as I can. It is why I have requested that those interested in taking over the franchise in Morley contact me. I am keen to support their bids, assuming that they are in the best interests of Morley and the town centre.
Finally, I ask the Minister whether there is any threat to the number of services that a directly managed branch can offer if it transitions to a franchised branch. I reassure all my communities in Leeds South West and Morley that I will work tirelessly to ensure that this branch remains open. It is crucial that the services that the post office provides in Morley town centre remain there for many years to come.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on securing the debate. The contributions throughout have been unified in highlighting that post offices are a focal point of our communities. They are a vital part of our society and our high streets, with millions of people depending on them every week. They are community hubs, providing access to communication, banking and other vital services. That is particularly important for those with restricted access, such as older people or those in more rural populations with little email connectivity. There are villages that fit that exact description in my constituency of Wokingham, such as Finchampstead, Swallowfield and Hurst. That is why I am deeply concerned about the news that 115 post office branches may be closed, with around 1,000 jobs at risk of being lost. It has the potential to increase social isolation for some of the most vulnerable groups in the UK.
I am especially concerned that the Post Office is reviewing proposals to replace existing branches. Specifically, it is looking for alternatives to its wholly owned branches, and considering franchise arrangements where a third party could take them on instead. That opens up lots of risks. In my constituency of Wokingham, the post office in Hurst was unexpectedly closed a few weeks ago. It was located in a shop that many considered a pillar of the community. Through no fault of the post office, the tenants running the shop had to close its doors. Losing a post office can really harm a small village such as Hurst, and the proposed solution that people should travel to Wokingham or Twyford to access services is simply not possible for all residents. Public transport links are limited, and those who rely on the post office are less likely to drive.
If the Post Office estate is reliant on third parties, it has no control, and there is the worrying potential that situations like that in Hurst will become increasingly commonplace. A future in which losing a local service once means that it is gone forever—very few are replaced once they are gone—with little chance of appeal is a failure of Government policy. That is especially relevant considering the potential loss of 500 WHSmith shops across the UK, many of which house post office branches, such as the one in Wokingham town centre.
The high street is struggling and the Government need to act urgently to turn things around. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the Post Office is on a sustainable footing for the long term? Will the Minister commit to ensuring that none of the 115 post offices will close until a consultation with each local community has been undertaken? Has the Minister met representatives from the Post Office to draw up plans in case it loses hundreds of its sites due to WHSmith’s financial issues?
The BBC reported today that Ofcom has proposed cutting the delivery of second-class letters to every other weekday and scrapping deliveries on Saturdays. That would harm services for millions of households and small businesses. Royal Mail executives should be working night and day to turn the company around and fix the postal service. The new owners agreed to the existing delivery targets when they took over the company, and they should stick to them. I would appreciate it if the Minister could address my points and offer reassurances that our communities will receive the great service they deserve.
Post office branches provide a place to do banking for millions of people across the country, and that is the case in Wokingham, but another area of concern is the lack of resilience in our local financial services. The WHSmith-located post office in Wokingham is too small and the staff are too busy with all their other tasks. One constituent had to wait about 45 minutes to withdraw £15. That is why I and local campaigners like Lynn Forbes hope that we can get a banking hub. However, our application has been declined. If the WHSmith in Wokingham town centre were to close, our already limited options would be reduced further.
Link, which provides the banking hubs, is encouraged within the current legislation to consider the protection of face-to-face banking, but it is not explicitly empowered to take that into account when making a final decision on whether to establish a banking hub. Instead, it just focuses on cash access. Will the Minister explain why the protection of face-to-face services is not considered, and will he introduce further legislation to require their protection?
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
This has been an excellent debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) on securing it and thank the Backbench Business Committee for awarding it. A consistent theme throughout the debate has been the important role the post office plays in communities across our land, providing what the hon. Member beautifully described as friendly access to key services that connect people, that service communities, particularly those without banks, and that help those unable to use the internet to connect to Government services. In West Worcestershire, we are fortunate enough to have 31 post offices, including some mobile services, and I put on record my thanks to all the friendly sub-postmasters and mistresses who provide those services.
Over the course of the debate we heard about places across the UK: Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard, South West Devon, South East Cornwall, Orkney and Shetland, Bermondsey and Old Southwark, South West Hertfordshire, Chelsea and Fulham, Didcot and Wantage, Glasgow North East, Stockton West, North Durham, Boston and Skegness, Bournemouth West, Thornbury and Yate, Leeds South West and Morley, and Wokingham, and in interventions we heard about Newton Abbot, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Basildon and Billericay, Dulwich, and Tiverton and Minehead. And I dare say, Madam Deputy Speaker, you feel strongly about the post office in Romsey. We can see just how incredibly valuable that network of friendly institutions is across the country.
I am afraid to say, however—and I break it gently to the Minister—that Labour’s Budget of broken promises is threatening that network. Through the national insurance jobs tax, the hike in business rates and the incoming employment regulations, Labour is hiking the cost of doing business, as swathes of post offices are facing tens of millions more in tax and red tape. Those pressures mean that the Post Office has been forced into assessing the future of more than 100 Crown post office branches. Rumours abound that when the Green Paper is published, it may include a consultation on the reduction in the number of post offices to below 11,500. Will the Minister put paid to that speculation by telling the House when the Green Paper will be published?
As the Post Office and its branch network are major employers, with more than 50,000 full-time equivalent workers, another impact is that the Post Office could face an extra £45 million bill as a result of the national insurance hike, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Post offices are often eligible for retail, hospitality and leisure business rates relief, and they face a huge increase in their business rates as the relief falls from 75% to 40%. According to the Government’s own impact assessment, the Employment Rights Bill will cost businesses across the country £4.5 billion. Proportionately, given that Post Office has 50,000 employees, the Bill will cost the Post Office over £8 million. The House does not have to take that from me; I will quote the chairman of the Post Office, Nigel Railton:
“It almost goes without saying: we are a business in need of a fresh start – and urgently… And at the recent Budget, we saw…costs rise with National Insurance Contributions, National Living Wage and business rates.”
Dame Harriett Baldwin
I will. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not like hearing that news.
Neil Coyle
It has nothing to do with hearing the news. I just wonder whether the shadow Minister can remind us how of many Crown post offices were lost while she was in government.
Dame Harriett Baldwin
I am just getting to that—the hon. Gentleman is absolutely on point with where I am going. Sadly, it was under the previous Labour Government that the network really shrank in a major way, when the number of post offices went into sharp decline, before it then stabilised in the 2010s. In fact, during the entire time that we were in coalition with our Liberal Democrat colleagues, and then in government ourselves, the network remained above that 11,500 figure. It takes action, as we have heard clearly this afternoon, to maintain that precious network.
Dame Harriett Baldwin
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, thank you very much.
Dame Harriett Baldwin
I have given way.
The previous Government worked to enter into a new partnership with post offices and came up with the idea that people could confirm their identity in person. That is a way of using that valuable network across the land. We recognise that vulnerable people sometimes struggle to verify their identity online. We also began the initiative to help communities dealing with bank closures by setting up a network of banking hubs. I was pleased to hear the Minister confirm earlier today that he will continue backing banking hub delivery through the Post Office, but does he consider that the framework negotiations between the Post Office and the banks, which are in their final stages, are going well?
One year on from ITV’s historic programme “Mr Bates vs the Post Office”, I want to put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for all he did to address the issues raised in that programme. Can the Minister detail the progress his Government are making on the compensation for sub-postmasters?
I want to raise the issue of Fujitsu, which designed the Horizon IT system that has destroyed so many lives and livelihoods. Under the previous Government, there were discussions with Fujitsu about providing a share of the compensation to the victims of the Horizon scandal, and Fujitsu confirmed that it will pause bids for Government contracts until the public inquiry is concluded. However, this month it was reported that the Government have awarded new contracts to Fujitsu. When Labour was in opposition, many Labour Members criticised awards made to Fujitsu, so can the Minister provide an update on the Government’s current approach?
Ben Coleman
The hon. Lady mentions the Horizon scandal. Is she of the opinion that the previous Government’s failure to address the Horizon scandal over such a long period of time and the billions of pounds that have had to be spent sorting out the mess since then have nothing to do with the financial problems that the Post Office now finds itself in?
Dame Harriett Baldwin
I do not want to politicise this too much, because I think that had gone on for a long period of time, and the inquiry took a lot of evidence last year. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton played a remarkable role in exonerating so many people, and in setting up the public inquiry.
My next question to the Minister is: could he provide an update on what he is hearing through his channels about when the inquiry may publish its report. It finished taking public evidence at the end of last year, and I anticipate it may publish that later this year, but does he have an update on that for the House? Does he have any plans to compensate sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were victims of Horizon’s predecessor systems—the Capture and ECCO systems that predated Horizon—and does he have plans to quash any convictions arising from those two systems?
In the spending review, how much public money is the Minister requesting to put in a replacement for the Horizon system? Can he tell us how many post offices currently benefit from small business rate relief, and what are the Government plans about continuing that throughout this Parliament? Further to the question from the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) about today’s worrying announcement from Ofcom that second class post may be delivered only every other weekday and not on Saturdays, what discussions is the Minister having with Ofcom to prevent this further attack on the demand for our precious postal services?
To conclude, we have heard how incredibly important this precious network of friendly people across our land is to this country, with those 11,500 post offices and the distance requirements that are in place. After hearing from so many colleagues, will the Minister reassure the House that he will sustain that network throughout the life of this Parliament. Prevention is so much better than cure. Let us all focus on supporting our much-loved post offices in any way we can to continue the wonderful work that they do up and down the country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
I echo the thanks to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this important debate. There have been some very clear and consistent messages from across the House to the Government in this debate, and I pay tribute to the passion with which hon. Members on all sides of the House have raised key constituency concerns, as the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) said.
We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer), for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke), for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) and for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Withington (Jeff Smith) has particular concerns about Didsbury post office. We also heard from the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young), and I know you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have concerns in this space, too.
Post offices provide hugely important everyday services to millions of people across our country. Communities rightly expect to have access to those essential services, just as they would to a GP surgery, a primary school or neighbourhood police. That is because, as many Members made clear, post offices are the very beating heart of our towns and villages.
As our economy has modernised and evolved, so too have our local post offices. Today they are so much more than a place to send letters and parcels. They act as high street banks, as many have said, as access points for some Government services, and as community hubs for an array of different activities, generating crucial social capital. Indeed, after the unearthing of the Horizon scandal, the nation’s unanimous support for sub-postmasters and their campaign for redress and exoneration shows how revered the post office and its workers are by the British public—by all of us.
We are working as fast as we can to give sub-postmasters the compensation they deserve, and we are indeed exploring what further steps we can take. But since the end of June, in just the six months that we have been in office, more than 1,000 more sub- postmasters who are victims of the scandal have received compensation. The amount paid out in redress has increased by over £355 million, more than double the amount that had been paid out at the time of the general election. As of 3 January, almost £600 million had been paid to over 3,800 sub-postmasters across all four main compensation schemes. Also as of 3 January, the GLO—group litigation order—scheme had received 453 claims of which 370 are fully complete and the remaining 83 are being assessed for their completeness or undergoing a request for further information that would unlock a more generous offer of compensation. We expect then to have paid substantial redress, even if the claims are not fully settled, to the majority of GLO claimants by 31 March. But let me be clear: there are still complex cases to resolve and there is still much more to do in terms of compensation.
The hon. Member for West Worcestershire, speaking for the Opposition, asked about Capture. We have identified a number of gaps in the compensation process. We published in particular the Kroll report into what had happened in terms of the Post Office use of the Capture software prior to the installation of the Horizon system. We are beginning to talk to sub-postmasters who used the Capture software about redress going forward so that we can design an effective redress scheme. The hon. Lady and the House may be aware that there are a number of cases where there were convictions that appear to relate to use of the Capture software by the Post Office that are with the Criminal Cases Review Commission at the moment.
The hon. Lady also asked about the timing of when we might hear the Sir Wyn Williams conclusions. As she will understand, we as the Government do not want in any way to be seen to be rushing Sir Wyn Williams. We have heard a similar timescale as her—sometime later this year—and we will all wait with considerable interest for the conclusions.
The hon. Lady also asked about the Ofcom consultation. I stress that it is still a consultation. Ofcom will be consulting for some 10 weeks and, as she would expect, we will be fully engaged in that process.
On the future of the post office, we all know that our high streets have faced huge challenges in recent years. In some cases, the presence of a post office on a high street has been a game changer in driving footfall and attracting custom to other businesses. The public—as many Members have alluded to, it is often the elderly, those who use cash and those who are digitally excluded—rely on the post office for essential services. It is therefore right that the Government hold the Post Office to account to ensure that there is enough postal service provision across the country, and I recognise my particular responsibility in that regard.
We protect the post office network by setting minimum access criteria. With a network of this size, we are likely to see fluctuation in the number of branches open at any one time, but crucially, the access criteria ensure that regardless of how the network changes, services remain within local reach of people at all times. The Government recognise the key role that post offices play in their communities and how branches in rural areas in particular often act as community hubs. We are listening carefully to stakeholders to ensure that the whole network, including those branches, is sustainable.
Mr Carmichael
Does the Minister agree that the manner in which the Post Office allowed the information about the closure of directly managed branches to come into the public domain was unacceptable? What is he doing to ensure that the Post Office treats communities with better respect than that in the future?
Gareth Thomas
I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are where we are, and it is important that we move forward. I will come to the question of directly managed branches in a second.
To ensure that we are planning properly for the future, we will publish a Green Paper before the summer to seek the public’s views, insights and experiences to help shape the future of the Post Office. In the meantime, we are taking steps to continue to support the network. Along with the annual £50 million subsidy, we have provided a further £37.5 million to support the Post Office network next year.
Our thinking on the future of the post office will also be influenced by Sir Wyn Williams’s conclusions. We continue to support and encourage the chair of the Post Office, Nigel Railton, to shift the focus of the Post Office away from headquarters and towards postmasters. The Post Office, with our support, is reviewing its costs, as its financial position continues to be challenging. We are working with the senior leadership at the Post Office on future opportunities, beginning with banking, so that the company can increase its product offers and commercial revenue going forward. The Post Office has set up a new consultative council that will work with senior management on how these new plans are taken forward. It is a first, but none the less important step to change the culture of the Post Office.
Building a sustainable future for the Post Office is imperative. It has had many false new starts. Nearly half of its branches are not profitable or make only a small profit from post office business. Postmaster pay has not increased materially for a decade. Mr Railton is looking to deliver a reduction in the Post Office’s costs and, as I have alluded to, an increase in its commercial revenues. He has also set out an intention to transform the service and the support that postmasters receive from the Post Office, which we have strongly encouraged. He has announced ambitions for a new deal for postmasters, and I am pleased that the Post Office recently made a £20 million immediate one-off payment to postmasters to increase their remuneration.
On the future of directly managed branches, I appreciate that it is challenging for communities that lose their post office service. I speak from experience, having had Harrow’s directly managed branch close in 2016 and transfer to a franchise service instead. I am always happy to challenge the Post Office on specific concerns that Members have at constituency level. However, the Post Office operates as a commercial business, and the company has the freedom to deliver the branch network within the parameters we set.
I know there is concern about the future of DMBs, and it is important to underline that no definitive decisions have been taken on the future of any individual directly managed branch. I have made clear to the Post Office that there must be discussions with unions and other key stakeholders. I am pleased to hear that the Post Office has seen positive engagement from independent postmasters and strategic partners, who have expressed their interest in taking on DMBs. It is encouraging that there continues to be such interest in the chance to run a post office.
Neil Coyle
I look forward to working with the Minister on the future of the franchise in my constituency. Is he aware that there were 373 Crown post offices in 2010 but that by 2024 that number had fallen to 115? The shadow Minister either did not know that figure or did not want to admit it.
Gareth Thomas
Funnily enough, I am aware of that statistic; my hon. Friend makes his point powerfully.
We were clear in our manifesto that that we would seek to strengthen the Post Office network in consultation with postmasters, trade unions and customers, and that remains very much our ambition. That is one of the reasons why we are working closely with the Post Office in providing funding to support the replacement of the Horizon computer system. The Post Office’s future lies particularly in cash and banking. With the right support from the financial services industry and engagement with groups such as Cash Access UK, there is clearly more that the Post Office could offer on the high street through banking hubs and the Post Office network. We are beginning to work with the Post Office to improve its banking offer on the high street.
The Government are strongly committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the Post Office. It is a national asset that provides an invaluable public service in all our constituencies. There are certainly challenges ahead, but we continue to work with the Post Office to ensure that it is fit for the future. We always welcome views on the network. I thank those hon. Members who secured the debate and all other hon. Members for their contributions.
Gideon Amos
I have learned today from the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) that Postman Pat is the model to follow, and just like Postman Pat himself, post office services may change, but they must not wither. We have also heard how much of a trusted institution our post offices are. The word “trust” came through several times from the hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) and for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice). We should never forget that it is the staff in those post offices and, of course, the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were so horrendously treated by the Horizon scandal who make post offices what they are and why they are so important to our communities.
My hon. Friends and hon. Members across House are clearly great champions of their local post offices. My hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) mentioned his post office’s lost cats service, which I was interested to hear about, and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) mentioned the outreach service. To paraphrase my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), in Wellington in my constituency the postal service was fixed so many times it was definitely broken, and now we no longer have one at all for a town of 15,000 people.
Many other hon. Members highlighted the importance of post offices as hubs for their communities, including the hon. Members for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) and for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). I completely agree with the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) that the King’s Road without a post office seems unimaginable. I wish him well in his campaign.
I was somewhat disappointed that the Minister did not comment on the fact that banking hubs, which are being created around the country, are not providing post office services despite having “Post Office” written on the outside of the building. I would very much like to follow that up with the Minister on another occasion; it seems an obvious solution. As the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire said, securing the next agreement for banking hubs is incredibly important, and we certainly support the Government in achieving that.
Finally, I congratulate the hon. Members for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale), for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) and for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on their petitions. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark is also continuing his excellent house-sitting services by sitting in the House this afternoon and making sure that the debate went on as needed.
I will leave the House with a couple of quotations from my petition about the post office in Wellington. One petitioner said:
“I feel so sorry for those people without a car—particularly the frail and elderly. They have to trek in all winds and weather”
to the next village several miles away. They continued:
“You see so many villages with their own post office, yet a growing town like Wellington doesn’t—it’s bizarre.”
Mary said:
“Why was it not considered at the same time as the banking hub, as it’s run by the post office?”
The first citizen of Wellington, our mayor, said that
“since 2019 when the…Post Office closed, at least two business owners”
tried to operate postal services but found that the funding given did not make it a viable option. That is why we desperately need a main post office for the town of Wellington and its 15,000 people.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of local Post Office services.
Petitions
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I wish to present a petition relating to the potential closure of the post office in Chester-le-Street, which has been at the heart of the community in North Durham since 1936.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of North Durham,
Declares that Chester-le-Street Post Office, which provides vital services to local residents is at risk of closure; and notes that 658 people have signed a similar online petition on this matter.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage the Post Office to ensure that Chester-le-Street Post Office can remain open.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P003039]
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the people of Stockton West. Yarm has the most beautiful high street in the country, with an amazing offer of retail and hospitality businesses. However, it faces a huge threat, as the Labour council is set to axe one-hour free parking, which poses a real risk to the high street, its businesses and jobs.
Supported by local councillors Andrew Sherris, John Coulson and Dan Fagan, more than 2,500 people have signed a similar petition online to protect Yarm’s one-hour free parking. I welcome the opportunity to present the petition today.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of the residents of the constituency of Stockton West,
Declares that Stockton Council must keep Yarm’s free 1-hour parking; further declares that free parking is crucial for supporting local businesses, encouraging footfall, and helping Yarm’s economy thrive; and further notes that the Council’s changes to eliminate 1-hour free parking risks harming small businesses and deterring shoppers.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to take immediate action to ensure that the high street in Yarm is supported with free 1-hour parking.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P003040]
Doncaster Royal Infirmary
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for the opportunity to make the case in this Chamber for the repair and refurbishment of Doncaster Royal Infirmary. This is not the first time I have raised this issue in this place, such is its importance to my constituents. Doncaster Royal Infirmary is at the heart of our community in Doncaster. For many of us, including myself, it is where we were born and rely on during some of the most difficult and painful moments of our lives. It is with great sadness that I come to this Chamber to say that after consistent underfunding, our hospital is in dire need of repair.
I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the NHS staff who have dedicated their careers to caring for the patients at the hospital. When I worked as a prison officer, I spent many hours on escorts at DRI and saw for myself the commitment of its staff. We live in a time where pressures on the NHS are immense, and staff across the country face unbearable conditions as they try to support patients in a system that desperately needs reform. I am pleased that this Government are committed to enacting change within our NHS for the benefit of both patients and the staff who treat them.
In Doncaster, our dedicated NHS staff face added pressure. Doncaster Royal Infirmary faces one of the highest repair backlogs in the country. The East Ward tower block, which houses some of the most vulnerable patients, faces critical infrastructure risks and safety concerns, and therefore is at the very top of the Doncaster and Bassetlaw teaching hospitals’ list of priorities. Other areas with a backlog of repairs include operating theatres, the critical care department and the women and children’s hospital.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend will know, in April 2021 a leak occurred at the women’s hospital at Doncaster Royal Infirmary. The water then flooded the area and went into the electrical systems, and a fire broke out. Some 60 patients were impacted and had to be evacuated, including premature babies. Thanks to the efforts of the amazing hospital staff, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, no one was hurt, but the damage was substantial, and it impacted larger parts of the hospital. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to learn from such incidents, and that it makes absolute sense, both financially and for people’s safety, to proactively manage repairs and do the maintenance that is required?
Sally Jameson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that incident showcased how desperate the situation is. It is a testament to the staff and the team at the trust that no one was hurt, and that the repair work that needed to be done happened immediately. Other areas where a backlog remains include the operating theatres. According to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary refurbishment plan, the operating theatres at the hospital do not meet modern standards for space.
Sally Jameson
Across the hospital, there remains infrastructure that dates back to the 1930s. Imagine all the advancements we have made in science, innovation, technology and medicine since then, yet Doncaster patients are treated in a building that has not been updated in line with any of that. Most worryingly, a recent report concluded that there would be an “increased risk to life” were a fire to occur in Doncaster and Bassetlaw teaching hospitals. That is due to the age and infrastructure of the buildings, and the electrical works, which do not meet the needs of a modern-day hospital.
In spite of the catalogue of urgently needed repairs, Doncaster was not successful in its bid to secure a new hospital under the previous Government. Despite promises made by a string of Health Ministers, our application for crucial funding from the new hospital programme was denied by the Conservatives. That was a bitter blow to the community. We now know that the funding promised for the programme never existed—it was a work of fiction. That does not just affect the hospitals included in the programme; the implications ripple across all hospitals that desperately need investment.
In Doncaster, we are doing all we can to improve health provision for residents. That includes the work that Mayor Ros Jones and the trust are doing to set up health on the high street, providing appropriate health provision in the city centre. That will not only improve and quicken the service, but increase footfall on the high street. The trust announced in December that as part of a wider £19.8 million investment project, some refurbishment works will be completed at Doncaster Royal Infirmary. That is welcome, but it is not the overall solution.
As a result of not being included in the new hospital programme, the Doncaster and Bassetlaw hospital trust has come up with a thorough and extensive on-site rebuild and refurbishment plan. The estimated cost in 2023 for the full refurbishment and a new building in front of the east ward tower block was up to £356 million, the cost for work on the theatres £35 million, and a refurbishment of the women’s and children’s hospital, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), would cost up to £87 million. That would also help to generate some extra capacity, which is much needed in the current climate.
This week, I visited Doncaster Royal Infirmary with my hon. Friend and the Minister to show her the extent of the repair backlog, and to demonstrate the urgency with which we need action. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for Health for meeting me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) this week to talk through the DRI refurbishment plan, and the support we need to get the rebuild work done. That work is also supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey). The plan lays out the detail of proposed refurbishment works, not just to clear the repair backlog, but to ensure that core services are protected and a safe site can be ensured for a minimum of 20 years.
I now ask the Government for action. I ask them for capital investment to clear the repair backlog, and to support the refurbishment and building programme, so that the people of Doncaster can access good-quality secondary care in a safe hospital. I ask the Government to support the staff at Doncaster Royal Infirmary in doing their jobs safely and effectively. I ask the Government to make sure that our hospital is fit for the future.
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) on securing a debate on this really important issue for her constituents. Since her election, she has been a committed champion for Doncaster Royal Infirmary, and I thank her for her tireless efforts. She is absolutely right that the promises made by the previous Government were hollow and built on sand. Even for the hospitals that made it into the new hospital programme, the money simply was not there. They let down the people of Doncaster.
On Monday, I had the privilege of visiting Doncaster Royal Infirmary, along with my hon. Friend and our hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), and witnessed the outstanding care that staff are providing despite significant infrastructure challenges. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s comments about the situation, and about the pressure that the staff find themselves under. Staff and patients deserve better than a hospital prone to floods, fires and equipment failures, some of which I saw for myself on Monday. Doncaster Royal Infirmary now has a backlog-of-maintenance bill of approximately £114 million, and the constant need for critical repairs leaves scarce resources for developing and enhancing facilities.
That is the reality facing Doncaster Royal Infirmary and hospitals nationwide after years of under-investment by the previous Government. Reversing the trend and repairing and rebuilding our hospital estate is a vital part of our ambition to create an NHS fit for the future. That is why the Chancellor announced that health capital spending is set to increase to £13.6 billion in 2025-26, representing record levels of capital investment in healthcare. I am pleased that works to address some of the most pressing issues at Doncaster Royal Infirmary are under way, with £19.8 million confirmed for the refurbishment and relocation of the critical care unit. That will deliver a safer and more accessible environment for the most vulnerable patients. Supporting projects are already in progress, including the relocation of the surgical same-day emergency care department. While I accept that this by no means addresses all the issues raised today, it is nevertheless a project that will deliver much-needed safety improvements.
NHS planning guidance published today sets out the NHS’s operational capital envelopes, national capital programmes and allocation processes for 2025-26. I recognise that the guidance will be of interest to Members who wish to understand the impacts on their constituencies, but as we are here to discuss Doncaster Royal Infirmary, I will focus on the funding opportunities available for that hospital.
The Government are backing the NHS with over £4 billion in operational capital in 2025-26 to empower local systems and ensure that funds are allocated according to local priorities. NHS England confirmed today that South Yorkshire integrated care board, which is responsible for Doncaster Royal Infirmary, has been allocated £107 million in operational capital to spend on its capital priorities next year. In addition to the annual operational capital allocations, the Government have allocated £750 million to an estates safety fund for 2025-26, which will focus on the worst safety risks across the NHS estate. South Yorkshire ICB has been allocated £19 million of that funding on the basis of need, critical infrastructure risk, estates incidents, and the recent maternity estates survey.
Systems have been asked to prioritise their estate safety allocations to deliver maximum safety benefits locally. Their plans will be reviewed by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that national and regional priorities are addressed effectively and schemes represent value for money. In some cases, estates safety funding may also be used to initiate multi-year schemes when that represents the most effective approach. I strongly encourage the trust to discuss options with the ICB for allocating some of its operational capital and estates safety funding to repairs at Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
Let me also draw attention to the £1.35 billion of capital funding allocated for constitutional standards recovery in 2025-2026. Although it is not targeted directly at repairs, Doncaster Royal Infirmary may be able to benefit from some of the £24 million that has been allocated to South Yorkshire ICB to support its progress towards achieving constitutional standards for my hon. Friend’s constituents. I encourage the trust to explore possible options with the ICB that could address constitutional standards recovery as well as critical repairs, maximising value for money and, crucially, benefiting patients who deserve much better.
The Government recognise that, like Doncaster Royal Infirmary, many hospitals across the country need funding to overhaul their digital infrastructure. That is why we are investing more than £2 billion in NHS technology and digital in 2025-26 to run essential services, increase productivity, improve cyber-security, enhance patient access, and ensure that all trusts have electronic patient records. I thank Doncaster and Bassetlaw trust for its co-operation on the implementation of a system-wide electronic patient record, and I want to reassure the trust that this investment in digital and technology will be available for projects beyond electronic patient records.
The Government understand that long-term certainty about capital funding will be essential to addressing the critical infrastructure issues at hospitals such as Doncaster Royal Infirmary, and across the NHS estate. Capital budgets beyond 2025-26 will be determined through the current spending review, which concludes in June 2025.
In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central for raising this important issue, and for her continued support, and that of her colleagues, for Doncaster Royal Infirmary. I extend my thanks to the staff of Doncaster Royal Infirmary for hosting my insightful visit, and for their candour in explaining to me how they have got into this situation in recent years. I hope to return when the new critical care unit is open. The Government are committed to repairing and rebuilding our hospital estate. It will take time—we have inherited a shocking situation—and I look forward to working with colleagues on this vital issue across the country in the coming years.
Question put and agreed to.
Petition
W12 and W14 Bus Service in North-east London
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Sixth sitting)
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. I remind Members to switch off any electronic devices. We will now hear oral evidence from Alex Greenwich, MP for Sydney in the Parliament of New South Wales, and from two witnesses joining via Zoom: Dr Chloe Furst, a dual-trained geriatrician and palliative care physician in South Australia and a board member of Voluntary Assisted Dying Australia and New Zealand, and Professor Meredith Blake from the University of Western Australia. Could the witnesses briefly introduce themselves for the record, starting with Alex Greenwich?
Alex Greenwich: My name is Alex Greenwich, Member for Sydney in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, and I introduced our voluntary assisted dying laws.
Dr Furst: Hi, nice to see you all. I am a geriatrician and palliative care specialist in South Australia. I have been quite instrumental in the implementation of South Australia’s voluntary assisted dying laws. I am a practising practitioner with experience with over 150 patients.
Professor Blake: Nice to see you all. I am a professor of criminal law, and health law and policy, in the law school at the University of Western Australia. I have been writing, researching and presenting in the area of end-of-life choices for about 25 years.
The Chair
Before calling the first Member, I remind all colleagues that questions should be limited to matters within scope of the Bill. We have to stick to the timings set out in the programme motion. The first session will finish at 12.30 pm, so can we stick to the points and keep them as short as possible, please? Members who wish to ask a question have indicated that, and I will call them in no particular order. I will start with Simon Opher.
Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)
Q
Dr Furst: The medications are completely effective. I have not experienced any failures. One of the things I feel quite comfortable reassuring my patients and their families is that this medication absolutely works.
In terms of oral administration—the default option in South Australia unless the patient cannot consume the medication or has problems with absorption—it puts them to sleep within a couple of minutes. They are heavily sedated, as if undergoing an anaesthetic, and then death ensures—that is, the heart stops and respiration stops. For about 95% of patients, that happens within about half an hour. There is a small, small percentage of patients who will continue to be sedated but circulation will not cease for some hours after that. We warn patients and, more importantly, their families that this may be the case, and that is an enzymatic issue.
The medication it is highly effective. Personally, I have not had any experience where patients have had complications—vomiting, respiratory distress or any other concerns. Certainly in South Australia, those have not been issues that have been reported to us. I think there have been a couple of cases of vomiting elsewhere, but the medication has worked in all cases, as far as I am aware, around Australia as well, so this has not been an issue.
IV administration is also highly effective. By the time the medication has been administered completely, the patient is deceased.
This works—it is peaceful. Patients say to me, “I want to go to sleep and not wake up,” and that is absolutely what happens. It is a very peaceful death.
Dr Opher
Q
Dr Furst: There have been no failures of treatment in South Australia, as far as I am aware. I am not aware of any other particular ones around the country that have been heavily broadcast to us.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
Q
Dr Furst: Every legislation within Australia is slightly different. For South Australia and Victoria, you are correct—well, there is pretty much no obligation all around Australia for a doctor to be present for self-administration. The reason for that is to give individuals autonomy over their death, and over the time and place of their choosing. We in South Australia do touch base with what we call the individual’s contact person to understand if there have been any complications and to check in after the death. A large number of our patients, though, will seek out support from a voluntary assisted dying nurse navigator, who is often present in the house just as a support person. We do also have a lot of feedback from them as to any complications, but the doctor often, or a nurse, will come at a later time to declare life extinct.
The reasoning was that we did not think that there would be complications and we wanted to give people autonomy. We work on a permit system in a lot of jurisdictions in Australia, so people have a permit; they get given their substance and they can take their substance at a time of their choosing. They might have the substance in their house for weeks or months, potentially. Again, there is no obligation to follow through with taking that substance, which we also think is quite important. We know that in Australia, about 30% of patients who have a permit or who are approved for voluntary assisted dying actually decide that they do not want to consume the substance, but it is about giving them that choice and autonomy, and the strength to maybe pursue other lines of therapy.
Naz Shah
Q
Dr Furst: I am in South Australia, but a recent survey by Palliative Care Australia surveyed over 900 palliative care specialists, and more than 80% of patients receiving voluntary assisted dying are actually getting combined palliative care and voluntary assisted dying. In our legislation in South Australia, there are key provisions for the monitoring of the funding to palliative care to ensure that no palliative care funding is diverted to voluntary assisted dying, but we feel very strongly that palliative care and voluntary assisted dying should go hand in hand. That is a feeling that is being seen around the country now. Palliative care physicians who are finishing off training now see voluntary assisted dying as part of their core business. It is no longer seen as something that should be provided by separate practitioners. It is really becoming quite integrated.
Professor Blake: I am coming in from Western Australia. We were the second jurisdiction in Australia to introduce voluntary assisted dying laws. Ours have been operative since July 2021, so we have had the opportunity to collect quite a lot of data. Year on year, the number of people utilising voluntary assisted dying in Western Australia is increasing. In the year 2023-24, there were 292 deaths by voluntary assisted dying, which represented 1.6% of WA deaths. I agree with Chloe and confirm her view around the palliative care side of things: 83.8% of those persons who accessed voluntary assisted dying were also accessing palliative care.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Q
Dr Furst: It has been a journey, certainly. Victoria started their voluntary assisted dying in 2019. I would be lying if I said that the palliative care community were completely on board with it at that point, but over the last five to six years there has been a real shift in mentality. We have seen that they can go hand in hand. Palliative care is about end-of-life choices. Voluntary assisted dying is about end-of-life choices. It is about putting the patient and the individual front and centre, and working with them. That is fundamental to palliative care. We have realised that voluntary assisted dying is a promotion of palliative care and it gives back choices.
Probably some of the older palliative care clinicians have not embraced voluntary assisted dying quite as much. That is probably very generalised, but certainly new consultants and new doctors that are coming through really see this as something that they want to do. I do not think that there is any animosity any more between the practitioners that choose to work in this space and those that do not. I get huge amounts of support from other palliative care physicians that do not necessarily act as practitioners. There is no real divide. It has been embraced, to be honest. In another five years, I think there will probably be very few palliative care practitioners who do not support this, unless they are true conscientious objectors for their own reasons—I guess, probably religious reasons. Palliative Care Australia and the peak medical bodies in Australia have generally shifted to see this as part of patient choice.
Alex Greenwich: The journey to voluntary assisted dying in New South Wales, and indeed across every Australian state, has benefited palliative care access and funding. In New South Wales, 85% of people who have accessed voluntary assisted dying are receiving palliative care. As part of the process, the co-ordinating and consulting practitioners also advise them on palliative care. The doctors are trained on the latest advances in palliative care. Baked into the principles of our legislation is access to palliative care for all citizens of New South Wales. Importantly, throughout our debate, whether Members supported or opposed the reform, our entire Parliament came together to ensure palliative care received an increase in funding and any access issues were addressed. The Australian experience with voluntary assisted dying is that it benefits and strengthens the palliative care system.
Professor Blake: Can I can I add to that? The Voluntary Assisted Dying Board in WA, as in all the other jurisdictions, produces a report. The very strong sentiment of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Board, and indeed within the Western Australia community, is that voluntary assisted dying is seen as part of the end-of-life journey. The board’s report states that the statistics and experience of Western Australians
“confirms…that voluntary assisted dying is an established and enduring end of life choice”.
For that reason, there has been quite a significant awareness that practitioners should be able to bring up voluntary assisted dying with the patient as part of that suite of end-of-life choices. That has been something that the evidence has suggested is very important, because if the practitioners are feeling that they cannot raise it in that context, that is having a detrimental effect on the patients who would like information on it. That has been our experience in Western Australia.
Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Alex Greenwich: Thank you very much for your question. At the outset, I will just stress that every jurisdiction should legislate the form of voluntary assisted dying that is appropriate to them. In New South Wales, that was six months for a terminal illness, or 12 months if that terminal illness was a neurodegenerative disorder. We had learned from the other schemes in Australia that that was going to be important because of the decline that occurs in neurodegenerative disorders like motor neurone disease, for example. It was because of that that we went down that path.
Professor Blake: I should add that in Queensland, there is no such distinction in life expectation between other diseases and neurodegenerative diseases. Queensland legislation is different: it sets a 12-month period of expected death, and the reason for that approach was in response to feedback from people living with neurodegenerative disease that they felt that they were being put in a different position to people suffering from, or experiencing, other terminal illnesses. The Queensland Parliament took a different approach to address that particular feedback.
Dr Furst: From South Australia’s perspective, we are similar to New South Wales; we have less than six months for all conditions bar neurodegenerative conditions, which is less than 12 months. As a clinician, personally, I think that 12 months for neurodegenerative conditions is really helpful, because—as you have heard—if you are looking at prognosis and trajectories, with things like cancer, a patient will be going along and then often have quite a steep and rapid decline. That six-month prognosis is quite noticeable, but for patients with conditions like motor neurone disease, their decline can be slow and very distressing to them. Also, when trying to balance the prognosis along with getting them through the process, 12 months is really helpful, so if there was any chance, I would be strongly advocating for that.
Kim Leadbeater (Spen Valley) (Lab)
Q
It is really valuable for us as a Committee to hear your reflections on the experience of the process of passing this legislation. How did you manage to keep that process patient-centred but also take into account the concerns around the broader societal issues, particularly when it comes to equality and human rights—those really important issues? What was that process like, and what are your reflections on it? Also, Dr Furst and Professor Blake, one thing that I feel really strongly about is having really good training around assisted dying, and end-of-life care and choice. Would you like to make any comments on what that looks like?
Alex Greenwich: Thank you very much for that question. I will take you through a little bit of the journey to voluntary assisted dying in New South Wales, what encouraged action, and then the safeguards that we put in place.
The New South Wales coroner had reported to us that there were a number of really horrible suicides of people with terminal illnesses who felt they had no option—that those were cruel and lonely suicides. That was backed up by paramedics and police who would arrive on site. Myself and my parliamentary colleagues decided, “We can do better, and we can regulate in this space.” Voluntary assisted dying in New South Wales is an important form of suicide prevention. What voluntary assisted dying does, in the model that we legislated, is ensure that a person who has a terminal illness and knows that it is going to be a cruel and painful end of their life is instead directed to a doctor—a doctor who will be able to take them through all of their palliative care options, provide and link them with social supports, and give them the choice to have a death that is better than their illness would otherwise provide.
It has been important to make sure that our legislation is limited to that cohort of people who are terminally ill and know they will have a cruel end of life. Our legislation is not about people with anorexia nervosa. It is not about people with a disability. It is not about people who are feeling a burden. It is about a very limited and narrow cohort of people who know that they are going to have a very cruel and painful end of their life, and want that control to know that they can have a death that is better than what their illness would otherwise provide.
We have ensured that decision-making capacity needs to be enduring. We have ensured that a person cannot be under any form of coercion. We ensured that we had a really strong period of implementation, from the time the Bill was passed to 18 months later, when it came into effect, to make sure that our health system and the various doctors required training.
In New South Wales, the experience of voluntary assisted dying is that it has been a form of suicide prevention, and that it has also been, as I explained earlier, very pro-palliative care. As I reflect on our parliamentary debate, it was also one of the first times that our Parliament had grappled with the concept of death. We were very honest about it, and we were very honest in having to admit that we are all going to die, that there are some people with some terminal illnesses who are going to die in a really cruel and painful way, and that we could provide them with an option of control, peace and respect. We believe, and our annual reports into our legislation indicate, that we have been able to provide that. I am happy to answer any further questions, but I will wrap up on that.
Professor Blake: Given that the Western Australia legislation has been in force rather longer than the other jurisdictions that have been talked about today, we have had the opportunity to reflect upon it—I am speaking here as a lawyer; I assume that is why I have been invited to talk—and that has revealed some of the very good things about the working of the legislation, but also some of the challenges that have emerged.
As Dr Furst has said, the legislation in all Australian jurisdictions varies slightly, but it follows a particular legislative model, and is highly prescriptive. It requires a number of requests and, in Western Australia, assessment by two different practitioners. In Western Australia, there is no judicial double-checking of that process. Although I note that that is contemplated within the UK law, that is not something that we have found to be necessary or even appropriate in Western Australia, and I think that would be the case in other Australian jurisdictions.
One of the issues we have experienced is that there is a struggle to get people to take up the training, whether that be medical practitioners or nurse practitioners. One of the thoughts around that has been the very prescriptive nature of the model, which requires a lot of work on the part of the practitioners. It is worth bearing in mind when looking at your piece of legislation that the more prescriptive it is, the more work it requires on the part of practitioners, and that is a lot of work. We need those people to undergo the training in order that the process is done properly and all the safeguards that are included within the legislation—and they are extensive—are respected. That is something to bear in mind.
We have prescriptive provisions around capacity and voluntariness and lack of coercion. I would add that we also have a requirement around residency. If we are looking at when the legislation has come before a tribunal or judicial body, the only circumstance—in Western Australia, at least—where it has come before the tribunal, which is the State Administrative Tribunal, has been where the practitioner has regarded the patient as not eligible on the grounds of not fulfilling the residency requirements. There has been no other ground on which a matter has been taken to a judicial body.
You asked about the training. That is an essential requirement for practitioners who are involved in making assessments and in the whole process. It is intrinsic to the operation of the Act. The feedback I have heard is aligned with what Dr Furst has said—that no divisions have arisen within the practitioners here, and that those who have chosen to do the training are indeed very valued and very much appreciated by the people who have accessed the scheme.
I will say two more things about the regulation. One is that in the report that has been handed down, the only negative feedback has been about delays. That has been identified as being due to a lack of education among health professionals. One of the recommendations of the report is that education really needs to increase so that people’s journey on VAD is not unnecessarily delayed and, perhaps, their wishes are not able to be granted.
The second thing is on conscientious objectors: 13.7% of applications for VAD in Western Australia from 2023 to 2024 were declined on the basis of conscientious objection. But in Western Australia, unlike some other Australian jurisdictions, if a practitioner declines to become involved in the process, they are required by law to give the patient an information sheet outlining options around voluntary assisted dying. That is actually mandated in the legislation.
I have probably said enough for now, so I will hand over to Chloe.
Dr Furst: I completely agree with Meredith that the training is fundamental. For most jurisdictions, it probably takes a full day. It is often an in-person event followed by an exam, which you have to pass. In South Australia, we had a whole lot of mandatory questions that you actually had to pass to be eligible, to make sure that you were upholding the legislation.
This is so different from anything else in medicine. In any other part of medicine that I practise, if I see a process that I think can be improved—if I see efficiencies that can be made or bits of the system that are not adding to patient care—I can choose to adapt the process as I see fit to give the patient the care that I want to give or that is compatible with what the patient wishes. That is so different from voluntary assisted dying, where, as Meredith said, it is so legislated, down to who can be a witness for various documents. As a doctor, the amount of documentation that is required for voluntary assisted dying is second to nothing. We just do not do that kind of documentation in any other areas of medicine. So it is quite different, and it really does require being quite precise around that documentation and making sure that you are meeting all the timeframes and guidelines. The training is hugely important in terms of the operational component.
There is also the training around end of life and conversations, and how you support the patient and the families. That is a lot harder to teach. That is, I guess, why people will fall into this, and why a large number of palliative care doctors will do it—because it is already second nature to them or they already have the relationship with the patient and they see these conversations as something they are good at and good at facilitating.
So there are two parts of that training that are really important, and then, as Meredith said, there is also the training we need to be giving to the rest of our workforce, and really all health practitioners. A patient might ask the social worker, the orderly or the dietician about assisted dying, and they have to know how they can respond and how they can connect that individual to the right practitioner. That is really important. We have done a lot of work in South Australia, as all the other jurisdictions have, around upskilling the whole workforce, because this is everyone’s role and job.
I also wanted to speak briefly on what we in South Australia call the gag clause. In South Australia and Victoria, we are not allowed to bring up voluntary assisted dying with patients, and that is really, really problematic. From my perspective, it leads to poor provision of care. In medicine, when I am talking to a patient, in every other area, if they needed treatment, I would be obliged, and it would be good practice, to tell them about all the treatment options that are available to them. If someone had cancer, I would want to be telling them about good palliative care, potentially surgery, and radiotherapy and chemotherapy, yet voluntary assisted dying is the one thing we are not allowed to talk about and is taken off the menu. Some people may not know that voluntary assisted dying is available to them. They might be waiting for me as the doctor to bring it up to them. I have brought up every other option for them; why am I not able to talk about voluntary assisted dying? I just think it is really important that we do not stigmatise voluntary assisted dying and that we see it as a valid option for people.
Professor Blake: To add to what Chloe said, in Western Australia practitioners can raise voluntary assisted dying as long as it is in association with other end-of-life choices, but the way the legislation is worded is confusing, so one of the recommendations in the most recent report is that that be removed altogether so that voluntary assisted dying is treated like any other treatment option. As Chloe indicated, the evidence was that treating voluntary assisted dying differently can compromise the whole end-of-life journey, because it interferes with discussion of other end-of-life options. The strong recommendation from the board is that it be removed altogether and that voluntary assisted dying be treated just like any other appropriate treatment option so that the patient has a true choice.
The Chair
Colleagues, before we continue, let me say that we have 13 questions and less than 30 minutes, so the question and the answer need to be no more than two minutes.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
Q
Dr Furst: Capacity assessments are taken every time a doctor sees the patient. In my state, that would be at first assessment—first request—then a consulting doctor would come and do another hour-long assessment of the patient and assesses capacity at that stage, and then I would come back as the co-ordinating doctor for a second or third assessment of the patient, and assess capacity. They would then be given their drug, if it is self-administered. We assume and hope that they retain capacity, and we strongly advise patients and families that, should they lose capacity, they will have voided their permit and they cannot take the drug, but there is less oversight of that. However, we know that the majority—over 80%—of these patients are connected with palliative care, so we often have community teams going in and seeing them, and we are still touching base with them, maybe more peripherally, and checking capacity as we are having conversations or as we are coming and doing home visits from a palliative care perspective. If it were deemed that the patient is quite delirious, the permit would be voided and we would remove the substance from the house. If it is practitioner administration, we are also, obviously, testing capacity right at the moment that we are administering the substance.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
Q
Alex Greenwich: In New South Wales, our legislation deals with and goes through coercion in quite some detail, with pathways to assess it. It deals specifically, for example, with a situation in which someone is under coercion from a person who is a beneficiary of their will; obviously, the person seeking voluntary assisted dying then becomes ineligible. In the space of coercion, that is a key part of the training for a doctor who will be a consulting or co-ordinating practitioner. We have made it a criminal offence in New South Wales, and indeed our board will report on it and on whether eligibility for access to voluntary assisted dying has been denied to someone. Our most recent report indicates that it has.
The overwhelming experience is that having voluntary assisted dying in place is itself a safeguard from coercion for people with a terminal illness. If someone wants to end their life quickly, voluntary assisted dying through a regulated process is not the option that they are going to take. Someone engaging in voluntary assisted dying will be assessed against coercion and against decision-making capacity, and will have to make sure it is an enduring decision.
When we talk about coercion, and the concern that people may currently have in the UK about people with a terminal illness feeling in any way coerced, the experience in New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia is that voluntary assisted dying has provided a safeguard in that regard. Our legislation, the training and the reporting is very clear on that.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
Q
Dr Furst: I do not think that is the case. We are seeking out from relatives—within a month, normally—around any complications. As I said, we are also informally speaking to the nurse practitioners who are on site, but I do not think that that has been published as part of our state report. In terms of coercion, I would say that it is much more likely that patients are being coerced into invasive and intensive treatments, like cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, than being coerced into voluntary assisted dying.
Danny Kruger
Q
Mr Greenwich, you said a couple of things. You said that voluntary assisted dying supports palliative care in terms of funding. I read that although New South Wales committed to spending an extra 743 million Australian dollars on palliative care, in fact the budget was cut by 249 million Australian dollars in 2023; at the same time, New South Wales allocated 97 million Australian dollars in new funding to assisted dying. I do not understand how you think that palliative care benefited from this introduction.
You talked about suicide prevention. The fact is that unassisted suicide rises in states that have assisted suicide laws, because suicide is contagious. It is too early to tell what is happening in New South Wales, but in recent years in Victoria unassisted suicide rose by 50%, while in New South Wales, before it had this law, it stayed the same. Again, I do not understand how you think that this helps with suicide.
We have just heard about the so-called safeguards and we heard yesterday from Australian colleagues. Do you agree that the safeguards that were introduced were in fact impediments to access and that it would be the right thing to do to remove them?
Alex Greenwich: I will try in the time to answer all three of those questions and I am happy to provide more information on notice as well.
On the palliative care funding, it is accurate that New South Wales had a record boost in palliative care funding. Not all of that could be expended as the workforce was being trained up, but that commitment from all sides of our Parliament is there. You can always seek to improve palliative care funding; that in no way should be competing at all with voluntary assisted dying.
When it comes to the question of suicide, as I addressed in my opening statement, voluntary assisted dying is a form of suicide prevention. If someone wishes to end their life, voluntary assisted dying is not the process they are going to take. It is a process that provides a safeguard to ensure that people are getting full information on palliative care and getting social supports.
In terms of the safeguards in our legislation and being proposed in your legislation, it is really important that you have in your head and in your heart the experience of a person with a terminal illness who is going to have a cruel and painful death. We are talking about people who are dying and who want to have a death better than their terminal illness would otherwise provide them with. We are talking about a small cohort to whom we in New South Wales sought to give peace, dignity and control. We are really proud that we did.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Q
Alex Greenwich: Our experience in New South Wales was based on evidence from doctors and people with the lived experience of a terminal illness. It is an extremely confronting thing to be told that you have a terminal illness, to be told that you have six months to live or to be told, if you have advanced bowel cancer, for example, that your end of life will look like you are going to be choking on your own faeces.
In New South Wales, we decided that it is important that that person, who has been told that they have a terminal illness, is able to have a full conversation with their doctor about all their options—one of those options being that they could have a better death than their illness would otherwise provide them with. We decided that being able to really talk through with your doctor all your options—from access to palliative care, to social supports, to what the process of voluntary assisted dying looks like—was so important. We believe that it is working really well in practice. We would be concerned about gagging those conversations, as that would ensure that a patient is not receiving the full information about their end-of-life choices.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Alex Greenwich: Yes. In our legislation we make it clear that the doctor has to make sure that the patient is aware of their palliative care options, and we have referral pathways for psychosocial support as well. All that is prescribed in the legislation. Obviously, in the training for voluntary assisted dying a lot of that stuff is covered. In the legislation, we also define the things we want to have in that training.
Kit Malthouse
Doctors?
Professor Blake: In Western Australia, which was the second jurisdiction to introduce voluntary assisted dying—
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
Q
Alex Greenwich: New South Wales was last in the nation when it came to adopting voluntary assisted dying, and that was actually beneficial because we were able to draw on the experiences of particularly Victoria and Western Australia to make sure that things like the gag clause were not in place. With all respect to the introducer of the Bill, as a result of the Australian experience this is not a revolutionary law reform. It has been tried and tested, we have appropriate safeguards in place throughout Australia, and they work.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Q
Dr Furst: First up, a patient has to specifically ask me about voluntary assisted dying. They have got to use words that really imply that that is what they want. I will often ask any relatives to leave so that I can have a conversation just with them, to try and reduce the risk of coercion, and then invite the family back.
One of the practical things that I often ask the patient is when they started thinking about this. Is it something that they have always considered should be a right, or is it more of a new-found belief given their current suffering? I want to understand what their current suffering is. I ask specifically whether they feel a burden on their family and friends. It is an hour-plus long conversation to really understand them and their suffering.
Again, I make sure they understand all the other treatment options available to them and what good palliative care looks like. I will often be prescribing other medications as part of that good palliative care—opiates and anxiolytics. As a geriatrician, I am also making sure that their mood is also addressed, and that this is not a reactive depression. I am really doing a holistic and comprehensive geriatric assessment as part of that voluntary assisted dying assessment as well.
Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Q
Dr Furst: All around Australia, mental health as the primary terminal illness is excluded, so anorexia by definition is excluded. I have had a patient come to me with anorexia as their terminal illness requesting voluntary assisted dying. It is a relatively easy assessment because they do not meet the standard criteria, and I was able to explain to them that they were not eligible. But it opens the opportunity to have good, in-depth conversations with them about what they are going through.
I cannot talk to the learning disabilities question, other than to say that every time a patient comes to me the assessment is directed to the patient. I saw a patient today with motor neurone disease who is on continuous bi-level positive airway pressure and is using Eyegaze. The assessment and conversations I have with her are based around what she can do for me. I have had patients who have been able to put a thumb up and down, and I have had trachy patients. I cannot necessarily talk about learning disabilities, but as a holistic practitioner you are trying to make sure that the patient in front of you understands everything and is given the full opportunity to express their wishes.
Professor Blake: I would just say—
The Chair
Order. I can only take one answer. I am sorry, Meredith, but we have not got time. It is one answer to one question.
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
Q
Dr Furst: We have experience of those cases in palliative care, but I would still say that they are not eligible for voluntary assisted dying. None of us would feel comfortable, because the condition has to be irreversible. Capacity-wise, you would have to make sure that they had capacity, and I would question whether someone that is anorexic truly has capacity around their illness.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Q
Alex Greenwich: In New South Wales, and across Australia, having a disability or complex mental health issue like anorexia does not make you eligible at all for voluntary assisted dying. The legislation we are dealing with and you are dealing with is not for people with a disability or anorexia nervosa, and not for people who feel they are a burden. It is for people with a terminal illness who may want the choice of a death that is better than what the illness would otherwise provide.
We worked closely with disability groups in New South Wales. Their main concern was that they would be treated equally in terms of access to the law if a person with a disability had a terminal illness. The key point is that this legislation is a safeguard to those concerns. To the point about people who are starving themselves, that is happening today in the UK because people do not have access to voluntary assisted dying. They are starving themselves to death rather than accessing a regulated scheme where they can discuss all their options and choices.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
Q
Alex Greenwich: If I think of our health system and how we adopted voluntary assisted dying, like all health systems we were under pressure following the covid pandemic. By legislating in this space you give your health system the priority of dealing with this, making sure doctors are trained to be able to address it and that there is a good implementation period. I believe the Bill has two years, and I think that is completely appropriate to make sure your health system gets up to speed. When it comes to end-of-life choices and healthcare, voluntary assisted dying provides a great deal of honesty and safeguards.
Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)
Q
Professor Blake: That is not the evidence that we have got.
Sean Woodcock
Let me just clarify. The state’s own report in 2023-24 had 35%.
Professor Blake: We have in a place a system whereby at least 20 case studies are examined by the board every year to look at the reasons behind the taking up of the option. As a means of checking up on how the system is working, that has proven to be very workable.
There are people who feel that they are a burden. People can feel that they are a burden, and that is part of their autonomous thinking. People have their own views of their own life. The system in place is adhering to the very well-established tests for valid decision making in healthcare generally. If we are talking about people making decisions because they feel like they a burden, well, people make decisions about their healthcare in all sorts of contexts. We have a system of ensuring that decisions are valid, which has proven to be long-standing and successful. That is that the person has capacity, that their decision is voluntary, and that they are informed of the relevant facts and information. That test has stood the test of time, and our legislation, and the legislation throughout Australia, seeks to replicate it.
I would add that with our voluntary assisted dying laws, there is a very clear emphasis on the information that the patient is entitled to. The information that the practitioner has to give to the patient is extensive. It must go through the palliative care options. It must go through with them what voluntary assisted dying involves, and it must also include discussion of, “What if the voluntary assisted dying moment does not work?”
The list of matters that must be discussed by the practitioner is very extensive. In no other sphere of medicine where a patient is working with their healthcare practitioner does this level of informed consent apply. In terms of medical practitioners ensuring that people have the capacity to make the decision, are making it voluntarily and have all the relevant information at their disposal, we cannot find anywhere, in any other context of healthcare, the level of safeguards and protections that we find in this sphere.
If there are people who are saying they are a burden, that does not mean that their decision is not voluntary. That does not mean that they do not have the capacity. It simply is an expression of how they feel. The key thing is not whether they think they are a burden; the key criteria are whether they have the capacity and whether their decision is voluntary and free from coercion. Health practitioners make those assessments all day, every day.
The Chair
Order. I remind colleagues that it is unacceptable for a Member to interrupt a witness once they have started answering. That brings us to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions. I thank all witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Kit Malthouse.)
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting)
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 21, page 42, line 23, leave out
“has the meaning given by section 437(8)”
and insert
“means—
(a) a community, foundation or voluntary school, or
(b) a community or foundation special school”.
This amendment amends the definition of “maintained school” in section 551B (inserted into the Education Act 1996 by clause 21) so that it does not exclude community or foundation special schools established in a hospital. Such schools are already excluded by the definition of “relevant school” in that inserted section.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 26, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“(4) This section may only come into force after the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report containing the following information—
(a) what form breakfast club provision by schools currently takes;
(b) how much breakfast club provision costs schools, and how much is charged by schools for such provision;
(c) how much funding is estimated to be required to enable schools to meet the requirements of this section;
(d) what additional staff will be required to deliver the breakfast clubs; and
(e) the grounds on which the Secretary of State would use the power under section 551C.”
Amendment 27, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“(4) This section may only come into force after the Secretary of State has provided details of how schools are to be resourced to meet the requirements of this section.”
Amendment 28, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“551E Duty to fund secondary school breakfast clubs
(1) The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, create a national school breakfast club programme.
(2) A programme created under subsection (1) must—
(a) provide a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs of breakfast club provision; and
(b) offer pupils in participating schools free food and drink.
(3) To be eligible to participate in the programme—
(a) a school must be a state funded secondary school, special school or provider of alternative provision; and
(b) at least 40% of the pupils on the school’s pupil roll must be in bands A-F of the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to continue with the existing funding programme for secondary school breakfast clubs in areas of deprivation.
Clause stand part.
Stephen Morgan
The Government amendment stands in the name of my hon. Friend, the Minister for School Standards. The amendment is a technical one, which will ensure that the clause only includes one reference to the exclusion of community or foundation special schools established in a hospital from the duty to secure breakfast club provision. Without the amendment, the Bill would mention that twice, which might have caused some confusion.
The amendment ensures the consistent use of the definition of maintained school with the provision on limits to branded school uniform items, which has also been confirmed by Government amendment. The effect of the Bill before and after the amendment—to exclude maintained schools established in a hospital—remains the same. Schools established in a hospital are excluded from this duty, because the Government recognise that children and young people who cannot attend their usual school, because of their medical needs, will already be receiving breakfast and quality care in hospital.
Amendments 26 and 27, tabled by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, seek a report from the Secretary of State to Parliament with key delivery questions on breakfast clubs. He raises some important issues and, as I stated previously, I value his engagement with the Bill and this subject.
The Department is working intensively and at pace on the delivery plans for breakfast clubs, including the information the hon. Member mentions and more. I will come to that later, but first I want to address his points about what form breakfast club provision takes and why we need to act. What we inherited from the previous Government is a patchwork of provision with varying costs for parents, varying offers and often, critically, insufficient funding for the actual club, leading to the exclusion of many disadvantaged pupils. We are legislating to replace that patchwork with an absolute commitment to give all children, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day via a free breakfast club.
On delivery, I want to reassure the shadow Minister that schools will be funded and supported to deliver the new breakfast clubs. We are working with more than 750 early adopter schools from this April to ensure that we get the implementation, funding and support to resources right, before national roll-out of the new clubs. We published our funding methodology alongside guidance for early adopters on 16 January this year. We worked closely with schools on the rates to ensure they were sufficient. Funding for national roll-out is, of course, subject to the next spending review. As we learn from the early adopters to develop our statutory guidance and support package, more information will be made available, including on the exemptions process, putting that in the public domain and before Parliament.
I trust that Members will agree that the Department has the right plans in place to deal with delivery considerations through work with early adopters, support and statutory guidance, and that they have heard my commitment in Committee today that schools will be funded and supported to deliver the clubs. Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston kindly to withdraw his amendments 26 and 27.
I am grateful for the opportunity afforded by amendment 28, also tabled by the shadow Minister, to discuss the continuation of provision for secondary schools in disadvantaged areas. The hon. Member makes a good point about hungry children in secondary schools, and I confirm that the 2,700 schools on the national school breakfast programme, including approximately 750 secondary schools, will continue to be supported by the scheme until at least March 2026.
We want to start by giving the youngest pupils, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day. Through our opportunity mission, the Government will ensure that all children get the best start in life as we deliver what we believe is the most important starting point of a child’s schooling journey. These new primary school breakfast clubs will be transformational, giving every child access to fully funded provision of at least 30 minutes of free breakfast club. This measure goes much further than the existing national school breakfast program, which only funds the food and covers up to 2,700 schools.
Our plan builds on the evidence that breakfast clubs in primary schools can boost children’s academic attainment and attendance and drive up life chances. The free club and food will also support parents with the cost of living, and support parents to work. Compared with studies of programmes targeted at primary-age pupils, there are few high-quality experimental studies on the impact of breakfast clubs on secondary-aged pupils. Typically, primary school breakfast clubs have higher take-up than secondaries, and more studies, such as Magic Breakfast’s evaluation, report their positive effects on attainment and attendance. The reported attendance improvement for children at breakfast club schools is equivalent to 26 fewer half days of absence per year for a class of 30 children. Education Endowment Foundation research also shows up to two months of additional progress from key stage one to key stage two.
It has always been our intent—with limited resources, but backed by the evidence—to start with primary schools as we roll out breakfast clubs. It is right that we start with supporting the youngest children. We are working with 750 early adopters from this April to test how the measure will best be implemented. That will not only help us to test and learn how every primary school in the future can deliver the new breakfast clubs, but it will give us important insights into how schools with unusual age ranges, such as all-through schools, special schools or those with on-site nurseries, implement the policy. On that basis, I invite the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to withdraw his amendment.
Clause 21, by placing a duty on state-funded primary schools to introduce free breakfast clubs, will give all children, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day. We are absolutely committed to spreading the evidenced benefits that breakfast clubs offer, which will form a key part of our mission to break the unfair link between background and opportunity. Many more children will be settled and ready to learn at the start of the school day. It is also good for attendance, good for attainment and good for behaviour.
At a minimum, the breakfast clubs will start for 30 minutes before the start of the school day and will include breakfast. They will be free of charge and available to all pupils from reception to year 6 at state-funded schools. Importantly, the provision includes children with special educational needs and disabilities at mainstream schools, as well as state-funded special schools and alternative provision.
Schools will be able to do what works best for their families, so they will be able to work alongside childcare providers and even other schools if that means that they are best able to deliver the benefits of breakfast clubs to help parents and children.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Has the Department conducted any analysis differentiating those students who are disadvantaged and on free school meals, or considered disadvantaged, and those who are not? The Government are applying a blanket policy across all students of primary school. The Minister makes an eloquent point that some of those children are very needy, but others are not. Has the Department conducted an analysis of the impact across different groups?
Stephen Morgan
The beauty of this scheme is its universal offer—a free offer to every child in primary school. As I mentioned earlier, we see the clear benefits of the scheme in terms of attainment, behaviour and, indeed, attendance. That is what is really exciting about our plans.
Work is already under way with 750 early adopter schools to start to deliver from April 2025, thanks to a tripling of funding for the breakfast clubs at last October’s Budget compared with financial year 2024-25. Early adopters are just the first step in delivering on our steadfast commitment to introducing breakfast clubs in every primary school. They will help us to test and learn how every school can best deliver the new breakfast clubs in the future and maximise the benefit to schools, their pupils and the families and communities they serve. Legislating for breakfast club provision in the Bill will give schools the certainty they need to plan for the future and ensure that there is a consistent and accessible offer for children and parents who need a settled start and support with childcare. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I rise today, as we pass the halfway point of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, to find that we still do not have the impact assessment. The Bill has passed Second Reading. It is totally pointless having an impact assessment of a measure if it is produced after has Parliament debated it. The Ministers would make the same point if they were still shadow Ministers, so I make it to them now. I do not understand what the hold-up is.
The last Government substantially expanded access to breakfast clubs in primary and secondary schools and created the holiday activities food programme. The national school breakfasts programme has been running since 2018, and in March 2023 the then Government announced £289 million for the national wraparound childcare funding programme, which helps to fund breakfast clubs, among other things. That was part of a much wider expansion of free childcare that saw spending on the free entitlement double in real terms between 2010 and 2024, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, including things such as the 30-hours offer, the two-year-old offer and the expanded childcare offer.
We will not vote against the clause and will not push our amendments to a vote, but I was struck by the comments made by Mark Russell of the Children’s Society, who said that given the resource constraints, he would have focused on rolling out breakfast clubs to a greater number of deprived secondary schools, rather than on a universal offer in primary. He said:
“I would like to see secondary school children helped, and if the pot is limited, I would probably step back from universality and provide for those most in need.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 55, Q122.]
I draw attention to the uncertainty being created by the Government’s refusal to commit to funding the existing free breakfast provision in secondary schools beyond next year, and likewise to the uncertainty being created around the holiday activities and food programme. A number of witnesses in our first oral evidence session called for Ministers to guarantee that funding beyond next year, and I join them in asking Ministers to give us that guarantee, or at least give us some sense that the provision targeted on deprived schools will be maintained.
To that end, our amendment 28 would lock in the existing provision in secondary schools and secondary special schools. There are arguments for specifically targeting needy secondary school pupils. According to evidence submitted to the Committee by Magic Breakfast:
“The extension to secondary pupils in special schools would not require a significant amount of additional resource”.
It would require about 2.2% of the budget. What did Ministers make of the suggestion by Magic Breakfast to make secondary special schools a priority? The Government have made primary schools their priority.
Amendment 26 would require the Government to report properly on provision. Groups such as Magic Breakfast are calling for careful measuring and monitoring of the programme, which is what we need. In Wales, we saw a commitment brought in in 2013 to reach all primary schools, but by last year, 85% of disadvantaged pupils were still not being reached by the provision. Obviously we do not want that to happen here. The Secretary of State must collect data on who is getting breakfasts and on the impact. As Magic Breakfast said in its evidence to the Committee,
“if the Government policy doesn’t significantly impact”
behaviour, attendance, concentration, academic attainment and health and wellbeing,
“then the Secretary of State should consider the efficacy of the policy roll out.”
That is why we want special monitoring.
The programme is landing on top of a complex existing patchwork, as the Minister said. Some 85% of schools already have a breakfast club, and one in eight of all schools, including secondary schools, have a taxpayer-funded breakfast offer. The new requirement being brought in by the clause will interact with the existing provision in lots of different ways.
Many school breakfast clubs currently run for an hour on a paid-for basis, and I hope that most of them will want to continue to run for at least the period that they run now. Now, if a breakfast club is provided for an hour or more, the school will have to charge the first 30 minutes but not the final 30 minutes, which unavoidably leads to complexity. On the other hand, we do not want schools to focus on just delivering the new statutory 30 minutes then pull the earlier provision, which is useful for parents. Schools will have to do a lot of agonising as they think all this through, and they will have to manage it carefully. In some cases, where the demand is very high, schools may struggle get all the children fed in 30 minutes—lunchtime is normally longer than that. That is one reason why Magic Breakfast is calling for advice and guidance, which I hope the Minister will consider.
Amendment 27 asks for a report on funding, because there is still a lot of uncertainty around that. According to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year:
“Based on the experience of the national school breakfast programme, the estimated annual cost today would be around £55 per pupil…for food-only provision and double that (around £110) for a ‘traditional’ before-school breakfast club. Labour’s manifesto offers £315 million overall in 2028; this could be enough to fund all primary school pupils under a food-only model, or 60% of pupils if the party plumps for a traditional breakfast club with some childcare element.”
The Government are just at the pilot stage, and we just want to make sure that the lessons are learned about the very real costs of this policy in different places and settings, be that for on-site provision, off-site provision, expensive or cheaper places to live, or small rural primaries. They will all have different costs and the funding will have to reflect that.
Hopefully all of these problems are surmountable, as this is obviously a good thing, but we want careful monitoring to make sure that the policy is actually making changes and having the positive impacts that people hope for, and to avoid any unintended consequences.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Stringer. We live in a country where, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, three in 10 children are growing up in poverty, and I know from talking to school leaders up and down the country that one of the biggest challenges that teachers face in the classroom is poverty outside the classroom. I do not think that anybody could disagree with the intent of ensuring that children are well fed and ready to learn and start the school day, but I have questions regarding how the provisions of the Bill will be delivered. Some have already been touched on by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston.
First, on practicalities, in our oral evidence session, Nigel Genders, the education officer for the Church of England, said that 65% of small rural primaries are Church of England schools. I asked him about the practicalities of delivering this scheme, and he said:
“there will be particular challenges in small schools in terms of staffing, managing the site,”
and pointed out that there are economies of scale for the large trusts, but not when
“a school…has 40 or 50 children, one member of staff and probably a site manager.”––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 66, Q142.]
How is that going to be delivered? I appreciate that there will be pilot schemes, but that is a big question that needs to be answered. Others have raised similar concerns about resourcing.
Secondly, although it remains to be seen how the pilots work out, given the immense financial pressure that so many schools find themselves under, I cannot stress strongly enough to Ministers how important it is that sufficient money is provided to deliver this programme. We cannot have “efficiencies” being found elsewhere—in terms of teaching staff and other activities that the children would normally get—to fund this. When the Mayor of London rolled out free school meals to all primaries, which I strongly supported, I laid down the same challenge to him. Sadly, the universal infant free school meal funding under the previous Government was very seldom uprated, and I know that schools in my constituencies were trying to trying to find money from other pots to fund it. Proper Funding is absolutely critical. In fact, the Association of School and College Leaders said in its written evidence that many of its members “remain to be convinced” that the money being allocated will be sufficient.
My third concern also relates to some of the oral evidence that we heard last week: when we have such scarce resources, as we are told every single day by the Chancellor and Ministers across Government, why are we not targeting our resources at those most in need? Kate Anstey, from the Child Poverty Action Group, said:
“take-up of breakfast clubs or different schemes is around 40%, whereas the vast majority of children are in school for lunchtime.”––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 98, Q217.]
As a London MP, I can tell hon. Members that children in temporary accommodation are often placed extremely far away from where they are at school. In the case of Twickenham, they are often placed in Croydon or Slough—all over the place—so they are spending 90 minutes, and sometimes longer, getting to school. Many often miss the start of the school day because of transport issues. They are the most needy and vulnerable children, and the chances of them actually being in school to get that breakfast are slim, so as ASCL did, I question whether this provision
“will actually attract those children who would most benefit from it.”
That is why, as the Minister is aware because I have tabled a new clause to speak to this, the Liberal Democrats’ long-standing policy is that we should actually be extending free school meals and providing a hot, healthy meal at lunch time, when children are definitely going to be in school, to all the poorest children in both primary and secondary schools.
I suspect we will touch on this issue when we discuss the next clause, but I will mention now that I was slightly alarmed that proposed new section 551B(5) of the Education Act 1996 says that the food will
“take such form as the appropriate authority thinks fit.”
I recognise that there are school food standards, but I am a bit worried that that might just be a piece of toast and perhaps, if children are lucky, a bit of fruit. Can we ensure that there is strong guidance on the nutritional value of what is being provided?
Finally, on the subject of 30 minutes being the minimum amount of free time, if lots of schools only offer the minimum, and lots of parents have an hour-long commute to work, or even longer than that, 30 minutes will not meet that childcare need. I am worried about the interaction with paid-for breakfast clubs if a parent is having to drop off at 7.30 am, but the free breakfast club does not start until 8 o’clock. Does that mean they get that last 30 minutes for free, but they pay for the first bit? How will that work logistically?
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I welcome what the Minister said about protecting the existing programme in secondary schools for a further year. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston is quite right that schools and families will want to know about much more than just next year, but I appreciate that the expectation is that the certainty will come in the spending review. I hope the same will also be true for the holiday activities and food programme.
Of course, breakfast clubs in school is not a new idea. There are, as the Minister said, 2,694 schools in the national school breakfast club programme, serving about 350,000 pupils. That programme is targeted according to the deprivation of an area, with eligibility at the whole-school level in those areas, and provides a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs.
There are many more breakfast clubs than that, however; it is estimated that the great majority of schools have some form of breakfast club. Many clubs, of course, have a modest charge, but if a child attending that breakfast club is helping a parent on a low income to be able to work, typically, that breakfast club provision, like wraparound care provision, would be eligible for reimbursement at up to 85% as a legitimate childcare cost under universal credit. That 85% is a higher rate than was ever available under the previous tax credits system. Some schools also use pupil premium to support breakfast clubs, and there are also other voluntary-sector and sponsored programmes.
From a policy perspective, overall, there are two big objectives to a breakfast club. The first is, of course, to help families with the cost of living, and the other is about attendance. Attendance is an issue in primary and secondary school, but we must remember that it is more of an issue in secondary school, and it is more of an issue the lower people are on the income scale. That is why the national school breakfast club programme runs in secondary as well as primary schools, and why it is targeted in the way that it is.
I also want to ask a couple of questions, as the hon. Member for Twickenham and my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston just did, about how the timings work and about the minimum of 30 minutes. The many schools—perhaps 85% of them—that already have a breakfast club quite often have it for longer than 30 minutes. What should they do? Should they charge for the bit that is not the 30 minutes but have 30 minutes that are free? That is perhaps not in the spirit of what we mean by a universally free service. If they have a paid 45-minute breakfast, would they also have to offer an option to just come for the 30 minutes and have that for free?
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Amanda Martin
I want to comment more from my own experience, because I used to be a pre-school chair. When the free hours came in for pre-school, they did not cover the full time that the child would be there, so mechanisms were put in place where some elements of the time were free and some elements were not. That sort of arrangement for operating such a system has been around in the sector for quite a while.
Damian Hinds
It has, and it has also been very controversial in many cases for pre-school provision, as the hon. Lady will know.
I also want to ask about the costs and reimbursements, which amendments 26 and 27 speak to. The Government, before they were in government and probably since, talked a lot about saving families £400 a year. In my rough maths, if we take £400 and divide it by 190 school days—[Interruption.] Oh, it is £450. Well, I am not able to adjust my maths live, so the answer will be slightly more than the number I give now. My maths gave me £2.10 a day. That seems to be somewhat different from the figures that schools are actually being reimbursed in the pilot programme, so I hope for some clarity on this point.
The details of the early-adopter programme talk about an initial set-up cost of £500, a lump sum of £1,099 to cover April to July and then a basic rate being provided per pupil. There is a different rate depending on whether the child is what is called FSM6—eligible for free school meals previously—if I have read the details correctly. I am not clear why the unit cost of a breakfast would be different between those two groups of children, but perhaps the Minister could fill me in.
Even at the higher rates—the FSM6 rates—there seems to be quite a gap between that and £2.10, or the Minister’s slightly higher figure, when it is £450 divided by 190 days. Obviously, part of that may be made up of savings from bulk purchasing and so on, but it still seems quite a gap, if I have understood the numbers correctly. I hope the Minister can help me to understand.
Patrick Spencer
When I was a governor of a primary school, I found that an unintended consequence of underfunded breakfast clubs was parents accruing ludicrous amounts of debt. There are no circumstances in which the school would have turned away the child, but that does not bode well for a policy that is about supporting parents who are hard up. If parents are forced to pay for the breakfast club and accrue huge amounts of debt, we know that is very bad for their mental health and for their general wellbeing. I do not know whether the Minister has anything to say on that point, but I am sure my right hon. Friend will agree.
Damian Hinds
As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point. My worry is that, in a couple of years’ time, when Members sitting on both sides of this Committee Room get emails about the funding pressures on schools—because, spoiler alert, there will still be funding pressures on schools—breakfast clubs will be one of the factors contributing to those pressures, if this programme is not fully funded or almost fully funded. I wonder whether the Minister will say on the record that it is his expectation that this programme will, like the national school breakfast club programme, cover at least 75% of the actual cost of provision.
Stephen Morgan
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their interventions. Members will appreciate that future funding decisions are subject to the spending review, but they can have the assurance from me today of the commitment that we have already made with regard to secondary school inclusion in the national school breakfast club programme and, indeed, my recently announced confirmation of more than £200 million for the holiday activities and food programme for the next financial year.
The shadow Minister made a number of points regarding schools currently on the national school breakfast club programme. Funding was confirmed in the previous Budget, which will ensure that that programme continues to at least March 2026. Subject to the will of Parliament, schools with children from reception to year 6 will transition from the existing programme to the new offer of free breakfast clubs lasting at least 30 minutes. The timing of the national roll-out will be confirmed in due course. Schools moving from the national school breakfast club programme to the new offer will be supported in that transition. Further details on the programme will follow after the conclusion of the spending review.
The shadow Minister asked a number of questions about when the duty will commence. Legislating breakfast club provision in this Bill will give schools the certainty that they need for the future. The national roll-out and commencement of this duty will be determined in 2025 after the spending review. National roll-out will also be informed by the assessment of the early-adopter phase of the roll-out, which will help us to test and learn how best we can support schools to implement their duty and overcome the barriers that they might encounter. As the Committee will know, we must go through the appropriate spending review process before committing to a date for national roll-out.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I have respect for the insight and experience of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, but I ask the Minister whether one of the goals of the free breakfast clubs is to ensure that children, particularly those from hard-up backgrounds, are in a position to be ready to learn, so that they can start the school day with a hungry mind, not a hungry belly. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire made a point about the current provision of free breakfast clubs, but in my constituency of Bournemouth East, we have remarkably few. There is a real inconsistency in provision across our country. On that note, I will make a special call for schools in Bournemouth East to be among the early adopters. I thank the Minister for his response.
Stephen Morgan
I am afraid that my hon. Friend needs to remain patient in waiting for the confirmation of which local authority areas will have early adopters, but I know that he has been a tireless champion on these issues. I promise that he will not have to wait much longer to know which schools in his patch may have a breakfast club.
This scheme will make a huge difference to children’s lives. We know that it will put more money in the pockets of parents, but also, as I mentioned earlier, that it will be good for attendance, attainment and behaviour. Research out today demonstrates the impact and the challenge that we face to make sure that children do start school ready to learn.
Amanda Martin
I want to make about point about attendance and the evidence that suggests progress. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East that is about children’s bellies being full and them being able to learn in the best part of the day. It is also a calming part of the day. It allows parents, if they have an infant and a junior, to drop them off—they could do the infant first, and the junior next. It also helps our parents to go to work. Evidence also suggests that breakfast clubs can help children to make up to two additional months of progress in their core reading, writing and maths skills because they are, as my hon. Friend said, ready to learn.
Stephen Morgan
My hon. Friend speaks with real authority on these issues as a former teacher. I know that she will be very excited about breakfast clubs coming to her new constituency of Portsmouth North. Attendance is a key priority for this Government, and it goes right to the very top—the Prime Minister has set out that he is also keen to make attendance a key priority. Children have to be in school to learn the skills that they need for life and work. I know that breakfast clubs will make a big difference in making that happen.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
I am a previous chair of governors and I have worked as an education welfare officer. Do you agree that punctuality also comes into the issue of attendance? If children come into school earlier for breakfast clubs, they are in class, which minimises the risk of disruption to other students’ learning and to teachers presenting their lessons.
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his time as a school governor. Governors across the country do such important work holding headteachers to account and supporting them in the difficult challenges that they face. He made an important point about punctuality. We know, of course, that if a child is accessing a breakfast club, it hopefully gets them to school on time. I know that he has been a real champion of those issues in his constituency.
We have just heard how passionate Labour Members are about the difference that breakfast clubs will make, and that is why we are so excited to roll them out through this legislation. We will learn from the early-adopter scheme, which will inform the monitoring and evaluation plan for the national roll-out. For that roll-out, we will ensure that there are appropriate arrangements for the collection of breakfast club data from schools and for the evaluation of the programme.
The hon. Member for Twickenham made a number of helpful points on the practicalities of funding our ambitions for children and young people. The new breakfast clubs and the benefits that they will bring to children and families up and down the country are a top priority for this Government. We will therefore, of course, provide funding to cover the new duty, including for the costs of nutritious food and staffing. Moreover, informed by our early-adopter scheme, we will support schools who face delivery challenges to find the right approach for their school, pupils and parents. Schools will absolutely not be left to do this alone. As I mentioned, from April this year, before this duty comes into force, we will work with up to 750 new breakfast clubs in schools across the country.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
The right hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned that many schools already have breakfast clubs. I regularly visit schools in Derby North and recently visited Cavendish Close junior academy, which already provides a breakfast club. Staff there were confident in their ability to scale up; in fact, they are excited to do so and welcome the opportunity. Does the Minister agree that this clause will open up the benefits of breakfast clubs to all our children in primary schools and that that represents a massive step forward?
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She speaks very eloquently about the benefits this will bring to parents. Those benefits will include not only £450 back into the parent’s pocket but more childcare choices. I know that she is excited about this programme being rolled out in her constituency. To summarise the points on funding, we are keen to learn from the early adopters and feed that into our ongoing support programme for schools.
A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North, raised points about the impact on attendance. Breakfast clubs have been proven to ensure that every child starts the day ready to learn by improving attendance, behaviour and attainment. The Magic Breakfast evaluation reported that the improved attendance of children at schools with breakfast clubs was equivalent to 26 fewer half-days of absence per year for a class of 30, and research by the Education Endowment Foundation showed that there was up to two months of additional progress from key stage 1 to key stage 2. Schools that have offered free universal breakfast clubs have told us that they make a huge difference. For example, Burton Green primary school in York reported significant improvements in punctuality, children more settled for lessons and improved behaviour, especially for pupils with SEND.
I assure hon. Members that I understand that absence is a key barrier to learning. For children to achieve and thrive, they need to be in school. We are doing lots to support that, including making attendance guidance statutory last summer, requiring schools to return data through our attendance data tool, and working with our attendance ambassador, Rob Tarn, to develop an attendance toolkit. We have also expanded the attendance monitoring programme to reach 1,000 more children, and have invested £15 million to expand that programme, which provides targeted one-to-one support for students who are persistently absent. I commend the clause to the Committee.
The Chair
Before we move on, I will say that I suspect that some hon. Members wanted to speak earlier. I will select Members to speak only if they bob. Members can speak after the Member proposing the motion has replied to the debate. The proposer then has the opportunity to reply, so it is easier if all Members have spoken by then. I had the impression that at least two Members wished to speak and therefore made slightly overlong interventions. I remind Members that interventions should be short and to the point.
While I am being pedagogic, I note that Members have once or twice involved me in the debate. Please avoid saying “you”, because I do not have an opinion on these matters.
Amendment 6 agreed to.
Clause 21, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Food and drink provided at Academies
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Morgan
I am grateful for the opportunity, afforded by the new clause suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), to discuss compliance with school food standards.
It is important that children eat nutritious food at school, and the Department encourages schools to have a whole-school approach to healthy eating. The standards for school food are set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014. They ensure that schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and that children get the energy and nutrition that they need across the school day. School governors and trustees have a statutory duty to ensure compliance with the school food standards. The existing regime involves school governors and trustees appropriately challenging the headteacher and senior leadership team to ensure that the school is meeting its obligations, and we want to support governors to work confidently with school leaders to ensure that the standards are met.
The Department for Education, with the National Governance Association, launched an online training pilot on school food for governors and trustees in November last year. The pilot, which will run until the end of May 2025, is designed to test the feasibility of using an online training platform to make information on school food available to governors and trustees in an accessible and flexible way. We will soon be evaluating the effectiveness of the training programme to determine whether it could be a valuable resource in the long term.
As well as supporting governors and trustees, we need a compliance regime that ensures standards are met without creating undue burdens. We note the findings of the compliance pilot run by the Department and the Food Standards Agency during the 2022-23 academic year, and we are working with the FSA on the next steps. Although the pilot demonstrated that food safety officers could conduct checks of school food standards during routine food hygiene inspections in schools, further consideration is needed of how non-compliance should be handled. Implementing that kind of monitoring arrangement nationally would require new funding, but more importantly, it is unlikely that it would be effective if the barriers identified in the pilot remained unaddressed. We want to work with the sector to understand how we can best overcome the challenges. For those reasons, I hope the new clause is not pressed.
We are committed to raising the healthiest generation ever. We have already laid secondary legislation to restrict television and online advertisement of less healthy food and drink to children and announced changes to the planning framework for fast food outlets near schools. We are also committed to banning the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s, for which we will set out plans in consultation in due course.
Clause 22 formalises the long-standing position that all schools should comply with the school food standards across the whole school day. The clause is a technical measure, as academies are already well versed in the standards, and this legal change simply confirms long-standing policy. All academies have had to comply with standards for lunchtime provision; but for some academies there is a regulatory gap in respect of food served outside lunch. The clause will close that gap and ensure that the food served at breakfast clubs is healthy and nutritious, giving pupils the energy they need to get the most from their school day.
Munira Wilson
I want to stress the concerns I expressed in my previous remarks about the quality and nutritional value of the food that will be offered. I recognise that school food standards are in place, but although the recent House of Lords report on obesity welcomed the introduction of school breakfast clubs, it strongly recommended that the Government review and update the school food standards, and one of the witnesses this Committee heard said that schools should be given clear direction on what is and is not acceptable.
It is important that our children do not get high-fat, sugary or minimal nutrition provision from the breakfast clubs. When it evaluated the breakfast offer at 17 primary schools in Yorkshire, the Food Foundation found that fruit and water were not always offered at breakfast. Such things should be addressed. I hope that as the guidance is rolled out, more detail will be provided, but I urge the Government to consider the recommendation to review school food standards as they roll out breakfast clubs.
Stephen Morgan
I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham for her contribution; this is an issue that I know she cares passionately about. As I mentioned, the early adopter programme for breakfast clubs will give us an opportunity to test and learn, and to make sure we implement a national scheme based on really good, nutritious food. Governing bodies have a duty to ensure that the standards for school food set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014 are complied with, and they should appropriately challenge the headteacher and senior leadership team to ensure the school is meeting its obligations.
I believe we are making quick progress to deliver breakfast clubs in every primary school, with 750 early adopters. We recently published early adopter guidance to provide support to schools on these issues, which includes support and advice on a healthy, balanced breakfast offer. It is important that children eat nutritious food at school, and the school food standards define the foods and drinks that must be provided and those that are restricted. As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach to school food under review.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
School uniforms: limits on branded items
Munira Wilson
I beg to move amendment 87, in clause 23, page 44, leave out lines 22 to 29 and insert—
“(1) The appropriate authority of a relevant school may not require a pupil at the school to have to buy branded items of school uniform for use during a school year which cost more in total to purchase than a specified monetary amount, to be reviewed annually.
(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify the monetary amount that may apply to—
(a) a primary pupil; and
(b) a secondary pupil.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 7.
Amendment 29, in clause 23, page 44, line 23, leave out “have” and insert “buy”.
This amendment would enable schools to require pupils to wear more than three branded items of school uniform as long as parents have not had to pay for them.
Amendment 59, in clause 23, page 44, line 24, leave out “three” and insert “two”.
Amendment 30, in clause 23, page 44, line 26, leave out “have” and insert “buy”.
This amendment would enable schools to require pupils to wear more than three branded items of school uniform as long as parents have not had to pay for them.
Amendment 60, in clause 23, page 44, line 27, leave out “three” and insert “two”.
Amendment 61, in clause 23, page 44, line 28, leave out from “year” to end of paragraph.
Amendment 31, in clause 23, page 44, line 29, at end insert—
“(1A) The appropriate authority of a school may require a pupil to buy or replace branded items which have been lost or damaged, or which the pupil has grown out of.”
This amendment would enable schools to require pupils to replace lost or damaged branded items.
Amendment 32, in clause 23, page 44, line 40, at end insert—
“except PE kit or other clothing or items required as part of the school’s provision of physical education lessons”.
Amendment 91, in clause 23, page 44, line 40, at end insert
“except items of kit required when representing the school in sporting activities”.
Government amendments 8 to 10.
Clause stand part.
New clause 35—VAT zero-rating for certain items of school uniform—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, make provision for certain items of school uniform to be zero-rated for the purposes of VAT.
(2) For the purposes of this section, ‘certain items of school uniform’ means items of school uniform for pupils up to the age of 16.”
New clause 56—School uniforms: availability of second-hand items—
“(1) The appropriate authority of a relevant school must ensure that second-hand items of school uniform are made available for sale to the parents of pupils or prospective pupils.
(2) Second-hand items of school uniform may be made available for sale so long as the items—
(a) comply with the school’s current uniform requirements;
(b) are in an acceptable condition; and
(c) can be purchased for significantly less than the cost of buying the same item new.
(3) The appropriate authority must make information on the purchase of second-hand items of school uniform easily available on the school’s website.
(4) In this section—
‘the appropriate authority’ means—
(a) in relation to an Academy school, an alternative provision Academy or a non-maintained special school, the proprietor;
(b) in relation to a maintained school, the governing body;
(c) in relation to a pupil referral unit, the local authority;
‘relevant school’ means a school in England which is—
(a) an Academy school;
(b) an alternative provision Academy;
(c) a maintained school within the meaning of section 437(8) of the Education Act 1996;
(d) a non-maintained special school within the meaning of section 337(A) of the Education Act 1996;
(e) a pupil referral unit not established in a hospital.
‘school uniform’ means any bag or clothing required for school or for any lesson, club, activity or event facilitated by the school.
‘second-hand items’ means items of school uniform which have previously been owned by another pupil, subject to subsection (2).”
Munira Wilson
I rise to speak to amendment 87, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends.
My party and I strongly support the objective of clause 23—to bring down or minimise the cost of school uniform for hard-pressed families up and down the country. We know that the cost of uniform causes a lot of hardship: it impacts school attendance when children do not have the right items of uniform, and we heard during our oral evidence sessions and have seen in some of the written evidence that children are regularly sent home from school if they do not have the right uniform, which I personally find outrageous considering the current attendance crisis. The intent behind this clause is absolutely right; my concern is how the Government have gone about it.
I have two concerns. The first is that, if a number of items are set out in legislation—three or four, depending on whether it is primary or secondary—there is nothing to stop the overinflation of the prices of those items. We could end up in a situation in which, for the sake of argument, three items cost £100 each. There is nothing to stop that happening, so I do not think the provision will necessarily rein in the cost of branded items for families. Secondly, it grates with me as a liberal to have such detailed prescription in legislation about how schools operate and the decisions that school leaders take on the number of items that can be branded.
Amendment 87 sets a cap on cost rather on the number of items, and that would be reviewed and updated through secondary legislation every year to keep it in line with inflation. Schools that want to have more branded items but cannot fit it within the cost cap could sell branded logos that can be sewn on to basic uniform items bought in supermarkets, such as plain jumpers and shirts and so on. I have to say, as a parent of small children, I do not fancy the idea of doing lots of sewing, but I am sure there are more innovative ways to iron on logos and suchlike.
The Association of School and College Leaders expressed the concern on behalf of their members in their written evidence that driving down the number of items and being so prescriptive might have the opposite effect, particularly with PE kit. Children, particularly teenagers subject to peer pressure, might compete to wear more expensive sporting items.
Setting a cap in monetary terms rather than on the number of items, addresses the two issues of overinflation and of over-prescription in legislation. It also has the benefit of being an effective market intervention, because it helps to drive down the costs of suppliers competing for school contracts for schools that want to be able to provide more branded items. That is a much more sensible way of approaching the issue and tackling a problem that we are united in wanting to tackle.
New clause 35 concerns a simple matter of fairness. I cannot understand why the zero rate of VAT applies only on clothing for children up to the age of 14 and that parents have to pay VAT on school uniform for children who are larger or who are over 14. Dare I say it—this is one of the few benefits of Brexit.
Munira Wilson
Press release—there we go! This is a rare benefit of Brexit: we have the freedom to apply a zero rate of VAT on school uniform up to the age of 16. It is a basic issue of fairness. If the Government want to drive down the cost of uniform, this is a simple thing for them to address.
Catherine Atkinson
There is a uniform shop, Uniform Direct, in my constituency in Derby, which was opened by Harvinder Shanan. Like me, she is a mum of three. She is determined to drive down the costs of school uniform and understands the financial pressures that local families face, particularly with the cost of living crisis that the last Government left us in. Her small business has been able to reduce the cost of items. She told me about how in one instance, when she began to supply a school, she was able to bring the cost of their blazers down from £75 to £25.
I note that the majority of the schools that Harvinder Shanan supplies are already compliant with the limitations on the number of branded items that the Bill imposes. If many can reduce, or have already reduced, the number of branded items, I am concerned that amendments seeking exceptions would fundamentally undermine the purpose of the clause, which is to bring down the costs of school uniform that families have to bear. Some providers might seek to increase the costs of branded items. Consideration of a cost cap was asked for, to limit the amount of money that could be charged. I invite the Minister to keep the clause under review and to keep all options open, should the cost of branded uniform items rise.
Turning to new clause 56, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston indicated a shared concern about prescription for schools, which seems somewhat at odds with the prescription sought through the new clause, which would prescribe details of how second-hand items might be made available down to what is on school websites. My concern is that the detail of that provision would impose so much prescription that when there are new items of uniform, second-hand items simply would not be available.
In total, the clause represents a huge saving for families in Derby North and across the country. I greatly welcome the provision.
Neil O'Brien
I find myself in great agreement with much of what the hon. Member for Twickenham said about the danger that this provision will turn into a piece of backfiring micromanagement. The Opposition have made that point and, indeed, we have heard Labour Members make the same point. We are not in a position to make a fiscal commitment today, but I thought that that the hon. Lady made a good point about VAT. I found myself agreeing with more and more of what she was saying and then, towards the end, when she started talking about potential Brexit benefits, I realised we were really through the looking glass. Remarkable moments here today—incredible scenes.
To describe our amendments in brief, amendments 29 and 30 say that schools can have items that parents do not have to pay for, and amendment 31 clarifies that it is three at any given time. Schools can require replacement of lost items; amendment 32 exempts PE kit, and amendment 91 exempts school sports team kit. New clause 56 is a positive suggestion to make schools offer old uniform to parents. As the hon. Member for Twickenham said, we do not particularly want to be prescriptive, but if we are going to be, we might as well do it in sensible ways. That builds on the previous guidance.
When I was a school governor, which was mainly under the previous Labour Government, I was struck by the flood of paper that came forth every week from “DFE Towers”, the Sanctuary Buildings. That flood abated a little after 2010, although probably never enough. Sometimes, I wondered whether we had more ring binders with policies in than we had children; but that might soon seem like a golden age, because under new Ministers, the urge to micromanage seems to be going into overdrive.
Our guidance, introduced in 2021, encouraged schools to have multiple suppliers, and it was focused on generally holding down costs, as the hon. Member for Twickenham pointed out. Parents are in fact spending less in real terms on school uniforms overall than they were a decade ago, according to the DFE’s own survey. The DFE found that average total expenditure on school uniform overall was down 10% in real terms, compared with 2014.
Tom Hayes
Does the shadow Minister agree with a 2023 report by the Children’s Society which showed that school uniform costs were another burden on families, impacting on children’s education, to the point that 22% of parents were reporting that their child was experiencing detention for breaching uniform policies, and one in eight had been placed in isolation? Last year, the Children’s Society surveyed parents again and found that two thirds were finding uniform costs unaffordable, which is not surprising given the cost of living crisis affecting so many parents. The hon. Member speaks as a former school governor and therefore with deep experience. Does he agree that we need to reduce the cost of uniforms, because parents are struggling and, as a consequence, children’s education is suffering too?
Neil O'Brien
That is a very helpful intervention, because it lets me say what I was about to say next. We obviously want to reduce the cost of school uniform, but really, we want to reduce the cost of clothing children overall. If we have the kind of backfiring effects that a number of Members on both sides have pointed out, we will not achieve that.
Catherine Atkinson
The shadow Minister’s new clause 56 sets out specific things in great detail. It seems really odd that he has a concern about micromanagement in light of the provisions he has tabled.
Neil O'Brien
The hon. Lady is quite right to point out the tension between wanting to avoid micromanagement and saying that if we are in the business of prescription, we might do some sensible things. I wanted to offer a positive suggestion rather than simply critique what the Government are doing, which is why that is there. Indeed, a lot of schools are already doing it. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but one reason why Whitehall micromanagement is a bad idea is that rules dreamed up by civil service mandarins in London often go wrong when they make contact with the real world. That is exactly what has happened here.
I have no doubt that Ministers’ intentions for clause 23 are good, but it will have the opposite effect to the one they intend. It may well make things more expensive for parents—not less. That will hit many schools. Ministers said, in answer to a written question, that
“based on the Department’s 2023 cost of school uniforms survey of parents, we estimate that one third of primary schools and seven in ten secondary schools will have to remove compulsory branded items from their uniforms to comply”.
Instead of measures the Government could have brought forward in the Bill—things that the polls show are teacher priorities such as discipline, as Teacher Tapp shows—we will have at least 8,000 schools spending their time reviewing their uniform policy.
Worst of all, this may well end up increasing costs for parents overall. Many secondary schools will respond to this new primary legislation by stopping having uniform PE kit, at which point, highly brand-aware kids will push parents to have stuff from Adidas or Nike or whatever instead, which will be more expensive. What do we think that school leaders will get rid of in response to the new rules? We know that according to the Government, lots of them will have to change their uniforms in response to this.
In a poll of school leaders last year, more than half said that the first things they would remove in the event of such restrictions would be PE kit, but uniform PE kit is cheaper than sportswear brands; it is nearly half the price for secondary school kids. I worry that the Government have a sort of tunnel vision here. They want to cut the cost of uniform, but we really want to cut the cost of clothing children overall. The problem is that when we get rid of uniform, particularly PE kit, what will fill the space is often more expensive and worse.
David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)
I speak as a parent of a child at a secondary school with branded PE kit, so I have some interest in this. Maybe my understanding is wrong, but surely any responsible school following this becoming law, as I hope it does, would still have a uniform? Uniform does not have to be branded to be uniform. This would not necessarily mean that it would be a free for all and that children would be encouraged to turn up in all sorts of branded sports gear. They can still wear plain sports clothes that are uniform and are not hugely expensive or branded by international sportswear brands.
Neil O'Brien
That is an incredibly helpful point, because it leads me to the point that the word “branded” here is being used in a very specific way, which is not a particularly natural meaning. Anything specific or anything where there is only a couple of shops that sell it will count as branded. For example, I think of the rugby jumper that I used to wear when I was doing rugby league in Huddersfield in the 1990s. It was a red jumper with a blue stripe. If it was freezing cold and snowing, I could reverse it. That jumper was branded. It did not have any brand on it—it was not sportswear—but anything like that is captured in the provision. I also remember that when I was at school, in summer we had very unbranded clothing. The school said, “You can have a black T-shirt.” What happened? Everyone had a black Nike or Adidas T-shirt, so more expensive stuff fills the space.
Let us take a worked example and think about the primary school that my children go to, which is typical. They have a jumper and a tie in the winter. My daughter has a summer dress. They have a PE hoodie, a PE T-shirt and a plastic book bag, so they are a couple of items over the limit. Our children are at a really typical state primary, so which of those items do Ministers want them to drop?
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
It is up to the school.
Neil O'Brien
If they drop the book bag, other bags will likely be more expensive. My kids are quite young, so they are not very brand-aware, but we will end up with a request for a branded bag and something more expensive. [Interruption.]
Neil O'Brien
If we get rid of the PE tops for the older kids, we will end up with branded sportswear stuff. [Interruption.] If Members want to intervene, they can do so.
I watched the kids in a London secondary school arriving for school the other day, and it was really apparent from watching them that the expensive thing for their parents was not the uniform, but the expensive branded coats that they were wearing over them. All the fashion brands were on display. I worry that we are missing the pressure that is put on parents to get this stuff when we take out uniforms. It is ironic that the word used in the legislation is “branded” school uniform, when fashion brands—real brands—will fill the space that Ministers are creating by trying to micromanage schools.
I will talk about sports teams and amendment 91, which I will press to a vote. There is a specific problem here. The explanatory notes to the Bill state that an item of branded uniform will be considered compulsory if a pupil is required to have it
“to participate in any lesson, club, activity or event facilitated by the school during that year. This means that it includes items required for PE and sport. This applies whether the lesson, club, event or activity is compulsory or optional (i.e. even if an activity is optional, if a pupil requires a branded item of uniform to participate”,
it will count towards the cap. It is clear that that means that if there is a sports team and it has a kit, that would count towards one of the three branded items. The explanatory notes make that absolutely clear.
If there is more than one school team, the problem is even worse. If a school had a sports team for athletics, rugby, swimming, football or whatever it might be, pupils would use up the entire limit of items doing that. This is effectively as good as a national ban on having school sports team kits. This is micromanagement gone wrong.
Neil O'Brien
I would also welcome an intervention from the Ministers if they want to say why this is wrong.
Amanda Martin
Having taught in schools and had schools sports teams, we have kits within the school. When pupils represent their school teams, the kits are washed and given out to the children, because that means that all children get a chance to participate. Schools might not have the same football or rugby team. Those kits belong to the school and are taken in and washed, so it does not stop children of all abilities and backgrounds representing their school.
Neil O'Brien
That is another hugely helpful intervention, because it lets me say two things. First, the clause as drafted does not help, because it uses the words “to have”. Unless the Government accept our amendments, the fact that the kits are being given does not make any difference, because the legislation does not say that. Secondly, there is an implicit assumption in the hon. Lady’s intervention that all schools will, from now on, have to pay for all this themselves. It is generous of her to make the huge funding commitment to schools that she has just mentioned, but unfortunately I do not think that the Ministers have come up with the money to do what she says.
We know why there are school sports teams. We do not expect English, Scottish or Welsh football teams to have a single kit. There is a reason why teams have a kit, yet that will effectively be banned by the clause. Amendment 91, which I will press to a vote, would exempt school sports teams. The DFE’s current suggestion on what schools should do in this situation is to give pupils kit, as the hon. Member for Portsmouth North said, but even that would not work under the clause unless the Government accept amendments 29 and 30. We have also tabled the amendments because the Bill as drafted potentially bans schools from asking children to wear “more than three” compulsory branded items even if the school has provided them for free, which is obviously bizarre. That is why our amendment would change “have” to “buy”.
That brings me to amendment 31, which is a practical one to correct what I think is a drafting error. At the moment, if a child grows out of, or loses, or damages a branded item, then parents will not have to replace that item within the academic year because the Bill says that they cannot be asked to “have more than three” items during a school year. If schools are allowed to require three branded items, then they should obviously be allowed to require that those items are replaced otherwise, effectively, uniform policy becomes unenforceable.
Instead of all this backfiring micromanagement, our new clause 25 points toward a different, more effective way to reduce costs for parents. Some 70% of schools already offer second-hand uniforms. Our amendment just aims to get schools doing what many others already are. As the parent of primary school children, I know how much is already passed on from sibling to sibling and from family to family outside school, though that is something that is obviously much less likely to happen with non-uniform items.
Finally, it says in the notes of the Bill that parents can make a complaint to the Department and that
“The department will be able to act when it is found that a school has not complied with the limit”. I feel that Ministers should have better things to do with their time than to try and fail to micromanage schools and determine whether the PE kit at Little Snoddington primary school is compliant. After so many attempts at micromanagement, I just worry that this is going to backfire and the cost in the end to parents is going to be higher.
Amanda Martin
While I have the utmost respect for the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, I want to draw his attention to the real world of parents, the cost of uniforms, the impact of negativity on pupils. As a former teacher and a parent of three lads who did not all go to the same school, so could not always have their clothes passed down, I am really pleased to see clause 23. We have heard from the Children’s Commissioner that this is an issue for so many children, through her big ambition conversation on behalf of children. We also see a BBC survey that notes how senior teachers, and I have been one of these, have helped parents buy uniform and have provided school uniform. That is done by so many staff in our schools across the country and it also shows the cost of the hardship that parents and families are under.
The Children’s Society also note in their support that this is “practical and effective”. They do not see it as red tape, as lines being drawn, or as schools being held to account. They actually see it as a real, practical and effective way to help children and to help parents afford uniform. It does not stop schools stipulating a school colour or a standard of uniform, relating to their own uniform policy. It stops uniforms costing the earth. Many parents have emailed me, and one parent said that they stagger the cost of uniform across the year—buying one now and getting another next time, when they get paid. That leaves children—I am guilty of it myself— wearing uniforms that are too big, and that they never grow into. Or worse still, if the uniform is passed down, it might be worn out because siblings have worn it, or a cousin has worn it, or a neighbour has worn it before donating it to the kids. The clause stops children feeling self-conscious and really uncomfortable in school. It gives them a sense of dignity while they are in their school place and—we all know— if they feel pride in who they are and feel confident, it helps with learning and with being able to take part fully in education.
Catherine Atkinson
Does my hon. Friend agree that what has been presented suggests that families must choose between branded uniform and fashion brands? Does this clause open up options for parents so that they can have more affordable uniform for their children and save the family money?
Amanda Martin
Absolutely, and it does not stop schools also having their own recycling for uniform, which many, many do. I will give a mention to the fabulous Penelope Ann, the only family owned uniform shop we have in Portsmouth, which works with schools to offer the best cost price they can on blazers and other uniform pieces to everyone across the city, allowing parents to top up, whether they want to buy trousers in that shop, or a supermarket, or go to another place to buy the extra uniform. In reality, three pieces of uniform could be a PE T-shirt, a book bag, and a school jumper. Those are three things that it could be, and that every child would be able to have. If they are in secondary school, it could be a blazer. It is on us to make sure. We have to check that schools are working with this. For example, Penelope Ann could offer schools a mark-up price on that blazer. It may well be that one school says, “No, thank you,” but that other schools do mark it up. It is for us to check and make sure that the reality is that every single child can wear a piece of uniform and feel part of their school.
In short, it is common sense. It makes uniforms affordable for all kids and it is what parents and children have been asking for.
Damian Hinds
We all share the objective of trying to keep costs down and reduce costs where possible. That is why we have guidance to schools on school uniform costs and why that guidance became statutory guidance. It is utterly extraordinary to talk about writing this level of detail about uniform policy into primary legislation.
In our previous days’ discussions on the Bill, we have said we will come back to all manner of really important things in delegated legislation, which can be more easily updated. For some reason, this measure needs to be written into an Act of Parliament.
Amanda Martin
The previous Government did take steps on uniform, but they are obviously not working, because parents are paying extortionate amounts of money for uniform. We need to look at what is going wrong. This is a way to help support parents.
Damian Hinds
If the Chair will indulge me, I will just read a brief extract of the statutory guidance:
“Parents should not have to think about the cost of a school uniform when choosing which school(s) to apply for. Therefore, schools need to ensure that their uniform is affordable.
In considering cost, schools will need to think about the total cost of school uniforms, taking into account all items of uniform or clothing parents will need to provide…
Schools should keep the use of branded items to a minimum.
Single supplier contracts should be avoided unless regular tendering competitions are run…This contract should be retendered at least every 5 years.
Schools should ensure that second-hand uniforms are available for parents to acquire”—
and that information needs to be readily available, and schools should
“engage with parents and pupils when they are developing their school uniform policy.”
Matt Bishop
I wonder about the word “minimum”. What is minimum? Is it 10 items, five items, 20 items?
Damian Hinds
What the guidance is saying to a headteacher is, “We trust you to be able to make judgements.” By the way, the Department gives guidance to schools on all manner of things, within which schools then make judgements on what is right, but it is statutory guidance, which means they have to have regard to every element in it.
I think it sounds like pretty good guidance. It is comprehensive. Unlike the clause that will become part of an Act of Parliament, it does not just focus on one aspect of cost. It talks about all the aspects.
Amanda Martin
The provision would not be in the Bill if the guidance was working. I have already made this comment. What tracking and monitoring has been done of the statutory guidance? It is obviously not working. We hear from parents who are being charged £100 for a blazer, or a rugby top, which has been mentioned—some of those are £50.
Damian Hinds
With deep respect, and I absolutely acknowledge the experience that the hon. Lady brings to the subject, there is nothing in the Bill to stop someone being charged £100 for a blazer. That is my point. It homes in on one aspect of the cost of kitting out a child to go to school and ignores the others.
I think the advice is good, and I wonder what makes the Government think that they can come up with a better formulation than trusting individual schools to make that decision—why they think they can come up with something that is going to work for 22,000 schools.
The hon. Lady says it obviously is not working. In the most recent school uniform survey done by the DFE in 2023, parents and carers were significantly more likely—twice as likely—to report that their school facilitated purchase of second-hand uniform. It had been 32% of parents, but now it is up to 65%.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston covered how the text as laid out in the Bill uses the word “branded”, but that includes not only where there is a school name or logo but if
“as a result of its colour, design, fabric or other distinctive characteristic, it is only available from particular suppliers.”
It covers rather more items than the lay reader might expect when talking about branded items.
There will be a maximum of three branded items in primary school, and four in secondary school if the fourth is a tie. What have the Government got against ties in primary schools? I put down a written parliamentary question on that, and I got an answer back that explained that the vast majority of primary schools do not have a tie. That is true—but some do. Why is it that Ministers sitting in Sanctuary Buildings think that because most do not have a tie, no one should be allowed to have a tie in year 6?
My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston already asked, and it is also in the amendment in his name, why the Bill specifies one cannot have more than three branded items, rather than require the purchase of more than three. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North outlined a case where the school might decide that a good use of its funds is to provide an item. It might not be sports gear—it might be a book bag—but as currently drafted, the school would not be allowed to do that.
The clause includes the phrase “during a school year”. That is peculiar wording. I do not know of any school that requires the use of uniform outside of the school year, so what is the purpose of that —what is it getting at? I presume that it means that there cannot be a summer uniform and a winter uniform, and not that it means one cannot replace an item part way through the year. First, it would be helpful to know that for sure, and secondly, it highlights again the craziness of writing that level of detail into an Act of Parliament. Schools are already obliged in the statutory guidance to ensure that uniform cost should not be a factor in school choice. Why not trust them to work out how best to do that, rather than have that level of prescription?
The hon. Member for Twickenham also made the point that the cost of uniform is not only about the number of items, but a mix of what the uniform is, the supplier price, the negotiation with suppliers, and the availability of second-hand uniform. Some schools will provide free uniform through a uniform exchange in certain cases. If I had to pick, I would contend that the bigger factor is the availability of second-hand uniform, rather than having one extra item. As I said earlier, many schools now provide that.
I also ask for clarity about optional items. For example, with a woolly hat, a school may say, “You do not have to have a woolly hat, but if you do, it should be a school woolly hat.” I am not clear whether that would be captured by the regulations. On the question of grandfathering, are we saying that from the moment that the Bill becomes an Act, the rules take effect whatever year in school someone is currently in, or are we saying that it applies to new entrants to key stage 1, key stage 2, year 7 or a middle school? If not, does that mean that a pupil already in school could say, “You can’t enforce your existing uniform policy on me”?
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Vicky Foxcroft.)
Finance Bill (Third sitting)
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Good morning everyone. Will Members please ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent? We continue line-by-line consideration of the Finance Bill. The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. It shows how the clauses, schedules and selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. If any Member wishes to press an amendment in a group to a vote—this includes the new clauses that have already been debated—they need to let me know before we reach them on the amendment paper.
Clause 57
Rate bands etc for tax years 2028-29 and 2029-30
Question (28 January) again proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee with you as Chair, Ms Vaz. Tuesday’s debate on this clause concluded before we came to the decision, but I think the Opposition indicated that they would not oppose it. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 57 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 58
EBTs: prohibition on applying property for benefit of participators etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
James Murray
Clauses 58 to 60 make changes to strengthen the conditions that must be met for transfers of shares into an employee benefit trust to be exempt from inheritance tax. An employee benefit trust is a trust that provides benefits and rewards to employees of a company, often in the form of shares in the company. Under certain conditions, such shares are exempt from inheritance tax. All or most employees need to be capable of benefiting from the trust for the inheritance tax exemption to apply, so it cannot be limited to shareholders of the company or family members, for example.
In 2023, the previous Government launched a consultation on employee ownership trusts and employee benefit trusts. The consultation set out concerns that such trusts were increasingly being used as a tax planning vehicle for shareholders and their families, rather than for a wider class of employees. At the autumn Budget, the current Government responded to that consultation and announced changes to strengthen the conditions that must be met for the transfer of shares into an employee benefit trust to be exempt from inheritance tax.
The changes made by clause 58 will mean that restrictions on shareholders and their family members benefiting from an employee benefit trust must apply for the entire lifetime of the trust. The clause will address cases in which the trust deed allows individuals who are closely connected with a shareholder to benefit after the participator’s death. The clause ensures that the Government’s position is explicitly clear in legislation. The change will come into effect on Royal Assent.
Previously, family members of the shareholder who were excluded from benefiting from the capital of the trust could still receive income payments from the trust. The changes made by clause 59 will ensure that no more than 25% of employees who can receive income payments from an employee benefit trust may be family members of the shareholder. This reinforces the original policy intent of employee benefit trusts to reward and motivate a wide group of employees.
Previously, an individual could set up a company, immediately make a transfer of shares to an employee benefit trust, and obtain an inheritance tax exemption. The changes made by clause 60 will mean that shares must have been held for at least two years before being transferred into the employee benefit trust. The provision will take into account shares held prior to any share reorganisation, and will strengthen protections against employee benefit trusts being used purely for inheritance tax planning purposes.
Clauses 59 and 60 are treated as having come into effect for transfers of value to new and existing trusts on or after 30 October 2024. The clauses will ensure that the tax treatment of employee benefit trusts is consistent with the original policy intent of rewarding and motivating employees, while minimising opportunities for abuse. I commend them to the Committee.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Bourne) (Con)
It is, as always, a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz.
As the Minister set out, clauses 58 to 60 make amendments to requirements for inheritance tax exemptions involving employee benefit trusts. Clause 58 provides that restrictions on shareholders and connected persons benefiting from employee benefit trusts will now apply for the lifetime of the trust. Clause 59 provides that no more than 25% of employees who receive income payments from an EBT can be connected to the shareholders in the company. Clause 60 provides that shares will now need to have been held for at least two years prior to being transferred to the EBT.
As the Minister said, the measures follow on from the consultation launched in 2023, which we referred to when we discussed clause 31 and employee ownership trusts. Although we will not oppose the clauses, I would be grateful if the Minister could comment on one specific issue that was raised during the consultation on the changes. In response to the measure introduced by clause 59, concerns were raised at consultation on behalf of smaller companies using EBTs that may now be forced to exclude certain employees from participating in share scheme arrangements in order to comply with the new requirement. What was the Minister’s assessment of that particular impact? Is he content that the benefits of the changes outweigh that particular risk cited in during the consultation?
James Murray
I welcome the Opposition’s support for the clauses, which build on the consultation that started when they were in office. The shadow Minister’s question related to what effect the changes might have on small businesses in particular. I will try to answer now, but he is free to contact me if he feels I have not covered his point fully.
The changes we are making to employee benefit trusts will not have an adverse effect on small businesses, because the original policy intent of exempting transfers of value to employee benefit trusts from inheritance tax was to encourage businesses to reward and motivate a wide range of employees. To qualify for the exemption, conditions need to be met that ensure that EBTs that benefit only shareholders and their families, or other people closely connected to shareholders, do not receive preferential inheritance tax treatment. Given that that is the aim in the principles behind the clauses, I am confident that they will not have the adverse effect that the shadow Minister fairly raised. I hope that provides him with some reassurance.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 58 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 59 and 60 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 61
Agricultural property relief: environmental management agreements
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
James Murray
The clause extends the scope of agricultural property relief from 6 April this year to land managed under certain environmental agreements. Agricultural property relief is an inheritance tax relief that reduces the amount that farmers and landowners must pay on land and other property that is owned and occupied for the purposes of agriculture. That will usually be land or pasture that is used to grow crops or to rear animals. Currently, access to APR may be lost where such land is taken out of agricultural production. Some tax advisers and industry representatives believe that provides a potential barrier for some farmers, particularly tenant farmers, to enter certain environmental land management agreements. Following consultation, the previous Government announced that they would extend agricultural property relief to such agreements.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
It is of course welcome that more land is to be brought under the scope of agricultural property relief, but given the introduction of the £1 million cap on agricultural property, is it not somewhat redundant? I know the Government use different numbers, but the industry believes that the majority of farms will be over that threshold anyway, so bringing more land within the scope of APR does not actually make much difference to the bill they will have to pay at the end.
James Murray
As the hon. Lady knows, because we have debated this many times, the data that we have published, based on His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs data, shows that the large majority of small farms will not be affected. I am sure she knows well the statistics on the 530 farms affected by the reforms to APR and business property relief in ’26-27, because she will have seen them in the Chancellor’s letter to the Treasury Committee and we have discussed them many times in this place.
Clause 61 relates specifically to land managed under certain environmental agreements, and was a measure proposed by the last Government. If the hon. Lady allows me to continue explaining why the clause is important, she might feel able to support it, given the benefits it will bring. The clause was welcomed by the sector, and the Government agree with the approach. I can confirm that there have been no changes to the design outlined by the previous Government in March 2024, which is why I hope to get the Opposition’s support for the clause.
As a result of the changes made by clause 61, from 6 April 2025 APR will be available for land managed under an environmental agreement with or on behalf of the UK Government, devolved Governments, public bodies, local authorities or approved responsible bodies. This includes but is not limited to the environmental land management schemes in England and equivalent schemes elsewhere in the UK, as well as any agreement that was live on or after 6 March 2024.
The Government are fully committed to increasing the uptake of environmental land management schemes in England, and we are providing the largest ever budget of £1.8 billion for this in 2025-26. The changes made by clause 61 will ensure that the tax system is not a barrier to uptake, thereby supporting farmers and land managers to deliver, alongside food production, significant and important outcomes for the climate and environment. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Gareth Davies
As the Minister said, clause 61 brings land managed under an environmental agreement—be that with the UK Government, devolved Governments, public bodies, local authorities or approved responsible bodies—within the scope of agricultural property relief.
I am afraid we have here Labour taking with one hand and providing far less with the other. For the £5 million, which we welcome, that they will give back to farmers each year with this measure, they will take away some £500 million a year through the family farm tax, if the Office for Budget Responsibility’s highly uncertain costings are to be believed. Many farmers, and bodies such as the National Farmers Union, have raised concerns about this. The Chartered Institute of Taxation has queried why the relief remains limited to schemes entered into with public authorities, rather than allowing enterprising landowners to enter into other schemes. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that, but we will not oppose the measure.
James Murray
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the measure. He made wider points about reforms to agricultural property relief, which we have debated several times. The clause focuses in a targeted way on environmental land management schemes.
The hon. Gentleman asked why private environmental land management that is outside of agreements is not included. I confirm that relief will be available for land managed under an environmental agreement with or on behalf of the UK Government, devolved Governments, public bodies, local authorities or approved responsible bodies. This will ensure that the extension of the relief applies only where there are high, verifiable environmental standards.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 61 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 62
National Savings Bank: statements from HMRC no longer to be required
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
James Murray
The clause makes changes to remove requirements in limited circumstances that the National Savings Bank, more commonly known as NS&I, obtains from HMRC a statement of inheritance tax paid before making a payment. The regulations concerned are consolidated regulations that confer powers and administrative obligations on NS&I which, before paying out a deceased person’s national savings and securities to personal representatives, must make due diligence checks, such as whether the payee has a grant of probate.
The changes made by the clause remove the requirement to contact HMRC directly to check inheritance tax paid in limited circumstances, including certain domicile conditions. This is no longer required in line with the modern compliance processes. This is a minor change that is connected to, but slightly out of scope of, the reforms for non-UK-domiciled individuals. It is consequential on the non-UK-domicile reforms. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Gareth Davies
The Minister may think that this is a minor issue—and he will be pleased to know that I agree with him. [Laughter.] I am just waking everybody up. The requirement is redundant and we will not oppose the clause.
James Murray
I applaud the hon. Gentleman’s theatre in delivering his response, and welcome his support.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 62 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 63
Rates of alcohol duty
Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)
I beg to move amendment 66, in clause 63, page 68, line 10, leave out “£32.79” and insert “£31.64”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 64 stand part.
New clause 2—Review of sections 63 and 64—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within six months of the passing of this Act and every six months thereafter, review the impact of the measures contained in sections 63 and 64 of this Act.
(2) Each review must consider the impact of the measures on—
(a) Scotch whisky distilleries,
(b) small spirit distilleries,
(c) wine producers and wholesalers,
(d) the hospitality industry, and
(e) those operating in the night-time economy.
(3) Each review must also examine the expected effect of the measures on exports and the domestic wine trade.
(4) A report setting out the findings of each review must be published and laid before both Houses of Parliament.”
New clause 4—Statements on increasing alcohol duty—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within six months of this Act being passed, make a statement to Parliament about the increase to alcohol duty introduced by section 63 of this Act.
(2) The statement under subsection (1) must include details of the impact on—
(a) hospitality sector,
(b) pubs, and
(c) UK wine sector.”
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to make a statement about the impact of increasing alcohol duty.
Mr MacDonald
The amendment would mean the relevant rate of duty would be unchanged from last year. I am one of the few MPs from Scotland on the Committee, but I am sure I am not alone in understanding the vital importance of the Scotch whisky industry not just to Scotland but to the UK economy. However, it bears repeating just how significant the industry is, and I would like to highlight a few key statistics.
Scotland is home to the production of 70% of UK spirits—whisky, gin and vodka. In 2023, Scotch whisky accounted for 74% of Scotland’s food and drink exports, and the industry employed 41,000 people in Scotland and an additional 25,000 throughout the UK. The Prime Minister himself recognised the importance of the industry. He went to the InchDairnie distillery in November 2023, and afterwards tweeted:
“Labour will put growth at the heart of our government and back Scotch producers to the hilt.”
The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) echoed this sentiment when he co-signed a letter to the Chancellor prior to the Budget, urging her to:
“Back one of our great industries, undo the damage of last year’s duty increase, and allow Scotch Whisky to deliver for the economy.”
Despite those commitments, the 2024 autumn Budget fails to deliver the support that the Scotch whisky industry so urgently needs.
A new survey reveals that 43% of 18 to 34-year-olds have given up drinking alcohol entirely. The share prices of the biggest two spirit companies halved over the past year. The Bill proposes 1p off a pint of beer, which I think we can all agree is a bit of a stunt, while increasing the tax on spirits by 32p, with a related VAT increase of 6p. That means that the duty is £9.18 on a standard bottle of vodka, gin or Scotch whisky.
Over the past 16 years, the duty on spirits has doubled. I am concerned, and so are many others, that we are plucking the golden goose one time too many. UK alcohol duty is the highest in the G7. A double measure of spirits is taxed four times more than the average-strength pint of cider in pubs, even when the cider contains more alcohol. Effectively, we are taxing whisky, gin and vodka four times as much.
What is worse, this punitive duty does not even deliver more revenue for the Treasury. This is an important point. Last year, the previous Government increased the duty on spirits by 10.1%, but according to HMRC the revenue from the duty fell by £237 million in the following 17 months. That clearly demonstrates that higher taxes on Scotch and spirits do not lead to higher revenue. The increase was forecast to bring in £800 million. Revenue from the duty has therefore fallen dramatically.
I understand that in recent years alcohol duty has risen in line with inflation under the new system. However, freezing it in this Budget would send a clear message that the Government stand behind one of our greatest industries. The troubled hospitality industry and the Scotch whisky industry do not need hollow words of support: they need meaningful action. I urge the Government to freeze alcohol duty on Scotch whisky and other spirits, and keep their promise. The Prime Minister said that we need to
“back Scotch producers to the hilt.”
Let us give this industry the angels’ share that it deserves.
Gareth Davies
My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk will speak to this clause, Ms Vaz.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I apologise for the confusion on our side, Ms Vaz. The Committee will be pleased to know that I have lots to say on this clause, so we can all settle in for a while.
Clause 63 increases the headline rate of alcohol duty in line with the retail price index, provides a reduction to the rates for draught alcoholic products and cuts to the rates paid by eligible small producers. The Government have also chosen not to extend the temporary easement for certain wine products. I say at the outset that His Majesty’s Opposition is a strong supporter of the broader alcohol sector, and we have some concerns about the impact that some of the provisions will have on important sectors. As well as speaking to clauses 63 and 64, I will speak to new clause 4, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne.
In 2023, the previous Government introduced a progressive strength-based duty system following the alcohol duty review, which was the biggest review of alcohol duties for more than 140 years. The new and simplified alcohol duty rates system was based on the common-sense principle of taxing alcohol by strength, with the aim of modernising the existing duties, supporting businesses and meeting our public health objectives. That was the first time that public health objectives had been inserted into the alcohol duty system. The reforms also introduced two new reliefs: the draught relief to reduce the duty burden on draught products sold at on-trade venues, and small producer relief.
At the autumn statement 2023, the previous Government froze alcohol duty rates until August 2024, and that was extended until February 2025 at the following Budget. According to the OBR, alcohol duty receipts are expected to raise £12.4 billion this year, falling by 0.6% compared with last year as the rates remain frozen, but receipts are then forecast to increase by 5% a year on average, to reach £15.9 billion by the end of the Parliament.
Pubs make a huge contribution to our culture, economy and communities. When the Conservatives were in government, we recognised that and introduced a raft of supportive measures, including draught relief, small producer relief and the Brexit pubs guarantee, which I am sure all hon. Members remember and welcome. I therefore welcome the increased draught relief from February, from 9.2% to 13.9%, and the fact that the relative value of small producer relief will be maintained. Although we welcome the inclusion of both reliefs, the increase to draught relief will mean that beer duty on a 5% pint of beer is reduced from 54p to 53p—a 1p saving. I fear that drinkers will not be toasting the Exchequer Secretary over that.
Turning to whisky—although it is a little early in the day for me—as the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire set out, Scotch whisky is one of our most iconic and successful industries. Some 43 bottles of scotch whisky are exported per second and the industry supports more than 66,000 jobs across the UK, many of which are in rural areas. The decision to uprate duty rates by RPI has been met with deep concern by the industry—indeed, the Scotch Whisky Association said that it represents a broken commitment, after the Prime Minister claimed last year that his Government’s trade strategy would
“back Scotch producers to the hilt.”
That sounds rather like the promise that he gave to farmers, which Labour’s family farm tax has broken. The managing director of Diageo said:
“This betrayal will leave a bitter taste for drinkers and pubs, while jeopardising jobs and investment across Scotland.”
I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those comments. Have the Government calculated the risk to jobs in the sector more widely?
A similar picture is painted by the cider industry, which supports more than 11,500 jobs and attracts more than 1 million tourists each year. The National Association of Cider Makers has raised fears that raising the headline rate, alongside the national insurance increases and the family farm tax, could put elements of the UK cider industry at risk. Has the Minister calculated the cumulative impact that these tax rises will have on the sector?
At this point, we should consider the wider context in which we are discussing these increases. Time and again we hear about the Budget placing a range of cost pressures on the hospitality industry, which is a key contributor to the UK economy. According to UKHospitality:
“In the past six years, hospitality has increased its annual economic contribution by £20 billion to £93 billion.”
The tax rises in the Budget, including the £25 billion a year jobs tax, will make it much harder for the industry to succeed. Just look at the impact of recent measures. Colliers, a professional property services company, reported that cutting the hospitality business rate relief from 75% to 40% means that restaurants will face a bill of, on average, over £13,000 a year, up from £5,500.
Mr MacDonald
Will the Minister comment on whether, when the Government fix all these additional taxes, they take into account what happens in Scotland, where many in the hospitality industry do not get business rate relief? We are getting it twice on exactly the same issue.
James Wild
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point that I am sure the Minister will want to cover when he responds.
The average bill for pubs will go from £4,000 to £9,642 a year. Any hon. Member who talks to hospitality businesses in their constituency will know the real-world challenges they are facing. As it happens, my favourite pub in my constituency closed its doors on Sunday, in part due to the increased costs and taxes the sector is facing. Have the Government considered the impact of the combination of these tax rises on pubs and the wider sector?
Turning to wine, as part of our reforms we introduced a wine easement for 18 months until February 2025. The Minister will be aware of the concerns of some in the sector that because that easement is coming to an end, duty will increase by 98p in just over 18 months. While we support the transition to the new regime and the end of the easement, I would be grateful if the Minister clarified what engagement he has had to understand how prepared the industry is for the new system.
We have many incredible wineries here in the UK. In 2023, sales rose 10% to reach nearly 9 million bottles. Supporting domestic wine producers should be a priority. In my constituency, I am fortunate to have Burn Valley winery, Cobble Hill winery and others. They are producing great products, proving very popular and helping to improve the rural economy and employment. However, growers have higher production and establishment costs, which will be made more challenging by the tax rises in these clauses and the wider Budget.
To support the industry, WineGB has proposed the introduction of a cellar door duty relief scheme modelled on the Australian scheme, to promote wine tourism, which a VisitBritain survey demonstrated could attract 16 million visitors. The Government have an ambitious target to increase annual visits to the UK to 50 million by 2030—up from 38 million last year. In the spirit of trying to help the Government lift their foot off the growth brake lever, perhaps the Minister will have a look at that idea and consider whether introducing it has any merit.
It is because of the challenges facing producers and the hospitality sector that we have tabled new clause 4, which would require the Chancellor, within six months of the Bill being passed, to make a statement to Parliament about the impact on various sectors of the increases in alcohol duties. As we have heard, increases to duty rates place significant additional costs on hospitality, pubs, whisky, spirits, wine, cider and other sectors, and we are concerned that this could inhibit growth and business investment. The previous Government recognised the significant contribution made by those sectors and saw an increase in business investment in the hospitality sector. Given the headwinds facing alcohol producers and hospitality businesses, which support so many jobs, it is only right that the Government report back to Parliament on the impact of their choices.
Clause 64 abolishes the duty stamps scheme for spirit drinks from 1 May 2025, fulfilling a commitment made by the Conservative Government in the spring Budget. We welcome this. The scheme was important when it was introduced, but it became an increasingly diminishing part of HMRC’s compliance response. Unnecessary regulation should of course be removed where possible, and I welcome this Government’s apparent commitment to deregulation, as set out in the Chancellor’s speech, though it would have more credibility if the Government were not also bringing forward the unemployment Bill that will add £4.5 billion to business costs.
As I set out, we support this change to reduce administrative burdens. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the concerns I have raised on behalf of the sector and producers in relation to these clauses.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. May I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? I own a bar called Cellar Door—though not the same cellar door as the ones the hon. Member for North West Norfolk just referred to.
I want to speak about wine and the hospitality and night-time economy in general. Under the current regime of the wine easement, 85% of all wine sold in the UK is subject to the same rate of duty. That is now to be replaced by 30 different rates. That fails to take account of fundamental differences between wine and other manufactured alcoholic drinks.
The alcohol by volume of wine cannot be predicted with precision before or during the wine-making process. The alcohol content is stable only at the point when the wine goes into the bottle. The ABV varies between different years and different vats. Until bottling, we do not know the ABV of a particular bottle of wine. It therefore creates huge uncertainty about price and profit margins for the industry if there are different rates of duty depending on the specific ABV, down to a gradation of 0.1% ABV. This is particularly important with low-cost wines. The point is that this regime is utterly impractical for wine producers and wine merchants.
Hal Wilson, co-founder of Cambridge Wine Merchants, told me:
“In my business this feels like death by a thousand cuts, or even two thousand cuts. We sell over 2,000 different wines each year and from February will need to know the precise ABV of each and every one before being able to calculate their full cost. For each 0.1% ABV difference there is a different amount of tax to be paid.”
I wrote to the Minister about this and got a long and detailed response, for which I am grateful. He made the point that HMRC will change its practices and accept the ABV on the label of the bottle to the nearest 0.5%, but that is current practice; it is not in the legislation as I understand it, and it is still far too complex and much of my criticism still holds. Secondly, the letter fundamentally misunderstands why people drink wine. Wine is consumed for the taste, not the strength. An ABV goes through the taste profile. Compare a light Beaujolais with a robust Rioja. It is all about taste, not about whether it is stronger so one can get more drunk. That is not how people consume wine.
The hospitality and the night-time economy industry is facing an existential crisis owing to rising energy prices, recent inflation, labour shortages following Brexit, changes to commuting patterns and the more than doubling of business rates. Now, alcohol duties are to be another burden. It is death by a thousand cuts. Every incremental cost makes survival more difficult. That is why we are asking for a review after six months to see the effect on the wine industry, hospitality industry, night-time economy and other industries.
James Murray
I will attempt to address the points raised by the Opposition parties. Let me make it clear that clause 63 makes changes to the alcohol duty rates from 1 February 2025. Alcohol duty rates for products qualifying for draft relief will be cut by 1.7% to take a penny of duty off an average-strength pint, while rates of all other products will increase by the retail price index.
The Chair
You can respond to the debate at the end. Would you still like to make an intervention?
James Murray
As I was saying, the clause also increases the relative value of small producer relief for both draught and non-draught products, and clause 64 ends the alcohol duty stamps scheme. To reassure Members, in consideration of what position to take at the autumn Budget, I had meetings and officials had further meetings with representatives from the wine, beer, spirits and cider industries, as well as with public health people, to understand the full range of opinions and how we could carefully calibrate our policy response.
Harriet Cross
The Scotch Whisky Association is not on the list of people the Minister met. Can he confirm whether he did meet the association?
James Murray
The association is included under “spirits”.
As we know, alcohol duty is frozen until 1 February. The OBR’s baseline, reflected in its forecast, is that alcohol duty will be uprated by RPI inflation each year. The Government have decided to maintain the value of alcohol duty for non-draught products by uprating it from 1 February. At the same time we are recognising the social and economic importance of pubs, as well as the fact that they promote more responsible drinking, by cutting duty for draught products, which account for the majority of alcohol sold in pubs.
A progressive strength-based duty system was introduced on 1 August 2023 by the previous Government following the alcohol duty review. The reforms introduced two new reliefs: a draught relief to reduce the duty burden on draught products sold in on-trade venues, and small producer relief that replaced the previous small brewers relief. The clause increases the generosity of both reliefs.
The alcohol duty stamps scheme is an anti-fraud measure applied to larger containers of high-strength alcoholic products, typically spirits. It requires the mandatory stamping of certain retail containers with a duty stamp. In 2022, HMRC was commissioned to review the effectiveness of the scheme. It found that it is outdated, susceptible to being undermined and now plays a diminished compliance role, and concluded that the cost and administrative burdens imposed on the spirits industry could no longer be justified. The previous Government announced the end of the scheme at spring Budget 2024. That is a decision that this Government will implement from 1 May 2025. That date was chosen after consultation with businesses, which requested sufficient time to prepare.
Clause 63 makes four changes. First, it increases the rates of alcohol duty for non-draught products to reflect RPI inflation. Secondly, it reduces the rates of alcohol duty on draught products by 1.7%. Thirdly, it amends the tables in schedule 9 to the Finance (No. 2) Act 2023 that are used by small producers to calculate their duty discount under small producer relief. This increases the value of small producer relief for both draught and non-draught products in relation to the main rates for these products.
In cash terms, the current cash discount given to small producers for draught products is maintained, while the discount provided to small producers for non-draught products is increased. Small producer relief provides the same relative discount, irrespective of whether a product also qualifies for draught relief. As a consequence of the RPI increase in non-draught rates, it increases the simplified rates in schedule 2 to the Travellers’ Allowances Order 1994, which is used for calculating duty on alcoholic products brought into Great Britain.
Some hon. Members raised questions about the impact of these measures on pubs and the hospitality industry. To support the hospitality industry, particularly recognising the role that pubs play in local communities, the Government have announced a reduction in the alcohol duty rates paid on draught products. This reduces businesses’ total duty bill by up to £100 million a year and increases the duty differential between draught and non-draught products from 9.2% to 13.9% for qualifying beer and cider.
As we have mentioned a couple of times in this debate, the reduction to draught relief rates will also result in the average alcoholic strength pint at 4.58% ABV paying 1% less in duty. Draught relief provides a reduced rate of duty on draught products below 8.5% ABV packaged in containers of at least 20 litres designed to connect to a qualifying system for dispensing drinks.
Clause 64 ends the alcohol duty stamps scheme from 1 May this year, removing the provisions in the Finance (No. 2) Act 2023 and the secondary legislation in the Duty Stamps Regulations 2006. It also makes consequential changes and removes references to the scheme where they appear elsewhere in legislation.
Amendment 66 would freeze alcohol duty for alcoholic products above 22% ABV. That is contrary to the Chancellor’s decision at the autumn Budget to increase those duty rates to reflect inflation, and would cost the Exchequer £150 million a year.
Specifically in relation to the Scotch whisky industry, I would like to set out that the overall alcohol package balances commercial pressures on the alcohol industry with the need to raise revenue for our vital public services and reduce alcohol-related harms. Consumers and brewers in Scotland will benefit in line with the rest of the UK, with consumption and production patterns roughly equal nationwide. Of course, 90% of Scotch whisky is exported, which means it pays no duty. The Scotch Whisky Association’s own figures show the health of the industry. The Budget offers support to the Scotch whisky industry by removing the alcohol duty stamps scheme, which we have just considered, and through investment in the spirit drinks verification scheme by reducing fees for geographical verification.
New clauses 2 and 4, which were also tabled by Opposition Members, would require the Chancellor to make additional statements about the impact of the alcohol duty measures. The Government do not believe further statements to be necessary. As usual, a tax information and impact note was published at the autumn Budget, outlining the anticipated impacts of the measures on alcohol producers and the hospitality sector. Alcohol duty, like other taxes, will be reviewed in future Budgets.
New clause 2 also requires a review of the impact on trade, but UK alcohol duty is, of course, not charged on exports. Some hon. Members raised the impact of the changes to business rates on the hospitality sector in Scotland, but business rates are, of course, devolved. The Scottish Government are accountable to the Scottish Parliament on devolved areas.
Hon. Members also raised questions around the wine easement and why it had not been extended or made permanent. I remind them that the wine easement was intended as a transitional arrangement to give the wine industry time to adapt to the strength-based duty calculation for wine. The revised alcohol duty system simplified and reduced differences between categories of alcohol. Making the wine easement permanent would introduce a new differential into the system and add to the complexity of that system. It would further lead to a duty regime in which stronger ABV wines pay less in proportion to their alcohol content than lower ABV wines. Making the wine easement permanent would, therefore, undermine the simplification and public health objectives of the revised alcohol duty system.
In conclusion, the changes to the alcohol duty balance public health objectives, fiscal pressures, cost of living pressures and the economic and social importance of pubs, while also supporting small producers by increasing the generosity of small producer relief. Furthermore, the end of the alcohol duty stamps scheme will simplify procedures for approximately 3,500 registered alcohol importers and producers, reducing overall costs on the spirits industry by an estimated £7 million a year. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee, and urge it to reject amendment 66 and new clauses 2 and 4.
Mr MacDonald
I do not have a great deal to add. I did miss out, when we declared our interests earlier, the fact that I own a pub, which hon. Members are very welcome to visit when they are next in Fort William—do not all rush at once. It never rains there.
I want to come back, briefly, to the 1p a pint reduction that we were promised. The whole hospitality industry and beer industry have come together to agree that that is a stunt, and that that 1p will not be passed on to the customer. It is just not relative at all, because the reduction in business property relief and the national insurance and minimum wage increases effectively mean that the cost to the hospitality industry is going through the roof. The Minister knows that perfectly well, but he still continues to trot out his line.
On the whisky industry, I am not sure that account has been taken of the potential tariffs. We talk about exports being very strong, but they are not actually very strong at the moment.
Lastly, on tax overall, when I make a submission to Scottish Government Ministers about the tax on hospitality, the whisky industry and so on, they all blame Westminster, but when I speak to Westminster Ministers about it, they all blame Scotland. The net result is that industries such as hospitality in Scotland are suffering from both sides, and that is simply not fair.
Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
On business rates, they are clearly devolved to the Scottish Government, so it fully sits within their remit to help the hospitality industry. If we are talking about standing behind the whisky industry, one of the first things that the Secretary of State for Business and Trade did was go to Brazil to work out that protected status for the Scotch whisky industry, which will mean millions of pounds extra in exports to Brazil.
We are also discussing clause 64, which deals with the abolition of duty stamps for alcoholic products, and that will also help the whisky industry. The Government are doing a number of things to support the whisky industry and stand behind it, including the provisions on its tax status and the Secretary of State’s efforts to increase exports. The hon. Member should perhaps reflect that in his comments.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 5—Review of effects of section 65 on illicit tobacco market—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within six months of this Act being passed, publish an assessment of the impact of the changes introduced by section 65 of this Act, on the illicit tobacco market.”
This new clause requires the Chancellor to review the impact increased rates of tobacco duty on the illicit tobacco market.
James Murray
The clause implements changes announced at the autumn Budget 2024, concerning tobacco duty rates. The duty charged on all tobacco products will rise in line with the tobacco duty escalator, with an additional increase being made for hand-rolling tobacco to reduce the gap with cigarettes. Smoking rates in the UK are falling but they are still too high; around 12% of adults are now smokers. Smoking remains the biggest cause of preventable illness and premature death in the UK, killing around 80,000 people a year and up to two thirds of all long-term users.
We have plans to reduce smoking rates further to achieve our ambition of a smoke-free UK. To realise that ambition, we announced our intention to phase out the sale of tobacco products for future generations, as part of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, along with powers to extend smoke-free legislation to some outdoor areas.
At the autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced that the Government will increase tobacco duty in line with the escalator. Clause 65 therefore specifies that the duty charged on all tobacco products will rise by 2% above RPI inflation. In addition, duty on hand-rolling tobacco increases by 12% above RPI inflation. These new tobacco duty rates will be treated as taking effect from 6 pm on the day that they were announced, 30 October last year.
Recognising the potential interactions between tobacco duty rates and the illicit market, HMRC and Border Force launched their refreshed illicit tobacco strategy in January 2024. The strategy is supported by £100 million of new funding, which will be used to scale up ongoing work and support new activities set out in the strategy, including enhanced detection and intelligence capabilities.
New clause 5 would require the Chancellor to review the impact of increased tobacco rates on the illicit tobacco market within six months of the Bill being passed. The Government respectfully will not accept this new clause, as the potential impact on illicit markets is already one of several factors the Government take into account when a decision on tobacco rates is made. I also note that the approach used in the costings at the Budget, certified by the Office for Budget Responsibility, accounts for behavioural responses to changing excise rates, including the impact of illicit markets. HMRC also publishes tobacco tax gaps annually, which allow for an analysis for the long-term trends in illicit trade.
Although the Government are rejecting new clause 5, I assure Committee members that the Government will continue to monitor illicit trade and to support the efforts of our enforcement agencies to counter it. HMRC and Border Force have had strategies in place to reduce the illicit trade in tobacco for over 20 years, which have helped to reduce the tobacco tax gap from 21.7% in 2005-06 to 14.5% in 2022-23. That happened during a prolonged period in which tobacco duties were consistently increased, as the attitude of all Administrations, including I believe the last one, has been that the threat of illicit tobacco needs to be addressed by reducing its availability, rather than allowing it to dictate our public health and tax policies.
On that matter, I hope that all Committee members, and I assure them that that will continue to be this Government’s approach. The clause will continue the tried and tested policy of using high duty rates on tobacco products to make tobacco less affordable. It will help to continue the reduction in smoking prevalence, supporting our ambition for a smoke-free UK, and will reduce the burden placed by smoking on our public services. I comment the clause to the Committee and urge it to reject new clause 5.
James Wild
As we have heard from the Minister, clause 65 increases excise duty on all tobacco products and the minimum excise tax on cigarettes by the duty escalator RPI plus 2%. In addition, the excise duty rate for hand-rolling tobacco increases by an additional 10%. This is a one-off increase in addition to the restated policy of increasing rates in line with RPI plus two percentage points. We are broadly supportive of these measures but I have some questions around purchaser behaviour and its impact on the illicit market and enforcement. In addition to speaking to clause 65, I will also speak to new clause 5, which stands in my name.
Tobacco receipts are expected to be £8.7 billion this year, down by 2.7% on last year. They are forecast to decline by 0.5% a year on average over the rest of the forecast period to £8.5 billion, as declining tobacco consumption offsets increasing duty rates. The tax information and impact note explains that over the four years from 2019 to 2023, the tobacco escalator coincided with a reduction in smoking prevalence from 14.1% to 11.9% of people aged over 18. That is clearly welcome. The Government are bringing forward the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which the Minister referred to and which includes lots of measures to make vapes less attractive to children and harder to get hold of. There is a lot to be said about that Bill, but fortunately, that is the job of another Committee.
Increasing the price of tobacco clearly comes with the risk of boosting the illicit market. The tax information and impact note suggests that some consumers might engage in cross-border shopping and purchase from the illicit tobacco market. HMRC will monitor and respond to any potential shift. Indeed, the OBR has suggested that the duty rate is beyond the peak of the Laffer curve—the revenue-maximising rate of tax. Can the Minister confirm what measures will form HMRC’s response to any shift in illegal consumption?
There are also questions around the figures. Although HMRC estimates that 10% of cigarettes and 35% of hand-rolling tobacco consumption is from illegal and other non-UK duty paid sources, evidence submitted by the industry believes that is a significant understatement. Its data shows that the consumption of tobacco from non-UK duty paid sources currently accounts for 30% of cigarettes and 54% of hand-rolling tobacco consumption. Has the Minister discussed with HMRC the difference between those figures and the basis on which they have been put together?
The Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association said that the illegal market is not in decline but that, contrary to HMRC’s claims, it is expanding. As well as providing more accurate figures on the scale of the illegal market, it would be useful to know whether the Government have calculated the potential consequences for retailers and law enforcement of an expanding illegal market.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member agree that the tobacco market’s estimates are not unbiased? It has form in exaggerating the scale of the illicit tobacco market in the UK.
James Wild
The hon. Member has probably seen the same evidence produced by the industry as I have; I do not think that we should dismiss it out of hand. Representatives from the industry do, for example, go around football terraces, pick up the empty packets, see where they came from, and do sampling or take other measures. Of course the industry’s evidence should be challenged and tested, but my point is about whether HMRC has worked with the sector to see if its figures are wrong. If they are, and HMRC’s are perfectly right, we can follow the HMRC figures. I am raising a legitimate concern about the accuracy of the data to make sure that we are all operating from the same page because, as the OBR has pointed out, we may already have reached the peak point where the tax will be doing harm.
The Minister referred to the success of enforcement over the last couple of decades. In March last year, the previous Government set out a new strategy to tackle illicit tobacco. With evidence of a substantial illegal market—and whichever set of figures we take, it is substantial—what steps are the Government taking? Are they taking the previous Government’s strategy forward or will they introduce their own strategy?
The industry has specifically proposed that the Government provide trading standards with full access to the powers granted to HMRC under the Tobacco Products (Traceability and Security Features) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. At present, the legislation allows trading standards to refer cases to HMRC, which will then consider imposing on-the-spot penalties of up to £10,000 on those selling tobacco.
The industry proposed that it would be far more effective for trading standards to apply the penalty at the point of enforcement rather than having to refer the case to HMRC. It also suggested allowing trading standards to keep the receipts from any such penalties to reinvest in its enforcement action—we are all familiar with the pressures that trading standards is facing. Will the Minister say whether the Government have considered those proposals and, if they have not, will he?
I have tabled new clause 5 to ensure there is better understanding of the risk around the illicit market. The Minister respectfully dismissed the need for it, but it would require the Chancellor to, within six months of this Act being passed, publish an assessment of the impact of the changes introduced by clause 65 of the Bill on the illicit tobacco market. As we have heard, increasing tobacco duty could alter the behaviour of consumers, and we could see greater illicit market share.
Evidence from the industry—which may be contested—shows that non-UK duty paid sources are significant. There is clearly a risk that a further increase to tobacco duty could boost the illicit market, and HMRC needs to act to protect lawful revenues for the taxpayer. We would therefore welcome the Chancellor publishing an assessment of the impact of the changes. As I set out, we will not oppose clause 65, but I look forward to the Minister’s response to my points, particularly on the illicit market.
James Murray
I welcome the Opposition’s support for these measures. I will write to the hon. Gentleman in response to some of the queries he raised about specific figures. I will address the points that he made about the illicit tobacco market, because that is obviously something we all want to consider in some depth in connection with anything that we do around the tobacco duty.
As I mentioned in my earlier remarks, HMRC and Border Force launched their refreshed illicit tobacco strategy in January 2024. That is being implemented under this Government. It is supported by £100 million of new funding, which will be used to scale up the ongoing work and support the new activities outlined in the strategy, including enhanced detection and intelligence capabilities.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the impact of increasing tobacco duty on the demand for illicit products, and whether increasing duty rates might push some smokers towards illicit products. It will be helpful if I set out the context for this discussion. Under the assumptions that were used in the tobacco costings for the autumn Budget, which were of course certified by the OBR, the overall level of increase decided on by the Government raises revenue while continuing to reduce tobacco consumption.
The approach used in costings, certified by the OBR, takes into account a number of potential behavioural responses to changing excise duty rates, such as quitting or reducing smoking, substituting with vapes, and moving from UK duty paid consumption to the non-UK duty paid market, including the impact on illicit products. However, the threat from illicit tobacco needs to be addressed by reducing its availability, rather than allowing it to dictate our tax and public health policies.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked whether HMRC had worked with the sector to authenticate its figures. HMRC has analysed how external figures are calculated, but World Health Organisation rules prohibit extensive engagement with the industry on such issues.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 65 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 66
Rates of vehicle excise duty for light passenger or light goods vehicles etc
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 6—Review of effects of £40,000 expensive car supplement threshold—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within six months of this Act being passed, publish an assessment of the impact of the £40,000 expensive car supplement threshold included in section 66.
(2) The assessment in subsection (1) must consider the effects of the threshold on the proportion of new cars sold which are Electric Vehicles.”
This new clause requires the Chancellor to review the impact of the £40,000 expensive car supplement threshold.
James Murray
Clause 66 makes changes to the uprating of standard vehicle excise duty rates for cars, vans and motorcycles, excluding first-year rates for cars, in line with the retail prices index, from 1 April. The clause will also change the VED first-year rates for new cars registered on or after 1 April, to strengthen incentives to purchase zero emission and electric cars.
As announced at the autumn Budget, the clause will freeze the zero emission rate at £10 until 2029-30, while increasing the rates for higher-emitting hybrid, petrol and diesel cars from 2025-26.
Vehicle excise duty—VED—is a tax on vehicle ownership, with rates depending on the vehicle type and the date of first registration. Vehicle excise duty first-year rates were introduced as part of the wider changes to the VED system implemented in 2017, and they vary according to emissions. Vehicle excise duty first-year rates are paid in the first year of a car’s life cycle, at the point of registration. From the second year, cars move to the standard rate of VED. From 1 April, new zero emission vehicles registered on or after that date will also be liable for the VED first-year rates.
Vehicle excise duty first-year rates have been routinely uprated by the RPI since their introduction in 2017, and as announced by the previous Government at the autumn statement in 2022, from April 2025, electric cars, vans and motorcycles will begin to pay VED in a similar way to petrol and diesel vehicles.
The clause will set the VED rates for 2025-26, increasing the standard rates for cars, vans and motorcycles in line with the RPI. As part of this uprating, the standard rate of VED for cars registered since 1 April 2017 will increase by only £5. The expensive car supplement will also be increased by £15, from £410 to £425. The rates for vans will increase by no more than £15, and motorcyclists will see an increase in rates of no more than £4.
From 1 April 2025, the VED first-year rate for zero emission cars will be frozen at £10 until 2029-30. For 2025-26, first-year rates for cars emitting 1 to 50 grams per km of carbon dioxide will go from £10 to £110, and cars emitting 51 to 75 grams per km of CO2 will go from £30 to £130. Rates for cars emitting 76 grams per km or more of CO2 will double.
New clause 6 would require the Chancellor to review the impact of the £40,000 expensive car supplement threshold and consider its effects on the proportion of new cars sold that are electric vehicles. As set out at the autumn Budget, the Government have already committed to considering increasing the £40,000 threshold for EVs at a future fiscal event. The Government recognise that new electric vehicles can still often be more expensive to purchase than their petrol or diesel counterparts, and we acknowledge the need to ensure that EVs are affordable as part of our transition to net zero. In the light of that commitment, a separate review is unnecessary so I urge the Committee to reject new clause 6.
The changes to the VED first-year rates outlined in clause 66 will increase the incentives to buy new zero emission cars at the point of purchase and support the uptake of new electric vehicles. Revenue from that change will also help to support public services and infrastructure in the UK. An increase in VED standard rates for cars, vans and motorcycles by the RPI in 2025-26 will ensure that VED receipts are maintained in real terms. I commend clause 66 to the Committee.
James Wild
As we heard from the Minister, clause 66 provides for increasing certain rates of VED for light passenger and light goods vehicles in line with the RPI. There will also be changes to the first-year rates for zero emission vehicles and low emission vehicles. We broadly support the measures, but as well as discussing clause 66, I will consider new clause 6, which is in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne.
According to the OBR, VED receipts are expected to raise £8.2 billion in 2024-25, up by £0.5 billion compared with 2023-24. It expects an increase through the forecast period to £11.2 billion, driven by an increasing number of cars, more cars paying the expensive car supplement and the extension of VED to electric vehicles from 2025. It was the last Government who decided that EVs would no longer be exempt from VED and moved to make the system fairer. I will raise some points about the implications of that, and particularly the expensive car supplement for electric vehicles. New zero emission cars, registered after 1 April, will be liable for that charge, which currently applies to cars with a list price exceeding £40,000. That threshold has not changed since 2017, despite inflation and changing technologies. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has called on the Government to look at that.
The current ECS threshold will add more than £2,000 to the cost of a zero emission vehicle in the first six years of ownership, and more than £3,000 including the standard rate VED that must also be paid. That will deter potential buyers from purchasing zero emission vehicles and will have an impact on residual values. According to figures quoted by the SMMT, the ECS is likely to capture more than half of the zero emission vehicle market from 2025.
The Minister referred to the Government saying that they may look at the threshold in future, and I will come on to that when I discuss new clause 6. Can he confirm how much the ECS currently raises and how much it is forecast to raise as a result of the changes? Given that the Government are committed to a 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicle sales, what impact will the ECS have on the Government’s progress towards that goal?
For those reasons, we have tabled new clause 6, which would require the Chancellor, within six months of the Bill being passed, to publish an assessment of the impact of the £40,000 expensive car supplement threshold in clause 66. The assessment must consider the effects of the threshold on the proportion of new car sales that are electric vehicles.
As we have heard, the threshold has remained unchanged since 2017 and the Government are pushing ahead with the 2030 date. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) introduced some welcome common sense to the debate by moving the date for the ban on new petrol and diesel car sales back to 2035. That is the date that the major car manufacturing countries in Europe and the rest of the world have adopted, and one that we should have stuck to.
The Government’s policy is odd because it makes people less likely to move to EVs—because it makes it more expensive to do so. Perhaps the Treasury is not quite as signed up to the Energy Secretary’s dogmatic approach as he is; perhaps it secretly agrees with Opposition Members who certainly think that he is the most expensive Cabinet member in many ways. Although I recognise that the Minister said that the Government have committed to look at the threshold, the new clause would make that binding and make sure that it happened within a specific timeframe. We therefore want the new clause to be taken forward. As I have set out, we will not oppose the clause, but I will press new clause 6 to a Division.
Hybrid vehicles will start paying road tax at the standard rate, as well as paying the ECS where applicable. Those changes will hasten the departure from hybrids, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne said earlier. I would be grateful if the Minister provided an assessment of the decision to disincentivise hybrids and if he could say how many jobs in the UK are based on producing hybrid vehicles.
James Murray
I thank the shadow Minister for indicating the Opposition’s support for the clause. I understand what the Opposition are doing by proposing new clause 6, and the points that they want to raise, and the Government have considered it. We consider our commitment, which was made at the autumn Budget in the public domain, to be a strong commitment from the Government: we will consider increasing the £40,000 threshold for EVs only at a future fiscal event.
We recognise that when electric vehicles are new, they can still often be more expensive to purchase than their petrol or diesel counterparts. There is a need to ensure that EVs are affordable as part of the transition. We also recognise that, as transport is currently the largest-emitting sector, decarbonising it is central to the wider delivery of the UK’s cross-economy climate targets.
As I said, it was announced at Budget ’24 that the Government will consider raising the threshold for zero emission cars only at a future fiscal event. The Government have no current plans to review the threshold for petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles, but we keep all taxes under review as part of the Budget process.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 66 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 67
Rates of vehicle excise duty for rigid goods vehicles without trailers etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Clauses 68 and 69 stand part.
Clause 71 stand part.
Government new clause 1—Rate of vehicle excise duty for haulage vehicles other than showman’s vehicles.
New clause 7—Statements on HGV Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and HGV Road User Levy—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within six months of this Act being passed, make a statement to Parliament about the increase to HGV VED introduced by sections 67 to 69 and increase to the HGV Road User Levy under section 71 of this Act.
(2) The statement under subsection (1) must include details of the impact on—
(a) the haulage sector,
(b) the decarbonisation of the logistics industry, and
(c) the UK economy.”
This new clause requires the Chancellor to make a statement about the impact of increasing Vehicle Excise Duty on HGVs.
James Murray
Clauses 67, 68 and 69 make changes to upgrade VED rates for heavy goods vehicles in line with the retail prices index from 1 April. They also make changes to the VED rates for rigid goods vehicles without trailers, rigid goods vehicles with trailers and vehicles with exceptional loads. Clause 71 uprates the heavy goods vehicle levy in line with the RPI from 1 April.
The registered keeper of a vehicle is responsible for paying VED. The rates depend on the vehicle’s revenue weight, axle configuration and Euro emission status. Furthermore, the HGV levy, which was introduced in August 2023 and frozen at the autumn statement in 2023, is payable for both UK and foreign HGVs using UK roads. Similarly to VED, the levy rates depend on the vehicle’s weight and Euro emissions status. Clauses 67, 68 and 69 will set the VED rates for heavy goods vehicles for ’25-26, increasing them in line with the RPI. For example, the annual VED liability of the most popular HGV—tax class TC01, VED band E1—will increase by £18, from £560 to £578. Hauliers will not see a real-terms increase in VED costs, as rates have increased to keep pace with inflation only.
The changes made by clause 71 will increase the annual rates for domestic and foreign HGVs using UK roads and the associated daily, weekly, monthly and six-monthly rates in line with the RPI. For example, the annual rate for the most common type of UK HGV will increase by £21, from £576 to £597. As part of that uprating, the £9 and £10 caps on the daily rates paid by foreign HGVs, which are a consequence of retained EU law and are now obsolete, will be removed.
Government new clause 1 corrects an omission in the Bill of an uplift to the general haulage rate announced at the autumn Budget. We are inserting a new clause to ensure that the legislation operates as intended by updating the currently recorded rate for the general haulage tax class—tax class 55—from £350 to £365 in line with the RPI.
New clause 7 seeks to require the Chancellor to make a statement about the impact of increasing VED on HGVs. The new clause is not necessary, as the Government have already published the tax information and impact note that sets out all the expected impacts of the measure. It makes clear that hauliers will not see a real-terms increase in their VED or HGV levy liabilities, as rates are being increased in line with the RPI to keep pace with inflation only. The measure is not expected to have any significant macroeconomic impacts.
Increasing both VED rates for HGVs and the HGV levy by the RPI for ’25-26 will ensure that VED receipts are maintained in real terms and that hauliers continue to make a fair contribution to the public finances in the wider context of a Budget in which hauliers have benefited from a further freeze in fuel duty, worth nearly £1,100 a year to the average HGV. I therefore commend clauses 67, 68, 69 and 71 as well as Government new clause 1 to the Committee, and I urge the Committee to reject new clause 7.
James Wild
As the Minister says, clauses 67, 68 and 69 provide for changes to certain rates of VED, and clause 71 increases the rates for the HGV road user levy. We will not oppose the provisions, but we have some concerns and points to make about the timing of the changes and the lack of support for impacted industries, such as the logistics sector. As well as discussing those clauses, I will consider new clause 7, which is in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne.
Heavy goods vehicle VED is a complex picture, with more than 80 different rates. The characteristics of HGVs determine their rates, and the increases to HGV VED represent the first rise since 2014. Heavy goods vehicles may also be liable for the additional HGV road user levy, which was introduced in 2014 and is a charge for using the road network, ranging from £150 to £749 a year. The levy was suspended in August 2020, demonstrating the previous Government’s support for the haulage sector during the pandemic. A reformed levy was introduced in 2023 and was frozen at the autumn statement in 2023. The new levy divides qualifying HGVs into six levy bands rather than the previous 22, which is a welcome simplification.
James Murray
I thank the hon. Gentleman for confirming that the Opposition will support these clauses. He asked about the wider challenges faced by the road haulage industry. Road haulage is key to the UK’s economy, and the Government acknowledge the pressures the industry has faced in recent years. As a result of the changes in these clauses, hauliers will not see a real-terms increase in their VED or HGV levy liabilities, as rates will be increased in line with the RPI to keep pace with inflation only.
Of course, revenue from HGV VED and the HGV levy helps to ensure that we can continue to fund the vital public services and infrastructure that people across the UK expect, so it is right that the taxes are regularly reviewed. In the wider context, hauliers will also benefit from the further freeze in fuel duty for 2025-26 that the Chancellor announced in the Budget, which is worth nearly £1,100 a year for the average heavy goods vehicle.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 67 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 68 and 69 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 70
Vehicle excise duty: zero-emission vehicles
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
James Murray
The clause makes minor amendments to ensure the legislation for the application of vehicle excise duty to zero emission vehicles operates as intended. In the 2022 autumn statement, the former Government announced that from April 2025, zero emission cars, vans and motorcycles would begin to pay VED in line with their petrol and diesel counterparts. The clause will ensure that the legislation governing the application of VED to zero emission vehicles operates as intended by making minor technical amendments to the legislation. The changes will clarify the current VED exemption for electric vehicles, clarify the interpretation of data entries on the certificate of conformity and ensure that all zero emission vans registered between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2008 pay VED, in line with their petrol or diesel counterparts, from 1 April 2025. The clause will ensure that the legislation for the application of VED to zero emission vehicles operates as intended.
James Wild
I will be very brief on this one. It is a perfectly sensible measure, and we will not be opposing it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 70 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 71 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 72
Rates of air passenger duty until 1 April 2026
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 73 stand part.
New clause 8—Review of bands and rates of air passenger duty—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within eighteen months of this Act being passed, publish an assessment of the impact of the changes to air passenger duty introduced by section 73 of this Act on—
(a) the public finances;
(b) carbon emissions; and
(c) household finances.
(2) The assessment under subsection (1)(c) must consider how households at a range of different income levels are affected by these changes.”
This new clause requires the Chancellor to publish an assessment of this Act’s changes to air passenger duty on the public finances, carbon emissions, and on the finances of households at a range of different income levels.
James Murray
Clause 72 sets the rates of air passenger duty for 2025-26, as announced in the 2024 spring Budget, and they will take effect on 1 April 2025. Clause 73 sets the rates of APD for 2026-27, as announced in the 2024 autumn Budget, and they will take effect a year later, on 1 April 2026.
APD rates have fallen in real terms, because they are set more than a year in advance using forecast RPI, and inflation has subsequently been much higher than originally forecast. The former Government announced that in 2025-26, rates would be uprated by forecast RPI and non-economy rates would be adjusted to account partially for previous high inflation. For 2026-27, the current Government are making a broad-based adjustment to all rates to compensate in part for previous high inflation and are raising the higher rate on larger private jets by an additional 50%. These changes aim to ensure that the aviation industry continues to make a fair contribution to the public finances. As is standard practice, the Government have given the industry more than 12 months’ notice.
Let me go into some detail. The changes made by clause 72 will raise all APD rates by forecast RPI, rounded to the nearest pound, for 2025-26. Non-economy rates will be further adjusted to correct partially for previous high inflation. For domestic and short-haul international economy passengers, these changes mean that rates will stay at their current level in 2025-26. Rates for other economy-class passengers will rise by £2. For non-economy international passengers, rates will rise by between £2, for short-haul commercial passengers, and £66, for those travelling ultra-long haul in larger private jets that incur the higher rate.
The changes made by clause 73 will raise all APD rates in 2026-27 to account partially for previous high inflation, and increase the higher rate on larger private jets by an extra 50% above the increases to other rates. For economy-class passengers, this means that those flying domestically will face an increase of £1. Rates for short-haul economy passengers will increase by £2, and those for long-haul economy passengers will increase by £12. The increases for non-economy passengers and those travelling in private jets will be greater. Whereas the short-haul international rate for economy passengers is increasing by £2, that for non-economy passengers is rising by £4 and that for private jet passengers by £58.
Taken together, the corrections to non-economy rates announced at the spring and autumn Budgets do not raise rates by more than RPI over the period since 2021-22, based on the latest figures. From 2027-28, rates will be rounded to the nearest penny, to ensure that they track forecast inflation more closely.
New clause 8 would require the Chancellor to publish an assessment of the impact of the APD changes on the public finances, carbon emissions and the finances of households at a range of income levels. At the autumn Budget, the Government published a TIIN that outlined the expected impacts of the APD changes, including the Exchequer, household and environmental impacts. New clause 8 is therefore unnecessary, and I urge the Committee to reject it.
These changes will help to maintain APD rates in real terms, following high inflation. I therefore commend clauses 72 and 73 to the Committee and urge it to reject new clause 8.
James Wild
As we heard from the Minister, clause 72 sets the rates of air passenger duty for the year 2025-26—those rates were announced in the 2024 spring Budget, precisely to give the sector time to plan—and clause 73 sets the rates for 2026-27. The higher rates that apply to larger private jets will increase by an additional 50%, as the Minister said. We will not oppose these measures, but we want to raise some points and seek more detail about their impact.
APD was first introduced on 1 November 1994. Initially, it was charged at a rate of £5 on flights within the UK and to other countries in the European Economic Area, and £10 on flights elsewhere. Since then, it has been reformed by successive Governments. Currently, it is chargeable per passenger flying from UK airports to domestic and international destinations, and rates vary by destination and class of travel. According to the OBR, APD receipts are expected to be £4.2 billion in 2024-25, and then they are forecast to increase by 9% a year, on average, to £6.5 billion in 2029-30, driven by increasing passenger numbers and the higher duty rates. The changes mean that a family of four flying economy to Florida, for example, will be taxed £408—a 16% increase on the current rates.
I turn first to the changes in clause 73 that relate to the higher rate, which will increase by an additional 50% on business and private jets. There is some concern from the industry about the impact of the measure on economic growth—the Government’s driving, No. 1 mission, in which we support their efforts. In reality, most private jets are corporate aircraft that are used as capital assets. One industry commentator said:
“They allow businesses to increase productivity and the amount of time they have in the day, which means they can make more money, employ more people and pay more in taxes. ”
That is something I think we all support. Has the Minister calculated what impact the 50% increase will have on economic growth and developing our trade relationships? The Prime Minister rightly travels a lot around the world to make connections and promote trade in our economy. Can the Minister confirm whether the Royal Squadron is subject to the higher rates, or is it exempt?
There has also been some concern about the impact on our constituents—people going on holiday or to see family and friends. The changes may limit flight options. Airlines UK has said that the rise will make it harder for British carriers to put on new routes. Does the Minister think the increase will impact the ability to consider new routes? It will certainly increase ticket prices; I woke up this morning to hear the boss of Ryanair on the radio saying that the increases in APD will mean that a third of an average £45 fare will now be tax.
It is because of the impacts that the rate rises might have on consumers, industry and economic growth that we tabled new clause 8, which would require the Chancellor to publish an assessment of the impact of the changes introduced by clause 73 within 18 months of the Bill being passed. The assessment would have to consider the impact of the changes on the public finances, carbon emissions and household incomes. The industry has been clear in its warnings in this regard, and we need to take them seriously. The Minister said that the new clause is unnecessary and that a review has been covered anyway, but reviews should be an important part of the Treasury’s toolkit in understanding impact.
We will not oppose these measures, but we will continue to raise industry’s concerns, particularly on behalf of our constituents and people who want to go on holiday.
James Murray
It might be worth my saying at the outset that our support for the aviation industry more broadly is very clear. I am sure the hon. Gentleman was listening to the Chancellor’s growth speech yesterday, in which she announced that we will no longer shy away from decisions about airport expansion, which can be delivered to support economic growth while meeting our climate obligations. People in the aviation industry can have no doubt about this Government’s desire and willingness, and concrete actions, to work with them to drive economic growth in this country.
In relation specifically to APD, which is the subject of these clauses, I say to the hon. Gentleman that the adjustment to the APD rates for ’26-27 is proportionate, because the rates have fallen significantly behind inflation in recent years. These changes will help to compensate for that fact. The short-haul international rate on economy passengers will increase by £2 on 1 April 2026. That rate has not increased since 2012. Even after 1 April 2026, for a family of four—two adults, two children—flying economy class to Spain, the total APD increase will be only £4, since under-16s travelling in economy class are exempt from APD.
By contrast, the increases for non-economy passengers and those travelling in private jets will be higher, to ensure that they make a fair contribution to the public finances. One other bit of context is that, unlike other sectors, no VAT applies to plane tickets and there is no tax on jet fuel. It is only fair that aviation pays its fair share through APD.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 72 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Christian Wakeford.)
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting)
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from three witnesses: Dr Amanda Ward, who holds a master’s and a PhD and is the legal adviser to the Scottish Parliament on proposed legislation changes; Professor Gareth Owen, who is a professor of psychological medicine, ethics and law and an honorary consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust; and Professor Laura Hoyano, emeritus professor of law at Wadham College, University of Oxford. Before I call the first Member to ask a question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill. May I ask the panel to introduce themselves?
Dr Ward: I am Dr Amanda Ward. You have already introduced me, but I have been involved with law reform in this space for 13 years. I am also a member of the Law Society of Scotland’s health and medical law committee. I moved to Queensland 18 months ago and took up a research fellowship at the Queensland University of Technology. I am representing myself in an independent capacity today.
Professor Hoyano: Good morning. I am Laura Hoyano; I am a professor of law at the University of Oxford, where I have taught medical law and ethics for many years, as well as human rights. I was a barrister in Canada for a decade, where I practised medical law and human rights law among other things; I am currently a practising barrister at the Bar of England and Wales.
Professor Owen: Hello. I am Gareth Owen; I am professor of psychological medicine, ethics and law at King’s College London and am part of the complex life and death decisions group there. I am a consultant psychiatrist at King’s College London, a general medical hospital at which I am a liaison psychiatrist working with adults over the age of 65.
The Chair
We must stick to the timing of the sittings resolution, as decided by the Committee. We have a long list of people who want to ask questions, so it will be one question with one answer; if Members could indicate who they would like to answer, that would be helpful.
Before we proceed, Dr Tidball has a declaration of interest to make.
Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
I just want to make sure that it is on the record that I have been taught by Professor Hoyano; indeed, well before I was elected, she was a colleague at work.
Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Professor Owen: I am somewhat reminded of the old adage that for every complex problem there is a simple solution that is false. We are dealing with complexity here—I think we have to accept that—but complex law or poor law will not provide good safeguards. If you step back and think about what the Bill is really about, at its simplest, it is about the decisional right to end one’s own life in terminal illness.
Associated with that is the concept of mental capacity. I have had over 20 years of research interest in mental capacity. When I look at the issues relating to mental capacity with the Bill, they are complex, but the other important point to understand is that they are very novel. We are in uncharted territory with respect to mental capacity, which is very much at the hub of the Bill.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
Q
Professor Owen: It is a bit more fundamental than that, actually. If you look at how mental capacity features in the Bill, the test or the concept that clause 1 rightly invites us to consider—rightly, I think—is the capacity to decide to end one’s own life. The Mental Capacity Act comes in at clause 3.
I have looked at mental capacity a lot in research, and there is no experience of the decision to end one’s own life. It is outside the experience of the Mental Capacity Act, the Court of Protection, the associated research and practitioners on the ground. The reference to the Mental Capacity Act in clause 3 puts you into an area where there is no experience of the central capacity question under consideration. It is very important that Parliament be clear-eyed about that. I can talk about the Mental Capacity Act in detail if you like, but that is the main point that I want to make.
Daniel Francis
The Chair may cut you off, but I am happy for you to continue if she allows it.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
Q
Professor Hoyano: I always have a problem when tort liability is ruled out by legislation. I think that the accountability of medical professionals, and indeed all medical practitioners in private practice, lies at the heart of how our national health service works, so I have a difficulty with that. I would have to ask Ms Leadbeater whether this is correct, but perhaps the intention was to ensure that members of the family who, for example, were against assisted dying in principle, would not be able to bring an action that could be vexatious against a doctor who had complied with the legislation and should therefore not be troubled with that type of litigation. It might be that that provision could be refined.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Q
Professor Hoyano: It is interesting that a number of Members of Parliament who are practising physicians pointed out in the debate that they have to evaluate freedom of decision making and absence of coercion in many different medical contexts. I point particularly to the withdrawal of medical treatment at the request of the patient, even if that will inevitably lead to death. It is considered to be a fundamental human right that lies at the heart of medical law that a patient has personal autonomy to decide what to do with their body and whether or not to accept medical treatment, provided that they have the capacity to do so and are acting without coercion from external sources. Doctors have to make those assessments all the time.
I suggest that it is perhaps a convenient fallacy to say that pulling the plug on a respirator or stopping artificial nutrition and hydration is a negative act, whereas giving a patient a syringe to end their own life is a positive act. I realise that with the Tony Bland case it was convenient to say that, but there is no doubt that most people on the street would say that pulling the plug on a respirator is a positive act, and yet doctors and nurses are required to do that every day in the NHS, because that is the patient’s autonomy. If there is any question about either coercion or capacity, the Court of Protection steps in and has the jurisdiction to make those decisions.
The Court of Protection should, I believe, be the court that is supervising this, not the High Court. Three levels of judges sit in the Court of Protection; I suggest that a High Court judge be specified, which would mean a statutory amendment to extend the jurisdiction of the Court of Protection. The Court of Protection makes decisions every day on whether a patient has the mental capacity to make decisions about their own medical treatment. It is accustomed to doing that, and one aspect of that analysis is whether the patient is being coerced externally.
Generally speaking, when a patient says, “I don’t want to be on a respirator any longer; I know I’m going to die,” we do not ask questions. As I understand it, it is not part of the protocol to say, “Are you doing this because you are worried about being a burden on the NHS?”, because their personal autonomy is the overriding principle governing medical decision making in relation to the patient. I hope that that answers your question.
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
Q
“are not confident that consent can act as an adequate safeguard”.
On mental capacity, it says:
“These decisions are opinions with a margin of error and are time specific. A person’s capacity can change”.
What is your view?
Professor Owen: That is important evidence, because it comes from a body of practitioners who are very used to doing mental capacity assessments. I think that the vast majority of that sample were consultant psychiatrists, so the pool, as it were, was one of considerable experience. That conveys questionable confidence in the consent processes, of which mental capacity is part, in relation to the decision to end one’s life. It is significant evidence about the confidence that is out there among experienced practitioners.
It is true that psychiatrists—liaison psychiatrists particularly; I have had experience with this myself, clinically and in relation to Court of Protection matters—will be involved with assessing capacity to make decisions to refuse life-sustaining treatment. Those decisions can be quite vexed and can go to the court, and the court can struggle with them.
An important question for the Committee is the distinction—or the similarity and difference, but I think that there are key differences—between the decision to refuse a treatment that is life-sustaining, of which the Court of Protection does have experience, and the decision to decide to end one’s own life. They are conceptually different decisions. I can outline some of the similarities and the differences now, but it might be helpful to take submissions specifically on that question, because it is very important and I think that there is some confusion about it. If you would find it helpful, the complex life and death decisions group could write a statement to elaborate on some of the issues. In summary, I think that that evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists is significant, in terms of the confidence.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Q
Dr Ward: I was the adviser on the previous Bill in Scotland as well, under Margo MacDonald MSP and Patrick Harvie MSP. That was in session 4 of our Parliament; we then did not have a Bill in session 5, which is when we set up things like the cross-party working group on end-of-life choices and I did the PhD. Luckily, we saw a domino effect internationally in session 5; there were various jurisdictions legislating for it. When we came to draft this legislation in 2021, in session 6 of the Parliament, we had decades of data that we had not had when Margo made her first attempt back in 2010.
With the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, we have been working with international experts since 2021, and we have had various consultation processes. It is currently with the Health Committee of the Scottish Parliament. We set up a medical advisory group, chaired by Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP: a group of almost a dozen practitioners in palliative care, mental health experts, geriatricians and other interested stakeholders. It produced a report for us on the medicinal aspects of the Bill.
That has been a four-year process. I understand that concerns have been voiced in this Committee that things have proceeded at pace, but I would argue that you are not pioneers. There is 20 or 30 years’ worth of data, which we have drawn on in Scotland, and there is four years’ worth of work in Scotland that this Committee and this Parliament could look to.
I would also make the point that the data is peer-reviewed and evidence-based. You really have to trust your international colleagues. The data is from Government bodies, from Health Departments, from independent academic peer-reviewed work and from independent review boards. We are now looking at fact rather than at falsehoods or concerns, as we were back in 2010.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
Q
Professor Owen: I think the answer to that is “Probably not,” given the current workforce. Another relevant point is that even if you were to insert into the Bill a very clear requirement for a consultant psychiatrist to be involved if there were concerns about mental health, what would happen in practice would be very different. You can see this in Oregon, whose law has a requirement for, essentially, a psychiatric referral in the case of mental health concern. Those referrals basically occur in less than 5% of cases; I think it is similar in California. Even if you put it in law, there is the question whether it will happen in practice. On the data, it does not. I think that that is a relevant consideration.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Q
Professor Hoyano: I have to say that I have real concerns, as a practising barrister, about how the provisions as currently drafted could work in terms of judicial oversight. There are a number of unusual functions, if I can express it that way, being attributed to the court. I need first of all to stress that the High Court’s family division, and the Court of Protection, regularly engage with life and death matters, but they are doing so in the context of an adversarial and not an inquisitorial system. However, since the 19th century we have had the invaluable institution of the Official Solicitor, who has investigatory powers or functions and who serves in court as an amicus curiae—a friend of the court—to assist the court in understanding where the issues lie and in calling witnesses. I do not think that it is feasible at all, in our current system, to have the court call witnesses or question them directly until they have been examined and cross-examined, if appropriate; the court can then put in questions and ask for clarification, as would happen normally now.
If we are to have a judicial oversight function as opposed to a panel of experts—to be honest, I think we already have the panel of experts: the doctors who are already involved in the different stages leading up to the final stage—the easiest approach would be for the investigatory function to be assigned to the office of the Official Solicitor, preferably with an individual who has expertise in this field and will be able to get experience by dealing with these cases. I point out that Lord Justice Munby himself—Sir James Munby, as he now is—represented the Official Solicitor in the seminal case on termination of life support, the Tony Bland case. We have a lot of experience in that area, in dealing with end-of-life decision making with the Official Solicitor, but I think that that role needs to be built into the legislation with very specific tasks set out, including an investigatory function.
The other current difficulty is that it is not clear at all what the procedure would be. With great respect to the drafters of the Bill, I have never before seen such a delegation of the most essential procedural structures entirely to rules of court in terms of practice directions or rules of practice; we do not do it in the family division and we do not do it in the Court of Protection. Exactly what has to happen needs to be set out.
It strikes me that the intention may be for the court to, in effect, certify that all the procedures have been correctly followed at the preliminary stages. What is not entirely clear is whether the court itself is required to investigate whether the criteria are satisfied. It reads like that, but I am not sure whether it is supposed to be a review function or a primary decision-making function.
This becomes even more difficult because of the way in which the Court of Appeal’s functions are ascribed. The Court of Appeal does not have power to summon witnesses; the Court of Appeal does not have power to question witnesses. In the criminal division, which is where I am primarily practising now, the court can hear expert evidence de bene esse in order to determine whether it should send a case back for a retrial on the basis of newly discovered evidence that was not originally available, but that evidence will be called by the defence. The defence will be putting the evidence in, the Crown will cross-examine and the court will ask any additional questions it wants to, but to have an original jurisdiction —in effect, what we call a trial de novo: a trial all over again—in the Court of Appeal is wholly inappropriate to an appellate jurisdiction. That needs to be completely rethought.
There is also a difficulty in that the right to appeal is very lopsided: only a patient can appeal a denial, not anyone else. If anyone has concerns about the probity and thoroughness of the preliminary stages, or thinks that the High Court judge sitting in the Court of Protection has made an error of law or has failed to follow the procedures, that needs to be reviewed by the Court of Appeal. We need an even-handed approach.
I can understand the motivation of not wanting busybody people, as happened in one case in Canada in which a wife had a religious objection to assisted dying, and yet there was no doubt that the husband had satisfied all the criteria. She went all the way to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal because of her religious objections; it turned out that religion was a source of great dissension in the marriage anyway, but her church was egging her on. I know that you do not want that kind of situation, but I believe that this legislation has to be completely even-handed for it to work and for the system to acquire public respect.
Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)
Q
Dr Ward: Which clause are we looking at?
Dr Opher
Now you’re asking. Let me check.
Dr Ward: In the interests of time, let me say that I moved to Queensland a year and a half ago, as I mentioned at the beginning, and took up an academic fellowship at the Australian Centre for Health Law Research. That university was tasked by the Government states of Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland with developing the training for assisted dying implementation there. The modules in that training very specifically go through coercion, how you detect coercion, how you discuss it with patients and cultural considerations around it. They cover everything from capacity to the administration of drugs. They are very robust training modules that healthcare practitioners must satisfy at a pass rate of 90%. We rely heavily on the training to make sure that coercion protection is in place.
Dr Opher
It was clause 26, sorry.
Professor Hoyano: Under the Canadian system, the provinces each have a college of physicians and surgeons. However, what has happened is that everyone has worked collaboratively across all 12 jurisdictions, plus the federal Government. We now have the Canadian MAiD—medical assistance in dying—curriculum, which was developed by the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers in consultation with experts from across the country. It is providing a comprehensive, bilingual, nationally accredited training programme that is evidence-based and is based on the learning that has happened in Canada since the legislation was first enacted.
There is also a model practice standard for MAiD and a companion document, “Advice to the Profession”, which all the medical colleges have signed up to. It helps practitioners to align their practice with the official guidance and assists health professional regulatory authorities to ensure that the public is protected. Coercion lies at the heart of these documents.
The regulations for the monitoring of medical assistance in dying require—and this is something else that I suggest be changed—that in Canada there has to be an annual report from the federal Government, which is very granular in detail, from right across the country. It happens at least once a year; there was one year in which we had two reports going into all the details. On coercion, we know that in 2023, when they examined the reasons for ineligibility, there were 41 cases across the country in which the physicians determined that the person had not made a voluntary request without external pressure, and it was therefore declined. We need to know is what is happening out there, and I do not think that a report every five years is going to help. We need to enlist all the medical professions involved in signing up to very detailed codes of practice, but we also need the training that Amanda has referred to as essential.
The last point that I would make is that McGill University is launching a national palliative care hub that is available to any practitioner in the country and from which they can receive guidance and support with helping and advising patients who are receiving palliative care. One of the options is, if the patient desires it, how to deal with these requests.
Dr Ward: Now that I have had a look at clause 26, may I answer the Member’s question? I think it is a very well drafted provision, and it is very similar to what we have in Scotland. In particular, I know we are concerned about people being coerced into assisted dying, but internationally it is actually the converse. Some jurisdictions are considering putting provisions in their Bill because family members are trying to put undue pressure on others not to make an assisted dying decision.
On my understanding of the reporting in Kim’s Bill, it is just not a five-year review: the Registrar General, the chief medical officer and the Secretary of State are involved. Again, I commend the Member in charge for the reporting procedures being very robust in the Bill.
Kim Leadbeater (Spen Valley) (Lab)
Q
I notice that you have also spoken a lot about misinformation; how do we tackle that? How do we make sure we are dealing with facts rather than speculation? In particular, how do we provide reassurance to marginalised communities and people with disabilities, who are understandably nervous about this change in the law? When it comes to safeguards and protections, what does best practice look like?
Dr Ward: To take your last point first, we must involve them in the process and have an open dialogue with them. That means not just in the consultation process, when you are considering passing legislation, but when you have your implementation taskforce, on which you must make sure you have representation from across all the stakeholders involved, including people with disabilities and people with terminal illnesses.
I would point to the fact that best practice is about balancing the autonomy, dignity and compassion that the Bill aims to achieve by giving people the option of assisted dying, while also protecting vulnerable people who feel that there are worries and concerns. However, having worked in this area for 13 years and seen people who would really benefit from having this option, and living now in a jurisdiction that has it, I would point out that some of the most vulnerable people I have seen are the terminally ill who want and need this choice. It is about taking a holistic and evidenced-based approach.
You as a Committee will hear from the great and the good across the board, and I am pleased that the Committee is taking account of lived experience, because that is very important to inform the decision-making process. It is about making sure that we are going to the source of evidence and using peer-reviewed data and Government data. Again, as I said earlier, you really need to trust your international colleagues who have gone before you on this. We need to consider what the Bill does versus inaccurate perceptions of or speculations on what it might do. The task here is to consider what is in front of you, not what might happen down the road.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
Q
Dr Ward: Look: assisted dying is the same as any other healthcare choice. It is always going to be limited. We are not going to reach everyone that we absolutely would want to. There are people who want to have this option and this choice who will not qualify under a terminal illness definition, but we have to draw the line somewhere. We looked at international evidence from Commonwealth countries that are very closely linked to Scotland and the UK. We drew the line with the definition that the person has an advanced progressive illness from which they are unable to recover and that will cause their premature death. For us, that demands the support of Members of Parliament in Scotland and the support of the public.
I really stress the fact that each jurisdiction has to legislate according to its own constitutional, societal, legal and cultural considerations, which is what we have done in Scotland. That is the definition that is working for us now. Previously, there were more liberal attempts that did not gain the support of the House. We believe that we have arrived at a situation that is very similar to the definition of terminal illness here in Westminster, and that is both safe and compassionate but also draws the line so that people who should not be able to access this do not.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
Q
Professor Owen: This is an essential question. I work clinically in the over-65 age group, where there is a lot of terminal illness, some of it in the last six months. You have to understand the population. The population is typically over 65 and frail. There can be a terminal illness, very typically with comorbidity. That comorbidity is often mental health comorbidity. Depression is at rates of 20% or thereabouts. Delirium and cognitive impairment is very common and often not picked up. There is patchy safeguarding, patchy access to social care and, as I know you have been hearing, patchy access to palliative care.
That is the ordinary person in the NHS. I know people who select into assisted dying are not necessarily that mean person, so to speak, but that is just a picture of what it looks like for me when I go to work. That is where one starts. Now think about burden. Well, this is a group that do feel very burdened. You might think some of that is excessive; some of it maybe is natural, given the life stage. So it is a mixed picture.
When it comes to pressure and coercion, I know you have been grappling with this a lot as a Committee, and I know there have been some amendments that address this. We have talked about clause 26 particularly in relation to this. Of course, when it comes back to the training question, you can take evidence on the state of safeguarding and how people are really able to assess coercive control, domestic violence and so on.
I would like to draw attention to something else that I am not sure has come so much to the attention of the Committee, which is not the offences or the criminal side of this; it is the common or garden capacity assessment side of it. This relates really to clause 1. It is the issue of how you deal with interpersonal pressures on somebody in a situation where there may be a mental health problem and there may not even be a diagnosis. You might be talking about a kind of cognitive impairment that has not reached the threshold for a diagnosis of dementia; you might be talking about a kind of mood problem or an anxiety problem that is sub-clinical; or you might be talking about a level of intelligence that is not clinically a learning disability. But it is there and it is interacting with a form of pressure within a family, let us say, which is often not malign in its intentions, but it exists. It is a very overvalued relationship, for example, with a strong sense of loyalty to somebody, or an enmeshment, for example.
What you have are situations where there is an impairment and also an interpersonal pressure. They interact and they amplify each other. That can have an important consequence in terms of the functional ability of mental capacity. Outside of the assisted dying context, when you look at that in the Court of Protection, which has been struggling with quite a lot of cases like this, that phenomenon of interaction that I am talking about between interpersonal pressure and impairment is recognised. It struggles with it. I have been involved in some research to try to structure the understanding of it, but it is not at the point where it is a kind of training manual that you can lift down from the shelf and roll out across the workforce. It is much more in a kind of research and development phase.
So it is important to draw attention to pressure not necessarily as malign in its intention, but which nevertheless operates in these situations and can have a subtle impact on the functional test of decision-making capacity. To bring us back to what the decision-making capacity is that we are talking about, it is the decision to end one’s own life.
Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)
Q
Dr Ward: I heard the session yesterday and would agree with the comments that were made there, particularly around proportionality. Article 2 is an absolute right —the right to life—whereas article 8 is a qualified right. Again, it is about that balancing act. The courts have been very clear that we need to protect vulnerable people, and I feel strongly that the Bill straddles that very well by giving choice but in a very limited set of circumstances.
On the Equality Act, there have been some claims made—this happened in Scotland—that the definition of disability in the Equality Act would cover people who are terminally ill. That that is not my reading of it, and that position is widely shared by the people advising us in Scotland on the legal capacity. That is all I have to say.
Professor Hoyano: I would only point out to the Committee that the common law entrenched the human rights of the patient a long time before the Human Rights Act 1998. We must remember that we do not just have to look at the European convention and Strasbourg. The common law has been very active in entrenching fundamental principles of the rights of the patient, particularly their autonomy in decision making regarding their own body, since long before the HRA.
The Chair
Time allows us to ask more questions. Three people have indicated that they wish to come in. I will start with Danny Kruger.
Danny Kruger
Q
Professor Hoyano said that the person in the street would not see the difference between a patient requesting to die by the withdrawal of treatment versus the active administration of fatal drugs, whereas I think you said, Professor Owen, that you did see a profound difference between that decision on the part of the patient and also, presumably, the act on the part of the medical professional, in the case of either the withdrawal of treatment or the administration of fatal medication. You said that you would be happy to draw that out; could you do so?
Professor Owen: Yes. I am happy to try now, but also to do it further with some written submissions if that would be helpful, because it is such an important point. First, for the man on the street, or the person on the bus, one thing to remember—this comes out in the public opinion polling—is that when you ask about assisted dying, some people think that that is access to palliative care. There is a degree of misconceptions that are out there in the public that are important to bear in mind.
On the distinction between the decision around the refusal of life-sustaining treatment and the decision regarding assisted dying, what are the similarities? Well, they are both about life and death. What are the differences? One is a refusal; one is a request. One is traditionally considered to be about bodily integrity—it is the so-called shield of the person, or the patient, against the intervention on the body that is being made by the medical profession. You are giving the patient an important right, which is a shield-like right. That contrasts with a request for assisted dying, which is a request. You are involving other people in an act that is an act of ending one’s life. That is not something that the medical profession has been comfortable with, going back thousands of years.
So you can discern a number of differences. Could you reduce those differences to one thing and one thing only, and be particularly precise about it? Probably not. I think you are talking about differences that cluster and group, and which we overall accept as a difference of kind.
The other issue here that is important is intention. When you are assessing somebody’s decision to refuse a life-sustaining treatment, the doctor there does not have the intention to end a person’s life. That would be a concerning intention were it there—and sometimes it is looked for, actually, if it is disputed. But of course, when a doctor is involved with a process where somebody is seeking assistance in the ending of their life, it is quite difficult to say that the doctor does not have an intention to end life.
One could go on with a discussion of the differences, but the similarity is that we are talking about life and death.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Let me come back to the content of the Bill, and to some of your points, Professor Owen. In terms of capacity and coercion, I think we are absolutely having these really important conversations. What concerns me a little bit, though, is whether we are saying we are not confident that two doctors, potentially a psychiatrist and an oncologist, and a judge can make assessments of capacity and coercion between them. What does that mean for things that are happening at the moment? We have talked about the withdrawal of end of life treatment and those things; those assessments must be being done now, all the time, but at the moment there is no legal framework around that. Surely, putting a legal framework around that and having all those multidisciplinary people involved has got to be a positive thing. Professor Hoyano, I would appreciate your thoughts on that.
Professor Hoyano: As I say, whereas I completely respect Professor Owen’s expertise in this as a psychiatrist, for me as a lawyer the question of capacity is a yes or no, necessarily. But capacity is always determined by the Court of Protection in respect of the decision that must be made by the person concerned: do they have the capacity to do it?
When we are talking about a determination of capacity, and also about coercion—which of course is part of capacity in a sense, because capacity is the autonomy of decision making—you are going to be having a very focused inquiry. It is not an inquiry into whether a person has capacity to manage their financial affairs. I probably do not have that capacity, but on something like this I would have capacity. It is important to recognise that it is a yes or no question, which the law has to draw and does draw, depending on the expertise of psychiatrists like Professor Owen, but also forming its own judgment from its own experience, which is why I think the Court of Protection really is the place where this should be.
There is one aspect of the Bill that worries me a lot, and that is the number of people who will be excluded by the provision that the medication must be self-administered. This would mean that Tony Nicklinson, who went all the way to the House of Lords to try to get the right to die, could not have it under this Bill, because he was paralysed. He was a tetraplegic, basically—he was paralysed from the neck down, with limited movement of his head, from a stroke. He lived for seven years with that condition and he would not have been able to self-administer. In fact, when he was denied by the House of Lords—anyone who has seen the Channel 4 programme will have watched him wail in despair—he refused all nutrition and hydration from that point until he died. That was the death he did not want, and I think we need to recognise that there are problems like that. In 2023 in Canada, across the entire country, only five patients opted to self-administer the medication—only five. Even when patients were capable of doing it, they wanted the doctor to do it instead, so let us remember that as well, please.
Dr Ward: Can I make a quick point about self-administration? This is something that in Scotland we looked into in great detail. In Scotland, we chose self-administration specifically because it does not just include ingestion or swallowing. There is a range of ways in which you can self-administer the medication, and I am happy to provide that information to the Committee if that would be helpful.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
Professor Owen: Good question. On the point about that interaction issue, it is not just me picking it up; it is the courts and the Court of Protection particularly. If you are interested, it is footnote (11) in the written submission from the Complex Life and Death Decisions group. The point that you make is well taken from my point of view. You have two doctors, essentially, doing the assessment. Some doctors can be very good at assessing social circumstances; some are not so good. I think it would be preferable to try to get a law that gets sight of social circumstances; one way of doing that may be to insert a requirement that a suitably experienced social worker is involved, so that there is some sensitivity to those contextual, relational, interpersonal effects, which, as I know you are aware, can be very subtle. A lot of these things are extremely difficult to pick up. They are easy to miss and, even when you are aware of them, there can be dilemmas about what to do with them.
Professor Hoyano: Might I add a postscript to that? A model that we could consider in this context is CAFCASS—the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service—in the family courts. It is a body of experts—civil servants, in effect—but they are independent and they are accustomed to dealing with specific context with social workers, for example. They investigate what should happen to a child in public law or private law proceedings. It occurs to me that something like that—a report from an equivalent body to the solicitor’s office, which I mentioned before—could be a very good way of building that in, because I completely agree that social workers are likely to be more professionally attuned, by virtue of their training and experience, to looking at the wider context.
Dr Opher
Q
Dr Ward: That picks up on the previous question, which my learned colleagues answered. Good legislation sets a baseline and a legal framework. You can take a kitchen sink approach to legislation, and you will end up with something that is completely unworkable in practice. There is an awful lot that guidance needs to pick up and should pick up. I understand that only certain things are appropriate for secondary legislation, but you should not try to legislate for every eventuality in a Bill.
On my reading of the Bill, there is nothing that prevents a multidisciplinary team from being involved with this. The Bill sets the baseline: there must be a minimum of two doctors. What happens in practice—and this should be picked up in guidance and secondary legislation—should be developed in conjunction with professional bodies: clinicians, allied health and social work. They are the appropriate people to develop that guidance, not legislators. I would say, “Be cautious about how much you put on the face of the Bill, because you might end up with something that is unworkable.”
Naz Shah
Q
Professor Owen: There are a lot of gaps. Take that point as I intend it—I do not say it as a downer on this project; I say it because it is true. There are just a lot of gaps. We are going into uncharted territory, so you might think it would be good to have more of a map before we start. This is one area where there are evidentiary gaps. It is not clear how those sorts of interactions should be assessed, what sorts of threshold should be set or what kind of training should be available. There has been a lot of talk about training; training is all very well and good, but you need to know what the point and purpose of the training is. The training has to be valid before you can roll it out. There are lots of gaps here.
That relates to the question of mental capacity assessment. It is often said, “Why are we worried about mental capacity? We have so much experience of doing it in health and social care contexts; we have the Mental Capacity Act, the Court of Protection and all this experience.” We do, and that extremely important work has been done since the parliamentary discussions you had about the Mental Capacity Act all those years ago. In some areas, it is being done reasonably well: in relation to treatment and care residents’ decisions, one can talk about a body of professionals who understand the concepts, can do the assessments and can achieve, at least when trained, good levels of agreement, so you can get the system to work.
But in areas of decision making where the decision itself is unsettled or conceptually much more profound or novel—I would suggest that the decision to end one’s own life has those characteristics—you cannot expect there to be such levels of reliability. That can be shown empirically in other areas where the decision making is unsettled. The question of how well capacity assessment works is actually matter-specific. That should not surprise us, because the whole concept of mental capacity is that it is matter-specific. That is the whole functional idea of mental capacity. The matter here is of the decision making to end one’s own life.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of the allocated time for the Committee to ask questions. I thank the witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Professor Preston, Dr Richards and Claire Williams gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Professor Preston: Hello. I am Nancy Preston, professor of supportive and palliative care and co-director of the international observatory on end-of-life care at Lancaster University. I am the co-lead for the European Association for Palliative Care taskforce, where we try to prepare guidelines for clinicians in countries where there is permissive legislation on assisted dying to help people whether they are involved or not involved.
Dr Richards: Hello. I am Dr Naomi Richards. I am a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and director of the end-of-life studies group there, which is a research and teaching group.
Claire Williams: Hello. I am Claire Williams and I am chair of the Greater Manchester research ethics committee. My background is one of nursing, but my focus for many years has been on ethical decision making in clinical research. That work inspired the proposal that I submitted. As you are aware, the proposal outlines a committee-based model for decision making in assisted dying cases, offering an alternative framework to that which places sole responsibility on a High Court judge. I believe that approach is far too narrow for such a complex and sensitive matter, and it is simply too much to expect one person to carry that burden alone. The proposal really shifts responsibility from that one individual judge to a panel of professionals, ensuring that decisions are made collectively with robust safeguards in place.
The Chair
I ask colleagues to ask one question, indicating who you wish to answer. If there is time at the end, I will open the floor for further questions.
Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)
Q
Claire Williams: I am not familiar per se with the types of drugs that will be used for assisted dying cases. In terms of my experience in research ethics, we make life and death decisions on a daily basis and decide whether we would offer patients the opportunity to take very experimental drugs. That is particularly difficult when dealing with terminally ill patients. What is so beneficial with using a committee-based model is that those decisions can be made collectively—decisions that are very similar and have real parallels in terms of ensuring that patients have fully consented, that they have capacity and that there is no coercion involved in recruiting them to clinical trial. That is how I see those parallels and how I feel assisted dying cases should be considered.
Jack Abbott
Q
Professor Preston: The decision to go into palliative care is often made more by a clinical team, recommending that there be changes in the goals of care and what we are to aiming do. There are two big European studies looking at that at the moment, in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer. It is about trying to get triggers so that those changes in care can happen, because people cannot make decisions unless they are informed and they are aware.
Equally, when it comes to assisted dying, we have done interviews with bereaved families and healthcare workers in the United States, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and also with British families who access assisted dying through Dignitas. We hear from the family members that it is something they have really thought about for a long time. It might come to a crunch point where they know they are potentially going to lose capacity, they are potentially going to lose the abilities that are important to them—although for someone else, losing them may not be an issue.
That is when people start to seek help. They usually first seek help from one or two family members. There is often secrecy around that, because you do not want everyone talking about it. It is quite exhausting to talk about. It is a decision you have made. Then they seek help from healthcare professionals, and that is where they get a varied response depending on who they access. It is a bit of a lottery, because it only a minority of doctors will be willing to do this. That is where the challenge comes in.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
Q
Professor Preston: The submission was with my colleague, Professor Suzanne Ost, who is a professor of law, and that very much came from Suzanne.
I think the aim is to have that bit of extra concern, so that we do not presume capacity, but instead almost presume that there is not capacity. It would be a bit like if you go to A&E with a child and they have a fracture. The presumption there is to ask, “How did this happen?” and “Do we need to rule anything out?”, rather than just assuming “Well, they have just fallen over” and that things are exactly as said. There is an element of that, where we are not presuming capacity, but are actually going into it and switching it around within the training to ask, “Do they have capacity?”. I think that would be a change within the Mental Capacity Act.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
Dr Richards: There are two things that I would like to say about this. The first is that it is individually specific, which probably will not come as a shock to you. The evidence shows that the people who request assisted dying are people who have a particular preference for control in their life, and they have had this preference across their life, so it is part of their identity. In that sense, it is a personal preference as opposed to a deficit in palliative care, which is what we hear a lot about.
The second thing is that, with regards to autonomy, proponents of assisted dying are very keen to emphasise that this is an autonomous decision, which it is, and would have to be by virtue of the law. However, that does not mean that families, loved ones and close social relations are not really embedded in that decision making. It is important to think of autonomy as relational rather than as an isolated making a decision not in relation to others. It is also important to think about the impacts on the family when you are thinking about the guidelines that would go along with any legislation.
Danny Kruger
Q
What we do know is that there is a combination. In two thirds of deaths in Belgium, I think, and in the United States, where I have visited, the first drug that is used is an anaesthetic, and then there is a paralysing agent. A paralytic drug is introduced, which often gives the impression that the patient is having a peaceful death, but we do not actually know what is going on beneath the surface. I am afraid to say that, from studies into people who have been on death row who have been legally executed, there is often evidence of brain trauma. Can you speak to this at all? We know that in a minority of cases real complications occur—it often takes a very long time for the patient to die, and there is vomiting and all sorts of distress. How can we improve what we know about the actual process of dying, and how can we reduce these terrible complications?
Claire Williams: I can only apologise, because I am here to give evidence about a model for collective decision making rather than about my experience with regard to these drugs. As you say, the potential side effects and prolonged deaths are something we will need to consider for these cases. We need to take evidence from other countries that have had this experiences. Apologies, but I cannot comment on this particular aspect.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Dr Richards: Assisted dying is quite categorically different from the end-of-life scenarios you are talking about there, so you would expect a very different set of safeguards. It is a misunderstanding to think that assisted dying is of a piece with other life-ending decisions. It is really something quite different and requires a different framework.
Dr Tidball
Q
Dr Richards: Quantifying dignity or respect—
Dr Tidball
Or real-life examples?
Dr Richards: So the question is: what is the evidence on trying to find out about this interactional space where you are asking about people’s motivations? Is that right?
Dr Tidball
Q
Dr Richards: By holistic processes, I assume you mean the multidisciplinary team conversations that we talked about in the previous session.
Dr Tidball
Yes.
Dr Richards: Maybe Nancy knows the evidence on that. Talking about gaps in research, I am an anthropologist, so I am interested in the discourse and the conversations that are happening, and I think there is a lack of evidence about that. We have a lot of evidence where it is tick boxes, for example, about motivations and procedure being following. We have less qualitative, in-depth, interactional evidence about that kind of holistic decision making.
Professor Preston: We have done some research where we interviewed doctors and healthcare workers who have had those conversations. The majority decide against it, but they are still having those conversations. We also heard the experience of the bereaved family, and what it was like to have those conversations. On the whole, the conversation is predominantly about palliative care—“Can we do something different? How can we meet and assess your needs?”
In some cases, the doctors in palliative care, particularly in Switzerland, certainly would never suggest assisted dying, but if the patient asks for it, they equally do not advise them how to get an assisted death. In some cases they said they sort of consciously blocked the conversation, so that the person timed out and could not have it. The emphasis is perhaps the other way in places like the Netherlands and Belgium, where it has been around longer and is much more integrated into other services, such as care homes and palliative care, as part of a holistic assessment.
I remember visiting a team in the Netherlands, and when they got a new patient they said, “We assess them for their preferences about whether they want to die, about resuscitation, about advance care planning and about euthanasia.” My jaw dropped; I was British—this was illegal. They do it in such a natural way. They said, “We need to plan that for them, because we need to understand what is right for them.” They are not suggesting it—they are just trying to take it on board. I would say that the predominance of the conversation is about palliative care, but if the patient wants the assisted death, they either might assist—which is rare—or suggest how they go to a right-to-die association. But more likely they will still tell them how palliative care can help.
Naz Shah
Q
“Consider whether there should be a stated exception to the usual presumption of capacity under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 in the Bill.”
What kind of standard do you think Parliament should consider adopting instead of the use of the Mental Capacity Act, and why do you think that?
Professor Preston: Again, this came from my colleague Suzanne Ost, who is a professor of law. As Naomi said, this is something very different from choosing to consent to an operation or even a research study. This is finite—it is a finite decision, so therefore the assessment should be a bit more. What I will say about mental capacity is that we had a PhD student who assessed mental capacity decisions by hospice care staff—particularly doctors, but also a lot of the nursing team who were making the decisions. She was a lawyer, and her conclusion was that it was incredibly well assessed. That was in terms of safeguarding—so, when people were going back to what we might consider unsafe homes—but that is what the person wanted, because their life was that unsafe home. I am talking about social deprivation and things like that. The people in this particular team were very good at assessing that and applying the Mental Capacity Act, according to her research.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Q
Claire Williams: I absolutely agree that a panel/committee approach would have better safeguarding for patients, because the decision is being made collectively with legal expertise and with other healthcare professionals—that might be palliative—or ethicists like myself. It is having that collective view, ensuring that everybody is happy and that that is exactly what the patient wants. I believe it should be a committee/panel-based approach for the final decision. As I said before, expecting a High Court judge—just one individual—to make that decision alone is hugely burdensome and not an approach that we should be taking.
Tom Gordon
Q
Professor Preston: There is a bigger and bigger conversation in a lot of these countries, including the Netherlands and Switzerland, that this is not about healthcare. I know that sounds a really strange thing, but it is about self-determination and a life choice. I remember someone saying to me, “Well, you wouldn’t check who I’m marrying.” They feel it is such a personal choice. I think patients do bring this up. They bring it up all the time now. Studies in Spain have shown that if a patient has a desire for hastened death, the best thing you should do is explore that desire. Why do they have that desire? How can we help you? Are there other needs we can meet? Most people will not want to then go ahead and have an assisted death. This is a minority of people. Could you remind me of the rest of your question?
Tom Gordon
If you have systems where assisted death is offered outside the healthcare setting, as in some of the countries around the world that you have mentioned, how does that limit people’s access to it? Do you think that has an impact?
Professor Preston: I think it almost enhances their access to it. At the moment, they get lost in the system. They are usually trying to find these two magical doctors—in a lot of countries, you still have to find those two doctors. Most doctors, even if they approve of the idea of assisted dying, do not want to be part of it. They might assess, but they might not prescribe. They might prescribe, but they would not administer. Trying to find those doctors to do it is really quite challenging. That is what we get back from the bereaved family interviews. How do you navigate a system where you cannot access the people you need to get to? People go doctor shopping—they are going to multiple doctors until they get the right answer.
If you keep it safer, outside of healthcare, people can talk to their doctor—they will mainly talk to their nurses, because they are the ones who do end-of-life care predominantly—and they can say, “Actually, that is not something we can do, but if you want to see, we have a stand with information about it. This is the service you can go through.” It is the same with the GP—things like that. I think it might actually make it easier for people to navigate. That is where I came to the idea of keeping it outside. It is a supportive way for patients and families because, on top of all this, they are dying. They are having a really difficult time and we are trying to get them to navigate services that are incredibly difficult when you are trying to find two doctors.
Just finally, on top of that, it is quite secret who does this. Doctors do not want to tell people. I have had people who do this—who might just assess and may not prescribe or administer—and they do not want people to know in palliative care because it does not go well for them. They are concerned that people will not like it. I do research in this area, and some people think that means that I am trying to push for assisted dying. I am not; I have a neutral stance. I will say things pro; I will say things against. But it is quite difficult for people involved. There is a bit of a taboo—there is a secrecy. It makes it even harder to say in the Bill, “Recommend another doctor.” It will be a challenge to find that person.
Dr Richards: May I add something? The evidence suggests that one of the implementation challenges with assisted dying is finding doctors willing to participate—consciously participate—in this practice. However, I think what you are asking there is about a more Swiss model of assisted dying. There is a reason that the Swiss model of assisted dying has stayed in Switzerland and gone nowhere else—it has not transferred or translated to other jurisdictions, because of its uniqueness and the practical challenges of disentangling it from a healthcare system.
It is important to recognise that, but we are also talking a little about disentangling assisted dying from palliative care. It is important to recognise that the majority of people who request assisted dying—who receive assisted dying—are within palliative care. They are already in that, as I am sure you have heard already. To disentangle assisted dying from the specialist communication around end of life would seem to be a self-inflicted problem of design, in my view, because it is safest being held there by the experts for those who want to get involved in it. It is safest being held in the healthcare system. As I say, there is a reason why the Swiss model is the only model where that happens outside a healthcare system. That is localised to Switzerland.
Dr Opher
Q
Claire Williams: Again, those safeguards would need to be in place. There would be concerns if they were not actually giving the drug to the patient, and seeing the patient take the medication. Yes, robust safeguards would need to be in place.
The Chair
Could you make it a supplementary? I want to get Kim Leadbeater in, and then we can come back to it.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Dr Richards: In covid, we did research in care homes, and there was real concern about “do not resuscitate” orders and emergency care plans that were blanketed across the care homes. Care home staff were traumatised by that, so there are real issues. We know that there are real issues day to day in how people are treated within the NHS. I think it is unconscious—I do not think people are intending it—but we know that people are treated differently and that different things are done. That is partly why we think a system outside that would protect them, because then you are not within the healthcare team that is treating you and giving you advice about such things, whereas if you are having to opt into a system where you have to do something more, they will not feel like it. That does not happen in the hospital. It is about trust.
One of the issues in Switzerland—I must just add, the same Swiss system is being adopted in Germany and Austria, which already has a panel—is that they are trying to protect these people by keeping it one step removed, so that people do not feel that they are trying to be persuaded to an assisted death. Most hospitals in Switzerland will not allow assisted dying to occur, because they do not want a lack of trust in their patient group. Instead, they will sometimes allow the right-to-die associations in to do this and there are just a few hospitals that allow their staff to do it. It is all about trust.
Kim Leadbeater
That is really helpful.
Dr Richards: I do not think there is any evidence that there is a loss of trust in doctors post legalisation—I just wanted to add that.
As I said in response to the earlier question, this is a categorically new thing that would be coming into society, which would cause cultural change in how we approach, think about and anticipate dying. It is a big deal—I know you all know that. Accompanying it, therefore, there needs to be really sensitive information delivery that is appropriate across society and that will alert people to this. In particular, if you are going to have a system where doctors are not allowed to raise it with patients, people need to know about it. That is one thing.
Reducing people’s fears is also important. I mean, there are so many misconceptions about assisted dying, even among people who have spent quite a lot of time reading about it and researching it. It is a very simple thing, but the discourse in society has been going on for so long that there is a lot of misunderstanding.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Dr Richards: Misunderstandings of what it is? Fundamentally, that it is not based on the principle of autonomy and that it is something that can be done to you, without your consent. You would not want the general public to think that. At a very basic level, it is understanding that assisted dying—the very phenomenon that that term encapsulates—is a phenomenon that starts with the patient. It is a request made by the patient because of their subjective assessment of their quality of life as they are dying. At a very fundamental level, you would want to communicate that to the public. It is a huge piece of work to have to create an informational context that is variegated according to the starting position of people’s knowledge base around it, and to bring in something that does not scare the public and so they see it as something that can be positive.
In jurisdictions that have legalised, even post-legalisation there continue to be elements that resist it. However, you start to see positive stories of the kind of ceremonial aspects that can come when you can time death. There is a whole cultural piece around new rites—new rites around dying that are being created when people choose to have an assisted death, and the new dying time or space that is opened up there, as well as the intentional actions that can happen from people’s social groups. Post-legalisation, it is not just fear—I think you get a balance of stories coming through—but it is something that you need to attend to.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Q
Dr Richards: I think you probably know the answer is that it is not patient-centric. In Marie Curie’s “Better End of Life Report 2024”, which was a representational survey with bereaved relatives, a third of people did not think that their relative even knew that they were dying. We still have a long way to go in communicating to people that they are in a terminal phase, so that they can find whatever residual value is in that period of time for themselves and their family. So, no, definitely not, but that is what we are striving for. I am sure that that is what all healthcare professionals are striving for.
In terms of assisted dying, it would be so explicit. It is categorically different from other kinds of conversations that are much more open-ended, like goals of care conversations at end of life. This is really quite specific, to the extent that you can actually give doctors a form of words to use, because their request for this procedure needs to be so categorical and there needs to be no ambiguity around that.
In a way, this conversation about assisted dying is actually different because it is very up front, it has to be very categorical and it has to be documented. In that sense, it is extremely patient-centric, and there would be no using euphemisms, which happens in end-of-life care, when what doctors think they have told their patients they do not hear. They have heard something else, because euphemisms change according to—well, you do not even have to go so far as to talk about different communities or cultural groups; they change from one person to another. I think this would require quite specific language. It would bring things into a much less ambiguous kind of territory.
Juliet Campbell (Broxtowe) (Lab)
Q
Professor Preston: I think it is about having that additional consideration. When additional consideration for, perhaps, social deprivation or about people from minority groups is in the training and is at the forefront of people’s thinking, they can address it.
I will give you an example. We did a study looking at access to palliative care. I know you have heard a lot about there being a postcode lottery and things like that. One of our areas is one of the most deprived coastal communities in the country, and yet it had equal access for people across all areas of society, because they brought in people to target anyone from those socially deprived areas.
Equally, at the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic, at one of the big London hospitals, we analysed the data because we were concerned about access to palliative care services. Were people accessing it during the pandemic? We also looked by ethnicity. What we found was that not only during the pandemic, but pre-pandemic, if you were non-white, it took—I don’t know—three or five days longer to get that referral.
We had an idea that from some of the research we had done on social deprivation, people are making assumptions. It is not about people making horrible decisions, but they are making assumptions: “Oh, they will have a big family—the family will look after them. This will happen or that will happen.”
The nurse consultant, Claude Chidiac, went in and did training for the staff and said, “Don’t assume that just because people come from an Afro-Caribbean family that they have got this big family.” Within a year, when the second wave happened, the difference had gone. It can be at the forefront of training and you can make people really think about it. I would say—I think someone said it yesterday—that there is almost an inverse inequality, because I think those families and those communities will be really trying to protect people from even thinking about going for it.
Daniel Francis
Q
Claire Williams: Again, I can only apologise, as my evidence is about a committee-based, panel approach to decision making rather than what happens at that point of end of life. I do not know whether somebody else is able to come in.
Professor Preston: I can take that if you want.
Daniel Francis
Thank you, Professor Preston. Sorry—if you agree, Mrs Harris.
The Chair
I wondered who was chairing for a moment.
Professor Preston: We raised that concern about doctors staying with people for prolonged periods of time. I think it will come down to what “self-administered” means. In our written evidence, we said that, in Switzerland, that has increasingly meant setting up an intravenous drip and the patient opens the port. In that case, you are talking about different drugs and it would be much speedier. But we have data on oral ingestion from Oregon, and I think 30% of cases took an hour to die. Most of us know that in the NHS, an hour with a doctor will be pretty unlikely, even if they are in another room. Most assisted deaths across the world occur in a home or a nursing home, so you do not have doctors there—we are not talking about GPs being out for prolonged periods of time. The method of administration may change that as well.
The other thing is that doctors are not used to being with patients at the end of life—it is nurses and healthcare assistants. So you are actually bringing in a new role for them to be with someone as they die. I am not saying that they have not had that experience, but they are not the traditional healthcare workers who are at the bedside. Again, that would need to be accounted for in the training so that they are more used to being around people who are at the end of life. They will have had some experience, but it is very much in the realm of healthcare assistants and nurses.
Naz Shah
Q
Dr Richards: It would have to be. Those examples that you have just given would not mean that it was not an explicit conversation.
Danny Kruger
Q
Professor Preston: I think we suggested a panel. I submitted some evidence after the last Select Committee inquiry about a panel that could operate outside. Lots of the reasons I gave were about helping to navigate, helping to identify doctors and helping to support people who feel vulnerable within the NHS.
What increasingly came out from the idea of a judge is the question of what exactly their role is and the fact that there is no right of appeal. However, if you had a panel, that would give a much more thorough understanding of what is happening. The additional safeguard is that the panel could say there needs to be a palliative care consultation. You would have to be sure the doctors who are doing it are, based on their register, qualified to have a palliative care conversation so that all options have been explored.
My fear is about if we do not specify what training is or what these people’s expertise is. Most doctors do not know too much about palliative care or what the options are. You do not need to see a palliative care doctor, as a palliative care nurse can talk you through it, but the additional power of that panel is that it could be answerable to the court or some other sort of assisted dying tribunal.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
Dr Richards: The Bill covers terminal illness only. It includes people with six months left to live, so it would not include the phenomenon of old age rational suicide, which is where you want to end your own life for reasons of the accumulated losses of old age, or because you feel you have lived a completed life. This really relates to people who are in what is called the fourth age of life. It is a social and cultural phenomenon that there are people in the fourth age of life who want to wrap things up on their own terms, but this is a separate phenomenon to people who are in a natural dying phase of life and want to accelerate that. It is different.
After you legalise assisted dying for terminally ill people, you will still get older people taking their own life. The highest demographic for completed suicides is people over the age of 70. It is a phenomenon around the world, but it is a qualitatively different phenomenon to people in a natural dying phase. If we look at the data on who requests assisted dying, it is people who want control and agency, and they may even have thought about it as a mode of dying that they want to access before they even had a terminal illness. They might have always imagined that, but that is in conjunction with various forms of suffering that they will be experiencing. It is not just personal preference; they are also suffering, and suffering is very multi-faceted and multi-dimensional at end of life. It has various different components, not just physical.
The Chair
Before we move to the next panel, is there anyone else who has pressing questions, or would you prefer to have a five-minute comfort break?
Naz Shah
Q
Dr Richards: I do not really understand why the case of terminal anorexia would be different to any other case in terms of the conversation. It would be necessary to have a very explicit conversation with somebody requesting assisted death; it does not matter what their illness is.
On the issue of anorexia, the numbers are really tiny. In the Oregon model, which is what is in the Bill, you are talking about one or two people in the history of assisted dying. It is a very minor issue to get focused on. I have seen so much about this in the press and being discussed here. If you are very concerned about terminal anorexia, I am sure you could do some tinkering with the Bill so that people would not be eligible for assisted dying, but in terms of the empirical data in jurisdictions that have legalised the Oregon model, which is what this is, there are one or two cases.
This should not be given a huge amount of time, because it is a distraction from the fact that really we are talking about a new mode of dying, which is a cultural response. Just as palliative care is a cultural response to suffering at the end of life, so is assisted dying. It is a different track; it is offering something different. Different types of people will want to go for that. It is a response to the protracted dying trajectory that we see now, which is new. In the history of human dying, we have never taken so long to die before. There has never been so much medical intervention at the end of life, and assisted dying is a cultural response to that. To get fixated on the two people with terminal anorexia who have accessed assisted dying in the States is a bit of a red herring.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Professor Preston: We have heard lots of evidence about training schemes around the world. To be honest, I think they are still developing, but we can look at the good elements of those and at what has and has not been evaluated. We can do it almost like action research, where you are learning as you go, and we can improve the training as we go.
Most people do not die under palliative care. This Bill will affect general care; it will affect specialist care, but not in palliative care. We need to train those people as well, because they will be having a lot of these conversations. We are doing that training now, which is about how we talk to someone in a compassionate way. How do you help people to understand that they can be involved in the decision making? What might the goals of care for you be, and what might a goals-of-care conversation look like?
We have lots of this training already. Palliative care has huge expertise in this with advanced care planning and the rest of it, so it is about getting some of that incorporated. It is not just about saying, “This is what an assisted death would look like. This is how it would process.” It must be more than that, and we need to help people to explore their end-of-life choices. How do you want to die? Do you want to die at home? Do you want the cat on the bed? It is about all those things that are really important to people, but we must have that conversation and explore them, and it is quite hard to get clinicians to have those conversations. There will be a special group of people who can manage this; they will need training and support.
The Chair
I thank the witnesses on behalf of the Committee. We will suspend until 3 pm, which gives us six minutes.
The Chair
Q
Pat Malone: My name is Pat Malone, and three members of my family died in dreadful circumstances, two of them by suicide, and I think the circumstances of their deaths would be useful for the Committee to know before any decisions are made.
Liz Reed: I am Liz Reed. My brother had an assisted death in a hospice in Queensland, Australia. Their law is very similar to the Bill—the assessments, the focus on coercion—so I am here to share how the law works in practice for a dying person and their family.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Pat Malone: I am not familiar with the situation in Australia. The two suicides in my family were outwith the law, and the third death I was going to talk about was a natural death—we would call it a natural death—so I am sorry but I cannot make a comparison.
Liz Reed: The system in Australia is, as I said, quite similar to what is being proposed here. It felt like throughout that process for my brother, Rob, it was really caring and respectful. He was able to change his mind, which he did, in terms of dates and when it would happen. His views and the views of his family were also taken into account and, through the process, he was treated like a person with autonomy whose choices were being respected.
The Chair
Q
Julie Thienpont: I am Julie Thienpont, and my husband and I were living in Spain at the time. My husband was diagnosed with mesothelioma and given three months left to live, so he opted for assisted dying. It was quite a rigorous process in Spain. It only came into law there in 2021, and he was one of the very first people in the south of Spain to take the opportunity of assisted dying.
Tom Gordon
Q
Liz Reed: As I said, my brother died in a hospice in Australia, where the hospices are extremely well funded, and the care he received was sensational. The team and the staff in that hospice made the time he had in there. Obviously, it was not amazing, because he was dying, but for a really difficult situation, it was comfortable for his family, and he had young children. You could not fault the care and access to the medication. We as a family, after he died, went back to the hospice to say, “This was changing for us and for him.”
But it did not change what was happening to my brother. He went from a hospital to a hospice, and he had a date planned for his death. He then actually changed his mind and extended it, because it was better than being in a hospital and the hospice care was great, but he still landed at the same point of saying, “This is not living.” It was not what he wanted, and not what he wanted. From a personal perspective, when he was diagnosed, we said, “You’ve got to come home.” But actually, I think, “Oh my God, what would have happened to him? How long would he have had to go on? How long would his children have had to watch him?” He was only 39 and his children were young, and they did not have to—they still remember their dad. For him, for his wife and for our family, I would not change anything.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
Pat Malone: In all three cases, it would have improved their lives and their deaths. My father died at the age of 85 from pancreatic cancer. He asked me to help him kill himself while he was in hospital in the last three or four weeks of his life. Obviously, I was not able to do so. He suggested that I put poison in his water, which I had no idea how to action. I spoke to his consultant and asked whether he could do anything to hasten his end, and he said, “No, no, no, I can’t.” After that, he lasted another three weeks and he had a horrendous death. It has scarred our family to this day.
My brother contracted the same disease, pancreatic cancer, and having seen my father die, he—having gone to six doctors and asked them whether they could help him end his life; he was under home hospice palliative care at that time—contrived his own suicide. Unfortunately, he asked his wife to sit and hold his hand while he died, as a result of which there was a police investigation into collusion. She and her daughter, who was also in the house at the time, were not cleared for eight months, during which they were interviewed repeatedly about anomalies and what they did or did not know. It was absolutely unconscionable to pile that on top of their grief, at a time when they had just lost their father and husband.
My sister’s death, having seen those two deaths, was much easier. She got motor neurone disease and was not really suffering in the way that my father and brother had been. She knew that her end was going to be as a live brain in a dead body, and that was the horror that she faced. From the beginning, she was fixed on going to Dignitas, which she did. It was not easy because, after the example of my brother’s family, she would not allow anybody in her family to have anything to do with the arrangements that she had to make, which were quite complicated and became ever more difficult for her. First, she could not drive a car any more and was going around on a mobility scooter, gathering endless documents and having all the tests that you need to have. Ultimately, she said, “This is my golden ticket.” When she was accepted by Dignitas, she said that it was the greatest relief of her life. She said, “I know I am not going to get cancer or dementia. I’m going to die painlessly at a time and place of my choosing.”
That is exactly what she did, but she died 1,000 miles from home. She should have died in her house with her family, and her dogs on the bed. She should not have been denied that. Had this Bill been enacted in her time, it would have been a much easier operation. The problem with this legislation mainly is that it is so long overdue. There are people now who are in that position. You may think our family is star crossed because we have had three deaths like that, but I think we are just a normal family. It is happening all the time. Chris Whitty talked on Monday about how we should not rush into this. We are not rushing into it; we are at the back of the queue, really.
Rachel Hopkins
Q
Julie Thienpont: Guido had decided right from the word go, even before he got sick, that that was the way he would want to end his life, if there was a possibility of it. He was from Belgium originally, so he expressed a wish that if ever he needed it, he would like to go back there.
The law in Spain is very similar to the Bill, which I have read through countless times. There are a lot of similarities. There were very rigorous checks. It involved much paperwork, counselling and family liaison. The difference was that it went before a board, so it was a panel that would allow or not allow the decision—it was not decided in a court. That would be the main difference, but the process was rigorous. It was slightly difficult for me, because although I can speak Spanish, the terminology was frequently more difficult, so they very kindly translated for me. They explained everything: what would happen and how it would happen, if it happened. It was a big celebration for Guy when he was actually granted this. They also told us that he could change his mind after he had made the decision, should he wish to. He did once. It was me who asked him to do that, because I did not feel he was sick enough, which sounds a bit silly, I know.
He was an intensely private person. The palliative care in the part of Spain where we were is excellent, but it was quite irrelevant for him because he had already expressed that he wanted to die at home. We lived up a mountain; we were quite remote. Being such a private person, he never wanted to be in a situation where somebody else had to see him in any vulnerable situations, especially with personal hygiene and so on—even me, although I was able to help him in many ways. I had to do a lot of procedures for him, after being trained to do so, but he was more than happy with the situation of having assisted dying once it was granted. He did not need any other sort of care, although we still had a nurse coming every few days and the family doctor came up at least once a week. That does not sound much, but he did not want her any more often than that.
Danny Kruger
Q
Pat Malone: She would not qualify, because there was no telling how long she would live as a live brain in a dead body, as she said. It could have been months or even years, so she would not qualify in any case under this Bill. However, you have moved mountains to get to this point, so the last thing in the world I want to do is pile more requirements on the Bill. I would like to see some stuff stripped out of it, actually, to make it easier, but I am not going to ask for that because we desperately need to get away from the status quo. This Bill gets us away from the status quo.
Naz Shah
Q
Julie Thienpont: Maybe I said “counselling”, but it was not a session of counselling. It was somebody asking my opinion to check that I was 100% behind Guy. His son also did that by proxy—via us—because he was in a different part of Spain. They wanted to ensure that he had talked it over with family members. It was not hastened along, because he had been given a short life span, so it did not take terribly long. He had to wait about three weeks before the initial ball started rolling, and then two weeks later a family doctor and nurses from the hospital came round for form filling, reading through, translating and signatures, and again another two weeks after that. Each time, I believe it went before a panel. We did not, but the paperwork had to go before a panel. They were left in no uncertain terms that that was the way he wanted to end his life.
It was a very peaceful, serene and beautiful death, as opposed to what it would have been like. He was able to speak to his relatives in Australia, his brothers in Belgium and other family members, and I was able to hold his hand. Guy had always been a bit of an old cowboy, and he always said that he wanted to die with his boots on. I am proud to say that that is what he did. At the end, we were holding hands, and I said to him, “Don’t be afraid.” He said, “I’m not afraid,” and he winked at me just before he closed his eyes.
On the process, perhaps I should have said that it was intravenous, so he had a drip in each arm. It was quite a quick process—maybe 10 to 15 minutes, which I thought was quite quick—but we had had lots of time that morning, you know. It was a beautiful end—the wink especially. I am left with very good memories of such a peaceful death, which was going to happen regardless. He was at peace with it, so that helped me.
Naz Shah
Q
Liz Reed: I understand the big focus on coercion. It is very similar in Australia. The difference between the Queensland Bill, specifically, and the Bill proposed here is that, in the Queensland Bill, coercion is punishable both ways: you can be punished for trying to coerce someone into an assisted death but also for trying to change their mind the other way. Those safeguards are in place because you hear anecdotally from practitioners that, broadly, people are being coerced out of this.
In our experience, the day before my brother died our mum said to him, “Are you sure?” She was not trying to coerce him, but was she trying to make him go on longer? Absolutely. That is her son, and that is completely natural and normal. She did not want to see him die. His response was, “This isn’t living.”
Naz Shah
Thank you very much.
Pat Malone: As far as my brother and sister were concerned, there was no check for coercion. There needs to be, as in the Bill, but there are many more safeguards in the Bill than there are now. The people who are contemplating suicide now have no safeguards at all.
Dr Opher
And he was having excellent palliative care, so what was in his mind, do you think? Why did he decide on that option?
Liz Reed: He knew he was dying. He was diagnosed in October 2022. Just to be clear, in the period before his health started to really deteriorate, he had a great time. He went fishing, he went to the beach—it was like an advert for Australia, how great his time was. He quit his job, he was with his young sons, and he had a lovely time. But his treatment stopped working. He had had every treatment and, even though he was on the pathway and had started the voluntary assisted dying process, he was still having immunotherapy. He wanted to live. His family wanted him to live. But he got to the point where he knew he was absolutely not going to live, and that it was a matter of time. He said that he was afraid not of dying, but of dying in an awful way. He was worried his lungs were filling up with fluid. He thought he might have a heart attack. He was afraid of that happening; he was not afraid of dying. He was not depressed but he knew what was coming. He felt, in his own words, “I’m just sitting here waiting to die.”
He had had experience of a friend whose wife had died, and she got so bad that her young son could not visit her any more because it was too frightening for him. My brother’s children will remember who he was: this big, 6-foot-6, rugby-playing, fun dad. He got to choose: “Actually, I’m ill enough, I’m frightened of what might come down, which I know is going to happen anyway, and I choose now.”
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Liz and Julie, I am interested to know whether you think any aspects of the processes that you went through in Australia and in Spain could have been done better or improved. Is there anything from your experiences that we could learn from to enhance what we are trying to do here?
I also have a question for all three of you—and Pat, goodness me, to come here and tell your story after everything you have been through is unbelievably brave, so thank you. What impact did these different types of death have on your grief and on bereavement? We are talking about different types of death, so I think it will be helpful to think what that looks like for people.
Julie Thienpont: It is a very good question, because I think it did impact my grief. There is not anything that I would change, for definite, about that, but I think I mentioned that I had not tried to talk Guy out of it the first time around, but I did say, “Don’t be so hasty, because you’re not as sick as you could be.” He was still getting up and dressed every day and managing pain, so we had that discussion. On the only day that I ever knew him to stay in bed a little bit longer, I knew he was thinking about phoning to say that he was ready, and he called me to him and said, “Come and sit with me. I want to ask you two things.” The main one relevant to this is: “Don’t try and talk me out of it this time. I’ve made the decision. Don’t try and talk me out of it, because I don’t want you to be impacted in that way.” The second one was to “be strong”.
Both those things have impacted my grief, because I was so strong for 12 whole months and I just thought, “Yes, we’ve gone through that. It’s been great, and”—not “great”. Sorry, I am using the wrong terminology, but for me, it was so good to know that he died so peacefully and he was at peace with himself. That happened and I thought, “Right, now I’ve got to do the ‘be strong’ bit,” so I did that. I did want to talk him out of it again, but I did not, and I was very strong, and then all of a sudden, one day, grief did start to creep in, obviously. Suddenly I thought, “Hang on, he’s not coming back.” That is a normal grieving process, but it held off a little while.
The pathway that the grief I experienced took was that every day I had a different memory of us sitting somewhere, being somewhere or doing something. During the last months that we had together, knowing that he was going to die—sorry to sound like a bit of a romantic—our love intensified so much. You know that everything you do, it is probably going to be the last time you do it. It is almost like an unbreakable bond between you: you are both in this situation together and you are going to get through it, you are going to be strong, and you are going to be there for each other. I think that carried me so far, because those four months that he lived were the best four months, in the sense of our closeness and how supportive and caring we were for each other. It makes me smile now. When I think of his passing, I smile. Yes, I do get upset and I miss him a big lot, but I smile because everything worked out the way he wanted it to.
Kim Leadbeater
Thank you so much.
Pat Malone: My experience with my father was entirely different. My daughter, who was seven at the time, reminded me recently, when I was putting my thoughts together for this, that in his last weeks she had visited him, and I had taken her into a side room and told her not to expect to see the grandpa that she knew, because he was very, very ill and he did not look anything like she would expect. She said she was very thankful that I did that, because she was stunned and shocked when she saw him. He was like a 1,000-year-old corpse, he was moving, and his eyes were yellow, and that is how she remembers him—she does not remember any of the good times. My sister, who lived close by, was with him most of the time, and she just sat by his bed and prayed for his heart to stop.
We were all shell-shocked when he did finally die. As I say, that informed the decisions that were made about suicide by my sister and brother. Had he been a farm animal, we would have been prosecuted for causing unnecessary suffering, but he was a man so he was not entitled to that sort of consideration. I remember him in that horrible ward breathing his last. The only time he moved in the last days was to cough up blood. For a man who had asked to be relieved of that burden, who had asked for an act of mercy, a week before, and it had been denied him—I cannot understand how anybody would deny a dying man a deliverance.
When my brother died, he and my sister-in-law had been together since they were 11 years old. He was only 53, so they had already known each other for 40 years. She had shared his suffering while he was being driven around the country looking for diagnoses and, ultimately, looking for doctors who would help him commit suicide. His weight had gone from 18 stone to 8 stone, and he was bright yellow as well. He was suffering all the time and she was suffering with him. She was relieved as well as grieving when he actually died—and then the police were at the door. The investigation went on until his inquest eight months later. The police were as helpful and sensitive as they could possibly be. Vicky got the impression that they wanted her to give the wrong answer—when they said, “Did you know what he was going to do?” she said, “Yes, I did”; to “Could you have stopped him?” she said, “Yes, he was weak as a kitten”; and to “Could you have resuscitated him?” she said “Yes,” because she had had some nursing training, and so on—and with every answer they just collapsed a little bit more.
Ultimately, at the inquest there was an anomaly in his suicide note. It was written in two different colours of ink, and the police investigated whether it could have been written at different times, possibly by different people. Giving evidence at his inquest, the police said that they thought his pen had run out—there was a squiggle at the top where it changed from black to blue—and they said that they were not proceeding with any idea that there had been positive involvement in his suicide.
I have a note of the transcript of what the coroner said, which reads: “I don’t want to make any more of this than I absolutely have to. I simply record therefore that Michael Malone took his own life. He did so quite deliberately and having made appropriate preparations, and so it’s not a case of my saying that he did so while the balance of his mind was disturbed, because it clearly was not. It was a decision that he took and I have every sympathy with that decision in so far as a coroner is allowed to say that.”
The police were very sympathetic. The coroner was very sympathetic. Danny Kruger is very sympathetic. But sympathy only goes so far, and I am glad that this Committee is now looking at exactly the people who matter first in this issue, who cannot be here to talk for themselves.
Liz Reed: In answer to the first point, about anything we would change or do differently, I think actually my brother’s case was dealt with really well and there were checks and balances along the whole way: “Does he meet the eligibility criteria?”—obviously—“but also, does he want to?” His wife was involved in the process with him, and he was checked constantly. A doctor administered for him, and he had met him already. He knew him and had a rapport with him. He had a few jokes with him at the end. So from that perspective, I do not think so. It is slightly different in Australia, in that it does not have to have a High Court judge, so the process feels a bit more streamlined than it is here, and maybe the access would be slightly different because of that.
In terms of the grief, I think anyone that knows someone who has been through a terminal illness knows that there is a level of anticipatory grief that comes with that—the waking up every morning thinking, “Has it been tonight? What happens next? What’s today?” Because when someone is in the final stages of their life, which my brother was, there is always something every day: “Oh, he’s got to have fluid drained from his heart today,” or, “Oh, this has happened.” There is always something, so that grief starts coming on before the person has even died.
The day my brother died we sat outside in the courtyard and had a glass of champagne. He chose a Bob Dylan song that he wanted to die to. It was extremely peaceful. It was seconds. And he got to say all the things, have all the conversations, speak to our parents—that sort of real American “closure”. That is what he got, and we were not sitting around thinking, “I wish I’d said this. I missed it,” or, “I was off doing something with the kids.” We were all there: my mum, my dad, me, his wife. We sat there and held his hand—and what a gift.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
Q
Liz Reed: I do not think so, no. I do not think it would have changed his mind. I am someone who is real squeamish, so I probably would not want to, because of how I feel about all that kind of stuff, but it would not have changed anything for him—no, absolutely not. But I think there is a comfort in having a doctor there administering that, “This is going to go as it should,” and there is a calm that comes with that.
Julie Thienpont: Guy being intensely private, as I mentioned before, he would have preferred less people around him at the time. There were two nurses, the family doctor and the administering doctor. They prepared the scene and put the drips in—they had to put one in each arm—and they had to be there in order to witness the whole thing. He would have preferred to have been able to do it himself, but I do not think the fact that it was administered by somebody else impacted in a negative way for him.
The Chair
Pat, I think you wanted to say something.
Pat Malone: Yes. My sister died under the Swiss method, which meant self-administering a cup. She had motor neurone disease, and she was slowly losing the use of her limbs. She went earlier than she needed to because she wanted to be sure that she would be able to swallow and lift her arm. She could probably have put it off for some months—an indeterminate period—but she died before she needed to in order to be sure that she could self-administer.
Sarah Olney
Q
Pat Malone: I cannot speak for her, but there were many, many problems. Bizarrely, the last package of documents that she sent to Dignitas got caught up in the postal strike, and they were all irreplaceable original documents. I do not know if you remember, but around that time—this was the winter of 2022-23—there was a postal strike, and it particularly affected international mail. For nine weeks, the documents were held up in a sorting office, and they could not find them. She was getting more and more concerned, because her horror was that she would miss that deadline. In actual fact, Dignitas agreed that in the final analysis she could hand carry the last of the documents she needed when she came to Switzerland, and she was still able, but her horror when she thought she was going to miss the bus was quite palpable. Yes, if a doctor had been able to do it, she might well have chosen that option.
Dr Opher
Q
Pat Malone: As I mentioned to Mr Kruger, I am loath to meddle in any way with the Bill. I think that as it is the Bill is the best we can do at this time.
The Chair
Order. I am going to let you continue, but that question is out of scope. Is there anything else you want to say, Mr Malone?
Pat Malone: I have said that as far as meddling with the Bill is concerned, I would like to see it pass as it is without too much delay.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
Pat Malone: I think that both my sister and brother had more than adequate palliative care. My sister, particularly—she was taken under the wing of the Macmillan nurses, even though she did not have cancer, and they were absolutely marvellous. Her GP was brilliant as well: behind her all the way for the whole year. She could not really have done it without her.
The NHS was excellent. In fact, my sister was used as a diagnostic tool, or diagnostic test, by NHS surgeons who were teaching medical students. She would be put in front of medical students and they would be asked what was wrong with her. Given that MND is normally associated with young men with brain trauma and so forth, it encouraged them to widen their appreciation of these diseases. It meant that she met NHS specialists at a particular level. She really wanted for nothing. She had a stairlift put in her house in short order. She had the mobility scooters and all the gimcracks that you have in your bathroom to help you get out of the bath and so forth. Above all, from the Macmillan nurses in Blyth, she had moral support. These are no-nonsense people who will walk through a wall if there is something that you need, and that is wonderful to have.
So there was no palliative care issue with my sister. She never needed any pain control. She had everything she needed. It did not change her mind one bit. I would like to see palliative care divorced from the idea of assisted dying. What she needed was assistance to die. What my brother needed was assistance to die. Palliative care was a side issue. It obviously comes into it, but if you could look at assisted dying on its own, I think that would be useful.
The Chair
Are there any more questions?
Julie Thienpont: Would it be okay if I said something?
The Chair
Of course. Please do.
Julie Thienpont: This is hearsay, of course. I live in Guernsey now. It is a small island, so we know a lot of people. A lot of people know each other. I had something published in the Guernsey press fairly recently. A friend of mine had a relative in the local hospice, which is excellent—it is absolutely beautiful and the palliative care and the teams are second to none. However, her relative who was in there saw the newspaper and said, “Oh, my goodness! I wish this Bill would come to pass here. I wish it would have been in time for me.” He said, “I am getting excellent treatment, but I am sitting here waiting to die. My family are coming every day to watch me wait to die.” He lived for five more days and he actually expressed that even though his care was excellent, he really wanted to die sooner on his own terms.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Liz Reed: Rob’s experience was that this law only came in in Queensland in January 2023, post his diagnosis. But it was an issue that had been in the press; he knew it was coming in and from diagnosis he thought it was something he might consider, and so he approached his doctor with that.
In terms of my view on whether doctors should bring this up—we are coming from a position of privilege where we have access to media; he knew this was going on, and I am sure there will be plenty of people who do not know. I do not really know, to be honest, where I sit on that. For our family and for my brother, it was absolutely the right thing to do. I cannot really answer.
Pat Malone: Some regulation and some guidance would not go amiss. My sister had fantastic support from her GP. She did a lot of extra work to meet the requirements of Dignitas, and my brother had exactly the opposite. When he went to his GP, for a long time he was told, “Oh, it’s just indigestion. Try Gaviscon.” Even when he went to his GP, in the light of his understanding of my father’s death, to say, “I think I’ve got pancreatic cancer,” his GP said, “No, it’s not—it’s just indigestion,” and so forth. It would not have mattered; an early diagnosis would have made no difference at all. But the GP was not very helpful and did not want to get involved.
When my brother died, my sister-in-law called the GP and the GP called the police. Before my brother was cold, the investigation started. If there was some way you could say to doctors, “This is what you can do, and this is what you can’t do. If you do not want to get involved, leave it to somebody who does because there are plenty of people who will”, and if that could be quantified somehow by a code of conduct—perhaps among the doctors, rather than in the Bill—that would be very useful.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Julie Thienpont: No. He made up his mind long before he was even sick. He felt that his mother had quite a traumatic passing, and said that she expressed a view that, had it been an option, she would have taken it. He had said from then, “That is the way I want to die. I want to die that way. I don’t want to be lingering in a bed, whether I am in pain or not. I don’t want that to happen.” That may not be something that I would choose, but that was his absolute choice—I have no doubt whatsoever. He said that to the team who had been looking after him when he first broached the subject, and I think they first of all thought he was not terribly serious. Then, when they realised he was, he said, “It’s my life, it’s my death—I want to choose.” I think that is what it is all about: allowing people that option to choose.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Prior to your personal experience, you might have had a different view or friends and family who had different views. For me, speaking to people who have had the experiences you have had, it becomes very clear that we have problems with the law as it stands, or the lack of the law as it stands. Would anybody like to share their own journey about that?
Pat Malone: From my standpoint, I did not give it a lot of thought until it started impacting on the family. But I understood exactly why my sister and my brother committed suicide. I would hope that this Bill could be enacted when my time comes.
Liz Reed: I had not given it a huge amount of thought; I am relatively young. I suppose if I was asked at the time I would have said, “Yes, sounds fine,” but I think I had also grossly misunderstood what it would mean for someone to go to Dignitas. There is a flippant comment that goes around—I can remember my dad saying it: “Oh, I’ll just go to Switzerland.” It is just not that easy. People I know and have met, like Pat, have had family members go to Dignitas, and it is actually a deeply traumatising experience. People’s lives are cut much shorter, they cannot enjoy their time and so on. I absolutely agree that I had not given it much thought.
I remember, on the day my brother died, getting back to where we were staying; I sat there and thought, “What would have happened to him?” I wrote to my MP, to say, “Hello, I am just wondering what would have happened, out of interest.” That is how I got involved. Had he been here, what would have happened to him and how long would he have had to limp on? You hear enough stories of people begging to die at the end of their lives, and I am really thankful that he did not have to.
The Chair
May I offer all three of you the collective condolences of everybody on the Committee? I thank you for your bravery in attending today and for speaking to us. Thank you very much.
Hon. Members
Hear, hear.
Examination of Witnesses
Dan Scorer, Professor Lewis, Dr Mulholland and Dr Price gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Professor Emyr Lewis, emeritus professor at the department of law and criminology at Aberystwyth University; Dr Michael Mulholland, honorary secretary at the Royal College of General Practitioners; Dr Annabel Price, from the Royal College of Psychiatrists; and Dan Scorer, head of policy, public affairs, information and advice at Mencap. Could you please introduce yourselves, so that we know who you are before you start giving evidence?
Dan Scorer: Hi. I am Dan Scorer from Mencap, the learning disability charity. We work across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We support 4,000 people with a learning disability with their care and support needs, as well as providing information and advice services across the three countries. We also campaign for better support for people with a learning disability, and their families, across health, social care, employment, social security and cost of living.
Dr Mulholland: Hi. I am Michael Mulholland. I am a GP in Buckinghamshire and the honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners, the professional membership body for general practitioners. We have 54,000 members across the UK.
Our current position as a college is that we oppose a change in the law regarding terminally ill adults; that was ratified by our council in 2020 when we last had a survey of the membership. Seeing that there were changes in the legislative landscape across the UK in 2023, our council asked for a group to be convened to look at where our college should be going. We created a committee that looked at that and created a list of principles, which I will be referring to in any evidence I give today. In our council, we are currently undergoing a review of what our position should be. We have a membership survey that is live at present, and we will be bringing that to our council in March this year to decide the college’s position.
Professor Lewis: Hello, I am Emyr Lewis. I am a lawyer from Aberystwyth University, and I am here to talk about the legal and constitutional aspects relating to Wales that arise from the Bill.
Dr Price: Good afternoon. My name is Dr Annabel Price. I am here representing the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a professional medical body responsible for supporting psychiatrists through their careers, from training through to retirement, and I represent 21,000 members.
I am an old-age liaison psychiatrist, working in a general hospital setting. I also provide psychiatry input to my local hospice, and I teach palliative care at the University of Cambridge. I have a research background in mental health at the end of life, and particularly mental capacity for terminally ill adults requesting assisted dying.
The Chair
Thank you. Liz Saville Roberts, Danny Kruger has kindly forfeited a question in order for you to have two, so I will call you first.
Liz Saville Roberts
Q
Professor Lewis, I am glad to say that the Committee appreciates that scrutiny is necessary for Wales-related aspects of this private Member’s Bill. What are the risks of insufficient scrutiny?
Professor Lewis: Because this is a private Member’s Bill, it will not have gone through the process, which a Government Bill would have done, of having discussion between Governments as to how this might be sorted out. That impacts on Wales. So it is really important to have a session that focuses, albeit briefly, on Wales. I am grateful to the Committee.
This is an England and Wales Bill because certain criminal offences are matters on which the Senedd in Cardiff cannot legislate, and that includes offences that relate to suicide. However, apart from that, the impact of the Bill on devolved matters, if it became law, would be substantial—on the health service in Wales, on social services in Wales and on Welsh society generally. It is important that you take account of that. Indeed, certain aspects of the Bill seem to me to require a legislative consent motion to respect the Sewel convention.
Liz Saville Roberts
Q
Professor Lewis: As I am sure you are aware, the Parliament here in London can legislate about anything at all—absolutely anything. However, where the power to legislate is given to the devolved legislatures, the Sewel convention states—in the Government of Wales Act, in section 176, I think—that the Parliament in London will
“not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters”.
That is what is said. Therefore, there are certain aspects of this Bill—I will give you brief detail on that—that, in my opinion, relate to devolved matters. The first is clause 32. This is a very broad clause that would give the Secretary of State very broad powers for the implementation of the Bill within the NHS, including within the NHS in Wales. It seems to me unarguable that that is a matter both on which the Welsh Government ought to be consulted and which would require legislative consent from the Senedd.
The second is a cluster of clauses that impose specific functions on Welsh Ministers and on the chief medical officer for Wales. They are clauses 31, 33 and 34. Once more, from a formal perspective, they seem to require a legislative consent motion, so it seems to me that some thought needs to be given as to how that might happen in the context of a private Member’s Bill.
Sarah Green
Q
Professor Lewis: A motion was put forward by Julie Morgan that was supported by three or four Members of the Senedd, which was broadly in support not of this specific Bill, but of the purpose of this Bill, and it was defeated, as you say, after a full debate on the Floor of the Senedd. Formally, legally and constitutionally, that is of no consequence, because it was not a legislative consent motion, and of course, as I said earlier, this Parliament is able to do what it likes. It could totally disregard that. Whether that would be a prudent or an appropriate thing to do, or even what one might describe as a constitutionally appropriate thing to do, is another matter.
I think it reinforces the point that there is a significance in making sure that scrutiny of the Bill has a Welsh focus. You might consider, for example, making different provision in Wales. How do you respect what was a democratic vote in the Senedd in Cardiff? Well, you might consider having different commencement provisions—I am not advocating this, it is just an example of what you might do. Commencement of the Bill in Wales might happen in a different way, on the assumption it was passed. You might put that in the hands of Welsh Ministers and the Senedd, just as an example.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)
Q
You have highlighted in particular the distinctions between health law, which is a devolved matter, and the law on suicide, which currently is not devolved. On the first page of your written evidence, you draw out clauses 32, 31, 33 and 34 in particular as issues that we should focus on in ironing out those legalities. Is there anything else you want to add to that that you think that we as a Government should focus on in our work consulting with the Senedd?
Professor Lewis: I think it is important that both Governments understand how the implementation of what will be a pretty radical change in the law will happen on the ground within the health service and among those who are responsible for delivering social services. I am thinking of issues such as adult safeguarding, which in Wales has its own specific law and is slightly different from the arrangements in England. There are those kinds of nuances between the two territories, and I think it would be prudent to focus on them.
I also think it is wise to bear in mind that Wales has certain statutory bodies whose interests might extend to the Bill. For example, there is the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, in particular; there is the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales as well. I think it is important that there is some forum, some scope, for those people also to be involved in how this is shaped.
Sarah Olney
Q
“is not sufficient for the purposes of this Bill.”
Could you expand a little on that and, if you feel able, make some recommendations as to what you think could be sufficient?
Dr Price: Thank you. In answering this, I will also refer back to Professor Gareth Owen’s oral submission, thinking about the purpose that the Mental Capacity Act was drawn up for and the fact that decisions about the ending of life were not one of the originally designed functions of it. We would need to think carefully about how that would then translate into a decision that was specifically about the capacity to end one’s life.
We also need to think about how that would work in practice. When we are thinking about capacity assessments, it is usually related to a treatment or a choice about a treatment or about somebody’s life—for example, changing residence. Psychiatrists and doctors and actually lots of professionals are very used to those sorts of decisions and have gathered a lot of knowledge, expertise and experience around it. This particular decision is something that in this country we do not have knowledge, expertise and experience in, and we therefore need to think about how that would look in practice.
As for advice to the Committee about what that might look like, I think that we need to gather what evidence we have—it is actually very thin—from other jurisdictions that think about capacity as part of this process. I am thinking about my PhD: I visited Oregon and talked to practitioners who were directly involved in these sorts of assessments. They described the process, but they are not using the Mental Capacity Act as their framework. They described a very interpersonal process, which relied on a relationship with the patient, and the better a patient was known, the more a gut feeling-type assessment was used. We need to think here about whether that would be a sufficient conversation to have.
One of the things that I have thought quite a lot about is how we can really understand the workings of a mental capacity assessment, and one of the best ways we can do that is to see who is not permitted to access assisted suicide because of a lack of capacity and what that assessment showed. We do not have data because the assessments for people who were not permitted to do it are not published; we cannot read them, so if this becomes legislation, one of the suggestions that I would have—it is supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists—is to, with patients’ consent, record capacity assessments to see whether they meet the standard that is necessary. I think it is important to set out the standard necessary and the components needed to be confident about a mental capacity assessment. That will help with standards, but will also help with training, because this is new territory for psychiatry, for medicine, and to be able to think about consistency and reliability, training needs to actually see a transparency in capacity assessments.
Dr Tidball
Q
Dan Scorer: There are two key concerns I will touch on. One was covered just at the end of the last session, with the question about preliminary discussions, and that is certainly a key area that we have concern about, about how that initial conversation is initiated and structured. For us, that really leads into a conversation around rights to advocacy. It would be extremely concerning if people with a learning disability who were terminally ill were not fully prepared and supported for that discussion.
For us, this links into the experiences that we had during the pandemic, which were touched on in yesterday’s evidence session by Dr Griffiths and others. We had people with a learning disability who were being consulted by medical professionals about “do not resuscitate” or “do not treat” decisions, and they were not being properly prepared for or supported in those discussions. Indeed, in one of our own care services, we had someone we support who was called up by a GP and asked whether she would want the kiss of life. The GP was trying to explain it to her excessively and she said, “No, of course not. I would not want to be kissed by someone I do not know.” Potentially, a “do not attempt CPR” notice was put in place. That example just shows the importance of preparing and supporting people for such discussions, so we want to see a right to advocacy included within the Bill to support people considering their end-of-life options.
Also, building on the previous question about the adequacy of the Mental Capacity Act, there is a question about the adequacy of training, awareness and compliance with that Act now. That is a huge issue that has been addressed, for example, through the Oliver McGowan mandatory training on learning disability and autism, which is rolling out across the NHS and social care services at the moment. However, in addition to the MCA, we also need to make sure that clinicians fully understand the Equality Act and the NHS accessible information standard about rights to information and support for disabled patients.
On clause 5, on training, we want to see much more specificity about the level of training that clinicians would have around the Mental Capacity Act and to make sure that they are fully aware of their responsibilities to make reasonable adjustments for patients, and to support them with understanding their choices around end-of-life care, which could include assisted dying.
Sojan Joseph
Q
“Mental disorders, such as depression, are more common in people nearing the end of their life. Delirium is more common… Hopelessness is a common symptom of depression…And people’s capacity and consent can be affected when they are going through this condition.”
In the last few days, we have heard much evidence that expressed concern about capacity assessment and that said, as Dan mentioned, there should be an advocacy service available. Rather than having the current model of two doctors and the court, if we have a panel with experts on it who can consider psychosocial assessment and capacity, would that make the Bill stronger, with more safeguarding being introduced to it?
Dr Mulholland: Sorry—can I check whether that was a question for me at the Royal College of GPs or a question for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, because I think that statement was in their evidence?
Sojan Joseph
The evidence is from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, but anybody can answer the question.
Dr Mulholland: As GPs, we feel that we need a stand-alone service to take people through this process for assisted dying. We do not feel that the GP is in a place to make an assessment of capacity for this process. That is beyond anything that any of us have ever trained in or understood, and it will need people who are trained in assessing capacity at that point. As GPs, we are very used to assessing whether somebody has the capacity to take a course of antibiotics or to be referred for something that we understand, but this is an issue that will require a much deeper level—the Royal College of Psychiatrists has probably thought more on that level about the next steps.
Dr Price: Yes; to refer back to the written evidence, if we think about people with palliative care needs towards the end of life—so the people who would qualify under this Bill—around 20% will have diagnosable depression, around 10% will have a wish to hasten death, and around 4% will have a more persistent wish to hasten death. Those wishes may not be expressed unless they are assessed for. One of the things that I would do in my clinical practice would be to look for treatable mental disorder in people who express a wish to hasten death.
I do not do that alone. You asked about a panel. When I am thinking about the needs of people who are nearing the end of life, and I work with people nearing the end of life most weeks of my working life, I work in a multidisciplinary team. My own small team comprises doctors, nurses and occupational therapists, but I work closely with social workers, the safeguarding lead, chaplains and all my medical and surgical colleagues to make good decisions about my patients in a biological, psychological and social way. Not all difficulties that are psychological can be fixed with a psychiatric intervention.
We would advocate as a college, and I would suggest as a clinician, that good decisions about our patients’ needs are made in a multidisciplinary way. That should be considered in the model of how to meet people’s needs in whatever way they present, but particularly for people who have difficulties and are suffering in a way that makes them feel that they do not want to continue living.
The Chair
In the interests of time, to allow everybody to ask their question, will Members indicate which of the panel members they would like to answer so that only one gives an answer? That allows everybody to get in.
Tom Gordon
Q
Dr Mulholland: That is something we have been thinking about carefully at the RCGP. Part of our normal discussion will often open it up for patients to lead discussions around their end of life. We see there could be potential restrictions for that clinical consultation with a gag order. We very much follow the opinion I heard from Dr Green from the British Medical Association earlier in the week. We go along with that.
We are very protective of our relationship as GPs, and want to give patients the options that they might want to choose for themselves. We are not usually pushing anyone to any decision, but supporting them through their end-of-life journey. We would want to protect that in whatever way, so we therefore feel that a service we can signpost to would be the most appropriate thing as the next step.
Dr Price: As a psychiatrist and as a representative of the psychiatric profession, it is noted in the Bill that mental disorder is a specific exclusion. It is very unlikely that a psychiatrist would suggest or bring up assisted dying in a conversation.
I think a concern allied to that is people with mental disorder who request assisted dying from their psychiatrist. It may be clear to all that they do not meet eligibility criteria for that, but it is not absolutely clear in the Bill, as it is written, to what extent a psychiatrist would have to comply with a wish for that person to progress to that first assessment. There is quite a lot involved in getting to that first official assessment, such as making a declaration and providing identification. A psychiatrist might therefore have to be involved to quite an extent in supporting that person to get there if that is their right and their wish, even though it may be clear to all that they do not meet eligibility criteria if that is the primary reason for their asking to end their life.
Jack Abbott
Q
Dr Price: If I take you to thinking about what an assessment of capacity would normally look like, if we think about clinical practice, a psychiatrist would normally get involved in an assessment of capacity if the decision maker was unclear about whether that person could make a decision. The psychiatrist’s role in that capacity assessment would be to look for the presence of mental disorder, and at whether mental disorder was likely to be impacting on that person’s decision making. They would advise the decision maker, and the decision maker would then have the clinical role of thinking about that information and assessing capacity with that in mind.
Psychiatrists sometimes assess capacity and make the determination, but it is usually about psychiatric intervention and issues that are within their area of clinical expertise, such as care and treatment, capacity assessment around the Mental Health Act 1983 and whether somebody is able to consent to their treatment. In the Bill, I am not absolutely clear whether the psychiatrist is considered to be a primary decision maker on whether somebody should be eligible based on capacity, or whether their role is to advise the decision maker, who would be the primary doctor or one of two doctors.
Should a psychiatrist be involved in every case? If there is a view that psychiatric disorders should be assessed for, and ideally diagnosed or ruled out, in every case, a psychiatrist might have a role. If they are seen as an expert support to the primary decision maker, that decision maker would need to decide whether a psychiatrist was needed in every case. We know from Oregon over the years that psychiatrists were involved very frequently at the beginning of the process, and now they are involved by request in around 3% of completed assisted dying cases. We do not have data on what the involvement is across all requests.
Dr Opher
Q
Dr Mulholland: As GPs, we can assess capacity. In this situation, the college’s position would be that we feel the GP should not be part of the assisted dying service, so we would see a standalone service that we can signpost our patients to. The GP role may go on to a different route afterwards, and it may be part of other things with palliative care and looking after the families. We think that some GPs may want to be involved and take that step, but we know from our membership surveys that we have had at least 40% of members in the past who would absolutely not want to have any part in that.
Similar to other services, such as termination of pregnancy, we think that the best option would probably be that the GP could signpost to an information service, such as something like what the BMA suggested the other day. They would not have to do anything more than that, and they would not withhold any option from the patient. We could discuss that these things exist, but we would not be doing that capacity assessment. Obviously, to give patients information about what they are going to, as you know, we would assess their capacity to take that information in, retain it and do the right thing with it for them. We would be doing that level of capacity assessment, but not further on in the process, where you are assessing whether a patient is able to make a final decision. I think Chris Whitty referred to the various levels of capacity. As the decision gets more difficult and complex, you want a greater understanding with the patient that they really know the implications of what is going on, and we just would not be doing that in general practice.
Daniel Francis
Q
Dan Scorer: The Mental Capacity Act starts from the principle of presuming capacity. The question would be whether, when someone who is terminally ill puts themselves forward for assisted dying, doubts start to emerge about whether they actually have the ability to make that decision in terms of whether they can understand, retain or weigh the information and communicate their intentions.
As I mentioned earlier, our concern is how those discussions around assisted dying are initiated. For many people with a learning disability who are terminally ill and in an incredibly vulnerable position, doctors are very important and influential figures. Having a doctor come to you and say, “What do you think about assisted dying—is that something you might want to consider?” could move them towards or into potentially accepting a course of action that they had never considered before.
That is why I was saying that it is about having advocacy support around that discussion and, as you were saying, about the role of families. Individuals should be able to choose who supports them with those discussions, whether it is friends or family members or an independent advocate—that would probably be our preference—who is specifically trained to support people with a learning disability who are considering their end-of-life options.
There is a lot that could be done in addition to what is in the Bill already to potentially much better support people who are considering end-of-life options and to have other professionals who could input into multidisciplinary discussions, potentially around capacity assessment.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
My question relates to point 15 in your written evidence, around the Human Tissue Authority. This is a model I looked at in terms of the decision making on coercion and capacity around people involved in organ donation. Can you tell me a little about that, and whether you think that there are parallels? It is a very serious decision, so we are in that territory. This is about what that looks like and what the role of psychiatrists is. We have talked a little about this already, but if we were to take this multidisciplinary approach, which I think is really powerful, what should the role of psychiatrists be?
Dr Price: On the role of an oversight group, one of the risks with individual practitioners doing these sorts of assessments is that they may do it once or twice in their career. What we know is likely to happen is that a smaller number of practitioners will do lots of assessments and build up individual expertise. However, it might be that a particular practitioner does this only for a patient who they know, or only a few times. Therefore, in terms of building up through repetition the sort of expertise that somebody such as me might have in the mental healthcare of an older person—thousands of patients over a couple of decades—an external group that understands the standards and the process should be able to scrutinise things at the time.
There are a number of bodies that do that not just for organ donation, but across lots of different services. We have them for liaison psychiatry, and they might have them for electroconvulsive therapy services, for example. They are not extraordinary or unusual, but they ensure that there is some consistency and reliability and that the assessments are of a standard. Scrutinising assessments after somebody has completed the process is useful for everybody who comes afterwards; it may not ensure that the quality was there for that individual. That would be the rationale for that sort of approach. Forgive me, but would you ask me the second part of your question again?
Kim Leadbeater
Q
Dr Price: I do not have lots of individual experience with that group, because I do not work within a specific service. But it is an example of a model that is in operation, and hopefully I have described the sorts of characteristics and why they are there.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
Q
Dr Mulholland: We are aware that we have a range of views in RCGP across general practitioners. Some of them have very strong views for or against based on moral grounds, and some of those are based on religious grounds—traditional conscientious objection grounds. But others do not want to take part in assisted dying just because they do not want to; they do not feel it is part of what being a GP is, or part of what they trained for.
In discussion with colleagues today, someone shared with me that for 35 years they have spent their time trying to extend the life of patients—that has been our role—and to help them towards the end of life. It is a philosophical change if they start to think about whether the patient’s life should end earlier. There are some colleagues who may decide that for those reasons, they do not want to take part in this. There will be others who very definitely do. We have that range, so we feel that a doctor or a health professional should have the right not to take part on any ground, and that should be protected—they should not feel the obligation to do something that they do not feel is within their wishes.
Naz Shah
Q
Dr Price: There is a lot of research evidence around depression in people with palliative care needs and people nearing the end of life. We know that depression is common, and across a number of studies it is at around 20%—much more common than in the general population. We know that depression is strongly associated with a wish to hasten death, and that if depression is found and treated in that group of patients, there will be significant change in the wish to hasten death.
There are a number of associations other than depression with a wish to hasten death, and they include difficult symptom experience, poor functional status—needing a lot of help with things—and being socially isolated. Those are really key ones. They also include a sense of loss of dignity and feeling like a burden on others. These things can all come together to make life feel very unbearable. We know that there is also an overlap between a wish to hasten death, which is a response to suffering, and feeling that one is better off dead, ending one’s own life or harming oneself. I was involved in a study where we asked people both the wording of “a wish to hasten death” and the suicide question from the PHQ9, which is a depression screening tool. Those who had a wish to hasten death were 18 times more likely to also feel suicidal, according to the psychiatric definition, than people who did not have a wish to hasten death. There is a strong association.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
“the more serious the decision, the greater the level of capacity”––[Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 30, Q3.]
and that it is used in tens, if not hundreds, of life and death cases in the NHS every week. The example he gave was someone refusing blood products that they would need to continue their life. In the light of that, I suppose I am a bit confused about your evidence saying that the MCA is not suitable for life or death decisions of this type. Do you think the MCA is not fit for purpose for those current life or death decisions that are being made, or is there something about the life or death decisions that would be made in an assisted dying context that makes that different?
Dr Price: The assumption that the Mental Capacity Act can translate neatly into this specific decision without a really clear sense of what that would look like in clinical practice is something that needs more careful thought.
I was involved in research in this area, and one of the things that I did was to scrutinise the concept of capacity as discussed in a number of forums—for example, the Commission on Assisted Dying, discussions in the House of Lords, and also interviews with doctors in England and Wales and in Oregon. There is a broad sense of what capacity is. For some, it is a very tight, cognitive definition that would mean that in practice, in assisted dying, most people would be found to be capacitous. Those who advocate a much broader sense of what capacity is—these can be contained within the framework of the Mental Capacity Act—would advocate a much broader sense of what that is, thinking about values and the person’s life experience and making more judgments, really, about that person’s life in a general sense.
What I do not think we have really pinned down is what concept of capacity is operating in the thoughts behind this Bill. Is it enough to say that we will essentially refer to the Mental Capacity Act, or do we need to be more specific about what is capacity for this decision? Is it sufficient to say, “We will refer out”, or do we need it on the face of the Bill so that anybody assessing capacity for this decision knows exactly what they should be doing and exactly how they should be having that conversation? Even though you may be operating within a legal framework, I think that the actual conversation —the actual content—will vary across practitioners. Is that good enough? Is that sufficient? Is that a good enough standard? When I do a capacity assessment, I have in mind that it may be appealed against—that is somebody’s right—and it should be available for scrutiny by a court. Essentially, that is the standard we are looking for, so it needs to be clear where the standard lies.
Kit Malthouse
Q
You talked about a percentage who wish to hasten death. The people we are talking about are facing death in any event within a foreseeable period, and they may be contemplating a death that is not pleasant. Some of the characteristics you talked about are presumably to be expected and may not necessarily interfere with their ability to make rational decisions in what they believe is their own best interest. In those circumstances, I do not understand why the Mental Capacity Act would not apply. I understand that you may be coming at it from a practitioner point of view, but if I make a decision to decline treatment to hasten my own death, I am not sure I would necessarily see that as qualitatively different, from the point of view of my own capacity, from saying, “I know I am going to die in three months’ time and I would like you to assist me to die slightly earlier.” Why are the two qualitatively different, from an MCA point of view? At the moment, one would be dealt with through the MCA, but you are saying the second would not necessarily be.
Dr Price: You are equating a refusal of treatment, in capacity terms, to hastening death by assisted dying. If those two things are equated, in terms of the gravity and the quality of the decision, the Mental Capacity Act may well be sufficient, but there are differences. There are differences in the information that the person would need and what they would need to understand. They would need to be able to understand the impact of the substance they are taking and what the likely positives and negatives of that are—all of those things.
The informed consent process is different from a refusal of treatment, and the informed consent process feeds into the capacity assessment. This is an area where we need to think carefully about whether the processes of the Mental Capacity Act, as it stands, map neatly enough on to that decision to make it workable.
Rachel Hopkins
Q
Dr Mulholland: The shape of the service is not set out in the Bill. We would say that GPs need to have a space where they can step away from it: that is the key point that we want to get across. For those who want to take part, it may be that they decide to do it, but it would have to sit outside the core general medical services that we provide at the moment. This is an additional thing; this is not part of our core job. We think that a separate service—it may not just be GPs; there may be lots of different practitioners and health professionals involved —would sit better with that. You could then assess the capacity and assess those other parts that are so important and are in the Bill at the later stages.
The GP may have a role, but that would be very much up to the individual GP to decide. It would not be set out that they should be taking part. They would then probably be part of this additional service to which the others who are not taking part could signpost. We just want to make sure that there is that clear space.
Danny Kruger
Q
Dr Mulholland: Fortunately, that is not the RCGP’s bit, but I think we would be very much concerned. In our principles, we were clear that we thought that there should be no reduction in core services in general practice, nor should there be any reduction, if the Bill goes through, in funding to palliative care services, which we know are often struggling as well. This should therefore be additionally funded. Whether it occurs in the NHS is not our decision, but we would be very concerned about health inequalities creeping into any part of the health service. We are aware of the differential that occurs in lots of things—life expectancy has come out again in recent reports between different parts of the country and people who live with different levels of poverty. If the Bill comes through, we will want to make sure that there is not a differential in who is able to access it. Whether that says that it should be NHS or private I am not sure, but that needs to be considered as part of whatever comes out of this.
Dr Opher
Q
Dr Mulholland: We see a lot of people with mood disorders of different types and of different severities. Many people with depression who are treated with antidepressants carry out full-functioning jobs and lives because of the treatment that they have and because their depression is not of that severity. If someone had very severe depression and we were accessing our psychiatric colleagues, that would be a different decision, and perhaps it is not something that would happen at that point. Most people with depression, anxiety and other mental health problems would have capacity, because we would presume it under the Mental Capacity Act, so it is not necessarily an obstruction to people being referred for anything.
Kim Leadbeater
Q
On capacity, just to reflect on the previous panel, my view is that psychiatric assessment would not be necessary in every case. We have heard from three families this afternoon; we can probably all agree that there was a clear wish from those individuals that this was the choice they wanted to make. I agree with the colleague who said that there will be a percentage of people; that is why I think referral to a psychiatrist is important in those cases. Have you any more thoughts on that, Dr Mulholland?
Dr Mulholland: As GPs, yes, holistic care is what we do—whole-person, biopsychosocial care. If we got into an end-of-life discussion with a patient and they expressed a wish to go through a route of assisted dying, should that be legal, that might still be part of a discussion that we would have with them. It is the active part of the process. The BMA referred to the word “refer”—referring to a colleague, for those who did not want to do it. We agree that signposting is a better process.
We would not want to be out of the patient’s life. It is very difficult to be out of a patient’s life, but it may be that we are not part of that particular aspect of their care. It is the same when we refer to surgeons and hospitals; they have an episode of care elsewhere. This would be another episode that someone might be undertaking for that person. We will still have the families that we are part of; we will still be caring for them as well. We do not see them leaving general practice or general practitioners, but the assisted dying part of their health journey, or death journey, would perhaps be outside some people’s experience or expertise. You would need experts and people trained in it to be doing it, and not necessarily every GP.
Dr Price: No matter what somebody’s reason is for entering the process or what the outcome is, we are very clear that anybody should be able to access really good evidence-based care so that this should not in any way derail, deflect or make people not think about really good care. People should get really thorough assessments, have the right professionals involved in their care and have treatment where they need it and would benefit from it. All the quality that we have and all the guidelines that we work to should still be adhered to. We should still be providing all of the other good-quality care that we can. It is important not to bypass that and not to take shortcuts because they have made that decision.
The Chair
There are three people left who want to ask questions, so can I beg for brevity?
Naz Shah
Q
“The very act of raising assisted dying in that way will make that vulnerable patient think, ‘God, is this doctor telling me that my life is not worth living any more?’”––[Official Report, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Public Bill Committee, 28 January 2025; c. 75, Q93.]
We heard from Dr Jamilla Hussain yesterday. She talked about mistrust of the NHS, particularly post-covid, where people had DNRs attached to them—disabled people and people of ethnic minority backgrounds in particular. Dan, are you concerned about the potential impact on people with learning disabilities?
Dan Scorer: Yes. One of the first things that I said earlier was about how the initiation of that first conversation is potentially an extremely risky and dangerous moment for people with a learning disability who are terminally ill. Your question is absolutely spot on, from the point of view that it could be highly suggestive and push people on a course that they may not want to go down. That is why I am suggesting that that initial conversation has to be incredibly well supported and structured.
There should, in our view, be an advocate who is supporting the person and preparing them for that discussion. Under the principles of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the person should have accessible information in advance of that discussion so that they are fully informed about all their rights in terms of treatment options at end of life. That discussion with a clinician should not be taking place until the person has been able to consider that information and have support from an advocate, so when the conversation does happen the person is fully informed and has had time to think about what their wishes might be. That would reduce the risk, which is absolutely there, that people could take the initiation of that discussion as a statement, “This is what you should do.” We absolutely do not want people to be in that position. We want strong safeguards and support in place if the Bill becomes law.
Dr Tidball
Q
Dan Scorer: There are a couple of things that I would like to say in response. One is about clause 31, on guidance from chief medical officers. Immediately, I would say that people with a learning disability should be involved in the development of that guidance from chief medical officers. That guidance will be key to many of the issues that we have discussed.
Clause 35 is about the review of the Act. The lived experience of people is absolutely vital to that. The Bill says that it will be five years until we have that review. Our view is that that is far too long. If the Bill becomes law and if there are really serious issues and discrimination taking place against people, we will want to know that a lot earlier than in five years’ time, and we will want action to be taken. Our suggestion is that review should be earlier. We would want to see strong representation from patient groups across that, as well as from people who have been involved in the process, such as family members, advocates and clinicians, to make sure that if serious issues are being raised, they can be picked up early and addressed.
Lewis Atkinson
Q
Although it is not my area, I absolutely note the concerns and the discussion about respecting the democratic will of the Senedd in these matters. Would you suggest any potential avenues in the Bill to incorporate an element of positive affirmation by the Senedd, or its consent? What do you suggest we look at?
Professor Lewis: Formally, there is a need in any event for a legislative consent motion in relation to the specific bits I mentioned earlier, I have suggested one potential avenue, which is that the Senedd and Welsh Government take on responsibility for whether and when the Act commences in Wales. Another option might be to do a thorough “think once, think twice, think Wales” review to see to what extent other functions of the Secretary of State might be better exercised in Wales by the Welsh Ministers. That is a non-exhaustive list, but I hope it helps.
Naz Shah
Q
Dr Price: The evidence that we have from research—this is in populations who would fulfil the criteria in terms of terminal illness—is that the prevalence of depression is around 20%. That is across a number of populations. It is associated with a wish to hasten death. Depression might impact upon that person’s decision making; I am not saying that it absolutely would, but it might. Also, treatment might change their view. We know that there is a strong association, for example, between pain and a wish to hasten death. Unresolved physical symptoms make people want to die, and when that pain is better, people no longer feel that way.
That is borne out in my clinical practice. We will get urgent referrals to see somebody who wants to die and who they are very concerned about. Then the pain is under control: we see them that day or the next day and they say, “Do you know what? The pain’s better. I don’t feel like that any more.” When we think about symptoms, we need to think carefully about what is treatable and what is remediable. That may be about psychiatric interventions, but it is often about a biological, psychological and social approach.
The Chair
May I thank the panel for giving evidence today? We really appreciate your attendance.
Daniel Francis
On a point of order, Mrs Harris. Yesterday, we heard evidence about the impact of the Bill on different groups with protected characteristics, including age, disability, race and sexual orientation. We heard from the EHRC, an arm’s length body of the Government, that it strongly recommends that a full impact assessment, a human rights assessment and a delegated powers memorandum be undertaken before the Committee begins line-by-line scrutiny.
We have also heard from witnesses about the impact that the Bill will have on disabled people, from Disability Rights UK and others, on black and minority ethnic people, from Dr Jamilla Hussain, from LGBT people, from Baroness Falkner, and on those from a low-income background, from Sam Royston of Marie Curie. We heard from Dr Sarah Cox and Dr Jamilla Hussain that evidence from their work shows that this Bill has a higher probability of pushing minority groups further away from seeking healthcare, while inequality pre-exists. As observed through the pandemic and from available data, minority groups do not always trust that their interests will be best represented in institutions that would enable the facilitation of someone’s death, should this Bill become law.
I therefore believe that on the basis of that advice, so as not to inadvertently widen health inequalities through Bill, it is essential to have health impact assessments. I appreciate that an equality impact assessment will be produced for Report stage, it will not be available for detailed line-by-line scrutiny. When we agreed the timetable for line-by-line scrutiny last Tuesday, we were not aware that this assessment would be produced, given it was first reported to the House during the money resolution last Wednesday. There is a risk that there will be a bigger impact on people with protected characteristics, and this will not be understood fully until the Government have produced the equality impact assessment. As things stand, that means that we will move into line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill on 11 February without a full understanding from the assessment of the impact of the Bill.
I am therefore minded to request a short Adjournment of the Committee so that, as advised, we can receive the assessments before we progress to line-by-line scrutiny. Please will you advise me, Mrs Harris, how I could secure such a motion to adjourn the Committee until we are in receipt of the evidence, as advised by the witnesses yesterday?
Sarah Sackman
Further to that point of order, Mrs Harris. I want to clarify the Government’s position. As the Committee knows, the Government are neutral on the Bill, but once the Committee has concluded its work and prior to Report, we are committed to publishing the ECHR memorandum, a delegated powers memorandum, the economic impact assessment that was committed to during the money resolution debate, and an assessment of the equalities impact of the Bill. In terms of the timing, it is necessary that the impacts that are assessed be of the Bill as it is brought forward. If the Bill is liable to change via amendments proposed by members of this Committee, it is important that we know what it is that we are assessing the impact of. That is why the proposed timing is to publish the impact assessment at that stage. The point is that before Members of the House come to a vote on Report and Third Reading, they will all have before them the impact assessment in respect of equalities and all those other aspects of the Bill.
The Chair
I am going to proceed now. I thank the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford for notice of his point of order. I am sure that the Member in charge and the Government have heard his points. If he wishes to look at procedural options, he should consult the Clerks in the Public Bill Office.
That brings us to the end of today’s sitting. The Committee will meet at 9.25 am on Tuesday 11 February to begin line-by-line consideration.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Bambos Charalambous.)
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Medicinal Cannabis
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered medicinal cannabis.
I invite Members to consider the benefits of medicinal cannabis, and I will address the challenges facing patients across the country. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey; I always appreciate the opportunity to do so, and it is good to see you in your place. It is also a pleasure to see other hon. Members in the Chamber for the debate. I look forward very much to the contribution from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), and particularly to hearing from the Minister. I know that this issue is not the Minister’s responsibility, but she always does her best to answer our queries. I spoke to her before the debate, and there are some things I want to ask her for, if that is all right.
I have been interested in this issue for many years, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. Many Members will have been introduced to the issue of medicinal cannabis by constituents who got in contact with them. In a way, it is a bit of a niche debate, and those Members who are here have specific asks. The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) has been a stalwart on this issue over the years. I am pleased to see him here to provide support, and he will probably ask the more difficult questions, given his particular knowledge.
Many Members will have been told by their constituents about the real difference medicinal cannabis has made, or could make, to their lives or those of their families. I asked a former Conservative Minister, Nick Hurd, for a meeting about a constituent some years ago, which he very kindly granted. I asked, “Would it be okay if I brought over the mother of Sophia, the young girl we are trying to help?” I knew that if I brought Danielle over —formidable lady that she is—she would be much more able to push the case, and of course she did. In all fairness to the Minister, he was impressed by her commitment on behalf of Sophia.
In my office, I have a picture of that wee girl when she was a five or six-year-old. At that age, she was having multiple seizures, but through the Minister here and back home, she was allocated medicinal cannabis. Her seizures, which happened multiple times every day, have been reduced to either none in a day or just one. If that is not an evidential base to prove the case for medicinal cannabis, I would like to know what is. That campaign is one that I have been wholeheartedly behind. Sophia Gibson’s mum and dad told me about the needs of their beautiful daughter, and I was absolutely won over to the fight for medicinal cannabis for very defined purposes. I have fought hard for Sophia and those like her.
Sophia’s mum and dad have sent me some information that is relevant to this issue, which I will quote for the record. Sophia was six when we first met, but she is now 13, and everyone involved in her care agrees that
“this is the most stable she has ever been”—
that is what her neurologist and paediatrician said at the last appointment Sophia had just before Christmas. Her school principal described the change Sophia has experienced since receiving this medicine, saying:
“I remember the times poor Sophia had a seizure and we were waiting on ambulances”—
that was when she was five or six, and I remember that. But her principal went on to say:
“what a change it has been for her in school since the medicine.”
Sophia’s mum says:
“with less seizures Sophia’s skills are growing and even her speech therapist and physio have said she’s doing really well all thanks to wholeplant medicinal cannabis.”
Now Sophia has reached her 13th birthday, and I put on my record my thanks to the former Minister for that. He got that medication prescribed for my constituent Sophia—Danielle and Darren’s young girl.
The legislation on medicinal cannabis in 2018 was a significant step forward for patients, as it ended the potential criminalisation of those living with, or just trying to manage, chronic conditions, but access to medicinal cannabis remains limited. There is compelling evidence that it can improve the quality of life of individuals with chronic conditions, including neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.
However, since medicinal cannabis was made legal, only five patients have been prescribed it on the NHS. I was pleased that young Sophia was one of them, and although she is undoubtedly not a well child, her parents believe that medicinal cannabis has played a part in her still being with them to brighten their days with her smile and her infectious joy. I know young Sophia personally, and I can vouch for the difference I have seen between her at the age of five or six and the 13-year-old she is today. Her improvement has brought joy to her parents, and indeed to every one of us who knows her. Her epileptic fits are down to zero, or one and no more, so that treatment really is important.
I also wish to bring the case of Ben to hon. Members’ attention. Joanne, his mum, is here on his behalf, and their MP, the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), would have been here, but unfortunately he had other engagements. I spoke to the Minister beforehand, so she knows what I am going to ask. The hon. Gentleman is very supportive of Ben, Joanne and her husband, and is keen to help.
Young Ben’s story is also incredible, and his mum can vouch for his problems. He was having up to 300 seizures per day. Can you imagine that? That wee boy was having seizures almost every other minute of the day. His parents are providing the medication themselves, but the NHS should be playing that role. It costs the family £2,000 a month, but they love their child and will do anything to help him.
To get the correct medication, people have to go through trials, and Joanne told me that Ben had failed 14 medications. The NHS says that if someone fails seven medications, they go directly on to medicinal cannabis. For the life of me, I cannot understand why that has not happened for young Ben. I ask the Minister whether it would be possible for her to meet Joanne and her MP, so that Joanne can put forward her case and find out why medicinal cannabis has not been approved for that wee boy.
Today, I saw a quick video of Ben when he was having all those problems and showing what he can do when he has access to medicinal cannabis. If ever we needed straightforward evidence that looks us straight in the eye, it is that. These exceptional circumstances require exceptional assistance.
Ben has now had a 98% reduction in seizures, because his mum and dad are paying for the medicinal cannabis, even though they should qualify for it. There seem to be some problems, so I ask the Minister to please meet the parents and their MP, so that they can make that case. I want to put that on the record for Joanne.
There is compelling evidence that medicinal cannabis can improve quality of life. The state of legality, but inaccessibility, is incredibly difficult for clinicians, who believe that their patients merit additional help. Subsequently, patients are not being given the proper care, because of challenges including a lack of awareness of the legislation and poor signposting of the treatments. It is incredibly hard to comprehend why we cannot get everyone on a pathway to better care. But when you meet the mums and dads and some of the children that I and other Members have met, you can understand the alternative and what it means.
A recent survey of 250 practising doctors by Alternaleaf —some of its staff are here in the audience today as well—found overwhelming support for widening the accessibility of medicinal cannabis to treat chronic pain. It found that 84% of UK doctors—the figures are massive —said they would be open to prescribing medicinal cannabis to manage chronic pain if it were part of the NHS toolkit.
I welcome the commitment from the Government and the Secretary of State, who told us in the main Chamber that £26 billion will be available for the NHS over the next few years. That is a good plan, and everybody, no matter their political persuasion, will welcome it, but we need to see some of that going towards this critical issue.
Alternaleaf patients rated the effectiveness of medicinal cannabis to be 8.5 out of 10, versus only 4.5 out of 10 for traditional medication prescribed on the NHS. We are not being critical, but we are pointing to the facts —the evidence is there. If it is better to have medicinal cannabis, let us have it if the alternative is not as effective.
Unlike many conventional painkillers, medicinal cannabis offers relief from symptoms without the high risk of dependency, overdose or debilitating side effects. Only 17% of Alternaleaf patients reported side effects from medicinal cannabis that affected their personal or work life, versus 88% for medication prescribed by the NHS. So there is a case to be made, and there are answers to be given.
Although private specialist clinics and pharmacies such as Alternaleaf support thousands of patients across the UK, they often receive conflicting guidance from regulators on product labelling, which can impact the availability of medicines for the patients who may benefit the most. We are here to raise awareness of that and to put the case for all those patients who might benefit most.
The UK has one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world for the prescribing of medicinal cannabis, and I agree that that must be the case—that is not an issue. But if there is evidence that medicinal cannabis can do good, then let us act on it.
The regime includes a prohibition against prescriptions being issued electronically to patients. However, we must allow doctors to access medicinal cannabis for their patients in the same way that we allow them to access opioids for them—under strict and certain circumstances. There are rules in place, and I understand that.
I challenge the suggestion that electronic prescribing is always unsafe; it is not. Physical prescriptions are understandably at risk of being lost, damaged or destroyed, whereas electronic records can permit greater real-time oversight and control of prescribing practices, both by private clinics and by regulatory bodies such as the Care Quality Commission. The reason I believe that that could be done electronically is that controlled drugs such as morphine are routinely prescribed electronically on the NHS. If we can do it for morphine, we can do it for medicinal cannabis. That is my point. And it can work as well, which is more important.
However, there must be strict measures in place to ensure that electronic prescription can never be a route to simply legalising cannabis in general. I am not pro drugs in any way, but I see the goodness and benefits of medicinal cannabis. That is why we are here: to prove that case and to put forward the evidential base. Although the benefit of medicinal cannabis to individuals and their families, as well as the economic benefit that is starting to arise, is reason enough to review the current approach and address the challenges, this is absolutely not a call to legalise cannabis wholesale, in the same way that we could never consider wholesale opioid legalisation.
Medicinal cannabis has offered a lifeline to another of constituents, Richard Barber. He spent years struggling with chronic conditions. Initially, an injury led to a misdiagnosed shoulder condition, which resulted in prescribed painkillers that not only proved ineffective, but caused distressing side effects, such as night terrors. Those things cannot be ignored either.
After extensive research, Richard discussed medicinal cannabis with his GP. After trying three different pain medications without success, his GP suggested exploring medicinal cannabis as an alternative treatment approach. Richard was prescribed medicinal cannabis through Alternaleaf and the results have been transformative for his condition. He has regained the ability to do the little things that people take for granted, such as going to the shops and walking his dogs, which he was unable to do in the past due to mobility issues, pain and seizures.
Richard’s story highlights some of the challenges that patients across the UK are facing. When Richard was first prescribed medicinal cannabis, he got in touch with his local police force—that is the right thing to do—to ensure that it was aware of the legality, yet the officers had never been informed about legal medicinal cannabis prescriptions. In fact, one in five police officers does not know that medicinal cannabis is legal and 89% of police officers say that they would benefit from more training on medicinal cannabis. That is not the Minister’s responsibility, but there is a role for another Government Department to look at that. That lack of awareness can manifest in patients being challenged in public when using legal products to manage their conditions, causing unnecessary distress to those in receipt of medicinal cannabis for a medical reason.
Patients are also finding that their landlords are unaware that medicinal cannabis is legal, when the Equality Act 2010 mandates that landlords, housing associations and property managers make reasonable adjustments to accommodate tenants’ medical needs, including the use of prescribed medicinal cannabis where appropriate. There are lots of issues, including the need for better awareness among the police and more accessibility for all our constituents across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
This debate is not new. The End Our Pain campaign has presented ways forward, and I ask the Minister once again to consider its trials; I am ever mindful that she will be conveying what we are asking for to another Minister. In 2019, the Health and Social Care Committee recommended initiating observational trials for patients already using cannabis-based medicines who cannot enter the randomised controlled trials. That recommendation initially had support from the Government, but that was retracted during the covid-19 pandemic.
In 2023, the Home Affairs Committee reaffirmed the need for increased access to these vital treatments. We all understand that there were pressures from all sides during covid-19, but that unfortunate suspension of support threw the trials back a few years. If the Home Affairs Committee reaffirmed that need for increased access in 2023, however, we need to make sure that that happens, and fully.
There is a notable precedent from 2013, when the Government granted a licence to GW Pharmaceuticals to supply Epidyolex to a child given only six months to live. These are true stories; I am not making any of them up. That decision not only saved that child’s life, but provided valuable evidence to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, highlighting the need for similar decisive action today. The treatments make lives better—they save lives—contribute to easing the pain and suffering of children and adults and give peace of mind to families.
End Our Pain proposes two observational trials. The operative word is trial—if they are not suitable, they can and should be shut down. Observational trial 1 would support individuals who are already prescribed medicinal cannabis and cannot undergo a dangerous washout period to enter a traditional RCT trial. Those patients could be funded to provide crucial data on the long-term use of their current and previous cannabis oil medicines. That was the original plan. Observational trial 2 would focus on children in desperate need—just like Sophia, Darren and Danielle’s wee girl, and Ben, the son of Joanne, who is in the Public Gallery. Many families are resorting to the black market due to insufficient private paediatric prescribers and wish to find a regulated, safer option for their children while maintaining their anonymity.
EOP has engaged with Melissa Sturgess, the CEO of Ananda Developments, which is willing to supply trial medicines early to those in urgent need—patients who may not survive the wait for trial recruitment to begin in 12 months. I have heard stories of people who are waiting for medicinal cannabis and whose health has been quite severely affected. Perhaps I view things too simply, but if I see a way of doing things, I think that we should just do those things and make a difference. There are patients who may not survive for the trial recruitment to begin in 12 months, for instance. Where will they be in 12 months? Where will their health be in 12 months? It will be worse, so we should be doing something right now.
EOP also believes that the data from current full extract prescriptions can be a significant aid in developing future treatments and improving long-term outcomes. It is estimated that the observational trial for those who are currently prescribed cannabis-based medicines but who cannot participate in other trials would cost approximately £2.7 million annually. That figure is based on an estimate of 150 children and young adults participating, with an average cost of £1,500 per patient per month. Given the good that that treatment could do and the difference it could make to people’s lives, that is a small price to pay for improved health for all those children and adults who could have a better life as a result.
It is imperative that the commitments to families are honoured, as the consequences of inaction could be devastating for those children. Many of their parents can no longer afford the cost of medication. I have given Members an idea about Joanne, who is here in the Public Gallery on behalf of her boy Ben, and what it costs her to provide the medication each month to ensure that Ben’s life-threatening seizures can be managed. It is really important that we get this matter right.
This debate will help to highlight the real impact that medicinal cannabis can have not only on patients and their families but on economic growth and how we can better spend the £26 billion that the Government have allocated for the NHS. It will also highlight how we can ensure that medicinal cannabis can make a difference for young people in my constituency and in Scotland, Wales and England. The Minister is a compassionate and understanding lady and, by her very nature, she wants to make lives better—that is what we are all here for. We beseech our Government and our Minister to make decisions that we can all support.
The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray), the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, told me before the debate that she will also talk about some personal experiences. We express such experiences on behalf of our constituents and others who, when we meet them, make us suddenly realise, “Yes, there is a simple way forward. There is a way that we can do it.”
We are also asking for consistency; it should not just be about the postcode that people live in. There has been an allocation of medicinal cannabis, and my constituent is one of those who benefited from that; I believe that others who could benefit should also be allowed to. We need consistency and coherence for the industry and to enable wider access to medicinal cannabis for those who could benefit in certain medically defined circumstances. We need the signposting of treatments, and we need to break down the persistent stigma and discrimination that patients face—perhaps from police, and from employers and landlords.
I have taken up enough time, and I am keen to hear the helpful contributions from other hon. Members who are here to back my plea on behalf of my constituents and others. Collectively, the parties can come together and act. We look beseechingly to the Minister and the Government to ensure that the offer of medicinal cannabis can be available for every child and adult in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland who can benefit from it. If we have a goal and a way of achieving it, the Government might consider that it is cheaper to have medicinal cannabis available on prescription under very strict conditions to make sure that people’s lives are better. If we do that, we will have done a lot.
Esther McVey (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they need to bob if they wish to be called. I also remind Members that, if they wish to speak, they need to be here for both the opening and closing speeches.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing forward this debate on an important issue.
On the number of Members present, the Thursday afternoon slot in Westminster Hall is challenging because Members often have to return to their constituencies. For people outside who have an interest in this matter, it is very important to convey that there are a large number of Members on both sides of the House who are focused and interested in this subject. I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group for medical cannabis on or under prescription, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi). I contributed—as did the hon. Member for Strangford and the Minister as the then Opposition spokesperson—to the last debate that took place on this in Westminster Hall.
The hon. Member for Strangford, as is often the case, delivered a tour de force on the issues and concerns, with the appropriate level of compassion and empathy for those who are caught up in this issue and affected by it. I do not want to overly dwell on the issues that he set out, because he did that very well.
Medical cannabis is demonstrably a cost-effective way to treat an array of conditions, including childhood epilepsy, to ease the impact of chemotherapy, or to alleviate the stiffness and spasms of multiple sclerosis. There is a strong body of evidence that it could be used for even more conditions, and the hon. Gentleman highlighted the continuing and ongoing need for trials.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman touches on something that piqued my interest in this subject 20 years ago, when my constituent the late Biz Ivol, who was a sufferer from multiple sclerosis, told me that the only relief she got from multiple sclerosis was by her own—shall we say—non-prescribed use of cannabis. She described multiple sclerosis to me as being not just stiffness and spasms, but like somebody was pulling barbed wire down inside her spine. When somebody is feeling that sort of pain and discomfort, surely it is incumbent on us all to find a way, through medicine, to give them some relief if we possibly can.
David Mundell
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Indeed, over time, I think all of us who have taken an interest in this issue have heard from multiple sclerosis sufferers about the pain and difficulties that they have encountered. It is incumbent on us, those in Government and those in the medical world to do what we can to make sure that that is no longer the case.
I want to focus my remarks on the economic case for medical cannabis. I will talk about the contribution that a different and more progressive approach could make to the economies of rural constituencies such as mine—those were some of the points that I touched on in the previous debate—because, at its core, the nascent medical cannabis sector is horticultural in character and is situated in rural and agricultural communities such as the one I represent.
In my constituency, I see Hilltop Leaf develop growing and processing facilities that are pristine and equipped with high-tech quantum sensors, microscopes or leaf barometers. It is a stark contrast to the damp tinfoil-wrapped rooms of illegal production, referred to earlier. It is certainly a marked contrast to the circumstances in which some people feel forced to acquire cannabis and the dangers and difficulties that they place themselves in through doing that. As the hon. Member for Strangford said, they do that because they love the person who is suffering. They do not want to see them suffer, and they are willing to take risks and do things that they would not otherwise consider.
In that context, it is all the more important that we see the industry—a modern, progressive industry—as a step forward. I enormously support the investment in my constituency. I particularly hope that good horticultural, administrative, managerial and logistics jobs, which will anchor the young people in the constituency, will flow from it; young people all too often feel the need to leave such communities for the want of opportunities.
The facilities at Hilltop should also be able to provide some 10% of the UK’s medical cannabis needs. I have hopes that Hilltop can go further still, because the medical cannabis sector could potentially bring more than £1 billion to the UK economy. I do not wish to divert into the Chancellor’s remarks about economic growth, Dame Esther, because we have heard a lot about that in the Chamber. But this industry is there and ready to grow—ready to create wealth and jobs, particularly in some of the most difficult rural environments in the UK. It has been estimated that tens of thousands of good quality jobs could be created if the UK’s regulatory, legal and medical frameworks were in line with norms elsewhere.
Sadly, byzantine rules on prescribing and overlapping and onerous regulations are holding the sector back. Medical cannabis was legalised in 2018 by my former colleague Sajid Javid, then the Home Secretary, but it remains unduly difficult to prescribe on the NHS across every part of the United Kingdom. Those in need—we should be clear that this is a matter of need—turn to private medical services, with the huge costs that they bring; the hon. Member for Strangford also highlighted that. They turn to criminals as well. It is absurd to make something of medicinal benefit legal, but for it to be put out of the reach of so many people who need it.
The situation has a knock-on effect on the sector. In recent years, we exported 213 tonnes of medical and scientific cannabis of the 329 tonnes produced in the UK. The sector could meet domestic patients’ needs and international demands, but incoherence in regulation and approach is hindering that. That also extends to cannabidiol or CBD, which has many benefits too. It is readily available to purchase on the high street, so much so that the CBD market in the UK is the second largest globally. However, hemp licensing laws mean that the flowers and leaves where CBD is found must be destroyed. Overseas imports then fulfil the needs of the domestic CBD market, and British supply chains do not benefit. Because of that approach, growers have to forsake the opportunity of a crop yielding £10,000 per acre, compared to £400 for wheat. At a time when rural Britain is struggling, such yields would be a real boon and bring income into the pockets of farmers.
Patients, producers, taxpayers and even the police, as the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned, could all benefit from unblocking the bottlenecks in prescription and production. As I have said on many occasions, for that to happen the various strands of Government need to be stitched together. Instead of keeping the strange patchwork of overlapping and clashing components, there needs to be a clear policy of supporting the prescription of medical cannabis, and the necessary regulation and official approach that would allow that to happen. The UK Government and, where appropriate, the devolved Administrations should review the prescription process, medical guidelines, acceptable technical levels and the overlapping regulatory and legal regimes.
We have debated and discussed this issue many times. I hope that we will see some progress and that we do not have to repeatedly debate an issue to which we should have a common-sense approach. It benefits patients and our economy. It has an adverse effect on criminals. Why would we not do it?
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McVey. Do not worry, I have not defected. I just sat here, rather than where Conservatives would normally sit, because I did not want to interrupt the flow of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) while he was making his speech. I am grateful to him for securing this debate.
I am here because of one of my constituents, Matt Hughes, and particularly on behalf of his son, Charlie, who has severe treatment-resistant epilepsy. Mr Hughes has been to see me on a number of occasions. I am in the thick of a correspondence battle with the Department —the latest was in December last year—trying to deal with some of the problems that have arisen out of the 2018 NICE guideline change, which was brought in by Sajid Javid.
Somebody looking at the NICE guidelines would think, “Problem solved—wonderful! We can get access to these very important treatments for severely epileptic children.” But we are here today because that access is simply not available in practice. It is no good for us, as policymakers, to think that we have done the job because the policy has changed: if it is not working in practice, there was no point in changing the guidance.
There are a huge number of problems. There are licensing issues, to which I will return in more detail. There was the very unhelpful advice given by the British Paediatric Neurology Association in 2021, which seems to directly contravene the advice of NICE from 2018. There are many examples in which general practitioners have thought, after clinical assessment, that this kind of treatment, particularly second-generation drugs, should be supplied and yet local hospital advice was against it. Finally, there is the failure of the funding pathway. We have already heard about individual funding requests, but one problem is that the general application for many children to benefit from this kind of drug means that it fails the exceptionality test, so requests for individual funding are being refused on the grounds that the impact of the drug on the particular patient is insufficiently exceptional.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for coming along. I mentioned Joanne’s son Ben, who has failed 14 medications—the NHS says seven, so it is clear that there are failures in the system. We would think that the NHS should automatically respond, but it has not. That underlines the issue that the hon. Gentleman is raising.
Jerome Mayhew
That is the purpose of this debate: to encourage the Minister to get the NHS to change practice in this area. She could usefully start with the difficulty in licensing because second-generation medication is personalised. It does not have one or two active ingredients, but up to 20—that is probably not the right terminology but I hope we all understand—and the amounts of each of those active ingredients are personalised, in a patient-centric way. Yet we persist in applying a randomised controlled trial approach simply not appropriate for personalised medication. As a result, there is a failure to adopt licensing for medication that, anecdotally, is hugely effective, and has been hugely effective in supporting my constituent Charlie.
It is not beyond the wit of man to design an appropriate licensing system for this kind of medication because it has been done effectively elsewhere. We could look at the examples of Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and even some states in the United States of America. If they can do it, why can’t we? I would be grateful if the Minister addressed that question specifically. Why do we persist with randomised control trials when we know that that acts against the adoption of this kind of modern medicine? Why does the Minister think that the licensing approach in all those first-world countries is in some way dangerous or inadequate?
Rather than repeating current policy, what change are the Government proposing to make to provide access through licensing for multiple active ingredient patient-centric dosing? What change are they proposing in relation to individual funding requests? Are they prepared to fix the problem of exceptionality, given that these drugs are routinely refused because they help too many children?
This is a huge issue. An estimated 35,000 children are affected. I hope the Minister will not dole out sympathy alone in her response, but set out the active change that the Government intend to make.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. It is undeniable that the United Kingdom’s relationship with cannabis remains fundamentally flawed. For too long, our prohibitionist stance has shaped public perception, linking cannabis with criminality instead of recognising its significant therapeutic value. Sometimes those who do recognise its therapeutic value are pushed into criminality. In reality, for many people across the UK, access to cannabis-based medicines can represent the difference between enduring chronic pain or multiple fits and leading a fulfilling life. That discrepancy is central to this debate.
Although, in principle, current regulations permit cannabis prescriptions for severe epilepsy, chemotherapy-induced nausea, muscle stiffness or spasms related to multiple sclerosis, genuine accessibility remains elusive. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has already mentioned, between 2018 and 2022 fewer than five NHS prescriptions for unlicensed medical cannabis, with the resulting funding issues, were issued, while private providers supplied nearly 90,000.
The stark contrast highlights the vast gulf between existing policy intentions and the lived experiences of patients seeking relief. Not only is this situation profoundly unjust for individuals who rely on cannabis to manage debilitating symptoms and have found no alternative, but it also entrenches an inherently two-tier healthcare system. Those with the financial means to travel for specialised appointments and cover private clinical expenses can access treatments that are virtually unobtainable for those who depend entirely on the NHS. While opinions on medical cannabis differ, I am sure we all agree that no one in Britain should be forced to pay exorbitant fees simply to secure a legally sanctioned and potentially life-changing medication.
The situation is further compounded by the fact that our outdated perspective on cannabis continues to hold back domestic medical innovation and economic growth. At a time when the Government project a modern vision for the nation, Britain lags behind international counterparts who have embraced a more progressive approach to cannabis-based treatments. By clinging to outdated stigmas, we not only fail our patients but also forgo opportunities to develop a robust medical cannabis sector, stifling both financial potential and essential healthcare advantages.
In the light of those realities, we must adopt a more compassionate and patient-centred strategy that does not penalise individuals for their economic circumstances. It is with this in mind that we must launch an investigation into the feasibility of GP prescribing of cannabis-based products, so that crucial treatments reach those who need them quickly. Such measures would reduce reliance on expensive private options, remove inequality and the push towards criminality, and alleviate unnecessary suffering of thousands of people nationwide.
Given the clear shortcomings of the current system, my colleagues in the Liberal Democrats and I urge the Government to reform policy in practice around medicinal cannabis across the UK. By doing so, we can ensure that patients receive the care they deserve while fostering a modern healthcare environment that truly reflects Britain’s commitment to innovation, compassion and equity.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
I am grateful for the honour of responding for His Majesty’s Opposition in this debate, Ms McVey.
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his tireless dedication to health issues—not just this one, but many others. In my short career on the Front Bench, I think this is already the fourth time in the space of six weeks that I have responded to a debate that he has secured; I congratulate him on his success in doing so. He never ceases to amaze me, because not only does he represent his own constituents—he has told us so passionately about Danielle, Sophia and their story—but he even represents others’ constituents as well, bringing forward and championing their issues. His ability to step forward and raise those issues is a true testament to the parliamentarian he is, and he has my full admiration and respect for doing so.
Today we have heard some moving stories about the difficulties faced by patients who are suffering, and about the plethora of conditions that could benefit from having these medications. I thank Medcan Family Foundation and the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society for their advocacy on the issue, and for repeatedly bringing that information to the fore so that this country can debate such an important topic.
The debate has focused on the challenges that many children and adults face with accessing medical cannabis, but we appear to be in a new phase when it comes to managing the fact that such prescribing is becoming more prevalent. It is worth recognising, as we have done, that there was no legal route for such treatment only seven years ago. It was Sir Sajid Javid, who, as the Home Secretary, listened to the families and commissioned a review into that area to allow the creation of legal routes for accessing those medications. That decision has led to significantly more people being able to access licensed cannabis-based medicines.
Between January 2018 and September 2024, written answers show that 24,395 NHS prescriptions for licensed cannabis-based medications such as nabilone, Sativex and—even as a doctor, I am struggling to say it—Epidyolex were dispensed across the community in England. However, it must be recognised that that is dwarfed by the number of private prescriptions currently being issued. Where there have been challenges with access to licensed medications, as with Sativex, the last Government worked with the NHS to take steps to increase uptake of prescribing. On 6 September 2021, the NHS wrote to local trusts and integrated care boards reminding them about NICE’s guidance relating to that medication, and their responsibilities to prescribe in line with NICE recommendations. My understanding is that the letter contributed to an increase of prescriptions of Sativex.
However, challenges remain with access to unlicensed cannabis-based medications. We have heard that those medicines must be accessed through individual funding requests, but clinicians are wary of prescribing them, because of concerns about both the evidence base and the legal responsibilities involved. I can attest to the fact that, as a doctor who prescribes unlicensed medications, one looks for guidance on the best way to do so safely. The law was changed in part to encourage more research and clinical trials so that robust evidence can be collected, potentially leading to marketing authorisation and licensing. In the meantime, it is notable that NICE guidance does not prohibit healthcare professionals from considering unlicensed medications. In 2021, NICE stated:
“The fact that NICE made no such population-wide recommendation should not however be interpreted by healthcare professionals as meaning that they are prevented from considering the use of unlicensed cannabis-based medicinal products where that is clinically appropriate in an individual case. Patients in this population can be prescribed cannabis-based medicinal products if a tertiary paediatric epilepsy specialist considers that that would be appropriate on a balance of benefit and risk, and in consultation with the patient, and their families and carers or guardian.”
However, a recent report by Medcan Family Foundation has highlighted that more restricted prescribing in some areas may be leading to serious or unintended consequences. It is concerning to see, when reviewing their research, that three online forums identified 382 families in the UK who are giving their child illegal cannabis products specifically to manage epilepsy. Given the nature of that research, it could be argued that the figure may be significantly higher nationwide. Is that just the tip of the iceberg?
It is worth reflecting on some of the debates that have taken place in this House that have been mentioned previously. I think it was Mark Twain who said, “The past doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” which I feel is apt in this case. To that end, it is always wise to try and learn from previous experiences. After all, advice from the wise is like the torch in the dark; it does not walk the path for us but it does light the path. So I looked at Hansard for the last debate and noted a particularly strong contribution from the then shadow Health Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), who is now the Minister with the power at her disposal. I think it is fair to ask her the questions she posed to the then Minister:
“It would be helpful if the Minister could set out what steps he is taking to empower and accelerate research in this space. I hope he will not dodge the question by saying that the issue is simply one for clinicians. The Government have a responsibility—the Minister is nodding, and we await his reply with interest, but there seems to be a lack of urgency on the issue, which is concerning. People are suffering right now. We have heard again this afternoon about children who are fitting, sometimes 100 times or more. Accessing care is, in some cases, pushing families to the brink of destitution. We should do everything we can to support those people.
If research is needed before clinicians feel comfortable prescribing, then it is incumbent on the Government to support clinicians. We need more streamlined clinical trials and better engagement with clinicians. We do not want to be back here in another two years, having a rerun of this debate. In 2020-21, the then Minister said:
‘It will take time to generate further evidence and see the results of clinical trials. The Health Secretary and I are committed to doing everything in our power to accelerate this work.’
If the Minister could update us on where this work has got to, and whether the Government are any closer to finding a solution, that would be welcomed by people tuning in today, and to the families present.
Finally, I would be grateful if the Minister set out what action he has taken to support people in the system right now—those living in extreme pain who are paying thousands of pounds to access treatment. There is consensus on this issue, as we have heard. The debate has been had and a decision has been made, but we can and should do better. In that spirit of consensus, we would all like to see some progress from the Minister.” —[Official Report, 20 April 2023; Vol. 731, c. 223WH.]
The Minister is clearly a strong advocate, and she is now in a position of power. She has been in post for over half a year, so what steps has she taken to empower and accelerate research in that area? What action has she taken to streamline clinical trials? Since taking office, what steps has she taken to empower clinicians to prescribe and to feel more comfortable? Since being in post, what action have her Government taken to support people in the system now?
It seems to me that the debate has moved on, but it is still rhyming. We are two years on and progress has been made. More than 24,000 prescriptions clearly represent an improvement. As has been said today, however, there is more to do, and we have new problems. The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) talked about the legal farming industry, the Hilltop Leaf situation and trying to create a virgin industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) talked about the clinical pathways and how they need to be specifically looked at. The hon. Member for Strangford highlighted policing, given that there is a growth in use. I will not tempt the Minister to stray into the Home Office brief, but I want to ask what conversations she is having with her Home Office counterparts about legal medical cannabis.
I hope the Government will continue to progress in this space as the issue evolves. They will have the Opposition’s support as they continue to research, educate and raise awareness. I hope the Minister will agree to meet Medcan and the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, if she has not done so already. Given the concerns that have been raised today, perhaps as a first step she will write to trusts and ICBs again to highlight the guidance on prescribing these medications. After all, we all want the safest, most effective medications to treat patients as soon as they are needed, and they should be uniformly accessible. I believe that noble aim is distinctly achievable, and I hope the Minister does too.
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. As he said, there are many hon. Members from both sides of the House representing constituents affected by the issue across the United Kingdom who would have liked to be here today. Obviously, health is a devolved matter. The hon. Gentleman spoke movingly about his constituents, and other colleagues talked about theirs. I agree with him. My words have been repeated back to me, so I do not need to say them again. This is an important issue for everyone in the Chamber and those who are listening in, as we all want to support people who are in very difficult circumstances.
The hon. Gentleman raised some key issues, which I will address. He said that landlords and the police are unaware of the legality surrounding prescribed medicinal cannabis. I encourage him to take that up with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. I understand that the Home Office has notified all police forces about the change to the law, and guidance has been issued to summarise what that means.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned electronic prescribing, which has been in operation for schedule 2 and 3 controlled drugs in NHS primary care settings since 2019. I am afraid there are no current plans to extend that to private clinics at this time.
The hon. Gentleman also spoke about an observational study with a small patient cohort. I am afraid that it would not produce results as robust as a randomised control trial, which is the gold standard for clinical trials, nor would it add to the current evidence base. It would not provide results suitable to inform routine clinical or NHS commissioning decisions, because there would be no way to compare the findings with what would have happened in the absence of the intervention. I will come on to clinical trials in more detail, but let us be clear about the problem we face, the challenge faced by all of us involved in this debate and the challenge faced by children, many of whom have been mentioned today.
Of course, we listen to Members of this House, and to patients, parents and families, who say that these medicines are safe and should be available. We must ensure the safety and effectiveness of all medicines. The benefits should outweigh any potential harm and, as the hon. Gentleman outlined, clinicians must have that assurance and clarity, too.
There are currently only two cannabis-based medicines in the world with marketing authorisations or licence. They are—I hope I do not stumble over them too—Sativex, for the treatment of muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis, and Epidyolex, for treatment related to two rare forms of epilepsy and tuberous sclerosis complex. Those medicines show that it is possible to develop cannabis-based treatments that have been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy. The evidence generated on their clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness can enable the National Institute for Care and Health Excellence to recommend them for use in the NHS.
The medicines we are talking about today are unlicensed, which means that they have not been assessed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Indeed, they have not been assessed or granted market authorisations by any medicines regulator anywhere in the world. However, as has been noted, in 2018 the then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, enabled the prescription of unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use. That provided a lawful route to these medicines for prescriptions for individual patients who were not benefiting from standard treatments and were not part of clinical trials, while limiting the ability to prescribe to specialist doctors. That came on the heels of the review by Professor Dame Sally Davies, then the chief medical officer, which found enough evidence of benefit to recommend that cannabis-based medicine should be moved out of schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001.
For epilepsy, that evidence was mainly in relation to cannabidiol, also known as CBD, rather than products containing the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. The review did not provide evidence to support routine prescribing or funding of those medicines on the NHS, which the previous Government should have made clear at the time. Before we see routine prescribing of these unlicensed medicines, the NHS must have greater assurance on their clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness at a population level. I am not a clinician—we are all here as politicians—and it is right that prescribing any medicine or treatment is a clinical decision, whether it is done on the NHS or privately. It is not for us to influence those decisions, so I cannot comment on individual cases.
We want to see more medicines approved by the MHRA and available on the NHS. We inherited a broken system, and it will take time to fix that failure, but the Chancellor has made an in-year investment in the NHS to fill the black hole that we inherited and prevent our having to cut back on services. That means that, more than ever, the NHS must account for every penny that it spends and make difficult decisions on what treatments are made available.
The NHS must get the best possible value for its investment in medicines and consider the cost-effectiveness of treatments to ensure that resources are used efficiently. For that to be fair, medicines or treatments initiated privately would not routinely be prescribed by the NHS unless the requested treatment was already approved under existing policies, which unlicensed medicinal cannabis is not, or when there are individual, exceptional circumstances. That remains the case even if privately funded treatment has been shown to have clinical benefit for an individual patient. This is the current NHS policy for all treatment initiated and prescribed privately, and it is not specific to medicinal cannabis.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response. A constituent of her colleague, the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), is in the Gallery today. Her young boy, Ben, is receiving Bedrolite and Bedica, which are both proven to assist him in having a 98% reduction in fits. The same thing happens to my young constituent, wee Sophia, and to many others as well, including Charlie, the constituent of the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew). If there is a proven evidential base, which there quite clearly is, should it not be part of the evidential base for NICE to ensure that all these medications are taken on board?
Karin Smyth
I will come on to the research.
As we have heard, and as I recognise, fewer than five patients have accessed these medicines on the NHS, so access is truly exceptional. The testimony of the children and families accessing these treatments privately—often at great personal cost, as we have heard this afternoon—is truly heartbreaking. I am sure we can all agree that all Government spending on health must be evidence-based, and colleagues are seeking to ensure that that is the case.
If we are to see more cannabis-based medicines routinely available on the NHS, we need more research. The National Institute for Health and Care Research, also known as the NIHR, and the MHRA are there to support manufacturers and researchers to develop new medicines and design quality studies. I strongly encourage the manufacturers of those products to invest in research to prove that they are safe and effective and meet the rigorous standards that we rightly expect for all medicines. They should engage with the NIHR and the MHRA on clinical research and medicines licensing processes. That is key in providing doctors with the confidence to prescribe cannabis-based products in the same way that they use any other licensed medicines recommended for use on the NHS, but we are not waiting for industry to respond to patient voices.
The NIHR and NHS England have recently confirmed more than £8.5 million in funding for clinical trials to investigate whether cannabis-based medicines are effective in the treatment of drug-related epilepsies. As I said when we were in opposition, and as has been highlighted today, action in this space is vital. Epilepsy is a terrible disease, and it can be life-limiting in the most serious cases.
We also know that although epilepsy is a fairly common neurological condition, affecting 1% to 2% of the population, about 30% of cases will sadly have seizures that are resistant to current treatments, so it is absolutely right that the NIHR and NHS England are pioneering truly world-first trials that will investigate the safety and effectiveness of CBD and THC in adults and children with treatment-resistant epilepsy. The trials will be co-led by experts from University College London and Great Ormond Street hospital and will look to recruit around 480 patients from across the UK. The study details are published on the NIHR website, and I understand that it will publish further details soon.
Further funding has also been awarded to the University of Edinburgh to investigate the efficacy of CBD in patients with neuropathic pain due to chemotherapy. Those are two examples of the type of research that we desperately need in this area of medicine, and a further 28 studies looking at cannabis-based medicines have been approved by the MHRA since 2018. It is an emotive and complex debate, but the clinical trials give me encouragement that there is a way forward. If the evidence supports it, we will see more cannabis-based medicines approved by the regulators and recommended by NICE. That is the only way we will see the evidence base improved and give clinicians the confidence to prescribe.
To conclude, the hon. Member for Strangford has brought this debate forward with his customary good faith and compassion.
Jim Shannon
I am sorry. I am not intervening just for the heck of it; I just want a wee bit of clarification. I welcome the fact that the Minister is referring to the trials, and how long they are. I ask the Minister, very quickly: how long will it be before they are complete? Also, I asked the Minister beforehand if she would agree to a meeting with the hon. Member for South Ribble and his constituent just to clarify the matter and take forward the case for a wee bairn. Those are my two asks.
Karin Smyth
I cannot answer the question about trials and research directly because, obviously, trials are run by the specialists at NIHR, in the usual way, and I am sure that the request for meeting has been heard. It would probably not be with me, but I am sure the officials have heard it and that the hon. Gentleman will have a response.
I thank the Opposition spokesperson for reading out my contribution and highlighting how proactive we are being, only seven months since forming the new Government. I am proud that the trials that we are looking to do are world firsts. No other country in the world is taking the same action to prove that the medicines are safe and effective. I know it will not come as much consolation to those families who are at the end of their tether with talk of processes, debates and regulations. I also know it may not feel like it, based on some of the things I have said today, but I think there is a way forward. There may be some light at the end of the tunnel, and this Government will do what we can to support NHS England and the NIHR to get the trials done.
Jim Shannon
I thank all hon. Members who contributed. The debate has been very helpful—indeed, more helpful than most. The Minister is right that it is unfortunate that a number of hon. Members who wished to be here just could not attend, including the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), as an example.
I thank, first of all, the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell). I thank him for all his knowledge on the subject. It is always a pleasure to come and hear him make a contribution based on his knowledge and expertise. He also referred to the framework that is in place; he says it is “absurd”. That was the word that he used for the way that we do not have a system that seems to embrace the benefits of medicinal cannabis. He referred to the economic case, which is part of the issue. It cannot be ignored, because it is really important. The right hon. Gentleman has the knowledge to bring something forward that can work and I thank him for his contribution.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), in his intervention, referred to people resorting, as they do sometimes, to finding the capacity to source medicinal cannabis when the system does not work for them.
The hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) also referred to his constituent and his constituent’s son, Charlie. Nothing ever tells a story better than an example, and his wee Charlie and my wee Sophia—if I may refer to a constituent of mine like that —do very clearly illustrate the case. He also referred to the trial, which is perhaps not working. I think the Minister, in a way, tried to answer that question, to be fair, but our impatience is one of the issues. The hon. Member also raised exceptionality issues, and he referred to clinical pathways. A process that responds quickly is important.
The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) brought forward her personal knowledge on the subject and it was helpful to have that contribution. As she said, no one in the UK should have to pay large fees when there is a product available to help that is evidentially proven. It is essential that we provide care and advantages for a better life, and that is what we are all trying to achieve.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), always brings his personal knowledge from his previous occupation—I do not say that to give him a big head. He referred to the NICE process. There is a way forward but, as he said, we need to empower and accelerate that process. The fact is that the 24,000 prescriptions in the UK are only part of the process, and there is much more to address.
I thank the Minister very much. Her final words were that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We have always got to be optimistic for our constituents and I think the Minister wants that to happen as well—I do not think it, I know that she wants that to happen. She also said she wants to support those who need help and the timescale for treatment is part of that. A message from the Gallery tells me that Bedrocan asked about trials and was told that a company had been found. I know that the Minister is not able to respond now, but perhaps she or her officials will come back to me and confirm where that is in the process.
Our whole objective in being here is to represent our constituents—to do our job the best we can on their behalf and to give them hope and solutions. Whether it is economic life or the personal or emotional help that people need, the debate has been used to raise awareness, which we all wish to do. On behalf of my constituents and other constituents across this whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who we love and represent each day we are here, we ask that the Government move with urgency to provide the medicinal cannabis that we need.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered medicinal cannabis.
Written Corrections
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Ministerial Corrections
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Defence
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Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) was passionate in making his points about late payment; this is not the first time that he has raised that issue in parliamentary settings. The Government do recognise the importance of fair payment practices. Direct suppliers to the MOD are required to sign up to the prompt payment code to be eligible for MOD contracts. The Director General Commercial recently wrote to large suppliers to remind them of that responsibility because some are better at complying than others.
[Official Report, 28 January 2025; Vol. 761, c. 105WH.]
Written correction submitted by the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, the right hon. Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle):
Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) was passionate in making his points about late payment; this is not the first time that he has raised that issue in parliamentary settings. The Government do recognise the importance of fair payment practices. Direct suppliers to the MOD are required to comply with the Government’s prompt payment policy to be eligible for MOD contracts. The Director General Commercial has written to large suppliers to remind them of that responsibility because some are better at complying than others.
Education
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Catherine McKinnell
On reunification specifically, “Working together to safeguard children 2023” was updated to ask local authorities to consider
“whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.”
It made it clear that family group decision making cannot be conducted before a child becomes looked after, but that it should still be considered as an option later.
[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2025; c. 126.]
Written correction submitted by the Minister for School Standards, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell):
Catherine McKinnell
On reunification specifically, “Working together to safeguard children 2023” was updated to ask local authorities to consider
“whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.”
It made it clear that if family group decision making cannot be conducted before a child becomes looked after, it should still be considered as an option later.
Written Statements
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Horizon Shortfall Scheme Appeals Process
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
In September 2024 the Secretary of State announced that the Government would be introducing an independent Horizon shortfall scheme appeals process. This will help ensure that all HSS claimants have the full opportunity to receive fair compensation and reflects a recommendation from the Horizon compensation advisory board.
During my December statement to the House, I promised that I would provide an update in the new year.
First, I can confirm that my Department is in the final stages of procuring a contract for its legal advisors on appeals cases, which will include an initial assessment of each postmaster’s case. We will also be appointing a separate firm as secretariat for the scheme’s independent panel and reviewer shortly, once the procurement process is complete.
My officials will shortly send to both appellants’ representatives and the advisory board a draft of detailed principles and guidance. These will ensure that the HSS appeals scheme is fit for purpose and provides a satisfactory outcome for affected postmasters, in line with the advisory board’s recommendation. They will also establish the eligibility criteria. We will continue to engage both groups on all aspects of the scheme.
I can also announce that this Government are committed to covering the reasonable costs of postmasters obtaining legal advice at each stage of the appeals process. As with appeals under the group litigation order and horizon convictions redress schemes, we will do this using a legal tariff. We strongly encourage potential appellants to take up this offer and only seek the advice of firms who have signed up to these tariffs. We are working with appellants’ legal representatives so that we can establish these tariffs as soon as possible.
Clarity about the principles of the scheme and our support for appellants’ legal costs will mean that legal representatives can begin to produce cases for appeal. We expect that the first cases will be ready for submission in the spring.
Eligible postmasters within Post Office’s HSS dispute resolution procedure will receive a letter in spring inviting them to transfer their case to HSS appeals. I will provide a further update to the House nearer to that time.
[HCWS399]
Humanitarian Medal: Eligibility
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The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
I have today placed in the Libraries of both Houses a copy of the Command Paper setting out updated eligibility for the Humanitarian Medal. The Humanitarian Medal will be awarded to those in public service, and members of organisations such as charities, who respond in support of human welfare during or in the aftermath of a crisis. The updated criteria ensure that individuals who assist with His Majesty’s Government’s response to humanitarian responses overseas are able to receive the medal, as was its original intention.
In addition, I am also announcing the first three eligible humanitarian incidents:
the earthquake in Morocco in September 2023;
the flooding in Libya in September 2023; and
the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Eligible individuals who assisted with His Majesty’s Government’s response to each of these humanitarian responses will receive the medal. My ministerial colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will be responsible for determining which individuals will be eligible.
[HCWS402]
Higher Education Partnership Delivery: Strengthening Oversight
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
My right hon. Friend, the Minister of State, Minister for Skills (Baroness Smith of Malvern) has made the following statement.
I am today announcing the publication of a consultation which sets out the Government proposals to strengthen oversight of partnership delivery in higher education. This consultation is one of the actions the Government are taking to protect public money. It was developed in response to the recommendations made by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee last year about the regulatory oversight of student loan funding for study at franchised providers.
English higher education providers are amongst the most highly regarded in the world, supporting learners to succeed for themselves, their communities and our country, and driving the economic growth we need. They also play a key role in this Government’s missions to break down barriers to opportunity and to drive economic growth. Higher education can open the door to opportunity for many, but only where that education is good quality and subject to effective management and governance.
The Office for Students (OfS) is the regulator responsible for higher education in England. Higher education providers must register with the OfS for their courses to be designated for publicly funded student finance. Some registered providers subcontract or “franchise” delivery of courses to partners that are not subject to the same regulatory requirements. Whilst there are many good examples of franchised provision being used to expand access and participation and deliver high quality provision, franchised higher education is one area where we have seen too many examples of abuse of public money in recent years and some concerning indicators of poor quality.
Students make a significant investment in higher education and they deserve to have confidence that in return they will receive excellent teaching, strong support and value for money. Taxpayers too deserve to know that the public money invested in student loans to help students access higher education is properly protected from fraud and misuse.
The proposals we are consulting on aim to bring franchised providers under greater scrutiny to help safeguard against the risks of misuse of public money and low-quality provision. This consultation proposes a requirement that franchised providers with 300 or more students should be directly regulated by the Office for Students if they want their students to access student loan funding.
The Government are committed to supporting innovation and competition. We recognise that franchising can provide smaller, innovative providers with the opportunity to enter the higher education sector. Setting a size threshold will still allow new and smaller providers who may find registration disproportionately burdensome to access the higher education market.
Whilst the OfS has currently paused registration of new higher education providers to support the sector with financial sustainability concerns, we expect this pause to cease before the Department’s proposed changes would come into effect.
The Office for Students announced last September that it had opened formal investigations into some universities’ and colleges’ subcontractual arrangements and that their next cycle of quality assessments would largely focus on the academic experiences of students studying through subcontractual arrangements. The Office for Students is consulting on proposals to strengthen expectations on providers wishing to join its register. This includes strengthening requirements that protect student interests and ensure effective governance and management of higher education. It has also communicated plans to publish student outcomes for all subcontractual partnerships on an annual basis from this year.
As a whole, I believe that these proposals will bring about the changes that are necessary to ensure that student loan funding is protected from misuse and students studying at franchised providers can have confidence that their courses are subject to rigorous quality requirements.
[HCWS403]
UNFCCC: UK's 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution Target
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The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
Under the Paris agreement, all parties are required to communicate their nationally determined contributions to the United Nations framework convention on climate change every 5 years, nine to 12 months prior to the relevant COP. NDCs covering the period 2031 to 2035 are due by 10 February 2025, ahead of COP30 in Brazil.
The Prime Minister announced on 12 November 2024 at COP29, three months ahead of the deadline, the UK’s 2035 NDC target to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% by 2035, compared with 1990 levels, excluding emissions from international aviation and shipping. The 2035 NDC is based on advice from the independent Climate Change Committee. It is a clear progression on the UK’s previous NDC pledging to reduce emissions by at least 68% by 2030, which remains in place. It is informed by the outcomes of the global stocktake from COP28 and is aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C. It is also aligned with the level of ambition in carbon budget 6 (2033 to 2037) on the pathway to net zero by 2050.
Today, the UK has submitted to the UNFCCC the information to facilitate clarity, transparency and understanding of the 2035 NDC, to aid interpretation of the headline emissions reduction target. The ICTU contains information about the scope, timing, sectors and greenhouse gases covered by the target, as well as some high-level information on policies and measures involved in delivering the NDC. It also includes information on how the NDC was created, how the NDC is considered fair and ambitious and informed by the aims of the Paris agreement, the convention, and the outcomes of the global stocktake.
Making Britain a clean-energy superpower is one of the five national missions of this Government. We will deliver an updated cross-economy plan to meet our climate targets in due course, with full detail of policy packages for all sectors. This will outline the policies and proposals needed to deliver carbon budgets 4 to 6 and the 2030 and 2035 NDCs on the pathway to net zero by 2050.
The UK’s early and ambitious NDC will help restore our global climate leadership and encourage greater ambition from other countries. It is one important part of the UK’s overall contribution to global emissions reductions, alongside our international climate finance and other support.
[HCWS404]
NHS England and NHS Operational Planning Guidance 2025-26
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
I am today laying in Parliament the Government mandate for NHS England, and NHS England is publishing the operational planning guidance for the NHS.
This Government won the election to deliver change. The mandate and operational planning guidance mark a significant step on a long journey to get the NHS back on its feet, and drive the reform that is needed to make it fit for the future.
The mandate and operational planning guidance address the urgent challenges facing the NHS, as highlighted by the Darzi investigation. They put the NHS on the road to recovery and reflect patient priorities: cutting waiting times, improving access to primary care and improving urgent and emergency care. They reflect the need for the NHS to live within its means, and ensure that investment in the NHS, against a challenging economic and fiscal backdrop, is matched with reform to the operating model and a sharp focus on improving efficiency and productivity.
Patients need high-quality elective care delivered in a timely fashion, and should have choice and control over their care. I am re-focusing the NHS on making progress towards the 18-week standard, and the steps to achieve this were set out in our elective reform plan. This mandate supports the modernisation of primary and community care that will help patients get timely access to a GP appointment. The mandate is the start of us delivering our manifesto commitment to provide 700,000 urgent dental appointments to address our dentistry crisis.
Right now, patients are not receiving urgent and emergency care when they need it. Today’s changes will put patients at the centre of delivery, focusing on safety, experience and outcomes, and we will tackle variation in services delivered across the country, bringing the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. These changes come ahead of publishing, in 2025, our strategy to fix urgent and emergency care.
Patients’ priorities will be delivered through a new operating model, which will devolve power closer to the frontline and allow the best performing providers and integrated care boards to earn more autonomy to provide services needed by their local communities—all while ensuring a focus on efficiency and productivity to support the NHS to live within its means.
This year’s operational planning guidance puts these objectives into practice with fewer targets, giving local systems greater control and flexibility over how local funding is deployed to best meet the needs of the people they serve. I am instructing the NHS to focus on the fundamentals and get back to basics. We are giving local leaders clear directions to prioritise cutting elective care waiting lists, improve A&E and ambulance wait times, improve access to GPs and urgent dental care, and solve the mental health crisis.
2025-26 must be a year of financial reset for the NHS. The budget settlement for the NHS is welcome and we will ensure it is spent wisely, through financial rigour, to deliver services for patients. NHS providers are being asked to undertake a 1 % reduction in cost base, while raising their productivity and efficiency by 4%.
Making decisions like these are never easy, but when I joined the Department, I pledged to make sure that every penny was spent in a way that provides the best value for the patients. Together we will bring reform to the NHS and get it back on its feet.
[HCWS400]
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
The Government have today introduced the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill in the House of Commons.
Border security is fundamental to both national and economic security. Threats to the UK from serious and organised crime, including organised immigration crime, and from terrorism and hostile state actors are rapidly evolving. The first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens, and to not only keep up with but stay ahead of these threats. This requires a whole of state and legislative response.
The international and cross-border nature of these threats and challenges means that border security is an essential part of keeping our country safe. This is why strengthening our border security is one of the foundations of the Government plan for change.
Small boat crossings put these threats and challenges into sharp relief, they undermine our border security and put lives at risk. Organised by criminal smuggler and trafficking gangs, they are extremely dangerous with 78 reported deaths at sea last year, with people crowded into flimsy dinghies. Over the last six years, criminal gangs have been allowed to build a network of illegal and dangerous smuggling operations, taking hold along our border and across the continent, involving illegal supply chains, logistics, false advertising and illicit finance, underpinned by serious violence and exploitation.
The establishment of the Border Security Command in July 2024 spearheads the significant shift in strategy that this Government are taking, adopting a transformative approach to deliver stronger border security through strong leadership, effective partnerships and a long-term vision. Its initial focus is on dismantling smuggling networks, but its broader aims are to enable smarter, faster and more effective interventions across the entire system to strengthen the UK border.
Introduced today, the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill delivers on the manifesto commitment to provide law enforcement with the powers it needs to protect the integrity of the UK border, including earlier intervention to detect, prevent and prosecute people smugglers, thereby disrupting their ability to carry out small boat crossings.
The measures, which have the strong support of law enforcement agencies like the National Crime Agency, Immigration Enforcement and police, include:
Placing the Border Security Command on a statutory footing
The Bill places the Border Security Command on to a statutory footing so that the commander has the authority to be an effective system leader, cohering and driving cross-Government systems to improve the collective response to cross border threats. This will give the commander the power they need to drive changes across different agencies and departments, and to be able to work internationally as we draw up new agreements with neighbouring, transit and upstream countries to tackle organised immigration crime and to co-operate on strengthening border security.
New and enhanced powers to strengthen border security, including new powers and offences
The Bill sets out new, transformative measures to provide law enforcement agencies with stronger powers to pursue, disrupt and deter organised immigration crime, including:
Creating new offences for supplying, offering to supply or handling items suspected of being for use in immigration crime, for example the buying, selling and transporting of small boat parts, as well as for the possession and supply of articles for use in serious crime.
Creating a new preparatory acts offence for collecting information to be used by organised immigration criminals to prepare for boat crossings. This includes arranging departure points, dates and times, with clear links back to the gangs facilitating the dangerous crossings.
Creating new powers to enable the search for and the seizure of electronic devices to identify links with organised immigration crime. This will enable the review of any information relevant to facilitation offences and to gather intelligence linked to smuggler and trafficking gangs.
The Bill makes it an offence to endanger another life at sea, to act as a deterrent to boat overcrowding and reduce further tragic loss of life among those making the perilous channel crossings. Those involved in physical aggression, intimidation or coercive behaviour, including preventing offers of rescue while at sea, will face prosecution. This stricter law sends a clear message that we are ready to take action against all those who are complicit in fatalities in the channel.
The Bill introduces new interim serious crime prevention orders to place severe curbs and restrictions on people involved in activities related to organised immigration crime, before they are arrested, ensuring that court delays do not mean a gap in our agencies taking action. Alongside this, two new criminal offences have been introduced which criminalise the making, adapting, importing, suppling, offering to supply and possession of a specified list of articles for use in serious crime.
The Bill also amends the counter-terrorism port powers to allow the police to take DNA samples and fingerprints at a port in Scotland, strengthening border security by bringing Scotland into alignment with the position across the rest of the UK.
Expanded data-sharing capabilities to assist in the development of the intelligence picture of organised immigration crime
The Bill strengthens information sharing which will allow law enforcement to access Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency data on UK registered trailers in real time, enhancing the detection of illegal entrants via lorry both in the UK and upstream.
A new, simplified and clearer provision for HMRC to share certain entire datasets it holds for custom functions with the Home Office and other Government Departments will be introduced, subject to data protection legislation. This will enable the identification of suspicious patterns, activity, or intelligence that would not be apparent if each dataset was considered in isolation.
Measures to support and strengthen the asylum and immigration system
Among other measures to support and strengthen the asylum and immigration system, the Bill repeals the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, delivering on the manifesto commitment to end the migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda which cost the taxpayer £700 million and sent four volunteers to Rwanda. The Government will be withdrawing separately from the UK-Rwanda treaty that underpinned that partnership.
The Bill also removes from the statute unworkable and counterproductive provisions from the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which allowed people to enter the asylum system but prevented asylum decision making, increased the backlog and put impossible pressure on asylum accommodation, driving up hotel use and costs. Many of those provisions were never enacted exactly because they were not workable.
Other measures in the Bill which seek to support the asylum and immigration system include introducing greater flexibility when taking biometric information, extending the trained cohort of those who can do so and creating a new power to take biometrics from foreign nationals outside of a visa process. The Bill also supports the disruption of professional enablers of abuse by amending governance structures to ensure the Immigration Services Commissioner can be an effective and more flexible regulator of immigration advice. Amendments to detention powers and creating the retrospective legal basis for fees to be collected in relation to the recognition of qualifications obtained overseas also work towards bolstering the immigration system.
Next steps
The Government are determined to strengthen UK border security and to tackle organised immigration crime. For too long the individuals behind this nefarious trade have been allowed to go unchecked. This legislation gives our law enforcement stronger tools than ever before to dismantle the gangs and provides the structure within which the full weight of the border security system can be brought to bear. These powers, alongside our work to ramp up returns, deportations, illegal working visits and action with the international community, transform the response to these threats and enable the step change needed.
[HCWS406]
Police Funding Settlement 2025-26
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The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has today laid before the House the “Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2025-26” (HC 621). The report sets out the Home Secretary’s determination for 2025-26 of the aggregate amounts of grants that she proposes to pay under section 46(2) of the Police Act 1996. Copies of the report are available from the Vote Office.
With this additional funding, overall funding for policing will total up to £19.6 billion in 2025-26, an increase of up to £1.1 billion when compared to the 2024-25 settlement. Of this amount, funding available to police and crime commissioners (PCCs) for their local police force will be up to £17.5 billion—an increase of up to an additional £1.1 billion in 2025-26, a 6.6% cash increase and 4.1% real-terms increase. This includes an additional £100 million for neighbourhood policing above that announced at the provisional police funding settlement. This assumes PCCs make use of the full precept flexibility of £14 for English forces.
This settlement demonstrates the Government continued commitment to putting officers back on the beat in communities across the country, and giving forces the resources to keep the public safe. We look forward to working with officers and police staff across the country on our shared ambition to make our streets safer.
The tables document funding to PCCs for 2025-26, including precept can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2025-01-30/HCWS407/
[HCWS407]
Integrated Settlements
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Angela Rayner)
Today, I am pleased to announce that the Government have published details of the integrated settlements for Greater Manchester combined authority and West Midlands combined authority for the period covering the financial year 2025-26.
The Government’s primary mission is to drive economic growth and raise living standards. This can only happen if local leaders have the right tools to deliver for their residents and businesses. As set out in the English Devolution White Paper, we must rewire England and end the hoarding in Whitehall by devolving power and money from central Government to those with skin in the game. Above all we need to free mayors to direct funding to where it delivers the best outcomes and value for money.
These historic integrated settlements are the first of their kind and will consolidate funding across more than 20 different funding streams covering housing, regeneration, local growth, local transport, adult skills, retrofit, and employment support. This will give mayors greater flexibility when spending devolved funding and empower them to make the strategic policy decisions necessary to foster growth and deliver better value for money and outcomes for their residents.
Over the coming weeks, we will work with Greater Manchester and West Midlands to agree the outcomes that they will use these settlements to deliver, and which will form the basis of the single accountability framework, replacing the complex and fragmented reporting processes that have existed to date. As part of this framework, these authorities will have flexibility to move funding between policy areas, helping to deliver better value for money and improved outcomes for citizens.
The English Devolution White Paper set out our intention to extend the benefits of the integrated settlement to more areas. The Government are already working rapidly to bring these settlements forward for mayors in the North East, Liverpool City region, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire mayoral combined authorities from the ’26-27 financial year. The Government are also exploring how the settlement policy could be applied to the Greater London Authority.
[HCWS405]
Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme Levy 2024-25
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
The Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme (Levy) Regulations 2014 require active employers’ liability insurers to pay an annual levy, based on their relative market share, for the purpose of meeting the costs of the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme. This is in line with the insurance industry’s commitment to fund a scheme of last resort for persons diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma who have been unable to trace their employer or their employer’s insurer.
Today I can announce that the total amount of the levy to be charged for 2024-25, the 11th year of the DMPS, is £28.6 million. The amount will be payable by active insurers by the end of March 2025.
Individual active insurers will be notified in writing of their share of the levy, together with how the amount was calculated and the payment arrangements. Insurers should be aware that it is a legal requirement to pay the levy within the set timescales.
I am pleased that the DMPS has seen 10 successful years of operation, assisting many hundreds of people who have been diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma. The ninth annual report for the scheme, along with the annual statistics, was published on 27 November 2024 and is available on the gov.uk website. I hope that members of both Houses will welcome this announcement and give the DMPS their continued support.
[HCWS401]
Grand Committee
Rape: Prosecutions
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
To ask His Majesty’s Government what are the main factors that have led to decades of low levels of rape cases being prosecuted, and continue to prevent such prosecutions, and what steps are they taking to resolve this.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I would like to thank in advance all noble Lords who are speaking today. I will be listening very closely to the two former Met Police Commissioners here today, because they probably not only understand the problems but know exactly where the solutions lie. I hope the Government will be listening to them as closely as I will.
We all know that our country is failing rape victims, who are mainly but not exclusively women. I could stand here all day and quote figures that show how bad things are now, and how bad they were a decade ago or even three or four decades ago. Misogyny is not new, and it is the root of most rapes. There have been times when women could be priests, or even gods, but extreme misogyny arose in Assyria two and a half thousand years ago and brought it into politics and religion.
I could talk about the way that young working-class girls in Rotherham were not believed and were ignored. We could explore the allegations of police collusion and corruption, with links to local drug gangs, or I could go back a decade and talk about the failures of the police when the Yorkshire ripper was killing sex workers. There is the scandal of Jimmy Savile, operating as a sexual predator in plain sight, with powerful friends in the BBC and Downing Street; or Worboys, the taxi driver who the police believe had 100 victims, some of whom had reported being assaulted before he was finally caught.
Each of these cases has the common threads of women and girls not being believed or fearing they would not be believed. There are the half-hearted investigations of women who do report and the professional scepticism of Crown Prosecution Service staff about whether a jury is going to convict. There is the character assassination of survivors and the intrusive exploration of their personal lives by the authorities, which are meant to be supporting them in getting justice. These high-profile cases open up the public debate, but they are the merest fraction of the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of women and girls who have reported, or not reported, gone to trial, or tried to, and then given up in despair.
What is striking in reading through the library of previous reports, inquiries and ministerial speeches is the repeated themes and recommendations. They tend to broadly agree with the existing policy relating to the investigation and prosecution of rape and then state that this policy is not being properly implemented. These kinds of failures are long standing. It can feel as though the repeated commissioning of these reviews and inspections is a way for government and other authorities to indicate concern, while never following through with the action and resources needed to make change. I am absolutely positive that this Labour Government will do better than that.
From the 1980s onwards, we had a slow but positive shift in the way the police and Crown prosecutors handled rape cases—from the setting up of rape investigation rooms and the swift collection of forensic evidence, to a merit-based approach to prosecution that looked at the evidence, rather than second-guessing what a jury might or might not decide. Coming out of the scandal of grooming gangs in several northern towns, Sir Keir Starmer, the then head of the Crown Prosecution Service, argued that it was not a question of the victim’s behaviour or criminal record, but whether the crime had happened. He said:
“if the yardstick traditionally used by prosecutors for evaluating the credibility of a victim in other cases were used without adaptation in cases of sexual exploitation, the outcome would potentially be a category of vulnerable victims left unprotected by the criminal law.”
He was absolutely right.
These changes, combined with the #MeToo campaign and a series of high-profile historical scandals, led to a huge increase in the reporting of rape cases. This was a success, but it came just as austerity led to the slow collapse of the criminal justice system. The result has been a disaster for rape victims—rape survivors—who have been seriously let down by an overstretched judicial system that has responded in the worst of all possible ways. It is a system that promises justice but delivers delays and failure.
The numbers of rapes recorded by the police increased steadily from the 1980s but tripled between 2014 and 2018, reaching their highest-ever volume. The number of reported rapes being successfully prosecuted has, however, dropped from 25% in 1981 to 1% or 2% in recent years.
Instead of our society recognising the scale of a hidden scandal and putting resources into achieving justice when hundreds of thousands of people started reporting this horrendous but regular, everyday crime, what the last Government did was to cut police, lawyers and police time. The Crown Prosecution Service quietly dropped the merit-based approach and rationed cases going forwards based on a Ladbrokes betting shop analysis of the odds of a jury convicting the alleged assailant—I am going to be very careful about naming the person I believe is responsible for that, because I am not sure whether saying it in the House of Lords gives me cover from prosecution.
The solution is more resources, and that means making it a priority within the judicial system—no more delaying trials for a year or more, so that the rape survivor gives up all hope of justice and drops out from emotional exhaustion. As long as rape is a crime that people think they can get away with, they will do it. Do this Government, or any Government, want rape legalised? The year-on-year failures make that appear, near enough, the outcome of austerity.
The other thing the Government can do is education and changing the culture. This is incredibly important and I feel that this avenue of recovery has not been explored. In France, Gisèle Pelicot has done this and changed the culture of shame from being all on the survivor to the shame being directed at all the men who raped her, all those who colluded and all those who did not report to the police what was happening. We need Ministers to get behind survivors and make it clear that rape is not just about grooming gangs, spiked drinks, dodgy taxi drivers or even police officers. All those need dealing with but, distressingly, most sexual assaults are about familiar and comfortable environments and people whom you know. Therefore, education is absolutely basic to sorting out this problem. I look forward very much to hearing what the Minister will say in reply. If he could pick up that point about education, I would be very grateful.
Baroness Wyld (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, on securing this debate and on her powerful speech. I regret very much that it is needed. During my research for this debate, my feelings were of—I do not use this word lightly—anger and incredulity that it is 2025 and we are still talking about this. I have three young daughters. My eldest is 14 and is just at the stage where she is travelling around London on the bus on her own. She asked me what I was doing today and I said I was coming to talk about this: the failure of the criminal justice system to protect victims and survivors of one of the most brutal and degrading offences.
Looking at the last Parliament, there was a recent victory for campaigners in last year’s change in the law to better protect survivors’ counselling notes. The cross-party work done by my noble friend Lady Bertin and others in the House—supported by the Minister when he was in his shadow role, as I remember—highlighted the uphill battle to ensure that survivors are treated with dignity and care.
I want to focus my remarks today on the first stage of the reporting process: the early stage, when victims and survivors of rape decide whether they are able to go to the police or, indeed, whether they are not. We can see the barriers: the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales reported that of respondents who had told someone that they had been raped but not the police, 38% thought that the police could not help them and a quarter thought that the police would not believe them. The last Government’s rape review reported that the percentage of victims who withdraw at the police stage has never fallen below 41% and, at the time of its report, it was sitting at 61%.
I acknowledge the action taken by the previous Administration and picked up by this one to improve processes. I welcome the progress made by Operation Soteria, the College of Policing and others, but it has taken far too long for victims’ voices to be heard and longer still for this to be translated into action.
We have a strategic policing requirement, which includes requiring violence against women and girls and domestic abuse to be tackled, but it is a depressingly patchy performance at best. Operation Soteria recognised that good practice was observed but was dependent on individual officers rather than built into systems and policies. I very much welcome this Government’s commitment to establishing specialist teams and the other commitments they have made on vetting, et cetera. I urge them to continue at pace, but the fundamental issue here is one of trust. While systems and processes are core to that trust, there is a deeper issue at play.
What really drove me to sign up to today’s debate is the need to spend more time talking about the culture within police forces, specifically attitudes to women and girls. Of course, given the topic today, it is important to acknowledge that men are also victims of rape, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, and I would never seek to minimise that. As the Home Affairs Select Committee recognised, women are more likely than men to experience rape, and the majority of perpetrators are men. I feel unable to strike an optimistic tone in this debate because too many revelations—from the 2022 IOPC review and the 2023 Casey review of the Met—have highlighted sexist and misogynistic behaviours in policing.
I am aware that many police officers do an excellent job. Like everyone in this Room, I am sure, I was brought up to respect and trust the police, and I am bringing up my own daughters to do so. They do a very difficult job. I am not saying that the failures on this specific issue are directly related to misogynistic behaviour—mistakes are made and the two are not necessarily linked—but the fact that the College of Policing is, in 2025, running a strategy to tackle misogynistic behaviours within policing tells us a lot, surely, about the impact of culture on performance. If women are to come forward, trust comes first. If their experiences when they come forward are to change, then culture is at the heart of it. Surely, given that our police forces clearly want to be able to recruit the best people to tackle violence against women and girls, they need to ensure that their culture supports this without fail.
Having listened to Ministers in the previous Administration and this one at the Dispatch Box, I believe that there is the political will to end violence against women and girls. That will require commitment to supporting police leadership to drive change, but also holding them properly to account by asking what exactly they are doing to call out such behaviour when they see it and hear it.
I finish by paying tribute to the victims and survivors. I hope that we can continue to work cross-party to do better.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for this well-timed opportunity to debate this issue. I did not disagree with anything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, just said. The problems of rape investigations, prosecutions and convictions are well known and understood; they have been there too long. What is less well developed are the solutions, and I will try to address that today.
Only one in six rapes is reported and of those reported, only one in 50 leads to a charge. Of those charged, only one in two leads to a conviction. That is a terrible pyramid, I am afraid, of failure, and a quite pathetic outcome. When we consider that crimes of violence—which these are—are crimes where the victim was present, is able to provide a description of the offender and perhaps even the name, and can say where evidence may be found, it is even more bizarre that we are not getting better outcomes from our system. The investigation is less likely to identify the suspect in a stranger attack, but less likely to see a prosecution where there is an existing relationship. The issue becomes one of proving consent, unless, of course, the victim is too young to provide that consent in law.
The whole process is hindered, in my view, by three things. First, this offence involves the most intimate and private of events: sexual activity. That makes it difficult to recount in public, to talk about to anyone else and to talk about exactly what happened. That is a challenge for anybody. Secondly, it takes a long time for an investigation to get to court, which causes obvious problems for the victim in recounting the evidence and persuading a jury that something happened. Finally, proving lack of consent requires careful collection and presentation of evidence. I believe that we must deal with these three issues in a radical way if we are to overhaul the system.
My suggested improvements are these. First, the police are most efficient and effective when they deploy in teams. We see that in counterterrorist investigations, murder investigations and complex fraud cases. However, with rape offences, single officers are often deployed. There are some great officers who can make progress, despite the challenges, which we all know about, but I am afraid that, increasingly, we need a team approach. This is a resourcing issue: you must either move them from what they are doing or give them more, but it needs to be addressed. The time for a team approach has come. We could get the same sort of outcomes that we see with murder cases. During my time and now, murder investigations in London had a detection rate of around 95%. It is entirely possible to have good detection rates—if you apply the right resources and the right skills to make sure that you have the right person and can convince a jury.
Also, rape has become a more complex crime to investigate. Far more digital evidence is now available, which is great, but you have to find it and share it with the defence. It has to be sifted, and presented in a way that a jury will understand. These are new and significant skills that the police are going to have to learn.
The police also need to investigate the history of the suspect’s prior relationships. We have a history of investigating the victim’s prior relationships. That has stopped—in a good way—but we do not do enough to check whether the suspect’s previous behaviour and relationships indicate that this incident was likely to happen. Often, obviously, we do not know who these people are, but we could investigate and discover who they might be.
As has been said, rape reporting and charging have been inhibited by the victim’s experience of reporting. Police attitudes have improved drastically over the past 20 years, but they are clearly still not good enough. People are trying to make progress, but one of the challenges for prosecutors and investigators is that they anticipate the victim’s experience in court. We have, I am afraid, an adversarial system that tries to destroy the victim and their evidence, albeit not as directly as it used to. Why cannot the adversarial system become more of a search for the truth in these cases? It is entirely possible. Iceland has a good method of dealing with child victims of crime: it carries out a search for the truth, not an attack on the person who claims they were attacked.
Sadly, juries tend to make moral judgments, even if the law says that they should not. Investigators and prosecutors overly anticipate the jury’s conclusions and therefore do not even get to the charging stage. That also infects the whole investigation process. I would argue that the adversarial legal system does not provide a good context in which these cases can go forward.
Of course, 70% of victims are vulnerable at the time of the attack. They are vulnerable because they experienced an attack, but they might also have had alcohol. They might be very young, very old, or mentally ill. That is often the reason why they are picked—because they are vulnerable. However, this does not make them a consistent witness later, I am afraid. Consistency is a test of truth. Any of us might ask, “You didn’t say that then, so why did you change your mind?” Unfortunately, some victims just do not have sufficient recollection to make them a powerful witness. The system has to acknowledge that and make sure that, if they are particularly vulnerable, the balance of the defence is put on to the suspect, so that we ask, “Was consent present or not?” We do that with children. A child below the age of 16 cannot legally consent to sex. What about somebody who is mentally ill? What about someone who is very old? What about somebody who was intoxicated because the suspect made them intoxicated? Should we look at shifting the balance of proof in those cases?
Does the CPS have the right charging threshold in these cases? At the moment, it is broadly 51%—the case is more likely to succeed than fail. Secondly, there is a public interest test: even if that is true, should we charge in this case? Perhaps we should consider whether there is a prima facie case and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute; or is there somewhere between prima facie and a reasonable chance of success? We have to look at making it easier to get these cases, which we know involve complex legal issues, to court. We should experiment with prosecutor-led investigations. People have said that that means the prosecutor is therefore less independent, but Scotland seems to manage with a procurator fiscal system. Why can we not do that here in England and Wales?
The Government are talking about dedicated rape courts. Perhaps we could arrange to have such courts, which would work quicker. In Scotland, murder cases get to court within 100 days for committal, so why can we not do that for rapes? Why can we not say that they have to be in court within 90 calendar days? It could be a different time limit, but the Committee knows the point I am making about a timely deadline. The courts could sit more often; they sit for only 220 days out of 365. Perhaps the judges could take shorter holidays, or we could have more judges. By getting more court days in these cases, we could make a real difference.
Finally, these cases might benefit from the researching of jurors. At the moment in this country, it is illegal to research jurors. Why can we not do that in these cases, in order to find out what evidence persuades a juror and what evidence does not? America can do it but for some reason, we deny the possibility of investigating jurors’ decision-making processes. Particularly in these cases, where privacy and intimacy are such big issues, perhaps we ought to consider more how a jury reaches its decision.
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington (CB)
I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on bringing this matter before the Committee. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I agree with everything that my noble friend and colleague Lord Hogan-Howe has said, but I have some additional things to say.
The year 1988 was a seminal time for the investigation of rape. A television programme was produced on Thames Valley Police, much against the views and opinion of the Association of Chief Police Officers. It created absolute mayhem by showing the way police officers were approaching and tackling rape. I happen to believe that it is now time for another seminal moment. Why would I say that?
In his recent report, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary said that the loss of public trust is about the failure
“to get the basics right”.
Surely, the investigation of rape is one of the primary things the police could deliver. There have been improvements since 1923—I mean 2023; that shows you how old I am. There has been an increase in the charging rate of 51% compared to the previous year. However, the success rate does not follow, so there are some strange figures around; I could not make much of the ones I have here myself. Although the conviction rate decreased, the volume of convictions increased, which means that the quality of cases going to the CPS and the courts, and being investigated by the police, is not quite reaching the level it could.
Rape has recently been a very important issue, and how we handle it has been shown to be not up to scratch. In her 2021-22 report, the Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird, said:
“The distressing truth is that if you are raped in Britain today, your chances of seeing justice are slim”.
I do not believe that is quite the position now. Protections have increased but, as the Committee will hear in a minute, there are massive deficiencies in relation to the people charged with doing the job itself and, more importantly, taking these cases through the courts.
I did my own research last night and the day before, with barristers who are prosecuting and defending, as well as two solicitors who are responsible for dealing with prosecution in these cases. One of the weaknesses they identified, my noble friend and colleague Lord Hogan-Howe has already talked about: victim attrition. It is said that it takes 10 months to bring a case from arrest, through investigation and questioning, to prosecution. My short and maybe faulty investigation shows that it now takes 18 months. That is what I have been told, but it cannot possibly be right. One of the reasons for that, which my noble friend and colleague has talked about, is the expertise of the people doing these investigations. You cannot have someone with no experience of detective work, investigation and forensic science doing a complicated rape case. You have to have one of the best detectives, who we use for terrorism and organised crime.
Returning to victim attrition, last year, 77 people decided that there was no point in going forward with a prosecution. They had to wait a further three to four years after the police had taken 10 to 18 months to get to court. That is an absolute disgrace and a scandal, and I know this Government accept that. How has it come about? I could go on about what has been done to the police over the past 25 to 30 years, and produce evidence of that, but this is not the time for that.
So, in view of where we are, my noble friend and colleague is right. We need expertise in the front line in investigating rapes, in order to do it in a proper way. The forensic side is massively important, because a lot of that will be what I call first-hand evidence. That has to be done by properly trained detectives, but there is a massive shortage of them in this country at the moment, for a number of reasons. Let us get that right. Then, let us consider how long it takes to prosecute, and the fast-tracking of CPS decisions. Equally important—although it is harder to do this in the present circumstances because of the state of the courts and the lack of barristers—is rapid charging: taking a case to court quickly, so that people’s memories of the trauma and violence they have experienced are fresh.
At the end of the day, we are all here for the Minister. We are here to help, not to criticise. Of course, we know about the terrible, tragic scandals involving people such as Couzens—that monster who was stalking the streets. But on this issue, things can be taken forward. We are not going to create Rome in a day, but we want to go stage by stage, improving what we are doing for victims. My message is similar to Bernard’s—how dare I refer to him by his Christian name!—we are here, it can be done and, if I may say so, this Government have made a very good start. I know the Minister and the Home Secretary are behind it, so let us get on with it, stage by stage. Your Lordships’ House needs to keep a watching brief on this, because it is too important to fail.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for convening this debate, which is very necessary and comes at a very appropriate time. Before we even start, however, digital research from the CSEW showed that fewer than one in six victims—16%—of sexual assault by rape or penetration had reported the incident to the police. The most common reasons given for non-reporting were embarrassment, at 40%; that they did not think the police could help, at 38%; and that they thought it would be humiliating, at 34%. All of those may well be true, but also, one-quarter of victims thought that the police would not believe them. That is something we can start working on strongly with the new Government.
I think we can safely assume that, whatever the final numbers are, the number of charges, let alone convictions, is infinitesimal compared to the number of rapes perpetrated. The number of prosecutions is increasing, although, as we have heard, conviction rates are decreasing. However, there is also an increase in what the CPS calls victim attrition, which a number of colleagues have mentioned this afternoon: prosecutions that stopped because the victim no longer supported, or was unable to support, a conviction. No wonder many perpetrators continue with impunity, given that they are never likely to be prosecuted. That is one of the most fundamental things. We know that certainty of prosecution is a big issue when it comes to perpetrators considering what they are doing.
What steps would make a difference? The causes and outcomes are very complex. First, there is the “He said, she said” argument. Police must gather enough evidence to refer a case to the Crown Prosecution Service, but there has been a great increase in the information available to consider: mobile phones, social media, et cetera. This does not always work out in the victim’s favour; it is a continuation of the “She must have been asking for it” type of argument. Being asked to hand over their mobile phone has led many victims to withdraw their complaint. In the words of Dame Vera Baird:
“They cannot face the unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion into their privacy”.
Charges for rape are as low—or nearly as low—as ever. The number of cases that have collapsed after failures in the way they were prosecuted is too high. That is totally inappropriate, and it is depressing. Then there are the time delays. According to the Home Affairs Committee, many victims say that if they had known how long it would take—we have heard that it can take 10 months, possibly now even 18 months—they would not have called the case to the attention of the police in the first place. That puts other victims in greater danger, too.
If there is enough evidence, only then can the accused perpetrator be charged. In the year to September 2021, just 1.3% of rape cases resulted in a charge, compared with 7.1% for all other recorded crime. Considering that we so frequently know the identity of the perpetrator, I am sure that everyone in this Room would agree that that is totally unacceptable. The CPS is bringing fewer rape prosecutions, often because the police do not put them forward. Why are fewer cases being put forward? In some cases, it is because the police have heard that the CPS is making fewer prosecutions. There is a self-fulfilling prophecy for noble Lords.
Then there is the funding. The Institute for Government estimated that the CPS budget was cut by 28% between 2009 and 2018. We are told that the Government have announced £40 million to support victims of crime, at least half of which is for community-based sexual violence and domestic abuse. Is that enough? I am sorry to say that I do not think it is—not by a long chalk. Cuts are still being made. RASA Merseyside, which supports victims with advice, counselling and guidance through the justice system, says that its funding has been reduced in real terms by 18%. There is more demand but fewer staff, leading to less support.
What is to be done? We have had some great suggestions this afternoon, all of which I am sure the Minister will carefully consider. The new Labour Government have described prosecution rates for rape as “shamefully low” and pledged “tougher enforcement and protection”. They said:
“The most prolific and harmful perpetrators will be relentlessly targeted, using tactics normally reserved for terrorists and organised crime”.
That is fully justified, given the amount of terror they cause.
The Government have also pledged to fast-track rape cases, with specialist courts at every Crown Court location in England and Wales, which sounds good. I would be interested to know within what timescale the Minister thinks we may get those specialist courts up and running.
I certainly welcome the Government’s announcement of plans to
“roll out free, independent legal advocates for victims and survivors of adult rape”
from 2025. They said the advocates would ensure that victims
“have support to enforce their legal rights, for example, in relation to the use of personal records during an investigation or in court”.
Many fundamental assumptions are holding us back. I am intrigued and heartened by the suggestions we have heard this afternoon. So come on, Labour, let us get on with the job. Can we not think a little bit more outside the box?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for securing this debate. It addresses a matter of profound urgency and importance, and one that speaks directly to justice, safety and equality in our society. The stark reality remains that too many victims of rape and sexual assault in the UK are being denied justice.
The figures are sobering. Although thousands of rape cases are reported every year, only a small fraction result in charges being brought. In the 12 months to July last year, the Crown Prosecution Service discontinued 496 rape cases. The proportion of rape prosecutions being dropped has also risen in recent years—up from 9.3% in 2022 to 12.8% at the end of last year. Low prosecution rates erode trust, silence survivors and result in crimes going unpunished. It is essential that we confront this issue with both urgency and compassion—a point made by all noble Lords who have contributed thus far.
Crippling court delays are thought to be a major contributing factor in why victims choose to abandon the process before a trial takes place. Victims face resource constraints in policing. In the Crown Prosecution Service, concerns have emerged that the changes to the rules about how digital evidence is handled have the potential to have adverse impacts on victims seeking justice. However, this has been disputed by representatives from Rape Crisis, who have said that the protections afforded to victims regarding digital evidence were vital in keeping them engaged—a point already raised in this debate.
Others have expressed concerns that although rape convictions have doubled over five years, the number of prosecutions that have been dropped has tripled. The importance of resource to deal with rape cases has been made very well today, and I am interested in the Minister’s thoughts on that.
The previous Government took steps to support victims, ensure justice is delivered and restore public confidence in the system. First, we made record investments in victim support services, providing survivors with more resources. We increased funding for rape crisis centres and nearly doubled the number of independent sexual violence advisers.
Secondly, under Conservative leadership, an action plan for improving the criminal justice system’s response to rape in England and Wales was published, and reports have been published every year since then to update Parliament and the public on the progress made in implementing recommendations in the action plans. It would be good to have an update on this.
Finally, we legislated to end the automatic halfway release for offenders sentenced for crimes such as rape, manslaughter and grievous bodily harm.
As a result of the implementation of these measures, progress was made in the prosecution of rape cases. Data from July to September 2023 showed that adult rape cases referred by the police to the CPS continued to increase: there were 1,470 police referrals in this period. In fact, we increased rape prosecutions by 56% since 2010 and pledged that rape victims would get the justice and support they deserve, with a new investigatory model for police forces and prosecutors, as well as pre-recorded cross examination for victims in all Crown Courts.
However, this is not enough, and we can all agree that we must go further. At present, adult rape cases take an average of two years to complete in court. I am sure everybody in this debate agrees that this is not good enough. It can leave survivors feeling as if they are in limbo, and lead to their withdrawing from the process before the cases reach trial. Statistics have been given today as evidence of this.
In their manifesto, the Government promised to appoint legal advocates to provide free legal services and support to rape survivors across England and Wales by redirecting PCC grants for victims’ services. Yet it is deeply concerning that, to date, progress has been slow. They appear to have stalled on their promise to set up dozens of specialist rape courts to deal with the court backlogs. Can the Minister confirm that they will continue to build on the efforts made by the previous Government? What attempts have the Government made to use vacant rooms and buildings on Crown Court sites to fast-track rape cases, as pledged during the election campaign? Will the Minister confirm that fast-track rape cases are indeed a priority for the Government in their commitment to tackle violence against women and girls?
I would also like to support, at this stage, the important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, in relation to education. It would be good if the Minister was able, either today or in writing, to tell us of any progress that has been made in this.
My noble friend Lady Wyld ended her excellent contribution by saying that there is cross-party support for this. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, made the point that we are here to help. I think this is something we can work on together, not fall out over, and make life better for the people who suffer.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this important debate, particularly, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for bringing this debate here today. One main theme in the debate has been the issue of trust: trust within the criminal justice system and, particularly, trust in women when they report rape. That underlies all the speeches made here this afternoon.
Rape and other sexual offences are among the most serious crimes that can be committed. It is right that we work hard to ensure that survivors receive the swift and compassionate response from our criminal justice system that they deserve. This Government were elected on a clear, landmark pledge to halve violence against women and girls over the next decade. Improving the criminal justice system’s response to rape is central to that pledge. Although our pledge necessarily focuses on the disproportionate impact of these crimes on women, we recognise that men and boys can also be victims of sexual offences, including rape. Noble Lords might note that I introduced the relevant amendment for male rape in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and that has changed the perception of male victims of sexual offences.
As we have heard, if you are a victim of rape in this country today, your chances of seeing your case reach trial are low, despite the courage it takes for survivors to come forward. Only a fraction of reported cases end in prosecution and, if charges are brought, it may take years for your case to come to trial. While the number of rape prosecutions has increased over recent years—now at the highest level since 2010—they continue to fall short of what victims, and the wider public, would expect. This Government are determined to transform the response to rape in this country, so that victims are supported and perpetrators brought to justice swiftly. That is our goal. It is a simple one, even if the task itself is not.
Let me set out the factors that have led us to this point. In 2019, charges and prosecutions for rape had fallen to an historic low, prompting the previous Government to carry out an end-to-end review of the criminal justice system’s response to adult rape offences. This review found that the system had, in fact, faltered from around 2016 onwards—a year that saw a sharp decline in rape prosecutions, coupled with a decline in convictions. The reasons for this drop are varied but well documented.
The first concerns systemic issues. When this Government took office, we inherited a justice system under intense pressure and a growing backlog of cases in the courts. The volume of outstanding cases in the Crown Court now stands at over 70,000—a record high. When the justice system is under this level of strain, everyone feels the impact; it is a sad fact that this includes victims, particularly victims of sexual offences. For many victims, the wait they might face is simply too much to bear. As it stands, around 55% of rape complainants, despite coming forward, eventually withdraw from the criminal justice process. Understandably, they want to focus on their own mental health and rebuilding their lives.
Rape cases also require specialist expertise; this point was made by both previous commissioners, who gave, if I may say so, some interesting ideas. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talked about group police work as the way to tackle this issue; he compared it to terrorist offences and the like, and I found it an interesting idea. Of course, this is a resource issue. These resource issues include the challenge of having enough specialist barristers, both prosecuting and defending, willing to take on these highly sensitive and difficult cases.
For prosecution volumes to improve, victims must also have the confidence to come forward and report what has happened to them, knowing that they will be taken seriously and, crucially, be given the support they need. Sadly, this is not always the experience of rape victims. This means that improvements in training, culture and local policing practices must all come together in a seamless and consistent manner. Victims will have confidence in the system only if they see it working effectively and compassionately.
I have set out some of the systemic issues. Now let me briefly highlight the challenges particular to this category of offences. First, many rapes are committed by someone known to the victim—often a current or former partner. Estimates suggest that more than 40% of adult rape victims are, or have been, in a relationship with their attacker. This complicates the investigative process.
Secondly, it is widely acknowledged that sexual offences, in particular rape, are often under-reported. Many victims fear the stigma of speaking out. Others lack confidence in the criminal justice system itself, feeling as though they are not being listened to or taken seriously—and, indeed, that they are the ones under scrutiny, not the perpetrator. During an investigation, it is not unusual for the police to request a victim’s personal records. Noble Lords will know that these requests have, at times, gone too far, causing unnecessary upset to victims, compounding their trauma and causing them to drop out of their case altogether.
I have outlined some of the challenges; now let me set out some of the commitments that this Government have made to begin addressing them. First, we have committed to ensuring swifter justice for victims and reducing the wait times that contribute to so many withdrawing from the process. One of the most vital steps in addressing this is reducing the time it takes from a charge being laid to the actual trial; we are working with the judiciary on how we can best fast-track rape cases through the courts.
More broadly, we have taken decisive action to drive the outstanding case load down, such as funding extra sitting days, which will see courts sit for a total of 108,500 days this financial year—the highest number in almost a decade. We have also increased the sentencing powers of magistrates’ courts from six months to 12 months for a single triable either-way offence. We expect this to free up around 2,000 sitting days and allow judges to deal with the more—indeed, the most—serious cases.
However, if victims are going to see justice done more swiftly in this country, we cannot simply do more of the same. We must go further. It will take once-in-a-generation reform, which is why the Lord Chancellor has commissioned Sir Brian Leveson to carry out an independent review of the criminal courts. Sir Brian will consider the merits of longer-term reform, as well as how our courts can operate more efficiently. I am sure that noble Lords will await the review’s findings with interest.
The Government’s second commitment is that every victim of adult rape should have access to a free, independent legal adviser. Later this year, we will introduce new independent legal advisers, who will offer free legal advice to victims of adult rape at any point from report to trial. These advisers will help victims understand their rights, including in relation to the use of personal information, as well as offering clarity about the court process, timelines and what to expect. These advisers will not undermine the right to a fair trial or prevent evidence coming to light. They will simply help victims understand and, if needed, take steps to protect the rights that they already have.
Our third commitment is that specialist rape and sexual offences teams will be introduced into every police force, ensuring that the right capabilities are in place properly to investigate these offences. Victims must have a positive experience when dealing with the police, which will in turn increase reporting and deliver better outcomes for victims. We are working closely with policing partners to make this a reality.
Encouragingly, the volume of rape cases being reported to the police has followed a significant upward trend in recent years despite the prevalence of rape remaining flat, as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales. This means more brave victims feeling confident to report their offence to the police without increases in the number of incidents of rape.
Those are just three of our commitments. They will be underpinned by a new strategy to combat violence against women and girls, to be published later this year, which will help us transform how government, and the justice system as a whole, responds to these horrific crimes.
Let me emphasise again that rape is an abhorrent crime. It has no place in our society, and far too many survivors have suffered without seeing justice or receiving the support they so desperately need. A combination of factors, including strained court capacity and inconsistent resourcing, have contributed to the level of rape prosecutions we see today, but it is not enough simply to reel off the complexities. We must act, and that is what the Government are doing. We are under no illusion about the scale of the challenge before us, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for raising this issue for debate.
I shall now answer some of the specific questions asked by noble Lords. First, education is a cross-government endeavour that starts with prevention. My colleagues Ministers Davies-Jones and Phillips are leading on this issue, as are colleagues in the Department for Education. Relationship, sex and health education is now a statutory part of the curriculum, and within that, people are learning about domestic abuse and consent. So there is a cross-departmental approach to this important part of the solution to the problem.
Other noble Lords asked about attrition—women dropping out of the process. The answer to that is in the three specific promises I made: to support women through legal advice, to speed up the process, and to ensure that women understand the reality of the court process they will go through.
Other noble Lords asked about the experience in court. Trauma-informed training has already been delivered at Snaresbrook, Leeds and Newcastle Crown Courts, with over 400 professionals trained so far, including court staff, CPS staff and the police. In addition, witness waiting rooms and in-court technology have been upgraded in selected courts, and Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act also addresses the way victims are treated as they go through these types of cases.
I might say that I have dealt with these matters myself. Very unusually, I have dealt with a youth rape. Magistrates would not normally deal with rape, but on appeals in the youth court a magistrate would sit as a winger. I dealt with one at Harrow Crown Court, and I thought it was handled as well as it possibly could be. Interestingly—I will close on this because I am being looked at by my Whip—the young woman concerned chose to be in the courtroom while the case was proceeding because she wanted to be part of the whole process. The technology was available for it to be done in a different way, but that was her choice, and I thought it was a very powerful one on her part.
If I have not answered noble Lords’ questions, I will write to them.
Creative Industries: Rights Reservation Model
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Foster of Bath
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on creators and the creative industries of the rights reservation model proposed in their consultation paper “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence” published on 17 December 2024.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister for meeting me earlier in the week. I accept that he wants genuine consultation, although, as I will come to in a moment, the Government appear, in some aspects of the consultation, to have predetermined the direction of travel.
I accept that it seems somewhat odd to be returning to this issue so soon after Tuesday’s debate and the passing of the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who deserves great praise for the work she has been doing. In my defence, I point out that I entered the ballot before the date had been set for Report stage of the Bill. Anyway, I am absolutely confident that we will need to keep returning to this issue many times, given the pace of development in AI. It is worth reflecting that on Tuesday evening, we were only just learning of the allegations by large AI firms that DeepSeek had been freeloading off their models to train its own model—an infringement, they claim, of their IP. How they have the gall to say that is beyond me, frankly, given that they have been responsible for the theft on a grand scale of the IP of UK creators.
I am not trying to join the debate retrospectively, but I must make my own position clear: the theft I have described must stop. I supported the noble Baroness’s amendments. The enormous success of our creative industries, much lauded on Tuesday, is in no small measure due to our gold standard IP regime, which has been the bedrock of growth, investment and innovation. We weaken it at our peril.
I want to make three things clear. First, this is not an IP v AI debate. The creative industries have been early adopters of AI and see the real benefits of its development. Indeed, they have been working with AI developers as fellow travellers. But if UK creators, many already poorly paid, are to earn even less because their IP is not remunerated, they will stop creating and so stop the flow of the high-class data needed for AI development. As Sir Paul McCartney said over the weekend,
“make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them”.
Secondly, I am unconvinced by arguments of legal uncertainty. Rather than sowing seeds of doubt, I would prefer to see the Government supporting the creative industries in upholding the law against unprecedented theft of their IP. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, said on Tuesday:
“This is not about balance”
between AI and IP,
“it is about implementing and upholding the rule of law ”.—[Official Report, 28/1/25; col. 167.]
But I also accept the need, as has frequently happened in the light of technological development, to update legislation, not least in terms of transparency and enforcement.
Thirdly, any updating should be based on detailed assessment of the implications. The question for this debate is:
“To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on creators and the creative industries of the rights reservation model proposed in their”
AI consultation paper. Sadly, Tuesday’s debate made it clear that the answer is, little or none.
The creative industries’ own assessment argues that the Government’s proposed option of a text and data-mining exception will weaken our gold-standard IP regime. They argue that it could mean that AI companies, most of which are large US tech firms, can effectively take British creators’ work to train their models, profit from it and, in many cases, not repay the creator. Bizarrely, having circumvented the IP protection of others, the AI companies can get IP protection for their own creations.
But instead of rehashing the debate, I want to offer the Minister an opportunity to give reassurances to this Committee and the creative community that the Government are listening to the concerns, and to offer further comments that Members in another place will read before the Bill is debated there—where, incidentally, I hope we might see a shift in the Official Opposition’s position.
The Minister and his colleagues in the other place have been keen to reassure us that any new TDM exception with opt-out or rights reservation would be introduced only once a workable opt-out was found. He and his ministerial colleagues must therefore have some confidence that these systems are at least emerging, so what examples can he provide? To get to a stage of actively promoting a particular option for reform, one must assume that the Government have received assurances that, if that option is in place, AI developers will proactively enter licence agreements for content. Can the Minister say whether such assurances have been received?
Ministers have also accepted that different types of work will need different systems of opt-out. Is the thinking that there will be a phased approach to the introduction, as each different system is agreed? How could that possibly work? Will the Minister offer reassurance that this will not lead to different works having different levels of copyright protection?
The Government have said that any system must be workable. How will that be assessed? On Tuesday, the Minister in the other place said before the DCMS Committee that it would not be a decision just for Ministers; rather, it would be one for them and industry. Can the Minister shed some light on how such a decision on workability might be agreed, and, in particular, give a categorical assurance that rights holders will have a formal role in approval?
The Minister in the other place also talked about the need for ease and accessibility in any new system. The creative industries have argued that the Government’s preferred option would create huge bureaucratic burdens for artists, particularly independent artists and small music labels, who would end up wasting hundreds of hours on paperwork and translating legal jargon rather than, for example, making music or writing books. Can the Minister explain what “easy” and “accessible” look like?
On other areas of the consultation there is more widespread agreement about the need for updating legislation. For example, some AI developers have publicly claimed that they can use temporary copying exemptions as a legal basis for using data for model training without paying. Will the Minister confirm that this is not intended and will be clarified in law? There are strong arguments in favour of changes around metadata, with legislation prohibiting the stripping of rights reservation protocols to help better protect so-called floating content. Again, will such prohibitions be included in any changes to the law?
I know that the Minister agrees on the need for far greater transparency, and the consultation contains proposals to implement some form of transparency mechanism for AI developers to follow, but does he agree that, to be effective, it will need to be transparency that provides a granular level of detail of the works that have been ingested? Without it, there will be no way for those developers to prove compliance with any opt-out. Does he also agree that developers should be required to provide details of the crawlers they have used, coupled with an assurance that the crawlers have been designed to interpret and respect machine-readable rights reservation notices?
On enforcement, transparency will only help to provide evidence of compliance—or non-compliance—with the law. It will not offer a route for creators to receive any form of compensation for the misuse of their works. If those rights holders have to go to court to receive any compensation, how will that move us on from where we are today? Again, the Minister in the other place told the DCMS Committee that he did not think that accessing justice through the courts should be the preserve of deep-pocketed rights holders. I agree. Can the Minister suggest how the Government foresee rights holders being able to access justice, if not through the courts?
Finally, little has been said about how any new law will co-exist with the laws we have now. Will the Minister confirm that any existing infringement would have to be dealt with under existing law? There are understandable concerns among our talented UK creators. I hope that when he responds the Minister will acknowledge those concerns and, in some areas at least, provide some assurances, not least a willingness to reconsider the potentially hugely damaging proposal for a new text and data-mining exception. Without it, we risk sacrificing a known success story—the UK’s £124 billion creative industries—for a leap in the dark.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, I want to address the impact of the Government’s proposed rights reservation model on the media. I declare my interest as deputy chairman of the Telegraph Media Group and note my other interests in the register. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, on securing this debate and on his powerful speech. Hard on the heels of Tuesday’s vote on the data Bill, it presents another opportunity to send a powerful signal that the Government’s preferred option for an opt-out model is deeply flawed and would profoundly damage the whole creative economy.
The crushing onslaught of digital media has impacted every aspect of life but nowhere more acutely than on the media, as advertising revenues, which support quality journalism, have haemorrhaged to the giant, unaccountable tech platforms. The UK’s advertising market was worth more than £36 billion in 2023, but £14 billion of that went direct to Google’s search service alone. By contrast, less than 4% of the value of the entire ad market—yes, 4%—went to news publishers. Media businesses have therefore been in a race against time to find a new business model, but just when many are so successfully doing so, the exponential growth of AI has brought huge new challenges with it, and this proposal will turbocharge that.
The reality of the current media landscape was set out recently by the Economist, which noted that social media had transformed the market by reducing the cost of the distribution of news to zero, and now AI is going to do the same by potentially reducing the cost of generating so-called news to zero. Between the two of them, we are being led into TS Eliot’s “wilderness of mirrors”, where it is impossible to tell the difference between truth and illusion, with profound ramifications for our democracy.
In some ways, it is impossible to reach conclusions about the Government’s opt-out model, as we know so little about it. There has been no impact assessment, and there must be. It is entirely untested and unevidenced, and we cannot learn from other jurisdictions because a working rights reservation regime does not exist anywhere else on the planet. Given the enormous repercussions of this, there must be clarity—and none exists, but of some things we can be certain.
One is that were it even possible to produce a practical and effective opt-out mechanism, and I have severe doubts about that, it would place an immense administrative burden and therefore unsustainable cost on even the largest news publishers. Already, more than 40% of the top 100 English-language news websites do not block any AI crawlers, and they are the ones that have the knowledge and resources to do so. Smaller news publishers, including hard-pressed local media or a freelancer writing on their Substack, simply would not stand a chance. One other point on which we can be certain is that while these proposals may seem attractive to big tech in the short term, over the long term they could end up significantly weakening AI and, as the noble Lord said, we are all pro AI. It has enormous potential but it must be done and dealt with properly.
The problems for AI will spring because it is totally reliant on large volumes of high-quality data. It needs a sustainable and fresh supply to function—something that is especially true for search engines such as Google’s AI Overviews, which rely on retrieval-augmented generation and feed off up-to-date news content to provide accurate, relevant information. Yet researchers predict that, if current trends continue, AI developers will deplete the available stock of public, human-created text data sometime between 2026 and 2032. It will inevitably be replaced by what? By AI-generated content—in other words, it will feed off itself in a way which will degrade the quality of large language models, as they begin to rely on their own inferior data. It would become a modern-day version of the fabled Greek king Erysichthon, whose hunger—forced on him by the goddess Demeter, I am told—was so insatiable that he squandered his entire fortune and ended up eating himself. That is what could happen with AI.
It need not be like this. There is a way forward that will allow both AI and the original content creators to flourish together: simply by ensuring that the existing copyright laws we have are properly and transparently enforced, with effective mechanisms to build a dynamic licensing market. This would be in the interests not just of content creators, who are so desperate for change after years of copyright theft by the GAI firms; of the public, who overwhelmingly believe that these companies should pay to use the content that trains them; or of the media, whose quality journalism is absolutely vital for our democracy. It would, as I have said, be in the long-term interests of AI, too. If the Government really want to make the UK an AI powerhouse and protect our creative industries, which are the envy of the world and will power growth in future, they must think again. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Black. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on securing this timely and excellent debate. In doing so, I declare my interests as set out in the register—in particular my technology interests, not least as an adviser to Socially Recruited, which is an AI business.
As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has already set out, we had an excellent debate on Tuesday night. My question for this afternoon is: how much does it cost to develop and train a foundation model? Is it £500 billion or £5 million? Is it somewhere in between? I do not know, but here is what we do know. The cost of current foundational models is felt by our creatives: the musicians who make sounds where there would otherwise be silence; and the writers who fill a blank page with words that touch our human hearts and souls and, sometimes, change the course of human history. They are paying the cost of the current “model” that we have.
How can it be not only that they are currently footing the cost but that the potential, proposed approach to this issue will put the onus on them to assert their rights? There is that onus, the cost, pressure and stress and, ultimately, the impossibility of doing this with an opt-out model. My first question to the Minister is: can it ever be so that opting out could work? How could it ever bring the certainty, clarity and consistency that we require? As a helpful example, can the Minister say something about the recent LAION case and the light that that throws on this matter?
There is a real tedium to this TDM discussion. It is just that an obvious and irrefutable truth is wilfully ignored and pushed to one side. If you own a copyright or have IP rights, you hold and own those rights. If you do not, the truth is simple and unquestionable: those rights are not yours. That should be the guiding principle when considering any potential approach to IP and copyright in relation not just to AI but to the fact that we have hundreds of years of legal certainty which comes from this.
How would the Minister define a proper and workable model for the preservation of these rights? What would he say to individuals and small entities about the cost, pressure and impossibility of seeking to enforce their rights? How does he intend transparency to be an important thread that runs through this alongside the technical? What about post-ingestion and, if we get to the point of some potential change, what about all that protected material already ingested deep into the engine room of these models?
What attracts businesses, investors and innovators to the UK from a regulatory and legislative perspective? It is certainty, clarity and consistency. In no sense can we say that we have those right now in our country. That is why I believe, not only when it comes to IP and copyright, that given all the issues we are currently grappling with in these new technologies, not least AI, we should have overarching AI legislation and right-sized regulation, which is always good for all elements of our economy and society. Yes, look at IP and copyright, but we should have an AI authority with AI-responsible officers labelling sandboxes and, crucially, a complete transformation of public engagement.
It seems clear at this stage that when it comes to the Government’s plans for IP and copyright in relation to AI, we should all have serious reservations. I go back to that fundamental truth that there is no question, debate, difficulty or complexity. You either have the rights set out at law or you do not. That should inform all discussions and points around IP and copyright. We should have an approach that goes to the heart of this fundamental truth: it is our data. We decide, determine and choose and then, for citizens, consumers and creatives, we have a real opportunity to say positively, with a hashtag, “#OurAIFutures”.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for initiating this timely debate following Tuesday’s vote on the Data (Use and Access) Bill. As someone with a background in the visual arts and as an artist member of DACS, the Design and Artists Copyright Society, I speak with direct knowledge of these challenges.
The overwhelming majority of creators, whether visual artists, writers, actors or filmmakers, are freelance or self-employed. Recent research from The University of Glasgow’s Centre for Regulation of the Creative Economy reveals a stark crisis: visual artists now earn a median income of just £12,500, a devastating 47% collapse since 2010. Most creators must juggle multiple jobs to survive, and even successful artists are earning only £17,500 annually.
The proposed rights reservation model fundamentally undermines the viability of visual artists’ careers across the country. It does this through a dangerous inversion of copyright principles, principles that creators have long relied upon to secure royalties and safeguard their work. Instead of protecting creators’ existing rights, it imposes costly new burdens requiring them to actively defend protections historically held by default.
As the EU’s AI Act demonstrates, this approach faces insurmountable technical and legal barriers, creating a labyrinth that benefits neither creators nor users. Consider the practical impossibility of an artist enforcing a comprehensive opt-out in our interconnected digital age. Picture a scenario where a museum visitor photographs an opted-out artist’s work and shares it on social media. These platforms routinely permit AI training on user content, inadvertently exposing the artist’s work to the very AI systems they sought to avoid. The artist’s intended opt-out becomes meaningless within seconds of a single smartphone click. This forces creators into an impossible choice: accept unwanted AI training or demand photography bans, unravelling decades of progress in democratising art access.
In today’s digital marketplace, an artist’s online visibility is not merely advantageous but is essential for survival. Their digital presence serves as a virtual gallery, portfolio and business card combined connecting them with collectors, commissioners and collaborators worldwide. Yet the proposed opt-out system creates an impossible dilemma: how can artists protect their work from AI training without simultaneously vanishing from search engines and potential clients? The distinction between beneficial visibility and unwanted AI scraping becomes a technical impossibility. This challenge is compounded by the breakneck pace of technological change in AI development. Web-crawling technologies evolve almost daily, rendering today’s opt-out mechanisms obsolete tomorrow. More troubling still is the retrospective futility of such measures: countless AI models have already ingested vast archives of artists’ works.
At the heart of the visual arts sector lies not corporations but individuals: freelance artists navigating an already complex professional landscape. The opt-out system would drown these artists in administrative complexity, forcing them to master an ever-shifting maze of technical decisions while trying to create art. This crushing burden falls heaviest on those least equipped: individual creators lacking corporate infrastructure and legal expertise. The system presents a cruel paradox. Artists would need to become experts in rapidly evolving AI technologies just to protect their existing rights. They would be forced to make critical decisions about their creative futures under intense time pressure without adequate information or support. How can we expect individual creators to navigate this labyrinth while simultaneously maintaining their artistic practice and earning a living? The answer is simple: we cannot. This system would create an unsustainable burden that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable members of our creative community.
Consider a professional photographer capturing thousands of images daily. Each photograph represents a separate copyrighted work, yet these images reside in cloud storage vulnerable to AI scraping. Under a rights reservation system, protecting each image becomes a Sisyphean task, turning a day’s creative output into weeks of administrative burden, as the noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Foster, rightly highlighted. This inversion of creative priorities is fundamentally flawed. Instead of forcing artists to become full-time guardians of their intellectual property, our systems should empower creation and ensure fair compensation. Responsibility for respecting copyright should rest squarely with AI companies that seek commercially to exploit artists’ work, not with the creators themselves. We must reject any framework that transforms artists from creators into perpetual copyright administrators defending their rights against technological encroachment.
The amendments to the data Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, chart the only viable path forward, one that brings fair value and legal certainty to creative industries and tech sectors alike. This Government must not succumb to pressure from US-based tech companies peddling the false promise that gutting copyright protection will somehow enrich Britain.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath on securing the debate today and on his penetrating introduction, which included a number of extremely important questions for the Minister.
AI clearly has many creative uses, as Sir Paul McCartney himself emphasised last Sunday. But it is one thing to use the tech and another to be at the mercy of it, as so many noble Lords emphasised in their thoughtful but passionate speeches, both on Tuesday and today. So many outside organisations—I thank them for their briefings—have also made that very clear in what they have said.
The use of IP-protected content for training is a key issue, which has also arisen in relation to generative AI models outside the UK. It is rather a delicious irony that Open AI is now complaining of its own IP being used to train DeepSeek, as my noble friend said. Here in the UK, the Government’s intentions are clear. The new consultation on AI and copyright, reinforced by the AI opportunities plan, has set out a preferred option—this is the key thing—to change the UK’s copyright framework by creating a text and data mining exception where rights holders have not expressly reserved their rights: in other words, an opt-out system.
We all thought this had been put to bed under the last Government, but this Government seem even more intent on creating a Singapore-on-Thames. In response, we have seen the creation of a new campaign across the creative and news industries, Creative Rights In AI Coalition, and Ed Newton-Rex has raised over 37,000 signatures from creators and creative organisations.
Frankly, the creative and news industries are in uproar. As my noble friend Lord Foster says, the proposals were not underpinned by a robust economic case, but the consultation also starts from the false premise of legal uncertainty. As we heard in the debate on the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on Tuesday, there is no lack of clarity over how AI developers can legally access training data. UK law is clear that commercial organisations, including gen AI developers, must license the data they use to train their large language models. AI developers have already reached agreement with news publishers in a number of cases. Open AI has signed deals with publishers internationally, such as News Corp, Axel Springer, the Atlantic and Reuters. There can be no excuse of market failure. There are well-established licensing solutions administered by a variety of well-established mechanisms and collecting societies.
The consultation says:
“The government believes that the best way to achieve these objectives is through a package of interventions that can balance the needs of the two sectors”.
But what kind of balance is this when it is all take and no give on the part of creatives? The Government have stated that they will move ahead with their preferred “rights reservation” option only if the transparency and rights reservation provisions are
“effective, accessible, and widely adopted”.
However, as we have heard from across the Room today, no effective rights reservation, no system for the use of content by gen AI models, has been proposed or implemented anywhere in the world, which makes the government proposals entirely speculative. The technology does not exist.
The laws around transparency of these activities have not caught up. At present, developers can scrape content from the internet without declaring their identity, or they may use content scraped for one purpose for the completely different commercial purpose of training AI models. How can rights owners opt out of something they do not know about? Once used to train these models, the commercial value has already been extracted from IP scraped without permission, with no way to delete data from these models.
We need transparency and a clear statement about copyright. We absolutely should not expect artists to have to opt out. AI developers must be transparent about the identity and purposes of their crawlers, and have separate crawlers for distinct purposes. Unless news publishers and the broader creative industries can retain control over their data, this will not only reduce investment in creative output but will ultimately harm innovation in the AI sector and, as we have heard, tech developers will lack the high-quality data that is the essential fuel in generative AI.
Retaining the Kidron amendments to address the challenges posed by AI development, particularly in relation to copyright and transparency, is in my view, and that of those on these Benches, essential. This should apply regardless of in which country the scraping of copyright material takes place if developers market their product in the UK. It is clear that AI developers have used their lobbying clout to persuade the Government that a new exemption from copyright in their favour is required. As a result, the Government seem to have gone soft on big tech. In response, my party, creators, the creative industries and many other supporters will be vigorously opposing Government plans for a new text and data-mining exemption.
The Minister has been posed a number of key questions by my noble friend Lord Foster and many others, including the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood. I put another question to him: will he now agree to withdraw the TDM with an opt-out as the preferred solution? That is one of the key requests of the creative industries; they would be dancing in the streets if the Minister said that today.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their uniformly brilliant contributions to this important debate. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for securing this debate and introducing it so powerfully. To start with a statement of the obvious: artificial intelligence can do us great good and great harm. I know we are hare mainly to avert the latter, but I open with a few thoughts on the former.
I should like to make two points in particular. First, the UK is often said to have a productivity problem and AI, even at its current level of capability, offers a great chance to fix this by automating routine tasks, improving decision-making and streamlining workflows. Secondly, it was often said, since the early days of e-commerce, that innovative use of technology was the preserve of the private sector, whereas the public sector was less nimble and consequently less productive. Those days must soon be over. Some of the best datasets, especially in this country, are public: health, education and geospatial in particular. Safely exploiting them will require close public-private collaboration, but if we are able to do so—and, I stress, do so safely—the productivity rewards will be extraordinary. This is why we, on these Benches, greatly welcome the AI action plan.
AI’s potential to revolutionise how we work and create is undeniable. In the creative industries, we have already seen its impact, with more than 38% of businesses incorporating AI technologies into their operations as of late last year. Whether in music, publishing, design or film, AI offers tools that enhance productivity, enable innovation, and open new markets. However, the key to all these prizes is public acceptance, the key to public acceptance is trustworthiness, and the key to trustworthiness is not permitting the theft of any kind of property, physical or intellectual.
This brings us to copyright and the rights of creators whose works underpin many of these advances. Copyright-protected materials are often used to train AI systems, too often without the permission, or even knowledge, of creators. Many persuasive and powerful voices push for laws, or interpretations of laws, in this country that prevent this happening. If we are able to create such laws, or such interpretations, I am all for them. I am worried, however, about creating laws we cannot enforce, because copyright can be enforced only if we know it has been infringed.
The size and the international distribution of AI training models render it extremely challenging to answer the two most fundamental questions, as I said on Tuesday. First, was a given piece of content used in a training model? Secondly, if so, in what jurisdiction did this take place? An AI lab determined to train a model on copyrighted content can do so in any jurisdiction of its choice. It may or may not choose to advise owners of scraped content, but my guess is that for a large model of 100 billion parameters, the lab might not be as assiduous in this as we would like. So, enforcement remains a significant challenge. A regulatory framework that lacks clear, enforceable protections risks being worse than ineffective in practice: it risks creating false confidence that eventually kills trust in, and public acceptance of, AI.
So, although we welcome the Government’s decision to launch a public consultation to address these challenges, it is vital that it leads to an outcome that does three things. First, needless to say, it must protect products of the mind from unlawful exploitation. Secondly, it must continue to allow AI labs to innovate, preferably in the UK. Thirdly, it must be enforceable. We all remember vividly Tuesday’s debate on Report of the DUA Bill. I worry that there is a pitfall in seeing AI and copyright policy as a zero-sum struggle between the first two of those objectives. I urge noble Lords, especially the Minister, to give equal emphasis and priority to all three of those goals.
I shall close with a few words on standards. As the Minister has rightly recognised, the key to an enforceable regime is internationally recognised technical standards, particularly, as I have argued, on digital watermarks to identify copyrighted content. A globally recognised, machine-readable watermark can alert scraping algorithms to copyrighted materials and alert rights holders to the uses of their materials. It may even allow rights holders to reserve their rights, opt out automatically or receive royalties automatically. In Tuesday’s debate, I was pleased to hear the Minister confirm that the Government will consider such standards as part of the consultation response.
Of course, the challenge here is that any such standards are—this is the bluntest possible way I can put it—either internationally observed and accepted or pointless. In this country, we have an opportunity to take the lead on creating them, just as we took the lead on setting standards for frontier AI safety in 2023 at Bletchley Park. I urge the Minister to strain every sinew to develop international standards. I say now that I and my party are most willing to support and collaborate on the development of such standards.
The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for introducing this debate and everyone who contributed. Clearly, several of the amendments that we discussed earlier in the week have been touched on in one form or another in today’s debate. The fact that those amendments were voted through demonstrates the intensity of noble Lords’ passion for and interest in this topic; of course, that is recognised. I acknowledge clearly, because I was asked this question, that I recognise the importance of these issues and I absolutely understand the concerns of the creative industries and, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, mentioned, the media sector.
In some ways, what we have discussed today speaks directly to the question of whether we need a consultation. On 17 December, we published a consultation that seeks to deliver a competitive copyright regime and a package of measures that support our creative industries and the AI sector. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but the proposals aim to deliver three objectives, and I agree with the way the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, framed objectives. The three objectives that we have put forward are: transparency about the use of copyrighted works to train AI models and AI-generated content, providing greater control for rights holders’ material so that they can be supported in protecting it and can be remunerated where it is used—again, I say that the aim here is quite the opposite of theft: it is to give more control—and enhancing lawful access to the material to be used to train world-leading AI models.
I reiterate what I said on Tuesday: this is a genuine consultation, and many people from a range of sectors are engaging to share their views and evidence. The Government continue to believe that it is important that we have the benefit of that public consultation before we act. A central issue that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, set it in his Question is how to make sure that rights holders can easily reserve their rights and control the use of their material. These are the challenges that rights holders face today. Although they may have copyright on their work, they are often unable in practice to control how it is used or to gain remuneration. This is often particularly true for new or solo artists, the very people we need to protect, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and others made.
The rights reservation model proposed in the consultation aims to enhance rights holders’ ability to withdraw their content from being used. It would support their ability to license this content for use with AI if they wish to do that. To do this, we will need the right blend of technology and regulation, and the consultation seeks views on how this should be achieved. Importantly—many noble Lords raised this point—this model would have to be simple, effective and accessible for rights holders of all sizes, something that, frankly, is not available in the current position. The Government have been clear that we will not proceed with this model unless we are confident that these criteria will be met.
On transparency, we want to consider how to achieve this broadly, ensuring that rights holders understand how and where their content is used, while also ensuring any measures are not disproportionate for small businesses and individuals.
On our third objective, access, for all the reasons that the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, said, we want to ensure that there is a system in place that allows AI developers to access the high-quality material they need to train world-leading models in the UK. We want that access to be without uncertainty and without legal liability slowing down investment and adoption.
These are undoubtedly complex issues, and we need to strike the right balance to ensure that we are able fully to benefit from AI and guarantee the success of our world-leading creative industries. This is why we are asking about all these elements in the consultation.
The question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, raises important issues about the impacts on creators and our assessment of these impacts. This was also something mentioned in the debate earlier in the week. I reassure noble Lords that gathering further economic impact evidence is one of the main reasons for conducting a full inquiry, but it is also worth pointing out that alongside our proposed paper on this, we published a 22-page summary options assessment that set out its initial analysis of the proposals that we have put forward, so it is not correct that there has been no options impact appraisal. This options assessment received a green rating from the independent Regulatory Policy Committee. It recognises, however, that quantitative evidence is currently limited in this area and highlights areas where the Government hope to receive further data during the course of the consultation.
The options assessment sets out the expected impacts of different options and assesses them against those three objectives in the consultation: control, access and transparency. The assessment does not provide detailed data on economic impact, as publicly available evidence in this area is currently rather limited. It is important that we let the consultation run its course so that we can gather evidence of impacts on the full range of affected parties. We are particularly keen for respondents to the consultation to provide further economic evidence to inform how we achieve our objectives. To answer partially, without being able to have singing in the streets, the question from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, depending on the evidence we receive through the consultation, we will revise, update and expand on the assessment of the options and better determine how we move forward with any potential legislative change. Acting without this would risk imposing legislation that does not have the intended effects.
Alongside our analysis, the Government of course continue to consider a broad range of external studies to assess AI’s economic impact. Modelling the potential economic impact of AI is complicated, and there are several external studies on this. We know that it is complicated, as we have seen just this week with the entry of DeepSeek and how that may change many of the things we think about, but AI adoption has the potential to drive growth across the economy, including, as many noble Lords mentioned, in the creative industries, where more than 38% of creative industry businesses have used AI technologies as of September 2024, with nearly 50% using AI to improve business operations. Earlier this week, I attended the launch of the Institute for the Future of Work’s report into the future of work and well-being, which looks at the impact of AI on work and well-being in all sectors. The Government have considered this external evidence alongside our internal analysis to inform our approach to AI and will continue to do so.
I will now move on to a few other areas. In passing, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Black, that the question of truth in the effect of AI is crucial. We are in an era where this is increasingly difficult; it is the first wave of the AI challenge. It is crucial for everybody in society and, of course, for the media. Technology will play an important part in delivering greater rightholder control. The Government are clear that any solutions need to be effective, proportionate and accessible to all parties of all sizes, and they must be easy to use. Again, I want to reassure noble Lords that we do not intend to go forward with this approach until we are confident that this is the case.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked whether anything is already available. Things are available; they are not good enough yet but coming along very fast. I know from my time as chair of the Natural History Museum, where we looked after vast amounts of data of huge potential value, that we had ways to try to block people getting hold of it. Things are available now but they need to be better; they also need to be simpler and usable by the individual.
The consultation recognises that more detailed work needs to be done, and an important function of the consultation is to help us work through this detail. A number of industry initiatives are already under way to deliver effective standards. As has been mentioned, these standards—international and national—will be crucial. These efforts, combined with careful regulation, will make it possible to deliver workable rights reservation tools, and a reimbursement mechanism that, again, should be easy to operate and not available only to the largest players or by going to court.
As noble Lords have raised it during the passage of the data Bill, I reiterate the central importance of transparency in the way that creative content is used. The use of web crawlers, metadata and watermarks as different forms of technological solutions could have a number of benefits for those who wish to control or license the use of their content with AI and could provide the very basis for a rights reservation tool.
We agree that a key issue to be addressed is the role of some web crawlers that are used to obtain content for AI training. However, it is important to recognise that web crawlers are used for different purposes, the most familiar being indexing online content so that it can be searched with a search engine. Standards on the use of web crawlers may also be important to improve the ability of rightholders to prevent the use of work against their wishes.
I spoke about workability, and several noble Lords made it clear that it must mean workability for the creative sector and creatives, as well as for others. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about the temporary copy issue. We have asked about that in the consultation.
To conclude, I again thank noble Lords for contributing to this debate. They can rest assured that the Government understand the strongly held and legitimate concerns which creators and rightholders have about their content being used. We also agree that transparency is fundamental. However, it would be wrong to commit to specific legislation while the Government’s consultation is ongoing. Indeed, we should and must consider stakeholders’ responses fully and progress our package of objectives together.
We will consider all the points raised by noble Lords today and during the passage of the Bill. We will do this alongside the responses and evidence received as part of the consultation, before bringing further proposals. I end on the specific point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on the LAION case, which is under German law. I will ask the IPO to give him a full answer on that.
Office for Students
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Willetts
To ask His Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the Office for Students about (1) its strategy for 2025 to 2030, and (2) its decision to pause applications regarding registering institutions, degree-awarding powers and university titles to allow greater focus on the financial sustainability of the sector.
Lord Willetts (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to open this debate and to give a warm welcome to the Minister opposite, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent. She is the Education Whip in the Lords. I had over two years as a Whip in the other place during which time I had to remain totally silent, which was extremely frustrating. It is yet more evidence of the more liberal and tolerant approach in your Lordships’ House that we will hear directly from the Education Whip. We are all looking forward to that, especially as today is the day when she became engaged, on which many congratulations.
I declare my interests as a visiting professor at King’s College London, a member of the council of the University of Southampton, and for helping Norland College to grow in Asia.
This debate in many ways picks up from one of the very last debates of the previous Parliament. Indeed, in Grand Committee in this very Room on 21 May 2024, we debated the powerful report by the Industry and Regulators Committee on the Office for Students. In that debate there was a particularly trenchant contribution from my noble friend Lord Johnson of Marylebone. I know that he very much regrets that, because of a commitment to the British Council, he is unable to be with us today.
Since then, the Office for Students has produced its new strategy for consultation, with the priorities of quality, the student interest and resilience. Those are absolutely understandable priorities. Then, on 2 December, came its announcement of a pause in some of its key activities, including registering providers and considering new candidates for degree-awarding powers and for university status. Its argument was that focusing on those responsibilities was inconsistent with its priorities, as set out in its strategy. That is a deep misunderstanding of the implications of those priorities; it is also a regrettable failure to discharge one of its statutory obligations.
The task of registering higher education providers and considering them for degree-awarding powers and university titles is fundamental. Ironically, that is made clear by a third announcement—today’s announcement by the Government about tackling the understandable problem of franchising not always leading to high-quality provision. I completely support their engagement with that problem, which is a real problem. They say that they are—and this is out for consultation—proposing
“a requirement that franchised providers with 300 or more students should be directly regulated by the Office for Students”.
That will, of course, require yet more registration activity by the Office for Students, which then says, slightly shamefacedly, that after the pause it expects to start engaging in even more activity, registering those franchised providers. There could be dozens of those—it would be interesting if the Minister could tell us more about them—if not over 100. But my understanding is that, in the last year, it managed to register 12 new providers, so all that is happening is that the backlog of important work is getting worse and worse.
Will the Minister assure us that the OfS will return as soon as possible to its key statutory responsibilities in this regard, and explain to the Committee why it can suspend its discharge of a duty set in legislation? I remember debating this issue at considerable length when the original legislation went through in 2016-17.
Hardest hit by this pause in the process are providers which had been applying to register for degree-awarding powers. It looks as if the pause may mean that some of them have to go back to the beginning. The evidence that they are submitting will have become out of date. They will have to start all over again. This would be very regrettable. It looks from some of the OfS’s comments as if some of the existing cases under consideration will continue. Will the Minister ask the OfS at least to complete the consideration of applications that have already been submitted to it?
The OfS says that it does not have the resource to do this and that it has to focus, therefore, on financial pressures facing universities. This is yet more evidence, of course, of the financial issues that universities face, and I, for one, think there is one obvious solution to this, which is to start once again raising fees, in line with inflation as a minimum, as the previous Labour Government did with surprisingly little fuss.
However, there is a connection between financial resilience, the financial difficulties facing the sector and the registration function of the OfS, because some universities and other higher education providers that get into financial difficulties may then look at a rescue package that includes the reallocation of degree-awarding powers, a new partner entering the registry or a new entity being created, perhaps as a result of a merger or something else, which itself requires registration. The degree-awarding powers and university title are assets that a university could deploy if it were trying to avoid the total disaster of running out of money and going bankrupt, so these provisions for permitting new degree-awarding powers registration may be exactly what is needed as part of a financial rescue package for providers in difficulties. Will the Minister assure noble Lords that where a rescue package for a higher education provider in financial difficulties involves some transfer of degree-awarding powers or university title, or some other creation, perhaps of a new body on the register, that she will request the OfS as a matter of urgency to engage in the necessary process to consider that application?
Finally, as time is tight, I just want to make one wider point about how the Department for Education and the OfS see higher education. There is a big, wide world of higher education out there, which includes very substantial global chains. I am a believer in the growth of higher education, and it seems to me very likely that part of the growth of higher education is bringing in much more professional management. Access to external finance involves those types of business models in higher education. They have not so far taken off in Britain—from a global perspective, ours looks like a cottage industry—but there are global chains of higher education providers that are very keen to invest here. I hope to see British higher education providers growing to a global role.
For example, one of the bids reportedly delayed is an application by the Engineering Institute of Technology from Australia, which is a substantial provider of engineering courses and already has an engineering college of technology here. My understanding is that it was applying for degree-awarding powers, but that application has been paused. OMNES in France is a group of 12 French universities. It wanted nine further international campuses. It has been seeking to register and get degree-awarding powers for more than a year, but that is apparently paused. The IU group in Germany has a range of campuses with 150,000 students currently enrolled. It was trying to set up in Britain. We should be open to this type of high-quality provision. I completely accept that in some of the supply-side reforms that I tried to promote as a Minister, as did subsequently my noble friend Lord Johnson, sometimes the quality was not good enough, and it is right to crack down on that. I very much regret that we did not have a regulatory regime in those early days, but when we have got these big global chains coming in, surely we should welcome them. There are also some British potential candidates; the Oxford International Education Group, for example.
I have been reading the Chancellor’s excellent speech, made yesterday, about the Government’s commitment to growth and their commitment that regulators should not stand in the way of growth opportunities. I wonder what would happen if these international higher education providers that want to invest in Britain, want to come and provide higher education in Britain, were to approach the Minister’s colleague, the excellent noble Baroness, Lady Gustafsson, who is the Minister for Investment and is supposed to be attracting international investment. How will the DfE and the OfS explain that, meanwhile, they are busy refusing to consider applications for international investment in a significant British growth sector? I think that we should honour the spirit of the Chancellor’s excellent speech yesterday and not allow the OfS to stand in its way.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for his masterly introduction of this important debate. I regret that there are only four of us speaking today, but I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson. In the glorious days of the coalition, I was appointed Minister for Olympic Sport and Media and as the Whip for Higher Education; I was never happier than when I had to stand in for the Minister because we had a number of people who transferred through that role.
We are all aware that universities are going through a very difficult time financially. Student fees have not kept up with inflation and the previous Government made a number of difficulties for overseas students; this has resulted in a large decline in those very students who make such a significant contribution to finances. Since we were stupid enough to leave the EU, there have been considerable drops in EU students, too.
I must say that, in reading this document, the mind boggles at the amount of additional administration that will be required
“to gather and analyse data to understand student experiences, enhance and protect students’ rights, and address barriers that prevent students from fully benefiting from their education”
—let alone all the financial data that will also be required. Thank goodness I was at university when we just got on with it.
I ask the Minister what impact will these demands have, particularly on the further education sector? Colleges have been the main providers of publicly funded higher education at levels 4 and 5 for 90 years. If university staff feel that they are not adequately paid, spare a thought for college lecturers, whose pay compares poorly with that of schoolteachers and university staff.
The pause in registering institutions for degree-awarding powers—DAPs—has had a dramatic effect on a number of colleges. Surely the financial sustainability of some providers should not come at the expense of limiting the possibility for others who could meet national and regional skills priorities. Collaboration between HE and FE is essential if we are to have any hope of meeting the Government’s ambitious growth strategy. Of course, HE is a relatively small part of college provision, but the regulatory costs and burdens are disproportionately high and risk limiting student choice and stifling innovation. Many students who study at higher levels in FE would not consider going away to university, yet their skills and aptitude may be just as good or even better than those of university students. Can the Minister say what consideration has been given to FE colleges in the Government’s grand plans?
Seeking financial sustainability has led to universities suspending some of their courses. As a modern linguist, I dread reading that yet another university has dropped modern languages. I declare an interest: I was a child in France and a student in Spain, and I lived in Germany with my RAF husband. I have always felt European; Brexit was for me a sort of bereavement. It is now more important than ever that we speak the languages of our near neighbours, but the global markets also call for proficiency in Mandarin, Arabic and Japanese if we wish to trade in countries further afield. As Willy Brandt put it so powerfully:
“If I’m selling to you, I speak your language; if I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen”.
I apologise for flouting the rules of the Committee to say something in a foreign language—just to translate, that means, “You must speak German”.
It is imperative that if we are trying to sell British goods and services, we must do so in the language of the buyer. The OfS is rightly concerned that on current trends 72% of providers will shortly be in deficit. Why have Governments not done more to safeguard our higher education providers, be they universities or colleges? Our UK universities regularly top the charts in international measurements. They are national stars, so what has gone wrong?
I thank the Library, the Association of Colleges and, at the last minute, the Office for Students, for their helpful briefings, and note the criticism from Mr Alex Proudfoot, who is chief executive of Independent Higher Education, that:
“The decision to suspend registration and”
degree-awarding powers
“processes until late in 2025 is a clear enough dereliction of their statutory duty. But to extend this to providers already in the process, effectively backdating this decision to the spring of 2024, is completely unjustifiable”.
He goes on,
“what the OfS is actually doing is picking winners and losers: deciding which providers are worth prioritising for financial sustainability, which students are deserving of the protection of the regulator and the funding to support their studies, and which are not”.
These are fighting words, and we all know that the losers will be the most disadvantaged.
We hear from the Office for Students that students want fair treatment from institutions that will listen to them, respond when things go wrong and set them up to succeed. They assume their education will be high quality, expect tailored learning experiences and access to academic resources and support, delivered in supportive and enriching environments. What students expect from higher education in the longer term is to acquire knowledge and develop skills that open doors to well-paid and rewarding employment and other opportunities. They expect higher education to have a positive and enduring impact on their lives and careers. The Office for Students states that it feels it is important to,
“prioritise managing risks for students already in the system, ahead of the benefits that new institutions, or institutions with the ability to award their own qualifications, bring”.
It points out that, despite the pause, it has continued with 17 DAP applications, 22 registration applications and six university title applications. So broadly its view of these measures is supportive, but they are, of course, already in the system, and we recognise that it will also need to care for those that follow them.
We are all well aware of the parlous situation of many universities and colleges. It is shameful that government has let this happen. Successive Governments have been prepared to ignore further education, partly because virtually all Parliamentarians and civil servants have been university educated. I know I was completely unaware of the richness and value of colleges until I went to work for City & Guilds and discovered people with skills vastly greater than my own. My Oxford degree enriched my love of medieval French, which has not helped me in any way later in life.
Finally, will the Minister say why there is no provision for integrating the lifelong learning entitlement funding model and what positive help the Government are prepared to offer to the beleaguered parts of this vital sector? Will they please rein in the OfS from the most damaging parts of this edict?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Willetts on securing this debate. His two brains have been working on overtime. I add my Benches’ congratulations to the Minister on her engagement. It is good to see her so happy.
I speak in this debate on the recent report published by the Office for Students that identifies three key priority areas for the next five years: quality assurance, wider student interest and sector resilience. The Office for Students is focusing its efforts on monitoring financial sustainability to help create a secure future for our world-leading universities. This is in response to growing concerns about declining student recruitment, increasing operational costs and wider economic uncertainty. I want to explore the significant changes proposed by the Office for Students in its strategy for 2025-30, particularly its decision to close the register for new higher education providers and pause granting degree-awarding powers until August 2025. While these changes are framed as necessary to strengthen the financial sustainability of higher education, they also raise important questions about their impact on innovation, access and diversity in the sector.
The Office for Students has decided to pause new entries in the register of higher education providers and temporarily halt the granting of degree-awarding powers. This decision is in direct response to the severe financial pressures facing many universities, particularly small, medium and specialist providers. New analysis suggests that up to 72% of higher education providers could be in financial deficit by the 2025-26 academic year, prompting the Office for Students to focus its resources on stabilising existing institutions rather than admitting new ones.
I confess today that, unlike others in this Committee, I was not educated in a university. Instead, I attended the Salvation Army’s William Booth College, an international college at Denmark Hill. It is a great building, and I congratulate the Salvation Army on not selling it to some big developer to develop “Denmark Hill Village” but investing heavily in the college and its educational achievements.
William Booth started the Salvation Army—I have time, I will do it—in 1865 as he was absolutely distraught at the poor educational attainment of the people, particularly in the East End, and their attraction to alcohol. They could not work because they could not keep their feet on the floor all the time. The first thing he did was get them off alcohol, off the grog, as he called it. The second thing was to find them a job. He persuaded somebody to buy a farm near Epping Forest, and people went to live there with their families, they were educated, they worked on the farm, and they got a life together. He even went as far as to buy land in Australia, and people, if they really did well, were able to have that land as a gift and develop their own business. He really was a social entrepreneur very early on in the whole setup. The college educates Salvation Army cadets, as they are called—officers—and it has now been an international college for some time. People come from all over the world to train there, and the impact that the Salvation Army has on people’s lives can never be underestimated. I guess that it also has great plans for the place. If noble Lords want to visit, I am happy to fix that up. It would be a travesty if something such as that that is managed well, has good people and does not have government money were not allowed to start today. Let us bear that in mind.
Can the Minister explain how the Office for Students intends to balance the need for financial stability with the need for ongoing innovation in higher education, particularly in industries such as health, engineering and the creative arts, given that smaller specialist providers often cater for niche demands? Does the Office for Students risk limiting innovation and diversity of provision by closing the register to new providers? Will doing so have an impact on the economy growing? Furthermore, we must acknowledge the broader context of this financial instability, which is the growing student recruitment crisis in the face of declining recruitment numbers and rising operational costs. British universities are grappling with the challenge of attracting students. How does the Minister plan to address the issue of declining student recruitment, particularly considering the financial pressures many universities face? While stabilising the sector is necessary, what is being done to ensure that institutions are still able to offer the courses and opportunities that will meet future demand in student and workforce markets and in wider society?
In conclusion, while the Office for Students’ strategy is designed to safeguard the financial sustainability of the sector and prevent further closures or disruptions, we must remain vigilant about the potential longer-term consequences. As we move forward, it is crucial that the Office for Students balances its financial oversight with a commitment to innovation, student access and diversity. The sector needs to be able to adapt to changing demands, and a robust plan to tackle the student recruitment crisis must be a central part of that strategy.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, what a genuinely engaging debate—I am also going for “joyful” today. I thank noble Lords for their congratulations. I am having a very good day, even if my husband-to-be’s credit card is probably not.
Moving on to the debate, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for opening the debate and, moreover, for the significant role he has played in shaping our world-class higher education. I never for a moment thought that I would ever be responding to “Two-brains” in an education debate, but I am delighted to do so. I agree with him on the joys of being a Whip at this end of the building. We are allowed to speak; the Chief Whip will decide whether that is for good or ill. The noble Lord’s ongoing contribution to the broader debate about the future of our universities is deeply valued.
I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, for requesting this debate. I know that he, having been instrumental in setting up the Office for Students, continues to have a keen interest in the future of our universities and in securing the future of our higher education system for the benefit of our students, the taxpayer and the economy. Higher education is vital to the future of our country. Our universities are revered globally for excellence and act as one of the country’s greatest enablers of two of this Government’s missions.
First, higher education is the engine for growth. It ensures that we have a highly skilled workforce and delivers world-class research that underpins long-term innovation and economic growth. In many communities, it acts as an anchor for local economic development and civic impact. It adds billions of pounds of value to our economy each year, supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and generates over three-quarters of all our education exports.
Higher education also provides opportunity. It enriches the lives of learners, regardless of their background, and how they access education—including at the Salvation Army, which, for the record, is where my mother was born. For many, it is a truly transformational experience. Graduates have better choice, better paid employment and are better able to contribute to the economy and society as whole, challenging understanding and developing new ideas. This contributes to a healthier, more cohesive society for us all. I have first-hand experience of this. I am the first person in my family to have gone to university. My grandmother, from the East End of London, would have been somewhat confused by where I ended up, but I know only too well how higher education can transform lives to ones of aspiration and achievement.
Secondly, higher education is an engine not only for the economy but for social mobility. This lies at the heart of the Government’s commitment to build skills for opportunity and growth, so that every young person can follow the pathway towards a better future that is right for them, whether at university or elsewhere. Technical education and further education are also key to ensuring that people have the right role for them and are able to find joy and happiness at work, which is what we are doing today.
The Office for Students is fundamental to all this through its effective and independent regulation of the sector. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, touched on the fact that there was no regulator in place when some genuinely challenging elements came into being. It is vital that we now have one, making it work in a way that delivers for the sector and the country.
The primary purpose of regulators is to protect the public. At the point when most students enter higher education, through tuition fees, they make the single biggest investment that they are ever likely to make. These fees are, of course, largely underwritten by the taxpayer through the student loans system. Therefore, it is vital that our universities and colleges offer high-quality provision that ensures a good return on that investment for students and the country, and it is right that independent regulation should seek to ensure this, while protecting and promoting the student interest.
What is the need for stronger regulation and the new strategy? We need to take a step back. Noble Lords will recall the report from the Industry and Regulators Committee on the Office for Students, published in September 2023, which provided a stark assessment of the regulator’s past performance. Indeed, it was entitled Must Do Better.
Last July, the Government published the report of Sir David Behan’s review of the OfS. The review sought to be forward-looking and create a platform for change, but Sir David was very clear that the environment within which the OfS operates has changed considerably since the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, first made the case for the regulator in 2010 and, indeed, since the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, articulated his vision for higher education in the 2017 White Paper Success as a Knowledge Economy.
The current situation is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Navigating this uncertain terrain will be a challenge for many providers, their students and, as it has proved, the OfS itself. Sir David found that the case for regulation was clear. He recognised the improvements the OfS had made since the publication of the Industry and Regulators Committee report but recommended that the OfS should focus on the key priorities of quality, financial sustainability, acting in the student interest and protecting public money. In short: do less but do it better.
Following the resignation of the noble Lord, Lord Wharton, as chair of the OfS, and while a permanent replacement is recruited, the Secretary of State has appointed Sir David as interim chair to oversee the implementation of his review. The OfS has begun this work, setting out a proposed road map for the next five years in the consultation currently running on its strategy, which are discussing today. However, while this important long-term work progresses, immediate priorities and risks must be assessed and addressed.
Central to Sir David’s analysis was a focus on the financial sustainability of the sector. Concerns about the sector’s finances have continued to grow, even appearing in the news this week. In November, the OfS published analysis of the higher education sector’s financial health for the 2022-23 financial year and forecasts for the next four years. It made for troubling reading, finding that both domestic and international recruitment are below the sector’s expectations; that by 2025-26, income could be £3.4 billion lower than provider forecasts; and that up to 72% of providers are expected to be in deficit if they do not take significant mitigating actions.
As a result, the OfS made the decision to temporarily pause the processing of applications regarding the OfS register, degree-awarding powers and university titles, to refocus their resources on managing the critical risk of financial sustainability in the sector. I reassure noble Lords that Education Ministers and officials meet with the OfS on a regular basis, and this specific issue was discussed with the OfS in November and again in December.
Of course, this is not the ideal decision for the OfS to make, and I do not underestimate the impact on those providers whose business models rely on achieving registration or progressing with degree-awarding powers, but it is a decision for the OfS as an independent regulator, not for Ministers. Furthermore, it is in line with the recommendations of the independent review and with expectations set out in the regulator’s code to prioritise resource to manage the greatest risk.
The pause is limited to new and early-stage applications. The OfS expects to restart the process in August, or earlier if possible, and will review every three months until then. Affected providers have been contacted individually and will be informed of progress and changes. I recognise the concerns that this stifles growth, but it is about keeping the show on the road while we deliver our long-term strategic ambitions for higher education. On that note, I will answer some of the specific questions put to me by noble Lords.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, there are unlikely to be more than 100 applications from franchised providers. We require only those with over 300 students to register for the new franchising model, and the largest 10 unregistered providers account for 58% of all franchised students at unregistered providers. This will work quite quickly and effectively with the largest suppliers.
With regard to the “Strengthening oversight of partnership delivery in higher education” consultation, we think that it is important to make progress towards strengthening the regulation of franchised higher education. The OfS has currently paused the registration of new higher education providers in order to support the sector with financial sustainability concerns, as I said, but this is being reviewed every three months.
With regard to institutions that are already in process, which the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, touched on, the OFS has said that it will process applications that are already well advanced. If the noble Lord has knowledge of where that is not happening, I would be grateful for the information. It will also review that every three months. Given what we are talking about between now and August, that seems proportionate, but, if there are specific concerns, I would like to hear from the noble Lord.
On global chains and the pause, I think it is fair to say that education is global. The best of education, as we discuss regularly in the House, allows people’s brains to flourish. Universities are cathedrals for learning, whether they are here or elsewhere; the more exposure we have to more people, the better position we are in to move society forward.
On global change, it is for providers and universities to make decisions about business models, including international investment. However, I can reassure noble Lords that this is temporary to address a critical risk. If there are people with whom we need to engage in the interim, we will endeavour to have those relationships to reassure those institutions. The OfS will consider such applications as soon as the process restarts but will, I hope, seek to work with partners as the pause is ongoing.
I believe that I have answered on the next bit. We are getting through the questions.
All three noble Lords asked: why so much regulatory burden now? Individuals and the taxpayer have invested hugely in higher education. It is right that this should be regulated. However, regulation has to be proportionate and not stifle growth. I agree that the Chancellor’s speech yesterday was excellent. We must also make sure that we are all contributing to the delivery of growth in order to continue to invest in the public services that I, for one, care so much about.
The Office for Students must, and does, abide by the Regulators’ Code and should not impose unnecessary burdens, but students’ experience and outcomes are critical. We need to ensure that students are getting what they pay for.
With regard to further education colleges, as raised by the noble Baroness—am I okay for time, Mr Whip?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
Thank you. It is quite nice to be on the other side.
FE colleges form an essential part of the HE landscape. We are very aware of the burden on colleges that are regulated by a number of different bodies. That is why, for example, we are proposing to exempt FE colleges from the new proposed requirements for franchising. I emphasise again that the pause is temporary. If FE colleges wish to register, they will be able to do so from this summer.
On the wider education strategy, in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, the Secretary of State has been clear and has announced five priorities for the reform of higher education. Given the time, I will not outline them but will write to the noble Baroness with the details.
I am very grateful for the thoughtful contributions that noble Lords have made during this debate. There is a great deal of higher education expertise in your Lordships’ House—some of which is a little terrifying—and I welcome this opportunity to benefit from it. I conclude by commending the efforts of the OfS. The Government continue to maintain their strong support for the regulator and its important work in protecting the interests of students. I also recognise the risks that universities and, by extension, students are facing. I assure noble Lords that both the Government and the OfS maintain a keen focus on overcoming these challenges to ensure that we maintain the secure, stable and world-class higher education that we are all so rightly proud of.
Terrorism: Glorification
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with the glorification of terrorism and terrorists in the United Kingdom.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
Before the noble Baroness starts, I remind noble Lords that this debate is time-limited. We have one speaker in the gap. If any speakers go over their time, that will eat into the time for the Minister to respond to the points made by noble Lords.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, first, I thank noble Lords who have stayed to take part in this debate, late on a Thursday afternoon. It is a timely debate because, as we all know, this week sees the beginning of the Omagh bomb inquiry. As it has begun, we have heard from the families of the victims of that bomb about how terrorism has destroyed their lives. The families of the victims have always behaved with decorum and dignity; my prayer is that they finally receive the answers they have been searching for and a modicum of closure. That dreadful day in August 1998 has much been in my mind this week.
I particularly want to thank the Minister, who is very knowledgeable of the threat of terrorism. This is in no small part due to his service as a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, and I look forward to his response later. Of course, he is not here today as an NIO Minister but rather as a Home Office Minister, because the glorification of terrorists and their organisations is certainly not confined to my part of the United Kingdom but is a threat to the security of the nation as a whole.
I want to speak principally about Sinn Féin’s continued glorification of the terrorist organisation the Provisional IRA, and the consequences of that. However, recently, on the streets of some of our major cities, we have seen other proscribed organisations, such as Hamas, being lauded. That too has its consequences, particularly around radicalisation. I am sure that other colleagues will want to speak to that issue.
As someone who has lived with and through terrorism, I am always alert to anything that would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, in the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy to lionise terrorists, putting them and their actions on a pedestal. There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior people, attending commemorations and celebrations of the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours. In the interests of time, I bring noble Lords the most recent example of a senior Sinn Féin figure glorifying the past deeds of terrorists.
Before Christmas, Michelle O’Neill, the vice-president of Sinn Féin and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland, attended a Provisional IRA commemoration in County Londonderry. The men she was commemorating before Christmas were killed by their own bomb as they travelled through Magherafelt in December 1971—long before Michelle O’Neill was born. Their names were Jim Sheridan, John Bateson and Martin Lee, all members of the self-styled South Derry Brigade of the IRA; it was announced after their deaths that they were on “active service” at the time. Here were three young men with murder in their hearts, who had been dead for 53 years in December, and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland thought it appropriate to commemorate them.
It goes without saying that, as on every occasion when this happens, the deep offence and hurt to those who have suffered at the hands of the IRA is revisited. The retraumatisation of victims is unforgivable and needs called out on every occasion it happens, but this public act of commemoration also sends a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men did was honourable. It glamorises what they did and, to young and impressionable people who have little knowledge or life experience of the brutality of the IRA, it makes them sound like heroes, which patently they were not.
The often-chanted “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a symptom of the continuing republican glorification of dead terrorists. It is, some argue, just a bit of fun, but nothing could be further from the truth. I will never forget being at a black-tie event in Belfast and being asked for a picture by a glamorous young woman, only to have her sing “Ooh ah up the Ra” into my face as she took a video. The fact that my father had survived an IRA attempt on his life, or that as a teenager I was on a school bus that was blown up by “the Ra” because our bus driver was a member of the security forces, was irrelevant to her. She thought that it was funny. I did not.
There is the issue. If we allow people in positions of authority to glorify terrorism in the way that the current First Minister of Northern Ireland does, it normalises and sanitises terrorism, and, in a cyclical way, this will lead to young people being radicalised again. Witness the radicalisation of those currently on our streets supporting the actions of Hamas. Many of the young people doing so know little about the Middle East but think it is quite hip and trendy to support Hamas, because they hate Israel.
A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. If all you know about the IRA is that they took on the Brits and that the First Minister said they were a “great bunch of lads”, you will think that “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a grand wee chant. These young people know little of the devastation, murder, intimidation and barbarity of the IRA, because it is not something that the current First Minister talks about.
There have been conversations in the past about making the glorification of terrorism a criminal offence. Indeed, the Terrorism Act 2006 makes provision for a person to be charged with an offence if they make a statement that encourages a person to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism. There have been no prosecutions under this section, to my knowledge, in Northern Ireland to date because, when challenged about such behaviour, Sinn Féin will argue that it is just honouring its dead. But of course it is much more than that. Its senior leadership is sending a message to wider republicans that violence and terrorism can be justified and that what the IRA did was justified. Of course it was not; there was never any justification for the violence, despite what the current First Minister claims. She will continue to claim that, and indeed to support the actions of these terrorists publicly, until she is prevented from doing so under law.
On Tuesday in the other place there was an Urgent Oral Question on the Government’s extremism review. During that Question, the member for North Antrim, Jim Allister MP, asked the Minister for Security about the glorification of terrorism by the current First Minister of Northern Ireland. The response he got from the Security Minister was disappointing, as he said:
“I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to delve into matters in Northern Ireland in the context of this response”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/1/25; col. 165.]
Why not? If the current First Minister of Northern Ireland is intent on continuing her glorification of terrorism and, at best, is reckless about the consequences, surely that should be a matter that a Security Minister should delve into. I hope the Minister here will be able to be a little clearer on that issue.
The IRA were defeated by the security services across the United Kingdom, not least the brave men and women who served in the RUC, the RUC Reserve, the PSNI, the Ulster Defence Regiment and then the Royal Irish Regiment, and of course colleagues in the mainstream Army. As the daughter of an RUC officer, I was always incredibly proud of how he served without fear or favour. For him and for many others to have their memories sullied by glorifying the terrorists who sought to murder them makes me very angry. We cannot allow the propaganda of the IRA’s political wing to rewrite what happened in Northern Ireland. That is why a change in the law is required, especially to deal with those in authority who continue to exalt and deify terrorists who have caused so much hurt and pain.
I am aware that, in 2023, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation considered whether the legislation on the encouragement and glorification of terrorism under the 2006 Act should be amended. He concluded that it was not possible to formulate a mere glorification offence within acceptable limits, and therefore recommended against amending Section 1 of the Terrorism Act. However, this conclusion was before the onslaught of the glorification that we have seen on our streets in respect of Hamas, and perhaps Mr Hall KC may want to review this section again. However, I acknowledge his expertise and instead propose a more nuanced approach.
I submit that the Government should consider an amendment to the legislation so that persons in authority or holding a particular office, such as a Minister in government or in the Northern Ireland Executive, should not be allowed to glorify past acts of terrorism, or terrorists, and that if they do so, they are committing an offence. This amendment is narrow in scope but would deal with the specific issue of people in authority sending skewed messages to young people about terrorism and the terrorists of the past. It falls within the counterterrorism strategy’s first principle of Prevent,
“to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”,
and therefore aligns with the Government’s strategy. I look forward to the Minister’s thoughts on that proposal.
I also note that there is a new interim Prevent commissioner, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who was appointed very recently, and I am more than happy to discuss this matter with him. He is here today, and I am very glad about that. I will leave my remarks there, and I look forward to hearing from noble Lords in relation to this issue.
Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, on obtaining this important debate and on bringing all her expertise and incisiveness to it in her opening remarks.
I declare my interest as set out in the register as a senior fellow at Policy Exchange, although my role there is unconnected with the issues of security, law and order, cohesion, integration and extremism that we will be discussing today. However, I was MP for Wycombe for nine years where, at that time, I represented more Muslims than any other MP from my party, and for several years I spoke as my party’s spokesperson in the Commons on integration and cohesion. So, although I will not discuss Northern Ireland today, I have an interest in the other matters raised by the noble Baroness.
I want to make five points and to ask the Minister some questions in the brief time I have. First, Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed organisations. Secondly, there can be no doubt that they have been and are being glorified, on marches, online and, I am afraid to say, in mosques throughout the UK. If the Minister has any doubts on that last point, I recommend to him the excellent account on X called habibi, where he will see some of the most egregious instances laid out. However, I hasten to add that in my view—it is important to say this—most marchers and worshippers in mosques are not supporters of Hamas or Hezbollah.
Thirdly, this glorification reflects the import into our domestic politics of foreign strife abroad, particularly in relation to Kashmir and, as we all know, the Middle East. Fourthly, there can of course be no objection to anyone seeking to march or express views online, or even discussing in a religious setting the Middle East or Kashmir. I became very interested in the Kashmir issue when I was in the Commons and have raised it myself. However, there can be no room in our domestic politics for thuggery, abuse, violence or intimidation, all of which we are now beginning to see in some of our inner-city constituencies, especially during general elections, as the Minister will be well aware. Fifthly, and finally, this glorification and the issues that arise from it are fuel for the far right and the far left, both of which seek to undermine and collapse our democratic politics.
I move on to some questions for the Minister about policing. I pay tribute to the work of the police, who have very difficult decisions and judgments to make. I introduce these questions with a quote from Matt Twist, Assistant Commissioner at the Met, who said:
“When we look back at the policing of protests over the last eight months, we know we didn’t get everything right”.
He said that while being interviewed for the Policy Exchange report, Might is Right?, by David Spencer, Sir Stephen Laws and Niamh Webb. My questions arise from recommendations in the report. I am not expecting the Minister to provide detailed answers today but if he does not have them, I would be grateful if he would write in due course.
Will the Government change the criteria to prohibit a protest march under Section 16 of the Public Order Act 1986 to prevent serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community, explicitly including the impact of cumulative disruption? Will the Government introduce a provision to prohibit a march if it would place any undue demands on the police or military forces, replicating Section 11 of the Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act 1998? Will the Government amend Section 11 of the Public Order Act 1986 to increase the notification period for all protest marches to 28 days, replicating the requirements in Northern Ireland? Will the Government legislate to expressly reverse the DPP v Ziegler Supreme Court verdict to ensure that no protester has a lawful excuse for obstructing the highway and for any public order offence, if he or she intends to obstruct, harass, inconvenience or harm others? Will the Government legislate to make it unlawful for individuals at protests to wear face coverings wholly or mainly with the intention of concealing their identity? Will the Government consider introducing a parades commission in London, and perhaps elsewhere, modelled on the commission in Northern Ireland?
Our liberal democracies depend on trust in order to function, and it would appear that trust is in decreasing supply, I am afraid, in countries that maintain high migration, have low growth and have high tech. I look forward to the Minister answering questions.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, for securing this important debate. I am well aware of her intense personal interest and, to be frank, at times her suffering on account of terrorism in Northern Ireland. I am very grateful to her for securing this debate. I am also delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, will be replying. He was a distinguished Minister in Northern Ireland. It is now, I think, 15 years or so since he was a Minister, and I am interested in reflecting on how he sees the evolution of this question of the public perception of the glorification of terrorism—how he thinks things have happened, whether he is surprised or whether it is pretty much what he was expecting when he was a Minister.
I was a civil rights marcher and I speak from the point of view of John Hume. There is no grievance in Northern Ireland that was worth the loss of a single life. Even more importantly, in terms of political structures, these were all clearly, essentially in place in the 1974 Sunningdale Agreement. There was absolutely no need for the thousands of lives that were lost. The largest single purveyor of death was the Provisional IRA in this period by some way, although there is a dreadful record of loyalist crime, and there were also instances where the British state forces let themselves down. But there is no question about who the largest purveyor of death was.
In recent times, there have been a number of cultural phenomena that tend to recreate and glorify that campaign. The most obvious example is the phenomena around the group Kneecap and their very successful film. The Sunday Times and the BBC—all these official organs of our culture—celebrate Kneecap and their work.
I cite the verdict of Professor Liam Kennedy from Tipperary—an old colleague of mine at Queens. What he says, and with some acuity, in his review of Kneecap’s film, is that
“in subtle ways … Kneecap serves to validate the Provisionals’ murderous assaults on their … neighbours and the British state”
and validates the idea that the decades of terror were
“inevitable and necessary, the last recourse of an historically oppressed people suffering from intergenerational trauma”.
I should say something else about my friend Professor Kennedy. More than any other academic in Belfast—I suspect that the Minister remembers this—he cared about the fate of those who were actually kneecapped in east Belfast in large numbers by the Provisional IRA. Nobody put themselves more at risk in speaking out against these crimes.
There is also the poem “The Knee” from this era by Ciaran Carson. I will read only the last section, which describes a kneecapping:
“It seems he was a hood, whatever, or the lads were just being careful.
Two and two were put together; what they added up to wasn’t five.
Visiting time: he takes his thirteen-month-old son on his other knee.
Learning to walk, he suddenly throws himself into the staggering,
Distance between his father and his father’s father, hands held up high,
His legs like the hands of a clock, one trying to catch up on the other”.
This is the cruelty which is now apparently a subject for critical acclaim in our mainstream media. This is why we are disturbed about the glorification of terrorism.
We have all made concessions, and the Minister was particularly important in defending the achievements of the Good Friday agreement when he was a Minister. But, as I say, I speak as somebody who was a civil rights marcher and who has never changed my mind on John Hume’s dictum that there is not a single political failing in Northern Ireland that justified or even began to justify the loss of a single life. But, somehow, Hume’s wisdom seems to be eroding now, and that is what is so worrying.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, on securing this debate. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, will respond, because he comes with tons of experience of the Northern Ireland situation. I know that this debate in general is about terrorism and the glorification of it at large, but on my immediate left is a victim of terrorism in his family, and the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, was directly a victim of terrorism when she was a youngster at school. Her father escaped, thank God, but not unscathed. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, was also a victim of terrorism, so we know this awful situation at very close hand. We do not have to run around and seek someone. People in my own family and my family circle were victims too. It seems that nearly everybody you know in Northern Ireland was in some way connected and got what I would call the sharp end of paramilitarism in Northern Ireland.
Not that this is very important, but I want to say it anyway, I come from a town in County Tyrone where I worked the best part of my life. The street I worked in was known as the most bombed street of any provincial town in Northern Ireland. In the Troubles, it had 18 500-pound car bombs planted on it. As soon as businesses were put together, another one arrived and the whole thing was blown. But, in the main, people did not turn to violence. They put their heads down, they got on with things and they rebuilt.
We now have a First Minister who tells us that there was no alternative to violence. That is an absolutely outrageous statement. Someone who holds that position should just stop and reflect on what they are saying and the impact that that has. We have lost thousands of people from both sides of the community. The IRA is responsible for 60% of those deaths, 30% are attributable to the loyalists and it is said that 10% are attributable to the forces of law and order, which is not strictly correct in this respect: that 10% figure includes where the security forces intervened or intercepted people on a mission to kill.
For example, there is a small village by the name of Coagh. The noble Lord, Lord McCrea, would know it, as he would have represented it at one time when he was the MP for Mid Ulster. Indeed, Stewartstown, where he grew up as a young fellow, is not far from it. The IRA made a mission to kill in that village on one occasion, and the security forces intercepted it. Now we have a demand asking why these IRA people have not had an inquest.
However, the story does not end there, because in that same village, Coagh, three Protestant workmen were having a conversation one day in a garage repair shop. An IRA squad arrived and just annihilated them as they were standing there having a conversation. That, of course, was designed to create as much antagonism as possible and to get a reaction, but there is no demand for an inquest into their deaths. Why is it that the terrorists are so important that they must have an inquest, but not these three unfortunate souls, who were just having a conversation on a summer’s afternoon when they were gunned down? No, they are dispensable.
In the report that the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, referred to, reference is made to the Terrorism Act 2000. That Act established several proscription offences, including addressing a meeting wearing clothing or displaying articles in public which
“arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”.
That is still going on. We now have what are called the dissident republicans, who are trying to carry on where others have left off. The PSNI, which would be the enforcement body, are under-resourced and underfunded. If we are going to get on top of the situation, the PSNI has to be given the materiel and the money to ensure that it can give reliable service to the community. Otherwise, we could drift back to terrible times, and not one of us in this Room today wants that to happen.
Surely, it is time. We have a very delicate situation in Northern Ireland and sometimes, we do not fully appreciate in your Lordships’ House just how delicate things can be. If it gets to the stage where terrorism is celebrated, which does happen, and no action is taken, there will be a bad ending. The situation we are in, and where we have come from, needs to be fully appreciated. I hope the Minister will take note, and I am sure he will, because he knows the situation quite well. He has tons of experience and I welcome him to his new post. I cannot think of anybody better to do it than him.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Foster for securing this debate asking His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with the glorification of terrorism. Page 3 of the helpful House of Lords Library paper outlines the definition of terrorism. It says that the 2000 Act covers anyone who
“promotes or encourages terrorism, including the unlawful glorification of terrorism”.
Section 1.2 is headed “How is glorifying terrorism defined?” and says:
“Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 makes the encouragement of terrorism an offence”,
including any offence that
“glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts or offences”.
Michelle O’Neill, who is now First Minister of Northern Ireland, stated in a BBC interview in 2022 that there was “no alternative” to the IRA campaign of violence before the 1998 Belfast agreement. I believe that the overwhelming majority of people were appalled at that sickening statement in her BBC interview. The continuing campaign by Sinn Féin to seek to justify and glorify the IRA campaign exposes what Sinn Féin leaders still believe. She said that
“the war came to Ireland”,
which is republicans’ effort to rewrite historical reality and must be strenuously challenged, not only by unionist politicians but by this Government.
There has always been an alternative to terrorism and there has never been a justification for such murderous activity. Does Michelle O’Neill believe that there was no alternative to shooting the innocent, butchering those whom the IRA interrogated, planting bombs to blow up men, women and children indiscriminately, kidnapping mothers such as Jean McConville in their own community, destroying families, targeting neighbours, terrorising communities and causing mayhem? Sinn Féin/IRA may try to sanitise itself but it must never be allowed to forget the devastating legacy of its violence, which is inflicted on the people of Northern Ireland and the mainland. Does she really think that there was no alternative to taking 10 innocent workmen off the bus at Kingsmill and shooting them like dogs along the road, simply because they were Protestant? The remarks made by Michelle O’Neill inflict further pain and suffering on the families of the victims who died as a result of the IRA’s murderous campaign.
It should also be remembered that the IRA holds the distinction of killing more Roman Catholics in the Troubles than any other protagonist in the conflict. So much for its claim that the IRA was established to defend the Catholic community from the British invaders. The IRA has a toxic legacy of murder; to suggest that there was no alternative seeks to poison future generations and to normalise terrorism, making it a legitimate way to get your way if you claim to be denied your political ambitions or aims. No wonder that, even today, across many nationalist areas, young people in clubs shout “Up the IRA” et cetera, as though what the Provos did should be glorified.
When challenged, Michelle O’Neill dismissed criticism by saying that
“we need to be mature enough … to agree to differ”,
glibly casting aside the hurt of her words. Of course, in reality, the mask slipped and exposed the heart of Sinn Féin philosophy: her shameful and arrogant defence of IRA terrorism for more than 30 years. As the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, mentioned, even as First Minister, Michelle O’Neill attended a commemoration in December to mark the deaths of three IRA men in my town, where I live, who killed themselves with their own bomb while on a murder mission more than 50 years ago. The men were said to be on a so-called active service mission at the time, but it was worthy of the First Minister of all the people of Northern Ireland to commemorate it—a further illustration of Sinn Féin being an integral part of the IRA.
Two weeks ago, I took part in a service along the roadside near Cookstown to mark the 33rd anniversary of the murder of eight innocent workmen at Teebane. I will never forget that night, for I assisted the injured in getting into the ambulance after that atrocity. I witness to this day the scars of some of those on that workmen’s bus who survived.
Never forget that I and other noble Lords here today lived through those 30 years of terror. We are not speaking about something we do not know. I know what it is to have my heart broken by the murder of my loved ones—to see them lying on a slab, with their bodies blown asunder. I know what it is to see a 16 year-old boy with only parts of his head and a few bones left because the rest of his body was blown to bits. He was not nothing; as a matter of fact, the one he was with was engaged to be married that day and was going to show her engagement ring to her aunt. I know what it is to see my children terrorised: 40 to 50 bullets were shot at our home when they were in it, and I received a real bomb packaged as missionary material.
There is nothing glorious in terrorism, irrespective of which community it comes from. We must unreservedly condemn it and ensure that our grandchildren never face that evil ever again, but we must also learn the lessons of the past. Because Governments failed to protect our people, innocent people faced the tragedy of 30 years of terrorism. May we learn the lessons of the past and never allow a generation to suffer such consequences again.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will speak briefly. I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, not just on securing this important debate but on the powerful and moving speech that she made, as well as all other Members. It has been very moving to listen to the contributions this afternoon.
I want to pick up on the point about people chanting support for the IRA. Yesterday on the streets of Birmingham, and last night at Villa Park, where I was watching the Villa-Celtic game, there were disgraceful scenes of people chanting support for the IRA. That, in a city where 21 people were murdered in the 1974 pub bombings and hundreds more were injured, is a complete and utter disgrace.
The CPS has said that tragedy chanting about Hillsborough or the Munich air crash can be treated as a public order offence, that fans responsible should be banned and that people can be arrested. I would like the Minister to find out why the police seem to have taken no action yesterday in Birmingham. I would like him to speak to the police and the CPS to ensure that the people responsible can be identified and prosecuted. Does he agree that Celtic must deal with this? They have to condemn it—it is an absolute disgrace. They know who they sold the tickets to, they can identify them and ban them. If Celtic will not do that, does the Minister agree that they should be banned from European competition in future? They can chant what they like—well, they should not, but what they do at Parkhead is a matter for them. Coming to Birmingham and chanting support for the IRA in that city is a complete and utter disgrace, and I would like the Minister to look at this.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, for bringing such a timely and important debate, and indeed all other noble Lords for their touching contributions.
The glorification of terrorism and terrorists in the United Kingdom is an issue that of course affects us all, but in particular the victims and survivors of these heinous acts. I start by emphatically stating that my heart goes out to those affected by terrorism, and in particular today to the Jewish community. When people march in London singing anti-Semitic slogans that glorify the terrorist atrocities of Hamas and 7 October, I consider it to be a dark day indeed. That applies equally to those who seek to glorify the appalling terrorist acts of the Troubles—as we have heard today, some of them were absolutely appalling—or indeed any other heinous acts which have happened in our nation and seek to undermine the fabric of our society. We should call out the glorification of terrorism at every opportunity.
First, under the Terrorism Act 2006 it is already an offence to glorify acts of terrorism. However, enforcement alone is not sufficient. What steps are His Majesty’s Government taking to root out the ideologies and cultural narratives that allow such glorification to thrive? Can the Minister also say whether the Government have a plan in place to ensure that all cases of glorification are treated equally, so as to protect the victims and survivors?
Secondly—this is an important point—we must ensure that our educational institutions are not unwittingly providing a platform for extremist ideologies. Schools and universities are critical places where strategies can be implemented that are hugely important in addressing radicalisation. What steps have been taken to strengthen the implementation of anti-terrorist strategies and address the growing challenges posed by online radicalisation?
Thirdly, the role of social media can hardly be overstated. Platforms that allow the dissemination of extremist propaganda must be held accountable. So, how are His Majesty’s Government working with technology companies to ensure robust enforcement of policies which ban hate speech? Are we doing enough to educate young people about the dangers of consuming and sharing such material?
Finally, we must confront this issue at the societal level. This requires more than legislation; it requires leadership. I urge His Majesty’s Government to take a stand against those who seek to manipulate grievances for the purpose of sowing division and hatred. Counterextremism efforts must be community-led, with a focus on fostering a shared understanding of our values in Britain, which unite, rather than divide, our diverse population.
We cannot, and must not, allow the glorification of terrorism to gain a foothold in our society. It is a matter of not just security but moral clarity. I call on the Government to redouble their efforts in order to address the growing menace with the urgency and determination that it demands.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for this debate today, which has been full of emotion and concern. It has raised issues that deserve to be respected, and I hope to be able to answer them in part.
I am particularly aware that this week, as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, mentioned, sees the commencement of the Omagh bombing inquiry. I had the privilege of attending the Memorial Garden in Omagh some 15 years ago. I met victims there and learned of their continued pain, anger and desire for answers. The noble Baroness has herself been a victim of terrorist activity, and I understand the pain, anger and wish for answers that she brings to this debate. I have met with victims of Omagh. I have sat in a room with the widows of police officers who were murdered. I have met those who were killed by the IRA—and, indeed, those who were shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries as well. I have sat with, and looked into the eyes of, people who have undertaken those killings, both from the IRA and from the loyalist community. I did so to try to understand and resolve some of the issues that underpin this debate today.
I am grateful for the comments from a number of noble Lords and Baronesses. The noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, mentioned my service in Northern Ireland. I had a fleeting period in Northern Ireland, but it left a deep impression on me and on my examination of the issues that still affect us today. Even in this Home Office job, just before Christmas, I attended the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham pub bombing. People still wanted answers and still did not understand; they were still the victims of violence that took place in the context of our discussions today. So I understand that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, asked what has changed since I was there. I would be interested to see what has happened since I left. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, mentioned this as well. One thing has happened since I left. When I was in Northern Ireland, I was the First Minister; I was the Deputy First Minister; I was the Treasury Minister, for a while; and I was the Culture Minister and the Housing Minister. Now, Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly hold those posts in a devolved Administration salvaged from the trauma of that not occurring. They have got local decision-making back in place, as envisaged by the Good Friday/Belfast agreement—call it what you will—of 1998. So, there has been progress in many ways, but pain—it has been visible in the Room today—still exists as a result of that activity.
In a sense, I would like to look to the future as well. We have the legacy of the Troubles, which, again, is self-evidently visible in this Room today—the trauma experienced by individuals and communities, and by some noble Lords and Baronesses in this Room, some of whom have represented such individuals in Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly, as was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe.
Addressing the legacy of the Troubles is one of the aims of the Good Friday agreement. Noble Lords will be aware that the Government, through my right honourable friend Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, are looking at how we can build on that legacy in order to ensure that we understand and find a way through those difficult issues.
The noble Baroness, Lady Foster, has given a view on the First Minister, as have other noble Lords here today; that is in the Room and on the record today. I hope that we can look at some of the issues as we go forward, while recognising that there is still a very deep scar in Northern Ireland as a whole.
That brings me to two points in relation to this debate. First, there is a Section 1 Terrorism Act 2006 offence of encouraging terrorism, including unlawful glorification. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, mentioned it. I will come to the other points he raised in a moment. For individuals who glorify acts of terrorism, whether online or offline, whether with reference to proscribed organisations or individual acts of terrorism, such behaviour has no place in our society. There is a legal definition of that act of glorification currently on the statute book. Police forces in Northern Ireland or elsewhere can seek to examine it and can bring prosecutions accordingly. It may not be satisfactory to the noble Baroness, and she may worry about the number of prosecutions made—I understand that—but that framework is there in law.
In that sense, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Austin, who I still call my noble friend, that the incidents at a football match this week, which I was not party to—I have read about them, I have not seen them personally, but I take his word for what happened—can be referred by the police if they feel a criminal act was committed under that offence. I urge him to draw it to the attention of the West Midlands Police because that is where the appropriate response lies. It is not for Ministers to determine whether criminal action has taken place, it is for Ministers to put legislation in place.
The second important area is Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which makes it an offence to support a proscribed organisation. Again, this was referred to by a number of Members. There is a whole list of proscribed organisations which the Government have determined are beyond the pale, owing to their activities. Hamas is included in that. I was not in Parliament at the time, but in 2019 the offence was widened to ensure that it captured such statements even where the speaker is reckless as to their impact. The penalty for that proscription offence is a maximum of 14 years in prison and/or an unlimited fine. Again, there is legislation on the statute book now, and it is not for Ministers to determine whether that legislation has been broken. It is for the police to make an arrest, prepare a case and put it to the Crown Prosecution Service; and it is for the CPS to determine whether charges should be made. Those charges are either made or not. If they are made, they go to court. If they go to court, they are in front of a jury and the jury determines whether the law has been broken.
So, currently, there is a mechanism in place for any of the instances noble Lords have raised concerns about today. Are those two mechanisms currently satisfactory, given the nature of the changes in the threat and the activities? Well, the Government have done two things since 4 July. We organised what we called a sprint to review counter-terrorism legislation. There was a leak of some discussion this week. That is not government policy—I put that on the record—but we have asked Jonathan Hall KC to look at current legislation and I think it is important that this debate can form part of assessment for the Government. He will make that assessment and produce a report on current terrorism legislation, by which I mean Section 12 of the Terrorism Act, Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 or indeed some potential new legislation to cover any issues raised today and elsewhere. He will present that report to Ministers at a date to be determined, we will make an assessment and either accept or reject any recommendations, and we may or may not bring forward new legislation during the many opportunities we have this year.
I am pleased, again, to see the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in his place because I am grateful to him as he has accepted a commission from the Government to review the current operation of Prevent. It largely does not deal with the Northern Ireland situation, I accept that, but it deals with some of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and other noble Lords in this Committee have mentioned. So, without wanting to influence the determination of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, he has a mandate independently to review this and make recommendations, which, again, the Government can reject or accept, that will be brought to this House in due course.
I say to all noble Lords here today that I understand the pain seen by the noble Lords, Lord Morrow, Lord McCrea and Lord Bew, and referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, and my noble friend Lord Austin. I particularly understand the sentiments of the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster. However, those issues are, in a sense, up for review. If the legislation is not sufficient or appropriate, then that will be reviewed, and recommendations will be made. We will respond to that in due course.
I will refer to a couple of other points that have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, raised a series of questions effectively about marching, parades and determinations. There is legislation on the statute book, and I have referred to it in the Chamber of this House recently. Legislation about marches is there. It gives powers to police officers and Gold Command to determine marching routes and whether they are suitable or if they cause difficulties. It is not the Parades Commission, but it a determination.
As a Government, we are currently looking at number of issues relating to the position of legislation. We have already publicly announced that there is legislation coming this year in a police and crime Bill that will look at the issue of war memorials and people who abuse them or stand on them. That is an issue. There are a number of other challenges that are on the radar. I am not in a position to announce policy today, but I assure the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that we are working on a number of policy options that will address some issues to do with the management of parades and marches in due course. When we are in position to announce them, we will do so in the police and crime Bill.
The Government are committed to ensuring that police have appropriate powers to maintain order. There are a range of powers already on the statute book for the police to do that. We are keeping all that public order legislation under constant review. Where there are gaps, we will identify them. I will look at the points that the noble Lord mentioned, and I will write to him in detail in response to them.
My time is up. I could add a few more points, but I want to touch on the contribution from His Majesty’s Opposition’s Front Bench. It is important that we look at the internet. It is important that we look at radicalisation on the internet. Again, that forms part of reviews that are taking place currently. Also, the Government are committed to reviewing that with the platform companies to make sure that we remove content that is encouraging terrorism or, indeed, encouraging the abuse of children or sexual abuse in other ways. That is all on the agenda as well.
Given that I am one minute over, I thank the noble Baroness for raising this issue. I may not have answered all her points, but she has a right to raise those issues. She has done in that in an effective way that has left a legacy on this Committee in terms of its discussion. If I have not picked up points made by noble Lords today, I will do so and respond according. I look forward to continuing to work with colleagues from Northern Ireland and beyond to ensure that the next generation of children has a peaceful and productive future in a society that respects differences and rejects violence.
House of Lords
Introduction: The Lord Bishop of Peterborough
Introduction: Baroness Levitt
Oaths and Affirmations
Musculoskeletal Health
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Black of Brentwood
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve musculoskeletal health.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I note my interest as co-chairman of the APPG on osteoporosis.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, improving health outcomes for the more than 17 million people in England with musculoskeletal conditions forms a key part of this Government’s missions to build an NHS fit for the future and kick-start economic growth. We are making a start by delivering a joint programme with the DWP—entitled Getting It Right First Time, the MSK community delivery programme—and working with integrated care board leaders to reduce NHS community waiting times and to improve data metrics and referral pathways.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, osteoporosis is one of the gravest musculoskeletal conditions, because fractures ruin lives and kill people. Can the Minister understand the frustration so many feel that, after years of promises, there is still no prospect of universal access to life-saving fracture liaison services in England? Each time this House debates osteoporosis, there is unanimous support and Ministers of both parties stand here and promise action. Each time there is an election, commitments are made, including one by the Secretary of State that rollout would be one of his first acts in post. Well, it was not, and 1,100 people have died since then. Will the Minister, without prevarication or diversion about widening access, specifically restate the Government’s commitment to universal rollout of FLS in England by 2030? If not, could she explain to thousands suffering often intolerable pain or grieving loved ones why they have reneged on it?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s campaigning, which is impressive in maintaining focus on what I regard as a very important area. He may be aware, but I draw it to his and your Lordships’ House’s attention, that a Written Ministerial Statement about addressing urgent challenges was laid today. It outlines the fact that planning guidance is soon to be published—it was not published as I entered the Chamber—and will reflect patient priorities that are important to those who have to contend with osteoporosis. These include cutting waiting times, improving access to primary care—bearing in mind that 30% of GP appointments are related to MSK—and improving urgent and emergency care. On the point the noble Lord asks about, as I have said before, we are working closely to consider a whole range of options to provide better quality and access to important preventive services as part of ending the postcode lottery. I will be pleased to keep him informed.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
We will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
I am a member of the APPG on osteoporosis, and we are very worried that fracture liaison services have been deprioritised in the recent NHS planning guidance. We know that the pump-priming transformation fund works because we have seen it working in Wales. It saves lives, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, releases people into the labour market, releases beds in hospitals and improves quality of life for thousands of people. Can the Minister give us an assurance? If this milestone has been missed in the planning guidance, we need urgent clarity on how the 2030 target will be reached.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My noble friend raises a number of important points. In reference to the planning guidance, I hope she will understand that at this stage that is leaked information and I am therefore not in a position to comment. The Secretary of State has confirmed that planning guidance will be published in due course. I agree that patients around the country are waiting too long for care and treatment. I draw my noble friend’s attention to the plan for change, which will get the health service back on its feet. Part of the elective recovery plan, published just a few weeks ago, sets out funding to boost DEXA, which is bone density scanning capacity to support improvements in bone health and early diagnosis, including for osteoporosis. That will provide an estimated 29,000 extra scans per year, so I hope my noble friend will take heart from that node of direction.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I declare a family interest in this condition. Will the Minister recognise that the failure to roll out the much-needed early diagnostic service, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, was promised during the general election campaign, will inevitably result in greater cost to the NHS in the years to come?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I certainly agree with the noble Lord that without the right services in place at the right time and in the right location, there is additional cost—not just to the NHS but to the economy and to individuals. We have found that musculoskeletal community services have the largest waiting lists in England, and I refer the noble Lord to our forthcoming 10-year plan on the move from hospital to community. That will be a key part of cutting waiting lists, and the measures I have already announced will also assist.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, did not the Health Secretary give an unequivocal commitment at last year’s general election that there would be universal fracture liaison services by 2030, with implementation starting immediately? Does that commitment still stand?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for allowing me to reiterate that the department is working closely with NHS England to look at a whole range of options to provide better-quality care and access to those important preventive services. I emphasise that this is part of ending the postcode lottery. I remind your Lordships’ House that integrated care boards are responsible for the delivery of these services. We will continue with the further actions that we are taking, some of which I have already referred to, which will ensure that patients are getting the service they need.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
Integrated Care Journal has indicated the potential to improve access pathways, giving an example of an AI physiotherapist service at home and covered by CQC. Will the Government develop and adapt something like this?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises an interesting point and I will be happy to look into what she suggests. I know she is aware that one of the main pillars of change will be about analogue to digital, and in that I put the contribution of AI. Just this afternoon I will speak to a conference about the role of AI in respect of women’s health, and osteoporosis will be very much part of that.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, to speak remotely.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]
As a sufferer of ankylosing spondylitis, a painful spinal musculoskeletal condition aggravated by a lack of physical movement, I can report that inactivity in underemployment can severely aggravate the condition. Would the state benefits system not be far better served if multi-patient group physio services and collective patient gyms—even open-air ones, as in the Far East—were available on a wider scale? Greater collective patient activity for this and other similar groups in large public venues would save money in the benefits system.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My noble friend raises a very important point from a position of a lot of experience. I can confirm that we recognise the importance of regular physical activity for those with MSK conditions. It helps to reduce pain and disability as well as improving well-being and helping with other conditions. The existence of MSK hubs with a non-healthcare workforce delivering physical activity-based interventions has been extremely helpful, and we will continue to encourage that and explore the role that hubs can play.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, we should pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Black for all his hard work in this area. I do not think the Minister answered his Question. On Tuesday evening she told the House she wanted to be honest, so in that spirit can she tell your Lordships whether the Government have agreed new dates, first, to begin the rollout and, secondly, to achieve universal fracture liaison services? If so, what are those dates? If not, can she tell us when we will have those dates, so that all the people waiting for these services are clearer about what they can look forward to?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am afraid I cannot give the noble Lord the dates that he seeks, but I will be pleased to keep him updated on the development of services.
Afghanistan: Women
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
To ask His Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with international partners about the Taliban’s restrictions on women in Afghanistan, including a ban on women attending medical schools.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, we remain in regular dialogue with international partners on Afghanistan, including using international mechanisms to maintain pressure on the Taliban to change course. The Minister for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan hosted a round table in New York on 20 January with the UN and permanent representatives of key countries. This month, we also pledged our political support to refer the Taliban to the International Court of Justice.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to His Majesty’s Government for referring Afghanistan’s violation of human rights to the International Court of Justice. However, the women of Afghanistan are in desperate need of urgent action to prevent the ban on attending medical schools having a long-term impact on the availability of female medical staff. It will have far-reaching consequences for women’s health outcomes, which are already dire. Can the Minister expand on what steps the Government have taken to ensure that women in Afghanistan will continue to be able to access women’s health services, despite the ban?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
As my noble friend says, the situation is extremely difficult, and we are relying in large part on our partners on the ground to be able to support women in the most horrendous of circumstances. Let us remember that the ban that she refers to comes on top of laws requiring women to be veiled at all times in public, banning women from singing, reciting or reading aloud in public, forbidding them to look at men they are not related to and strictly enforcing male escorts for women. The situation is intolerable, and it is good that we have supported taking this to the ICJ. In the meantime, we are doing everything we can on the ground to support women in Afghanistan.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, the brave Afghan women who peacefully protest against these brutal policies have been threatened, arrested, forcibly disappeared, detained and tortured. Their voices must be heard. They want concrete and effective measures against the Taliban. They do not want the Taliban to be granted any legitimacy and normalisation of their oppressive rule under the guise of engagement—those are their words. Do His Majesty’s Government agree that targeted sanctions, refusal to recognise this repressive regime and unwavering support for women’s resistance in Afghanistan are the minimum actions that the international community must take in good faith?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We are extremely careful about the way that we engage with Afghanistan. The noble Baroness knows that we recognise states and not Governments. On sanctions, we implement the UN sanctions. We have some very limited engagement with the Taliban to bring about some of the changes that we want to see and to make these points about women and human rights, but as she will know, this is incredibly difficult. We are working for the large part through international partners on the ground to make sure that we get humanitarian aid to support people today.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester
My Lords, these measures are taken by men with an absolute lack of transparency and without any involvement of those concerned, and they are clearly aimed at excluding women and girls from public life. Following on from what has been said, are the Government actively meeting female Afghan leaders to hear their perspectives? Will the UK Government help female Afghans to be part of the international talks so that they are able to play a part in the future of the country?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
That is such an important point. The voices of Afghan women are suppressed in their own country, but we must provide platforms whenever we can to make sure that those voices are heard. I was very grateful to the Leader of the House recently for her enabling me to meet Malala here in our House. The right reverend Prelate is right, and we will continue to find whatever means we can to make sure that women in Afghanistan have the opportunity to speak on their own behalf.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, how are we using our influence at the United Nations to deal with these issues, particularly around education? Without education, those young girls will continue to be exploited, be badly treated and be at the risk of being married off.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am grateful for that question. My noble friend the Minister for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan is using his convening mechanisms at the UN to raise these issues, garner international support and keep the spotlight on them. It is principally through these multinational fora that we are able to bring about the pressure that may be needed.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister outline which areas of the Government’s influence are more likely to have effect in dealing with the Taliban? By mechanisms of influence, I am talking about direct interaction with the Taliban.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
For reasons that we have touched on today, that is incredibly difficult. The focus for us when it comes to Afghan women is to make sure that the eyes of the world are on this issue and that we get the aid to them now, because the need is desperate. That is why we are planning £161 million in aid to Afghanistan this financial year.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the situation for women in Afghanistan is truly dreadful, and I am sure the whole House agrees that there are no easy or simple solutions. Perhaps the Minister could expand on the answer she gave earlier on whether the Government have considered targeted sanctions or providing diplomatic incentives to encourage the Taliban to change course.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We consider anything that might work. Obviously, we do not comment on future sanctions designations, but I can say that we keep the situation under very close review.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest that I share with many Members of your Lordships’ House in that I am an ambassador for the Halo Trust. In a speech 10 days ago, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan described his own Government’s prohibitions on female education as
“committing an injustice against 20 million people”
and he asserted that restrictions on female education run counter to both the wishes of the Prophet and sharia law. What assessment have the Government made of internal divisions within the Afghan Government on this question, as well as our diplomatic capacity to encourage those who seek to widen the parameters of women’s rights under the Taliban? On extending the parameters of women’s rights and other rights under the Taliban, if the Government have not done so, I suggest that they would do well to speak to James Cowan, the CEO of the Halo Trust, who has established a great spread of engagement in that regard.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I support everything my noble friend has said about the Halo Trust and the phenomenal work that it has been able to do in the most difficult circumstances. I commend to the House the initiative taken in Pakistan recently on the importance of education of women and girls within Islam and how it is such a concern. It is a strong initiative. It is difficult to say that any one event, conference or intervention is going to have the effect that we all wish to see, but I hope that, by continuing to support such gatherings and the making of these cases, we can, over time, have the impact that we want.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, we have had the 2020 Afghanistan sanctions for four years now. There are a number of exceptions to those sanctions, justifiable for assuring the delivery of humanitarian aid, but any exceptions can be abused. In light of the more recent examples that my noble friend gave, have the Government reviewed the exceptions and the sanctions that have been in place for four years to ensure that they are up to date and there is no circumvention, and that those individuals who are restricting the rights of women, as we have been discussing, are not able to profit from circumventing sanctions?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
As I have said, we keep this issue under close review. The noble Lord is right to highlight the most recent restrictions around medical education. We are working as hard as we can to make sure that we are still able to get the aid to where it needs to get to, and we have made a point of making sure that at least half the aid that we get into the country goes directly to women and girls.
Schools: World War II Anniversary
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Evans of Rainow
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to involve schools in the commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of the end of World War II.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Question. We owe our freedom to those who fought in World War II. The 80th anniversary of VE Day and VJ Day will be marked with a series of events paying tribute to the millions of people across the UK and the Commonwealth who experienced the war, from the front line to the home front and beyond. It is vital that children understand the important roles played by their forebears. Resources and educational material are being developed for schools to help young people learn about the Second World War, and children and young people will be involved in a range of commemorative events.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I thank the Minister for that excellent Answer. She will know well that her government department did an excellent job of commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War, as noble Lords will remember, between 2014 and 2018. With that in mind, given that it is the 80th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War, what plans does her department have to engage with all schoolchildren, but particularly those in state schools, to make sure that they interact with surviving veterans in their communities before it is too late?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord that the 100-year commemoration of the First World War was indeed powerful. Whether through activities in schools, conversations in the home with older relatives or the work of some of our fabulous museums, such as the Imperial War Museum, I wholeheartedly agree with him that living history is a hugely powerful way for children to gain an understanding of the past. Sadly, we will soon be at the point where we will not have the voices of people who experienced the Second World War, whether as veterans or as children. I am very clear that that should be incorporated into how schools, and we more broadly, mark these important 80th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the Memorial Gates foundation. Over 600,000 African service men and women served alongside the British forces in World War II. Some are still living, including Warrant Officer Joseph Hammond, who served in the “Forgotten” Fourteenth Army in Burma. Will she meet with the foundation, the legion and others concerned to see how we can best facilitate the witnesses who are still living to make their contribution to the education of young people during the 80th anniversary?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We are keen at DCMS and across government to make sure that all voices are heard. I would be very happy to meet the organisations my noble friend has raised. We are clear that there were a huge number of troops and people deployed and that their voices and stories should be part of the commemoration of these important events.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I was a member of the Government’s advisory committee for the commemoration of World War I. I felt that my Conservative colleagues were reluctant to emphasise the role that the 1.5 million Indian soldiers played in World War I. In our schools, we now have the grandchildren and, in some cases, the great-grandchildren, of the 2.5 million Indians who served in the British Imperial Army in World War II—not to mention the many West Indians who served mainly as ground staff in the RAF and the Poles who were unable to go home afterwards. Can we make sure that we emphasise how much today’s society and schoolchildren are descended from all of those who fought with us in World War II?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We are clear that this is an important part of the commemoration. As the noble Lord has identified, our victory and our freedom relied both on the 365,000 British troops and the 1.5 million Commonwealth troops who were deployed alongside 2.5 million soldiers from the pre-partition Indian army. It is right, as the noble Lord makes clear, that the sacrifices made by those serving across Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and all the troops who fought as part of the British and Commonwealth response, will be very much at the heart of the commemorations.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I am probably the only person in this House today who was a child during the Second World War, between the ages of six and 12.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
And the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—of course. But there are not very many of us, I have to say. Does the Minister think it might be useful to have some views from those of us who lived through it on what happened: for example, on rationing?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am not going to comment on how many noble Lords were children during the Second World War. I still have my great aunt’s ration card, which is one of my very valued family memories of the Second World War. I agree with the noble and learned Baroness that the stories of children from the Second World War, as told to children, will help them understand the full experience of what war was like. There are children still going through war situations now, including, very sadly, some of the children who may be in our schools. I will not go into the story about my mother talking about the first time she managed to eat chocolate and a banana and hated them, but all of this adds flavour and colour to the stories that we would all want children to learn from and understand.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I am proud to say that my father was president of the Royal British Legion. He loved his time working under the direct command of Admiral Lord West—the noble Lord, Lord West. So I must declare an interest: for them, and for the honorary captain of the Royal Navy Reserve, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, and every other reservist, active and retired Armed Forces personnel, I want this to be an amazing anniversary. Does the Minister agree that one of the best ways of doing this is via the cadet force, which encourages children between the ages of 12 and 18 to be the best they can be?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I pay tribute to the noble Earl’s father’s role and to all those in your Lordships’ House who have served or are serving in various capacities in our Armed Forces. I am happy to agree with the noble Earl about the cadet forces. The Combined Cadet Force programme will continue to receive £3.6 million in government funding through the Ministry of Defence for this academic year. This funding supports the ambition for it to grow to 600,000 cadets in 500 school cadet units across the UK. It is in addition to the annual cost to the MoD of the Combined Cadet Force, which is estimated at over £42 million per year. I ought to note that my nephew benefits hugely from being a member of one of the cadet forces.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, as the Culture Minister who was responsible for the World War I commemorations, I first utterly reject the notion that Ministers were reluctant to commemorate the contribution of Commonwealth soldiers. I felt very strongly that their contribution was very much to the fore.
The Minister mentioned the Imperial War Museum. I urge her to include all our cultural institutions in the 80th anniversary commemorations, in particular our regimental museums, which are central to the services and their identity. They are funded by the Ministry of Defence and—this is not a criticism—I always feel that they are a bit of an orphan when it comes to thinking about our cultural strategy. So this will be an opportunity to really recognise the cultural contribution that our regimental museums make.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
At DCMS, we are really keen for all museums with a relevant interest and those with a broader social role in telling the story of the people of Britain to take part. I had an initial conversation about the celebrations yesterday with my noble friend Lord Coaker and I will be happy to pick up the point the noble Lord raised.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
My Lords, I welcome what has been said about the plan to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. On this day in 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In those commemorations, when we look at and celebrate the end of World War II, we should not forget about the conditions that gave rise to World War II. The next generation needs to be just as aware of that as of the ending of it.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am absolutely confident that Members from across your Lordships’ House will agree. This week has also marked Holocaust Memorial Day and this year will also mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. I am confident that those stories will be told. His Majesty the King recently visited Auschwitz. It was the first state visit by our head of state and it is really important that those stories are told as part of this. It is a commemoration of all the events of the Second World War.
European Union: Trade
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Liddle
To ask His Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the European Commission on securing better trade terms with the European Union, including through a possible customs union as suggested by Commissioner Šefčovič.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are committed to resetting our EU relationship, including by reducing barriers to trade. We will negotiate a veterinary sanitary and phytosanitary—SPS—agreement to prevent unnecessary border checks. We aim to secure mutual recognition for professional qualifications, and we will work to help our touring artists. We look forward to exploring these issues with the EU, but we have been clear that there will be no return to freedom of movement, the customs union or the single market.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her Answer. Since I tabled this Question, we have had the Chancellor’s growth speech, which recommitted the Government to this reset of our relations. Does my noble friend agree that this is a means of lessening unnecessary barriers to trade, in a shorter timeframe than many big infrastructure projects, that would lead to better growth prospects and greater overseas-investor confidence in Britian and help the tens of thousands of SMEs that have ceased to trade with Europe because of the Brexit barriers? Does she also agree that, now that the new Conservative leader has said that Brexit was ill-planned, this presents an opportunity to overcome the blockers to a better trading arrangement?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for raising the comments made by the leader of the Opposition. I understand she has criticised her predecessors for mishandling Brexit, saying that leaving the EU without a growth plan was a “mistake”. I hope this means that we can work on a cross-party basis on these issues, because resetting our relationship with the EU will be key to delivering our plan for change and our plan for growth. The Chancellor has been clear that removing barriers to trade with the EU is critical to support growth and help our businesses. As the Chancellor said recently in her Mansion House speech, our biggest trading partner is the EU. We must recognise that our markets are highly interconnected and ensure that our approach to the EU reset supports growth and delivers investment for the economy.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the Government have said on many occasions that they want to reset our relationship, and this Minister is no exception. Largely speaking, that means ruling things out as far as ruling things in. I understand that negotiating in detail in public is not a good practice. However, a good practice is telling your counterparty what you want. So far, there have been no specific demands or requests from the UK to Brussels. When will that start, and when will this reset actually happen?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. We are not going to give a running commentary on negotiations.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Lord suggests that he did not ask for that. However, if we were to start putting demands in the media, I am not sure that is resetting the relationship with our European friends and neighbours; it sounds like more of the same that we saw from the previous Government.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the Minister just told the House that there would be no return to freedom of movement. The Prime Minister is travelling to Brussels next week to meet with EU leaders. According to media reports this morning, they are going to ask him to agree to a new youth mobility scheme. Can the Minister say whether that is not a return to freedom of movement?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
A youth mobility scheme is absolutely not a return to freedom of movement. If the noble Lord wishes to have a longer discussion about the youth mobility scheme, there will be a longer debate on this issue later today. We will obviously be looking at EU proposals on a range of issues, but there are no plans for a Europe-wide youth mobility scheme.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister recognise that the remarks made by Commissioner Šefčovič do not involve the UK joining a customs union? They were about rules of origin, mainly for Mediterranean countries, of whom only one, Turkey, is in a customs union—the others are not. Will she therefore confirm that the Government will give urgent and positive consideration to this proposal?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention is, as the noble Lord makes clear, not a customs union, nor is it an EU scheme. We are always looking at ways to reduce barriers to trade within our clear red lines, because having a smooth trading relationship with the EU is absolutely essential to driving growth at home. This is one of the options, and it is right and responsible that we are looking at it to determine what is in the UK’s national interest. But nothing has been agreed yet and, as ever, I am not going to give a running commentary on these talks.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)
My Lords, while I do not require the Minister to respond in song—wonderful though that might be—would she remember when she is in Brussels this week to focus very hard on the need for musicians and their instruments to be able to travel much more freely? Music is one of our most wonderful outcomes from the United Kingdom in the whole art field, and it is one that has been really damaged by the way in which movement is not allowed. That is hampering all sorts of things, not just the young. She can of course respond in song if she feels like it.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I genuinely think noble Lords would be very keen for me not to respond in song; they can all speculate on what type of song I would respond with. The question the noble Baroness raises around touring artists is a good one, and I look forward to talking about this in greater depth this afternoon.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, now that we have talked about the Second World War, it should remind us that the whole development of the EU, and the Common Market before it, was based on very close Franco-German co-operation and reconciliation. Now that that co-operation is not what it was, by any means, and that new forces are emerging in Europe, should we not work for new ideas and relations with our European neighbours? We certainly want good relations through the European Political Community organisation, where we have good status and standing, and where a number of completely new ideas, free of some of the old prejudices, are available and should be developed.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
These two Questions I have been responding to today do have an element of similarity. I agree with the noble Lord that our relationships with Europe are related to trade but they also have to be related to security. We want to deepen co-operation within areas where the EU has unique capabilities, such as sanctions, countering disinformation, military mobilisation, and civilian crisis management and support—particularly to Ukraine. It is quite sobering to remember and recognise that, while we are talking about commemorating the Second World War, we do have war in Europe currently.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister give a couple of economic arguments for why we would not want to be in a customs arrangement with the European Union?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We had an election, and this Government stood on not rejoining the customs union. We keep our promises as a party, and I make no apology for doing so.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
Can the Minister tell your Lordships what involvement there is with the devolved Administrations? Are there consultations with them in relation to these discussions with the EU, since the outcome of those discussions will have a major impact on internal UK trade, not least because of the Windsor Framework?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
In relation to the Windsor Framework, and with regard to Northern Ireland in particular, this Government are committed to delivering for the people of Northern Ireland and protecting trade flows. The noble Lord will be aware that my noble friend Lord Murphy is currently undertaking an independent review of the Windsor Framework to ensure that it is delivering for all communities in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, may I endorse and support the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and say he will have considerable support from this side?
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
My Lords, that concludes Oral Questions for today.
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The Senior Deputy Speaker
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, these 32 Motions give effect to the rotation rule, which is applied each January, following the recent meeting of the Committee of Selection to secure a regular turnover of Select Committee memberships and to establish the membership of the 2025 special inquiry committees. There are also Motions to appoint members to the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee, following the decision of the House to establish such a committee, and to amend the terms of reference of the European Affairs Committee to reflect the establishment of this new committee.
The Committee of Selection has considered that it was in the best interests of the House that the current chair of the Conduct Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, lead the debate on the most recent report of the committee, which reviews and makes recommendations for changes to the Code of Conduct. It is therefore proposed that she remain on the committee until the debate has been held, which will be no later than Thursday 20 March, at which point the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, will join the committee as the new chair.
I take this opportunity to thank the noble Lords who are rotating off committees for their committed service, and to welcome those noble Lords who will join the hard-working committees of the House. I beg to move.
Gaza: Humanitarian Situation
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, since the heinous terrorist attacks of 7 October, we have stood united across the House in calling for the unconditional release of all hostages by Hamas as the only way to reach a sustainable end to this abhorrent conflict. We now feel both the anxiety and the hope of the families who have waited, anticipating the release of the remarkably brave women hostages who have been returned thus far under the ceasefire agreement. We saw this morning the release of the hostage Agam Berger, with, we hope, seven more set to be freed today. We pay tribute to all their families through their suffering.
It is important to remember the hostages who we learned on Monday will not return home alive, having been murdered at the hands of Hamas. This is the most devastating news for their families, and we must have them in our thoughts during the uncertainty in the days and weeks ahead. As the Minister said in the other place, we want the ceasefire agreement to hold, but we stress that every single hostage must be released.
The Minister rightly referred to UNRWA. Although no one can doubt the size of the distribution network, we cannot ignore the problems within that organisation. It is in no one’s interest to pretend that they have not happened. We know the facts: UNRWA staff and institutions have been infiltrated by Hamas, and there have been shocking allegations of UNRWA staff involvement in the 7 October attacks. Following the UN internal investigations and the subsequent sackings, the Colonna report and the reforms need to be implemented in full. The Minister in the other place said:
“I have discussed this directly with the head of UNRWA, and I know that my colleagues have done so repeatedly”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/1/25; col. 188.]
Does the Minister have any update for the House on how these discussions are going, and can she tell us what progress has been made on the implementation of the Colonna report?
The reconstruction of Gaza is obviously a huge task. What discussions have the Government had with regional neighbours? What role does the Minister envisage for the UK in this reconstruction? Will we be contributing financially, and is she pushing for multilateral institutions to be involved?
On the future governance of Gaza, I have said that I would like to hear more about the Government’s day 1 plan. The Foreign Secretary previously told the House—and I think we would all agree—that
“there cannot be a role for Hamas”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/1/25; col. 516.]
As my right honourable friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said in the other place, we echo those words, but the sickening sight of Hamas gunmen parading around hostages just last weekend—we saw it again this morning—caused great alarm. What steps are being taken to end the reign of terror that Hamas has unleashed upon the Gaza Strip?
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, in a week where we have all acknowledged as a country, including our Head of State, the horrors of 80 years ago, we should be sensitive to the ongoing humanitarian crisis and conflict in the Middle East. There is no place for anti-Semitism in the UK or anywhere, and we should learn the lessons of dehumanisation. That is why we should condemn President Trump when he describes the cleaning out of Gaza, and condemn extremists who called Palestinians human animals. Language is important, and therefore sensitivity should be part of our policy-making.
It is worth recognising, as the noble Lord did, that Hamas continues to dehumanise hostages. For the families of hostages who will have their loved ones returned alive, we give thanks for the ceasefire, and we commiserate with those who will receive their loved ones’ bodies. We should hope that the ceasefire holds, because it should provide—even though it is very hard to see—a basis for future and further political dialogue. But two things are actively working against that.
The first is the implementation, today, of the ban on UNRWA in Israeli sovereign territory. I welcome that this has been condemned by the Government. What actions will the UK take? UNRWA operates under a mandate. The Israeli Government have obligations under that UN mandate, and UNRWA should be free to provide humanitarian assistance within the Occupied Territories, unfettered at the border areas within Israeli territory. I would be grateful to hear what actions the Government will now take. While we welcome the fact that Ministers can condemn and raise concerns, there should not be impunity for breaching the UN mandate.
In the West Bank, we continue to see unacceptable violence, not only with regard to the settlers but in the impunity of those within the outposts, and the violence there, which is illegal under Israeli law. There can be no two-state solution if one of the authorities is systematically losing territory day by day. What actions will the Government take on expanding the sanctions on those who are perpetrating the violence, as well as ensuring that there is no impunity for those who are carrying out actions against Palestinian settlements?
On recovery and construction, I welcome that there is now a dedicated official within the FCDO to lead the UK official response to the consideration of reconstruction. I hope that the Minister might be prepared to offer a briefing on the actions in detail and what officials are doing. I welcome that we are co-ordinating that work. Previously in the Chamber, we have discussed the scale of rubble clearance, body recovery and the humanitarian catastrophe, from which the recovery will be enormous.
The Minister will not be surprised that I again raise the fact that there needs to be intensive work on child trauma, and especially on the restoration of education facilities. I have welcomed the UK support through multilateral funding. I appeal to the Government that one area where the UK can play a considerable and direct role, bilaterally, is the establishment of education support and child trauma and psychosocial support within these areas. I have raised before in the Chamber the 17,000 children—the equivalent of the entire under-10 population of London—who are homeless, without shelter or education.
I welcome the increased funding for the Palestinian Authority, but it is still lower than before the 0.7% ODA cuts. I hope the Government will now reconsider the overall envelope of UK assistance to ensure that we can play an increasing role in the recovery.
Finally, I hope that the House will allow me to raise two other brief aspects—one is Lebanon, and the other is the concerning news about conflict prevention. If we have learned anything during the last two years, with the conflicts in the Middle East in particular, it is that conflict prevention is one of the most efficient investments we can make. Where it fails, the cost is extreme. There are very worrying reports of a proposed one-third cut in conflict prevention funding. I hope that the Government will reconsider this.
Other reconstruction is needed in Lebanon. Yesterday, I and some colleagues met with Halima Kaakour, a Lebanese MP. I hope that Ministers will meet female Lebanese MPs who now want to work in a cross-party, cross-confessional and cross-community way in the Lebanese Parliament to ensure that reconstruction is part of the hoped-for peace and recovery, rather than entrenched division. If that is done badly and corruptly, unfortunately it will not bring about sustainable recovery.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
I am grateful to both noble Lords for their comments and questions. I echo the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, about Holocaust Memorial Day and the ever-vigilant way that we must think about anti-Semitism across the world, not least here in our own country.
The noble Lord opposite mentioned how united we have been at various points throughout this conflict. It is important that we maintain that unity whenever we can. As the noble Lord said, we need to support those hostages who are now released and are trying to rebuild their lives after the most traumatic events that they must have endured.
As the noble Lord said, our thoughts too must be with those who are enduring the most unconscionable grief at the loss of their relatives in these circumstances, as well as with those who continue to wait. Every hour that passes, they must experience agony waiting for news of their loved ones who are still held.
I am pleased that we made a decision early in the Government to restore aid to UNRWA. It is difficult to see how getting sufficient aid on the scale needed and to the places and people who so desperately need it can be achieved without UNRWA. However it is done, that aid must get to those people.
As the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, reminded us, the Foreign Secretary has said that it would not be right for Hamas to lead the work of rebuilding. As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, that work will be extensive. It must not just address the physical infrastructure; it needs to think too about the trauma that the community in Gaza has been through and, most of all, about the experience of children. Sometimes it will be right for the UK to take the lead and sometimes it will right that we work through others. We have some expertise we can lend to this, so I can promise the noble Lord that, where it is right for us to take the lead, then this is what should happen.
I was asked whether the population of Gaza should be able to return. Of course, if that is their wish, then they should be able to return to their homes, rebuild their lives and live peacefully in the land in which they have lived for years and built their lives. For them to be able to do that, it is important that the ceasefire holds. Without the ceasefire holding, it is impossible to imagine how the next steps towards the peace that we all want to see can ever be secured.
We remain committed to the two-state solution. Nobody should be doing anything to undermine the prospects of achieving that solution, however far away it seemed at some point. Perhaps it seems a tiny bit closer today than it did when we last discussed these matters last week or the week before, but it is still a very long way away.
I will take away the request for a briefing on reconstruction. It is a very good idea to have more engagement and detail. Sometimes it is difficult to get a meaningful discussion in this place, but briefing is a good suggestion. With noble Lords’ permission, I will take this away and invite noble Lords to the department to answer some of their more detailed questions.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I will pick up on something that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said about education. Understandably, much of the emphasis in the humanitarian response to what has been going on in Gaza has been about providing food, fuel and medicines. Under the United Nations, education is a right for all children. There are thousands and thousands of traumatised children living in Gaza who desperately need to get back to school. Would the Minister agree that this should now be given very high priority in all our reconstruction work with the international community? UNRWA has a huge amount of experience in providing education and schools across Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Territories. Would she agree that it should be restored and allowed to continue its work so that children in Gaza and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories should be able to get back to school and learn, to gain the skills and knowledge that they need to establish themselves in future?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is important to remember that our priority is to get the food, medicine and shelter to the people in Gaza who need it—most of all the children—but every day that is lost in education is a barrier to that community being able to support itself and to prosper and thrive. The only way that peace can be achieved is with a secure Israel and a prosperous Gaza. This seems such a long way from where we are. The noble Baroness is right to remind us that the need to get food and medicine in should go alongside the need for education. It seems very difficult from where we are, but it is important that we do not lose sight of the needs of young people to have the education that is their right.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very sensitive response to these extremely difficult problems. I know that a number of other noble Lords share my concerns as to how the Government will ensure that the much-needed reconstruction aid for Gaza is not appropriated by Hamas or other military groups to use to prepare for further attacks on Israel.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Of course this is a concern. We want all the aid that we and others provide to go to those people who need it so desperately. How we can make sure of anything is a very interesting proposition when it comes to Gaza. We will do everything we can, working through partners. We think that the best way to do this is through UNRWA. If there are other ways then we must use whatever we can find. As reconstruction begins—which we hope will be soon—it is important that this is done responsibly and sustainably so that the peace we may be about to achieve can last.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester
My Lords, I am grateful for this Statement and thank the Minister for her sensitive and careful comments. Would she accept that, although the ceasefire agreement offers a glimmer of hope that a different future is possible, the situation in the West Bank continues to go from bad to worse? What assessment have the Government made of Israel’s intensification of military action in the West Bank? The fear held by many, including those on these Benches who have just returned from that region, is that this is a precursor to full or partial annexation. What is the Government’s strategy for dealing with the deteriorating situation in the West Bank?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is right to remind us of this. This is a very complex situation and it is moving. We speak regularly with partners in the region and directly with leaders in Israel; we also use our presence in multilateral fora to make sure that these concerns are raised as often as we can, in the right way. It is difficult to imagine a situation where there is some progress only in one situation—these things are not completely separate, of course, and we must use every tool of influence that we possess in order to bring about the peace that we need.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, to follow on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, can the Minister elaborate on reconstruction in Gaza? We were all horrified by the videos that we saw when the hostages were released, which showed us that Hamas is in control and has a presence and military arms. I cannot see how there can be a long-term peace if Hamas is in control of Gaza. It will do everything it can to take the aid that we are giving. Does the Minister agree that it is impossible to imagine the long-sought two-state solution if Hamas is in control? So what steps will the Government take to create a democratically elected and governed Gaza and the West Bank?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
What is important is that the reconstruction of Gaza is led by the people of Gaza—yes, with support. There is a huge difference between the people of Gaza and Hamas. We want to work with international agencies to make sure that the people of Gaza are given the support that they need. Let us be under no illusions about how difficult that will be, partly because of the issues that the noble Lord alluded to, but also because the majority of the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. The extent of the work needed means that it will take many years; we will have to support this work for quite some time.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister confirm whether the Government have made any representations to the Government of Israel about the law that is about to come into force to remove the possibility of UNRWA having any access to the State of Israel? Can she say what rough impact assessment we may have made of the likely effect of that move, which is of course to frustrate a mandate given to UNRWA by the United Nations General Assembly? Can she also cast light on the discrepancy between the views of the Government of Israel that they have in fact provided evidence about the nine members of UNRWA staff who were thought to be acting with Hamas and were dismissed, and the view of UNRWA itself that it has not received any evidence whatever from the Government of Israel as to the guilt of these people?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is our view that the best way to get aid in as efficiently as is needed is through UNRWA. It is good that some aid has started to get in over the past few days but, without UNRWA, it is very hard to see how that will be sustained. To answer his specific question, yes, we have made that case very clearly to the Government of Israel.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s comments on UNRWA. It is reported that, in the first week of the ceasefire, UNRWA delivered 60% of all food aid into the Gaza Strip. It is therefore very difficult, without any other information from the Israeli Government, to know how they propose to replace that. Or will they literally leave people to starve in the Gaza Strip? We saw the horrific footage of hundreds of thousands of people returning to their land without much to go home to after the destruction there. The need is absolutely critical and, at a time like this, to outlaw UNRWA is completely irresponsible.
Can the Minister say whether the British Government have yet commented on the Trump Administration’s desire to “clean out” Gaza? I note that the French President and the German Chancellor have said that they do not support it and have condemned it. Indeed, in Egypt, Jordan and across the Arab world, it has been condemned and not supported. Will the British Government join those voices and utterly condemn what has been described as potential ethnic cleansing?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We do not agree that the people of Gaza should be prevented from returning to their homes. We are very clear about that. On what the noble Baroness said about UNRWA, yes, it is very difficult to see how the aid will be delivered and received without UNRWA. If there is another way of doing this that can be done straight away, on the scale that we need—clearly, the only important thing is that the aid gets where it is needed, not who does it—it is difficult to imagine how that could be achieved. So we continue to make that case; we know what the date is and what the law says. We will continue to make the case to the Israeli Government, but we are concerned, as the noble Baroness indicates we should be.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I can help my noble friend the Minister. We must do everything that we can to provide humanitarian aid. COGAT has provided figures on who provides the aid: UNRWA in fact has recently provided only 13% of the aid that goes in. Much more comes from other organisations. The World Food Programme, for example, provides more than 30%. In view of the problems that UNRWA has with its relationship with Hamas, should we not be ensuring that the aid that we provide goes through the World Food Programme and other organisations, rather than UNRWA, which is suspect?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am sorry, but I do not agree with that. UNRWA has been by far the most effective organisation at delivering aid in Gaza for very many years. There are other organisations and they may need to do an awful lot more, very, very quickly. We all should appreciate just how unlikely and difficult that will be.
Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. The world has rightly been focused on the horrors of the past 16 months in Gaza. As the right reverend Prelate said, during that time the situation in the West Bank has been rapidly deteriorating. In October, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, I hosted a group of young Palestinians from the West Bank. Two weeks ago, one of those young people, Amir, was shot in the knee and his friend was killed. A secure and prosperous West Bank is as important a component of a lasting peace as everything else that is happening. I ask the Minister: as well as speaking to people on the ground and our international partners, are we also speaking to the charities and wonderful organisations here in the UK that have been doing so much, for many years, to help bring both sides together for a lasting peace?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Yes, we are, but let me first convey my sincere condolences to Amir, who lost his friend in such circumstances; I also hope that he recovers quickly and fully soon. The noble Baroness is right to highlight the sterling work that has been done for very many years by charities and other organisations here in the UK that care so deeply about what is happening in the Middle East. Their work, I know, has saved lives and has enabled people to rebuild their lives and live more fully. There things are led by Governments—there are diplomatic routes and the conversations we are able to have—but nothing will substitute for the work of people-to-people connections and the links that are made between individuals and their families across the world. It is such a powerful thing and I thank her for reminding us of that.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, among the numerous shocking statistics that have come out of Gaza is that there are now over 100,000 wounded people there, that Gaza has the highest proportion per head of child amputees of any country in the world, and that 60% of people in Gaza have lost at least one member of their family.
Does my noble friend agree that maybe we have a harder job on our hands than we think? It is not just the homes, the schools and the hospitals that need rebuilding; it is the shattered lives of a profoundly traumatised people.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I could not agree more. We are doing what we can. As my noble friend says, this is not something that you just fix. It is a trauma that can be felt through many years—indeed, through generations. UK support has meant that more than half a million people have received essential healthcare, 647,000 have received food and 284,000 have improved access to water, sanitation and hygiene. As we have said today, whether or not UNRWA is able to continue will in large part determine whether some of that work can happen in the future.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, is it not time to remind ourselves of the obligation that this country made through the Balfour Declaration? It stated clearly that
“nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
Does the Minister agree that that includes the population of the West Bank and Gaza? Will she update the House on the noises coming from Washington about the possible emptying of Gaza into neighbouring countries—namely, Jordan—and does she agree that not a penny of British taxpayers’ money should be spent on the reconstruction of Gaza if it is to be forcibly emptied of its Palestinian population?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The noble Lord might be getting ahead of where I was planning on going today, but I have been very clear on our view of the importance of Gazans being able to return to their homes should they wish. That is our position and, I think, something that the noble Lord will probably agree with.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, I refer to the answer that the Minister gave to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, when he raised the very important matter of preventing aid going to Hamas and preventing Hamas hijacking that aid, looting it and using it for future attacks on Israel. I think the noble Baroness said that this was an interesting issue. She referred to UNRWA and its role. Can she give a bit more detail about what is being done with international partners, with Israel, to prevent this outrageous movement into terrorist hands of aid that should go to the people of Gaza?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is not interesting; it is urgent. Aid needs to get to the people who need it. One of the problems when a place descends into such desperation is that lawlessness always inevitably follows. That is what has happened, but we are still able to work with partners on the ground to get the aid to where it is needed. That is what we must continue to focus on. We have proven that we are able to get the aid where it is needed. We managed to vaccinate children against polio, where they needed two vaccinations. We managed to deliver that; it is not beyond us to get food, medicine and shelter to children in Gaza.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that measures must be taken now to protect and document locations where mass graves have been reported in Gaza? With that in mind, I suggest that we consult the International Commission on Missing Persons, which stands ready to support all efforts to protect and investigate mass graves and reliably identify human remains, for the sake of the dignity of the people of Gaza but also for the sake of peace and security in the long term.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Yes. That is a very good suggestion, and I will take it up. The noble Baroness is of course completely right that it is essential to be able to identify remains and to have an accurate picture of what has happened, for there to be consequences where appropriate and for loved ones to be able to identify the bodies of people they have lost. It is a bedrock without which it is very difficult to imagine how any peace could be achieved in the future.
Lord Polak (Con)
I refer the House to my registered interests. It was deeply shameful this morning to see that young girl, Agam Berger, come out after 15 months, surrounded, harassed and jeered by masked, armed gunmen. As I said in the House the other day, Israel is not negotiating with the UK or the UAE. Israel has to negotiate or do a deal with these thugs and terrorists called Hamas. Before everyone bemoans Israel’s decision regarding UNRWA, does the Minister agree that UNRWA has been in situ for many years, and during that time the aid that we and the rest of the world have given was used for what? It was used for building underground tunnels and amassing rockets to send to people. That is what UNRWA has done. Before we talk of the holy grail that is UNRWA, it is also responsible because it was there when all this was happening.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I will start by agreeing with the noble Lord about the scenes on release: the trauma is compounded by the way it is done. It is wrong, and it is not something that anybody, whatever your views on all this, should ever wish to see. On UNRWA, it is not a holy grail; it is a practical way of getting aid to a community that needs it so desperately. If there is another way of achieving the same, and if it is better or can do the same job, we must use that, but I genuinely do not see how other agencies will be able to get that aid into Gaza and to the people who need it as quickly as we need them to and at the scale we need them to.
Low and No-Tax Jurisdictions
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Sikka
That this House takes note of the tax implications of corporations shifting profits to low and no-tax jurisdictions.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, to this House. I really look forward to hearing her maiden speech.
It is a good time to talk about profit shifting, as the US is tearing up tax treaties and the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting—BEPS—project has stalled. HMRC states that since 2010 some £500 billion of tax has not been collected. A methodological annexe issued by HMRC, dated 20 June 2024, states:
“Some forms of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) are included in the tax gap where they represent tax loss that we can address under UK law. The tax gap does not include BEPS arrangements that cannot be addressed under UK law and that will be tackled multilaterally through the OECD”.
Basically, HMRC does not really know how much profit is shifted out of the UK and what the related tax losses are.
Multinational corporations are shifting annual profits of around $1.4 trillion into tax havens, causing Governments around the world to lose $348 billion a year in direct tax revenue. I am sure the Minister will be able to tell us how much the UK is losing. Over $329 billion of profit is shifted into the UK’s Crown dependencies and overseas territories by multinational corporations every year, causing a tax loss of $80 billion.
This daylight robbery is facilitated by financial engineering and opacity from a rapacious tax abuse industry located in the UK and its global dependencies. The Criminal Finances Act 2017 was introduced to tackle corporate tax evasion but, to the best of my knowledge, to date no one has been charged or prosecuted under it. So how exactly are profits shifted? I have a couple of examples.
Consider the case of BHS, which collapsed in 2016. I declare an interest as an adviser to the Work and Pensions Committee during its investigation into BHS. Lady Green, spouse of the chief executive, held 98% of its shares. In 2001, BHS sold some of its properties for £106 million to Carmen Properties Ltd, a company based in Jersey and under the sole control of Lady Green. The properties were then immediately leased back to BHS in England. Between 2002 and 2015, BHS paid £153 million in rent to the company in Jersey. These rents were tax-deductible expenses in the UK and reduced the tax liabilities of BHS. The rents booked in Jersey were not taxed because the profits were not made on the island. The profits of Carmen, the Jersey-based company, were then paid as dividends to Lady Green, who resided in Monaco, which levies no income tax at all.
Through this related-party transaction, BHS was able to manufacture a tax-deductible expense and reduce its tax liability. Lady Green received dividends on which no tax was paid in the UK or anywhere else. This type of financial engineering is not uncommon and the resulting losses do not form part of HMRC’s tax gap numbers, which are grossly understated. Governments can easily check the leakage of tax revenues by deducting tax at source from dividends, interest and other payments to entities in low and zero tax-rated jurisdictions. If the recipient can show that he or she paid the tax on the transaction elsewhere then the tax withheld can be refunded, but successive Governments have made no effort to curb this sort of tax avoidance.
My second example relates to the use of affiliates and subsidiaries in low or no-tax jurisdictions to shift profits. Starbucks, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, oil, gas and numerous other entities use complex corporate networks to shift profits. Apple’s profits are parked mostly in Jersey, where it really has no physical presence. Transnational corporations have huge opportunities for profit shifting and tax abuse. A microchip company has its product designed in country A, manufactured in B, tested in C and patented in D, and has its marketing rights located in E. Determining the cost, profits and allocation to each country is highly problematic.
Companies adjust their import and export prices and shift profits, especially as around 60% of world trade is internal to companies. The OECD’s transfer pricing rules require the use of arm’s-length prices, but in the absence of active independent markets such prices are almost impossible to ascertain. The top 500 companies in the world control around 70% of world trade; 80% of global sales of coffee are attributed to just three multinational corporations; and two companies control 40% of the global commercial seed market. Around 10 companies dominate the global pharmaceutical industry, four dominate the agricultural commodities market and around 14 dominate global auto manufacturing. This gives them huge opportunities for profit shifting and tax abuse.
I will illustrate this with an example relating to bananas. I am sure that all noble Lords have had bananas and have wondered where exactly most of the UK’s bananas come from. The UK’s bananas come from an island that does not grow any bananas and which no banana-laden ship has ever visited—that is, Jersey. Companies such as Chiquita, Dole, Fresh Del Monte, Fyffes and Geest control banana production in west Africa and Latin America, but all the paperwork is routed through Jersey.
For bananas selling for £1 in a UK supermarket, 13p goes to the growing country, of which 10.5p is for the cost of production, 1.5p is for labour and 1p is profit. After that, the games begin: 8p goes to a purchasing network located in the Caymans, within the same group of companies; 8p goes to a Luxembourg subsidiary for providing financial services, including interest payments on intragroup loans; 4p goes to Ireland for the use of a brand name; 4p goes to the Isle of Man for providing insurance; 6p goes to Jersey for management services; and 17p goes to Bermuda for providing a distribution network, even though no ship ever visits there.
By the time the bananas are unloaded in the UK, the 13p-worth of bananas magically has a cost of 60p and is sold in the supermarket for £1. The supermarket incurs costs in selling those bananas and will eventually declare a profit of 2p, which if taxed at the rate of 25% will yield half a penny for the Chancellor, out of the £1 that the customer has spent. So 47p of the profit made from UK customers is booked in low or no-tax jurisdictions and those profits are not taxed anywhere in the world. These numbers do not form part of HMRC’s tax gap calculation. Almost every multinational company is engaged in this type of profit shifting and tax abuse. I used to work for an oil company; another day I can maybe give the House examples of what the oil companies get up to.
Profit shifting requires urgent attention. The Companies Act 2006 does not require company accounts to provide any information about profits shifted. Accounts are totally opaque. Can the Minister say what plans the Government have to give visibility to profit shifting? Some visibility can be provided by public country-by-country reporting, which would enable proper transparency on both the amount of taxes avoided by multinationals and how far the UK’s measures have been effective in tackling that.
Section 122 of the Finance Act 2015 contained a requirement for multinationals operating in the UK to publish a public country-by-country report. But the legislation was never implemented and was subsequently repealed by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2023. The UK is now way behind other countries. The EU and Australia now require companies to make these disclosures through public country-by-country reporting. Can the Minister explain why the UK shuns tax transparency?
The UK Government have signed up to the OECD global tax deal, requiring a 15% minimum effective tax rate on multinational corporate profits, but President Trump has withdrawn from that agreement and threatened sanctions against Governments which levy 15% minimum tax on US companies operating in their countries. There is a way forward in the UN framework convention on international tax co-operation, but, unfortunately, last November the UK Government voted against it. It would be helpful to know what their strategy is.
Finally, it would be helpful if corporate tax returns are made publicly available, so that we can all see how they are shifting profits and what kind of taxes are being abused. That would empower the Public Accounts Committee to scrutinise those corporations and any sweetheart deals done by HMRC. I beg to move.
Baroness Coffey (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a huge privilege to have been introduced to this House last week, thanks to the recommendation to His Majesty the King by the leader of the Opposition, the right honourable Kemi Badenoch. I want to thank everybody who has made me feel most welcome. That starts with Black Rod and her team of excellent doorkeepers, under the stewardship of Mr Ingram; to the security team who keep us safe; to the Library, who feed our minds; to the catering team, who feed us and keep us going; to the cleaners, who keep this space spotless and sparkling; to all the clerks, who have helped me navigate this familiar, yet new, territory; and indeed everyone who contributes to enable this extraordinary, hallowed atmosphere in which we operate and seek to do our level best in the important constitutional role that we undertake.
I also want to thank my supporters who introduced me last week: first, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, whom I first met when I unexpectedly became Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. She was my absolute rock and I learned so much from her, as I am doing now. As for the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, I first met her over 20 years ago and we have been friends ever since. She has been a constant source of encouragement to me.
However, I would not be here at all if it were not for my family. It was particularly emotional when I was introduced last Tuesday, as it was precisely six months after my dear mother passed away. She loved Parliament and she loved politics. She loved coming to Westminster, particularly to the River Restaurant, where she would be called “M’Lady”—she loved that. She was a teacher, as was my father, who had passed away some years earlier. I held his Bible in my hand as I swore the oath. My sister was in the Gallery, and she genuinely saved my life seven years ago when, thanks to her tenacity with the NHS, I had an emergency operation for a brain abscess, which thankfully was successful.
As a family, we were all involved at some point in the Conservative Party in Liverpool, where I grew up in Grassendale, leading to its inclusion in my longer title. My political awareness was triggered by Militant Labour’s running of my home city, when, yes, my parents, as teachers, were part of the thousands who received their redundancy notices. That was when I realised that politics—who ran the council or country—mattered.
I certainly enjoyed my time as a Back-Bencher representing the people and businesses of Suffolk, and I reflect my love for Suffolk in my longer title with the town of Saxmundham, where I live. I should alert your Lordships that, when I left government, I became the Back-Bencher who spoke the most in the final six months of the last Parliament. I think it was the ability to speak for the first time on any topic that inspired me to pronounce on a variety of issues, recognising that I had been a Minister continuously for over nine years—two-thirds of my parliamentary career there. But I have that out of my system and I expect to be able to focus on some particular areas—but those will be of my choice in this House. Prime Ministers have made choices for me, on where I specialised and gained most experience and expertise, particularly in three departments—Defra, Health and Social Care, and Work and Pensions—where I had the privilege of being Secretary of State. I will endeavour, to the best of my ability, to really embrace the huge positivity of this House in its key role of scrutinising legislation and the Executive.
I know government is hard. I actually want the Government to do well, for the sake of the great people of our great nation. While I am sure we will disagree on certain aspects of policy or how we can improve the performance of our public services, I am united in wanting a strong NHS, a strong economy and for our country to succeed. I have long admired the tone of this House, with keen and courteous scrutiny at its heart, somewhat in sharp contrast to the other place where, sadly, the focus has become the social media clip rather than the social discourse and debate we used to have.
I hope that I have already accrued some credits in my apprenticeship for this place, by learning from all the Lords Ministers with whom I worked in government. There are several to name. However, I will save that for another day, but I can assure noble Lords that I recognise both how hard Lords Ministers work and the contribution to scrutiny made by this House, with its gentle peer pressure in trying to improve the legislation and performance of government for the greater good, even if, at times, it did not feel quite so gentle.
I am conscious that beyond the Chamber there is a wider community of Parliament in which I seek to play to a role. I have already started attending APPG events on the ocean, nature, trees and energy, and I look forward to the annual tug-of-war for charity. I certainly hope to provide some balance—if not some ballast—to help the Baronesses defeat the Commons for the first time.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
I know that I am making my maiden speech in this House perhaps much earlier than the norm. I could say it is because I am interested in the topic, as I worked as a finance director for a subsidiary of the multinational company Mars, Incorporated, so I am fully aware of the issue of corporate taxation and transfer pricing—more on that later. But I confess that the real reason for speaking today is that I am really keen to speak in Monday’s Moses Room debate on the statutory instrument about bins—yes, bins. Bins, potholes and pavements are the basics of local political life and, when they are not working well, people notice and get fed-up very quickly. However, I shall save my further remarks until next week.
I turn now to today’s debate on multinationals and corporate taxation. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on securing this debate. As a Professor of Accounting at the University of Sheffield, I know he has focused considerably on this issue. I bring my experience from business. I qualified as a chartered management accountant while working for Mars, Incorporated, and I certainly enjoyed the intellectual challenge of taxation. I think it wise at this point that I declare that I have a deferred pension with Mars, which is a multinational corporation.
My curiosity about corporate taxation was triggered when I did a summer placement with Ernst & Young. I had the joy of spending a week with the VAT team just as they were in court helping their client to persuade the judiciary that, yes indeed, a Jaffa cake is a cake, not a biscuit. With that, their product would continue to be zero-rated for VAT and therefore cheaper to the consumer. There is a saying in accountancy that “Profit is vanity, balance is sanity and cash is reality”. The reality for business is that tax is cash and, whether it is cash flow keeping the business afloat, paying salaries and bills, or investing cash in new capital equipment or intellectual capital, every good business will have a focus on tax, tax rates and the rules set out by legislatures around the world on how it manages its operations.
We also know that Governments require steady tax receipts in order to provide good public services. It was my tax training and business experience that gave me the confidence early on in my parliamentary career to point out to the then Chancellor, George Osborne, that several of the banks, particularly RBS, probably would not pay any corporation tax for a very long time as they could roll over all their losses from the financial crash, year after year. I am pleased to say that then led to a change in policy, so tax losses can only be rolled over for six years.
It is important that tax be fair. We should recognise that corporate tax rates and the overall tax burden on companies need to be fair and competitive if we want the economy to grow. We saw how the economy of the Republic of Ireland was massively boosted when it cut its corporation tax rate to12.5% and many companies flocked there, particularly IT companies. That is why the work on transfer pricing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, referred, has been so important, as ultimately businesses can choose where their headquarters or their science and innovation hubs, or their other key assets, are.
Transfer pricing is a fundamental concept in international taxation and corporate finance. It is the way that profits are shared around the world. It involves the pricings of goods, services and intangible assets when they are exchanged between related entities within a corporate group—inter-company transfers of goods or services. Transfer pricing delivers the necessary compliance on taxation and it can be a valuable tool for companies to become more efficient, to manage risk and to bolster economic development in countries and communities.
Importantly, especially with the OECD guidelines, transfer pricing is designed to ensure fair competition. It was the Conservative-led Government, using their leadership of the G8 back in 2013, who first brought this issue to task on the global stage after the financial crisis of the late noughties. It was agreed at the G8, and then at the G20 later that year, to have the OECD establish guidelines, as the useful Library briefing points out. The OECD completed its guidelines on BEPS—base erosion and profit shifting. A significant element was introducing the arm’s-length principle, which suggests that intercompany prices should align with those charged between unrelated parties in a competitive market. This principle serves as a cornerstone for many countries’ transfer pricing regulations, promoting fairness and transparency.
By appropriately allocating profits and costs among subsidiaries, companies can mitigate the risk of double taxation, which occurs when two or more jurisdictions impose taxes on the same income. Additionally, transfer pricing can help manage operational risks associated with currency fluctuations, and by adjusting transfer prices to account for exchange rate movements companies can stabilise their financial results, providing greater predictability in earnings and cash flows. This stability is crucial for long-term strategic planning and investment decisions.
Another important merit of transfer pricing is its contribution to promoting fair competition. By adhering to the arm’s-length principles, companies are incentivised to price their goods and services fairly. That practice helps prevent anti-competitive behaviour for local businesses which otherwise could be undercut by aggressive tax planning.
Overall, this is all useful in trying to make sure that we keep up to date in having that level playing field around the world. In June 2019, G20 Finance Ministers agreed to update the OECD proposals, known as BEPS 2, with two main interlocking pillars. Pillar 1 re-allocates part of the profits of the largest and most profitable multinationals from where they earn income to where they sell products and services; pillar 2 would impose a 15% minimum tax on global corporate profits based on the residence of the corporation. I understand that the 15% minimum tax has been controversial, as it removes one of the levers of agile, growing economies. I am also aware that the new US Administration have expressed concerns. However, this is a useful mechanism to make sure that there is fairness around the world.
For what it is worth, I think our time would be better focused on making the most of our investment zones and freeports, as well as stabilising tax legislation to give businesses certainty and confidence to invest here and help boost our economy. We should continue to welcome the many corporations that are based here and be mindful of the reasons why some companies are moving their corporate headquarters elsewhere.
Companies and communities need each other. Together, companies and communities can and must profit from each other—something on which I hope all noble Lords would agree.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on securing this debate. He has allowed me to claim in the future that he has been talking bananas, but he knows I have too much respect for him to do that.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Coffey on a truly excellent maiden speech. She has served as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, while representing her Suffolk coastal seat. She is known to love jazz, and as anyone who has been to the Conservative Party conference—which I thoroughly recommend to all noble Lords—knows, she excels at karaoke. In this House, I am sure she will have “the time of her life”—some will know why I say that—which, had I sung it, Hansard would not have recorded, so I think I got away with it.
I hope my noble friend has turned off the alarm on her phone, because I do not want my speech to be interrupted by “I Vow to Thee, My Country”, which I gather has happened in the past. There is a rumour that she and the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, are lobbying for a cigar smoking room to be created on the Terrace—I am not sure about that—as she brings gender equalisation even to this area. What she brings to this House, apart from anything else, is much-needed business experience. She is really welcome; it was an exceptional maiden speech, on which many congratulations.
This debate features one of my favourite subjects. The Minister knows of others, which he will be pleased to know I will not refer to, but I will focus on two areas, which I believe will generate more tax and revenue for the United Kingdom, because we are keen to work together so to do. The subject that the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has put forward was the subject of my maiden speech in 2013, made in response to the report from the then Economic Affairs Committee. I have spoken a few times on BEPS, as explained so well by my noble friend Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, is quite right to bring it up.
The UK has implemented several legislative measures to address profit shifting by multinational companies and has adopted BEPS measures recommended by the OECD, including the hybrid mismatching rules. These rules prevent tax advantages from differences in tax treatment of entities or instruments between countries. For example, a payment can be treated as a tax-deductible expense in one country and the receipt considered a tax-exempt dividend in another.
Then there is the UK corporate interest restriction, which limits the amount of tax relief that companies can claim on their net interest expenses to the higher of £2 million or 30% of EBITDA. It is a very powerful method of preventing private equity avoiding tax. Then there is the diverted profit tax, which was introduced in 2015. This targets profits artificially diverted from the UK, as it imposes a 25% tax on profits deemed to be diverted through schemes.
When I first qualified as a chartered tax accountant—which was much to everyone’s surprise, particularly my father’s, at the time—it was the controlled foreign companies rules which were the hot new area. They came in in 1984—I qualified in 1985—and were significantly reformed later, in 2012. These rules aim to prevent UK companies shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions by taxing the income of foreign subsidiaries of UK resident companies. There has of course always been the transfer pricing rules, which ensure that transactions between related parties are genuinely conducted at arm’s length, and HMRC has issued guidance on that as recently as September 2024.
With all this going on, why are we having this debate? It is because of the OECD’s pillars 1 and 2. The UK has one of the most robust anti-BEPS regimes in the world, largely due to measures taken by the previous Conservative Government, but also subsequent actions by the Labour Government. The OECD has led moves to eliminate BEPS since 2012. From the BEPS report in 2015, the UK has implemented pretty much all the material recommendations and closed a number of loopholes. The UK has implemented the first phase of pillar 2 and is implementing the second phase. The UK was one of the group of nations implementing at the very earliest date, along with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and all of the EU countries.
But now, as the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has indicated, somewhat shockingly perhaps, the US has pulled out of both pillars, and this leaves our Government in a quandary. Do we want to avoid retaliation or do we stick to our guns? We have discussed pillar 1 and pillar 2 at length in this House. A number of us were keen on the digital services tax, or DST, and we tried to persuade the Government that it was time to tighten it up. The argument given to us against this was the John Lewis argument: that if you are not careful, you attack shopkeepers trying to sell their products online, as opposed to marketplace providers which simply facilitate a sale.
At the time, I worked very hard with a very able tax adviser, Glyn Fullerlove, who drafted the legislation—which would have worked—but there was no political impetus to implement it, mainly because we all thought that DST would be a temporary tax while pillar 1 and pillar 2 were properly implemented. This does not look like it is going to happen. Will the Minister look at the DST rules afresh? In his opinion, are they still fit for purpose? Hard choices need to be made on DST—I believe it raised only £380 million last year and might raise about £800 million this year. Given that the Minister wants to help companies grow and raise more revenue, perhaps he might have another look at DST and see whether or not it should be enhanced.
On a practical matter, will a consequence of pillar 2 having no force or effect in the US be that US multinationals will no longer share information with non-US subsidiaries? If they do not share this information, it makes pillar 2 compliance and in particular the understated profits rule tax—UPRT—almost impossible. Has the Minister asked the US multinationals with a presence here whether they will have this information from their head office? I appreciate that the UPRT, which yields some £2.8 billion, will be harder to give up—indeed, it should not be given up—but it would be helpful to hear the Government’s plans for it, given that the information collation may be extremely difficult.
Another related area that I also believe can be of assistance to HMG in raising revenue is the undertaxation of profits in the UK by VAT evasion of offshore online retailers, which is a form of profit shifting. I am very grateful to Richard Allen, the heroic figure of RAVAS, for all his hard work in this area. As we know, bad actors are selling goods online under £135 to evade VAT and to gain a competitive advantage over law-abiding businesses both abroad and in the UK. Distortions of competition caused by the evasion of VAT cause significant harm to domestic retail, both on the high street and online. This harm in turn damages the UK economy through reduced tax revenue, subsequent employment and so on.
Despite recent legislation, which a number of us worked on, there are still obvious flaws in the ID verification system operated by Companies House, and HMRC has essentially enabled bad actors to easily obtain UK company registrations and thus VAT numbers. We have all read about thousands of letters arriving at a flat in Swansea as a result of overseas actors trying to create artificial UK companies. They are pursuing negative and fraudulent behaviour that is essentially the evasion of VAT, and thus shifting profits overseas.
Currently, HMRC has no effective mechanism for enforcing VAT on imports below £135 in value. Import VAT is no longer due on business-to-consumer non-excise goods sent in consignments valued at £135 or less. It is assumed that overseas businesses have complied with the UK legislation that obliges them to register for UK VAT, but that assumption is entirely unenforceable and a coach and horses are driven through it.
Some constructive ideas—such as a passport scheme where you simply put a sticker on every good that can be scanned as it comes in—are around but have not been enforced. It is true that some measures have been introduced, but there remains a significant and immediate problem. Can the Minister look at this urgent issue afresh and perhaps accept a meeting with Richard Allen of RAVAS, so that we can generate the appropriate and correct revenue for HM Treasury and continue the fight against evasion of VAT?
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, many of the large corporations that affect our lives are multinational enterprises. This circumstance is a product of the process of globalisation that has taken place over the last half century, albeit that some multinational corporations have far longer histories. Most of the multinational corporations originated in a single country to which they may continue to owe a partial allegiance, but this might be regarded as an historical circumstance that is of little relevance today.
The Ford Motor Company is an early example of a multinational corporation. The company was incorporated in 1903. The headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan no longer commands its European offshoots, but the headquarters has nevertheless been responsible for major financial decisions. This has detrimentally affected some of the former subsidiaries of the company outside the United States.
Two such former subsidiaries were Jaguar and Land Rover, acquired in 1989 and 2000 respectively. Our Government should have intervened to prevent the foreign purchase of these leading British firms; many other Governments would have done so. In 2008 the two companies were sold on to the Indian company Tata Motors when the American Ford company was in financial distress.
Tata had previously been involved in a joint venture with the Fiat motor company, which is now part of a multinational Italian, American and French conglomerate known as Stellantis, which comprises Fiat, Chrysler, Citroën and a host of other marques. This conglomerate was created in 2021 and is headquartered in the Netherlands. It is a paradigm of a modern multinational corporation. The question arises of whether there are disadvantages from this sort of globalisation that might be experienced by the subsidiary companies and by the countries in which they are located.
The history of Jaguar Land Rover demonstrates the manner in which a native enterprise can acquire a global reach. The firm is now set to penetrate the Chinese and Indian markets. It is arguable that it would not be in such a position if it had remained solely in British ownership. However, when such a company becomes part of a much larger organisation it is in a dangerously subservient position. It can be affected by circumstances within the larger organisation over which it has no control, and which can be to its detriment. The sale of Jaguar Land Rover to Tata was occasioned by the financial distress of the Ford Motor Company, which had purchased the firms in an attempt to enhance its own profitability.
The professor, my noble friend Lord Sikka, has highlighted some severe abuses arising within multinational corporations that can affect their subsidiary companies and the nations in which they reside. The profits of a firm can be used by the parent company to sustain other, less profitable parts of the enterprise, when they might have been used for the firm’s own investments. He has pointed to the ways in which multinational corporations can conduct internal trade at fictitious and exorbitant prices to enable them to evade taxes on a massive scale. They can assign the costs of their enterprise to subsidiaries in countries where there are high taxes, and they can assign their profits to subsidiaries in countries in which there are low taxes. By appearing to make losses in the high-tax domains, they can avoid being taxed, and by declaring them elsewhere, they can retain a large part of their profits. To overcome these abuses can require considerable resources and strong co-ordination between the affected nations, which may have vastly different tax regimes.
The UK has a financial services industry of a disproportionate size when measured against the size of its gross domestic product. It is inevitable that it should be in the forefront of advising and facilitating the stratagems of tax avoidance. A dramatic case of tax avoidance that has recently come to light concerns the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. He has been residing and trading within the UK. However, his trades and hedge fund operations have been attributed to the British Virgin Islands, a so-called tax haven. In a defence against the charges of tax evasion, the oligarch’s lawyers have declared that he has
“always obtained independent expert professional”
opinion and legal advice, and has
“acted in accordance with that advice”.
This brief assertion reveals two things. The first is that there are plenty of people at hand in the City of London to advise on how to evade the British laws of taxation. The second is that those laws are weak and easily exploited. Our financial sector has mediated many of the acquisitions and takeovers that have created large multinational corporations. In the process, we have lost the ownership of many of our premier enterprises. Our national interests have become subservient to the interests of the multinational corporations to an extent that is probably unprecedented in the developed world.
The UK has lost ownership and control of its major public utilities and of its strategic industries. Utilities in which foreign ownership dominates include electricity generation, water, seaports, airports, railways, rolling stock and much more. The majority of motor manufacturers in the UK are under foreign ownership, a large part of our aviation industry has been sold to foreign owners, we are no longer the owners of our steel industry and most of our cement manufacturing is in foreign ownership—the list could be continued almost indefinitely.
The British financial sector and British banks differ markedly in their behaviour from those in adjacent countries. They have had a long history, and they were originally involved in trade and financial intermediation. Formerly, continental banks were involved principally in agricultural credit, and then they began investing in manufacturing. This may partly explain our nation’s comparative failure to invest in manufacturing, despite the fact that we were the original industrial nation.
Our banks and financial sector invest preponderantly in property and financial assets. The profits are derived from the commissions earned in mediating mergers and takeovers among firms. A major source of income has come from selling our industrial assets to overseas owners. The sale of our assets to foreign owners has enabled us to maintain a large deficit on our current account; the value of the goods that we import far exceeds the value of those that we export. The sale of our assets has also sustained a demand for the pound in international currency markets. This has inhibited our exports by raising their prices for foreign purchasers, which has also been a factor in our industrial decline.
A nostrum to alleviate those problems, propounded by the previous Government, has been to encourage foreign direct investment, which was the theme of the Harrington report that was commissioned by the Conservatives. Such a strategy will invite multinational corporations to enter the British economy. It will add to a deadweight loss, which is the remittance overseas of dividends and interest payments. Those are an incalculable drain on our national income. The noble Lord, Lord Harrington, observes that, when the Government invest, the private sector follows, and that £1 of government investment can unlock between £7 and £10 of private sector investment. He recommends that the Government should become an active investor. The present Government are also pursuing foreign direct investment. However, they seem to be unwilling to become an investor; they would prefer to rely almost completely on foreign capital.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
I will speak briefly in the gap. I want to ask my noble friend the Minister about the measures that can be taken. The issue has been set out very clearly, but is the Treasury considering steps such as strengthening HMRC’s enforcement of transfer pricing? Is it considering the idea of withholding tax on intergroup payments and generally tightening its anti-enforcement rules?
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, first, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. She made a fascinating maiden speech; I thank her for it. Her interest may be in bins, but by speaking in this debate, she has, either voluntarily or involuntarily, joined the society of financial geeks who speak about tax issues in this House. I am the least expert of them, so I am glad that she has now joined the cast.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for obtaining this debate; it is very timely and important. He helped us all by explaining base erosion and profit shifting— BEPS—which is, in essence, the use of artificial transactions to shift profits into tax havens or lower-tax jurisdictions and avoid the taxes that would otherwise have been payable in the country where the profits arose. At the global level, the OECD estimates that, annually, some 4% to 10% of global corporate tax revenue is lost through BEPS. The Tax Justice Network alleges that the losses are almost double the OECD estimate and that a network of British Crown dependencies and overseas territories is responsible for some 23% of those losses.
Discussions of Crown dependencies and overseas territories are for another day—there is a very complex debate to be had—but I point to the experience that the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, referred to: the exposure yesterday of the Abramovich tax avoidance scandal. It was exposed publicly by a group known as Cyprus Confidential. It underscores how limited HMRC’s capability is to pursue large tax avoiders and their enablers. I join the noble Lord, Lord Davies, in asking: what kind of remedies could be put in place? As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said, we could use a great deal more clarity on what exactly is being lost to the UK; the tax gap is not an adequate way to try to analyse or to expose this set of problems.
We need to take some credit here in the UK, because under different Governments we have sought to join international efforts to tackle BEPS. In many ways, we have been a leading voice in developing the OECD’s two-pillar strategy, which is supported by 135 countries and jurisdictions. Under it, pillar 1 would reallocate part of the profits of the largest and most profitable multinationals from where they “earn income” under accounting rules to where they “sell” products and services. Pillar 2 would impose a 15% minimum tax on the global corporate profits of multinationals with over €750 million in turnover based on the residence of the corporation. The OECD estimates that, by implementing pillar 2, global tax paid by the world’s biggest multinationals would increase by $192 billion per year.
Although multinationals in a number of sectors use profit shifting—the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, talked about the motor industry—the sector of most concern, by far, is the technology sector, which has so many tools to use in profit shifting. Frankly, here we are primarily talking about US-based corporations. I looked at the actions that the UK has taken. As the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, in 2015 there was the diverted profits tax; it did not raise a lot of money, but it led to some changes in behaviour. I join the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, in asking: why has country-by-country reporting ended up getting dropped? Perhaps the Minister can help us with that.
In 2020, the UK implemented a digital service tax of 2%, reflecting its concern that foreign—again, primarily US—technology multinationals were profit shifting to reduce their UK tax bill. The DST raised £678 million for the Treasury last year, predominantly from Google, Amazon and Apple. The tax also provides a more level playing field for UK-based technology firms. As the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, it is described as a temporary measure until pillar 1 is completed, which, I think, is why attention has not been paid to it. I join him in suggesting that it is time that the Government looked at the DST, to see if it could be enhanced in ways that would better represent both the loss of gross revenue and the unevenness of the playing field.
To enact pillar 2, the UK introduced in 2024 a multinational top-up tax—MTT—and a domestic top-up tax, DTT. The Finance Bill, which is now making its way through Parliament and which we will receive although we will be unable to amend it, is intended to complete the UK legislation for pillar 2 by introducing the undertaxed profits rule, UTPR. This is the bit with teeth. As the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said, it is estimated to bring in about £2.8 billion a year.
There is a real question, as far as I understand, about when this will be implemented, once the legislation is passed. Can the Minister give us some clarifications on the date? There are growing concerns that, potentially, it could be kicked into the long grass. The problem is, as we can all anticipate, the arrival of President Trump. He very clearly said that the OECD agreement on BEPS has
“no force … in the United States”.
It has withdrawn from all the relevant treaties, but this is a far stronger statement.
In November, the FT printed an article entitled
“Trump win puts global corporate tax deal ‘in peril’”.
It suggested that countries would be too scared to apply UTPR to US-based companies for fear of punitive tariffs. Indeed, the big tech companies, which have the US President’s ear, as we all know, have said very clearly through their lobby groups that they plan to use trade negotiations to push back strongly against even the UK’s existing 2% digital services tax.
To add another complication to all this, in a rapidly changing world, we have cryptocurrency. I regard cryptocurrency basically as pyramid schemes masquerading as technology, but they can certainly provide a mechanism for bad actors who want to carry out any kind of tax avoidance, including profit shifting. I am interested to know how this changes the thinking of the Government and HMRC in trying to keep a grip on the profit-shifting strategies that are increasingly employed.
One thing I would suggest is that it is time to make sure that we link up with potential allies who are also willing to stand firm against base erosion and profit shifting. We know it is the EU; I suspect it is also Canada and Japan, and there should be others. My party has called for the Government to seize the opportunity of a pan-Europe customs scheme as a mechanism which would perhaps help us pull together our relationship with the EU but then also engage with other allies around this issue. I ask the Minister: are we in discussion with others who share our worldview on how we keep alive the strategy to end base erosion and profit shifting in this new Trump era? This really has to be done collectively, because it is one of those areas where we either hang together or, frankly, we hang separately.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady Coffey on her excellent speech. I eagerly look forward to working with her and taking advantage of both her ministerial and business experience. It is not every day that one speaks after a former Deputy Prime Minister, and I share her love of culture, racing and music. I was pleased to hear her refer to our own noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott and to her time at the DWP, where I undertook a review of the state pension age, which, at the time, was quite widely welcomed. I always wondered who was behind that amusing judgment on Jaffa cakes—now we all know.
I also agree with my noble friend that where companies are headquartered is very important. In my own experience, there are pluses, such as R&D centres and community outreach, which are usually lost when companies move abroad. We need a Government who promote investor confidence and certainty, as my noble friend explained, in order to keep our innovative companies in the UK and attract new ones.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, did, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for initiating this debate. He and I sometimes agree on what the Government are doing wrong, although our philosophies are different. He has set out a coherent set of principles from a left-wing perspective. I think differently, not least because I believe in the importance of the private sector and innovative companies in driving growth, but that does not detract from his consistency and persistence.
For decades, some multinational corporations have funnelled billions of pounds in profits to minimise tax, especially to lower their exposure to corporation tax. This is achieved by various methods. For example, a company may sell intellectual property to a subsidiary in a low-tax country and pay the subsidiary for the use of that intellectual property, or goods and services may be traded between subsidiaries at manipulated prices to allocate profits to the tax haven entity. We have heard examples from the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, including the reports this week about the arrangements for the Abramovich yachts. What is the Government’s attitude to that arrangement? That said, it is imperative that businesses and their capital should be able to move freely so that there is international investment and the benefits of comparative advantage are realised.
The previous Government made significant progress in tackling the transfer of businesses’ profits to low-tax and no-tax locations. We constantly stressed our commitment to combating tax avoidance and pledged to raise an additional £6 billion annually. In 2018, we announced a digital services tax to ensure that digital businesses paid tax that reflected the value they derived from UK users, as an interim measure, pending an international agreement to reform the corporate tax framework. I supported it in this House, drawing on my own experience in the retail sector, where the tech giants held an unfair advantage because they did not pay much VAT and had much lower business rates. That reality has not changed. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that it was the sector of most concern to her.
Then, in 2022, as we have already heard, we confirmed that we would implement the OECD pillar 2 rules for a global minimum corporate tax rate, for accounting periods beginning after 2023. Pillar 2 applies a “global minimum tax” of 15% to the profits of multinational groups whose revenue exceeds €750 million per year. Provision to this effect was included in the Finance Act 2023 and further provisions were included in the Finance Bill 2023-24. As a result, the OBR estimated that the implementation of these reforms could raise £2.8 billion in 2028-29.
Due largely to measures taken by the previous Government, as my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley said, the UK has one of the most robust anti-base erosion and profit shifting regimes in the world.
That was the position until very recently. But the US has always been unenthusiastic about this whole process and this attitude is most marked in the Republican Party. The US has very recently withdrawn from the OECD deal in full. This is explosive stuff. US firms are some of the most prominent among those whose activities have caused the problems to which I have referred. The US announcement upends all plans and expectations. There are strong hints that UK interests might be adversely affected as a consequence. For example, our digital services tax and the undertaxed profits rule might be in the present Administration’s sights. The Minister may be able to confirm the sums involved. As I understand it, DST was forecast by the NAO in 2022 to raise £862 million by 2024-25. UTPR is only just beginning to take effect but is due to raise £550 million by 2029-30, according to the HMRC policy paper of last October on multinational top-up tax.
In short, the path along which we were proceeding now looks to be full of problems. An alternative to sticking to these taxes is the risk of costly tariffs if an accommodation cannot be found with the Trump Administration; in other words, the world has changed and we need to reflect how best to respond to this change. What is the Government’s assessment of all this—including my noble friend Lord Leigh’s question about the impact of the future lack of information sharing? How will they respond and, most importantly, how will they protect UK interests? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts on this extremely important issue.
The disadvantages of corporations shifting profits to low-tax or non-tax jurisdictions are well known; there is no need for me to go on about them, except to say that they represent a serious problem for UK economic interests. These disadvantages apply whatever the US Administration might do, but we now need a fundamental rethink about how we can best deal with these disadvantages in the world as it now is and tackle the problems that we jointly see.
My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley has come forward with various alternative proposals on VAT and its enforcement. In 2021, the Conservative Government introduced changes to limit profit shifting, from which the OBR then scored substantial revenue. If there is good reason to believe that these have not been as effective as they should have been, as my noble friend suggested, I would encourage Ministers to look at them again. I believe that his points merit serious consideration.
I had intended to end by outlining how the Government’s recent actions have damaged the economy. It remains true that, by talking the economy down, making large increases in employment taxes and crushing companies under new employment regulations, the Government are making fundamentally wrong and anti-growth choices. The consequence is a flat economy killed stone dead by the Budget—even Tesco followed Sainsbury’s with job cuts this week—and a potentially chilling effect on investment from overseas.
Yet these actions—foolish as they were—are only marginally relevant to today’s subject. It is well-run businesses in a thriving public sector that create jobs and wealth. They rely on the Government of the day to deal with the complexities of international tax and negotiate arrangements that are effective and fair to UK plc. The Trump challenge on tax is serious and I look forward to hearing how the Government plan to address it.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on securing this debate, and thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I also take this opportunity to join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, on her maiden speech and welcoming her to your Lordships’ House.
I will seek to set out the work that the Government are doing to uphold internationally agreed principles of fair tax competition and protect the UK against profit shifting by multinational companies. If there are any specific questions raised during the debate that I am unable to answer now, I will happily write to noble Lords.
I start by underlining our commitment to growth—the number one mission of this Government—and how the corporate tax system can help deliver this mission. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned, we had to take some difficult decisions in the Budget last year to restore stability to the public finances. These were not decisions that we wanted to take, but they were necessary to clear up the mess we inherited. We recognise that this has impacted some businesses and has had impacts beyond business, too.
However, in last year’s Budget we also published a corporate tax road map to provide the best possible conditions for incentivising business investment, which is the lifeblood of a growing economy. That road map caps corporation tax at 25% for the duration of this Parliament—the lowest rate in the G7. It maintains our world-leading capital allowances system, including permanent full expensing, and the £1 million annual investment allowance. As a result of permanent full expensing, the independent OBR has forecast that business investment will increase by an extra £3 billion each year. Permanent full expensing solidifies the UK’s position at the top of the rankings of OECD countries’ plant and machinery capital allowances and among the most competitive capital allowances in the world.
The corporate tax road map also maintains generous R&D tax reliefs that will support an estimated £56 billion of business R&D expenditure. It is a road map to provide predictability, stability and certainty to business and investors from around the globe, while generating the revenue needed to invest in Britain. It comes after several years of cliff edges in investment allowances and multiple changes in rate policy, all of which have undermined global confidence in our corporate tax system. Despite the difficult fiscal position, our capital gains tax rate also remains internationally competitive and the current top rate is lower than it was between 2010 and 2016.
The Government’s objective is to maintain an internationally competitive tax system, where businesses pay their fair share of tax in the UK. As noble Lords know, under the current international framework, taxing rights are generally allocated to countries based on where the physical activities of a given business are undertaken. However, businesses rely increasingly on remote business models that allow companies to operate in and make considerable revenue from a market without a physical presence there. This is particularly true of firms providing digital services.
Added to this, business models are increasingly complex and globalised in nature, with businesses often operating in a number of jurisdictions. Intangible assets, such as intellectual property, can also be transferred to low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions more easily than physical goods. These changes are improving competitiveness and dynamism in the global economy, but we now need to ensure that our tax system, much of which dates back over a century, adapts to this changed environment.
According to the OECD, lost global tax revenues now total $100 billion to $240 billion annually—equivalent to between 4% and 10% of global corporation income tax revenues. This is why the Government are committed to addressing unfairness in the international tax system and protecting the UK against base erosion and profit shifting, where it exists.
We have a range of different measures in the UK tax code to ensure that this is the case. For example, measures on transfer pricing ensure that companies do not manipulate prices between related parties for tax reasons. Controlled foreign company rules, which the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, mentioned, prevent multinationals shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions using controlled foreign subsidiaries. Our anti-hybrid rules tackle tax avoidance strategies that exploit differences in the tax treatment of financial instruments or entities across jurisdictions, and our corporate interest restriction rules limit the amount of interest expense that a UK company can deduct from its taxable profits. HMRC conducts rigorous in-depth inquiries to ensure that multinational companies comply with these rules, and it also works closely with international partners to gather intelligence and tackle serious and deliberate non-compliance.
Profit shifting and base erosion is a global issue by its very nature, which is why the UK has supported efforts to strengthen the international tax framework. The most significant of these is the OECD’s inclusive framework on base erosion and profit shifting project, as explained by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Kramer, and my noble friend Lord Sikka. As other noble Lords have set out, this framework is the result of over 135 countries and jurisdictions working together, and comprises two pillars.
Pillar 1 looks to provide for a more stable and certain international tax system by addressing the issue I raised previously; namely, updating the system of international taxing rights to reflect the digitised nature of the economy. Under plans currently being discussed, a new system would be introduced whereby certain taxing rights are reallocated to market jurisdictions, as opposed to where the company is based.
The noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, asked about the Government’s position on pillar 1 and the digital services tax. The Government continue to support an agreement on pillar 1 and, as a temporary measure, the UK’s digital services tax currently applies a 2% levy on providers of search engines, social media platforms and online marketplaces, reflecting their UK activities. We look forward to working with the new US Administration to understand their concerns around the digital services tax and consider how these can be addressed in a way that preserves the policy objectives.
The noble Lord also asked about the VAT paid by online retailers. To summarise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, set out, since 2021, overseas retailers are requested to register for VAT on supplies of low-value imports below £135. Where an overseas seller sells goods via an online marketplace, the marketplace is liable for VAT on goods of any value. The OBR continues to estimate that this will raise £1.8 billion by 2026-27.
Pillar 2 of the OECD inclusive framework reforms, also known as the global minimum tax, is already an internationally agreed common approach. It creates fair conditions for attracting inward investment, while protecting countries’ tax bases from large multinationals shifting their profits to low-tax jurisdictions. It does this by requiring multinationals that generate annual revenues of more than €750 million to pay an effective tax rate of 15% on their profits in every jurisdiction where they operate. Where their effective tax rate falls below this, these companies will pay a top-up tax. This effectively imposes a floor on tax competition between jurisdictions.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, the Government are currently legislating for the final part of the pillar 2 agreement through the Finance Bill. The undertaxed profits rule will ensure that firms cannot evade their responsibilities under the global minimum tax.
The pillar 2 agreement is historic in its scope and reach and has been implemented, or is in the process of being implemented, by the UK, all EU member states, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and others. The UK is forecast to raise more than £15 billion over the next six years from pillar 2 to support our public services and help grow the economy.
My noble friend Lord Sikka and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kramer and Lady Neville-Rolfe, asked about executive orders relating to pillar 2. While I know that they would not expect me to give a running commentary on every executive order or decision made by President Trump and his Administration, the UK will of course be open to discussing concerns and ways to alleviate these in a way that upholds the policy aims of pillar 2. To reiterate—here I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer—this is an international agreement signed by over 135 countries after many years of detailed negotiation. We believe it represents a fair approach to how countries compete for cross-border investment.
The UK operates a comprehensive network of tax treaties to ensure the correct allocation of taxing rights between jurisdictions. Alongside pillars 1 and 2 of the OECD scheme, we participate in a range of other tax transparency arrangements to protect the UK tax base. These include the country-by-country reporting arrangements, which require large companies to provide a detailed report of their income, taxes paid and other financial activities on a country-by-country basis.
We have committed to implementing the crypto asset reporting framework to facilitate the automatic exchange of information on ownership and transactions in crypto assets. The UK is leading international efforts to co-ordinate transparency and the exchange of beneficial ownership, including through registers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, touched briefly on the Crown dependencies and overseas territories. I recognise that that is a much longer debate but I will briefly say this. The elected Governments of the Crown dependencies and inhabited overseas territories are responsible for many fiscal matters, including tax. They are committed to upholding international tax standards. All Crown dependencies and those overseas territories with a financial centre have become members of the OECD/G20 inclusive framework on base erosion and profit shifting. They have implemented the common reporting standard, and they all meet the standard necessary for the exchange of information on request.
My noble friend Lord Sikka and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about country-by-country reporting. As I have said, the Government are a strong supporter of greater tax transparency and efforts to ensure that multinational groups are appropriately taxed in the jurisdictions in which they operate. While public country-by-country reporting could have a role to play in supporting those objectives, the Government believe it is important that any action be co-ordinated at the international level to ensure that it is comprehensive and consistent and avoids competitive distortion.
The arrangements I have already set out sit alongside the steps this Government took at the Budget last year to protect the UK tax base and close the tax gap, which is the difference between the amount of tax owed and the amount that is collected. The measures in last year’s Budget represent the most ambitious package ever to close the tax gap, making sure that everyone who should be paying their tax is doing so. Overall, the package is expected to raise £6.5 billion in additional tax revenue per year by 2029-30. We will achieve that by investing £1.9 billion in HMRC staff and modernised IT systems, including recruiting an additional 5,000 compliance staff. This includes additional resources for HMRC transfer pricing specialists, focused on preventing multinational profits shifting.
I will briefly address the question asked by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. Our plans include new proposals to close the offshore corporate tax gap. We will consult on lowering the thresholds for exemption from transfer pricing for medium-sized businesses to align with international peers, and we will seek views on introducing a requirement for businesses in scope of transfer pricing rules to report cross-border-related party transactions to HMRC.
My noble friend Lord Sikka questioned the size of the tax gap. The Government have set out data for the domestic tax gap, which has been published online, as well as initial statistics on individuals with undisclosed foreign income. We will continue to be led by this data, and we remain committed to closing the tax gap, both domestic and offshore.
This Government support fair global rules on tax competition which protect the UK against profit shifting and base erosion. Through the action we are taking domestically and through international bodies, including the OECD, we are ensuring that these rules keep pace with the changing nature of global trade and the development of digital technology. In doing so, we are being guided by our number one mission: higher and more inclusive economic growth. That growth must be underpinned by fairness in the global tax arrangements, which is at the heart of our approach, and it must be delivered through a competitive domestic tax regime, which is precisely what our world-leading corporate tax road map will help to achieve.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Before the Minister sits down—admirably well within his time—I think his answer in respect of my VAT point relates to NETPs, non-established taxpayers, rather than taxpayers who falsely claim to be in the UK. I invite him to consider that particular point further, because I believe it will raise billions of pounds for HMRC if that loophole is addressed. Secondly, he very elegantly sidestepped the issue of the digital services tax. Again, while the Government are in negotiations with the US, which could stretch on for years, there is an opportunity in the meantime for us to have a look to see what extra revenue we can raise through digital services tax.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I have set out as much as I am able to at the moment on the noble Lord’s latter point on the digital services tax, but I will happily raise his point on VAT with my colleague the Exchequer Secretary. We will write to the noble Lord on anything that we can usefully add.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for her excellent speech. I look forward to interacting with her in the months and years to come. I also thank all other noble Lords for their contributions. I think this issue will become more, acute because successive Governments have shifted profits away from corporations to what I call normal people. They have been given the choice: either pay more for crumbling services or lose hard-won social rights completely. Therefore, the way we treat corporations and corporate power will become a vital issue for debate.
Transfer pricing rules are now broken, because world trade is dominated by a handful of companies, as I indicated earlier. Numerous actors are dominated by very few companies, which means arm’s-length prices are almost impossible to find. Some noble Lords may have noted that the BRICS countries, especially Brazil, and others have developed their own way of applying arm’s-length prices because companies have been abusing them. That is also worth looking at.
I am sure there will be lots of reflection on the various contributions, but my final point is that a UK resident company is liable to pay UK corporation tax on its global profits, subject to tax treaties and double taxation agreements—in other words, giving benefit after credit for the taxes paid somewhere else. If those companies’ profits are not taxed anywhere that means the UK Government can tax them, but I have not come across any example of where any Government have actually done so, so there are billions of pounds waiting to be collected. Perhaps in the next debate—I might try my luck next year—we can have this point clarified. Once again, I thank all noble Lords.
Europe: Youth Mobility
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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The Lord Bishop of St Albans
That this House takes note of the case for a new youth mobility scheme with European countries.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, youth mobility schemes are a topical subject in this Parliament at the moment. A Private Member’s Bill on this very subject is making its way through the other place, which yesterday held a debate on youth mobility schemes with the EU. In this Chamber, we had a Question on it from the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, last week and a Question today from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I am aware that a number of noble Lords have already asked supplementaries and I look forward to the opportunity for them to develop some of those points more fully in this debate. In particular, I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Moraes.
I believe that the need for closer ties with our European neighbours is more pressing now than it has been for some time. There are many reasons for that, but, with the Ukrainian war and increasing geopolitical instability likely to exacerbate existing migration issues, the need for international co-operation is all the more important, especially with those countries that are quite literally our neighbours. I hope this debate will provide an opportunity to think how we might maximise the opportunities for our young people to experience study, work, leisure, sport, music and so on in the wider world beyond our shores.
However, building mutual trust and respect with our European allies, both those in the EU and those that are not members, cannot be achieved simply in political fora or via policy decisions only. Indeed, sometimes they can be a source of much wrangling and entrenched resentments, which both led to and were a result of Brexit. That decision has been made, and I hope this debate is not about that. If we want to build trust and mutual understanding, we need a whole host of positive engagements and relationships at all levels in science and research, education, culture and sport, and, critically, opportunities for citizens to live and work together, both here and across mainland Europe.
Quite apart from the fact reintroducing youth mobility and cultural exchanges would be expedient for our foreign policy, there is the sheer demand for the restoration of these opportunities for our young people and the broader public. Polling in August 2024 found that 58% of the population think a youth mobility scheme is a good idea. There is a real demand for something like this. There has been a great loss to our young people just at the very time when they should be gaining new experiences and broadening their worldviews, making friends from people of other nations and cultures, with opportunities for travel, education and study abroad with our European partners. Those opportunities have gradually diminished and, where arrangements exist, they are usually more complicated and even more competitive.
There are broadly two strands of argument that I intend to cover when it comes to making the case for a new youth mobility scheme with European countries, although I also hope to touch on some of the challenges facing our creative industries, especially touring musicians. I have to confess that I feel rather daunted by the expertise of so many in your Lordships’ House on this topic. I come to this debate not as an expert but as someone who has greatly benefited from rich experiences in other cultures over extended periods and as someone who cares deeply about the opportunities for our young people to travel, learn languages and be exposed to the world and the cultural exchange of ideas and for our creative industries, one of the great success stories of our nation, to thrive. I look to listen and learn about the various challenges and opportunities that exist when it comes to negotiating youth mobility, and to better understand the position of His Majesty’s Government.
This Motion was deliberately worded to say “European countries” rather than “the EU” as I hope to avoid us becoming mired in old debates. However, the question of bilateral agreements with the EU versus individual approaches to EU member states is likely to be an integral part of this debate. In spite of that, I hope we can be open-minded as we think about how best to renew the rich landscape of cultural, educational and civic ties that we have shared with mainland Europe in the past, whether that be through rejoining the Erasmus scheme or by agreeing a new youth mobility scheme altogether.
Another point I would like to stress is that sometimes people conflate youth mobility schemes with freedom of movement. This has cropped up repeatedly, including in this House recently during Oral Questions. Will the Minister confirm that the Government understand that youth mobility schemes are not the same thing as freedom of movement? Indeed, the proposal for a new youth mobility scheme from the European Commission last year was both age limited and time limited. I appreciate that that scheme was rejected by the previous Government, and indeed the current one, but even had it been accepted, it would not have been a return to free movement.
I note that in these parliamentary exchanges His Majesty’s Government frequently point to the Turing scheme as the answer, which offers funding for UK students to go abroad on placements. The focus within this scheme of ensuring that disadvantaged students are able to access this funding is admirable, and I totally support it—indeed, it is appropriate. But still this does not make it a substitute for the Erasmus programme, which was much broader in scope and scale. For example, the Erasmus+ scheme includes specific partnerships and funding streams to promote sport and physical activity. The Turing scheme is also, critically, not an exchange programme.
His Majesty’s Government have committed to a reset in relations with the EU. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, led a debate on EU relations last October. The government spokesperson for that debate, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said:
“This is about turning the page, reinvigorating alliances and forging new partnerships with our European friends, rather than reopening the divisions of the past”.—[Official Report, 10/10/24; col. 2210.]
In that spirit, His Majesty’s Government recently successfully negotiated the UK rejoining the Horizon programme post Brexit. There are positive examples here of how this can be done. The Erasmus scheme does not consist only of EU member states. Norway, for example, is a country which has developed extremely close and collaborative relationships with the EU despite not holding member status. If that is not going to work for us, let us at least propose something new, given that we have turned down the most recent proposal.
Like all Members of your Lordships’ House, I am acutely aware that the public purse is under strain and that one of the arguments against Erasmus was the cost, due to more students coming to the UK than UK students going to Europe. I for one am not sure that that is an argument against the Erasmus scheme, but rather the result of our embarrassingly poor foreign language learning and teaching here in the UK. If anything, it is an argument to encourage more of our young people to go abroad to study at European universities and improve their foreign language skills. Speaking a second or even a third language is a vital skill that is only becoming more and more important in our globalised world, yet the number of students and pupils taking language courses continues to decline.
I would like to pick up on a few points from the excellent debate on EU relations I mentioned. First, the facilitation of overseas school trips has been complicated by regulations on the UK-EU border post Brexit. Last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, committed to:
“ensuring school visits and other opportunities for exchange”
and eradicating
“some of the challenges that have arisen”.—[Official Report, 20/1/25; col. 1479.]
Can the Minister update the House on whether there has been any progress on that issue? What specific takes are being considered or taken?
Secondly, there are challenges facing the creative sector, particularly musicians. This was raised this morning by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson of Winterbourne, in one of the Oral Questions. This is an issue that first came to my attention through the particular challenges facing choirs that have tried to arrange overseas tours. I understand that DCMS is working closely with representatives from the industry to try and find solutions to the challenges facing the sector after leaving the EU, and this is welcome news. Will His Majesty’s Government, in the short term, do their utmost to secure an EU-UK visa waiver agreement for performing artists and their staff? This is widely supported within the creative industries, and there is precedent for these kinds of agreements with the EU.
In the longer term, it is vital that some music performers are able to stay for periods of more than 90 days. It is particularly important for orchestras, choirs and the theatre sector, which generally have longer touring periods. Can the Minister tell us what steps His Majesty’s Government are taking towards negotiating such an agreement with the EU?
Finally, the Government have said that they do not want to commit to a specific programme regarding youth mobility in the UK at the moment. I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to say much today in the light of future negotiating strategies, and that there are a number of obstacles we are seeking to resolve with the EU—for example, concerning Northern Ireland. However, as they enter the first EU-UK summit, I hope they will bear in mind how much the UK stands to gain from renegotiating a youth mobility scheme, which could be a real win-win and be of mutual benefit, in particular for our young people. Can the Minister confirm when we might expect an update on this issue?
I will conclude my opening remarks by reiterating that close ties with our neighbours are essential to UK interests in the current global climate. These have to be underpinned by a mutual understanding of and respect for other nations, cultures, languages and customs if they are going to be sustainable and resilient. There are so many difficulties facing our young people today. The opportunity to travel, live and work abroad has enriched the lives of so many in the past, as well as proving essential to their future success. I hope we will ensure that we are not depriving Britain’s young people of these experiences and those opportunities to thrive.
Lord Moraes (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am honoured to make my maiden speech today in this debate. It is somewhat daunting. The doorkeeper steadied me just now and said, “Every one of the noble Lords in the Chamber today has been in the same place”. I am not sure if that helped. I did notice also that there are noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have had connections with the European Union and who have been MEPs.
I want to start my remarks in this maiden speech with some comments on the approach of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans to these mobility schemes. Many noble Lords and Baronesses in this Chamber will have had experience of those reciprocal mobility schemes in their work. In my experience over 20 years, I helped many young constituents with these reciprocal schemes and how to navigate them. Over the years I saw UK students, some from disadvantaged backgrounds who would not otherwise have afforded to access those schemes to study, benefit from Erasmus and other mobility opportunities. Those schemes were not perfect. For example, there should have been more UK take-up between 1987 and when we left in 2020—that is clear. But, very objectively, I saw a lasting benefit for those students in the UK, and I also saw measurable economic benefit and benefit to our academic institutions in the UK.
On this vexed point that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans raised about free movement, I would love to hear other opinions on it in this debate, but my understanding was always that the legal base of these reciprocal mobility schemes was never anything to do with free movement because they did not involve settlement and that was the key legal element that would make such schemes “free movement”. These schemes are not free movement; they are reciprocal schemes that generate advantages in all aspects of our lives. I will limit my comments on the debate to that and will now proceed with my maiden speech.
I thank your Lordships for the kindness and support I have received since entering the House. I thank my noble friends Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lady Smith of Basildon for introducing me. I was only introduced on 16 January, but already I have received so much help and kindness from the remarkable staff in every part of this House.
I feel the honour of being in this House very keenly, not least because of my own background. I was a first-generation immigrant to this country. I was born in Aden, but my family had to leave during the Aden Emergency. My family were then split—my mother took us back to her country of origin, India, while my father gained entry to the UK as an overseas student, where he trained as a teacher and became a key worker in Scotland. We were eventually reunited. My parents were part of that generation which, some noble Lords and Baronesses will understand, was a generation of Commonwealth immigrants of the 1960s and 1970s who came to this country to give their children opportunity—and that certainly happened to me.
I then grew up in Scotland, first in Dundee and then Stirling, and this of course explains my accent, which has been somewhat commented on. As a new member—I am sure other new noble Lords and Baronesses will have had this experience—I am open to all sorts of advice. The first piece of advice I got on the first day that I came was from a noble Lord, who will remain unnamed, who said, “That’s a very nice soft Scottish accent”. Then he paused and added, “But nobody’s going to hear it if you don’t speak up”. So I immediately raised my volume and I have kept to that volume, hopefully, for noble Lords and Baronesses.
I came to London to further my law studies but could only do so because I had the opportunity to work for John Reid, then an MP, and later Paul Boateng, then an MP—now my noble friends Lord Reid of Cardowan and Lord Boateng. I thank them both for the start they gave me. I then stayed in the capital, working at the Trades Union Congress—the noble Lord, Lord Monks, allowed me to work at Congress House and I thank him for that—and, later, as director of JCWI, an independent legal protection NGO in the area of immigration, nationality and asylum law. In some ways, I was returning to the issues that had affected my family, but your Lordships may well recall that, during the period of the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the UK experienced the most significant refugee arrivals since the war—from the former Yugoslavia, the Kurds, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Working on these refugee issues individually, and on the policy, was a very formative experience. I did, of course, encounter many colleagues during that JCWI period and I am very honoured that they have come to listen to my maiden speech.
In 1999, I had the honour of being elected to the European Parliament for London. I shared this honour for a period with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who was also on my London list. I am really gratified that a number of colleagues who also served in the European Parliament are present in the Chamber. I chaired the Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee, and that legislative committee became enormous. It covered security, migration and the rule of law, but, because the Lisbon treaty gave it the competences and powers, it ended up reaching into data and privacy. As a result, I was able to chair the Facebook inquiry and work on data adequacy agreements, and I started work on the EU AI White Paper before we left the EU in 2020.
That brings me to a second reason why I am so happy and honoured to join your Lordships’ House. Over that whole period, I regularly gave evidence to committees of your Lordships’ House. This peaked in 2018—some noble Lords and Baronesses will recognise this—at a time when we were having heated discussions on how we were going to resolve issues post Brexit. How were we going to continue to share security databases such as SIS II or remain involved in Europol? Were we going to achieve data adequacy with the EU and were we going to adopt the European arrest warrant? Some of these issues are still not resolved and are still being considered by the House.
My point is that I gave evidence to Lords committees, whether it was the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee or the European Union Scrutiny Committee, as it was, in front of noble Lords who actually understood the issues—I am not making any comparisons with the evidence I gave to the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other House, which is a fine committee—and in some cases had actually put the issues together. I will give one example: the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, negotiated the passenger name record security agreements in the EU, and then he was the noble Lord asking me questions about it—which was kind of defeating, but there we go. It does give a sense of how this House can often be incisive and in the moment but can also, in my view, take a longer view of some of the most sensitive issues Parliament has to deal with, in an age when everyone wants instant solutions but when it is sometimes important to think through the most sensitive issues if we possibly can.
In conclusion, it has been an honour to make my first speech in your Lordships’ House in this debate and on this subject, and I very much look forward to making contributions in the future.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour and a particular pleasure for me to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Moraes. We share something, inasmuch as we spent our early years in the fine city of Dundee. I notice that the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, is here today. I am not sure that he can say he spent his early years in the city of Dundee, but there we are.
My title, and that of my noble friend Lord Moraes, reflect that city’s heritage. For those noble Lords who do not know, although it is not visible, his title is Baron Moraes, of Hawkhill in the City of Dundee. Hawkhill is one of the longest-established thoroughfares in the city and contains much of his alma mater, the University of Dundee. It also contains a lot of hostelries in which he and I—at different times and at different ages, because we were a decade apart in our early years in Dundee—found much pleasure and often had some raucous nights out.
As my noble friend said, after he left university he came to London. It is important to note that he is qualified to practise in Scots and English law, which is not something that all that many people accomplish. He has achieved a wide experience over the years. I think it is appropriate that, having come here to act as a humble researcher to two MPs—now the noble Lords, Lord Boateng and Lord Reid of Cardowan—he now enters your Lordships’ House on an equal basis with them. It is very well merited.
My noble friend outlined his work, particularly as a national officer with the Trades Union Congress. This is nothing to do with my noble friend, but he mentioned an anecdote about the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, effectively being on two sides of the fence. It reminds me of the time when I was a full-time trade union official. One of my colleagues submitted a claim for pay and conditions to a particular company. Soon after, he joined that company in the department where he had to answer his own claim—which he did not do in full. It was similar to the situation with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope.
My noble friend Lord Moraes has gained many awards for the work he has carried out—most notably, of course, the OBE. He mentioned having been warmly greeted by many Scottish Members of both Houses in the months since he joined us. It is appropriate to say that not many of them realised his Scottish roots until they heard his dulcet tones. It brings to mind the phrase, “Ye can tak’ the laddie oot of Scotland, but ye cannae tak’ Scotland oot of the laddie”. That is very much the case as far as my noble friend Lord Moraes is concerned. It is a pleasure to have him here. I am sure that noble Lords will join me in looking forward to the many powerful contributions he will make to debates and to the wider work of your Lordships.
I commend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans on securing this important debate. As he said in his comprehensive opening speech, this is a topical subject that I sense is beginning to gain some traction. Last year, as we know, the European Commission announced a proposal to open negotiations with the UK on a youth mobility scheme for all EU citizens, which would give 18 to 30 year-olds the opportunity to work or study in the UK for up to four years and offer the equivalent entitlement to young people from the UK. The Commission stated that the proposal would not be a return to free movement because it would be time limited, but it would enable studying, training, working and travelling. However, that proposal did not get very far. Although the previous Government rejected it, it is only fair to say that the EU was insistent that it must apply to all EU member states and not just be on an individual basis. That was the rock on which it foundered at that time.
Young people who become involved in exchanges with EU countries would return home at the end of them. That is the purpose of these exchanges: to gain experience of living and working in another country but then, at the end of it, to return home and bring what experience they gain into their working life in this country. That is a straightforward premise and it is disingenuous, to say the least, to portray it as somehow amounting to freedom of movement, as some do. Those who do so are, I believe, fully aware that that is not the case, yet they continue with what is, in effect, a distortion to fan the flames for those who are naive enough to believe that there is some nefarious attempt to reintroduce freedom of movement by the backdoor.
Let us be clear: the EU has not approached the UK with a formal proposal regarding a reciprocal youth mobility scheme. Rather, it should be our Government making the approach, because to do so would benefit thousands of young people in the age group characterised as Gen Z. It was rather dispiriting to hear my noble friend say earlier today, during Oral Questions, that the Government have no plans to seek a youth mobility scheme. No doubt she is duty bound to repeat that at the end of this debate, which is regrettable. To maintain such a cautious stance is to dance to the tune of those who want to feed the fears of those willing to buy fake news about some form of weakening of our current position vis-à-vis the European Union.
As noble Lords may know, the Prime Minister is meeting EU leaders next week and No. 10 has briefed that it is an opportunity to discuss “enhanced strategic cooperation” with the EU. I suggest that a youth mobility scheme should be part of that and should be less complicated to agree than other areas, such as dismantling trade barriers.
Maroš Šefčovič, the European Union’s new trade chief responsible for post-Brexit negotiations, said recently that a pan-European customs area
“is something we could consider”
as part of a reset in discussions between the UK and the EU. That might enable the UK to join the pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention. That created quite a bit of media stushie—as we say in Scotland—but such an idea is, I believe, non-threatening to the outcome of the 2016 referendum. That is underscored by the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who is with us today, has effectively given it the green light. I do not think that it is in any way a threat.
That may help to open up possibilities for an EU-UK youth mobility scheme but, even it does not, it is not as though youth mobility schemes are in any way unusual for this country. We of course had them when we were part of the EU, as my noble friend Lord Moraes mentioned, and today the UK has a youth mobility visa open to people from 12 different countries, which involves a quota system for each. In 2023, the last year for which figures are available, about 23,000 people came to the UK under these agreements.
These youth mobility schemes provide valuable cultural exchange opportunities for Generation Z to experience life in another country for up to two or three years and then return home. Those participating in schemes are able to work if they wish to do so, which provides valuable opportunities that help to prepare them for working life. The schemes involve countries some distance from these shores; there should be an equivalent for countries nearer to home, including countries in the European Union.
For the benefit of journalists, some of whom seem to be easily alarmed, these schemes are not designed, nor intended, to be a route for economic growth or to address specific labour shortages. They are about giving young people the best early chances in their life and working life. Recent polling for Best for Britain showed that 59% of UK citizens thought that the Government should prioritise negotiating a reciprocal relationship with the EU for Gen Z, with only 15% disagreeing with that proposal.
Although the EU Commission proposal was for any new scheme to involve all member states, as I said earlier, this need not be a deal breaker. EU member states can reach bilateral agreements on labour mobility with non-EU countries, and it is surely much easier and swifter to strike a deal with one country than with the whole EU. The key will be the limits to any such agreement, but that would be the subject of negotiations. Surely, with good will on both sides, a suitable arrangement could be achieved.
The Government should review its position on this, develop a policy that stops finding reasons for not doing it and search, together with EU member states, for reasons for doing it. I urge my noble friend to convey this view to fellow Ministers, potentially as a first step towards the change that our young people need and deserve.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and it is a particular pleasure to have been able to listen to the rather endearing maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Moraes. I am sure he will bring a lot to this House from his experience.
I also thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing and opening this debate. I listened to his speech with a good deal of interest, and he set out the positions very clearly. I was waiting, I confess, for the moment at which he would show how his positions derived from the doctrine of the Church of England or Christianity more broadly, but sadly, that point never came. Nevertheless, I take them as so derived, and he certainly made a very good political case for the changes in rules in our relationship to the EU that he set out. He referred to the reset, and I want to begin by talking a little about the so-called reset, because that is the context in which we are looking at this idea of youth mobility.
I confess that I am not completely convinced that we need a reset with the EU. The relationship seems to be working perfectly well for the moment, but I accept that there are many who think differently, and that is why the Government have taken us on the path that we are now on. I think it would be better if the Government could set out their objectives for that reset a bit more clearly. I refer the Minister to the comprehensive document that we set out in February 2020 outlining our approach to the free trade association negotiations. It is a pity, to put it no more strongly, that in a negotiation of this nature we have no real guidance on what the Government are seeking to achieve and why, so I guess we have to define it for ourselves.
The way I look at the reset and what may be on the table falls into two categories. The first category is a set of proposals that would be marginal but genuine improvements to the relationship as it now stands. None of them are game-changers, but they are things such as improving the mutual recognition of qualifications procedures, something to do with the arrangements on touring artists—which have been referred to and I am sure will be again—improvements to the conformity assessments, pragmatic relaxation of border processes, e-gates and things such as that. I would put at least some kind of youth mobility agreements into this category, and I will come back to that and explain why. That is one category.
The other category of things that might come up in the reset is more troubling from my point of view, and ought to be more troubling from the country’s point of view as well. Those are things that we are led to believe might be on the table, although we are not quite sure. They are issues such as free movement-like arrangements, participation in asylum or migration arrangements of the EU, application of EU law, alignment with EU rules or regulations in any way, ECJ monitoring in an SPS agreement or accepting EU rules on defence procurement. Those are the sorts of things that start to change the FTA-type relationship that we have into a different kind of relationship, one that involves a degree of subordination, acceptance of lawmaking outside the country, that we had hoped we had got away from.
Some of these things may be on the table for the Government; we do not know. I hope that if—and it is probably when—they come back with something from these negotiations, they will be honest about whether they have accepted changes to the free trade nature of the relationship and lawmaking outside the country through alignment with EU law. That is a fundamental point.
As I have said, youth mobility arrangements can, but do not necessarily, come into that category. They are a prudential issue rather than a problem of principle, at least in certain forms. One has to say that because, after all, the UK has youth mobility agreements with a number of other countries around the world already, so there can be no objection of principle to another such agreement. It all depends on the terms and the degree of control. If we are ever asked to judge whether a youth mobility agreement with the EU is sensible, I would look at four criteria.
First, what are the numbers? They are crucial. We all know that there is a huge debate about the number of migrants coming into the country. I will not get into that, but in that context some numbers in a youth mobility scheme would not be material and some definitely would. All our existing agreements have numbers below a cap of 10,000 per year, with the exception of Australia. That is the order of magnitude that we would have to think about in an EU arrangement. The EU’s proposal for such an agreement includes no cap at all; it is simply a criteria-based arrangement under which, in principle, many tens of millions of people would probably be allowed to come to this country. Maybe they would not—I am confident they would not—but it takes only a small proportion to cause a difficulty. Numbers and a cap are really important.
The second criterion is fairness and balance. One has to laugh slightly at the nature of the EU’s proposal to us for such a scheme, which is so wildly unbalanced and tilted in its direction that it cannot think we would give it any serious consideration. Can it really be fair that everybody who meets the criteria in the entire European Union is allowed to come to the UK but that UK citizens are allowed to go to only one of the 27 EU countries? It makes no sense for the EU to say both “We can negotiate this only at EU level, because that is the way we do things” and “You can come to only one of our 27 countries, because that is also the way we do things”. We cannot have that. It makes no sense. If it is a UK-EU agreement, it would have to be done on that basis.
Thirdly, there can be no importing of EU concepts, by which I mean non-discrimination between UK and EU citizens. It is a big ask in the EU’s recommendation that we should accept that EU visitors under the scheme should not have to pay the NHS surcharge, for example, and that students should not have to pay the same fees as other foreign students. That too is not acceptable in such an arrangement. There should be and is a distinction, which we should maintain, between UK citizens and non-UK citizens. I see no case for assimilating EU citizens into that category.
Fourthly and finally, we are clear that this is an EU ask, and the Government have been quite clear that it is not something that they are looking to negotiate particularly, which is good. If we end up agreeing it anyway, what will we get in exchange for making concessions to the EU? How will it come up in the negotiations? There are many things that we ought to want from the European Union in any reordered arrangement, but unfortunately the most important of those, the Northern Ireland arrangements, are already off limits for the time being—more is the pity.
However, there are acceptable trades for this. The most obvious area is mobility; one can imagine a high-equilibrium arrangement, with some sort of youth mobility agreement in return for some sort of relaxation of the ESTA-type arrangements, better use of eGates, more pragmatic arrangements for service providers, including tourists, artists and so on. One can see we could find an equilibrium that could make sense and be of benefit for both sides. Whether that kind of thing is on the table, or whether the Government plan to concede more than that, we just do not know; we will have to wait and see.
To conclude, I set out these four tests for youth mobility. To be honest, I find it hard, in practice, to imagine that it is possible at the moment to negotiate a youth mobility scheme that would match all four of those things, but you never know. It is wise for the Government to have said they have no plans for such a scheme and it is probably best to stick to that, unless a really good offer is made to us.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to have heard the maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, which was absolutely charming. He will be a welcome addition to this House.
If we do not give young people the opportunities that we tore from them when we left the EU, then we will not only deny them all the wonderful broadening of mind and experiences that came from the EU mobility scheme; we will deskill them and reduce our own future, because if we limit young people, we limit ourselves. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans on securing this vital debate, and I could not agree more on the harm that is being done to the creative industries, tourism and all that area, and therefore to our country, for which the creative industries are an economic driver.
If we could restore to our young people at least some of the opportunities that they had when we were members of the EU, we would give them a whole range of advantages that will remain with them all their lives. Travel not only broadens the mind but gives young people independence and confidence. When you have to navigate a new country on your own, you are forced to step up, to solve problems and become self-reliant. You have to overcome challenges in an unfamiliar environment, and that builds resilience and confidence. Living and working in another country exposes you to different cultures, enables you to understand different perspectives and makes you more open-minded and reasonable—we could sure do with more reasonableness. You learn to be adaptable when you have to work and communicate with people from diverse backgrounds. For some young people, who have limited horizons because of the circumstances of their birth, this is a route to change. Getting away from an environment that is damaging or limiting is vital to life chances.
In terms of future prospects, working abroad improves soft skills, such as communication, adaptability and problem-solving. It can give you a competitive edge in the job market when you return. It expands your network: you get to meet people from all over. and you will create all sorts of valuable personal and professional connections. These networks can open doors to future job opportunities and collaboration.
Living in another country broadens your perspective on life and your future goals. It challenges your world view and may help you reassess what you want in life. In fact, that is what happened to me: I was hitching round Europe, headed for drama school, when I suddenly realised that I did not want to go to drama school—I wanted to go to art school. I went to art school at Oxford Polytechnic, which is where I led my first political campaign. That is how I ended up, 20 years later, going into politics, leading a campaign and introducing same-sex marriage. You see? It works.
You may discover new passions or career paths that you had not considered before. Dealing with different systems, languages and ways of life teaches you to think on your feet; you learn how to adapt to uncertainty, and that really stands you in good stead for the vagaries of your life ahead. Of course, it is also fun.
I am sure we all agree that those are good things. Indeed, as has been mentioned, the Government have bilateral agreements for youth exchanges with a number of countries outside the EU, so they obviously agree. But when it comes to the EU, somehow this Labour Government lose their bravery and are found wanting. It is all very well talking about a reset, but you have to be willing to enter the arena and deal.
In the other place on 15 January, my colleague, James MacCleary, the Lib Dem MP for Lewes, introduced the Youth Mobility Scheme (EU Countries) Bill to
“require the Secretary of State to enter into negotiations with countries which are members of the European Union”—
or are not—
“for the purpose of extending the Youth Mobility Scheme to applicants from”
the EU
“on a reciprocal basis”.
He pointed out the immense damage caused by the Brexit deal and the irony of young people now being able to live and work in Japan for two years but not hop across the channel to France. The Government are shouting their mantra about growth right now, but when growth comes from dealing with the EU, somehow it is dismissed, despite the UK facing acute labour shortages in several areas, including the hospitality trade. Young people visiting are just who we need for that industry.
So far, the Government’s reset with the EU is just talk. They seem to be afraid that if they get closer to the EU, that will be a threat to their electability, boosting Conservative and Reform votes, and be seen as a return to freedom of movement, which it is not. They run from that, but it is not that. We need to show the EU that we are worth allowing a closer and carefully designed youth mobility scheme. We could make sure that those taking part could come here as a clearly defined category on a tightly controlled time limit, but it would also be a signal that we have rejoined the world of reality and send out a message that we are open for business, for real.
I listened to the Chancellor’s “growth, growth, growth” mantra, but everything she said is undermined by these failures to move on the EU mobility scheme, to recognise the market that is Europe on our doorstep, and, indeed, as said by Ed Davey in PMQs yesterday, to enter a customs union, because red tape is killing growth.
Additionally, yesterday, my Lib Dem colleague in the other place, Sarah Olney, had a Westminster Hall debate titled:
“That this House has considered the potential merits of a youth mobility scheme between the EU and the UK”.
With the constant refrain from Labour now that they want a reset, she pointed out that we need to
“forge a new partnership with our European neighbours, one built on co-operation, not confrontation, and moving towards a new comprehensive agreement. A crucial step in that process is rebuilding confidence by agreeing partnerships and associations”—
whether it is Erasmus or whatever—
“to help restore prosperity and opportunities for British people”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/1/25; col. 134WH.]
We also need to consider that President Trump is now in the White House. The Government have apparently woken up to the importance of building a closer defence and security agreement with the EU, but the EU, unsurprisingly, wants something in return and is insisting that those agreements run side by side with other arrangements, including a youth mobility scheme. The Guardian, on 25 January, reported on the MRP survey of almost 15,000 people by YouGov for the Best for Britain think tank, which showed that more people in every single constituency in England, Scotland and Wales back closer arrangements with the EU rather than more transatlantic trade with Washington.
Of course a youth mobility scheme will involve reciprocal migration obligations, but this is about an investment for the future, growth and well-being, and it will be carefully designed. I understand that the Government are scared of a political backlash, but what is the point of a 400-seat majority at the beginning phase of a Parliament, where brave governance will see people feeling better at the end of five years? Otherwise, I do not think they believe in themselves. Our world is descending into chaos and need right now, so please, Labour, use your power to stop this. The whole point of being in government is power, so please use it.
There will need to be administration and cost, but that is what investment is, and investing in our young people is the absolute best investment we can make. It is not a return to free movement. This is a scheme that would not replicate the original youth mobility scheme or—sadly, in my view—restore the full benefits that UK citizens had pre-Brexit, but it would help young people for a short period, unlike the open-ended rights they previously had. It is likely that, unlike the old system, a youth mobility scheme could or would require visas, fees and possible job restrictions, depending on our labour market. Although it would not be as flexible as the scheme we had when we had EU membership, it would be a step towards easing travel and work barriers. We could negotiate the age limits, the length of stay and the job restrictions if they are needed.
The Chancellor’s 45-minute speech was a heart-rending plea for growth, growth, growth. She admitted that we need to go further and faster in the pursuit of economic growth, and Liberal Democrats agree with her, but the route to a reset can start with this tiny, open-hearted step into a youth EU mobility scheme. One small step for young people; one giant step towards common sense, growth, security and power. The insanity of refusal and denial must stop.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, to this House and look forward to his future contributions. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate with its focus on young people and the opportunities of mobility and exchange.
Young people had the most to lose but the least voice in the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The opportunities afforded to previous generations to explore and experience life, study and work in countries on our shared continent, and to enjoy the well-evidenced benefits of international and intercultural exchange—of which more later—are no longer available. For them, it will be more difficult and more expensive to build international friendships, networks and partnerships, and we will never know what cultural, social and economic innovations might have been born from collaborations that can no longer take place.
There are growing calls on the Government to grasp the opportunity to put this right. The British Chambers of Commerce has described the absence of arrangements for mobility for young people in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as a “serious omission”, affecting
“everything from school trips to summer jobs in both labour markets”.
ABTA has asked government to prioritise a youth mobility arrangement, arguing that it would rejuvenate opportunities for young people in the UK and foster growth for our essential businesses. YouGov polling from last year found that 68% of the British public would support a bilateral deal to allow 18-30 year-olds to live, work and study in countries across the entirety of Europe. Over half of those people who voted leave said that they would support such an agreement.
Nowhere is the mood music louder than among young people themselves. Last year, the European Economic and Social Committee of the EU published a report highlighting the challenges that young people on both sides of the channel are facing as a result of restricted mobility, and their aspirations for a future relationship between the UK and the EU. Based on extensive consultation among youth organisations and individuals, the report includes direct quotes from young people which express their deep sense of loss and a perception that the current relationship is broken, fractured and closed.
The EESC report makes a series of recommendations, echoing those from the European Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House and of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, of which I am a member. There is “universal and unanimous support” for the full reintegration of the UK into Erasmus+ and shared disappointment in the replacement Turing Scheme, with its limited offer and funding and no inward mobility—a scheme assessed as inadequate in the Government’s own analysis.
It is worth noting, as we have already heard, that Erasmus+ encompasses far more than funding for university students to undertake international placements. It is a vehicle for youth voluntary exchanges and a vital financial lifeline for thousands of young activist networks, organisations and youth councils. It has a proud 38-year record of delivering for young people and organisations across Europe, with a particular emphasis on marginalised groups. Post-Brexit, without access to Erasmus+, dozens of the UK’s youth charities have gone under, including the British Youth Council, which entered insolvency in April 2024, unable to meet ongoing financial challenges without the support that had come from Erasmus+.
This House has often discussed the loss of Erasmus+, but less attention has been paid to the impact of our leaving Creative Europe, the EU’s flagship programme to support the cultural, creative and audio-visual sectors. Between 2014 and 2019, Creative Europe delivered £100 million in funding to UK projects. The UK was the third most successful country in the number of funded projects over that period, with a particular impact on creative and cultural projects in the nations and regions. The Welsh Senedd’s 2024 Culture Shock report calls for government to prioritise association with Creative Europe at the forthcoming review of the TCA.
Rejoining Erasmus+ and Creative Europe would allow young people to apply for joint funding for projects that enable exchange at home and abroad. This would offset at least some of the damage of the current arrangement, helping today’s young people build and nurture the intercultural networks that underpin their development and careers and that inspire innovative new ideas. It would be a positive step on the journey towards a comprehensive and reciprocal scheme of the kind we are debating today.
The idea of a scheme that allows young people to live, work and study in the EU and the UK for a limited period is not a radically new concept. Indeed, according to the Library’s research, the UK already has such agreements in place with 13 countries around the world. Clearly, we believe in the personal, professional and social benefits that accrue from international and intercultural communication, and the increased understanding between nations that grows from this kind of exchange. However, the overwhelming majority of the exchange programmes already in place can be accessed only with a significant and costly long-haul flight, which likely puts them out of reach for many young people. Surely the Minister would agree that enabling exchange between the EU and the UK makes sense, not just because our histories are interwoven but because the relative ease and lower cost of access makes the benefits of exchange available to a wider and more diverse range of young people.
As we have heard, the introduction of a reciprocal arrangement would have significant benefits for the creative and cultural sector, which has been so severely impacted by an agreement that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, himself said, in March 2022, was “too purist” on youth mobility and touring artists, was
“making life difficult on both sides”,
and should be reviewed. The 90 in 180 days agreement, to which this and the last Government so often refer, does not address a fundamental issue, in that it does not permit artists to undertake work that is paid.
The hardest hit by all this are the younger, early-career artists, working on low profit margins and with limited administrative support. The bureaucracy involved in securing visas and permits for sets, costumes, instruments and merchandise is not only time-consuming but the cost is often prohibitive. Artists can no longer take up the last-minute engagements that have so often fast-tracked their careers. In some cases, visa restrictions disproportionately impact younger artists, because the waivers exempt only established artists or require minimum income thresholds, which of course younger artists cannot meet. A youth mobility scheme would not solve all the challenges for post-Brexit touring, but it could significantly improve the situation for early-career artists, who are more likely to be travelling alone or in splitter vans, to be carrying their own costumes and instruments, and to be transporting merchandise using the “merchandise in baggage” rules.
One of the most striking issues highlighted in the EESC report is the absence of institutional structures for youth engagement between the UK and the EU and in the groups that oversee and advise on the implementation of the TCA. I hope that this omission will be addressed at the review point next year.
Listening to young people and structuring their voices into the processes by which decisions are reached is more important now than it has ever been. Generational divides have always existed, but some of the factors that differentiate young people today from the decision-making generation are particularly profound. The climate and housing crises may well be unparalleled sources of intergenerational tension, as is the burden of future debt. Brains that have been shaped, quite literally, by the printing press technology of Johannes Gutenberg have to work hard to imagine how a generation whose brains are shaped by the technology of Gates—the “click to read more” technology—thinks, experiences and communicates. Therefore, it is all the more important to involve young people in policy development and to structure their voices into discussions and decisions about the longer term.
I welcome this Government’s commitment to reset our relationship with the EU. I hope that this includes fresh thinking, informed by the voices of young people, on intercultural and international exchange mechanisms, including Erasmus+ and Creative Europe, and an agreement that opens up the rich experience of living, working and studying across our shared continent.
A youth mobility agreement would not be a return to free movement. These schemes can be tailored to national interests and limited in terms of numbers or duration. But it would harness the transformative potential of youth connections in unlocking a closer bilateral relationship between the EU and the UK based on good will and intercultural understanding.
This is not just about restoring opportunities for individuals. A systematic review published last year determined that intercultural competence is one of the main requirements for success in today’s globalised world, and its absence a crucial factor in failure. The review found that these skills of cultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, language proficiency, empathy and flexibility are best developed through studying and staying in different cultural environments and participating in cultural programmes across geographic borders.
This is the real win of exchange and mobility with our nearest neighbour and our key trading partner: not just a future generation enriched by the experience of studying, living and working in different environments and among different peoples, but a future generation better equipped to help ensure the future success and prosperity of the UK.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this matter before us today. My contribution will be to strongly support a youth mobility scheme between the United Kingdom and European countries. But, before putting forward my arguments for this, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his maiden speech—and thank him, actually, for mentioning me.
The noble Lord and I go back quite a long way, if I might use that phrase. We first encountered each other, I think, when I was the UK Immigration Minister—never an easy job at the best of times, as we all know—and the noble Lord was the head of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. We had some exchanges at that time and I am pleased to say that, despite our slightly different backgrounds and responsibilities, we had a positive relationship. Later, when we were both MEPs, the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, was, as he said, the chair of the LIBE Committee—the justice committee —of the European Parliament, with me as the lead Conservative. I can state categorically that, by working together, especially on security issues, we were able to demonstrate the importance of the UK in protecting not only our own citizens but all Europeans and the wider world. It was a most productive relationship. Sadly, of course, Brexit removed those activities, but I am absolutely delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, is now here with us.
In examining the Government’s stated wish to restore or reset our relationship with the EU, the matter we are debating today is of great importance, not only for our young people but for the economic, cultural and diplomatic ties that bind us to our closest neighbours.
Since the UK left the EU, young people on both sides of the channel have faced a stark reality: opportunities that were once taken for granted have disappeared. The ability to study, work and gain international experience in each other’s countries has been significantly diminished. This is not merely an inconvenience: it is a loss of potential, a restriction of opportunity and a barrier to future prosperity.
We have long argued that expanding youth mobility schemes to more countries—particularly those geographically and economically close to the UK—would be beneficial. Sectors with fluid labour markets, such as hospitality, have relied on the participation of young workers for years.
Of course, youth mobility schemes are not new, as other noble Lords have mentioned. The UK already has agreements with countries such as Australia, Canada and Japan, allowing young people to live and work in those nations for a defined period. These agreements are reciprocal, well regulated and mutually beneficial. There is absolutely no logical reason why a similar scheme cannot be agreed with Europe, especially with the EU itself. Of course, the specifics will need to be negotiated to ensure that we get a deal that is in our interests, but that is very much achievable.
The economic case is compelling. This is an initiative welcomed across business communities and across all sectors, and widely seen by labour organisations and the third sector as a serious omission from our current relationships. European interns have often been invaluable in helping British small and medium-sized companies expand into new European markets. The long-standing practice among UK lawyers—I speak as a lawyer myself— of spending time in an EU member state during training or after qualification has been crucial for professional development and career success. However, this pathway is no longer accessible to those lawyers employed by firms without EU offices, as they cannot take advantage of the intra-corporate transfer provisions contained within the TCA.
Similarly, for example, the horticulture sector has for many years sent students and young people to the Netherlands in the summer, while taking European students here—a system that has been fundamental to how they do business.
Polling evidence also shows very strong public support for a youth mobility scheme. In August 2024, research by More in Common found that 58% of people think that such a scheme is a good idea, compared with only 10% who oppose it. Breaking that down, 71% of those who voted Labour in the July general election supported the scheme, as well as a majority—56%—of Conservative voters. I should not mention it, but even among Reform UK voters, support stood at 44%, with only 27% against. Those numbers demonstrate a broad consensus in favour of restoring structured opportunities for young people.
A structured mobility scheme with the EU would enhance the UK’s soft power. Our influence in Europe and beyond is built not only on economic and security relationships—important as they are—but on cultural and personal connections. When young people live and work abroad, they form lasting relationships, break down barriers and build bridges—both literally and figuratively, I think. These connections contribute to Britain’s standing in the world, making us a more attractive and engaged partner on the international stage.
Some are arguing that concerns about immigration should deter us from pursuing such a scheme. One or two speakers have done that. As I have said, I speak as a former Immigration Minister and there is a clear misunderstanding of the proposals. A youth mobility agreement is not unrestricted migration; it is a temporary reciprocal arrangement that benefits both sides. Those coming into the UK must have financial means to support themselves and it does not offer a path to citizenship. It is not—I repeat, not—a return to free movement.
We know that the EU has expressed its openness to having an agreement. To a large extent, the ball is now in the UK’s court. If we fail to engage constructively, we risk further diminishing our ties with our closest allies and depriving future generations of the opportunities that all their predecessors enjoyed.
The benefits of youth mobility are clear, but we must place this in the wider context of our relationship with Europe. This is not just good for young people; it is good for the UK and good for Europe. The EU has already put an offer on the table and our Government should now engage, negotiate and reach a fair and beneficial agreement, without further delay. By doing so, we can secure meaningful gains across multiple sectors, foster a closer and more co-operative relationship with our European neighbours and, in doing so, enhance our collective security and economic prosperity.
In conclusion, this is an opportunity that we really must seize. I urge the Government to act in the best interests of our young people and our country.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his maiden speech. Our paths crossed a little over 10 years ago when he, as a Member of the European Parliament, and I, as the chair of a committee of this House responsible for justice and home affairs, were doing our best to mitigate the somewhat impetuous effort of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, to remove the UK from all justice and home affairs legislation. I am glad to say that we were successful then, although we were thwarted by the Brexit process. I welcome the noble Lord to this House, where I am sure he will make a major contribution.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans is also to be congratulated and thanked for securing this timely debate on the potential for a UK-EU mobility partnership as part of the Government’s reset of our post-Brexit relationship with the EU, and for his most helpful and illuminating introduction to the debate. This debate is all the more necessary as it provides an opportunity to clear away some of the quantities of disinformation that have swirled around the subject since the idea surfaced in Brussels early last summer, well ahead of the July election here.
To clear up one of those bits of disinformation, the idea has not yet been put to the UK by the EU in any formal sense. It was an idea that the Commission raised with the EU member states, and to which they got a reasonably positive response, but it was not put to us—except by journalists—because there are no current negotiations going on between the UK and the EU, so there was no need to respond to it, positively or negatively. The then Labour Opposition chose to react to it—quite unnecessarily, I have to say—in a way that was interpreted more negatively than was justified.
The second piece of disinformation is that the concept of mobility partnerships for particular age groups and professions is not understood as being as widespread as it is around the world. In no case does it amount to full free movement, and it is often numerically capped. So far as the EU is concerned, the Commissioner who will now be handling the matter in the new Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, made clear last week that any UK-EU scheme would not—I repeat “not”—amount to free movement.
Having got rid of those two main pieces of disinformation, it surely makes sense for the Government to consider carefully the pros and cons of such a mobility partnership. I hope the Minister will say that they will now do that, so that we are in a position to engage constructively if and when the idea is raised with us in the reset negotiations.
So far as your Lordships’ European Affairs Committee is concerned, the idea was studied in the process of preparing the report we made to the Government and the House in April 2023. I was serving as a member of the committee at the time, and we concluded that the idea made a lot of sense and would be in the UK’s interest. When the then Government reacted to our conclusion, they did not agree, but they were a different Government. Our report, which was subscribed to by a committee of all parties and none, is surely therefore worth looking at again now.
Since the time of that report by your Lordships’ European Affairs Committee, I would suggest that the case for giving positive consideration to a UK-EU mobility partnership has become much more compelling. Following our departure from the EU almost five years ago to the day, the opportunities for those in this age bracket to be likely to be covered by any mobility partnership have shrunk dramatically on both sides of the channel. Brexit has deprived them of many of the openings they had when we were a member of the EU.
School visits have virtually collapsed; access to the ever more successful Erasmus scheme, to which other non-EU countries belong, has lapsed; knowledge of other European languages in this country has continued to slide; the activities of performing artists of all kinds have been hit hard; and young professionals in a whole range of specialisations have ceased to have easy access to jobs on both sides of the channel. That is a pretty sorry litany, and I could go on. Moreover, the sign of interest in a mobility partnership with us, which we have heard from Brussels, means that there is a good chance that such an approach would fulfil one crucial characteristic for success in negotiation: mutual benefit to both sides.
The time has surely come to stop sucking our teeth, to stop repeating constantly the mantra “We have no plans for a mobility partnership”, and to give the whole idea a thorough and open-minded consideration. After all, we might discover some help there for the Government’s top priority of stimulating growth.
Finally, on a more general point, it does not make sense and is not in our national interest for us to debate every idea for improving the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU as if it was a rerun of the damagingly divisive debates we had between 2016 and 2019 over the principle of our EU membership. The debate we are having today is not part of that and should not be treated as if it was.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for initiating this debate. It is not the first time and it will not be the last that we debate our relations with the EU and I thank him for making that possible.
I also welcome my friend the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, whom I have known for 26 years. He served in the European Parliament with me and had a distinguished career there, not only as deputy leader of the Labour group but also, significantly, as chair of the civil liberties committee of Parliament where he made a memorable contribution. The secret of success in the European Parliament is to get agreement across the chamber and the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, was excellent at that and well respected as a figure who could unify the chamber. He is very welcome here. I know he will make many contributions.
I am not giving anything away if I tell this House that I am an unrepentant supporter of the European Union. I voted yes in the referendum. Together with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, I headed up the Cambridge for Europe campaign and I have never regretted a single statement or anything that we did during that campaign. As has been said, this proposal is very modest. It is not going back into the EU. It is far more modest than anything I would personally be happy with.
We cannot keep on hearing that the Labour Government have no plans. The Labour Government have a large majority. They have a population, particularly the young, who want a closer relationship with Europe, so they had better find some plans unless they want to alienate all the youth vote in Britain—that is, the youth vote that is not alienated from the Conservative Party, which does not seem to have many plans either. Maybe my noble friend Lord Effingham will correct me on that and tell me that we are going to have a Damascene conversion, which should please the right reverend Prelate.
I was a European federalist. In 1981, when the Labour Opposition were campaigning to leave the European Union, which was being magnificently defended by Baroness Thatcher, I joined a small group in Brussels that set up the Crocodile Club to campaign for a federal Europe. The Conservative representative on that group was the French passport-holding Mr Johnson —Mr Stanley Johnson, with whom I enjoyed many meetings and dinners when we planned what we would like to have seen as Europe, which was a Europe that was very similar in its structure to the United States.
I say to this Government and to my friends in opposition on this side of the House that, if people want to come to Britain, is not that the same as them wanting to go to Texas or California—a sign of a country that is in demand, where they want to contribute? I certainly agree that we have to sort out the welfare bill, because we do not want welfare tourism, but the fact that people want to come and work and contribute to the wealth of Britain is surely something we should be rejoicing in. We should be pleased about it, not be a dog in the manger and say that we do not want to see them. My view is that moving from Spain to the UK should be seen as little different from moving from, say, Maine to Minnesota.
I always believed that all citizens of the European Union should have the vote where they live. The idea, which our party and Labour have, that we should enfranchise people who have been outside Britain for so long that they have probably forgotten the language is not the way forward. The way forward is that a European citizen in the European Union should have a vote where they live. If noble Lords look back a few years, they will see that I moved a Private Member’s Bill to that very effect. I can say, not unsurprisingly, that the Bill got absolutely nowhere, but there is a lot to be said for it.
If we are going to look to the future, as a relatively small population grouping in a not huge geographical part of the world, then we have to work together. We cannot have a constant dog-in-the-manger attitude to our nearest colleagues. We have to get back to the spirit of my good friend, the late Arthur Cockfield, who designed the Single European Act so that we could work and trade together, and of Mrs Thatcher—before she went bonkers—who was fully in support of us having a Europe in which it was easier for us to move around and trade.
We have all seen the ABTA report which shows how far the ability of British citizens to work in Europe has declined: 69%, it said in the briefing that it sent me. We have seen the YouGov report from April, which said that 68% support a youth mobility deal. We have heard that youth mobility, sadly, does not involve free movement; personally, I wish it did, but the fact that it does not surely makes it even harder for the major political parties to decide that they have no plans to do anything.
As I have said before in this House, if we want to represent the future of Britain, we have to change our attitude to the European Union. We have to move on. The majority that voted to leave have been cremated; they are not there any more. We have to start looking positively at Europe.
One of the saddest things in my 25 years in the European Parliament was, I am sorry to say, dealing with often Labour Ministers who quoted the Daily Mail to me. I well recall a meeting with Geoff Hoon, who was a Europe Minister—one of the 18 that we ran through in our 17 years. He lasted about six months. I went to see him because I wanted Britain to take up money from Europe to publicise the EU through our libraries, with documentation and material supplied by Europe. Geoff said to me, “I’m sorry, Richard, the Daily Mail wouldn’t stand for it”.
Yesterday, my wife drew my attention to the fact that the Labour Government now wish to invoke the spirit of Mrs Thatcher. Goodness knows where we go from here, but that is where we are. If we are going to move forward and be the Government of this country again, on this side and that side, we have to start doing what the younger voters in this country want. This is not a country of old men and women any more; it is a country in which we have to deliver for the up-and-coming generation who are going to create the wealth of the country.
I have said many times when I have talked to students through our schools’ programme that I came from a golden generation. We grew up in peace, with growth, and we are fantastically better off than we were when I was a child. If we are to deliver that for the next generation, it will require a fundamental reset with Europe—one that goes much further than either the Government or the Opposition are talking about. And noble Lords will notice that there is one party I have not mentioned in that sentence.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and the pro-European words he has just shared with us. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for bringing this important debate to this House and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his maiden speech. He introduced today’s debate with such passion, and it was important to hear his own experiences of how mobility schemes have reached out to those from underprivileged backgrounds. That was an important note. I look forward to hearing more of his contributions and say croeso, welcome, to the noble Lord.
As the youngest Member of this House, I take a special interest in proposals that will offer young people more opportunities. Under-30s, who such schemes are aimed at, are a generation which has been most affected by the loss of work opportunities post-Brexit. This has been coupled with the isolating experiences that the Covid pandemic had on youth. Along with being locked out of the housing market with low wages, hopes are dashed for many in my generation. His Majesty’s Government have an opportunity to change this with an act of good will towards young people, establishing a new youth mobility scheme with the EU. This is not just about young people but about the other benefits to the economy and society, as has been shared by many noble Lords today.
We are not alone in this view. A poll conducted by YouGov for the European Council on Foreign Relations found that almost seven in 10 Britons, including a 55% majority of former pro-Brexit voters, would support a scheme that would allow 200,000 18 to 40 year-olds from the UK and the EU to travel, study and work freely in each other’s countries for up to four years.
I would like to talk about the broader context that this debate offers. Yesterday, Wales’s biggest university, Cardiff University, announced plans to cut 400 jobs. The proposals include completely axing courses such as nursing, music, ancient history and modern languages. Other schools will be merged to save money. I fear that Cardiff University will not be the last to make such an announcement.
After Brexit, the UK’s withdrawal from Erasmus and continuous cuts to fields such as culture and the arts mean that current modern languages students in particular undoubtedly get a markedly different experience from other alumni. However, language learning is no less important today than at any point in the past. It could be argued that mutual understanding is more crucial in today’s world than ever before.
The vice-chancellor has blamed these difficult decisions on the precarious financial position of many universities, particularly in the context of declining international student applications and increasing cost pressures—these issues are tied closely together. Cardiff University is not alone in this struggle; many universities across the UK have been warning of a crisis looming. In the case of universities in Wales, the Welsh Government and His Majesty’s Government have a lot to answer for. The recent decision on national insurance has made the situation worse.
Before I conclude, I will rebut claims that this would be a return to free movement. This is not the case for the youth mobility scheme already established with 12 non-EU countries, because it would be time limited and require people to meet certain conditions before and during their stay. His Majesty’s Government could set the quota and the length of stay. When the UK was a member state, UK nationals had the right to move and reside freely within the EU; that is not the case for this scheme.
Although it has been reported that the EU has been forthcoming with proposals for a mobility scheme with the UK, I strongly urge His Majesty’s Government to show leadership and proactively suggest their own proposal. As part of designing a proposal—today we have had several suggestions for what that could include—I would also make the case for expanding the age limit. Many people in their 30s and in their early careers would enjoy and benefit from an opportunity to work, study and live abroad. As the Prime Minister is set to meet EU leaders in Brussels on Monday, I hope that a youth mobility scheme is on the table and is progressed. I also hope that the future of our higher education institutions is considered as part of His Majesty’s Government’s reset with the EU.
I will close with a couple of questions for the Minister directly. Can she confirm whether a youth mobility scheme will be discussed with EU leaders next week? Furthermore, can she share with us what consultation His Majesty’s Government are undertaking or plan to undertake with young people regarding the UK’s reset with the EU?
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate; it is clearly a popular subject. There have been Questions and other debates on it, but in this Chamber people have managed to provide many different answers to a similar question. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his interesting maiden speech. It showed humour and was, I think, a view of what we may come to expect from him in the future—insight and modesty—but he knows what he is talking about.
I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes. I am grateful to her for her advice on how to pronounce Llanfaes—so if I get it wrong, it is not my fault. Her point about widening the age range is one that I think many of us in this Chamber would take to heart. It is probably not quite the age she has in mind, but raising it at least to the mid-40s would be reasonable because, apart from anything else, it seems that the current younger generation seem to grow up rather more slowly than our generation had to.
It may have escaped the notice of some here, but earlier this month the Government launched the soft power council; it was so soft that nobody took much notice. Nevertheless, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Lisa Nandy from DCMS got together to announce this new council because they believe that soft power is the one thing that is going to be incredibly important in making Britain great again. Of course, they are right.
As David Lammy put it:
“Soft power is fundamental to the UK’s impact and reputation around the world … But we have not taken a sufficiently strategic approach … Harnessing soft power effectively can help to build relationships, deepen trust, enhance our security and drive”—
you guessed it—“economic growth”. Well, nobody is going to disagree with that.
We all agree that soft power is delivered in massive quantities by youth mobility. Getting young people to see and experience this country, and getting our young people to experience life abroad, is all about delivering soft power. Tomorrow’s young people include tomorrow’s leaders. Previous leaders of the States, for instance, have been students in the UK and have reflected favourably on that experience once in office. So a youth mobility scheme should be an important part of any soft power initiative. Surely that will be a contributor to the growth that we are in search of and that is proving so elusive.
Yesterday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she wants a Government who remove barriers to growth “one by one”. She said she is intent on making it
“easier for businesses to trade”.
What happened just five years ago has not made it easier for businesses to trade. The right reverend Prelate said he hoped that in this debate we would not rehearse the arguments over Brexit, and I think we have all tried not to disappoint him. The latest poll from YouGov, published this week, shows that just 30% of people think that we were right to leave the EU—but let us not debate that now.
The UK is not going back into the EU, the single market or the customs union; we have heard that often enough to actually believe it. Instead, we are resetting the relationship—and we need to. In the interests of growth, we certainly need to reset that relationship as quickly as possible. Exports by small businesses are down by 30% since Brexit. Some 20,000 small businesses have stopped exporting altogether. The noble Lord, Lord Frost—I see him returning to his place—sees no need for this reset. He told us that he believes the relationship is working well, even though those small firms have stopped exporting altogether.
The noble Lord was at least a little more positive—just a little—on the subject of a youth mobility scheme. I confess that I share his view that the EU’s original proposal that we read about had flaws—not least the idea that we should be able to send people from the UK to only one EU country but then they would have Schengen rights to travel, which limits things somewhat and seems a little unnecessary. Nevertheless, it is a serious starting point for negotiations that the EU wanted to open. The majority of people in this country would be perfectly prepared to open those negotiations, and they would want them to lead somewhere.
In this debate we have heard much about the advantages for individuals of the opportunity to live and work abroad. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, would not even be in this Chamber, she tells us, had it not been for taking advantage of that opportunity. The advantage is not just in soft power but in young workers coming to the UK. Our young people get experience that is useful to bring back here. The hospitality industry and ABTA have been very clear that, without that experience, the pipeline of people to work in the travel industry in this country is very badly hit. In the more short-term rush for growth, those young workers—who work not for a great deal of money but with much enthusiasm, particularly in our hospitality industry and probably in our care industries as well—are much missed.
The choice of existing schemes is, to say the least, somewhat idiosyncratic. It is all very well to have a youth mobility scheme with Andorra or Monaco. South Korea and Uruguay may have young people who look fondly on the UK, but I have not come across many of them recently. Perhaps they find places closer to home that they wish to visit and that they can afford to visit.
Since we started these specific youth mobility schemes, some of which date back to 2008, half the visitors who have taken advantage of them have come from Australia. Much as we all welcome the Australians who come and work in this country, we need to broaden our horizons and encourage people from our nearest neighbours in Europe. Our estrangement from the EU— from Europe—has been hard on this country, not just for trade, but from an emotional point of view for many people. As other noble Lords have said, it is time for us to really start rebuilding those bridges.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has said, school trips have been decimated. That has had a terrible effect on the language schools in this country. There are grave fears that this situation could get even worse and that short-term tourists will be deterred too by the prospect of the ETA coming into force—not next year, nor the year after, but in April 2025. The ETA scheme is already operating for further flung countries. If it is to come into effect for European countries in April, can the Minister reassure us that everything is up and running to cope with it; that Operation Brock will not be needed again; that coaches will continue to flow through the port of Dover, and that there is nothing to fear? Can she reassure us that businesses, particularly in Kent, will not be hit, because they are fearful that they will suffer terrible disruption?
I will finish on a more positive note, as the right reverend Prelate asked us to do. We should take the concept of town twinning as far as we can and encourage towns to build close relationships in Europe; to get together and travel to Europe. Again, I fear that the ETA may be an obstacle in the way of this happening.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans on securing this debate. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his charming and heartfelt speech. I know that he will make a significant contribution to this House.
In principle, I welcome the concept of a youth mobility scheme. While most noble Lords in the Chamber are against the Government’s position, I am in the rather perverse position today of defending it, unless the Minister disappoints me later. Even within the last two or three years, we have undertaken bilateral arrangements and discussions with different countries including, indeed, with the EU on a multilateral basis for a youth mobility programme. As other noble Lords have said, in the last few years we have secured arrangements with various countries—Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand and Andorra—so we can do it. It is to be hoped that we can secure a scheme again.
Let me talk about the Turing scheme; some noble Lords are rather insouciant and dismissive of it. In 2023, more than 40,000 people benefited from the scheme across 474 successful applications. In 2022, there were 373 successful applications and more than 30,000 students involved. To come back to the point that the right reverend Prelate made about Erasmus+, I am afraid that he is seeing the glass half-empty, not half-full. Yes, we are not proficient in foreign languages, but the reason that Erasmus+ did not work for us post Brexit is that we are number two in the world for soft power—as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said—and people want to come to the UK. Over a seven-year period, the programme would have cost the UK a net £2 billion. On pure cost grounds, it was not feasible to continue that system.
In the same way, there are opportunities for collaboration, such as we see with the Horizon programme. Tunisia and Israel, for instance, are not in Horizon, but they have relationships with the European Union. This is a laudable aim, and I do not blame the British Chambers of Commerce and ABTA for making a strong point. I think, however, that your Lordships’ House needs to look at the wider political and economic context of this very difficult decision.
There is much criticism of the failure to include a youth mobility scheme in either the withdrawal agreement or the trade and co-operation agreement. With all due respect to noble Lords, the Government at that time had limited bandwidth; they had other pressing priorities and there was a lack of political willpower on both sides by the EU and United Kingdom. Many in your Lordships’ House did everything in their power to obstruct and thwart the UK’s formal legal exit from the EU over many months, which of course impacted negotiations. As someone who was closely involved as chief of staff to the Secretary of State for Brexit and worked closely with the Article 50 task force, I know that the Government had other issues: the financial settlement, the transition period, the Northern Ireland protocol, Cyprus and the sovereign bases, governance of the withdrawal agreement, and Gibraltar, to name the most important.
That brings me to the issue of citizens’ rights. For the more than 5 million EU citizens living in the United Kingdom, we have established in legislation and via the independent monitoring authority the most generous and benign immigration regime for non-citizens anywhere in the world. Indeed, in the next few months, the EU settlement scheme will migrate hundreds of thousands of those non-UK citizens from pre-settled to settled status as a result of a High Court case in 2022. That will enable them to have indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom, which is de facto citizenship—despite the UK being a third country. No such reciprocal EU-wide regime exists to protect and enhance the rights of British citizens in the European Union.
The UK was one of only three countries that, in 2004, imposed no transitional requirements in respect of the free movement directive. The significant numbers who moved to the UK thereafter were many more than were envisaged by either politicians or academics at the time. From 2021 to 2024, more than 4.5 million immigrants migrated to the UK. After five years, the vast majority will be granted indefinite leave to remain, meaning access to benefits, social housing and the NHS. Net migration last year was 728,000. It peaked in 2023, shamefully, at 906,000; no party had put that in their manifesto and it was not agreed by any electors.
I hope to explain that that is why the Government are rightly wary of any policy that might give rise to a return to de facto free movement. By 2032, in just seven years’ time, Britain’s population will have risen by 5 million and, in 22 years, by 9 million—a 13% rise in only about 25 years. The immigration system is, frankly, broken, but I will illustrate the many areas of dysfunction—the student visa scheme is a good example of short-termism and putting off difficult financial choices for another day.
A glut of student visas was issued in 2021 and onwards, motivated in many cases by the prospect of two years’ work on the graduate visa route. The explosion was driven by huge numbers of people from developing countries attending the lowest cost, least selective institutions, often on shorter postgraduate taught courses. Rather than selling education to future researchers, our universities are increasingly in the business of selling visas to delivery drivers.
Why did the Government do this? Short-termism, and it was my party that was in government, I accept that. The long freeze in tuition fees means that the real-terms value of the fees paid by domestic students has dropped by £2,800 since 2012 and, as the Migration Advisory Committee puts it, the sector has “an overreliance on immigration” because the higher fees charged to foreign students are what is keeping the sector from toppling over. While this is good for universities, the wages of those on the graduate route and their ability to switch to longer-term visas suggest that it is less good for the UK. Eventually, if we do not get a grip on this, we will see more pressure on public services, a fall in per capita GDP, a failure to train and upskill our domestic workforce and more welfare dependency—not good for the future of the country.
This is the economic context in which we are debating this very important issue today. It is not making a value judgment on whether travel and broadening the mind is generally a good thing; it is just being realistic and pragmatic about the challenges we are facing. That said, I welcome the position paper put forward by the EU Commission seeking a mandate from the Council of Ministers that was published in April last year. I think it is the right thing to do and it is right that we have a meaningful set of negotiations between the EU and the UK on the youth mobility scheme—and it is one which I have read with great care.
It is in many ways a sensible and pragmatic opening position, with its emphasis on limited in time mobility and the fulfilment of certain conditions, such as subsistence funding, health insurance and appropriate travel documents. For me and, no doubt, His Majesty’s Government, there are still major impediments before a deal can be secured. Being a third country is a shibboleth for the intransigent absolutists of the European Union and the EU Commission—but it cuts both ways. Professor Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law at Cambridge University, has described the proposal as “a defensive strategy”, as much to prevent the possibility of the UK striking more liberal and permissive youth mobility agreements with individual EU countries on a bilateral basis. Third country status is a two-way street. Why should the UK set aside healthcare surcharges for EU citizens when we have an NHS under huge pressure? Why should we forgo income from foreign students from the EU while charging enhanced fees to those young people from South Korea, India, South Africa, Canada and the United States? We should not accept that we have as an encumbrance single market indivisibility.
The youth mobility scheme is part of the Government’s mythical reset—but of solid details, red lines, bargaining points and strategic objectives there are thus far none. If, as the German ambassador has made clear, the EU sees a youth mobility scheme as a priority, the EU will need to de-escalate potential conflict, loosen the rigid negotiation guidelines and be more realistic—perhaps by giving ground on the length of the programme to, say, two years; on higher education fees; on fixing a cap or quota; agreeing a realistic visa cost; and explicitly ruling out the competence of the European Court of Justice.
To finish on a positive note, as we all have today, I will quote Oscar Wilde:
“Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices”.
For the avoidance of doubt, I support a programme that allows thousands of young people to travel, work, study, play sport and live among people of different backgrounds and cultures in Europe. It will undoubtedly benefit and enrich their lives and the wider community—I myself have travelled throughout Europe for over 40 years—but it must be done for our national benefit, in our long-term, sustainable national interest and in a pragmatic and realistic way. For that reason, I find myself, unusually, supporting the Government’s position.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, and very much enjoyed hearing his soft Scottish accent. In fact, we have heard a duo of Scottish accents.
We are discussing a hugely complicated area, as we have just heard, but the complications are essentially bureaucratic, economic and political. I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Frost, talk about his perception of what the EU had offered. I take his point about our being able to go to only one country while others might be able to come here. However, I was also very pleased to hear him recognise, with all his knowledge and expertise in this area, that we need to do something for touring artists and musicians and, if we can, for youth mobility.
The ability to travel and experience the world is profoundly important. It is an important aspect of human behaviour and indeed civilisation. That is not complicated. Going back to the Renaissance and before, curiosity, that prerequisite of intellect, has led people to travel, learn and exchange ideas. Think of the Grand Tour—think of what Turner painted when he toured or what the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, found when she toured. Students of language improve their mastery by visiting and speaking to natives in their mother tongue. I doubt whether many noble Lords have not at some point improved their French, Italian, Spanish or German in France, Italy, Spain or Germany.
Perhaps I could refer to some personal reminiscences. My father, Lennox Berkeley, learned his trade as a composer when Maurice Ravel took him to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. That quintessentially English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel and always paid tribute to what he learned. More recently, George Benjamin, one of our leading composers, immersed himself in French music in studies with Olivier Messiaen. Many British composers have benefited, as have I, from visits to IRCAM, Pierre Boulez’s research institute investigating electronic music in the Beaubourg centre. We need to protect our soft power and the voice of our leading artists is a soft power.
Talking of soft power, I am extremely concerned to hear that the British Council is heavily in debt, owing to loss of income from English language teaching during Covid. I hope the Government can reassure us that they will support the British Council, which not only helps with the exchange of ideas and helps us take works of art abroad—my opera with Ian McEwan would not have happened in Rome were it not for British Council support—but fosters the exchange of ideas.
The Government must try to make sure that the British Council does not sink beneath the waves of the English Channel. It is a really good advert for UK culture, as is the BBC World Service. I must tell noble Lords that I was informed today that it has had to institute some major cuts, despite Government investment.
Youth mobility is surely part of growing up, as we have heard. I fear that, if it is not protected and enhanced, it will become, like music education, the preserve of the well off. Reacting to initiatives from the EU, Priti Patel, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said that she thought youth mobility would be damaging to freedom of movement and that it would relax freedom of movement rules. What is the Government’s view of this? In my view, it is overly paranoid. Where would we be without our architects experiencing the work of European architects, without writers immersing themselves in foreign climes, or without cooks sampling international traditions? I would like to see us rejoin Erasmus; although it was quite right of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, to talk in glowing terms of the Turing Scheme, it is not Erasmus and it is not reciprocal.
I want to see better rules about cabotage—these are utterly ridiculous. If you are taking a symphony orchestra or a ballet company abroad, you have to exchange your truck on entering Europe, and you then have to exchange it again after every two venues. That adds incomparably to the cost of touring.
There are things that we can do. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, intimated that there are things that could be tweaked, and that is a good start for all of us. As the right reverend Prelate said at the beginning of the debate, let us not get into well-rehearsed discussions about Brexit but let us see what we can do to improve where we are, and possibly move on from there. I want to see future generations have the opportunities that the right reverend Prelate mentioned. I want them to have the opportunities that we had—to go to Paris and to Berlin, and to discover things and exchange ideas with their counterparts in Europe. I hope that the Government may be able to move us in that direction.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, I join others in thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for his introduction to the debate. I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his excellent maiden speech. Along with him and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, it is a very great pleasure for me to speak in this debate within a solid group of three Dundonians.
I will briefly touch on a few points: youth mobility schemes, which are different from those of freedom of movement; how these still benefit international culture as much as national economies; and the current availability of help to us from the 46-state human rights and think tank affiliation of the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom remains a prominent member. I am a recent chairman of its Education and Culture Committee.
Since Brexit, youth movement numbers from Europe to the United Kingdom have dramatically declined, as many have drawn our attention to. Clearly, this negative trend should be reversed. Does the Minister agree that, if accepted, recent European Commission proposals for a UK-EU youth mobility scheme would achieve two purposes—first, improving numbers, and, secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, and others have pointed out, so doing without causing freedom of movement?
Through the proposed EU scheme, individuals can come only for a limited period and thus are not permitted to settle in the United Kingdom, as conversely UK participants are equally restricted from so doing in European Union member states. Do the Government aim to secure a deal with the European Commission very soon? What are their current reservations? Which further concessions, if any, will they then seek to gain from the Commission?
Then there are the existing youth mobility schemes which the United Kingdom already has, and which we have heard about in this debate, with 12 different countries, including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Iceland, Uruguay, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, regarding the 27 European Union member states, bilateral youth mobility arrangements with any or all of them would be much less desirable than a working arrangement with all of them together through the European Union. That follows anyway, once there is a youth mobility deal with the European Commission itself. Only an EU-level approach will ensure that all member states are treated equally in respect of the mobility of young people to the United Kingdom. Does the Minister concur that this comparative assessment adds a further reason for the Government to secure a timely youth mobility deal with the European Union as soon as possible?
As the right reverend Prelate has implied, not only ought we to have a new youth mobility system with the European Union. We should also rejoin Erasmus. The Turin and Horizon schemes are to be welcomed, and I very much endorse what my noble friend Lord Jackson said in praising Horizon. Nevertheless, Erasmus goes much wider, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made this point, too. The cost of Erasmus has been complained about due to more students coming to the United Kingdom than United Kingdom students are going to Europe. Yet that is hardly surprising. For, along with the right reverend Prelate, all your Lordships will lament the continuing inadequacy of language skills in the United Kingdom. The cost of Erasmus is surely well worth paying for, if, to our advantage, it can help redress this and certain other learning deficiencies that the United Kingdom has when compared with different countries in Europe.
Regarding economic growth and complementing labour shortages, and in so far as these consequences can be assisted at all by increased youth mobility to the United Kingdom, the Government are right to describe them as secondary goals. The priority must be personal development arising from education and culture exchanges. However, as a useful by-product, youth mobility will clearly improve the United Kingdom economy, as it will serve to reduce our labour shortages. That is why the British Chambers of Commerce urges this to be borne in mind in order to create sensible long-term designs for youth mobility, where these are able to promote culture along with economic growth both here and elsewhere.
Does the Minister assent that it is exactly this duality of good cultural and economic outcomes together which sensible long-term youth mobility designs ought to contain? Does she believe that this should, therefore, become part of our forthcoming talks with the European Commission, equally so to accompany our application to rejoin Erasmus, hence as well shaping our plan of action to rejoin Erasmus this year, as soon as we can, after concluding a youth mobility deal with the European Union?
Fortunately, and in any case, we are already party to a number of Council of Europe initiatives related to youth mobility. These strengthen our hand for European Commission dealings, as they also do for applying to rejoin Erasmus. Over the last few decades, the United Kingdom has variously signed and ratified the European Agreement on Continued Payment of Scholarships to Students Studying Abroad; the Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region; and the European Agreement on Travel by young Persons on Collective Passports between the Member Countries of the Council of Europe.
One action we have not so far signed is the European Agreement on Regulations governing the Movement of Persons between Member States of the Council of Europe. That would assist UK citizens, by indicating the travel and identity papers which they need for crossing between signatory states. We should sign this without too much further delay. Can the Minister please give an assurance that we will do so?
Not least, there is also the Council of Europe’s European Youth Foundation from which we benefit. This funds European youth activities to encourage peace, understanding and co-operation within Europe and globally, in a spirit of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Given that, save for only one of them, the United Kingdom is already party to these Council of Europe measures and their broad aims, I am quite sure that the Minister would consider that we must make full use of their powerful range and advocacy. We should do so when we talk to the European Commission and others about co-operating within a variety of constructive options.
For the more we adopt that approach, the more likely it becomes that we will achieve our objectives, including the immediate ones this year of rejoining Erasmus and improving youth mobility to the United Kingdom.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to participate towards the end of this debate. Like other noble Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for introducing what is clearly a timely debate. As my noble friend Lady Featherstone has pointed out, there have been debates in the other place initiated by our honourable friends James MacCleary MP, who had a Private Member’s Bill about youth mobility, and Sarah Olney, the Member for Richmond Park, who had a debate on exactly the same topic yesterday.
On these Benches, we have a very clear sense that youth mobility matters. Unlike perhaps the other Benches, we are also absolutely united in believing that youth mobility matters as a way of strengthening our relations with our European partners. I am very glad that I am not having to summate either from the Official Opposition Front Bench or the Government Front Bench, because I suspect that both are a little more constrained by their party lines and in some cases by the fact that their Back Benches are so completely at odds over how far they believe youth mobility should be part of a wider package—or not.
It is always the convention to congratulate a new Peer on their maiden speech. As others have done today, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moraes. His maiden speech was quite different from so many. It was not self-aggrandising in any way; it was one of the most humble speeches but one that also made very clear the important role that he played in the European Parliament and the role that he is going to play in your Lordships’ House. Not only is the noble Lord very welcome but his maiden speech is also one that we will all remember.
Youth mobility is hugely important but was dramatically reduced for young people when we left the European Union. The right reverend Prelate is right that today is not the day to rehearse the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but it is the time to think about what we can do to enhance the opportunities for our young people. I think I will be unique this afternoon in declaring an interest. Unlike my namesake, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, I clearly would not fit into any youth mobility scheme. I note that even the youngest Member of your Lordships’ House would be pushing it to participate in any proposed youth mobility scheme by the time His Majesty’s Government get around to agreeing to the idea if the cap is going to be the age of 30. My interests lie in the fact that I am a professor at Cambridge University and a non-executive director of BIMM University Limited, so I have higher education interests which obviously link to the mobility of young people.
Like that of my noble friend Lady Featherstone, my life was very much changed by the opportunity to travel when I was young. In my case, I went on a French exchange. It was exactly the opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, described; many of us will have been to other countries on school exchanges. In those days, you did not get just a five-year passport for a child or a 10-year passport for an adult; you could have a one-year, temporary, paper passport. As I was so anxious about going, that is what I asked for—aged 14—just in case I did not really like being abroad or I felt that it was a bit too much and never wanted to go again. However, I found that going to another European country was empowering, and I am still close to the family that I exchanged with. It was an opportunity to learn modern foreign languages in a way that people find so much harder in the 2020s. Like other noble Lords, I think that we should consider ensuring that we have as many opportunities as possible for young people—ideally those between 18 and 30, as well as school groups and other individuals—to go to other European countries without going through excessive bureaucratic procedures.
A formal youth mobility scheme is clearly desirable. What it would look like is open for negotiation. We have heard today some anxiety that what the European Commission seems to be proposing might have too many constraints. However, surely the purpose of a negotiation is that each side says, “This is our starting point”, and then at a certain point, you find a compromise. The fact that the European Commission has put forward some ideas is clearly welcome.
What is less welcome—indeed, it is rather worrying—is the fact that His Majesty’s Government have been talking about a reset with the European Union. At one level, it sounds wonderful: that we need to rebuild our relations and trust. However, it leaves me, leading from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, having to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Frost. He talked about the reset being rather vague and said that, at the moment, we have no idea what it means. We know that the Foreign Secretary has been talking about closer co-operation in security and defence. If we listen to what is being said in Brussels or Berlin, there is clearly also an interest in the sense that, if the United Kingdom wants to build up a security and defence relationship with the European Union, youth mobility might be seen as part of a quid pro quo.
We understand that the Minister will not give us a running commentary and that she will clearly have been told that she has to read out the standard memo: that we are not going back into the customs union or the single market, and we are not rejoining the European Union—all the things that noble Lords know that Front-Bench Ministers are told to say. The mantra seems to be inevitable, almost regardless of the question. I do not expect her to say any of that, but can she say whether His Majesty’s Government are open to thinking about youth mobility? Will they listen to the calls from her noble friend Lord Moraes, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and others about the importance of youth mobility for our young people? As my noble friend Lady Featherstone pointed out, for UK citizens, the opportunity to study, to work and to travel is hugely important.
One of the words that has come up in this debate is “reciprocity”, but that is one of the things that is missing from the Turing scheme. However effective the scheme might be for outward mobility, what we lack is the idea that students will come back and study in the UK. We heard from certain noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that there may be a concern about migration figures. However, a youth mobility scheme is not about migration. This is time-limited, and if we are to be part of a negotiation, numbers could be limited, too. There are all sorts of ways in which a youth mobility scheme could be reciprocal. That would have benefits not just for our young people but for soft power.
Indeed, at Oral Questions this morning, if I noted correctly what the Minister said, she agreed that a youth mobility scheme is not a return to free movement. If that is indeed the Government’s position—the Minister is nodding—can she give us some hope that the Government might be open to a mobility scheme? It would strengthen UK soft power—like, I suspect, many noble Lords, I had not heard about the new soft power council that the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, told us about. If the Government are concerned about soft power, exchanges are one of the ways to help that. International higher education is one aspect, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, pointed out the other day, in response to a question from me—except my question was not about international higher education, it was much more about exchanges.
What we have seen in the past is that international higher education, but also places such as Sandhurst or the Royal College of Defence Studies, gives the opportunity for people to come temporarily and they go back to their home countries with a better understanding of the United Kingdom, very often having exchanged with future leaders. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said, today’s young people are tomorrow’s leaders. Engaging in reciprocal exchanges gives our young people the opportunity to make contacts that will mean that we are better able to work with our partners, whether they are across the channel or the Atlantic, in the future.
There are many reasons why youth mobility is an important issue that should be considered on its own merits, in addition to being viewed as something that will help us foster stronger relations with the European Union. Does the Minister agree?
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his maiden speech. I also flag that I greatly enjoyed hearing about the tour of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone—from Oxford Polytechnic to travelling in Europe to politics.
I believe all noble Lords would agree that our country’s youth are our future. We have heard much talk this week of the importance of economic growth, but long-term growth will be achieved only if we nurture and cherish those young people who are the future leaders of tomorrow. Educational opportunities, including those for travel and exchange, are vital for Britain’s youth if they are to flourish. The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, mentioned the existing bilateral youth mobility agreements, as did my noble friends Lord Kirkhope and Lord Jackson.
To facilitate such educational exchanges, the UK already has bilateral youth mobility agreements with 12 countries. These are reciprocal arrangements that benefit young people from both countries involved. We also have the Turing and Horizon schemes. However, it is equally important that we ensure that such bilateral schemes are balanced with the needs of the UK. Therefore, these schemes have strict caps on the numbers of people who are able to obtain visas under them and quotas to ensure that the UK retains complete control over the numbers of people entering the country through such visas.
Many noble Lords have raised in the debate the proposal for a new EU-UK youth mobility scheme put forward by the European Commission last year, but His Majesty’s Official Opposition believe that there are several issues with this. First, an EU-UK youth mobility scheme would pose challenges to British universities. The Commission’s proposal included provision for equal treatment between EU and UK citizens in respect of higher education tuition fees. Currently, the level of tuition fees for international students for an undergraduate degree varies between £11,400 and £38,000 per year, and the institutions involved derive approximately 20% of their revenue from international students’ fees. If EU students were to pay home fees, this could place a further strain on the finances of universities, many of which are already struggling.
Jamie Arrowsmith, head of the international arm of Universities UK, told the trade publication Research Professional News that an EU-UK youth mobility scheme would be
“difficult for the Government to agree to”
given the financial situation of British universities. He continued:
“At a time when tuition fees don’t cover the full cost of teaching … it’s difficult to see how this could work without exacerbating concerns over financial sustainability or imposing a significant cost on the government”.
Secondly, there are concerns surrounding numbers. Home Office statistics indicate that, during the year ending June 2024, 24,091 grants were made through the current youth mobility scheme. That would appear manageable, but with the ONS recently stating that the UK population will rise to 72.5 million by 2032, it is important that we take a measured approach to the number of people coming to the UK. The country voted to leave the EU. We must therefore be careful that we do not enter into any arrangement that may lead to freedom of movement being unintentionally implemented. An EU-wide youth mobility scheme, as the European Commission called for, would potentially lead to that.
We have also heard much talk of the Government’s proposed EU reset, which was mentioned by my noble friends Lord Frost and Lord Jackson. The 2024 Labour manifesto stated that Labour is:
“confident in our status outside of the EU, but a leading nation in Europe once again, with an improved and ambitious relationship with our European partners”.
The Prime Minister has stated that the Government do not have plans to introduce such a scheme, but he has not ruled it out completely. Given that they have made so much of their reset with the EU and that the European Union appears to be pushing for a youth mobility scheme to be part of any new deal with the UK, how can we be sure that the Government do not agree to something that may see freedom of movement reintroduced? Can the Minister confirm that His Majesty’s Government will not enter into an agreement with the EU that introduces an open-ended youth mobility scheme?
Finally, we should have a greater focus on domestic opportunities for our young people. There is a plethora of enriching experiences from which they can benefit at home, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the cadet force, which I referred to in today’s third Oral Question. As an example, studies have confirmed that being on the cadet force improves school attendance, improves mental and physical well-being and results in enhanced employability. While the report did not make a monetary estimate of the total benefits of being a cadet, it estimated that the cost savings from a reduced use of mental health services and better educational outcomes were worth around £95 million a year. For that reason, we ask the Minister why the Government are removing the National Citizen Service and why the Department for Education is ceasing its funding of the cadet expansion programme.
I hope all noble Lords agree that, if we want our young generation truly to thrive, we should be strengthening these programmes and others like them, not removing them or cutting their funding.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate on the case for a new youth mobility scheme with European countries. I echo the warm welcome across your Lordships’ House to my noble friend Lord Moraes and congratulate him on his maiden speech. It is clear that he has a wealth of knowledge and experience to contribute to your Lordships’ House on this and other significant issues. He already has many friends here from his previous career, not least at the European Parliament. I note that, with my noble friend Lord Watson and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, he also joins an impressive group of Dundonians.
We have heard a lot of interesting, impassioned speeches about the opportunities of the reset and youth mobility. I will address these points in turn but, as someone married to an EEA citizen, I first thank the right reverend Prelate for noting that Europe extends beyond the EU. As someone who sees the significance of the right to vote and to obtain a passport, I cannot quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, that settled status is de facto citizenship. However, it is significant, not least because my husband got his settled status just two weeks ago and we celebrated that as a major life moment.
I thought it would be useful to update Peers on the progress that the Government have made on the reset of relations with the EU so far, not least as this debate falls the day before the fifth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU. As the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, noted, this was following a democratic vote where citizens were asked whether or not they wanted to leave the EU. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, will take some comfort from the fact that this Government are clear that we want to reset the relationship with our European friends and neighbours. We will not, however, be relitigating Brexit—a point referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, in her speech. However, I will say that the Government are committed to delivering an improved and ambitious relationship with our European partners within the EU and beyond. We do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that there was not a need to do this. I am afraid that I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, that keeping the red lines we committed to—our election promises—is somehow not brave: in other words, cowardly and wrong. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, implied that I do not agree with the Government on this and am merely sort of parroting words—I paraphrase, but I should make it very clear that I do agree with the Government’s position and am proud to restate it. I am clear that we should not use our majority in the other place to break our manifesto commitments.
The noble Lord, Lord Frost, asked me to set out the objectives of the reset, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, also spoke about the reset. The noble Baroness is right that I am not going to give a running commentary. The President of the European Commission and the Prime Minister have agreed to strengthen the relationship between the EU and UK, putting it on a more solid, stable footing. The Prime Minister met with European Commission President von der Leyen in the autumn to agree to strengthen our relationship, and they met again on 7 November at the EPC in Budapest. The Foreign Secretary attended the Foreign Affairs Council in October and the Chancellor addressed the Eurogroup meeting in December. The Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, has been taking discussions forward with his counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, asked whether a youth mobility scheme would be discussed with EU leaders next week. As noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the Prime Minister will travel to Brussels on 3 February to attend an informal EU Council meeting at the invitation of Council President António Costa. In response to the noble Baroness’s question, this discussion is expected to focus on the geostrategic challenges facing Europe.
We have agreed to hold regular UK-EU summits at leader level to review progress, starting in the first half of this year. In particular, we want to work closely to address wider global challenges including economic headwinds, geopolitical competition, irregular migration, climate change and energy prices, which pose fundamental challenges to our shared values and provide the strategic driver for stronger co-operation. We will work across the three pillars of the UK-EU reset: safety, security and the economy. We recognise that delivering new agreements will take time, but we are ambitious, have clear priorities and want to move forward at pace.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, asked about consultations on the EU reset with young people. As we move forward, we recognise the importance of maintaining an effective dialogue with industry leaders, trade unions and civil society through a variety of means. This includes the formal channels such as the UK TCA domestic advisory group and the Civil Society Forum.
My noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie asked about the pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention. Before I turn to the question of mobility, which I will come on to shortly, I want to make it clear to my noble friend that the convention is not a customs union or an EU scheme. We are always looking at ways to reduce barriers to trade in the EU, within our red lines, as this is essential to driving growth at home. This is an option and it is right and responsible that we look at it, but we are not seeking necessarily to participate in it at the present time.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, asked whether everything was up and running in relation to electronic travel authorisation, which will be rolled out to European nationals later this year. I can assure her that the rollout started in October 2023 and is proceeding well. If there are other points relating to borders that she wishes to raise with me, I am happy to pick that up after this debate.
Turning now to the question of youth mobility, I want to be clear in response to the right reverend Prelate’s question that this is not the same as freedom of movement. That came up at several points throughout the debate. This Government recognise the value of people-to-people connections and of schemes which give young people the opportunity to experience different cultures of work. The noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Newnham and Lady Featherstone, made this point very powerfully.
These opportunities exist in various forms internationally. Working holiday programmes offered by countries such as France and Chile, scholarship schemes such as Chevening and Marshall in the UK, the Australia Awards, Fulbright in the US and the Japanese Government’s scholarship scheme are other examples of mobility programmes. There is also the Turing scheme, which I will speak about in more detail in a moment, and the Taith scheme in Wales.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, made clear, some training or education institutions have their own schemes. My own year studying abroad was part of my degree course; it was not facilitated by Erasmus. I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, on the importance of modern languages—a point also made by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. We lose something if we do not have an ability as a country to look beyond our borders and learn foreign languages. That is a strongly held personal view that I have expressed previously in this House.
To be clear to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, the EU has not put forward a proposal to us on youth mobility at the moment. There was some potential misunderstanding on the part of a number of noble Lords that this is an active proposal that is on the table. It has not been put forward at the moment.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Lords, Lord Moraes and Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, talked about a youth mobility scheme, which differs from free movement in several ways. A youth mobility scheme would require an application. It is time-bound. There are age restrictions. It operates on quotas generally and is subject to charges such as a visa application fee and the immigration health surcharge. The free movement provisions were unconditional for those who were entitled to access them.
A number of noble Lords mentioned Turing. As noble Lords are aware, the Turing scheme is the UK Government’s programme for students to study and work anywhere in the world. Since 2021, the scheme has helped tens of thousands of UK students to develop new skills, gain international experience and boost their employability, both in the EU and beyond. Turing provides more funding to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, so they can participate in international placements, breaking down barriers to opportunity.
For the 2024-25 academic year, education providers and other eligible organisations from across the UK have been allocated over £105 million to send more than 45,000 students on study and work placements across the globe. I am pleased to say that around 53% of those opportunities will be for participants from disadvantaged backgrounds. Those are not small numbers, in my view.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, and others referred to the issues facing touring artists, soft power and Creative Europe. Noble Lords have highlighted the benefits of mobility arrangements for musicians, choirs and artists, as well as for the wider creative sector. We are working with the creative and cultural sectors to ensure that our world-leading sectors can continue to promote growth and enrich lives at home and abroad.
As set out in our manifesto, the Government are committed to supporting our touring artists in performing and promoting themselves around the world. That is why we are engaging with the European Commission and EU member states to explore how best to improve arrangements for touring without seeing a return to free movement. We have not proposed any plans for Creative Europe. We want to look forward, not backwards, working together on shared priorities and global challenges.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and others mentioned the UK Soft Power Council. The Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport are co-chairing the council, which is made up from experts from the foreign policy and soft power sectors, including culture, the creative industries, media and sport. The first meeting of the council was on 15 January. The council will advise the Government on a strategy, a new campaign, and a strategic calendar of domestic and international events. We agree with noble Lords who made it clear that our soft power in these areas is one of our strengths in international relations.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoke about the issues facing the British Council. We remain committed to ensuring the financial stability of the British Council, and our continued funding underlines our support for its important work in promoting the English language, UK arts and culture, and education. I hope he finds that reassuring.
Separate from Turing, our bilateral youth mobility schemes provide a range of valuable cultural exchange opportunities, offering young people from the UK and partner countries the chance to experience life in another country and to make lifelong ties and friendships overseas. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheatcroft and Lady Smith of Newnham, spoke about school trips. I did not have such a positive experience of my own French exchange at school, but that did not put me off travelling later in life, which was good. The Government are committed to providing enriching opportunities for our students and young people to experience other countries and cultures. The previous Government agreed measures with France in 2023 that make travel for school groups between the UK and France easier.
Such schemes and programmes exist the world over because they have well-documented cultural and social benefits. As the noble Lord, Lord Frost, highlighted, successive Governments in the UK have supported youth mobility schemes, from the very first youth mobility scheme in 2008 with Canada to the agreements with India and Uruguay in 2023 and 2024 respectively. As the noble Earls, Lord Effingham and Lord Dundee, noted, the United Kingdom already offers and operates a number of bilateral youth mobility schemes with European countries such as Iceland and Andorra, as well as with a number of our global partners such as India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As of last autumn, these schemes have attracted 24,000 participants to the UK who have come here to work, study or simply to visit and spend some time in the UK. That is a testament to the value of these opportunities.
With regard to a prospective scheme with the EU, the Government have been clear that we do not have any plans for a youth mobility scheme, but we will look at the EU’s proposals on a range of issues. The Government have been elected on a commitment not to return to free movement. In response to the question from the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, we will not be returning to free movement. This objective must be respected, but it does not diminish the value of the schemes that we have discussed in your Lordships’ House today. We are committed to our promises and to delivering for the British people.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I thank all Members of your Lordships’ House for their contributions to this debate, which has been wide-ranging and fascinating. I particularly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his excellent maiden speech. I am sure he is going to make many valuable contributions to the work of your Lordships’ House over the coming years.
It is clear to all of us that this is a subject which is going up the agenda; it is not going to go away. This is so important to our young people. We have all managed to resist, by and large, rerunning arguments about the EU or Brexit, because we need to try to find new ways forward. As always in a debate in your Lordships’ House, I find myself having learned a whole lot of new information. Some of the facts, for example, on university fees I was not aware of. I realise, as always when we look at the seemingly simple problems we want to solve, that often there are things we have not considered. That is certainly true for me.
However, there is a consensus that there is a real urgency to try to see how we can take this forward for some areas, particularly, for example, for musicians and artists, and how we can perhaps build and develop Turing and Horizon; how we can look to develop other bilateral agreements; and how, with the EU reset, we can take every opportunity to find as many win-win solutions as we can to provide as many opportunities as possible for our young people to be able to move into other cultures and to learn—whatever we call it; let us keep away from some of the phrases we have used. We just need to try to find movement on this.
I am hugely grateful for all the contributions and I look forward to working in the future with Members of your Lordships’ House as we try to develop this further, for the sake of our young people and our place in the world.