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Oral Answers to Questions
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Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
The previous Government’s record on fuel poverty was absolutely woeful, and we have had to inherit an incredibly challenging trajectory. We are doing everything we can to shift that by upgrading homes for families in fuel poverty, driving up standards in the rental sector so that we lift 1 million people out of fuel poverty and supporting over 3 million households with our warm homes discount, all while running with our mission for clean power.
Chris Law
Despite Scotland being one of the most energy-rich nations in Europe, decades of mismanagement by different colours of UK Government—whether Labour or Conservative—have led to a shocking one third of households in Scotland living in fuel poverty. That number is set to rise, along with energy bills. The Government were elected on Labour’s pledge to cut energy bills by £300, but yesterday the chair of GB Energy admitted that that was “not in its remit” and was completely unable to say when bills would come down, alleviating fuel poverty. If this is not another broken promise from the Prime Minister, can the Secretary of State confirm exactly when in this parliamentary term consumers in Scotland will see that reduction?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
Fuel poverty is devolved in Scotland. The Scottish Government have had the opportunity to make a dent in this problem for almost 20 years and they have not. Even now, as we are ramping up upgrades to help people with fuel poverty, the Scottish Government are raiding more than £200 million from retrofitting funds that could help families today. I will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman on how we tackle this problem.
Mr Speaker
I call Wendy Chamberlain. She is not here. I call Frank McNally.
Frank McNally (Coatbridge and Bellshill) (Lab)
I commend the Minister for the announcement of support for those in most need this winter. Given Scotland’s colder climate, does the Minister share my view that, as she has just expressed, the Scottish Government’s decision to cut £200 million from the retrofitting budget is failing people in Coatbridge and Bellshill and across Scotland, and that with record funding from this UK Government in the Budget, they should reverse that cut?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is completely right. There is no justification for raiding retrofitting budgets, because we know that is the route by which we upgrade people’s homes to deliver homes that are warmer and cheaper to run. We are doing our bit to drive down energy bills and deliver clean power, which is the route to energy security and financial security. The Scottish Government need to crack on and do their bit.
Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Sarah Jones)
The Government came into office six months ago and are determined to ensure that clean energy jobs are high quality, well paid and secure, with strong trade unions. I want to take this opportunity to commend EDF Renewables for its recent recognition agreements with three trade unions. Through the Office for Clean Energy Jobs, we are working with industry and trades unions to support fair pay and workers’ rights, and ensuring that workers across the country can benefit from the economic opportunities of the net zero transition.
Chris Webb
Data centres at Blackpool’s proposed high-performance data centre campus Silicon Sands will be powered by renewable energy and cooled by liquid immersion techniques, with the excess heat repurposed into neighbourhood buildings and homes. Silicon Sands could lead the way in an environmentally friendly approach to data centres, while creating thousands of well-paid jobs for my home town. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how the Department can support my vision to build a better Blackpool?
Sarah Jones
I would of course be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to talk about this great project, Silicon Sands, which will bring jobs and be really innovative for his area. The wider point is really important—for too long, our coastal and industrial communities have not had the job opportunities they deserve. We are determined to change that.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Can the Minister assure the House that her ambitions for renewable energy can be achieved without Chinese slave labour?
Sarah Jones
Yes—of course, we ensure that the highest standards are kept in all these things. The Government’s position is to make sure that we are very careful about them. The right hon. Gentleman may be referring to solar, which is a particular issue that people have raised. We have a solar taskforce, which has been set up exactly to look at those points.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I know that Members will find it unusual that Mr Speaker has left the Chair during questions. It is because he is going to attend the memorial service for Lord Hoyle, so I am sure that the whole House wants to send our best wishes to him.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
We know that this winter has been difficult for many people who are struggling with high energy bills. We agreed the winter support package with industry and Energy UK to get support to the people who need it, and £500 million is being provided through industry. When combined with the support that we are providing through the warm home discount, that amounts to £1 billion for the families who we know need help this winter.
David Williams
As well as residents, businesses in the ceramics sector struggle with high energy bills and face many other pressures. Sadly, only yesterday more than 80 workers in my constituency lost their jobs when Royal Stafford, a historic ceramics manufacturer for nearly 200 years, went into liquidation—a devastating blow for the workers and their families. Will the Secretary of State meet GMB officials, Ceramics UK and me as a matter of urgency to explain how the Government will support the ceramics sector, protect jobs, and tackle the serious difficulties that energy-intensive industries face in decarbonising?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is right to point out that we need to reduce energy bills for businesses, including those in energy-intensive industries. I was sorry to hear about the job losses in his constituency, and one of the ministerial team will be happy to meet him. I must add, however, that this is exactly why we are running our clean power mission. We see that the route through which we can drive down bills is breaking our dependence on global fossil fuel markets over which we have no control, in order to take ourselves off the rollercoaster of price rises and price hikes that is so damaging to businesses. While we do that, we are working with Ofgem and industry to ensure that businesses are not being locked into expensive contracts, and to ensure that they have much stronger redress when things go wrong.
Michael Wheeler
I thank the Minister for all her work in this area. I know from conversations with my constituents that energy costs are a large part of the cost of living crisis for them. Following the Conservative party’s failure to protect our energy system and invest in home-grown clean power, can the Minister give us an update on what steps are being taken to tackle my constituents’ high energy bills?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is 100% right. The reason we are so exposed as a country to global fossil fuel markets and the rollercoaster that is damaging business and hurting consumers is the Conservative party’s failure to invest in home-grown clean power and to upgrade people's homes to insulate them from high prices. That is a record of which the Conservatives should be ashamed, and it is a record that we are determined to change.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Many households in my constituency are struggling with high energy bills because the last Government left us exposed to the unpredictable fossil fuel market. Does the Minister agree that the only way in which to protect residents in my constituency and across the country permanently is to unlock clean power that we control here in the UK?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is completely right. Every solar panel and every wind turbine that we put up takes us closer to delivering the energy security that we need to achieve financial security for families. That, combined with our drive to upgrade people’s homes, is what will protect households in the long term. It is the central mission of this team, this Department and this Government, and it is why we are running at clean power by 2030.
Ms Billington
In anticipation of the energy market reform that the last Government neglected to carry out, I look forward to hearing confirmation from my colleagues on the Front Bench that we may be able to find a way of insulating people in the long term—for the transition to decarbonising heat, for example. Can my hon. Friend confirm that, in future, we may be able to have a social tariff that protects the most vulnerable from the excesses of energy prices?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I agree with my hon. Friend that we urgently need to tackle the challenge of affordability. Energy is not a luxury good; it is foundational, and for too many people, this essential good is not affordable. A social tariff is one mechanism of responding to this, and there are different ways in which that can be implemented. We are looking at all the options, to ensure that families can get this essential good at more affordable prices.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
People living in rural locations disproportionately live in housing stock that is older and colder and does not have gas. In the Minister’s discussions with energy suppliers, will she please not forget to talk to the suppliers of liquefied petroleum gas and oil, since many of our constituents—particularly with the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment—are suffering a great deal?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We are very alive to the issues in rural communities, and we are working to ensure that there are solutions for all types of homes. We had record applications to our boiler upgrade scheme for heat pumps, a large number of which were from rural households. We are very clear as we roll out our plan that there will be a solution for every single household, so that everyone can benefit from homes that are warmer and cheaper to run.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
This winter, many of my constituents are concerned about energy outages. Last Thursday, the Cooper school and Glory Farm school had to close for the entire day when they lost all electricity supply. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can ensure the grid has the capacity to avoid these outages, which are so damaging to homes, businesses and critical public services?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
Yes, we will meet the hon. Gentleman. We are working to ensure that outages are not the norm. This is obviously linked to weather issues that we are having to respond to, but the team has been working to ensure that households are not put in a difficult situation, and when they are, that we are responding as quickly as possible.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
What would help bill payers is the £300 cut to energy bills that the Labour party promised in its manifesto. Instead, bills went up £149 in October, they went up £21 in January, and they are going up again by £99 in April. Can the Minister explain where the source of this departmental ineptitude lies, and would she like to apologise to the people of these islands for writing cheques that her party cannot cash?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
The hon. Member explains exactly why we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuel markets. That is why it is critical that we deliver clean power by 2030—that is the central mission of this team, and we are running at it. The Scottish Government do have the levers to protect households in fuel poverty. Before the hon. Member criticises us, they should get their house in order and get on with the job.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
Prior to the election, the Secretary of State promised to cut my constituents’ energy bills by £300. Would the Minister repeat that promise at the Dispatch Box?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We have a manifesto commitment to reduce energy bills by £300. We are doing everything we can. We have a legacy of record high energy bills. We are running at clean power because we think that is the route to delivering lower energy costs. We are upgrading people’s homes because we know that is the route to delivering homes that are warmer and cleaner to run. We are doing everything we can. The Conservative party oversaw a crisis for households, so before its Members start lecturing us on what we should do, they should be hanging their heads in shame.
Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
The national wealth fund is an essential part of our clean energy and growth missions. Recent investments include £20 million of investment into XLCC, a subsea cable manufacturer, to develop a new facility in Scotland, creating 900 jobs; £28 million of investment into Cornish Metals to finance lithium production, supporting more than 300 local jobs; and £1 billion, working with Barclays and Lloyds, to upgrade social housing, giving people warmer homes and lower bills.
Patrick Hurley
I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. In the Liverpool bay area, just off the coast of my Southport constituency, we already have a number of wind farms, including the Burbo Bank scheme. Can he outline to the House what more his Department is doing to ensure that, as we put up these wind farms, jobs are created in constituencies like mine?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend asks a really important question, which Members from right across this House will agree with. The situation we have inherited from the last Government is that Germany has almost twice as many renewables jobs per capita as Britain, Sweden almost three times as many, and Denmark almost four times as many. Through a combination of Great British Energy, the national wealth fund and a clean industry bonus, we are making sure that we do not just build offshore wind in this country, but reap the huge industrial opportunity from it.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Court of Session’s judgment on Rosebank and Jackdaw was to do with their consents, not their licences? When he comes to consider his decisions on those consents, he should do so on the basis that these are existing, not new, licences.
Ed Miliband
That is an individual planning case, so I will be careful about what I say. What I will say to the hon. Lady is that the last Government made an unlawful decision, according to the court. We are going to follow due process.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield Heeley) (Lab)
GB Nuclear is about to make two decisions on small modular reactors, and I know my right hon. Friend will agree that those SMRs and their supply chains should be built here in the UK. Although we have the capability in Sheffield, we do not necessarily have the capacity, so will he work with me, my colleagues and businesses in Sheffield to look at proposals for a nuclear manufacturing centre of excellence?
Ed Miliband
I welcome that question from my right hon. Friend, who is a fantastic champion of these issues. We will look at any proposal in detail, but she makes such an important point, which I would make to all Members of this House. People will have different views on this issue, but clean energy is the economic opportunity of the 21st century—whether it is small modular reactors, offshore wind, hydrogen or carbon capture. In our first six months, this Government have shown what it means to deliver at pace on the investments that this country needs.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
Has the Secretary of State engaged in any discussions with Northern Ireland industries on the strategic use of the sovereign wealth fund?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I discussed this issue in detail in advance of the preparation of the Great British Energy Bill, and it is also relevant to the national wealth fund. We want our institutions to serve all countries in our United Kingdom, and I encourage him and industries in his constituency to make applications to the national wealth fund, which is there to support people and industries across the UK.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
The Government policy to decarbonise the grid by 2030 rests on the National Energy System Operator’s assumption of a £147 per tonne carbon price, but manufacturers are lining up to tell the Energy Secretary that it would destroy British industry. Will he guarantee today that for the remainder of this Parliament, we will have a lower carbon price than Europe?
Ed Miliband
NESO made that assumption, but it does not reflect our assumption that the carbon price will be significantly lower. I will not start predicting market prices. What I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that the difference between him and us is that he believes that we should double down on fossil fuels as the answer to the problems facing the country, whereas we know that clean energy is the way forward.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
Since this Government came into office, we have taken a series of steps to deliver clean, home-grown power for Britain, including lifting the onshore wind ban, consenting to nearly 3 GW of solar and overseeing the most successful renewables auction in history. In December, we published our clean power action plan, which has been widely welcomed by business as providing the route map that simply did not exist under the previous Government.
Peter Prinsley
Energy projects in East Anglia will be crucial for generating the clean, cheap power that this country needs to grow, from wind and solar farms to nuclear power stations, including the much-needed Sizewell C. These projects will bring high-skilled jobs to East Anglia, including in my constituency of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. What action are the Government taking to ensure that the infrastructure improvements to connect these projects to the grid will not be hamstrung by the planning process?
Ed Miliband
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and congratulate him on his advocacy. Members across the House have a decision to make here. As the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), said earlier, we are exposed to fossil fuels and we see what is happening in global markets with prices going up. If we want to change that and have clean home-grown power that we can control, we have to build the infrastructure we need. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) on supporting it and on supporting our planning reforms, and I urge Members across this House to do the same.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
Given that the British taxpayer is paying billions of pounds in subsidies to fell trees in Canada and ship the wood across the Atlantic to burn in the Drax power station, can the Secretary of State tell the House where the clean energy lies within that? Has he read the KPMG report? If he has, will he come to the House and make a statement on his assessment of it?
Ed Miliband
The last Government consulted on what, if any, future support there should be for biomass power stations. We are studying that consultation and we will make a statement in due course.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
Community energy projects can help us achieve clean energy by 2030. Darley Abbey Community Energy is surging ahead with plans for 100 kW Archimedes screw on the River Derwent—the same river that powered the world’s first factory 200 years ago. The project could generate enough hydroelectricity to power all the businesses at Darley Abbey Mills, but there are hurdles in place, including planning permission, insurance costs and the need for up-front capital. What can the Government do to support local renewable community projects such as these to succeed?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend makes a fantastically important point, which is that we often think about planning reform as being about the large-scale projects, but it is also about unblocking the smaller-scale projects. Having a national energy policy statement that includes 2030, working with local authorities and making sure there are enough planners to make the decisions—all those things can all make a difference. I congratulate my hon. Friend on her advocacy for this work, and I congratulate the local community on this project.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Experts are clear that the savings from the Government’s clean power action plan will be wiped out by 2050 if airport expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton goes ahead, and that relying on so-called sustainable aviation fuels would use up to half the UK’s agricultural land. Does the Secretary of State agree with the scientists that, while ambitious clean power plans are hugely welcome, if this Government also back airport expansion, they are not going to meet their climate obligations?
Ed Miliband
As the Chancellor said last week, any aviation expansion has to take place within carbon budgets and environmental limits. I would also point out that this Government have achieved more in six months than the last Government did in 14 years. We have lifted the onshore wind ban, consented nearly 3 GW of solar, set up GB Energy and the national wealth fund and held the most successful renewables auction in history. This Government are delivering on clean power.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
To achieve his clean power plan, can the Secretary of State say exactly what local communities need to do to convince him that solar farms on agricultural lands are not appropriate in their area?
Ed Miliband
It is quite extraordinary. We are absolutely exposed as a country, yet the Conservatives oppose clean power. They have a blanket opposition to clean power, so let every person in the country know that when energy bills remain high, they are opposing the things that will bring them down. It is quite extraordinary. This is the Conservative party that lost the last general election—its worst defeat in 200 years—yet if anything, since the election, Conservative Members have got worse and learned nothing.
Joy Morrissey
The Secretary of State recently approved a 524-hectare solar farm in Lincolnshire—a farm linked to Dale Vince, a £5.4 million donor to the Labour party. The public have a right to be certain that this decision was carried out properly, so will the Secretary of State refer his conduct of this application to the independent adviser on ministerial standards? Yes or no?
Ed Miliband
I am glad the hon. Lady asks, because I took no part in this decision—I recused myself. [Interruption.] Here we go. They have nothing to say about the country, just desperate scraping of the barrel. Let the whole House hear that they oppose a solar plan that will put up solar panels throughout the country and give clean power to the British people. The state of the Conservative party is something to behold.
Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
Our commitment to make Britain a clean energy superpower is the only way to protect bill payers permanently. The Government are determined to support all households with their energy costs, including those that are off grid, and eligible low-income households are being supported with the warm home discount. I urge households off the gas grid to contact their electricity supplier, if they have one, to see what support they can receive.
Charlotte Cane
Many of my constituents, as well as being off grid, have homes built of non-standard materials—clunch or wattle and daub—and those homes are also often listed. What support will the Minister provide to my constituents who are looking to retrofit their homes to move away from oil and improve insulation?
Michael Shanks
The hon. Lady is right that, particularly in rural areas, certain house types are often much more difficult to heat due to much older building materials and a lack of insulation. The Minister for Consumers, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), is working to make sure our warm homes plan can reach all communities and all types of households, and I encourage the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) to feed in any ideas for how we can do that for these rural and off-grid households.
Jamie Stone
Every winter, Altnaharra in my constituency is the coldest place in the UK. I can think of lots of pensioners who are faced with the invidious decision of whether to switch off and shiver or to run into debt. It occurs to me that the Department for Work and Pensions may well have a database of these people, so will His Majesty’s Government get the DWP to work with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to identify them and give a helping hand?
Michael Shanks
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful point. Where we can co-ordinate information and data across Government to identify people who need more support, we will do so. My Department is currently working with the Department for Work and Pensions to release as much of that information as possible, and we hope that we will be able to make progress in due course.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that new oil and gas developments will not give us energy security? As the fossil fuels they produce will be sold internationally, they will not lower bills and they will undermine our climate commitments.
Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend is, of course, right to say that, even if oil and gas are extracted from the continental shelf, they are sold on the international markets. The companies that extract the oil and gas are in the business of trying to make as much profit as possible and will sell to the highest bidder, so it does not protect prices for consumers in this country. We were clear in our manifesto that we will not issue licences for new exploration and new fields, but that we will continue to support those licences that have already been issued. Our future does not lie in more oil and gas; it lies in clean power, which is why we are moving at pace to deliver that.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
The warm homes plan will upgrade up to 5 million homes with low-carbon solutions such as heat pumps, solar and insulation to deliver homes that are warmer and cheaper to run. We have already kick-started delivery, with up to 300,000 homes being upgraded this year alone. We will set out our plans in the spring on how we will ramp this up.
Anna Dixon
In 2023, it emerged that a number of substandard retrofitting works were carried out as part of Government schemes. In some cases, properties were left with structural damage. When households sought redress, they found that many of the authorised contractors had folded, and they have been left to pick up the bill. Will the Minister assure me and my constituents in Shipley that, under the warm homes plan, sufficient safeguards will be put in place to protect households from rogue companies?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are aware of too many cases where home upgrades have not been done to the required standard. We are very clear that the ad hoc, fragmented system of regulating home upgrades that we inherited from the last Government is in dire need of reform. We will overhaul that system so that when people have home upgrades, they can be confident that they will be of the highest standard and that when things go wrong, they will have as much protection as possible and redress within the system.
Deirdre Costigan
The previous Government were content to sit back and allow developers to build homes that have locked people into years of expensive and dirty gas heating. How will the Minister ensure that the 1.5 million new homes the Government will deliver will not keep people dependent on outdated and costly gas heating systems?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the new homes we build must be fit for the future and must be decent homes that comply with our carbon standards. We are working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to bring forward the future homes standard, and we will set out our plans for that in due course.
Jessica Toale
I have been shocked by the number of mouldy and damp homes that I have visited in my constituency. No one should be forced to live in such conditions. We have some of the leakiest homes in Europe as a result of the last Government’s failure to deal with the problem. Will the Minister tell me how our warm homes plan will improve housing conditions and bring down bills for my constituents in Bournemouth West?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
Cold, damp homes that are hard to heat are the reality for too many households in this country. That is the legacy of the party opposite and a legacy that we are absolutely determined to turn around. We are committed to upgrading homes in the rental sectors with our minimum energy efficiency standard so that we can make cold, draughty homes a thing of the past. We will ramp up our warm homes plan so that my hon. Friend’s constituents and constituents across the country will benefit from homes that are warmer and bills that are lower.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Will the Minister acknowledge the amazing contributions of groups such as New Forest Friends of the Earth, which this very morning have been lobbying their MPs in Parliament Square on warm homes initiatives? They will be coming to the Government with some possibly costly proposals, but I hope that the Government, despite the economic legacy that they allegedly inherited, will give them a sympathetic hearing.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for reminding us about our economic inheritance. We are reaching out to organisations and stakeholders across the country—industry, charities and third sector organisations—to feed into our warm homes plan, so we are keen to hear ideas. We are conscious that we have an ambitious programme and we need to do a big scaling-up of home upgrades across the country, so we are definitely in the market for hearing from and reaching out to organisations that can come up with ideas.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Is it not a fact that, regardless of how much money is put into a warm homes scheme, social tariffs or whatever, consumers can never be insulated against the massive cost of the mad net zero policy that will require thousands of new turbines, acres of solar farms and miles of new transmission lines, all at a cost to the consumer? How on earth does the Minister believe that we will deal with the issue of fuel poverty in this country with that cost?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I will say to the right hon. Gentleman that at the moment, families are not insulated from fossil fuel markets. We have seen one of the worst energy crises, which has had a huge impact on the cost of living. The status quo is not tenable. We already have record-high energy prices and the only way that we are going to bear down on that is through clean power. The alternative is to do nothing—but we have seen the impact of doing nothing over the last 14 years and consumers and constituents across the country are the ones being impacted. We will absolutely drive forward with clean power by 2030 because that is our route to providing an energy system that delivers energy security and that can deliver financial security.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Minister came to the House previously and gave us some encouragement about the warm homes scheme and how it has been discussed with the regions, the Northern Ireland Assembly in particular. Since that statement, has she had the opportunity to speak to the relevant Minister in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland to ensure that we can all gain from the warm homes scheme, which the Minister is proposing in a positive fashion?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We are speaking to all the devolved Administrations. We are constantly engaging with them, including in our inter-ministerial group. On this specific issue of home upgrades and how we drive up standards, we are working with the Scottish, the Welsh and the Northern Ireland Administrations.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
Home insulation delivers warm homes and lower bills. I have visited Government-backed schemes across the country and seen their impact on households and consumers, but we also know that there are too many examples of homes not being upgraded to the required standard. We are not happy or comfortable with that. We are committed to overhauling system so that when people have home upgrades, they can be confident that they will be of the highest standard and that, if things go wrong, they will have redress so that we can take them on this journey with us.
Andrew George
Further to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and several other hon. Members, I, too, have picked up numerous cases in my constituency of Government-sponsored defective home insulation work and of extortionate, poor-quality and defective work of unscrupulous cowboy contractors who masquerade as operating under Government schemes. This includes Mrs King in Helston in my constituency who has paid out £19,000 to have insulation installed and then removed. I am pleased with the Minister’s response, but surely the Government need to do more to give householders confidence that these projects are both cost-effective and provide proper redress.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
The hon. Gentleman is right: it is just not good enough for any householder to get a home upgrade that is not up to standard. I am sorry to hear about the example of Mrs King. We are working with Members across the House on supporting a number of individual cases. If it is a Government-backed scheme that is at fault, mechanisms are in place for the work to be remediated at low cost. But, at the end of the day, we have acknowledged that the system requires root and branch reform so that when consumers opt for upgrades they can have the confidence of knowing that they will deliver what we are saying: warm homes that are cheaper to run.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Next week, the Select Committee will be hearing from some of the victims of the botched solid wall insulation installed under the previous Government’s energy company obligation and GB insulation scheme. That includes people whose homes may well have to be rebuilt, as the cost of repairing the damage may be higher. Will the Minister tell us how such a thing could have happened, and will she confirm that she is happy to come back to the Select Committee to add to the comments that she has already made about rebuilding consumer confidence after the disaster under the previous Government?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
What is clear to us as a new Government is that the system of regulating home upgrades was too ad hoc and too fragmented. Accountability was not clear enough and consumers were not at the heart of the system. We are committed to turning around that system. Put simply, when someone has a home upgrade, they need to have the confidence that it will work for them and that, when things go wrong, redress will be put in place. I am committed to update the Select Committee on the progress that we are making on getting a grip of what we have inherited and on making sure that such a thing never happens again for consumers.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
As we have been hearing, Dickensian conditions of cold, damp and mouldy homes are shamefully on the increase. In my constituency, more than 4,000 households are having to make that difficult decision between eating and heating because of the previous Government’s dither and delay on insulation. However, even now, local authorities and families are in limbo, anxiously awaiting confirmation of the 2025-26 funding for ECO4 and the Great British Insulation scheme through a ministerial statement. Will the Minister act with the urgency that is needed to bring those schemes and the warm home scheme forward to tackle fuel poverty?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I thank the hon. Member for pointing out the inheritance and the legacy. That is material, because it is the backdrop to everything we are trying to do. We are clear that we need to drive forward with momentum and pace. That is why we are already upgrading up to 300,000 homes this year alone. It is also why we are working with local authorities and social housing providers to deliver warm homes that are cheaper to run for communities across the country. We are absolutely moving at pace with our warm homes plan. We will be setting out that plan, and at its heart is an ambition to ramp up the number of upgrades massively, so that more families across the country can benefit from what we know works: warm homes and lower bills.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
We know that people are frustrated with standing charges, and we are committed as a Government to reducing them. As an initial step, the regulator Ofgem is consulting on giving people the option of no standing charge tariffs within the price cap, and we will continue to work with the regulator to ensure that we lower standing charges in the fairest way possible.
Victoria Collins
Lesley from Tring is one of my constituents who just missed out on the winter fuel allowance. She said she will be
“spending most of the winter in bed”
because she is struggling with energy costs. While so many are struggling with the cost of energy, standing charges disproportionately affect those on lower incomes such as Lesley. Will the Government meet Ofgem to discuss those disparities and prepare detailed action to review standing charges for a fairer system?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I am sorry to hear about the case of Lesley, and I know there are people across the country who have this frustration with standing charges. I reassure the House that we have a commitment to reducing them. We are working with Ofgem on a set of options. Our challenge is to ensure that standing charges do not penalise some households and that they are as fair as possible. That is what we are committed to doing, and that is what we are working every day to deliver.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not just on this question, but on securing an Adjournment debate last night on exactly the same subject. As I stated last night, clean power projects in his constituency and across the country are vital to achieving our clean power mission, which will give us energy security and bring down bills for families. Of course, all proposals are assessed on their individual merit through the planning system, and where communities host infrastructure, the Government believe they should directly benefit from it.
Greg Smith
In answering my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) earlier, the Secretary of State completely dismissed the legitimate concerns of rural communities and farmers who are being asked to take on energy projects. Yet last night in the Adjournment debate, the Under-Secretary found a more reasonable tone, accepting the point on cumulative impact in constituencies such as mine that are being asked to take up to 3,000 acres of projects. Will the Under-Secretary go into more detail about how the Government will put in mitigations on cumulative impact to protect communities such as mine?
Michael Shanks
I would be testing the patience of the Deputy Speaker if I were to go into more detail than I could in an Adjournment debate. The point I made clearly to the hon. Gentleman was that it is not a credible position for him to take that there should be absolutely no infrastructure built anywhere in his constituency. The reality is we need to build new infrastructure, not just energy infrastructure but right across the public sector. I have said clearly that the work we are taking forward on the strategic spatial energy plan and on the land use framework by colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is about trying to ensure that we manage the best use of land, but we will have to build new infrastructure, and communities will have to host it.
Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
We announced that Great British Energy’s headquarters will be in Aberdeen, recognising the decades of experience in that city as the energy capital of Europe and our determination to invest in good, well-paid jobs in the city. With £8.3 billion-worth of investment behind Great British Energy, it will deliver economic value and jobs right across the supply chain across all parts of the country, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Great British Energy is the right idea for our time: public ownership, investment in supply chains and the reindustrialisation of our nation.
Mr Alaba
I commend the Minister on the progress he has made on setting up Great British Energy. Can he outline to the House what opportunities our publicly owned champion will bring to Southend East and Rochford and the wider south-east region?
Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend is right. Of course, the Great British Energy legislation is still going through Parliament at the moment; we hope that process will conclude soon, but in the meantime, hard work has been taking place to identify all the opportunities for Great British Energy to invest. Both Opposition parties—the SNP and the Conservatives—seem to oppose Great British Energy. Every single investment that it makes, every job that it creates, and every part of the supply chain that it incentivises will be delivered by Great British Energy against the SNP and the Conservatives, who have opposed it at every single stage. I ask them to rethink their position on what is a publicly owned champion to deliver for communities, create good, well-paid jobs, and deliver the clean power future that we need as a country.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
We heard from the chief executive officer of Great British Energy the other day. He said that it was not in his brief to cut bills by £300. What is Great British Energy for, then? It turned out that the jobs were not going to materialise either, so how will the Government make sure that we do not have some bureaucrat job-creation scheme in every region of the country, as the Minister’s Back Benchers are calling for, but actually have a company that invests in things that otherwise would not be invested in? Technologies such as wind and solar are already investable, so will Great British Energy focus on those things that need to be brought closer to market?
Michael Shanks
The right hon. Gentleman strongly makes the case for the importance of a publicly owned energy champion investing in parts of the energy system that are not currently getting that investment; I appreciate his recognition of that. What the interim chair of Great British Energy said very clearly—of course, it has not appointed a CEO yet—and what we have said consistently is that Great British Energy’s headquarters in Aberdeen will of course create jobs, but the majority of the jobs that will be created by that investment will come from the investment that Great British Energy makes in supply chains, in projects, and in developing the clean power that we need. Great British Energy will champion the industries that the right hon. Gentleman speaks about and deliver jobs in this country to reindustrialise communities, and Conservative Members will have to explain why they are against those jobs when they are created, including if they are created in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It was refreshing yesterday to have some clarity on Great British Energy’s plans, not from the Secretary of State or from Ministers—that would be asking far too much—but from the Manchester-based chairman of the Aberdeen-based company, Juergen Maier. He stated that cutting energy bills is a “very long-term project”—not £300 by the next election, then—and that the Aberdeen headquarters, if we can call it that, will employ only 200 to 300 people, far from the 1,000 initially promised, although that may come in 20 years’ time. On behalf of the tens of thousands of energy workers worried for their future, and indeed the millions watching their energy bills rise yet again, can I ask the Minister whether he agrees with the now very interim chairman?
Michael Shanks
The shadow Minister must be the only Member of Parliament representing Aberdeenshire who is against investment in Aberdeenshire. He will have to explain to his constituents and businesses right across his community why he stands up and opposes investment in his constituency. Of course, in doing so, he misunderstands the role that Great British Energy will play; the key point of it is that it will invest £8.3 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament in clean power projects right across the country, helping to unlock private sector investment and create supply chains in this country. The shadow Minister has now turned his face against all of those jobs that will be created in Aberdeen, which is a question he will have to answer for his constituents.
Andrew Bowie
The Minister has a right cheek to come to this Chamber and talk about protecting jobs in Aberdeenshire, when tens of thousands of energy workers are going to lose their jobs because of this Government’s decisions on the North sea. The British people were promised lower bills by the next election; now, they have been given a vague assurance that in the very long term bills might come down, and they are meant to be grateful for that.
The arrogance of this Government is staggering, if not surprising. They are so driven by ideology that they will not even allow Government lawyers to defend licences issued for Rosebank and Jackdaw, and are willing to see imports of fracked gas increase as long as they go down in history as the Government who shut down the North sea. While pensioners freeze as the Minister’s Government strip them of the winter fuel allowance, and as people are made unemployed due to his Government’s position on the North sea, can the Minister see why people across this country are quite miffed that the Government get to waste £8 billion of their money on the GB Energy white elephant?
Michael Shanks
First, let us be absolutely clear that Great British Energy will invest in clean power projects right across the country, including in the shadow Minister’s constituency. Secondly, he has an absolute cheek to come to this Chamber and talk about jobs in oil and gas, when more than 70,000 jobs were lost in North sea industries over the past decade—the shadow Minister was in the Energy Department for at least a chunk of that time. The truth is that a transition is under way in the North sea. Conservative Members were quite happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it was not happening as thousands of people lost their jobs. This Government are determined to build what comes next; the shadow Minister stands opposed to that, and he will have to explain to his constituents and the people of Scotland why he does not support that investment.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That brings us to topicals, and questions and answers will have to be very brief.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
In recent weeks, we have seen continuing rises in prices in global fossil fuel markets, with wholesale gas prices last month 60% higher than a year ago, which is caused by a number of factors. I want to be clear with the House: as long as Britain remains so dependent on fossil fuels, we will be in the grip of these global markets controlled by petrostates and dictators, with direct impacts here at home. The only way to get off this rollercoaster is with clean, home-grown power that we control, and that is what the Government’s clean energy mission is all about.
John Lamont
The Scottish Borders has some of the most beautiful countryside in the whole of the United Kingdom, but it is going to be destroyed by the massive pylons being built by ScottishPower Energy Networks in pursuit of Scottish Government and UK Government policy. Does the Secretary of State think it is right to charge ahead with these plans, which are firmly opposed by local communities?
Ed Miliband
I say to the hon. Gentleman, and I have said it throughout this Question Time, that local communities should have a say, but we have a decision to make as a country. Do we build the clean energy infrastructure to protect us from volatile fossil fuel markets, or do businesses, families and the public finances—£94 billion was spent during the energy bills crisis—remain exposed? I know what I would choose: we protect ourselves.
Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend asks a really important question. The whole point of our clean industry bonus is to incentivise British manufacturing. That is so important for the country, and it was not done by the last Government. We are determined that his constituents and constituents across the country will benefit.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
This Government’s ideological obsession with intermittent renewables at the expense of stable, clean, baseload nuclear power will, we think, be their greatest mistake. They have delayed the small modular reactor down-selection competition, and we have not heard a peep about the final investment decision on Sizewell C. However, none of that comes close to the monumental act of self-harm of deciding to throw away and bury—out of reach, underground—20 years of nuclear-grade plutonium, which could be used to drive forward a nuclear revolution in this country. How does the Secretary of State think this will play with the pro-growth, pro-nuclear MPs in his own party who are already worried about him being a drag on growth?
Ed Miliband
First, may I take this opportunity—I know we are short of time, Madam Deputy Speaker—to congratulate the permanent shadow Energy Secretary, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), on the birth of her baby boy? I am sure the whole House will want to join me in congratulating her. I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his temporary elevation.
On the issue of plutonium disposition and the decisions I and my hon. Friends have made, we are acting on the best advice we have inside Government. It has the potential to create thousands of jobs—thousands of long-term jobs—and it is the right thing to do not just for jobs, but for nuclear safety.
Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Sarah Jones)
South Yorkshire has a proud history of steelmaking, as I saw for myself when I was at Sheffield Forgemasters last week. We saw a huge reduction in steel production in this country on the last Government’s watch, and we want to turn that around, which is why we are delivering a steel strategy. As ever, I would of course be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to talk about how we can make this work.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
While we eagerly await progress on bringing community energy into the Great British Energy Bill when it comes back to this House, will Ministers reassure community groups around the country that they will enlarge and expand the community energy fund of £10 million, which is so successful that it is currently oversubscribed?
Ed Miliband
I know that the hon. Lady has had long discussions with the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), on these issues. We are absolutely determined that, as part of Great British Energy, community energy will be massively expanded. That was our manifesto commitment, and that is what we will deliver. Hon. Members around the Chamber have asked how their community can benefit, and community energy will be an essential part.
Ruth Jones (Newport West and Islwyn) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Although we are clearly on the sprint to deliver clean power by 2030, demand for electricity in this country is likely to double by 2050. Our reforms around connection to the grid are important —they will make sure that there is space for demand projects, such as data centres, to connect—but so is building the grid for the future, so that we have capacity in our network to deliver on our growth aspirations.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Ed Miliband
We are absolutely determined to build the manufacturing base in this country. I mentioned the investment in XLCC. That is a crucial part of building the supply chains. The supply chains have been eroded over a decade or two; we are determined to build them up.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Michael Shanks
I cannot speak on behalf of the House of Commons authorities, but under the building regulations of 2021, all new non-residential buildings and those undergoing major renovations must install charging infrastructure. In government, along with colleagues in the Department for Transport, I hosted roundtables yesterday, and I will host another today, on how we can unlock much more investment in charging infrastructure, because that is critical in supporting the transition to electric vehicles.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
Ed Miliband
I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman and completely concur with him on this issue. Nuclear is an essential part of our clean energy future. The demand for electricity in the years ahead—there will be a 50% increase by 2035, and demand will probably be double, if not more, by 2050—means that we need all the technologies at our disposal: renewables, nuclear and others. The SNP is 100% in the wrong place on this, but I am glad to say that Scottish Labour is in the right place.
Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)
When I visited Birkby junior school, I saw that tackling climate change and pollution is one of its key priorities. Does the Minister agree that setting a strong nationally determined contribution at COP29 and committing to an ambitious clean power target is important in demonstrating that the Government are intent on tackling climate change, especially at a time when other global leaders are not?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Kerry McCarthy)
Last week, the UK formally submitted its NDC to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. It is a world-leading, ambitious target that we hope will demonstrate ambition to other countries. In that NDC, we have a youth clause for the first time, and I am very keen to talk to Members across the House about how we can better engage with schools, communities and young people to bring them on board with us as we seek to achieve our ambitions.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. We know that we have a job to do to ensure that all insulation is up to standard and that we have the right measures for every type of household. I am keen to engage with him and Members across the House.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
The UK has a fantastic £26 billion clean tech sector, leading the way in innovation and carbon reduction for everything from clean power to sustainable agriculture. However, all too often, red tape and bureaucracy are locking in dependency on fossil fuels and foreign oil and gas. How can we work across Government to cut back on this unnecessary red tape, and ensure that our schemes support the leading tech and innovation that our best-of-British producers are bringing forward?
Ed Miliband
There is huge potential, and with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, I will chair an artificial intelligence energy council, looking at not only how we can meet the future demands of AI, but how AI and technology can help us deliver the infrastructure and energy system of the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) makes an important point, which we will take away.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Ed Miliband
Let us be frank: the big prize that has eluded past Governments for a long time is a proper plan to upgrade all types of buildings, not just residential properties. The Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), and I are working on that closely with colleagues from across Government. It is part of a bigger version of the warm homes plan, which is also about buildings. We will definitely take away the experience that the hon. Lady raises.
Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)
What engagement has the Minister had with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities council leaders on local power plans? Does he agree that a partnership approach by Government, councils and community organisations, such as the West Lothian Climate Action Network, is key to the success of local power plans?
Michael Shanks
I agree with my hon. Friend. The local power plan is a key part of what Great British Energy will deliver. It will give communities the power to develop local power projects wherever possible, and to achieve the social and economic benefits of doing so. We are engaging with a number of stakeholders across the UK. Because of the devolution settlement, our main contact will be with the Scottish Government, who have their relationship with COSLA, but we are determined that local government across the UK will help drive this forward, and will have the capacity to support communities in doing so.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Miatta Fahnbulleh
The right hon. Member is right to raise this issue. We have to deliver on the teleswitching transition. We are behind where we need to be, but we are working with industry and Ofgem to make sure that households are not left in the dark, and that everyone can upgrade to smart meters, which will be much better for them. I am keen to work with him and Members from all parts of the House to make sure that we get this right for his community and other communities that are affected.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Government procurement budget is around £300 billion. Can the Minister please tell us what percentage of his allocation will go to British businesses? Will he confirm that where we have to import, no modern slavery will be imported into this country?
Ed Miliband
On the second question, I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who is an eloquent champion for tackling modern slavery. I know Members from all parts of the House share her view. We need to do better as a Government, in terms of the guidelines inherited from the last Government, and the solar taskforce is looking at those issues. Her first question relates to something that we are discussing with our colleagues in government. The economic and social value we can get as a country from the procurement budget is huge and untapped, and we need to do something about it.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
The £80 million swimming pool support fund to help make pools more energy-efficient is facing a significant underspend before it expires in a few months’ time. Will the Minister urgently meet Eastbourne borough council, Better, and me to discuss unlocking this national underspend to help fund solar panels and pool covers at Eastbourne Sovereign centre, where I learned to swim?
Ed Miliband
I am massively in favour of solar panels on swimming pools and lidos—I am an occasional lido user myself—so I am fully on board with the hon. Gentleman’s point. I will pass it on to colleagues in government.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
Southampton Itchen has many Victorian and inter-war homes that are poorly insulated and therefore expensiveto heat, especially as the Conservative party dragged its feet and did not invest in clean or affordable energy. What steps is the Minister taking to improve the insulation and energy efficiency of my constituents’ homes?
Ed Miliband
This is hard, partly because of the fiscal backdrop, but we are working on a comprehensive plan so that we can help not just the poorest—we want to help those in fuel poverty—but people across the income spectrum through a more universal offer. If we can get funding for up-front investments, there will be massive paybacks; that is the chance. We all know that. It is a hard nut to crack, but we are doing our best to do so.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Energy suppliers are now forecasting that the energy price cap will go up in April by another 5%, making for some 16% since last summer. Will the Secretary of State tell the House when bills will come down—or will net stupid zero mean that they will only ever go up?
Ed Miliband
It is a particular pleasure to end with the hon. Gentleman. Here it is: a decision for all Members of the House to make. We are on the rollercoaster of the fossil fuel markets; we have no control over them. The mission of this Government is to take back control with clean, home-grown power. I urge him and Members across the House to support taking back control.
National Cancer Plan
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Andrew Gwynne)
With permission, I wish to make a statement on the national cancer plan. Today is World Cancer Day. Almost everyone in our country has been affected by cancer, either themselves or through a friend or relative. Having lost both my parents to cancer, I am so grateful to the Prime Minister for giving me this job. He has given me the chance of a lifetime to do my parents proud by creating the kind of compassionate and humane healthcare that all our constituents deserve.
I am also pleased to be led by a survivor of kidney cancer, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. His experience as a patient will be invaluable to us in the months ahead. I pay tribute to the amazing cancer charities who do fantastic work to help people live with cancer, support bereaved families and drive vital research in this area—Macmillan, Cancer Research UK, Cancer52 and Marie Curie to name just a few.
Lord Darzi’s investigation set out the scale of the challenges that we face in fixing the NHS, and how desperately we need to improve cancer diagnosis rates, waits and outcomes. He found that
“the UK has substantially higher rates than our European neighbours, Nordic countries, and countries that predominantly speak English”.
There were close to 100,000 more cases of cancer in 2019 than in 2001. While survival rates at one year, five years and 10 years have all improved, the rate of improvement slowed substantially during the 2010s.
Lord Darzi also noted important inequalities in the provision of cancer care; people in the most underserved areas are more likely to present as an emergency. As Cancer Research UK pointed out in its submission to the investigation, the 62-day target for referral to treatment has not been met for almost 10 years. Last May, performance was at just under 66%, with more than 30% of patients waiting longer than 31 days to start radical radiotherapy.
For all those reasons and more, we do not have a second to waste. That is why the Prime Minister kicked off this year with our elective reform plan, setting out how we will cut the longest waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. From March next year, around 100,000 more people every year will be told if they have cancer or not within 28 days, and around 17,000 more people will begin treatment within two months of diagnosis. That is why this year, we will spend £70 million on replacing older radiotherapy machines with newer, more efficient models. That is why in the King’s Speech we put forward an improved Tobacco and Vapes Bill, helping to reduce around 80,000 preventable deaths and putting us on track to a smoke-free UK.
While around 40% of cancers are caused by avoidable factors such as smoking, the backdrop is one of an ageing society. Cancer Research UK has forecast half a million cancer cases each year by 2040. We are preparing for the future now, with our 10-year health plan for the NHS. The plan will set out the framework of reforms that we need to ensure better outcomes and to meet the growing challenges that we face in the fight against this dreadful disease. The plan will play to Britain’s strengths as a global leader in the development of advanced therapies, using our strong academic and life sciences industry.
We should remember that the NHS was the first health service in Europe to commission CAR-T cellular therapy for blood cancer patients. On this World Cancer Day, I can announce that we will build on that legacy by investing in a cutting-edge, world-leading trial to transform breast cancer care through artificial intelligence. Nearly 700,000 women will take part in this trial, testing how cutting-edge AI tools can be used to catch breast cancer cases earlier. Thirty testing sites across the country will be enhanced with the latest digital AI technologies, ready to invite women already booked in for routine screenings on the NHS to take part.
The technology will assist radiologists by screening patients to identify changes in breast tissue that show possible signs of cancer, with referral for further investigations if required. If the trial is successful, it has immense potential to free up hundreds of radiologists and other specialists across the country to see more patients, tackle rising cancer rates and save more lives. It is just one example of how British scientists are at the forefront of transforming cancer care, and of the promising potential of cutting-edge innovations to tackle one of the UK’s biggest killers.
This Government know that unless we do things differently, our NHS will remain in the dire state in which we inherited it. That means proper reform, from doing away with burdensome process that holds back frontline staff to handing more power to local leaders so that they can deliver for the communities they know best. It also means embracing new technologies, including AI, to transform the way we deliver care and to improve patient outcomes. Today’s trial is yet more evidence of this Government taking action to bring in the reform that is desperately needed. As the Prime Minister set out last month, our plan for change will put the UK on the front foot, unleashing AI to drive up health services and shift the NHS from analogue to digital, as part of our 10-year plan.
Our 10-year plan will ensure that the NHS is there for our grandchildren and future generations, but we believe that the increasing number of cancer cases and the complexity of cancer care mean that we need a specific approach to cancer. We are determined both to bring down the number of lives cut short by cancer and to ensure that many more people go on to lead a full life after their treatment. That is why I am today announcing a call for evidence for our new national cancer plan that we will publish following the 10-year plan in the second half of this year. We will look at the full range of factors and tools that will allow us to transform outcomes for cancer patients while improving their experiences of treatment and care. We will make the United Kingdom a world leader in cancer survival by fighting the disease on all fronts—through better research, diagnosis, screening, treatment and prevention. However, we cannot do this alone, and that is why we are launching this call for evidence from patients, doctors, nurses, scientists, our key partners and other members of the public on what should be included.
To support that work, we will relaunch the children and young people’s cancer taskforce, co-chaired by the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) and Professor Darren Hargrave, with Dr Sharna Shanmugavadivel as vice-chair. I’ve put my teeth in—apologies if I pronounced that wrong. The taskforce will bring together the country’s top experts to set out plans to improve treatment, detection and research for cancer in children, which will feed into the plan. At every stage, we will ensure that patient voices are heard. I look forward to updating the House on the progress of the plan, the taskforce and the trial throughout the year.
Many of us on the Government Benches remember with pride the previous Labour Government’s record in the fight against cancer. We introduced landmark legislation to ban smoking in public places, protecting a generation of children from the harms of second-hand smoke, while putting record sums into smoking cessation programmes. At the dawn of the millennium, we launched a national cancer plan, which led to faster cancer diagnosis and treatment times, increased funding for cancer services, equipped the national health service with radiotherapy machines—many of which are still there—and expanded cancer research funding, so that a new generation of scientists could answer the call. What did that plan lead to? Survival rates went up. The number of patients diagnosed and treated on time went up. The number of lives lived well after cancer went up. That was our record in government, and we will do it again. I commend this statement to the House.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and I thank all the NHS workers, charities, scientists and others working to help those with cancer.
We can all agree that tackling cancer should be a top priority for the NHS. From diagnosing people quickly to starting treatment quickly and using the latest technology and drugs, we all want to see improvements. The recent trends in cancer survival rates are positive. The one-year survival rate for cancer increased by 5.9% between 2010 and 2020, and the five-year survival rate increased by 4.3% in the same period. Despite those improvements, we are not yet where we want to be, and we will be up front about that.
In government, we took action to catch cancer sooner and boost survival rates, with initiatives such as lung cancer screening and prostate cancer trials, and we welcome that Labour is continuing with that mission. We will work constructively with the Government on that, as we all want to achieve the same positive outcomes. However, the statement as a whole is rather disappointing. The Minister has told us that this is a cancer plan, but it is not; it is a statement that there is to be one. The Government saying that they want cancer survival rates to increase and that they are going to have a plan does not make it so—we need the plan itself.
The announcement of the AI trial in breast cancer is a welcome approach. Artificial intelligence has the capacity to revolutionise the way we diagnose disease, and I am delighted that the Government wish to explore those opportunities. We also very much welcome the relaunch of the children and young people’s cancer taskforce, and are pleased it will be able to continue its valuable work under the co-chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) and Professor Darren Hargrave. It is just a shame that the Labour Government wasted seven months by suspending the Conservative taskforce, only to reinstate it now.
I note the Minister’s comments about waiting times to start treatment, and we agree that these must improve. I am sure it will not have escaped his notice that NHS Wales, which has been under a Labour Administration for 25 years, has a poorer performance, and I am certain he would not want party politics to affect such an issue. Can he tell the House what conversations he is having with his Welsh counterparts to improve cancer care there?
I am also concerned that last month, the Government appeared to quietly abandon the target of ensuring that patients receive treatment a maximum of 62 days from an urgent referral of suspected cancer, despite the Health Secretary having said before the election that a Labour Government would meet that target within the first term. Will the Minister clarify his commitment to the 62-day target?
More scanners are, of course, welcome, but what are the Government doing to ensure that there are enough trained professionals to interpret the results of the scans effectively?
With charities such as Macmillan and Marie Curie being hit with devastating increases in national insurance contributions, what help will be provided so that they do not have to cut back the vital support and guidance services they provide to cancer patients?
Anyone who has faced cancer will know that time is of the essence. The second half of the year—if it is not until December—could be quite a long time from now. Will the Minister therefore be more clear about when he intends to publish the plan? May I recommend using the evidence collected in our 2022 call for evidence, as well as the policies of the interim major conditions strategy, published in 2023, to speed up the plan? The quicker the Government act, the more lives they will be able to save.
Andrew Gwynne
I start by genuinely thanking the shadow Minister for the co-operation she has pledged as we seek to improve the outcomes for people with cancer. This is not a party political issue. We all want people to be diagnosed more quickly and to be put on the effective treatment pathways as quickly as possible, and we all want people to have better outcomes. I would just remind her, however, that while progress was made over the past decade, as I referred to in the statement, Lord Darzi clearly set out that the rate of progress was much slower than in comparator countries, and that we could and should have been on a much better trajectory.
That is why we are committed to a new national cancer plan—something for which the sector has been calling for some time. We are going to consult on that plan. I hope the shadow Minister is not suggesting that we should just pull a plan out of thin air without any consultation with the sector, patients or anybody with any interest in cancer.
Of course, things have changed over recent years. New technology has advanced and scientific progress is advancing, although there are still some areas where, stubbornly, there is not enough research. We need to build up the case for research and get the funding in; I think especially of brain tumours, where, quite frankly, things have not progressed at all. We need to ensure that in the 10-year cancer plan, we really drive forward in some of those areas, using the latest technology and scientific advances.
The shadow Minister asked about targets. I just say to her that we have actually strengthened targets, rather than setting new ones for cancer. Currently, the NHS is on track to deliver against its cancer targets for this year. Yes, we should be ambitious where we can, and that is exactly what this Labour Government are going to do.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I am delighted to announce to the House that we will be opening a drug trial for glioblastoma brain tumours in May, in memory of my late sister, Margaret. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] But for how long will progress on this depend on people baking cakes, running marathons and organising dinners? When will the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Care Research get their act together and do something for the 3,200 people who will be diagnosed with this dreadful illness this year?
Andrew Gwynne
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. Those of us who knew Margaret miss her very much; she was such a towering figure in the Labour party for so many years, and we on the Labour Benches have a lot to thank her—and, indeed, my hon. Friend—for.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right on research. This is one area where, quite frankly, we have not done well enough. We have not made any progress. I know she will continue to champion more research. With our new national cancer plan, I hope that she will be pushing on an open door, because this is one area we absolutely have to do much better in.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
Nearly every family has a cancer story, whether it is a personal fight or that of a loved one. A 10-year plan from the Government is a welcome step, as the previous Government broke their promise to implement a 10-year cancer strategy that would have made a real difference to patients. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches are very proud that our cancer campaigner, my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), secured from the Government a commitment to introduce such a plan.
Testing for cancer, diagnosing and starting treatment quickly reduces stress and anxiety. Also, if the cancer is caught early, it is more likely to be treated successfully. Yet the target of 85% of people receiving their diagnosis and starting treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral has not been met since December 2015. In my constituency, one third of cases fall short of that target and 1,000 families lose a loved one every year to this cruel disease.
Lord Darzi’s review laid out very clearly that the UK has appreciably higher cancer mortality rates than other countries and that more than 30% of patients are waiting longer than 31 days for radical radiotherapy. A quarter of England’s 280 radiotherapy machines are now operating beyond their recommended 10-year lifespan, and in some areas, such as West Sussex, there is no access to radiotherapy at all. That is why we welcomed the £70 million investment announced in October to start to replace the older radiotherapy machines.
Will the Minister confirm whether there will be further rounds of funding to keep pace with available radiotherapy technology? Will he look to support those at the mercy of a postcode lottery by ensuring that radiotherapy is available in all areas? What is the expected timeline for reversing the damage done by the previous Government, and when can all patients expect to start their treatment within the 62-day urgent referral target?
Andrew Gwynne
One reason we think a national cancer plan is so important is precisely to get the investment in the areas we need so that we can tackle those health inequalities. There are very real inequalities when it comes to the diagnosis of cancer and, more importantly, the treatment and therefore the outcomes. I am really keen that we focus on that in the plan, to ensure that all parts of the country achieve the best outcomes for people who have been diagnosed with cancer.
Part of the plan is the roll-out of community diagnostic centres so that we can get diagnosis much earlier. That then puts greater pressure on getting people through the front door for treatment, so that is why, as part of the recovery plan that the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary announced, we are seeking to get more people treated more quickly on those treatment pathways. Hopefully, that will get the desired outcomes we want. It is a commitment that we will seek to restore the national health service to its constitutional standards. That is a priority of this Government.
On radiotherapy machines, the £70 million investment will fund about 25 or so machines. The criteria for evaluating bids are the age of the machine, the proportion of machines aged over seven years, and the performance against the 31-day standard for radiotherapy, with poorer performers prioritised. On future rounds of funding, the cancer plan will feed into spending reviews and future Budgets. It is our priority to ensure that we reach the cancer targets, so hopefully we can make the case to the Treasury for future investment in further years.
Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)
As someone who lost his wife to cancer, I know the dire circumstances that a cancer diagnosis can bring. It is right that cancer plans should focus on the best outcomes: improving the amount of time that people live for, or having a cure. I would like to raise with the Minister the specific issue of pain relief management. As part of the plan, will he ensure that there is an investigation into how pain relief management can be improved for cancer patients, and that it is given not just during the week but at weekends too?
Andrew Gwynne
Absolutely. My hon. Friend raises a really important point about how people receive pain relief and how that is managed. There are some really good examples out there of how it is done really well and, shockingly, there are some that are less good. We want to learn from the best. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says, it is about taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. Absolutely, that should form part of the plan.
Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)
Like many people in this House, I have seen up close and personal the devastating impact that a cancer diagnosis can have on people and families. I have also seen the difference between an early diagnosis and a later diagnosis, which is why I very much welcome the use of AI in early diagnosis. One positive by-product of having a long-standing national health service is that we have in the UK a very large database of historical tissue samples. Will the Minister consider using AI to do a retrospective analysis of those historical tissue samples to try to spot patterns that could inform future speedy diagnosis across a whole range of cancers?
Andrew Gwynne
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that suggestion and will ask my officials to look into it. I am very keen that we maximise the latest advances in technology, genomics, life sciences and research to ensure that we identify people who are at risk of cancer, preferably before they develop cancer, so that we can get them on appropriate treatments where necessary and they avoid the pain and misery that cancer can bring.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)
On this World Cancer Day, will my hon. Friend the public health Minister tell me what efforts he is making to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer, such as a bloated tummy, lack of appetite or feeling full, tummy pain or needing to pee more often, in order to increase lifesaving early diagnosis?
Andrew Gwynne
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for all the work that she has done on ovarian cancer since becoming an MP. She knows—the rest of the House might not—that I lost my mum to ovarian cancer. I was 19 when my mum died and she was only 50—my age today. She had a late diagnosis. They basically opened her up to perform a hysterectomy and the cancer had spread all the way through her body. They sewed her back up and she died at the end of a hospital ward two days later in pain and agony. Having awareness of those symptoms is so important. My mum was fobbed off by her GP, because she worked in a shop and lifted boxes. She had a bad back and was bloated and so on. The GP said it was down to her work, rather than erring on the side of caution and getting her checked out. We must ensure that women today are heard by GPs and, more importantly, that we err on the side of caution and get people on to treatment.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
The Minister is absolutely right to focus on this. I warmly welcome the reinstatement of the children and young people’s cancer taskforce. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my constituent Charlotte Fairall, who was pivotal in the work to bring the taskforce together in the first place. Charlotte’s daughter Sophie died of rhabdomyosarcoma when she was just 10 years old. I know the Minister met Charlotte to discuss this issue. Unfortunately, Sophie is not alone—around 500 children and young people die of cancer every year in the UK. It is the biggest cause of death by illness of children under the age of 14. Sophie had a wish list of things that she wanted to achieve before she died, including cooking with Gordon Ramsay and wearing high-heeled shoes, but she also wanted to meaningfully change the way we detect, treat and care for children with cancer. Does the Minister agree that the taskforce is a great step in that direction?
Andrew Gwynne
It absolutely is, and I thank the hon. Lady for agreeing to co-chair the re-formed taskforce. I know that she cares passionately about this issue, and it was lovely to meet Charlotte some time before Christmas.
Cancer is terrible, and cancer affecting children even more so. As the hon. Lady knows, we paused the taskforce because the general election got in the way. We wanted to carry out a real-time stocktake to establish whether we needed all these different taskforces, but, along with Charlotte, she convinced me, and convinced the Secretary of State, that the work of this taskforce will be crucial to informing our national cancer plan, and I wish her all the best in securing the outcomes that both she and I want to see.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that the move from analogue to digital will be key to cancer research, especially in the field of rare cancers such as the brain tumours that we have been hearing about?
Andrew Gwynne
I absolutely do. That shift to analogue to digital, and the use of the latest advantages in technology, science and research, will push the boundaries of what is possible when it comes to diagnosing and treating some of the rarer cancers, on which we have made virtually zero progress in recent years. I think that, with the right direction, the right commitment and the right drive, we can really start to make inroads in this area.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
May I invite the Minister, and indeed everyone here, to join us in Room M after these exchanges, when Radiotherapy UK will have a drop-in session with—most important—our patron Bryan Robson, England’s Captain Fantastic? I thank him for mentioning radiotherapy in his statement, which is crucial step forward, but may I suggest that he and the Government need to show exponentially greater ambition to get this right? The UK spends 5% of its cancer budget on radiotherapy, while the OECD average is 9%, which is why the UK is at the bottom of the survival league for so many cancers. Will the Minister commit himself to putting that right?
Andrew Gwynne
I am not sure that I will be able to attend the hon. Gentleman’s meeting, but I will certainly be in Westminster Hall for his debate later this afternoon. I understand exactly the concerns of people who are championing the need for increased access to radiotherapy treatments. My dad benefited from radiotherapy at the Christie, which probably gave him an extra couple of years of life with his family—I will be forever grateful for that. I get it; I understand it; we need to make the case.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Ind)
I thank the Minister for his welcome statement, and join him in thanking all the organisations that do the vital work of helping and supporting those with cancer and their families. He is right to talk about health inequalities, which, as he will know, continue to worsen in constituencies such as mine, where, on average, people live 10 years less than others in more affluent areas; and last year more than 13,000 were waiting for diagnostic tests. Will he join me in commending the work of Eccleshill community diagnostic centre in Bradford— essential, and the first of its kind—which is speeding up the detection of life-threatening conditions such as cancer, and will he assure me that, as part of his national action plan, more support will be given to places such as Bradford and the Eccleshill community diagnostic centre, so that no one is left behind when it comes to their treatment?
Andrew Gwynne
As my hon. Friend says, tackling health inequalities is a key priority for this Government, in relation to our health mission but also more generally, when it comes to some of the big conditions such as cancer. In areas such as his and mine, the prevalence of cancer is greater, because of the industrial legacy, and also because the prevalence of smoking is still much higher than the national average. I commend the work of his local diagnostics team, and we need much more of that best practice to be spread across the areas that need it the most.
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
I welcome the Minister's statement. He will be aware that a routine prostate cancer screening programme would save many lives. Can he give any indication of when it will be introduced?
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, and also for the written parliamentary questions about prostate cancer that he and a number of other Members have tabled. According to the current guidance, screening for prostate cancer is not recommended in the UK because of the inaccuracy of the current best test for prostate-specific antigen. Indeed, it could actually harm men, as some might be diagnosed with a cancer that would not have caused them problems during their lives. However, I am looking at this carefully, and I know that further information has gone to the National Institute for Health and Care Research so that it can, perhaps, reach a different conclusion. Obviously, as technology and other mechanisms advance, this may well be an area where we can make inroads, but I am happy to work with the hon. Gentleman to ensure that every opportunity is met.
Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)
I welcome this plan. I note that it was a recommendation from the Health and Social Care Committee in the last Parliament, and, as a member of that Committee, I hope that it sets a precedent.
Two weeks ago I lost my brother, Alex English, to high-grade acinic cell carcinoma. While I pay tribute to all those who gave him care, can the Minister confirm that we will look at rare cancers and make sure that we research some of them and find treatments?
Andrew Gwynne
First, may I send my condolences to my hon. Friend and his family on the loss of his brother Alex?
Of course rarer cancers are important, and they are a crucial part of what will be in the national cancer plan. It is in these areas that we must focus our efforts on diagnosis, treatment and, more importantly, getting the research done, so that we can find ways of tackling some of the very rare but deadly cancers that affect many families, including my hon. Friend’s.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
In 2013, the number of breast cancer cases in women under 50 topped 10,000 for the first time, but routine breast cancer screenings are given only to women aged 40 and over. Will the Department review that and ensure that, when appropriate, initial appointments can be given to younger women? While I am at it, although the Minister might not have time to attend, may I invite everyone else to swing by my drop-in event this afternoon to discuss local health inequalities in breast cancer?
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the work that she does in this regard. The decisions on whom to screen are made by the UK national screening committee and their advice comes to Ministers, but I am aware of the case that she has made. Screening women earlier for breast cancer should perhaps be looked at, and I will ensure that my officials look into whether we can make some progress on that for her.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I know that some of these contributions are quite emotional, and if people need to leave the Chamber after they have spoken, that is okay by me.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
Ethan was just 15 and studying for his GCSEs when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Sadly, he passed away two years later. I had the privilege of meeting his mum, Nikki, this weekend at two events organised to raise money for brain tumour research. In Ethan’s memory, will the Minister commit himself to improving outcomes for people with brain tumours through the national cancer plan?
Andrew Gwynne
Through my hon. Friend, I would like to pass my condolences on to Nikki for the loss of Ethan. As I have said, we have not made anything like the progress we would want to make on treatment and survival rates for brain tumours. That will form an integral part of our national cancer plan, and we will utilise all the latest advances in technology and science to try to get the better outcomes that we so desperately want.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I genuinely welcome the Minister’s commitment to the upgrading of radiotherapy machines, but I share the concerns of the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), about the scale of the ambition. In defeating this horrible disease, technology and innovation is our friend. What is the Minister’s ambition for minimally invasive cancer therapies in the national cancer plan? These technologies are coming along every day, but awareness of them and the ability to get them rolled out on the frontline is slapdash at best. Will he commit to looking at those emerging therapies and getting them rolled out as soon as possible?
Andrew Gwynne
Absolutely. Things are advancing so quickly in technology and innovation. It is quite remarkable that science fiction is becoming science fact. We are obviously interested in minimally invasive therapies, and they will form part of the plan. That is why we are consulting. That is the purpose of this exercise: so that we can look at what technologies are here today, what the emerging technologies are and how they will shift the dial on some cancers.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
The House will know that my family, like many others in Newcastle-under-Lyme, has been impacted by cancer in recent times, so I thank the Minister for his statement and his personal commitment to getting this right. On World Cancer Day, I join him in paying tribute to the charities he mentioned in his statement, and particularly my constituents Mary and Colin, who raise so much money every year for Macmillan. Health inequalities in some of our poorest communities and our ethnic minority communities play a big role in cancer being diagnosed. Can the Minister tell me and my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme how we will tackle those health inequalities alongside this national cancer plan?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and it relates to not just cancer but a whole range of conditions, including cardiovascular disease, strokes and so many others—it is the same areas that have the worst outcomes, because there are endemic health inequalities that we have not shifted the dial on for decades. Life expectancy is much lower, and healthy life expectancy is much worse, than in less deprived areas. It is part of our health mission to drive forward better health outcomes for people living in the poorest areas, and our national cancer plan will be a key part of that.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
In his remarks yesterday, the Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms, the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), implied that he was discussing the future with AstraZeneca, which has had some bad news this week. AstraZeneca makes immunotherapies, among other things, and therefore is very important in allowing people to live better for longer. What discussion will the Minister be having as part of his plan with the pharmaceutical sector, since plainly the national health service cannot do this alone?
Andrew Gwynne
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I have certainly had a number of roundtables with the pharmaceutical sector in the UK about how we can support it, how we can grow our life sciences sector and how Britain can be at the cutting edge of new treatments and clinical trials. Indeed, we had a Delegated Legislation Committee yesterday on regulations to make it easier to carry out clinical trials in this country. Some of the latest advances in pharma are quite remarkable; I think particularly of the work being done on mRNA technology to look at having specific cancer treatments pertinent to a person’s genomics—it could be a game changer.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Hyndburn is home to the incredible woman Lorraine Hargreaves. She established the charity Milly’s Smiles after her daughter Milly died of leukaemia, and each year she supports thousands of families whose children have cancer. Can the Minister reassure her that this plan will also improve outcomes for children? I know that Lorraine will welcome the announcement on the re-establishment of the taskforce, but would the Minister consider meeting her to discuss the lack of support and grief groups for families who go through the unimaginable tragedy of losing a child to cancer?
Andrew Gwynne
I cannot even begin to think what it would be like to lose a child full stop, but to lose them to cancer would be horrific for their parents. I pay tribute to Lorraine for all the campaigning she has done on this. I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and Lorraine to talk about this, but the whole reason for putting the taskforce back on an operational footing is so that we can make the changes that she and Lorraine want to see.
Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)
Members across the House will be all too familiar with constituents reaching out to let them know that safe, effective new medicines are not approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. The Minister speaks of research and the need for access. Will he commit to being a critical friend of NICE, to ensure both good value for the taxpayer and good access for patients?
Andrew Gwynne
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. NICE is there for a particular reason: to ensure that the drugs being developed are available on the NHS when they meet the required threshold. Of course, we want to ensure that as new treatments become available, they are available for British patients. The work that is being done with Moderna and other pharmaceutical companies will ensure that British patients have access to some of the latest treatments as they come through the pipeline.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
One of my earliest memories is being in a hospital room as my grandfather was dying of cancer. Ten days ago, I was in the same hospital as my father died with the same cancer—50 years in between, almost to the week, but no significant change in prognosis. Can the Minister assure me that what are termed the less survivable cancers, which are not necessarily rare cancers, are included as part of this work?
Andrew Gwynne
My heart goes out to my hon. Friend. I lost both my parents to cancer, and it does not matter when it happens in your life; it is just heartbreaking. As the children of those parents, you never get over it. Of course, we will have a concerted effort on less survivable cancers. In part, they are less survivable because the research has not been done, or not to the extent that we can develop better treatments for them. That is where we really have to shift the dial in the next decade. We have to make sure that people who have a cancer diagnosis have the best opportunities to live a long and fulfilling life after cancer.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
I declare an interest, in that I have now been smoke-free for 34 days using the NHS Quit Smoking app, even though my waistline and the Government have tested my resolve in recent weeks.
Eighteen months ago we lost my office manager, Susan Hall, to lymphoma. The Minister will know that parliamentary employees are not just employees; they are part of our family. Part of her treatment was community care provided by an excellent hospice in my constituency called Mountbatten hospice. This is not meant to be a political point, but what progress has been made on looking at a fairer, Government-led mechanism to fund our hospices across the United Kingdom on an even footing and with more money?
Andrew Gwynne
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being smoke-free. Hopefully, he is the first of many as we move towards a smoke-free UK by 2030. He makes a real and serious point about not just community care—one of the big shifts in the health mission is from hospital to community—but how we approach the hospice sector. Last weekend I was at my local hospice, Willow Wood in Ashton-under-Lyne, where staff made exactly the same point. That will be fed into the national cancer plan.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement, and particularly for his deep understanding of women’s health issues and the difficulty that many women face in getting their GP to understand what they are going through. The Women and Equalities Committee has spent some time looking at that this year.
The George Eliot hospital in my constituency serves many of my constituents, who often complain about the length of time it takes to get scan results. Between June 2023 and 2024, almost 12% of people waited more than 28 days to receive MRI results, compared with 6.5% nationally. I know that the team there are working very hard to bring the time down, but can the Minister reassure my constituents that the use of AI will speed up the time it takes for them to get their scan results and the treatment they need?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend makes some really important points. The need to get people scanned more quickly, and to get results to consultants, is in part why we now have extra capacity through community diagnostic centres, where there are extra facilities for scans. She is absolutely right to raise the issue of where AI and emerging technologies may take us, which will almost certainly lead to faster identification of cancers.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
I thank the Minister for making his statement on World Cancer Day, and I do not doubt his sincerity on this issue. On 22 March 2022, the then Northern Ireland Health Minister launched a 10-year cancer strategy and funding plan. It was co-designed, co-produced and co-chaired by Professor Charlotte McArdle, the then chief nursing officer, and Ivan McMinn, the then chair of Cancer Focus NI. The strategy looked to adopt a regional approach, to create smoother pathways and to adopt successful innovations. It had 58 action points and was costed at £145 million per year for 10 years, but it has not really made any progress since the fall of the Northern Ireland Executive. The Minister has said that he is developing a national cancer plan. Will he meet me and the current Northern Ireland Health Minister to ensure that the work that was developed is not lost but is built into what can be a truly successful national cancer plan if we do it right?
Andrew Gwynne
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the work that he did in this area in a previous guise. I am more than happy to meet him and Mike Nesbitt, with whom I had a meeting on drug strategy and drugs as a public health issue before this statement, to drive forward how we can improve outcomes in Northern Ireland and get that plan working again, as it should never have stalled.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
People talk about the politics of hope and, goodness me, this statement can give the country some hope that cancer survival rates will be driven up. However, the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust has remained challenged over the last 14 years. Will my hon. Friend the Minister confirm that the areas that are most challenged will be given support to catch up and push on?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which is not lost on those of us on the Government Front Bench. There are real challenges across the healthcare system, and some of the areas with some of the worst outcomes also happen to have some of the worst health inequalities. Those issues are exacerbated by the pressure on the healthcare system. He can have my reassurance that the Government will make it a priority to drive down health inequalities and ensure that healthcare systems get the support they need.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I hope the Minister will join me in thanking the team at Dorset cancer centre in Poole, who enabled my step-mum, Sally Walls, to ring the bell this morning following the end of her radiotherapy treatment. Her treatment has been exceptional and swift, but the situation is inconsistent. Nikki from Horton was told that she needed a two-week appointment for gynaecological problems. When she called, she was told that it would be six weeks. She could not bear to wait, so she borrowed £650 to find out that she was all clear. Can the Minister offer reassurance that he will end the postcode lottery?
Andrew Gwynne
I congratulate the hon. Lady’s step-mum on ringing that bell, which is great news. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue of inconsistency when it comes to the levels of service that different patients get. That will obviously be a major factor in the national cancer plan going forward, to ensure that all people diagnosed with cancer have the same levels of treatment and the same opportunities to survive.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the Minister’s statement. He will know as well as anybody else in this Chamber that smoking causes one in four cancers in this country, and that two out of three people who smoke will die as a result. He is assiduously moving the Tobacco and Vapes Bill through Parliament. Can he set out the likely effect that the Bill will have on those shocking statistics?
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for being a member of the Committee for that Bill, which ended its business last Thursday. The hon. Members for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), and for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), who are sitting on the Opposition Front Bench, were also members of that Committee. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because the Bill will stop the conveyor belt that the tobacco industry has used to its advantage for decades. We are saying that we will not allow any more children and young people to become addicted to nicotine and tobacco, which, as he says, kills two out of every three users. It is uniquely the most harmful product, and we are making the next generation smoke-free for a reason.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
One of my constituents waited two years from the onset of severe symptoms to receive a cancer diagnosis, and another 10 weeks to have the type of cancer identified, at which point it was incurable. One of the key failings in this case seems to be the disconnect between her reporting the symptoms to her GP and getting the right referral to the hospital, despite her having a previous history of breast cancer. What promises can the Minister make on improving the co-ordination between different parts of the NHS to make sure that people like my constituent do not fall through the cracks in the future?
Andrew Gwynne
That kind of experience is unacceptable, and the purpose of our plan is to demand better of the NHS and the system more widely when it comes to cancer outcomes. Nobody should have the kind of experience that the hon. Lady’s constituent had, which is why we will drive better outcomes through better treatment and earlier diagnosis, and make sure that the whole NHS is joined up in the process—a key part of the national cancer plan.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
Given that today is World Cancer Day, this statement is extremely welcome. Half of all leukaemia patients will not survive beyond five years, and the outlook is even bleaker for those diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. If no action is taken, 80% of those diagnosed with AML today will not survive this Parliament. Early diagnosis and greater research are key to improving people’s chances. Will the Minister consider introducing measures to ensure that they are included in the national cancer plan?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend has my assurance on all fronts there. Early diagnosis, more and better research, and identifying how we improve outcomes for people with a variety of cancers are all crucial. His points about leukaemia are well rehearsed in the Department and will be a key part of the national cancer plan.
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
Some 3.4 million people in England live further than 45 minutes away from a radiotherapy centre. We all want to see that changed, but one of the challenges will be the fact that eight out of 10 radiotherapists have considered leaving the profession. Could the Minister outline what work the Government are doing to retain and recruit the radiotherapists that we need?
Andrew Gwynne
The hon. Member makes a reasonable point, and part of the reason that we are having a refreshed workforce plan alongside the 10-year NHS plan is precisely to address some of the concerns that he has raised. We need to make sure that we have the right workforce in the right place, and to future-proof it for the kinds of treatments that will come on stream in the coming decade.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement and also for the time he has spent with me discussing my private Member’s Bill, the Rare Cancers Bill. Yesterday, I met representatives of the Brain Tumour Charity, Brain Tumour Research and Pancreatic Cancer UK, and we did in part discuss the national cancer plan. I do not speak on those charities’ behalf, but one of the conclusions I drew from the discussion was that there is a real need to have the voices of rare cancer patients and survivors at the heart of this consultation. Does the Minister agree with that point? Secondly, on World Cancer Day, will he join me in wishing my daughter Ruth good luck as she trains to run a marathon in aid of the Brain Tumour Charity?
Andrew Gwynne
Good luck, Ruth! I hope she succeeds and raises lots of money for such a good cause. I want to thank my hon. Friend as well for his crucial work in this area. He has my assurances that at the heart of the first step, which is the call for evidence I have announced today, and of the development of the national cancer plan, those with lived experience—patients or loved ones of people who have had cancer and those who have either survived or are now bereaved—absolutely have to be at the heart of what we are doing. We will take their views, their opinions and their thoughts fully on board as we develop this plan.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
I lost my father to lymphoma and my wife is an ovarian cancer survivor, so I warmly welcome this statement. In Gloucestershire, we are a designated regional cancer centre, but unfortunately the buildings at Cheltenham general are just not up to scratch any more. Fundraising was mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), and we are in that situation. We need £17.5 million and we have £9 million to go. Will the Minister warmly congratulate the Big Space Cancer Appeal fundraisers, particularly Dr Charles Candish and Dr Sam Guglani, who are leading the charge on that? Would he like to meet those consultants to discuss how we might move this fundraising effort along so that the whole project does not rest on the back of charity?
Andrew Gwynne
I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member and the team to look at precisely those points and I wish them all the very best in their fundraising efforts, but look, as a country we are better than this. I want to see the national cancer plan really start to address how we can get that research, that treatment, those diagnoses and those better outcomes for people with the NHS at the heart of it, doing what the NHS does best and ensuring that we get those outcomes from publicly funded improvements.
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
I welcome all the efforts this Government are making to improve cancer services. Early diagnosis is just as important as prevention, but we all know that patients are currently waiting several months for scan procedures. A recent visit to the GP surgeries in my constituency showed that they have spare capacity for scanning, but it is not actively offered to patients at the moment. This is due to a lack of collaborative working and communication in the health system, so will the Minister tell the House how we can improve the existing systems so that they work effectively and people can get timely procedures?
Andrew Gwynne
Part of our recovery plan is to ensure that we return the national health service to constitutional standards, not just in respect of cancer but across the board. We inherited a broken national health service and it is incumbent on this Government to fix it and make it fit for the future. Clearly, in areas such as my hon. Friend’s, the NHS needs to be doing much better when it comes to cancer outcomes and cancer treatments, and this plan and this Government will ensure that his local system gets all the support it needs.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
I declare an interest, as I have a family member who has shares in a medical company.
I pay tribute to the Minister for following through with his promise for a national cancer plan. It is clearly very important to him, and it is to me as well. Shaun Walsh of Cancer Research UK first raised with me the need for a dedicated cancer plan, and it has been an important part of my work in Parliament since then. Will the Minister meet me and Shaun to discuss the next steps for the national cancer plan?
Andrew Gwynne
I am more than happy to do so. My diary secretary, who will be watching this from the Department of Health, is probably having kittens at the amount of meetings. I meet Shaun and the cancer charities frequently anyway, and as I said at the start of the statement, I commend the work that they do in this area. This national cancer plan is important to me, to the Secretary of State, to the Prime Minister and to the sector, and that is why we are doing the right thing and having a plan.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
I welcome today’s statement and I know that my wife, Julia, who is a consultant radiographer in mammography at King’s Mill hospital, will also welcome it. One of my earliest childhood memories is of watching my grandfather, William Yemm, die of lung cancer. William was a lifelong coalminer at Blidworth colliery. I think he drank and smoked rather more than was good for him throughout his life, so does the Minister agree that prevention is every bit as important as diagnosis, treatment and research in the fight against cancer? Can he reassure me that this welcome national cancer plan will consider what action we can take to prevent people from developing cancer?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend raises such an important point. This Government have three shifts and I have mentioned two of them already: the shifts from hospital to community and from analogue to digital. The third shift is from sickness to prevention. We absolutely have to shift the dial, whether it is on alcohol harms, smoking, obesity, inactivity or the air we breathe. These are the five-point plan priorities when it comes to prevention. My hon. Friend is so right to focus on this, and we hope to cut the instances of a whole range of preventable illnesses, including cancer.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
Many of my constituents have to travel to England to access cancer treatment. This presents many problems, one of which is a lack of data sharing between NHS England and NHS Wales. Will the Minister assure Welsh patients that if they are treated in an English hospital, their data will follow them home and that it will be accessible to NHS Wales?
Andrew Gwynne
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I also have regular meetings with ministerial colleagues in the Welsh Government, and this is an area of interest to both Governments. We need to make sure there is better sharing of data and information for patients from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland when accessing NHS services in England, so that there is joined-up, smarter use of the data held on patients by our respective NHS systems in order to get better outcomes. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am already taking this up with ministerial colleagues across the devolved Administrations.
Paul Davies (Colne Valley) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement. Since my election, I have met a wide range of cancer charities, especially those representing rare and less common cancers. As the Minister knows, 55% of UK cancer deaths are a result of those types of cancers, such as blood, ovarian and kidney cancers. Will he ensure that rare and less common cancers are not forgotten in the national cancer plan?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend has my full assurance that all cancers—all tumour types—will be an integral part of the national cancer plan. On rarer cancers, it is important that we use the call for evidence and the discussions we will have in the coming weeks and months to ensure that those voices are heard as we drive forward our plan.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his statement. His words always display the compassion and comfort that these types of statements should convey.
Does the Minister agree that it is time for the Government to do more to fund cancer research, rather than leaving charities to bear the burden? Cancer Research UK alone has invested more than £4 billion in research over the last 10 years. Will this plan ensure that groundbreaking research, such as that carried out at Queen’s University Belfast, will have enhanced funding for a world-class breakthrough in finding a cure for cancer? Will Northern Ireland be one of the UK’s 30 testing sites for women?
Andrew Gwynne
I thank my hon. Friend. I always call him my hon. Friend because I see more of him than I see of my wife. [Laughter.] Usually because we are in the same debates.
The hon. Member makes an important point about research, which will be a crucial aspect of the national cancer plan. Advances in technology, science and pharmaceuticals do not happen by accident; they happen because we fund the research to get to that point. We need to do much better in researching some of the rarer and less survivable cancers. Those scientists and charities must have access to the funds that are available so they can carry out the research we need.
As for where the 30 sites will be, that is above my pay grade. There are criteria, but I will take it back to my officials and see what we can do.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for his statement, and I thank every Member on both sides of the Chamber who has shared their personal stories.
I was nine years old when I lost my grandmother, Grace, to cancer. That was a long time ago, but it still has a profound effect on me. Does the Minister agree that early detection is vital for survival rates? In particular, I emphasise the point about the importance of ensuring that women are taken seriously when they visit their GP.
I thank my constituent Sir Rod Stewart for the support he gave to the radiography department at Princess Alexandra hospital. Does the Minister agree that this national cancer plan will mean that we do not have to rely on the good will of rock legends such as Rod Stewart to support everyone in our society?
Andrew Gwynne
Talk about name-dropping; if only I had such famous constituents. Burnage was once home to the Gallagher brothers, and Denton was home to Mick Hucknall—I do not think any of them live there any more.
My hon. Friend makes an important point that women, in particular, have to be taken seriously by their GPs. The symptoms of some of these cancers could indicate a multitude of different things but, knowing from my mum’s bitter experience, I would sooner that GPs erred on the side of caution and got people diagnosed. If the diagnosis turns out not to be cancer, what a wonderful result that is. If it is cancer, we can get them on the treatment pathway sooner rather than later.
Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)
I also commend the Minister for his great announcement, which is welcome and needed.
The Minister has often spoken about the importance of shifting from sickness to prevention, from hospital to community, and from analogue to digital. Residents of Southend East and Rochford deserve an NHS that is there when they need it. What impact does he think the plan will have on the issues he has outlined today?
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend raises an important point, and it is a good one on which to end. Each of those three shifts—from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention—could be taken in isolation. However, by putting them together, we can shift how we deliver health and care in this country. We will make it fit for purpose, we will drive up standards across the system, we will get the NHS back to constitutional standards—which means lower waiting times, shorter waiting lists and better outcomes—and, when it comes to cancer, we will save lives. It is as simple as that.
Bill Presented
Statutory Adoption Pay (Report on Extension to the Self-Employed) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Lisa Smart presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the merits of extending eligibility for statutory adoption pay to persons who are self-employed or contractors; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 7 March, and to be printed (Bill 175).
Road Traffic (Unlicensed Drivers)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Will Stone (Swindon North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide that an unlicensed driver who has never held a valid driving licence and who causes the death of another person by driving commits the offence of careless driving under section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988; and for connected purposes.
I thank Members for being present as I introduce the Harry Parker Bill. Before I speak to the aim of the Bill, I will give some context. This is not just a policy matter; it is about justice, accountability and preventing future tragedies.
Who was Harry? What happened to him? And how can we change the law to prevent anyone from going through what his parents Adam and Kelly, who are sitting in the Gallery, have gone through? Harry was a 14-year-old boy. He loved football, taking home a trophy or two in his time. Those who knew him said he was a very popular and charming young man. To his parents, he was their world. Adam says:
“He had the biggest heart and loved to make people laugh. He could light up the room with just his presence.”
However, on 25 November 2022, the unspeakable happened—an event that truly rocked our community. Harry was struck by a car outside his school, which sadly resulted in his death. This, in itself, is a tragedy. Harry was a young, 14-year-old boy with his whole life ahead of him. I ask the House to join me in expressing our deepest condolences to the family, and to recognise them and their remarkable strength in facing this unimaginable loss.
Losing Harry was tragic enough, but what followed made it even worse. The person who struck Harry was driving without a licence and without insurance and failed to stop at the scene. Given the circumstances, one might assume that justice would be served and that the individual would face serious criminal charges, yet in November 2024, all charges were dropped.
Let me be absolutely clear: this is not an attack on the Crown Prosecution Service or the police. They followed the law as it stands, but that is precisely the problem. The law in its current form is failing. We must ask ourselves how it can be that a person can drive illegally and take a life, yet face no legal consequences. How can it be that knowingly operating a vehicle without a licence is not automatically deemed careless or dangerous driving? The answer is simple: our system is flawed. A person who does not hold a valid licence has no business being behind the wheel of a car, and when they are, they put lives at risk.
I cannot bring Harry back, nor can I give Adam and Kelly the justice they deserve. No legislation, no speech and no court ruling will ever ease their pain. What we can do—what we must do—is ensure that no other family has to endure what they have been through. The Harry Parker Bill seeks to close the dangerous gaps in our legal system and impose real-world consequences on those who choose to drive without a licence; under the Bill, those who drive without a valid licence are deemed careless. I urge the House to join me in honouring Harry’s memory not just with words, but with action. Let us commit to making our roads safer for all. I urge the Government to consider this Bill in their road safety strategy.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Will Stone, Mr Bayo Alaba, Dan Aldridge, Alex McIntyre, Luke Myer, Chris Vince, Alex Ballinger, Tom Hayes, Henry Tufnell, Dr Roz Savage, Deidre Costigan and
Frank McNally present the Bill.
Will Stone accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 June, and to be printed (Bill 174).
Business of the House
Social Security Benefits
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)
I beg to move,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
Sir Stephen Timms
In my view, the instruments are compatible with the European convention on human rights.
The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025 will increase relevant state pension rates by 4.1%, in line with the growth in average earnings in the year to May to July 2024. It will increase most other benefit rates by 1.7%, in line with the rise in the consumer prices index in the year to September 2024. The Government’s commitment to the triple lock means that the basic and full rate of the new state pension will be uprated by whichever is highest out of the growth in earnings, the growth in prices, or 2.5%. That will mean 4.1% for 2025-26. From April this year, the basic state pension will increase from £169.50 per week to £176.45, and the full rate of the new state pension will increase from £221.20 to £230.25.
We are fully committed to maintaining the pension triple lock. There is some confusion about the position of the Conservative party, and I hope that the shadow Minister will clarify the position when he speaks.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
On clarification, can the Minister clarify for how much longer the state pension will be taxed? The Conservative Government stood for election on a commitment to the triple lock plus. We lost the election, but we were going to take out that fiscal drag. Can the Minister explain how long that tax will stay in place?
Sir Stephen Timms
My understanding, from what the Leader of the Opposition has said, is that the Conservative party is no longer committed to the triple lock, let alone the triple lock plus. I can tell the hon. Member that we do not have any plans to do what he suggests.
Sir Stephen Timms
I simply point out to the hon. Gentleman that his party appears to no longer be committed to the triple lock. We look forward to clarification on that point from the shadow Minister.
Other components of state pension awards, such as those previously built up under earnings-related state pension schemes, including the additional state pension, will increase by 1.7% in line with prices. The Government are committed to supporting pensioners on the lowest incomes, so the safety net provided by the pension credit standard minimum guarantee will increase by 4.1%. For single pensioners, that means an increase from £218.15 to £227.10 per week; for couples, the increase is from £332.95 to £346.60 per week. We want everybody entitled to that support to receive it, which is why we launched the national pension credit campaign. We received around 150,000 pension credit applications in the 16 weeks after the winter fuel payment announcement.
Dr Evans
I am very grateful. We do indeed want more people to take up pension credit. However, one of the biggest problems is the processing time. The response to a written question that I tabled before Christmas showed that there was a 75% success rate in getting that done within 50 days, which means that that did not happen for one in four. I later re-tabled the same question, and it turned out that the standard had got worse. What work are the Government doing to make sure that applications are processed within 50 days? Especially when it is cold and people have had their winter fuel payment taken away, it is important that those who need that support get it as soon as they can.
Sir Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman is quite right; it is important that applications are processed speedily, and I am pleased with the number of applications. I can confirm—I think he knows this—that everybody who applied before 21 December will receive, if they are successful, their winter fuel payment. We have also moved extra staff on to pension credit processing. However, the hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise that point.
Universal credit and the legacy means-tested benefits that it replaces provide support for people of working age. We have committed in our manifesto to reviewing universal credit, so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty, and we will set out shortly how we plan to fulfil that commitment. For those below state pension age, the order increases the personal and standard allowances of working-age benefits, including universal credit, by 1.7%, in line with the increase in prices in the year to September 2024. In the Budget last November, the Chancellor announced that the maximum repayment deduction from universal credit payments will be reduced from April, from 25% of the universal credit standard allowance to 15%—the fair repayment rate—and 1.2 million households are expected to benefit from that change by an average of £420 per year.
In addition, the order increases statutory payments by 1.7%. That includes statutory maternity pay, statutory paternity pay, statutory shared parental pay and statutory sick pay. Benefits for those who have additional costs as a result of disability or health impairments will also increase by 1.7%. That includes disability living allowance, attendance allowance and personal independence payment. The order will also increase carer’s allowance by 1.7%. The Chancellor announced in the Budget that, from April, the weekly carer’s allowance earnings threshold will be pegged to the level of 16 hours’ work at the national living wage. That means that, from April, unpaid carers will be able to earn up to £196 per week net earnings and still receive carer’s allowance, compared with £151 now. I am pleased to say that that move has been very widely welcomed, and we expect it to bring an additional 60,000 unpaid carers into eligibility for the benefit, and, crucially, to reduce the likelihood that carers who manage to combine some work with their caring responsibilities will inadvertently fall foul of the earnings limit, because, in future, that threshold will keep up with changes in the national living wage.
On disability and carer’s benefits, we will continue to ensure that carers, and people who face additional costs because of disability or health impairment, get the support that they need, and we will set out proposals for reform of health and disability benefits in a Green Paper in the spring.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
In my constituency of Horsham, food bank usage increased by 25% last year, and it has increased by 700% over six years. In the light of that evidence of the pressures, will the Government consider putting a minimum level on universal credit?
Sir Stephen Timms
I have seen representations along those lines. It is not something that we are considering at the moment, but we are, as I have mentioned, committed to reviewing universal credit, and we will do so over the course of this year. I imagine that we will be looking at a very wide variety of representations, and the hon. Gentleman and others will be very welcome to make submissions to us along those lines. Lastly, let me say a word about the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Before the Minister gets on to the pension issue, may I just say that the order requires the Secretary of State to examine the effects of benefit uprating and the effects of the existing payment of benefits? What studies has he done on the effect of the two-child benefit cap? Secondly, last week we passed a welfare spending cap—a cap that, obviously, could be breached in the future. Will the Government revisit the whole idea of the welfare cap, with a view to abolishing it, so that we ensure that the motive force in deciding on benefits is the level of need, rather than an arbitrary figure decided by the Treasury?
Sir Stephen Timms
On the two-child limit, as the right hon. Member knows, we very quickly set up after the general election the child poverty taskforce, which is looking in a very ambitious way at the whole range of levers that the Government have at their disposal for tackling the problem of child poverty. We would very much like to repeat the success of the last Labour Government in reducing child poverty so dramatically in when in office. I say that with particularly strong feeling, having taken the Child Poverty Act 2010 through the House towards the end of that Government’s term. Under consideration certainly will be social security changes—we will look at what changes might be appropriate. We are not able to say whether the two-child limit will be removed, but all those things will be considered carefully during production of the report, which the taskforce will bring forward.
We are not looking, I do not think, at changing the arrangements around the overall welfare cap. Of course, there is always some confusion between the individual benefit cap and the overall welfare cap. As the right hon. Member said, there was a debate last week on the overall cap. There is certainly scope for debate about that and, indeed, the benefit cap as well, but we are not proposing any changes to those arrangements in the short term.
The draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order sets out the yearly amount by which the GMP part of an individual’s contracted-out occupational pension earned between April 1988 and April 1997 must be increased if it is in payment. The increases paid by occupational pension schemes help to provide a measure of inflation protection to people who are in receipt of GMPs earned between those two years. Legislation requires that GMPs earned between those two dates must be increased by the percentage increase in the general level of prices, as measured the previous September, capped at 3%. This year, it means that the order will increase the relevant part of the GMP by the September 2024 consumer prices index figure, which is 1.7%.
The draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order, if Parliament approves it this afternoon, commits the Government to increased expenditure of £6.9 billion in 2025-26. The changes will mainly come into effect from 7 April and will apply for the tax year 2025-26. The order maintains the triple lock, benefiting pensioners who are in receipt of the basic and new state pensions; raises the level of the safety net in pension credit beyond the increase in prices; increases the rate of benefits for people in the labour market; and increases the rate of carer’s benefits and support to help with additional costs arising from disability or health impairment.
The draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order requires formerly contracted-out occupational pension schemes to pay an increase of 1.7% on GMPs in payment earned between April 1988 and April 1997, providing people with a measure of protection against inflation, paid for by their scheme. I commend to the House the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025 and the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
Let me state at the outset that the Opposition support the measures to uprate pensions in line with earnings and benefits in line with inflation. I am honoured, personally, to take part in this important annual ritual, which is never well attended but is always a high-quality debate. The traditional star of this debate is, of course, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who this year has descended from the clouds of the Work and Pensions Committee to the sweaty arena of ministerial office. No one is more qualified than he to take the office that he now has. No one has more genuine expertise and compassion for the people that we all want to support than he, so I am very pleased that he is in this role. I just note in passing how much the House misses the expertise of departed Members. Paul Maynard, David Linden and Nigel Mills all used to take part in this debate to great value. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), who is taking up his position as a new star of this annual debate.
Despite the formality, it is an important debate, because it is an opportunity for us to take stock of the welfare and pensions system as a whole. As pensions and the triple lock were mentioned, I am happy to provide some clarification for the right hon. Gentleman. I think he has misunderstood, or our leader’s position has been misquoted, because we are not looking at cancelling the triple lock. It is his colleague, the new Pensions Minister, who has been very clearly quoted saying that the triple lock is a silly system and indefensible. I look forward to further clarification from Government Members.
Dan Tomlinson
As I understand it, the shadow Chancellor said that the triple lock is unsustainable. Do you agree with him on that point?
Danny Kruger
Clearly, there are questions about the long-term sustainability of our pensions system and our national insurance fund, but I think the shadow Chancellor was talking about the very long term, rather than the immediate situation that we are in. There is no intention, on the Conservative Benches anyway, to review the triple lock at this stage.
Sir Stephen Timms
To clarify the position further, what happened was that the leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party was asked on LBC whether she would look at the triple lock, and her reply was,
“we’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here.”
What did she mean by that?
Danny Kruger
My right hon. Friend replied, “No”, to the interviewer. We are not looking at means-testing the triple lock. She was talking more generally about the challenge of means-testing in our social security system, which is a legitimate question for us all to consider, as I shall go on to discuss.
I did not want to get too partisan in this debate, but—[Interruption.] Here we go! No, I won’t, genuinely, because the challenge of our welfare system is a shared problem that we face across the House. I will note in passing that our party’s record on welfare is a good one. We introduced universal credit, rationalising the spaghetti web of benefits that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman when he was last in office. We made work pay and helped people off welfare and into work, and we succeeded in that, with 4 million more people in employment in 2024 than in 2010.
Let me point out that we had another mess to sort out in the public finances. When we took office, the Government were running a deficit of 9% and the Treasury was spending way more than it was earning. By the time the pandemic struck, the deficit was down to less than 1%. We were living within our means and were able to afford the generous uplifts made to benefits and pensions in the last Parliament, as well as the huge package of support that we provided during the pandemic.
I want to be fair and admit that, as the Minister suggested, the welfare system is not working properly at the moment. Too many people are being consigned to a life of inactivity and dependency, especially via the categories of sickness benefit. It is bad for those people, their communities and the country as a whole, including the taxpayer, who spends £65 billion a year on incapacity and disability benefits, rising to £100 billion a year unless reforms are made by the end of this Parliament.
So what is going on? Those terrible figures reflect the fact that we have bad rates of physical ill health, including obesity and, as is strongly evidenced in the statistics, bad backs because we simply do not move around enough in the day. The figures also reflect a rise in mental ill health, which we see in alarming rates in schools and among young people. We have to do more on those issues through all sorts of interventions that lie more with the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care than with the Department for Work and Pensions. However, as the Lords Economic Affairs Committee reported last week, the rise in welfare claims cannot be attributed to worsening health or longer NHS waiting lists; the problem is growing far faster than that.
Perhaps the problem is low wages that do not attract people into employment, and that is certainly a reality. Low wages have driven demand for the immigration that we have seen get so out of control in recent years. Profound changes are under way in the world of work, away from secure employment towards a more precarious jobs market. Labour is destroying jobs, taxing employment and discouraging new hires with its new Employment Rights Bill. However, the fact is that wages have risen sharply above inflation in recent years, which is why pensions are going up by earnings this year. Employers are offering good wages but are not filling vacancies.
The issue is not health, although we have problems in health; the issue is not work, although we have big problems there—the issue is welfare. People are not being incentivised to take jobs because the offer from the welfare system is better. When I say welfare, I do not mean unemployment support. Thanks to universal credit and the last Government’s reforms, we saw record numbers of people move off unemployment benefit and into work. That is because we offered support to people to find work and imposed strict conditions that meant people had to actively look for a job. If they did not, they lost the benefit. That worked for a lot of people, but we found—here is the issue—that for a lot of other people, the incentives made them go the other way, further away from work into the sickness category, because that is where the good money is. In some cases, the money is double what they can get on unemployment benefit, and sometimes £3,000 more than the minimum wage. People almost certainly get it because the approval rates are high at over 90% for the limited capacity for work category.
This is big and unconditional money. There is no expectation to do anything about the health conditions that mean someone is signed off sick. There is no expectation of being reassessed any time soon or, indeed, ever. That is the challenge, and I hope the Government will rise to it in the same way that we rose to the crisis in unemployment benefit in the last decade.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
One of the ways the last Government helped to deal with this issue was by dealing with the taper. It was at 63% and it went down to 55%, so people who were working got more of their own money back. Does my hon. Friend believe that this is one way we could incentivise people to step back into the workplace—by having more of their money as they earn it?
Danny Kruger
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That was a key part of the reforms brought in towards the last part of the last decade, enabled by universal credit—a much simpler system. I am glad to say that we managed to reduce that taper significantly and to incentivise work.
Dan Tomlinson
Madam Deputy Speaker, I will try not to say “you” this time—I am sorry.
I would be genuinely interested to know what the Opposition’s position is on reform of the incapacity benefit system. It is a knotty problem. I know that when Opposition Members were in government, it was considered, but I am not clear what their position is at the moment. I know the Government are coming forward with proposals soon, so I would be genuinely interested to hear.
Danny Kruger
I am grateful for the opportunity. We had a whole series of plans that were sadly interrupted by the general election result, and I will come on in a moment to some of the suggestions I have for where the Government might go.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman was talking about incentivising people into work. In my surgeries in Torbay, I find that an awful lot of people are off sick with hip problems or mental health challenges, and the challenge people have in getting back into work is the broken health system that was left by the previous Conservative Government. I hope the new Government will drive harder on fixing the system, because many people on benefits are keen to get back into work; they are just unfit for work.
Danny Kruger
The hon. Gentleman reflects the experience that many of us have had in our surgeries. Nevertheless, I do not think that health reform on its own will do the job. As I mentioned, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has looked into the matter and reported last week, pointing out that the increase in welfare claims cannot be attributed to longer waiting lists or, indeed, to worsening health conditions. The welfare problem is outstripping the problems we see in the nation’s health, so we have to do more in the DWP. We wait with bated breath to see some movement on that front.
In fact, it was in this debate last year when we were uprating benefits that the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern), now a ministerial colleague of the right hon. Member for East Ham, said that, “Labour has a plan”. That was a year ago. Seven months ago, Labour won the election. She did not say that the plan was oven-ready, but she implied it. I know the Minister says that the delay is because of a court case that happened two weeks ago, but I do not quite understand how that explains the delay that has been going on for seven months.
Here we are approving a measure that will increase expenditure by nearly £7 billion, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and we have no idea how the bill will be brought down over time. But after much head scratching in the DWP—and, we are told, people pulling their hair out in No. 10—we are getting closer to the big reveal. We hear exciting hints in the media that the Government might scrap the limited capacity for work category altogether, scrap the work capability assessment, merge employment and support allowance into the personal independence payment system, or require people on sickness benefits to engage with work coaches. I am encouraged by all that pitch-rolling.
If the Government are softening up their Back Benchers for serious reform, I applaud them for it, but I will believe it when I see it, because Labour opposed every step towards tougher conditions, more assessments and more incentives to work. They opposed reforms that we were introducing to the fit note system. In fact, I see from a written answer to a question in the other place that the Government say they have no plans to reform the fit note system, which I regret. I wonder whether the Minister could help clarify if that is the case.
On universal credit, it appears that the sinner repenteth, or sort of repenteth. The Government are on some kind of journey. In the last Parliament, they said they would scrap universal credit, then they said they would replace it, and now, as we have heard, they are reviewing it. I am glad to hear that, although the right hon. Gentleman just said that they are reviewing it over the course of this year, so that seems to be unrelated to the Green Paper process, which we are expecting in the spring. I would like to understand how those two processes are aligned.
Rather than scrapping, replacing or reviewing universal credit, I invite the Government simply to use it. It is a flexible system, as we saw during the pandemic, and it works; it just needs to be adapted to the new challenge. In conclusion, let me make a few suggestions for the right hon. Gentleman to consider as he prepares his Green Paper and his universal credit review.
The back to work plan that we announced before the general election would have got 1.1 million people into work, using more support and tougher conditions—“more support” meaning more of the WorkWell pilots that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) introduced. I was glad to hear the Secretary of State praising those pilots yesterday, although sadly without attribution. In our view, the work capability assessment should be face to face, and it should be asset-based, not deficit-based; it should be asking what a claimant can do, not what they cannot do. The claimant should begin the journey of recovery—the journey back towards work—then and there. Rather than budgeting for ever higher welfare, as we are doing today, we should be investing in a universal support system to run alongside universal credit.
We also need tougher conditions. We simply cannot have people with a bad back or anxiety being signed off sick for the rest of their lives; they need to know that we believe in them, and that believing in them means having high expectations of them. In exchange for benefits paid for by working people, claimants should take active steps, when they can, to address their physical and mental health needs, and they should work meaningfully on their own health and wellbeing. That will not look the same for everyone and it must not be a tick-box exercise. That is why we need the help of civil society, not just coaches and therapists, providing the human touch and the range of help and opportunities that people need.
Most of all, we need a clear message to go out from the Government that unless a person is so severely disabled or ill that they genuinely can never work at all, they will not have a life on benefits. That clear message, enacted through reform that the right hon. Gentleman’s Department must bring forward urgently, is the only way to get our exorbitant welfare bills under control, and to get our workforce and our economy moving again.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I will start by commenting on the contribution made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger). First, it is really important that in this place we use evidence, to help ensure that we have effective, evidence-based policy. When we are using policy-based evidence, that is quite dangerous. I am referring to his remarks about conditionality. I refer him to the evidence, such as the two-year study undertaken by the University of York, which showed that there was no evidence to support tough sanctions. People have lost their lives because of sanctions, and that study showed that there was no evidence to support stopping somebody’s social security support—their money that they use to live—for up to two years, because that was the period that the Government of the day said benefits could be stopped for. That has real-life consequences.
I can also refer the shadow Minister to his own Cabinet Office reports, which showed that sanctions were not effective in getting people into work. We all need to be very responsible in what we say.
Debbie Abrahams
No, I am sorry but I am not going to give way.
As a former public health consultant, I can also say that the key drivers of ill health are socioeconomic determinants. There is so much evidence for that, going back decades, and I wonder why Conservative Members are not familiar with it—whether it is just not palatable to them, or it is inconvenient. Much more recently, the covid inquiry that we debated a couple of weeks ago showed very clearly that one of the reasons why we had such a poor experience, both in terms of morbidity and mortality—more than any other country in Europe—was our ill health. It does a real disservice to the people who have lost their lives or are enduring long covid at the moment, to their families and their memories, to suggest that it is something else, let alone to the people who are—
Debbie Abrahams
No, I am not going to give way. [Interruption.] I am not going to give way.
I welcome the social security order and, in particular, what my right hon. Friend the Minister has said about it. It was an absolute pleasure to serve on the Select Committee when he was its Chair, and in this respect I agree with the shadow Minister: my right hon. Friend’s transfer from the Select Committee to his ministerial position is very welcome. We all appreciate his gravitas and experience, but also his common decency in the role.
I want to talk about the context of this uprating order and the importance of our social security system in providing, at the very least, a safety net for people when they need it, and from cradle to grave, like the NHS. Unfortunately, though, over the past 14 to 15 years, the adequacy of support for people on low incomes has been dramatically eroded, particularly for people of working age—again, contrary to what the shadow Minister has said. Between 2010 and 2012, the uprating was about 1.5%; between 2012 and 2016, it was 1%; and between 2016 and 2020, it was zero. The average annual consumer prices index increase for each of those years was about 3%.
There has been a steady and consistent erosion in the value of social security support, which has affected the value of universal credit, jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit and child benefit. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that this erosion was equivalent to a cut of £20 billion a year from social security support for working-age people. That is clearly not well understood by the Conservative party.
Something else that is not well understood is that these are predominantly people in low-paid work. The vast majority of people in receipt of working-age social security support are, or have been, working people—that is something for us all to consider. Only a tiny proportion of DWP spending is spent on jobseeker’s allowance, for example—it is 0.001% of the current budget. As is evidenced in the Work and Pensions Committee’s report from last year, which I invite shadow Ministers to read, out-of-work support is at the lowest level in real terms since 1912. This is not a generous system; according to OECD comparisons, we are not supporting people in the way that a civilised society as well off as we are should do.
The consequences of inadequate social security are clear. Last week’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation poverty report made for bleak reading—again, I invite people to read it. Over one in five people in the UK are in poverty; that is 21%, or 14.3 million people. Of those, 8.1 million are working-age adults. Some 4.3 million children are in poverty—three in 10 among the population as a whole, while in my constituency the figure is one in two—and 1.9 million of those in poverty are pensioners.
Disabled people are at greater risk of poverty, partly by virtue of the additional costs that they face due to their disability and ill health, and partly due to the barriers to work that disabled people face. Disability employment has flatlined; when it comes to being in work, the gap between people who are not disabled and those who are has been about 30% for the past 14 years or so. It went down by about 1%. Some 16 million people in the UK are disabled—nearly one in four—and almost four in 10 families have at least one person who is disabled. The poverty rate for disabled people, which is 30%, is 10 percentage points higher than it is for non-disabled people. The rate is even higher—50%—for those living with a long-term, limiting mental health condition, compared with 29% for people with a physical disability or another type of disability.
Other groups of people are also disproportionately more likely to live in poverty, including former carers, people from ethnic minority communities and lone parents, but given the media speculation there has been about the future of disability support, I want to focus on that. Last year’s Select Committee report on benefit levels set out a wide range of evidence suggesting that benefit levels are too low and that claimants are often unable to afford daily living costs and extra costs associated with having a health condition or disability. Although the Select Committee supports the Government’s ambition to get Britain working and a social security system that supports work, these ambitions are not achievable within a few months. Meanwhile, people are barely clinging on.
The DWP does not have an expressed objective for how it will support claimants with daily essential living costs. In the Select Committee’s report we recommended building a cross-party consensus to take this forward, and for the Government to outline and benchmark objectives linked to living costs to measure the effectiveness of benefit levels, and to make changes alongside annual uprating. I would welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister revisiting this Select Committee report, particularly our recommendations.
I would like to set out the consequences of our currently inadequate social security system. From peer-reviewed articles, we know that for every 1% increase in child poverty, six babies per 100,000 live births fail to reach their first birthday. That is the consequence of living in poverty for children. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), because of his medical training, will know much of this, but a rewiring of the brain of children living in poverty affects them for the rest of their lives.
In another peer-reviewed piece published in 2016 in a BMJ journal, entitled “First, do no harm”, a metadata analysis of the impacts of the changes to and reassessment of the work capability assessment between 2010 and 2013 in 149 local authority areas in England found that, for each additional 10,000 people who were reassessed, there were an additional six suicides, 2,700 additional cases of mental health problems and over 7,000 more antidepressant scripts. This is evidence.
Many Members will know of my previous campaigns, and I want to refer to the deaths we have seen of social security claimants whose benefits have been stopped. I mention again Errol Graham, a 52-year-old Nottingham man with a severe mental health condition, who basically starved to death after his social security support was stopped. There are so many others I could mention, and I pay tribute to the families who have campaigned on their behalf for justice, because it is quite horrific.
Talking about people surviving our social security system, there is the case of TP—I will use his initials—also a 52-year-old man, who had worked all his life. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and, sadly, his diagnosis was terminal. He was trying to be migrated from his particular incapacity support to universal credit, and he lost all his disability premiums. He was one of the litigants in a case about transitional protections when migrating from ESA and disability premiums to universal credit. This is an example of somebody who has worked all their life, and four out of five disabilities and health conditions are acquired—it could happen to any one of us, and I would just like us to consider that.
In another case, AB was born with congenital cerebral palsy and worked for 25 years, but then could not go on. If I read out the whole story, we would all be in tears, because it is just heartrending, describing the indignity of having to rely on such low-level support.
I will leave it there, but I know my right hon. Friend the Minister takes this very seriously, and I hope all of us here will work towards making the social security system more adequate for those people.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
I would like to acknowledge the very sobering and comprehensive speech given by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). This is disturbing, and one would hope that our DWP, and our Government as a whole, would take a trauma-informed approach to dealing with our communities, as I believe that would stand us in good stead.
I broadly welcome the upratings in the proposals before us for both benefits and pensions, but I will focus first on pensions. Sadly, the Labour Government inherited a system under which, for the last 10 years, we have seen an increase in pensioner poverty. Two million pensioners remain in poverty, and 1 million are on the edge of poverty, and one would have hoped that a Labour Government wanting to cut the number in half and promoting social justice would have driven such an agenda harder in their first seven months in power. The cut to the winter fuel allowance has exacerbated this situation. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) highlighted the backlogs and rightly said that they are totally unacceptable. The reality is that we are seeing pensioner poverty.
Again, we know that women are more likely to be victims of poverty, yet the WASPI women have in effect been victims of a decision of this Government. It was really pleasing that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions welcomed the report, acknowledged it and apologised, but, sadly, she did not actually action the report. That gives me great displeasure, as well as many other people across the United Kingdom.
In evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, the ombudsman suggested that there is usually a bit of a conversation between the ombudsman and the Government about what an acceptable system or approach to compensation would be. Sadly, however, that never happened as far as the WASPI women are concerned, which is disturbing, and I want to understand why. Why was there the breakdown in communication between the ombudsman and the previous Conservative Government? I am looking to explore that with the ombudsman in another way.
On pensions, I would also like to highlight the housing issues. I served my community for 30 years as a councillor, and I am therefore very alive to some of the challenges people face. Housing is a massive issue, and it is disturbing that, when reflecting on pensions, the cost of housing is rarely taken into account. In 1979, 35% of our housing stock was social rented housing. That figure is now down to 17% across the United Kingdom, and in my constituency of Torbay it is as low as 7%. This means that people, whether pensioners or those on other benefits, in constituencies such as mine where there is a lack of social rented housing are particularly hard-hit by that lack of support; they will have to take money away from putting food on the table in order to pay the rent. It is therefore disappointing that the local housing allowance has not been enhanced in this round. Almost 1 million children across the United Kingdom will be living in households that have this gap between their benefits and the cost of their accommodation and they will be driven even further into poverty.
On universal credit, colleagues have already mentioned the recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report which highlighted that couples face a £55 a week gap between covering the basics and what they actually receive. That is a little over £2,800 a year, so people are being driven even deeper into poverty just around the basics on their universal credit offer.
Finally, on the carer’s allowance scandal, while we Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s engagement and the review that is taking place, unanswered questions remain. We need to make sure this is addressed at pace to support people, because 136,000 people—the equivalent of the population of West Bromwich—are affected, owing £250 million. They fell foul of a system where people only need to earn £1 more a week and they do not then owe £52, they owe £4,200—tapers need to be implemented.
One of the real challenges we face is that the DWP service is, sadly, broken. It is not fit for purpose and needs redesigning. I have nothing but utter respect for the Secretary of State on this issue, and instead of driving new agendas we need to lift the bonnet and redesign the system, get it for purpose and, most importantly, co-design it with people who are disabled or benefit users, so that it can actually support them.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about those most in need of benefits and the difference they can make. He spoke about the WASPI women and about children in poverty, but does he agree that veterans could also be helped out more by the DWP, such as by the Government backing the Royal British Legion “Credit their Service” campaign to change legislation so that military compensation is not classed as income when calculating means-tested benefits? Does my hon. Gentleman agree that that group would benefit from such a change?
Steve Darling
My hon. Friend is right to highlight that. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) and I are awaiting a meeting with the Minister to explore that very issue and the RBL’s campaign.
To conclude, I lived through a world of broken children’s services in Torbay, but we rolled our sleeves up, sorted it out and moved from failing to good within two years by getting the right people in place, making sure systems were sorted out and driving culture change. We need that co-design with people who use the system so we can get the DWP sorted as well.
Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet) (Lab)
First, I echo the comments of others in praising the Minister for his work on this issue over decades in this place. I saw it before becoming a Member of Parliament during my time working in the charity sector at the Resolution Foundation and most recently at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I was working on these issues, and I always knew then that we had a friend in Parliament who cared deeply about the welfare system and about the needs of people receiving benefits and support from the state, and who also, like me, wants to see more people being supported to move into employment. Even though I am not going to focus on that topic today as I want to talk about pensions, I do want to put on record my thanks for his service, and I am glad to see him as a Minister.
I want to start by talking about an institution that is not often discussed in this place but that is crucial to all of our lives and shapes a lot of politics even though we do not remark on it too much: the family. That is the institution that almost all of us are closest to and that shapes so much of the way we see the world. It is important that we as policymakers—as people sitting here in the House of Commons—do not just think of individuals as people on their own who are separate from one another and that we instead remember that we all exist in families. If we look at someone’s biography online, it might say they are a father and a husband, because our families are a big part of our identities. We would do well to remember that.
Sometimes our politics and our media might want to push us into discussing pensions in a way that promotes the salience of a war between the generations, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Mr Dillon
The hon. Gentleman talks about the importance of family and I could not agree more, but does he also agree that a family is a unit designed by that family and an arbitrary limit of a two-child benefit cap does nothing to protect that family unit if they have more than two children?
Dan Tomlinson
I grew up in poverty. We had no money and lived in social housing. I had free school meals throughout my childhood, and the three of us were in emergency and temporary accommodation as well. And I know the benefit system was there for my mum and for us, and I have confidence that this Government will make the decisions that we need to make to ensure that our welfare system is there for families like the one I grew up in. I know a review is looking at universal credit and the welfare system, and I look forward to it reporting in the months ahead. This is a really important issue, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it.
On families and the state pension, often people want to pit the young and the old against one another, but the evidence shows that young people are one of the most supportive groups for the increase in state pension. That is in part because we—I still call myself young now, in my early 30s—know and have seen throughout our lives how much people who are retired, such as our grandparents or older people we know in the community, have contributed to our lives and our families and also the lives of our communities. Also, to put on my economist’s hat, increases in the state pension and support for the triple lock, which we on this side of the House steadfastly support, will benefit young people the most because an extra few pence on the state pension today means an extra few pounds—or tens of pounds or, depending on which generation we are talking about, hundreds of pounds—in the future because of the way these things compound over time. It is really important we continue to support the state pension and the triple lock.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about the long-term benefits to the economy from treating the benefits system seriously. Does he agree that that applies to the two-child cap as well because if we were to remove that not only would we lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, which is inherently a good thing, but we would also improve health and education outcomes and ultimately make a more productive population over the long run?
Dan Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention on the same important topic raised by the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon). I know that the Government are looking at this issue and at how we can reform the welfare system to support people to get the money they need and have the incentives and the right approach to welfare to help more people get into employment. That is the long-term sustainable route to reducing poverty and I hope we can do more to achieve it.
Dan Tomlinson
I am happy to give way, although I perhaps should make some progress.
Dr Luke Evans
The hon. Member makes a fantastic point about the family unit. The last Government were looking at introducing a measure on household income, particularly with child benefit, to try to make sure that we see people not as individuals, but as a group. That could stop such things as the child benefit cliff edge. However, the new Government took that measure away in the Budget. Would he make the argument to his Front Benchers that looking at household units—the family unit—is a positive way of seeing how we can support people?
Dan Tomlinson
That is important in some respects. One of the challenges with the policy that the hon. Member identifies is that we tax people on an individual basis and the benefits he refers to are often linked to the tax system. He raises an important point, and I am sure it is being considered.
I will make some progress and conclude my remarks. I am supportive of the increase in the state pension and of the triple lock. I know we have already had a little ding-dong about it, but it is the case that the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said that the triple lock was unsustainable. Perhaps he was referring to the long term, but that still concerns me, not least given what I have said about young people benefiting most from increases in the state pension over time.
I am glad that in April the 20,000 pensioners in my constituency will receive either a £470 uplift if they are on the new state pension or, I believe, a £360 uplift if they are on the basic rate of state pension. That is incredibly important for living standards. I spent many years living with my grandparents part-time. They taught me a lot, and many of my values have come from them. We know how much care older people can provide to family and to their communities, and I see that in Chipping Barnet. At almost every community event, whether that is a local church, an institution or a charity doing good in the community, there are so many retired people giving their time and care, making Barnet—my corner of north London that I have the pleasure of representing—a better place to live. Providing that security in retirement is so very important.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
I endorse the warm words of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), in paying tribute to the Minister, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and the work he has done in previous Parliaments. As a recently elected Member, I was not in the House then, but I was aware of the work being done. Some of the contributions we have had in this debate so far have been extremely powerful. The quality of the debate seems to be in inverse proportion to the number of Members present.
I rise not to oppose these orders but to focus specifically on the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025, or GMP. The order gives applicable pension schemes the percentage by which they need to uprate GMP entitlement built up between 1988 and 1997. This year the increase is 1.7%. Wow! That was informed by the CPI figure for the year to September 2024. While that increase and the other increases are welcome, they will not even touch the sides. We must remember that the Government have taken away the winter fuel payment. We have seen numerous increases in energy costs, and we are seeing rising food prices because of policies on national insurance contributions and now the family farm tax.
These matters are reserved, but all those years ago back in 2014, we were promised in the run-up to the referendum that we would receive maximum devolution. That has not happened. People in Scotland may not know this, but we have had to introduce seven different benefits to mitigate the effects of decisions made here in Westminster. Fair pensions are necessary for ensuring dignity in old age, but we must be aware of the unintended consequences when changes are made to the pension system. During the transition to single-tier pensions in 2016, the DWP was found by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman not to have provided clear and accurate information that some pension holders were worse off under the changes. By the DWP’s own figures, about 50,000 people would lose out. That failure in communication seems emblematic of an outdated approach to social security that saw people unfairly treated when changes were made to their pension provision. We saw that happen again with the WASPI women. The PHSO again found that the DWP had committed maladministration in communicating those pension changes to WASPI women.
Pensions and pension provision are wide-reaching. Last week, I raised the issue of prison officers and changes to their pension scheme that mean some of them will be working until they are 68. I again impress upon the Government the need to consider the unintended consequences of that and all other pension changes. That is perhaps even more pertinent now, as the state pension age is due to rise to 67 for men and women between 2026 and 2028, and to 68 between 2044 and 2046. The DWP failed on previous occasions when it came to communicating these changes to people regarding their pensions. We have a new Government, and if they will not allow the Scottish people to determine their own future in these matters, or they will not devolve these matters to the Scottish Government, all I can ask is that they deliver fairness in pensions, because people need certainty when it comes to their retirement plans.
I agree with the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) when he mentioned the forthcoming review of the welfare system, and I wholeheartedly endorse the quiet words spoken by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) when she made her powerful intervention talking about the socioeconomic determinants of ill health. That message cannot go unnoticed by the DWP in these matters.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
It is a real honour to participate in this debate. I may not be as illustrious as previous contributors, but I will try my best to make whatever small impact I can. I start by commenting on a point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) about believing in people and wanting the best for them. I wholeheartedly agree with that—we want the best for people and for them to be the best that they can—but simply believing is not enough. Simply believing that my children will achieve great grades at school without sending them to school or giving them the facilities and the tools is not enough. My team are in the relegation zone, and simply wanting them not to be relegated by belief will not be enough without investment in that football team. When we have had under-investment, especially in the mental health sector, we need more than just belief to achieve and to alleviate those problems. The semantics that we use specifically around our GPs, when we are sometimes questioning their credibility when they sign people off, are rather damaging.
I welcome the increase in pensions announced by the Secretary of State, but at this moment in time, as colleagues have mentioned, 1.9 million pensioners in the UK are living in relative poverty. Pensioners are missing meals, having to shelter in libraries and are depressed due to the Government’s cuts to the winter fuel payment. Research conducted by Unite the union has shown that more than two thirds of its retired members are having to turn down their heating. A third are taking fewer baths and showers, and 16% have cut back on hot meals due to the increased costs of trying to stay warm. Heating or eating is a reality for many people; they are not just words that we utter in this Chamber.
In addition, more than 63% of people have said that they have felt more cold, more often and 17% are reporting that the cut has resulted in their becoming ill or their symptoms becoming worse. That is burdening our NHS, which is already overstretched. We must find a way, if possible, to release the statistics for excessive deaths caused by the cold weather.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
You are making a very powerful case. Would you agree with me that—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I am sure the hon. Member is not intervening on me, so the word “you” is not appropriate. Interventions should be brief.
Neil Duncan-Jordan
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. Does the hon. Member agree that just as the Government are addressing child poverty by setting up a child poverty taskforce, they should set up a pensioner poverty taskforce for pensioner poverty?
Shockat Adam
I could not agree more; that would be vital for pensioners. Ever since I was elected, emails from pensioners on that issue have been in the top three issues—it is a real issue. If alongside increasing pensions we could reverse the cuts to the winter fuel payment, that would save lives.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That concludes the Back-Bench contributions. I believe that the Minister would like to do a short wind-up.
Sir Stephen Timms
With the leave of the House, I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. There have been some helpful contributions on important issues. I am grateful for the support expressed for the measures in the orders, and for the kind things said about me, which I will enjoy while they last. Let me thank in particular the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), for drawing attention to the contributions of others who spoke in such debates in the past. He named Paul Maynard, David Linden and Nigel Mills, and he was absolutely right to do so.
I am particularly grateful to Nigel Mills for his help in the work of the Work and Pensions Committee, and I am delighted that the Committee is now in the good hands of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). She made an important contribution to the work of the Committee in the last Parliament, and had an important and positive influence over the whole direction of the Committee. She highlighted, as she often does, the position of vulnerable benefit claimants and how they are looked after. I look forward to giving evidence to her in the Committee next week as work resumes on an inquiry of the Committee from the last Parliament.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who called for a taper in carer’s allowance. As he will have heard, the Chancellor announced in the Budget in November that we would look at the case for a taper. I hope to be able to update the House on that reasonably soon.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson) for what he said. He was right to draw attention to the high level of support among young people for the triple lock policy, which matters right across the age range.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) was right to call for certainty about pensions. People need to know what the position will be when they reach retirement age. The last Labour Government reduced the number of pensioners below the poverty line by a million. Sadly, as we have been reminded in this debate, it has gone up again over the last few years. We want to get back on the better track that we were on before. That was picked up in the remarks of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam).
Seamus Logan
Does the Minister agree that two measures that the Government could take that would make a serious impact on the levels of poverty would be to restore the winter fuel payment and abolish the two-child cap?
Sir Stephen Timms
I have already spoken in the debate about the two-child cap, and we will be coming forward with the report and strategy proposed by the child poverty taskforce. On pensioner poverty, I think that substantial measures will be needed, and we will come forward with those in due course.
Dr Luke Evans
I am grateful to the Minister for taking another intervention. He talked about planning for the future and people understanding what is going on with their pensions. We have the WASPI example where that was not seen to be the case. The new Government are making changes to inheritance tax and where pensions fall, but much of the public do not realise that that will have big implications for them as their pensions will be subject to tax and inheritance tax. Would he consider a campaign to let people know that that change is coming in the next year or so?
Sir Stephen Timms
I am not quite sure what change the hon. Gentleman is referring to, but I certainly agree that people need to be confident about what the arrangements will be in the future so that they can plan accordingly. That is the one of the reasons why the pensions triple lock is important, as it gives people confidence about how things will be in the future.
We are: increasing the basic state pension and the new state pension in line with earnings growth by 4.1%, meeting our commitment to the triple lock; increasing the pension credit standard minimum guarantee in line with earnings growth by 4.1%; increasing benefits to meet additional disability needs and carers’ benefits in line with prices; and increasing working-age benefits in line with prices as well, at 1.7%. This year, GMPs accrued between 1988 and 1997 must by law be increased by 1.7%, which is the increase in the consumer prices index in the year up to September 2024. The GMP is important in giving people assurance about a level below which their scheme pension cannot fall. I commend both orders to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Pensions
Resolved,
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.—(Martin McCluskey.)
National Insurance Contributions
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
I beg to move,
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the draft Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
James Murray
Regulations are made each year to set various national insurance thresholds, and to uprate child benefit and the guardian’s allowance. In opening the debate, I will give the House details of what the regulations set out to do. First, the Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2025 set the rates of certain national insurance contribution classes and the level of certain thresholds for the 2025-26 tax year. The lower earnings limit, the small profits threshold and the rates of class 2 and class 3 contributions will all be uprated by the September consumer prices index figure of 1.7%, while the other limits and thresholds covered by the regulations will remain fixed at their existing levels.
The regulations also make provision for a Treasury grant—a transfer of wider Government funds—to be paid into the national insurance fund, if required, for the 2025-26 tax year. The regulations also, importantly, extend the veterans’ employer national insurance contributions relief until April 2026. The scope of the regulations under discussion is limited to the 2025-26 tax year.
As hon. Members will know, national insurance contributions are social security contributions; people make contributions when they are in work to receive contributory benefits when they are not working—for example, after they have retired, or if they become unemployed. National insurance contribution receipts fund those contributory benefits, as well as helping to fund the NHS.
The primary threshold and the lower profits limit are the points at which employees and the self-employed start to pay employee class 1 and self-employed class 4 national insurance contributions respectively. The primary threshold and lower profits limit were frozen by the previous Government at £12,570 until April 2028. However, the level of those thresholds does not affect people’s ability to build up entitlement to contributory benefits such as the state pension. For employees, entitlement is determined by their earnings being above the lower earnings limit, which the regulations will uprate from £123 a week in 2024-25 to £125 a week in 2025-26. That is the equivalent of an uprating from £6,396 to £6,500 a year.
Entitlement for self-employed people is determined by their earnings being above the small profits threshold, which the regulations will uprate from £6,725 in 2024-25 to £6,845 for 2025-26. Uprating the lower earnings limit and the small profits threshold is the usual process, and it maintains the real level of income at which people gain entitlement to contributory benefits. Wage growth is currently higher than inflation, which means that following the uprating by CPI, there will be a reduction in the number of hours that someone who has received a typical wage increase needs to work to gain entitlement compared with last year.
The upper earnings limit, which is the point at which the main rate of employee national insurance contributions drops to 2%, and the upper profits limit, which is the point at which the main rate of self-employed national insurance contributions drops to 2%, are aligned with the higher rate threshold for income tax at £50,270 a year. The previous Government also froze those thresholds until April 2028.
I now turn to the thresholds for employer national insurance contribution reliefs. As hon. Members are aware, the Government have had to make difficult decisions to fix the public finances. One of the toughest decisions that we faced was the decision to increase the rate of employer national insurance contributions and reduce the secondary threshold. Although those changes are the subject of a separate Bill, not these regulations, they are the context for why our decision to maintain other targeted national insurance contributions reliefs is so important. Those employer reliefs include those for under-21-year-olds, under-25 apprentices, veterans, and new employees in freeports and investment zones. The regulations that we are debating set these thresholds in line with other personal tax thresholds.
The regulations also provide for the national insurance contributions relief for employers of veterans to be extended for a year until April 2026. This measure means that next year, businesses will continue to pay no employer national insurance contributions on salaries up to the veterans upper secondary threshold of £50,270 for the first year of a qualifying veteran’s employment in a civilian role.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I welcome the extension of national insurance contributions relief for veterans, but does the Minister agree that we need to do more to ensure that employers across the country know that the relief exists, to incentivise employing veterans?
James Murray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we want employers to be aware of this important relief, and to encourage them to make use of it to employ veterans. This relief helps to support those who have already given so much to our country, and it also means that the skills and the huge potential of those people who have already given such service to our country can be used to make a further contribution to our country and our economy. We want all employers to know that this relief exists. We can all play a role as local MPs in making sure that all employers in our constituencies are aware of this important relief. I thank my hon. Friend for letting me make that point.
The continuation of the veterans relief is evidence of the Government’s commitment to supporting our veterans. As I explained in response to my hon. Friend’s intervention, it is intended to incentivise employers to take advantage of the wide range of skills and experience that ex-military personnel offer. As I said, it is important that we support those who have given so much to our country by helping to make sure that our country benefits further from the skills and potential of our service leavers.
Let me move on to the national insurance fund, into which the majority of national insurance contributions are paid, and which is used to pay the state pension and other contributory benefits. The Treasury has the ability to transfer funds from wider Government revenues into the national insurance fund. The regulations make provision for a transfer of this kind, known as a Treasury grant, of up to 5% of forecasted annual benefit expenditure to be paid into the national insurance fund, if needed, in 2025-26. A similar provision will be made in respect of the Northern Ireland national insurance fund.
The Government Actuary’s Department report laid alongside these regulations forecasts that a Treasury grant will not be required in 2025-26, but as a precautionary measure, the Government consider it prudent to make provision at this stage for a Treasury grant. That is consistent with what has been done in previous years.
I turn to the draft Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2025. As hon. Members will know, the Government are committed to delivering a welfare system that is fair for taxpayers while providing support to those who need it. The order will ensure that the benefits for which Treasury Ministers are responsible, and which His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs delivers, are uprated by inflation in April 2025. Child benefit and the guardian’s allowance will increase in line with the consumer prices index, which had inflation at 1.7% in the year to September 2024. Uprating by the preceding September’s CPI is the Government’s typical approach. Tax credit awards will end on 5 April 2025, so no changes to rates will be required from 2025-26 onwards.
I hope all Members will support the regulations. Rejecting them would mean that HMRC-administered benefits would not rise at all next year, and so would lose value in real terms. The regulations fix most of the rates and thresholds for the national insurance contributions that they cover at the 2024-25 levels for the 2025-26 tax year, except for the lower earnings limit, the small profits threshold, and the rates of class 2 and class 3 contributions, which will all be updated by the September 2024 CPI rate of 1.7%. The regulations also make provision for a Treasury grant. They extend the veterans employer national insurance contributions relief, and increase the rates of child benefit and the guardian’s allowance in line with prices.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
The Minister talked about the Treasury grant being up to 5%. As a matter of curiosity, what figure had Treasury planned to put in?
James Murray
The regulations contain a provision for us, in case it is needed. The expectation is that it will not be. As I mentioned, a Government Actuary’s Department report laid alongside the regulations has forecast that the Treasury grant will not be required in 2025-26. The provision in the regulations is a precautionary measure, and is in line with what has happened in previous years. The Government consider it prudent to continue the practice of previous years, and to make provision for the grant in these regulations. I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.
The regulations enable an increase in child benefit and the guardian’s allowance in line with prices. Without these regulations, HMRC would be unable to collect national insurance contributions receipts, and child benefit and guardian’s allowance would be frozen at the 2024-25 levels. I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting the regulations.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Before I call the shadow Minister, I inform the Liberal Democrat spokesman that I will call him immediately afterwards.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Bourne) (Con)
I welcome the opportunity to contribute on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. As the Minister said, the first statutory instrument sets rates, limits and thresholds for national insurance contributions for the 2025-26 tax year. It covers the rate of class 2 NICs, the small profits threshold, the rate of voluntary class 3 NICs, the zero-rate relief on secondary class 1 NICs for qualifying armed forces veterans—a Conservative Government legacy that we are very proud of—and the various upper secondary thresholds and the upper limits and thresholds that determine class 1 NICs.
These regulations also allow for payments of a Treasury grant not exceeding 5% of the estimated benefit expenditure for the 2025-26 tax year. This is to be made into the national insurance fund, with a corresponding provision for Northern Ireland. We welcome the uprating with CPI of the class 1 lower earnings limit and the class 2 small profits threshold, but the overall picture in these regulations is one of continuity, not of change.
The secondary threshold, however, is the exception. Although the regulations leave it unchanged, that will not last for very long. They will be overridden by the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill, which is under consideration in the other place. It will cut the secondary threshold from a weekly level of £176 to £96 in the coming tax year, on top of raising the secondary class 1 NICs rate to 15%.
The disastrous, job-destroying consequences of Labour’s £25 billion tax on working people are well known by now, and have been debated in this place many times. They are also widely acknowledged, from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to the left-wing Resolution Foundation. This time last year, when in opposition, the Minister put on record his concern over the distributional impact of the freezes on allowances, limits and thresholds, which his Government are in large part continuing. We accept that these are difficult decisions, but we took them to return the public finances to a sustainable footing in the aftermath of the double crisis of the pandemic and the energy price shock driven by the disgraceful invasion of Ukraine.
If the Minister was concerned about the distributional impact back then, and in particular about
“the post-tax income for low and middle earners”—[Official Report, Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee, 7 February 2024; c. 6.],
I wonder just how concerned he is now, in the context of his own party’s Budget. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the largest percentage increases in labour costs will be inflicted on lower-wage workers; meanwhile, as much as 76% of the additional tax burden will be passed on to those same workers in the form of lower real wages, according to the independent OBR. Does the Minister agree with the OBR and the IFS on the distributional impact of the NICs tax hike?
Dr Luke Evans
My hon. Friend has talked about context, which is really important. This is a finance SI, but the wider context is that another Bill is being brought forward—the Employment Rights Bill—that is estimated to cost £5 billion on top of existing tax measures in the Budget. Does he think that that will have a direct impact on people who are trying to find work? There is a chance, surely, that more people will be let go and made unemployed because of this potential cost and impact.
Gareth Davies
I completely agree with the point that my hon. Friend is making, which has also been made to me by several local businesses in my constituency. This is a double whammy. We have a tax increase that will increase the cost of doing business and affect the profitability of businesses and, in some cases, their survival; in addition, they are being hit with additional regulation, which businesses themselves, including the CBI, have made clear will add to the burden of regulation and make it less easy to hire people and, in some cases, to keep them. This double whammy, I am afraid, will result in job freezes at best, and, in some tragic cases, to job losses. I think we should all be very concerned about that.
To be fair to the Minister, he has in the past expressed great concern about the lower-paid in our society across all constituencies. Has he therefore undertaken his own distributional analysis of changes to national insurance rates, limits and thresholds in the round? If he has, does that analysis show anything different from what the OBR and the IFS have shown?
I would like to highlight the fact that the impact note for this specific statutory instrument predates the October Budget. I hope there is an updated impact analysis to consider the new context—surely there is. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that and show it to us.
Finally, I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether the Treasury is considering an extension of the veterans zero-rate relief beyond 2026, or whether that will now act as a final sunset date for the relief. He is absolutely right to say that we all have a part to play in highlighting this relief to businesses. We all want to see veterans hired in our country. My constituency has one of the largest populations of veterans, and I, with others on the Opposition Benches, will certainly join the Minister in doing anything we can to better inform businesses of this benefit. However, it would be good if he could confirm whether there are any plans or intentions to extend the relief beyond the 2026 point set out in the regulations.
As the Minister said, the second statutory instrument uprates child benefit and guardian’s allowance in line with CPI for the 2025-26 tax year. These benefits are an important part of our welfare system, and we welcome the vital support that they provide. However, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has pointed out,
“Work is the most important route out of poverty”,
and we agree. Between 2010 and 2024, Conservative Governments helped to create 4 million jobs. The proportion of children living in workless households fell from 16% to 10%. Even as employment increased, the proportion of all jobs considered low paid declined from 20% in 2010 to just 3.4% in 2024, which I hope the whole House welcomes and recognises.
Labour has never left office with unemployment lower than it found it, and within four months of its first Budget unemployment is on the rise, with the number of workers on payrolls dropping by the most we have seen since the peak of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the OBR says that Labour’s jobs tax will weigh on real wages. With inflation also expected to rise in the near term, and many of the Minister’s Back-Bench Labour colleagues no doubt taking the view that child benefit provision is not generous enough, have the Government prepared an assessment of the impact of their Budget measures on levels of child poverty over the next 12 months, and in particular of the impact their jobs tax may have through higher unemployment and lower pay? Finally, is the Minister confident that this uprating will cancel out any adverse consequences of the Budget, such as those I have raised?
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Minister’s suggestion that today’s proposals are yoked to the national insurance increases going through the other place. Since the general election, we have had doom and gloom from the Labour party until very recently. The uncertainty around the Budget and the national insurance increases that are yet to hit has only put the cold hand around the economic growth that we need to see pumping harder in our economy.
In my own part of the world in the west country, it is having a massive impact on the tourism industry. The fact that the thresholds at which people start to pay national insurance are going down from £9,200 to £5,000 means that businesses in my constituency, such as Paignton pier, Paignton zoo and Splashdown, all have massive increases in seasonal worker costs, through both the threshold hitting harder and the increases in national insurance costs. When I speak to businesses such as Splashdown in Paignton, they tell me that it means they will probably operate for a shorter time and that they may look at reducing the number of staff they take on. Sadly, the national insurance increase is a jobs tax on our tourism industry, as well as on the rest of our economy.
I am only too well aware that the cost to hospitality is £1 billion. That is extremely disturbing. Again, people will not be taken on due to those cost pressures. Therefore, this really is a jobs tax.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I am very interested in what my hon. Friend is saying about the threat to jobs. At the other end of the country, the north of Scotland, we have the same issue. The loss of any jobs in the hospitality industry is disastrous, when we do not have much employment anyway. We would like much more—let us put it that way.
Steve Darling
I am delighted with my hon. Friend’s intervention, because the Liberal Democrats represent the full length of the United Kingdom from Shetland to the Isles of Scilly, and it is important that we hear about that impact from a breadth of colleagues. The Liberal Democrats represent some of the best places to go on holiday across the UK.
There is a significant high-tech industry in Torbay. Again, businesses in that manufacturing industry tells me that their owners abroad may ask them to offshore some of their manufacturing to places such as Taiwan, where taxes on employment are significantly lower. That is another significant impact of the rise in national insurance contributions.
Bay Care is an outstanding social care business, but Kat Hall, one of its senior managers, tells me that this measure will have a significant impact. The business operates within very tight margins, and it will have to reduce services or limit its offer to our communities in South Devon and Torbay. Those reductions will inevitably have an impact on the social care offer.
Finally, let me say something about the voluntary sector. Torbay Communities gives outstanding service to the people of South Devon and Torbay, but the national insurance increases will confront it with considerable challenges. It will have to think about whether to reduce its staff and stop supporting some of the most vulnerable people in the area—people who are in need. With due respect to the Minister, I ask the Government to reflect on these increases and to see how they can alleviate them, particularly in the hospitality, social care and voluntary sectors.
James Murray
With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will respond to the comments of hon. Members.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies), set out the official Opposition’s response to the regulations and the order that are before us, but his speech related largely to the changes being made by a different piece of legislation—a Bill—so I will be careful not to try your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, by veering into that legislation, and will remain strictly within the confines of the regulations and the order.
Let me say briefly, however, that as the hon. Gentleman knows, we had to take difficult decisions in the Budget last October, and one of the toughest was the decision to increase the rate of employer national insurance contributions and lower the secondary threshold. The reason we had to take those difficult decisions was the fiscal situation that we had inherited from the Government of which he was a member. I note that in his recollection of history, he referred to a double crisis; I think that it was, at the very least, a triple crisis, given Liz Truss’s premiership in the country and leadership of his party, so he may have omitted certain facts from the historical record, although I am sure that the wider British public will make no such mistake.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about some of the impacts of the national insurance changes. Again, he was speaking about a Bill rather than the statutory instruments that we are discussing, and for that separate Bill a tax information and impact note has been published, as is standard practice. I welcomed his support for our extension of veterans relief for a year, until April 2026, to help more ex-service personnel into employment. As the scope of the regulations is limited to the 2025-26 tax year, they could extend it only by one year, but we think it important for that to be done.
The hon. Gentleman also spoke about work being the best way out of poverty, and I entirely agree with him in that regard. When we are creating jobs and ensuring that businesses can invest and provide work opportunities for people throughout the country, it is important for those jobs to be decent jobs with decent pay, and our changes to the national living wage are of course important in that respect. Overall, in relation to all the measures in the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility has concluded that the employment level will rise from 33.1 million to 34.3 million between 2024 and 2029.
The spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), also spoke about a Bill rather than the regulations that we are debating. I want to reassure him by pointing to the comments that the Chancellor has made since taking office last July. Since her first few days in No. 11 Downing Street, she has been determined to boost growth by getting rid of the ban on onshore wind turbines, reforming the way in which pensions can invest, and ensuring that the planning and regulatory barriers get out of the way of the growth that we are determined to achieve for this country.
The Chancellor’s growth speech last week was just the latest example of her leadership in taking those decisions, which are the right ones for our country, to boost investment and growth. We know that having a stable set of public finances is a prerequisite for that investment and growth. The difficult decisions that both Opposition spokespeople referred to are slightly off the topic of the regulations in front of us, but they none the less drew attention to the fact that those difficult decisions were precisely to restore the public finances, while supporting public services, therefore allowing investment to increase and seeking the growth that we are determined to deliver for this country.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veteran’s Relief) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.
Resolved,
That the draft Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 15 January, be approved.—(James Murray.)
Business of the House (5 February)
Ordered,
That at the sitting on Wednesday 5 February, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on—
(1) the Motion in the name of Secretary Yvette Cooper relating to Police Grant Report not later than three hours after the start of proceedings on that Motion, and
(2) the Motions in the name of Secretary Angela Rayner relating to Local Government Finance not later than three hours after the start of proceedings on the first such Motion or six hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion relating to Police Grant Report, whichever is the later; proceedings on those Motions may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Lucy Powell.)
Business without Debate
Bereaved Parents: Birth Certificates
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Twenty-two years ago, I became part of a club that no one wants to join: the young widows club. My husband Nick died of oesophageal cancer, and I was left with an 18-month-old baby and a toddler. Over the course of the next couple of years, I met dozens of young widows, including Beth, whose husband Simon had died of bowel cancer just two days before their beautiful baby daughter Elsa was born. Beth and I navigated this strange and unwelcome new reality together, spending time with our three little girls, who were all too young to understand the awfulness of what had happened.
Beth was part of an even smaller, even more unlucky club than me: the one where you have to give birth alone, to a baby you have longed for, while at the same time grieving for the partner you have lost and the future you will never share. For many of those tragically unlucky women, it gets even worse. Every year in the UK, around 200 young bereaved women are drawn into a ridiculous, unnecessary and costly legal battle to have their baby’s father’s name registered on the birth certificate. Incredibly, in 2025, if a woman is pregnant when their partner dies but they are not married, the law says that they cannot automatically name the father on the birth certificate. If ever there was a case of adding insult to injury, that has to be it.
The law seems to think that if a woman is legally married, there is no question but that her baby is her husband’s. But if she has been living in a committed relationship, perhaps for years on end, the fact that she does not have a ring on her finger means that the paternity of her child is in question. Having been through the unimaginable experience of losing her partner while carrying his child, and then giving birth alone, she is then expected to enter into a legal process to prove that he was indeed the father, so that the child does not grow up with a blank space on their birth certificate. This is out of date, out of touch and, frankly, quite traumatic for all those involved. Women have described it as demeaning, insulting and overwhelming.
The reality is that more and more couples are choosing to live together without getting married. In 2022, the number of children born outside marriage in the UK surpassed the number of babies born to parents who were married or in a civil partnership for the first time since records began in 1845, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. It is high time the law was updated to remove this anachronistic insult to unmarried mothers.
Not long after I was widowed, I became involved with a brilliant organisation called WAY—Widowed and Young. It is where I met Beth and made many other lifelong friends. WAY has been running the Blank Space campaign to try to change this out-of-date law, which penalises people for not being married. I commend WAY for its campaigning and am proud to bring this issue before the Minister so that the anomaly can be addressed. The women I will talk about are all members of WAY, and I thank them for sharing their stories.
Nicola and her partner Stewart had been through a successful in vitro fertilisation journey, which was needed because he had had testicular cancer 10 years earlier. Six weeks after a positive pregnancy test, they found out that Stewart’s cancer had returned, and he died seven months into Nicola’s pregnancy, so he never got the chance to meet the son he had so desperately fought for. Nicola booked an appointment with the registrar, knowing that she would be going alone, but she took as much paperwork as possible to show that Stewart was the father. She had a range of hospital documents signed by him, which not only proved that he was the father but detailed his documented wishes for their embryos if he were to die. However, the registrar explained to Nicola that because she and Stewart were not married, he had to be physically present to be named on the birth certificate. Her evidence did not count, and she was sent away with a birth certificate that had a blank space where Stewart’s name should have been. Nicola says:
“We had made this baby together, literally and scientifically, and for him not to be recognised at all was devastating.”
It took a year and over £1,000 to get to court. Stewart’s father went along to attend the hearing with Nicola, and it took just a few minutes for the court to discuss and approve the change, and to add Stewart’s name to the birth certificate. It was almost as if the court could not believe that she had had to go through the process in the first place. Given the overwhelming evidence and the support of blood relatives, it was the obvious decision. She says:
“To have to go through this whilst bringing up a newborn on my own and grieving was utterly humiliating and exhausting.”
I can attest to the fact that no young widow who is learning to be a mum and grieving at the same time should ever have to fight to have their partner listed on a birth certificate, and many of them cannot afford to do so, even if they wanted to.
Paula was 18 weeks pregnant when her partner was killed while cycling to work. Despite having his DNA and a proven 99.9% match, it took three and a half years for her to get a birth certificate with his name on it, and the process cost nearly £3,000.
Eleanor’s partner Robin was killed in a road traffic accident 18 days before his baby daughter was born. Eleanor says:
“If you haven’t been through this situation, you may not understand how demeaning this rule is. It made me feel like I wasn’t to be trusted, as if an unmarried woman has no rights or voice. My partner and I lived together and planned to have a child—we just weren’t married. It wasn’t a one-night stand, and simple tax records would have proven that. While I shouldn’t have had to prove anything beyond my word, I would have willingly provided documentation and statements from both our families to confirm our relationship.”
In the end, the complexity and expense of having to fight the system proved too much for Eleanor, so her daughter’s birth certificate was never changed and the blank space remains.
These examples show just how difficult and cruel this situation is, and they also show that the process can be very different depending on where a woman lives, which court she applies to, and who hears the application. Like so many other things, it can become a bit of a postcode lottery.
Under UK law, a birth needs to be registered within 42 days. If the parents are unmarried, they both have to be present to be named on the birth certificate—one parent cannot add the other. If a parent has died, the surviving parent can amend the birth certificate at a future date to include the deceased parent’s name, but they have to apply first to the family court for a declaration of parentage. This involves a form and a court fee of £365, and the court application takes three to four months to be processed. Then, at an initial court hearing, a senior family judge will consider the application. Many judges have never come across this process, and I have read stories of young widows not only having to go through the process themselves, but having to explain it to judges and court administrators while doing so.
There may be a second hearing some months later, and in between there will be requests for DNA, evidence and witness statements. If the court approves, it will issue a document confirming that the deceased person was the child’s parent, and it then makes a declaration at a court hearing. This will then be sent to the registrar of births, deaths and marriages, and it can then take several more weeks for the re-registering of the birth to be completed.
I am sure I do not need to tell Members that this is a tortuous process—one of those bits of bureaucracy that seems ridiculous when we spell out the whole process, as I have done here. At the best of times it would be frustrating and slow. At the worst of times, it can simply be too much to cope with. The paperwork of death is long, frustrating and sometimes complicated. I remember being told by one organisation that it had to have written confirmation from my husband to close an account, even though I had written to it to say that he had died. I would like to think that things have moved on in the last 23 years, but we seem to have created a system that overcomplicates everything.
Clearly, it would not be right for someone to be able to put someone else’s name down on a birth certificate as the father without reasonable proof; what WAY is campaigning for is a way to resolve this issue so that women whose partners have died during pregnancy can follow a clear and simple process to register their partner on their child’s birth certificate. It should not cost thousands of pounds, and it should not be so complicated that some women just give up through frustration.
In Switzerland, France and Germany, unmarried fathers can declare their parentage early in the pregnancy to protect their rights. We have parental responsibility agreements here for unmarried fathers, so perhaps one answer would be to bring that forward into pregnancy so that if the worst, most unimaginable tragedy happened during pregnancy, there would be one less thing for newly widowed mums to have to worry about. Doctors could make a record of who the father is when the pregnancy is first entered into medical records, and this could be used as a legal document. Advice could be given at antenatal appointments, bringing people’s attention to the issues that can arise for parents who are not married, so that they could be more aware. The executor could be called in as a witness to confirm paternity. There are ways around this if we are creative and clever. In honour of Nicola, Paula, Elanor and their children, I look forward to hearing how the Minister will take this dilemma forward and hopefully find an answer.
When you are widowed young, you lose so much. You lose the partner you love, you lose the life you had built together and you lose the future you had planned. Your children lose their father—or sometimes their mother—their family is never the same again, and their lives will be shaped in many ways by the loss, however young they are when it happened. Being widowed when pregnant is all this and more. The trauma of birthing and grieving at the same time runs deep and lasts a lifetime. I really hope that the Government will move swiftly to make some changes so that one tiny little bit of this awful journey is made easier for those who have to navigate it.
Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on bringing forward this incredibly important debate and thank her for having the strength to share her experience. She has shone a light on a matter that will resonate with people in every constituency across the country.
I rise to raise a related matter that has been brought to my attention and to the attention of other representatives in Birmingham by one of my constituents, Wunmi Babalola. Last year, she and her partner Charlie lost their infant son, Kayode Babalola-Fellows. Her experience of registering Kayode’s death was much more difficult than it needed to be. They found themselves sitting in Birmingham register office alongside new parents who were registering their own children’s births, and they were required to attend two separate appointments on the same day to register the birth and their son’s passing. Wunmi said:
“I was already feeling the pain of our loss so much and when we arrived we had to sit and wait our turn with everyone else, including with parents with their babies registering their births. I felt my loss so intensely in that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks… It should be a joyful time for new parents, while obviously for us it was an awful, traumatic one. I just didn’t feel those two worlds should have to collide like they did.”
I also pay tribute to Councillor Carmel Corrigan, who is a representative for Kings Norton North in my constituency. Last week, Birmingham city council carried her motion calling on the authority to work with the register office to secure an appointed officer with seniority and experience to support families through their grief, so that people who experience baby loss do not have to register their baby’s death alongside parents who are registering births, and to explore what additional support the registry service and the NHS can provide to parents in that situation.
Carmel spoke about the loss of her own son, Aodhan Hay, 28 years ago, when she experienced something very similar. If something can come out of this debate, I hope it is attention for the issues raised by the hon. Member for South Devon and for the situation that my constituents faced, because if we can prevent a similar ordeal for other bereaved parents, we will have done some good.
I pay tribute to all the campaigners, including the hon. Lady, who have taken some form of good from the hardest pain and dearest loss to provide some comfort to others. I ask the Minister to look at the good work undertaken in Birmingham and to assess the case for national guidance and support for register offices, so that the circumstances that Wunmi and Charlie faced do not happen again.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)
I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this debate on an important and emotive subject. I start by saying how sorry I am for the loss that she and her family suffered, and how much I admire her resilience in coming to this House to share her story. That takes a huge amount of courage.
The circumstances in which the hon. Lady and others have lost co-parents are heartbreaking indeed. The Government are determined to ensure that the justice system is better able to support children and families, and particularly mothers who have lost the father of their child.
The hon. Lady helpfully outlined the current process for registering a parent’s name on a birth certificate when that parent has passed away, but it is important to set out precisely how this works. Under section 55A of the Family Law Act 1986, in situations where a child is born to unmarried parents and the father is deceased prior to birth, a declaration of parentage must be issued by the court for paternity to be established. It is right that a fee is attached to this application, but it is important to say that there are mechanisms in place to support those who cannot afford the fee.
The help with fees scheme considers a range of factors, including an applicant’s income, their savings and whether they receive any benefits, so that the fee can be waived in certain circumstances. Once a declaration is issued, the birth can then be re-registered to include the father’s details or, to put it another way and as we have heard, to fill in that blank space.
To recognise the challenges that mothers face when seeking a declaration of parentage, a key intention of the provisions in family proceedings is to make the process as simple as possible in the most difficult of circumstances, while at the same time ensuring that the court has the means to establish parentage if one parent is deceased and is not, of course, able to convey their views themselves.
That process, while we have to emphasise simplicity and ease for those going through the toughest of circumstances, is an important one. It is important because in some cases the process can bear on significant financial implications for others, such as children from previous relationships, and can bear on issues such as nationality and others that touch on the best interests of the child. While ensuring the process is clear and simple to support bereaved parents, the courts must therefore have a process that instils confidence in the important details that a birth certificate contains.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
I want to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this incredibly important debate.
The Minister has spoken well on the process involved. If a couple are married when the father dies while the woman is pregnant, it is a relatively simple process to register that person as the father of the child. It is a much more complicated matter for people where the couple are not married. I suggest, and I hope my hon. Friend agrees, that legislation might not have kept pace with societal change and with the reality of how couples now choose to live when they plan families.
Sarah Sackman
My hon. Friend is right to reflect on the growing number of couples in this country who cohabit and for whom marriage is not something they have chosen. It is right, too, that in general the law keeps up, to reflect that sort of societal change. I will come in due course to discuss more widely what the Government are doing in that space. I return, however, to the essential point that while clarity, simplicity and affordability are important in the registration process, particularly to support bereaved parents, we must have a process that instils confidence in what the birth certificate contains.
I thank the hon. Member for South Devon for drawing attention to Widowed and Young’s campaign. As she rightly points out, it does some absolutely amazing work, particularly for those younger people who have tragically lost a spouse or life partner. I can reassure the hon. Member now that the Government take the matter incredibly seriously and we are working hard to improve the family justice system for children and families.
Widowed and Young advocates for a simplified court process. We know that delays in the court process add to the distress when someone is going through bereavement. That can have a significant impact on children and families. We are committed to improving timeliness and reducing the outstanding caseload in the family court. That is why we have set ambitious targets for reducing delays in 2024-25 and have focused on closing the longest-running cases, not least so that can free up court time to deal with precisely the sorts of processes to which the hon. Member draws attention.
To further support those who use the family court, we are committed to improving digital solutions to support families with exploring various options for resolving child arrangement disputes early and away from court whenever possible. That is an area where digital solutions can be brought to bear on the sorts of issues that have been raised today. The Ministry of Justice is working on testing and developing various digital innovations that aim to support users in the private family justice system to help those families find the right information at the right time for them to reach agreements where that is appropriate, and particularly in the sorts of processes and proceedings under focus, which in the vast majority of cases are entirely non-contentious.
Let me turn to the wider issue of cohabitation reform. The subject that the hon. Member for South Devon raises and that others have raised today speak to the broader issues for cohabiting couples in our society who, under existing law, have only limited financial protections compared with those who are married or in a civil partnership. I know that a number of colleagues across the House have written to my Department about this, and my noble friend Lord Ponsonby was pleased to attend a parliamentary roundtable to discuss it last November.
We know that the limited rights and protections available to cohabitants can affect the most vulnerable in our society who are often affected at the most difficult stages in life, such as when a partner dies, or at the point of separation. We know, too, that those limited rights and protections disproportionately affect women, including victims of domestic and economic abuse, as well as their children. With the number of cohabiting couples in the UK having more than doubled over the past 30 years, it is important, as others have said, that law reflects the society in which we now live. That indeed is why the Government set out in our manifesto a commitment to strengthen the rights and protections available to women in cohabiting couples. We will be setting out the next steps on this manifesto commitment—how we intend to implement it—as soon as possible.
The issue raised by the hon. Member for South Devon speaks directly to those challenges that sometimes face parents who are unmarried. I would like to thank her once again for securing this important debate and pay tribute to her bravery in coming forward to talk about it. I hope that this is the start of a conversation. I hope that she and I can discuss in more depth very soon the sorts of changes that might be necessary to better protect people in law, and I look forward to working with her to that end.
While I am on my feet, let me also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for the related issue that he raises and let me extend my personal condolences to the family involved. They have been through one of the worst things imaginable in my view. Certainly, processes of administration—of registration—should not be designed to exacerbate that. If he will write to me with that particular case, I would be happy to take a look at it, and I look forward to working with him on how we can address and mitigate the distress of parents of children who die in childbirth.
Once again, let me thank the hon. Member for South Devon for securing this important debate. I look forward to working with her on how we can ameliorate the situation for those for whom she is campaigning.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 10 / Noes: 3 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Feryal Clark)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025.
Thank you for coming to save the day, Sir Christopher; it is an honour to serve under your chairmanship. These regulations were laid before Parliament on 16 December 2024. As the Online Safety Act 2023 sets out, the Secretary of State must set thresholds for three categories of service: category 1, category 2A and category 2B. The services that fall into each of those categories will be required to comply with additional duties, with category 1 services having the most duties placed on them. The duties are in addition to the core duties that apply to all user-to-user and search services in scope.
The 2023 Act requires that specific factors must be taken into account by the Secretary of State when deciding thresholds for each category. The threshold conditions for user-to-user services must be set on user numbers and functionalities as well as any other characteristics or factors relating to the user-to-user part of the service that the Secretary of State deems relevant.
For category 1, the key consideration is the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service and its functionalities, on how quickly, easily and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service. For category 2A, the key consideration is the likely impact of the number of users of the search engine on the level of risk of harm to individuals from search content that is illegal or harmful to children. For category 2B, the key consideration is the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service and its functionalities on the level of risk of harm to individuals from illegal content or content that is harmful to children disseminated by means of the service.
Those conditions form the basis of Ofcom’s independent research and advice, as published in March 2024, which the Secretary of State was required to consider when setting threshold conditions. In laying these regulations before Parliament, the Secretary of State has considered the research carried out and the advice from Ofcom and agreed to its recommendations.
I understand that this decision will not please everyone. In particular, I recognise that the thresholds are unlikely to capture so-called “small but risky services”, as per Baroness Morgan’s successful amendment, which made it possible to create a threshold condition by reference only to functionalities and any other factors or characteristics. However, it is important to note that all regulated user-to-user and search services, no matter their size, will be subject to existing illegal content duties and, where relevant, child safety duties. The categories do not change that fact.
If the codes on illegal content duties currently laid before Parliament pass without objection, the duties will be in effect by this spring. They will force services to put in place systems and processes to tackle illegal content. If a service is likely to be accessed by children, the child safety duties will require services to conduct a child safety risk assessment and provide safety measures for child users. We expect that those will come into effect this summer, on the basis that the codes for the duties will have passed by then.
Together, the illegal content and child safety duties will mark the biggest material change in online safety for UK citizens since the internet era began. We expect the Online Safety Act to cover more than 100,000 services of various sizes, showing that the legislation goes far and wide to ensure important protections for users, particularly children, online.
The instrument before us will enable additional duties for categorised services. All categorised services must comply with transparency reporting duties. They must also have terms on the ability of parents to access information about children’s use of a service in the event of a child’s death. Category 1 services will have the most additional requirements. They will have to give adults more choice about the content they see and the people they interact with, and they must protect journalistic and news publisher content and content of democratic importance. The duties will also ensure that we can hold these companies to account over their terms of service, ensuring that they keep the promises they make to their users.
Once in force, the regulations will enable Ofcom to establish a public register of categorised services, which it expects to publish this summer. Ofcom will then consult on the draft codes of practice and guidance where relevant for additional duties. Ofcom will also do additional work to tackle small but risky services.
Ofcom’s work to tackle egregious content and enhance accountability does not stop with this instrument, which takes me back to the small but risky services that I mentioned. The horrifying stories I have heard about these sites during a number of debates recently are truly heartbreaking; we must do everything in our power to prevent vulnerable people from falling victim to such circumstances. I was pleased to see Ofcom set out in September 2024 its targeted approach to tackling small but risky services, which includes a dedicated supervision taskforce and a commitment to move to rapid enforcement action where necessary. That followed a letter from the Secretary of State to Ofcom inquiring about those services.
I am confident that the regulatory framework, combined with the bespoke taskforce, will work to keep all UK citizens safe online, but I must stress that the Secretary of State will hold the thresholds under review going forward. If there is evidence that the categories have become outdated or that they inadequately protect users, he will not shy away from updating them or reviewing the legislation, as he has made clear recently.
Finally, the online world that we are looking to govern is complex and ever-changing. The Act will not solve every problem, but it will bring real benefit to children and adults who have to contend with an unsafe online world for far too long. We should see the instruments we are debating as a step in that process and a first iteration, not as something fixed or set in stone, because there is much more to do. Our foremost priority is the timely implementation of the Act to enforce the additional duties as soon as possible. Years of delay and indecision have already come at a heartbreaking cost for vulnerable children and adults. Now it is time to deliver, but that relies on Parliament approving the categorisation thresholds without delay.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. The Online Safety Act will be one of the lasting accomplish-ments of the last Government. It is world-leading legislation that places significant new responsibilities and duties on social media platforms and search services, to increase safety online. Most importantly, this vital legislation ensures that children are better protected online.
If it is worrying that children aged eight to 17 spend between two and five hours online per day, then it is deeply concerning that half of 13-year-olds reported seeing hardcore, misogynistic pornographic material on social media sites. It is for those reasons that Conservative Ministers ensured that there were the strongest measures in the Online Safety Act to protect children. For example, platforms will be required to prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content and will provide parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they arise.
Furthermore, the Act requires all in-scope services that allow pornography to use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from accessing it, including services that host user-generated content and services that publish pornography. Ofcom has robust enforcement powers available to use against companies who fail to fulfil their duties. The Act also includes provisions to protect adult users, as it ensures that major platforms are more transparent about what kinds of potentially harmful content they allow. It gives users more control over the types of content they want to see.
The Act allocates regulated services into different categories to ensure that regulatory requirements are applied proportionately. The thresholds that we are debating follow Ofcom’s work and consultation on what platforms should be set as category 1, category 2A and category 2B. The highest-risk platforms—the largest social media and pornography sites—will be designated as category 1 and will bear the highest duty of care. Category 2A will contain the highest-risk search engines, such as Google and Bing, and category 2B will contain the remaining high-risk and high-reach sites.
The regulations enable Ofcom to designate services subject to additional duties. That will address content that promotes, encourages or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, as well as content that is abusive or incites hate. Where users are likely to access this content, category 1 providers will be required to proactively offer adults optional features to reduce the likelihood of their encountering such content or to alert them to its nature. There are concerns that category 1 sites may omit smaller platforms with harmful content, and it may be prudent for the Government to look at redefining that at a later date.
The Online Safety Act’s impact assessment concludes that more than 25,000 companies may be within scope of the new regulatory framework. Companies designated into higher categories will face additional risks as they face more duties. Can the Minister reassure tech companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, that her Department will continue to work with them to ensure that cost is affordable and proportionate?
I note that Ofcom expects the illegal harms safety duties to become enforceable around March 2025, once technology companies have assessed the risk of online harms on their platforms. Does the Minister agree that platforms do not need to wait, and should already be taking action to improve safety on their sites? Can the Minister confirm that she is encouraging platforms to take this proactive action?
Separately from the Online Safety Act, the last Government launched the pornography review to explore the effectiveness of regulation, legislation and the law enforcement response to pornography. I understand that that review has now concluded. Can the Minister provide her reassurance that the review’s final report will be published imminently?
I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on these points. The Online Safety Act is a pivotal piece of legislation and makes the UK the safest place in the world to be a child online. I am proud of the previous Government’s role in passing it, and I urge the Minister to ensure that it is fully implemented as soon as possible.
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I am disappointed in this statutory instrument. I recognise the Minister’s acknowledgment of the small sites, high-harm issue, but the issue is far more important and we are missing an opportunity here. Can the Minister set out why the regulations as drafted do not follow the will of Parliament, accepted by the previous Government and written into the Act, that thresholds for categorisation can be based on risk or size? That was a long-argued point that went through many iterations.
The then Minister accepted the amendment that was put forward and said:
“many in the House have steadfastly campaigned on the issue of small but risky platforms.” —[Official Report, 12 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 806.]
He confirmed that the legislation would now give the Secretary of State the discretion to decide whether to set a threshold based on the number of users or the functionalities offered, or both factors, with the change ensuring that the framework was as flexible as possible in responding to the risk landscape. That has been thrown away in this new legislation. The Minister just said that we must do everything in our power, and yet the Government are throwing out a crucial change made to the Act to actually give them more power. They are getting rid of a power by changing this.
The amendment was to ensure that small sites dedicated to harm, such as sites providing information on suicide or self-harm or set up to target abuse and hatred at minority groups, like we saw in the riots in the summer, were subject to the fullest range of duties. When Ofcom published its advice, however, it disregarded this flexibility and advised that regulation should be laid bringing only the large platforms into category 1.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Is the hon. Member as concerned as I am that the Government seem to be ignoring the will of Parliament in their decision? Is he worried that young people particularly will suffer as a result?
Martin Wrigley
Absolutely—I am. The Secretary of State’s decision to proceed with this narrow interpretation of the Online Safety Act provisions, and the failure to use the power they have to reject Ofcom’s imperfect advice, will allow small, risky platforms to continue to operate without the most stringent regulatory restrictions available. That leaves significant numbers of vulnerable users—women and individuals from minority groups—at risk of serious harm from targeted activity on these platforms.
I will set a few more questions for the Minister. How do His Majesty’s Government intend to assess whether Ofcom’s regulatory approach to small but high-harm sites is proving effective, and have any details been provided on Ofcom’s schedule of research about such sites? What assessment have the Government made of the different harms occurring on small, high-harm platforms? Have they broken this down by type of harm, and will they make such information available? Have the Government received legal advice about the use of service disruption orders for small but high-harm sites? Do the Government expect Ofcom to take enforcement action against small but high-harm sites, and have they made an assessment of the likely timescales for enforcement action? Will the Government set out criteria against which they expect Ofcom to keep its approach to small but high-harm sites under continual review, as set out in their draft statement of strategic priorities for online safety?
Was the Minister aware of the previous Government’s commitment that Select Committees in both Houses would be given the opportunity to scrutinise draft Online Safety Act statutory instruments before they were laid? If she was, why did that not happen in this case? Will she put on record her assurances that Online Safety Act statutory instruments will in future be shared with the relevant Committees before they are laid?
For all those reasons, I will vote against the motion.
Kirsty Blackman
I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this Committee, Sir Christopher. Like at least one other Member in the room, I lived the Online Safety Bill for a significant number of months—in fact, it seemed to drag on for years.
As the Minister said, the Online Safety Act is long overdue. We have needed this legislation for 30 years, since I was a kid using the internet in the early ’90s. There has always been the risk of harm on online platforms, and there have always been places where people can be radicalised and can see misogynistic content or content that children should never be able to see. In this case, legislation has moved significantly slower than society—I completely agree with the Minister about that—but that is not a reason for accepting the statutory instrument or agreeing with the proposed threshold conditions.
On the threshold conditions, I am unclear as to why the Government have chosen 34 million and 7 million for the average monthly active users. Is it 34 million because Reddit happens to have 35 million average UK users—is that why they have taken that decision? I absolutely believe that Reddit should be in scope of category 1, and I am pretty sure that Reddit believes it should be in scope of category 1 and have those additional duties. Reddit is one of the places where the functionalities and content recommendation services mean that people, no matter what age they are, can see incredibly harmful content. They can also see content that can be incredibly funny—a number of brilliant places on Reddit allow people can look at pictures of cats, which is my favourite way to use the internet—but there are dark places in Reddit forums, where people can end up going down rabbit holes. I therefore agree that platforms such as Reddit should be in scope of category 1.
The Minister spoke about schedule 11 and the changes that were made during the passage of the Act. The Minister is absolutely right. Paragraph 1(5) of that schedule states:
“In making regulations under sub-paragraph (1), the Secretary of State must take into account the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service, and its functionalities, on how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.”
However, that does not undo the fact that we as legislators made a change to an earlier provision in that schedule. We fought for that incredibly hard and at every opportunity—in the Bill Committee, on the Floor of the House, in the recommitted Committee and in the House of Lords. At every stage, we voted for that change to be made, and significant numbers of outside organisations cared deeply about it. We wanted small high-risk platforms to be included. The provision that was added meant that the Secretary of State must make regulations relating to
“any other characteristics of that part of the service or factors relating to that part of the service that the Secretary of State considers relevant.”
That was what the Government were willing to give us. It was not the original amendment that I moved in Bill Committee, which was specifically about small high-risk platforms, but it was enough to cover what we wanted.
What functionalities could and should be brought in scope? I believe that any service that allows users to livestream should be in the scope of category 1. We know that livestreaming is where the biggest increase in self-generated child sexual abuse material is. We know that livestreaming is incredibly dangerous, as people who are desperate to get access to child sexual abuse material can convince vulnerable young people and children to livestream. There is no delay where that content can be looked at and checked in advance of it being put up, yet the Government do not believe that every service that allows six-year-olds to livestream should be within the scope of category 1. The Government do not believe that those services should be subject to those additional safety duties, despite the fact that section 1 of the Online Safety Act 2023 says platforms should be “safe by design”. However, this is not creating platforms that are safe by design.
The regulations do not exclude young people from the ability to stream explicit videos to anyone because they only include services with over 34 million users, or over 7 million when it comes to content recommendation, and I agree that services in those cases are problematic. However, there are other really problematic services, causing life-changing—or in some cases, life-ending—problems for children, young people and vulnerable adults that will not be in the scope of category 1.
Generally, I am not a big fan of a lot of things that the UK Government have done; I have been on my feet, in the Chamber, arguing against a significant number of those things. This is one of the things that makes me most angry, because the Government, by putting forward this secondary legislation, are legislating in opposition to the will and intention of the Houses of Parliament. I know that we cannot bind a future Government or House, but this is not what was intended or agreed and moved on, nor what Royal Assent was given on; that was on the basis that we had assurances from Government Ministers that they would look at those functionalities and small but high-risk platforms.
For what Ofcom has put out in guidance and information on what it is doing on small but high-risk platforms, why are we not using everything that is available? Why are Government not willing to use everything available to them to bring those very high-risk platforms into the scope of category 1?
The changes that category 1 services would be required to make include additional duties; for a start, they are under more scrutiny—which is to be expected—and they are put on a specific list of category 1 services which will be published. That list of category 1 services includes platforms such as 4chan, that some people may have never heard of. Responsible parents will see that list and say, “Hold on a second. Why is 4chan on there? I don’t want my children to be going on there. It is clearly not a ginormous platform, therefore it must be on there because it is a high-risk service.” Parents will look at that list and talk to their children about those platforms. In terms of the category 1 list, never mind the additional duties, that would have a positive impact. Putting suicide forums on that list of category 1 services would have a positive impact on the behaviour of parents, children, and the teachers who teach those young people how to access the internet safely.
I guarantee that a significant number of teachers and people that are involved with young people have never heard of 4chan, but putting it on that list would give them an additional tool to enable them to approach young people and talk about the ways in which they use the internet.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
I thank the hon. Lady for speaking so passionately on this matter. As the Liberal Democrat mental health spokesperson, something that we are increasingly coming across is that it is not just adults asking children to livestream, but children, peer-to-peer, who do not realise that it is illegal. As the hon. Lady touched on, the mental health impact is huge but also lifelong. Someone can have a digital footprint that they can never get rid of, and children who are uninformed and uneducated to the impacts of their decisions could be affected decades into the future.
Kirsty Blackman
I completely agree. That is an additional reason why livestreaming is one of my biggest concerns. That functionality should have been included as a matter of course. Any of the organisations that deal with young people and the removal of child sexual abuse material online, such as the Internet Watch Foundation, will tell you that livestreaming is a huge concern. The hon. Member is 100% correct.
That is the way I talk to my children about online safety: once something is put online—once it is on the internet—it cannot ever be taken back. It is there forever, no matter what anyone does about it, and young people may not have the capacity to understand that. If systems were safe by design, young people simply would not have access to livestreaming at all; they would not have access to that functionality, so there would be that moment of thinking before they do something. They would not be able to do peer-to-peer livestreaming that can then be shared among the entire school and the entire world.
We know from research that a significant number of child sexual abuse materials are impossible to take down. Young people may put their own images online or somebody else may share them without their consent. Organisations such as the Internet Watch Foundation do everything they can to try to take down that content, but it is like playing whack-a-mole; it comes up and up and up. Once they have fallen into that trap, the content cannot be taken back. If we were being safe by design, we would ensure, as far as possible—as far as the Government could do, we could do or Ofcom could do—that no young person would be able to access that functionality. As I said, it should have been included.
I appreciate what the Government said about content recommendation and the algorithms that are used to ensure that people stay on platforms for a significant length of time. I do not know how many Members have spent much time on TikTok, but people can start watching videos of cats and still be there an hour and a half later. The algorithms are there to try to keep us on the platform. They are there because, actually, the platforms make money from our seeing the advertisements. They want us to see exciting content. Part of the issue with the content recommendation referenced in the conditions is that platforms are serving more and more exciting and extreme content to try to keep us there for longer, so we end up with people being radicalised on these platforms—possibly not intentionally by the platforms, but because their algorithm serves more and more extreme content.
I agree that that content should have the lower threshold in terms of the number of users. I am not sure about the numbers of the thresholds, but I think the Government have that differentiation correct, particularly on the addictive nature of algorithmic content. However, they are failing on incredibly high-risk content. The additional duties for category 1 services involve a number of different things: illegal content risk assessments, duties relating to terms of service, children’s risk assessments, adult empowerment duties and record-keeping duties. As I said, the fact that those category 1-ranked platforms will be on a list is powerful in itself, but adding those additional duties is really important.
Let us say that somebody is undertaking a risky business—piercing, for example. Even though not many people get piercings in the grand scheme of things, the Government require piercing organisations to jump through additional hoops because they are involved in dangerous things that carry a risk of infection and other associated risks. They are required to meet hygiene regulations, register with environmental health and have checks of their records to ensure that they know who is being provided with piercings, because it is a risky thing. The Government are putting additional duties on them because they recognise that piercing is risky and potentially harmful.
However, the Government are choosing not to put additional duties on incredibly high-risk platforms. They are choosing not to do that. They have been given the right to do that. Parliament has made its will very clear: “We want the Government to take action over those small high-risk platforms.” I do not care how many hoops 4chan has to jump through. Give it as many hoops as possible; it is an incredibly harmful site, and there are many others out there—hon. Members mentioned suicide forums, for example. Make them jump through every single hoop. If we cannot ban them outright—which would be my preferred option—make them keep records, make them have adult-empowerment duties, and put them on a list of organisations that we, the Government or Ofcom reckon are harmful.
If we end up in a situation where, due to the failures of this Act, young people commit suicide, and the platform is not categorised properly, there is then a reduction in the amount of protections, and in the information that they have to provide about deceased children to the families, because they are not categorised as category 1 or 2B. We could end up in a situation where a young person dies as a result of being radicalised on a forum—because the Government decided it should not be in scope—but that platform does not even have to provide the deceased child’s family with access to that online usage. That is shocking, right? If the Government are not willing to take the proper action required, at least bring these platforms into the scope of the actions and requirements related to deceased children.
I appreciate that I have taken a significant length of time—although not nearly as long as the Online Safety Act has taken to pass, I hasten to say—but I am absolutely serious about the fact that I am really, really angry about this. This is endangering children. This is endangering young people. This is turning the Online Safety Act back into what some people suggested it should be at the beginning, an anti-Facebook and anti-Twitter Act, or a regulation of Facebook and Twitter— or X—Act, rather than something that genuinely creates what it says in section 1 of the Act: an online world that is “safe by design”.
This is not creating an online world that is safe by design; this is opening young people and vulnerable adults up to far more risks than it should. The Government are wilfully making this choice, and we are giving them the opportunity to undo this and to choose to make the right decision—the decision that Parliament has asked them to make—to include functionalities such as livestreaming, and to include those high-risk platforms that we know radicalise people and put them at a higher risk of death.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
It is a great and unexpected pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I want to take this opportunity to say something about why I think these regulations are a mistake. I agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) has just said—I will seek not to repeat it—but it is probably worth noting at the outset that, as the Minister has rightly explained, these regulations are not the only means by which we will hold online services to account under this legislation.
A category 1 designation allows Ofcom—the regulator —to impose additional constraints on a platform. I think that is an entirely fair point to make, but as the hon. Lady observed, something like 100,000 online services are likely to be in scope of this Act overall. It is worth noting that, in Ofcom’s assessment, something like 12 to 16 services only would qualify for category 1 status if, as is currently the case, size was the only criterion and we set the limit—as these regulations seek to do—at 7 million monthly users.
As the hon. Lady explained, over a considerable period of time, with a considerable amount of energy expended, Parliament decided that it was appropriate to include in the category 1 designation not just the largest services, but those services where a great deal of harm may be concentrated but the services are, in themselves, much smaller. Those services being smaller might happen organically, or it might, of course, happen because that harmful content seeks refuge from the regulation applied to the larger services by migrating to smaller ones.
There is good reason, therefore, to think that having smaller services potentially included in category 1 designation is a tool that Ofcom, and indeed the Government, will want to have available.
Those platforms, such as ones that specialise in suicide or self-harm, might well be the kind of platforms that we find ourselves increasingly concerned about and that the Government will increasingly be asked to do something about. I have to say to the Minister that it is not sensible to remove from the regulator’s hand the tools that it might want to use to do what the Government will undoubtedly ask it to do—the Government themselves will come under pressure to do something about that.
Again, as has been explained, what or who we include in that category 1 designation really matters, because of the additional powers and constraints that Ofcom will have available to it in relation to category 1 services. Those powers include the only powers available under this Act to protect adults from anything that is not illegal content—including vulnerable adults, by the way. There will come a time when the Government, I suspect, will wish they had more to deal with problems of that nature. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North explained, the Act gives those powers, so it is bizarre in the extreme that the Government should choose voluntarily not to use them. It is bizarre, also, because the Labour party in opposition was clear in its support for the change.
The hon. Member for Newton Abbot quoted one example of something that the shadow spokesman at the time, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who now has Government responsibilities elsewhere, said during the passage of the Bill. I will quote another example to the Committee. She said:
“Categorisation of services based on size rather than risk of harm will mean that the Bill will fail to address some of the most extreme harms on the internet.”––[Official Report, Online Safety Public Bill Committee, 12 July 2022; c. 168.]
I think she was absolutely right then, and still is now. The draft regulations, I am afraid, do exactly what she said the Act should not do: they limit the criterion for the designation of category 1, and these additional powers, to size only.
We should think about the Government’s rationale for what they are doing. In December, the Secretary of State made a written statement to set out the reasoning for the measures that the Government have put before the Committee:
“In making these Regulations, I have considered factors as required by the Act. Amendments made during the passage of the Act, changed the consideration for Category 1 from the ‘level of risk of harm to adults from priority content that is harmful to adults disseminated by means of the service’ to ‘how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.’ This was a significant change”.—[Official Report, 16 December 2024; Vol. 759, c. 12WS.]
In other words, I think the Secretary of State was arguing that he has no option but to limit to a scale criterion-only designation for category 1, because that is how the Act has changed. That is fundamentally mistaken, if I may say so to the Minister. I do not expect her to have all this before her—I know her officials will take careful note—but the Act states at paragraph 1(5) of schedule 11:
“In making regulations under sub-paragraph (1)”—
the draft regulations we are discussing—
“the Secretary of State must take into account the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service, and its functionalities, on”—
and this is the part the Secretary of State drew out in his statement—
“how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.”
Without doubt, therefore, the Secretary of State has to take the number of users into account, but it is not the only criterion. There is a fundamental misunderstanding —at least, I hope that is what it is—in the ministerial statement, which suggests that that is the only criterion to be considered. It is not, and I think it is a mistake to ignore the others, which, again, have already been drawn out in the debate.
To be clear, these draft regulations mean that no smaller platform—under the level of 7 million monthly users—can ever be considered as a category 1 platform, unless or until the Government and Ofcom change their approach to the categorisation process. I repeat the point, and I make no apologies for doing so, that that is specifically contrary to what Parliament had intended in the passage of the Act.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North and I are not the only ones making this observation. There are multiple organisations with whom we and then the Labour party worked closely to get this Act passed for the protection of those about whom the Labour party is charged with worrying. Those include organisations such as the Samaritans, Mind, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Molly Rose Foundation, all of which care deeply about the effectiveness of this legislation, as I am sure we all do.
It is true, and the Minister may make this point, that Ofcom’s advice suggested the course of action the Government are now taking. However, “advice” is the key word. The Government were not obliged to take it, and in this instance I think they would have been wiser to resist it. Ofcom will not have all the tools it could have to deal with smaller services where greater harm may be concentrated, despite what the Act allows. I have to say that tying one hand behind Ofcom’s back is not sensible, even when Ofcom is itself asking us to do so. That is especially true when the Government place such heavy reliance on the Online Safety Act—as they are entitled to—to deal with the multiple online harms that arise.
I have lost count, as I suspect others in this Committee have, of the number of times that Ministers have referred to the Online Safety Act when challenged about harmful materials or behaviours online and said, “This is the answer. This Act gives us powers to act against services that do not do what they should.” They are right that it is not a perfect piece of legislation, and none of us involved in its generation would claim that it was, but it does give Government and regulators the powers to act. However, that does us no good at all if, in subsequent pieces of statutory legislation, the Government choose not to use those tools or put them beyond Ofcom’s reach. That is what the regulations do.
I have to say to the Minister that government is hard enough. She should not throw away the tools she needs to do the job that she has promised everyone that she will do. This is a mistake, and I hope that even at this late stage the Minister will find a way to avoid making it.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I will not repeat many of the points that have already been made, but I want to express my concern that these changes do not bring into scope small but potentially dangerous platforms, including those that bring about specific, targeted abuse and harms, as well as those that disguise themselves as support for preventing self-harm, suicide and eating disorders, but actually promote that ideology and cause further harm.
As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) just said, the Government have missed an opportunity to correct what they continue to say this statutory instrument addresses. I also echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) on what I see as a blunt tool, which is the setting of the limits at 7 million and 34 million. Reading into the regulations and the explanatory documents shows that the figures are worked out using a six-month mean average, so there is absolutely nothing to prevent one of these platforms, should they want to flout or get below the threshold, from simply delisting or deregistering a number of their users over that six-month rolling period, which would see them fall out of scope of the regulations.
I was not previously in this place, but from listening to other Members speak about previous pieces of legislation that came from the Online Safety Act that considered the level of risk rather than using numbers as a blank term, I encourage the Government, as previous speakers have done, to go back and look at what the legislation is about achieving—protecting our online users.
Feryal Clark
I thank all Members for their very powerful contributions to the debate. This instrument will bring us one step closer to a safer online world for our citizens. It is clearer than ever that it is desperately needed: transparency, accountability and user empowerment matter now more than ever.
The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Huntingdon, asked whether we agree on the need for companies not to wait for the duties in the Act to be implemented, but to ensure that safety is baked in from the start. I absolutely agree, and he will be aware that the Secretary of State has made that point on many occasions. He also raised the issue of proportionality. I confirm that many of the duties on categorised services are subject to the principle of proportionality, which requires Ofcom to consider measures that are technically feasible to providers of a certain size or capacity, and in some cases duties are based on the assessment of risk of harm presented by the service.
For example, in determining what is proportionate for the user empowerment duties on content for category 1 services, the findings of the most recent user empowerment assessments are relevant. They include the incidence of relevant content on the service in addition to the size and capacity of the provider. Where a code of practice is relevant to a duty, Ofcom must have regard to the principles on proportionality, and what is proportionate for one kind of service might not be for another.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon is absolutely right that the pornography review has been completed. The Government are reviewing that at the moment and will publish it in due course.
In response to the hon. Members for Newton Abbot and for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), when the Online Safety Act was introduced, category 1 thresholds were due to be assessed based on the level of risk and harm for adults—as the Members read out very clearly. That was removed during the passage of the Bill by the previous Government.
As things stand, although Baroness Morgan’s successful amendment made it possible for threshold conditions to be based solely on functionalities, it did not change the basis of Ofcom’s research, which for category 1 is easy, quick and wide dissemination of content. The Secretary of State had to consider that. I will repeat that for all Members to hear again: the Secretary of State has to act within the powers given to him in schedule 11 when setting out the threshold and conditions. The powers do not allow for thresholds to be determined by another body, as per the amendment.
Although the hon. Member for Aberdeen North very powerfully read out the Act, it very clearly sets out that it does not actually do what she is asking for it to do. We absolutely agree that small but risky sites need to be covered, but as it stands, the Secretary of State does not have the powers to include them.
Feryal Clark
Sorry, I have lots of points to cover. If I have not covered the hon Member’s concerns in my response, she is more than welcome to intervene later.
These small but risky services are of significant concern to the Government, and they will still have to protect against illegal content and, where relevant, content that is harmful to children. Ofcom also has a dedicated taskforce to go after them. I hope that answers the hon. Member’s question.
The hon. Member for Newton Abbot also raised the review of Ofcom’s approach. The regulator has already trialled an approach of targeting small but risky services through its regulation of video-sharing platforms. Indeed, a number of those services improved their policies and content moderation in response. All the adult platforms under the VSP regime, large and small, have implemented age verification through this route to ensure that under-18s cannot access pornography on their services. In instances where services fail to make necessary changes, they will face formal enforcement action from Ofcom. Ofcom has a proven track record and the Government have every faith in its ability to take action against non-compliant services.
The hon. Member also raised issues around how Ofcom will enforce action against small but risky services. Ofcom will have robust enforcement powers available to use against companies that fail to fulfil their duties and it will be able to issue enforcement decisions. Action can include fines of up to £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue in the relevant year, whichever is higher, and Ofcom can direct companies to take specific steps to comply with its regulation.
Martin Wrigley
The Minister raised the issue of age verification, which is good. However, she did not say how “harmful to adults”, “harmful to vulnerable minorities” and “harmful to women” are categorised. Children are protected in this case, but those other groups are not.
Also, in response to the answer that the Minister just gave, the difficulty is not the Ofcom powers; it is the obligation on the provider. If we have not put a provider into category 1, it does not have the same level of obligation as category 1 companies do. No matter what powers Ofcom has and no matter what fines it imposes, it cannot get such companies to give those commitments to a category 1 level if they are not in that category.
Removing the section is not giving Ofcom the tools it needs. The Minister was absolutely right earlier when she said that there is much more to do. Why drop this ability to put other sites in category 1?
Feryal Clark
I think the hon. Member missed it when I said that, as things stand, the Secretary of State does not have the power to include them. It is not about removing them; it is about not having the powers to include them, as things stand, at the moment.
I will conclude. In extreme cases, Ofcom, with the agreement of the courts, uses business disruption measures, which are court orders that mean third parties have to withdraw non-compliant services, or restrict or block access to non-compliant services in the UK.
The hon. Member for Newton Abbot also asked whether the Act will be reviewed to address the gaps in it. As I said at the start, our immediate focus is getting the Act implemented quickly and effectively. It was designed to tackle illegal content and protect children, and we want those protections in place as soon as possible. It is right that the Government continually assess the ability of the framework to keep us safe, especially given that technology develops so quickly. We will look, of course, at how effective these protections are and build on the Online Safety Act, based on evidence. However, our message to social media companies remains clear: there is no need to wait. As the Opposition spokesperson said, those companies can and should take immediate action to protect their users.
On the use of business disruption measures, the Act provides Ofcom with powers to apply to court for such measures, as I have said, including where there is continued failure and non-compliance. We expect Ofcom to use all available enforcement mechanisms.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon asked how Parliament can scrutinise the delivery of the legislation. Ongoing parliamentary scrutiny is absolutely crucial; indeed, the Online Safety Act requires Ofcom codes to be laid before Parliament for scrutiny. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and the Communications and Digital Committee of the House of Lords will play a vital role in scrutinising the regime. Ofcom’s codes of practice for illegal content duties were laid before Parliament in December. Subject to their passing without objection, we expect them to be in force by spring 2025, and the child safety codes are expected to be laid before Parliament in April, in order to be in effect by summer 2025. Under section 178 of the Act, the Secretary of State is required to review the effectiveness of its regulatory framework between two and five years after key provisions of the Act come into force. That will be published as a report and laid before Parliament.
Letters were sent in advance of laying these regulations to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee and the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. Hon. Members have asked about user numbers. Ofcom recommended the threshold of 34 million or 7 million for category 1. Services must exceed the user number thresholds. The Government are not in a position to confirm who will be categorised. That will be the statutory role of Ofcom once the regulations have passed.
Feryal Clark
I am going to make some progress. On livestreaming, Ofcom considered that functionality, but concluded that the key functionalities that spread content easily, quickly and widely are content recommender systems and forwarding or resharing user-generated content.
Services accessed by children must still be safe by design, regardless of whether they are categorised. Small but risky services will also still be required to comply with illegal content duties. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North should be well aware of that as she raised concerns on that issue.
On child safety, there were questions about how online safety protects children from harmful content. The Act requires all services in scope to proactively remove and prevent users from being exposed to priority illegal content, such as illegal suicide content and child sexual exploitation and abuse material. That is already within the remit.
In addition, companies that are likely to be accessed by children will need to take steps to protect children from harmful content and behaviour on their services, including content that is legal but none the less presents a risk of harm to children. The Act designates content that promotes suicide or self-harm as in the category of primary priority content that is harmful to children. Parents and children will also be able to report pro-suicide or pro-self-harm content to the platform and the reporting mechanism will need to be easy to navigate for child users. On 8 May, Ofcom published its draft children’s safety codes of conduct, in which it proposed measures that companies should employ to protect children from suicide and self-harm content, as well as other content.
Finally, on why category 1 is not based on risk, such as the risk of hate speech, when the Act was introduced, category 1 thresholds were due to be assessed on the level of risk of harm to adults from priority content disseminated by means of that service. As I said earlier, that was removed during the Act’s passage by the then Government and replaced with consideration of the likely functionalities and how easily, quickly and widely user-generated content is disseminated, which is a significant change. Although the Government understand that that approach has its critics, who argue that the risk of harm is the most significant factor, that is the position under the Act.
Kirsty Blackman
The Minister is making the case that the Secretary of State’s hands are tied by the Act —that it requires stuff in relation to the number of users. Can she tell us in which part of the Act it says that, because it does not say that? If she can tell us where it is in the Act, I am quite willing to sit down and shut up about this point, but it is not in the Act.
Feryal Clark
The legislation allows the Secretary of State to deviate from Ofcom’s advice and to publish a statement explaining why. However, the core consideration for category 1 under schedule 11 is—I repeat for the third time—how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of a service. As a result, for category 1, Ofcom concluded that the content is disseminated with increased breadth as the number of users increases.
The decision to proceed with the threshold combination recommended by Ofcom, rather than discounting user-number thresholds, reflects that any threshold condition created by the Government should consider the factors as set out in the Act, including easy, quick and wide dissemination for category 1, and the evidence base. That is what the Act says. As a result, the Government decided to not proceed with an approach that deviated from Ofcom’s recommendation, particularly considering the risk of unintended consequences.
I am more than happy to write to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North with the full details. I understand that she feels very passionately about this point, but the Act is the Act. Although I am grateful for her contribution, I have to follow what the Act says, based on the legal advice that I get.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I have sympathy with her position, especially in relation to legal advice, having both received it and given it. I suggest that the Minister is talking about two different things, and they need to be separated. The first is the question of whether legal but harmful content was removed from the Bill, which it undoubtedly was. Measures in relation to content that is neither unlawful nor harmful to children were largely removed from the Bill—the Minister is right to say that.
What we are discussing, however, are the tools available to Ofcom to deal with those platforms that it is still concerned about in relation to the remaining content within the ambit of the Bill. The worry of those of us who have spoken in the debate is that the Government are about to remove one of the tools that Ofcom would have had to deal with smaller, high-harm platforms when the harm in question remains in ambit of the Bill—not that which was taken out during its passage. Would the Minister accept that?
Feryal Clark
I will again set out what the Secretary of State’s powers are. The Government have considered the suggestion of Baroness Morgan and others to categorise small but risky based on the coroner or Ofcom linking a service to a death. The Government were grateful for that suggestion. However, there were issues with that approach, including with what the Act allows the Secretary of State to consider when setting the categories. The Secretary of State is not allowed to consider anything other than the factors set out in the Act, which says that it has to include easy, quick and wide dissemination for category 1, and has to be evidence based.
I hope that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North will accept that I will write to her in great detail, and include a letter from Government lawyers setting out what I am saying in relation to the powers of the Secretary of State in setting the categories. I hope that she will be satisfied with that. I want to make it clear that we are not taking anything out; the Secretary of State is proceeding with the powers that he has been given.
Feryal Clark
I am going to proceed. I think I have covered the main points raised by hon. Members. I hope that the Committee agrees with me on the importance of enacting these thresholds and implementing the Online Safety Act as swiftly as possible. I made it clear that Ofcom has set up a taskforce that will review the small but risky sites, in response to the Secretary of State’s letter to it in September.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam was Attorney General for four years. It is just possible that his interpretation of the Act is correct, and that of the Minister’s officials is incorrect. I do not have detailed knowledge of this legislation, but I wonder whether the Minister and her Whip want to take some further time and pause before putting these regulations to a vote—that would be perfectly acceptable to us. We will not oppose the regulations, but we are cautious that if the Minister wants more time, she is welcome to take it.
Feryal Clark
Although I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, I am sure that he will appreciate that this issue has been looked into and discussed in debates and with officials. With that, I commend these regulations to the Committee.
The Chair
The debate can continue until seven minutes past 11 o’clock. For the benefit of new Members, if anybody wishes to speak again, it is possible to speak for a second time in a General Committee.
Kirsty Blackman
Thank you, Sir Christopher—I appreciate that prod. I did look at Standing Orders this morning, but could not find that bit, so that is incredibly helpful.
On what the Minister said about schedule 11 and the notes that she has been passed from her team on that point, I appreciate her commitment to share the Government’s legal advice. That will be incredibly helpful; it would have been helpful to have it in advance of this Committee.
In schedule 11, it says:
“In making regulations under sub-paragraph (1), the Secretary of State must take into account the likely impact of the number of users of the user-to-user part of the service, and its functionalities, on how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of the service.”
Perhaps I cannot read English, or perhaps the Minister, her legal advisers and the team at DSIT read it in a different way from me, but the Secretary of State having to take something into account and the Secretary of State being bound by something are two different things—they are not the same. It does not say that the Secretary of State must regulate only on the specific number of users.
In fact, schedule 11 says earlier that the Secretary of State
“must make regulations specifying conditions…for the user-to-user part of regulated user-to-user services relating to each of the following”,
which are the
“number of users…functionalities of that part of the service, and…any other characteristics of that part of the service or factors”.
The Secretary of State must therefore make regulations in relation to any other characteristics of that part of the service or factors
“relating to that part of the service that the Secretary of State considers relevant.”
He must do that, but he must only take into account the number of users. The Government, however, have decided that taking into account is much more important than “must” do something. They have decided to do that despite Parliament being pretty clear in the language it has used.
I am not terribly happy with the Online Safety Act. It is a lot better than the situation we have currently, but it is far from perfect. As the Minister said, I argued in favour of keeping the stuff about legal but harmful content for adults. I argued against the then Government’s position on that, but the Act is the Act that we have.
The Minister’s point does not make sense. The Secretary of State has to take into account the number of users and how quickly things are disseminated, but he must make regulations about functionalities or factors that he considers relevant. Therefore, it seems that he does not consider suicide forums and livestreaming to be relevant; if he did, he would surely be bound by the “must” and would have to make regulations about them. It is frustrating that the Act does not do what it is supposed to do and does not protect young people from livestreaming. The Minister said that it protects people from seeing that illegal content, but it does not prevent them from creating it.
The Government could make regulations so that every platform that has a livestreaming functionality, or even every platform that has child users on it—there is a lot in the Act about the proportion of children who use a service—is automatically included in category 1 because they consider them to be high risk.
Sir Jeremy Wright
It would not be right for either of us to ask the Minister to disclose legal advice—that clearly would not be appropriate—but I am grateful for the Minister’s offer to share a slightly more expansive description of why the Government have come to the conclusion that they have.
On the hon. Lady’s point about what the Act actually says, we have both quoted paragraph 1(5) of schedule 11, which deals with whether the language that has found its way into the ministerial statement is the be-all and end-all of the Minister’s conclusions. We both think it is not. If it is the case, as I think the Minister is arguing, that the ability to disseminate “easily, quickly and widely” is essentially a synonym for the scale of the service and the number of its users, what does the hon. Lady think of the amendment that Baroness Morgan made in the other place to paragraph 1(4), which says that when the regulations we are considering specify
“the way or ways in which the relevant conditions are met”,
for category 1 threshold conditions
“at least one specified condition about number of users or functionality must be met”?
The crucial word that was added is “or”. If the number of users were required to establish what the hon. Lady has described, the word “or” would be inappropriate.
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree, and that is a helpful clarification.
If the Government have decided that it is too difficult to regulate high-risk platforms as category 1, and that they do not matter enough because they do not have enough of an impact, they should stand up and tell us that. Rather than saying that their hands have been tied by the Act—they manifestly have not—they need to take ownership of their actions. If they have decided that such platforms are not important enough or that they cannot be bothered having a fight with Ofcom about that, they should be honest and say, “This is the position we have decided to take.” Instead, they are standing up and saying, “Our hands have been tied,” but that is just not correct: their hands have not been tied by the Act.
I appreciate that the Minister will get in touch with me about the legal advice, but it will be too late. This statutory instrument will have been through the process by that time, and people will have been put at risk as a result of the Government’s failure. They have the power to take action in relation to functionalities and factors, and in relation to suicide forums, livestreaming and the creation of child sexual abuse material, and they are choosing not to.
If the Government have decided that it is too difficult to do that, that those platforms are not risky enough and that not enough people are being harmed by them, they need to hold their hands up and say, “We’ve decided that this is the position we are going to take.” They must not hide behind the legislation, which does not say what they are telling us it says. They should just be honest about the fact that they have decided that they cannot be bothered to take action. They cannot be bothered to have a fight with Ofcom because it is not important enough. Hiding behind the legislation is incredibly cowardly—it does not say that.
Martin Wrigley
I do not have the benefit of having gone through the Act in its entirety, so I appreciate the input of hon. Members on this subject. It is that one word: “or”. Amendment 245 entailed moving from a test of size “and” functionality to a test of size “or” functionality. That is not, as far as I can hear from what the Minister has said, what is causing the problem; it should be giving the Government the opportunity to keep that in there. In setting these categorisations on just size, they are ignoring that.
The Minister also mentioned that the Act did not give the Secretary of State the power to allow somebody else to put organisations or sites into these categories; no, that is not what is being asked. It is about a recommendation from Ofcom for the Secretary of State to bring those smaller types of sites into the category. What this change does is remove the powers to stop those small sites that promote misogyny and racist hatred and those things that are very harmful, and which we saw examples of in the summer.
The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is looking into those events at the moment, as I know, because I sit on the Committee. However, those powers are being thrown away, and an opportunity is being missed, because the powers for setting the thresholds have been misinterpreted. I beg the Minister to take a moment and look again, because the Government are getting this wrong.
Feryal Clark
The comments made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North are absolutely outrageous, but I would not expect anything less from the SNP. I have made it very clear that I will share legal advice with Members. I also made it clear that the small but risky sites that Members have been talking about were raised by the Secretary of State in a letter to Ofcom in September, and Ofcom has set up a taskforce to look at those services.
The key thing for the Government is to get on with implementing the Online Safety Act. I know that the hon. Lady would like us to spend lots of time delaying, but we are interested in getting on with implementing the Act so that we can keep children safe online. With that, I commend the regulations to the House.
The Chair
For the benefit of people watching, only Committee members can cast votes in a Division.
Question put.
Draft Electricity Capacity (Amendment) Regulations 2025
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Electricity Capacity (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Twigg, and to be back so soon in the year to talk about the capacity market. The draft instrument, which was laid before the House on 16 December 2024, seeks to make technical improvements and changes to the capacity market scheme—the Government’s main tool for ensuring security of electricity supply in Great Britain. To achieve clean power by 2030, electricity market reform is critical; to paraphrase our clean power action plan, we must reform the capacity market to provide clear and viable routes to decarbonisation for unabated gas, enable low-carbon flexible capacity and incentivise investment in existing capacity.
Before outlining the provisions in the draft instrument, I will briefly provide some context. Great Britain’s capacity market was introduced in 2014 and is designed to ensure that sufficient electrical capacity is available to meet future predicted demand in order to maintain security of electricity supply. It is a well-established, technology-neutral scheme, in which existing and new build electricity capacity receives revenue based on capacity. Participants secure agreements through auctions, which require them to make capacity available at times of system stress.
The capacity market is our main tool for ensuring security of electricity supply and provides all forms of capacity with the right incentives to be on the system to deliver when needed. It covers generation, storage, consumer-led flexibility—formerly known as demand-side response—and interconnection capacity. Through capacity market auctions, which are held annually one year and four years ahead of delivery, we secure the capacity needed to meet future peak demand under a range of scenarios, based on advice from the capacity market delivery body, the National Energy System Operator.
Since its introduction in 2014, the capacity market has contributed to investment in just under 19 GW of new, flexible capacity, which is needed to replace older, less efficient plants as we transition to a net zero economy. To date, the capacity market has been successful in ensuring that Great Britain has adequate electricity capacity to meet demand, and it continues to be required in order to maintain security of supply and provide investor confidence. To ensure that the capacity market continues to function effectively, we regularly make adjustments to the implementing legislation, based on our day-to-day experiences of operating the scheme. On that note, let me turn to the details of the draft instrument.
The draft instrument makes changes to eight regulations, to deliver technical improvements and changes that support the functioning of the capacity market and that have been identified and explored through consultation. This is about improving security of supply and, by accelerating investment in low-carbon technologies, increasing the role they play in the capacity market, thus supporting the Government’s 2030 clean power mission.
Stakeholder feedback in the consultations identified a need to review the wider timescales associated with the settlement body’s penalty calculation activities, to ensure that timelines for settlement remain appropriate. The settlements body is the Electricity Settlements Company, which is a private company owned by the Secretary of State for the Department and established to oversee the settlement of payments to and from suppliers and capacity providers. The draft instrument amends the timelines for the settlement body’s determinations so that they are in line with those concerning penalty charges.
As part of the requirements under the capacity market rules, some capacity market units must complete an extended performance test. This provides assurance that a capacity market unit from a storage-generating technology class can deliver capacity for the relevant duration. Effectively, extended performance tests are a sub-function of the satisfactory performance days requirement, which requires a capacity provider to demonstrate availability during a delivery year. The policy intent is that failure to meet extended performance tests should have the same consequence as failure to meet satisfactory performance days. The draft instrument ensures that the regime is consistent and that the two demonstrations of performance are treated in similar fashion when failed.
To assist industry when pre-qualifying for the capacity market, the draft instrument further clarifies that a capacity market unit can be pre-qualified only where no contract for difference has been awarded, unless the contract for difference in question has expired or been terminated. The draft instrument further clarifies that a contract for difference means a contract for difference, or an investment contract entered into with the contract for difference counterparty, which has always been the policy intent.
Finally, multi-year agreements provide greater revenue certainty and are likely to incentivise further low-carbon participation in the capacity market, which improves market liquidity and can lead to a greater diversity of technologies. A new nine-year capex threshold introduced by the draft instrument will ensure that new and refurbishing projects, with costs that fall between the existing thresholds, are not prevented from entering the capacity market.
The draft instrument also enables participants to access a three-year agreement with a capex threshold of £0 kW, which is available to low-carbon new build and unproven demand-side response capacity. That will remove barriers for low-carbon, low-capex technologies to access longer agreements in the capacity market. To ensure that projects meet the definition of low-carbon capacity, the draft instrument introduces an emissions-related determination, which is a decision that the delivery body may take, as a further reviewable decision type.
Let me turn now to the two consultations carried out by the Government—indeed, the previous Government—on the measures in the draft instrument. The instrument contains the second phase—phase 2—of the capacity market reforms, which were consulted on towards the end of 2023. These strengthen security of supply and accelerate investment in low-carbon technologies, and respondents were broadly supportive of the proposals. We have also made a number of technical amendments to the capacity market rules, which support the regulations and which were laid before the House—many Members here today were also present then—on 16 December 2024.
In conclusion, the draft instrument introduces a number of technical provisions and changes to enable the continued efficient operation of the capacity market, so that it can continue to deliver on its objectives. These reforms will be critical on our pathway to achieving clean power by 2030. They will improve security of supply and, by accelerating investment in low-carbon technologies, increase the role that those play in the capacity market. We need clear routes for the decarbonisation of unabated gas and for the rapid acceleration of low-carbon, flexible capacity, and today we make another step towards that. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Twigg. It is a day full of energy; we cannot get enough energy—in all respects, I suppose.
As we discussed just a few weeks ago with regards to the Electricity Capacity Mechanism (Amendment) Regulations 2024, the capacity market scheme was introduced in 2014 as part of electricity market reform, to ensure security of electricity supply by providing payments for reliable sources of electrical generation capacity or, in some cases, reduced demand.
The capacity market is responsible for ensuring that the right incentives are in place to deliver during periods of electricity system shortage and stress. As we mentioned when the previous amendments were introduced in November, the previous Government identified over a decade ago that, while introducing renewable energy sources into the energy mix,
“The amount of gas capacity we will need to call on at times of peak demand will remain high, with potentially significant amounts of new gas generating capacity required by 2030.”
As we saw in the January cold snap, a renewables-dominated system does indeed come under considerable stress. When the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine—as it often does not in the UK, especially in the winter—we experience a dearth in the supply of renewable-generated electricity. That is compounded by high demand on the coldest, darkest days.
The draft instrument aims to improve security of supply and expedite investment in low-carbon technologies. It seeks to amend the timeframe for the Electricity Settlements Company’s determinations, bringing those adjustment decisions in line with the timeframe for penalty charges. It also seeks to use multi-year agreements to provide certainty, incentivising a greater range of technologies to participate. On that basis, and also because it was the previous Government who began this work, I do not wish to oppose the draft instrument.
I shall not stand in the way of business today, as the draft instrument seeks to make only minor adjustments to the capacity market. However, as before, I do wish to put on record the Opposition’s apprehensions regarding an increasingly intermittent energy system, shored up by increasingly expensive capacity market payments. As I said, however, we support these moves today.
Question put and agreed to.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
Clauses 30 and 37 concern the regulation of independent educational institutions. I will turn first to clause 30. All children should receive the best chances in life and an education that helps them to achieve and thrive. To support that, it is already a legal requirement for private schools to register with the Secretary of State. Registered schools are regularly inspected and action is taken against schools that potentially put children at risk of harm by providing an unsafe or poor-quality education. The clause will bring more settings that provide a full-time education into that well-established and effective regime. That will lead to more children learning in a regulated and safe setting that is subject to regular inspection.
At present, private schools are regulated mainly by chapter 1 of part 4 of the Education and Skills Act 2008. The Act allows private schools to be subject to regular inspection, regulates the changes that they may make to their operation, and provides mechanisms to allow the Government to intervene in cases of severe safeguarding risk. The clause redefines the settings that are to be regulated under the 2008 Act and extends those protections to more children who attend full-time educational settings that are not schools. It will also provide clarity to those running educational settings about whether the regulatory regime applies to them.
In broad terms, settings will be required to register with the Secretary of State if five or more children of compulsory school age, or one or more such child with an EHCP—education, health and care plan—who is looked after by the local authority, could be expected to receive all or a majority of their education at the institution. When determining whether the new test of “full-time” is met, the factors found in proposed new section 92(4) in the clause will be considered.
Finally, in the interest of clarity, the clause provides a list of excepted institutions. Excepted institutions are not being brought into scope of the 2008 Act, even though they otherwise may meet our new definition. Generally speaking, that is because they are already captured by a suitable regulatory regime.
I will turn to clause 37. Clause 30 is intended to ensure that more settings that provide full-time education to children are subject to regulation. In addition, other legislation already applies in England to independent schools, but will not automatically apply to other independent educational institutions. Further legislation will be required if that is to apply to all the settings regulated under the 2008 Act. Clause 37 provides a regulation-making power to do that, and to apply other legislation that applies to independent schools—over and above the 2008 Act—to other full-time educational institutions.
That approach is proposed for two reasons. First, it will permit Parliament to debate the principle of bringing independent educational institutions into the existing regulatory regime in the 2008 Act for independent schools. Secondly, it will allow Parliament to debate separately the practical impacts of that with regard to the other individual pieces of legislation. That is because any regulations made under this proposed power will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise and approve any regulations made under clause 37. The clause is a mechanism to allow the changes, which might be regarded as downstream from clause 30, to be made.
To turn back to clause 30, this reasonable and proportionate step is built on a clear principle. Settings that provide education on a full-time basis and, as a result, are more responsible for children’s educational wellbeing, should be regulated and subject to Government oversight. The measure closes and identifies weakness in our existing regime. No more will settings be able to avoid registration and regulation by offering a narrow education, meaning that some children are not equipped to thrive in the modern world.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I could pick this concern up in our next debate, on clause 31, but a related issue is linked to my concerns about this clause, so I will give the Minister a moment to reply. He mentioned the list of excepted institutions, which we find at clause 30, page 70, from line 17, and various types of institution are exempted: local authority schools, special schools, 16-to-19 academies and further education colleges, but not academies and free schools. Why? I want to check that that is a conscious choice by the Government and to get an explanation of why that is the case.
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
With your permission, Sir Edward, my remarks apply to clauses 30 to 36, because I thought it was more convenient to speak to them all together. Clauses 30 to 36 are extremely welcome to tackle illegal schools. Such schools are mostly, but not always, faith-based—
The Chair
Order. We are debating clauses 30 and 37, so as long as you stick to that, that is fine.
Lizzi Collinge
I believe my remarks apply fully to clauses 30 and 37, Sir Edward, if you are happy with that—please let me know if not.
Lizzi Collinge
Thank you, Sir Edward. The measures to tackle illegal schools, which are often but not always faith-based, are very welcome, and they will protect children from severe harm. The reasons for the need for the measures contained in clauses 30 and 37 are often hidden, and they are often clustered in certain local authorities. The so-called education that takes place in some of those unregistered settings is often deeply intolerant, not aligned with British values, and not of good quality for young children.
I have a question for the Minister about the definition of “full-time” in clause 30. I have a slight concern that we might be creating loopholes. Although clause 36 allows for multiple inspections where there are suspicions of links to part-time settings, I worry that we might create a situation in which illegal schools could get around the legislation by going part-time. Will the Minister consider that and perhaps whether, once this legislation has settled in, there may be need for action on part-time settings? Obviously, we do not want to capture Sunday schools, or a bit of prayer study or some study of the Koran after prayers, but I think we might need to look at this in future.
Stephen Morgan
I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, for his constructive response. He made a number of points and asked whether the clause applies to academies. It will not change the way in which academies, as state-funded independent schools run by not-for-profit charitable status trusts, are regulated. Academy trusts are accountable to the Secretary of State for Education through their contractual funding agreement, the terms of which already require them to comply with the regulatory regime established by the 2008 Act. All academy schools are subject to regular inspection by Ofsted under the education inspection framework.
Neil O’Brien
Is that not also the case for 16-to-19 academies already? I do not understand why they have to be exempted in the Bill, but non-16-to-19 academies are not. Surely they also have the same kind of funding agreement.
Stephen Morgan
I am happy to take the shadow Minister’s points away and get him a response in due course.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 30 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31
Independent educational institution standards
Neil O’Brien
I beg to move amendment 70, in clause 31, page 72, line 31, at end insert—
“(1A) Powers under subsection (1) may not be exercised in relation to an academy.”
This amendment specifies that the Secretary of State should rely on the provisions in Funding Agreements as regards to academies.
Neil O’Brien
This will be relatively short and sweet. Amendment 70 aims to prevent a large and, I hope, unintentional expansion of the Secretary of State’s powers. Academies and free schools are, of course, independent state-funded schools. I think that under clause 30, an academy school, but not a 16-to-19 academy, is an independent educational institution for the purposes of the 2008 Act. This amendment to clause 31 would ensure that the powers under proposed new section 118A(1) may not be exercised in relation to an academy; instead, the Secretary of State should rely on the provisions in funding agreements with the academies and free schools.
Our amendment is grouped with clause stand part, so I also want to ask the Minister about something I read in the regulatory impact assessment. Page 56 states:
“We have identified one possible adverse distributional impact. Based on our current understanding, the Independent Schools Standards: Registration Requirements measure is expected to disproportionately impact some religious or faith-based schools. Where in scope of the new regulation, these schools may have to meet the Independent School Standards, which may entail costs.”
Will the Minister say how large those costs are, or explain why faith schools are disproportionately impacted? It may be unrelated but I also noted various references in the impact assessments to the Haredim; will the Minister speak to why that group is particularly affected by some of these measures?
Stephen Morgan
Amendment 70 seeks to disapply for academies the new power to suspend registration given by clause 31. It would not be appropriate if children in academies were not protected by the additional powers within a regulatory regime that already applies to them. I hope that that gives the assurance sought by the shadow Minister, and that he agrees to withdraw the amendment.
Clause 31 will make several changes to the regulatory regime for private schools found in the 2008 Act. The clause has a number of distinct parts, including a new power of suspension. It may help hon. Members if I quickly summarise the most significant changes.
First, the clause will allow the Government to set out, in regulations, standards requiring individual proprietors, or individuals with the general control and management of the proprietor, to be fit and proper persons in the Secretary of State’s opinion. Secondly, the clause will allow the Secretary of State to direct the chief inspector to carry out an inspection of an institution that has lodged an appeal against a decision not to register it, so that up-to-date information can be given to the tribunal.
Thirdly, as discussed, the clause makes a power for the Secretary of State to temporarily suspend the registration and, where applicable, the boarding of an independent educational institution, such as a private school. That power would be used when the Secretary of State is satisfied that there are breaches of the relevant standards and she has reasonable cause to believe that, because of the breaches, there is a risk of harm to children at the institution. During the period of suspension, the proprietor would commit a criminal offence if the institution remains open, providing education or other supervised activity, or if it were to provide boarding accommodation in breach of a stop boarding requirement.
In addition, rights of appeal to the first-tier tribunal against a decision to suspend registration or to impose a stop boarding requirement are conferred by subsection 31(6). We acknowledge that a suspension of registration would be a serious step that would inevitably disrupt children’s education; the new powers are therefore likely to be used only in the most serious cases. It is, however, essential that we have appropriate tools to provide the flexibility to act appropriately in cases where students are at risk of harm.
Finally, the clause will, by amending section 124 of the 2008 Act, change how appeals against enforcement action to deregister private schools are determined by the first-tier tribunal. That will ensure that more effective action can be taken against private schools with long-term or serious failings. In some cases, private schools can avoid deregistration by making improvements to meet the standards at the time of the appeal hearing. These changes will ensure that the first-tier tribunal carefully considers future compliance. The clause reverses the burden of proof so that the appealing proprietor must demonstrate that it has capacity to sustain compliance with the standards. These measures make many improvements to the existing system of private school registration and regulation, and I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Neil O’Brien
We thought that it was unintentional that academies are being brought into this new system of regulation. From the Minister’s comments, it is clearly intentional. This is triple dipping: the Minister already has controls over these schools; clause 43 takes that further, and this is another thing. I therefore will push the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Stephen Morgan
This group of clauses concerns actions that can be taken against those who operate an education institution in breach of the existing regulatory regime. I will discuss clause 36 first. The existing regulatory regime for private schools is found mainly in the 2008 Act. The regime requires, among other things, that settings providing full-time education are registered and subject to regular inspection. That allows the Government to intervene in cases where children’s wellbeing is at risk. Those not complying with the regulatory regime may be committing a criminal offence and may knowingly be putting children at risk of harm. Ofsted may already investigate and gather evidence of the offences to support criminal prosecution.
I am sure the Committee will agree that it is vital that Ofsted has the powers it needs to investigate those crimes, and clause 36 grants Ofsted those powers. Let me be clear: the additional powers apply only in limited and specific circumstances. Ofsted’s routine activity determining school performance is not impacted by this measure. Instead, the additional powers will be available only when Ofsted is gathering evidence about the commission of the specified relevant offences. That will most commonly be in relation to investigations regarding the running of illegal unregistered schools, which is an offence under the 2008 Act.
It might help Members if I quickly run through each part of the new sections. Proposed new section 127A contains the list of relevant offences. It is only during an investigation into whether offences are being or have been committed, or when evidence of offences may be found, that the strengthened powers may be used. Proposed new section 127B broadens and strengthens Ofsted’s existing powers of entry. It sets out that Ofsted may enter any premises without a warrant for the purpose of an inspection. Proposed new section 127C provides a mechanism and sets out the process whereby Ofsted may apply to a justice of the peace for a warrant to enter premises, if it is necessary for the inspection to take place. Proposed new section 127D contains a list of strengthened investigation powers that may be used by Ofsted under a warrant issued by the justice of the peace. Proposed new section 127E provides even stronger powers and introduces a mechanism for a police constable to assist with entering and investigating premises using reasonable force if necessary. Finally, proposed new section 127F contains a list of new criminal offences being introduced to discourage those present during an inspection from preventing inspectors from fulfilling their duties in this area.
The measures strike the correct balance of ensuring that Ofsted can fulfil its statutory function of identifying criminal behaviour in connection with illegal, unregistered schools and so better protect children who may be attending unsafe settings, while providing oversight and scrutiny of the use of the most intrusive powers.
Clause 32 contains the criminal sentences available against those who are found to be running an unregistered school. Clause 36 will make it easier to identify such people and build a prosecution against them. Those who have conducted an unregistered school have demonstrated their unsuitability for future roles overseeing children’s education. Clause 32 provides the court with a power to prevent such people from holding that responsibility in future.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I have a couple of brief questions for the Minister.
Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty’s chief inspector, raised the question of additional resources for Ofsted because of the administrative burden of applying for warrants. I think he would like the powers to go further so that he would not have to apply for a warrant; I can see merit in needing to do so. Will the Minister confirm whether that additional resource will be provided to Ofsted?
We are considering two clauses in this group, but with regard to the whole section on unregistered provision, why has alternative provision been exempted from the powers? Again, Sir Martyn Oliver raised concerns that he does not have the powers to go in and inspect. Ofsted regularly finds unsafe provision. The Government should take action in this area, because some of our most vulnerable children who are excluded from schools are being put in unregistered alternative provision, where they are not necessarily provided with a broad education and attendance records are not always taken. Real questions and concerns have been raised about alternative provision.
Lizzi Collinge
I very much welcome the clauses. The strengthened powers of entry for Ofsted are important. As I have said, a lot of the problems in illegal schools are hidden, and they are often clustered geographically. In one local authority, we may never see this problem, but in some local authorities we see it repeatedly. Illegal settings have been the scene of widespread neglect and abuse—sometimes serious sexual abuse—and the powers of entry and for a court to prevent someone who has been convicted of running an illegal school from ever doing it again are very important. I urge the Committee to support the clauses.
Stephen Morgan
On the hon. Member for Twickenham’s points about Ofsted, the powers are available only to investigate the commission of specified relevant offences. Our experience is that the majority of inspections of unregistered schools are conducted under Ofsted’s existing powers process and on the basis of consent and co-operation. We anticipate that that will continue even after Ofsted has been granted the enhanced powers in the measure. The powers will not be available to Ofsted when inspecting private schools against the independent school standards. The hon. Member asked about resources for Ofsted; we are working closely with Ofsted on what the powers will mean, as Sir Martyn set out in the evidence session.
I will take away the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale and write to her on those matters.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33
Material changes
Neil O’Brien
I beg to move amendment 71, in clause 33, page 86, line 12, leave out lines 12 and 13.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 72, in clause 33, page 86, line 38, at end insert—
“(2D) The Secretary of State must issue guidance for relevant institutions on how subsection (2)(g) is to be understood.”
This amendment to allow independent schools not to have to notify the Secretary of State about change of use for buildings.
Clause stand part.
Clause 35 stand part.
Neil O’Brien
Section 102 of the 2008 Act requires the proprietor of an academy to make an application to the Secretary of State for the approval of a material change, as defined in section 101 of that Act. Clause 33 introduces a new definition of material change, which adds to the list of material changes in the 2008 Act.
Proposed new subsection (2)(g) will require the notification of the Secretary of State when there is
“a change of the buildings occupied by the institution and made available for student use”.
Some of the things in the proposed list are reasonable things for the school to have to apply to the Secretary of State for—if it is a complete change of the proprietor or a change to the age range, or if it stops being a special school or moves to a completely different location, that is fine—but the idea that schools should have to apply to the Secretary of State if there is a change of the buildings occupied by the institution is too vaguely defined.
If I build a new building or get some new bits stuck on the end of one of the wings of my school, do I have to apply to the Secretary of State? It is not clear from a natural reading of proposed new subsection (2)(g). We worry that this will end up with even minor changes requiring approval from the Secretary of State, which is not necessary. Given that a breach of the provision can lead to an academy being deregistered as an independent educational institution, or the imposition of restrictions on the academy, it seems excessive.
Amendment 71 seeks to delete paragraph (g), which would be the best outcome, while amendment 72 seeks at least for the Secretary of State to provide guidance. Will the Minister provide some reassurance that we are not going to end up with schools feeling like they have to apply to the Secretary of State every time they build a new building, move out of one wing or add an extension to another? It seems like a recipe for unnecessary bureaucracy, creating legal risks for academies that really should not be there.
Stephen Morgan
Amendment 71 would make changes to clause 33, which, among other things, requires private schools to seek prior approval from the Secretary of State before they occupy a building and make it available for student use. The amendment is intended to remove this new requirement. I appreciate that there may be concerns regarding new burdens on private schools, but let me explain why the change is necessary.
Currently, a change of buildings occupied for student use, either at or away from the registered address, is not a material change. This means that there is no prior assurance that new buildings are safe for student use. Unfortunately, we see examples in which private schools are inspected and children are found in buildings that are unsuitable for their education and, in some cases, unsafe.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister keeps talking about private schools, but am I right in thinking that this also applies to academies?
Stephen Morgan
I answered the shadow Minister’s point earlier. We are referring specifically to private schools in this legislation. This is an important and necessary change that I trust Members will support.
Amendment 72 would place on the Secretary of State a legal obligation to publish guidance regarding how a change of buildings for student use will work. I reassure Members that the Department already publishes non-statutory guidance for private schools in relation to applications to make a material change. I can confirm for Members that we intend to update the guidance ahead of introduction, to explain how provisions are intended to operate. For the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask the shadow Minister not to press his amendments to a vote.
On clause 33, if a private school wishes to amend its registered details, prior approval must be sought through a material change application. This process provides assurance that the school will still meet the independent school standards after the change is made. The current regime is too restrictive in the case of schools that admit students with special educational needs. An application for a material change is required to start or cease to admit one student. The Bill will redefine this material change to require an application to be submitted when a school wants to become, or ceases to be, a special school. It will also become a material change when a special school wants to change the type of special educational needs for which it caters. That will provide greater clarity and transparency to parents, commissioners and inspectorates.
In addition, as already discussed, there will be an entirely new category of material change. It will become a material change for a school to make a change to the buildings it occupies and makes available for students’ use for more than six months. The clause also allows for an appropriate degree of discretion in deciding whether a material change can be approved.
Munira Wilson
The National Association of Special Schools is concerned that schools seeking to make material changes sometimes face undue bureaucratic delays that mean some students end up losing out on suitable provision. Will the Minister assure the association that service level agreements will be put in place so that requests can be expedited?
Stephen Morgan
We are consulting and engaging widely on the Bill. The hon. Lady’s point is well made, and the Department will respond to it in due course.
Finally, clause 35 allows more proportionate action to be taken if a private school makes an unapproved material change. Currently, deregistration is the only option available, but forcing a school to close is often not a proportionate action to take. The new proposals will allow for relevant restrictions to be imposed on a private school by the Secretary of State when an unapproved material change is made. This will often be a more proportionate response, providing parents with confidence that suitable action can be taken to ensure that private schools are safe and suitable.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister keeps saying “private schools”, but we are talking about independent educational institutions. As I understand it, that includes academy schools, which are state schools.
The Minister also keeps talking about proportionality. Proposed new subsection (2B) states that, for the purposes of proposed new subsection (2)(g), the Secretary of State would have to be notified of any change to either “part of a building” or a “permanent outdoor structure”. If a school wanted to build a bike shed, it would potentially have to go to the Secretary of State. That does not seem proportionate at all. Perhaps the Minister can answer that point.
Stephen Morgan
I assure the shadow Minister that the provision does apply to academies, so I thank him for raising that point. Clauses 33 and 35 make important changes to our material change regime, so I hope the Committee agrees that they should stand part of the Bill.
Neil O’Brien
I wish to press the amendment to a vote. The Minister has confirmed that the provision applies to academy schools. It is not proportionate—to use the Minister’s term—to require the Secretary of State to be informed of a state school changing part of a building, or building a permanent outdoor structure. A school that put up a gazebo would have to go to the Secretary of State. That is not proportionate; it is an error. The rest of the clause is totally reasonable, but on this point it is unreasonable, so I want to press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Stephen Morgan
The clause removes an ambiguity in the Education and Skills Act 2008 as to when a private school or other independent educational institution may be permanently removed from the register. It amends section 100 of that Act, which currently allows for removal in certain circumstances but is silent as to whether an institution can be removed with the proprietor’s consent only.
The new power expressly allows the Secretary of State to remove a private school from the register immediately if a proprietor requests this or agrees it in writing. It will provide not only for administrative convenience but for public benefit, by allowing for the register to be quickly updated and kept accurate when the proprietor consents to removal in writing. I therefore hope the Committee agrees that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 35 to 37 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 38
Inspectors and inspectorates: reports and information sharing
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Morgan
Private schools are subject to inspection to ensure that the education they offer is safe and helps children to achieve and thrive. In addition, where a school provides accommodation, it is also subject to welfare inspections to ensure that it complies with its duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of its boarding children.
Around half of all private schools are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, with the remainder inspected by Ofsted. The clause is intended to strengthen the relationship between the two inspectorates to facilitate high-quality inspections and the identification of safeguarding risks. It will also ensure smooth working between Ofsted and any other person who may be appointed to inspect a registered setting under the Education and Skills Act 2008 or appointed to inspect accommodation provided to children by a school or college under the Children Act 1989.
There is a clear interest in inspectorates working closely together, willingly collaborating on best practice and ensuring that known safeguarding risks are shared and acted on. The clause makes two types of changes to support those goals. The first type of change amends existing statutory obligation on the chief inspector to report at least annually on the quality of other inspectorates. This obligation will be replaced with a more flexible obligation on the chief inspector to report as and when required, and on all aspects of an inspectorate performance or only some.
The second change confers on the chief inspector two new express powers to share information with the other inspectorates for the purpose of enabling or facilitating their inspections. This change removes any ambiguity about whether the chief inspector may share information directly with other inspectorates for those purposes. This information can already be shared via the Department. The change will allow a freer flow of information between the inspectorates and facilitate closer and joint working for the purpose of keeping children safe.
Although minor, the changes will support even closer working between the inspectorates, leading to better outcomes for children. For that reason, I hope the Committee agrees that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 38 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 39
Teacher misconduct
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Morgan
The Government take very seriously the protection of children and young people, particularly when they are receiving their education. We know that teachers are the single most important in-school factor in a child’s education. We also know that the overwhelming majority of those teachers are highly competent and never engage in any form of serious misconduct, but the reality is that some teachers do commit serious misconduct and it is vital that, when this occurs, it is dealt with fairly and transparently. That is why we have robust arrangements in place for regulating the teaching profession.
The overriding aims of the teacher misconduct regime are to protect children and young people, to help to maintain public confidence in the teaching profession and to uphold proper standards of conduct. This reflects the expectations placed on teachers throughout their career, both inside and outside school, as set out in the published teacher standards.
The current teacher misconduct regime was established in 2012. Since then, we have made a number of changes to the processes and procedures to take account of relevant case law and High Court judgments, including changes to the publicly available teacher misconduct advice, which sets out the factors to be considered by professional conduct panels when dealing with cases of teacher misconduct. We have also amended the funding agreements of further education colleges, special post-16 institutions and independent training providers, so that, like schools and sixth-form colleges, they do not employ prohibited teachers.
There is, however, more that we need to do to ensure that children and young people are protected, and the only way we can do this is by making the amendments proposed in the clause. The clause allows the Secretary of State to consider whether it is appropriate to investigate serious misconduct that occurred when the person was not employed in teaching work, but we will ensure that cases are taken forward only when there is a clear rationale for doing so and when a range of factors, including public interest, the seriousness of the misconduct and any mitigation presented by the individual, have been considered. The clause will also extend the teacher misconduct regime beyond schools and sixth-form colleges to cover further education colleges, special post-16 institutions, independent training providers, online education providers and independent educational institutions. This will ensure that children under the age of 19 are protected when accessing their education.
Finally, the clause enables the Secretary of State to consider referrals of serious misconduct irrespective of where they come from. Existing legislation does not allow the Teaching Regulation Agency to consider referrals from departmental officials when serious misconduct comes to their attention during the performance of their day-to-day duties. The clause ensures that cases may be referred to the Teaching Regulation Agency promptly, without the need to wait for a third party to make a referral or where it is unclear whether someone else has made or will make the referral. We are also clear that this should be a fair and transparent process, and we will provide training for staff to help them to understand more about the types of circumstances in which they should consider making a referral. Collectively, and most importantly, the clause will ensure the protection and safeguarding of more children and young people. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
First, I will ask the Minister a bit about process. The questions we ask in Parliament are often rhetorical; we do not expect answers to them from Ministers, and nor do we get them, but this is the Committee stage of a Bill’s passage, known as line-by-line scrutiny, where quite often he questions we put are questions about facts or the intent of the legislation. I have asked a number of questions at different points in this Committee stage that have not been answered, but nor has the Minister necessarily been saying, “I will write to the hon. Member in response.” Does he intend to do that, or, if any questions have been left hanging, are we required to put down a written parliamentary question to which the Minister will respond?
For the avoidance of doubt, what I am about to say is not in the category of question that requires a factual response or note of intent. The misconduct regime covered in the clause is clearly exceptionally important for the protection of children, public confidence and maintaining the very highest reputation of the profession. I welcome what is new in the clause, because it is right and proportionate that we should be able to take action regardless of when the incident took place and whether the individual was a teacher in the profession at that time. I also welcome online education and independent educational settings being brought into scope, as well as the ability to investigate a suspicion or an incident regardless of how it came to light.
I want to ask the Minister about something related to the regulatory regime. It would not technically require primary legislation, but there are quite a lot of things in the Bill that do not require primary legislation to be effected. I am referring to the matter of vexatious complaints. In the world we live in, particularly with the influence and prevalence of social media, we have heard teachers express the feeling that sometimes, in a small minority of cases, complaints may be made against a teacher neither for the right reasons, nor because of a genuine safeguarding concern. Of course there should not be barriers blocking people from any background raising concerns; the ability to do so should be available to everybody. Equally, however, there is a concern sometimes that when seeking to remove barriers, we risk going too far the other way.
We must ensure that there is a process to go through so that all genuine concerns and complaints do come through, but that we do not end up with an excessive volume of vexatious complaints. These are, I am afraid, sometimes fuelled by social media.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Let me state on the record that I have not met a single teacher who has not received some form of vexatious complaint at one point in their career. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will speak to this issue when he responds.
The Bill expands the scope for potential dismissal. Dismissal processes are incredibly cumbersome and costly for schools, so will the Minister speak to what provision he will make for schools to be reimbursed for what they are going through? The Bill also expands the capacity to look back into the previous career of someone who has started up a school. Would bankruptcy, for instance, prevent someone from being considered worthy of running a school? Will the Minister therefore also speak to whether a perfectly reasonable business experience might cause the Secretary of State to intervene?
Stephen Morgan
I appreciate the questions and contributions from the Opposition on this important clause. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire is right to ensure that he gets responses to all the questions that he raises, and I know from my own postbag that he does not shy from submitting written parliamentary questions, so I am sure he will find that route or any other appropriate route. He has asked a number of detailed questions and I am very keen that we are scrutinised in the way that we are taking this Bill forward, so if there is anything we have not responded to, obviously I shall be delighted to do so.
Damian Hinds
To give a few examples, I have asked about the distinction between elective home education and education otherwise than at school, what happens with optional uniform items, and what happens in schools that already have a breakfast club that lasts longer than 30 minutes. None of these were meant to be difficult or rhetorical questions, designed to catch the Minister out; they are genuine questions, and I do not think any were answered on the floor of the Committee. My question is, therefore, will Ministers write in general, or do we need to put down further questions if we want to get answers?
Stephen Morgan
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention —his questions are on the public record, and we will do our best to respond to each of the points. My colleague may also wish to respond.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
I rise to seek clarity on how the Committee is conducting itself. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleague, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, have said a number of times that they realise that they are asking a large number of questions and do not expect answers to all of them—
Catherine McKinnell
Excuse me. I am speaking. We would be more than happy to answer all of the questions that are being asked, but it may be helpful if the right hon. Gentleman and his colleague were more clear about what questions that do require specific answers have not been answered while we are discussing the specific clause. We would be more than happy to furnish them with responses.
The Chair
Order. The general practice is that people put questions, and the Minister attempts to reply to every question. If an Opposition member feels that the Minister has not replied to the question, they can object—you can speak as often as you like—or indeed, you can request that the Minister writes to you, and the Minister can agree to that or not. But the whole purpose of the Committee is for people to ask questions and for Ministers to do their level best, with the help of their excellent officials, to answer every question—which these excellent Ministers will of course do.
Stephen Morgan
That is very kind, Sir Edward. I absolutely agree with you.
The right hon. Member for East Hampshire made a number of points with regard to the Teaching Regulation Agency. He will know from his time as Education Secretary that the TRA does not deal with complaints; it considers only allegations of the most serious misconduct. Any complaint that has been incorrectly referred to the agency will now undergo an initial triage process, which ought to determine whether a referral should be progressed by the Teaching Regulation Agency or whether it is more appropriate to redirect the complainant to another service.
Patrick Spencer
Does the Minister expect the number of misconduct hearings and cases brought where teachers are subject to potential dismissal to increase considerably? I am concerned that the consequences of the Bill will be huge for many schools and that they will be burdened with a huge cost. Does he expect the numbers to go up?
Stephen Morgan
We will consider these matters extremely closely as we progress the Bill further. I will take that point away to officials. With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s question about bankruptcy, the Teaching Regulation Agency considers only cases involving allegations of the most serious misconduct. Cases of misconduct that are not serious enough to warrant a lifetime prohibition from teaching and all cases of incompetence are more appropriately dealt with by employers at the local level. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 39 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 40
School teachers’ qualifications and induction
Neil O'Brien
I beg to move amendment 73, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) The requirement in subsection (1)(a) only applies after a person has been carrying out such work in a school for five years.’”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 74, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) Where a person was carrying out such work at the time of the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2025, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply.’”
Amendment 75, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) Where a person is carrying out such work for the purposes of teaching a shortage subject, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply.
(1B) For the purposes of this section, “shortage subject” means any subject in relation to which the Department for Education’s recruitment targets for initial teacher training have been missed in the most recent year for which such statistics exist.’”
Amendment 76, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) Where a person is carrying out such work in an academy school, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply where the condition in subsection (1B) is met.
(1B) The condition is that—
(a) the individual is employed by the proprietor of an academy;
(b) the proprietor of the academy is satisfied that the individual has sufficient expertise to enable them to undertake such work appropriately; and
(c) the proprietor will provide the individual with appropriate training, support and guidance to ensure that they are able to undertake such work appropriately.’”
This amendment allows academies to maintain discretion about whether to employ teachers without QTS if they are subject matter experts and have received training from the academy.
Amendment 94, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (5) insert—
‘(5A) Regulations made by the Secretary of State under this section must have regard to—
(a) the availability of qualified teachers in each school subject, and
(b) the necessity or desirability of specific sectoral expertise for teachers in each school subject’”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to take account of the availability of qualified teachers in each subject, and the desirability of specific sectoral expertise when making regulations under Clause 40.
Clause stand part.
Neil O'Brien
Sir Martyn Oliver gave us a good example of how the current freedoms are used on our first day of evidence. He said:
“In the past, I have brought in professional sportspeople to teach alongside PE teachers, and they have run sessions. Because I was in Wakefield, it was rugby league: I had rugby league professionals working with about a quarter of the schools in Wakefield at one point.” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 49, Q108.]
When he said that, I thought about when I was being taught rugby league not far away in Huddersfield, and how much we would have loved it if the professionals had come from Fartown to teach us. We were never told what the rules of rugby league were, nor was it revealed to us that there was a different type of rugby. It would have been amazing to have the professionals with us. That is just one example of how schools use non-qualified teacher status teachers in a brilliant way to bring in people who would otherwise never be in state schools.
Former headteacher David Thomas told us on the same day:
“I have concerns about limiting the number of people with unqualified teacher status who are not working towards qualified teacher status.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 92, Q199.]
He also said:
“I have worked with some fantastic people—generally late-career people in shortage subjects who want to go and give back in the last five to 10 years of their career—who would not go through some of the bureaucracy associated with getting qualified teacher status but are absolutely fantastic and have brought wonderful things to a school and to a sector. I have seen them change children’s lives.”––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 14 January 2025; c. 92, Q200.]
Rebecca Leek from the Suffolk Primary Headteachers Association gave another good example, telling us:
“I had to step in as an interim headteacher in Ipswich just prior to covid. I did not have an early years lead… There was someone who was not a qualified teacher, but who had been running an outstanding nursery… I took her on, and although she was not qualified, she was really excellent. I was able to do that because it was an academy school, and it was not an issue. In a maintained school, there is a specific need for a qualified teacher to teach in early years, so I would not have been able to take her on.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 83, Q174.]
Likewise, when I asked Julie McCulloch from the Association of School and College Leaders whether it was better to have a non-QTS teacher than no teacher, she noted that
“sometimes that is the case, particularly when we are looking at vocational subjects at the top end of secondary school and into colleges.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 22, Q44.]
When the Secretary of State was asked about this on “The News Agents” last night, she made exactly the same point. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment for the Bill says that
“some schools may struggle to find the teachers that they need”
as a result of the measure. It adds:
“From September 2026, we estimate this could affect around 700-1,250 potential entrants to the teaching profession per annum…This represents around 1-2% of all entrants to the teaching workforce in…2022.”
The only phrase I take issue with in that is “to the teaching profession”, because it is not the teaching profession as a whole but state schools that those potentially brilliant teachers will be locked out of. Private schools will not have the same burden put on them.
In attempting to construct an argument for that restriction, the impact assessment also says:
“Evidence suggests that being taught by a high-quality teacher can add almost half a GCSE grade per subject to a given pupil’s results”.
Obviously, we all know that high-quality teachers are key in education, but amazingly, the Department for Education does not go on to produce a single shred of evidence—it does not even attempt to give a tiny particle of evidence—that teachers without QTS are of low quality. When Ministers have been pressed on that, they do not demur; a policy is being adopted without any evidence at all.
There is also no estimate of what impact the creation of a new barrier to entry might have, particularly in the sorts of subject area that non-QTS teachers are employed in, which are often those that are more difficult to recruit for. Even the Government sort of acknowledge that the measure is not needed, as we find out by reading a footnote at the bottom of page 24 of the impact assessment, which was published halfway through the Bill Committee process. It is like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; the plans are available if we go to a locked toilet in an abandoned room on the bottom floor of a building that is open twice a year. The footnote reveals that:
“Unqualified teachers will not require QTS to work in further education, 14–19 and 16-19 academies, university technical colleges, studio schools and non-maintained school early years settings.”
My first question to the Minister is, if it is so desperately important to ban non-QTS teachers from our schools that we have to make primary legislation to do it, why are all those other types of school not included? How many non-QTS teachers are in those settings and will therefore be exempt?
Last month, data came out showing that the Government had recruited only 62% of their target number of students into initial teacher training for secondary schools, with particularly dramatic shortfalls in subjects such as physics, where only 30% of the target number had been recruited, business studies, design and technology, music, computing and chemistry. The National Education Union rightly talks about a
“global teacher recruitment and retention crisis”.
Most school systems across the world are battling to recruit teachers; if anyone googles “teacher shortage Ireland” or “teacher shortage Australia”—or “teacher shortage” pretty much anywhere—they will see what I mean.
Between 2011 and 2022, the last Government added 29,454 extra teachers to schools in England and grew the total school workforce by 96,555, or 11%. yet we still have a shortage of teachers in key subjects. About 3% of teachers are non-QTS, so this might seem like an odd time to make things harder for schools to recruit good teachers, especially in the specialist subjects where they tend to be used. To that end, our amendments seek to at least limit those counterproductive new restrictions, which have received a wide variety of criticisms from the sector. Amendment 73 proposes in a five-year grace period, because not requiring QTS can get teachers through the door into state education.
What message does the Government measure send to people who are mid-career, who might want to become teachers and give back but who cannot actually afford to do a PGCE or an apprenticeship? The Government’s plan will grandfather non-QTS teachers, but if they move school, they will have to get QTS. Amendment 74 would allow mobility and fix that. Amendment 75 would retain the freedom at least for shortage subjects; amendment 94, in the name of the hon. Member for Twickenham, also looks at that issue. Amendment 76 would allow academies to maintain discretion about whether to employ teachers without QTS if they are subject matter experts and have received training from the academy in question.
The bottom line is: where is the evidence—any evidence—that this is a problem in our education system, never mind one of the most important problems that we need to make primary legislation to resolve? Where is the evidence that DFE Ministers know better who to employ than school leaders themselves? They have not produced a single shred of evidence in the impact assessment.
I am afraid that this measure is another example of Ministers believing that they know best, but it will make recruitment challenges harder, create a barrier to entry into state schools, and prevent some great sports people, IT people and other people who want to give back from doing so. The unions may want this—they have for years—but it remains a mistake.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
The hon. Member has twice referred to professional sportspeople, and the quote he read out at the beginning of his speech mentioned their contributing “alongside” teachers. Does he acknowledge that there is no prohibition on professional sportspeople or other experienced, inspiring professionals contributing alongside teachers? The issue is when they do so without that input. I kindly invite the hon. Member to correct that point.
Neil O'Brien
The hon. Lady has completely missed the point. This clause means that academy schools will no longer be able to employ people without QTS to do exactly the kind of inspiring things that Sir Martyn, at the start of our first evidence session, said he had used them so brilliantly to do.
Catherine Atkinson
The quote was “alongside” teachers. Having people there alongside teachers is not prohibited. I am sure that the Minister will clarify that matter if I am mistaken.
Neil O'Brien
To be clear, it will be illegal to employ them if they do not have QTS. People can turn up, but they cannot be employed. I do not know whether the hon. Lady is deliberately trying to muddy the water, or whether she has just missed the point. I notice that the Minister has not chosen to intervene. To be clear, the clause will stop Sir Martyn and people like him doing exactly what he said he had found it useful to do: employing non-QTS teachers, alongside teachers, to come and give back to their community.
During the course of my remarks, nobody has offered me a single shred of evidence that non-QTS teachers are bad teachers, are somehow a big problem in our schools, or are one of the top problems that we need to address. The clause will make things harder for schools, and it will mean that fewer pupils get a good lesson. Our amendments aim to stop this piece of vandalism, which is something that the unions wanted, that Ministers have given them, and that will be bad for our schools and our children.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston talked about bottom lines and evidence. At the moment, the attainment gap between those who achieve and those who do not is widening across our country. For a number of years, and since the previous Government—the right hon. Member for East Hampshire was in fact—
Damian Hinds
Does the hon. Lady know what the attainment gap was at key stage 2 and key stage 4 in 2010, and how it compares with right now?
Amanda Martin
The right hon. Member was a Secretary of State, and under his leadership the teachers’ recruitment crisis was worse than it had ever been. Recruitment targets for core subjects such as maths, physics and modern languages were missed, and retention rates were poor. That was when we were allowing people with qualified teachers status and without it. It is not a bottom line for what we want our children to have: it should be a right for every single child, wherever they are in the country, to be taught by a qualified teacher, or somebody on the route to qualified teacher status. Just because we had not achieved it under the last Government, that does not mean we should not have ambition for our children to achieve it under this Government.
Munira Wilson
I note your comment about speaking specifically to the clauses and amendments under consideration, Sir Edward; I wanted to start with some comments that relate both to this group and to several clauses that follow, so that I do not try the Committee’s patience by repeating myself.
My comments relate in general to the various academy freedoms with which these clauses are concerned. I want to take a step back and ask this question: where have these proposals come from? The entire sector and indeed the Children’s Commissioner seem to have been blindsided. When I speak to teachers and school leaders, at the top of their priority list is sorting out SEND, the recruitment and retention crisis, children missing from school and children’s mental health. Parents tell me that they just want their schools funded properly so that they are not being asked to buy glue sticks and tissue boxes.
Not once have I heard a maintained or academy school leader or parent say to me that the biggest problem in our schools that we need to sort out is the academy freedoms. This was reflected in the oral evidence that we heard. To quote Sir Dan Moynihan,
“It is not clear what problem this is solving. I have seen no evidence to suggest that academy freedoms are creating an issue anywhere. Why are we doing this?” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 75, Q160.]
I ask Ministers that very question. What is the problem that the Government were seeking to fix when they drew up this clause, and several subsequent clauses, in relation to the academy freedoms they are trying to diminish?
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I rise to support clause 40 and to argue that the amendments under discussion are unnecessary. I very much welcome this measure. It underpins the ambition that the Government have to ensure that every child gets the best quality of education. Although this will not necessarily be a shared view, the top quality of education comes not through obsessing about structures, but about getting the right people in place. This is simply a common-sense proposal to ensure that, across the board, no matter the structure of the school, parents can be reassured, and as children set foot in that school they can be reassured, that they are getting the best quality education.
Darren Paffey
I will make some progress and then will be happy to give way.
I ask Opposition Members to reflect on the logical fallacy of applying this laissez-faire approach in a way that they probably would not do—or at least I hope they would not do—for other professions. I think it is uncontroversial to ask for assurance that, when I take my car in for repair, I am not just giving it over to someone who is enthusiastic about car repairs, but is actually qualified. The stakes of that going wrong are high; someone who does not know how to fix brakes will cause significant risk. When I visit the GP, I want reassurance that I have not just got someone who has done health tech, had a great 20-year-long career in that, and has decided to swap over and offer their expertise there. I want someone who is absolutely qualified in that practice.
I reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North said: no one doubts the quality of subject experts. No one doubts that those with significant top-quality experience can come in and be absolutely inspirational, but by saying that that is enough, Opposition Members suggest that qualified teacher status adds no value to that subject expertise. What about the skills in effective student development, pedagogy, collaboration, class management, assessment, feedback and differentiation? Those are not things that come naturally with subject expertise.
Several hon. Members rose—
Patrick Spencer
If the hon. Member takes a moment later today to listen to the Secretary of State’s interview on “The News Agents” podcast, Emily Maitlis said, “You can have a terrible teacher with qualified status, but a fantastic teacher who is not qualified…can’t you?” The Secretary of State’s response was, “Absolutely”. Does the hon. Member agree with her?
Darren Paffey
What I agree is, that if someone is not performing up to scratch, the response should not be to remove the qualification for everyone else, but to deal with that individual teacher and drive up standards within the school. That is once again, completely common sense.
Catherine Atkinson
Does my hon. Friend agree that we train our teachers for a reason? Would he agree that parents expect their children to be taught by qualified teachers for a reason? Would he agree that some of the dismissive attitudes that we have heard from Opposition Members are insulting to the professionalism of our qualified teachers?
Darren Paffey
I fully agree that it is deeply concerning that qualified teacher status is so unimportant to them. However, it is unsurprising that the profession is in the state it is and feeling utterly undervalued after the last 14 years. I simply do not understand why qualified teacher status in all schools is such a low priority for some.
The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston mentioned that is the prerogative of good headteachers to have that freedom. Would he therefore logically suggest that it is the freedom of every hospital director to decide whether someone is suitably qualified to carry out surgery, or would they ask for an independent agreed common framework of training and qualification for surgeons? I suspect, and hope, it would be that. The response, as I have said, to the recruitment and the shortage issue is not to lower our ambitions.
I think back to the evidence session in which we heard from Sir Martyn Oliver—His Majesty’s chief inspector at Ofsted—who actually said that appointing a non-qualified teacher to role was a “deficit decision”. Those were his words, not mine. He said that it would not be his first choice, no matter how well it worked, and that non-QTS staff should supplement fully qualified staff, not replace them. I ask the Opposition to reflect on that.
This proportionate, reassuring measure is restoring common sense. It is once again restoring the value of teaching as a profession, alongside the other measures that have been taken on teacher pay, teacher prestige and investment in schools, although those were certainly not taken in recent years.
Damian Hinds
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen. I enjoyed his speech and I think he made several very good points, a number of which the Opposition would agree with. We certainly agree with the importance of the foundation of qualified teacher status, and a lot of work rightly went into reforming the core content and framework of initial teacher training, as well as the early career framework. Those are incredibly important foundations for a successful career in teaching.
With the present Government’s plan to recruit just 6,500 teachers over the next five years, which is a material slow-down compared with the Parliament just ended, it should be more straightforward to hit those recruitment targets, but I do not think this discussion is really about the numbers that we can recruit into the teaching profession. It is about getting the right people, which the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen also said. It is not about obsessing over having the structures but getting the right people, and this is about getting the right people in front of children in school settings. By the way, presuming we are not just talking about academics, that also applies to sport, music and art.
Patrick Spencer
Can my right hon. Friend answer me this question? Which is better, an English graduate, with QTS, teaching maths in a primary or secondary school, or a maths graduate, without QTS, teaching maths in a primary or secondary school?
Damian Hinds
I think this is where the whole House comes together. The best of all worlds is to have someone who is both a subject specialist, with their own excellent academic record, and QTS, and who is also a really inspirational practitioner. Of course, those three things come together on many occasions, but sometimes there are choices that have to be made.
Darren Paffey
Very briefly, does the right hon. Gentleman not agree therefore that the right people we are talking about are not just those who quite rightly often have a stellar career in another area of subject expertise? Would they not be right for children and for schools if they wanted not only to bring that expertise but to do everything they can to be best prepared to direct the curriculum, outcome and chances of those children by being qualified?
Damian Hinds
Of course, and for many people that is the right thing to do. There are mid-career and later-career programmes for coming into teaching and I want people to do those more and more. Sometimes, however, people come from abroad, and it could be from a country with which we do not necessarily have mutual recognition, or they might come from the independent sector, so they might have taught for many years and be an outstanding practitioner. The hon. Gentleman also said if he went to the mechanic, he would not want someone who is just fascinated by engines, and I understand that entirely. However, if someone wanted to learn football, and they had the opportunity to learn from a professional footballer, although not as the only PE teacher—
Damian Hinds
Look at this! How do I choose? I will go to the hon. Member for Portsmouth North.
Amanda Martin
And a cracking football team, I will add. Absolutely, those sportsmen and sportswomen can inspire, but actually many of those at the elite of their game would not understand the difficulties for those children who may not be as good at that sport, so therefore it is about their learning of pedagogy and differentiation. They could absolutely enhance learning, but actually becoming a teacher would need a qualified teacher status. If someone is really committed and wants to give something back, they can spend a year of their time on a PGCE to get that on-the-job training. We should not be racing to the bottom with our kids.
Damian Hinds
I am very happy to let that comment sit there. Of course, the hon. Lady is right: there are many things that come from a PGCE, but being a top-five footballer may not be one of them. For that kid, having in their school, with other PE teachers, someone with personal experience playing at a high or high-ish level might really bring something. That does not negate the hon. Lady’s point, but I think it stands on its own.
Ellie Chowns
As the parent of a former footballer, I know that the Football Association does not let people coach football, even Saturday league, without being a qualified coach, so the right hon. Member’s analogy falls down.
Ellie Chowns
No, I am making my point, which is that it is entirely reasonable to require that people who are in an educational role are either qualified to take that role or undergoing the process of qualification. If somebody wants to be a teacher and wants to contribute to educating our young people, I see no reason why they would not want to make sure that they have the skills to do that. [Interruption.] I let the right hon. Gentleman finish his sentences.
Damian Hinds
I think the hon. Lady makes my point for me: it is possible to train children to play football without a PGCE.
Ellie Chowns
When coaching young people playing football at Saturday clubs, the Football Association is the relevant regulatory body. When teaching in a school, the relevant regulatory body is that which gives qualified teacher status.
Damian Hinds
Yes, but that does not change the fact that individuals, perhaps including the hon. Lady’s son—I do not know her son; I do not know his circumstances or his school career—may be perfectly capable of helping kids learn how to play football without having a PGCE, and it happens—
Damian Hinds
Colleagues and friends, forgive me; it happens all the time in clubs and in schools. It happens in after-school football clubs and before-school football clubs. If the club starts five minutes after half-past 3 or finishes five minutes before half-past 3, I am not quite sure I understand how that individual’s ability to help kids to learn how to play football is materially affected.
Damian Hinds
I did not realise we were going to spend today talking about football.
Catherine McKinnell
I think it might be helpful to clarify—although I am surprised it needs to be clarified for a former Secretary of State for Education—that the current exemptions for qualified teacher status, which he will be well aware of, already apply to maintained schools and they will continue to apply as part of the extension of the same requirements to the academy system. He will be well aware of the exemptions, and he will be well aware that what he is saying is not correct.
Damian Hinds
No, no, no; he may be well aware of many things, but he is certainly not well aware that what he is saying is not correct. He is totally aware that what he just said is correct: that people who do not have a PGCE or QTS may still form a valuable and useful part of the staff at a school to help kids to learn in a variety of disciplines, including non-academic ones such as sport and art.
Damian Hinds
I am starting to attract a little bit too much attention from Sir Edward, who I think may be becoming impatient with me for the length of my speech, but I will give way one last time.
Lizzi Collinge
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his patience with our multiple interventions. However, I believe they are very necessary. Does he agree that the experiences of hundreds of thousands of parents during covid lockdowns, when schools were closed, show very clearly that having professional knowledge and experience in the workplace is no substitution for being a teacher? As someone who home-schooled a two-year-old and a six-year-old, trust me when I say that that experience gave me even more respect for the qualified teachers of this world. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is a fundamental difference between subject-matter expertise and the ability to teach?
Damian Hinds
I agree with the hon. Lady 100%, just as I agreed with what the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen said entirely. Of course, there is not just a material difference between not being a qualified teacher and being a qualified teacher. It is like night and day, and what teachers learn about pedagogy and the experience they get during that time cannot be replicated on an online course or by reading books. She is right, too, that during covid millions of people up and down the country quite rightly developed, renewed or enhanced their respect for the teaching profession and for what teaching is capable of doing.
Damian Hinds
I did say, “One last time,” but I cannot refuse my hon. Friend.
Neil O’Brien
I thank my right hon. Friend, and I completely agree with him about the respect due to teachers. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North mentioned a “race to the bottom”, yet that is not what the Secretary of State is saying, and there is no evidence in any of what the Government are doing that there is a problem with the quality of non-QTS teachers. Indeed, we heard from Rebecca Leek at the start of our proceedings that it was a race to the top. She was getting one of the best people—she happened to be running a nursery and had not gone into teaching; but she knew all about the early years and was one of the best people one could possibly get, even though she was non-QTS. Another hon. Member on this Committee has said that there was “no reason” not to get QTS, but in many cases, there are reasons. Perhaps someone is at the very end of their career and is not going to go through all the bureaucracy to do that, in order to do the last two years of—[Interruption.] It was said—
The Chair
Order. Committee Members may speak as often as they like, so interventions need to be very short.
Neil O’Brien
To finish the point, sometimes there are reasons. Sometimes people want to give back; but by making it harder for them to go to state schools, it is state schools that will miss out—not independent schools or others.
Damian Hinds
The points that the hon. Members for Southampton Itchen and for Morecambe and Lunesdale made lead me to—you will be pleased to know, Sir Edward—the concluding section of my remarks, which is to pose the same question that all Opposition Members have posed: why? What is driving this? As with so many other aspects of the Bill—we heard about in the evidence sessions on day one—what is the problem we are trying to solve?
So I did a little research. I wondered—after 14 dark years of Conservatives in government, people being able to recruit teachers willy-nilly, a race to the bottom, blah, blah, blah—how huge the proportion had become of the teaching workforce without qualified status, which is something that Government Members, I and all of us know has such huge value, but which can also be complemented by people with other types of expertise and experience, who may help to augment those brilliant teachers with their qualified teacher status. What do you suppose the proportion was, Sir Edward?
Damian Hinds
I am at liberty to reveal that, after those 14 years, the proportion of the teaching workforce without qualified teacher status was 3.1%. [Interruption.] Then I thought—like the hon. Member for Lewisham North, the Whip—that it might have been from a low base and that there must have been huge growth in those 14 years. So I looked back to see what the proportion was in 2010. Last year, it was 3.1%. Can you guess what it was in 2010, Sir Edward?
Damian Hinds
It was 3.2%—so the proportion in fact shrank slightly over those 14 years. I therefore wonder what verdict Government Members, in their bid to avoid a race to the bottom, give on the Labour Government from 1997 to 2010, which left us with 3.2% of the teaching workforce not being qualified.
Catherine McKinnell
Does the right hon. Member have a breakdown of how many of that percentage are teachers in training?
Damian Hinds
I do—I am so glad the hon. Lady asked that, because I asked the same question that she rightly did. Presumably, most of the 3.2% were on a journey towards qualified teacher status. I have the spreadsheet on front of me: the proportion of full-time equivalent teachers without qualified teacher status who were not on a QTS route in 2010-11 was 85.6%.
Damian Hinds
I thought I was doing the questions. My question is: what is the thing that has changed and got worse over this period, which the Government think they are going to address? What is driving the inclusion of these provisions in primary legislation? What problem are Ministers trying to solve?
Amanda Martin
I would like to understand whether the classes that are covered by teaching assistants and cover supervisors are included in the ratio of qualified or unqualified teachers, because things happen on a daily basis in our classrooms, and teachers are not always registered as the registered teacher—they might be covering a class or they might be a teaching assistant who has been asked to step up. I was asked why, and I was not able to answer at the beginning, but the Government still believe that the answer to the “Why?” question is that we need to ensure that all our children are taught by qualified teachers to get the best education. During the early 2010s, the gap across all school stages began to gradually close, but the attainment gap has since widened, with 10 years of progress wiped out—that is from a February 2024 Sutton Trust report.
Neil O’Brien
The hon. Lady says that all of our pupils deserve a QTS teacher, so why are the Government exempting those in further education, 14 to 19 and 16 to 19, academies, university technical colleges, studio schools, non-maintained schools and early years settings? If it is so desperately important, why are they exempting the settings that have more non-QTS teachers? The hon. Lady thinks that is a mistake, presumably.
Amanda Martin
No, I had finished—I do not know why the hon. Member intervened.
Patrick Spencer
I will not bore everyone with another rendition of the credit of non-QTS teachers. I will just say that I spent Friday at Debenham high school. When I spoke to the headteacher, he sighed in frustration at suddenly having to look down the barrel and find qualified status for his language teachers. He has a Spanish teacher who works at the high school who he will now to need to train. I know we are having an argument about immigration policy in this country, but trying to stop foreign teachers coming to this country and teaching in schools in Suffolk is not how the problem will be solved.
My point is about costs. A Policy Exchange report suggested that getting all non-QTS teachers trained was going to cost in excess of £120 million—six times the budget that the Government have allocated to solving stuck schools, and six times the budget we are going to spend on getting teachers to jump over regulatory barriers. So can the Minister confirm the estimated cost of getting teachers qualified status and whether the Department will cover that cost, or will the Government just end up burdening schools with the cost of getting over this regulatory hurdle?
David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
I was not going to speak in this debate, but I have sat here in increasing bafflement—a bit like the debate we had in a previous sitting on branded school uniform items. I think most ordinary families watching or listening to this debate will share my confusion. We have heard time and again from Opposition Members about whether the measure is needed. I have QTS—I was a teacher in a previous life 10 years ago—but I am speaking as a parent. I have one child at a maintained primary school, and my eldest child is at an academy secondary school. I do not care what kind of school they go to, as long as it is a good school and they get a good education with good outcomes. For me, this is about expectations and high standards. As a parent, I am entitled to expect that both my children are taught by qualified teachers.
Patrick Spencer
The hon. Gentleman has just made two completely different statements. He said, “I will send my children to a school that will deliver an outstanding education that is right for them,” while simultaneously saying, “Ah, but this is about making sure that teachers have qualified status, and my expectation that they have qualified status, whether my children get a good education or not.” Failing schools that academise are three times more likely to improve an Ofsted rating than—
Patrick Spencer
I did not hear that, but I am sure it was one of the hon. Gentleman’s funnier comments.
Patrick Spencer
The hon. Gentleman just made two different statements, so can he clarify what he means?
David Baines
I do not believe they are contradictory, because expecting an outstanding education involves expecting teachers to be qualified. The hon. Member’s colleagues have said that, and witnesses in oral sessions said the same. Of course qualified teachers are the ideal. I do not believe it is contradictory to say that I expect teachers to be qualified and that I want my children to have an outstanding education—those things go hand in hand.
Neil O’Brien
If the hon. Gentleman were a parent at an FE college, would he have the same expectation, and does he understand why all these other schools are exempt?
David Baines
In an ideal situation, of course I want whoever is teaching my children to be qualified, and I do not think that is an unfair expectation.
Going back to a point that has been made, we have heard that that is already the situation in maintained schools. To bring what may be the conclusion of the debate back to its start by mentioning the rugby league—which I am very happy to talk about for many hours, if anyone will indulge me—in my constituency of St Helens North, our rugby league club does outstanding work across the community including in both maintained and academy schools, with children across the borough getting access to high-quality sports coaching. That will not change. At maintained schools across the country, pupils have access to specialist adults coming in and teaching them all sorts of things in the presence of qualified teachers as well. That will not change. This is about high expectations. Like the debate we had about branded items, most parents and families listening to this will be absolutely baffled at the Opposition and at how much time we are spending talking about something that, to most parents, should be a standard expectation —that the people teaching their children are qualified.
Catherine McKinnell
Thank you, Sir Edward. I rise to speak to amendments in the names of the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and the hon. Member for Twickenham, and to clause 40 stand part.
Turning first to amendment 73, I do appreciate that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has some concerns about clause 40. However, this amendment could deny new teachers high-quality training and induction, which is based on the evidence of what makes good teaching during the critical early years of their careers. Moreover, the amendment would apply to schools maintained by local authorities and special schools, which are already required to employ teachers who have or are working towards QTS—a system, I might add, that is working quite effectively. As well as ensuring subject knowledge, QTS ensures that teachers understand how children learn, can adapt their teaching to the needs of children in their class—particularly and including those with special educational needs—and can develop effective behaviour management techniques. It is remarkable that we are having to justify the importance of teacher training.
Catherine McKinnell
It has been referred to as a bureaucratic hurdle a number of times during this debate, which I think those in the teaching profession will find remarkable, as well as parents, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North said.
Amendment 73 could also lead to some unqualified teachers either leaving the profession or moving to another school before the five-year deadline that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston suggests, rather than gaining the training and support to which all teachers should be entitled. That would risk having a negative impact on both the quality of teaching and the retention of teachers. We recognise that schools will still need some flexibility, so we are updating regulations to clarify that schools will still be able to recruit an unqualified teacher. Those teachers will have three terms to secure a place on an appropriate route to qualified teacher status, which will ensure that schools’ recruitment processes for teachers are not held up in any way.
Damian Hinds
Just to ask a factual question that I should know the answer to, are those regulations published?
Catherine McKinnell
Those are the regulations that are already in place for the maintained sector.
Catherine McKinnell
They will be updated to apply to the academies sector.
Turning to amendment 74, I appreciate the intention of the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to ensure that the clause does not impact the working arrangements of unqualified teachers already working in academies. We agree that the requirement should not impact existing employment arrangements in academies, but we need to do that in a way that does not inadvertently affect the way that legislation already applies to local authority maintained schools and special schools.
We will, subject to the passage of the Bill, provide an exemption in regulations for any teacher who commences their employment with an academy school or trust prior to September 2026. Those teachers who move to another employer after that date will need to obtain qualified teacher status. We will set out an exemption in regulations for teachers who are employed to teach in a primary or secondary academy setting. That will mean that we are able to provide schools with reasonable time to prepare for any necessary changes to their recruitment procedures following changes to primary legislation.
On amendments 75 and 94, I recognise the challenges around teacher recruitment that we have inherited. However, the solution should not be to embed lower standards for shortage subjects in primary legislation. The amendments would create uncertainty for schools and teachers, as the teachers that schools employ could move in and out of the requirement to hold qualified teacher status depending on each year’s initial teacher training recruitment data. They would also change the requirements for qualified teacher status in local authority maintained schools and special schools, which are already required to employ teachers with qualified teacher status.
Under clause 40, schools will continue to be able to recruit teachers without qualified teacher status for any subject and then support those teachers to gain qualified teacher status through an appropriate route.
Neil O’Brien
It seems to me that the Government recognise the importance of pragmatism and that that is why they have chosen to exempt FE, 14-to-19 academies, 16-to-19 academies, university technical colleges, studio schools and non-maintained early years settings, and I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that. I put it to her that the same argument that has caused Ministers to pragmatically exclude those types of schools is perhaps also an argument for excluding shortage subjects.
Catherine McKinnell
As the hon. Member is aware, qualified teacher status is the professional qualification for teachers in primary and secondary schools. Currently, it applies to local authority maintained schools and special schools. Under these proposals, it will apply to all primary and secondary state-funded schools in England. As he is aware, there are currently some exceptions to that in legislation. Those exceptions will continue to apply as the requirement is applied to the academy sector.
On the second part of the hon. Member’s question—
Neil O’Brien
The second part of my question was about the settings the Minister has chosen to exclude—let us be clear that this is a new exclusion from a new rule. They are settings where the share of non-QTS teachers is typically higher. We are still looking for the explanation of why some schools are different from others. These are schools with kids of the same age—schools with 14-year-olds—but some will have the new requirement and others will not. I am just trying to get Ministers to explain the logic of that. It seems to be pragmatic: there are not enough QTS teachers in those schools and Ministers do not want to create a problem by applying their new rules to those types of settings, of which there are many. I am just trying to make the same point about shortage subjects. I do not know if the Minister can see the connection.
Catherine McKinnell
I wonder if it would be helpful if I finished my comments, and then I will be more than happy to come back to the hon. Gentleman’s question if I have not answered it. I am currently responding to the amendments tabled by various Members, and then I will set out the rationale for clause 40. I would be more than happy to answer specific questions at the end if I have not anticipated them, which I hope to do.
Under clause 40, schools will continue to be able to recruit teachers without qualified teacher status for any subject and then support those teachers to gain qualified teacher status through an appropriate route. We are updating the regulations to clarify that they will have three terms to secure a place on an appropriate route to QTS. We believe that will give schools adequate flexibility for circumstances in which they need to recruit a subject expert who does not have qualified teacher status, but can be on a route to gaining it under these requirements.
We are focused on ensuring that we have enough qualified teachers available for schools. Obviously, the best recruitment strategy is retention, and that starts with making sure that teachers who are currently teaching have access to high-quality training and induction support. We have a range of measures beyond the Bill to address the recruitment and retention of teachers in shortage subjects, including a targeted retention incentive, worth up to £6,000 after tax, for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools.
I have considered amendment 76, in the name of the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, but amending clause 40 in that way would build a loophole into the changes that the clause seeks to make, so the amendment effectively seeks to remove the clause. Clause 40 demonstrates our commitment to qualified teacher status and the professional status of teaching. High-quality teaching is the most important in-school factor for improving outcomes for all children. Great teachers need subject expertise, but they also need to understand how children learn, how to adapt age-specific approaches, and how to adapt their teaching to children in their class with a range of different needs.
This Bill will continue to raise standards. It builds on reforms made by previous Governments, who ensured that the essential knowledge associated with great teaching is incorporated into all primary and teacher training. We want to ensure that new teachers have the benefit of that knowledge, whichever type of school they work in. For the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask hon. Members not to press their amendments.
Clause 40 will help us break down barriers to opportunity by making sure that new teachers are prepared for a successful teaching career through high-quality, regulated initial teacher training, followed by statutory induction to support their professional development. It will reaffirm the professional status of teaching and emphasise the importance of high-quality teaching for children’s outcomes.
Academies will need to ensure that new teachers entering the classroom have or are working towards qualified teacher status, followed by the completion of statutory induction. The qualified teacher status requirement will ensure that new teachers and experienced educators moving from other settings are supported to have long-term, successful teaching careers and are in the best possible position to have an impact on children’s life chances. It will not apply to any teacher who was recruited and employed before the implementation date, unless they move to a different employer. That will minimise any disruption to current academy employment arrangements.
The clause will ensure that teachers who gain qualified teacher status after the implementation date complete statutory induction so that they receive a programme of support that ensures that they meet standards and are well trained at the start of their careers. It will bring academies in line with maintained schools and will standardise the approach across state-funded schools for new teachers to the classroom to have or be working towards qualified teacher status, and to complete statutory induction.
I hope that answers the question about why we are doing this. To allay the concerns that have been raised, let me say that the exemptions that are currently in place for maintained schools will remain and will be extended to academies. I hope that answers that question.
Catherine McKinnell
I was going to answer some more specific questions, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman wants to put his question again so that I appreciate what it is.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister talks about maintaining or continuing with various things but, to be clear, the clause will introduce a new exemption. This is not just about later phases of education; it is about children in normal secondary schools. The Government have chosen to exempt further education, 14-to-19 academies, 16-to-19 academies, UTCs, studio schools and non-maintained school early years settings. There are a heck of a lot of state schools that are being exempted from the things that the Ministers say are so desperately important. I still have not heard the reason why, if they are so important, they do not apply to them, too.
Catherine McKinnell
I have been pretty clear that we are basically bringing to the state school academy sector the same requirements that currently apply to the local authority maintained school sector and to special schools.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister says “ to the…academy sector”, but she is not doing it to 14-to-19 academies, to 16-to-19 academies, or to UTCs and studio schools, which are both types of academy. It is not, as she says, all academies; it is only some, and I do not know why.
Catherine McKinnell
High-quality teaching is available for those who want to teach in further education settings or early years settings. Early years teacher status is available for those wishing to specialise in teaching babies and young children. There is an optional professional status, qualified teacher learning and skills status, available to further education teachers. None of those things are the subject of this Bill, which deals specifically with primary and secondary schools in the state sector, including local authority maintained schools, special schools and academies.
There is a range of city technology colleges, studio schools and university technical colleges that offer a particular curriculum or focus in some respect on a particular artistic, technical or vocational education. We want to ensure that they have the flexibility that they require to employ specialist teachers with a range of expertise, knowledge and experience to deliver that education effectively.
The intention of the clause is to extend the already well-functioning qualified teacher status in the maintained sector to all primary and secondary schools so that parents know that their child has a core offer—it is not just about qualified teacher status; it is about the national curriculum, which we will get on to, and I am sure we will have additional debate on the teacher pay floor and conditions—and teachers who work in state primary and secondary schools, whether they are a maintained schools or academy schools, know that there is a core offer for them to work in that environment. The purpose of the clause is to provide clarity about what both a teacher and a parent can expect from a school.
I can go into more detail on specific points that hon. Members have made, but I believe I have covered most outstanding queries. I will leave it there, unless hon. Members have specific issues that they feel I have not addressed.
Neil O’Brien
I wish to press our amendment 75. To explain that briefly, across the public sector, be it in the civil service, the police or social work, we are trying to make it easier for talented people to come in from the outside, yet in this field we are moving in exactly the opposite direction. The Government are offering pragmatism in some fields, but not in the case of shortage subjects. I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 73, but I am keen to press our amendment 75.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 75, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) Where a person is carrying out such work for the purposes of teaching a shortage subject, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply.
(1B) For the purposes of this section, “shortage subject” means any subject in relation to which the Department for Education’s recruitment targets for initial teacher training have been missed in the most recent year for which such statistics exist.’”—(Neil O’Brien.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Munira Wilson
My amendment 94 largely seeks to do the same as the amendment on which we have just voted, so I do not propose to press it to a vote, but if I may, Sir Edward, I will just say one sentence about it.
Given some of the comments by Government Members, I want to clarify on the record that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches believe that qualified teachers are crucial. The purpose of my amendment 94 was to prevent unintended consequences. When a specialist teacher is not available, I would rather children had somebody in front of them with the knowledge to teach them than went without—that is why we tabled amendment 94—but we absolutely agree with the Government’s intentions. I was troubled by the suggestion that we wanted to lower standards in schools, or anything like that. Qualified teachers—excellent teachers—are critical to children’s outcomes.
The Chair
Amendment 94 is not moved.
Clause 40 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 41
Academy schools: duty to follow National Curriculum
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 44—Flexibility to not follow the National Curriculum—
“(1) The Education Act 2002 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 79(4), omit from ‘include’ to the end of paragraph (a).
(3) In section 80—
(a) in subsection (1)(b), omit ‘known as’ and insert ‘which may be, or include,’;
(b) after subsection (1), insert—
‘(1A) Any curriculum taught under subsection (1)(b) which is not the National Curriculum for England must not be of a lower standard than the National Curriculum for England.
(1B) All curriculums must be assessed by the Chief Inspector to be of high quality.’.
(4) In section 88—
(a) in subsection (1), omit from ‘that the’ to ‘is implemented’ and insert ‘a balanced and broadly based curriculum’;
(b) in subsection (1A), omit from ‘that the’ to ‘are implemented’ and insert ‘appropriate assessment arrangements’.”
This new clause would allow local authority maintained schools to offer a curriculum that is different from the national curriculum but that is broad and balanced. It extends academy freedoms over the curriculum to maintained schools.
New clause 53—Exemption from requirement to follow National Curriculum in the interests of improving standards—
“In the Education Act 2002, after section 95 (Appeals against directions under section 93 etc) insert—
‘95A Exception in the interests of improving standards
Where the proprietor of an Academy school or a local authority maintained school believes that the raising of standards in the school would be better served by the school’s curriculum not including the National Curriculum, any provisions of this Act or any other Act do not apply so far as they require the school’s curriculum to include or follow the National Curriculum.’”
New clause 54—Exemption from requirement to follow National Curriculum where Ofsted approves curriculum—
“In the Education Act 2002, after section 95 (Appeals against directions under section 93 etc) insert—
‘95A Exemption where Ofsted certifies curriculum as broad and balanced
Where—
(a) the proprietor of an Academy school or a local authority maintained school believes that the raising of standards in the school would be better served by the school’s curriculum not including the National Curriculum, and
(b) His Majesty’s Chief Inspector has, within the previous ten years, certified that the school provides its pupils with a broad and balanced curriculum,
any provisions of this Act or any other Act do not apply so far as they require the school’s curriculum to include or follow the National Curriculum.’”
New clause 65—Flexibility to take into account local circumstances when following the National Curriculum—
“In section 87 of the Education Act 2002 (establishment of the National Curriculum for England by order), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) In any revision to the National Curriculum for England, the Secretary of State must ensure that the National Curriculum shall consist of—
(a) a core framework; and
(b) subjects or areas of learning outside the core framework that allow flexibility for each school to take account of their specific circumstances.’”
This new clause would clarify that, when revised, the National Curriculum for England will provide a core framework as well as flexibility for schools to take account of their own specific circumstances.
New clause 66—Parliamentary approval of revisions of the National Curriculum—
“In section 87 of the Education Act 2002 (establishment of the National Curriculum for England by order), after subsection (3) insert—
‘(3A) An order made under this section revising the National Curriculum for England shall be subject to the affirmative procedure.’”
This new clause would make revisions to the National Curriculum subject to parliamentary approval by the affirmative procedure.
Catherine McKinnell
Parents and children have a right to expect that every child will receive a core education that builds the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to thrive, regardless of the school they attend. Our reforms will create a richer, broader curriculum that will ensure that children are prepared for life, work and the future. We want all children to benefit from the reformed curriculum, so the clause will introduce a requirement for academies to follow the national curriculum in the same way as maintained schools.
That does not mean prescribing every last detail of what is taught and how. The reformed curriculum will allow all schools plenty of scope for innovation. It will be designed to empower, not restrict, academies and other schools, and will ensure that teachers have the flexibility to adapt to the needs of their pupils. The measures will be commenced only after the independent curriculum and assessment review has concluded and we have responded to its recommendations and developed a reformed curriculum. The clause will give every child guaranteed access to a cutting-edge curriculum that will provide an excellent foundation in reading, writing and maths, and ensure that they leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work. I hope the Committee agrees that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
New clause 44 was tabled by the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. G. K. Chesterton famously said, “You should never take down a fence until you know why it was put up.” The national curriculum was established in the late 1980s to ensure that children receive a broad, high-quality education. It provides a strong foundation, regardless of background or the school attended. It is not about meeting an abstract standard; it is about making sure that all children have access to the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in society and the economy of the future. The national curriculum also enables credible national qualifications, facilitates smoother school transitions and supports accountability.
However, it is not, and was never intended to be, prescriptive. Kenneth Baker—now Lord Baker—said when introducing the national curriculum:
“We want to build upon…the professionalism of the many fine and dedicated teachers throughout our education system… The national curriculum will provide scope for imaginative approaches developed by our teachers.”
Much has changed since then, but that principle still very much applies. By taking away that curriculum fence, the new clause could undermine the consistency and equity of education across state-funded schools at a time when we are trying to assure it. Allowing maintained schools to deviate from the national curriculum could lead to a more fragmented system, in which the quality and content of education varies widely. It was that problem, and the lack of transparency in and accountability for what our children were being taught, that led to the curriculum fence being erected in the first place. We must not return to curriculum decisions being taken in what James Callaghan famously called a “secret garden”.
As drafted, the new clause could also place an unimaginable burden on Ofsted to assess the curriculum of any school deviating from the national curriculum to ensure high quality. Intentionally or otherwise, the new clause would also remove the requirement to deliver national curriculum assessments, including the phonics screening check and SATs. That would undermine key quality measures, making it harder for parents to compare how well schools teach pupils and harder for schools to be held to account. On that basis, I invite the hon. Members not to press the new clause to a vote.
New clause 53, also tabled by the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich—
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this it will be convenient to discuss:
New clause 44—Flexibility to not follow the National Curriculum—
“(1) The Education Act 2002 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 79(4), omit from ‘include’ to the end of paragraph (a).
(3) In section 80—
(a) in subsection (1)(b), omit ‘known as’ and insert ‘which may be, or include,’;
(b) after subsection (1), insert—
‘(1A) Any curriculum taught under subsection (1)(b) which is not the National Curriculum for England must not be of a lower standard than the National Curriculum for England.
(1B) All curriculums must be assessed by the Chief Inspector to be of high quality.’.
(4) In section 88—
(a) in subsection (1), omit from ‘that the’ to ‘is implemented’ and insert ‘a balanced and broadly based curriculum’;
(b) in subsection (1A), omit from ‘that the’ to ‘are implemented’ and insert ‘appropriate assessment arrangements’.”.
This new clause would allow local authority maintained schools to offer a curriculum that is different from the national curriculum but that is broad and balanced. It extends academy freedoms over the curriculum to maintained schools.
New clause 53—Exemption from requirement to follow National Curriculum in the interests of improving standards—
“In the Education Act 2002, after section 95 (Appeals against directions under section 93 etc) insert—
‘95A Exception in the interests of improving standards
Where the proprietor of an Academy school or a local authority maintained school believes that the raising of standards in the school would be better served by the school’s curriculum not including the National Curriculum, any provisions of this Act or any other Act do not apply so far as they require the school’s curriculum to include or follow the National Curriculum.’”.
New clause 54—Exemption from requirement to follow National Curriculum where Ofsted approves curriculum—
“In the Education Act 2002, after section 95 (Appeals against directions under section 93 etc) insert—
‘95A Exemption where Ofsted certifies curriculum as broad and balanced
Where—
(a) the proprietor of an Academy school or a local authority maintained school believes that the raising of standards in the school would be better served by the school’s curriculum not including the National Curriculum, and
(b) His Majesty’s Chief Inspector has, within the previous ten years, certified that the school provides its pupils with a broad and balanced curriculum, any provisions of this Act or any other Act do not apply so far as they require the school’s curriculum to include or follow the National Curriculum.’”.
New clause 65—Flexibility to take into account local circumstances when following the National Curriculum—
“In section 87 of the Education Act 2002 (establishment of the National Curriculum for England by order), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) In any revision to the National Curriculum for England, the Secretary of State must ensure that the National Curriculum shall consist of—
(a) a core framework; and
(b) subjects or areas of learning outside the core framework that allow flexibility for each school to take account of their specific circumstances.’”.
This new clause would clarify that, when revised, the National Curriculum for England will provide a core framework as well as flexibility for schools to take account of their own specific circumstances.
New clause 66—Parliamentary approval of revisions of the National Curriculum—
“In section 87 of the Education Act 2002 (establishment of the National Curriculum for England by order), after subsection (3) insert—
‘(3A) An order made under this section revising the National Curriculum for England shall be subject to the affirmative procedure.’”.
This new clause would make revisions to the National Curriculum subject to parliamentary approval by the affirmative procedure.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
We move on to new clause 53, tabled by the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. Removing the entitlement to a high-quality core curriculum for all children by allowing schools, whether they are maintained or academies, to deviate from the national curriculum, could create an unequal system where the content of a child’s core education varies widely.
Let us be clear that what we are talking about: a requirement to teach the national curriculum does not create a ceiling; it does not force schools to teach in a particular way or prevent them from adapting or innovating, and it does not stop them adding extra content that works for their pupils. It simply says that, as a nation, this is the core knowledge and skills that we expect schools to teach their pupils, whatever their background. New clause 53 would allow a school to decide not to teach its pupils some important core content that all other children are being taught. We do not think that parents want their children’s school to be able to do that. On that basis, I ask the hon. Members to withdraw the new clause.
The hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich also tabled new clause 54. The national curriculum is the cornerstone of the education system. We are reforming it and extending it to cover academies to ensure that every child, regardless of their background or the school they attend, receives the best possible core education. I have set out already why allowing schools to opt out of the national curriculum creates a risk of an unequal system, where not all children can benefit from a strong foundation of the reformed curriculum and what it will provide, so I will focus on the additional elements in the new clause, particularly the Ofsted certifications.
There are unanswered questions about how this provision would work in practice. We have moved from single headline judgments in Ofsted inspections, but the new clause seeks to create a single judgment that would have a material impact on a school for the next decade. The fact that a school offered a broad and balanced curriculum, as all schools must, at some point in the previous 10 years does not mean that it currently does or will do in the future if it chooses not to follow the national curriculum. If, subsequently, Ofsted found the school’s curriculum was not up to scratch, the school would have the disruption and cost of suddenly having to teach the national curriculum again. Allowing more schools to deviate from the national curriculum just as we are reforming it creates a risk that some pupils will not be taught the core knowledge and skills that every young person deserves to be taught. I again invite the hon. Members to withdraw the new clause.
New clause 65 was tabled by the hon. Member for Twickenham. Ensuring that schools can adapt their teaching to unique contexts and circumstances is clearly important, but the current framework already provides the flexibility that schools need and value. The national curriculum subject programmes of study already give schools the flexibility to tailor the content and delivery of the curriculum to meet the needs of their pupils and to take account of new developments, societal changes or topical issues. The reformed national curriculum will help to deliver the Government’s commitment to high and rising standards, supporting the innovation and professionalism of teachers while ensuring greater attention to breadth and flexibility. The proposed core framework would add significant extra complexity to the national curriculum, which already has core and foundation subjects, and would risk being confusing for schools. On that basis, I invite the hon. Member to withdraw the new clause.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
New clause 54 would allow academies to continue to exercise freedom in the matter of their curriculum where Ofsted is satisfied that the curriculum is broad and balanced. New clause 53 would allow ongoing curriculum freedom in academies where it is needed in the interests of improving standards. New clause 44 would extend academy freedoms to local authority maintained schools, allowing them to offer a curriculum that is different from the national curriculum, as long as it is broad and balanced and certified by Ofsted.
The imposition on all schools of the—currently being rewritten—national curriculum was raised in our evidence session right at the start of this Bill Committee. As Nigel Genders, the chief education officer of the Church of England noted:
“The complexity is that this legislation is happening at the same time as the curriculum and assessment review, so our schools are being asked to sign up to a general curriculum for everybody without knowing what that curriculum is likely to be.” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 64.]
There is a parallel here in that we are also being asked to sign up to sweeping reforms to the academies order at the same time as the Government are changing the accountability framework, as the hon. Member for Twickenham correctly pointed out in the Chamber yesterday. Several school leaders gave us good examples showing why it is a mistake to take away academy freedoms to vary from the national curriculum. As Sir Dan Moynihan, the leader of the incredibly successful Harris Federation, explained to us:
“We have taken over failing schools in very disadvantaged places in London, and we have found youngsters in the lower years of secondary schools unable to read and write. We varied the curriculum in the short term and narrowed the number of subjects in key stage 3 in order to maximise the amount of time given for literacy and numeracy, because the children were not able to access the other subjects. Of course, that is subject to Ofsted. Ofsted comes in, inspects and sees whether what you are doing is reasonable.
“That flexibility has allowed us to widen the curriculum out again later and take those schools on to ‘outstanding’ status. We are subject to Ofsted scrutiny. It is not clear to me why we would need to follow the full national curriculum. What advantage does that give? When we have to provide all the nationally-recognised qualifications—GCSEs, A-levels, SATs—and we are subject to external regulation by Ofsted, why take away the flexibility to do what is needed locally?” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 72.]
Luke Sparkes, from the also very successful Dixons Academies Trust, argued that:
“we…need the ability to enact the curriculum in a responsive and flexible way at a local level. I can see the desire to get that consistency, but there needs to be a consistency without stifling innovation.” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 79.]
Rebecca Leek from the Suffolk Primary Headteachers’ Association told us:
“Anything that says, ‘Well, we are going to go slightly more with a one-size-fits-all model’—bearing in mind, too, that we do not know what that looks like, because this national curriculum has not even been written yet—is a worry. That is what I mean. If we suddenly all have to comply with something that is more uniform and have to check—‘Oh no, we cannot do that’, ‘Yes, we can do that’, ‘No, we can’t do that’, ‘Yes, we can do that’—it will impede our ability to be agile”. ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 83.]
The Minister talked about Chesterton’s fence and gave us some lessons in Conservative history and philosophy, but I point her to the same argument: this is an example of Chesterton’s fence. These freedoms and flexibilities are there for a reason. They are there to defend us against the inflexibility of not being able to do what Sir Dan Moynihan needs to do to turn around failing schools. It is no good us saying, “Here is the perfect curriculum. Let’s go and study this incredibly advanced subject” if the kids cannot read or add up. This is a very powerful point that school leaders are making to us, one which I hope Ministers will take on board.
Since the Minister referred to a bit of Conversative history and Ken Baker’s creation of the national curriculum in the 1980s, she will of course be aware that there was a huge debate about it and a lot of concern, particularly from Mrs Thatcher, about what many described as the “nationalised curriculum”. There was concern that it would get out of hand, become too prescriptive, too bureaucratic and too burdensome. That debate will always be there, and the safety valve we have at the moment is that never since its instigation have all schools had to follow the national curriculum. Even though academies did not exist then, city technology colleges did and they did not have the follow the national curriculum. This is the first time in our whole history that every single school will have to follow it.
In relation to previous clauses, I have spoken about getting away from the dead hand of compliance culture and moving toward an achievement and innovation culture—a culture of freedom—in our schools. Pupils at Michaela Community School made the greatest progress in the whole country three years in a row—an incredible achievement—and they did that by having an incredibly distinctive and knowledge-intensive curriculum that was completely their own. Its head, Katharine Birbalsingh, has argued in an open letter to the Secretary of State:
“Clearly there needs to be a broad academic core for all children. But a rigid national curriculum that dictates adherence to a robotic, turgid and monotonous programme of learning that prevents headteachers from giving their children a bespoke offer tailored to the needs of their pupils, is quite frankly, horrifying. Anyone in teaching who has an entrepreneurial spirit, who enjoys thinking creatively about how best to address the needs of their pupils, will be driven out of the profession. Not to mention how standards will drop! High standards depend in part on the dynamism of teachers. Why would you want to kill our creativity?
Then there is the cost. Your curriculum changes will cost schools time and money. Do you have any idea of the work required from teachers and school leaders to change their curriculum? You will force heads to divert precious resources from helping struggling families to fulfil a bureaucratic whim coming from Whitehall. Why are you changing things? What is the problem you are trying to solve?”
That is a good question; perhaps the Minister can tell us the answer.
Nor is it just school leaders who are raising concerns about this clause. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) said that the proposal to make it compulsory for academies to teach the national curriculum was “of particular concern” to her. Our three new clauses reflect what school leaders have told us. We think the clause is fundamentally a bad idea, but we are trying to find a compromise.
New clause 53 responds to Sir Dan Moynihan’s point that freedom to vary from the national curriculum can be really important in turnaround situations: we cannot succeed in other things if children are unable first to read and write. New clause 54 allows freedom where schools are delivering a broad and balanced curriculum. That worries Ministers, although we heard from the head of Ofsted the other day that schools are delivering a broad and balanced curriculum, so once again it is not clear what problem Ministers are trying to solve. We do not learn the answer from the impact assessment either. If this is just about ensuring that all schools have the same freedoms, new clause 54 would give local authority schools the same freedoms as academies, but that is not what the Government are proposing.
I hope the Minister will tell us at some point what problem she is trying to solve. Where is the evidence of abuse? There is none in the impact assessment, and Ministers have not produced any at any point so far in the process. The Government’s impact assessment says that schools
“may need to hire additional or specialist teachers for any subjects not currently delivered or underrepresented in existing curricula”,
that they may need to make adjustments in their facilities, resources and materials to meet the national curriculum standards, and that they may need “additional or specialised training” to deliver the new national curriculum. It says:
“some academies may be particularly affected if their current curriculum differs significantly from the new national curriculum”.
Unfortunately, the impact assessment does not put any numbers on the impact. Will the Minister commit clearly and unambiguously to meet the costs, including for facilities, for any schools that have to incur costs as a result of this measure?
The Minister talked about Jim Callaghan’s famous phrase, his reference to a “secret garden”. We will come on to that on a later new clause, when we will advance the case against secret lessons in relationships, health and sex education. I hope the Minister will be as good as her word; I hope she is against the secret garden in that domain. On these new clauses, we hope the Minister will listen to the voices of school leaders, her own colleagues and people who are concerned about clause 41, and tell us what the problem is that the Government are trying to solve. The Government clearly like the idea of everything being the same—they like imposing the same thing on every school in the country—but what is the problem? Where is the evidence that this needs to happen? Why are Ministers not listening to serious school leaders who have turned around a lot of schools, who say that they need this freedom to turn around schools that are currently failing kids? Why do Ministers think they know better than school leaders who have already succeeded in turning around failing schools?
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. In the light of the discussion that we had before lunch, I want to put on the record that those who are questioning these measures—certainly on the Liberal Democrat Benches—are not trying to attack standards. We recognise that, like qualified teachers, the national curriculum is a very good thing for our children. It is important that children and young people have a common core. None the less, I come back to the question that I posed earlier and the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston just posed again: what is the problem that Ministers are trying to fix with clause 41?
In oral evidence, His Majesty’s chief inspector of schools, Sir Martyn Oliver, told us that there is very little evidence that academy schools are not teaching a broad and balanced curriculum. He said:
“the education inspection framework that we currently use significantly reduced the deviation of academies because it set out the need to carry out a broad and balanced curriculum…I would always want to give headteachers the flexibility to do what is right for their children”. ––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 50, Q113.]
Given the Ofsted framework, given that our primary schools are preparing children to sit their standard assessment tests, and given that secondary schools are preparing pupils for a range of public examinations, not least GCSEs, all of which have common syllabuses, the reality on the ground is that most schools do not deviate very much from the national curriculum.
On the other hand, during the oral evidence sessions we heard that school leaders have sometimes used the freedom to deviate where children have fallen behind as a result of disadvantage, trauma, the covid pandemic or other reasons, to ensure they reach the required level to be able to engage in that broad and balanced curriculum. I ask Ministers: if an 11-year-old is struggling to read and write, does it make sense to expect them to access the full history, geography and modern languages curriculum immediately at the start of year 7? As much as I would want them to—I say this as a languages graduate who bemoans the death of modern languages in our schools—we cannot expect them to do those things until they have a basic standard of written English.
The Children’s Commissioner spoke powerfully of her own experience. She had to turn a school around by ditching the wider curriculum to get the children up to the required standard before opening up the curriculum.
David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)
In schools that follow the national curriculum, there is nothing stopping teachers from differentiating and offering support to children who are not up to the required standard in reading and writing when they go from year 2 to year 3, for example. That happens now in thousands of schools up and down the country without issue. What is the problem with having the national curriculum in schools that would be expected to differentiate anyway?
Munira Wilson
I defer to the hon. Member’s expertise. He said earlier that he is a teacher—
Munira Wilson
He was a teacher before he became an MP. School leaders are raising concerns about their freedom to deviate being taken away. They feel that they need a degree of deviation where children have fallen behind, or for good geographical reasons, or because a particular cohort needs it. I have nothing against the national curriculum—it is a very good thing.
The hon. Gentleman brings me to new clauses 65 and 66. My worry is that imposing the provision on all schools in the middle of a curriculum review means that Members of Parliament are being asked to sign all schools up to something when we do not yet know what it looks like. That is why I ask, in new clause 66, for parliamentary approval and oversight of what the curriculum review brings forward. We have no idea what the review’s outcome will be or what the Government will propose. New clause 65 would ensure that we have flexibility.
The Minister says that new clause 65 adds too much complexity to what is already in place, but I come back to my earlier point: what we are not talking about is not yet in place. The provisions will come into force once the new curriculum is implemented as a result of the review. Through my two new clauses, I am proposing a basic core curriculum to which every child is entitled, and sufficient flexibility for school leaders to respond to the needs and issues in their communities. They are the experts. The hon. Member for St Helens North is an expert because he was a teacher, but in general Members of Parliament and Ministers—I say this with all due respect—are not education experts, as far as I am aware.
I do not think it is necessarily for Whitehall to decide every element of the curriculum. My aim in the amendment is to put into legislation a basic core curriculum, with flexibility around the edges and parliamentary approval. We do not know what is coming down the tracks, but we will ask schools to implement it, so I do not think it unreasonable to expect Parliament to give approval to what comes out of the review.
I have a specific question for Ministers—one that I put to Leora Cruddas from the Confederation of School Trusts. I asked her how she thought the curriculum provisions would apply to university technical colleges, which by their nature stray quite a lot from the curriculum. I visited a great UTC in Durham in the north-east—the Minister may have visited herself—and was interested to see how much it narrows the curriculum. People might think that that is a good or a bad thing, but young people with very specific skillsets and interests have flourished in some UTCs. Will this provision apply to UTCs?
Nigel Genders, who has been quoted already, raised the same point I did—that we are being asked to make these provisions when we do not know what the curriculum will be. I respectfully ask that Ministers seriously consider new clauses 65 and 66, particularly the parliamentary oversight aspect.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
The national curriculum is a vital part of our school system, but its centrality does not mean there is never space for deviation from it. A couple of hours ago I was saying that initial teacher training and qualified teacher status is a fundamental foundation of our school system, with 97% of teachers in the state education system having qualified teacher status. It was 97% in 2024, and as it happens it was also 97% in 2010. Similarly, we know that the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum the great majority of the time.
Damian Hinds
That is a question for the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues on the Government Front Bench. He is at liberty to table a written parliamentary question, but I think he will find that it is not possible to get a numerical answer to that question. We did, though, discuss the matter with Ofsted in the evidence sessions—I think the hon. Gentleman was there—and it is a broadly known fact, as any educationalist will tell him, that the vast majority of schools follow the national curriculum for all sorts of good reasons, some of which I will come to.
It is not widely understood that the national curriculum has always been a relatively loose framework, including for maintained schools. That is the British tradition. There are other school systems in the world that are very much more centrally directed. Even for local authority and maintained schools it has always been, relatively speaking, quite a devolved system with relative autonomy. It is not possible, sitting in Sanctuary Buildings, to decide suddenly what children are going to learn. Occasionally we will hear a press story about how the Department or its Ministers have banned Steinbeck from schools in England, but that just is not possible to do. We had a row a couple of years ago about so-called decolonising the curriculum. We had people writing to us saying that our national curriculum glorifies the British empire and instils all these negative attitudes, and I said, “Where? Show me where in this document it does that. It doesn’t.” It does not specify things to study in nearly that much detail.
That brings me on to the Semmelweis question. I first posed the Semmelweis question more than 10 years ago when I was on the Education Committee, because I was curious to know who decides what children learn in schools. For anyone who wants to know what the Semmelweis question is, it is: “Who was Semmelweis?” From visiting schools I realised that everybody under the age of 18 was very familiar with Semmelweis, and young adults and anybody under the age of 25 or 30 knew who Semmelweis was, but nobody over the age of 40 had the first clue who he was.
Would colleagues like to know who Semmelweis was? He worked a hospital in Austria where there were two maternity wards, one of which was staffed by midwives and the other by surgeons. The midwives were women and the surgeons were men. Semmelweis detected, through statistical analysis, that the mortality rates in the two maternity wards were markedly different: the safety rate in the midwife-led ward was much better. This was relevant at the time I looked into it because of the hospital superbug. It is quite difficult to find out who, but somebody had decided that every child in Britain, or in England, should learn this story about Semmelweis, because that would promote hygiene in hospital settings.
Semmelweis is not on the national curriculum. Nowhere does it say in a document produced by the Department for Education that every child will learn that. So who does decide? For most subjects in key stages 1 to 3, it is a mix of what schools themselves decide and individual teachers decide. Historically, it would have been a lot about what was in the textbook, so textbook publishers play a role. In more modern times it is educational technology and platforms like Oak National Academy. Then for English and maths it is very much about what is in the year 6 assessments.
At key stage 4 and sixth form, as the hon. Member for Twickenham set out correctly, it is really the exam boards that decide what a pupil needs to know to get the GCSE or A-level, and it is the same for other qualifications. That in turn determines what children have to learn. That is not the national curriculum but what is called the specification. The specification for a GCSE is about as close as we can get to a definition of who decides what children will learn at school. Although that refers specifically to key stage 4 and above, it also affects what children learn in preparation in lower school and junior schools. The Minister quoted Jim Callaghan and said that things should not be decided in a “secret garden”. Well, that is the secret garden: the specification that determines what is studied at GCSE. It is not, currently, a detailed national curriculum.
Why is the looseness of the national curriculum important? Because the national curriculum is driven by politicians, and keeping the national curriculum loose has helped to keep politics at bay. That can sometimes be frustrating. There will be times when the Minister, like Ministers before her, will say, “My God, I am the Schools Minister—I should be able to determine what happens in schools.” That can be frustrating, but it is also helpful that Ministers cannot affect that directly. I would meet Education Ministers from other countries who said, “We’ve just changed the textbook,” and I would think, “God, I wish we could do that.” But we are a million miles away from saying that we have changed the textbook and every child in England is going to learn the same thing.
By the way, Ministers will still get a procession of people asking for this or that to be put on the curriculum. Spoiler alert: climate change and financial education are both already on the national curriculum, disguised in different subjects, but that will not stop people coming to lobby Ministers to do it for the first time. Ministers will get a lot more of those visits in future.
During the passage of the Education Reform Act 1988—Gerbil, as it was known—the national curriculum could have been made more prescriptive, but self-restraint on the part of the Government of the day, and of Governments since, has meant it has not been. The key point is that we cannot guarantee that self-restraint into the future.
In case colleagues think I am just talking about what children will learn in geography or science, I point out that there are sensitive subjects that a lot of people have an interest in. When we took evidence, I asked the Church of England and Catholic Education Service representatives about someone changing the definition of religious education. Colleagues will know that only one event in history is specified in the national curriculum, which is the holocaust, and no other. English literature is another sensitive subject. Boy, I can tell Ministers that relationships, sex and health education has its controversies—they will not be short of people banging down their door looking for changes there.
Tom Hayes
I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman; as a former Secretary of State, he has a lot of insight and experience, so I am enjoying and learning from what he is saying, but could he say a little about alignment with or deviation from the national curriculum, which is the point we are trying to address? I would appreciate hearing more about his point of view on that.
Damian Hinds
I do not know whether the hon. Member has a copy of my notes, but that is what I was just about to say.
I argued on Second Reading that the ability of academies—which are now the majority of secondary schools and a large number of primary schools in this country—even if most of the time hardly any use it, to deviate somewhat from the national curriculum is a safety valve against politicisation. I remind colleagues on the Labour Benches that their party is currently in government with a whacking great majority, but it is possible that it might not be forever. We all have an interest in guarding against over-politicisation.
As we have heard, and as my hon. Friend the shadow Minister rightly said, it can be an instrument of school improvement to ease off from some aspects of the national curriculum while refocussing on core subjects.
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that freedoms in respect of the curriculum have also been used to hide information from children—for example, to avoid giving a broad curriculum on personal, social, health and economic education and so avoid giving full sex education to children? Does he accept that freedoms have been used in ways that could negatively impact children?
Damian Hinds
I am not sure that the hon. Lady’s Front-Bench colleagues will necessarily thank her for making that intervention. That view is held by some. Sir Christopher would rightly admonish me were we to get into a whole debate about PSHE or RSHE, but it is true that the RSHE curriculum covers a range of things that, rightly, children must learn about as they prepare for the adult world, develop their sense of self and their place in society and, crucially, learn respect and kindness towards others, along with valuing all individuals. There is also a degree of flexibility within the curriculum, because at the end of the day there are 21,500 schools in the country, and there are schools with different character and different intakes. I am sure the hon. Lady is not trying to make my point for me, but if we make the national curriculum more rigid, we actually run into more problems, rather than solve them.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
You said that the more rigid you make the national curriculum, the more problems we will have, but we are not debating making the national curriculum more rigid. We are debating whether the national curriculum should apply to all schools. A minute ago, you said that the ability not to use the national curriculum is a safety valve against politicisation, but that goes against everything you said in the previous 10 minutes, which was all about the flexibilities that are inherent in the national curriculum, of which you gave some excellent examples.
Damian Hinds
I do not think those things are in conflict. My point was that the national curriculum, as it was set up, is quite loose. It did not have to be, it does not have to be now and it does not have to be in five or 10 years. It can be written exactly as Ministers at the time wish to write it. Although the hon. Lady says we are not debating whether to make the national curriculum more rigid, actually we might be—we do not know. I will come to that in a moment.
I was saying—you will be pleased to know, Sir Christopher, that I do want to accelerate—that the flexibility can be an instrument for school improvement, either for entire year groups, for the entire school or, indeed, on a longer basis, for a nurture group or a group or individual who, for whatever reason, needs additional support. It also means that schools might specialise somewhat, and that they might innovate without having, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston rightly said, to overthink about whether they are complying exactly with this or that specification.
At a time when we are rightly concerned about attendance numbers, it has been suggested to me that making adherence to the national curriculum more specified, and possibly the curriculum itself being made more rigid, could be injurious to school attendance or inclusion in mainstream schooling if it makes more children feel rejected, uncomfortable or unhappy at school and so seek education either at home or in alternative settings.
The crucial point is that, whether schools have innovated with an academy trust curriculum, decided to deviate to support individual groups for a period of time, or specialised somewhat, they will all be judged by Ofsted on the simple requirement of having a broad and balanced curriculum. For most schools the easiest way to comply with having a broad and balanced curriculum is to follow the national curriculum—but there can be other ways. Again, like my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, I am left wondering what the problem the Government are trying to solve is.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
We keep coming back to “What is the problem?” That is the wrong question to ask. We are partly here to solve problems, but we are also here to reach further and be more ambitious, so the right hon. Gentleman should be asking, “What is the objective we are aiming for?” That would be a far more engaging question for him to ask.
Damian Hinds
If the hon. Gentleman is going to pose a great rhetorical question like that, he should have an answer ready. What is it? What is this thing that we are reaching for? I do not think any of us in this room is well qualified or well placed to say, “Where can we take this school?” The person best placed to decide that is the school leader. We would like to give some leeway and flexibility, within a system of all sorts of measurements, constraints and so on, for people to be able to innovate and do what is right for children.
David Baines
The right hon. Gentleman would have made a good teacher, because he has a very engaging style—although I would have been grateful for a curriculum so I knew what he was covering in the classroom.
Is the right hon. Gentleman in favour of a national curriculum? If he is not—I am really not sure—why did he not repeal it? If schools need greater flexibility, why did he not get rid of it when he was Education Secretary?
Damian Hinds
Bless the hon. Gentleman for saying I am engaging, but I am obviously not that engaging, because I spent the first three minutes explaining why the national curriculum is the core standard and why it is central to our school system. That does not mean, though, that we cannot have some deviation from it, just like—if I recall this, I might bring it back to mind—qualified teacher status, which is, of course, a central part of our teaching profession, but that does not mean there cannot be a little bit of deviation—it is about 3% and has been for the last decade and a half—from it.
Damian Hinds
I will give way to the hon. Member for St Helens North as he was the nicest to me.
David Baines
The right hon. Gentleman just said that the national curriculum is a set of core standards; why should that not apply for all schools?
Damian Hinds
For all the reasons that I gave, it does apply. Ofsted requires a broad and balanced curriculum from every school, and the vast majority of the time the vast majority of schools say that that is the national curriculum, but some of them may innovate and deviate. They may need to do something different to support children or they may be in a school improvement phase. All those are good reasons. In a system where we trust school leaders and teachers to do what is right for the kids in front of them, those are all reasons to have some flexibility.
Ellie Chowns
Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the national curriculum is a floor, not a ceiling?
Damian Hinds
Sort of. It is not really a floor or a ceiling at the moment; it is a very loose framework that says, “These are the things at key stages 1 to 4 that one should cover.” It is not really a floor because it does not say, “You must learn these things. You may learn others.” It says, “These are the broad categories of things that you must learn.”
Damian Hinds
Now we are on to modern methods of construction: scaffolding or a floor? I do not know. I will give way to the hon. Member for Bournemouth East, then I promise I will move on.
Damian Hinds
As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has mentioned, it has long been the case that some schools have not had to follow the national curriculum. Even under the proposals in the Bill there will be some schools that will not have to follow it. One of the reasons why I have been banging on for so long, Sir Christopher, is because I have been through a lot of these points already and I am being asked to restate them. I have to ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me but, as I have set out, it is a broad framework, and there is nothing wrong with having a little bit of innovation within that.
I want to come to a close. There are serious people working on the curriculum review and I wish them well in their work. We must of course await the outcome, not prejudge it. So far we have heard only the good stuff—the things we are going to add. In politics, it is always easy to talk about adding things. We are adding more creativity, art and sport, and those are all things that I welcome. It is great to have those opportunities for young people. The difficulty may arrive when we ask, “What does that mean?” Does it mean a longer school day, which is one option? Or does it mean that something else has to go to make way for those things? I do not have the answer, but it is a relevant question.
To come back to the ceiling point—whether the national curriculum is a floor or a ceiling—it depends how much headroom is needed. In a very loose national curriculum, schools can innovate and so on, but in a heavily specified national curriculum, they cannot, because the floor is already close to the ceiling and there is not that much room to play with.
I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Herefordshire is on Professor Francis’s working group, or what will be in the review document, but there are three problems with insisting on 100% adherence to the national curriculum. First, we are being asked to agree to it before we have the outcome of the national curriculum review. Secondly, Ministers are not obliged to adopt that independent review; they may decide to do something slightly, or more than slightly, different. Thirdly, they are not obliged to stop there. I say “they”, but it is of course not only them. The Bill is going to be an Act of Parliament: we are not legislating for what happens between 2024 and 2029; in the absence of another piece of legislation to replace this one, we are legislating for all time. We cannot know who might come along in the future and decide to do something of which colleagues here might not approve.
We do not have large numbers of schools teaching unscientific facts, creationism and what have you. We do have Ofsted, which evaluates all schools on whether they follow a broad and balanced curriculum. We know that, the great majority of the time, the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum, but some innovate, and that can have some benefits. Like others, I am left asking Ministers, what problem are we trying to solve?
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I had a long speech prepared, but it does not include Keats, Semmelweis or Callaghan, so I will cut it short. Teachers want to be trusted to teach, to read their class and to choose what to teach, when to teach and how to teach it. My concern is that the Government are bringing all schools under the same framework and that that will allow them to fundamentally change what is taught in schools.
We have all read the news about the Becky Francis review trying to broaden the curriculum, dumb it down, dilute it and move it away from a knowledge-rich focus. Will the Minister confirm the Government’s intention to retain the national curriculum’s focus on knowledge, and the attainment of knowledge, as opposed to skills? I know she will say that the Francis review has not reported, but the Government have no statutory obligation to accept its recommendations. Will Ministers please confirm that they want to keep the national curriculum focused on knowledge and core knowledge subjects?
It is clear that the intention is for all schools to teach the national curriculum. Can the Minister assure me, and thousands of teachers who want to do the best for their students, that the curriculum will be kept broad to allow them to teach as they see fit, in the best interests of their students? Again, the Government do not have to follow the guidance from the Becky Francis review.
What has been proven over time is that the current framework works for academies. I will keep saying this in the Committee: academies have been proven to produce better results for children who come from a low-performing or failing state school—they have been proven to do much better for children in the long term. [Interruption.] They have; that is what the evidence says.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I hope you are enjoying the debate, Sir Christopher. Although national curriculum reform is not mentioned in the Bill, it is going forward.
The previous Government introduced a number of curriculum changes. Those were often implemented quickly and not considerate of the profession. In 2010, one or two years were given to implement the changes, depending on sector. The consultation was top-down and was criticised for not reflecting classroom realities. In 2013, the Government had one year to implement the changes. There was a wider consultation, but despite that the original proposals were unchanged. In 2016, there were almost immediate changes to the curriculum, but, again, no fundamental changes were made to the original proposals after the consultation. In 2019, there was one year for implementation, and in 2020 and 2021 the changes were immediate, albeit that that was linked to the fallout from covid and the attempts to rectify that. Again, some changes involved input from the profession, and some did not.
A national curriculum should do what it says on the tin and be a “national” curriculum. It should have a core basis. We should consult the profession. I found it really difficult to sit here and listen to the ideas that have been put forward, when the previous Government did absolutely none of that.
Catherine McKinnell
Where to start? I guess I should start by responding to the fundamental question that I think hon. Members are asking: what problem are we trying to solve? Fundamentally, Opposition Members—I do not refer to all of them—do not seem to have a very realistic perspective on the challenges that are very present in the education system. They cite singular examples of schools that are doing a fantastic job and that absolutely should be celebrated, but that is not reflective of the entire system.
Through this Bill and the other reforms we are looking to introduce—I think Opposition Members fundamentally agree with them, but do not wish to say so—we are trying to create a core offer for every child in this country. No matter what type of school they go to, what their background is and where they come from, children will be guaranteed a core, quality educational offer, with qualified teachers and a national curriculum core framework that gives them the basis, yes, of knowledge, but also skills and development as an individual that set them up for life.
It is an absolute myth that maintained schools are unable to innovate while following the national curriculum. The reformed national curriculum will support innovation and professionalism in teachers, and maintain the flexibility that we know is really important if schools are to meet the needs of their children. It is absolutely right that schools can, for example, choose to prioritise English and maths, if that is what their children need. However, that should not be at the expense of curriculum breadth and opportunity for young people who also need extra support.
We want every child in every state school to have a broad range of subjects and to have the opportunity to study a common core of knowledge that has been determined by experts and agreed by Parliament. I absolutely agree that it should be led by experts, which is why we have an independent panel of experts advising on the curriculum and assessment review. I absolutely recognise the strong track record of, for example, Michaela and the good outcomes it delivers for its students. I understand that, as hon. Members have rightly acknowledged, the vast majority of schools do follow the national curriculum.
It is our intention to create a common core framework right across our school system, regardless of the structure of the school. That is all we are trying to achieve with this fairly straightforward measure. To be honest, the attitude that is sometimes displayed and the fears that are being mongered just seem a little hysterical. Every child should have a high-quality education, which is all that we seek to ensure with the measures in the Bill.
Neil O'Brien
I read out the very real concerns of serious educational leaders with strong track records. The Minister says that they are hysterical.
Neil O'Brien
Well, she said the concerns are hysterical. They are not my concerns; they are concerns that have been put to this Committee by incredibly respected school leaders. The Minister says that only a few of them are using these freedoms. Well, if it is only a few, why should they not have the freedom to do what they know works? Why do Ministers think they know better? Let me just ask two specific questions. Will UTCs have to follow the curriculum as well, and will all the costs that fall on schools from this measure be met? I ask those questions now, because Ministers may want to get the answers from the Box.
Catherine McKinnell
Let me be clear: I have not referred to any academy leaders or professionals in our education system as expressing views that are hysterical. I have referred to hon. Members, and I was very clear about that in my comments. I have seen far too much of that in this Committee—putting words into Members’ mouths. It is not respectful to the people we are here to represent and serve, who are working extremely hard in our school system and contributing constructively to this debate. We are open to feedback, which is why we have two consultations out on a number of the measures being considered as part of our reforms. We absolutely welcome feedback; we welcome challenge. Actually, the level of challenge reflects how important this is to the people who contribute to the discussion and debate. The hysteria I was talking about referred to hon. Members and their characterisation of some of the changes.
For the sake of a reality check, let me just say that in 2022—Members should note these statistics—of primary schools in multi-academy trusts, 64% were good and 15% were outstanding; in single-academy trusts, 67% were good and 27% were outstanding; and in maintained schools, 76% were good and 16% were outstanding. There is no difference for children’s outcomes depending on the school’s status. This is not about academies versus maintained schools or anything like it; it is about making sure that we have a framework that serves every child and that every child has a core offer as part of their education. To treat it like some sort of terrible, terrifying prospect is a mischaracterisation of the reality of both the school system and the changes we are looking to make.
Ellie Chowns
I thank the Minister for the statistics she has presented, which echo the point I was about to ask her about. Would like to challenge—as she just has—the assertion from the Conservative Benches that academies are somehow better performing? Would she agree that there is no clear evidence, as suggested by Professor Stephen Gorard, who absolutely knows what he is talking about, that academies as a whole do better than maintained schools? An ideological commitment to academies, based on a set of cherry-picked examples of individual schools, is unhelpful to the tenor of the debate. We should focus on ensuring that every child in every type of school gets an excellent education.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. She took the words out of my mouth earlier when she challenged the right hon. Member for East Hampshire. The national curriculum offer and everything we are presenting as part of our reforms provide a floor, but not a ceiling on ambition, innovation, flexibility and the ability to give an outstanding and exemplary education to the children in this country. We celebrate and value success for our children, in whatever form it comes, whether that is an academy or a local authority-maintained school. Indeed, success comes in all those forms.
All we wish to see, through this fairly straightforward measure, is a knowledge-rich education—in answer to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston—and a curriculum that is cutting-edge and that ensures high and rising standards for every child. That is why we launched the curriculum and assessment review to take the advice of experts on bringing the curriculum up to date. It is why we want to see the national curriculum as the experience that every child should have, and the framework that every child should experience throughout their primary and secondary education, regardless of the type of state school that they attend. And it is why we will be asking Members to support clause stand part.
Before the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston asks, I will respond to his question on UTCs because—
Catherine McKinnell
We recognise the valuable contribution of UTCs in providing a distinctive technical education curriculum. However, we want to ensure that all children have access to a quality core curriculum. The curriculum and assessment review is helping us to make sure we have a broad, enriching curriculum from which every child can benefit. Once it is complete, we will work with UTCs to provide any support they need to implement the changes, because we recognise their particular offer.
Munira Wilson
It was me who asked about UTCs. In her answer, is the Minister suggesting that UTCs will be required to follow the full national curriculum, even if they have a very specific technical specialism?
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Member for East Hampshire made a very interesting speech. As far as I could tell, it was not all entirely relevant to the clause, but it was an interesting description of a national curriculum and its purpose and core. Fundamentally, we want every child to have that basic core of rich knowledge and experience. Even if their school has a technical or other specialism, we still want them to have that curriculum. It is incumbent on us as a Government to create a curriculum and assessment framework that can accommodate variations, flexibility and innovation within the system. We will work with UTCs to ensure that the curriculum can be applied in their context.
This brings me to the question from the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston about costs. As we plan the implementation of the curriculum, we will work with trusts and schools to consider what support they might need to implement the changes. That is my response to his question.
Tom Hayes
I am just reflecting on this debate, and I wonder whether the Minister would agree with me on three points. First, we do not have evidence that academies have improved outcomes, and where we do, it is thin and contested. Secondly, we do not really have evidence that academics are using their autonomy; in fact, the only DFE report I could find on this dates back to 2014. Thirdly, where there may be evidence that academics are performing well, it is not necessarily the case that deviation from the national curriculum is the major contributor to that success. Is not the problem that we do not have a significant body of evidence from the last 14 years? The Conservative spokespeople on the Committee could have commissioned one from the Department for Education to back up their arguments.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes some interesting and valuable points.
Catherine McKinnell
Could I just respond to my hon. Friend’s point? I think the fundamental point he is making is that an obsession with the structure of a school is a distraction from the importance of ensuring the quality and outcomes experienced by the children within it. That is why this Government are focused on ensuring that every school has the fundamentals to provide that opportunity for children, whether that is having qualified teachers in the classroom or a curriculum and assessment framework that sets every child up to thrive. We are focused on ensuring that teachers have a fair pay framework, which we will get on to, and that there is consistency across the board, so that every school in every local community can co-operate—we will also get on to that—to ensure that children in that area, regardless of their background and needs, have the opportunity to thrive and achieve as part of their education.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 41 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 42
Academy schools: educational provision for improving behaviour
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Catherine McKinnell
Clause 42 will ensure that all mainstream and special state schools are subject to the same regulatory requirements and safeguards when directing pupils off site to improve their behaviour, creating a baseline between academies and maintained schools. Academy schools can already arrange off-site placements through their general powers, and in doing so they already follow the same guidance as maintained schools. However, technically there is inconsistency in the legal framework. Providing academies with the same explicit statutory power and equivalent limits and controls will strengthen the wider efforts to consistently safeguard all pupils and promote educational outcomes. It will also support consistency, scrutiny and transparency against misconduct or malpractice.
In using the power, academies will be required to follow the same statutory requirements as maintained schools, as set out in existing guidance. These include notifying the local authority where a pupil has an education, health and care plan; setting out the objectives of the off-site placement and keeping it under review; and keeping parents fully informed to meet pupils’ needs. I therefore recommend that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 42 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 43
Academies: power to secure performance of proprietor’s duties etc
Neil O’Brien
I beg to move amendment 78, in clause 43, page 102, leave out lines 35 and 36.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 79, in clause 43, page 102, line 37, leave out from “may” to the end of line 3 on page 103 and insert
“exercise their powers under the funding agreement to terminate or require performance of the funding agreement in accordance with its terms.”
Amendment 88, in clause 43, page 102, line 37, leave out from “directions” to the end of line 39 and insert
“as are necessary to secure compliance with statutory duties, the requirements of the Funding Agreement, or charity law.”
This amendment would limit the Secretary of State’s power of direction should an Academy breach, or act unreasonably in respect of, the performance of a relevant duty.
Amendment 89, in clause 43, page 103, line 2, leave out from “directions” to the end of line 3 and insert
“as are necessary to secure compliance with statutory duties, the requirements of the Funding Agreement, or charity law.”
This amendment would limit the Secretary of State’s power of direction should an Academy act unreasonably in respect of the exercise of a relevant power.
Amendment 77, in clause 43, page 103, line 3, at end insert—
“(2A) Where the Secretary of State exercises functions under this section, the Secretary of State must make a statement in the House of Commons which explains the actions taken and the reasons for taking such actions.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to make a statement to Parliament each time the Secretary of State uses the powers in this clause.
Clause stand part.
Neil O’Brien
This is a very centralising Bill. We have already talked about what PE kit people should be wearing at school; we have talked about whether schools will now have to apply to the Secretary of State to put up a bike rack. [Laughter.] Ministers laugh, but it is serious. They agreed to a clause just this morning that has that effect.
Neil O’Brien
It is not nonsense. It is your legislation. Sorry, let me correct the record: it is nonsense. This is nonsense legislation that we are being asked to pass.
Now we come on to something really serious that school leaders are warning us about, which is another completely out-of-control piece of centralisation. As drafted, the Bill will create the power for the Secretary of State to direct academy schools to do pretty much anything. Leora Cruddas, of the Confederation of School Trusts, has suggested a way to bring the currently unlimited clause 43 power under some limits:
“We do have concerns about the power to direct. We think it is too wide at the moment. We accept that the policy intention is one of equivalence in relation to maintained schools, but maintained schools are different legal structures from academy trusts, and we do not think that the clauses in the Bill properly reflect that. It is too broad and it is too wide. We would like to work with the Government to restrict it to create greater limits. Those limits should be around statutory duties on academy trusts, statutory guidance, the provisions in the funding agreement and charity law.”
That is precisely what Opposition amendments 88 and 89 would do. We are not against Ministers having a new power to intervene to get schools to fulfil their duties, but that is different; it is narrower than the current drafting. It may just be that when officials have gone away and tried to turn Ministers’ intentions into legislation, they have gone too far.
David Thomas, a successful headteacher, has made the same point:
“If the purpose is, as it says in the explanatory notes, to issue a direction to academy trusts to comply with their duty, that feels like a perfectly reasonable thing to be able to do. The Bill, as drafted, gives the Secretary of State the ability to ‘give the proprietor such directions as the Secretary of State considers appropriate’. I do not think it is appropriate for a Secretary of State to give an operational action plan to a school, but I think it is perfectly reasonable for a Secretary of State to tell a school that it needs to follow its duty. I think there is just a mismatch between the stated intention and the drafting, and I would correct that mismatch.”
I am not surprised that school leaders are concerned. The Government’s own policy summary notes make it clear that they intend to use the power to reach into schools and intervene on pretty much anything that the Department wants. They give the following example:
“The academy trust has failed to deal with a parental complaint and has not followed its complaints process. Therefore, the issue may be escalated to the Department to consider. In such cases, the Secretary of State could issue a compliance direction to ensure the trust addresses the complaint appropriately”.
It is crystal clear that the Government are taking a power to direct any academy school, without limit, on any issue they see fit. That is such a big move away from the whole idea of the academies programme—the idea of independent state-funded schools.
There are two ways of fixing the problem. Amendments 78 and 79 would simply delete the bit that is excessive, proposed new section 497C(1)(b); amendment 77 would require a statement to be made when the powers are used. Alternatively, amendments 88 and 89—this is, broadly speaking, the suggestion made by the Confederation of School Trusts—would be more incremental reforms. They would retain the text about direction but, in two relevant places, would limit it to
“compliance with statutory duties, the requirements of the Funding Agreement, or charity law.”
The impact assessment for the Bill says that if schools do not comply with the new orders from the Secretary of State, the trustees may be found to be in contempt of court. This charge may come with punishments including fines. It is also possible that, in very extreme cases, individuals found in contempt of court could face a custodial sentence. Helpfully, the assessment says that that should be very rare, but what a long way we have travelled from the whole idea of academies as independent state schools!
That has been the theme as we have gone through the Bill: again and again, we are moving away from a culture of entrepreneurialism, can-do spirit and freedom—going out there and solving problems and making the magic happen for kids—and towards a compliance culture that is all about dealing with what the Secretary of State wants and clicking our heels when they say jump. Since 1988, we have been on a cross-party journey away from micromanagement and towards greater autonomy for schools.
Catherine McKinnell
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that 48% of schools are local authority-maintained schools? He seems to be denigrating their entire modus operandi in his characterisation of the way non-academies work. They are working hard and are delivering fantastic outcomes for children. We do not denigrate academies; I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman wishes to do so to maintained schools.
Neil O’Brien
It is always a bad sign when someone has to misrepresent completely what their opponent is trying to say. Allow me to address that point directly by, once again, reading what Leora Cruddas of the Confederation of School Trusts told the Committee:
“We accept that the policy intention is one of equivalence in relation to maintained schools, but maintained schools are different legal structures from academy trusts, and we do not think that the clauses in the Bill properly reflect that. It is too broad and it is too wide. We would like to work with the Government to restrict it to create greater limits.” ––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 81, Q169.]
That is what our amendments seek to do.
To take the temperature out of the discussion, let me say that I do not have a problem with the Government having a new power of intervention to cut across their funding agreements with academies—although that is a big step, by the way. My problem is with the completely unlimited nature of the power. I am thinking about the effect of getting away from micromanagement over time. The sixth-form college I went to had become brilliant because it had managed to use the freedoms in the 1992 reforms to take a huge step away from micromanagement, but some of the older teachers there still remembered the days when they had to ring up the town hall if they wanted the heating turned up. Imagine that absurd degree of micromanagement. Terrifyingly, some schools in Scotland are still experiencing that insane degree of micromanagement; teachers there are currently on strike because their concerns about discipline are not being taken seriously, so we can see that freedom has worked in England.
I do not think that this was the intention of the Ministers, but the drafting of the clause is far too sweeping. It gives an unlimited power. I see no reason why the Ministers should not accept the suggestion from the Confederation of School Trusts, which our amendments seek to implement, that we limit that power in certain reasonable ways. It is fine for Ministers to be able to intervene more, but we need some limits. I am sure that the current Secretary of State wants only good things, but a bad future Secretary of State should not be able to do just anything they want.
The Ministers started from a reasonable point of view, but it has gone too far. I hope that they will work with the CST to turn the unlimited power into a limited one. Perhaps they will even accept our amendments, which would do exactly that.
Munira Wilson
I was going to say largely the same as the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, although I think he was exaggerating slightly in suggesting that the power will lead to local authorities telling schools whether or not they can switch their heating on and off.
Munira Wilson
All right. I have a lot of sympathy with amendments 88 and 89, and I agree that the drafting of the clause seems at odds with the explanatory notes. There is a potential overreach of the Secretary of State’s powers over schools, so I look forward to hearing what the Minister can say to temper what is in the Bill. I have no problem ideologically with what I think are the Ministers’ intentions; it is just that the drafting seems to allow a level of overreach and micromanagement from Whitehall, which I think we all wish to avoid.
Damian Hinds
Clause 43 will give the Secretary of State a power to direct specific actions to comply with duties, rather than just specifying what those duties are. That is what brings it into a different category. It is a much wider set of powers than we would find in a funding agreement. In principle, it appears to include the power to dictate how individual schools are run, which is not to say that the present Ministers would ever do so.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, is there a mechanism to challenge or appeal a decision made in that way? Secondly, has the Department assessed how much extra work will be involved for it as a result of handling more complaints?
I want to say a little about academies and maintained schools in general. There is no conflict. Defending academy freedoms and what academies can do does not mean pushing down on maintained schools. I have had children at both, and I have both in my constituency. In fact, East Hampshire is relatively unacademised: particularly at primary level, it has a relatively small number of schools that are academies. I love them all, because they are places where children learn, but none of that takes away from the fact that the freedoms and flexibilities afforded to academies are good things to have.
On the question of academic studies, as with grammar schools or various other debates, I could find an academic who could give us any answer we want. In fairness, causality is really hard to prove with these things. What I can tell the Minister, however, is that I have a graph. He may have seen it; if not, I will be happy to send him a copy. It is a U-shaped graph of the performance of schools in England relative to their peers in other countries; it relates to the PISA study, but there are equivalents for PIRLS and TIMSS.
The graph shows how remarkably school performance in England has improved over the past decade and a half. Nobody should ever claim that a single factor causes these things, but a fundamental vehicle for schools improvement in that time—alongside the hub network and established and proven methods such as maths mastery and phonics—was the ability for schools to convert to academies, and for academy trusts to spread good practice through our system.
Catherine McKinnell
I will turn first to amendment 77, which was tabled by the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. We are committed to maintaining transparency in our decisions to intervene in academies and trusts. We already publish notices to improve and termination warning notices when they are issued to trusts. When a direction is issued, the Secretary of State will publish the direction unless there are good reasons not to do so. The direction will make clear the duty or power in relation to which it is made; it will also clearly state what the trust has to do to rectify the issue. We therefore do not consider it necessary to make a statement to the House of Commons about every direction. I therefore respectfully ask the hon. Members not to press amendment 77.
Amendment 78 seeks to limit the legal duty limb of the direction-making power to when the Secretary of State considers that there has been a breach of a legal duty by a trust. As the regulator of academies, the Secretary of State must be able to ensure that trusts are complying with their legal duties; this includes performing those legal duties properly and not bending the rules. That is why it is important that the Secretary of State can intervene when trusts are performing their legal duties in an unreasonable way, just as we can issue a direction to governing bodies of maintained schools under existing powers when there is an unreasonable performance of a duty. I therefore respectfully ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to withdraw amendment 78.
Amendment 79 seeks to limit the scope of the power to secure proper performance of academy trusts to breaches of their legal duties only. It also suggests that the Secretary of State may not be able to issue a direction, but should instead rely on the termination powers in funding agreements to enforce compliance with the duty. The legal duties and powers to maintain schools and academies originate from different sources. The duties and powers for maintained schools are contained primarily in legislation; in contrast, some academy duties and powers are sourced in legislation, but others are sourced in contract. This measure therefore needs to be drafted broadly to encompass a comparable range of powers and duties.
The purpose of the direction-making power is to give the Secretary of State a way of enforcing breaches of legal obligations where threatening to terminate a funding agreement and move an academy to another trust is not proportionate. The amendment would totally undermine that purpose and would leave us with essentially the same powers that we have now. I therefore respectfully ask hon. Members not to press amendment 79.
Amendments 88 and 89 seek to limit the scope of the Secretary of State’s power to issue directions. The Secretary of State must be able to hold trusts and their proprietors to account for fulfilling their duties and powers. Limiting the scope of compliance, as is proposed, would undermine that ability and would hinder effective oversight.
As I have said, the legal framework for academies is distinct from the framework for local authority-maintained schools. The duties and powers applicable to academies are not solely enshrined in legislation; they are also embedded in their funding agreements and articles of association. A power with a more broadly drafted scope is necessary to encompass a comparable range of powers and duties. The broader scope will ensure that the Secretary of State can address the unreasonable actions of academy proprietors comprehensively and effectively, without the need to terminate a trust’s funding agreement. Narrowing the scope of directions, as amendments 88 and 89 would, risks hindering the Secretary of State’s ability to enforce proprietors’ compliance with their duties and to exercise their powers as they should.
It is crucial that we maintain a robust and flexible approach to oversight, ensuring that all academies adhere to the highest standards of governance and accountability. Furthermore, it is important to note that any directions issued by the Secretary of State will be made in line with common-law principles of reasonableness and fairness. This will ensure that the directions are fair, balanced and appropriate to the circumstances, providing a safeguard against any potential misuse of power. For those reasons, I respectfully ask hon. Members not to press amendments 88 and 89.
I turn to clause 43. The majority of trusts are doing an excellent job, providing good-quality education to their children and fulfilling their legal obligations while doing so. However, when things go wrong and trusts are not fulfilling their obligations or are stretching the rules unreasonably, it can be hard for Government to intervene. The only intervention that we can currently take is threatening to remove academies from the trust, and that would disrupt the education of children. That is the only option, even when non-compliance is not even connected to education outcomes.
Clause 43 will allow the Secretary of State to issue a direction to a trust when things go wrong, identifying what needs to be done to remedy it. That will provide the trust with clarity about its responsibilities. In almost all cases, before deciding to issue a direction, the Secretary of State will write to the trust to let it know that she is minded to direct it to take action, providing an opportunity for it to make representations. When the trust does not comply with that direction, instead of disrupting the education of pupils for quite discrete matters we will seek an enforcement through a court order. That means that the Secretary of State can ensure that trusts are doing what they should be doing, without unnecessary disruption to pupils.
I shall now respond to some of the questions raised. This is not about micromanaging academies. Existing intervention powers, like termination warning notices, simply are not always suitable for isolated breaches of legal duties or unreasonable behaviour—they are like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. That is no way to run a system where what is often required is firm but much less drastic action. Terminating funding agreements can be incredibly disruptive for pupils, parents, staff and communities. The new measure offers a much more flexible, direct and commensurate way to ensure compliance. It will minimise disruption and maintain stability for trusts and their pupils.
With regard to the shadow Minister’s comments about the Confederation of Schools Trusts’ suggestions, I should say that I have absolute admiration for the work that the CST does and full respect for its views on these matters. However, the measure is drafted with the scope to cover a broad range of ways in which an academy trust might breach a legal duty, or exercise a power unreasonably, in a way that warrants intervention. By covering all duties and powers applicable to academy trusts, our drafting achieves that aim and makes the direction-making power as effective an intervention measure as possible.
We will issue guidance in due course detailing the circumstances in which we will issue a direction. We do not think it is necessary to limit the scope of the power to duties and powers in legislation, funding agreements and articles of association, as that would still result in a broad power.
On the question of appeals, we will issue a “minded to” letter first, as is already the case, so that the trust can respond to concerns. But when a trust is fulfilling a legal duty or exercising a legal power in an unreasonable way, the measure gives the Secretary of State the power to issue a direction to the trust, which will make it clear what is required from the trust. In cases of unreasonableness, we will issue a direction only when the behaviour of the trust is such that no reasonable trust could have acted in such a way, not simply when the Secretary of State disagrees with the action of the trust.
If a trust believes that the Secretary State has issued a direction mistakenly or unreasonably, the direction may be challenged by way of judicial review. Without this proposed direction-making power, the Secretary of State’s ability to take action in cases of unacceptable behaviour from trusts—for example, issues in relation to off-rolling—will be limited.
I turn to the comments of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire. As he will be aware, we are already regularly engaging with trusts as part of existing intervention processes. The amount of extra work for the Department is certainly a factor to consider, but it is difficult to quantify as it will vary on a case-by-case basis. Considering existing parallel powers for maintained schools has not led to an increase in work for the Department. Indeed, being able to take a more measured and proportionate approach, rather than a “sledgehammer to crack a nut” one, will hopefully be a more proportionate and measured response to any unreasonable behaviour by academy trusts.
Damian Hinds
For clarification, I meant that if a trust or a school had not followed its own complaints procedure and the DFE needed to intervene, that would result in an increase in the volume of parental complaints. The DFE does handle parental complaints, of course. I think that there would be an increase in the volume. My question was about the specific resourcing implications of that, particularly in a changed world with social media: when people get wind of these things, complaints could grow somewhat.
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman asks about a very specific example. I am happy to take it away. The issue of complaints is generally important. The Department is looking at where accountability and responsibility lies and how to make clear for parents where they can best direct their concerns. It is an important issue and one we are taking away.
In terms of the implementation of this power, I cannot see a significant impact, given that the provision is intended to create a much more reasonable approach when it comes to academies that are not fulfilling their legal duties. Currently the only options available are significant and disproportionate in many cases, and action might be required to deal with the case of a trust not complying with its legal obligations.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister mentions a trust that is not complying with its legal duties; I do not think we would have a problem with addressing that, but that is not what is drafted here. As the provision is drafted, the Secretary of State can intervene whenever he or she thinks, in their own eye, that the school is behaving unreasonably. The only appeal the school will have is judicial review. The Minister is saying a lot of sensible stuff, but that is just too much, and I am keen to press amendment 88.
Catherine McKinnell
I have already responded to that point, both in my substantive comments and subsequent responses. I think we will have to agree to disagree. I urge the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.
Neil O’Brien
For all the reasons we have just rehearsed, I am keen to push amendment 88. Ministers may well vote against it today, but I hope that later on in the process they will listen to what school leaders are saying. There is a group of amendments, but I intend to push only amendment 88 to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 78.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 88, clause 43, page 102, line 37, leave out from “directions” to the end of line 39 and insert
“as are necessary to secure compliance with statutory duties, the requirements of the Funding Agreement, or charity law.”—(Neil O’Brien.)
This amendment would limit the Secretary of State’s power of direction should an Academy breach, or act unreasonably in respect of, the performance of a relevant duty.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Neil O’Brien
I beg to move amendment 80, in clause 44, page 103, leave out from line 25 to line 8 on page 104 and insert—
“(a) in subsection (A1), after ‘measures)’ insert ‘unless the Secretary of State determines that no suitable sponsor is available’;
(b) after subsection (A1) insert—
‘(A2) Where the Secretary of State determines that no suitable sponsor is available, the Secretary of State must, within 14 days, publish a plan to secure appropriate governance and leadership of the school and to secure its rapid improvement.
(A3) A plan published under subsection (A2) must include—
(a) the parties with responsibility for the school and its improvement;
(b) the parties who will take action to improve provision in the school;
(c) the resources that will be provided to the relevant parties, including who will provide the resources and when the resources will be provided; and
(d) the intended outcomes of the plan, with the relevant timetables for the outcomes.
(A4) The Secretary of State must report annually to Parliament on—
(a) the number of times the Secretary of State has published a plan under subsection (A2);
(b) the resources which have been provided as part of any plans; and
(c) the outcomes of any plans.’”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 81, in clause 44, page 103, line 28, at end insert—
“(c) after subsection (1), insert—
‘(1ZA) The Secretary of State must make an Academy order in respect of a maintained school in England if—
(a) Ofsted has judged the school to require significant improvement; or
(b) a Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence team has judged the school to be significantly underperforming when compared with neighbouring schools with similar demographics.’”
Amendment 82, in clause 44, page 103, line 28, at end insert—
“(c) after subsection (7), insert—
‘(7A) No application or petition for judicial review may be made or brought in relation to a decision taken by the Secretary of State to make an Academy order.’”
Amendment 95, in clause 44, page 103, line 28, at end insert—
“(c) after subsection (1A) insert—
‘(1B) Before deciding whether to issue an Academy order in respect of a maintained school, the Secretary of State must issue an invitation for expressions of interest for suitable sponsors.
(1C) The Secretary of State must make an assessment of whether or not to issue an Academy order based on the established track record of parties who responded to the invitation issued under subsection (1B) with an expression of interest in raising school standards.’”
Amendment 96, in clause 44, page 104, line 8, at end insert—
“(10) Before the amendments made by this section come into force, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report detailing—
(a) the mechanisms, including Academy Orders, by which improvement of school standards can be achieved, and
(b) guidance on the appropriate usage of these mechanisms.”
Clause stand part.
Neil O’Brien
The Bill ends the automatic conversion of failing schools into academies. That measure was put in place because it became apparent that the most effective way to turn around failing schools at scale was to put them under new management. It also became apparent that when there was a question of discretion and choice, that opened the way for bitterly divisive local campaigns and time-consuming legal action.
The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) said on Second Reading:
“I know from bitter personal experience that any change to the status of a school can become highly political. The current system, in which failing schools automatically become academies, provides clarity and de-politicisation, and ensures a rapid transition. I fear that making that process discretionary would result in a large increase in judicial reviews, pressure on councils and prolonged uncertainty, which is in nobody’s interests.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 902.]
She also said on the “Today” programme that the end of the academies order will mean that
“the DFE will find itself mired in the high court in judicial review. When we tried to transfer our first failing school to a Harris academy we spent two years in court, and children…don’t have that time to waste.”
Rob Tarn, the chief executive of the Northern Education Trust, has made the same point:
“If there’s no longer a known, blanket reality…There is a risk that, where it’s been determined a school needs to join a strong trust, it will take much longer and we will go back to the early days of academisation when people went to court.”
Catherine McKinnell
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that I should be predicting which schools go into special measures and which have an Ofsted outcome that requires significant improvement?
Neil O’Brien
I am afraid that the Minister is the one making the prediction. It is her consultation document that says that the Government expect that twice as many schools will go through some combination of either RISE or structural intervention. The Government must know, to be able to make the claim—
Neil O’Brien
Just a second. To make the claim that Ministers want to make for all kinds of reasons, they have to know. It is not me who is making the prediction, but them. I just want them to give us the numbers behind it.
Catherine McKinnell
I think that the hon. Gentleman is conflating the identification of stuck schools that under his Government remained consistently underperforming—about 600 schools, with 312,000 children. The RISE teams will immediately focus on those as the immediate priority for improving outcomes.
Neil O’Brien
I am trying to get the Minister to de-conflate her own statistics. The Government want to present the statistic in a deliberately conflated way and I am trying to get it de-conflated. This is the Government’s statistic; I am not offering it. I would like to have some sense from them of how many schools—they must have the figure to make the claim—are going to go through structural interventions so that we can compare the future regime to the previous regime. The Ministers are the ones making the claim that this will intervene on more schools; I am not claiming that. I think it is reasonable to ask for the numbers behind the Government’s own claims, which they did not have to make.
There is an irony behind all this. Ministers have said that they worry about having different types of schools and they want things in the system to be generally more consistent. Currently, the school system is a sort of halfway house: about 80% of secondary schools are now academies, but fewer than half of primaries are—so just over half of state schools are now academies; most academies are in a trust and so on.
In the absence of this Bill we were gradually moving over time, in an organic way, to get to a consistent system based on academies and trusts, which would then at some point operate on the same framework. But the Bill effectively freezes that halfway: it is ending the academisation order and enabling local authorities to open more new schools again. I have never been quite clear about why Ministers want a situation where they do not end up with an organic move to a single system but remain with the distinction between academies and local authority maintained schools, particularly given the drive for consistency elsewhere in the Bill.
In the past, there have been people in the Government who have held anti-academies views, or at least been prepared to bandwagon with anti-academies campaigners on the left. When running for leadership of the Labour party, the Prime Minister said:
“The academisation of our schools is centralising at its core and it has fundamentally disempowered parents, pupils and communities.”
That was not long ago; there he was, on the bandwagon with the anti-academies people.
Likewise, the Deputy Prime Minister said she wanted to stop academy conversion and
“scrap the inefficient free school programme”.
We talked about the evidence that those programmes worked when Labour Members asked for it. The Deputy Prime Minister said that the free schools programme is inefficient, but the average Progress 8 score of a free school is 0.25. That is a fantastic score, getting a quarter of a grade better across all subjects, which is beating the national average. That is what the Deputy Prime Minister thought was so inefficient, but the opposite is the truth. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are not the only ones: the Culture Secretary spoke at an anti-academies conference. The Energy Secretary said that free schools were the last thing we need—but actually, for many kids they are the first. When Ministers in this Government say that they just want more options, and that they are still prepared to fight all the usual suspects to put failing schools under new management—even where left-wing local campaigns are against it—we start from a bit of a sceptical position, because of the relatively recent comments made by senior Ministers.
We do not have to imagine the future. The other day, we saw a choice: we saw a straw in the wind. Glebefields primary school in Tipton was issued with an academy order after being rated less than good twice. The DFE previously told Glebefields that the Education Secretary did not believe the case met the criteria to revoke academisation, despite the change of policy before us. The school threatened legal action and the Secretary of State changed her mind. I worry that there will be many such cases, as well as court cases, and that too many children will find themselves in schools that are failing them, and in need of new management that they will not get.
Ultimately, our amendments seek to limit the damage of this clause, but fundamentally we think that it is a mistake. We worry that, in a few years’ time, Ministers will realise what some of their Back-Bench colleagues already realise: why this clause is a big mistake.
Munira Wilson
On clause 44, Liberal Democrats have long supported the position that a failing school, or one that Ofsted has identified as requiring intervention, should not automatically be made an academy. That is our long-standing policy position, so when the Bill was published I welcomed that measure.
However, I felt the need to table amendments because, as I stated yesterday in the Chamber, I was concerned that we were being asked to take away the automatic provision of issuing an academy order without knowing what the school inspection regime would be, and were therefore being asked to legislate in a vacuum. I still think that it is wrong that this legislation started to be considered before we had yesterday’s announcements, but I recognise that the Government have now made them.
I was quite taken, in the oral evidence session, in which we heard from various witnesses, not least by Sir Jon Coles, who said he would like to see what Government policy is underpinning this particular measure, and what the Government’s school improvement policy is. I think the jury is still out on what we heard yesterday, but the fact that we have had a policy announcement negates, to some extent, amendment 95 in my name. It sought to ensure that there was something in place, so that if there were not an automatic academy order, the Secretary of State would invite bids from successful academy trusts that had a track record of turning schools around.
I say to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston that academisation is not a silver bullet. He has enjoyed quoting many times the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden, who spoke out against her own Front Bench, but she even said herself on Radio 4 in the interview that he cited—which I listened to very carefully on the day it was broadcast—that academisation is not a silver bullet. I have not seen it in my own constituency, but I note that the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) pointed out on Second Reading that she worked in areas in the north-west where there were some schools with very vulnerable pupils that had not been improved by being switched from academy trust to academy trust. Clearly, it is not always the correct answer. I therefore think it is important that Ministers set out the whole range of options that are available to ensure that we can turn schools around—and turn them around quickly—because our children deserve the best possible opportunities to flourish and thrive.
Some questions were posed on that yesterday, and I am sure that Ministers will address it over the coming weeks—although I welcome comments today—but, with the RISE teams that are being put in place, the number of advisers is really quite small for the number of schools.
Neil O'Brien
The hon. Lady, in her speech, is talking a lot of sense. I would just point out to her that in the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, per-pupil funding, in real terms, went up by 11%. There will always be constraints. Indeed, the current Ministers have cut the academisation grant and the trust improvement capacity fund, and cut Latin, maths, computing, and physics support; lots of things have been cut. In fairness, schools funding, per pupil, went up a lot faster in the last Parliament than it did in 2010 to 2015, when the hon. Lady’s party was in government. But there are always—[Interruption.]
Munira Wilson
I am very happy to respond to that. The hon. Gentleman will know full well—[Interruption.] Sorry; if the hon. Gentleman wishes to make these party political jibes, I am very happy to come back at him on them. In 2010 to 2015, it was the Liberal Democrats in government who made sure that schools’ day-to-day funding was not cut. We were responsible for introducing the pupil premium, which, post 2015, was never uprated.
Munira Wilson
In a moment. I will make this point, because I wanted to pick up on it in the oral evidence session when people were asking questions about attainment, but we ran out of time. The pupil premium was a Liberal Democrat front-page manifesto policy in 2010. That was implemented and it has helped disadvantaged pupils. After 2015 it was not uprated in line with inflation, and that is why our disadvantaged children up and down the country are now getting less money, in real terms, to support their education. We have seen a widening attainment gap since covid in particular.
So, I will take no lectures from the Conservative Benches on supporting disadvantaged pupils. It was our policy on free school meals, and our policy on the pupil premium, that came to bear. Actually, it was after 2015 that we saw funding cuts. The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston boasted that per-pupil funding was raised; the Conservatives only got it back to 2010 levels by the time they left government in 2024. I am sure that Members across this room, when they visit their schools, will hear stories about the funding pressures.
Munira Wilson
I think we are diverging somewhat from the clause and the amendments.
Munira Wilson
I will give way only if it relates to the clause and the amendments, because I fear we have veered on to school funding, as opposed to academy orders.
Tom Hayes
I was going to show some solidarity with the hon. Lady, which she may find useful. This is my second Bill Committee—the first was on water—and if it is any consolation to the hon. Lady, the Conservative spokespeople blamed 14 years of water mismanagement on the five years of coalition with the Liberal Democrats in that Committee, too. My question is, would she agree that, actually, it is unfair to blame the Liberal Democrats for 14 years of education failure, given that they were only in coalition for five of those failing years?
Munira Wilson
I think it is unfair because, as I have pointed out, we saw the most damaging cuts, and the lack of keeping up with inflation—in terms of schools funding—from 2015 onwards. As Liberals, it is core to our DNA to champion education, because we recognise that that is the route out of poverty and disadvantage for everyone. No matter someone’s background, that is how they flourish in life. That is why we had such a big focus on education when we were in government. Sadly, we never saw that level of focus after we left government.
I return to clause 44 and the amendments in my name. I share some of the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston about judicial reviews. I do not share his concerns far enough to support his amendment, because a judicial review is sometimes an important safety valve in all sorts of decision making, but I recognise what he says: that all sorts of campaigns and judicial reviews could start up. Just the other day, I was talking to a former Minister who has been involved in a London school that needs turning around; they have had all sorts of problems in making the necessary changes, and were subject to a judicial review, which the governing body and those involved won. I recognise and share the shadow Minister’s concerns, and I look forward to hearing how the Minister will address them, but putting a bar on all JRs in primary legislation is possibly overreach.
Amanda Martin
I want to comment on judicial reviews. Opposition Members will be aware that the previous Government’s long-standing policy of issuing academisation orders to schools with two RIs was not in fact a duty, but can they set out on how many occasions those would have been challenged through a judicial review? Rather than them taking the time, I can tell them that there were numerous judicial reviews that held up the changes that we would have wanted to make, whether regarding governance or a change in leadership. The clause allows local authorities and local areas to choose which way to go.
Munira Wilson
The hon. Lady posed a question and answered it herself, so I shall move on.
My amendment 95 is perhaps made redundant by yesterday’s announcements, but amendment 96 talks about parliamentary oversight. That comes back to the fundamental point that I made in the Chamber yesterday, which is that we will end up passing the Bill before we see the outcome of the consultations from Ofsted and the Government on school improvement. I therefore humbly ask Ministers to at least allow Parliament to have sight of what will replace the power that is being amended, our support for which is of long standing.
Catherine McKinnell
Amendment 80 would retain the existing duty to issue an academy order where a school is judged to be in a category of concern by Ofsted. However, it provides an exemption to the duty in cases where the Secretary of State is unable to identify a suitable sponsor trust for the school.
Amendment 81 would not alter the repeal of the existing duty to issue academy orders to schools in a statutory category of concern; it would replace it with a duty to issue an academy order to schools assessed as requiring significant improvement or assessed by a RISE team to be significantly underperforming in comparison with their peers. Where a school is judged as requiring special measures, the Secretary of State would have a choice as to whether to issue an academy order, to deploy a RISE team or to use another intervention measure.
The amendments acknowledge the spirit of our proposal, which is to repeal the duty to issue academy orders and so to provide more flexibility to take the best course of action for each school. We recognise that in some cases the existing leadership of a failing school is strong and, with the right support, has the capacity to improve the school. Repealing the duty to issue an academy order means that in such cases we will have the flexibility to provide targeted support to schools, for example through RISE teams, to drive school improvement without the need to change the school’s leadership. I acknowledge the spirit of amendments 80 and 81 and the support for greater flexibility, but they would undermine the objective of enabling greater flexibility when intervening in failing schools. I therefore ask the hon. Members not to press them.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
As set out by the Secretary of State yesterday, is it not the case that RISE teams will make the faster, earlier interventions to help schools improve before the situation gets so bad that these orders are given? Is that not exactly the point we are trying to get to?
Catherine McKinnell
Absolutely. The hon. Lady has put it very well. I was going to come to the detail of how the RISE teams will work, as I appreciate some questions have been raised. Fundamentally it needs to be understood that RISE will be a very different service from previous education improvement services that have been referenced. There will be more days, more money and better quality, because RISE will draw on the very best available school improvement capacity within the region, much of which lies within our academy trust leaders themselves.
Damian Hinds
I have a genuine question, as they say on Twitter. Quite a lot of teachers and school leaders have asked me, what is the difference between people joining a RISE team and national leaders in education?
Catherine McKinnell
Genuine delay of response, on the basis that I will come to that in my comments, but I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s interest.
Amendment 82—tabled jointly in the names of the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich—means that where the Secretary of State decides to issue an academy order to a school, the decision cannot be challenged by judicial review. The amendment looks to address the concerns that have been raised that repealing the duty to issue academy orders will lead to delays in school conversions and improvement, due to legal challenges against the Secretary of State’s decision.
I do not accept the challenge that repealing the duty to issue academy orders will lead to unacceptably high numbers of legal challenges. As part of our future intervention process, we will set out a robust and lawful policy which will set out the circumstances in which we will issue an academy order to a school in a category of concern, and that will help ensure that all decisions taken to intervene are in the best interest of the individual school and its circumstances. However, there should be the possibility, and ability, for those impacted by decisions to issue an academy order to challenge that decision where it might have got it wrong. I therefore respectfully ask that the Members withdraw that amendment.
I now turn to amendments 95 and 96, tabled by the hon. Member for Twickenham. Amendment 95 seeks to require the Secretary of State to invite expressions of interest from potential sponsor trusts prior to issuing an academy order to a failing school. It then requires the Secretary of State to assess the track record of potential sponsors identified as regards school improvement. Amendment 96 would require the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament, setting out the different mechanisms that can be used to secure school improvement, and guidance on the appropriate usage of those mechanisms, before measures can take effect. The Department already has an established practice on publishing clear policy and guidance on the methods used to support and intervene in schools. In particular, the support and intervention in school guidance makes clear the various intervention powers that may be used when a school is underperforming and the circumstances in which they may be used. In most cases, failing maintained schools subsequently converted to academies have shown improvements. The last published data shows that since 2010, 68% of previously maintained schools, now academies, improved to a “good” or “outstanding” in their latest Ofsted inspection. Conversely, that does show that 32% did not.
Once it is decided that an academy order should be issued, the Department already has established processes in place to identify the best sponsor for each failing school. Using the high-quality trust framework, the Department identifies trusts with the expertise and track record in delivering high-quality and inclusive education and the capacity to rapidly transform the performance of the school. The Department will consider the individual school characteristics and the school’s improvement needs in order to match the school with the right trust. We will continue to ensure that we identify the best possible sponsor match for failing schools that receive academy orders to maximise the potential for school improvement. The Department already has these well-established practices, so I do not believe the amendments are necessary to achieve the outcome that they seek. I respectfully ask the hon. Member for Twickenham not to press them to a vote.
Catherine McKinnell
We greatly value the role of trusts in the school system. Indeed, we recognise the improvements they have brought, particularly for disadvantaged children. We recognise the excellence and innovation seen right across our schools and trusts. As I said earlier, we also recognise that a lot of the capacity to drive improvement across the system exists within those academy trusts, and we will harness that.
Without single headline grades, Ofsted will continue to identify those schools that require significant improvement or are in special measures and it will be able to make judgments to inform the level of support that should be given. If a school in special measures does not have the leadership capacity to improve, the proposal subject to consultation is that it should be immediately moved towards academisation. Where a school does have the leadership capacity to improve, for the next year, while we are building up the capacity of the RISE teams—as I said, 20 began work yesterday, but we recognise we are not up to full capacity yet—it will be issued with an academy order. However, once we have the RISE teams to go in and support the leadership team to drive improvements within those schools, we will put in that support, rather than going straight to an academy order.
Tom Hayes
We have heard various things from the Conservative spokespeople, including from a sedentary position. I just heard the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston say something about the Prime Minister. I want to put on the record what the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions recently:
“Parents and teachers know that we introduced academies. Parents and teachers know that we are driven by standards. We are committed to standards—they are part of the future—and we will continue to focus on them.”—[Official Report, 22 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 1000.]
It is really important that words are not being put in the mouths of Members, particularly when those Members are not in this room.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification, and I agree; there has been far too much of that in this Committee.
Neil O’Brien
I literally just read out the Prime Minister’s own words. They are not my words. If he did not want to say them, he did not have to say them. I want to press the Minister, because I can sense that she is starting to wind up. She is talking about how many schools will go through structural intervention—in other words, academisation. The Government have put out a statistic saying that there will be twice as many schools going through RISE and academisation combined over the next three years as there were over the last two years. The Government clearly have a statistic for how many schools they expect to go through academisation, and I am keen that the Minister tell the House what that number is. How many schools do they expect to go through academisation in the next three years? They obviously know.
Catherine McKinnell
To be clear, we have identified the 600 schools that require RISE intervention, and that will be mandated—
Catherine McKinnell
If I could just finish, that will be mandated intervention for schools that have been consistently underperforming. They are schools that are not part of the previous Government’s procedure for mandating intervention within schools. They are schools that have been sitting just above the mandated intervention procedures but have been consistently underperforming. This is one of the big failures of the previous Government. We have spent a lot of time in the last few days recognising the great successes of many educational reforms over the years, but it is a crying shame that so many schools are still struggling and have not had the support they need to improve over the years.
Catherine McKinnell
No. The idea that a one-trick-pony approach to improving schools will get the required outcome is simply not borne out by the facts.
I will give a piece of data that might help to illustrate my point. This is in no way a reflection of academies—we absolutely support academies, and we cannot wait to see RISE working with academies to drive great practice and improvements across the system. However, 42% of schools that were placed in special measures or judged as requiring significant improvement in 2023-24 by Ofsted were academies. The idea that simply academising, academising, academising will get the outcomes we need for children is a narrow-minded, inflexible approach that has let far too many children down. We are not willing to put up with that.
Catherine McKinnell
I will get on to answering the hon. Gentleman’s question, if he would like me to. He can ask it again or ask another one.
Neil O’Brien
I am keen to get a piece of information that the Government have not properly put into the public domain. They clearly know how many schools they expect to go through academisation in the next three years. What is the number? That is all I am looking for.
Catherine McKinnell
I will need to write to the hon. Gentleman to answer that specific question, as I think it is more complex than he identifies. There are obviously schools that we know are underperforming, and that is where we want to target our resources. Those in special measures and those that require significant improvement will undergo academy conversion over the next 12 months. We probably have the number for that, but ongoing Ofsted inspections will identify new schools that will fall into that category, and they will need to be academised. We cannot predict that, and it would not be fair for us to do so.
We have roughly 312,000 children at schools that we have already identified as struggling schools that are not getting any support or intervention. We are directing targeted, mandated RISE support to them. Clearly, future schools will unfortunately fall into those categories as more Ofsted inspections are undertaken over the next year. I therefore do not have the exact figure as to how many will fall into whichever category.
We obviously hope that schools will benefit from the universal RISE service that we will bring forward to support all schools to improve, regardless of their process. That, however, is part of the consultation; we will look to roll it out in due course.
To be clear on the number of RISE advisers, we recognise that 20 seems like a small number, but they will be the facilitators of a much larger army of school improvement expertise that we know already exists in the system. That will be put together with schools that require support. By April, we will have 50 advisers as we are undertaking a recruitment process to bring in the best of the best for school improvement support. They will not deliver the school improvement but will ensure that school improvement is made available and matched up with schools that need it.
As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire will know, the national leaders of education, who are school improvers, were deployed for a basic 10 days. That was obviously valuable, but RISE will draw on a much broader range of institutional capacity, and it will bring in more than one provider. There will be more help and expertise, and there will be more time and more money. We are not going to waste any time. We are investing in making sure that children do not spend one more day in a school that is not giving them the outcomes they deserve. I hope the Committee will agree to the clause standing part of the Bill.
Neil O’Brien
I am keen to press the amendment.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Munira Wilson
I beg to move amendment 47, in clause 45, page 104, line 17, at end insert—
“(za) in subsection (1)(a), after ‘the’ insert ‘minimum’”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 45 and 46 stand part.
Government amendment 93.
New clause 7—Power to prescribe pay and conditions for teachers—
“The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of this Act—
(a) make provision for the power of the governing bodies of maintained schools to set the pay and working conditions of school teachers to be made equivalent with the relevant powers of academies;
(b) provide guidance to all applicable schools that—
(i) pay levels given in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document are to be treated as the minimum pay of relevant teachers;
(ii) teachers may be paid above the pay levels given in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document.
(iii) they must have regard to the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document but may vary from it in the best interests of their pupils and staff.”
This new clause would make the pay set out in the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document a floor, and extend freedoms over pay and conditions to local authority maintained schools.
Government new clause 57—Pay and conditions of Academy teachers.
Government new schedule 1—Pay and conditions of Academy teachers: amendments to the Education Act 2002.
Munira Wilson
Amendment 47 would, very simply, make the Secretary of State’s recommendations on pay and conditions a minimum for all schools, whether maintained or academy schools, as the Secretary of State and Ministers have now confirmed was their intention with the Bill. I note that, since I tabled this, new schedule 1 has been tabled. I question why we need a separate order-making power, with all the complexities set out in the new schedule—I am sure the Minister will address that—but I think we are at one in saying that the recommendations should be a floor not a ceiling.
I return once again to the data laid out in the House of Commons Library document on the Bill, which suggests that there is very little variation in pay between maintained schools and academies. Again, I am not 100% sure why we need the new schedule; I just think we should have a floor for all schools. I think it is great that where schools have the means, they are able to pay a premium to attract teachers in shortage subjects, challenging areas or schools that may have had their challenges, but, as we all know, the reality is that most schools are massively strapped for cash—most headteachers and governors I speak to say that. The idea that they are all going to be able to pay a premium is for the birds. None the less, those schools that are able to should absolutely have that freedom.
Neil O’Brien
We have been on quite a journey on this clause. At the Education Committee on 15 January, the Secretary of State said that critics of the Bill were confused. She said:
“It has become clear to me that there has been some confusion and some worry about what I have said in this area, so today I want to be absolutely clear that all schools will have full flexibility to innovate with a floor and no ceiling on what that means.”
The fact that, subsequent to that, we have pages and pages of Government amendments to their own Bill suggests pretty powerfully that it was not school leaders and critics of the Bill who were confused.
This is a very significant measure. The impact assessment notes that an Employer Link survey conducted in 2021 found that over 28% of employers varied in some way from the school teachers’ pay and conditions document. Freedoms have been quite widely used. As Sir Jon Coles said in evidence to this Committee, just because people are using the freedoms does not necessarily mean that they know they are using them. Some of the innovations are great—they are things we all want for our teachers and schools. For example, United Learning, Jon Coles’s trust, was paying 6.5% on top of the national pay and conditions to retain good people. Dixons was innovating with a really interesting nine-day fortnight, so that teachers in really tough areas got more preparation time. This is really powerful innovation that we do not want to take away.
The Secretary of State called for a floor not a ceiling and said that she wanted
“that innovation and flexibility to be available to all schools regardless of type.”
We think that is a good principle and we agree about extending it to all schools. That is why our new clause 7 would extend freedoms over pay and conditions to local authority maintained schools as well. Given that the Government said previously that it would be good to have the same freedoms for everybody, we assume that they will accept the new clause so that we can have the floor not a ceiling for everybody, not just academies.
If a floor not a ceiling is right for teachers, surely it is right in principle for the other half of the schools workforce. Surely, school support staff—actually, they are the majority of the workforce in schools—are not worth any less than teachers, and the same principles should apply to them. This is critical. Lots of trusts are using the advantages of scale to make back-office savings and efficiencies, and ploughing them back into additional benefits and pay to support really good staff. I hope that Ministers will support our new clause 64, when we come to it, and accept that the principle that they have applied to teachers should apply to everybody else in our schools, too.
Ellie Chowns
I warmly welcome the proposal to ensure that there is a level playing field for pay for teachers who teach in different types of schools. Does the Minister consider that now is the time to take a similar approach to addressing pay for leaders of schools? I found it pretty jaw dropping to hear recently that the pay and pension of a CEO of a well-known multi-academy trust topped £600,000 per year. I took the trouble of having a look at that particular academy trust and found that it has 168 people on salaries of over £100,000, and it covers just 55 schools.
It is clearly not sustainable for the pay of leaders of multi-academy trusts to continue to increase in proportion to the number of schools in those trusts. If that approach was taken to salary setting, the Minister herself would be on millions of pounds a year. We had an interesting discussion earlier about the difference between correlation and causation. There is worrying evidence—I have seen interesting analysis from Warwick Mansell, for example—showing correlation between the prevalence of non-QTS teachers and high pupil-teacher ratios in multi-academy trusts and high levels of executive pay. That strongly suggests that such trusts are diverting or channelling more funding into higher executive pay rather than frontline teaching, which is surely of concern.
While I welcome the moves to ensure equitability across teacher salaries in all types of state school, is it not time to address pay inequalities and excessive pay in certain leadership functions in multi-academy trusts in particular? I note that the Public Accounts Committee drew attention back in 2022 to the DFE not having a handle on executive pay in the sector. I would warmly welcome the Minister’s comments on whether the Government have any intention to take action to address this.
Amanda Martin
It is good to follow the hon. Member for North Herefordshire. A lot of this argument has just been about pay, but we are actually considering schoolteachers’ pay and conditions. We need to take into account all elements of schoolteachers’ pay and conditions. The hon. Member spoke about executive pay of CEOs. There is an academy trust—United Learning trust—where many staff cease to get sick pay above statutory levels after six weeks. That does not strike me as likely to attract and retain high-quality staff. People may fall ill through no fault of their own, and this is not the right approach to take when we have a recruitment and retention crisis.
The schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document allows for recruitment and retention points, SEN points and teaching and learning responsibility points to be awarded. It also allows for teachers working in schools to rise up without an incremental scale, unlike me when I entered teaching and took an annual increment to rise up the scale. We can allow for teachers to be paid at a high level, should there be a need and desire for that. That includes the upper pay scale. Members who were not in the profession may not know that the previous Government introduced that with five elements, but those were quickly reduced to three to keep good and experienced teachers in the classroom.
On the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions element, with regard to flexibility it covers 1,265 hours. That can be negotiated in an academy or maintained school according to what works best for individual teachers or the school. I have an example from my city. Several years ago, through the narrowing of the curriculum, GCSE dance was removed from it. The school worked with the dance teacher, who still did her 1,265 hours, but moved her timing, because she did it as an after-school element. There is still the 1,265 element and flexibility. However, the provisions will mean that wherever people teach, in whatever organisation, if they are in a school that is funded by taxpayers—funded by the Government—they will have national standards for their pay and their terms and conditions.
Catherine McKinnell
I will speak about amendment 47, new clause 7, Government amendment 93, new clause 57, new schedule 1 and clause 26.
On amendment 47, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Twickenham for her considered and constructive views on our teachers’ pay and conditions measures. I hope she will agree that, in tabling our own amendments—of which I will give more details shortly, and respond to her specific question—the Government have demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that schools can innovate and share best practice to recruit and retain the teachers our children need. I absolutely appreciate what the hon. Lady is trying to achieve with the amendment. However, if it will satisfy her, our amendment will do two key things. First, it will create a power for the Secretary of State to require teachers in academy schools and alternative provision academies to be paid at least a minimum level of remuneration. When used with the existing power to set pay for teachers in maintained schools, that will enable the Secretary of State to set a floor on pay for all teachers in all state schools. I think that addresses the key effect that the hon. Lady’s amendment seeks to achieve.
Secondly, our amendment will require academies to have regard to the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document and guidance. That makes clear that we will deliver on our commitment to creating a floor with no ceiling on teachers’ pay, and we remain committed to consulting on changes to the school teachers’ pay and conditions document to remove the ceiling and allow all schools to innovate and attract the top teaching talent that they need.
On new clause 7, which the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston tabled, I appreciate his concern. I think we have reached a level of agreement—I do not think there is strong disagreement on the need for clarity for academies or the principle of equivalence between academies and maintained schools on teacher pay and conditions. That is why we have introduced our own amendments to this clause that will, for the first time, allow the Secretary of State to guarantee core pay arrangements for all state school teachers.
Our understanding of new clause 7 is that it seeks to achieve a similar outcome to our Government amendments. However, the Government’s amendment on this matter achieves what the hon. Member’s amendment seeks to achieve and more, with greater clarity and precision. It clarifies those academies and teachers who should be in scope, and importantly, retains the Secretary of State’s power to set a flexible framework for maintained schools, giving them the certainty that they want. It also takes into account the important, considered and constructive views of the teaching profession and other stakeholders, without undermining the independent pay review process that we know schools, teachers and stakeholders value. The Government have listened and acted decisively on this matter, and I urge hon. Members not to press their amendments.
The Government amendments seek to replace clause 45 and detail the Government’s proposed approach to teachers’ pay and conditions. Let me say from the outset that the Government’s objectives on pay and conditions have not changed. As the Secretary of State set out clearly at the Education Committee meeting, we will create a floor with no ceiling by providing a core pay offer for teachers in state schools and enabling innovation to help all schools attract the top teaching talent they need. Those amendments will provide additional clarity about how we will deliver that.
The existing clause 45 will be replaced by new clause 57 and new schedule 1, which introduces a new accompanying schedule to the clause. Amendment 93 deals with the commencement of the new clause and the schedule. The Opposition made a great deal of noise about our plans for teacher pay and conditions, claiming that we wanted to restrict academy freedoms and that our secret intention was actually to cut teachers’ pay. All of it was nonsense. Our rationale for why we need these changes has always been clear. We know that what makes the biggest difference to a young person’s education is high-quality teaching. We greatly value the role that trusts play in the school system, particularly for disadvantaged children—they have transformed schools, and we want them to continue to drive high and rising standards for all pupils. But there are severe shortages of qualified teachers across the country. Our teachers are integral to driving high and rising standards, and having an attractive pay and conditions framework is vital to recruiting and retaining excellent teachers for every classroom.
Neil O’Brien
It is generous of the Minister to give way. To address the point that I raised in my speech, does she agree that the principle of a floor but no ceiling should apply to school support staff as well as teachers?
Catherine McKinnell
Yes, I was going to come to that point, because it is welcome that the hon. Gentleman focused on school support staff. He is absolutely right that they are integral to any successful school. However, we do not intend to amend the provisions, because we are legislating for the school support staff negotiating body in the Employment Rights Bill, and we are creating a new system for support in 2025. Rather than try to amend the existing one, we are creating a new negotiating body for them. It makes sense that the outcomes from the new body will apply in same way to all state-funded schools in England.
The primary legislation does not commit us to a one-size-fits-all approach, and so there will be flexibilities for local circumstance to be able to flex above minimum agreement. Again, there will also be a floor but no ceiling for school support staff. We will continue to work with the sector, during and after the passage of the Bill, to ensure that the school support staff negotiating body meets the needs of all school types. The shadow Minister’s intervention and focus on school support staff is absolutely welcome.
In response to the specific question of why we need a separate order-making power, we have clarified the objective by tabling an amendment that requires all academy schools and alternative provision academies to pay their teachers at least the minimum level of pay set out in secondary legislation. Subsequent reforms to the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document will ensure there is no ceiling on the maximum that maintained schools can pay for their teachers.
The amendment will also require academies to have regard to the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document, ensuring an established starting point for all state schools while giving confidence that existing or future changes benefiting teachers and pupils can continue. Maintained schools will continue to follow the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document, but the Government are committed to making changes to the document following the Bill’s passage, to remove the ceiling and build in flexibility so that all schools can innovate to attract and retain the best talent.
We absolutely want to ensure that the freedoms that academies have enjoyed will continue. Indeed, they will be extended to maintained schools. In terms of examples used, such as the nine-day week—
Catherine McKinnell
Fortnight. Indeed, as in the interesting example given by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North, it is right that schools are able to find new and innovative ways of ensuring that they retain and attract the teachers who we know will drive the high and rising standards that we want across our schools. I hope I have answered all the questions.
Ellie Chowns
I thank the Minister for giving way. Does she agree with me that there is a case for establishing a national pay framework for academy trust leaders, given the huge and rising salaries?
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution, and I recognise the concerns that she has set out. It is essential that we have the best people to lead our schools. That is how we drive and raise standards. But we are absolutely clear that academy trust salaries must be justifiable and must reflect the individual responsibility, and also local recruitment and retention needs. The Academy Trust Handbook gives academy trusts the authority to set their own pay. Trusts must ensure their decisions about levels of executive pay, including salary and other benefits,
“follow a robust evidence-based process and are a reasonable and defensible reflection of the individual’s role and responsibilities.”
We work with trusts on executive pay. Where there is an insufficient demonstration of value for money, or no direct link to improving outcomes for students, and where executive pay in an academy trust is found to be an outlier when compared with similar academy trusts, the Department engages with the trust and assesses compliance with the Academy Trust Handbook. The hon. Lady’s concerns are noted and, where required, the process will be followed.
Ellie Chowns
Just to expand on that, I would like to ask the Minister whether she thinks it is reasonable and justifiable that an academy trust leader has a salary of over £600,000, when a leader in a local authority with responsibility for an equivalent or larger number of schools would have a salary nowhere near?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Lady has made her point. I will not comment on individual circumstances or individual trust leaders—I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to do so. But she has made her point and it is an important one that is reflected in the processes in the Academy Trust Handbook and the processes that are in place regarding these issues. We will keep it under review as a Department. Obviously the changes that we are bringing will have an impact in terms of setting a more equal balance between the approaches of academies and maintained schools in pay and conditions. That is the intention of the clause.
I hope I have set out clearly how our amendments to the existing clause 45 and subsequent secondary legislation will deliver on our commitment to a floor with no ceiling. It will enable good practice and innovation to continue and will be used by all state schools to recruit and retain the best teachers that they need for our children. I therefore urge members of the Committee to support the amendments, but in this context the current clause 45 should not stand part of the Bill.
Munira Wilson
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 45 disagreed to.
The Chair
So clause 45 does not stand part of the Bill. Does clause 46 stand part of the Bill?
The Chair
We already debated clause 46. If people were not following, I cannot do anything other than express my concern about that. If it is the wish of the Committee that we discuss clause 46 before we put it to the vote, I can be flexible and allow that.
Clause 46
Application of pay and conditions order to education action zones
Question proposed, That clause 46 stand part of the Bill.
Catherine McKinnell
I am extremely grateful for your flexibility on this matter, Sir Christopher. I have a very short contribution to make on clause 46. It is a minor technical change that sensibly tidies up legal provision that is no longer necessary. The clause repeals section 128 of the Education Act 2002. That section enabled maintained schools in education action zones to apply to determine their own pay and conditions for teachers. However, as education action zones have not existed since 2005, the most appropriate action is to repeal section 128 of that Act entirely.
Although the legislation to create new education action zones remains in place, the effect of the clause is negligible given that no education action zones currently exist. If any new ones were subsequently created, as a result of this clause they would no longer be able to opt out of the statutory pay and conditions framework, which is entirely consistent with the Government’s new approach to teachers’ pay.
Neil O'Brien
Sir Christopher, you are a superb Chairman. You are also a very kind and thoughtful one for those of us who are not quick enough on the draw.
I will not make detailed comments here. We are abolishing something that was set up in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and it struck me that there are related ideas that the Minister might want to pick up rather than abolish.
As well as the education action zones that we are discussing here, the Blair Government had another go at that same idea in the 2002 Act and enabled huge amounts of school freedom in particular areas to bring about improvement. Although lots of work was done on that legislation and it was passed through the House, and lots of work was done to implement it, there was a change of Secretary of State and, strangely, the powers, although they are on the statute book, were never commenced.
We, as the Opposition, do not have the power to commence them, but I would recommend to the Minister that she does. I think there is a great opportunity here to get some innovation into the system. New clause 67, when we come to it, may look familiar to Ministers and to DFE lawyers, because I am afraid we have stolen it—it is a straightforward rip-off of 2002 Blair era reforms.
Even though in this clause abolishes a bit of Blair-era reform, we encourage Ministers to get back on the reforming horse and to return to that spirit. We hope when we come to that new clause that Ministers will spot what we are trying to do.
Catherine McKinnell
I note the spoiler for amendments to come.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 46 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 47
Co-operation between schools and local authorities
Question proposed, That clause 47 stand part of the Bill.
Catherine McKinnell
Clause 47 creates a new co-operation duty for schools and local authorities. It aims to strengthen how schools and local authorities work together on school admissions and place planning.
Collaboration and co-operation on these issues is vital to ensuring that all children, especially the most vulnerable, can receive a school education. The clause places a duty on mainstream state schools and local authorities to co-operate with each other regarding their respective school admissions functions. It also places a duty on mainstream, special and alternative provision state schools to co-operate with local authorities regarding their place-planning functions.
For the admissions and place-planning system to function effectively, co-operation between schools and local authorities is essential. For example, local authorities need to regularly engage with local schools to produce and deliver proposals for ensuring that there are sufficient school places.
That process normally works well and we know that the vast majority of schools and local authorities already work together effectively to ensure that there is sufficient supply of school places and that local admission systems are working to support parent choice and allowing children to achieve and thrive. However, until now there has been no general duty on schools and local authorities to co-operate on these important issues.
In some instances, that has led to some schools and local authorities acting unilaterally or unhelpfully in regard to admissions or local place planning, without recognising the impact of their decisions on local communities. These new duties will send a strong message to schools and local authorities about the importance of co-operation on school admissions and place planning. As a result, we expect that schools and local authorities will seek to act more collaboratively on these issues, for example, sharing information in a timely manner and ensuring that they are working together in the best interests of the local community.
The absence of specific duties on co-operation also means that there are limited options available for the Secretary of State to intervene where a school or local authority is refusing to co-operate on these issues. Formalising a need to co-operate as a statutory duty will provide a mechanism to address such a situation. Where a school or local authority is failing or refusing to co-operate, the Secretary of State will be able to use her existing and planned enforcement powers to intervene, for example by considering directing the party at fault to take specific steps to comply with their co-operation duty.
Neil O'Brien
I will be quite brief. Clauses 47 to 50 are all of a piece, though it is the last of them, clause 50, that we have the greatest concerns about. In the interest of time, I will reserve my comments on the other clauses until later.
On clause 47, I just want to note my concerns that a rather vaguely defined duty to co-operate should not be abused by local authorities, and that a school’s failure to co-operate to the satisfaction of the local authority should not be used as a trigger for some of the rather alarming powers in clause 40. I just mark my concerns on this one, particularly about the vagueness of the duty to co-operate. I will return to more specific concerns on later clauses.
Munira Wilson
I warmly welcome the provision in clause 47. The Liberal Democrats have long called for far greater co-operation between local authorities and schools on admissions and place planning. This is even more important now as we see falling school rolls, which is a particularly acute problem in London. It is the case in other parts of the country as well, but in my own local authority, eight reception classes were closed in primary schools in, I think, the last academic year. At the moment, we have high demand for our secondaries and falling demand for our primaries. Over the years, that will feed through into secondary schools, which is where most of our academies sit. We must ensure that academies or schools are working with the local authority on place planning. Having a massive surplus of places in such a cash-constrained environment is neither realistic or desirable.
I would add just one caveat from talking to the Confederation of School Trusts and the evidence we heard from Sir John Coles. They all welcome this particular provision, but Sir John Coles said that schools and local authorities need clear guidance on how this will work in practice. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on what guidance will be issued.
Ellie Chowns
I too absolutely welcome this new duty to co-operate. It is really important in the context of the problems that competition over people’s heads has led to. I am, however, like others, a bit concerned about the vagueness of the way that it is specified in the legislation. I feel that it does not make it clear enough what the duty to co-operate actually means. Would the Minister consider making it more clear, such as specifying that the local authority becomes the admissions authority for all schools in the area? Would the Government also consider reforming the legacy of partial selection that is still there for some schools? Arguably, we should reform aptitude-based tests and other admissions tests, which evidence shows have led to inequalities in admissions.
Catherine Atkinson
The Bill represents a really important opportunity to strengthen the partnership working between schools and local authorities. As well as visiting schools across my constituency of Derby North, I visited Derby College and our university technical college—UTC. In looking at the opportunities and benefits that can be brought by better co-operation, would the Minister consider encouraging local authorities to assess fully 14 to 16 provision across all providers, to ensure that any gaps or barriers to accessing all those opportunities are considered? Could there also be potential consideration of offering opportunities for young people to study and train for part of the week in college settings? There is a real opportunity for our young people when we have better collaboration and co-operation on admissions.
Catherine McKinnell
In response to both Opposition Front-Bench spokespersons, we have deliberately not attempted to set out precisely what co-operation means, because it will depend on unique local context and issues. We expect, however, co-operation to include local authorities engaging collaboratively and constructively with schools, and academy trusts producing proposals for ensuring sufficient school places and how to reduce and repurpose spare capacity, which the hon. Member for Twickenham rightly identified as a challenge. We also expect local authorities to share their place-planning strategy with academy trusts and other local partners, and be transparent about underpinning capacity and forecast data, as well as the rationale for targeting schools for expansion or contraction.
We expect schools and trusts to work collaboratively and constructively with local authorities, other academy trusts and the Department, on place-planning matters; act reasonably when considering or responding to requests to raise or lower published admission numbers; expand or contract where necessary; and be transparent with local authorities and the regions group about issues affecting their ability to deliver places and about any significant changes that they are planning. I hope that addresses the concerns.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North asked a question about 14 to 16 provision. Where that is in an academy trust within a local authority area, the same co-operation duties apply. She is absolutely right that moments of transition are another key factor, and they have been regularly identified as a challenge for young people. They can be a real opportunity for young people but can also be challenging. We must create seamless transitions for young people. I will take away the consideration that the duty could form part of the solution to ensuring smooth transitions, particularly by ensuring that we have the provision for the age cohort she referred to. I trust that I have answered the questions raised.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 47 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Vicky Foxcroft
I beg to move, That further consideration be now adjourned.
I specifically thank you, Sir Edward, for being so patient in the Chair for so long. [Interruption.] Sorry, Sir Christopher.
The Chair
There are many occasions on which I have been confused with Sir Edward Leigh. I am going to indulge the Committee. Back in 1983, we were both new Members, and in those days, there was a system whereby the Chair of a Select Committee was chosen by the other members of the Committee. I was taken for a cup of tea or something stronger by somebody who aspired to be the Chair of a Committee. After he had given me a monologue for about half an hour, I said, “I didn’t think that people were able to vote unless they were members of the Committee.” He said, “You are Edward Leigh, aren’t you?” I have never seen anybody disappear as quickly as that, because he had wasted half an hour of valuable canvassing time.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Vicky Foxcroft.)
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Apprenticeships
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the value of apprenticeships and National Apprenticeships Week.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. It is my first debate of this nature. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for granting me the time for this important topic. I declare an interest ahead of this debate: I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships. I also declare that skills and apprenticeships are my political passion in this House.
We are about to celebrate National Apprenticeships Week, which runs next week. It is right that we celebrate the success of more than 750,000 apprenticeships that are powering skills and productivity in our local economies. I have had the privilege of meeting and visiting more than 100 businesses and their apprentices since I was elected. The breadth, talent and determination have been humbling, from butchers’ apprentices in Newborough and engineering students at Caterpillar in my constituency, to construction apprentices at Laing O’Rourke building a new Olympia, to, most recently, brilliant and creative learners at the Fashion Retail Academy. One of the most inspiring days I have spent as an MP was meeting learners and employers at the National Theatre to understand more about how we support apprenticeships in the creative arts.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. The creative industries have been identified as a growth-driving sector, and I know the Government recognise the impact of the arts on the wider economy. We must build more talent pipelines and widen the accessibility of careers in the arts for the longevity of the sector. In my role as co-chair of the APPG for theatre, I have looked at the critical skill shortages that the sector faces in technical, backstage roles, from lighting to sound clinicians and wigs, hair and makeup. That is why it is crucial for Skills England to review the seasonality of theatre work and explore the development of shorter-term apprenticeships to widen access to those entry-level roles.
Andrew Pakes
I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. As we have discussed previously, we both want to make sure that jobs in theatre, the arts and creative industries are open to young people in our constituencies and across the country.
We were the first country to pass a national apprenticeship Act when the Tudor Parliament enacted the Statute of Artificers in 1563. It is mind-boggling to think how much our society and economy have changed since then. What has not changed is the timeless requirement of educating the next generation, and ensuring that novices in the jobs market are set forth in the working world with all the pride and self-reliance of mastering a new occupation, profession or skill.
Over the past few years, there have been various reports into the status, scale and success of apprenticeships. It is clear that the system is not working as it should be. In my view, it is a national disgrace that the number of apprenticeships fell under the last Government.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate at the start of National Apprenticeships Week. Apprenticeships are particularly important in rural areas such as Glastonbury and Somerton, because they provide a valuable pathway for young people to gain practical skills and go on to secure employment in their local communities. That helps to combat rural depopulation and boost the local economy. There is a conflict, however, because although apprenticeships are good, the levy is not. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the apprenticeship levy should be scrapped?
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Order. Before the hon. Member responds, I remind Members that a lot of people want to get in on this debate, and we need to keep questions much shorter in order to do that.
Andrew Pakes
I agree with the hon. Lady. That is why I welcome the announcement in September last year by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and Education Secretary of a new growth and skills levy to replace the existing apprenticeship levy, and include new foundation apprenticeships. That will give young people a route into careers where the nation has skills gaps.
It cannot be stated often or loudly enough that apprenticeships not only transform the lives of those who take them, but are vital to our economy and growth. Ministers’ single, unifying, animating purpose is to get the economy growing, and I wholeheartedly endorse that.
Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)
Like me, my hon. Friend is a passionate advocate for apprenticeships, which play a huge role in Barrow and Furness and are vital for the workforce needed for the defence sector. BAE has an incredible 94% completion rate, whereas the national average is 51%. Does he agree that the Government’s much-needed reforms are vital for improving access to good, skilled jobs in growing industries such as the defence sector. What thought has been given to improving the national completion rate?
Andrew Pakes
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Before I came to Parliament, I was a union official at Prospect, which represents many workers in the defence sector and in Barrow, so I know full well the great expertise of apprentices in the defence sector. We need more of those apprenticeships for our national security and for new jobs.
Growth will come because of a range of factors—we will secure inward investment and trade deals, shake up the planning system, boost infrastructure and back business—but a sure-fire way to stimulate growth is to invest in people’s skills, energy and talent. Just yesterday, I met level 3 to level 7 KPMG apprentices from all parts of the country who work together to bring new opportunities. It was brilliant to hear from Gaby from Peterborough, who told her own story and gave lessons for how to ensure that more young people in Peterborough get the same opportunities. That means nothing short of a revolution in our system of apprenticeships.
I am proud that the previous Labour Government revitalised apprenticeships—the largest expansion in our history—and I welcome the cross-party support for innovation since then, including all-age apprenticeships and all-qualification approaches to workplace learning, but I am not satisfied. We need to address head-on why 900,000 young people across our country are not in education, employment or training; why young people cannot access the opportunities they need; and why the opportunities are not there in the first place. That matters in Peterborough, where we have seen falling apprenticeship numbers and rising levels of youth unemployment.
Last Friday, I was pleased to co-host a NEETs summit with Peterborough college, Anglia Ruskin University Peterborough and local businesses and providers to look at how we can make apprenticeships work better in my constituency. We need to put rocket boosters under the number of firms that take on apprentices, not for altruistic reasons but because it makes smart business sense. We also need reform to ensure that apprenticeship standards work for businesses and learners. I ask the Minister to remove the artificial barriers to success of academic English and maths, and move quickly to business-ready, work-ready, functional skills where they matter.
We are coming up to National Apprenticeship Week, and I want to address one other issue before I finish: not apprenticeships policy, but the cultural barriers. In too many parts of the UK, there is a hang-up about apprenticeships, and so many parts of the system are obsessed with university. Of course, we should value our world-class universities and celebrate the hard work of our university students. As a former president of the National Union of Students, of course I recognise the vital role that British universities play in our national story. However, apprenticeships should be seen as an equally valid alternative route, a legitimate way to gain skills and experience, and a vital contributor to our economic prosperity, and yet in public policy sometimes they are not. Why is that? I fear that there is still a snobbery about apprenticeships in the UK that is not found in competitor countries such as Germany and Sweden, which are more competitive. There is too often a lazy and misguided assumption that apprenticeships are second best to degrees, and that apprentices are lesser in comparison with undergraduates.
We often use the phrase, “University is not for everyone,” as though university is the gold standard and apprenticeships are the also-ran for second-class kids. The English class system exerts itself and places people into boxes, limiting horizons, prejudicing futures and stifling ambitions. That must stop, not only for the good of the brilliant, energetic, ambitious young and not-so-young people who embark on apprenticeships, but for the economy and growth. We will not secure growth with one hand tied behind our back. Hardly any of the apprentices I have met say that their journey was made easier by careers support at school. That is why we need change in our careers service. We must make it easier for businesses to support learners and parents, and we need a step change in how we regard apprenticeships.
We are coming up to National Apprenticeship Week. Let us be loud and proud about apprenticeships. Let us challenge the stigma, call out the snobs, and put apprenticeships centre stage in our policy making, economic mission and national culture.
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in a debate. To get in all the speakers we have, please try to limit yourselves to three minutes. I call Peter Bedford—he is not here. Jim Shannon, please.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Ms Jardine. I am always happy to be a substitute. I commend the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing the debate, and I spoke to him beforehand. There is a big crowd here because the subject is all-important to each and every one of us. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s contribution, which I know will be positive.
Along with everyone here, I am a massive supporter of apprenticeships and the value they bring to the world of careers for young people. As I told the hon. Gentleman beforehand, I tabled an early-day motion about Northern Ireland apprenticeships two weeks ago. I see the good and the potential for apprentices across Northern Ireland. I am giving a Northern Ireland perspective to this debate to complement, echo and support the hon. Gentleman and everyone who speaks.
There are 13,000 apprentices across Northern Ireland, and it is great to be able to say that there are some incredible opportunities for young people in my constituency. Companies such as Thales and many car companies are brilliant at encouraging young people down the apprenticeship path. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and I met representatives of Thales just before Christmas. I was impressed by the work the company is doing with apprenticeships. Apprentices get a good wage, which starts small and gives them encouragement to stay at it. As an example of what can be done, their student fees are paid by the company. Job suitability is about nothing more than having the desire and the work ethic to learn.
It is important to look at the range of stakeholders: local councils, employers, further education colleges, universities and others. The South Eastern Regional College in my constituency is brilliant at supporting young people through their educational journey. It is holding its spring awards ceremony in the terrace pavilion on Monday 3 March. I look forward to that, and to sharing its success.
In Northern Ireland, especially in my constituency and the Ards peninsula, we have a tradition of work in the construction sector. It is important that those in the sector have plenty of opportunities to advance— for some of them, to having their own businesses. The Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland has set aside some £600,000 to increase apprenticeship participation among women, people with disabilities and individuals from disadvantaged areas. That will encourage collaboration between education, business and community sectors to develop innovative solutions for enhancing inclusivity in apprenticeships.
The theme for this year’s Northern Ireland Apprenticeship Week is “Getting it Right for You”, and that is we want to do for apprentices. Job creation is so important for sectors such as STEM, mechanics, aerospace and defence across the UK. There are endless opportunities, and we must do more to make our young people aware of them. Boys and girls, men and women can all take advantage of them. I am encouraged by the women in Northern Ireland who are looking for jobs in engineering. I look forward to the Minister’s contribution and to doing all we can to support apprenticeship opportunities across the devolved nations.
Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this important debate.
Apprenticeships matter. They matter because they break down the barriers to opportunity, giving residents in cities like Gloucester the skills that they need to succeed in life. This Government are committed to creating a fairer, more inclusive system that equips individuals with not only the skills that they need today, but the skills that we will all need in future.
We are introducing a youth guarantee, transforming further education colleges and fostering collaboration between businesses, training providers and Government to build a highly skilled workforce ready to support Labour’s industrial strategy. I hope that in Gloucestershire we will take advantage of the devolution of adult skills funding, empowering local leaders to take charge of skills development in our area. Importantly, we will reform the apprenticeship levy, which has proven ineffective. In its place, the Government will introduce a flexible growth and skills levy, creating a fairer system that works for employers and learners in Gloucester.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
When I spoke to an apprenticeships organisation in Rugby called Intec Business Colleges, it pointed out a deficiency of the previous apprenticeship levy: the threshold meant that it was mostly applicable to and attractive to larger companies. Sadly, that has meant that the small and medium-sized enterprise market has been significantly disadvantaged. Does my hon. Friend agree that as this Government reform the levy to be more effective, we must do everything we can to encourage SMEs to gain from apprentices, so young people can have more opportunities?
Alex McIntyre
I agree entirely. SMEs are the backbone of our business community. I recently met the Federation of Small Businesses in the south-west to discuss the opportunities in small and medium-sized businesses in Gloucester and across the region. As my hon. Friend says, apprenticeships are so important to those businesses, as is ensuring that the new levy is flexible so everyone can take part and every person in our country can benefit from the opportunities.
I recently met the principal of Gloucestershire College to discuss the opportunities and the vital role of FE colleges in helping young people to develop the skills that they need for the future, but challenges remain. Our higher and further education system is under significant strain. Many young people leave school without the skills or preparation that they need for the future. I will therefore be grateful if the Minister sets out the steps that the Government are taking to support FE colleges and work placements.
Apprenticeships are not just a pathway to employment. They are a key driver of opportunity for future generations. They provide people with the chance to gain valuable skills, earn while they learn and build fulfilling careers. By supporting people to gain skills in sectors such as technology, science, engineering, health and education, we are building a skilled workforce that will benefit individuals, businesses and the economy. The steps that this Government are taking will leave a lasting legacy of opportunity, ensuring a prosperous future and a workforce ready for the challenges ahead. This will lay the foundations for a stronger Britain, one in which the future is bright and Gloucester thrives.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate; I commend the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing it, particularly ahead of National Apprenticeship Week next week. We in this place appreciate that apprenticeships play a crucial role in developing skills, supporting businesses and providing opportunities for young people to embark on meaningful careers.
I am proud of the progress that was made and am keen to see how it can continue. Between 2010 and 2024, the Conservative Government delivered 5.8 million apprenticeships, creating routes into 70% of occupations. In the last academic year alone, apprenticeship starts increased to 278,590, with 66% of those supported by the apprenticeship levy. Those figures highlight my party’s commitment to ensuring that young people and adults alike have access to high-quality training that meets the demands of our economy. Since 2020, we have also seen the successful roll-out of T-levels, another innovative qualification that combines study with workplace experience.
Across my constituency, I have seen absolutely fantastic examples of apprenticeships making a real difference. Just last week, I met an apprentice called Stan at Surespan, a local access solutions business. It is a manufacturing business in Aldridge, but with global markets, and it is investing heavily in apprenticeships and technical training. In-Comm Training is another outstanding apprenticeship provider. Events such as the Brownhills jobcentre apprenticeship fair further demonstrate the enthusiasm and the need from both businesses and learners in supporting apprenticeships.
It is important that we ensure that apprenticeships remain of high quality and accessible and that they are offered as a career choice alongside university. Although local businesses across my constituency are actively creating apprenticeships, I ask the Minister to confirm that the focus will remain not just on quantity, but on the quality of apprenticeships.
I would also like to raise concerns about funding and accessibility for SMEs. That is really important, particularly with businesses feeling the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions—the jobs tax. We cannot just keep squeezing and squeezing small businesses. Without addressing that, we will not see increases in investment in employment and apprenticeship opportunities.
I could speak a lot longer on this topic—as hon. Members may have guessed, I am rather passionate about it—but I am conscious that the clock is ticking. Apprenticeships are a crucial pillar of our education and skills system. They provide young people with the opportunity to learn while they earn, to support businesses in finding the skilled workforce they need and to contribute to our nation’s economy. Let us work together to make sure that there are more apprenticeships in future.
Frank McNally (Coatbridge and Bellshill) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) on securing this important debate. I welcome the opportunity to recognise the importance of National Apprenticeship Week in the UK—although you and I will be celebrating Scottish Apprenticeship Week next month.
Prior to my election, I spent many years as the chair of education in North Lanarkshire, Scotland’s second largest education authority. In an area in which one in four children are living in poverty, the route through education and entering positive pathways is critical. For many, that involves apprenticeships, which break down the barriers to opportunity. A successful apprenticeship journey works most effectively with the efforts of schools, further education, Government and employers.
During my time in office, I was pleased that we were able to operate the largest foundation apprenticeship programme in Scotland. Just last year, there were more than 2,000 modern apprenticeship starts in North Lanarkshire. However, in Coatbridge and Bellshill and across Scotland, despite the efforts of employers and learners, challenges remain. It beggars belief that despite the record settlement that the UK Government have given to Scotland, the Scottish Government’s draft Budget includes a real-terms cut in apprenticeship funding. Colleges Scotland has warned that the Scottish Government’s Budget for the next financial year will deliver a real-terms cut of 1.4% for the college sector, following a shocking 17% real-terms cut in recent years and the termination of more than 1,700 posts since 2020.
I have said on a number of occasions since the election that in Scotland and across the UK we need a skills revolution. That is the only way that we will transform our physical and digital infrastructure and deliver the well-paid jobs of the future. It is therefore not acceptable that the number of apprenticeship starts for 16 to 24-year-olds in Scotland has fallen by 5,800—a drop of 28%—in the past 10 years, according to analysis by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Just last month, the chief executive of Scottish Engineering highlighted the fact that one in five high-quality potential engineering apprenticeships have been lost this year because of a lack of funding.
It is right that the Labour Government are committed to fixing the mess left by the Tories with new apprenticeship reforms. It is critical that we get a Government in Scotland who have a similar laser focus.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes); I have a business in Peterborough, and I concur with everything he said.
Let me begin by highlighting the remarkable return on investment that apprenticeships provide. I know from my time in Parliament that everything leads to the Treasury. Studies have shown that every £1 invested in level 2 and level 3 apprenticeship training will see a return of between £26 and £28. That is a big win not just for employers, but for apprentices.
For many individuals who do not thrive in traditional academic environments, apprenticeships are a lifeline. I lost so many friends, colleagues and peers who were brighter by far than I was, but who just did not fit into the conventional education system. If they had had an apprenticeship model they would have been really successful, but unfortunately they are now without work after so many decades. That is especially the case in unconventional areas like ours.
There are several challenges that employers and apprentices face. Among the most important is system complexity. For the employers I have spoken to, it is so complicated to employ apprentices. The system was meant to make things easier, but it has made things more complicated.
We need to concentrate on making the levy system a lot simpler for employers. We may need to revisit the tax treatment of self-funded training. Employer-funded training benefits from broad tax exemptions, while self-funded training does not enjoy the same advantages. To encourage greater training uptake among the self-employed and smaller businesses, we should align the tax relief for self-funded training and employer-funded training, levelling the playing field and incentivising skills development. We must also improve administrative support and reduce the regulatory complex. The decline in apprenticeship numbers and the overall reduction in training participation are not just statistics; they are signals that our current system is too complex and that both employers and apprentices are facing real, tangible challenges.
Before I conclude, I have a few questions for the Minister. How will the Government simplify the apprenticeship levy to ensure a uniform and effective subsidy rate for all employers, regardless of size? What measures will be introduced to ensure that public funding for adult education is increased and spent effectively to achieve outcomes? How do the Government plan to address the administrative burdens that discourage employers? Will the tax treatment of self-funded training be reviewed to create a level playing field for everybody?
Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing such an important debate as we approach National Apprenticeship Week. National Apprenticeship Week will bring us together to shine a spotlight on fantastic businesses and apprentices across our country, and rightly so.
Across the country, apprentices are building skills for life. They are also helping us to plug massive skill shortages across critical national infrastructure sectors as they train. One sector where we lack suitably qualified and experienced people and where apprenticeships are building skills for the future is the nuclear sector. Last week, I had the real pleasure of meeting and speaking to apprentices from Rolls-Royce, on which I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. These highly skilled, hard-working apprentices are based at Rolls-Royce’s Raynesway site in Derby. They are designing propulsion plants that will power the next generation of AUKUS submarines and safeguard our national security for years to come. They should be proud of their work.
As much as I love speaking to the apprentices working in businesses across my constituency, I do not need to take their word for how valuable their experiences are. I myself know how valuable an apprenticeship can be and what a fulfilling career trajectory it can lead to, although I must say that when I first walked through the doors at Courtaulds to start my apprenticeship back in 1989, I would not have imagined ending up in this place. Having decided that A-levels did not feel right for me, I began a four-year broad craft apprenticeship. It allowed me to build my practical skills and attend college one day a week, before going on to specialise as an instrument and control mechanic.
I want every child in Derby and across the country to be educated about the amazing career opportunities that apprenticeships can offer. Our teenagers and young people must be able to make an informed choice about their next step, whether that is university or entering the workplace as an apprentice. The curriculum has an important role to play, and it is vital that we give every child a practical, hands-on learning experience. It is also important that students understand how such experiences might link to a range of vocational opportunities once they leave school.
I am pleased that the Labour Government have brought forward the curriculum and assessment review, which will ensure that children leave school ready to enter the workplace. As a former apprentice, I will always advocate for the huge value of apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are not second best. They are a fulfilling and exciting opportunity that our education system must support and reflect.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this vital debate.
I start by mentioning an injustice. It is not right, economically or morally, that so many young people who want to enjoy a vocational education have not benefited from the same opportunities as university students. In my constituency of Folkestone and Hythe there is incredible potential for a thriving apprenticeship system. My constituency has strengths in the creative industries, as well as in green energy and nuclear—we are home to Little Cheyne Court wind farm and Dungeness nuclear power stations. But the potential for apprenticeships is untapped. Despite the significant number of regeneration projects in Folkestone and Hythe, the number of apprenticeship starts in construction, planning and the built environment fell by 49% in 2022-23 compared with the year before. Currently, there are 500 16 to 24-year-olds who are searching for work in Folkestone and Hythe but cannot find it. Apprenticeships have a critical role to play in supporting people to succeed in the workforce.
I want to celebrate East Kent college in Folkestone, which in 2023 was judged by Ofsted to be outstanding and offers an incredible array of qualifications, such as BTECs, T-levels and adult education, as well as a junior college. I also commend the work of large businesses locally such as EDF, as well as smaller local businesses such as Jenner and Park Farm Construction, which provide brilliant apprenticeships. But frustratingly, spending on training by businesses is at its lowest level since 2011. I want to speak directly to employers in Folkestone and Hythe: when you invest in apprenticeships, you invest in our young people; when you invest in our young people, you invest in our future and our community; and if you support the local community, it will give back to your businesses and support your success.
I believe that it is critical that part of Skills England’s mandate will be to collaborate with the Migration Advisory Committee to ensure that we prioritise training of our young people before reaching to recruit from abroad. The Government’s reforms will benefit many young people in Folkestone and Hythe who feel disenfranchised and believe that the 21st-century economy does not necessarily serve them. In many cases after deindustrialisation, where we gave them a pound shop in the place of a workshop, they may well be right.
I have some questions for the Minister on future policy development. I would welcome the publication of a timeline as to when we can expect the phased development of Skills England. How do the Government plan to align our industrial strategy, Invest 2035, with their apprenticeship strategy, and how can they use apprenticeships to reduce youth unemployment and long-term economic inactivity?
Much was made of Tony Blair’s desire to see 50% of young people start university, but there are a lot of people, whether they have gone to university or not, who are ill-prepared for the 21st-century economy. We have had “education, education, education”; we now need apprenticeships, apprenticeships, apprenticeships.
Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for introducing this topic. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I have had personal experience of the value of apprenticeships during my career and within my own family. My father, who became a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, completed an apprenticeship in the surveying department of a local authority rating department in the early 1960s. He came from a working-class family in Glasgow. That opportunity was the making of him, and he went on to have a successful and enjoyable career. By the time I started the same career, the route to qualifying as a chartered surveyor began at university.
Today, firms such as global real-estate advisers Avison Young, where I worked, offer a range of apprenticeships: for town planners, surveyors and project managers; and across support functions, such as marketing, IT and human resources. I have come to understand the value of apprenticeships as a way to improve productivity. Apprentices who join the workforce from the age of 16 onwards in Scotland are able to earn and contribute while learning on the job and combining with study at college or university on day release.
Apprenticeships improve staff retention and loyalty. From an employer’s point of view, they introduce fresh talent and promote diversity in the workplace. From an employee’s point of view, apprenticeships present opportunities for some who otherwise may not have had the chance to combine on-the-job training with a degree-level qualification. Today, apprenticeships are available in a much wider range of career paths than ever before. I strongly encourage employers and young people in my constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire North to consider the apprenticeship route to work. If they do, they will find that West College Scotland does an outstanding job of supporting learners and employers across my constituency to develop the skills that they need. I doubt that we can overstate the importance of apprenticeships, and I am pleased to be able to support National Apprenticeship Week.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this important debate. Bendalls Engineering in my constituency of Carlisle can trace its route back to 1894. Founded as a family-run business, Bendalls can lay claim to having manufactured the body parts of Donald Campbell’s Bluebird cars and boats in the 1920s, and in the 1950s the company became one of the first suppliers of bespoke equipment to Britain’s first nuclear facility. I was therefore delighted to learn that the latest chapter in Bendalls’s history of innovation is to be an on-site skills academy managed by Lakes college.
My constituency brims with companies like Bendalls—from international firms such as Pirelli, and locally headquartered companies like Grain broadband, to other family-founded business, including the haulier Wm Armstrong, industrial supplier Thomas Graham and agricultural machinery provider Rickerby. All are committed to building a pipeline of talent through their apprenticeship programmes, which is complemented by the excellent array of apprenticeship programmes offered by Carlisle college.
In geographically remote places such as my constituency, with low inward migration and an ageing population, these apprenticeship schemes are the lifeblood of our local economy. What a shame then that, under the previous Government and in slight contrast to the rosy picture painted by the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), fewer and fewer people embarked on apprenticeships. Indeed, between the introduction of the apprenticeship levy in 2017 and 2023, apprenticeships fell by 31%, while the number of skilled job vacancies more than doubled.
Wendy Morton
I set out my case during my speech, but since the hon. Lady is so passionate about apprenticeships, perhaps she can explain how the Government’s interest in employer national insurance will help with the creation of more apprenticeships. They cannot simply keep pushing and pushing business, and squeezing their profit margins, and expect them to be able to invest in employment opportunities and training.
Ms Minns
I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. We are having a debate on apprenticeships, and the fact that I put forward is that, under the last Government, they fell by 31%. I think it would be welcome if Opposition Members started to own their record in government. This Government, by contrast, are committed to making apprenticeships work for employers, apprentices and our country, closing regional growth gaps, targeting the skilled jobs that the country is crying out for and giving businesses like Bendalls more flexibility on the courses that are funded.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am very proud to be speaking today about the value of apprenticeships and National Apprenticeships Week. I represent the largest constituency in England, so it will be unsurprising to my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) and everyone else that I want to speak about apprenticeships in Northumberland and the north-east, as well as Callerton and Throckley, where young people typically have extreme difficulty in accessing apprenticeships.
I visited my old school on Friday and had the pleasure of speaking to the deputy head; we spoke about the issues that many of the students at Queen Elizabeth’s High School still have in getting access to skilled employment after they leave school and vocational education. Simply put, for many people in the north-east who want to remain there, there are not enough jobs, particularly in Northumberland. One of the major failures of the previous Government is that young people had to leave Hexham to find their futures elsewhere. I do not wish to score political points on that issue; people’s need to leave is a political reality. One of the things that I will judge myself by is whether people can make their homes and their lives in Northumberland.
Apprenticeship programmes are essential to increasing social mobility, pride in communities and, frankly, to combating some of the depopulation in my part of the world. As I have said before in this Chamber and in the main Chamber, I represent the place where I grew up but unfortunately I am much more likely to bump into the parents and grandparents of my former schoolmates in the street than I am to bump into my former schoolmates themselves. That is a tragedy and a shame.
We need to ensure that local businesses are able to benefit from flexibility. I spent a couple of years working in the steel sector, where I saw highly sought-after apprenticeships that were much more competitive than Oxford and Cambridge. However, we have an apprenticeship regime that is designed for multinational companies; it is not designed for industries that are far smaller, or for businesses such as Brocksbushes Farm Shop, which I visited a couple of weeks ago. I had an incredibly productive conversation there about the challenges it faces. It wants to offer more young people employment and more upskilling. It is held back not just by inflexibility in the current regime—and I urge the Government to look at that, and at how they can work with rural and small businesses to make the apprenticeship scheme work better for them—but by poor transport links. One of things that would make a major difference to the farm shop is simply having a bus stop slightly nearer to its premises. That would massively increase the ability of young people to get out there and to get the skills they need, while earning an income.
As I come to the end of my speech, I urge the Minister to seriously consider how we can improve apprenticeships—not just in major urban centres and in areas with good transport links, but in areas with poor transport links. That is because transport infrastructure is a key part of how we improve the issue.
Several hon. Members rose—
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Order. Given the number of speakers, we will now have to move to two minutes per speech, unfortunately.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) on securing this debate. It is heartening to see so many Members here talking about this important subject, although they seem rather weighted on one side of the room.
I was keen to contribute to the debate because in rural areas such as my South West Norfolk constituency, apprenticeships are crucial. They offer a way into many industries in rural communities, including land management, farming, planning services, engineering, energy and nature conservation. So often, I talk to businesses in my constituency that struggle to recruit. They cannot find the people with the right skills, and as a result, their businesses often suffer. Apprenticeships are an important tool for addressing that challenge.
One business in my constituency that has been successfully leading the way on apprenticeships is Warren Services in Thetford, under the direction of Richard Bridgman and his son Will. Warren Services is an engineering firm with a proud track record of more than 30 years. To its credit, Warren is committed to building the workforce of the future, and it routinely goes to schools, academies and colleges to inspire young people to pursue a career in engineering and manufacturing. It regularly hosts recruitment days; there is one coming up next week, on 13 February. I do not normally advocate for second jobs, but if anyone wants a level 2 apprenticeship, they are available next week.
I am delighted that this Labour Government are doing more to support firms such as Warren and making apprenticeships a key part of their employment offer. In particular, I welcome the focus on green skills and the green skills gap in this country. Building a workforce with the skills needed to transition to a greener society is crucial to tackling the climate and nature crisis.
Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes), who secured this debate.
Too many of our children are out of school and education, and they are leaving school ill-equipped for the world of work. Apprenticeships are a vital tool to help people attain hands-on skills while earning, without the financial repercussions of university or college life. They provide the specific, tailored skills that our local economies need to grow. For many of our young people—especially those who did not fit into the school system—apprenticeships are also a second chance.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting a group of students in Asda’s supported internship programme. It was particularly noteworthy because those children had significant learning difficulties. The internship has given them a supported way into the workplace to gain the skills that they need to thrive, and they have worked incredibly hard to develop their skills significantly. I was struck by how well integrated they were in their workplace and with their colleagues, and by the pride their tutors took in their increased confidence. That is especially important, because disabled people are twice as unlikely to find employment.
Finding a job early, and grounding it in skills and development, transforms the lives of young people in Nuneaton and throughout the United Kingdom. Our rich and diverse bedrock of small businesses and microbusinesses in Nuneaton find it more and more challenging to access apprenticeships. That is one of the reasons why the number of apprenticeships in Nuneaton halved between 2018 and 2023. We have been working alongside umbrella bodies to remove some of the barriers that trade and small businesses face in entering into apprenticeships, and we would very much welcome more investment to remove those barriers.
Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this important debate. In the interest of time, I will focus on one issue: the awareness of apprenticeship opportunities, particularly among school leavers.
When I go around my Rossendale and Darwen constituency, I am inspired by the range of opportunities that our great businesses offer, but at the same time, a lack of skills and the inability to recruit the people they need remain key barriers to growth. I go into schools and talk to young people, and their awareness of the opportunities available to them remains remarkably low. That is reflected in the take-up of apprenticeships: only 25% are taken up by school leavers—around 80,000 students in 2023, compared with over 300,000 who applied for universities—and take-up was dominated by two sectors, which leaves many areas completely under-represented. It is also reflected in surveys: although 70% of parents would recommend an apprenticeship to their child, only one in 10 would be confident in supporting them through the application process, compared with four in 10 for university applications, and 82% of teachers said that they felt confident talking about university opportunities, compared with just 27% for apprenticeships.
That is a fundamental issue. Indeed, the National Foundation for Educational Research found that the principal barrier to young people accessing apprenticeships was
“a lack of in-depth understanding of apprenticeships amongst young people, their parents/carers, and teachers, including the opportunities for career progression. This is preventing young people from even getting to the point of application.”
I have some questions for the Minister. To what degree are we assessing the impact of the enhanced Baker clause? What more can we do to enhance awareness among schools, businesses and others? To what degree should we consider destination measures—what students’ education leads to, rather than the qualifications they get—in Ofsted judgments?
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this debate as we approach National Apprenticeship Week.
We are fortunate in my Colchester constituency to have a diverse range of apprenticeship opportunities—from healthcare roles at Colchester hospital and in other parts of the NHS, to retail law and engineering—many of which are offered via the Colchester Institute university centre. Data from the Department for Education shows that there were 370 apprenticeship starts in Colchester in 2023-24, with over 1,400 people participating. Those numbers are good, but they are not great; we really need to raise them in Colchester and across Essex.
Unfortunately, there has been a fall in the take-up of intermediate-level qualifications—a reduction of nearly 50%, as I understand it—in the past five years. That must be addressed, because apprenticeships often give people a vital entry into the workforce. I encourage the Minister to consider how we can support intermediate and high-level apprenticeships in the near future, and to give employers and universities maximum flexibility in tailoring a new apprenticeship offer for new times.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this debate.
It is great to see that the debate is so well attended, and it is clear that we could have had three times as long and still filled the time. Reflecting on some of the things we have heard, I believe that the previous Government had a commitment to apprenticeships, but they did not have any kind of systemic approach. There is a huge raft of different initiatives, but we do not have a proper skills system in this country. We have several different qualifications that do not coherently work together, which is why we see a very low completion rate. Many people complete their course but do not need the qualification to get the job. The previous Government focused on T-levels, through which apprenticeships cannot be done. We really need the Government and Skills England—as it is being created—to put that whole raft of different initiatives into a constructive system.
There have been a lot of contributions about promoting the value of apprenticeships to young people; what we actually find is that when those major companies bring forward their apprenticeship schemes, there is no lack of people applying for them—there are 200 people for every job. We need to make apprenticeships more attractive to businesses, particularly SMEs. We have a system entirely designed around the BAEs and the Rolls-Royces of this world, but we need to reflect the reality of the economy, which, in many of our towns, is mainly those small businesses that are completely excluded from the system.
When the Minister gets to her feet, I hope she can say a lot more about when the Government will bring the growth and skills levy forward, what the role of Skills England will be, and how we will end up with a more systemic approach to capitalise on the huge interest in this subject to ensure we make real progress.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this debate ahead of National Apprenticeship Week.
I am a great advocate of the apprenticeship system. This time last year I was employed at the University of Nottingham, teaching degree-level apprenticeships in electromechanical engineering. Degree-level apprenticeship courses strongly complement a traditional format of degree-level education and powerfully support the Government’s skills agenda.
I want to focus specifically on degree-level apprenticeships and their unique offering. The course I helped deliver at Nottingham was a new paradigm in degree delivery. When people picture a degree in mechanical engineering, they could be forgiven for thinking of an aged lecturer—often male and white—delivering a sermon on gear ratios or some such nonsense to a half-empty, oak-panelled lecture hall, with his students often more taken by the declining state of repair of his ochre elbow patches than the content of his lectures. However, that image could not be further from the course that my colleagues and I were delivering last year. In a degree-level apprenticeship, content is commonly provided asynchronously via recordings and digital exercises, in a manner significantly more engaging than otherwise might be possible in a traditionally delivered degree.
When I was in my previous employment, I often joked that my role was closer to a professional Youtuber than that of a traditional lecturer, with my days spent recording and editing 15 to 20-minute videos in a bite- sized, easily digestible format. I want more degree-level apprenticeships to be offered to allow more people to access the knowledge and experience those courses offer. I want to see people thrive with a new skills offering, and to reverse the decline in apprenticeships that happened under the previous Government.
This Friday, I will visit JTL Training in Sandiacre in my constituency, a training facility which supports career development and business growth and offers apprenticeships and traineeships in building services engineering. I am looking forward to meeting the apprentices on Friday, to talk to them about exactly how we can support their growth, and the growth of our nation.
Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine.
The families and young people in Barking and Dagenham are not short of aspiration or willingness to work hard, but the lack of opportunities means that a staggering 46% of 19-year-olds there lack qualifications, the second worst statistic in London. The statistics do not much improve as young adults get older, as 22% of the residents in the area that I represent have no qualifications at all. Of course, behind every such statistic is a person, a life and wasted potential.
Unemployment caused by a skills gap also holds us back as a country. In Barking and Dagenham, economic inactivity is 25% higher than the London average, so this topic really matters to my constituents. The truth is that many of the people who I represent want to work, but the skills programmes and apprenticeship opportunities are simply not there. Indeed, the national apprenticeship levy is a system that is broken, which I know all too well because I led a local authority before coming to this place.
That is why I welcome the Government’s announcement to establish Skills England. I would also welcome the Minister giving more details on the timeline for that body, because the skills and apprenticeship challenge is a national one. Compared with those of other OECD countries, the UK workforce are under-qualified, primarily because this country has a much lower uptake of technical training in comparison with other levels of study, for reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) outlined.
Consequently, a national commitment to a comprehensive apprenticeship scheme is important. It should include small and medium-sized enterprises, such as those in my constituency, because I frequently meet apprentices who tell me that the additional support they receive from smaller employers or microbusinesses is outstanding.
It is important to link a skills agenda to an industrial strategy, which has been lacking for the past 14 years. Without a comprehensive industrial strategy and a skills agenda that sit side by side, we will set ourselves up for failure, so I welcome the Government’s commitment on both those plans.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine.
I welcome the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes). He has not just secured this debate, but shown leadership on this issue long before he became an MP.
Apprenticeships matter to me, and not just because I have seen at first hand the impact they can have on young people’s lives. I also recognise that they are crucial for delivering on this Government’s agenda. We will not have the construction skills needed to get Britain building again, from key infrastructure to affordable housing, without action on apprenticeships; our workforce will not have the skills they need to seize the benefits of the green transition, from retrofitting to green manufacturing, without action on apprenticeships; and, crucially for me, we will not live up to our aspiration to be less agnostic about the type of growth, the type of jobs and who benefits from them for the first time in a long time in this country without action on apprenticeships.
I am lucky to have some fantastic businesses and training providers in my constituency, and to have had not one, but two Secretaries of State visit them with me. First, the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation came to visit Cadent, to see the incredible pride that its apprenticeships took in the skills they were learning at their training centre in Hitchin. Secondly, the Secretary of State for Education came to see the fantastic charity Amazing Apprenticeships, founded by Hitchin resident Anna Morrison CBE, which agitates for better action and ambition around apprenticeships, and supports more young people to access them, not just locally but across the country.
When I speak to those apprentices, it is clear that they have huge pride in their work and in the opportunities available to them. What is also clear is the greater optimism they now have for their own futures as a result of their apprenticeships. That is an optimism that I want more people in my constituency to have.
From speaking to employers and to Anna Morrison, it is clear that there is more we can do, from making sure that we improve functional skills, to ensure that employers have confidence in them and more young people can access them, to making sure that as we expand the huge opportunity that foundation apprenticeships can provide, we also support more employers and particularly more SMEs to offer them, so that they can truly be a stepping-stone for more young people into apprenticeships. We must also ensure that we build on the greater awareness that young people now have of apprenticeships and turn that into a greater number of apprenticeship starts. Heartbreakingly, that number declined under the last Government. Young people deserve a lot better and I look forward to working with the Minister to make sure they get it.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
I welcome today’s debate and its focus on apprenticeships, which is so important.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) suggested earlier, apprenticeships and the narratives around them have changed a lot in recent years. When I was younger, apprenticeships were seen as something that working-class kids did. They were not considered academic or necessarily broad. They were in traditional trades, such as hairdressing, plumbing, building or being an electrician. Actually, my dad did one, completing the training to be a bricklayer.
However, the situation is quite different now. People can do an apprenticeship in anything, from computer science to law to being a chef or a pilot. They are not just for people fresh out of college or high school. Many apprentices in my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages are older than 25 and the majority of the apprenticeships undertaken are advanced qualifications.
Our policies must reflect those shifts, which is why I welcome Skills England’s work in driving forward national skills development and transforming opportunities for young people and those switching careers.
Apprenticeships do not just provide education, but are a powerful tool for economic growth, as many hon. Members have said, particularly in towns. I regularly meet representatives of Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group, the outstanding college in my constituency, which collaborates with more than 700 employers from small businesses to multinational corporations. Its success in securing apprenticeships highlights the vital role that apprenticeships play in bridging skills gaps and strengthening our workforce.
I am also glad that Skills England is committed to working across industry with employees and other key organisations to refine its assessments of the UK’s skills needs. We must be laser focused on skills shortages, particularly in SMEs, while ensuring that apprenticeships work for businesses and the people taking them. I believe Skills England’s review will hold the answers we need. I look forward to the Minister telling us where the Government are with that and the timeline for that process.
Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing the debate. I am a proud manufacturing MP from the Black Country. I represent Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, where manufacturing still makes up 25% of the jobs available, but we have two and a half times the national average of people with no qualifications.
I want to make three points. First, I want our skills strategy to prioritise manufacturing, engineering and construction in line with the industrial strategy. We do not want to see welding, bricklaying and retrofitting on the Migration Advisory Committee’s shortage occupation list, because we want to grow our own. We want to build 1.5 million new homes with new construction workers brought in through construction apprenticeships. That is why I am so worried about the fact that there were only 24,000 construction apprenticeship starts last year.
Secondly, I want us to prioritise level 3 and 4 apprenticeships, because that is where the wages premium really is. Just 17% of people in my constituency have level 4 skills, but 40% of the jobs on offer need those skills.
Finally, the mandatory grade 4 English and maths at GCSE continues to be a barrier to young people accessing apprenticeships in my constituency. The perpetual resits are so dispiriting. I bow to no one in my belief that working-class kids need qualifications, but there has to be a better way. I hope the Minister has some answers for me.
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
Order. We are out of time. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Max Wilkinson.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) on securing the debate.
Apprenticeships are a vital part of our education system, and the Liberal Democrats think there should be more of them. They break down barriers to opportunity and offer young people a chance to learn while earning through vocational placements. However, after years of Conservative failure, the system is badly struggling and is failing to attract the number of young people it should.
Mr Perkins
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that the Liberal Democrats believe that there should be more apprenticeships. One of his colleagues said that the apprenticeship levy should be abolished. Can he clarify whether that is Liberal Democrat policy? If so, how does he intend to fund the extra apprenticeships that he wants?
Max Wilkinson
I will move on to that, and the hon. Gentleman will find that there is a pleasing consensus between my party and his.
There are positive stories around, and I will highlight an example of good practice from Cheltenham. The hon. Member for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre) mentioned Gloscol, which has one of the most influential, if not the most influential, cyber-clusters outside London. The 5,000 members in CyNam work closely with academia and the education sector to build the skills that drive growth. Gloucestershire college is helping to equip the cyber-security professionals of tomorrow with the skills they need via a range of digital and cyber apprenticeships, in both Cheltenham and Gloucester. Apprentices at Gloscol benefit from being at the heart of Cheltenham’s cyber-security community, close to GCHQ and the Golden Valley development, alongside experienced professionals based in co-working spaces on site. The cyber degree apprenticeship is endorsed by the National Cyber Security Centre and is offered in partnership with the University of the West of England. It gives young people a route into a huge growth sector, helps our economy to thrive locally and nationally, and makes our nation safer too. The college is also offering courses at its new £5.2 million sustainable construction centre. The hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) mentioned green skills earlier. We are equipping young people with the skills needed to deliver the built environment we need for the future.
Those are just two examples from Gloucestershire college, which is ably led by its visionary principal, Matthew Burgess. It is a local success story of which I and the hon. Member for Gloucester are rightly proud, and it shows that offering apprenticeships should be a much bigger priority for this country.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
Another key development site, similar to the projects my hon. Friend has mentioned, is Tata’s Agratas gigafactory near Taunton. It is important that colleges can set up apprenticeships and skills training in advance of the factory being built. Does my hon. Friend support a request to the Minister to facilitate that?
Max Wilkinson
Of course. An alignment of skills with the jobs need for the future is key in the apprenticeship sector. Flawed policy in the past means that there has been a clear drop-off in new apprentices in recent years. Just over 736,000 apprentices participated in an apprenticeship in the last academic year, which is a slight decrease of 2.1% on the previous reporting period. Apprenticeship starts overall have fallen by 170,000 since 2015-16, when the Conservatives started governing alone. The deal on offer is clearly not as attractive as it once was.
We need to recognise that apprentices have the same rights as other employees, but experience a large pay disparity compared with other workers. The national minimum wage will be £11.44 for those aged 21 and over, but for a first-year apprentice, the rate is much lower. Young people are not immune from the cost of living crisis and the disparity between those two wages might be a disincentive. Have Ministers considered whether it is and whether it might be putting young people off from taking up apprenticeships?
The Liberal Democrats would scrap the apprentice rate and instead pay apprentices more fairly. We must also reform the apprenticeship levy, which many Members have mentioned today. Employers tell us that it simply does not work and the House of Commons Library briefing shows that there are large underspends every single year. The amount of money being put aside to train young people is simply not being spent. The Association of Employment and Learning Providers says that the money is being raised for skills but not spent on skills, at a time when Governments—this one and the last—say they are keen to encourage businesses to invest in skills.
The Lib Dems would replace the broken apprenticeship levy with a broader and more flexible skills and training levy. We are pleased to hear that the Government want to abolish the apprenticeship levy and replace it with a new growth and skills levy under Skills England. That is a positive step. However, it is clear that there is still work to be done in establishing the new levy and Skills England to oversee it. I would appreciate an update from the Minister on where things are with that policy.
There is also a concern that careers advice systems are not being properly set up to advise people of the many opportunities in apprenticeships. If we are going to fill the skills gaps that we have discussed, alignment of careers advice with those gaps will be key.
We Liberal Democrats believe that apprenticeships have a much bigger role to play. We welcome the Government’s plan for changing the system. If we get the reform right, we will help young people and employers, too. Central to that will be finally getting rid of the failed apprenticeship levy, properly valuing apprenticeships and learning from best practice like that in my constituency and that of my neighbour in Gloucester.
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
I call the Opposition spokesperson, Rebecca Paul.
Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Jardine, and to respond today for the first time for His Majesty’s Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) on securing this debate on the value of apprenticeships and National Apprenticeships Week.
We have heard some tremendously insightful points this morning and, like others, I thank all Members for their contributions. I think it is apparent that everyone who has spoken today recognises the inherent merit of apprenticeships and it was we in the Conservative party who acted to deliver a world-class apprenticeship system that has created opportunities for countless young people, which would otherwise have remained out of reach, allowing them to earn while they learn.
Since 2010, there have been more than 5.8 million apprenticeship starts, with 736,500 people participating in an apprenticeship in England in the 2023-24 academic year alone. The numbers are impressive, but what truly makes the system we put in place one of the most laudable in the world is the sheer diversity of occupations that have been opened up to our young people. In England today, the apprenticeship system reaches into nearly 700 different occupations—everything from finance to agriculture to construction to nuclear physics. That means that today it is more viable than ever before for young people to chart their own paths and take those vital first steps into the careers that they have been dreaming of.
Of course, a robust apprenticeship scheme offering access to qualifications ranging from level 2 through to master’s degrees at level 7 cannot be delivered on the cheap. That is why successive Conservative Governments always sought to fund apprenticeships properly. In our final year in office, we delivered £2.7 billion for apprenticeships. As Members will appreciate, even the most excellent apprenticeship schemes are of little use without the anticipated uptake. That is why, when in government, we set out to cut red tape for businesses offering apprenticeships. We fully funded young people up to the age of 21 undertaking apprenticeships in small businesses, increased the amount of money apprenticeship levy payers could give to SMEs to hire an apprentice and put all apprenticeships on UCAS so that young people can compare apprenticeships in the same way they would a university degree.
Rebecca Paul
I am sorry; I will need to make progress so that the Minister has sufficient time.
Crucially, it was a Conservative Government that brought the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 into law, ensuring that all pupils now meet providers of technical education so that they understand the wide range of career routes and training available to them, such as apprenticeships, T-levels or traineeships—not just the traditional academic options.
I know that Members will have their own accounts of how this fantastic system is working to nurture and support young people in their constituencies, and we have heard many of them today. I could not miss the opportunity presented by the debate to highlight one of my own. I was recently fortunate enough to visit the UK headquarters of Toyota, located in Burgh Heath, in the Reigate constituency. The visit included the chance to meet and hear from some of the outstanding apprentices working at the company. I was struck by the truly impressive enthusiasm, intelligence and dedication of these young workers. Though still in the early stages of their careers, the apprentices were already making hugely valuable contributions across departments from engineering to finance to marketing. In return, they received experience and training that I have no doubt will leave them in excellent standing for the duration of their working lives. That is an example of apprenticeships done right—an exemplar of what Conservative Governments have been working to enable and support for the last 14 years.
It is of real concern that today the very framework that made these apprenticeships, and so many others like them, possible now appears to be in some jeopardy. That jeopardy arises from a Government commitment to replace the apprenticeship levy with a growth and skills levy that will allow firms to spend up to 50% of their levy contributions on non-apprenticeship related training. If we make the plausible assumption that businesses will take maximum advantage of that flexibility, the number of apprenticeships on offer could slump from about 350,000 to just 140,000, a 60% decrease.
Of particular concern is that the worst of the impact would be felt by our youngest workers at the very first stages of their careers. If we again assume the full 50% decrease in spending, the number of apprenticeships available to those under the age of 19 would crash to below 40,000. That would be a drop from 106,000 in 2017. I concede that the Government’s intended approach might make some degree of sense if a significant portion of the apprenticeship levy remained unspent and would otherwise be serving no useful purpose. However, this is simply not the case. A full 98% of the apprenticeship budget has been used up over the last two years. That funding has gone to support high-quality, career-boosting apprenticeships of the sort we have been discussing this morning. It is concerning that this commitment risks seeing apprenticeship funding diffuse out into lower value courses, or even seminars and programmes that employers would have offered anyway. That is clearly not in the best interests of our young people, and risks creating a cohort with markedly worse life chances than that which came before.
It may well be the case that the Government intend to have their cake and eat it. It would be possible to both allow firms the flexibility to spend 50% of their levy contributions elsewhere and to maintain the current number of apprenticeships, but that could only be achieved with additional Government spending. To maintain the number of apprenticeship starts at the current level—assuming the 50% flexibility on levy spending—the Government would be forced to invest an additional £1.5 billion of new funding.
I ask the Minister to provide clarity on the Government’s intentions. Will firms be given 50% discretion to divert funding away from apprenticeships, as was previously announced? If so, will the Government step in with fresh investment to maintain numbers or will they allow our dynamic apprenticeship system to wither? If Ministers intend to intercede, where will the £1.5 billion they need be found? I pose those important questions not to score political points, but because we derive enormous value in this country from the transformative effect of apprenticeships and want to see as many young people benefit from them as possible.
With one eye on the clock to ensure the Minister has sufficient time to respond, I will say a brief word on defence. As of November 2023, the Ministry of Defence was the largest single deliverer of apprenticeships in the UK, with over 22,000 personnel engaged on a nationally recognised apprenticeship programme at any one time. In addition, over 95% of our non-commissioned military recruits are offered an apprenticeship after their trade training. That includes schemes with focuses on digital, nuclear, analytics and much more. Apprenticeships are a thread that runs through our armed forces, the Ministry of Defence and those private sector organisations that support both. It is of great importance that in their rush to redefine the way apprenticeships are delivered in this country the Government do not deprive our armed forces of the much-needed talent and capacity that is now nurtured and developed through apprenticeship schemes.
I have left the Minister much to address, so will now end where I began, by congratulating the hon. Member for Peterborough on providing us with this valuable opportunity to express our support for, and commitment to, apprenticeships. I wish everyone participating from 10 February a successful National Apprenticeship Week.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
It is a privilege to speak with you as Chair, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) on securing a debate on this subject and on his thoughtful speech. Whether in debates like today, or in his role as co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, he is an excellent ambassador for apprenticeships. I appreciate his enthusiasm and drive, and I was extremely impressed to hear that he has visited over 100 businesses since being a Member of Parliament.
As we have heard, I have a good many questions to respond to and I will endeavour to do my best. It is refreshing to hear from the many Members on the Government Benches about their grassroots experiences; there are those who have held jobs, been apprentices and are well connected to their communities, and we appreciate them all.
I want to set the record straight when it comes to what the Government have inherited. As well as inheriting the £22 billion black hole, we also inherited the fact that one in eight 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training. Indeed, UK employers have said to us that a third of vacancies are due to skills shortages under the previous Government. Technical training at level 4 and 5 in the UK is at only 4% of adults, compared to Germany at 20% and Canada at 34%. What we have inherited is absolutely staggering. This is a Government for change—we are investing in our people and their future careers, and I will continue to speak about these issues.
I acknowledge everybody who has spoken: my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Leigh Ingham), for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham), for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), for Rugby (John Slinger) for Coatbridge and Bellshill (Frank McNally), for Leicester South (Shockat Adam), for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), for Carlisle (Ms Minns), for Hexham (Joe Morris), for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling), for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), for Colchester (Pam Cox), for Erewash (Adam Thompson), for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), and for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance), as well as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) and for Reigate (Rebecca Paul). I thank them all for their contributions.
National Apprenticeship Week promises to be the best yet, with more than 1,000 events across the country showcasing all that apprenticeships have to offer, as well as the wonderful apprentices taking to social media, including Instagram, to share their stories to inspire the apprentices of tomorrow. I thank all the apprentices, employers and providers who have worked so hard to provide these opportunities and to make apprenticeships such a success.
We know that right now the system is not working for far too many young people who have the most to gain from apprenticeships, but who have too often been locked out of accessing these opportunities. Apprenticeship starts by young people under 25 fell by almost 40% between 2015-16 and 2023-24. We are committed to changing this and to rebalancing the system to support more young people. That is why we are introducing new foundation apprenticeships in targeted, growing sectors. These will give more young people a foot in the door at the start of their working lives, while supporting the pipeline of new talent that employers will need to drive economic growth. We are working closely with employers and providers to design these new offers and ensure that they have the opportunity to develop their infrastructure before training and assessment starts.
We also want to make sure that apprentice wages support the attraction of talented individuals into apprenticeships. We are increasing the apprenticeship minimum wage by 18% this April, from £6.40 to £7.55, which will boost the hourly rate for thousands of young apprentices across a range of sectors and those in their first year of an apprenticeship.
We will continue to support care leavers to undertake apprenticeships. Apprentices under the age of 25 who have been in local authority care can claim a bursary of £3,000 when they start an apprenticeship. We will continue to pay £1,000 to both employers and training providers to support them to take on apprentices aged under 19, or 19 to 24 if they have an education, health and care plan or have been in care. Employers are exempt from paying towards employees’ national insurance for all apprentices aged up to 25 when the employee’s wage is below £50,270 a year.
As we work to support more apprenticeship opportunities for young people, it is vital we make sure they are aware of these opportunities. We are promoting career starter apprenticeships, suitable for those leaving full-time education, and targeting young people through the Skills for Life campaign. We have committed to improving careers advice and guaranteeing two weeks of work experience for every young person, as well as to establishing a national jobs and careers service to support people into work and help them to get on at work.
We are also taking action to support employers who want to build the skilled workforce they need for long-term success but who have told us they have not been able to find the right training options. In recent years, UK employers have said that over a third of their vacancies were down to skill shortages. That is why, as a key step of our levy-funded growth and skills offer, we will be introducing shorter duration apprenticeships. These will allow employers to benefit from high-quality apprenticeship training for valuable, in-demand roles that need less than 12 months’ training to be fully occupationally competent, offering more flexibility where that is right for the employer and the learner. We will continue to listen to employers as we deliver the greater flexibility they have called for, and to work with them as we build a vigorous and responsive skills system that will support employers to fill skills gaps that are holding back our economy.
After the Conservatives left us with a collapsing apprenticeship system as well as skills shortages, Labour is listening to employers and redrawing the system through Skills England, a new growth and skills levy, and new foundation apprenticeships. Apprenticeship starts by young people under 25 fell by almost 40% between 2015-16 and 2023-24. The Government are focusing on establishing a coherent skills system, with more flexible training options that support employers to fill skills gaps by driving growth and spreading opportunity. We are introducing foundation apprenticeships to get young people into work-based training and employment, as well as delivering shorter duration apprenticeships to provide flexibility for employers and learners.
SMEs are incredibly important to the economy and to apprenticeships. They are more likely to employ younger apprentices and apprentices from disadvantaged areas. We pay 100% of the training costs for young apprentices aged 16 to 21 and for apprentices aged 22 to 24 who have an education, health and care plan or have been in local authority care where they have undertaken apprenticeships with SMEs. As I have mentioned, we also pay £1,000 to employers and providers for apprentices aged 16 to 18 and those aged 19 to 24 who have an EHCP. We will ensure that we consider the needs of the smaller employer as we develop our levy-funded growth and skills offer.
The Government’s first mission is to kickstart economic growth. Across the country, skills gaps are holding back business growth, so we will support employers to invest in skills training. That brings me on to Skills England. We know that right now the skills system in England is complex. There is no shared national ambition on skills development. There is a need to bring together in one place a range of functions, currently scattered across different organisations, to better support the delivery of the skills that the economy needs and to further our industrial strategy, and growth and opportunity missions.
We are setting up Skills England to address these problems by bringing coherence and efficiency to the system, for the benefit of learners, businesses and local areas. Skills England will ensure that we know where our skills gaps are, and the training needed to fill them now and in the future. Skills England will combine the best available statistical data, with insights generated by employers and other key stakeholders. It will also ensure that there is a comprehensive suite of apprenticeships, training and technical qualifications that are aligned with skills gaps and the needs of employers.
The first Skills England report highlighted employer demand for levels 4 and 5—high technical qualifications; those qualifications have been independently approved as providing the skills that employers need. Skills England will work closely with employers, providers, trade unions, Government Departments, combined authorities, regional bodies and other agencies, all of which will help deliver our mission to drive economic growth and to open up a world of opportunity for young people and adults. The Government have an ambitious plan to rebuild Britain. We will deliver 1.5 million homes in England in this Parliament. Around 5,000 more construction apprenticeship places will be made available per year by 2027-28, thanks to an £140 million industry investment to get Britain building again.
We welcome Peterborough’s commitment to breaking down barriers to opportunity by being part of one of eight youth trailblazers that will launch in April 2025. Peterborough and Cambridgeshire have just announced the formation of their youth forum to shape the youth guarantee, to ensure that the voices and perspectives of young people are included in decision making. That pilot will address the needs and challenges faced by the young people in that area. It was wonderful to hear from many MPs about the work in their constituencies. I thank everybody for championing the work that the Government are doing in this area.
Jim Shannon
On a point of order, Ms Jardine. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) has not wound up the debate.
Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
We are out of time. The hon. Member indicated at the start that he did not mind.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the value of apprenticeships and National Apprenticeships Week.
Six Nations Rugby Championship: Viewing Access
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Christine Jardine (in the Chair)
I will call Charlie Dewhirst to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.
Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the potential merits of free-to-view access for the Six Nations Rugby Championship in 2026 and beyond.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am pleased to have secured this timely debate on the future of the Six Nations and its broadcast in the UK, as the championship’s current deal with the BBC and ITV comes to an end after this tournament. For the record, I am a former employee of the Rugby Football Union, but I have not been an employee there since 2017. I am delighted to be joined today by colleagues from across the four home nations, but I assure hon. Members that I will not mention the results of the England or Wales games at the weekend—there is no need to dwell on those.
First, I will address the importance of the Six Nations to rugby union and the nation. It is one of the most popular annual sporting events, and over the weekend millions of people across the UK were watching at home, in the pub and at rugby clubs. It celebrates old rivalries between the home nations and inspires so many children to get involved in the game. It also fills a void in the sporting calendar during the cold and wet weekends in February and March, when not many other major events—or, indeed, anything else—are taking place.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I do not want to rub salt into the wound, but we had a magnificent game this Saturday and we enjoyed the victory; others will come—there are more to go. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing forward this debate, and he mentioned a factor that is critical for me and for most of us. Does he agree that UK buy-in at the Olympic games, and the national pride experienced, are partly due to the accessibility, which means that people can watch and become engaged? That is one way for us to inspire the next generation of boys and girls he referred to.
Charlie Dewhirst
I absolutely agree; the hon. Member makes a good point. I will come on in some detail to the importance of the tournament’s accessibility and how it inspires the next generation of fans and players. I also note that the match at the weekend was really excellent for at least 40 minutes, but we will leave it there.
The tournament has a rich history. It was first played in 1883, as the Home Nations championship, among the four home nations of the United Kingdom. In 1910, the tournament became the Five Nations championship in 1910, with the addition of France. In 2000, it was expanded to become the Six Nations, when Italy was invited to join.
Over the years, the Five and then the Six Nations has provided many iconic moments. Would you believe, Ms Jardine, that I am just about old enough to remember the great Scottish grand slam-winning side of 1990? Who can forget what Gavin Henson did to us English in 2005? On the flipside, I was lucky enough to be at the Millennium stadium in 2017 when Elliot Daly scored that last-minute winner to break Welsh hearts. The tournament has made names such as Hastings, O’Driscoll, Warburton and Itoje household names. My fear is that any move away from free-to-air television could see audiences plummet and risk us missing out on the next generation of rugby players and fans.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this really important debate. According to a recent study by CHoosing Active Role Models to INspire Girls, only 28% of 14-year-olds were able to identify a sporting role model. Does he agree that if the women’s Six Nations follows the men’s game and moves behind a paywall, it would limit girls’ access to the sport, reduce visibility and ultimately harm efforts to grow women’s participation in rugby?
Charlie Dewhirst
I absolutely agree. The women’s rugby game has been a huge success story over the last decade, and the free-to-air coverage that we have of the women’s Six Nations has been a key part of that. I pay tribute to all the clubs up and down the country that have done such a huge amount of work to get more girls and women into the game and to play it.
To go back to what I was saying about free-to-air access across the board, all current matches are shown on the BBC and ITV. That ensures that the sport has a vital window to the wider population; that is key to keeping it in the national spotlight. It is worth recalling that the last comprehensive free-to-air broadcast deal for test cricket was for the 2005 Ashes series—arguably the greatest of all time—but I question whether that rollercoaster summer of cricket would have grabbed the nation’s attention in the same way had it not been accessible to all.
Since then, cricketing authorities have been battling for the survival of the test format; this is 20 years after it went behind a paywall. They have had to invent what I will call a new gimmick format for free-to-air television in an attempt to win over the next generation of fans. Thankfully, today’s is not a debate about the pros and cons of the Hundred, so I will return to the matters in hand.
Charlie Dewhirst
We could. Perhaps that is an opportunity for later in the year; we could return to Westminster Hall.
There were several reports in the media last week that a deal between the Six Nations and TNT Sports for coverage in 2026 and beyond was imminent. I am grateful to the Six Nations for providing me with clarification on that point, and I can confirm that those reports are inaccurate, as any deal has yet to go out to tender. That does, however, set the backdrop for today’s debate, as it will be vital that any new deal maintains free-to-air coverage.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for initiating this timely debate. Does he agree that the Six Nations needs to ensure that there is a balance between reach and revenue when entering into these conversations with broadcasters?
Charlie Dewhirst
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, and the debate is very timely, given what I am about to say. I am also grateful for her contribution, given her role in Parliament as regards rugby and her previous role in the sport as well. I am very aware that income from broadcast deals is vital to the home nations’ rugby unions, but I would caution against a dash to the highest bidder. This should be a case not of maximising income but of optimising it so that the sport continues to have a broad reach, which in turn creates more fans.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
I think the decision would run counter to the aim of increasing engagement in the sport. The hon. Member will know that the Rugby Football Union receives £28 million of taxpayers’ money to not only deliver the women’s rugby world cup but improve engagement in the women’s game. However, is he aware that the joint venture between the rugby world cup and the RFU to deliver the tournament awarded the contract to provide the equipment to Rhino Rugby, a long-term RFU sponsor, which was paid £800,000 and selected ahead of Aramis Rugby, which offered to deliver all the equipment for free? I would question that. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should do more to monitor how taxpayers’ money is spent and whether that is being done in the interest of growing the game?
Charlie Dewhirst
I think we can all agree that we are looking forward to the women’s world cup. I am not aware of the detail of the situation to which the hon. Gentleman alludes, but I am sure it is something the Minister will take an interest. I hope they can both meet to discuss it further.
Viewing figures for matches that involve the home nations and that are shown free to air during the Six Nations have significantly outperformed viewing figures for, for example, the autumn internationals on subscription services showing the same countries. If rugby risks its broader fanbase, it will become harder to attract other sponsors, and that will become counterproductive in the long term. These are, of course, commercial decisions for private organisations, but Parliament does have a say through the listed sporting events. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has powers, using the Broadcasting Act 1996, to draw up a list of sporting events of national interest.
Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)
In Wales, rugby is of course a part of our culture and national identity, and international tournaments such as the Six Nations are an integral part of our national calendar. Caerfyrddin, my constituency, has produced a plethora of first-class players. There are far too many to name, although perhaps I should drop in one or two such as, in the past glory days, Roy Bergiers and Delme Thomas, and more recently, Shane Williams—a phenomenal player—Mike Phillips and, to come up to date, Gareth Davies. There are many more. Does the hon. Member agree that, win or lose—as is our case at the moment—rugby brings us all together in Wales and should be included in group A? Of course, the free-to-view aspect is also so important for S4C, which produces our Welsh-language-medium coverage of sport. This tournament needs to be included in group A.
Charlie Dewhirst
I could not agree more. I hope that the hon. Lady’s local clubs will play a key role in the rebuild of the national side and that there will be a few more victories in future.
Returning to listed events, the broadcast rights must be offered to the main free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters on fair and reasonable terms. The aim is to ensure that events are made available to all television viewers and are placed in groups A and B. Any group A events must be shown in full and live by the qualifying broadcaster, but group B can have live coverage on subscription services, as long as the highlights are then provided to free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters.
Currently, group A events include the Olympic and Paralympic games, the men’s and women’s football world cup finals tournaments, the men’s and women’s European football championship tournaments, the FA cup final, the Scottish FA cup final, the grand national, the Wimbledon tennis finals, the rugby union world cup final, the Derby and the rugby league Challenge cup final. Group B, which only needs highlights on free to air, is test cricket matches played in England, non-finals play in Wimbledon, all other matches in the rugby union world cup finals tournament, the Commonwealth games, the world athletics championship, the cricket world cup where home nations are playing in the final or semi-final, the Ryder cup, the Open golf championship and the Six Nations.
In terms of basic viewing figures, the Six Nations outperforms a number of events already in group A. England games regularly have in excess of 4 million viewers, which is higher than either the Derby or the rugby league Challenge cup final.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. He mentioned his previous occupation, and we had this discussion when the RFU did a deal for England home games in the Six Nations and, I think, for away games against France. We saw a big difference in viewership figures for those England games, which fell from an average of 4 or 5 million to just 2 million. With the Six Nations games now averaging 8 million, it would be a huge drop if we were to return to those sorts of numbers. Perhaps the RFU, and those making this decision, should keep that in mind, particularly when we are trying to get as many people as possible to watch these games.
Charlie Dewhirst
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is important that we get the timings of the games and everything else right so that we optimise the broadcast number. As we have seen with various experiments in recent years, whether games take place on Friday nights or Sunday afternoons, rather than the traditional Saturday afternoon, also has a bearing. That all needs to be taken into account, as I am sure it will be as the negotiations progress in the coming months.
As has been mentioned, the tournament attracts about 120 million viewers—a clear demonstration of its popularity. The Six Nations matches involving the home countries should be moved from group B to group A to ensure that this much-loved tournament continues to have the broadest possible reach. That is vital for the health of the game, from elite level down to the grassroots.
Watching our international teams through free-to-air coverage of the Six Nations is often the only exposure fans will have to professional rugby. For many of us across the UK, the opportunity to watch elite club rugby in person is a postcode lottery. My own constituency of Bridlington and The Wolds in East Yorkshire is equidistant from three of the closest English premiership teams: Leicester, Newcastle and Sale. Anyone with the vaguest grasp of geography will know that none of those is remotely close to where I live.
In my part of the world, the grassroots game is therefore the bedrock of local rugby. Clubs such as Bridlington, Driffield, Hornsea and Pocklington do an incredible job of introducing hundreds of boys and girls to the sport every year, ensuring the continued strength of the amateur game. To take one example, Driffield fields six senior teams—four men’s teams and two ladies’ teams—and has minis and juniors at every age group from under-sixes to under-16s. Those are the epitome of community sports clubs, but many of those kids gave rugby a go only because they wanted to be the next Marcus Smith, Finn Russell or Liam Williams. I suggest that watching the Six Nations, and being inspired by it, is a huge part of the pathway to taking up the sport.
My final point is less about sport and more about our United Kingdom and our friends in Ireland, France and Italy. No other tournament pits England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales against each other, every year, in such a high-profile event. All of us love to use the games to bring up old rivalries and have a cheap dig at our neighbours. However, it is an occasion that shows that there is so much more that unites us than divides us.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I thank the hon. Member for giving way on that point, because rugby does bring us together, but we cannot ignore the financial challenges faced by the sport we love in all of the home nations and overseas. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does the hon. Member agree that it is important that public sector broadcasting comes to the table and is able to be competitive and to provide a future, so that grassroots sport and future generations keep playing rugby and have a love of the sport, as we all do in this Chamber?
Charlie Dewhirst
I could not have put it better myself. It is so important to get the balance right between ensuring a secure financial future for our unions and the availability of the game to the widest possible audience. A symbiotic, positive relationship between those things will ensure the healthy future of the game across the United Kingdom.
Sport has a unique ability to be a force for good, and the Six Nations does that as well as any event. I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to consider the importance of the tournament to rugby union and the United Kingdom. I call on her to review the listed sporting events and to put the Six Nations in the top tier, where it belongs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stephanie Peacock)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am pleased to respond to this debate; I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst) on securing it and on making such a good speech.
Rugby union has a vital role to play in our national identity around the United Kingdom. The Six Nations is a jewel in the crown of international rugby union. Each year, the competition manages to deliver unpredictable and compelling storylines that captivate audiences across the globe. There are few events with the same level of anticipation. It brings the parts of our country together in fierce but fair rivalry, as the hon. Member concluded.
Through comprehensive broadcast coverage spanning 209 international territories, the 2023 championship reached more than 121 million viewers, who tuned in to watch the action unfold. I will make only brief mention of the weekend to congratulate Scotland and Ireland on their impressive wins; I very much hope that England and Wales can bounce back next weekend.
As well as the success of the men’s Six Nations in recent years, the women’s Six Nations has risen to prominence and has inspired young girls and women across the country. I am delighted that England will be hosting the 10th edition of the women’s rugby world cup this year in August and September. The opening game will take place at the Stadium of Light and the final is scheduled to be held at Twickenham. I look forward to cheering on the Red Roses and the other home countries.
Tonia Antoniazzi
The women’s Six Nations and the rugby world cup are absolutely tremendous. Rugby union goes from this exciting time of year in February, with the men’s Six Nations, through to the women’s Six Nations; then we have the Lions and then the women’s world cup. It is so exciting. There is such a tension around this: that is why this deal on a paywall or no paywall is so important at this time of year. I urge the Minister to have as many conversations as possible for a positive outcome for everybody.
Stephanie Peacock
I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend for her contribution, and I pay tribute to her for her work. We have talked about this issue many times. She is absolutely right about the span of rugby throughout the year. I was really lucky to be cheering on the Red Roses at Twickenham a few months ago with my former boss Sylvia Heal, a former Member of this House; I look forward to doing so again in the coming months. I will come on in a moment to some of the points that my hon. Friend raised.
I am aware of reports relating to the broadcasting of the Six Nations from 2026 onwards, which is obviously why the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds secured this timely debate. It should be emphasised that this is a live issue, and it would not be appropriate to comment on every single stage of ongoing commercial negotiations, as I am sure Members will appreciate. However, I recently met Six Nations Rugby to discuss the issue further. It was clear to me that Six Nations Rugby understands the strength of feeling among rugby fans on this issue and appreciates the significant cultural and financial contribution that the Six Nations makes to each nation’s rugby union’s governing body, including the RFU. The Government recognise the importance of broadcasting sporting events such as the Six Nations to attract significant audience interest.
The hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds proposed changes to the so-called listed events regime that, in his view, would protect free-to-air coverage of the Six Nations. As he outlined, the Broadcasting Act 1996 gives the Secretary of State the power to draw up a list of sporting events of national interest. The broadcast rights to such events must be offered to the main free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters on “fair and reasonable terms”. The current listed events regime is designed to ensure that sporting events of national significance are available to as wide an audience as possible, by prohibiting the exclusive broadcasting of the event without the prior consent of Ofcom.
As colleagues will know, the Six Nations is listed under the Act as a group B protected event, which means that although highlights must be offered to free-to-air broadcasters, full live coverage does not need to be made available to them. Listing does not guarantee that an event will be broadcast live or on a free-to-air channel. Rights holders are not required to sell rights for listed events, and free-to-air broadcasters are not obliged to purchase them. Conversely, the example of the Six Nations demonstrates that putting an event in group B does not prevent a rights holder from selling full live coverage rights to a free-to-air broadcaster or broadcasters.
The Government believe that the current list of events works well and strikes an appropriate balance between access to sporting events and allowing sports to maximise broadcasting revenue. We therefore have no plans to review the list at this time. When discussing the Six Nations, it is important to consider that broadcasting income is a significant revenue stream for rugby union and is important to the financial sustainability of all home nations unions. The current Six Nations broadcasting rights are said to be worth £90 million a year—a significant revenue stream for the six rugby governing bodies.
The previous Government loaned premiership clubs £124 million as part of the sport survival package to keep elite-level rugby union alive during the pandemic, and championship clubs were loaned £5 million. We are supporting rugby union authorities to improve the financial sustainability of the sport. Indeed, I recently met the RFU to discuss the future of rugby union.
Edward Morello
The Minister makes valid points about the contribution that the Government have made. However, the RFU has lost £30 million and overseen three premiership clubs going bust, so I question whether the Government are doing enough to scrutinise the governing bodies of the game in England.
Stephanie Peacock
That is, of course, a matter for the RFU. I took note of the hon. Gentleman’s earlier intervention; if it is helpful, I am happy to write to him about the specific points that he raised.
I welcome the recent progress that the game has made on funding distribution and other issues. We will continue to work with the RFU, with representatives of premiership and championship clubs and with the wider sport sector to support the ongoing sustainability of elite and community-level rugby. More broadly, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport provides the majority of direct support for grassroots sport through our arm’s length body Sport England, which invests over £250 million of national lottery and Government money annually. Sport England has awarded £30,859,000 to the RFU—one of its long-term system partners—for the 2022-2027 period, to support men’s and women’s grassroots rugby union. DCMS has also provided over £28 million of investment to support England’s hosting of the 2025 women’s rugby world cup, including £14.5 million to support the legacy of that tournament through improvements to facilities and greater opportunities for women and girls at all levels.
Despite that support, the RFU is independent of Government and is responsible for the regulation of rugby union at all levels. Given the financial difficulties facing rugby union, it is right that the RFU and the Six Nations consider the trade-offs between visibility, access to games, maximising revenue and protecting our cultural heritage.
Tonia Antoniazzi
I appreciate the Minister’s generosity with her time. Does she agree that it is vital that Six Nations coverage be available in the Welsh language for those watching in Wales? As the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) mentioned, rugby is different in Wales: the viewing figures are higher, and it is such a huge part of our culture. Will the Minister meet BBC Wales, ITV Wales and S4C to ensure that those conversations about the Welsh language are heard?
Stephanie Peacock
I know that 80% of the population in Wales watches the Six Nations. I think Six Nations Rugby is very conscious of that and is taking many steps to protect the Welsh-language broadcast; I know that it is looking at options going forward. I would be happy to meet those organisations—indeed, I do so in my role as media Minister—and to take that forward with my hon. Friend.
It is understandable that the potential for the Six Nations to move away from free-to-air television attracts a great deal of scrutiny and concern from fans. The Government are very aware of that. It is right that the RFU and Six Nations Rugby take a considered and balanced approach, recognising the need to achieve reach to existing and new fans and the importance that the Six Nations has for the cultural pride of every home nation, all while maximising much-needed broadcasting revenue.
This debate has been a brilliant opportunity to discuss the continued success of the Six Nations. I thank the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds once again for securing the debate, and I thank all Members who have attended and taken part.
Question put and agreed to.
UK-US Bilateral Relationship
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the UK-US bilateral relationship.
It is a pleasure to serve under your tutelage, Sir John, and let me introduce you to a fine Scots word: fankle. It means a tangle, or a confusion. President Donald Trump knows what it means, because his mother was a Scot from the Isle of Lewis, and the White House team know one when they see one. And they see one right here in Britain, as our foreign policy is disjointed, dysfunctional and callow.
The White House has fired the first shots in a trade war, with tariffs and the threat of tariffs shaping policy. The EU is under this sword of Damocles, but we could avoid the sort of damage to key exports, such as Scotch whisky, that we saw when Mr Trump was last atop Pennsylvania Avenue.
Overall, the UK enjoys a balanced scorecard on trade with the US, although our preponderance of services over goods could yet make us a target. Should we side with the EU? The UK exported £179 billion-worth of goods and services to the US in 2023 and we imported £112 billion-worth of US goods. Looking at individual countries, the US is by far our largest export market; Germany is a distant second, with an export market about a third the size of America’s.
In today’s world, America innovates, China imitates, Europe regulates and Britain prevaricates. Just as President Trump is freeing US industry from its shackles, here Labour is imposing more taxes, more red tape and self-harming nonsense such as the ruinous Employment Rights Bill—the union barons’ charter. Labour wants to offshore decision making to courts, to outsourced and unelected lawyers, and to take dictation from the EU. And they want to force through the Chagos fiasco, Britain’s biggest capitulation since Singapore in 1942—although we did at least fire some shots 83 years ago.
Can the Minister offer some reassurance today that instead Britain will get off its knees, use the freedoms of Brexit, and stride confidently and boldly into the world, striking our own deals? The Russian bear is scratching at our back door, we feel the hot breath of the Chinese dragon on our neck and under President Trump the American eagle is starting to spread its wings.
Among all that, which way to turn, for our Foreign Secretary seems like a cork in a raging sea? Labour’s instincts in time of trouble are to run for the skirts of nanny Europe, but Europe is fading, with sclerotic growth amid political turmoil. Its two great powers, France and Germany, are rudderless and drifting. And although Labour would have us believe that it is resetting relations with the EU, the reality is that our position is pathetic.
The Prime Minister cannot say what he wants from Europe, while they have their invoice already made out; they want a youth mobility scheme that would put yet more pressure on our own children who are seeking their first job. And Europe has avaricious eyes on that old sacrificial lamb—fish from our pristine waters—and to hell with British coastal communities who rely upon the sea’s bounty.
Also, we are cosying up to China. The Chancellor is fresh back from “Operation Kowtow” with a few cheap baubles, despite China’s anti-competitive trade practices, even as the diggers move to build Beijing’s London embassy astride critical data cables. We risk feeding the dragon that one day may immolate us.
What then of the United States, which for so long has been our ally under the umbrella of the much-vaunted “special relationship”? Surely the choice is obvious, yet it would mean Labour dealing with a man that it dispatched activists to defeat in the US election. He is, to quote that master diplomat the Foreign Secretary,
“a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath. A tyrant in a toupee.”
I will also quote Labour’s choice of ambassador to Washington DC, who called the returning President a “bully”, “reckless” and a “danger to the world.” The Damascene conversion that our diplomats have lately undergone means that Mr Trump is now “a nice man”. And as for KKK jibes? Apparently, they are “old news” that will matter not a jot on Capitol Hill. However, they neither forgive nor forget; the die is cast. What is said cannot be unsaid by fawning. And although the Foreign Secretary boasts of having a meal with the President, perhaps the Minister who is here today could confirm both how little access the Foreign Secretary had to the President and just how massive the humble pie was that he was forced to pretend he enjoyed.
Huge though those problems are, they are nothing compared with the Chagos deal, which will see us cede the strategic joint UK-US Diego Garcia base to distant Mauritius and pay billions to lease it back. We saw the unseemly haste with which Labour wanted to push that deal through, in the face of warnings that Mauritius was moving ever closer to both expansive China and malign Iran.
Now the Foreign Secretary is moving at pace again, scuttling to try to explain to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the deal is just the job to see off a legal opinion—not a decision—that there might be an issue with the Chagos islands and Diego Garcia in particular. Yes, negotiations were begun by the previous Government but we did not conclude them. We would certainly not have considered the ludicrous terms on offer, where we take something of ours, give it away and then pay through the nose to borrow it back.
The Americans already see what this is: a supine Britain, afraid of a possible legal setback, falling over itself to avoid offending a foreign Government. It is nothing short of a national humiliation. We have a Labour Government frightened of their own shadow, happier to be soft-touch law takers not lawmakers, who would have this sovereign Parliament infantilised and push around by bewigged silks and the Brussels secretariat.
This Government are more worried about the price of Oasis tickets than the cost of making our elected representatives subservient to quangos and arm’s length bodies, and now to the National Assembly in Port Louis, Mauritius, which is further from Diego Garcia than London is from Rome. Aboard his luxury jet—he seems more interested in a Gulfstream G700 than the G7 countries—whisking him to the US, the Foreign Secretary might consider a quote from Mr Rubio:
“Compromise that’s not a solution is a waste of time.”
Against that sort of clear thinking, our toadying diplomats look like battery toys plugged into the mains: out of their depth, out of touch, out of control. China knows the true value of bases such as Diego Garcia. It is even building artificial islands—the great wall of sand—in the South China sea as unsinkable aircraft carriers. The US will rightly torpedo Labour’s woeful Chagos sell-out.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate. Does he agree that, despite the best efforts of the Labour Government, there is a long-standing and enduring relationship between the USA, Scotland and the rest of the UK? More importantly from our perspective as Scottish MPs, Tartan Week in New York is a good example of that strong relationship between the US and Scotland.
John Cooper
I agree completely. I was privileged to join my hon. Friend at Tartan Week in America, which is a key showcase for all things Scottish. We are lucky that President Trump is effectively an Ayrshire businessman, since he owns a golf course in Scotland.
If the Chagos deal were in effect vetoed by America, would our Foreign Secretary dare continue, in the event of such mortification? What price Downing Street’s hostage-to-fortune claim that the Foreign Secretary will still be in post at the next election? If their 3-amp fuses do not blow too soon, perhaps our underpowered team might get to discuss defence with America. The US wants NATO to pull its budgetary weight. Might we hear today where Labour are with plans to lift defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, given the first casualty of their mishandling of the economy has been growth? Will it happen, and when?
If we are moving ever closer to faceless and distant Strasbourg and Brussels, as yesterday’s visit by the PM surely signposts, we ought to consider Ireland, which sums up America’s issue with European freeloading on defence. Ireland is not in NATO, yet is under the aegis of the British-supplied nuclear deterrent. The undersea cables that see US tax dollars converted to euros and piled into the coffers of Dublin are at risk from Putin’s shadow fleet.
Those data cables are as critical today as were the convoys from America and Canada during the battle of the Atlantic, and every bit as vulnerable. The country’s only defence, since Ireland has zero underwater capability, is Britain—the same Britain Ireland is happy to traduce in international courts over the troubles. We have a rare window of opportunity with Mr Trump and his White House team, but the puerile insults keep coming. The titanic struggle playing out now is between the oldest superpower, the United States, and the newest, China. Europe, prickling with full outrage at the new US President, is sidelined. It is, at best, indifferent to the UK and wants to make even new defence agreements transactional, all about commercial deals, even as the fires of conflict blaze. China need not be our enemy, but it is not our friend. Its industrial heft means genuine competition in many areas is impossible. Its annual production of batteries is sufficient for global needs—no wonder UK plans for a gigafactory have come to nothing.
We must seek every advantage we can, and the US offers the most fertile ground. We speak the same language, George Bernard Shaw’s adage that we are two nations separated by a common language notwithstanding. The late unpleasantness of the American revolution is in the rear-view mirror. We have a shared history of standing for liberty, and our transatlantic co-operation on defence is unmatched. US forces are the big stick; they see ours as a precision scalpel.
Labour does not lack for numbers in this Parliament. Is there no one in their serried ranks who can see that an anglophile US President, a man of immense pragmatism, offers us a chance to form a mutually beneficial relationship and perhaps a full trade deal—or are they the new model terracotta army, which looks impressive from a distance, but which sits mute, eyes painted on, as their leaders tread the same old worn and fruitless path to Brussels and show a bit of ankle to China? Enough of Oliver Twist: “Please Mr Xi and Ms von der Leyen, may we have some more?”
In 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill boarded a flying boat on Loch Ryan in my Dumfries and Galloway constituency, destination the United States. His message then was,
“let us go forward together”. —[Official Report, 13 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1502.]
We should deliver the same message to Washington today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
Order. First, I will call Members who bob, so please could those who wish to be called make sure to bob? Secondly, I remind Members that they should be here for the start of a debate if they want to contribute, but I will try to be generous. Thirdly, so that all who want to can speak, let us try to work on the basis of about four minutes each. That is informal at this stage, but as we continue, we will look at it again.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for calling this debate on the UK-US bilateral relationship. I listened closely to his speech and we agree on the importance of the UK-US relationship and our desire to build on those bonds.
Britain’s place in the world matters. After the needless fights and petty politicking of the last Government, which did so much damage to our relationships around the world, I am proud that our Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have made reconnecting with our allies a priority of this Government. After the furore of the Northern Ireland protocol, the collapse of US-UK trade talks, and strains following Brexit, I am glad that we now have a Government who are ready to put the national interest, rather than party interests, first.
It was Winston Churchill who first described the UK-US relationship as “special”. For centuries, the relationship between our two nations has been one of collaboration, co-operation and enduring partnership. Together, we have defended the world from tyranny and two world wars, stood strong in the cold war, and for centuries worked closely towards our mutual security and prosperity. I put on record my congratulations to President Trump on his inauguration, and we look forward to working with him in the years ahead.
As the Prime Minister has said, we will continue to build upon the unshakeable foundations of our transatlantic alliance as we tackle the global challenges together. We have our shared language, close cultural exchange, strong ties in commerce, and the many links between our peoples through business, friendships and family. Indeed, President Trump’s mother was Scottish and I know he has always been very fond of our country. I am sure that the depth of friendship will continue.
The Prime Minister had a warm and constructive conversation with President Trump the other week, during which they discussed the economy. President Trump stated that they “get along well” and that the Prime Minister is doing a “good job”.
There has been a lot of noise around our relationship with the United States and the new Administration, much of it coming from the Opposition Benches. There have been, as there always will be, things that we disagree on. We clearly did not agree with Elon Musk’s outlandish attacks on members of the Government, but differences on single matters of policy do not diminish the deep and enduring relationship between us and the United States. I dare say that the previous Government disagreed with the Biden Administration on many things.
I regret to note that the Opposition really seem to be getting carried away, with Members seeming to suggest that the Government must choose between our relationship with the EU and our relationship with the United States. Last week, the shadow Business Secretary, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), suggested that improving our relationship with both the EU and the US was akin to an attempt at
“making love simultaneously to a rhino and a sloth.”
Leaving aside why anyone would want to do either of those things, is it not exactly that destructive attitude that has caused so much damage to British businesses and UK trade over the past 14 years?
In these dangerous times, the idea that we must choose between our allies—that somehow we are either with America or with Europe—is wrong. Last year, the UK’s total trade in goods and services with the United States was £294 billion, and with the EU it was £822 billion. Our co-ordination with the United States on defence, security and foreign policy is indispensable, as is our co-ordination with Europe, our closest neighbours. Attlee did not choose between allies, nor did Churchill. The national interest requires that we work with both the EU and the US.
In the years ahead, the UK will again stand tall on the world stage. This Government’s commitment to international law, their commitment to growing our economy and free trade, and their work navigating the new, more challenging multipolar era are all worthy of Opposition Members’ serious engagement, not party political sniping. Our shared history with the United States, our close security and defence partnerships and our economic ties matter more than words. This Government will continue to invest in the transatlantic relationship in the years to come.
Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I serve in the British-American Parliamentary Group. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for securing this important debate.
As President George H. W. Bush once said,
“America has no truer friend than Great Britain.”
That sentiment has been repeated time and again but, sadly, we now have a Government seemingly intent on weakening that vital bond. We have a Foreign Secretary who, without hesitation, labelled the leader of the free world a
“racist and KKK/neo-Nazi sympathiser”;
a Health Secretary who referred to him as an “odious…little man”; and, perhaps most concerning of all, a Prime Minister who accused the leader of the free world of an “attack on democracy”—a far cry from leadership figures such as Churchill, Thatcher and even Blair, who understood the value of forging strong and meaningful relations with our closest ally.
Unfortunately, it is not just the Government’s words of woke condemnation that are cause for concern, but their actions. The Trump Administration have unequivocally expressed their concerns about the Foreign Secretary’s reckless proposal to cede sovereignty over the strategically vital Chagos islands to Mauritius. Yet the Foreign Secretary pressed ahead, attempting to finalise the deal before President Trump officially took office. That pattern of misguided priorities and dangerous diplomacy cannot be ignored. Do the Government believe that the special relationship no longer matters?
Prime Minister after Prime Minister and President after President have been steadfast in their commitment to that enduring relationship. Why? Because both sides recognise that our trade is worth more than £300 billion, with 1.2 million Americans working in British companies and 1.5 million British citizens working for American firms. The UK imports around £58 billion in goods from the US and exports £60.4 billion in return. Our Chancellor has stated that she is focused on growth, so surely consolidating and strengthening those economic ties must be a top priority? The previous Government were in talks with President Trump about a post-Brexit deal that would have seen trade increase by potentially
“three to four, five times”.
It is deeply concerning that some Members on the Government Benches and all those on the Liberal Democrat Benches seem intent on undermining the biggest democratic decision this country has ever made: our decision to leave the European Union. Rejoining the EU customs union would not only be undemocratic, but would damage our special relationship with American businesses and prevent us from fostering our own independent trade deals.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway recognised, President Trump is an Anglophile. He has property in Scotland and a deep sentimental connection to British culture and the royal family. It would be regrettable to see that bond undermined by a Government determined to placate the cultural left at every opportunity. It is therefore essential that the Government invite President Trump over for a state visit at the earliest opportunity. That would send a powerful message to the world that the special relationship between our two great nations is as strong as ever.
The Government must stop playing politics with our national interest. The United States is and always will be our greatest ally. We share a history, a culture and, most importantly, a vision for how the world should be. The Government must act now to secure our future and preserve the special relationship for generations to come.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for securing this debate, and I look forward to visiting his constituency in a couple of weeks for a short holiday during recess.
Like the UK, the USA recently voted for decisive change. I heartily congratulate President Trump on his election. People here in the UK and across the Atlantic have been feeling the impact of low economic growth, with a decline in productivity and GDP per capita for many years. From Mansfield, Massachusetts to my constituency of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, people are feeling the impact in their pockets. They know how tough things are out there for their families. The recent changes in both Governments are clearly a response to the frustration felt by both electorates, and it is therefore in both our countries’ interests to work together to deal with the issue.
Despite many attempts to highlight the differences between the two Administrations, we have a great deal in common. Both Governments have made much of their agenda for growth: the US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said that an increase in GDP should be seen as a key performance indicator of the Trump presidency, while here at home my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has also made it clear that economic growth is the Government’s No. 1 mission, a message reiterated through announcements in the past week. We all understand that, primarily, a Government must ensure the economic security of the electorate and give them confidence that they will be better off. However, to earn the right even to be heard on the crucial issue of the economy, parties—in opposition or in government—must prove beyond doubt that they can also ensure the safety and security of the nation.
Here in the UK we have been steadily increasing our defence spending as a share of GDP over the last 10 years. It is currently at just over 2.3%, higher than the NATO target and higher than most other NATO countries. The new Administration in the United States want NATO allies to do more, and I agree that we must. We live in an increasingly dangerous world, and it is right that we and our European allies are asked to do, and do, more. Only yesterday the Prime Minister was in Brussels urging our European neighbours to spend more on defence and to step up and shoulder more of the burden.
We underestimate the threat of Vladimir Putin and Russia at our peril. The Government must go further, with an aspiration to spend 2.5% and beyond on defence as soon as possible. That alignment of priorities should be seen as an opportunity for us here in the UK. It is an opportunity for the UK to be the bridge between US and our European neighbours and, most importantly, NATO. We can take the case to the United States by jointly demonstrating our unshakable commitment to the alliance through our contributions to defence spending. Britain must take the lead on that agenda.
As a former chief executive officer in the United States and as someone who spent many years there in Massachusetts and California, I wholeheartedly support the Government’s efforts to work more closely with the new US Administration. The special relationship is paramount to the international diplomatic network. Both Administrations share a renewed confidence from their electorate based upon the common agendas that I have outlined, and it is on those agendas that we must build a much stronger relationship with the United States going forward.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for raising this topic at such a timely moment, as we look to the start of the new US Administration.
The new Administration offers an opportunity for greater UK-US relations, which is something we should jump at. Although I have not always been the greatest supporter of the Donald Trump portrayed in the media, I certainly admire some of the steps already taken by the Administration. I am pleased to have a presidency that seems to have a grasp of the special relationship with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that we should treasure. We have moved from a former President who called us Brits—that was meant as a slur, by the way—and promised that no orange feet would ever be in the White House, so I could never have gone because I am an Orangeman. He had a very clear, biased opinion. We now have President Trump—a man who treasures his Ulster Scots roots and has the respect for our monarchy that we all hold. What a difference a year makes.
I was heartened to hear the interview in which the President highlighted massive concerns with the EU, which many of us share, yet he indicated his belief that the relationship with the UK could be retained. There is a real possibility of the friendship between our nations being restored to what it once was, which can only benefit us on both sides of the ocean.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be utterly outrageous if the benefits of any trade deal with the US were not felt equally in Northern Ireland—an integral part of the United Kingdom—because of the protocol? Does he agree that this Labour Government need to take action and remove the Irish sea border, so that Northern Ireland can benefit from any trade deal done with the US?
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. She stands alongside the rest of us in relation to this issue.
I am further encouraged that Vice-President J. D. Vance has close Ulster Scots roots that have shaped him. Now is the time to highlight the fact that so much good in America has a foundation in our shared Ulster Scots values of hard work, courage, family, commitment and fairness. There are multiple large businesses in my constituency, such as Rich Sauces and Lakeland Dairies, that have a great business co-operation with the United States of America. There is so much space for greater investment and economic improvement for both Northern Ireland and the US.
The US and Canada are two of Northern Ireland’s important markets both for exports and inward investment, with over 320 North American firms choosing to establish themselves there—that is the relationship that we have. In the 12 months leading up to March 2024, exports to those markets reached £2.3 billion, highlighting the wealth of opportunities available for local companies. We have a new opportunity, under a new Administration, to make new conditions and make Northern Ireland even greater and bigger within this great United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Many Americans have their roots in what is now Northern Ireland and in Scotland. Their Scots Irish or Ulster Scots roots are something to be proud of, and I believe that we can and should build on those links to bring greater cultural tourism to Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly will work on that as well, but there is more to be done. We are a place of peace and open for business, and that needs to be highlighted not simply by the Northern Ireland Executive, but by this Parliament and in this debate.
I will finish with this point, because I am conscious of the numbers who want to speak and the time limit. Donald Trump is a businessman of action, and he responds to that. His Administration have been working hard since day one to bring about change, so let us ensure that greater friendship and business co-operation with the United Kingdom, particularly with Northern Ireland, is brought to his attention and acted upon as a matter of urgency, not left to linger in the ether—to use an Ulster Scotsism. The time to act is now, so let us get going and improve our mutually beneficial relationship.
I look forward to the Minister’s response; he always tries to give us the answers that we request. I also look forward to the response from the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), a lady of integrity.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for bringing such an important subject to this Chamber.
No political party has a monopoly on patriotism, the flag or, certainly, the UK-US relationship. It is a relationship vested in our shared values of democracy, freedom and the international rules-based system. It is based on our shared history of defending and nurturing these values; frequently we have done so by fighting side by side in wars. It is a relationship based on our armed forces co-operating and our intelligence services working closely together in our mutual national interests. Most fundamentally, it is a relationship between two peoples that is based on friendship, exchange and respect.
In that context, I must refer to the words of the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway, which I felt were hyperbolic and unbecoming of such an important subject. He spoke about “supine Britain” and “national humiliation”, and said our defence was, compared with the United States, merely “a precision scalpel”. That is somewhat hypocritical, given that his party saw our Army shrink to the smallest size since the Napoleonic wars. We on the Labour Benches will not take any lectures on our armed forces from him.
The hon. Member spoke about “toadying diplomats”. I regard that as deeply offensive to the diplomats around the world who work around the clock to look after our national interests and our citizens when they are in peril, doing everything they can to enhance our international relationships. He spoke about Labour Ministers having made comments in the past about President Trump. I merely ask whether he has ever investigated the comments of the former British Prime Minister and Mayor of London regarding President Trump. Referring to the torpedoing of Labour’s policy was also unfortunate and dangerous language.
I will defer to my hon. Friend the Minister on the Government’s bilateral relationship with the USA, but I want to touch on a couple of personal aspects of the relationship. In 2009, 16 years ago, I was fortunate to be invited by the US State Department to take part in an international visitor leadership programme—a three-week visit to the United States. That is an example of the US investing in the bilateral relationship. The rumour is that those who go on the IVLP visits are deemed to be people who may one day have some influence; well, 16 years later, I am an MP, so there must have been something right about that.
Jim Shannon
Three Members who are present were in the Northern Ireland Assembly back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, when the United States Government sponsored us to go to America and learn how to govern, so it is not just the hon. Gentleman who benefited from that.
John Slinger
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I support all such schemes, which strengthen the relationship between our two countries.
I saw the military co-operation between our two countries in operation in Iraq, when I visited Baghdad in 2005 and 2006 with Prime Minister Blair’s special envoy to Iraq, the late right hon. Ann Clwyd. I also have good friends in the United States, as I am sure we all do. I want to refer to my late friend Michael McCarthy, whom I got to know when we were both studying for master’s degrees—in my case, in international studies—at Durham University in 2001, and in whose memory I established a lecture at my old college at Durham, University College. The lecture raises money for a travel bursary in his name, which allows students who would not otherwise be able to do so to visit the United States during their studies. That is the special relationship in action—investing in the special relationship to develop friendships.
The bilateral relationship is a relationship that transcends party-political boundaries. It is not owned by one party. It should not be exploited for political purposes or political gain, particularly given that the United States and the United Kingdom have so much to gain from it. Indeed, the rest of the free world depends in some ways on a very healthy, strong bilateral relationship between our two great countries.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
I am grateful to colleagues for their co-operation. Six Members are standing, and I will call the Front Benchers at 3.28 pm, so brevity would be appreciated. Three to four minutes would be brilliant.
Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)
When it comes to debating the potential of the special relationship with this incoming Administration, I think I am in a fortunate position. It is not just that for 10 years I have stood up and defended President Trump—I was very much on my own in those days—but that I know half his Cabinet. We should consider ourselves incredibly lucky, because it is not just the President who is an Anglophile, as the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) said. I promise Members that half the Cabinet are; indeed, senior members of the Administration have children at school in London as we speak. We have a unique opportunity over the next four years and I really hope we exploit it.
During his last term as President, Trump said to me personally that he really wanted to do a free trade deal with the United Kingdom. Now, I know he is very keen on tariffs—tariffs are being put on all over the world, and no doubt the EU will feel some of that—but with us he was very happy to have a free trade deal. He felt that it would not be unfair, because we are roughly operating on similar levels and with similar costs. Those opportunities are fantastic.
On defence, we should face the fact that without America we are defenceless, so it matters, but we should think about the bit that we give back. Diego Garcia is probably the single most important thing that we give America right now. Without it, America does not have access to the middle east, India and much else. It is the single most important island in the world for America—after Hawaii, obviously—so it really matters.
We have had news in the last hour that the Government are going to push ahead with the surrender of the sovereignty of the Chagos islands, at a reported cost of up to £19 billion—I am sure that cannot be true. I warn the Government that they may not be getting huge pushback from America at this moment in time, because they have a list as long as your arm of other priorities, but once they realise that we do not even have that to give them any more, our value to them in that two-way relationship will be considerably reduced. I genuinely fear that if this continues and the American Administration wakes up to it—I could quote three members of the Cabinet I have spoken to personally about it—our chances of not just avoiding tariffs but moving on to a sectoral free trade deal will all but evaporate. The special relationship will be dangerously fractured if the Government carry on with this, so I urge them to please, please give the American Administration a few weeks to think about this while they settle into office.
I will finish on one quick point about the economics. In 2008, the eurozone economy was exactly the same size as the American economy, but 16 years on the American economy is double the size of the eurozone. We do not have to say, “America not Europe,” or “Europe not America”; the really important thing is to understand where the growth is and where the investment will come from. Whatever new terms we seek with Brussels—if it is just a good relationship, that is fine—we must not tie ourselves to an EU rulebook that prohibits free trade with the USA. Economically, it is the future, and the EU is the past.
Chris Evans (Caerphilly) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) on his eloquent and passionate speech although, as he would expect, I do not agree with much of what he said.
I am pleased to follow the man whom YouGov called the 31st most famous person in Britain in 2024. I am sure that in 2025 he will be looking to move up the charts as quickly as possible.
When I have thought about what has happened over the past couple of days, my mind has often drifted back to a very wet holiday in Cornwall a couple of years ago, when I read “The Art of the Deal”. If anybody wants to see President Trump’s thinking, they just need to read that book. He says that the worst thing a person can do when he wants to make a deal is to look too desperate, and the most important thing, he says, is to have leverage in that deal. There has been a lot of talk since November about how we want to be friends with President Trump, and a lot of people have taken back what they have said about him, but the truth is that we have to look at the deal and the leverage that we have.
We will always be strategically important to the US. Our relationship has deep roots in defence, security and intelligence, and our armed forces have always fought alongside each other. The United States can access UK intelligence networks in states where it lacks its own. It gets to work through British counterparts in the Commonwealth and many places where we hold more significant historical ties. The UK also gets a good deal; we have great bilateral intelligence-sharing agreements, and UK diplomats in the US have a particularly strong relationship with key policymakers.
My worry going into this debate was that we would make this about personality, and we would start talking about the personality of Donald Trump or the Prime Minister. Presidents and Prime Ministers come and go. In four years’ time, Donald Trump will not be President any more—the US constitution says so. For too long, when we have talked about the special relationship, we have reduced it down to personality. That may go back to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but let us not forget that they fell out over the Falklands when Reagan tried to intervene.
Whether we support Trump or not, and whatever we think of him personally, the fact is that we have to be a critical friend. We cannot blindly obey or expect obedience from each other; that is not how it works. I recall many years ago, when I was working for Lord Touhig, he gave a speech on the UK-US involvement in Iraq. He said then:
“True friends tell each other the truth, no matter how difficult and painful that might be from time to time. It is up to this Government to be honest and plain-speaking with our American friends.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 570.]
He said that the relationship
“must be a true partnership, in which we do not always hitch our wagon to America’s star on foreign and defence policy.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 568.]
This has been done before. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson desperately wanted this country to get involved in the debacle of Vietnam. The national security adviser McGeorge Bundy advised the President:
“We want to make very sure that the British get it into their heads that it makes no sense for us to rescue the pound while there is no British flag in Vietnam.”
Wilson offered Johnson other reassurances—generally those that aligned with his own view on the right course of action, including that British bases at Suez would be maintained—but he did not give in on the matter of Vietnam. I have to say with all candour that I wish we had had the same attitude in the early 2000s when we were approaching the situation in Afghanistan.
Deals will have to be made with America, but we have to remember that whether it be President Trump, Biden or Kennedy, the American President is elected with one aim in mind: to make sure that he gets the best deal for America. Otherwise, what is the point in electing him? It is the same for us in this country. We expect the British Prime Minister to get the best possible deal, but, in an uncertain time, that does not mean that we forgo our principles. We do not have to be selective in our battles. We can make our views clear and remain strong, but our priority must always be this country and putting our priorities first. That is the only way we can continue to make this relationship special.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) on securing the debate at this pivotal time. It is typically prescient of him to have done so.
When considering my remarks, my first thought was to try to embarrass the Government by replaying all the disgraceful, disobliging and damaging comments that members of the Labour party have made about America, and particularly about President Trump. It might be fun, I thought, to see Government Members squirm, particularly if I could find some choice comments by the Minister himself. However, having researched the dreadful, embarrassing comments, I cannot in good conscience replay them here.
I am a patriot. I have fought for my country all over the world, often alongside our American cousins and usually with an American as my boss. I served for General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf war, on the staff of the superb General David Petraeus in the second Gulf war and under Marine Corps General Richard Mills in the Helmand river valley of Afghanistan. In Sierra Leone, my bacon was well and truly saved by the USS Kearsarge and its embarked port of marines. I cannot replay Labour’s embarrassing catalogue of errors or risk making our relationship with the United States any weaker than it currently is.
Indeed, in my own small way I have been doing my own bit to strengthen Anglo-American relations by employing as my senior parliamentary assistant a no-nonsense native New Yorker from Queens. When Gloria tells me to jump, I do not ask why; I simply ask, “How high?” But my relationship with my parliamentary assistant should never be replicated at a national level. We need to be a strong nation and to conduct our relations from that position of strength.
Of course, much of what we contribute to this relationship we cannot talk about, because it is secret and long may it remain so, but in the public realm it is very clear that the Government are playing for time with their strategic defence review, which is primarily there to produce the political cover for increasing defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP. That is a mistake being played out in public. By not having a threat-based and foreign policy-led review, we are missing a huge opportunity to face down the real-world threats that we see today. Everyone in Government seems to have forgotten the old adage: “Prepare for the war you don’t want to have to fight.” The answer, instead, seems to be “2.5% of GDP—now, what’s the question?”
America has a clear-eyed view of its national interest and we should have one of ours. It has been striking to see the speed with which the Trump Administration has hit the ground running. Not for him the interminable list of reviews, taskforces and consultations that our own Government prefer.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the Chagos islands, which our Government propose to give away the sovereignty of, only to lease them back at vast expense for the British taxpayer. That is surely the worst plan since the Prime Minister hired a voice coach. He must rethink the proposed course of action and not simply hope that it never reaches the top of the President’s in-tray. I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) in that regard. It will reach the top of that in-tray, and this Government will be embarrassed at how cackhandedly this fiasco has been handled. The Government should climb down, and climb down quickly.
In the late 1950s, the French were demanding that all US forces leave French soil and Dean Rusk asked pointedly, “Does that include the dead ones in the military cemeteries?” The UK’s relationship with the US was probably at its lowest ebb following Suez. It has improved since and is strong today. Much of that strength was paid for by the sacrifice of our own troops, serving alongside and indeed for our American cousins. The Government must not squander that inheritance. Instead, they will honour our fallen by making this country stronger and by forging a stronger special relationship with the United States.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
Members can see that we have about 11 minutes left for Back-Bench speakers, so let us divide it between the three remaining Back-Bench speakers.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I commend the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for securing this important debate.
The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) rightly talked about the huge advantages of a trade deal with the US. As a vet who grew up on a farm, I gently point out that not all standards are the same, and we know that in any trade deal the US will be very keen to sell us products such as chlorinated chicken, or beef that has been produced using growth hormones and farming methods that include antibiotics to a higher extent than we would. Not only would such products undermine our environmental and animal welfare standards; they would also put our own farmers at a competitive disadvantage. It is not just vets and farmers who are proud of our high animal welfare standards; the British public are, too. They do not want those standards to be compromised. I urge the Minister to ensure that in any trade deals our farmers and our animal welfare standards are protected.
The withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organisation prevents a significant challenge for UK public health, because the US provided about a fifth of the entire WHO budget and its departure creates an immediate funding shortfall. It is not only UK public health that will be affected but global public health. The intent to withdraw from the World Health Organisation will restrict communications from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
These measures are likely to have a significant implication for global and UK public health security. The US plays critical roles in the surveillance of infectious diseases, including giving direct support to develop capacity overseas, monitoring the threat of antibiotic-resistant infectious, and recognising and investigating emerging infectious diseases with pandemic potential. USAID programmes are often heavily involved in ensuring access to vaccines for diseases such as polio, which has almost been eradicated, but while it is present anywhere in the world, is still a threat to the UK.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
The UK and the US have long led on humanitarian aid—saving lives and preventing crises. Scrapping USAID abandons that leadership, worsening global instability. International aid fosters security and economic growth, reducing forced migration. Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK must persuade the US to rethink that decision?
Dr Chambers
I totally agree with my hon. Friend’s insightful comment. In both those scenarios, withdrawal from key agencies will reduce global awareness and increase the chances of future global health crises. World Health Organisation-collaborating centres around the world, including those in the US, directly inform the development of our annual influenza vaccine, which is a vital aspect of reducing a significant pressure on the NHS every winter.
Meanwhile, it is currently unclear how the US stance on wider public health agencies may shift in the future. Just this week, the World Organisation for Animal Health reported the emergence of highly pathogenic H5N9 avian influenza in poultry for the first time in the US. This is an evolving situation for which the Centre for Disease Control would normally provide crucial updates. How orders to cease communications may impact the service remains to be seen.
The UK also invests heavily in supporting capacity building for overseas infectious disease surveillance as part of delivering our own national action and public health plans. I ask the Minister: are there plans to conduct an impact assessment on how the withdrawal of the US from key public health agencies may impact public health security in the UK? Although we totally understand that we cannot replace all that US funding, do the Government envision a requirement or see opportunities for the UK to expand or review its existing programmes to ensure stability of its global public health interests?
For so many people in need around the world, UK and US foreign aid has been the difference between life and death. Whether tackling climate change, pandemics or extreme poverty, the Liberal Democrats believe in global solutions to global problems, and in the importance of international development when building a more peaceful and prosperous world, with the UK leading the way. That is why we are eventually hoping to see our international development budget restored to 0.7% of GDP. Not only will that make the world more stable; it will also make the UK a safer and healthier place to live.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
Three minutes each now. I call Iqbal Mohamed.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John, and I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for securing this debate. I put on record my membership of the British-American Parliamentary Group. I also congratulate President Trump on his election and inauguration, and I thank him for his role in bringing about the ceasefire in Gaza.
A truly special and constructive bilateral relationship between the UK and the US is essential. Key elements of such a relationship must be: mutual respect, where both nations respect each other’s sovereignty and decisions by valuing each other’s perspectives and priorities without imposing one’s will on the other; equality, with a balanced partnership where both countries have an equal say in decisions, with collaborative decision making ensuring that both parties benefit fairly from the relationship; shared goals and values, where the relationship is built on common values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law; and being a critical friend, and having open, transparent and honest communication where both nations are able to express their concerns and opinions freely, fostering an environment of trust and understanding.
Instead, I am afraid to say, the UK-US special relationship is often described as toxic, abusive and destructive, due to several key factors. There is an imbalance of power where the relationship is frequently characterised with the UK as the junior partner. That dynamic has led to the UK being pressured into supporting US policies and actions that do not align with our own national interests or ethical standards. Political manipulation by the US, forcing the UK’s political alignment, has sometimes resulted in catastrophic decisions—for example, the UK’s support for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on questionable or fabricated intelligence, which led to significant loss of life and long-term regional instability.
A special relationship is important and essential. However, our country’s best interest is not served by blind subservience in the face of US power. The disasters of failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show only too well where that leads. The failures post 9/11 continue to reverberate decades later, whether in the form of refugees from Afghanistan appearing on our shores or the continued threat of ISIS. I hope that the Government’s failure to challenge US support for Israeli apartheid in the west bank and the genocide in Gaza will not also come back to haunt our country in the years and decades to come.
In conclusion, it is crucial for the UK to assert its sovereignty and pursue an independent path that aligns with international law and its own values, and to be a positive influence on the US.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I want to use this debate to try to get an answer to a question that I asked in PMQs a few weeks ago, and to which I did not get an answer. How does the United Kingdom Government hope to obtain a trade deal for the United Kingdom so long as the customs laws, the trade laws and many of the economic laws of a part of this United Kingdom are made not in the United Kingdom by Parliament but by the EU? How, without the unity of a common customs base, a common trade base and common standards affecting the goods that can be imported and exported from our country, do we obtain a trade deal with a third country such as the United States?
If President Trump proceeds with his threatened tariffs on the EU, does that mean they will apply to Northern Ireland because we are subject to the EU’s wretched trade laws and tariffs and everything else that goes with it? When and how will the United Kingdom put ourselves in a position where we can obtain a trade deal applicable to all the United Kingdom so long as it persists with the partitioning protocol agreement that divides the United Kingdom and leaves part of it under the control of a foreign power? Or are this Government interested only in a trade deal that would benefit Great Britain? Have they abandoned any interest in a trade deal for the whole United Kingdom? I would like an answer to that question, and I would like the Minister to explain how it is even possible, legally, to obtain a trade deal for the whole United Kingdom so long as this Government do not control the trade laws of the whole United Kingdom.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
I am very grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members for their brevity. I am determined to ensure that those who want to speak get the opportunity to do so. Thank you for your co-operation this afternoon. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesman.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair today, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for securing today’s debate on this important topic. The level of interest shows how important the issue is to our country. Many Members, including the hon. Members for Rugby (John Slinger), for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have spoken warmly of how they have benefited from the historical relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States.
Let us be in no doubt: the US is a key ally of the UK, and our relationship today is the consequence of close co-operation across many generations. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not concerned about the preservation of any relationship. He is threatening Denmark and Panama, bullying Canada and Mexico and undermining NATO by praising Putin’s aggression towards Ukraine.
In personal and international relations, the President is unpredictable and disloyal. He breaks laws and he lies. He bullies and intimidates. He does not see the benefit of institutions that foster co-operation and promote stability and peace. That represents a threat to the UK’s relationship with the US and to the UK’s wider interests.
The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway had some colourful rhetorical flourishes, but they could not mask the brass neck of his remarks, for his Conservative party is in no position to criticise others for selling the UK short in global affairs. From their botched Brexit deal to the rushed trade deals that betrayed British farmers under the last Government, the UK shrank from leadership and stood small on the global stage.
We know that Donald Trump likes to set the news agenda by making outrageous pronouncements. The only thing I agreed with in the speech by the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) is that we should focus not on the statements but on his deeds. Sadly, even in his first days in office, actions by the new US Administration underscore that we cannot depend on the US in the way that we have in the past. In critical areas, this US Administration have moved far away from the rules-based order that has marked the partnership between the UK and the US over the last 60 or more years.
For example, we have seen Donald Trump sign an executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organisation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) set out, we are in an era when the UK and all countries depend on one another for health security. Covid-19, severe acute respiratory syndrome, mpox—these viruses know no borders. International co-operation is critical if we are to protect our citizens. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) said we were lucky in the members of the Administration. Since a number of them disregard vaccine science, it is deeply concerning to see the US withdraw from international health co-operation.
Donald Trump has also withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement while encouraging US oil companies to renew extensive drilling operations including in sensitive environmental settings. Recent reports from Copernicus show how rapidly the globe is heating. Climate emergencies from fires in California to extreme rainfall and flooding in Valencia and in the UK show that the impacts are no abstract future threat. This decision by the new Administration sets back hard-won international progress and undermines collective efforts to reduce carbon emissions and protect future generations.
Take, too, the recent announcement of a stop to all USAID funding, alongside the briefing that the Administration wants to wind up USAID entirely. USAID is the world’s largest single aid donor. In 2023, it disbursed $72 billion of aid worldwide. In countries across the globe, UK Aid has worked alongside our US partners to support women and girls, the victims of conflict and those displaced by climate emergencies and natural disasters. The consequences of this unilateral action by the US Administration have been severe. From Ukraine to Syria to Sudan, cuts to US support have put lives at risk while throwing international partnerships into disarray. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester highlighted, USAID cuts threaten progress in eradicating illnesses such as polio once and for all.
We have urged this Government not to abandon Parliament’s historic commitment to provide 0.7% of GNI in overseas aid. Leadership with our international partners on international development is all the more critical in light of the capriciousness of the US Administration. Perhaps the greatest worry comes from the Administration’s approach to Russia and Ukraine. In the White House, the President described Putin’s illegal war as genius. Meantime, his vice-president has advocated a proposal that would give Russia the territory that it has illegally seized.
The post-war security of Europe was protected under US-UK leadership through NATO. Our defence, security and intelligence partnership with the US has been a cornerstone of UK foreign policy. When the facts change, we must pause and take stock. The harsh truth is that we can no longer rely on the US. It is time for the UK to lead within Europe and ensure that the brave Ukrainians are properly supported.
At a time when non-democratic states such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea seek to menace and undermine democracies, the UK needs partners it can rely on and we cannot say that of Donald Trump. The issue is how to manage this situation. The Conservatives and Reform are currently engaged in an undignified squabble to show who can be the most sycophantic to Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Labour has gone cap in hand to plead with Trump to treat us nicely. On this, I agree with the hon. Members for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) and for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) that we must proceed from a position of strength.
The Conservatives, Reform and the Labour party fundamentally misunderstand that Trump is someone who believes that might is right and who scorns those who show weakness. We know that Donald Trump wants to be invited to make a state visit to the UK. If he wants to make our relationship transactional, we can do that too. The Prime Minister should make it clear that there will be no state visit unless or until Donald Trump commits to attending a summit on funding and equipping Ukraine to resist Russia’s aggression. If Trump commits to defending Ukraine and talks about seizing the Russian assets held in the US, the UK and the EU so that we can fund Ukraine, then we can talk about a state visit.
The UK needs to strengthen our position in the face of Trump’s bullying. We trade more than twice as much with our closest neighbours in the EU than we do with the US, and they share our immediate security threats—unlike the US, many of them are on the frontline of Putin’s aggression. By showing leadership in European security, and opening negotiations on a new UK-EU customs union, the UK would show Donald Trump that we are serious about leading and will not bend to his threats.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) on securing this important and timely debate.
Our bilateral relationship with the United States is one to be cherished. The shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), represented our party at President Trump’s inauguration last month. We look forward with optimism to the opportunities presented by his election. However, both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have made, shall we say, choice remarks about the President, so it is fortunate for the Government that our ties go beyond the simply political. The friendship and affinity between our two peoples and countries are profound and deep-rooted, manifesting in millions of interactions each and every day—from nearly £300 million in trade and co-operation of defence and security, to shared cultural values and a commitment to prosperity and freedom.
Our diplomatic ties bring all that together. As her posting in Washington comes to an end, I pay tribute to Dame Karen Pierce for her work as British ambassador to Washington. I had the pleasure of meeting Dame Karen when I was a Foreign Office Minister. This Friday will mark five years since her appointment, and she has served with distinction.
One area that is ripe for development is our trading relationship. When we were in government, our total trade with the United States grew from £123.5 billion in 2010 to £294.1 billion in the four quarters to the end of the third quarter of 2024. Labour could go further and get moving on a UK-US trade deal from which every part of the UK stands to benefit. The deal that the Conservative Government were drawing up with the last Trump Administration is sitting on the shelf. Will the Minister commit to seizing this golden opportunity and dusting off our free-trade deal? What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade to get back to the negotiating table with President Trump and finish what we started?
In the absence of a full trade deal, do the Government have any plans to negotiate any new state-level agreements? In March last year, we signed a trade pact with Texas, which came just four months on from agreeing the UK-Florida memorandum of understanding. We also signed the Atlantic declaration in 2023. That declaration, and the accompanying action plan, forms the basis of an innovative partnership across the full spectrum of our trade relations. Will the Minister update us on what he and his colleagues have done since July to build on the Atlantic declaration and deliver on the action plan?
I will turn now to defence and security co-operation between the UK and the US, which is particularly crucial within NATO. We have a key role in influencing other member states to do more. We hosted the 2014 NATO summit and made the Wales pledge. That leadership was dearly needed at a time when Britain was one of only four countries to meet their defence spending targets. Today, we need to step up to the plate once again. The Conservative party went into the election with a full funded plan to increase spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. That was a serious and major financial commitment, but 2.5% should never be seen as an end state; rather, it is a further step on the road back to the sustained increase in defence investment that we need to fully upgrade our overall deterrence posture.
Our defence policy programme will look at how we deliver more resources to the military and ensure that more funding is well spent. We will always be prudent with the public finances, but our approach to defence will be fundamentally threat-driven, with a total focus on delivering a safe and secure United Kingdom. Sadly, we see that Labour is now wobbling on its 2.5% commitment. As I have said, this is not about the number, but about our influence. If Labour fails to show the leadership in NATO that we did, we will be vacating our role as key influences in the alliance.
Integral to our security partnership are the theatres in which we work closely with the United States, and one of the Government’s first acts was to rush the Chagos islands out of the door at any price, undermining that partnership. We have been calling for weeks for the Government to wait for the new US Administration to give a view, instead of trying to force through a deal. I am pleased that they have finally conceded that they need a steer from President Trump before proceeding. Will the Minister now confirm what discussions the Government had with the new Administration in the lead-up to the inauguration?
We know that the Foreign Secretary spoke to the US Secretary of State and discussed Diego Garcia, so it is disappointing that we had to drag this fact out of the Government through written questions rather than the Government’s being candid in their read-out, which did not mention Diego Garcia. What are the Government trying to hide? What exactly did the Foreign Secretary discuss with Secretary Rubio in respect of the Chagos islands? Will UK and US autonomy of operations on Diego Garcia be absolutely guaranteed, or have the Government offered complete sovereignty, as is being reported in the media this afternoon? If, at the end of the term of the treaty, we cannot extend the period during which we exercise sovereign rights on Diego Garcia, will the UK-US base have to be decommissioned? This failure of diplomacy has so far never failed to bewilder. Rather than flogging our strategic assets along with the kitchen sink, Labour should focus on strengthening our shared defence capabilities.
On China, it is difficult to reconcile the clear position of the United States with the this Government’s approach. For all the Chancellor’s kowtowing in Beijing, she returned with only £600 million over five years. Where was the China audit? I understand that work is under way, but it is not due to conclude until the spring. Did Foreign Office Ministers at least discuss the audit with the Chancellor before she set off? The response to my written parliamentary question today was, let us say, somewhat lacking in clarity. The read-out on gov.uk was murky, and instead of inviting real scrutiny, the Chancellor preferred to take questions from the state-run media of the Chinese Communist party, so perhaps the Minister can enlighten us as to what was actually discussed. We know that the new US Administration are particularly concerned about China’s anti-competitive trade and economic practices. Which aspects of China’s economic practices did the Chancellor raise concerns about in Beijing?
Hon. Members know that the root cause of so much of the suffering in the middle east is the Iranian regime. Through its support for Hamas, Hezbollah and, until its collapse, the Assad regime, Iran sows discord and misery. In April last year, we were in lock step with the United States in responding to Iran’s destabilising activity, including its direct attack on Israel. Through a co-ordinated package with the US, leading Iranian military figures were sanctioned, and we tightened the net on key actors in Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicle and missile industries, further limiting its ability to destabilise the region. Will the Minister tell us how the Government plan to work with our allies, especially the US, on a robust strategy towards Iran? If our American allies reassert maximum pressure on Iran, will the Labour Government be prepared to harden our policy to support that work?
More broadly in the middle east, we all welcome the ceasefire deal that has been secured between Hamas and Israel, and we acknowledge the influence of President Trump in delivering that. It is so important that we work together with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia to build on the Abraham accords, to ensure that we see a lasting peace in the region. Will the Minister ensure that the UK is absolutely plugged into those discussions and at the forefront, alongside the US?
On Ukraine, it is crucial that we continue to work extremely closely with the US, as we have since the very beginning of Russia’s illegal invasion. American security is on the line in Ukraine, as are British and European security. We therefore need to face the ongoing challenges of that war together. Like others, we are keen to learn more about the specific policies that the new US Administration plan to pursue. We are proud of how we led on support to Ukraine and its people during our time in government. Can the Minister update us on discussions with the new Administration regarding Ukraine, and on what plans there are to continue to build on our considerable support?
To conclude, we have no closer ally than the United States. Over the past century, the essential partnership between our two nations has enabled us to lead on issues of global importance together. Our bilateral relationship is underpinned by deep ties between our people and civil societies, a thriving economic relationship, and the closest co-operation on defence and security. It is a friendship to be treasured, and we hope that the Government will take the necessary steps to strengthen it for years to come.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
Before I call the Minister, I ask that he finishes a couple of minutes before 4 pm to give Mr Cooper a chance to wind up the debate.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir John. I know you are also a strong supporter of the UK-US relationship. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions, particularly the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper). I also extend my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the tragic accidents in Washington DC and Pennsylvania in recent days. Our thoughts are with the American people and the people of those cities at this time. I also pay tribute to the emergency services for their dedicated work in such challenging conditions, as we saw after the terrible attacks in Las Vegas and New Orleans, and in the terrible forest fires in Los Angeles.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing the debate, and for his work on the Business and Trade Committee. He will not be surprised to hear that I did not agree with all his comments, but there are some areas of agreement. I certainly agree with his characterisation of the very balanced trading relationship that we have with the United States; that point was also made by other Members on both sides of the House. I agree about some of the global threats that we must work on together, and about the fundamental values that bind us together in relation to defence, security and liberty. I gently say to him that there are no “toadying diplomats”; they are motivated by a great degree of duty and service, exemplified by Dame Karen Pierce, who will be retiring shortly from her role. I would take issue with him on that.
The partnership between the United Kingdom and the United States is strong and historic, and it is understandably of huge interest to Members of this House and the wider public. We have heard reference to the important role that BAPG and others play; many individual parliamentarians’ links and histories are crucial to the relationship.
We will always do what is right for the British people, and a crucial part of that is a strong United Kingdom-US relationship. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) made powerful comments on that point. Our US links have a powerful role to play in delivering on many UK missions: ensuring long-term peace and security in the middle east, Europe and the Indo-Pacific; growing the economy in both our countries; delivering on security for our citizens; and propelling the tech revolution to achieve a sustainable and prosperous future for us all—to name just a few. This is a timely and important debate, and I am grateful for the many contributions. I will try my best to respond to them all.
We all recognise the extraordinary mandate that President Trump received from the American people in November. It was truly historic, as rightly emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm). My hon. Friend was also right to talk about the challenges faced by the American people—indeed, his own constituents —in relation to growth in the economy, a matter that we are resolute in attempting to address as a Government. We see that election as an opportunity to engage with the United States with a renewed sense of energy, dynamism and purpose, and we have been forthright in extending our congratulations to President Trump on his victory. Indeed, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have reiterated their commitment to working closely with him and his Administration.
The Prime Minister spoke to the President on 26 January, and the warmth of their discussion demonstrated that the friendship between our countries is not restricted to any one political party or tradition; our relationship transcends them, as several hon. Members have rightly said. The Foreign Secretary, similarly, was delighted to speak to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 27 January, and they expressed their eagerness to commence work together to address our many shared challenges, including the situation in the middle east, Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine and the challenges posed by China. I pay tribute to President Trump’s work on securing the ceasefire and the release of hostages, which was referred to in the debate.
Stephen Doughty
I will make some progress. I will try to come back to the right hon. Lady if I have time at the end, but a lot of points were made.
The Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also reaffirmed our enduring commitment to the AUKUS partnership. Many Opposition Members rightly referred to the depth of our defence relationship, including the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), who did so very aptly and whom I thank for his service. The depth of that relationship remains an essential pillar of our collective security.
In an increasingly unstable world, we agree that NATO should be strengthened and defence spending increased to adapt to new threats, which is why the Prime Minister has underlined our cast-iron commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence. The UK looks forward to working with President Trump to ensure that our NATO alliance keeps Americans and Europeans safe, including in regions such as the Arctic. We will not tolerate attempts to disrupt critical infrastructure or restrict freedom of navigation by our adversaries. There is no global security without Arctic security. Alongside our closest allies, we are ready to support security in that region. That is one of the reasons I recently travelled there for the Arctic Circle Assembly.
Equally, as has been rightly mentioned, including by the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), our support for Ukraine is iron-clad. When the Prime Minister was in Kyiv last month, he saw at first hand the unrelenting aggression from Russia that Ukrainians face every day. As the PM said, the US has played a vital role alongside allies in supporting Ukraine. Our collective stance should be to help Ukraine to be in the strongest possible position in the months to come. I thank the shadow Minister and other right hon. and hon. Members for their support and comments on that.
A number of hon. Members have mentioned the British Indian Ocean Territory and I know many feel strongly about it. I advise them to take much of the reporting on that, especially regarding the finances, with a large pinch of salt. I will repeat what I have said in the House: the Government inherited a situation where the long-term future of the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, which is so vital to UK and US security, was under threat. Finalising a deal means we can secure that base with strong protections, including from malign influence, that will allow the base to operate unchanged well into the next century. In close collaboration with the US—it is right that we give it time to consider—we will only agree to a deal that is in the UK’s best interests and those of our allies, and that protects our collective national security.
Stephen Doughty
I have answered many questions on Chagos. I am going to make progress, because I am conscious of the time.
Since taking office, the UK Government have shown strong international leadership on climate, and a steadfast commitment to the sustainable development goals. We remain committed to an impactful and reformed WHO. However, global issues require collective action, which is why the UK will continue to work with partners, including the US, our closest ally, to advance shared goals.
A lot of comments today rightly focused on the strength of our economic and trading partnership, which is a crucial pillar of our relationship. Strengthening that partnership with the US is a core component of the Government’s growth mission. We only have to reflect on Robert Lighthizer’s past statement that the Anglo-American trade relationship
“may be the healthiest…in the world”—
almost a decade later, the same can be said today.
Crucially, as has been said, I emphasise that we have a fair and balanced trading relationship that benefits both sides of the Atlantic. That relationship is worth more than £300 billion a year—nearly a fifth of all UK trade. We have more than a £1 trillion invested in each other’s economies, and more than 1 million Americans work for UK-owned businesses, and the same the other way. Those relationships go far beyond London and Washington DC. We heard about the important relationship with Scotland and Scotch whisky, as outlined by the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway, who sponsored the debate. There are strong ties in my own community in Wales. We also heard about the strong ties with Northern Ireland.
From US defence manufacturing in Bedfordshire to the close to 50,000 jobs supported by UK companies in Vice-President Vance’s home state of Ohio, the US is an extraordinarily dynamic economy with a huge amount of potential for the UK. Our countries share a determination to drive economic growth, which is the UK Government’s core aim. We are committed to open and free trade, and its crucial role in delivering economic growth.
Although we might have a different philosophical approach to tariffs, we will continue to seize opportunities to boost trade with the US in a way that promotes growth, creates jobs and aligns with the UK’s national interests. Indeed, we seek to strengthen relationships at all levels of the US economy, including with cities and states. I have had the pleasure of meeting many governors and lieutenant governors over the past few months to discuss that.
We are not going to choose between our allies, as the Prime Minister has said. It is not a case of either America or Europe. That is apparently my own family history, which I will come to later. We are inexorably bound together and face the same global threats and challenges. We have a strong will to overcome those together. Our national interest demands that we work with both, which is exactly what we will do.
I cannot end without reflecting on the vibrant links between the peoples of the United States and the United Kingdom. I am particularly proud, in that regard, of my own family ties to the United States, including my American grandfather, Harold, who fought in Europe in world war two. He came over from the Bronx in New York, in that strong tradition of service and duty that binds our two peoples together, including in the armed forces. My family history goes back to Pennsylvania in the 1700s, and I have many ties across the United States. I have visited 25 of the United States in my life, and counting. I am honoured to be the Minister with the responsibility for those relationships. As I said, those relationships exist across all of the United States and all parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
I am looking forward to marking the 250th anniversary of US independence next year, as well as the FIFA world cup, which will be hosted by Canada, Mexico and the US, not to mention the LA Olympics in 2028. Speaking of sports, the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway is, as he said, well aware of President Trump’s deep affection for Scotland, with his mother having been born on the Isle of Lewis and with his golf resort Trump Turnberry. I have some family history in Kirkcudbrightshire in Scotland, and I studied at the University of St Andrews, another key Scottish golfing location.
The President’s deep affection for our country and all its parts, as well as for our royal family, is well understood. We really welcome that affection and those special ties, which are another side of our special relationship. We also have incredible educational ties, including through the Marshall scholarship programme. I have met many of the Marshall scholars. We count a CIA director, five US ambassadors, two members of Congress, six Pulitzer prize winners, a NASA astronaut and a Nobel laureate among our Marshall alumni.
Calum Miller
The Minister is giving a wonderful description of familial and other ties. Will he address the fact that the current US Administration are of a very different nature from previous ones, and can he tell us how the Government are addressing that change?
Stephen Doughty
As I said, we are going to focus on our common agendas globally: on growth, on defence, on security and on common prospects for our peoples. That is very much what this Government are focused on, and our relationship transcends all Administrations and all parties. That has been very clear under multiple Governments in the United States and the United Kingdom in the past.
I will take the opportunity to thank our consulates for their incredible work to promote strong ties across the United States. I also thank Dame Karen Pierce, as the shadow Minister did, for her tremendous leadership as ambassador to the US. It has been a pleasure to work with her and her team. She has done an outstanding job of nurturing the relationship over the last three years through the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, of course, our own elections.
Lord Mandelson, the next ambassador to the US, who I met just yesterday, will bring his extensive foreign and economic knowledge, strong business links and experience at the highest levels of Government, not least in trade, to the table. I know he will seize that new role with the same level of vigour, diligence and enthusiasm for our relationship as those who preceded him.
I conclude by saying that there is a vital and dynamic alliance between the United Kingdom and the US. We might not always agree on everything, but there is a huge amount on which we do agree. We all want our voters to feel the benefits of economic growth in their pockets. We want peace and security not just in the middle east, but in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and globally. We want to harness the tech revolution for all our peoples.
Together, we will face those challenges. Our special relationship has endured, it continues to endure and it will endure; it is forged in blood, it is formed in common ideals and it is focused on the wellbeing and security of our citizens. It is a remarkable story, and long may it continue.
John Cooper
I thank all the right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part today. I associate myself with the Minister’s remarks about the aviation tragedies in America. Our hearts are with all those affected. It is clear from this debate that the strength of our relationship with America matters a great deal to us.
I want to pick up on one or two Members’ contributions. I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who told us that the birds and the bees have, apparently, been upgraded to the rhinos and the sloths. I shall resist saying too much about Orangemen, but it suffices to say that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is not, I suspect, a fan of fake tan.
I also thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp). He knows, better than most of us, the importance of immediate action. We must take that message away when we consider defence spending. We need to urgently see where we are with that.
I conclude by saying that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) might take the message to America that we are not junior partners. Rather than us becoming the 51st state of the USA, the United States might, in fact, like to come back in under the furled umbrella of the British empire.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the UK-US bilateral relationship.
Children in Care
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government policy on children in care.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I asked for this debate because we as parliamentarians must maintain the focus on children the state is responsible for. I have been a foster carer for 25 years, a member of an adoption panel for a decade and a lead member of a tier 1 local authority, and I have seen the pressures build at the same time as resources and support have declined. The number of children in care has increased by 28% since 2010, and the number of children in residential care has increased by 102% since 2010, so the question is: what has caused these huge spikes? Of course, there are various factors and no consensus view; it would only be fair to say that the number of unaccompanied asylum seekers in care has more than doubled in that period.
For me, there are two main factors. First, the significant rise in poverty that started during austerity, coupled with a housing crisis, has pushed more families to the brink. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that approximately 3.8 million people experienced destitution in 2022.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I spoke to him beforehand and told him a lovely story from Northern Ireland that reminds me of the goodness of this world. A man from Northern Ireland, who was a foster child, set up a company called Madlug, which makes fashionable and good-quality bags. The idea is that for every bag purchased, another bag is given to a child in care for them to carry their personal possessions. The dignity that gives is admirable. Does the hon. Member agree that companies that seek to improve the self-worth and dignity of children should be encouraged and supported?
John Whitby
I recognise that children go to placements with plastic bags, and it is heartbreaking. What a fabulous thing the hon. Member has raised.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that approximately 3.8 million people experienced destitution in 2022, including approximately 1 million children—nearly triple the number in 2017.
The second factor was the withdrawal of universal early help. Sure Start was withdrawn at different speeds and to differing degrees around the country, as local authorities removed their discretionary spending due to a loss of revenue support from the previous Government. It went from being a universal service to a targeted one. The spending on early help is now £1.8 billion a year less than it was in 2010. Here is the kicker: we are now spending more on children’s residential placements than we are on early help.
Early help did exactly what it said on the tin: it provided parents with health and wellbeing support, parenting advice, childcare and learning, and support for children with special needs. There were benefits to social care and to health. Indeed, an Institute for Fiscal Studies study found that Sure Start prevented so many children from being hospitalised that it saved the NHS the equivalent of a third of the entire Sure Start budget. The IFS also stated that Sure Start almost certainly delivered benefits significantly greater than its cost.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is giving a moving account of the structural factors that underpin the rise in personal trauma that has led to more children in the care system. Those placed in the formal care system get access to therapeutic support directly, whereas those placed with kinship carers do not have the same level of support, often because of anomalies in how they are treated. Does my hon. Friend agree that now is a good time to review the level of therapeutic support available to those in kinship care, who might have experienced exactly the same personal trauma as those in the more formal care system?
John Whitby
I do agree. It appears as though the Government are expanding the services available to children in kinship care, and that sounds like a good thing. I would like every child in care to have therapeutic support, because they all need it. They have all been massively traumatised by something.
The next question is: why has the number of residential placements increased so much faster than the number of children in care? The answer is simple: the number of foster families has remained fairly flat in the same period, despite the significant efforts of authorities and independent fostering agencies to attract new carers.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
Some time ago, I worked in international development roles, including with former orphanage children in eastern bloc countries in the former Soviet Union, such as Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova, and it was abundantly clear then that children are better off raised in families. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should be doing much more to support fostering and adoption processes, without losing our grip on safeguarding practices?
John Whitby
I obviously want children to stay in the family network as much as possible. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill supports that with family group decision making and the kinship care offer, so hopefully more children will stay within the familial network, which is better for them and for the state.
The previous Government introduced a couple of positive innovations on fostering. They came quite late in their term and were not extended to all areas, but they are worth pursuing. First, they introduced regionalisation. Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire have combined along East Midlands combined county authority lines to form Foster for East Midlands, which creates a combined and increased marketing resource. The results are positive, especially against the backdrop of UK-wide fostering inquiry numbers falling.
In preparation for this debate, I did the obligatory Google search for “fostering in Derbyshire” to replicate what a potential new foster carer might find online, and I am afraid Foster for East Midlands was the fifth hit after four sponsored ads. The ability for independents to outspend even combined local authority budgets should not be a surprise, given the significant cost of independent placements compared with local authority placements. The reality is that the taxpayer is paying for them to outspend local authorities.
The other recent positive innovation is Mockingbird. One of the most cited reasons for foster carers leaving the role is the lack of support. It is easy for new foster carers to feel isolated, given the nature of the role. Mockingbird puts a constellation of new carers around an experienced foster carer, who will guide and support them, and enables the building of support networks among the carers.
If we cannot get enough new foster carers into the system, we need to ensure that the ones we have do not leave unnecessarily. That support means fewer placement breakdowns and less disruption in children’s lives.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech based on his personal experience. He talks about the importance of support, and I want to talk about the importance of advocacy services that advise children on their rights when they receive social care services. Advocacy can be transformative to the lives of children, but the Children’s Commissioner found that many children do not receive support from an advocate, despite being referred by their local authority. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are trying to protect the most vulnerable, which he is clearly passionate about, a good starting point is to prioritise advocates so that children feel like they are being listened to?
John Whitby
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that the voice of the child is key at every step of the way. We must listen to children, so advocacy is entirely fundamental.
For full disclosure, I should say that I have not received fostering allowances since last May, as I have been busy doing other things, so I have nothing to gain by saying this, but the 32% of local authorities that pay allowances below the national minimum allowance will not attract new foster carers based on altruism alone. Foster carers need a reasonable amount of renumeration, like anyone else.
The result of more children needing foster care without a corresponding number of extra foster carers is a crisis in placement sufficiency, which means more children in highly expensive residential placements, in many cases a great distance from their home town.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for securing this very important debate. In my Horsham constituency, a family has approached me who are kinship carers for their grandson. They feel they are discriminated against in a system that gives more resources and attention to children in care than to kinship carers. Given the shortage of places in foster care, does the hon. Member agree that we need to do everything we can to balance up the support that kinship carers receive?
John Whitby
Unsurprisingly, I definitely agree with the hon. Member: of course we need to support children in kinship care. I am sure the Minister will talk about kinship care as well, and I am glad to say that part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill requires local authorities to make an offer on kinship care, which is very positive.
As I was saying, a lack of foster care places means more children in highly expensive residential placements, in many cases a great distance from their home town. There is a very good chance that they will end up in the north-west, because that is where a quarter of children’s homes are located. Of course, some children need to be placed away from familiar surroundings, but not on this scale. It is great that the Government are looking to address this issue through the planning process, so that care homes can more easily be created where they are needed. Personally, I would like to see a focus on smaller homes, because they feel less institutionalised and are easier to integrate into the community.
The cost of some residential children’s home placements is extraordinary, and it is one of the factors pushing councils ever closer to section 104 notices. The cost of looked-after children has risen from £3.1 billion in 2009-10 to £7 billion in 2022-23.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech, giving us great insight into his experience both as a foster carer and as a lead member. A recent survey by the National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum found that 77% of children with experience of care struggle to afford food, and three quarters said that the cost of living crisis has damaged their mental health. Does he agree that this issue requires a cross-Government, cross-agency and cross-sector approach, as well as learning from the best in the sector, including my own local council, Telford and Wrekin council, which only last year was recognised as a national leader for its work in this space?
John Whitby
All of government and all councils need to do more. They need to understand that we need to do more for children in care to create a level playing field, because they have such difficult issues to overcome. I completely agree with my hon. Friend.
In the same period that the cost of children in care went up to £7 billion, local councils’ overall core funding went down by 9% in real terms. The Government are absolutely right to introduce a financial oversight scheme, because some providers have made excessive profits. It was widely reported that the 20 largest national providers of children’s placements collectively made profits of £310 million in 2021-22.
Of course, we must focus on outcomes for children in care, which are historically and currently very poor. In 2018-19, just 6.8% of children in care received a grade 5 or above in English and maths, compared with 43.2% of all children. In turn, that explains why just 22% of care leavers aged 27 are in employment. Even when they are in employment, there is a £6,000 pay gap between care leavers and those in the general population. It would be easy to blame educators or the care sector for the problem, but the reality is that these children have suffered some sort of significant trauma in their lives. Whether that is neglect, abuse or something else, it is never good.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important subject to Westminster Hall. He mentioned the impact that being in care has on many children. He is probably aware that nearly one third of children in kinship care—just over 31%—have diagnosed or suspected social, emotional or mental health needs. Although we recognise and congratulate the Government on their announcement for kinship carers in the recent Budget, we must also ensure that we make the tools available to children and families to get the mental health support that they need.
John Whitby
There is clearly a theme here. I am sure the Minister will address the growing consensus that kinship care needs the support that children in care receive.
Children are bound to be impacted by the problems they have experienced. That is not to say that we accept poor results; it is just to put them in context. The statistics show that children who have been in care for longer than 12 months receive better grades than those who have been in care for less than 12 months. That makes sense to me, because the longer they are in care, the longer they have stability in their home lives and a focus on education from their foster carers or residential care workers. It is also worth saying that in my experience, the virtual school is a real positive for the child. That is supported by the fact that persistent absence from school, which has been a national issue since covid, is actually better among the cohort of children in care than the overall school population.
With more children, less money and a placement sufficiency crisis, we need to put much more focus on keeping families together and children out of care wherever it is possible and safe to do so. Mandating local authorities to offer family group decision making is a big step forward. The evidence shows that that prevents a significant number of children from going into care in the first place, and keeps them out of care going forward. Following on from family group decision making, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will require all councils to publish a kinship offer, as we have heard, so that more children can stay in more familiar surroundings. Those children will be further supported by the virtual school.
On the subject of the virtual school, and with corporate parenting in mind, I encourage the Government to consider taking up the recommendation of the Education Committee to give virtual school heads statutory powers over the process of school allocation. On the subject of corporate parenting, we need to be conscious that this is everyone’s responsibility, and all Government Departments should consider how they can give that bit extra for children in care. When children have left care, we need to go on supporting them. Through Staying Close, young people leaving residential care will be afforded that bit of extra support to keep them in their property or in education, or to support their general wellbeing. Staying Close is another scheme that is bearing fruit, and I am glad it will be expanded by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. There are many positives to take from the Bill, and just seven months into the new Administration, it is a big step forward.
I will finish almost where I started, with early help. The previous Government introduced, in some areas, family hubs, which provide universal early help from pregnancy onwards. The early signs are very encouraging, and I ask the Minister and the Secretary of State to consider extending the programme as soon as possible. It is the ultimate example of investing to save. Prevention is better than cure, and it is also cheaper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
It is a privilege to speak with you in the Chair, Sir John. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) on securing a debate on this important subject, and I thank hon. Members for their interventions. I will attempt to respond to as many as possible in the time that I have.
I know that this subject is close to my hon. Friend’s heart, because he has been a foster carer for many years; as a former children and families social worker and fostering manager, it is close mine, too. I am delighted and proud to be part of a Government who are making such a difference for children in care. I thank all foster carers for the care that they provide to foster children across our country.
Children in care are among the most vulnerable in our society. My hon. Friend is correct that the number of children in care has increased year on year since 2010, under the previous Government. The problems facing the children’s care system were set out in a 2022 review led by my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), and the Competition and Markets Authority also reported on failings in the children’s social care market that year. Both called for radical action. This Government inherited a broken care system that is failing too many children, despite the heroic efforts of social workers, carers and all those who champion children’s outcomes.
We are taking action. Since the election, we have announced funding in the Budget to enable more children to stay in family-centred environments, including the largest ever national investment in kinship care of £40 million. We have also published a policy statement with ambitious plans to reform children’s social care and focus the system towards early help for families.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
On the point about early intervention and prevention, I thank the Minister for agreeing to visit Sussex later this year to meet me and an organisation called Pause, which works with mothers who have had a child taken into care. It works across a number of local authorities but by no means all, and I hope that the Government will look favourably upon its work and enable more funding to support it in more areas.
Janet Daby
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention and I look forward to visiting Sussex.
In the local government finance settlement, we announced two grants that will double settlement investment in preventive children’s services to over £500 million in 2025-26. We have introduced legislation to underpin our reforms, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The actions we plan to take do not stop there: we have a vision to improve services for children in care and we are on that journey.
Foster carers offer crucial support to some of the most vulnerable children in our society. They provide love, stability and compassion to children and young people when they need it most. We recognise that there are sufficiency challenges in foster care and we want to recruit more foster carers, so that foster care is available for more children who need it, in the places where they live. On that point, I say to anybody listening to the debate who is interested in becoming a foster carer: please do contact your local authority children’s services.
In the autumn Budget, we announced an additional £15 million to expand the fostering recruitment and retention programme. My Department is currently supporting two thirds of local authorities across England in 10 regional hubs. The extra funding will expand our approach to ensure that every local authority has access to that support. The regional hubs support foster carers from their first inquiry through to providing a retention model. Our aim is to boost the number of approvals among those who apply to become foster carers, and take further steps to retain those who we have. I note the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales about the need to retain foster carers and I absolutely agree with him.
No foster carer should be financially disadvantaged because of their fostering role. We expect all foster carers to receive at least the weekly national minimum allowance, in addition to any agreed expenses, to cover the full cost of caring for each child placed with them. In January, local authorities were sent a letter to remind them of their duty to provide the national minimum allowance and to notify them of the latest 3.55% uplift. Fostering service providers can choose to pay above the minimum allowance or to pay additional fees. Qualifying care relief, a tax relief, is also available to support foster carers. The threshold for the relief has been raised in recent years to ensure that the vast majority of foster carers will not pay tax on their care income. We encourage fostering service providers to adhere to the foster care charter, which sets out clear principles for how foster carers should be treated and recognises their invaluable work.
For most children in care, foster care is the best option when they cannot live in kinship arrangements. Kinship care, which has been mentioned by Members across the Chamber, is an area where the Government are investing. We recognise that for some young people, kinship care is absolutely where they need to be, and that kinship carers need support to enable them to care for their children. We announced £90 million of capital funding in the autumn Budget to fund new places in children’s homes and to secure children’s homes.
We are using that money in two ways. First, we are providing funding to maintain existing provision and expand capacity across both secure and open children’s homes. That will provide 180 additional open children’s home placements by late 2025. It will also help local authorities to support our most vulnerable children accommodated in specialist care in secure children’s homes, including continuing plans to create two brand-new secure homes in London and the west midlands. We recognise that we need a variation of care dependent on the care needs of the child.
Secondly, we are taking action to provide increased provision specifically for children with multiple complex needs who have been, or are at risk of being, deprived of their liberty. For such children, their needs will be a response to complex ongoing trauma. We have invited local authorities to bid for new capital funding to build 200 new places in local authority children’s homes. Local authorities and health partners will be encouraged to work together to deliver suitable packages of care and plans to support these young people. Alongside that, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will create a new statutory mechanism that allows children with complex needs to be placed in safe, flexible and secure community-based provision that keeps children safe. All young people should receive consistently high-quality care. To improve the quality of children’s homes, the Bill will strengthen Ofsted’s powers to hold provider groups to account where there are quality issues.
The current children’s social care placement market is dysfunctional. It is not delivering enough safe, loving homes for children in the right parts of the country at a sustainable cost to the taxpayer. As has been mentioned, some councils are on the brink of bankruptcy, in part due to the rising cost of spending on children in care, while some providers are making excess profits despite sometimes providing sub-par care for our most vulnerable children. The Government are clear that profiteering from vulnerable children in care is absolutely unacceptable, and we are committed to stamping it out where it occurs in the children’s social care market.
We are introducing a package of measures to fix this. The measures will rebalance the market and improve competition, regulation and the commissioning of placements. They will shine a light on the levels of profit being made and bring greater visibility to the prices that local authorities are paying. The measures, which are in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, form a key part of our strategy to address the problems of the market.
I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales for speaking so eloquently and passionately about children in care, his experiences and the many issues to do with children’s social care. This subject means a great deal to him, as it does to me and to our Government. We need to get this right. There is a lot to do. I acknowledge the dedication that he has shown in his working life. Our opportunity mission is focused on breaking the link between children’s backgrounds and their success. I am determined to support and to improve the life chances of children in care, and this Government have an ambitious plan.
Question put and agreed to.
Accessibility of Radiotherapy
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the accessibility of radiotherapy.
It is a great honour to serve under your guidance, Sir John, and it is a great privilege to have the opportunity to raise the issue of the accessibility of radiotherapy on World Cancer Day.
Three quarters of those in my communities in Westmorland live dangerously too far from radiotherapy treatment. It has been my privilege over the years to drive a number of my constituents to the Rosemere centre at Preston to get treatment, and I am always struck by the quality of the treatment and the warmth and professionalism of the staff, but also by the gruelling impact on my constituents, on whom the daily lengthy journeys take a terrible toll.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so early in his speech. He mentioned travel times. Travel times to radiotherapy for my constituents in St Albans and Hertfordshire would certainly be much reduced if the relocation of the Mount Vernon cancer centre to Watford General could proceed, and the only way for that to happen is if the new hospital programme goes ahead sooner than is currently planned. Would he agree with me that shortening the travel time would provide a much better service for local residents?
Tim Farron
Yes, I absolutely do agree with my hon. Friend. Travel times, which I will come on to in a moment, do have an impact on outcomes—in other words, whether people survive—because there is an impact on the extent to which a person will be referred for treatment depending on how close they are to the nearest site. What she says is absolutely right, especially for her communities.
For my constituents, the two, three or in some cases four-hour round trip to the excellent but distant Rosemere cancer unit at Preston is not just inconvenient, but debilitating and cruel. It means that many do not complete their treatment, and many choose not even to start such treatment. Some do not even get referred for radiotherapy in the first place, because clinicians understandably conclude that the patient is not strong enough to cope with the rigours of travelling such distances so frequently. For us in Westmorland, longer journeys mean shorter lives.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate, especially on World Cancer Day. In my constituency of North Norfolk, Radiotherapy UK found that nobody can access radiotherapy treatment within 75 minutes by public transport. Does he agree that we need a two-pronged approach to tackle this—to fix our broken public transport infrastructure and to make more services available closer to where people are, such as at Cromer hospital in my constituency?
Tim Farron
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Back at the time of the last Labour Government, the national radiotherapy advisory group recommended that it was bad practice for anybody to live beyond 45 minutes of a radiotherapy centre one-way, or a round trip of an hour and a half, yet so many people—7.5 million people—including his constituents and my constituents, live beyond that.
Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)
On that specific point, I do not want to show off about who has the worst travel times for radiotherapy, but nobody in my constituency of Frome and East Somerset who does not own a car lives within that recommended 45-minute NHS travel time. Does my hon. Friend agree that reliable, quick and affordable public transport is key, and that the recent increase to the bus fare cap has not helped with the situation?
Tim Farron
Yes. By definition, almost all of the radiotherapy deserts—those places that are beyond sensible and safe travelling times—are rural communities. As a result, they have terrible public transport. It is not just about the cost. The increase in the bus fare cap is hugely damaging, but for many of our communities—my hon. Friend’s and mine alike—it almost does not matter what the bus cap is; if there is no bus to spend the fare on, people are stuffed, really. That has a huge impact on their cancer outcomes, which means whether they survive or not.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
Could the reason that radiotherapy is used in only 35% of cases, rather than 50% of cases, be that local transport just does not exist to take people to have the treatments that they need?
Tim Farron
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a combination of reasons, which I will come on to in a moment, but distance from treatment is undoubtedly the critical point that decides whether people can access and take advantage of lifesaving and life-prolonging treatment.
Jim Shannon
First, I commend the hon. Member for championing this issue for all the years I have known him in this House. He deserves credit for that, he has got this debate in Westminster Hall today, and we are looking to the Minister for a response. Does the hon. Member agree that the issue goes more widely, and is also about recruitment? Training and retention of clinical oncologists is needed, with only seven in 10 training places filled in 2024. Does he agree that there is a way forward—bursaries for students, which could begin to fill the training needs in the long term? Students would understand that they will not live under the burden of student debt if they pick a career for life—in other words, help them with a bursary and the NHS will have them forever.
Tim Farron
I completely agree with the hon. Member. Many people watching the debate today, whether physically in the Gallery or on television outside, are part of that outstanding workforce, and we are massively grateful to them. What a career for someone to be in, where you are saving lives every day and alleviating pain. That is a wonderful thing, yet there are not enough of them. The workforce is part of the solution, as well as the challenge, to the problem that we face.
For us in Westmorland, longer journeys mean shorter lives. The answer is clear for us in Westmorland, and that is to build a satellite radiotherapy unit at the Westmorland general hospital in Kendal as part of the Rosemere unit, following the model of the many excellent satellite units around the UK. The number of cancer patients travelling from south Cumbria each year for radiotherapy provides demand for at least one linear accelerator at the Westmorland general hospital. If the experience of other new satellite centres around the country is replicated, such as at the new Hereford site, which is a satellite of Cheltenham, a satellite centre in Kendal would attract at least 20% more patients than existing demand, because people who would not have had radiotherapy treatment at all beforehand would now be able to access it, simply because it is closer to them. That a satellite unit in Kendal has not already happened is an indictment of the lack of responsiveness to the obvious need from NHS England, and of a lack of concern for cancer patients and their families who live in rural communities.
Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)
I commend the hon. Member for his advocacy on this subject over a long time. The satellite centres are one thing. I represent Northern Ireland and my constituency of Lagan Valley, and I note that there are people in the Gallery involved in the All-Island Cancer Research Institute. Does he agree that geography is important and that cancer knows no boundaries, so our efforts to tackle it should also know no boundaries?
Tim Farron
The hon. Member makes wonderful points, and it is absolutely right that in every corner of the United Kingdom we need to ensure that we have the staffing, the kit and the level of technology to meet need close enough to where people live for people to be kept safe and treated in a convenient way.
In Westmorland, we successfully campaigned to bring chemotherapy, greater amounts of surgery and a new diagnostic hub to Kendal. All of that is welcome, and all of that has saved lives. I am unbelievably grateful to all those in our communities who campaigned alongside us, and to the wonderful NHS professionals who deliver and run those services, but the failure of successive Governments, including the one I was a part of, and NHS management to take the people of Westmorland out of the radiotherapy desert is utterly inexcusable given the multiple opportunities to do so over the last 30 or so years.
So my first ask of the Minister is that he takes a personal interest in the call for a satellite radiotherapy unit at the Westmorland general hospital in Kendal, and that he meets with me and with oncologists, commissioners and patients, to kickstart that bid.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we must also do more to help local groups providing clinical and non-clinical support for radiotherapy patients after treatment, such as the Macmillan radiotherapy late effects service and the Cancer Connect group in my constituency of Yeovil?
Tim Farron
My hon. Friend makes a great point and does a great service to his community by standing up for those groups who support people after cancer, and their families. I know that personally in my own family, so I congratulate him on making a really important point.
My second ask—the Minister should be delighted to hear that I only have two—is that he separately meets with the all-party group on radiotherapy and the leading fantastic clinicians who support us, to look at how the Government and NHS England can turn the tide on radiotherapy nationwide, because the problems of access do not just affect Westmorland; they affect the whole country.
Although in Westmorland our issue is unacceptable distance from services, the problem across the country is that we lack sufficient capacity, lack up-to-date technology, and lack an effective workforce plan. Britain is behind our neighbours on the number of radiotherapy machines, and we are behind our neighbours in how advanced that machinery is. In France, for example, there are twice as many linear accelerators per head as we have in the United Kingdom. Across the OECD, roughly 9% of cancer budgets are spent on radiotherapy; in the UK we spend a paltry 5%. One in two of us will have cancer at some point, and one in two people with cancer should have radiotherapy—to be precise, 53% of us should—yet only 35% of cancer patients in the UK had radiotherapy as their primary treatment. In fact, the regional variation in access to radiotherapy ranges from the lowest of only 29.8%—by the way, that is in my constituency—up to 50%.
There are shocking variations based on tumour type, too. Only 11% of lung cancer patients in some regions receive radiotherapy, compared with 43% in other regions. Only 18% of rectal cancer patients receive radiotherapy in some areas, compared with 62% in others. People’s chances of surviving should not depend on their postcode. Inadequate and inequitable radiotherapy capacity is costing lives. Over the past decade, more than 500,000 patients have waited more than two months for their first cancer treatment. Yet the chilling reality is that for every four weeks of delay in treatment we have a 10% reduction in our chances of surviving.
The Royal College of Radiologists reminds us that in 2024 only 38% of patients starting radiotherapy did so within two months of an urgent referral for cancer. The national target is 85%. Let us compare that with other forms of cancer treatment: 68% of patients had surgery for their cancer in that time, and 64% started chemotherapy within that two months. That means that over 10,000 patients requiring radiotherapy received their treatment after the recommended timeframe. In 2023 some 92% of cancer centres reported delays in patients starting radiotherapy. That is one of the main reasons why the UK is near the bottom of the OECD cancer outcome rankings, which is a sanitised way of saying that people with cancer in Britain are more likely to die sooner than in other equivalent countries. So longer journeys mean shorter lives, and longer waiting times also mean shorter lives.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
Thank you, Sir John, for your chairmanship today. In Northern Ireland, one in two people who need radiotherapy do not get it at an early stage. Does the hon. Member agree that a strong focus on awareness and early diagnosis is needed?
Tim Farron
That is a good point. Early diagnosis is vital. We are getting a bit better at it, but it would be a tragedy if we diagnosed people but then did not treat them early enough to cure them. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point on behalf of his communities.
If we cannot cope with treating the number of cancer patients we are seeing now, how will we deal with the projected 30% increase in cancer cases by 2040? The good news—the very, very good news—is that it does not need to be this way. The upcoming cancer plan, of which we have heard an outline today, is an opportunity to supercharge cancer services and transform a culture of normalising unacceptable delays into one that drives continuous cancer care improvements. However, without decisive and radical action and leadership, lives will continue to be lost needlessly.
Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I was very struck by the hon. Gentleman’s comment about longer journeys meaning shorter lives. There is no competition on journeys, of course, but my constituents in Na h-Eileanan an Iar and the Western Isles face some of the longest journeys in Britain to get cancer treatment, outwith and within the constituency. Somebody from Barra, for example, faces a three-day journey to Stornoway by boat, taxi and aeroplane for therapy and then a return journey over three days. I hope that that can be changed by sending people directly to Glasgow or, perhaps even better, by implementing a public service order to restore flights between one end of the island and the other. I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate and for his very telling comment about longer journeys meaning shorter lives.
Tim Farron
I am extraordinarily fond of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, which he represents well. He makes an important point about travel times. In some parts of my constituency, people need to take a ferry to get from one place to another, but it is not quite as common as in his constituency.
At the heart of the radical, lifesaving transformation that we need through the cancer plan must be the elevation of the unsung hero, the Cinderella of our cancer services: radiotherapy. Lord Darzi found that 30% of patients are waiting more than 31 days for radical radiotherapy. As the incidence of cancer grows, the urgent need for quicker and more efficient treatments such as radiotherapy is only increasing.
As things stand, the replacement and updating of linear accelerators is left to the 52 separate cancer units in England—52 separate procurement operations, 52 different finance officers trying to balance the books and 52 different heads of service all trying to meet increasing demand, often without the time and space to look beyond the horizon. It is time, then, to centralise the commissioning of the technology to ensure a constant focus on updating and expanding radiotherapy. That would immediately start saving lives everywhere.
Radiotherapy UK estimates that simply replacing all the out-of-date LINACs could free up 87,000 additional appointments every single year. Modern radiotherapy is quicker and more accurate than other treatment. It is also by far the cheapest, costing between £3,000 and £7,000 per patient—several times less expensive than equivalent cancer treatments. The Government’s £70 million commitment to radiotherapy services was welcome, but in reality, as the Minister says, that money would cover the cost of only 26 LINAC machines, fewer than half the number that are currently operating beyond their sell-by date. Erratic one-off rounds of funding do not address the need for a sustainable rolling programme of machine replacement to enable planning, support procurement and improve access for patients. Even the new machines are often old technology. What a terrible waste.
In my years of campaigning on this matter, I have found that radiotherapy lacks funding and prominence. Britain therefore lags behind our neighbours, so people tragically die when they do not need to—all because of a lack of leadership and drive from the centre. On more than one occasion, I have almost seen the penny drop on the faces of Ministers of all parties when it comes to our failure on radiotherapy, but every time so far, I have seen that zeal founder on the rocks of bureaucratic sluggishness, indifference and resistance to change within the NHS. If they show the leadership that we desperately need, the Minister and the Secretary of State will have the enthusiastic and active support of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy, and of the army of outstanding clinicians who are out there saving lives.
Professor Mike Richards is a name that many people remember. He was the cancer tsar in the early noughties, under the previous Labour Government; he did great work and his achievements were tangible. If the Government will forgive me for using shorthand, we basically need a Mike Richards for radiotherapy, and we need them, like, yesterday. Failing that, tomorrow morning would just about do. Every day we delay, my constituents—as well as yours, Sir John, and those of the Minister and of all Members present—are dying unnecessarily.
We need new technology as we plan treatments, too. Last May, £15.5 million was announced for AI technology that would save clinicians time and reduce radiotherapy waiting lists. However, we have heard from cancer units around the country that this funding may be withdrawn or diverted, which would be a hammer blow to trusts in the face of the ongoing workforce crisis. Will the Minister take the chance today to reassure our cancer units and confirm that this funding will go, as promised, to radiotherapy departments in full? I hope the Minister will also act swiftly to tackle the perversities of the tariff payments for radiotherapy, which effectively punish trusts for treating cancer patients in the most effective and modern ways.
I ask the Minister to guarantee that radiotherapy will be at the centre of the NHS 10-year cancer plan, and that that plan will be led by people empowered and determined to deliver it. The technology is vital, but the people matter just as much. Our specialist and highly skilled radiotherapy workforce numbers only 6,400 people, yet the survey conducted by Radiotherapy UK shows that one in five cancer doctors may leave the profession in the next five years. We have a 15% shortage in clinical oncologists—set to rise to 21% by the end of this Parliament—and 30% of oncologist training posts were vacant last year. On top of that, 50% of clinical technologists are over 50 years old, and 84% of heads of cancer services reported that they were concerned that workforce shortages affected the quality of patient care.
I ask the Minister to agree that the 10-year cancer plan will include a renewed investment in workforce and infrastructure. A 10-year vision already exists, by the way—drawn up by the experts, via Radiotherapy UK. I simply urge the Minister to consider their findings and borrow the proposals detailed by leading oncologists and cancer experts.
I have asked for two separate meetings today. The first is on the need for a satellite radiotherapy unit at Kendal; the second is a first meeting for the Minister with the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy, to look at the national picture. I hope he will grant me both.
The radiotherapy lobby is tiny: 6,400 dedicated professionals within our health service; a compact but awesome group of charities and volunteers; a handful of companies building the technology, many of which are based in the United Kingdom; England’s captain fantastic, Bryan Robson; and a small band of MPs of all parties, seeking to be a voice not just for the radiotherapy sector, but for the thousands and thousands of people living with cancer in our country, who deserve the best treatment that we can give them. For the last generation or more, the UK has let those people down, and so often with tragic consequences. Yet radiotherapy is a cost-effective, easily deliverable technology that will save lives in every community in this country.
We are way behind where we need to be, yet it would be so easy, with the right leadership from Ministers, to catch up with and go beyond our neighbours. Cancer no longer needs to be seen as a death sentence; it is a disease that can be treated and cured, but we cannot do that if our systems and practices prevent us from deploying the best treatments available. Please save lives, Minister, and become our radiotherapy champion.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
This is a short debate. I intend to call the first Front-Bench speaker at 5.08 pm.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this debate and for his dedication on this issue. I declare an interest as a governor of the Royal Berkshire hospital. I also have a family member who has shares in a medical company.
Radiotherapy access suffers from geographical constraints, and this issue cannot be solved until the significant workforce challenge is addressed alongside it. The Royal College of Radiologists states that in England the NHS faces a 30% shortfall in radiologists. That figure is projected to rise to 40% by 2028, yet more than a fifth of NHS trusts have implemented recruitment freezes. Shortfalls in recruitment mean that consultants, faced with burnout and impossible workloads, retire earlier. That is made especially clear as the average age of retirement is just 54.
The Royal College of Radiologists highlights the absurd situation whereby newly trained consultants may struggle to find jobs, forcing invaluable radiologists and oncologists to go for locum jobs, move abroad or leave the healthcare sector altogether at a time when their skills are best placed in our NHS to fix our cancer care crisis—a crisis in which not a single integrated care board is currently meeting its cancer waiting time standards.
The impact of the recruitment freezes on patients is tangible and is not limited to radiotherapy. Some 80% of patient pathways in the NHS are reliant on radiology. Delays in scan reporting result in delayed treatment. Delayed treatment results in worse outcomes. Worse outcomes may be the deciding factor in whether someone fails to recover.
How will the Government ensure that when my Wokingham constituents visit the Royal Berkshire hospital, the oncology and screening departments are fully staffed? Can the Minister explain his understanding of the recruitment freezes that are taking place across NHS trusts? I am aware that the Minister has a very, very busy diary: he told me so earlier today in the main Chamber.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Andrew Gwynne)
I suspect that my diary will be a little busier with the two requests from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).
Clive Jones
The Minister’s diary will be a little busy, but I am sure it can cope. I ask him to meet me and representatives of the Royal College of Radiologists to discuss the Government’s plan for workforce reform.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
I am delighted to be able to call the Front-Bench spokesmen early, although that does not necessarily mean that they have to go on at immense length. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesman.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Thank you very much, Sir John. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I promise that I will not go on at great length, partly because—
Helen Morgan
Well, my hon. Friend did go on at great length. He has secured a really important debate for World Cancer Day; it is an honour to speak in it for the Liberal Democrats. He outlined the issues comprehensively; I am not sure that I could improve on what he said. I welcome the Government’s announcement earlier today on the national cancer strategy and I highlight the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), who campaigned for it.
Cancer services in general have declined to an unacceptable level, as I think everyone would agree. I hope that the Government stick to their word on addressing that issue and ensuring that everybody can access the care they need, when they need it and—as my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) pointed out so eloquently—where they need it.
In the UK, over 100,000 cancer patients receive radiotherapy treatment each year from a specialist workforce of 6,400 professionals. Cancer is one of the most difficult diseases—it is difficult for individuals and it is difficult for their families—and yet the number of patients who have waited over four months to receive cancer treatment has more than doubled since 2020.
Like so many areas of NHS care, the time people have to wait and the quality of care that they receive depends hugely on where they happen to live. That has to change; I hope that the Government will make that one of their urgent missions. People’s chances of surviving should not depend on their postcode.
NHS data shows that the west midlands had over 150,000 radiotherapy attendances in 2022, which is the most recent available data. That is the highest of all regions, yet hospitals such as Shrewsbury and Telford hospital in my constituency have had some of the worst waiting times. In September 2024, at the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin trust, only just over half of patients requiring radiotherapy met the 62-day treatment standard. The target for treatment is 85%.
It is important to acknowledge that the situation at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust is improving—I welcome that—and that it was impacted by the staff shortages that many hon. Members have outlined today. But it is not just about numbers and statistics; it is about the impact on people’s lives. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham has pointed out the importance of scans, and some of my constituents who are undergoing cancer treatment have waited a long time for scans and say that sometimes they have not had the result of a scan until their next treatment was due. That is due to staffing shortages.
Waiting times are important, but so too are distances, particularly when somebody is poorly and finding it difficult to travel a long way. People in Shropshire are served in Shrewsbury, so I am glad to say that the distance issue is perhaps not as acute as it might be in other rural areas in the country, but the public transport issue remains so. Many people rely on friends and family to drive them to appointments, as there is no other reliable way of getting there and a taxi is simply too expensive for them to consider. For that reason, some will not be accessing the care that they need. Across the country, 3.4 million people live further away than the target of 45 minutes from a radiotherapy centre, so it is important that we address those radiotherapy deserts and ensure that people can access the care that they need.
In addition to the outdated, sparse machines and low morale, we found that 65% of staff felt that they did not have enough machine capacity and 93% felt that workforce numbers were too low. Therefore, in addition to the long distances involved, we must put an end to the problem of people being unable to be treated not just because they live a long way from the equipment, but because the equipment, when it is available, is outdated or because there is nobody to staff it properly and interpret what needs to be done.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has said all this before, so I will draw my remarks to a conclusion. The Liberal Democrats would boost cancer survival rates by introducing a guarantee that 100% of patients would start treatment within 62 days of their urgent referral. We need to replace the ageing radiotherapy machines and increase the number of machines, so that no one has to travel too far for treatment. We need to recruit nurses, cancer nurses and the specialist staff required to staff the radiotherapy machines. We would also like to see a cancer survival Bill, requiring the Government to co-ordinate and ensure funding for research into those cancers with the lowest survival rates. I hope the Minister will be making cancer a top priority for the new Government and push to reinstate the UK as a global leader in cancer research and, most importantly, in cancer outcomes.
I welcome the commitment already made to invest £70 million in replacing ancient machines and delivering new ones, but I hope the Minister will consider where that investment is distributed so that we can address the urgent problem of treatment deserts. I hope that he will also consider that this is a spend-to-save issue—radiotherapy treatment is both effective and cost-effective, and a worthwhile investment for the NHS to consider from a financial perspective.
I also want the Minister to commit to introducing a 10-year workforce plan for radiotherapy as part of the national cancer strategy to which the Government are already committed, to ensure that people get the care they need, when they need it, with the appropriately qualified professionals necessary to deliver it.
Finally, we must address the problem of building space. Many of our hospitals, as we all know, are crumbling. Care must be delivered in an appropriate setting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham has outlined on a number of occasions. In conclusion, we welcome the Government’s steps so far, but I would like to push them to go further.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
Thank you, Helen; as you predicted, your speech was pointed and not too long. I now call the shadow Minister.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir John.
As we discuss the future of radiotherapy services, it is essential that we acknowledge the vital role our radiographers, medical physicists and oncologists play, along with all the nursing staff and others, in the delivery of care.
The professionals are the backbone of any successful radiotherapy service, and without them progress is impossible. However, it is clear that Governments have faced significant challenges in both staffing and infrastructure. I will take this opportunity to scrutinise the current state of radiotherapy services and the plans to address those concerns. The demand for radiotherapy has increased substantially in recent years, driven primarily by one factor: our ageing population, and the fact that as we grow older our chances of being diagnosed with cancer increase significantly. However, radiotherapy is and remains one of the most cost-effective treatments available within the NHS. Previous Governments recognised that fact, and between 2016 and 2021 they invested £162 million to enable the replacement or upgrade of approximately 100 radiotherapy machines.
Since April 2022, the responsibility for investing in new machines has sat with local integrated care boards in England, supported by the 2021spending review, which set aside money for the purpose. As hon. Members have said, to keep up with increasing demand and the need for cutting-edge care, there must be significant sustained investment in radiotherapy services. Radiotherapy is one of the most technologically advanced areas of healthcare, so it is incumbent on us to keep up with the latest scientific developments.
It is welcome that the Government have announced £70 million for new radiotherapy machines, but Radiotherapy UK has said that that is not enough and has suggested that the Government invest five times that amount to upgrade out-of-date machines. I would appreciate clarification on that point. The Government have consistently stated in written answers that funding for new radiotherapy machines will be allocated by ICBs using criteria set by NHS England, but how will they monitor the upgrading of the machines across ICB areas to ensure that that takes place and to prevent the postcode lottery that Members have described? Furthermore, NHS England has confirmed that it will give high-performing local systems greater freedom around capital spending. Will such freedoms include capital retention, which can be used to invest in new radiotherapy equipment?
One of the most pressing issues is the need for a comprehensive long-term strategic plan for radiotherapy from the Government. The absence of such a plan hinders the ability to think strategically about the future of cancer care and to make the necessary investment to meet growing demand. I am glad that today, World Cancer Day, the Government have committed to produce a new cancer plan. We are told that it will include details about how outcomes for cancer patients, including waiting times, will be improved. Will the Minister indicate whether it will provide specifics on the roll-out of radiotherapy machines in the short, medium and long term?
In response to a written question last month, the Minister clarified:
“NHS England does not hold any data on the effectiveness of radiotherapy machines relative to the number of doses that they deliver.”
Hon. Members have said that newer machines will be able to deliver more doses more quickly. I would be interested to know whether the Department has any plans to collect such data.
Of course, any strategic plan should focus not just on the machines, but on the people who operate them—the radiotherapy workforce. What steps are the Government taking to improve the recruitment and retention of the radiotherapy workforce?
In a written question, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale asked the Government whether they had consulted or planned to consult with clinical experts, the radiotherapy industry, patients or charities about how best to allocate the funds announced in the Budget for the new radiotherapy machines. The Minister responded by saying:
“The Department has no plans to consult on this matter”,
and reiterated that the funding would be allocated using NHS England criteria. The Minister today announced the plan to produce a cancer strategy. Will that include radiotherapy? Will he commit to working with Radiotherapy UK and providers to improve access to radiotherapy treatment where it is currently lacking?
The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) made a very compelling case about long journeys. He spoke about a service in his constituency, and there are others that are similarly affected. We know that earlier treatment affects survival rates. I asked the Minister a question in the main Chamber earlier about the 62-day target, and I did not hear him answer. Will he confirm that he intends to stick to the Health Secretary’s previous commitment to reaching the 62-day target by the end of this Parliament?
In addition to Government investment, the private sector plays a role in ensuring the future success of radiotherapy services. The NHS has signed a significant partnership agreement with the independent sector to increase capacity for diagnostic and elective procedures, which will help to reduce waiting times, but it is not clear whether that agreement includes treatment equipment such as radiotherapy machines. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government will work with the independent sector to upgrade equipment such as radiotherapy machines? A partnership that includes capital investment in radiotherapy equipment could ease the burden on the NHS and speed up access to treatment for patients.
I know the Minister is hugely motivated to do all he can to improve cancer care, as we all are. This debate should have helped to give him a steer on how that can be achieved.
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
I ask the Minister to leave a few moments for Mr Farron to say a final word of wind-up, and Mr Farron, in turn, to leave me a few moments to put the question.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Andrew Gwynne)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for bringing this important debate to Parliament on World Cancer Day, and other Members for their contributions on this really important topic. I am happy to meet the hon. Member and his colleagues from the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy to discuss these issues further. I suspect that my diary is going to get busier, but I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) as well, to ensure that we get this aspect of the national cancer plan absolutely right.
To answer one of the questions put by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), the national cancer plan will include radiotherapy—it would be odd if it did not, given the importance of radiotherapy—and I will work with Radiotherapy UK and others with an interest in this area. That is partly why we have launched our call for evidence today: to get the views and opinions of as many people and organisations as possible, so that we get the plan right. It has to be fit not just for 2025, but for 2035 and the years in between, so there is a lot of work to be done.
We know that cancer patients are waiting too long for treatment. That is why we are taking immediate action to kick-start the recovery of the NHS with a commitment to cut waiting times that will benefit all, including those with cancer. In our 10-year plan for the NHS, we committed to return our national health service to constitutional standards, including on cancer.
By investing in our workforce, a point made by several hon. Members, and allocating £70 million for new radiotherapy machines, we will reduce cancer waiting times and give more patients access to state-of-the-art treatments. Fixing the NHS also requires reform. This year, we will publish our 10-year health plan to help build a health service fit for the future and, as I have already mentioned, we are today announcing the launch of a call for evidence for a dedicated national cancer plan, another step towards unleashing our country’s potential as a world leader in saving lives from this deadly disease. I encourage everyone to have their say by responding to the national cancer plan call for evidence.
I assure hon. Members that the priority of this Government is to ensure that radiotherapy is available quickly to those who need it. Radiotherapy is a crucial treatment for many cancer patients, as it can shrink tumours very effectively. Although the vast majority of the population are located within reasonable distance of where they would go for treatment, I am very aware that that is not always the case, particularly in rural communities.
I can give a family example. My dad, who sadly died two years ago from a very rare and aggressive form of rectal cancer, benefited from superb treatment at the Christie in Manchester, which is our local cancer hospital. He had chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radiotherapy. The radiotherapy shrank his tumours, and that almost certainly gave him an extra two years of quality life with his family, including his great-grandson. I will forever be grateful that he received that.
One day, though, we took him to the Christie and he got chatting to somebody who was also receiving radiotherapy. This is pertinent to the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), who leads on these matters for the Liberal Democrats, because this person was from Shropshire. My dad is Salopian born—he was born in Shrewsbury and brought up in High Ercall, before being dragged to Manchester in the 1950s when my grandad got a job as the chief accountant at Manchester education committee—and they got talking. “You’re really from Shropshire and you’re coming to Manchester for radiotherapy?” It was the nearest place that had that treatment available at that time. It really hit me then how sporadic these things are, and how some people have to travel unacceptably long distances. We need to make sure that in our national cancer plan, we look at the deserts and the accessibility issues.
Tim Farron
I would not be doing my job at all well if I did not pursue the Minister on this point. Earlier, he very kindly talked about meeting the all-party group to talk about the national picture, and I want to press him on our local bid to tackle the problem he has just spoken about. Will he meet me and local oncologists to talk about how we can deliver a radiotherapy satellite centre in Kendal?
Andrew Gwynne
I was just coming to that—the hon. Gentleman has obviously started to read my notes from a distance. I am aware that he met representatives of the previous Government to discuss the possibility of a satellite unit in his local area. The situation is the same now as it was then: it is the responsibility of the integrated care board, but if the hon. Gentleman thinks it would be helpful for us to have a meeting and see if we can push that case, my door is open. I absolutely recognise that people in that part of Cumbria would prefer to have those services closer to where they live. If we can impress that on his local ICB, let us see if we can make progress.
The Government aim to ensure that each treatment centre is accessible to the highest possible number of patients, as well as easily reached by the staff who work there. That is another consideration—it is not just the patients who have to physically get to these units, but the staff. We recognise that for those in rural communities, machinery may not be available at their local hospital, meaning that the only option is travel to specialist centres to receive the best possible care. Radiotherapy service provision is agreed by local systems, and each patient’s care needs and treatment location are decided on a case-by-case basis by their clinicians. We are giving local systems greater flexibility and control, as they are best placed to understand and meet the needs of their communities, but to drive the national cancer plan forward, we have to tackle this postcode lottery and the deserts head-on.
Accessibility is also about making sure that we have the right workforce available to deliver the treatment in the right places and at the right time. That is why the number of training places has increased, and it is why we are improving the quality of education for assistant practitioners, diagnostics and therapeutic radiographers. NHS England is also working to improve the retention of radiographers and radiologists through initiatives such as increasing investment in career development. By ensuring our workforce feels supported, we put ourselves in a better position to deliver the care that people need.
Turning to investment in machines, I agree with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale that we should be ambitious in our plans to ensure that patients are treated as quickly as possible. Lord Darzi’s report highlighted the scale of the challenge we face: under the previous Government, waiting times for treatment increased, and more than 30% of patients waited longer than 31 days for radical radiotherapy.
In response to Lord Darzi’s findings, we have taken urgent action to get the NHS back on its feet. At the recent Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor supported our commitment to end the backlogs by announcing £70 million of investment in new radiotherapy machines in 2025-26. Replacing older radiotherapy machines with newer, more efficient and more technically advanced ones will ensure that patients can be seen more quickly. By doing so, we will improve access and speed up cancer treatment. Making more advanced machines available means that patients will have fewer trips to receive their treatment.
Hon. Members may be aware that NHS England has now allocated funding to trusts across the country to purchase the new radiotherapy machines with the £70 million investment. NHS England invited trusts to express interest in receiving funding to purchase a new machine. Allocation criteria focused on the age of the machine being replaced, the proportion of older machines in use in the trust and the trust’s performance on radiotherapy. We expect to fund at least 27 new machines, which should be available to treat patients by spring 2026.
Those steps will ensure that we can improve cancer waiting times as soon as possible, helping us to put an end to the last Government’s neglect and underinvestment. I reassure the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, and other hon. Members, that we will continue to make the case for additional funding, so that we can continue to upgrade machines and push the advances of the latest technological developments, for the benefit of patients with cancer.
I turn to the national cancer plan. Beyond immediate actions, we know that bold reform is required to rise to the growing challenge that cancers of all types represent. Lord Darzi found that cancer survival in this country is worse than in comparable countries, and that improvement slowed greatly during the 2010s. To help us to develop more targeted actions, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced the development of a national cancer plan, which was the subject of the statement I gave in the House just a few hours ago. The overarching aim of the plan is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer. It will detail how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, ensuring that patients have access to the most effective treatments and technology, including radiotherapy.
Today, we launched our national cancer plan call for evidence. We welcome views from all hon. and right hon. Members, as well as from clinicians, patients and their families—it is critical that we get the views of people who have lived experience of accessing cancer care—charities, researchers, members of the public and, of course, the excellent all-party parliamentary groups that champion cancer treatment and outcomes in this House.
In closing, I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale for bringing this crucial matter to the House. I thank hon. Members, whose contributions have, in the spirit of this year’s World Cancer Day, put places and people at the centre of care. I am pleased to assure hon. Members that we are undertaking both immediate actions and bold reforms to improve access to radiotherapy. There is a lot more that we need to do, and we will do it in partnership. This work is part of our effort to rebuild the NHS and deliver world-class cancer services for everybody—something that will always be a top priority for this Government and that is personal for me—so let’s get on and achieve it.
Tim Farron
First of all, Sir John, thank you for your oversight of this debate and for keeping us in order. I also thank everybody who has contributed from the Front and Back Benches. Members from all sides of the House have contributed so knowledgably and passionately on behalf of their communities, so I am really grateful to them all.
I especially thank the Minister for his response and for agreeing to my two requests. That is great—I appreciate it very much indeed. I also appreciated his statement in the main Chamber earlier, when he spoke very movingly about his own family experiences. We share an experience: my mum also passed away from ovarian cancer, at a similar age to his mum. We begin to see the impact that cancer has on the lives of just about every single family, so when we get to a position where we can do something about it, what a privilege that is and what an opportunity, which we absolutely must not miss.
Since I still have a few moments left, I encourage Members who are not already members of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy to join up, please: we will not overburden you. I have discovered over time that decisions are so often made in the interest of the people who are in the room, so we need to be in the room. Chemotherapy is a really vital part of cancer treatment and the pharmaceutical industry that goes with it has tons of resource to lobby us; that is good, and it is entitled to do that. Radiotherapy is a very different industry. This is the lobby—so we need to be in the room to make sure that we are equally heard and that radiotherapy is part of the armoury to tackle and defeat cancer.
Money is vital, but leadership is key. Having people who will be “on it” constantly within NHS England at the senior levels—who want this to happen, who are dissatisfied with how things are and who are hungry for change—is essential, but, without meaning any disrespect to anybody, I do not see that at the moment. I am, though, encouraged by what the Minister said about trying to instil it.
Radiotherapy is non-invasive. It is increasingly targeted and accurate. In the time that I have been involved in this area of campaigning, I have seen an exponential increase in how targeted it is and therefore how strong the doses, so to speak—the fractions—can be. I have seen the damage that can be done to a tumour without seriously damaging the healthy tissue around it. If the Minister is trying to convince his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to give us more money, he should argue that radiotherapy is so beneficial for the economy, because people will go back to work healthy, earn money and pay taxes.
I thank the Minister very much again for responding to points made in the debate. My final point is to make again the case for satellite radiotherapy units around the country, not just in my patch. His civil servants might want to look into this more deeply. Among the wonderful people I met today was a young clinician, James, who works in a radiotherapy unit in London. He used to work in Cheltenham, which then of course branched out to have a satellite unit at Hereford. He was able to demonstrate and vouch for the fact that that new satellite unit ended up with getting on for 25% more patients than it had originally planned for. That was for one obvious reason: people who would not have had radiotherapy at all were able to get it because it was closer to them. The important thing to remember is that satellite units are not just about convenience—in fact, they are not even about convenience; they are about saving people’s lives and returning people to normal life if possible.
I again thank the Minister for the attention he has given this issue, and I thank everybody else here today for taking part in this debate—not least yourself, Sir John.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the accessibility of radiotherapy.
Written Corrections
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Ministerial Corrections
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Justice
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Sir Nicholas Dakin
I am getting towards the end of going through the clauses. In fact, I have come to the last and final clause that I wish to comment upon, clause 15, as you had probably worked out, Madam Deputy Speaker, because that usually comes after clause 14. [Laughter.] There is no clause 16, so clause 15 is the final clause.
[Official Report, 29 January 2025; Vol. 761, c. 335.]
Written correction submitted by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin):
Sir Nicholas Dakin
I am getting towards the end of going through the clauses. In fact, I have come to the last and final clause that I wish to comment upon, clause 15, as you had probably worked out, Madam Deputy Speaker, because that usually comes after clause 14. [Laughter.] Clause 15 is the final clause I will speak to today.
Housing, Communities and Local Government
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Jim McMahon
The permanent relief will come in at 40% in 2026-27, but we have included a transition period.
[Official Report, Non-Domestic Rating (Multiplier and Private Schools) Public Bill Committee, 11 December 2024; c. 77, Q125.]
Written correction submitted by the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon):
Jim McMahon
The permanent reduction will come in 2026-27, but we have included a transition period.
Jim McMahon
What the evidence says is that there has been provision to ensure that those schools that are mainly or wholly for pupils with special educational needs will not be affected by these measures at all.
[Official Report, Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Public Bill Committee, 11 December 2024; c. 78, Q126.]
Written correction submitted by the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon):
Jim McMahon
What the evidence says is that there has been provision to ensure that those schools that are mainly or wholly for pupils with an education, health and care plan will not be affected by these measures at all.
Written Statements
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Serious Fraud Office (Contingencies Fund Advance)
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The Solicitor General (Lucy Rigby)
I would like to inform the House that a cash advance from the Contingencies Fund has been sought for the Serious Fraud Office.
The advance is required to cover costs relating to the investigation and prosecution of very large and complex cases pending parliamentary approval of the 2024-25 supplementary estimate. Part of the SFO’s supplementary estimate will seek an increase in both its resource departmental expenditure limit and net cash requirement to cover the cost of very large and complex fraud, bribery, and corruption cases.
The SFO supplementary estimate includes additional funding for high cost casework with a small amount allocated for office improvement works as agreed through phase 1 of the spending review 2025.
Parliamentary approval for additional resources of £15,000,000 has been sought in a supplementary estimate for the SFO. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £15,000,000 will be met by a repayable cash advance from the Contingencies Fund.
The advance will be repaid upon Royal Assent of the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill.
[HCWS414]
National Cancer Plan Call for Evidence
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Andrew Gwynne)
With today being World Cancer Day, I want to be clear about this Government’s commitment to transforming cancer care and ensuring that fewer people die from this devastating disease by launching our call for evidence for a new national cancer plan.
One in two people will develop cancer in their lifetime and we are currently diagnosing and treating near record numbers of patients, with over 350,000—357,378—people receiving their first treatment over the last 12 months. This is expected to increase significantly as the population ages, with Cancer Research UK forecasting half a million cancer cases each year by 2040. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will put us on track to a smoke-free UK, helping to reduce around 80,000 preventable deaths and reduce the burden on the NHS and on the taxpayer. While around 40% of cancers are caused by avoidable factors such as smoking, we know that much of the rise in cancer cases will be caused by ageing and is unavoidable.
We know the issues that are key to improving cancer survival. We know we need patients to be seen faster and cancers to be diagnosed earlier to secure better patient outcomes. We know that reducing the time it takes to be diagnosed and treated can make a crucial difference to a patient’s outcome. I want every patient to get excellent care and treatment, and to achieve that, we need an effective and sustainable health and social care sector.
The independent review of the NHS by Lord Darzi set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the NHS, and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. At the same time, he pointed to the NHS’s success in delivering targeted lung health checks. That is transforming the early diagnosis of lung cancer in disadvantaged communities—something that he described as a sign of hope.
In response to the Darzi report, we have launched an extensive programme of engagement to develop a 10-year health plan to reform the NHS. We need the 10-year health plan to set out how we can build a health system fit for the future. It will set out the framework of reforms we need to ensure better outcomes across the NHS and to meet significant challenges like cancer. Furthermore, our elective reform plan sets out how we will return to the 18-week constitutional standard and put patient experience front and centre.
However, we know that the increasing number of cancer cases and the complexity of cancer care mean that we need a specific approach to cancer that aligns with our wider vision of how we want to reform the NHS. As a result, I am delighted to inform the House that we will publish a national cancer plan later this year, following publication of the 10-year health plan. I am determined to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer, and to ensure that many more people go on to lead a full life after their cancer treatment. The national cancer plan is the first step to preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer more effectively. To achieve this goal, the plan will look at the full range of factors and tools that will allow us to transform outcomes for cancer patients and improve their experiences of treatment and care.
We cannot do this alone, and that is why we are launching a call for evidence from patients, doctors, nurses, scientists, our key partners, and other members of the public on what should be included in the plan.
Following a period of planning and engagement with our partners across the cancer community, we will aim to publish the national cancer plan in the second half of 2025.
I am pleased to inform the House that we will also be relaunching the children and young people’s cancer taskforce to identify ways to improve outcomes and patient experience for children and young people with cancer. Dame Caroline Dinenage and Professor Darren Hargrave have been appointed as its co-chairs, alongside Dr Sharna Shanmugavadivel as vice-chair. I will update the House on progress in due course.
[HCWS415]
Grand Committee
National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung, and resume after 10 minutes.
Clause 2: Secondary threshold for secondary Class 1 contributions
Amendment 18
Baroness Noakes
Member’s explanatory statement
This forms part of a package of amendments in the name of Baroness Noakes to allow for a phased introduction of the reductions to the secondary threshold.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 18 and to speak to Amendments 21, 24 and 25 in this group. These amendments are designed to make the national insurance increases in the Bill more manageable by businesses, as they are going to be picking up the lion’s share of the costs of national insurance in the first instance. The amendments do not change the overall approach of raising the rate and lowering the secondary earnings threshold; instead, they seek to phase in the secondary threshold reduction over two years, rather than taking the “big bang” approach taken in the Bill. The reduction in the secondary threshold is the larger of the two main changes in the Bill, raising roughly one and a half times the amount raised by raising the national insurance rate of contributions.
I should declare my financial interests in a wide range of listed companies, many of which operate in the UK and are therefore affected by the Bill. These include shareholdings in Next plc—which gives me a neat segue into the fact that I was prompted to table these amendments after listening to a “Today” programme interview with my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, in his capacity as chief executive of Next, who argued for delayed implementation. I was delighted when my noble friend then added his name to my amendment, along with my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. I very much look forward to his contribution to the debate.
I was particularly struck when listening to the “Today” interview by my noble friend’s analysis of the financial impact of the changes on part-time jobs and those that pay at or around the minimum wage. I think he said that it will add roughly 2% to the cost of employing higher-paid workers, but for part-time and lower-paid workers the figure is 6.5%. This, of course, is before you factor in the minimum wage hike, which will be coming in at the same time and will more than double the impact on certain kinds of employees, particularly younger ones.
I spoke about the regressive effect of the Bill at Second Reading and I was frankly astonished that the Minister’s Back-Benchers were not jumping up and down about the impact of the national insurance changes on the employment prospects of key groups such as female part-timers and young people. His Back-Benchers seem to have bought the disingenuous line, which has been run by the Chancellor and, indeed, the Minister, that these extra national insurance costs will be borne by businesses. The plain truth is that employers will not simply absorb the cost increases, as the Office for Budget Responsibility made abundantly clear: employees will pay, in the form of reduced hours, reduced pay increases or job losses. We will all pay in higher prices and, if that keeps interest rates higher for longer, home owners will pay too.
Part of the problem from the business perspective is the sheer scale of the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, hitting them in just a few months’ time, at exactly the same time as the minimum wage hike. I expect that the Minister will say that the minimum wage increase is not in this Bill, but the plain fact is that businesses are facing a double whammy. Very few businesses can shrug off an increase of well over 10% in their payroll costs. The likelihood is that businesses will take rapid action to try to curtail the financial impact, but that action may well be suboptimal when looked at over a longer timeframe.
Recruitment freezes are the quickest way to put a lid on costs and they are already a feature of today’s uncertain business environment. The recruitment sector is therefore struggling and will doubtless have to reduce its own headcount in due course. If hours are reduced for part-time staff, that will have a particularly hard impact on women and their families, who are often dependent on the additional income that such jobs bring. Pay increases, other than for those on the minimum wage, will probably be held down, and most families are already struggling with inflation and will be hard hit if wages go down in real terms. We can also expect employers to reduce headcount. This is already happening, as a glance at the business pages of the media will confirm.
The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, who is not here today, may well run his argument that this is entirely healthy, because it will encourage businesses to invest to reduce their reliance on labour and thereby increase productivity and release workers to be redeployed elsewhere in the economy. As I have said before, that is a nice theory, but it fails at a practical level. Businesses need confidence in the country’s economic prospects before they invest, and most business confidence surveys are well into negative territory. Many investment decisions are already on hold or being cancelled. In addition, we have high employment at present, thanks to the previous Government, but job vacancies are relatively low and falling. A more realistic outcome, at least in the short term, is that there will be fewer people in employment. The OBR calculated the impact of the national insurance changes as a loss of 50,000 jobs, but it could easily be higher than that.
My amendment is about ameliorating the short-term impact of the Government’s national insurance changes on businesses, so that they have more time to plan how they will absorb the increases alongside the additional minimum wage costs. If businesses have more time to work out the best way to cope, the impact on jobs and pay could well be softened. My amendment merely delays the full impact of the national insurance changes for an extra year, by phasing in the reduction in the secondary threshold over two years rather than make businesses face the whole impact at once next April. I am quite sure that the business community would prefer an even longer phasing in and would prefer it to apply to the increased rate of contributions as well as to the reduction in the threshold. My amendments are an attempt at a reasonable compromise. I beg to move.
Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, particularly my role as chief executive of Next plc, a company that employs over 40,000 people, of whom 22,000 are part-time. It is a job that I have had for 22 years, which I think makes me the longest-serving chief executive in the FTSE 100. I hope that I am able to bring that experience to inform the debate, which is why I rise to speak to all the amendments in this group tabled by my noble friend Lady Noakes, to which I have added my name.
I hope that the Minister will take this amendment in the spirit in which it is intended. To that end, I recognise the Government’s need to balance their books, the importance of their doing that, and that the parlous state of public finances cannot be wholly laid at the door of the current Administration. Nor can I see, in principle, why the employer national insurance threshold should disproportionately benefit lower-paid jobs, as it does at the moment. In principle, I can see no reason for that; it is the speed at which the change is happening that concerns me.
The problems caused by that speed are particularly acute because the axe falls hardest and disproportionately on entry-level part-time work, as my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out. The way in which the change in the threshold works is something of a poll tax on jobs. Poll taxes do not have a great history of success, but the cost of around £600 is the same whether you earn £9,000 or £900,000. So, the combined effect of this increase on a job paying £60,000 would be 2%; on a part-time job paying £12,000, it would be 6.5%.
That change needs to be taken in the context of the rise in the national living wage. My noble friend Lady Noakes is absolutely right that, together, they mean that the figure for entry-level part-time working—jobs in hospitality, retail and care homes—will go up by 13% in April this year. It is impossible to see how this can result in anything other than a reduction in opportunities to join the workforce; indeed, it will result in some people having to leave the workforce. I hope that, going forward, these types of changes and the work of the Low Pay Commission are considered in conjunction with each other. It seems to me that these two changes have come in at the same time without co-ordination.
Unfortunately, this change comes at a time when the employment market is at something of a tipping point. Again, it is no one in particular’s fault—it is the employment cycle—but every economic indicator that I can see, through both the ONS and my own work, suggests that the labour market is hardening. In every single discipline in the business that I work for, whether it is computer programming or product development for stores, the applicant to vacancy ratio is rising.
Let me give a flavour of that. Last year, when we took on temporary staff in the run-up to Christmas, the ratio of applicants to vacancies was up by 50% on the previous year. In the previous year, we had nine applicants for every shop job; last year, it was more than 13. In this environment, the speed of change will dramatically affect the national insurance threshold change’s impact on both people and inflation.
Starting with the social impact, it is inevitable that businesses will have to accelerate their plans to increase productivity. There are plenty of opportunities to increase productivity, mechanisation and artificial intelligence both being at the forefront of those opportunities; but one way or another, that increase in productivity means fewer jobs. The time we have to implement those changes will directly affect the social impact of those efforts to increase productivity. The faster the change occurs, the less time businesses and individuals will have to manage down employee numbers through the natural turnover of staff, which is the normal way we would try to implement any improvement in productivity, particularly in part-time work. Natural turnover of staff is quite high; if you can manage such changes through natural turnover, it dramatically reduces the impact on human beings.
It is a shame that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, is not here, because I have heard him say that labour becoming more productive—that is, going out into the workforce and finding other, more productive things to do—can be a good thing. It can, but it will take people time to find those additional jobs, and time is what these amendments ask for.
Last Wednesday, my noble friend Lady Lawlor highlighted the acute pressure that the threshold change will put on retailers. She was right. On that day, Morrisons said that, in the light of the Budget, it would have to go harder and deeper in its drive to reduce costs. It joined Sainsbury’s, which has already announced 3,000 job losses.
The second reason for phasing in this change is its effect on inflation. Again, it might be helpful if I give the perspective of the company I work for. It is in the fortunate position whereby the growth we are able to enjoy, the margins we have and the productivity gains we think we will be able to achieve, collectively mean that we will need to pass on an increase in prices of only 1% this year, as a result of the Budget changes. Had we not had those margins to absorb the changes, and had we not had those productivity gains, that figure would have been just over 4%.
In other industries, in particular the food industry, margins are much narrower than those enjoyed in fashion retail. My concern is that everything I am hearing from that industry means that we will see price rises in the order of 4%. Were the threshold change to be phased in over two years, that inflationary spike would reduce price rises to closer to the Bank of England’s 2% target. That in turn would pave the way for a faster reduction in interest rates, which is in everyone’s interest—including the country’s biggest borrower, the Government. Phasing in the change would reduce the social and inflationary costs of this increase.
Lord Swire (Con)
I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. I want to speak briefly in support of this series of amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes and others. It is very important to listen to what somebody such as my noble friend Lord Wolfson, who is involved in the retail industry, has just said.
I know, given my experience of dealing with the Treasury as a Minister, that it takes an absolutist position on most things. The Treasury does not like to cede any point at all; it regards that as some sort of weakness. I suspect that the Minister has been told that this is what the Treasury has decided and that he is not to resile from any of the arguments or rescind any of the inherent parts of the Bill. However, this proposal would not really change anything.
We on this side of the House are not arguing against these increases. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke in Davos about reinvigorating the economy and instilling confidence in it, at the same time as the Government are going to kick in the solar plexus a lot of those entering the market—people leaving university, for instance, and trying to get into the job market for the first time. They have an astonishing combination of challenges ahead of them, not least because of student loan repayments and the cost of housing.
If these changes are instigated so quickly now, where are the companies’ savings going to come from? They can come only from freezing employment and shedding jobs, from passing on the costs to the consumer and from totally stopping their R&D budgets. All these things are not, I would argue, in the long-term interests of the British economy.
By all means let these changes come, but let the market be prepared—the market being the employers, who can look at these changes and spend more time trying to accommodate them. Otherwise the Government are going to achieve what they think they are going to achieve on the one hand with an increase in income from these increases, but at the same time there must be a decrease because there will be fewer people in employment and more people needing some kind of financial support, which will have the precise inverse effect of what we are told the Government are seeking to achieve.
I hope that the Minister will realise that we are not trying to attack the principle of what the Government are trying to do. We recognise the fact that the Government need to raise revenue from somewhere, but we are asking the Government to think more holistically about the knock-on effects on those very people who they maintain they are also trying to help.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support these amendments. It occurs to me—I would be interested to know whether it is true—that this must be the first series of amendments where the three signatories have all been directors of FTSE 100 companies. That must tell us something. I think it is the first time, but I will be happy to be proven wrong.
It is a great pleasure to speak after one of my role models—she does not know it, but it is true—my noble friend Lady Noakes, as well as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe and, particularly, my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Apsley Guise, who is widely regarded as one of the leading businessmen of his generation. I say that because he is from a younger generation than me, perhaps. He has an outstanding business career that has created thousands of jobs and tremendous value for shareholders. Thankfully, he still has time to contribute to your Lordships’ House and other communal activities, so when he speaks I think we should listen carefully. He is right to say that there is some truth that more expensive labour leads to greater productivity, mainly because productivity is measured as output per hour so, by definition, productivity improves, but it is not necessarily a good thing in and of itself. He mentioned the food sector. Certainly, in the hospitality sector I know of companies that are just closing down. This increase has led them to say that they are going to give it up, which cannot be what the Government want.
On 6 January, Next reported anaemic growth as the result of the tax measures. On the very same day, S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index came out and said that nearly 25% of British businesses reduced their workforce following the Budget specifically. The index indicated that the private sector has experienced its weakest growth in 14 months, with firms shedding jobs at the fastest pace in more than 15 years, other than during the pandemic. HMRC released its payroll data on 21 January. Employees in the UK declined by 47,000 to 30.3 million in December alone, the biggest drop since November 2020, which again was pandemic-related. As my noble friend Lord Wolfson mentioned, Sainsbury’s came out on 23 January with cuts to head office of 3,000 and an ambition to reduce senior management roles by 20%. Recently, on 27 January, the Confederation of British Industry reported that private sector firms expect a significant decline in activity over the next three months with a weighted balance of 22% negative. It said that this pessimism is widespread across sectors including services, distribution and manufacturing. The downturn was mainly due to the Budget.
With the assistance of someone who is much smarter than me on spreadsheets, I have tried to calculate the effect of all this. Although I am an economist by background, this is not a specialist area for me, so I would be extremely grateful if the Minister would ask the Treasury to comment on the numbers that I am going to give him. I think that they are right, but I would be more than happy to be challenged if they are not.
My premise is that the average UK earnings per full-time employee is £33,280. The number of full-time equivalents in the UK is bang on 30 million. If you increase the existing employers’ NI rate of 13.8% to 15% and reduce the existing NI threshold of £9,100 to £5,000, you get an increase in total NI take from £100 billion to £127.2 billion, giving you a total employers’ NI increase of £27.2 billion—or, to be precise, £27.154 billion—which is the sum that the Chancellor seeks. Fair enough. But, given all that we have heard today, what happens if employment reduces? You can put in any variable you like. I have taken what I regard to be a most reasonable suggestion of 3%. Let us say that, as a result of this, there is a 3% reduction in employment. Personally, I think it would be much more, but let us say 3%. At that point, the number of UK full-time equivalents becomes 29.1 million. The employers’ NI take goes to £123 billion, which is a reduction of £3.8 billion. But, at the same time, there is universal credit for those redundant full-time equivalents of £20,000 a head, which costs the Treasury £18 billion. If you add the loss of that universal credit to the reduction in NI take that I have just mentioned, you get a net loss of—guess what—bang on £27.05 billion. So, the 3% reduction in employment that I reckon will happen leads to absolutely no gain to the Treasury whatever.
I present those figures because I would like to be challenged on them and proven wrong, but I do not think that I am. Along with the signatories to the amendment, I hope that the Government will take this opportunity to reflect carefully, in the spirit of co-operation, as to whether it is wise to bring this measure in so harshly, so quickly.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee that this is my first intervention on the Bill. I am not a FTSE 100 director, nor am I the chief executive of a great company like Next. I am the chief executive of a small charity in Scotland and the reason why I have not been able to participate on this Bill is that we are going through a consultation process to reduce our employee numbers at this very moment as a direct result of the cliff edge and shock to us of the increases in national insurance.
I rise merely to say that everything that my noble friends Lady Noakes, Lord Wolfson and Lord Leigh have just said is my daily life at the moment. While businesses can potentially put up their prices, charities cannot. What also concerns me is that because this cliff edge, which is what these amendments are trying to smooth out, is happening at the same time as the rise in national minimum wage, we are facing a double whammy in trying to make our books balance.
What finally concerns me is that this will lead not only to a reduction in the number of those in employment but to a reduction of skills in these organisations. These things cannot easily be built up again, should the situation change. Give us time to implement and do the things that we need to do. I urge the Minister to listen to my colleagues and do all that he can to soften this terrible blow.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches are not in the same place as those on the Conservative Benches in taking the position outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Swire, to seek a delay before these measures are introduced. We are opposed to their introduction. We supported a regret Motion at Second Reading and those on the Committee who were present in the first two days will know that we moved a series of amendments essentially to halt the increase in employers’ NICs, and the related changes, in its tracks. In the case of part-timers, we went beyond that and sought to have employers’ NICs halved from their current level because of the importance of dealing with disadvantaged people, the hospitality industry and other reasons. In the first two days of Committee, I and my colleagues talked extensively and made our substantive and detailed arguments. I know that the Committee will not want to hear me repeat all those, so I merely say that we stand our ground.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 18, 21 and 25 in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes. I am particularly pleased to see my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, who brings his unique knowledge of the difficulties that businesses are facing, especially in the retail sector. He runs one of Britain’s most admired companies—and has done so for 22 years, he tells us. I agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Leigh, and others, said about him and his business.
As always, my noble friend Lady Noakes stated the arguments very clearly and persuasively. My noble friend Lord Wolfson used a new phrase, for this Committee: he talked about a poll tax, rather than the “jobs tax” term that we have used before—that is always a warning. He said that the changes in national insurance could affect as many as 20 million jobs, which explains to some extent the huge reaction there has been to this measure right across business and, indeed, from many in work.
As he said, for relatively little cost, we could reduce the social and economic impacts of the changes. His spirit was very constructive. He acknowledged the productivity improvement that is needed, some of which is already in the pipeline, as he said, but also the difficulty of what I would call the shock tactic of the double whammy of the April changes. My noble friends Lord Swire and Lord Leigh gave us first-hand evidence of the loss of jobs which is taking place already, and which we have talked about before. My noble friend Lady Fraser evidenced the impact of that double whammy and brought out the point about the loss of skills: if people lose their jobs, we lose the skills in the industry. We had further estimates from my noble friend Lord Leigh, to add to those we had last week from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, which merit attention.
The amendment seeks to allow for a more gradual transition in the reduction of the secondary threshold. That would allow businesses time to adjust to the increase of a substantial new tax burden. It aims to be a small but important step in alleviating some of the burden on employers. The Government have to accept that they have placed considerable strain on business with their fiscal policies, and a phased introduction would provide a more manageable path forward.
Businesses are the backbone of the economy: they provide jobs, drive innovation and contribute to the prosperity of our communities right across the country. However, given the current pressures they are under, it is critical that we do not introduce changes that exacerbate their struggles. The sudden and sharp reduction in the secondary threshold will represent a huge burden, particularly for smaller employers, as we discussed last time, and for those grappling with rising costs and reduced cash flow. A gradual approach would ensure that the reduction was not a sudden shock to businesses and allow them to adjust their payroll and budgeting systems. It would be more predictable and manageable, and employers could plan and absorb the changes over time.
The IFS has found that the lowest salaries will be affected the most, with the lowest earners facing a larger than 4.5% increase in contribution, compared with less than 1.5% for the highest earners. It is partly because of the perverse effects and the adjustment issues that we are looking at today that the IFS has suggested that the Budget measure will—quite quickly—raise only £16 billion a year. My noble friend Lord Leigh has also modelled the impact of a 3% jobs cut, which he estimates would wipe out the revenue from the proposed changes.
We need to think again. My noble friends Lady Noakes and Lord Wolfson talked about the 10% to 13% increases coming in April, if you take NICs and the national minimum wage together; some delay or a reduction in the threshold would avoid the disaster, particularly on the high street, that I am so worried about.
I was talking to an excellent member of staff in the closing shop in Salisbury which I mentioned last week. She still does not have a job to go to. That has not been my experience of retail closures in the past; usually, the best employees are quickly snapped up by the competition. We have a bit of a problem here, and I would like to work with the Government to see whether anything can be done to alleviate the difficulties.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I will address the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, which would phase in the introduction of the secondary threshold cut to £6,760 in the next tax year and £5,000 from 2026-27.
I absolutely appreciate the concerns raised by noble Lords during this debate, and by businesses, about the impacts of the Bill. It was a privilege to hear the insights and expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and I greatly appreciate the constructive spirit of his contribution. However, as I have set out previously in this Committee, the Bill is necessary to repair the public finances, to protect working people and to invest in Britain’s future, including by providing more than £20 billion extra for the NHS over this year and next. This funding will reduce waiting times by supporting the NHS to deliver 40,000 extra elective appointments a week and will make progress towards the commitment that patients should expect to wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment. Reducing the threshold by less than that set out in the Bill would reduce the revenue generated by it and would therefore introduce new pressures, which would have to be met by more borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures.
Given these points, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendments.
Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, can he say how much this amendment and the resulting delay would cost the Government? That would help those of us on this side of the Committee to understand why this is not possible.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The Government tend to cost the Government’s policies. It is not usual practice for the Government to cost Opposition policies.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, will he commit to having the Treasury look at the numbers I mooted? I will happily send him the spreadsheet if it helps to verify whether they are accurate.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord set out some figures that are based on his assumptions, not the Government’s assumptions. I have no reason to dispute his maths or the computing power of Microsoft Excel, but I do not think I can commit Treasury resources to checking the figures in his own spreadsheet.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank all my noble friends for taking part in this debate and supporting these amendments. They were put forward as a constructive way to deal with what could be some very damaging impacts caused by the Government’s legislation.
I was confused by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, saying that she is against the Bill, so she does not want to engage in ways of making things better. As His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, we believe that what we are here to do is try to make policies better, even though we disagree with virtually all the Bills the Government are putting forward at the moment. Our job is to engage constructively and, certainly, to try to avoid damaging aspects.
My noble friend Lord Wolfson spoke about being able to pass on price increases of 1%; he has an amazing luxury, because not all retailers can do that. At the weekend, I got talking to a local businessman who owns a number of shops. Most of his workforce are part-time staff. He employs quite a lot of people in and around our villages, and in the neighbouring villages, where he has other shops. He said that he does not know what to do. He cannot increase prices because the goods he sells do not lend themselves to significant price increases. The only thing he can do is to reduce hours or numbers. These measures means that our local economies—things that are really important to people—will be damaged by less income for local families. They are having really significant impacts, whether at the large end of business or the very smallest end.
I regret the Minister just saying again and again that he has to repair the finances and put more money into public services because he wants to protect working people. The one thing he is not doing with these changes is protecting working people. I sincerely hope that, between Committee and Report, the Government will think about whether they can find ways of making this Bill less damaging. We are not arguing that the Bill should not exist—we do not believe that that is our role, and we did not vote against it at Second Reading and certainly would not have done so—but there are many ways of softening its edges. I hope the Government will consider that between now and Report.
With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for early years provision.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, in moving this amendment, I will speak also to my Amendment 40; both concern early years provision. I am afraid that this measure is another example of not protecting working people. The Budget will have a disastrous impact on the early years sector, and we need to consider this fully.
My Amendment 28 asks the Government to produce an appropriate impact assessment on the effect of this jobs tax on the early years sector. There have been calls from across the sector for the Government to acknowledge the impact this measure will have. The Early Years Alliance has estimated that this harsh tax will cost each nursery an additional £18,600 per year. Yet, despite these calls, the Government have not acknowledged the especially harsh impact this tax will have on the early years sector.
The chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association has told us that, on average, 75% of a nursery’s expenditure is spent on staffing costs, and that, as a result of this tax raid, nurseries will have to find an additional 11% on top of the usual amount they spend on staff. Her view was that, following this Budget, the only realistic options facing nurseries are to pass the extra burden on to parents and/or to reduce the number of places they offer, in order to prevent them going out of business. Although I welcome the additional funding for early years introduced in the Budget, this sector is already under financial pressure, and this additional burden on a sector that provides such an integral service seems incredibly short-sighted.
In December, the Government published their funding rates for 2025-26, but they failed to include an uplift for this damaging tax, which they themselves are introducing. My Amendment 40 seeks to reduce the impact on early years by increasing the employment allowance in this labour-intensive sector. This is often made up of part-time workers whose employers are hit worst by the reduction in the threshold for NICs, as we just heard from my noble friend Lord Wolfson. I would like to understand the cost to the Exchequer. The Minister helpfully gave us a figure for the overall cost of the increase in the employment allowance last time. Can he give an estimate of how much will go to early years providers, so that we can understand the impact of doubling it?
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, we consider these areas so important that employers’ national insurance contributions should not be changed from the current formula. Our position remains unchanged. We discussed it extensively in both substance and detail on the first two days in Committee, and I would not try the Committee’s patience by repeating all the arguments that were made from these Benches.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support these important amendments. Today, all three and four year-olds in England are entitled to free education before they start school full time at the age of five. In the year 2023-24, there were almost 23 children for every teacher—the highest ratio thus far. If we continue with this measure without amendment, we will see an even higher ratio, with the number of adults declining because of the costs, as we heard previously in Committee and again today. We have 3,100 nursery schools and 11,700 day nurseries, and they play an integral part in the induction of little people into the world of education. They are vital to the well-being of the child and, indeed, to parents being able to pay their way with confidence that their children are receiving an early years education. I urge the Minister to provide an exemption, or to ensure in one way or another that early years education and care providers, whether in a nursery school, a day nursery or another system—voluntary and independent, as well as public sector—are prevented from losing teachers due to the additional costs.
I echo what my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said. I would be very happy with an increased employment allowance. We need an impact assessment, given the large number of people employed in this sector and the impact this measure will have on children’s education later in life. We are now paying the price of the Covid lockdown, with the children who passed through schooling at that age. Let us stop making things difficult for early years provision and try to improve it, not disimprove it by such a measure.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I will address the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, which seeks to prevent commencement of this Bill until an impact assessment is published for the early years sector.
Delaying commencement of the Bill would reduce the revenue generated from it and require either higher borrowing, lower public spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. The Government carefully consider the impacts of all policies, including the changes to employer national insurance. As I have stated previously in Committee, an assessment of the policy has been published by HMRC in its tax information and impact note, including impacts on the Exchequer, the economy, individuals, households and families, equalities and businesses, including civil society organisations, with details on monitoring and evaluation.
Further, the OBR’s economic and fiscal outlook sets out the expected macroeconomic impact of the changes to employer national insurance contributions on employment, growth and inflation. The Government and the OBR have therefore already set out the impacts of the policy change. This approach is in line with previous changes to national insurance and taxation, and the Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments.
Amendment 40, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, seeks to increase the employment allowance for early years providers. This would introduce new pressures which would have to be met by either more borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. I also note that creating new thresholds or rates based on what sector a business is in would introduce distortion and additional complexity into the tax system.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, asked for some specific figures. The figures are not broken down in the way that she asks for.
Early years providers have a crucial role to play in driving economic growth and breaking down barriers to opportunity. We are committed to making childcare more affordable and accessible. That is why, in our manifesto, the Government committed to delivering the expansion of government-funded childcare for working parents and to opening 3,000 new or expanded nurseries through upgrading space in primary schools to support the expansion of the sector.
Despite the very challenging fiscal circumstances the Government inherited, at the Budget the Chancellor announced significant increases to the funding that early years providers are paid to deliver government-funded childcare places. This means that total funding will rise to more than £8 billion in 2025-26.
In light of these points, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for his response. I hope that in the light of what has been said today and on previous days, the Government will look at the impact of these NICs changes on our early years sector.
When we were in government, we took steps to support the early years sector, and we know that the national insurance increase is going to be a significant setback. My noble friend Lady Lawlor talked about the numbers of providers spread across the country, which play a huge part in the induction to the world of education and in helping young people to get the right kind of start in life. The very least the Government can do is to look at the impact note again and produce an assessment of the impact of the policy on the early years sector in particular, not just the overall economic impact. We have heard from the Minister on several occasions that they have produced a note, but it is a macroeconomic—an overall—note, while what we have here are very big changes in the economy affecting individual sectors, some of them very badly. There does not seem to be any readiness to look at the impact in those sectors and to find solutions, whether through national insurance changes or some other way. I suggested the employment allowance as another route.
The noble Lord will also recall that when in government we took steps to increase the supply of early years provision by expanding the childminding sector and encouraging the establishment of new nurseries alongside our expansion of the 30-hours free childcare policy. Without an assessment of the impact of these changes, how can the Government be sure that they will be able to deliver on the ambitious plans that the Minister set out to expand free childcare hours for hard-working families? I think there is a measure of agreement on objectives, but we need to find a way to get there.
These are important questions, and Ministers need to answer them before we get to Report. It is intolerable that we are pressing ahead with a jobs tax without a full assessment of the policy. We have had some macro figures, now broken down into three chunks, but it is very difficult for us to know what the individual effect is on different sectors. This is a serious matter. Working families across the country are very concerned. My worry is that the noise of concerns on something such as early years will increase as April comes and early years providers discover just what sort of hole they are in, but in the interests of time, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for hospices.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 29 is in my name and would prevent commencement of the Act until a full impact assessment is published for hospices. The NI announcement was a big blow for hospices already struggling with their budgets. There is also understandable frustration in hospices being told that this was for the benefit of an NHS that is already chronically underfunding most children’s and adult hospice services.
Sam Royston said:
“We project that over the coming 25 years the need for palliative care is going to rise by 25%, with around 150,000 more people needing”
end-of-life services. He said:
“We have no plan, no plan at all to address the scale of that challenge”.—[Official Report, Commons, Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill Committee, 29/1/25; col. 189.]
Hospices are particularly impacted as most have significant retail operations employing many people close to the minimum wage and many on part-time contracts. These are the employees where, typically, the impact of this tax is proportionally highest.
Many hospices already struggling with deficit budgets modelled the financial costs at between £150,000 and £450,000 in proportion to their turnover. For example, St Christopher’s Hospice in south London said that it will face increased costs of around £450,000 a year, which is equivalent to the cost of nine specialist nurses. Nationally, the hospice movement estimates that the cost to the sector will be £34 million for England and just under £40 million for the whole of the United Kingdom. Only this week, the Kirkwood hospice announced that it would be reducing its costs by £1.7 million a year, which will involve placing 33 roles at risk of redundancy.
We all know how important hospices are and the difference that they make. I got in touch with Rachel Street, who is the CEO of Heart of Kent Hospice. This is a hospice I know well: my mother was a founding patron, and I have seen the dedication of the frontline staff, their professionalism and their compassion. They make—and I use this phrase deliberately—a life-changing difference. I visit it every year to present colleague awards in my mother’s name, and I am always moved by their stories and by the kindness and tenderness that they show to those at the end of life’s journey.
As a charity, Heart of Kent Hospice has been hit with the double whammy that my noble friends Lady Noakes and Lady Fraser discussed earlier: increases to the national living wage and employers’ national insurance. Plus, as a charity employing doctors and nurses, it anticipates being impacted by any increases to the NHS Agenda for Change pay scales. It has more than 60 staff whose salaries will need to be uplifted to the national living wage, which is more than a third of its workforce. It now needs to look to reinstate differentials between roles, otherwise shop assistants and shop managers in its retail operation will be on the same salary. The ripple effects up through the organisation are huge, squeezing pay differentials throughout.
The retail teams are where hospices are seeing the cost pressure the most, drastically reducing the surplus made by their charity shops, which is an important part of their income for the delivery of palliative care services. For all hospices, the main costs of delivering vital services are wages and salaries, and, like other charities, they employ many colleagues on the national living wage, often in part-time roles, so they are all significantly impacted. For the Heart of Kent hospice alone, this change will cost it over £200,000 a year, on top of the £6.5 million it needs to raise, of which only 20% is funded by the integrated care board.
Baroness Sater (Con)
I rise in support of my noble friend, who made an excellent and passionate speech about hospices and the dire need for support they will have if the NICs changes go through. They will affect, as we have heard already, redundancies and the level of staffing. The burden that will be put on hospices will be extraordinary and the figures are unbelievable if we consider how much they will have to raise if they have to find that money in the future. As I have said previously, it is imperative that we have an impact assessment whereby we can understand these individual sectors and the absolute devastation that will happen if we do not know what will happen, going forward. So I plead with and urge the Minister to reconsider and support my noble friend on this important sector. It is important that we know a little more about what will happen if these insurance rises take place.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest in much the same way. If all goes to plan, I will speak on Thursday in respect of social care homes, particularly adult social care homes, where many of the same issues arise. I cannot imagine the response if a Conservative Government had decided to put national insurance rises on such institutions; can noble Lords begin to see the headlines that would be against us?
This House is a revising Chamber; it allows the Government the opportunity to pause, rethink and consider, and if ever there was a case to do so, this is it. Before the Government have the acute embarrassment of urging Peers to go through the Division Lobby to penalise care homes and hospices in such a way, I very much hope that they will take advantage of the gap between Committee and Report to reflect on the arguments.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, I too support my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest and thank her for her very moving and informed speech. It triggered a memory for me. I was approached by the Children’s Hospice South West for a fundraiser —my goodness, I think it was 15 years ago—and managed to raise a record amount by putting on an event for it. I saw for myself the astonishing job that hospices do. They provide a level of care and places that many of these people—children, in particular—could not find elsewhere, so the question for the Minister is this: if some of them are to shed staff and therefore be less able to take these very needy children and their relations, where will the Government step in? How will they take up the slack and what, ultimately, will be the cost to the Government?
I have some sympathy with the Minister. He has come here today to hold the Treasury line, of course, but we are wasting our time if, to each and every group of amendments we table, the stock reply is, “The Government need to raise the money. They don’t recognise the figures that the Opposition are presenting”, and we move on to another set of amendments. That does not suggest to me much dialogue or debate. But I congratulate the Minister on one thing: so far in our deliberations this afternoon he has not alluded once to the fictitious £22 billion black hole.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, listening to noble Lords present the case for Amendment 29, I agreed with every single word that was said. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, said that an exemption was required. Amendment 29 does not ask for that exemption; it asks for an assessment to be done, and therefore it does not mean that an exemption would come, which is why, on day one in Committee, we on these Benches tabled an amendment to say that an exemption for hospices should apply. If we bring that back on Report, I hope that the noble Baroness will support us as we hold our ground.
I want to talk briefly to the other amendment in this group: Amendment 41, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, regarding the increase in the employer allowance to £20,000 for hospices. Just as a matter of fact, the average number of staff per hospice is 81 full-time equivalent employees, and the average salary is £23,626. Therefore, the average total salary bill for a hospice is £1.863 million, so a £20,000 employment allowance will be absolutely useless because hospitals will still be clobbered by the national insurance contribution increase. That is why we put them down for an exemption, and we hold our ground on that.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 41. I support Amendment 29 in the name of my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest, who gave an extremely moving speech. She has made such a huge contribution to the charitable sector, as a supporter and a fundraiser. We must listen to her and the evidence that she has gathered in her work in the run-up to this discussion, which shows how important it is to find a way to match the compensation that NHS bodies are getting under the arrangements made for increasing national insurance and reducing the threshold.
That is the purpose of our series of amendments, some of which are probing, some of which we will pursue, because this is an important sector. Hospices are an essential part of our healthcare system, and the Bill will leave many unable to provide the services that they are currently offering. I was glad to have the support of my noble friend Lady Sater for both amendments, and that my noble friend Lord Swire was able to mention the fundraising for hospices which many have taken part in across this House. Indeed, hospices were one of my favourite charities of the year at Tesco, and one of the most moving with staff. We were talking about up to 300,000 people who were engaged in raising money for hospices. That taught us a lot about the difficulties and the wondrous jobs that they do.
My Amendment 41 seeks to increase the employment allowance for hospices, which would ease some of the financial pressures that they are facing at the hands of this Government. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, intervened, and it was helpful, to say that an exemption would cost—£1.83 million or was it billion?
Lord Scriven (LD)
I was pointing out that the average salary bill of a hospice is £1.8 million.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
That is the average salary bill, so the noble Lord is right that an increase in the employment allowance would not absorb all the extra costs.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Obviously, for smaller bodies, the employment allowance is, as the Minister has said on several occasions, helpful because it alleviates the cost of the changes. Therefore, looking at the employment allowance is another way of coming at the issue, which is one of the reasons why we have put it forward for discussion.
Despite the fact that many hospices provide functions that would otherwise need to be provided by the NHS or social care, the Government have failed to recognise their importance and are instead taxing the hospices that the country relies on. Although hospices do not charge for their services, they receive only one-third of their funding from the Government and rely on charitable donations for the remainder of their income. This will place unnecessary and costly additional pressures on their finances at a time when demand for hospice care is growing. The Government seem to be unaware of the great help hospices provide and the fact that they reduce pressure on the NHS by providing services in a more efficient and effective way. There is a saving there to offset any cost.
While I am aware that the Minister claims that the already published impact note is enough, I have not heard another noble Lord agree with that. Although I am sure he will respond in a similar manner, the current note is simply not sufficient and does not include any impact assessment on the very businesses it is being imposed on. That is very concerning for hospices which do so much work to support the NHS and could well be bankrupted by this Government’s decision to introduce the jobs charge. The charity for children’s hospices, Together for Short Lives, has estimated that this tax rate will cost an additional £133,966 for every children’s hospice. That is an extraordinarily high number for a sector that is not profit-orientated, and I am concerned about that impact. Although I welcome the £100 million in funding that the Government have announced for hospice improvements, that money will not help with the staffing costs that these hospices will now face.
As my noble friend Lady Monckton said, hospices are life affirming and give wide support beyond the patients in the hospices to the families in their grief. They are a vital part of the palliative care system, as I hope the Minister will agree. I think that the Government will be blamed if hospices go into a downward spiral as a result of these extra costs in April. They should look again at some way of helping them, whether it is an exemption, a delay, a change to the employment allowance or some form of compensation. It is an important matter that we should address in this Committee.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I will address Amendments 29 and 41. I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. I acknowledge the powerful contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest; I listened very carefully to all the points that she and other noble Lords made.
As I noted in a previous sitting of this Committee, it is important to recognise that all charities, including hospices, can benefit from the employment allowance, which this Bill more than doubles, from £5,000 to £10,500. This will benefit charities of all sizes, particularly the smallest ones. The Government also provide wider support for charities, including hospices, via the tax regime. This tax regime is among the most generous in the world, with tax reliefs for charities and their donors worth just over £6 billion for the tax year to April 2024.
On the specific point made by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, the situation whereby independent contractors, including primary care providers, social care providers, charities and nurseries, will not be supported with the costs arising from these changes is exactly the same as with the changes to employer national insurance rates under the previous Government’s plan for the health and social care levy.
This Government have provided a real-terms increase of 3.5% in core local government spending power for 2025-26, including £880 million of new grant funding provided to social care. This funding can be used to address the range of pressures facing the adult social care sector. We are also supporting the hospice sector with an increase in funding of £100 million for adult and children’s hospices to ensure that they have the best physical environment for care—
Lord Scriven (LD)
Can the Minister confirm that the £100 million is capital and cannot be used for revenue?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
We are also providing an additional £26 million of revenue to support children and young people’s hospices.
As I have said previously, delaying commencement of the Bill would reduce the revenue generated from it and require either higher borrowing, lower public spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. The Government carefully consider the impacts of all policies, of course, including the changes to employer national insurance. As I have also said previously, an assessment of the policy has already been published by HMRC in its tax information and impact note.
Further, the OBR’s economic and fiscal outlook sets out the expected macroeconomic impact of the changes. The Government and the OBR have therefore already set out the impacts of this policy change. This approach is in line with previous changes to national insurance and to taxation. The Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments.
In the light of the points I have made, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the thoughtful contributions to this debate from my noble friends Lady Sater, Lord Leigh and Lord Swire. I note the contribution on Amendment 41 in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. All I can say is that I urge the Minister to consider carefully the amendments we have been debating and to acknowledge the essential services provided by the hospice sector. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Altrincham
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for retail.
Lord Altrincham (Con)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 30 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest and to support Amendment 51 in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.
Amendment 30 would delay the commencement of Clause 2 until an impact assessment had been published fully to assess the impact this tax will have on the retail sector, and Amendment 51 increases the employment allowance to £20,000 for that sector.
Retail is important because so many people work in it, not people on average or in aggregate in a Treasury forecast, but hundreds of thousands of individuals, some young, some in their first job, some working part time—as well as their families, their neighbourhoods and their customers—where they bring joy to themselves and to others every day. We know that this Bill will lead to job losses.
When the national insurance increase was first announced, there was an expectation, perhaps a hope, that the cost would be met by price rises or other changes rather than by job losses, but as the weeks have gone by, we know that the increase is being funded by job losses. That is why this impact assessment question is important because part of the impact is happening already. From the initial announcement to today, we already know that the policy is being funded by job losses, so the Bill is creating policy-driven unemployment. All of us in this Room share a little in the responsibility for this, but we should at least be very careful in our actions when we know that the cost will be unemployment.
As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, and others have said, we might hope that jobs will be created elsewhere. We must surely, on all sides of this debate, hope for job creation, but that does not change the short-term impact of job losses. Equally, we might hope for productivity improvements—say, the automation of retail—which is important anyway, as the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, mentioned, but not, alas, if we can help it, at the cost of job losses.
To go back to what my noble friend Lord Leigh was talking about, to where the estimates at best are for those of us who are not in the Treasury, very roughly, it looks as if in retail the national insurance hike could easily lead to a 5% reduction in headcount, and if retail is of the order of 2 million or 3 million people, we could quite quickly get unemployment just from retail of 200,000. If you add a couple of hundred thousand from other areas, we are on the way to half a million job losses that could come from this policy. There was an expression earlier on about what is in scope in taxation and in the tax take. What is in scope here are individuals who will lose their jobs—unemployment is in scope. There are direct impacts on job losses.
The value of our retail sector cannot be understated. In 2024, retail sales in Great Britain were worth £500 billion, and 2.87 million people were employed in the sector: nearly 10% of all jobs in the British economy. That is therefore nearly 3 million people whose jobs will be put at risk due to this tax increase.
One of the great benefits of employment in the retail sector is that there is extraordinary element of flexibility, which allows a great number of young people to work in the sector. As has already been discussed in Committee, those who are paid the least will be affected the most. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, mentioned earlier that the cost impact on part-time and often very young workers is a 13% increase. This paints a bleak picture for our young people in the sector. Young people are already a more vulnerable group of people, and I am highly concerned that this tax increase will only paint a bleaker picture for young people trying to enter the job market.
The reduction of the threshold at which employers begin to pay employer’s national insurance to £5,000 will hit part-time employees the most. Given that half of all retail employees are part time, the fact that this jobs tax will bring 1.45 million part-time retail employees into the bracket is a devastating result for a sector that often employs young people.
The retail sector has responded with outcries at this tax that will be imposed upon it, with 81 major retailers writing to the Chancellor expressing concern over the impact the tax will have on the sector that typically operates with a 3% to 5% profit margin. In a survey done by the British Retail Consortium, 56% of chief financial officers said they would reduce the number of hours and overtime they offered their employees. This is why this is a jobs tax because businesses will be forced to cut costs in order to continue, and as such, it will hit workers the most.
I am concerned not only about the impact this tax raid will have on workers but about the impact consumers will face given the survey I mentioned above, where 67% of retailers responded that they would be forced to raise prices.
We in this Room are all aware of the impact that this tax increase will have and of the inevitable factor of creating unemployment. I look forward to hearing from other noble Lords on this issue, and I beg to move.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend and his amendment, which is important. If the Minister will forgive me, we hear the same reply all the time. I do not think that HMRC’s figures, the Budget assessment or the OBR figures that we were given in November or December provide adequate information to sectors facing huge job losses. They need to plan ahead, and these assessments may spur the Government if it is written down in black and white that these jobs will go.
The economist Liam Halligan pointed out in his weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend that, according to S&P’s bellwether PMI index of business leaders, firms are cutting jobs at the fastest rate since the financial crisis. He writes that there was a 47,000 drop in payroll employees in December, the biggest monthly fall since lockdown. Those figures were tallied after Sainsbury’s announced 3,000 job losses. At the same time, he wrote that personal insolvencies in England and Wales were up by 14% in 2024, with a huge spike after the Budget. UK company liquidations surged. In 2024, 3,230 companies were shut down under the courts.
Last week, I mentioned the impact on the retail sector. I will not go through it, but it is estimated that as a result of the Budget entirely, which includes the NIC costs, £7 billion will go out of the retail sector. Those figures are staggering. I cannot accept the Government’s blithe assessment. I know that the Minister is sticking to the Treasury line with the statement that the impact assessments published so far are in line with what has been published in the past. We are dealing with a different sort of measure in this NIC Bill. I have been in the House of Lords only since November 2022, but it is the first time in my experience here that we have faced a measure where it is clear to all concerned that there will be job losses on a significant scale. Surely, that should spur the Government to want to provide some kind of impact breakdown for the different sectors, whether they are the charitable, voluntary or caring sectors or in the only area where we will see growth, the private sector. If the Chancellor is so convinced and she and the Government are keen and will produce growth, they should recognise that this will come from the private sector. It does not come from growing the public sector. I hope the Minister will support or think again, as my noble friend proposes, on retail.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, again, we discussed this area extensively over the first two days in Committee. I particularly recommend to the Committee the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough. The Government have put in place protection for microbusinesses. I think the calculation by the noble Lord was right, basically, that it is up to about seven employees. His proposals would put in significant protection for small businesses, those just up from micro and those potentially at the beginning of scale-up, which we need so much in this area. The noble Lord is now in his place, and I am delighted to make those comments in his presence.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 51 and I support Amendment 30 in the name of my noble friend Lady Monckton, presented by my noble friend Lord Altrincham, who started by drawing attention to the very substantial number of people we are talking about in retail—hundreds of thousands of people—and the problems they are facing. As my noble friend Lady Lawlor said, jobs are being cut at the fastest rate since the financial crisis. This is a grim situation.
My Amendment 51 probes whether the Government would be willing to increase the employment allowance from £10,500 to £20,000 to offer support to the smallest businesses in the retail sector at a modest cost to the Exchequer. As my noble friend Lord Altrincham noted, our retail sector is invaluable in terms of the value it creates for our economy. In 2023, retail accounted for 4.7% of the UK’s total economic output, worth more than £110 billion. Much of this value added was in small shops, from barbers and hairdressers to farm shops. For every £1 spent in 2024, 30p was spent in food shops and 11p in clothing shops. Retail accounts for at least 50% of spending in Britain, but despite that, this Government—unlike the previous Labour Government, I have to say—appear not to understand the value that this sector provides to our economy and the jobs that it provides, particularly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, for part-time workers on low pay.
There have been warnings from a range of sources about the devastating impact of this tax raid on workers, who will face fewer pay rises or fewer working hours, and on businesses, which will be forced to raise prices in order to maintain their business. The British Chambers of Commerce warned that more than half of firms intended to raise prices in response to these tax hikes, and we have had a detailed analysis from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, a non-food retailer. He acknowledged that price rises or job losses in the food sector and food stores might be worse because of the lower margins in that part of the industry. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, referenced the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough. It is good to see him back. He also tabled an amendment in a previous sitting which I very much supported.
There is further evidence that the Government have to think again, and there is an array of ways of doing so. I hope that, before Report, the Government will sit down, think about the devastating effects of these changes and consider whether there are ways, small or large, of alleviating their impact on many sectors of the economy and of social enterprise, which we will come on to discuss again.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 30, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest, and moved by the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, seeks to prevent commencement of the Bill until an impact assessment is published for the retail sector. Delaying commencement of the Bill would reduce the revenue generated from it and require either higher borrowing, lower public spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. The Government carefully consider the impacts of all policies, including the changes to employer national insurance.
As I have said previously, an impact assessment of the policy has been published by HMRC in its tax information and impact note. Further, the OBR’s economic and fiscal outlook sets out the expected macroeconomic impact of the changes to employer national insurance contributions. The Government and the OBR have therefore already set out the impacts of the policy change. This approach is in line with previous changes to national insurance and to taxation, and the Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments.
Amendment 51, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, seeks to increase the employment allowance for those employed in the retail sectors. The Government are taking action as part of the Bill to protect the smallest businesses by increasing the employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,500. This means that next year, 865,000 employers will pay no national insurance at all, and more than half of employers will see no change or will gain overall from this package. This means that employers will be able to employ up to four full-time workers on the national living wage and pay no employer national insurance.
The Budget also set out further steps that the Government are taking to strengthen small businesses’ ability to invest and grow, including in the retail sector. This includes freezing the small business multiplier, permanently reducing business tax rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties from 2026-27, and publishing the Corporate Tax Roadmap to provide stability and certainty within the tax system for businesses across the economy.
Increasing the employment allowance for specific sectors would add additional complexity to the tax system and, by adding further spending pressures, would require higher borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. In light of the points I have made, I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment and other noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
The Minister helpfully said in his opening remarks that not doing this would mean that the Government would have to increase borrowing, reduce spending or increase taxes. Yesterday—I think—I tried to be helpful by suggesting to him that there is a way of raising further revenue by amending the digital services tax to make it effective and looking at VAT on imported goods below £135. Since then, the American Government have announced that they are looking to put import taxes on goods below £135 imported from China, and the Times reported that the digital services tax was being looked at again.
In this context, will my noble friend, or rather the Minister—I beg his pardon; as he knows, I already regard him as a noble friend—reconsider what other options there might be to replace the areas of taxation which noble Peers on this side of the Committee have expressed concerns about?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments and very happy to be his noble friend once again. As he knows, the Government keep all taxation under review, and I will take his submissions as representations on that matter.
Lord Altrincham (Con)
Perhaps we should not offer the Minister any more taxation ideas because we are trying to rein him in at the moment and, obviously, VAT is very much in scope and is coming next, so perhaps we should just hold back. But I thank him for his response and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for hospitality.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 31, in my name, would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for hospitality. I have spoken to several organisations in this sector and the message is clear: His Majesty’s Government have differentiated between larger and smaller businesses, making smaller businesses exempt, but larger businesses could have their profitability wiped out. As I said in the debate, the Government should have considered the mix of the labour bill on a company’s P&L and tiered the increase to relieve the pressure on high-labour, low-margin businesses, such as hospitality.
Companies are proposing to increase tariffs and pass on increases to their clients. This will bring its own problems. Bearing in mind that we have just managed to stabilise inflation, this will bring a cycle of increased prices. Companies are already getting signals from their supply chains that prices will increase due to the NI changes, so the spiral will continue. Meanwhile, growth plans are being reduced, new job opportunities are being cut and restructuring and redundancies are already under way. The people I spoke to saw no opportunity to grow their business and therefore the economy, and this is creating huge risk and pressure for businesses. They say that they are going to be so busy negotiating price increases and restructuring that they will have no time to address their strategic priorities. One business told me that it would significantly reduce the amount of capital it would have been spending in the year ahead, as it is unable now to justify the level of return. It is also reviewing labour costs to find efficiency savings to offset the cost increase. Prices for customers will increase, which will probably result in customers spending less, which will increase the pressure on businesses to reduce hours further to offset the volume decline. Entry level jobs, as we have heard already today, will simply disappear.
I had an email from someone who owns three hotels, and she gave me three examples of the effect that this will have. An over-21 year-old full-time kitchen porter having an increase of 50p per hour would mean that his salary would increase by £1,040 to £26,520 and the employer’s NI will increase by £818. A 21 year-old gardener with an increase of £1 an hour would increase his salary by £2,080 to £27,000, and his national insurance will also increase by £818. A part-time waitress over 21 with an increase of 50p an hour will have a total pay increase of £416 and the employer’s national insurance will increase by £690. So, across just three staff members, the extra salary is £3,536 and the extra national insurance is £2,477. When you consider that she employs 198 staff members across three hotels, the increase is huge. As she put it to me, “This is absolutely terrifying for us, as we simply cannot increase our prices to the same extent”.
I then spoke to James Chiavarini, who runs a long-established family restaurant in London, Il Portico. He said, “It is difficult to overstate how much hospitality helps our country by providing skills, training and employment to thousands of people, many of them neurodiverse, who want to work, want to contribute, but are not a natural fit for a 9 to 5 office job”. This is what we do at Team Domenica. We train people with a wide range of learning disabilities who want to work in this sector. With this new threshold, we know already that it will be so much harder to place them. James also said, “All the proposed increases will do is drive more businesses to close, create more unemployment and an even bigger benefit burden on the creaking state”. I will edit, for the sake of propriety and decency, his final sentence. “It’s a policy dreamt up by public servants who have never once in their lives taken on a risk to open a business, employ a struggling or vulnerable teen, or even work over a weekend”. Amendment 31 is important because jobs in the hospitality sector will disappear and restaurants, cafes and even hotels will be forced to close. I beg to move.
Baroness Fleet (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest’s Amendment 31. My noble friend is a tireless and brave campaigner in the charity sector, and she has spoken so movingly today about this Bill.
I declare my interests as listed in the register. I am a council member of Arts Council England and the chair and co-founder of the London Music Fund, a charity that provides music scholarships for talented children from low-income, disadvantaged backgrounds.
I have not previously spoken on this Bill but, as a passionate supporter of the arts and creative industries, I speak today for one very good reason: the national insurance increase will be devastating for the arts, which are, of course, great contributors to the hospitality and tourism sectors. Even Sir Nicholas Hytner, probably the greatest director of his generation, has said that this Government are doing more harm than good. Artistic enterprises will fold. Theatres, arts venues, museums, orchestras, music charities, conservatoires and dance and opera companies are all reeling as they work out exactly what the impact will be. The National Theatre, for example, reckons that it faces an annual bill of £1.1 million in addition to the minimum wage rise.
A report in The Stage newsletter recently calculated the overall impact on theatres. The cost averages out at about £100,000 per theatre, with the double whammy of NI and minimum wage. The Theatre Trust estimates that there are more than 1,100 theatres across the UK. Thus, a conservative estimate is a cut of £100 million to UK theatre, spread across the subsidised and commercial sectors. As Alistair Smith writes in The Stage, if the Government had instead announced a cut of £100 million to theatre funding at the Budget,
“the entire sector would be up in arms”.
Indeed, every budget is being revised and the reality is hitting home: smaller casts, fewer risks to be taken, redundancies and lower employment levels.
The Society of London Theatre estimates that 40% of theatres and performing arts venues are at risk of closure over the next five years. The larger arts venues will be clobbered by national insurance bills: £750,000 for the Southbank Centre; more than £1.5 million for the Royal Opera House; and £280,000 for the Opera North company. Two-thirds of museums are concerned about funding shortfalls. Think of the tourists who go to our great museums every year. So much for growth, levelling up and supporting the arts. Music services central to the delivery of music education to primary and secondary schools will, according to Music Mark, be hit by a bill of around £7.5 million.
This Government once trumpeted their support for the arts—how that was welcomed—but now we know that those soothing words were empty and meaningless. All arts charities slog away at raising funds from generous donors, and now some of that hard-won cash will just go into the Treasury’s coffers. This is money that was raised in the expectation of supporting creativity, access for low-income audiences and children, and so much more. This Government are no friend of the arts. It is a shameful betrayal.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, again, in the first two days we had an extensive discussion of the hospitality, leisure and tourism sectors. Once again, we stress the importance of tackling part-time work as a mechanism to keep these sectors from suffering the full impact of the Government’s changes, so I will not repeat that for about the fourth time today. We continue to be of the view that simply talking about impact assessments and employment allowances do not get us where we need to be. I am afraid that this is an issue of exemption, and the noble Lord knows that on part-time work, I feel very much that we should be reducing employers’ national insurance contributions.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I rise to briefly support Amendments 31 and 49 in relation to the hospitality sector. As we have already learned in the two previous days of Committee, there is great resistance to having the full impact assessments we are calling for, specifically in relation to these national insurance contribution increases. Perhaps that is not surprising when you look at the impact on the hospitality sector.
I will simply share one anecdote on the experience of one independent publican, who is employing 20 part-time workers. They typically work 20 hours of shifts at £15 per hour, therefore earning £300 per week on average. This publican’s bill for national insurance contributions will increase by 73%. As we know, the real problem here is dropping the threshold so severely as to create not just a punishing but an excessively regressive tax, hitting hospitality and SMEs at the margin during their delicate stages of growth or survival.
In this case, how is the publican going to respond? These are his choices: reduce the headcount; reduce the number of hours worked by the part-time workers; reduce the number of hours that his pub can remain open; and, where possible, increase prices. All of those are very damaging to the Government’s No.1 economic mission of growth, and potentially damaging for inflation, but particularly damaging to jobs and part-time workers who rely on those jobs. Typically, we are talking about the young and the old. I again support others in saying that this is a reckless act. To push these measures through without conducting a proper assessment strikes me as economically ruinous.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 49, and I support Amendment 31 in the name of my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest. The fact is that, as we have also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, we need an impact assessment here as well so that we can assess where to make changes and what impact this jobs tax is having.
My Amendment 49, along with others that I have tabled, would increase the employment allowance from £10,500 to £20,000. This sector, which is so important to our day-to-day life and to our tourist industry, is full of part-time workers and the lowest paid will suffer a tsunami from the NICs changes. We need to find a way of alleviating the pain, and my amendment is one such proposal.
It is a particular pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, to the Committee and to hear her evidence of the impact on the arts. She is right that the creative industries and hospitality are integrally linked, but I was equally concerned to hear about the impact on museums, theatres and other aspects of the creative arts. She is also right that, on this evidence, the Government are no friend of the arts; that should be of concern to the Committee.
My noble friend Lady Monckton was right to talk of the spiral of price increases, the diversionary pressure on management, the impact on capital investment and the effect on jobs, especially the lowest level jobs. They are particularly hit by the double whammy, as I have said already today, of the changes in NICs and the national minimum wage, which will particularly bite younger people. For good reasons, the national minimum wage for younger people has been increased, but that is making a particular difficulty in terms of hiring them, which I fear we shall see in the results in the coming months.
I have further evidence about hospitality, which I think some local papers may be interested in, so I will run through it because it is important. There have been calls from across the sector about how damaging the tax will be. Restaurateur Tom Kerridge, despite backing Labour at the election, has expressed concern that this tax raid will have “a catastrophic effect”. He said that it would cost,
“£850 extra per member of staff per year”
and have a reaction into a negative process in terms of employment. He also said:
“This is a very difficult time for hospitality, because the next few weeks are particularly busy. They give a false sense of feeling that everything is okay … it’s going to have a catastrophic effect, moving into the new year”.
He said that just before Christmas, and things have got worse.
On top of that, UKHospitality said that the national insurance increase at the Budget will lead to business closures and job losses within a year. It said that
“the changes to the NICs threshold are not just unsustainable for our businesses, they are regressive in their impact on lower earners and will impact flexible working practices which many older workers and parents rely on. Unquestionably, they will lead to business closures and to job losses within a year”.
I was particularly pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, about his new evidence on pubs. The British Institute of Innkeeping, which has warned that the Budget will see 75% of pubs cut hours, thinks that 40% will reduce opening times and that one in three will make staff redundant. It said:
“The Budget, billed to support working people, will pull the rug out from under these already fragile small businesses and significantly reduce the employment opportunities they can provide. 75% will cut staff hours, 40% will reduce opening hours and 1-in-3 will make staff redundant”.
This will have an extraordinarily damaging impact on the sector and the economy.
More than 200 leading restaurant, pub and hotel companies including Stonegate, Greene King, Wetherspoons and Young’s wrote to the Chancellor warning that the Budget will cost the industry £3.4 billion a year. They said:
“As leaders of hospitality businesses, we are compelled to highlight our grave fears about the impact of the Budget, particularly relating to the Employer NICs threshold. Alongside the changes to the national minimum wage levels this will cost hospitality—at a conservative estimate—£3.4 billion a year”.
I would be grateful if the Minister would provide an actual number.
Finally, Simon Emeny, chief executive of Fuller’s, which owns about 400 pubs and hotels and employs almost 5,000 people, said he was “just utterly disappointed” by the Chancellor’s choices. He claimed they “disproportionately” impacted hospitality, which is a big employer of young people and part-time workers.
These are real impacts and the Government’s changes are disproportionately affecting mainly small and vibrant businesses such as these. The biggest hit is from the decrease in the threshold, which could be phased in. Alternatively, the Government could help smaller businesses by increasing the employment allowance, as I have also suggested. I simply urge the Government to act.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I will address the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest, which seeks to prevent commencement of this Bill until an impact assessment is published for the hospitality sector. Delaying commencement of this Bill would reduce the revenue generated from it and require either higher borrowing, lower public spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. The Government, of course, carefully consider the impacts of all policies, including the changes to employer national insurance.
As I have said before, an assessment of the policy has been published by HMRC in its tax information and impact note. Further, the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook sets out the expected macroeconomic impact of the changes to employer national insurance contributions. The Government and the OBR have therefore already set out the impacts of the policy change. This approach is in line with previous changes to national insurance and to taxation, and the Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments.
I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lady, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, which seeks to increase the employment allowance for those employed in the hospitality sectors. The Government are taking action as part of this Bill to protect the smallest businesses by increasing the employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,500. This means that next year, 865,000 employers will pay no employer national insurance at all; more than half of employers see no change, or gain overall, from this package. The specific data the noble Baroness requested is not broken down in the way she asks for.
Increasing the employment allowance for specific sectors would add additional complexity to the tax system, and adding further spending pressures would require higher borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. In light of these points, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con)
I am grateful for all the thoughtful contributions to this debate and, in particular, to my noble friend Lady Fleet for her impassioned defence of the arts sector, and to the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, for standing up for pubs. In particular, I note the contribution on Amendment 49 in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.
I urge the Minister to consider the amendments we have been debating and to understand the impact on the livelihoods provided by those in the hospitality industry. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I simply want to ask the Minister whether he had changed his view. The impact note came out in November. It was probably drafted based on data relating to before then, when it was far from clear what changes these national insurance measures would precipitate. What we have seen—we have heard from a working retailer today—is that this is having a depressing effect on confidence and jobs across the country. I hope that, before Report, the Minister will reflect on that and give us some assurance as to how the negative effects, which will affect his prime mission of growth, can be dealt with and alleviated.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for community pharmacies.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to contribute to this, the third day of Committee on this very important Bill. I say at the outset to the Minister and noble Lords that, again, this is a commencement amendment and does not seek in any meaningful way a permanent exemption to this jobs tax. It is merely an opportunity for the Government to think again, based on up-to-date and more contemporary empirical evidence, so that they can study properly a full impact assessment, as the Bill has an impact on a very important part of the healthcare sector: community pharmacies.
The Minister will know that there is significant concern across the whole NHS and the wider healthcare sector about the implications of these fiscal changes for community pharmacies. The figures produced by Community Pharmacy England suggest that these changes alone will generate an extra burden, an extra encumbrance, on community pharmacies of approximately £50 million, even with the changes in the employment allowance. If you strip out the employment allowance, the figure is approximately £74 million. If you add the two other cumulative factors to these fiscal changes, the encumbrance for community pharmacies is going to be very heavy.
Of course, on its own, we welcome the rise in the national minimum wage—we believe that low-paid people should be paid more and have a decent standard of living—but, remember, these burdens are falling on a particular part of the community. This will mean an extra cost of anything between £115 million and £152 million per annum, according to Community Pharmacy England. If you also add in the reduction in the business rates relief as it impacts on operating costs, the overall, universal impact on community pharmacies will be in the region of £200 million—that is, one-fifth of £1 billion.
Let us remember what community pharmacies are: an adjunct to the NHS, in that they are a neighbourhood health service. I accept that Governments have to make tough decisions; in fact, my own party, when it was in government, was not able to support community pharmacies to the level that we would have liked. There has been a real-terms reduction in pharmacy funding from central government since 2015. The lowest number of pharmacies are now open to the public at any time since 2009, which is 16 years ago: 1,250 pharmacies have closed since 2017. What we are talking about today is a policy decision that has at its heart the very viability of this sector.
As noble Lords will know, doctors and dentists are able to defray the costs of their non-domestic rates by direct reimbursement from the National Health Service. That is not the case with pharmacies; in fact, 90% of pharmacies’ work contracts are for NHS reasons and projects, such as dispensing advice and consultancy—principally dispensing.
Let us think about what community pharmacies do for their local communities. They are a lifeline. Flu immunisation, smoking cessation, sexual health services, alcohol misuse interventions, substance misuse services, healthy lifestyles, diet and nutrition, and generic health education—these are all vital functions that community pharmacies carry out. They take a sizeable burden off NHS acute hospital trusts—clinical commissioning groups as was—and, of course, primary care facilities.
They cannot put their prices up. Because they are locked into contractual arrangements, which are fixed, they cannot pass the costs on to the consumer. Often, they cannot make cuts in staffing or the services offered, or make redundancies, without in effect closing the facility—or at least hugely reducing the service that they deliver. They have, over the past 10 or so years, increased service delivery massively. They will put most public services to shame in terms of delivery of productivity in that period; indeed, they are the safety valve for the NHS.
We on this side of the Room are asking not for special favours or for the policy to be junked but for an opportunity for the Government to think again about the special circumstances of community pharmacies. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe made an important point: the impact note that the Minister prayed in aid is out of date. I do not think that it has the up-to-date, topical data that it should have for the Government to properly consider, with the evidence available, the policy.
Incidentally, I should tell your Lordships that, naturally, I support the other amendments in this group: the employment allowance variation amendments, in respect of dentists and doctors, and, of course, Amendment 46 on pharmacies especially.
To conclude, this is about using an evidence-based analysis to create an impact assessment; to review the policy, at least; to inform the fairest and most sensible policy formulation; and to protect the interests of a vital part of our healthcare sector. If we do not do that, it will have a major impact on very vulnerable people who are NHS patients and who use the important services of community pharmacies. For that reason, I ask your Lordships to support this amendment and beg to move.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment on pharmacies. We must think of the impact. I have spoken to those who have been impacted already and worry that there is an impact not just on community pharmacies, which employ more pharmacists, but on small providers. When we look at what happens in towns and villages across the country, we see that, when a pharmacy closes down, elderly people, families and people looking for their prescriptions have to take a bus and go somewhere else. The impact on town centres of this sort of change can be quite significant. We have 3,560 independent pharmacies today.
In all of our debates today, we have spoken about the impact on each sector and how it might be alleviated, with amendment after amendment proposed from these Benches and from the Liberal Democrats, who spoke earlier in Committee. Barring retail and hospitality, today’s groups of amendments cover what are usually called public services. They are provided by independent providers. Some, such as the early years and hospice sectors, are charitable as well as independent. If they do not provide these services, there will be greater costs to the taxpayer, and they will do so in a much more bureaucratic and less person-sensitive way. The quality will go down and the cover will be broader; in fact, it will not meet the kind of person-to-person approach that we see offered by many independent providers.
I support my noble friend Lord Jackson because we are talking about people and their jobs: 80,000 pharmacists were employed in 2023-24. As well as them, we are thinking of pharmaceutical technicians, of which there are 34,300. These are real people and real jobs, and they are on top of the jobs that we have spoken about day in and day out in this Committee. I implore the Government and the Minister to think about what happens when people’s jobs go: not only do we as communities lose the services that are vital and which we have spoken about; we see an impact on our streets and our communities, and we increase the cost to the taxpayer—that will go further, in addition to the high hike in borrowing and the tax rises that the Government intend. We will see the further damage that will be caused to the economy. I implore the Government to think again.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I wish to speak to the amendments in this group; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for introducing it. I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I am the vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pharmacy, so this issue is close to my heart.
The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, aptly outlined the pressure that community pharmacists are under at the moment and the issues that they face. He also mentioned a lot of facts and figures from Community Pharmacy England and the National Pharmacy Association, which have outlined the impact that these national insurance contributions will have on community pharmacy. The reason an impact assessment will not work is that the data is already out there, in terms of data from the industry itself. On average, every week, 10 community pharmacists are closing. There is a crisis in community pharmacy, which means that pharmacy after pharmacy in communities up and down this country can no longer survive and is falling by the wayside. An impact assessment would be useful only to reiterate the information that is already out there from the industry; it will not stop organisations falling by the wayside every single week.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 44, 45 and 46 and to Amendment 34 in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I agree with everything that he said.
Primary care facilities have been hung out to dry. The Government have already acknowledged that the NHS should be exempted from the jobs tax. It is unfortunate that they have made the bizarre decision not to include other healthcare providers, such as GPs, pharmacies and dentists, which serve the same purpose as NHS providers.
We need to get to the bottom of two issues: first, why GPs, pharmacies and dental practices have not been included, as the NHS has, in the exemptions from the increase in employer national insurance contributions; and, secondly, why GPs, pharmacies and dentists will not benefit from any increase in the employment allowance.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury told BBC “Question Time” in November:
“GP surgeries are privately-owned partnerships, they’re not part of the public sector”,
and
“they will therefore have to pay”.
However, GPs are recognised as public authorities in existing law, such as the Freedom of Information Act 2000. They may be privately owned partnerships, but that does not reflect how they operate. Not only that but because they are legally classed as public authorities, they will not be eligible for the increased employment allowance, so they will have to pay the full national insurance increase.
Section 2(1) of the National Insurance Contributions Act 2014 states:
“A person cannot qualify for an employment allowance for a tax year if, at any time in the tax year, the person is a public authority which is not a charity”.
Section 2(2) defines a public authority as
“any person whose activities involve, wholly or mainly, the performance of functions (whether or not in the United Kingdom) which are of a public nature”.
GP surgeries, whether they are privately owned partnerships or not, exclusively provide NHS services: their activities wholly involve the performance of public functions. The Minister confirmed last week that the employment allowance does not apply to charities, which my research confirms. Does he agree that the allowance should apply to these other vital services—pharmacies, dentists and GPs? That would be a simple change. Previous Conservative Governments recognised this. We fully funded and offset any increases in employment costs for GPs; this is acknowledged by the British Medical Association.
Given that the Institute of General Practice Management, which represents GP practice managers, estimates that the jobs tax will cost the average GP practice around £20,000 a year, it is all the more vital that we offset these costs by allowing GPs to receive the employment allowance, preferably at an increased rate of £20,000, as my amendment suggested. It may not be much but it might help with non-GP staff in surgeries, in pharmacies and in dentists. I am looking all the time at changes and concessions that might not cost the Government too much, but I do not get the feeling that the Government understand the difficulties that some of these sectors are in.
It is not just GPs that will suffer. Community Pharmacy England estimates the cost, as I think we already heard, at £50 million in total. That is part of the treble whammy that we heard about from my noble friend Lord Jackson. I am especially concerned about this because of the impact of these changes across the private-sector end of healthcare, because its work makes life easier for NHS services, reducing pressure on A&E and on other public health services.
I spoke to a local pharmacist yesterday. He is a worried man. He believes that when the new NICs charges come through, he will have too little left at the end of the period to invest in his shop and his vaccine services. So, he will be lacking the crucial application of capital to keep the business up to date and serviceable. He will also look to reduce hours. At present, he is open early and late, providing a superb service to the local community—indefatigable, as he was through Covid. I have to say that the pharmacy in my local Wiltshire village is already closing on Saturday, and it is a half-hour drive to another or to the local A&E. Multiply these types of decision by the hundreds of thousands of pharmacies, dentists and GP surgeries across the country, and you can see that the Government’s failure to compensate for the NICs increases is an act of self-harm. Can the Minister therefore confirm that, as a minimum, the Government will include GPs, pharmacies and dentists, who provide NHS services for the public benefit, in the employment allowance?
Lord Scriven (LD)
Just for absolute clarity, community pharmacists can claim the employment allowance. Of the other two services the noble Baroness mentioned, GPs cannot but dentists can if their NHS work is below 50%. It is important that we get that absolutely correct for the record.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I was actually asking the question about this, as we did on charities. The Minister confirmed the position very helpfully last time, and I am asking him to clarify the position and look positively at trying to extend this. I am delighted that some community pharmacies get the employment allowance and would like to see it increased to alleviate difficulties in the sorts of small chemists I was talking about. If we can find another way, I would be delighted as well, but this 50% rule seems a bit odd, and I wonder whether the Minister could clarify or have a look at it. Frankly, it was very good to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, in view of his role in community pharmacies, and, more worryingly, to learn from him just how many pharmacies are closing. When I was in retail and we had pharmacies, there was actually a battle to buy extra licences so that more pharmacies could be opened. If it is going in the other direction, that is not good news for our healthcare services, which we all care so much about.
I look forward to a positive response from the Minister on this important area, which is complicated.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I will address the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which seeks to prevent commencement of the Bill until an impact assessment is published for community pharmacies. Delaying its commencement would reduce the revenue generated from it and require either higher borrowing, lower public spending or alternative revenue-raising measures.
The Government carefully consider the impacts of all policies, including the changes to employer national insurance. As I have said before, an assessment of the policy has been published by HMRC in its tax information and impact note. Further, the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook sets out the expected macroeconomic impact of the changes to employer national insurance contributions. The Government and the OBR have therefore already set out the impacts of the policy change. This approach is in line with previous changes to national insurance and taxation and the Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments.
I turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, which seek to increase the employment allowance for those employed in primary care, including in GP surgeries, dentist surgeries and pharmacies. The distinction between those in the public sector who will be compensated and those who will not follows existing practice and is the same as the distinction that the previous Government used for their health and social care levy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, asked specifically about eligibility for the employment allowance. Eligibility is not determined by sector but depends on the make-up of an individual business’s work. HMRC guidance explains that this is based on whether an organisation is doing 50% or more of its work in the public sector. It is therefore down to individual organisations to determine their eligibility for any given year. The employment allowance was introduced in 2014 by the previous Government. This Government have not changed the eligibility rules on the employment allowance in any way, beyond removing the £100,000 threshold.
The revenue raised from the measures in the Bill will play a critical role in restoring economic stability and funding the NHS. As a result of measures in the Bill and the wider Budget measures, the NHS will receive over £20 billion extra over two years to deliver 40,000 extra elective appointments a week. Primary care providers—in general practice, dentistry, pharmacy and eyecare—are important independent contractors which provide nearly £20 billion-worth of NHS services. Every year, the Government consult each sector about what services it provides, and what money it is entitled to in return under its contract. As in previous years, this will be dealt with as part of that process.
The Government have announced a proposed £889 million uplift for general practice in 2025-26 and have set out the proposed areas of reform which will help us to deliver on our manifesto commitments. This is the largest uplift to GP funding since the beginning of the five-year framework and means that we are reversing the recent trend, with a rising share of total NHS resources going to general practice. We have started consulting with the General Practitioners Committee England of the British Medical Association on the 2025-26 GP contract and will consider a range of proposed policy changes. These will be announced in the usual way, following the close of the consultation later this year.
The Department of Health has entered into consultation with Community Pharmacy England regarding the 2024-25 and 2025-26 funding contractual framework. The final funding settlement will be announced in the usual way following this consultation. The NHS in England invests around £3 billion on dentistry every year. NHS pharmaceutical, ophthalmic and dental allocations for integrated care systems for 2025-26 have been published alongside NHS planning guidance.
In light of these points, I respectfully ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Scriven (LD)
Again, for the clarity of the record, the Minister has just said about GPs something which completely contradicts what it says on WWW.GOV.UK. It is about whether a GP practice can claim employment allowance. It says:
“There is no entitlement to the Employment Allowance, because the majority of the work done, is wholly or mainly of a public nature”.
Since it says on GOV.UK that GPs cannot claim the employment allowance, can the Minister write to the Committee to clarify the contradictions between the website and what he has just said in his answer?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I will happily write, because it is an important point and deserves clarification. Listening to what the noble Lord read out, I do not think the statements are contradictory, because the website is absolutely referring to the 50% or more point. I think it is drawing a conclusion from that, given that most of them are doing more than 50%, but I do not think they are contradictory.
Lord Scriven (LD)
I quote again exactly what it says, which is that
“there is no entitlement to the Employment Allowance”
for GPs. That is from “Eligibility for Employment Allowance: further employer guidance” on GOV.UK. It makes it clear that there is no entitlement to the employment allowance for GPs.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As I said, I am more than happy to write to clarify that. What it goes on to say suggests it is consistent with that. Perhaps that first sentence is incorrect but I will write to the Committee to clarify.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It would be helpful if the Minister clarified that. I am concerned about this backward-lookingness that tends to be a feature of our discussions, because we are trying to look forward and make sure that growth stops flatlining, so that this economy grows in the coming months and years. Saying that a particular rule on employment was laid down in the past and therefore that the Government are not going to change it is a mistake.
In this area, there is a lot of evidence of a problem. The NHS has been compensated for these steep increases. The private sector part of the health services sector, which I know the Minister’s Secretary of State and his advisers think can play an important part in the future, is being sold down the river. That seems to be a pity; we should take this opportunity to try and do something to improve things.
I withdraw my amendment—no, I have not moved it. Forgive me.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
People are withdrawing their amendments before even moving them.
If I could beg the indulgence of the Committee briefly, I wonder what the Liberal Democrats’ view on this policy is because I have a Liberal Democrat press release dated 16 December, entitled, “Liberal Democrats table amendment to exempt health and care providers from NICs hike”. Many Liberal Democrat MPs in the other place are quoted. I was not able to discern it in his remarks but is the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, against the whole policy with regard to community pharmacies and NICs, or just against the concept of doing a proper, thorough and robust empirical analysis and impact assessment?
Lord Scriven (LD)
I understand that the noble Lord may have had other appointments on day one in Committee, but if he had been here then he would have seen that we are totally against it. We gave explanations of how extra taxes could have been done.
While I am on my feet, just to clarify for the Minister, I have looked a bit further at the website and what he said is absolutely correct. The 90% that I was referring to was a specific example of a number of people employed.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that point. I am of course still happy to write, so that we have absolutely clarified the point.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
We have established that an epistle will be oncoming from the Minister to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I am glad he has clarified that. I just think—
Baroness Kramer (LD)
Perhaps I may interrupt. I really think it was appropriate that we did not remake the speeches that we made extensively on days one and two. I am sorry if people were unable to attend or contribute on those days, but it is not sensible for us to continuously repeat the same statements that we have made over and over again. We have tried to observe that, out of respect for the Committee, and an assumption that those who are interested in what we had to say would have looked at Hansard.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I think the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is rather tetchy about that. I am seeking clarification of the Liberal Democrat policy, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has given me a very clear explanation, for which I am inordinately grateful. Perhaps I can now move on to speak to my Amendment 34.
I heard the Minister and, notwithstanding what colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches have said, I still think that he did not adequately address the issue of the data and the response since the Budget on this particular policy with this particular healthcare sector. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe made a very cogent and valid point that it is not good enough to just keep saying, “We have no intention of publishing an impact assessment; that is the end of the debate”. That is not discharging the proper fiduciary duty of Ministers to make sure that they are pursuing the correct financial policies and know the impact they will have on individuals in the NHS and wider healthcare sector. That needs to be looked at again; perhaps it will be.
While I am on my feet, for the avoidance of doubt, I did attend on previous days in Committee. I was there, and I moved an amendment on day one, I think, should noble Lords want to read Hansard. With that caveat made, I feel duty bound to beg leave to withdraw my amendment, subject to further discussion on Report.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Brennan of Canton
Introduction: Lord Raval
Pension Fund Reliefs
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Altmann
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure the taxpayer spending on pension fund reliefs has a beneficial long-term impact on the United Kingdom’s economy and financial markets.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government published the interim report of the pensions investment review on 14 November. This report put forward a series of ambitious proposals to reform the UK pensions system. Together, these proposals could unlock around £80 billion of productive investment in infrastructure and fast-growing companies. The full report will be published in the spring ahead of legislation being introduced in the pension schemes Bill.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
I thank the noble Lord for his Answer. Can I press him a little on the £70 billion of taxpayers’ money that is going into people’s pensions every year, with absolutely no requirement for any of it to be placed into the UK or to revive the UK economy? We have a growth agenda, and a desperate need for long-term investment in assets that are very suitable for UK pension funds. Will the noble Lord agree to meet me to discuss ways in which we can encourage or incentivise more pension assets, and more of the taxpayer contribution, to boost our economy rather than all the others? All other major countries’ pension schemes have significant overweighting in their domestic markets, whereas ours have maybe 3% in UK equities.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. I take this opportunity to recognise her career-long commitment to improving outcomes for savers and investors. The announcements the Chancellor made at the Mansion House on the pensions review could unlock billions of pounds of additional investment, but of course, as the noble Baroness rightly said, it is not in any way guaranteed that this investment will take place in the domestic market. The Government share her concerns that UK pension funds are investing less in the domestic economy than overseas counterparts. There is also clear evidence of a sustained pattern of withdrawal by DC pension schemes from UK-listed equities for at least the last decade. That is why the pensions review is considering whether further interventions may be needed to ensure our reforms benefit UK growth. We will continue to work with the pensions industry to increase investment in UK markets. I look forward to continuing to work with the noble Baroness on these issues and of course I am very happy to meet her.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s recent announcement on measures to spur growth will increase the supply of infrastructure and productive investment for pension funds to invest in, but the fragmented nature of UK pension provision can hamper its ability to invest in such assets—in many instances, it cannot deal with the scale of investment required. Do the Government remain committed to addressing this capability problem as part of their strategy for growth?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for her question. I absolutely agree; there is international and industry consensus that scale and consolidation are beneficial to pension funds, driving economies of scale and efficiencies that can be passed back to savers and unlocking productive investment. That is what the Mansion House reforms seek to do. My noble friend talked about the ability of pension funds to invest in productive assets. That is what the infrastructure strategy and the industrial strategy are designed to do. I hope we will see more announcements along those lines at the time of the spending review.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I hear what the Minister says, but what steps are the Government taking to increase the supply of domestic infrastructure projects and other long-term investments in the UK economy that would meet the needs of pension funds’ trustees and investors? I hear from trustees that they would quite like to do some of this stuff but sometimes struggle to find suitable projects in which to invest. Are we not going backwards, with listed investment companies being killed off?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The answer to the last part of the noble Lord’s question is no. However, I very much agree with the analysis he set out in the rest of his question. Ensuring that there are investment opportunities for these assets to be invested in is a key part of our strategy, which is why we are producing the infrastructure strategy at the time of the spending review. I hope it will answer a lot of the noble Lord’s questions when it comes out.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Following the excellent question from the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, on pensions, I am not asking my noble friend the Minister to meet me, but I am asking him to have a look at the British ISA idea, whereby tax-free savings could be focused on British companies. I know that the Labour Party is keen on investment in British companies, as we all are. Will he look again and promote the idea of a British ISA?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am flattered to be referred to as the noble Lord’s noble friend, and I consider him to be a friend as well. I am more than happy to look at his ideas.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord—my noble friend—the Minister for his replies. Will he agree that the best thing that pension funds, both defined benefit and defined contribution, could do to support the British economy is pay adequate and secure pensions? What plans do the Government have to ensure that that is the case?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. I of course agree that adequacy is an absolutely essential part of the pensions landscape. That is what phase 2 of the pensions review is designed to look at. The scope and terms of reference for phase 2 will be published in due course, once we have made fuller progress with phase 1.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
Is the Minister aware that the resumption of investment flows into investment trusts requires investor confidence, including from pension funds, that the future regime will not repeat the mistakes of the past? How can that happen when the FCA consultation suggests reinstating aggregation of costs for investment trusts, which do not have consumer costs, and then not aggregating costs for ETFs, which do have such costs? Are the Government prepared to lose billions more over the next 18 months or more until the regulator gets it technically correct?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am aware of the issue that the noble Baroness raises, mainly because of her campaigning on it. I pay tribute to her and to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for their campaigning on this issue and for their Private Members’ Bills when we were in opposition, which I found extremely persuasive. I think we have made some progress since we have been in government. I regret that we are not able to go as far as the noble Baroness set out in her recent Private Member’s Bill right now, but we continue to review these issues and I thank her again for her campaigning.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, it is all very well to talk and review, but we face problems now. Do the Government intend to introduce extra incentives to encourage pension funds to invest in UK-listed shares and in domestic infrastructure?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Baroness talks of a sense of urgency, but, of course, she had 14 years to do something about this and did not. The previous Government never legislated for the reforms they brought forward. We are legislating for them. As I said, we are absolutely concerned that UK pension funds are investing less in the domestic economy, which is exactly why the pensions review is looking at the issue.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, one of the obligations on the trustees of pension funds is to get the best return for pensioners. Is the Minister resigned to the fact that, if we invest in British infrastructure, pensioners will be worse off as a result?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am not sure that the noble Lord should talk down the British economy in quite that way.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, for 2023, the cost of tax relief on pension contributions was £46.8 billion, and another £23.8 billion of relief was given on related national insurance contributions. Some 63% of the total tax relief went to 6 million higher and additional rate taxpayers, and only 37% went to 28.1 million basic rate taxpayers. By fixing the tax relief at 20% for everybody, the Government can not only reduce inequalities but have £14.5 billion a year surplus. Will the Minister consider this reform?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. He is correct that the Government spend around £70 billion annually on pension tax reliefs, because we want to encourage pension savings. That is why, for the vast majority of savers, pension contributions made from income during working life are tax free, and it is why, like many other countries, the UK exempts from tax the returns pension funds receive on the investments they make. Tax is not within the scope of the pensions review.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, one way of making pension funds better able to support British industry would be to amalgamate many of the smaller ones and increase their efficiency. I think this idea has already been mooted and discussed. Is there not a further thought that the large area of public service pensions, which are unfunded—not local government, which is funded—should be considered being made into funded pensions? Would that not also help to reinforce pensions’ contribution to our nation?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. He is absolutely right that consolidation and scale are key to the strategy behind the pensions review. I will certainly pass his ideas back to my honourable friend, the Pensions Minister.
UK–China Economic and Financial Strategy Dialogue
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Davidson of Glen Clova
To ask His Majesty’s Government what were the outcomes of the UK–China Economic and Financial Strategy Dialogue held in Beijing in January.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, the 2025 UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue was the first since 2019. The Chancellor was joined by the Governor of the Bank of England, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, and representatives from Britain’s financial services firms. The dialogue unlocked agreements worth £600 million over the next five years, and secured new agreements on vaccine approvals, fertiliser, whisky labelling, legal services, automotives, and accountancy. In financial services, co-operation was agreed in areas such as capital markets, pensions and sustainable finance. The Chancellor also raised areas of concern to the UK, including trade imbalances, economic security, Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, and human rights.
Lord Davidson of Glen Clova (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response. I congratulate the Government on breaking the hiatus in the dialogue, which lasted for a long period of five years. Does my noble friend agree with me that the UK indisputably has a world-class financial services industry, which has delivered one-third of the service exports to China? Will he outline what is proposed by the Government to strengthen the relationship between China and the UK in financial services?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for his question. He is right: this was the first economic and financial dialogue since 2019. The Chancellor was absolutely clear that we cannot ignore the fact that China is the second-largest economy worldwide, and our fourth-largest trading partner. He is right that financial services are the jewel in the crown of our relationship with China. That is why our financial services were the key focus of the Chancellor’s visit, which secured significant outcomes in terms of a new green bond, new commercial licences and quota allocations, the UK-China wealth connect, and capital markets and financial regulatory co-operation. That co-operation will continue and be strengthened.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, could the Minister tell us whether the dialogue included a discussion of BRICS Pay? This is the alternate payment system that the BRICS countries have created in order to be able to move away from SWIFT. Obviously, it assists sanctions- busting, and it potentially destabilises the global financial system. What discussions were held on BRICS Pay?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am aware of the issue raised by the noble Baroness, but I do not believe that discussions took place on that. The Government consider that it is up to each individual country to decide what international agreements it wants to be part of.
Baroness D’Souza (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister believe that there are any risks at all involved in importing large numbers of electronic vehicles manufactured in China, which would plug the gap in the falling number of Tesla vehicles that are being purchased in the UK?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The Government are committed to attracting investment into the UK to support our world-leading energy ambitions. Investment in the energy sector is subject to the highest levels of national security scrutiny, and we will not hesitate to use our powers to protect national security wherever we identify concerns.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, did His Majesty’s Government discuss with the Chinese authorities the imposition of 10% tariffs on Chinese exports by the United States?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
It is not for the UK to comment on US-China relations.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, what assessment have the Government made of the potential risks associated with increased economic engagement with China? What strategies are in place to safeguard against such vulnerabilities?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. We must, and will, continue to engage with our international partners on trade and investment to grow our economy, while ensuring that our security and values are not compromised. That means finding the right way to build a stable and balanced relationship with China, one that recognises the importance of co-operation and addressing the global issues that we face, competing where interests differ and challenging robustly where we must.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)
Given the global financial and AI sector impacts of DeepSeek, what discussions were had about IP exfiltration as part of the national security discussions that the Minister has mentioned?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am afraid that I am not aware of any such discussions.
Lord Sassoon (Con)
I note my interest as president of the China-Britain Business Council and as having other China interests. Does the Minister agree with me that in total there are some £40 billion of UK exports going to China each year, including to Hong Kong, and those support 400,000 UK jobs? While the EFD marks a very important re-engagement with China, will he confirm that there will be other ministerial engagements at the top level, including Trade Ministers, to support British business growth?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I agree with the point that he sets out in terms of the number of jobs that are supported by trade between our two countries. Yes, I think that further such ministerial engagements are planned. The Secretary of State for Business and Trade and the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero are both, I think, due to attend similar discussions.
Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister have any discomfiture at all about his Government going to China and begging for investment and trade while many parliamentarians in this Palace remain sanctioned by the Chinese regime?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I completely disagree with the noble Lord’s characterisation of the Chancellor’s visit to China. As I said, we must and will continue to engage with our international partners in trade and investment, and that includes engaging with China. We cannot ignore the fact that China is the second-largest economy worldwide and our fourth-largest trading partner, with exports supporting close to half a million jobs in the UK. We need to help British businesses export around the world, and that includes to China. On human rights and the parliamentary sanctions that the noble Lord talks about, the Chancellor did raise those—absolutely—but she believes that, unless we open that dialogue, we will be unable to raise the concerns that we have.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
Were there any discussions at all about the Chinese merchant fleet and the use of certain ships by the Russians as the shadow fleet—and also the £7 trillion worth of trade that goes through the South China Sea and is threatened by Chinese actions?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
Of course, I was not in the room, so I cannot entirely judge exactly whether those issues were raised—but certainly the Chancellor raised important issues of national security. She raised the concerns that the UK Government have about China, and Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, so the issues that my noble friend raises would have been very much at the forefront of their discussions.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
Does the Minister understand that the impact of fining our car companies huge sums for making vehicles that people want to buy, because they are not making sufficient electric cars, has the effect of handing our car industry to the Chinese, who are flooding the market with cheap electric cars—leading to the destruction of jobs throughout the Midlands and elsewhere?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I absolutely understand the point that the noble Lord raises. There are different priorities that we need to balance as we make policy and move forward. As he says, there is the industrial strategy priority of making sure that we have a competitive and thriving car industry in the UK, and there is also the objective of making sure that we achieve our net-zero objectives. Transport is a major component of that, so electric vehicles will play a very important part as we move towards our net-zero targets. Absolutely, we have to balance those objectives, and I am very aware of the issues that the noble Lord raises.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
My Lords, the Minister told us that the Chancellor spoke about the sanctioning of Members of your Lordships’ House and the human rights implications of that appalling situation. Can he tell us whether there were any other discussions in the human rights context in the light of China’s appalling record on human rights?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. Yes, I reassure her that there absolutely were. The UK Government will stand firm on human rights in China and will continue to raise concerns at the highest level of the Chinese Government. In all our engagements with the Chinese Government, we continue to challenge them robustly on human rights violations and continue to raise our concerns at the highest level of the Government. The Prime Minister did so at his meeting at the G20 with President Xi and the Chancellor also raised concerns in a number of areas, including the case of British national Jimmy Lai, the restrictions on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, human rights abuses and forced labour.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
Given that climate change knows no boundaries and that there is a change of policy taking place in the USA in that regard, does the Minister see the possibility of us having more dialogue with China in this context as a way forward?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. Our journey towards net zero will remain vital for our energy security in this country, as well as our economic growth, so that will absolutely continue to play an important part in our economic policy. China will of course be part of that in how we move forward together, both in terms of its own journey towards net zero and in how it can help our journey towards net zero.
Primary Schools: Mental Health Problems
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with mental health problems in primary schools.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this is a particularly pertinent Question as it is Children’s Mental Health Week. The Government are committed to setting every child up for the best start in life and, as part of our ambition for high and rising standards in schools, helping every child to achieve and thrive. We will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, so that every young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate.
Lord Storey (LD)
I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. It is important that children and young people have access to mental health support, but of course the reasons that cause mental health and well-being problems need to be carefully considered, whether it is bullying or online problems. Every school needs to know how well children are doing, but I would suggest to the Minister that maybe the pressures that key stage SATs put on 10 and 11 year-olds can at times be very harmful indeed. Would the Minister consider looking at how we might alleviate those pressures, by perhaps considering having standardised teacher assessments or ways that make it much more enjoyable rather than a frightening experience for them?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am afraid that I think it is important that we maintain both the check on students’ progress and the accountability for our schools that key stage tests enable us to have. So, no, I will not be taking the noble Lord up on his suggestion of fundamentally changing those any time in the near future.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, for children and adults, feeling sad and unhappy is a normal human experience. Recent polling found that 84% of GPs think society’s approach to mental health has led to the normal ups and downs of life being seen as medical problems. However, family breakdown—one of the causes that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, did not mention—is an underrecognised driver of children’s poor mental health. How are the Government guarding against overdiagnosis of mental illness in children and also helping parents understand that parental splits profoundly affect their children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes some important points, based of course on his long experience of supporting families to support their children. I am clear that clinical support should be sought for children only where it is appropriate. Schools need to seek the right source of support at the right time for social and emotional needs, and that is where mental health support teams and other professionals can assist in making those decisions. On the important point he makes about family breakdowns, I completely share his view that it can be enormously difficult for children when their parents split. I am sure he will be pleased to hear that the Ministry of Justice provides support to help individuals to make child arrangements and find emotional support, for example. Resources are also available for that on the Cafcass website.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, the recent health visiting survey suggests that there is an inadequate service in the majority of England compared to the other three countries. It also shows that there are exemplars of good practice, such as in Manchester, but that families are sending children to primary school having had no health-visiting support prior to going to school because of the paucity. How is the Minister’s department working with the Department of Health and Social Care to look at the provision of health visitors?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes an important point about the support available to children at the very earliest age. This and developing the healthiest generation of children are key objectives for my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. We have set a clear objective in our Plan for Change to ensure that we increase the proportion of children who arrive at school with the development to enable them to then learn and make a success of the rest of their lives. I am sure that this will play an important part in achieving that.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, the Rural Mental Health report produced in the other place highlighted that
“NHS mental health services are often not fairly accessible for rural communities”,
with services largely centred in towns and cities,
“creating barriers to access, compounded by the limitations and weaknesses of rural public transport and digital connectivity”.
I declare an interest because 65% of small, rural primary schools across England are Church schools. When developing plans to improve mental health provision in primary schools, how does the Minister intend to ensure equity of access and quality for students in small, rural settings?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point about the challenges for schools in rural areas to access the mental health support that we will make available. He identified the considerable difficulties for young people who really need child and adolescent mental health services in accessing them. That is why this Government will fund an additional 8,500 mental health workers to support both children and adults. As we continue to develop the policy to ensure that there is access to a mental health professional in every school, we will certainly bear in mind the important points that he made about the particular needs of rural schools.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me—going back to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised about bullying—that children with observable mental health problems, or who are on the autism spectrum, are very often vulnerable to bullying in schools, and sometimes that will exacerbate the challenges that they already have? In what way are the Government supporting schools to ensure that children who have those difficulties are supported, particularly in the playground?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
That is an appropriately wide-ranging question from my noble friend. First, on the topic of bullying, it is enormously important that every school has a strong policy and strong action to tackle bullying and to support children. She raised the issue of children with autism and other needs, and we are making progress there with the national framework for autism assessment services. We are also very clear that no child should need to wait for an assessment to receive the necessary support from schools. That will include support with learning and, as she rightly said, support for them to play a full and safe part in the life of the school.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the increasing evidence of the correlation between smartphone and social media use and an increase in children’s mental health problems. According to a recent survey done by Teacher Tapp, just over 75% of teachers surveyed who worked in primary schools reported that mobile phones had to be handed in at the beginning of the school day, but that fell to 48% in secondary schools. Given the mounting concerns that we are hearing, particularly from health professionals, about the impact of smartphones on children’s mental health, will the Government think again and follow a precautionary principle in banning mobile phones in schools until we have the evidence that they are safe?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
As the noble Baroness knows, there is strong guidance to schools to develop appropriate policies with respect to smartphones —in my view, ensuring that children do not have access to smartphones during the period of time that they are in school—but there is a whole range of ways of ensuring that that happens, and I think it is appropriate to leave it to head teachers to follow that guidance and ensure that their children are protected from any impacts of smartphones and enabled to achieve and thrive in their schools.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the first thing we need to do is to make sure teachers know when they should start to access extra help and support, even if it is available, because without that guidance, you really are going to waste a lot of time and money?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that a key part of our special educational needs and disabilities programme needs to be to ensure that teachers have the continuing professional development and initial teacher training to be able to identify at an early stage those children who are in mental distress and need support. That needs to happen even earlier, which is why children’s mental health and well-being is also an important part of the early years curriculum, and why we have provided support to early years practitioners to be able to identify that early as well.
Car Parking Companies
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Spellar
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to regulate car parking companies with regard to the charges that they can impose on motorists.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, we understand the frustrations and complexities that motorists face in dealing with private parking, so we are exploring all possible ways to give motorists the best protection and support. We want to strike a balance between ensuring that parking charges and debt recovery fees are at a reasonable level and allowing parking operators to manage car parks effectively. We are planning to launch a consultation—I am not going to say “in due course”—during this year, which will include options for capping charges and debt recovery fees.
Lord Spellar (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply. She will be aware that the legislation to regulate the behaviour of parking companies was passed by Parliament in 2019, yet because of obstruction by the industry it is still not in force and motorists are still being hit with excessive and unfair charges. Does she accept that the industry’s business model depends on access to the Government’s DVLA database? Unless companies are prepared to co-operate, should they not be cut off from access to that system? That may rather get their attention and co-operation.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for the non-controversial Question of the day and for all the campaigning he has done on this issue; I know it is a great frustration to so many people. The problem was that, when the code was laid in 2022 as a result of the 2019 Act, there was a legal challenge and it had to be withdrawn. We are going out to consultation again, to make sure that we do the consultation properly and thoroughly. We will bring forward a further code of practice in due course, once that consultation has been done properly. I understand the point my noble friend is making. If he wants to put in a submission to the consultation, we would be very pleased to hear it.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as introducing and taking through the House in 1889—
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
In 1989, not 1889—I was a little young then. I took through the House the Parking Bill, which introduced cashless parking into this country for the first time. I am sure noble Lords will be very pleased about that. Subsequently, as has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, in his excellent question, my right honourable friend Sir Gregory Knight, who was the MP in Yorkshire, introduced this further parking Act, which had clear instructions for a code of practice to be introduced. The Minister mentioned that that was put on hold in 2022. Surely we can now make some progress, because we all know of the many abuses which take place, particularly in the private parking industry.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I have not been in this ministerial post since 2022. I will now take action on this as quickly as I can. I thank the noble Lord for his work on this and agree that it is very important that we get it resolved as quickly as possible. The industry did step up and produce its own code of practice, covering the whole private parking industry. That was a step forward, but we need to do what it says in the Act and introduce a government code of practice. We will get on with that as quickly as possible.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, the code of conduct has been discussed today. It was withdrawn after only four months. In the policy document and consultation that the Government plan, will they be looking at the issue of motorists who have been charged nearly £2,000 for taking more than five minutes to pay for their parking?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
That was some of the worst practice that we have seen, and there has been a lot of media interest in this. I see, as probably we all do, people wrestling to download apps when there is no wifi, so that they can pay their parking charges. Both private parking trade associations have recognised this as an issue. They have worked collaboratively to take immediate steps to ensure that motorists no longer receive parking charges in that kind of scenario. This came into effect at the start of February. We welcome those steps taken by the industry, but there is still more to do.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, in her consultation, will the Minister ensure that she links up with the devolved Government in Cardiff? Many of these companies operate in England and in Wales. In Wales, some of the regulations may vary and they take no notice of them. Can she include that in any consultation?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I hope that anybody in Wales who is interested in this will contribute to the consultation. We want much better practice in these arrangements, across the United Kingdom. Any contributions to the consultation will be welcome.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)
My Lords, when I was campaigning to ban cowboy wheel-clampers, otherwise known as modern-day highway robbers—a campaign in which the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, was very helpful—I was very aware of the need for the Security Industry Authority to have adequate powers to deal with rogue parking companies that come up with more and more ingenious ways to persecute motorists. Can my noble friend liaise with Ministers in the Home Office to ensure that the Security Industry Authority, perhaps during the consultation that she has talked about, has adequate powers to punish those rogue companies that persecute motorists?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I very much understand the issues that my noble friend has outlined. We will do our best to work across government. That is a Home Office issue, but I would be happy to meet her and the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to discuss this further.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Is the Minister aware that, following the judicial review that she mentioned of the code of conduct, the department promised to publish an impact assessment? It did publish draft impact assessments but has not yet published the full impact assessments. Is the reason for that that the impact assessments show that the £100 dropping to £40 does work and that the problem is that councils, which can charge only £50, dropping to £25, are not able to enforce parking restrictions because it simply is not economic?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am not sure why the full impact assessment was not published. The accredited trade association’s voluntary cap on private parking charges is £100, as the noble Lord will be aware. I will look into the issue around local authority caps on parking charges and get back to him.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is it the case that many government departments use consultations as a reason not to do something? Is it not about time that we put timescales on these things and make sure that departments act on behalf of the public?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand my noble friend’s frustration, but the previous code of practice failed because things had been put into it that were not subject to consultation. It is very important that the consultation does take place this time, otherwise the next code of practice will fail as well.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that, if more towns provided free car parking, many more town centres might be thriving instead of dying?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I think many local authorities would say that the fees and charges that they charge for parking help with the enormous gap in funding that they have faced in the last 14 years, and that is one of the reasons why they do it. It is for the voters of the local areas to decide whether or not the parking policies in their area are sound; local people can challenge parking policies if they wish to.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Does the Minister share my concern about the level of hospital parking charges, which seem to be completely unregulated? Will she look at this at the earliest opportunity?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am sorry: I missed the start of the noble Baroness’s question.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Will the noble Baroness look at the astronomically high level of hospital parking charges, which seem to go completely unregulated?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Once again, I understand the frustrations about this. It is for hospital trusts to decide how they manage their own parking arrangements, and people can challenge that. However, I appreciate that there are significant issues in that respect. I am sorry to keep repeating it, but if the noble Baroness wishes to put in a submission to the consultation, I would be grateful to hear from her.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister, whom we all have very high respect for, aware that certain local authorities discriminate against four-wheel drive vehicles parking in town centres? I can hear the Liberal Democrats saying, “Quite right, too”, but for those of us who live in rural areas, having a four-wheel drive is not unusual, and in many cases it is a necessity. Four-wheel drive vehicles are part and parcel of the countryside, and sometimes we wish to visit town centres. Can the Minister look into this matter?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I can remember the letters. Local authorities are best placed to determine the nature and scope of parking policies in their own areas, including whether parking should be provided free, balancing the needs of residents, emergency services and local businesses that work in and visit those areas. There is a right to challenge now, which was published in 2015, which advises how residents can challenge and cause a formal review of parking policies in their local area. If the noble Lord is worried about four-wheel drive parking, he can always challenge that with his local authority.
Women’s Health Strategy
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, nearly 600,000 women are waiting for treatment on a gynaecological waiting list in England. Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto made a commitment that:
“Never again will women’s health be neglected. Labour will prioritise women’s health as we reform the NHS”.
Why, then, are the Government removing the requirement on integrated care boards to implement women’s health hubs? The Answer given to this Urgent Question by the Minister in the other place stated that at least 90% of ICBs already have women’s health hubs, which is terrific. If they have been rolled out so effectively, why not complete the job and follow through to reach 100%? Perhaps the Minister could tell us what exciting plans she has to do this.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
I would be glad to give information to the noble Baroness, whom I thank for reminding your Lordships’ House of the situation that we inherited—600,000 women on gynaecological waiting lists—and the challenge before us. My honourable friend in the other place was quite right about the planning guidance, but I commend the effort of the noble Baroness’s Government for pump-priming the introduction of women’s health hubs to the point where there are some 80 across the country—in nine out of 10 areas, there is at least one. It was never a long-term planning situation. The noble Baroness will also be aware of the informed observation from the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, that planning guidance has too many specifics. We therefore needed a new approach, which is what we have done. The planning guidance is not the catalogue of all the levers, nor of all that happens, in the NHS.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, women’s health hubs have proved enormously popular with practitioners, who are able to give multiple treatments in one session, and with women, who no longer have to take time off on different days to go to different clinics for different procedures. Given this, why are the Government not backing this cost-effective strategy, not least because it prevents women showing up at A&E, which is far more expensive?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
We are not closing women’s health hubs—it is important to put that on record. I have already said how successful the pilot has been; it therefore does not require a further target. I hope that noble Lords have seen that the changes to the planning guidance move away from the old centralised operating model to give more control and direction locally. As I said, the decision not to mandate women’s health hubs reflects a new approach to the guidance: fewer national directives and more empowerment of local leaders. Women’s health hubs are also described in the elective reform plan, which is one example of another area where their importance is recognised and boosted.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will know that women’s health hubs are vital in reducing gynaecological waiting lists. We have seen that through their success in areas such as Birmingham, Tower Hamlets and Liverpool. I hear what the Minister has been saying, but there is strong concern from the sector that many of the existing hubs are in their infancy or are not yet operational. They will not progress unless there is operational guidance for the NHS or formal commitment to them from the Government. With their removal from the planning guidance, what actions is the Minister taking to ensure that every ICB has a women’s hub? Given what she said about local decision-making, what steps are being taken to make sure that we learn from the success of the highest-performing hubs and share it with others?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
We continue to learn from the best. I am committed to speaking with the leadership of ICBs about the importance of women’s health hubs, not least because it is about improving women’s healthcare. Having visited a women’s health hub myself, I can testify to the points that the noble Baronesses have made. However, I gently repeat that we need to look not just in the planning guidance but in the elective reform plan, which states about the NHS that:
“In gynaecology we will support … innovative models offering patients care closer to home”.
That is exemplified by the women’s health hub. The Neighbourhood Health Guidelines, published just last week, include women’s health hubs as an example of a neighbourhood health model.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)
My Lords, the history of health policy through successive Governments has been one of too many priorities and targets which are not delivered, so I support the Government in this analysis. It has also been one of poorer outcomes for women and minorities. Given the shift in leadership from the Department of Health and others, how will the Government ensure better outcomes for women and minorities? How will those be monitored? Will they intervene early if they do not see that direction of travel?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her welcome for the new approach in the planning guidance. As she commented, and as noble Lords opposite will know, just because something is in the guidance does not mean that it will happen. For example, despite targets for A&E performance or ambulance response times being written into planning, they were not delivered. This is not where we want to be. We will continue to work with NHS England; for example, to ensure that women’s health is key. I should also emphasise that, as we move towards the 10-year health plan, women’s health will feature not as an adjunct but run throughout.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s comments. We know that black women are three to four times more likely to die during childbirth and that the rate of maternal deaths in the UK has risen during the past 10 years, which I am sure she will agree is a national disgrace. Does she therefore accept that women—and especially women of colour—have been ill served for many years? How will the Government reverse this trend?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness. It is a disgrace that there is such a huge inequality in maternity care. Maternal mortality rates are some 2.3 times higher for black women and 1.4 times higher for Asian women, while those living in the most deprived areas have a maternal mortality rate nearly twice as high as that for those who live in the least deprived areas. That cannot be acceptable in 2025. I am glad that we have taken a number of actions to ensure that trusts who fail on maternity care are robustly supported. We will set an explicit target to close black and Asian maternal mortality gaps. Trusts are also required to publish a suitable plan to tackle this and to put it into action. It is a challenge, but not one that we shy away from.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register. What is the Government’s timetable for a revised or updated version of the women’s health strategy? Can the Minister also assure the House that there will be adequate funding for its implementation when it is brought in?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
Let me assure my noble friend and other noble Lords that there are no plans to cancel the women’s health strategy. I know my noble friend did not say that, but it is very important to put that on record. We continue to implement it; for example, since I have been in post, through measures such as supporting pregnancy loss through a full rollout of baby loss certificates, introducing menopause support in the workplace, and boosting women’s participation in research and clinical trials. As I said, our priorities for delivering the strategy will be through the 10-year plan. Funding decisions will be announced in due course.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, given that one-third of all new breast cancer cases occur in women over the age of 70, will the Minister consider extending automatic screening for those women? At the moment, it stops at that age.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
Women over 70 can request an assessment if they feel it is appropriate for them. We act on and apply the scientific advice and evidence that we are given. On World Cancer Day, perhaps it would be appropriate to say to the noble Baroness that some 700,000 women across the country will take part in a world-leading trial to test our cutting-edge AI tools, which will be used to catch breast cancer cases earlier. This morning, I was at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton with Minister Vallance to see the incredible contribution that AI is making to improved cancer services, including for women.
Avian Influenza
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, as the shadow Secretary of State said in the other place on Thursday, this is a very difficult time for bird-keepers 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 the mental and economic resilience of individuals. Will the Government commit to looking to remove the restrictions as soon as it is safe to do so and also consider the possibility of vaccinations?
While avian flu has been financially devastating for farmers, the last outbreak was devastating and disastrous for wild bird flocks. Will the Government therefore continue monitoring seabirds, including using citizen science, which delivers much of the monitoring, and commit to funding for research to secure best practice and understand the transfer of avian influenza and other diseases between wild and captive birds, including sub-lethal effects?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, we are clearly very concerned about avian influenza. The noble Lord asked about the removal of restrictions. Of course, we want to lift restrictions as soon as we can, but only when we are absolutely certain that it is safe from a biosecurity perspective. He also asked specifically about seabirds, which is important because we know that there was a huge impact on seabirds in the last, very serious, outbreak. We are committed to continuing our work to monitor the impact of avian influenza on wild birds, together with other threats to their populations. This work is progressing through the English seabird conservation and recovery pathway through Natural England. The noble Lord may be interested to know that we have recently held a workshop with stakeholders to discuss how we can work together to take the key actions from the report forward. I also reiterate that members of the public are encouraged to report any findings of dead wild birds.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, avian flu is becoming a yearly occurrence. In the run-up to Christmas 2022, special measures had to be taken to ensure that the supply of turkeys was secured. Currently, free range chickens are kept in barns. What reassurances can the Minister provide that, following her department’s call for free range birds to be required to be kept indoors, their welfare will be protected in these confined conditions? What plans do the Government have to support farmers to train staff to prepare for future outbreaks?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am sure that the noble Baroness is aware that we recently brought in a statutory instrument in order that owners of poultry that are free range do not lose that designation while there is an outbreak going forward. Clearly, it is really important that farmers and poultry and egg producers have support during influenza outbreaks. We have compensation in, and we are looking at labelling changes; we do not want to put extra costs on to farmers and egg producers during an outbreak, and we are working very hard to ensure that that does not happen.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
My Lords, with apologies to the Liberal Democrats, following on from the Minister’s opening remarks, could she say what assessment has been made about the effects on the north-east tourism industry following the avian flu outbreak, which closed visits to the Farne Islands and other islands off the north-east coast? Could she say whether she thinks that Newcastle United’s success in the Carabao Cup against Arsenal can provide some compensation towards this loss?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Well, in Defra, we work actively with all areas that are affected by avian influenza, including the areas that my noble friend refers to. All I can say is that Newcastle United appear to be having a better season than Leicester City.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, will the noble Baroness share sympathy with producers of poultry and eggs, who are deeply worried at this time? My noble friend asked from the Front Bench about the status of vaccination. Is she able to say what that status is, at this time, for domestic production?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Yes. The vaccination of poultry and captive birds—clearly, we are not talking about wild birds—is not currently permitted. Avian influenza vaccination is not considered to be a viable option for this season. We have a cross-government and industry task force exploring the potential for vaccination to be used as a preventive measure in the future. In spring this year, we expect the task force to publish its initial report and there will be a statement on that. We realise this is something we need to work on.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, research is absolutely fundamental at this point as we monitor what is going on and its very worrying effects. What are His Majesty’s Government doing to support centres such as the Animal and Plant Health Agency in New Haw, which is trying to work on this and desperately needs to redevelop its facilities?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We work very closely with APHA—the Animal and Plant Health Agency—and are very pleased that we have secured funding for the continued upgrading at Weybridge. We also work with the other sites in order to ensure that we have the best research possible to deal with our ongoing biosecurity and disease risks, of which there are, unfortunately, so many these days.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to various poultry farmers across Norfolk and, in particular, in my former constituency of North West Norfolk, who set the highest possible standards of biosecurity and animal welfare. Can the Minister say something about what HMG are doing to co-ordinate action across the devolved Administrations? Can she confirm to the House that her department is firmly in control and that there is one unified policy?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I can absolutely reassure the noble Lord on that. I speak very regularly with my devolved Administration counterparts and, obviously, we discuss issues such as avian influenza. My officials work constantly with the devolved Administration officials as well when we have an outbreak such as this.
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)
My Lords, noble Lords will be aware that Northern Ireland comes under the European regulations for organic egg production, not the UK ones. Because of the impact of avian influenza on free range eggs, which is an impact on organic egg production in the UK, would the Minister consider a lobby to bring Northern Ireland under UK organic egg regulations, as opposed to EU regulations?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right and, again, this is why I regularly meet with both the Permanent Secretary and the Minister at DAERA to discuss exactly these sorts of issues. We do not want any part of the UK to be at an unnecessary disadvantage. It is really important that we support egg producers and poultry producers in whichever part of the UK they are. I am certainly happy to discuss his suggestion with officials.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware of the disturbing outbreak of H5N9 in the US where, for the first time, this variant of avian influenza has proved to be highly pathogenic. As a result, some 119,000 ducks have been killed on one farm. Given that H5N1 is also circulating extremely widely in the US—clearly out of control in animals, and with some human cases—are the Government working with and speaking to the US Government? No one is safe until everyone is safe, and the current situation with highly pathogenic avian flu in the US is deeply concerning.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Yes, we of course work internationally on issues such as this and we are currently monitoring the situation in the USA. It is important to point out that the influenza of avian origin in the USA is a single genotype—B3.13—of highly pathogenic avian influenza. It has been identified in lactating cattle, as the noble Baroness pointed out, and we are trying to understand the virus strain associated with those cases. We have published a case definition to allow us to monitor, triage and, if necessary, test any reported cases so that we can focus any resources appropriately. But it is important to stress that this does not change the risk level for mammalian livestock in the UK, which is currently very low. We have no reason to suspect that the virus is circulating in our cattle, and nor is the virus strain circulating in Europe.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, while I entirely agree with the Minister that the risk to humans is very low, none the less, more than once in the past we have used H5N1 as a basis for potential pandemic preparedness. Would this not be a wise moment to re-enter the question of pandemic preparedness, with a training exercise looking at the risks associated with the mutation of this virus, so that it is transmissible between humans?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Of course, it is critical that we are on top of the issues that the noble Lord raises, because I think we all agree that there is likely to be another pandemic on the horizon at some point in the future. We need to ensure that we look at all areas where we could potentially have problems. We are looking closely at what has happened where there has been transmission from birds to humans. At the moment, it is clear that this happens only when poultry owners spend a lot of time handling infected birds, so it is not a general concern for human contamination— but we absolutely have to be prepared for the next pandemic.
Renters’ Rights Bill
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Scottish and Welsh Legislative Consent sought.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I extend my thanks to the many noble Lords with whom I have spoken about this Bill, and to Members of this House and people outside it who have worked so hard to improve the private rented sector over many years. I am looking forward to the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lady Brown and Lord Wilson.
The private rental system needs to change. It currently provides the least affordable, poorest quality and most insecure housing of all tenures. The insecurity it engenders creates uncertainty in the lives of tenants and allows good landlords to be undercut by the minority of rogues and chancers. In short, the 11 million private renters and the 2.3 million landlords across England are being failed.
The Renters’ Rights Bill brings forward the most significant changes to the sector for nearly 40 years. The Bill will strengthen the security of tenure for tenants; ensure that they are paying a fair rent; guarantee a minimum standard that they can expect from a property; provide new robust avenues to redress; and more. The Government have worked closely with those across the sector to ensure that the Bill’s measures strike the right balance. I will set out some of these key measures.
As many noble Lords will be aware, the Bill will deliver the Government’s manifesto commitment to abolish Section 21 no-fault evictions as soon as possible, removing the threat of arbitrary eviction and granting renters the security and stability they deserve. Section 21 evictions can wreak havoc with tenants’ employment, schooling and lives in general. As leader of Stevenage Council, I saw at first hand the knock-on effects that arbitrary evictions can have on families’ physical and mental health, with more people pushed into inadequate temporary accommodation. The case that always sticks with me is that of the parents of a child with special educational needs, who fought and fought to get their child into a school near where they lived but were then evicted from the very property that was near to that school.
It is unacceptable that over 123,000 households in England are currently living in temporary accommodation. This includes 159,380 children—the highest number of children in temporary accommodation on record. Removing this threat will immediately improve the lives of millions.
The Government also recognise that the vast majority of landlords provide an excellent service, and it is vital to ensure landlords can reclaim their properties when they need to. To this end, new, clear and expanded possession grounds will be introduced. We will ensure these are as watertight as possible, so that they cannot be abused by landlords seeking possession for the wrong reasons. These robust grounds will ensure that there is no room for loopholes in the system, and tenants will benefit from longer notice and protected periods.
The new tenancy system will operate on the basis of periodic tenancies. This will support tenants who want to leave poor-quality homes or face circumstances such as domestic abuse. Tenants will be able to give two months’ notice at any point.
I know several noble Lords have raised concerns about the removal of fixed-term tenancies. To be clear, it is a core principle of this Bill, and this Government’s firm belief, that there is no place for fixed terms in the future assured tenancy system. Both landlords and tenants will benefit from a simpler system, with a single set of rights and responsibilities. Neither group should be locked into a fixed term if their circumstances change.
In designing the grounds, the Government took time to ensure the Bill works for everyone, including students. To meet this goal, a new possession ground has been created to allow landlords renting to students in HMOs to seek possession ahead of each new academic year, facilitating the yearly cycle of short-term student tenancies. To further protect the student market, private purpose-built student accommodation will be removed from the assured tenancy system in recognition of the limited market such accommodation focuses on, and the differences between purpose-built accommodation and “off-street” private housing rented to students. Providers must sign up to government-approved codes of practice, which will ensure homes are safe and good quality, to be removed from the assured tenancy system.
The Bill also makes changes to the system by which rent can be increased, preventing unscrupulous landlords from using unfair rent increases to evict tenants by the back door. Landlords will now be able to increase rents only once per year and they must do so through the Section 13 process. Tenants will be empowered to challenge egregious increases at the First-tier Tribunal, without fear of receiving a higher rent than the landlord initially intended.
To further support tenants trying to do the right thing, a mandatory repeated rent arrears ground will not be included in the Bill. We will also increase the mandatory threshold for eviction under the mandatory rent arrears ground from two to three months.
The Bill proposes new laws to end the cruel practice of rental bidding wars by landlords and letting agents. For too many tenants, rental bidding restricts their ability to make an informed choice about one of the most financially significant decisions they face. They are led to think they have found a property they can afford to rent, only to discover they would need to pay way over the asking price to secure it. Our reforms will end this practice for good. Landlords and letting agents will be required to publish an asking rent for their property and will then be prohibited from asking for, encouraging or accepting a higher offer.
Following amendment on Report in the Commons, the Bill will also limit the amount of rent in advance that a landlord can require after the tenancy has been signed but before the tenant has taken possession to a maximum of one month. That aside, landlords will no longer be able to include any terms in the tenancy agreement that have the effect of requiring rent to be paid prior to the rent due date. Tenants will retain the flexibility to make payments of rent in advance during the tenancy should they wish to do so. Taken together, these measures will prevent the small number of unscrupulous landlords setting tenants against each other or excluding altogether renters who are perfectly able to afford the monthly rent on a property.
Everyone in the private rented sector is entitled to a safe and decent home. This Bill will make it illegal for landlords and letting agents in England, Scotland and Wales to discriminate against tenants in receipt of benefits or because they have children. Local councils will have strong enforcement powers to tackle unlawful practices related to rental discrimination. Mortgage lenders and insurers will also no longer be able to impose restrictive discriminatory terms.
Pets can bring a huge amount of joy to people’s lives, and this cannot be restricted to those lucky enough to own their own home. We are committed to supporting responsible pet ownership in the private rented sector. The Bill will ensure that landlords do not unreasonably withhold consent when a tenant requests to have a pet in their home, with the tenant able to challenge unfair decisions. We know that some landlords are concerned about potential damage caused by pets. That is why the Bill will allow landlords to require insurance covering pet damage. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lords, Lord Trees and Lord de Clifford, for their fantastic expertise, which they have shared with us to ensure that these reforms will work as intended. We continue to work with them.
The decent homes standard, which applies only to the social rented sector, will apply to the private rented sector and be enforceable for the first time. This will ensure that privately rented homes are safe, secure and hazard free, tackling the blight of poor-quality homes. The Bill will also extend the application of Awaab’s law to the private rented sector, enabling the setting of clear legal expectations about the timeframes within which landlords must make homes safe when they contain serious hazards. We will launch a consultation on the content of the decent homes standard for social and privately rented homes in the coming months. We will also set out further information about the timescales for implementation in due course.
The Bill provides for the introduction of a new PRS landlord ombudsman service that will deliver quick, fair, impartial and binding resolutions for tenants whose landlords fail to resolve legitimate complaints. The ombudsman will support a number of the new measures the Bill introduces—for example, giving tenants further opportunity to escalate issues where a landlord has encouraged a bidding war or unreasonably refused a pet.
The Housing Ombudsman Service has extensive experience in tenant-landlord services and redress and is well placed to deliver streamlined redress for both private and social tenants. We said in opposition that we agreed with this approach, and we are still of that view. However, this is not a final decision. We will continue working to design the best possible service for users and, following a full value-for-money assessment, we will determine who is best placed to deliver a high- quality service.
This Bill also introduces a private rented sector database, through which tenants will be able to access information to inform choices when entering new tenancies. Landlords will be able to understand their obligations and demonstrate compliance, and local authorities will be able to use the database to target enforcement activity. We will continue to consider what information is necessary to collect to support more informed rental experiences for tenants, and to provide local authorities with a dataset which will support the enforcement of health and safety standards in the private rented sector.
The changes I have just mentioned have the potential to transform the experience of renting in England, but their success is contingent on effective enforcement. The Bill will strengthen local councils’ enforcement powers and introduce a new requirement for councils to report on enforcement activity. The Bill includes a staged enforcement framework for local authority enforcement. New maximum penalties of £7,000 and £40,000 will be introduced for initial or minor compliance and for serious, repeat or persistent non-compliance respectively.
The Bill will also significantly strengthen rent repayment orders. This will provide a stronger deterrent against non-compliance and further empower tenants to take action against landlords when they commit offences. More offences will be brought into the scope of rent repayment orders. Further changes include making sure superior landlords and company directors can be held liable, and doubling the maximum amount a landlord can be ordered to pay from one to two years’ rent. We are also doubling the period in which tenants and local authorities can apply for a rent repayment order and requiring repeat offenders to pay the maximum amount.
New investigatory powers will make it easier for councils to identify and fine unscrupulous landlords. Local authorities will be able to request information from third parties and enter business premises and—in much more limited circumstances—residential premises to gather evidence where required. The new powers contain safeguards to ensure that they are used appropriately and proportionately.
It is imperative that the reforms in the Bill can be handled by the courts and tribunals system; many noble Lords have expressed concerns about this and have raised them with me. I want to reassure noble Lords that we are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to ensure that the justice system is prepared for the implementation of this Bill. Most tenancies end without court proceedings being required, and the digitisation of the court possession process will make the process easier to navigate for landlords and tenants in those cases where they are. I will be meeting very soon with a number of noble Lords who have expressed interest in this digitisation process, and I look forward to that further engagement.
I know we all share a wish to see fairness and proportionality in any regulatory framework. We believe we have achieved that in our reforms, and I very much look forward to your Lordships’ scrutiny of the Bill. The Bill ensures that tenants can put down roots in their communities. They deserve to enjoy that stability, just as home owners do, and we should reward landlords who provide the excellent service that so many of them do. This will be the biggest change to the experience of renting in this country for generations. I believe the measures in the Renters’ Rights Bill are sufficiently comprehensive, robust and balanced to achieve that change, and give all tenants a better place to call home. I beg to move.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register as vice-president of the Local Government Association. I very much look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, and welcome them to the House.
The Renters’ Rights Bill is counterproductive. While the Government may have good intentions, they will drive landlords from the market—reducing choice and putting up rent for the tenants they seek to protect. While we discuss this Bill, it is important to remind ourselves who landlords are: around 45% own one rental property, with another 40% owning two to four. In many, if not most, cases these are not professional landlords; they may have gained an extra property when a family member has died or through marriage later in life, or perhaps they invested in a property or two to use as a pension. To expect them to be able to cope with all the costs and burdens placed on them by this Bill is at best naive. Many decent landlords and safe, quality homes will leave the rental market as a result.
We must absolutely deal with bad landlords, but in most circumstances there is no reason a good landlord would want to lose a good tenant. It is in their interest to keep a steady income from a reliable tenant who respects their property. Having an empty property is expensive, and there are significant fees and paperwork involved with finding a new tenant. While trying to protect and improve living conditions for renters, the Government should be very careful not to do the opposite and make it worse for them.
The last Conservative Government introduced our own version of this Bill, the Renters (Reform) Bill. It was first introduced to the House of Commons in May 2023 and eventually had its Second Reading in your Lordships’ House in May 2024, but was not taken any further before the general election. The Bill did not make quick progress because we wanted to take our time to get this right. We listened to representations from the sector and carefully considered the impact of our policies. We made changes during the Bill’s passage through the House of Commons, most notably on the readiness of the courts, and further changes were planned for the House of Lords, most notably to carve out student lets.
We recognise that some reform to our rental market was necessary to protect tenants from the abuse at the hands of rogue landlords, but it was always important to us that we balance the rights of tenants to live safely and peacefully in the homes they were renting with the rights of landlords, particularly with respect to their property rights.
The Government were trying to balance the see-saw, and I know we did not get everything right. Many felt that the measures introduced by the Bill went too far in favour of tenants and too far against the landlords in a way that would work to the detriment of the rental market, and I have sympathy with that. However, we listened to the concerns that were raised and we were making changes to the Bill as it progressed.
If the Renters (Reform) Bill did not quite balance the see-saw, the Renters Rights’ Bill tips it over. This is not the same Bill that the last Conservative Government introduced, and the Government are rushing it through without any care for the repercussions that will reverberate throughout the sector. Labour has abandoned our commitment to improvements in His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service before abolishing Section 21 for existing tenancies, as well as our six-month implementation period before abolishing Section 21 for new tenancies. This means that our courts will not be resourced as they need to be. Labour has also abandoned our requirement for the Lord Chancellor to assess the courts’ possession processes before abolishing Section 21 for existing tenancies, which would have ensured that they were ready for the changes first.
Labour has abandoned our plans that would have stopped tenants being able to give notice during the first six months, to give landlords some predictability and protect them against tenants seeking to exploit these new arrangements for rolling tenancies such as holiday lets. Labour has abandoned our plans to make it easier to remove anti-social tenants, which we were changing from “likely” to cause a nuisance or annoyance to “capable” of doing so, making it much harder to evict those who deserve to be evicted. Labour has also abandoned our commitment to sufficiently carve out student accommodation, where it is essential that both landlords and tenants have the certainty of fixed-term contracts to plan for subsequent years.
Not only have the Government removed many of the safeguards and improvements for landlords that we put in the Bill but they have added many concerning measures of their own. They are increasing the mandatory eviction threshold for rent arrears from two months to three months, significantly increasing the loss incurred by landlords when a tenant is not paying for the property they are occupying. They are shortening the time limit for landlords to consider a pet, which we know to be a significant issue. They are rushing, in our opinion, the implementation for the private sector of Awaab’s law—a law that was designed for the social housing sector and that could have significant implications for smaller landlords if not implemented very carefully.
If that was not enough, Labour took the Bill even further, through the amendments it made in the House of Commons. It introduced amendments to include restricting the payment of rent in advance, which will hit most severely self-employed renters and those with bad credit ratings, where a landlord is now even less likely to want to take the risk on them. It introduced amendments requiring landlords to pay compensation to tenants when they possess their properties, burdening landlords with even more unfair costs, even if they have no choice but to take their property back and may have already spent a lot of money to do so.
Much has changed since the original Bill was introduced, and we must acknowledge the broader context that the Bill and the sector find themselves in. Landlords are leaving the rental sector at a higher rate than ever, with many citing rental reforms as their reason for leaving. Rightmove has estimated that 18% of homes up for sale were previously rented, compared with 8% in 2010. In London, where we know the problem in the rental market can be most acute, the situation is even worse: 29% of homes for sale in our capital city were previously rented out.
On top of this inflated package of rental reforms, landlords now have the minimum energy-efficiency standards to contend with. Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is requiring all private and social rented homes to meet EPC C by 2030. The industry estimates that this could cost the sector £25 billion—an average of £5,400 per home. This is a cost that many landlords, particularly those with only one or two properties, just cannot take.
Of course, this is set against a backdrop of ever-increasing taxation from a Government who do not understand how our economy works. All these issues compound to make our country an unattractive, burdensome and expensive place to be a landlord, however fair and decent one might be to their tenants.
There is always a balance to be found with legislation, and in this case respect for property rights is essential for investment and stability. I would expect the risk of legal challenge on this Bill to be very high. There will certainly be a few interested parties queuing up to challenge the Government over the rights to their own property. If the Government are not careful, and continue with such an aggressive pursuit of landlords, there is a good chance that their Bill will get stuck in the courts and not be able to benefit anyone.
In Scotland, similar legislation has resulted in the highest rent increases in the United Kingdom because of demand far outstripping supply. The Nationwide Foundation found that 70% of landlords and letting agents lack confidence in the future of the sector. This has led to a significant reduction in rental stock, which has made it much more difficult and expensive for tenants, especially those on low incomes, to find a home. We must learn from Scotland’s mistakes.
There will always be people who want, or need, to rent rather than buy their home. We must ensure that there is a stable rental market for them, and we will do all we can to convince the Government to think carefully about how they proceed. We intend to table amendments to address some of the most pressing concerns, including: the capacity and operation of the courts; student landlords, who need certainty of length of tenure and other mutually agreeable fixed-term contracts; some exemptions for smaller landlords, who are less able to weather these changes; the availability of insurance for damage caused by pets; consideration of the property rights of landlords; and the impact on the housing market. We will pursue these amendments for the benefit of landlords and tenants alike, because we know what will happen if we do not.
The Government’s own impact assessment acknowledges that tenants will see increased costs as a result of their policies, saying
“it is likely that landlords will pass through some costs of new policies to tenants in the form of higher rents—to offset those costs and maintain a degree of profit”.
Surely the Government cannot want this, and I hope that they will listen to the concerns being raised by the sector and by many noble Lords across this House before it is too late.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, the Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill and support the fundamental principles in it of rebalancing the relationship between landlord and tenant. We thank the Minister for the meetings so far and look forward to working with her to make progress. We also look forward to hearing the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown.
We are particularly supportive of the measures to immediately ban Section 21 eviction notices. Frankly, this change cannot come soon enough for so many, and we owe it to the almost 1 million renters who have been on the receiving end of a no-fault eviction since the change was promised in the 2019 Conservative manifesto. They are only a small fraction of the vast numbers who have lived with the insecurities of the now most common form of tenure—assured shorthold tenancies—since they were first introduced in 1988. Given all the similarities to the previous Renters (Reform) Bill—in particular, on scrapping no-fault evictions—it was so disappointing to see the Conservatives in the other place attempting to block the Bill altogether. They need to deliver on their original promise. This much- heralded but delayed change by the previous Government remains nothing short of a scandal and has left a legacy for tenants that we should have uppermost in our minds during the progress of the Bill.
The promise to ban no-fault evictions followed by dither and delay made, if possible, the market even worse for tenants, prompting a 30% growth in Airbnb short-term lets and taking away even more security of tenure from other tenants. There is one small silver lining: the sector itself has had significant notice of this change and therefore time to prepare for no-fault evictions bans.
Tenants are aptly described as the
“People on the Frontline of Britain’s Housing Emergency”
in Vicky Spratt’s excellent book, Tenants, in which she outlines the ever-widening gaps between those who own and those who rent. All issues, from inequality to fuel poverty, mental and physical ill health, the cost of living and lack of social mobility, are impacted by insecurity of tenure—or a home that you simply cannot rely on. The direct link between being evicted as a tenant and homeless is well documented by, among others, the Local Government Association.
At the heart of this issue is lack of supply of suitable homes. We strongly support the Government’s ambitions to end homelessness, but that needs to be matched with greater ambition to build social and council homes for rent—150,000 per year, which was in our manifesto, along with a programme of insulation for all housing, a planning use change to control second homes and new powers for councils to halt right to buy based on local needs.
Of course, the elephant in the room with the private rented sector is rents, and we on these Benches regret the lack of progress on this issue. Although we welcome the ban on bidding wars, which in turn drive up rent, this Bill still does not deal with the chronic levels of rent increases. Private rent inflation may have slowed down, but it is still rising faster than the CPI. The Renters’ Reform Coalition, which I thank for its briefing, rightly highlights that this will continue to leave open significant increases in rent as a means to evict. As the Renters’ Reform Coalition makes clear, England’s rents as a share of disposable income are some of the highest in Europe, with two-thirds of in-work private renters struggling to pay. This Government’s housebuilding plans will not change the supply crisis for years and will not fix this rent problem. Amendments by our Liberal Democrat colleague Gideon Amos MP linked rent rises to the Bank of England base rate, and we will look at options, such as the CPI or national wage growth, in Committee.
Given the poor condition of so many private lets, with the 2023-24 English Housing Survey highlighting that the private rented sector has the highest proportion of non-decent dwellings at 21%, we welcome the extension of the decent homes standard and the introduction of Awaab’s law across the PRS. However, we have significant concerns about enforcement, which other colleagues will elaborate on. Likewise, we welcome the protections for renters who are on benefits and those with children.
Instability in this area cannot be overstated, given that a quarter of all private renters have lived in three or more homes in the past five years. Therefore, we welcome the 12-month protected period at the start of new tenancies, and we will continue to explore the possibility of another extended period of tenancy guaranteed as an incentive to landlords to build to rent.
We will look to improve the Bill—for example, by supporting those who serve the whole nation in our military and give the ultimate service. In the previous Parliament, our colleague Helen Morgan MP campaigned to ensure that MoD housing was included under decent homes. The Kerslake commission report, Homes Unfit for Heroes, commissioned by John Healey MP, lays bare how poor the standards are. I ask the Minister to let us know the possibility of including service accommodation in this Bill. We live in an uncertain world, and putting our Armed Forces and their families into shoddy and inadequate housing, which impacts health and morale, is a failure of our duty to them.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Thornhill will lead us in our attempts to improve and expand the database. The majority of landlords that we know about—the ones that will participate in this debate or have briefed us—are the ones we can see and who will immediately join the database and ombudsman scheme. They, like the majority of tenants, are responsible landlords—but we know so little. It is the landlords we cannot see about whom we have limited knowledge, information and transparency. A database can be either a tick-box exercise or a significant game-changer on this. I hope the Bill progresses and that it will be the latter.
Tonight, as we speak, a primary school child will be in their third rental in a year and will know the insecurity no child should have to bear: health-defining, future-defining and life-defining. We owe it to that future generation to get this right, but to do it soon.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction and for many helpful meetings on the Bill. I look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown. I declare my housing and property interests as on the register, including that I have family members who own rented property.
The Bill introduces much-needed reforms to the private rented sector—the PRS—which I greatly welcome. However, I want to address a big question that I know is in the minds of a number of your Lordships: however necessary the reforms to the PRS, will the Bill lead to large numbers of landlords exiting the market? If a lot of landlords decide this kind of investment is no longer for them, what will happen to the rental market?
A mass exodus of landlords seems very unlikely. Property remains an attractive long-term investment in uncertain times. However, analysis by the consultancy Savills shows that a gradual reduction in private rental properties has already been under way in London. Despite the arrival of the new providers of Build to Rent apartments, it seems entirely possible that the Bill will lead to more landlords selling up.
Keeping up with the new legislative requirements not only necessitates use of proper, professional lettings agents but will mean substantial investment for properties in need of modernisation. Meeting the decent homes standard comes alongside a forthcoming duty to upgrade properties to higher energy efficiency standards. Many landlords, particularly those who have borrowed heavily in the hope of making capital gains, simply lack the resources to comply with important new demands.
I conclude that the PRS will get smaller, but this is not necessarily a negative outcome. The private rented sector doubled in size in the early 2000s and, despite a tougher tax regime, there are still some 2.3 million private landlords. Meanwhile, the expansion of private renting has led the sector to take on a role for which it is not well equipped. With the steep decline in social housing—the council and housing association sector is now barely half its former size—the PRS’s expansion has had to fill the gap. Yet, private renting is seldom the best option for those needing low rents, good quality and long-term security. Nor does the enlarged PRS suit the taxpayer: the sector’s higher market rents have propelled more renters into housing benefit at escalating cost to the Exchequer. The PRS has found itself performing a role in place of councils and housing associations, which suits neither the tenants nor the public purse. The Bill could help achieve some rebalancing between the private sector and the social sector.
Of course, an expansion of provision by councils and housing associations through the building of new homes is an essential part of the Government’s plans for constructing 1.5 million homes during the course of this Parliament, but as well as a substantial new-build social housing programme, this seems an important moment to promote the purchase and modernisation of previously privately rented property to house those on lower incomes. If there are more sales of privately rented properties, and if strong enforcement of the Bill’s new measures deters purchase by less scrupulous landlords, then the opportunity—indeed, the necessity—to switch property to restock the much-diminished provision by social landlords will emerge.
Some local authorities are already active in bringing PRS rentals, including former right-to-buy private rentals, into the social housing sector, not least to provide temporary accommodation for homeless families. Buying privately rented property can achieve a speedy solution to urgent, immediate housing problems, while also being there in perpetuity as genuinely affordable, secure accommodation. This is where the housing associations of the 1960s and 1970s came in, buying and modernising the properties of Mr Rachman and his like.
It is important to note that, sometimes, owner-occupiers will step in and do up the property. No doubt some sales will transfer the homes to larger landlords, who can achieve some economies of scale and introduce professional management. However, high interest rates and the less favourable tax arrangements now in place may inhibit these buyers. For sure, local authorities will need to be on their guard to prevent property acquisitions by rogue landlords who do not intend to comply with the new environment introduced by the Bill.
How can transfers to social lettings be achieved when this legislation is enacted? I suggest that the Government look at an exemption from capital gains tax for the sales of properties from private landlords to social landlords. Such support would pay for itself in reducing the need for ever-rising housing benefit payments. Such an incentive could propel the rebalancing between sectors after so many years of decline for social housing. If the PRS were to continue to shrink by about 2% annually, the outcome could be positive, with both an additional 500,000 home owners and 500,000 more social tenancies.
In conclusion, I look forward to raising some specific issues in Committee, including the regulation of lettings agents, the constraints on switching long-term lets to short-term letting, the content of the new property register and the basis for in-tenancy rent increases. For now, I welcome the positive contribution that the Bill will make.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I welcome this Bill and the commitment that the Government have made to tackling the pervasive insecurity and unaffordability of the private rented sector. I will be delighted to listen to the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown.
Last week, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford, the lead Bishop on housing, chaired a round table with a number of noble Lords and members of the Renters’ Reform Coalition. Although she is unable to be here today, I know that she is looking forward to contributing to the Bill as it progresses.
The Bill is an opportunity to strike a fairer, long-term deal that will benefit both landlords and tenants. We must heed the voices not only of tenants themselves but of landlords’ groups, which have expressed legitimate concerns about any potential negative consequences, however unintended, of the changes introduced by the Bill.
There are many things that the Bill gets right, including, to name just a few: the introduction of a private rented sector landlord ombudsman service; the expansion of provisions supporting tenants with pets—my cats and I are grateful; and the extension of Awaab’s law to the private rented sector. These are in line with the vision of the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, which argued that good housing should meet the following standard and be
“sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying”.
However, I have some concerns about the Bill as it stands. First, it ought to extend the decent homes standard to all temporary and asylum accommodation. While I celebrate the Government’s decision to introduce a clause extending its scope to temporary accommodation following a consultation, I note that this change will be at the discretion of the courts on a case-by-case basis. This extension should apply to dispersed accommodation for asylum seekers, which is currently managed by accommodation providers on behalf of the Home Office. In a debate last week, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Sheffield correctly identified the need to move from the use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers to dispersed accommodation sites in communities. This will require local government to be properly funded to provide support services for asylum seekers, especially children, to enable integration into local schools and communities.
I am also concerned about discretionary grounds for eviction, which could affect, for instance, tenants who are terminally ill. I welcome the opportunity the Bill provides to explore what are the remaining grounds for possession, where they need not be mandatory.
Finally, I turn to the topic of tied accommodation. I thank the Minister for her engagement with these Benches regarding the Bill’s implications for those in occupational tied accommodation, a concept which is well-defined in law. As the Bill progresses, I anticipate that there will be need for further conversations to ensure that charitable retirement housing schemes for those who spend their working life in tied accommodation are not inadvertently prejudiced.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests. I thank all sides of this House for the welcome they have given me to the Lords. It has been a warm and gracious welcome, so thank you very much. I thank the offices of the Lord Speaker, Black Rod and the Clerk of the Parliaments, who worked with great professionalism to ensure that my introduction to this House went according to plan. I have discovered that the House of Lords is, like the House of Commons, a rabbit warren, only with red carpets. I therefore thank the doorkeepers for pointing me in the right direction.
I thank my noble friends Lady Smith of Basildon and Lord Kennedy of Southwark for their leadership. I pay tribute to my noble friends Lady Armstrong of Hill Top and Lord Hanson of Flint for sponsoring me. I have known my noble friend Lady Armstrong for almost 40 years. As MP for North West Durham, she introduced me to the House of Commons when I won the Sedgefield by-election. My noble friend Lord Hanson and I shadowed the Home Office between 2010 and 2015; my noble friend was the shadow Minister and I the shadow Whip. I remember us winning a couple of votes in Committee on one occasion—I emphasise that it was on only one occasion.
This year, 2025, is turning out to be an eventful one for the Wilson family. On 14 January, I became a grandfather for the third time, this time to a beautiful baby girl. On 20 January, I was introduced to this House, and, next month, my mother will celebrate her 100th birthday. Obviously a little tired after 100 years, mam is still as sharp as a pin and loves to reminisce. I will never forget how her face lit up when I told her I was to be a Member of the House of Lords. She leant forward in her chair, reached out for my hand and said: “And your dad was a miner”. Mam was born in 1925, in the colliery village of Fishburn, in County Durham. In 1925, this House was home to 26 Dukes, 29 Marquesses, 130 Earls and 73 Viscounts—none of them, as far as I am aware, the son or daughter of a coal miner.
My dad was brought up in Trimdon, another colliery village, just to the north of Fishburn, and my parents left school on the eve of the Second World War. Ambition and aspiration were restricted primarily to three occupations for men in those villages at that time: work on a farm, go down the pit, or join the Army. Dad’s first job was on a farm. Since he was in a reserved occupation, he joined the Home Guard, and would pick up his rifle and three rounds of ammunition from the vicarage to fend off any potential Nazi invasion. On 30 August 1939, his elder brother joined the Royal Artillery. Evacuated from Dunkirk, he would eventually see service behind the beaches of Normandy with the second battalion of the SAS. He was our rogue hero.
Careers for women in those villages at that time were also rare. Mam worked during the war in a fish shop in Billingham, on Teesside, and she still regales the family with how it was in old money: 1p for a bag of chips and threepence for a fish. Every night, the blitz came to Billingham. Every night, she took to the bomb shelter or hid under her neighbour’s reinforced kitchen table as the Nazis tried to destroy the town. By the time my parents married, dad was working down the pit, and he did so for the best part of 40 years. I grew up one of two sons on a council estate in Trimdon. It was a close-knit community.
I joined the Labour Party many years ago because I believe in ambition and aspiration. There is plenty of talent around, but opportunity for all is scarce. Equality of opportunity is central to a just society: an education that takes you as far as you want to go, a job which enriches your life and that of society, a society in which you are looked after when you are ill and where you live in a home not just a house, and where we all understand that the first duty of government is to defend the nation.
I had the privilege of representing Sedgefield for 12 years. The constituency had moved on from being a mining constituency. The area that was once the Sedgefield constituency boasts, at Newton Aycliffe, one of the largest business parks in the north-east. I am proud of the part that I played in ensuring that Hitachi Rail built its train manufacturing plant in the constituency, situated just a few hundred yards from where George Stephenson assembled Locomotion No. 1 some 200 years ago this September. I wanted to make sure that the opportunities that were not there for my parents were there for my constituents.
The 2019 election was a defeat for me and a defeat for Labour. That election was dire for the country. The electorate was confronted with a choice of Prime Minister which was not a choice between the lesser of two evils, as many thought, but was in fact, I am afraid, a choice between the evil of two lessers. It was a torrid time, but I am pleased and proud that Keir Starmer has turned Labour into a party that is once again serious about government—so serious in fact that we have formed a Government only five years after a massive defeat.
Of course, Tony Blair was my predecessor, and his leadership galvanised Labour to victory. I first met him in the bar of the Trimdon Community College at the time of his selection as Sedgefield’s Labour candidate in 1983, and I went on to work for him for many years. Tony had a big smile, big charisma and big ideas. However, so dreadful were Labour’s prospects in 1983 that, if you had said to me back then that Tony Blair would go on to form a Government that would keep the Conservatives out of power for 13 years and win three consecutive general elections, I would have replied, “Go away, pick up a pen and write a novel. You’ve a great imagination”. If you had said to me back then that I would be relaying this story in my maiden speech in the House of Lords, I would have replied, “I think that you have being drinking one too many pints down the Labour club”.
I want to end by returning to my granddaughter. Because of medical advancements, she will probably reach her centenary in 2125. What kind of world will it be? Will my granddaughter be able to afford to buy her own house, or will she only be able to afford to rent? Will she live in a society where we understand that we can go faster alone but only go further together? Will she live in a society where free speech is not just opinion but based in fact and founded on truth? Will our generation prevent another world war, so that my grandchildren can live to become grandparents themselves? Will the worst effects of climate change be stopped, or will it not even be safe for her to venture outside? In 2125, will there still be hereditary Peers in the House of Lords?
The task for us all, especially this Government, is to face the challenges that are moulding the 21st century, with all its contradictions, tragedies and opportunities, and to do so with belief, imagination and fortitude. Our responsibility is huge: to protect all that we believe in—human rights, democracy, the rule of law, equality of opportunity and our way of life. This Government need to be successful for the country and for the sake of all our grandchildren. It is my ambition and aspiration to ensure that I play my part in that.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend on a powerful and very moving maiden speech.
My noble friend is known for being one of the “famous five”, a group of local Labour Party members who helped Tony Blair to be selected as a Labour candidate in 1983, as he indicated; the rest is history. My noble friend stepped into those very big shoes when he won the Sedgefield constituency, but he clearly showed that he could fill them. He was immensely proud, as he said, that he had been instrumental in bringing a Hitachi Rail factory to Newton Aycliffe.
The House will have realised how equally proud he is of his northern industrial heritage. A Sedgefield lad born and bred, he still lives in his constituency and he showed us the love that he has for it, for that heritage and for County Durham. However, he was too modest to say that he is working on a PhD on its culture and class issues. My noble friend’s background and solid life experiences will ensure that he makes a formidable contribution to this House. I know that he will be given a warm welcome.
I supported the previous Government when they sought to reform the private rented sector to the benefit of tenants, and I support my Government now in ensuring that reform happens. I was really disappointed that the Conservative Party has refused to support the legislation, when both pieces of legislation have the same aim. The Government have developed comprehensive protections for tenants and, at the same time, recognise the contribution made by responsible landlords who provide quality homes. It is clear that great care has been taken in the drafting of this Bill to avoid unintended consequences. Of course, there are ways in which the Bill can be improved, and we have been briefed by Citizens Advice and Shelter, as well as by several organisations representing different interests in the PRS and those involved in student housing, but all expressed general support for the Bill and its aims.
I believe this legislation has the power to transform the private rented sector into a place where tenants can access safe and decent properties at a fair price in the knowledge that, unless their landlord has good reason, it is a place they can call home for as long as they like. It also presents an opportunity for the vast majority of good landlords to establish longer-term tenancies and to show that the minority of bad ones have no place in the sector.
In the Bill, there are issues about the Courts & Tribunal Service, the removal of fixed-term tenancies and enforcement capacity—to name only some aspects. In the time we have, I will focus on a few: first, the impact on social landlords; secondly, the new ombudsman and the role of agents in helping to get that right; and, thirdly, student accommodation. If we are truly to solve the housing emergency, we need to deliver the complementary goals of increased supply and stronger regulation that will ensure that homes are built and maintained at a high standard. This Bill is key to the second half of that equation.
In the social housing sector, it is clear that much has been done by the Government already to allow social landlords to gain access to properties in need of essential redevelopment and improvement works. Regeneration can restore pride in communities and in places that have been left behind, so I am pleased that changes in this legislation will not impede housing-led regeneration and redevelopment.
I know there are concerns that some of the proposed changes to rent increases might impact on social landlords’ ability to increase rents in a harmonised way and affect their ability to deliver repairs and maintenance. There are also concerns about accessing the First-tier Tribunal. I hope the Minister will be willing to meet the National Housing Federation to discuss these.
I turn now to the very welcome proposal for a new ombudsman for the private rented sector, and I declare an interest as the chair of the Property Ombudsman scheme—TPO. It is right that all renters, whether in social or private rented housing, can access quick, fair, impartial and binding resolutions for complaints about their landlord. Can the Minister clarify whether a PRS ombudsman would apply to social landlords’ market rent tenancies?
In the private rented sector, TPO has been dealing with complaints against letting and managing agents for over 20 years. It dealt with 70,000 inquiries last year. That has taught us that tenants’ complaints often include not just the agents but the decisions and actions of their landlords as well. For example, where there is a cost to repair a property, landlords need to authorise payments and instruct agents to carry out the work. From a tenant’s point of view, the agent and the landlord are one and the same, so letting agents will have an important role in delivering the objectives of the legislation.
Whether the decision be that there is one combined ombudsman for the PRS and social housing sector or two separate ombudsmen, it needs to be clear that the purpose of the ombudsman is to provide clarity to tenants on where to go for redress. This will be a new concept for the 50% of PRS landlords who do not employ agents. Can the Minister provide some clarity on how they will be engaged with the process?
I welcome the proposed landlord database. Agents will be required to use the database to check whether the properties that landlords ask them to market are registered as well as that the landlord is registered with the new PRS ombudsman. Can the Minister please clarify whether the database is intended to be a one-stop shop that agents and tenants can use to check the property is registered and compliant and that the landlord is registered for redress?
It is a complex area, with the potential for tenants to find themselves lost and frustrated. A lettings dispute can involve on average five different unresolved issues. Will the Minister consider how the database could be developed to help tenants triage multiple issues to ensure that serious hazards are referred to local authorities, landlord issues are directed to the new ombudsman, agent issues are referred to the Property Ombudsman and rent issues are appointed to the First-tier Tribunal?
Joint investigations will be required and both ombudsmen will need to be able to refer cases to local authorities for enforcement, especially when homes fall short of the decent homes standard and Awaab’s law. Just as the Property Ombudsman now works with redress providers and trading standards, a joined-up approach will be required to ensure that the new system works for both tenants and landlords.
I raise a final issue: the impact of the Bill on student housing. The Government have said that they will exempt purpose-built student accommodation from the decision to end fixed-term tenancy agreements. They subsequently included off-street accommodation, where most students live in their second and third years. Unfortunately, as far as I understand it—although it was not clear from the Minister’s introduction—this will not apply to one- and two-bedroom apartments, yet these account for a third of all student housing. The university sector believes that this is likely to cause confusion and disruption for students and could lead to landlords exiting this market because of the uncertainties. If that is the case, will the Minister agree to look at this again?
This is a complex Bill that will have an interesting Committee stage, but I assure the Minister that the organisation that I chair—the Property Ombudsman—is ready to offer its substantial experience of the PRS to help ensure that the Bill works for tenants, landlords and agents.
Lord Willetts (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on his excellent maiden speech, its eloquence and his extraordinary personal story. This afternoon, behind the Bench of Bishops, we may have seen another constitutional function emerge in this House: the Bench of Blairites. I welcome the noble Lord and appreciate what he said about his predecessor as Member of Parliament. He also spoke eloquently about opportunity, and that is a test against which the measures in the Bill should be assessed.
I thank the Minister for her willingness to engage in discussions with all of us across the House. In her opening speech, she referred to genuine problems with the private rented sector, the difficulties for people in employment if they lose their accommodation and the incredible difficulties for parents with a child at school if they face the uncertainty of losing the place where they live. She ended by saying that she hoped this legislation would help tenants put down deeper roots in the community.
That was all very eloquent, but it revealed a way of thinking that simply does not reflect the reality of student accommodation, for which these concerns do not apply. There are over 1 million students in the private rented sector and a long-standing problem, preceding this Government, is that, although access to private rented accommodation has been crucial to the growth of higher education in this country, the housing department has never really understood higher education and the education department has never understood the importance of private housing. I fear that this legislation is an example of that phenomenon.
For example, students receive maintenance loans in three separate payments during the year. Many rents historically have been structured around the payment of maintenance loans. There is now an assumption of a monthly rental payment model and no scope for landlords to offer tenancies structured around maintenance loans. Have there been any conversations with the education department about changing arrangements for the payment of maintenance loans so that they match the envisaged new payments of rents? Those are the kinds of practical issues that matter and are acute if there is no understanding of the problems facing students.
Students have genuine grievances. At the All-Party Group for Students last week, all of us from both Houses were left in no doubt about their unhappiness, which was sometimes about the quality of student accommodation and sometimes about the role of guarantors, for example. But few believe that the Government’s proposals, as they stand, will make these problems significantly better. Indeed, there is a danger of landlords exiting the system.
The Government have already made some welcome concessions. First, there is the exemption for purpose-built student accommodation. This is estimated to cover about half a million students out of the 1.2 million in private rented accommodation. It is the most expensive and is heavily regulated—quite rightly. There are significant constraints on its supply and on its further provision.
We have recently had the famous ground 4A exemption, which means that landlords can repossess a rented property in advance of the new academic year. This applies to landlords of HMOs with three or more bedrooms. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, this does not cover the many smaller landlords of smaller student accommodation with one or two bedrooms.
It is estimated that, of the 1.2 million students in the private rented sector, half a million or so are in purpose-built accommodation. There may be another 300,000 or 400,000 in the larger HMOs, and there could well be 200,000 to 300,000 in the smaller private landlord arrangements for which there is currently no special recognition. Will the Minister consider, for example, extending this exemption beyond large HMOs to all private landlords?
More radically, will the Minister consider the case for continuing to allow 12-month academic year tenancies —a system which has worked well overall? Does she recognise that there are other risks with some of the provisions in the Bill? For example, upfront payments may now be much harder to require. However, there will be the increased use of guarantors. Requiring a guarantor for a student from a low-income background is very tough, as is requiring a UK guarantor for an overseas student.
Perhaps the housing department is fed up with special pleading on behalf of students, but I think the crucial criterion is one of opportunity, as we heard in that excellent maiden speech. In the purpose-built accommodation—PBA—the rents for students average about £190 a week, in contrast with about £130 a week charged by small private landlords. We could end up with a system where the more expensive accommodation sector grows and is exempt. By and large, this is more expensive and occupied by the affluent students. In future, low-income students might find it harder to access the diminishing amount of lower-rent accommodation. Maybe they are supposed to stay at home and become commuter students. Some people want to see that. A very good social rule of thumb is that the more affluent someone’s family and the higher their social class, the greater the distance they go away to university. The low-income students will be staying at home and commuting, while the students from affluent backgrounds will pay high rents in high-quality, purpose-built accommodation a long way from home. If we end up with this, it will not be meeting the opportunity challenge. I very much hope the Minister will accept that her proposals need to be assessed as to whether or not they promote educational opportunity in our country.
Lord Etherton (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on his impressive and, in many respects, quite moving speech. Before I turn to the two matters of substance on which I wish to address the House, I should draw attention to the fact that my husband has a small portfolio of rental properties.
First, I will briefly address the matter of court process. We all know that there will be many more contested possession proceedings by landlords following the enactment of the Bill and the abolition of Section 21 no-fault evictions. It would not be right to abolish no-fault evictions without adequate speed and resources for dealing with the increase in contested proceedings.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, said, that might lead to such discontent on the part of small investors that they would be induced to leave the private rental sector. Any significant reduction in PRS accommodation would, as we all know, be disastrous at the present time. The Government need to demonstrate that measures have been or will be put in place which will help to secure that court claims by landlords for possession of residential properties will be disposed of in a timely and efficient way. I appreciate that the Government are well aware of this imperative and are thinking of how to address it. As the judge who had responsibility for the introduction of small money claims online, I would be very happy to give any assistance on this aspect that might be thought to be useful.
I turn now to the principal matter on which I wish to address the House, which is the issue of financial penalties. There are several respects in which the financial penalty provisions in the Bill are, I would say, wholly unsatisfactory. The penalties that can be imposed by a local housing authority for breaches of the requirements of the Bill fall into two categories: up to £7,000 and, in some cases, up to £40,000 where the local housing authority is satisfied that the landlord has committed a specified crime.
The first problem is the mishmash of the standard of proof where the penalty is £7,000 or less. The new Sections 16I, 16J, 16K and 16L, introduced into the Housing Act 1988 by Clause 17, which include prohibitions relating to the misuse of possession grounds and not giving a written statement of tenancy terms, enable the local housing authority to impose a penalty of £7,000 or less if satisfied “beyond reasonable doubt”—that is the criminal standard—that the landlord or other relevant person has contravened the prohibitions.
By contrast, Clause 42 provides that the local housing authority may impose a fine not exceeding £7,000 if, “on the balance of probabilities”—the civil standard—it is satisfied that there has been a breach of a rental discrimination measure relating to children and benefit status in Chapter 3 of Part 2 of the Bill. There is no explanation in the Explanatory Notes as to why this is a different standard of proof from that introduced in Clause 17.
Again, Clause 59 allows a local authority to impose a financial penalty on a person if satisfied “on the balance of probabilities”—the civil standard—that the person has breached the requirement in Clause 58 that an advertisement or offer must include a specific amount of rent payable under the letting and impose a prohibition against inviting, encouraging or accepting an offer of rent which exceeds the proposed rent. Again, in contrast, a local housing authority may impose a financial penalty of £7,000 or less only if satisfied “beyond reasonable doubt”—the criminal standard—that the person has breached an obligation under regulations for landlord redress schemes.
These are sufficient examples, although there are others, of the Bill specifying different standards of proof for the same level of financial penalty, £7,000 or less, without explanation either in the legislation or in the Explanatory Notes of the reason for this. One has to question whether the employees of a local housing authority, who have no legal training and no criminal trial experience, can properly and accurately swing from one standard of proof to another.
The Bill will provide for local housing authorities to impose a higher fine of £40,000 if satisfied that a relevant offence has been committed. This is the case, for example, in relation to the new provisions introduced by Clause 17 of the Bill, which I have just mentioned, and the provisions concerning financial redress schemes, which I also mentioned.
It is not right for the employees of a local housing authority who have no legal training and no criminal trial experience to be free to impose a financial penalty of larger sums—up to £40,000—on their assessment of whether the ingredients of a criminal offence had been committed. A good example of the dangers of this is the ability of a local housing authority to impose a financial penalty of up to £40,000 where it is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that an offence has been committed under Section 16 of the 1988 Act, where the landlord relies on a ground in Schedule 2, knowing that they would not be able to obtain an order for possession on that ground or being reckless as to whether they would be able to do so.
Another example is the power of a local housing authority under Clause 92 to
“impose a financial penalty on a person if satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the person has … committed an offence under section 93 … of knowingly or recklessly providing information to the database operator which is false or misleading in a material respect in purported compliance with a requirement imposed by regulations under Chapter 3 of Part 2”.
The mental state of “recklessness” in criminal law is an extremely difficult one and has given rise to case law. It is something less than intention but more blameworthy than carelessness. Recklessness will arise if the accused consciously—that is, looking at the matter subjectively—takes an unjustified risk. Such difficult concepts should play no part in this legislation, which will mostly affect landlords who own one or, at most, very few properties for rent.
It should certainly not be left to local authority employees to reach their own conclusion on the application of “recklessness” in criminal law. The only state of mind that should be capable of giving rise to an offence under the Bill is “intention”—that is to say, actual knowledge or actual intention of the landlord to do the matters comprising the ingredients of the offence. That is clear, easy to understand and fair. It is what good legislation should be.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I, like my noble friend Lady Grender, welcome the Bill. I thank the Minister and her colleagues for getting the Bill to this stage after several years of waiting. I agree with her that the Bill brings forward the most significant changes in the sector for 40 years.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on his outstanding maiden speech and I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown.
A key difference of this Bill when compared with the Renters (Reform) Bill of a few years ago is that Section 21 is to be abolished before court reforms are delivered. Anything further that the Minister can tell us about how processes in the courts can be speeded up would be helpful. There will I think be significant discussion of that in Committee.
That said, the Bill takes us in the right direction. My party conference a few years ago debated Section 21, and two conclusions emerged. Conference wanted repeal of Section 21 and it wanted to protect good tenants from bad landlords. But it also wanted to protect good landlords from bad tenants. So, as the Bill progresses, I hope we can assess it against those criteria.
I suggest that there needs to be a third test. There are lots of solutions proposed in the Bill, but we must beware of just solving one problem when, in so doing, we create another. One example is restrictions on taking rent in advance: should it be one month or two months? On the face of it, one month in advance plus a deposit would seem to be sufficient. Yet some prospective tenants might find it easier to pay more rent up front, particularly those from overseas who have difficulty providing traditional affordability checks. So Committee will be important in assessing the policy of one month’s rent up front, which I understand was a late decision by the Government.
Another example of unintended consequences would be in relation to student housing. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has amply covered that issue, and I think there are problems there. Purpose-built student accommodation is rightly exempt from the Bill, and ground 4A allows student houses—that is, houses in multiple occupation—to be reclaimed to prepare for the next yearly intake of students. That exemption is the right approach, but what about the wish of many landlords to extend ground 4A to one-bedroom and two-bedroom houses and flats? They are not HMOs, but the removal of fixed-term tenancy agreements may worsen things for landlords renting out such accommodation because two months’ notice given midway through the academic year could lead to a loss of student accommodation, as landlords might then decide to leave the student housing market altogether and release those one-bedroom and two-bedroom accommodation units on to the wider private rented market. We must use Committee to examine that issue further.
Clause 98 and Schedule 4 refer to the decent homes standard. The Government are introducing a decent homes standard into the private rented sector for the first time, and I fully support their wish to do so. However, timeframes for improvements and more information on who will be responsible for resourcing them are needed, because one-fifth of homes in the private rented sector do not meet the decent homes standard. The Government will need to be clearer about the minimum standards that will be shown on the private rented sector database, which I strongly welcome because it will bring key information together in one place and can be used to assist with enforcement and rent repayment orders.
I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association because I want to say that, for the decent homes standard to be met, it would help if licensing schemes could provide a way for local authorities to inspect privately rented housing without the need for a tenant to have complained. As we know, many tenants are discouraged from complaining. In the Housing Act 2004, local authorities can create selective licensing schemes to improve poor standards, but they cannot require the physical state of a property to be improved as part of that licence. That is an issue for us to examine further in Committee, which I hope to be involved in doing.
Another question that I have is about market rents. Market rents have to be defined, and there may well be problems in doing so because the market is different across the country. Rental increases will be limited to once a year, but tenants would benefit from clarity on what level of rent increases would be appropriate. I suggest that uprating in line with CPI would be an appropriate method. Again, I look forward to examining that further.
There have been a number of claims at Second Reading today that restrictive regulation will reduce the supply of rental homes. I am not sure that is true. At the moment, there may be some signs of it, but we will have to wait a while until we see exactly what the circumstances are. I accept that we have to be careful about assessing whether the prohibition of fixed-term contracts increases the number of landlords choosing to offer short-term lets outside the private rented sector.
At its heart, this Bill is about standards in the private rented sector. It is not about pursuing good landlords but about pursuing bad ones and improving standards. For that reason, I strongly support the Bill in its overall intentions.
Baroness Fookes (Con)
My Lords, I realise that this is a wide-ranging Bill, but I want only to deal with one small aspect of it, which the Minister kindly referred to in her opening remarks: the value of allowing tenants to keep pets as the general standard. She was kind enough to mention the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Trees, as having given her valuable advice on this topic, so I shall be interested to hear what they have to say later in this debate and interested too to see whether any of my comments chime with what they say.
My first interest in this was when I was an MP—heaven alone knows how many years ago now—but I remember feeling saddened and indeed angered by the blanket refusal of many landlords to allow someone to keep a beloved pet. I can remember one constituent who refused to go into suitable accommodation without their pet. Others would succumb to this because they were desperate and had to give up their pet. There has been, over these many years, a lot of hidden unhappiness, needless unhappiness, for people who so value the companionship of animals. I think we now realise more clearly than ever before the mental and physical health which can accrue from having a pet. I hope that this is a good moment in which to set the matter straight.
Sadly, it seems that there are still many landlords who, without this Bill, will not allow pets to be kept. I was startled by Battersea Dogs & Cats Home saying that the second-most common reason for people giving pets back to it related to housing. It added that only a very small percentage of landlords ever indicated that they were happy about pets being kept. There remains a great deal of work to be done on this score.
I understand that there are those who worry about the possible unhappy implications of very noisy dogs, damage to furniture and perhaps aggressive dogs, but these can be exaggerated. In any case, the idea of insurance being required, if the landlord so wishes, is a very sensible approach. I hope that that will help towards sensible pet ownership.
On the other hand, I have some reservations about the adequacy of the two clauses which deal with this—Clauses 12 and 13. For a start, it is obviously proper that landlords should not withhold their consent unreasonably, but there is no indication whatever about what unreasonable behaviour might constitute. I know full well that it is impossible to list every eventuality in the Bill, or even in delegated legislation, but I am concerned that there seems to be no way of dealing with this. The Minister may have something in mind: perhaps some official guidance which is outside the law but which gives clear indications. I would not expect to deal with anything so detailed tonight, but I would be very happy if we could have correspondence on this matter and these other matters at a later stage or, indeed, have that unusual and valued thing, an actual meeting.
In addition, I am concerned that we are creating another unfairness because social housing is not included. I can understand why if we are not dealing with social housing, but it is going to look rather odd if we have a right in one sector that is not available in another, very comparable sector which, for the average person, will seem to be exactly the same. I wonder whether there is any way in which we can deal with that issue.
I have some reservations on these matters, but, overall, I am delighted that we have at last got where I would like to have got—what?—50 years ago. Anyway, better late than never.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
What a genuine pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. Oddly, in my decade here, I think it is the first time that I have followed her. I say those words warmly and very much hope that I will not disappoint her with what I am about to say, but I am directionally with her.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on a very compelling, moving—I am going to borrow that word again—and thoroughly eloquent maiden speech. I am very grateful to him for sharing all those memories with us; it was a wonderful thing. I look forward to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, which is coming up next—she should not worry, as there are about five minutes between me and her.
I remind the House of my entries in the register of interests, in particular as a trustee of various Scottish entities which are engaged in letting rural properties. I have, in a much smaller way, three rural properties that I let. Noble Lords should remember that, in Scotland, Section 21 has already been abolished, so I have some experience of life beyond this Bill, which may be helpful to the House later.
I will cover two brief subjects now. The first is the great importance of smooth judicial and administrative processes, both to the landlord and the tenant. Secondly, I will cover the topic of pets and pet insurance.
On the first area, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, who has done all the heavy lifting for me. I do not want to repeat things that he has said, but he underlined the challenges and the crucial importance of having clarity, efficiency and speed within the administrative and court processes. I note that almost everything contained in the Bill is a new process in some way.
When the Minister kindly came to the Cross-Bench meeting, I think she had more questions from us than almost any other Minister recently. She would have felt the interest in this particular area within that meeting. I am grateful in advance for her help in getting going a meeting with interested Cross-Benchers to discuss the detail of the court processes and the IT system that will support these, which I believe is in progress of booking at the moment.
The construction of the new processes for courts and the ombudsman, which will, I hope, provide clarity, efficiency and speed, is something that I do not feel will be particularly easy or can be done particularly quickly if, that is, we are to start in the new era smoothly. This inevitably means that the commencement provisions of the Bill will need to take account of this if Parliament is to be confident that it has done its part in making sure the new system is fully operational as it becomes live.
I turn to my second and final area: the provisions about pets and pet insurance. Here I am grateful again to the Minister for arranging a discussion with interested officials on the Bill team. I have also had the benefit of discussions with former colleagues and others within the insurance industry. The rural letting market in Scotland is one where you would expect a pet. The Scottish market, at least in my experience, copes with the problem of pet damage in a very simple way. Pets are discussed with the landlord, who therefore understands what pets are involved. Assuming that all are agreeable— I do not remember any instance where things were not agreeable—market standards are for deposits of up to two months’ rent. On leaving the property, the deposit is then used to deal with any pet damage. No insurance is involved, and the system has the benefit of being very simple. I think there may be lessons there, which I will come back to.
Insurance, generally, is against things that are unlikely; it is never against things which are inevitable. The puppy has not been born that does not chew, and it is inevitable that dogs will cause some damage to a home. Other pets will cause damage to homes—for instance, to fitted carpets. It is not surprising, therefore, that, to date, no comprehensive pet damage insurance policy exists in the UK market. I was responsible for many years for underwriting operations in continental European countries and I never came across any similar insurance there either.
Various UK insurance brokers, no doubt in response to the provisions of this Bill and spotting a potential opportunity, are attempting to interest insurers in providing some element of cover. The insurance risk carriers to date—that is, not the insurance broker intermediaries—have shown no interest. I spoke to the head of personal lines of a UK FTSE 250 insurance group, and they indicated to me that they would have no appetite to develop such a product. I was not surprised, having had a similar role in the past.
The one insurance product that is currently on the market is not available to tenants and covers only accidental damage. It gives an example of a covered event: a dog might tear down the curtains in a house, and that action might damage the wall in some way, and it is the wall which is then repaired. This is, as a percentage of the actual loss cost likely from pet damage, very small. The language of the Bill suggests that insurance will be available both to tenants and to property owners, and that the coverage of the products will extend to all risks of physical loss or damage to the property. However, this is not wholly clear, nor are the insurance limits that might be needed clear, in any of the Bill documentation.
Within the Bill, the landlord has the right to require the tenant to go and find such insurance before the tenant would be allowed to have the pet on their premises. Currently, neither the landlord nor the tenant would know exactly what to set out to buy, and there is no product available. I am all for the presumption that pets can be inside a rented home, for all the reasons contained in the Explanatory Memorandum and which were given again in the Minister’s excellent opening speech.
As things stand, I regret, the insurance provisions of the Bill do not work. I hope to continue working with the Bill team to explore the insurance options, remembering that risk transfer into the insurance markets is complex and expensive. I strongly think that we should take a look at the Scottish solution. Where people have asked for a pet, the landlord should have the ability to ask for the comfort of perhaps two additional weeks of rent deposit. I hope the Minister might agree to meet to talk through this potential option in the future.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. It is an absolute pleasure to be part of this very well-informed debate this afternoon, and to follow on from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I am not sure that we are going to agree on the clauses within the Bill about pets, but I can inform the House that Cara the dog is going to be delighted by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and I intend to tell her all about it when I get home tonight.
I am very grateful to my sponsors, my noble friends Lady Smith of Basildon and Lord Kennedy, for their enormous support. I thank the House staff most sincerely for their help in getting me around the place; they have all been so massively kind.
I grew up in Silvertown in east London. My parents both worked on factory floors and my home was a council flat overlooking the dying docks. All the opportunities I had as a child were founded on that security of tenure, the affordable rent, the stable school and the local library, from which I borrowed and read incessantly. These resources were just vital. They shaped my life and they have informed my career.
After being the first in my family to go to university, I worked as a residential social worker, which gave me some invaluable insights into the vulnerabilities of young people. I then went on to work for the London Borough of Waltham Forest in a number of social policy roles.
I became a councillor in the London Borough of Newham in 1988 and held that role until my election to Parliament in 2005. During that time, I focused on culture. I saw it as a way of providing opportunities for young people that might not be available to them at home. I fought for the Olympics to come to Stratford, which at that time was blighted by swathes of disused industrial land. I cannot say that all the changes have been positive—there has been a severe lack of affordable homes—but there are also genuine opportunities to combat social exclusion that have been created too, particularly by the cultural offer.
Following my election to the other place, I argued constantly for social homes and action against child poverty. Since 2017, I have been highlighting the appalling exploitation of children by organised criminals, particularly in county-lines drug dealing. We simply must recognise that the same child can be both a perpetrator of appalling violence and a victim of grooming and exploitation. It was therefore music to my ears to hear our new Government committing to take strong action on this with the forthcoming crime and policing Bill.
As we know, Parliament is not only about representing but also about governing. My career on the Labour Front Bench began as a Whip. I was in fact the Whip in charge of the landmark Equality Act 2010. I remained a Whip in opposition and joined the Home Office team, working on fire and then policing but also on topics I knew embarrassingly little about, such as recreational drugs. I recall one very memorable occasion when our now Prime Minister sat alongside me chortling as I was enlightened about the various uses of poppers. He suggested I went away and watch “Breaking Bad” as homework.
It is hard to speak about this period without reflecting on Brexit and the threats that assail us from Putin’s far-right Russia and the rise of divisive authoritarian nationalism, around the world and here at home. My only notable rebellion was to vote against the triggering of Article 50, but, as we know, it passed and plunged us into a maelstrom of chaos, insecurity and vulnerability. I simply could not bring myself to vote to make the people I represented poorer. Now I intend to do all I can to mitigate the damage Brexit has caused and to get us working again on shared challenges alongside our European partners.
After 2019, I took the prisons and probation brief, focusing on issues affecting women that are now being ably taken forward by my noble friend Lord Timpson. My next reshuffle was the luckiest because it brought me to the role of shadow Minister for Africa. My focus was twofold: to address the serious problems of Africa’s present, including the brutal generals’ war in Sudan, the Horn of Africa drought and the conflicts in the Sahel and the Great Lakes. But I also wanted to ensure that we were not distracted from the resourcefulness and leadership of Africa’s people and from the massive opportunities for progress. I want to pay tribute to my dear friend the Foreign Secretary and to my noble friend Lord Collins for their passionate commitment to this very agenda.
I believe that Africa is rising, despite all the challenges of insecurity, despite climate heating and despite unfair treatment by the global financial system. I genuinely believe that historians will look back on this century and say that it was Africa’s. I believe that we as a country will be stronger, fairer and more prosperous if we act as a valued partner to our African friends and not behave like a blinkered patriarch who thinks themselves noble for offering crumbs from the table.
I intend to continue to work on the causes that have defined my career and life, a flavour of which I hope I have given today. I hope you will agree that it is utterly fitting for me to make my maiden speech on this Bill, which promises to deliver a sea change in the balance between renters and landlords.
Sadly, the housing crisis has deepened in Newham, even as our borough has grown massively. Much of that blame lies with policies that encouraged a poorly regulated and unaffordable private rented sector to expand without limit. The damage done by housing insecurity and disrepair is life-shaping. It disrupts education, employment and both bodily and mental health. It is why ending child poverty remains more of a rallying cry than a reality. Families cannot access good work and contribute fully as equals in our society without a decent, secure home like the one that we had in Silvertown. That base was essential for me getting here today, and I support the rapid progress of this Bill into law so that many young people have these very same opportunities in future.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Brown of Silvertown, both to welcome her to your Lordships’ House and to applaud her warm, passionate, insightful and compelling maiden speech—not at all dry, as she told me she feared it would be.
My noble friend says that she intends to continue working on the causes that have defined her career. That is good news because, as we have heard, these causes have been wide-ranging and important. They include culture, Africa, women in the criminal justice system, and children, including child poverty. I look forward to working with her on child poverty in particular, as the Government’s child poverty strategy takes shape. She rightly made the link between child poverty and housing insecurity and disrepair, thereby underlining the importance of the Bill, to which I now turn.
When we debated the Bill’s predecessor, I was able to give it only a very lukewarm welcome, as it contained so many flaws and holes. It is good to be able to welcome this Bill unequivocally, especially as it was approved in the Commons as a result of the Minister listening to and acting on some of the suggestions made. But there is still, of course, room for further improvement. I am grateful to the Renters’ Reform Coalition and others who have briefed us on the further changes needed
“if the legislation is to deliver on the government’s ambitions to address the ‘insecurity and injustice that too many renters experience’ and ‘decisively level the playing field between landlords and tenants’”.
Before turning to some of these changes, I will say a word about context. I do not pretend to have expertise in housing law, but I came to the issue from my long-standing concern about poverty and the insecurity it creates. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report published last week made clear, high housing costs are
“a major driver of poverty … leading to a risk of compromised living standards, insecurity and at worst, homelessness and rough sleeping”.
It explains that private renters in particular are pulled into poverty by high housing costs. Shockingly, around half of private renters are in poverty only after their housing costs are factored in. On average, private renters in poverty spend around 60% more on housing costs than social renters in poverty. The situation is made worse by the continued freezing of the local housing allowance and the impact of the benefit cap, which I hope the Government will eventually address.
It is thus not surprising that the latest Bristol University financial fairness tracker survey found that parents of children living in rented accommodation were especially likely to face serious financial difficulties or to be struggling. As well as having issues with damp, mould and condensation, around half had needed to borrow money just to meet their daily living expenses.
Given the poverty that results from high housing costs in the private rented sector, I am very sympathetic to the calls from the Renters’ Reform Coalition for more decisive action on affordability. As Shelter underlines, there is a real risk that the security that the welcome immediate abolition of Section 21 aims to provide will be undermined by unfair rent hikes designed to force tenants out. I believe that the coalition makes a good case for a cap on in-tenancy rent increases. I do not really understand why the Government are opposed to this. It is not the same as rent controls, although I admit that I think there is a case for them. Ministers suggest that the answer to an unreasonable rent hike is for the tenant to challenge it at a tribunal, but how realistic is this? After all, the Minister in the Commons himself described this as an “onerous process”. I hope this can be looked at again, together with the coalition’s suggestion of a national rental affordability commission to investigate effective methods to make renting more affordable.
The other main concern of the coalition that I want to take up is the need to strengthen the very welcome anti-discrimination provisions in the Bill that would outlaw any ban on renting to families with children and those in receipt of social security. There are two main issues here. The first concerns landlords’ right to demand a guarantor. The fear is that this could be used to circumvent the Bill’s anti-discrimination provisions. Although it is welcome that the Bill was changed in the Commons to prevent landlords demanding multiple months of rent up front, as a Shelter housing champion and long-standing private renter pointed out at a briefing last week, rent in advance and guarantors are two sides of the same coin. Some of those in the most vulnerable circumstances are least likely to be able to find a guarantor, so the coalition suggests limits on the situations in which a landlord can demand a guarantor, which seems reasonable to me.
Barnardo’s and others recommend that all English local authorities should be required to offer guarantor and rent deposit schemes to care leavers, and that care leavers should be added to the groups that are specifically protected from discrimination by landlords. I hope the Government might also be open to the addition of other groups to the list of those who must not be discriminated against, particularly disabled people, prison leavers, and refugees and other non-UK passport holders—this points to the abolition of right to rent, which can lead to racial discrimination. I ask my noble friend: will those with no recourse to public funds receive the same protection as social security recipients?
Although I welcome that the Bill does not include the change to the definition of anti-social behaviour contained in the previous Bill, it does make eviction on grounds of ASB easier. This would be to the detriment particularly of survivors of domestic abuse and disabled people, who are vulnerable to ASB complaints. Justice encourages us instead to press for better training and resources for the police and local authorities to investigate and fully respond to ASB complaints.
I will raise the question of Home Office accommodation, mentioned by the right reverend Prelate and raised with me by London Councils. It argues that the Bill should include such accommodation so as to ensure that asylum seekers and refugees benefit from the decent homes standard, also called for by Hibiscus on behalf of black and minoritised women; otherwise, London Councils argues, the Bill could give rise to a two-tier system in which a small minority of rogue landlords might be incentivised to procure poor-quality accommodation for use as asylum accommodation.
On the basis of the extensive evidence it received from London authorities about the poor standards of asylum accommodation, London Councils contests the Minister’s assertion in Committee in the Commons that extending the Bill’s provisions to asylum accommodation is unnecessary. This is an issue I hope to pursue in Committee, and I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister would be willing to meet London Councils’ parliamentary officer to discuss what is involved.
In conclusion, as I said earlier, the Minister in the Commons did act on some of the concerns raised there. I know that my noble friend the Minister is a good listener, so I hope we might be able to make further improvements to the Bill in this House. In this way, we can turn what is a good Bill into a potentially ground-breaking one that achieves the Government’s aims of decisively levelling the playing field between tenants and landlords, and providing much greater genuine security to tenants.
The Earl of Leicester (Con)
My Lords, I refer your Lordships to my property interests as set out in the register, specifically a large and historic portfolio of houses in Norfolk, 93% of which are leased to local people and key workers, all living in and contributing to the local community year-round. I say this because it is really important—due to its popularity as a holiday destination, North Norfolk District Council lies third in the rankings, behind Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, for second home ownership. I could increase my income, like many of my neighbours do, by renting these out as holiday cottages, but I do not because I am acutely aware of how crucial they are to maintaining the social fabric in a rural community where property prices and demand are sky high and where there is very little public provision.
The Labour Government intend to transform the experience of private renting through introducing reforms that level the playing field between landlords and tenants. For them, abolishing Section 21 and restricting the use of Section 13 notices, while increasing many other safeguards for tenants, will allow for the growth of communities and reduce the risk of homelessness. Clearly, from what I have just said, I too am pro-community and anti-homelessness, which is where the Government and I are aligned. Where we differ, however, is in our understanding of the true effects that these reforms will have on the private renting market, particularly in rural communities.
In the rural private housing sector, this Bill will lead to a decrease in the number of properties available in an already struggling market. The Country Land and Business Association has surveyed its membership and found that 44% of rural private landlords are planning to sell or change the use class of their properties in the next two years. During that same period, only 21% are planning to build new properties. I am no economist, but I understand supply and demand. A diminished supply of properties will inevitably lead to a price increase for consumers. In fact, that has already been occurring. Since April 2018, there has been a net loss of properties in the rural private rented sector. In a poll, nearly 90% of rural private landlords gave changes to PRS tenancies as a cause for their decision to change use class. More specifically, 57% of CLA members cited the removal of Section 21 as the reason for the net loss, as did a greater number in Scotland, where it has already happened.
Despite my talking predominantly about rural areas, these same issues will also develop in urban regions. Not only will these changes lead to supply issues and thus price rises but the lack of supply will ultimately add strain to housing associations and municipal housing.
The rural economy differs from that of other sectors. Rural business owners commonly offer accommodation within their employment packages. It is a vital part of their ability to attract staff in—let us say—the tourism or hospitality industries. Following the passing of this Bill, especially with the absence of Section 21, I fear for the crucial ability of landlords to remain flexible and adaptable to their ever-changing business needs. Specifically, I am adamant that the new grounds for possession that refer strictly to “agricultural” landlords and workers must be broadened to include the 85% of rural businesses which are not involved with farming or forestry. If accommodation cannot be recovered quickly from previous employees, this economic system will break, but I wonder whether this Government care or even understand this. They have not shown a great understanding of the rural economy thus far.
I want to mention the provision to allow tenants rights to keep a pet. I wholly understand the benefits a pet can bring to family life, enhancing the mental health of those who are lonely, for example. Indeed, we benefit from having three family dogs and, I joke not, a recently deceased parrot. He died three weeks ago and, coincidentally, was called Basil.
I should mention, as set out in the register of interests, that I am a trustee of SongBird Survival, a charity that funds scientific research identifying the reasons for declines in the number of songbirds. The charity has funded work with Reading University’s Dr Hugh Hanmer showing that cats can travel long distances and can affect the natural environment beyond their home range. It also funded work with Exeter University’s Professor Robbie McDonald and Dr Sarah Crowley in 2019 and 2020 studying the drivers and facilitators of hunting behaviour and options for management of said cats. Conservative estimates ascribe 90 million deaths of songbirds to cats per annum. As a result of this real threat to biodiversity, landlords should be allowed to ban cats from some of their properties which are in particularly sensitive rural areas; for example, near SSSIs or NNRs.
There are also very serious issues with the Bill related to student accommodation, but I will let others speak more eloquently on that.
Present, chronic court backlogs, along with the generally underresourced judicial system, will cause a crisis in people’s access to justice. Dispute resolution firm Excello Law said that in this Bill:
“The risk to both tenants and landlords is the existing backlogs in the court system. Trying to obtain possession orders will be protracted, causing uncertainty and delays for both landlords and tenants”.
More than 4.5 million households will need tenancy agreements updating; letting agent staff and landlords will need to undertake training, and insurance and mortgage providers will need to adjust policies and rates. I hope the Government pay attention to that and allow time for it to happen before the Bill becomes law.
Overall, rural or not, I stand by the fact that landlords want to keep tenants. They do not want voids, which are very expensive. I balk at the sentiment brought by this Bill, which assumes that private landlords in this country are, on the whole, bad. They provide a very valuable service which often—through mere geography —housing associations or councils are unable to provide; indeed, they complement them. The vast majority of landlords are excellent people, who are human and want to develop a relationship with their tenants. I have concerns that provisions in the Bill pertaining to challenging rents at tribunal where there is no downside for the tenant could put pressure on those trying to foster positive relations as more vexatious claims are pursued.
This Bill will penalise the whole sector, and the ramifications will be felt across the country for years, putting extra pressure on already-struggling housing associations and the diminishing number of municipally owned council houses. It is not difficult to imagine a world in which, through this Bill, the Government exacerbate the problems of 11 million private renters, 2.3 million landlords and, ultimately, themselves.
Lord Thurlow (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the two maiden speakers on their inspiring, eloquent and very interesting speeches. I want to inform the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, that he and I share something in common—I am sorry to see that he is not in his place. My grandfather was the vicar of Sedgefield more than 100 years ago. Furthermore, he also sat in this Chamber, so we have two special causes to celebrate together.
The Bill is big and ambitious, with far-reaching implications not only for occupiers and landlords but for the surveying profession—I should declare that I am, and was for decades, a chartered surveyor, working in this space to some extent. I also have two buy-to-let flats and advise a property development company that develops entry-level housing in England. The surveying profession will be involved; the Courts & Tribunals Service, as we have heard, and the ombudsman services will be dramatically affected. Social services will also be involved, as will, most of all in my opinion, local authorities. That said, I support most of the clauses in the Bill; it is a very welcome addition to the statute book.
Turning to those concerns, this Bill is going to frighten landlords. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, informed us of what has happened in Scotland. That is an excellent market test of what is going to happen here in England and Wales. I too live in Scotland. A nationwide firm of estate agents which specialises in letting property closed its office nearest to where I live after Section 21 was abolished in Scotland. I spoke to them about this, and they said that they did it simply because the market dried up for landlords or they withdrew. They closed their department. All those landlords either sold their properties—most of which would have become second homes—or turned them into holiday accommodation and Airbnb-type alternatives. The only losers were the tenant community, and they have nowhere else to turn—there is a terrible shortage of housing. Do not let us fall into that trap and let that happen here.
Ending fixed-term leases is a mistake. They do not have to be long leases, but there are a lot of enterprising individuals who want to criss-cross the country: they are on secondment; they are on a consultancy project; they might be digital nomads, moving between centres of excellence in their field. They know they are going to be somewhere for three or four years. There is no reason why they should not have a fixed-term contract. The landlord would appreciate it and benefit, and, of course, they would, too—they could call it “home”.
I am concerned about, as we have heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, the courts and tribunal services and the delays likely to result from the logjam of huge increases in the numbers of referrals and complaints. We underestimate the pressure on the ombudsman’s services as these new rules come into play; there will be an awful lot of call on their services.
The impact on local authorities is principally one of resourcing. They have a big role to play in this Bill; there are going to be legions of surveyors having to be trained up in the decent homes standard and the implications of the ability to operate Awaab’s law. There is going to be a significant increase in the need for computers, IT and digital recording, which will include ongoing maintenance. We are a country of some 50 million people—we are not a country like the Nordics, New Zealand or others, where they are dealing with 10% of the size of our population—and these recording systems are immensely expensive to maintain. We are asking local authorities to become policemen, and that is not their role. They will have to enforce the new rules and regulations, which is going to be culturally difficult and will require a lot more employment, training and resourcing. Who is going to pay for it? We know that the local authority system is basically bust financially.
Finally, I do not think that it will work to prohibit rental bidding. Unless I have misread the Bill—I apologise if that is the case—I think that all a landlord has to do to prevent being caught out on rental bidding is to quote an unreasonably high rent, way above estimated rental value, and let the market do its work through a Dutch auction and gazumping, or whatever else it might be. But perhaps I have missed something in the Bill.
In conclusion, I support most of the clauses of the Bill. I am concerned that some will not work, and I am certain that others need review, but I look forward to Committee very much indeed and to discussing all these matters.
Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, on their excellent and passionate maiden speeches. As other noble Lords have said, they were an inspiring couple of maiden speeches.
I declare an interest as a landlord of over two decades and a former renter in the private rented sector for some 16 years. The Bill before your Lordships’ House has much to commend it. I support ending arbitrary evictions under Section 21, and the imposition of a decent homes standard and Awaab’s law in the PRS. Of course, as ever, with these and other elements of the Bill, the devil is in the details and how they are implemented.
On Section 21, as has been noted, the courts will have to be ready to deal with the expected increase in workload. I welcome HMG’s commitment to the digitisation of the court process, but this must be made an urgent priority.
However, my main concern with the Bill is the impact of moving to periodic tenancies only, with a ban on longer terms and upfront payments. Both those measures, as we have heard, will have a significant unintended impact, which will reduce the availability of homes, increase rents and affect the financial viability of the PRS as a whole.
The inability to negotiate upfront payments, as we have heard, will hit the self-employed, foreign students, those with a poor credit history and vulnerable people. It also risks a legal challenge under common contract law. No one has yet satisfactorily explained to me the benefits of moving to periodic tenancies and scrapping assured shorthold tenancies; it seems a solution in search of a problem.
Two reasons have been given by Ministers—and I thank the Minister for her engagement on this Bill: first, to enable those suffering domestic abuse to be able to leave; and, secondly, to enable tenants to leave unsatisfactory properties and give them additional flexibility to perhaps move to a new job or area, both while giving two months’ notice. In the first case, someone suffering domestic abuse is unlikely to give two months’ notice. In fact, charities dealing with abuse have told me that it is the abuser who stays in the home as the victim flees. In the second case, most ASTs, in my experience, have a six-month break clause, allowing enough flexibility for most tenants.
As for unsatisfactory homes in the PRS, that is exactly the reason for the decent homes standard, Awaab’s law, the ombudsman, the database and rent repayment orders. Any bad landlord providing sub-standard accommodation will find themselves subject to up to £40,000 in fines and swingeing rent repayment orders, payable to the local authority or the tenants themselves.
I found the Government’s impact assessment of the PRS very negative. It is, in fact, the most popular form of rental tenure, compared to council or other social housing. I recall being a councillor in Essex, where I represented what was once the largest council estate in Europe, and, believe me, the tenants were not very enamoured of the local council or the housing provided. Later, when I was a renter in the PRS, I moved 10 times in 16 years, but only one of those was a forced move, when my landlords discovered that they could make more money renting to Americans in the summer than to me all year round. In any event, most tenants do not intend to stay in the PRS for life, and many stay in a tenancy for just one year—and that is particularly applicable to students.
I understand the need for security. For five years I worked for a national charity and housing association providing housing for young homeless people and people with mental health issues. The idea was to provide homes and stability for vulnerable people, but two-month periodic tenancies are not the answer. Tenants will have less security, not more, as instead of a one or two-year tenancy, if mutually agreed, landlords will be able to give notice at any time, up to four months if reoccupying or selling their property. Why cannot reasonable people agree a fixed term, with a break clause if required? Incidentally, the majority of tenants want fixed-term tenancies.
Another unintended consequence is that landlords will increase rents, because tenants will be able to move out at short notice and many costs for the landlord are front-loaded, such as cleaning and referencing each time. The risk of voids or vacancies will increase, and landlords will increase rents to cover the added risk.
There may or may not be a mass exodus of landlords from the PRS; some will wait and see, but up to 70% are considering selling up—that is a fact. It is also true that the PRS has doubled in size since 2002. That was an era when buy-to-let mortgages were introduced, money was relatively cheap and baby boomers invested their pensions in the PRS—but those days are over. The issue is not whether there is a mass exodus from the PRS; it is that supply is not keeping up with demand, which will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
Even if the Government’s housebuilding target of 1.5 million homes is met, it does not mean that affordable homes will be built where people need them. What is needed is a commitment to build more affordable and social housing in the right places. Build to rent is expanding, but at nowhere near the scale to take up the slack. More regulation of the PRS is welcome, but if the costs associated with it spirals, including the cost of new EPC regulations, investing in the PRS will simply no longer be viable.
Costs have already spiralled for existing landlords, with around 40% of landlords paying double or even up to quadruple for their mortgages. For those new PRS investors that there are, they are increasingly chasing yields of 8% to 9%—impossible in the south but available in the north. That will create a regional imbalance. Some argue that if landlords leave the PRS that will be a good thing, as more property is opened up for first-time buyers. That will happen in many instances, but in many others, landlords will gravitate to ultra-short lets, as we have heard from other noble Lords. They are far more profitable and virtually unregulated; a register will not make a blind bit of difference.
Once purely periodic tenancies are introduced, the line between ultra-short lets and long-term lets will become blurred. In many cities and coastal resorts, long-let availability for local residents will simply disappear. In many apartment blocks, the sense of community will be lost. It is already happening. In some apartment blocks in London, 90% of flats are Airbnb. Even in Camden in London, for example, short lets can be four times more expensive than a long let, and hence much more profitable. Airbnb will try to say that its accommodation is being rented out by old grannies. The fact is that Airbnb and other ultra-short-let platforms are being increasingly dominated by professional landlords, who often avoid tax, as, unlike with estate agents, their rental income is not registered with HMRC. Local communities and all of us suffer as a result.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, on their eloquent maiden speeches. I am sure from these speeches that the breadth and depth of their experience will add greatly to the work of this House, and I look forward to working with them.
We support the objectives of the Bill and see it as a major step towards a safe, secure and affordable private rented sector. Having a home is something many of us take for granted—a place of refuge, security, comfort, safety and reassurance—yet for so many people, including large numbers of children, this is a far-off dream. In my own city of Bristol, 54% of people in the misery of temporary accommodation have dependent children. What kind of start in life is this for them?
The severe shortage of social rented dwellings means that more and more renters are now dependent on private rentals. Shelter reports that there has been a net loss of 24,000 social homes per year since 1991 through the right to buy and demolition. New build has replaced less than half of them. In the meantime, the private rented market has more than doubled since 1980, with unaffordable rents leaving renters struggling to make ends meet, with many ending up in debt and homelessness. As others have said, there is a desperate shortage of, and need for, social homes at affordable rents.
Most landlords fulfil their responsibilities and treat tenants with respect and consideration, but where exploitative and irresponsible landlords fail to comply with standards and conditions required, it is right that early enforcement powers to fine and sanction are provided in addition to legal redress, which may take much longer.
Many of the proposals in the Bill will be welcome to renters, but what is missing is any form of rent stabilisation. As we have heard from other noble Lords, the high rents in the private sector place a huge burden on renters—one-third of renters spend half or more of their income on rent. They are often intimidated from challenging increases by fear of eviction and being made homeless. Even with the banning of Section 21 evictions, landlords can still force eviction through rent hikes that tenants cannot afford. Without some form of rent control, tenants will still not be protected from summary eviction and the threat of homelessness.
Various ways of pegging rents have been mooted, such as to inflation, wage growth or the Bank of England base rate. There needs to be a framework which allows reasonable predictability for rent so that tenants can budget and not be priced out by rent hikes. Rent controls are well-established in European and other OECD countries. This is by a combination of local and national measures, and I hope that the Government will perhaps look at some of these as we progress with the Bill.
The Bill gives tenants the right to challenge unreasonable rent increases, but many tenants will feel unconfident or intimidated in challenging their landlord at a tribunal. So I hope that, through the process of the Bill, the Government will give some thought to measures for the stabilisation of rents.
The CAB tells us that one in four of the complaints it receives is about disrepair, damp, mould and excessive cold. Making the decent homes standard a legal requirement is essential. Renters often experience horrific conditions of disrepair, damp and even infestation with vermin, and they survive on a knife edge of insecurity with the constant fear of being forced into homelessness. I am sure that those of us who have been councillors who have already spoken in this debate are well aware of some of the dreadful conditions that people live in, with landlords who repeatedly fail to carry out effective repairs and maintenance work. The online database publishing information on private rented sector dwellings and landlords could be a very powerful enforcement tool, depending on what information is to be included about landlords’ records and the condition of dwellings.
However, bringing unfit properties up to standard may be costly, and effective enforcement will pose very serious challenges for cash-starved local authorities. Local authorities’ budgets have been cut to the bone and, if they are to enforce compliance, they will need the resources to do so. Tenants must be confident that the law will be enforced promptly and not be buried in lengthy bureaucracy. This will be essential for the success of this legislation, and the Government must give assurances that enforcement will be fully funded.
The banning of discrimination against benefit recipients will help people with disabilities who are on benefit. Evidence shows that people of colour are more likely to be in substandard accommodation and that black and Asian people are more likely to be denied the right to a safe and secure home. It will be essential for anti-discrimination measures to be rigorously enforced.
However, problems of accessibility remain. Private rented dwellings are often too small to allow a wheelchair or accessible bathrooms and kitchens. People are having to remain in hospital as the needs caused by injury or illness cannot be accommodated in their private rental property. Renters have had adaptations refused by landlords. Access rights are human rights for tenants, and they must be guaranteed in law, so I hope we will make some progress on this in Committee.
As my colleagues have said, Liberal Democrats also believe that accommodation for service personnel should comply with the same decent homes standard and that the accommodation of refugees and asylum seekers should be on the same principle, as in an amendment tabled by Liberal Democrat colleagues in the Commons.
We welcome the first steps that the Bill is taking to provide a fairer private rented sector, with clear rights and responsibilities, and with sanctions and redress for non-compliance. The private rented sector is the second-largest tenure in the UK, yet privately rented homes are the most insecure, most expensive and the lowest quality of any tenure. Reform is long overdue.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I, too, declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I offer a very warm welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of wherever it was—
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Sedgefield—unforgettable, obviously.
I want to point out to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, that he is not going to beat me in a competition between who has more in common with the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, because my grandfather was a miner in south Wales. In fact, he was killed in a mining disaster, the largest there has ever been in Britain. I also grew up on a council estate until I was 18 years of age and left home for college.
I love so much about this Bill. It ends no fault evictions, it helps to protect tenants from damp and mould and it makes it easier for renters to keep pets. I support those things 100%. Of course, the Government have responded well to suggested amendments, such as stopping excessive demands for rent up front. I am even hopeful that the Minister might give me a positive response to an amendment which I will table later, tabled by my colleague Carla Denyer MP in the other place, which talks about the needs of people with disabilities, both visible and invisible. It would be absolutely wonderful to get something in the Bill to improve the situation for disabled renters in the private rented sector, and to send a message to those landlords who lock them out of the sector that it is not acceptable that so many people struggle to get permission for the most basic of adaptations, or face discrimination in renting in the first place.
The Bill is not perfect, but it is the kind of legislation I was hoping this Government might put forward, and I would like to suggest some big ideas about what the Government should do next. The big things that are missing, and the main reasons why many young people are choosing to vote Green instead of red these days are rent controls and an end to the right to buy. We need a living rent to match the living wage. This would be similar to the living wage scheme that we Greens proposed and got the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, to agree to 24 years ago.
There would be a national commission to decide the living rent with input from local authorities and mayors. It would examine factors like local income in different areas, the size of properties and local market conditions, plus the condition of the properties themselves. We should not have a situation where an estimated one in 10 tenants is spending 60% of their income on rent.
With rents going up rapidly year by year, this is not just an issue of a few hotspots; rents went up by over three times the rate of inflation last year. The question is: why? How does that happen? I have heard all the arguments about it being due to population growth and shortage of supply, but, when you look at the actual figures for the last few decades, you find that housing supply is not just keeping pace with but increasingly outstripping household formation. The houses have been built, but they have ended up in fewer hands; that is the root of the problem with our housing market.
Rents have gone from being 10% of income to an average of around one-third of income. One clear reason why the brakes have come off rents in the private sector is right to buy and the decline in social housing. Rents have risen rapidly, along with the country’s benefits bill. If the Government want to increase the supply of housing, why do Ministers not take up the challenge: invest in social housing and “build, baby, build”. Why do Ministers not invest in a future of good-quality social housing that cannot be sold off, thereby creating decent homes for the younger generations, who are increasingly worried that they may never have the security and quality of life that their parents’ generation had?
The long-term solutions to rising rents are: ending the chokehold on supply from greedy developers who are land-banking, and dealing with the property speculators who buy ghost flats in London and leave them empty all year. While the Government are thinking through what steps they can take to deal with these rich property developers, who restrict the housing market to get even richer, Ministers can and should act to reform the rental market with sensible and locally sensitive limits on what people can charge.
The inequality of housing has become a huge generation divide, as other noble Lords have said. Some 11 million people are renting. We have one generation—going on two generations—who, unless decisive action is taken by this Government, will never be able to earn enough to have a mortgage and are straining to afford their rent. That is not to mention the sharp rise in the number of families with children staying in temporary accommodation for more than five years.
This Bill will definitely help—there is no doubt about that—but, equally, it does not touch the roots of the problem. I would like to hear from the Minister whether social housing is a high priority. I have asked questions on the issue of housing, and in response Ministers talk about affordable housing. I am not talking about just affordable housing; I care very much about social housing. That is where I grew up for my first 18 years and I think other people deserve that as well. So I urge Ministers to consider the steps needed to fix our housing crisis, just as we would all expect from a concerned Labour Government.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I find myself in an unusual situation, almost feeling that I am making a maiden speech. After 16 years on the Front Bench, being a freed-up Back-Bencher is a bit of a shock: you are free to think, but there is nothing you have to do. Reflecting on advice I received from a Conservative Peer when I first came into the House, it was put to me that the role is one of scrutiny, and the advice I received was to do that thoroughly. He said that the way to do it thoroughly was to choose a Bill and see it through from beginning to end—and I have chosen this Bill.
To equip myself to participate, I have read around the Bill, particularly the Library briefing, but I do recognise that I have much more to learn. Nevertheless, it seems that this area has three problems: price, quality and security. Over recent years, rent increases exceeding wage increases has made people poorer: in particular, it has made poor people poorer. The Bill would seem to make a modest impact, at best, on that.
On quality, the Bill would seem to make a more significant input. Clearly, from the news stories that one hears from time to time, the issue of quality is important to the minority of tenants who find themselves with rogue landlords who ignore their obligations.
It is security that seems to be the problem that is most comprehensively covered by this Bill, and I am very pleased by that. Insecurity must be very difficult to live with. I cannot really understand it. My experience of renting goes way back to when I was a child in the late 1940s, the 1950s and the early 1960s. I lived in a council house; it was not a wonderful palace but it was perfectly adequate. In those days, rents were controlled and there was security of tenure. The day-to-day thinking about it was not in any way significantly different from owning your own house.
Since 1968, I have been privileged to live in a house that I have owned—or, at least, have owned in some sort of relationship with a building society—so to feel what it is like to be an insecure tenant today is very difficult. I cannot find a better word than “horrible”; I guess that is how it must be. There is the anxiety of not knowing where you are going to sleep next week or next month, the depression it must bring and the mental health problems that come with it. This leads to things beyond the problem of renting, such as homelessness and rough sleeping—and one has to recognise that rough sleeping leads to early death.
It has even changed the pattern of our behaviours in society. Nowadays, two-wage families are starting either not to have children or to have them very late, which is exacerbating the growing demographic crisis in this country. I am sure that, by the end of this process and after scrutiny, I will be convinced to support the Bill, but we must hit the price problem: we must build the 1.5 million houses we have promised and we must build the right sort of houses.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I offer my thanks to both the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, for their enthusiastic and energy-driven speeches, which were very infectious. They will help to drive me along and give me the energy to do all the things that will come along to all of us. They are both very welcome.
I must declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a part-owner of rented property in Bingley, west Yorkshire.
The renters Bill aims to ensure that those renting homes from landlords across the nation have a safe, secure place to live, managed by a landlord who is reasonable, responsive and reactive when problems in their rented home occur—something I am sure that we all wish to see. However, I do not believe that this Bill will necessarily achieve that. I have spoken with a range of stakeholders in the rental market prior to the debate, including those in the built-to-rent sector, which has the potential to deliver up to 10% of this Government’s overall housing targets. The built-to-rent sector—if it is given the policy environment to deliver new, net, additional, high-quality, long-term rent homes—would do a great deal to achieve the housing targets that we need.
It appears to me that the built-to-rent sector is particularly susceptible to the clauses in the Bill, in its current form, that pertain to open-ended tenancies with two-month notice periods, where renters can serve notice to leave their home on day one. This is because built-to-rent homes can be moved into quickly, as they benefit from shared amenities such as wifi and concierge services, among others, that make them very attractive places to live. Renters can move in with just their suitcase and some groceries, and without the need to set up the water meter and internet provider, or deal with the utility providers.
The Government have put on record their support for bringing more institutional investor landlords into the rental market and driving up standards across the market, both of which are laudable goals, alongside the building of new homes. However, allowing renters to immediately serve notice to leave their rented home on day one of their tenancy will have a detrimental impact, particularly on the build-to-rent sector’s ability to secure investment, both domestic and foreign, to deliver the homes that this Government want to see built.
To reiterate, this measure increases the risk of short-term renting by those looking to take advantage of the legislative issues that the Bill creates, and prevents those who truly want to put down roots in the area where they rent their home doing so, while also having an impact on future housing supply. That is not what this Government intend, I am sure, and is certainly not supportive of the Government’s growth agenda or housebuilding targets.
I want the Bill to put in place the ability for renters to serve their two months’ notice only after they have rented their home for a minimum of four months, thereby discouraging those who would use the Bill in its current form to take advantage of the facilities and high-quality homes that build-to-rent landlords provide. I am well aware of the need to ensure that renters are not trapped in unsafe, mis-sold, damp or mould-ridden rented homes, and such exemptions should of course be included in any amendments made to the relevant clauses in Committee.
An additional potential consequence of the Bill that has been raised with me and that warrants consideration in this place is the impact on housing supply due to the incentive the Bill presents to renters to challenge their landlords’ rent increase when served a Section 13 notice. I add at this point that the fact that Section 13 notices have not yet been digitised is an issue that, in this day and age, needs urgent attention. Section 13 notices being challenged by any and all renters simply to delay a rent increase will serve to achieve only one goal: discouraging landlords looking to provide rental homes and investors looking to create new rental homes. These delays in landlords being able to achieve reasonable increases in their rent from renters will mean that less investment is available for these landlords to build the new homes we need.
The Government cannot expect institutional landlords and investors to deliver new high-quality, sustainable homes if they face so much uncertainty and delay about the rent they might reasonably receive. I strongly support an amendment to the Section 13 clause of the Bill to ensure that legitimate rent challenges from renters are progressed through the courts at speed—we have heard a lot of attention being drawn to the difficulties of the court process at the moment—while rent challenges that have no legitimacy and are being lodged simply to delay fair and reasonable rent increases are deterred.
Some opinions that landlords should focus on are the ability for a failed rent challenge in the court to bring the date of the original rent increase back into effect with a payment plan put in place that is achievable for the renter to pay off over a reasonable period, or giving the courts the ability to increase rents past the point proposed on the Section 13 notice if the increase is below market rate and is subsequently challenged by the renter.
The Government have some laudable ambitions, and improving the lives of renters while delivering new homes are clearly two that many in this and the other place will rightly support. However, the Bill as it stands leaves too many loopholes open for some to exploit, at the expense of those who the legislation is being put in place to protect.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, what wonderful maiden speeches we have heard today. I heartily endorse the congratulations given to our new Peers.
Having read the debates in the other place describing the horror stories of damp dripping down walls, mould, infestations, faulty electrics and landlords who just do not care, I welcome the principles behind this Bill. As recorded in the register, I have dabbled with being a landlord myself, and know that nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of tenants. The majority of landlords take their responsibilities seriously, but for far too long a minority of rogue landlords have been able to exploit loopholes in legislation to treat tenants in, frankly, a horrific and wholly unacceptable way. The Bill must put an end to that and provide tenants with the security and certainty they deserve.
Our overall objective must be providing enough safe rented accommodation for all, thereby helping to end homelessness. However, homelessness, in our context, can arise in two very different ways: first, by unscrupulous landlords evicting tenants who have the courage to point out problems in their rented properties; but, secondly, by imposing excessive blanket regulation which causes conscientious landlords to sell up. Both must be prevented if we are to reduce, and perhaps one day eliminate, homelessness.
A delicate balance therefore has to be struck here. There clearly needs to be tighter regulation, but the last thing we want is good landlords being deterred by this Bill from staying in the sector. This would drive up rents and empower those bad landlords who simply ignore the rules. We need to be honest about this reality and not allow well-meaning ideology to trump what is in the public interest.
Therefore, it is alarming to hear the leader of the Opposition in the other place say that 47% of landlords either attempted to sell a property in 2023 or were thinking of doing so, with the biggest reason being their fear of new laws. Good landlords provide a vital service. The private rented sector is essential for those who cannot yet afford a mortgage, young people and those who need to move for work purposes. Landlords giving up rental properties will not help the people who need to rent, and there are an awful lot of them.
What is the answer to getting the balance right? For me, the way to do it is by targeting the new regulatory regime at the unscrupulous landlords, not by using the blunt instrument of blanket regulatory burdens, which will deter good landlords from continuing and risk increasing homelessness. We heard in the other place that four-fifths of landlords are conscientious and want to look after the well-being of their tenants—and, of course, their properties. Yes, there needs to be tighter regulation to target the minority of landlords who give that label a bad name, and many of the measures in the Bill seem entirely appropriate. The question is, rather, how are they to be enforced, by whom and against whom?
Ideally, where there is a dispute, we should be maximising the powers of a judge, arbitrator or ombudsman to adjudicate on the specific circumstances of each case to determine how the regulatory regime should fairly apply in that case. Although I suspect it will not happen, I would drop some of the provisions which may otherwise drive good landlords out, while applying a tighter regulatory framework than currently, so as to ensure greater fairness for tenants. It is a question of getting the balance right.
On the good landlords side of the balance, allowing rent arrears to accumulate over three months before enforcement action can be taken risks intimidating those landlords into leaving the sector, with all the undesirable consequences which will ensue. A landlord is not a charity, and some depend entirely on the rent to pay mortgages or for their daily living costs. The relationship between tenant and landlord has to be a two-way street. Similarly, banning landlords from obtaining rent in advance will create greater risk for landlords and make them risk-averse in selecting tenants. This can only be detrimental to the latter. I also think that any current objections to fixed-term penalties and existing periods of notice are mitigated if there is a mechanism for ensuring that the ombudsman has the power to decide, where a tenant has a complaint, whether a landlord is giving notice for the right reasons.
On the tenant’s side of the balance, the Bill is spot on as to what the reasons for eviction—horrid word—must be. Similarly, I see nothing wrong with being able to challenge rent increases if those increases are being used as a disguised way of forcing the tenant to leave, beyond the reasons permitted in the Bill. Nor do I think that the reference to open market rents being imposed on landlords is unreasonable, provided that there is a detailed explanation of how this will be assessed. I also welcome the extension of Awaab’s law to the private rental sector, to force landlords to address conditions such as faulty electrics, mould and damp.
Finally, I welcome the provisions dealing with landlord redress schemes, registration and the ombudsman, provided there is clarity about how overlap with enforcement by local authorities and the courts will be avoided. The ombudsman scheme is where the focus should be, since consideration will then be given quickly and cost-effectively to the specific circumstances of the case, provided of course that the ombudsman’s office is resourced well enough.
There is lots of promise in the Bill, but it needs to be honest and laser-focused on what is in the all-round public interest: the interests of good landlords as well as of tenants. The effect of the Bill on the housing market and its effect on homelessness then need to be monitored closely. A commitment by the Government to report to Parliament annually to that effect, even if not enshrined in the Bill, would be welcome.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest, as in the register, as a Suffolk farmer with rented residential properties. I have been running our rural business for over 50 years. I have also been particularly concerned to protect and, where possible, enhance the beauty of rural England. I served three terms as a countryside commissioner for England and Wales, five years as chair of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and 20 years as president of the Suffolk Preservation Society. I therefore look at this Bill mainly through rural eyes.
I am afraid that I see this Bill as fundamentally flawed. Allow me to explain. Last year, I welcomed the new Government and wished them well, in the national interest. Since then, they have got into choppy waters, mainly by pursuing policies that were internally contradictory to their main objectives, particularly economic growth. We are seeing this again with this Bill. The drafting suggests a dislike, or at least a distrust, of the private rented sector. Yet this sector accounts for some 18% of the whole rented sector.
To increase the number of houses is one of the Government’s objectives. We all recognise that there are some very bad, even evil, landlords. I fully support all parts of the Bill dealing with this, including the abolition of Section 21. However, the central point in the Bill is the abolition of the assured shorthold tenancy. Of course, Mr Gove’s Renters (Reform) Bill also did this. This policy and the deporting of migrants to Rwanda were two of the most stupid things that the last Government did.
From the 1960s right the way through to the 1980s, rural housing was subject to severe constraints on both tenancies and rents. Rents set by the rent officer were extremely low, often providing zero return on capital and cash flow that was not enough even to keep the houses properly maintained. As mechanisation of farming continued, more and more houses became available to farmers. The big leap forward came in 1988 with the introduction of the assured shorthold tenancy. John MacGregor was the Secretary of State for Agriculture and Nick Ridley was at Environment—two fine Tory Ministers. The AST gave security of tenure through mutual agreement to both tenant and landlord for an initial period of six, 12 or 24 months, with annual rent reviews and the option of renewal on a rolling two-monthly basis. The AST has worked very well for 36 years. It seems batty to abolish it now; surely this is a case of “If it works, don’t fix it”.
The Conservatives changed the lease term to six months, in Committee in the Commons. This Government are jealous of that and have brought it back to just two months, virtually a non-term. As the courts in England are overwhelmed, it is extremely difficult to see how this can be policed. I very much took the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, about how the judicial review of these very high penalties of up to £40,000 can be done. It is not really for local authorities to impose such things. Sums of that size are a judicial matter. The proposed tribunals to adjudicate on rents will be as restrictive to, and much more costly than, the rent officer. Traditionally, the private rented sector has used the RPI rather than the CPI for annual rent reviews. Meanwhile the Unite union is agitating for the CPI, as others have mentioned today, and wage increase rents if they are lower.
Finally, I urge the Government to recognise that the private rented sector in housing is part of the capitalist system. Landlords are a form of entrepreneur. While their profession must certainly be monitored and called to account, with appropriate penalties for abuse, it must be allowed to attract investment. The rents at the moment are barely adequate to provide a return on capital, low as it may be. There are few properties which produce a taxable rent of 3%. Most of them are 2% or less.
I recognise that there are those, some of them in the Government, who dislike private landlords. However, I suspect that even the Chancellor would recognise that there are no economic resources available to replace the system. The Government have housing targets to reach. These are imperilled by the present Bill. Let us hope that the experience and expertise of your Lordships’ House will allow it to be improved.
Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as a non-affiliated Member of your Lordships’ House I congratulate the Government on the Bill before us. Having listened to the contributions thus far, wiser counsel will come from other noble Lords on improving and revising the legislation. I can only offer a narrow but, I believe, important perspective on an overlooked sector.
I particularly wish to associate myself with the comments and contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I also heartily congratulate my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on a deeply moving and important maiden speech, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown. She reminded me of Silvertown, where my mother used to buy second-hand clothes for us as children from Rathbone Street market. Their contributions gave us memories that empower us, especially when dealing with legislation that is to effect positive social change.
As I have said, I am no expert in this field, but as the Minister will know, I have taken a keen interest in the paucity of rights for people who live in houseboats. I declare a personal interest in that friends of mine are currently moored at Chelsea and are deeply affected by developments there. I am grateful to the Library for the extensive research that it undertook on my behalf in relation to the rights, or rather lack of rights, of houseboat dwellers. My focus is residential houseboats moored on the Thames and other inland waterways in England and Wales, and not canal boats, which are currently part of a review being undertaken.
I have been informed by colleagues in the other place and the Minister, for whom I have the highest regard, that a simple amendment which would extend the rights enjoyed by mobile homes under the Mobile Homes Act 2013, which amended previous legislation, would fall outside of the scope of the Bill before us. I am grateful to the clerks for their initial advice, but I take this opportunity to inform the Minister and others that I will return to this subject and, I hope, with an amendment that achieves the necessary protections and falls within the scope of the Bill.
I believe that the rights and protections afforded by this Bill and other Acts of Parliament apply to residents of houseboats because such houseboats have tenancies. Their licences are precisely that: a means of renting mooring fixed either to a pier or to the riverbank. Yet those living on houseboats have absolutely no security of tenure. Although they pay council tax, energy bills, water bills and insurance bills, they do not have the same statutory rights as other tenants. This must be addressed. They have no protections when the owners of moorings propose to increase fees or, more worryingly, as we have seen at Chelsea, little redress when the owners of moorings propose not only to increase fees or develop the sites but to refuse to renew their licences or, indeed, review their tenancies. The situation faced by houseboat owners and residents is not dissimilar to that faced by mobile home residents, but while there is now legislation designed to provide some protections to mobile home residents, there is nothing designed to apply to residential houseboats.
That is the sad reality facing houseboat owners at Chelsea Reach, a historic community that dates back to the 1930s, and other sites that have faced or are about to face development or disappearance. This scenario is played out on moorings the length and breadth of the country as people fight to retain their homes and, if and when they are evicted or are unable to remain because of excessive increases in charges and licence fees, have to physically remove their homes and often dispose of them.
Previous Governments have declared that the issue is not “big enough” to legislate for and that it is not widespread. However, the problem is spreading as developers circle sites; the problem will grow, and evictions and homelessness will grow with it. From Vauxhall to Chelsea, to the Isle of Wight and beyond, people have had to face the choice of battling through the courts, with all the costs that go with it, for basic protections or quitting their moorings and taking their homes with them—or, in some instances, taking a sledgehammer to the interior of their houseboat to prevent the bailiffs taking the property.
There is a moral imperative for the Government to take action. I will not go on at length, but it is enough to say that it is often necessary to take preventive action to stop a small wrongdoing from becoming widespread. I urge the Government to work with me and others—and I ask the Minister for that assurance—to see how we can amend the Bill to afford the same rights to those houseboat owners and residents as afforded to those covered by the Mobile Homes Act 2013.
In conclusion, let us extend those basic rights, with the accompanying criteria, so that people can enjoy permanent and ongoing tenancies; security of tenure; protection from harassment; written agreements; conditions of residence; and pitch fee protection. I contend that what I am asking for on behalf of others is reasonable and moderate. I ask the Government to commit to delivering these basic rights to these forgotten and often overlooked residents.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Fookes, I want to address the issue of pet ownership. It is one that I have raised a number of times in this House, and I am delighted that the Government are now tackling it.
We are a nation of pet lovers. There are around 13.5 million homes with dogs as pets in the UK and around 12.5 million homes are graced by a cat—mine included. My husband and I have been blessed with the company of several cats—Destino is the incumbent—for 30 years and understand only too well the old adage that a cat is what makes a flat or a house a home. We have always been lucky to own our own home, but the companionship offered by pets should not be a privilege limited only to those who can do so, as the Minister quite rightly said in her opening remarks.
That is becoming a pressing issue as we increasingly become a nation of renters, many of whom want to own a pet cat or dog yet, at the moment, simply cannot. The second most common reason that animals are relinquished to the wonderful Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is housing, with only 8% of private landlords currently listing their property as pet-friendly, while an unacceptable 33% of private landlords who do not currently allow pets in any of their properties say that nothing would persuade them to do so.
Cats Protection’s Cats and Their Stats report in 2024 found that over half a million households who would like to have a cat do not have one because their rental agreements forbid it. As a result, Cats Protection took in the equivalent of three cats each day last year where owners had to make the gut-wrenching decision to give them up. These are not just dry statistics; wanting a pet and being told you cannot have one impacts people’s health and well-being, not least older, often lonely, people for whom a pet is a lifeline.
There are thousands of heartbreaking stories of people taking that most difficult of decisions to give up their beloved pet to a shelter when they cannot find somewhere pet-friendly to live. That includes cats like Zeke, who arrived at Battersea just 24 hours before his first birthday after his owners were faced with that unenviable decision whether to find an alternative rental property that would allow pets or to give up their beloved animal altogether. Take Anna and her husband who, after selling their home, had to find a short-term rental with their newborn son and two cats. That young family found it so difficult to find a landlord who would allow cats that they ended up living in a tiny converted garage.
Pets truly are members of the family. It is hard to overestimate the health benefits that pet ownership brings. Research by Mars Petcare has found that pet ownership saves the NHS around £2.5 billion each year in the UK, with pet owners making 15% fewer visits to a doctor for health reasons. That is partly the result of the physical health benefits of owning a dog but also the result of the significant mental health support that all pets provide.
As the Bill progressed in the other place, we heard arguments opposing the inclusion of the pet provisions due to concerns that pets cause damage to properties, but evidence suggests that these fears are exaggerated. Research commissioned by Battersea with the universities of Huddersfield, Sheffield Hallam and Brunel found that renting to tenants with pets is in fact commercially beneficial for landlords.
I welcome strongly the pet provisions in this Bill which seek to prevent landlords being able unreasonably to refuse a pet request from a tenant. I also recognise that improvements have already been baked into the Bill, including reducing the amount of time that landlords have to respond to a pet request. This change will make a meaningful difference for both tenants and shelter organisations dedicated to rehoming animals.
However, there is room further to strengthen the Bill’s pet provisions to create a fairer balance between the needs and rights of both tenants and landlords. I aim to bring forward proposals to do so in Committee. As has happened in countries such as France and Canada, where similar legislation has been passed, providing guiding principles on what constitutes unreasonable grounds for a landlord’s refusal to a pet request would be a positive step. While no piece of legislation can feasibly detail all scenarios, as my noble friend Lady Fookes outlined earlier, without such guiding principles I am concerned that the legislation will leave loopholes open for landlords, giving too much leeway to deny the majority of pet requests, in turn placing an unnecessary burden on tenants, the ombudsman and ultimately the courts.
I also believe that, once permission for a pet has been granted, it should remain in place for the duration of the tenancy; otherwise, there is a risk of landlords revoking consent later down the line, undermining the stability and security for renters and their pets.
Additionally, while I have no doubt that this legislation will make a real difference for those tenants in situ who wish to acquire a new pet, it will not act as enough of a sea-change for those with existing pets who are looking for a new place to rent, with landlords simply shuffling prospective tenants to the bottom of the list.
I strongly support the pet provision aspects of the Bill because they mark the start of a long-overdue culture shift which will mean that more tenants can own a pet in rented homes, with incalculable benefits not just for their own health and for the pets, but for society as a whole. With more people renting than ever, and more wanting to own a pet, this legislation is a tremendous opportunity to unlock thousands of homes for pet owners. I hope we can make the small necessary amendments to it in Committee to ensure that we deliver for all those who want and deserve that most precious gift in life—the unconditional love of a pet.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for the way she introduced the Bill. I also congratulate our two maiden speakers on their highly relevant, interesting and insightful maiden speeches. Finally, I declare that some of my family members let three residential properties, although I do not.
There are many elements to the Bill, and perhaps the most referenced tonight is the removal of Section 21 notices and the objective of providing tenants with greater security of tenure. These notices certainly encouraged supply of rental accommodation but have been abused by some landlords in so-called no-fault evictions of tenants. The pendulum of legal rights is now swinging towards tenants. Some landlords may not like it, but it is the Government’s policy and, with their substantial House of Commons majority, it will become law. I believe that most have now accepted that inevitability.
That said, there is evidence that this impending change is already leading to a reduction in the supply of property to rent while, at the same time, demand remains high and increasing. I will not delay the House further with figures today, but even the most enthusiastic advocates of ending Section 21 can claim that, at best, the supply of rented accommodation is flat. I therefore ask the Minister to clarify specifically whether the Government’s view is that ending Section 21 notices is expected to increase the supply of rented accommodation.
A related area of concern is the reversion to landlords having henceforth to go via the courts in Section 8 processes to regain possession of their property. Logically, this means that courts will have more cases than currently, as was confirmed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, along with his other concerns, and was also raised by the noble Earls, Lord Kinnoull and Lord Leicester, and the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow.
While new tenant rights will take almost immediate effect, there is very little confidence that the already clogged court and tribunal systems will somehow be simultaneously transformed, apparently by using the magic of digital and AI, into swift and effective delivery mechanisms. I therefore ask the Minister to bear down, in the interests of both landlords and tenants, on the specifics and, in particular, the timetable for this seemingly miraculous transformation.
On a more positive note, and contrary to the tone around the Bill, there are many occasions when landlords and tenants have positive relationships. Consequently, both want to establish longer-term arrangements. This runs immediately into the difficulty that fixed-term tenancies have sometimes been used to trap tenants, but it does not have to be that way, as the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, touched on.
I plan to table a positive amendment that would enable tenants and landlords, if requested by the tenant after four months of occupancy—when they should have been able to size up their landlord and the property; of course, the reverse also applies—to go forward to mutual benefit on a longer-term basis, crucially without removing the tenant’s ability to depart on two months’ notice. This, like other aspects of the Bill, will apply only to some landlord-tenant circumstances, but the Bill needs to make such agreements at least possible. If it does not, informal or verbal agreements will develop outside the legislation, and these tend to end in tears. Tenant groups with which I have discussed the draft amendment have written to me to confirm that they think it has the potential to help tenants have greater security in the context that I have described.
I may also table amendments in two other areas that we might consider in order to maintain a better balance between landlords and tenants. The first is the case of rent arrears: the Bill requires three months’ arrears, plus four weeks’ notice, plus—according to the Ministry of Justice—some seven months for court processes. This will make rental properties unrentable and unavailable for almost 12 months, which is too long.
Secondly, where the landlord seeks to sell a property under the new ground 1A, the evidence shows that the period of 12 months to prove the property has been marketed is twice the length necessary. With suitable evidential safeguards—again, crucial—the property should be made available to rent after just six months. Both these amendments address the need to sustain rather than contract the supply of suitable rental accommodation.
I have two final points. First, as we seek to make these adjustments to the landlord-tenant relationship, the fundamental—on which many have touched—is a mismatch between supply and demand. As long as the housing stock available to rent is so out of kilter with demand, systemic problems of non-availability and methods of rationing—overt or unspoken—will remain. In particular, landlords will be even more selective than they are now about who they choose to rent to—and they still have a choice.
Secondly—and I have raised this before—while the Government assure us, in exactly the same way as the last Government did, that most landlords are good, the real target for improvements in standards of accommodation and tenant rights should be, as we were reminded by the noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Thurlow and Lord Carter, the minority of bad ones. These individuals, and in some cases gangs, do not care for written agreements, the decent homes standard or legal niceties; their activities are based on force, extortion and neglect.
The Bill risks—do I dare say this?—helping mainly middle-class renters to gain and assert their rights. Unless we get much more serious about enforcement, which means properly resourcing it against truly exploitative landlords, life for those at the bottom of the housing ladder, where the direst needs and worst poverty coexist, will remain untouched despite this well-intentioned Bill—as it presently stands.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, I am another vice-president of the Local Government Association. More particularly, because of what I want to say tonight, I am co-president of London Councils, the body which represents all 32 London boroughs and the City of London. I was also a London borough councillor for 40 years and leader of that council for 13 years. Not surprisingly, therefore, I am going to speak about the situation in London, although I recognise that many of the points I raise apply in most, if not all, cities and towns throughout the country.
London is home to an estimated 2.7 million private renters. Rented properties now account for 31% of homes in the capital. I am told that the closest regional average is just over 19%. Home ownership, therefore, is unaffordable for many London residents, and there are extremely long waiting lists for social housing. As a result, having access to safe, secure and affordable private rental property is vital for very many people living in London. London Councils welcomes many of the measures in the Bill and supports the Government’s aim to deliver a fairer, more secure and better quality private rented sector. In particular, it strongly supports the abolition of Section 21 no-fault evictions, which really cannot come soon enough.
The Bill proposes a range of significant new regulatory and enforcement responsibilities for local authorities. These include responsibility for enforcing the decent homes standard in the private rented sector and a duty on local housing authorities to enforce landlord legislation in their area, which, of course, means every one of the 32 London borough councils.
According to the English Housing Survey for 2022-23, London had 134,000 non-decent private homes, accounting for 12% of the market. Raising these to the decent homes standard will need significant investment, and will be costly and resource-intensive for boroughs to enforce. London boroughs forecast a funding shortfall in 2025-26 of £500 million. I am not going to ask the Minister to commit to the full funding, because I have been doing that for the last 40 years and I know the answer I will get, but will she commit to working with local authorities to produce a full new burdens assessment in relation to the Bill so that we have a real and realistic idea of the actual resource needs to implement it?
I want to turn to Home Office accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers. In the other place, the Government argued that it was not necessary to bring that within the scope of the Bill because such accommodation is already regulated to what they describe as a “high standard” by the asylum and support contracts, enforced by the Home Office. Evidence from London borough local authorities—I am sure that local authorities in other parts of the country would bear this out too—consistently demonstrates that the view expressed by the Government in the other place is simply not the reality. Extensive feedback from London authorities provides widespread evidence of poor standards across asylum accommodation. Enforcement action is often slow when contract breaches and other issues are identified, and I am told that a number of barriers remain in implementing effective enforcement action. The sub-contracting model of the Home Office providers results in a lack of accountability and misalignment between Home Office and local authority standards. London local authorities report that responses are slow, and that residents spend hours at a time waiting to get through via the helpline. In some instances, there is evidence that complaints are not properly recorded.
The exclusion of Home Office accommodation from the provisions of this Bill will inevitably result in a two-tier system, which will be particularly serious in London. Extending the provisions of the Bill would assist in creating uniform standards and give statutory bodies greater powers to take effective enforcement action. London Councils is therefore seeking to extend the provisions under Awaab’s law and the decent homes standard to include Home Office-contracted accommodation, including initial, contingency and dispersal accommodation. It asks that the powers of the proposed ombudsman be extended to include asylum seekers. Having an independent ombudsman would give people seeking asylum greater agency and trust in the asylum system.
London Councils is raising very important issues, drawn not from expectation but from actual experience, and no doubt the same is true in many other towns and cities in the country. I ask the Minister not simply to dismiss them as unnecessary but rather to take them away and give careful consideration to how best they can be met within the provisions of this Bill.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friends Lord Wilson of Sedgefield and Lady Brown of Silvertown on their excellent maiden speeches. I am sure that the House will benefit from their membership.
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tope; he has covered a number of the points that were going to be included in my speech and I agree with everything he has said. My views on housing are very much governed and guided by my experience as an inner-London borough councillor. However, I am not just going to talk about London; I also want to talk about older renters.
A Venn diagram shows that there is considerable overlap, with a higher proportion of older renters in London than anywhere else in the country. This is a particularly difficult issue which needs to be addressed. There is a crisis in London’s housing, driven by a combination of soaring rents, the lack of affordable housing and growing insecurity for tenants. With 2.7 million private renters, making up 31% of the capital’s housing market, many Londoners are struggling with rising costs, poor housing conditions and the threat of eviction.
Older renters in London are particularly vulnerable in this crisis. Many are long-term tenants on fixed incomes, facing significant rent hikes, leaving them at risk of eviction and potential homelessness. Unlike younger renters, older tenants often struggle to relocate due to mobility issues, limited financial means and a shortage of suitable age-friendly housing. Additionally, age discrimination and strong competition in the private rental sector make it harder for older people to secure new tenancies. This is a growing issue. Research from the charity Independent Age estimates that, over the coming 25 years, there will be a fourfold increase in the number of older renters.
Urgent action is needed, including rent controls, greater legal protections and stronger enforcement against rogue landlords. Without intervention, London’s rental market will continue to push vulnerable groups, especially older people, into precarious and unstable living conditions. Given the extent of the crisis in London, I make no apology for highlighting the views of London Councils, emphasising the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and by the Mayor of London on what is needed in addition to what is in the Bill.
The mayor and London Councils have broadly welcomed the Renters’ Rights Bill as a crucial step towards improving the private rented sector in the capital. However, they have highlighted key areas where further government action is needed to address the capital’s severe housing pressures, growing homelessness and stretched local authority resources. We will need to address the issues they have raised during the Committee stage.
The mayor and London Councils support the abolition of Section 21 no-fault evictions, which have been a major driver of homelessness in London: 5,000 Londoners faced homelessness due to Section 21 evictions in the last fiscal year, which is an 18% increase on the previous year. Greater protection for tenants is set out in the Bill, but the mayor, for example, has also called for rent control powers to be devolved to London, while London Councils, as we have heard, supports strengthened tenant protections against sudden rent increases through a fairer tribunal process and an extended notice period of two months.
Both bodies have expressed concerns about the new regulatory and enforcement responsibilities being placed on local authorities. Councils will be responsible for enforcing the decent homes standard in a private rental sector where 134,000 properties failed to meet this standard. With London boroughs already facing a £500 million funding shortfall for the forthcoming year, additional enforcement duties will be unsustainable without government funding. London Councils has urged the Government to undertake a full new burdens assessment to ensure councils can implement the reforms effectively.
We also need stronger protections against rental discrimination. They call for the regulation of guarantor requirements, which discriminate against older people, who find it more difficult to obtain such guarantees, in addition to migrants and low-income renters. The Bill should also ensure better access to compensation for renters who have faced discrimination, with a lower burden of proof for claims.
I am running out of time, so I will just emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and my noble friend, about extending protection to asylum accommodation. The mayor and London Councils have highlighted the substandard conditions in Home Office-provided asylum accommodation. We need an extension of the decent homes standard to cover asylum accommodation, the application of Awaab’s law and the new renters’ ombudsman to cover asylum housing, ensuring that asylum seekers and refugees receive the same legal protections as other renters.
Lord de Clifford (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, for their passionate and moving maiden speeches. This Bill will be welcomed by tenants, not only to improve security of tenure of their homes and the quality of properties being rented to them.
The Bill encourages tenants to seek redress against poor landlords for issues they have with their properties, such as repairs, unfair rents and unfair evictions. It increases the reliance on courts, local authorities and ombudsmen to decide on these issues, as has been covered by many Peers. Currently, all these are under pressure, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister what plans are in place to deal with this increased workload.
Also, with the increase in reliance on these bodies, is there a risk that the complexities for tenants on who to contact increases? There are currently 10 organisations that they could contact about these issues. Some clarification for tenants in future would be useful.
Change always creates uncertainty, and this Bill certainly does for landlords, who are already making decisions based on this Bill and its many unintended consequences, some of which I will address.
I welcome the need and reason to give notice to protected tenants, but I ask the Minister for clarification on an issue that came forward to me: if a landlord has a rented property under a shorthold tenancy and has the need to employ a carer for themselves or for a carer to live in that property, could they give notice under ground 5E with only four weeks’ notice? This issue was raised with me—I do not expect an answer tonight.
I am sure that the tenants’ rights and protections to challenge punitive practices such as rental bidding will be circumvented by landlords and letting agents by increasing the asking price of the rented property, especially when the demand is in certain areas, therefore again putting tenants off from putting in offers, as was already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow. The principle of being allowed to take rents in advance is welcome, but one simple rule does not work for a sufficient number of tenants—mainly those who do not have credit history. For example, overseas individuals and families coming to this country to work or study, individuals starting new businesses with less than three years’ worth of accounts, and students with no guarantor may all have the funds to pay rent in advance, but they cannot due to this Bill and will be overlooked in preference of those tenants with regular incomes. I ask the Minister: has any amendment been considered on how we can help these types of prospective tenants?
The reduction of the effective minimum term of three months for tenancies means more uncertainty for landlords. Landlords and letting agents will incur most of the costs of letting a property at the beginning of the tenancy and will therefore be out of pocket on a regular basis. Why do the Government feel the need for such a short starting period to tenancies? Do not landlords deserve some protection for the cost of moving a tenant into a property?
Pet ownership has increased in the past five years, and the importance of pets to individual families has also increased, so the right to request a pet is helpful and welcomed. Would it not be wise to first define a pet in the Bill? Could I suggest that a term such as “companion animal” is used? In the veterinary profession, this category typically includes dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and other small mammals. I think that this would help within the Bill. I thank the Minister for noting my interest in this area as well.
It is acknowledged that pets bring additional dirt and increased wear and tear to properties and, on occasion, cause damage and infestation of fleas. That is why holiday letting markets charge extra amounts when pets are allowed. The Bill has tried to address this concern by asking tenants to pay for pet insurance; as pointed out by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, this product does not exist. I look forward to further discussions on this point with the Minister and in Committee.
There is a shortage of supply of rental properties, and there has been for many years, especially in rural areas, as covered by the noble Earl, Lord Leicester. With the changes in the Bill, rural landlords in areas with good communication to major cities and holiday destinations are changing the use of properties to holiday lets or renting to city weekenders on a common law tenancy basis, which gives the landlord a lot more flexibility. This further reduces the availability of affordable supply of property to local individuals, workers and families, and this is an area we need to address. I look forward to contributing further to the Bill in Committee .
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as an owner of rented property. The last Government introduced a Bill to reform the rental market; it was a rotten idea then, and it is a rotten idea today. Although I believe it is extremely well intentioned, it will undoubtedly do more harm than good. I am constantly amazed by the belief of Governments, in the face of evidence and common sense, that they can improve things by intervening in a market that works. Last week, I quoted the late Milton Friedman:
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand”.
If this Bill is enacted, then, in five years, there will be an even greater shortage of rented accommodation than there is at present—that is, if anything more than a token market remains.
Landlords are already creaking under the weight of tax and bureaucracy, and the rental market is shrinking. Rented accommodation will always be needed, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, but the policies the Government are proposing will result in a further reduction of the amount of rented property available. Decreasing supply coupled with the increasing demand will serve only to push up costs for new tenants.
The Government’s tortuous manoeuvring around rent controls will not work. Under the Bill, any tenant who disagrees with a rent increase can go to a tribunal. At that tribunal, rent can only be reduced: it can never be increased beyond the landlord’s proposal, however modest that proposal may have been. It is a win-only bet for the tenant. Even if a proposed rent increase is ruled acceptable, the tenant does not have to start paying it until the tribunal has concluded. Who knows how long that could take? At best, the tenant gets a rent reduction, at worst a delayed rent increase. Why would every tenant not appeal on every possible occasion? The tribunals will be swamped and the delays will become unreasonable.
There is another problem with rent tribunals. The tribunals’ job is to determine what the market rent should be and to ensure that rent increases do not exceed it. If rents never go above an existing market rate, the market rate will not change; it will stay exactly the same. To state the obvious, landlords let their premises in return for rent. To create a situation where the return on investment is static because the rent never goes up, but costs go up, can result only in a reduced supply of rental accommodation.
In Berlin, in 2020, they introduced a law to maintain rents at 2019 levels for five years. Because of that law, the number of new rental properties coming on to the market fell by almost half and the scheme ended after less than two years. Similar legislation in Scotland has resulted in a significant reduction in rental stock and the highest rent increases in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, because of the shortage of rental accommodation, foreign students ended up sleeping in tents. The evidence of the harm that can be done by Governments trying to interfere in the market stares us in the face.
There are many problems in the Bill and I have commented on only one of them so far. To burden landlords with some of the other suggestions in the Bill will only accelerate the landlords’ exodus from the market. As my noble friend Lady Scott said, around 90% of landlords are individuals, of whom nearly half own only one property. Many of them will not have the resources to cope with the Government’s new demands. I remind the Government that landlords already have considerable overheads to maintain their properties: gas safety test certificates are needed every year; electrical installation condition reports are required for each new letting, or every five years; energy performance certificates are obligatory; and the demands of what they must achieve increase every year. Landlords are legally required to vet their tenants, and tenants can complain to their local authority if rules are not complied with.
Those are some of the costs of bureaucracy that landlords face already. The Bill makes the burdens worse. Demands will include limiting deposits to one month’s rent. The existing five weeks in no way covers the damage caused by a bad tenant. Landlords will not be able to refuse pets, despite the almost inevitable damage. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Black, that I have never refused a pet, and they have invariably cost me money way over and beyond any deposit. I will never refuse one either, by the way.
Fixed-term tenancies are to be abolished, even where they are in the interest of both parties, such as the majority of student accommodation. The threshold needed to be breached for eviction for anti-social behaviour or rental arrears is being raised. Up to now, the ability to use Section 21 ensured that tenants behaved in a neighbourly manner.
There will be much to deal with in Committee. I will spare your Lordships any more today.
Lord Desai (CB)
My Lords, let me first say congratulations to the two maiden speakers. Let us hope that they enjoy being in your Lordships’ House.
I start by saying that we have a very distorted housing market. Among all the countries of Europe, we have the highest amount of home ownership—two-thirds of houses are home-owned. If you look at home ownership, social housing and private rental, you see that private rental is the stepchild of the country. When I first arrived in this country 60 years ago, there was a very healthy rental market. Indeed, until I arrived here, I had lived only in rental houses, in two different countries, in four different cities. The idea of owning a house was never there. After my first two attempts at renting flats, which I was very lucky with, everybody screamed at me, “Why are you renting?” They said I must buy, because mortgage payments were tax deductible so I really should stop all this tenancy business and buy.
We have subsidised home ownership outrageously. The only asset I know of on which you can make a profit and pay no capital gains tax is an owned house. If you have a housing market like that, it is no wonder that anybody who can at all afford to have a mortgage, even at the age of 12 or 13 or whenever, will get a mortgage from the bank of mum and dad. They will take a loan and buy a house.
We are, basically, leaving the rest of the population in two different categories. Those who are local, and qualify under the terms of the local council, get social housing. New Labour, unfortunately, did not build any social housing, so we do not have as much social housing as we used to. The people who are left, who cannot have social housing and do not have the money to buy a house, are in the category of private rental tenants. They are either transients, such as students who will be there for only two or three years and who do not really mind about the rent, or new arrivals in this country—immigrants—or people who are very poor but unable to get any social housing.
You have to look at the category of people trapped in the private rental category, who are, relatively speaking, in the worst-off section of society. We do not have what we used to when I first arrived here: comfortable three-bedroom houses for rent. We used to have unfurnished rentals.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, who is not in his place, mentioned Rachman and Rachmanism. He was an exploitative landlord, and the whole scandal about Rachman basically made people very hostile to this. Steadily since then, since 1965 to now, we have expanded one part of housing with subsidies but starved the private rented sector.
I do not want to talk about the details of the Bill because a lot of people have already done so, but we have to do something about the generous tax treatment of owned houses. In my view, this discourages people from investing in stocks and shares, as stocks and shares are taxed for capital gains but you are not taxed for capital gains in housing. We invest far too much in bricks and mortar and not enough in productive capital because our tax system is totally distorted. Anyway, that is not what the Bill is about. It is about the one- fifth of the population who are trapped in private rentals.
Importantly, if you are going to index rents, you should not index them to the consumer prices index. I urge the Government to ask the Office for National Statistics to construct a housing costs index. Landlords may have to pay for repairs and so on, which are different kinds of costs from the consumer prices that go into the consumer prices index. Landlords may find that it costs much more to repair a property or keep it in good shape than buying bread or sausages. We ought to do at least that little thing in favour of the universally disliked landlords. That might improve the performance of the Bill.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, like a number of other speakers, I begin by referring to my entry in the register of interests. I declare that I am a landlord of some rented properties on my own account, and I am a landlord in a capacity as trustee for quite a lot more.
At the risk of stating the obvious, but I think this is rather important, houses are wasting assets. They always need refreshing and maintaining, and that is a predicament that affects everyone in this country in one way or another. They are also, and I think this is also significant, a crucial part of our national infra- structure. While we have heard a lot recently about the failures to properly maintain our national infrastructure —the railways, roads and water systems—we do not really think about housing in that context, but of course it should be thought of that way. If you want to look at an example of what happens if you do not carry out proper maintenance on buildings, you need go no further than the building where we are this evening, which is an absolute scandal.
Although we sometimes might have thought to the contrary today, the private rental sector is not homogenous, and there clearly has been abuse, which the Government are right to address. Nevertheless, as is also clear, the private landlord/tenant process is an essential element of our housing scene in this country and, as the previous speaker has just said, quite distinct from owner-occupation. Getting it right as much as we can in the real world—I say that because I want to contrast it with the kinds of desktop studies that sometimes accompany debates of this sort—is crucial for individual families’ well-being and the wider provision of housing in the country taken as a whole. We must not throw out the metaphorical baby with the bathwater.
However, we cannot do that unless we start from the presumption, which has to be based on realism about the real world, that both landlords and tenants are not scheming crooks. Still, there must be usable mechanisms that can cut in quickly and unequivocally against tenants and landlords if roguery is suspected. It is a question of balance. Some of the changes in the Bill seem desirable and move in the direction of improving that balance, while others perhaps go in the opposite direction. As we shall be discussing those in more detail at later stages, I will not go into them now. All I will say as a landlord is that if the rent is not paid, it has the same effect as opening a wallet and taking cash out of it, and trashing a house or flat is the same as trashing someone’s car. They are not victimless activities —on the contrary.
From the tenant’s point of view, security of tenure is clearly an important aspect, and I have considerable sympathy with the proposals to end no-fault eviction. However, market rent is a very slippery concept, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, touched on. Where I live, in the north of England, rent levels in Cleator Moor are very different from those in Chelsea. That has a considerable bearing because, where landlords are being expected to improve houses at the behest of the Government, you find that building costs have recently been increasing, as far as I can see, way ahead of inflation, so the whole thing gets into a muddle if we are not careful. There is an important question for the long run: if the code by which private landlords are expected to operate turns—de facto, not necessarily de jure—into some kind of housing benefit, what are the consequences and implications of that?
It is one of the mysteries of the world we live in that the land and housing market does not appear necessarily to follow the rules that are generally thought to apply under the wider laws of economics; we have to look only at the Government’s recent experience with calculating profitability in agriculture to see that. When there is a conflict in this sort of context between experience and theory, the experience of the real marketplace must always be right.
Simply repeating historic mantras is not very helpful in this context. What is needed is a complete rethink from first principles about a whole range of both the subject matter of the Bill and the inexorably connected flanking measures. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, has been doing a bit of that, as did the noble Lord, Lord Best, earlier in the debate. If we do not do that, we will end up simply going down a cul de sac.
As I have said already, the whole housing sector, just like other infrastructure, is a wasting asset. That has to be at the centre of our thinking and has to be understood by Governments—not only this Government, but Governments of all political persuasions—and the private rental sector is an integral component of that. My belief is that the only way it can function in the national interest is if it works for both landlords and tenants. That depends as much on the balance within the legislation as it does on the specificity of each and every element of it. If the arrangements—taken together with the Government’s involvement outside but having a bearing on this market—do not achieve that, the Bill will simply become an Act that fails.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I have to declare a personal and professional interest with the private rented sector since 1968. Members of my family are also private rented sector landlords. I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill so cogently, and I add my tribute to our two excellent maiden speakers.
My professional training, which started in 1969 or thereabouts, involved an understanding of the Protection from Eviction Act, the Rent Acts, the rent officer service, rent assessment committees and fair rents. That regime, I know for certain, created a severe attrition of the private rented sector. The statistics show that it fell from 31% of homes in 1961 to under 10% in 1991, with substantial value write-downs in the process. The 1988 Act brought some relief and brought in shortholds. The emphasis was on the “short” bit; that was what it was intended to do, and you could not let for more than five years in the early stages. It has continued pretty much uninterrupted, under several subsequent Administrations. Even so, the proportion stood at 9.7% of homes in 2000.
The Government have been strident in their insistence that under the Bill no rent controls are planned, but I see the ability to challenge above-market rents, and the allied pressure for CPI pegging of rents and the whole question of affordability, to amount to the same principle of fair rents under the 1965 Act, give or take a bit, and likely to have very similar outcomes. At any rate, I believe that it is a distinction without a real difference, and could be adjusted and altered at the stroke of a pen.
The market will take note of this, looking at the headwinds and the new obligations under this Bill. My take is that the private rented sector is now destined for material decline. Halving it to the sub-10% of homes it was in 2000 seems a least a possible medium-term prospect. There will be no rush to the exit, just a steady attrition, with probably the 45% of the PRS in the buy-to-let component leading the way.
Does it matter, in what is actually a highly interconnected and joined-up housing sector, where people can move from one to the other? If the noble Lord, Lord Best, is right—I am glad to see him in his place —the surplus would be hoovered up by social landlords and new companies to be let at affordable rents— I assume this means an absolute maximum of 80% of market rent. However, having bought the property, which may need work and improvement, at market levels, to then let at a 20% discount, with rising costs and current interest projections, and the added duties, risks and so on, strikes me as improbable. I would like to know where the model for this is. Maybe he is right and giving incentives to sell to the sitting renter—those of them who have the cash—would be a way forward.
If these properties are released in dribs and drabs on to the general housing market, they cannot fail to have a dampening effect, likely over an extended timeframe, on the growth in housing values and the viability of new-build rollout because of the interconnected nature of the sector. I remind your Lordships that the CBRE suggests that there are at least 1 million consented residential plots that have not been built out and are sitting there waiting to go.
If I am right here, and we are moving to a higher proportion altogether of social rented property, then, again, the pressure on homes to purchase might, by that token, reduce. Good, I hear noble Lords say, but be careful what you wish for. Year-on-year increases in house prices are, in large part, what underpins our economy. From the Treasury at one end, with the tax revenues in sight, through developers and constructors, and local authorities to first-time buyers at the other end hoping to build equity in their home, this is all about money supply, banking, consumer spending and so on.
I am no fan of a model based on inventory rather than productivity—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, almost touched on. I consider, in any event, that it will only end in tears, eventually. But it is such an important driver in our post-industrial, service industry-based economy, where we in the UK have about the fifth or sixth highest exposure to property-related debt in the world, that it cannot be ignored.
So, what about the inventory valuation that sits behind this? Has anybody done the calculations? I see this Bill as having the potential to trigger much larger events in a system of very many moving parts. I hope it is not an adverse trigger. I would hate things to get back to the stage we were at in 2008. This is why I would prefer a less iconoclastic reform, despite all the ills and abuses in the existing private rented sector, which I readily acknowledge. I would like to see choice, flexibility, freedom to transact, ease of entry and exit and all the mobility that this implies. That also implies a fair balance. It is a world of complementary needs. We should remember, too, that after 2008 the expansion of the private rented sector was able to absorb a lot of the pain that would have otherwise resulted from that debacle. But I am afraid that I see a bulky document, inherently encapsulating more cost, risk and delay and a transactional drag while it all beds in.
We have to stop conflating the problems within the private rented sector with other matters such as social inequality, lack of affordability, housing costs, high and inward migration, employment problems, income distribution and so on. We have to remove it from that—
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
Excuse me. Will the noble Earl please wind up? The advisory time is seven minutes.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
I am actually finished. If I am right, there is little that can be done with this Bill. None the less, I will engage in order to try to improve it. Like my noble ancestor Lord Byron, I deny nothing but I doubt everything.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, I first declare my interest as a rental property owner. I support certain aspects of this Bill but have major reservations on other parts of it. On some issues the Bill strikes the right balance. This is agreed by the National Residential Landlords Association and the Large Agents Representation Group. These issues include provisions to establish a decent homes standard, applying Awaab’s law sensibly, tackling discriminatory practices faced by benefit claimants and families with children, protecting guarantors when a tenant dies while renting a property, and efforts to end bidding wars. These parts of the Bill are welcome.
Before I look at the Bill’s problems, I would like to take a step back and examine the background to the English residential letting market. First, there are not enough private rented properties to meet demand. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, has acknowledged that demand is currently outstripping the supply of properties available to let. According to the latest English Private Landlord Survey, the number of landlords looking to sell properties is increasing: 31% of landlords plan to cut the number of properties they rent out. Landlords selling properties is not good news for tenants. This is a leading reason that tenancies end, according to the Government’s homelessness data.
The leading countryside organisation, the CLA, states that that the rural private housing sector is shrinking, with 44% of countryside landlords planning to sell or change use class in the next two years. This compares with only 21% planning to build in the same period. Some 90% of those planning to leave the sector gave changes in private rented sector tenancies as the first cause. The second cause was the proposal to increase minimum energy efficiency standards to energy performance certificate C. The third cause was the abolition of Section 21, which I shall now move on to.
The courts are already facing huge backlogs. Ending Section 21 will put an even greater strain on them. They will need to consider and process possession cases where landlords have good cause, under the Section 8 process. The other place’s Housing Select Committee has previously warned that the courts will be overwhelmed without reform. Government data suggests that it takes a court an average of just over seven months to process Section 8 possession cases. This is from a case being accepted to the property being repossessed and includes cases related to anti-social behaviour and serious rent arrears.
As far back as September, the Housing Minister in the other place said that the Government are working
“to ensure that the court system is ready at the point that the new system comes into effect”.
However, since then, no clarity has been provided by the Government about what the courts being ready means in practice. This is especially concerning given that the Minister told the Public Bill Committee in the other place that the court system is “on its knees”. A clear resource plan must be put in place before reforms take effect. The Law Society has rightly warned that
“without investment for housing legal aid and the courts, the bill will not achieve its aims”.
Despite representing the most significant reforms to the private rented sector in over 30 years, no clear implementation plan has been developed or published. Such a plan is vital to ensure that the sector understands what is expected of it and when. Sufficient time needs to be allowed to prepare for changes. I therefore ask the Minister: which parts of the Bill will be implemented at what stage?
I now move to the problems of the legislation regarding the tribunal system. The Bill is set to allow tenants to challenge above-market rent increases at the property tribunal. The ruling cannot decide that a proposed rent increase should be higher than what was proposed by a landlord, and tenants can take rent determinations to a tribunal free of charge. Based on the measures in the Bill, there is no clear reason as to why a tenant would not take an increase to the tribunal. This is irrespective of whether their challenge would be successful, not least because the only way to test if a rent increase was at market rates or not would be to go to the tribunal.
At the Second Reading of the Bill in the other place, the Housing Minister told MPs that the Government
“do not want the tribunal overwhelmed”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/10/24; col. 413.]
However, it is not clear how this will be achieved. I suggest that, to prevent the property tribunal being overwhelmed with rental appeal cases, tenants should first be able to establish from the Valuation Office Agency whether a proposed rent increase is within market rates or not. This would make use of the VOA’s experience on local market rents and reduce waiting times for cases that need to be decided by the tribunal.
The next problem is Clause 9. The effect of this could see a number of otherwise suitable applicants shut out from the private rented sector. The clause prohibits any form of rent in advance other than the first month’s rent, which is only payable after the tenancy agreement has been entered into. While the Government’s intentions behind seeking to prevent large amounts of rent being paid in advance are understandable, limiting this ability may close off the private rental market to certain groups who most struggle to prove their ability to sustain a tenancy, including covering their rents. Those most likely to be affected are international students and overseas workers who have no credit history in the UK, as well as those employed on a short-term or variable basis with income that fluctuates. Those from overseas are also most likely to struggle to secure a UK-based guarantor for their rent.
In addition, I ask the Minister how guarantors will work under the new legislation. Given the end of the fixed-term tenancies, it is unlikely that a guarantor would be willing to guarantee a tenant’s rent indefinitely. The Bill’s potential to close off the market from those overseas is in direct contrast with the Chancellor’s ambition to encourage more high-skilled workers to UK and the Education Secretary’s recent message welcoming international students to the country.
I have two other issues. The first is ensuring that the database of private housing works. Chris Norris of the NRLA, which represents 100,000 landlords, said:
“It makes no sense that whilst planning to create a national database of private landlords, the Government now wants to make it easier for councils to license landlords as well”.
How do the Government plan to prevent the two schemes duplicating each other? A failure to do so risks them becoming nothing more than cash cows at the expense of landlords. The database must make it easier for responsible landlords to demonstrate compliance with all their obligations.
My second and final issue is the uncertainty for landlords over gaining repossession of one or two-bedroom properties let out to students. Can I ask the Minister why the new possession ground 4A will not apply to these?
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, on their excellent maiden speeches and welcome them to the House. I declare an interest as a part-owner of two rental properties—although without beneficial interest—as a veterinary surgeon and as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare.
I want to concentrate in this debate on the issue of keeping pets. I thank the Bill team for the useful discussions we have had. Currently, the Bill has limited descriptions of three important areas. First, what is a pet? They are described in the Bill as
“an animal kept by a person mainly for … personal interest, … companionship, … ornamental purposes”,
which, basically, could be any animal. Secondly, what is damage? I will say a bit more about that later. Thirdly, there is what is reasonable or unreasonable, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, earlier.
With respect to the definition of pets, clearly there are different considerations of welfare, public health, damage, hazards and consequences to others between keeping one budgerigar or five Alsatians. Most species of pet are likely to cause no problems, the most popular pets, dogs and cats, are unfortunately those in respect of which the greatest problems might occur. There is a balance to be struck between three variables: the welfare of the pet, the well-being of pet owners and the possible negative impact on others.
In considering the trade-offs, the first point I want to make is the difference between assistance dogs and other dogs. Assistance dogs are protected by the Equality Act 2010 and are known as auxiliary aids to disabled people. They are not legally regarded as pets, but Assistance Dogs UK still receives reports of obstacles to people with assistance dogs being able to access private rental accommodation. Given the high degree of training of the dogs and of the owners, and the benefit to the owners of such dogs, I suggest there is a clear argument in favour of a tenant’s right to have an assistance dog in private rental accommodation. However, there is an issue, as there is no official recognition of assistance dogs. There is a need for some central registration of such animals and owners to unequivocally identify them—perhaps analogous to the provision of blue badges for preferential parking for people with certain disabilities.
With regard to the welfare of pets in private rental accommodation, such pets are covered by the same animal welfare protections provided under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and other legislation for animals in any other accommodation, so there is no issue regarding the welfare of the animals.
From the pet owner’s perspective, there is much evidence of the value of pets to human well-being. A 2016 report, Companion Animal Economics, estimates that owning a pet reduces costs to the NHS by £2.5 billion per year through reduced numbers of doctor visits. Furthermore, there are well-known health benefits, including improved mental and physical well-being by reducing feelings of anxiety and depression and increased physical activity on the part of owners.
With respect to damage, this is not fully defined in the Bill, but it clearly applies to physical damage of furniture and fittings. Certain pets—notably dogs—can do considerable damage to furniture or fittings, especially when confined in accommodation without supervision. I suggest that the figures for costs quoted in the impact assessment of £12 per year for landlords and £7 per year for pet-owning tenants are far too low.
However, the negative effects of dogs and cats potentially go beyond physical damage. Of considerable consequence, and unconsidered by the Bill, is the contamination of housing with other allergens of pet origin and infestations, particularly of fleas. These may have considerable consequences for follow-on tenants and landlords. Flea infestation of dogs and cats is common, and it is a considerable problem in accommodation. There are now very effective products for dogs and cats to prevent and control fleas, but of course it is up to the owners to administer them appropriately.
Fitted carpets and central heating provide ideal habitats for fleas. Most of the flea life cycle is in the environment where the eggs, larvae and adults are. The adults can survive for some considerable time without feeding. In a property that is infested but has been left empty for some time, when a person goes in there, the fleas will pounce on them for a feed as well as any animal. Only this weekend, I was in the butchers in my village in Perthshire and I mentioned what we were doing today. He told me about his girlfriend’s experience with a cottage she rented in the village. The previous tenants had dogs and cats. She went into the empty cottage, turned on the central heating, and the place was hoaching—as we would say in Scotland—with fleas. They had to get rid of all the carpets, sand the wooden floors and varnish them.
Another direct witness experience came, while we were preparing this, from my researcher, who has friends who rent out a property in Canterbury. The tenants had done a runner and not paid, and when they went into the property it was highly infested. It took five fumigation attempts over four months by professional pest controllers to get rid of that infestation and cost the landlord nearly £1,000.
If insurance or a deposit arrangement can cover that, that is one thing. But my understanding is that insurance may be difficult to secure, particularly for insect infestation. I will leave this issue to noble Lords who are much more expert in this area than I am, including my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, but I suggest that this is an important issue to resolve. Surveys show that 40% of landlords are unwilling to accept tenants who own a pet. Problems such as this, unless resolved, may encourage more and more landlords to abandon the rented sector.
Finally, I ask the Minister: what assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the likelihood of insurance provision or alternatives? Assistance dogs should be given special regard in the provisions of the Bill, so will His Majesty’s Government consider establishing a register of assistance dogs and keepers to enable them to be identifiable by landlords?
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, on their entry to the House. I really enjoyed both their speeches. I felt they were delivered with passion and with that which is always welcome in this House—humour. I thank the Minister, who has been very generous with her time in answering our many and varied queries.
This has been a very lengthy and informed debate, and at times somewhat heated. I was reminded—if I needed to be—that we are indeed a nation of pet lovers. Coming at this stage in the batting order and knowing that we all now really just want to hear the Minister’s responses to our very wide-ranging concerns, I have ruled out a lot of facts and details that noble Lords have diligently provided. I am aiming to be succinct, I hope, and not too repetitive.
First, I thank from our Benches the very many who have sent us briefings, particularly the Renters’ Reform Coalition—especially Generation Rent and Shelter. For the landlords—and let us be honest, the majority are good landlords—I thank the National Residential Landlords Association, Propertymark and LARG. They all welcome the Bill in different ways but see unintended consequences. We must explore these, and seek to remedy them and strengthen the Bill, which will be our task over the coming months.
As many have said, we too are pleased to receive the Bill. On the whole, there is much to be welcomed, such as the abolition of Section 21, which has been trailed so much and for so long that it is very much taken for granted. We do not accept the plea from landlords that we should wait until the courts are ready; they should be by now as they too have had ample notice. My question to the Minister is: are they ready?
That said, we do think there are other legitimate concerns from the landlords’ side, as was very well expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in her detailed contribution. We will join that ride on the see-saw. In particular, we ask the Government for a timeline of the many and various aspects of the Bill to provide certainty, because that is what has been missed in all this. The sector—tenants and landlords—need certainty for all parties, so that we do not jeopardise the Bill’s key objectives in haste or unpreparedness.
It must be said, and has been said by several noble Lords, that a lack of supply of homes for social rent over decades has brought us to this crisis point. The noble Lord, Lord Best, outlined this particularly well. This has created an entire cohort of renters who would have previously been housed in social housing but are now struggling in the private rented sector. They can often be the most vulnerable and financially challenged, and in need of additional support. Our real concern is that despite the Bill they may well still be at the sharp end of renting, unable to access the rights enabled in the Bill and vulnerable to being threatened by the least scrupulous landlords—as was passionately and forcefully expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. We also have concerns for these residents around eligibility checks and guarantors. We need the issues raised by landlords to be fully answered to protect these renters.
The Bill relies on tenants to challenge their landlord across a range of issues, not just regarding rent rises but on unfit properties and repairs, as we have heard. Of course, the Bill gives tenants more rights. We applaud that but doubt whether the residents about whom we are most concerned will have the means or the motivation to take advantage of the new rights. Can the Minister outline any changes that will be brought in, possibly in other ways, to support tenant advocacy, as is the case in the social rented sector? The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, pointed out just how complex the current system is. It will deter even the hardiest tenant.
The Bill is clear that a database could be a great aid to tenants in this regard. We believe that it has the potential to be a game-changer, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Grender. We regret that the detail of its contents is to be left to secondary legislation. We seek for some clear criteria to be enshrined in the Bill to ensure that it really is fit for purpose. In particular, we would support failure to register on the database becoming a breach of duty which would count towards a rent repayment order. That would provide a real incentive to register, in addition to the heavy fines indicated in the Bill.
On renters repayment orders, we are pleased that the Bill introduces six more offences that constitute a breach, but we feel that this is somewhat neutered by the First-tier Tribunal’s powers. It appears that it must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that one of these offences has been committed, as this is the criminal standard of proof—it is a very high bar. I listened intently to the nuanced and detailed response of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, on this.
It is clear that every one of us is concerned about whether the measures in the Bill would lead to a drop in supply. It is strongly claimed by the landlord sector— I believe that evidence from Scotland has actually been mixed—but is contested by others, as there may be different reasons why some of the baby boomer owners have decided that they have had enough and want to sell up.
What is in no doubt is that there are legitimate concerns about the flight of landlords to more lucrative short-term lets, such as Airbnb. This concern is heightened in the Bill by the measure to abolish fixed-term tenancy, which, while a welcome measure for many, could have unintended consequences. Therefore, we feel that some provision for a review should be built into the Bill, no matter what it ends up being, because the rhetoric on both sides of this argument needs to be tested against reality. As the supply side is the crucial issue, can the Minister tell us when there will be a level playing field between both rental sectors, as the Airbnb side is far less regulated at present and there are no incentives to encourage landlords back? Several noble Lords will say that the Bill actually does the opposite.
The Liberal Democrats support build to rent. Supply of this and social homes is vital to climb slowly out of our housing crisis. We can no longer rely solely on the landlord owning between one and five properties, which has been the main market for decades, thus we will explore means to incentivise more build to rent. We also want to keep the smaller landlords in the game, and we should acknowledge that repossession of one’s property is a legitimate concern. They should be reassured that the grounds for repossession have been strengthened, but grounds 1A and 1B still remain a cause for concern. We believe that the threshold for sale and moving in a family member should be higher than at present, as this could still be a fig leaf for an illegal eviction—for once the tenant has moved out, who will in fact check that the house is sold or the family have moved in?
This leads us to the legitimate questions that have been raised by several noble Lords about the capacity and resource readiness of local councils and other agencies to deal with the Bill. Enforcement and the capability of enforcement are big issues; without effective enforcement, the Bill fails.
We were very pleased that the Government have been bold enough to extend the decent homes standard and Awaab’s law to the private rented sector. Many noble Lords supported this measure, but let us not underestimate it; it is not easy, having spoken to both landlords and tenants, to judge who is at fault. I feel that there is more debate to be had there, but we know in our hearts that the consequences can be fatal.
We are in no doubt that it will be a leap for many landlords who genuinely want to improve their properties, but it is a mountain to climb, as too many of our properties are non-decent—or is it indecent?—which is quite shocking for such a wealthy country. What we are concerned about is the reality shown to us by numerous case studies, including from Citizens Advice, that any property improvements resulting from public money have been shown to result in the landlord immediately asking for higher rent from the very tenant whose financial situation gave rise to the eligibility of the landlord to receive the grant and add value to their property in the first place. This cannot be right. We will look to explore this unfairness further in Committee.
We have heard from several noble Lords, and we were shocked to learn, that Ministry of Defence properties are exempt from the Bill. The argument has been put forcibly by others, but I will just say that our service families deserve, at the very least, the same as everyone else.
A key issue mentioned by several noble Lords—especially memorable was the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—is the whole notion of affordability. We know that, in many parts of the country, rent is simply not affordable. My noble friend Lord Tope outlined the incredibly difficult situation in our capital city, but elsewhere too people are paying a far higher percentage of their income on simply putting a roof over their heads. This is not sustainable. The evidence and detail of this is irrefutable. We support the measures in the Bill to try to give some stability to rent increases, as many people are stretching themselves to the maximum to pay rent and the year-on-year increases implicit in the Bill—which do not keep up with wage increases and the cost of living—are simply unsustainable.
We are sceptical about how the First-tier Tribunal will work and the amount of work it may or may not end up with. We do not agree that its criteria to agree on a fair rent should be market rent, precisely because of the dearth of supply. We would like to work with the Minister to find a way forward on rent increases that is fair to both landlords and tenants.
Although we are not as pessimistic as some, we are not without a degree of scepticism about the unintended consequences of the Bill and whether the see-saw is balanced or broken. But we will work constructively to get it over the line.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register, particularly being a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. As a fellow north-easterner, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on his excellent maiden speech, and also on his mother’s impending 100th birthday. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, on her passionate maiden speech. I share her concerns for children. I also thank the Minister for the time that she has given noble Lords to explain the Bill. I thank the many groups and people who have written to us and sent us submissions on the Bill.
We all want everyone to have a safe, secure and affordable home. The question is whether this Bill will deliver this or whether it risks undermining a key housing sector to the detriment of landlords and tenants alike. The Minister has argued that the Government have no choice but to introduce this Bill to reform the private rented sector. However, this assertion does not hold up under scrutiny.
While the Renters (Reform) Bill was originally conceived by the previous Conservative Government to address long-standing issues in the private rented sector, in its current form the Bill risks doing more harm than good. Comparing this Bill with its predecessor, the Renters (Reform) Bill in 2023-24, we see some striking differences. The changes proposed by the current Government threaten to destabilise the private rented sector. This is a sector that has seen remarkable growth in recent years, now housing nearly 19% of all households —some 4.6 million people.
Rather than providing the stability renters need, this Bill risks exacerbating the very problems it seeks to resolve. According to Scotland's Housing Network, 16% of landlords are scaling back their supply, and 12% are considering leaving the sector altogether. Scotland shows that the overregulation proposed here has pushed landlords out of the market, reducing housing supply and leaving renters in a worse position, with the highest rent increases in the UK. While these reforms are meant to protect tenants, they threaten to leave them with fewer choices and higher costs.
The Renters’ Rights Bill has been said by many in this Chamber—including the noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Thurlow and Lord Truscott—to risk introducing a series of provisions that are set to significantly disrupt the private rented sector. It is a well-established fact that private landlords, when faced with increased regulation, often choose to exit the market. This is not just speculation: research from the National Residential Landlords Association in 2023 revealed that one in four landlords were considering selling at least one of their properties due to increased regulation, with many citing the Renters (Reform) Bill as a major factor. According to the English Private Landlord Survey 2024, 31% of landlords planned to decrease the number of properties or sell them altogether, compared to 16% in 2018.
Get Living, a significant player in the build-to-rent sector, has expressed serious concerns about how these changes could undermine long-term investment in rental homes. Savills, Hamptons, Zoopla and others warn that the provisions in the Bill could exacerbate the housing crisis. This is a concerning trend that will directly impact housing availability. As more landlords leave the market, there will be fewer rental homes, and it will be tenants who feel the effects of this most acutely. Moreover, by reducing investment in the rental sector, these reforms could also undermine the Government’s targets for housebuilding.
The previous Conservative Government worked hard to increase housing stock, delivering 2.5 million homes between 2010 and 2024, with 1 million of these delivered during the last Parliament. If the proposed changes in this Bill push landlords out of the market, it will risk reversing the progress on housing delivery.
Further data from Oxford Economics paints a grim picture: only one in eight renters can afford to purchase a home in their area. For many, the private rented sector is the only viable option, but these new regulations are forcing landlords to sell their properties, tightening an already overstretched market. Will the Minister explain why this Bill seems to accelerate the exodus of landlords from the market? What steps do the Government intend to take to reverse this damaging trend?
An issue that has been raised by many noble Lords is Section 21 and its impact on the courts system. I was particularly struck by the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. The previous Conservative Government were clear in their approach: any abolition of Section 21 would come only after significant reform of HM Courts & Tribunals Service. This would have ensured that the court system was ready and able to process cases efficiently and fairly. Unfortunately, the Bill abandons that commitment, rushing forward with the abolition of Section 21 without first addressing the ongoing strain in our courts.
Our court system is already under immense strain. Landlords are facing significant delays when seeking possession of a property, and these delays would only worsen with the proposed changes to Section 21. The First-tier Tribunal is already overwhelmed with challenges related to rent increases; currently, it can take up to 10 weeks for the tribunal to make a decision. Introducing additional cases to this already overburdened system risks further delays, which would ultimately harm both tenants and landlords alike.
Moreover, the legislation includes provisions enabling tenants to challenge rent increases more easily. While the right to challenge unjust rent hikes is important, the process outlined in the Bill could overwhelm our already stretched court system. As highlighted by my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Northbrook, a system that allows all rent increases to be appealed with no downside risks flooding the court system. How will the First-tier Tribunal manage the added burden of rent appeals, when it is already struggling with its current case load?
The abolition of Section 21 repossessions means that responsible landlords will be forced to rely on the courts to process legitimate possession cases. However, as the Housing Minister himself admitted in the Bill Committee in the other place, the UK court system is “on its knees”. While the Minister correctly argues that “court readiness” is essential to the successful operation of the new system, which I assume refers to the abolition of Section 21 and the resulting shift in the equilibrium of the renters’ market, His Majesty’s Government have yet to clarify what “court readiness” truly means in practical terms. What resources will be allocated to ensure that the courts are properly equipped for these reforms? The Law Society has rightly warned that
“without investment in housing legal aid and the courts, the Bill will not achieve its aims”.
Student lets have been raised by many noble Lords. The Bill exempts purpose-built student accommodation from the requirement to end fixed-term tenancies, a provision that we agree with. However, this exemption will not apply to other forms of student accommodation, such as private rental properties where second- and third-year undergraduate students typically reside. This Government have abandoned our commitment to sufficiently carve out student accommodation, where it is essential that both landlords and tenants have the certainty of fixed-term contracts to plan for subsequent years. What about master’s and PhD students, who often require longer-term accommodation, typically in smaller, privately rented properties? According to data from accommodationforstudents.com, one- and two-bedroom properties make up one-third of all student housing. The provisions for purpose-built student accommodation should be extended to include all student properties, ensuring the smooth operation of the entire student housing market and protecting the annual cycle of student rentals.
In conclusion, the need for more homes in the private rented sector is urgent. Savills estimates that, by 2031, we will need as many as 1 million additional homes for private rent to keep up with rising demand. How, then, can we afford to risk policies that may drive landlords out of the market and make this shortage even worse? As the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, how do we strike the right balance between protecting tenants and maintaining a healthy rental market that supports investment and meets the needs of renters across the country? It is crucial that the Government listen to the voices of landlords, housing experts and tenants who have raised concerns about the impact of the Bill, and we intend to table amendments that address some of the most pressing concerns. Ultimately, we must ensure that the policies we put in place strengthen, not weaken, the system that provides homes for renters, while also supporting landlords, who are crucial to meeting the nation’s housing needs. The future of our rental market depends on striking that balance.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their excellent contributions. It has been a very interesting and thoughtful debate, and it has been a pleasure to listen to the contributions with the expertise that we have around the House. At times, I felt a bit like Doctor Dolittle, as the debates ranged from fleas, to parrots, to packs of Alsatians— I will come on to pets in a moment.
First, I congratulate my noble friends Lord Wilson of Sedgefield and Lady Brown of Silvertown on their outstanding maiden speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Wilson, made very moving references to the history of our industrial heritage and his own family’s part in that. I congratulate him on his new grandchild and wish his mum a happy 100th birthday.
I was very pleased to hear about the East End heritage of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown. That is where my own family came from, with my dad’s family growing up in Bethnal Green and then Walthamstow, in Highams Park where I spent a great deal of my childhood with my granny. I welcome both noble Lords to the House; we all very much look forward to working with them. All three of us are examples of the social mobility which should be everyone’s opportunity, not just in our country but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, pointed out, across the world. Safe, secure, affordable housing is part of that social mobility, so it is very appropriate for today’s debate.
I will endeavour to respond to all the points raised by noble Lords. There was a great deal raised in the debate, so, if I miss anything, I will of course write to noble Lords afterwards. We can also have many further discussions in Committee on these points.
Before I get on to those specific points, as others have said, it is a bit disappointing, bearing in mind that this builds on the Bill brought by the previous Government, that the Conservatives voted against this Bill in the Commons. To the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, about my Government’s competency on housing, I hope he was listening to what many other Peers said about the housing crisis, because it is his party that has presided over that, not mine.
I will go into some more detail on the Bill and the points that noble Lords have made. There were some very important issues raised, to which we will give much further consideration in Committee. Abolishing Section 21 was mentioned by many noble Lords, but by the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, in particular. It is one of the Government’s most pressing objectives to remove Section 21 from the statute book as soon as possible. The new tenancy system for the private rented sector will be introduced in one stage. At this point, it will apply to all private rented tenancies and existing tenancies will convert to the new system, including those that currently have a fixed term. New tenancies signed after the date will also be governed by the new rules: thereafter, no private landlord will be able to serve a new Section 21 notice. This single date will prevent a confusing two-tier system and give all tenants security in their homes immediately.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, I am very grateful for all the briefings we have received on this and to all those organisations that have campaigned so hard and for so long on behalf of both landlords and tenants. I reassure noble Lords that we will work closely with all parts of the sector, including the courts, to ensure a smooth transition to the new system, and we will provide sufficient notice ahead of implementation.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lords, Lord Howard, Lord Cromwell and Lord Marlesford, made points about the abolition of fixed terms. I understand the concerns about that but, as I made clear in my opening speech, this is a core principle of the Bill and a change this Government believe is fundamental to providing security of tenure. It was also the policy of the last Government and stands as a core foundation of our tenancy regime. We just do not accept that fixed terms offer the best structure for renters. They oblige them to pay rent regardless of the standard of the property or whether it is best for their circumstances, and they restrict renters’ freedom to move if they need to.
These changes do not pose any threat to good landlords who operate fairly and comply with the rules. Tenants do not move house unless they absolutely have to, because of the cost and upheaval. If they leave, they will be required to provide two months’ notice, giving landlords time to find new tenants. We are not prepared to lock tenants in for longer, which would prevent them leaving properties with dangerous hazards or even in situations of domestic abuse.
Several noble Lords—I will go through the list, as there was quite a lot of them—mentioned the potential impact of these reforms on supply in the private rented sector. They include the noble Lord, Lord Best, who was a bit more positive about this, as well as the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Thornhill, the noble Lords, Lord Willetts, Lord Shipley, Lord Thurlow, Lord Carter, Lord Howard, Lord Cromwell, Lord Northbrook and Lord Jamieson, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. I understand the concerns about supply; we have considered it very carefully. While we understand that the new system may spark a period of adaptation, we do not believe that the reforms will lead to the sort of landlord exodus that some have mooted. The sector has doubled in size since the early 2000s, and there is no evidence of an exodus since the reform has been put on the table. In addition, the recent 2023-24 English Housing Survey indicated that the size of the PRS has remained broadly stable since 2013-14.
Our proposals will make sure that landlords have the confidence and support they need to continue to invest and operate in the sector. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made some good points about the potential for PRS properties to return to social housing; I would like to think that that might be the case, but we will wait to see whether that happens. Some local authorities are already starting to buy up private property that comes on the market.
Noble Lords raised the issue of the affordability of properties, including my noble friend Lady Lister—who made a very powerful intervention, and I am grateful to her for that—the noble Lords, Lord Truscott and Lord Desai, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Janke. We recognise the affordability pressures faced by those living in the private rented sector. The Renters’ Rights Bill works to strengthen tenants’ rights as a whole. Stronger powers to challenge excessive rent hikes complement the increase in security through the abolition of Section 21 evictions. Tenants will no longer be too frightened of eviction to challenge bad behaviour. The Bill takes practical steps to help renters, by ending unfair bidding wars, preventing landlords demanding large amounts of rent in advance, and tackling rental discrimination. We hope that that will help.
My noble friend Lady Lister raised the issue of local housing allowances. To deliver our commitment to build more affordable homes, we have had to take some difficult decisions to address the challenging fiscal context. The Government currently spend around £30 billion annually on housing support, and the April 2024 one-year local housing allowance increase will cost an additional £1.2 billion in 2024-25 and approximately £7 billion over five years. However, we will keep this under review and continue to look at it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lords, Lord Truscott, Lord Marlesford, Lord Northbrook and Lord Jamieson, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and others raised concerns about the strain on the court system. It is a serious concern, and we take it seriously. We do not believe that it is appropriate to tie in the implementation date of these urgently needed reforms to what could be a subjective assessment of court readiness. I reassure your Lordships that we are working very closely with the Ministry of Justice to assess the impacts of our legislation on the courts and tribunals, and to ensure that the justice system is prepared for the implementation of the Bill more generally. Our discussions with the MoJ cover a range of options for managing the impact of these and our other housing reforms, including mitigations to help avoid disputes arising in the first place, thereby keeping away some of this from the courts, and to manage the risks that are associated.
After my many years in local government, I was not at all surprised that noble Lords raised the issue of local government resourcing. The noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Davies, rightly pointed out that strengthening the enforcement framework will count for little if local authorities do not have the resources to act. Some local authorities already enforce effectively, but we acknowledge the resourcing challenges that many authorities face.
It should be noted that local authorities will not need to enforce the full set of reforms until later down the line, as measures in the Bill do not all happen at the same time. In the first instance, we want to pursue a “polluter pays” approach, which will see bad landlords meet the costs of the enforcement against them. We are supporting that by extending and increasing civil penalties, which will be ring-fenced for that enforcement. However, I accept that more must be done. In accordance with the new burdens doctrine—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, asked about that—we will ensure that additional asks on local authorities as a result of our reforms are fully funded. We will look hard at how best we can further boost capacity and capability, to create that sustainable funding system over the longer term.
A number of noble Lords raised issues around extending the provisions in the Bill. The noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Thornhill, particularly referred to MoD accommodation, although I think other noble Lords raised this as well. The Government strongly agree that we should allow dedicated military personnel and their families safe and decent homes. However, bringing that accommodation within the scope of the Bill is not the right way to achieve that. The decent homes standard is already used by the MoD as a benchmark for service family accommodation. It has a policy that no homes fall below the decent homes standard and, if they do fall below this level during occupation, works are undertaken to restore them to the minimum standard.
The MoD has developed its own higher defence decent homes plus standard, its target standard for all service family accommodation, and MoD Ministers are committed to reviewing that target standard as part of the new military housing strategy for service accommodation, with the aim of improving the standard of service family accommodation across the estate. This is in line with the recommendations of the Kerslake review, which was mentioned by noble Lords, and the House of Commons Defence Committee’s recommendations in its report into service accommodation, which was published at the end of last year. The MoD will provide further information on this review early in this year.
On the extension to Home Office accommodation mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Davies, the contracts the Home Office has with providers of asylum accommodation should already require it to meet the decent homes standard. I have heard the messages from noble Lords and I will have further negotiations and discussions with colleagues in the Home Office about that. I have also seen the briefing by London Councils and, again, I will discuss that with Home Office colleagues. On temporary and emergency accommodation, we need to think about that and I will come back to that in Committee, if that is okay.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, for his persistence in raising the issues of houseboat owners and residents. We recognise that the occupants of residential boats have the benefit of protection under the Protection from Eviction Act and wider consumer protection legislation, but they do not enjoy the same level of tenure security as those in the private rented sector. This Bill is focused on reforming the assured tenancy regime. Houseboat owners fall outside the scope of the assured tenancy regime, but we will consider what further action might be necessary to provide house- boat owners with greater security in their homes.
I move on to pets for a moment and some very interesting contributions on this subject from the noble Lords, Lord Trees, Lord Carter and Lord Black, the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and other noble Lords. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, that I am very happy to have a meeting with her. The guidance may come from the outcomes of the appeals and our consideration as we go through Committee, but I thank her for her contribution. Very little can be done to evoke the same sense of joy, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, outlined, as a beloved family pet. We do not believe that experience should be denied to those who are not able to own their own home and, for this reason, we are introducing the right. There are reasonable limitations to that, but these measures will end the choice between having a pet or a rented home and ensure that everyone in England can benefit from the great companionship that having a pet brings.
I hope we can continue to work with the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, on the insurance issues. They were also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and by the noble Lords, Lord de Clifford and Lord Trees. Landlords will be able to charge reasonable costs of insurance. We listen to the concerns that insurance products will not be available to cover the risks of pets, but there is currently a reduced demand for landlord pet insurance as many landlords simply refuse to allow pets. So we hope the market will respond to the increased demand for these products. To the noble Lord, Lord Trees, I say that I will take up his point about assistance dogs—that is an issue,
I think we have covered pets. On the issues around students, which many noble Lords have raised, we have introduced a new ground specific to the so-called typical students: those living in shared houses who sign up each year. This will preserve the annual cycle of student housing. I understand the issues raised by noble Lords and no doubt we will come back to this in Committee, but we must be very careful not to leave a loophole here. We do not intend this to capture every student—far from it. For example, I do not think that it is right for a parent who lives alone with their children to be evicted just because they are studying at university. Those tenants should have the same security as everyone else. To the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, my noble friend Lady Warwick and the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Shipley, we can discuss this further, but we need to proceed with caution here.
A number of noble Lords spoke about ground 4A being too narrow. The Government recognise the impact that the new tenancy system will have. While we believe the ground covers of the majority of the market, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. We think it is reasonable that the ground will apply to full-time students in larger house-share situations. Students studying part-time alongside work or who live in smaller properties should enjoy the same security as other tenants.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Janke, and the noble Lords, Lord Northbrook and Lord Marlesford, raised rent increases. The Government are clear that this will stop a minority of rogue landlords who try to use rent increases as a means of back-door eviction. Measures in the Bill will ensure that this does not happen. All rent increases will take place via the Section 13 process, so the tenant can challenge them if necessary. That is really important in giving tenants the assurance that they need. We will allow only one rent increase per year and will increase the required notice to give tenants longer to prepare for rent increases.
The noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Howard and Lord Inglewood, all raised the issue of rent appeals. We will give tenants greater confidence to challenge unfair rent increases at the First-tier Tribunal by ensuring that the tenant will not pay more than the landlord originally asked for, following a tribunal determination. We are going further. We will end the practice of backdating rent increases, to prevent tenants being thrust into debt. To protect the most vulnerable tenants, in cases of undue hardship the tribunal will be able to delay the start of the rent increase for up to two months. Taken together, these measures ensure that tenants have a right of appeal, and prevent rent increases being used as a back-door route to eviction.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Grender, Lady Jones and Lady Janke, and my noble friends Lady Lister and Lord Davies spoke passionately about rent controls. This is an important topic for me to clarify. The Government have no plans to implement rent controls. Doing so may hinder rather than help the market. The evidence strongly suggests that controls would have a long-term negative impact on housing supply, discouraging investment and leading to declining property standards. Heavy-handed controls tend to mean higher rents at the start of a tenancy and can make it harder for tenants to find a home. They also encourage the growth of unregulated subletting, as seen in countries such as Sweden, where rent controls have been introduced. These can leave the most vulnerable tenants exposed to even higher costs and minimal protections. That is not to say that the Government do not care deeply about affordability. We are helping with the practical steps of ending bidding wars, prohibiting requests for large amounts of upfront rent and empowering tenants to challenge unreasonable rent increases.
Noble Lords have suggested that the rent-in-advance provisions will make it harder for some tenants to access the private rented sector. We have heard the arguments that requesting large amounts of rent in advance can give landlords the confidence to let. However, for the majority of renters, who do not have access to large cash reserves, these requests are simply too big a price to pay. In terms of guarantors, landlords and agents will have the final say on who they let their property to.
We are clear that landlords should consider a tenant’s individual circumstances when negotiating the rental. They are free to agree rental conditions within the law that best enable a sustainable tenancy. Landlords will be able to continue to take a holding deposit of up to one week’s rent and a tenancy deposit of five or six weeks’ rent.
I see my time is drawing to a close, so I am going to conclude my remarks. I knew I would not get through all the issues, but I will respond in writing to all noble Peers who have taken part in the debate to answer the other questions. I reiterate my thanks to your Lordships for engagement with the Bill to this point. As the Bill progresses, I am very happy to accommodate any request from noble Lords for additional briefings, wherever possible and helpful.
The Renters’ Rights Bill honours our Government’s manifesto commitment to overhaul the regulation of the private rented sector. I believe these reforms take great strides in empowering tenants, giving them greater security and stopping them from being exploited. Landlords will also be supported, and rogue operators who tarnish the reputation of the good ones will be driven out. It is important to reiterate that the intention is not to demonise landlords or tenants; they both want stable tenancies with well-maintained properties and regular rent payments. I look forward very much to working with your Lordships during the passage of this important Bill, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, and that it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House that they consider the Bill in the following order: Clauses 1 to 4, Schedule 1, Clauses 5 to 31, Schedule 2, Clauses 32 to 74, Schedule 3, Clauses 75 to 101, Schedule 4, Clause 102, Schedule 5, Clauses 103 to 146, Schedule 6, Clauses 147 to 149, Title.