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Oral Answers to Questions
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Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
This Government are determined to halt and reverse the trend of nature loss in our country and end the cycle of destroy, regret and restore. We are investing £400 million in tree planting and peatland restoration. We have announced a new nature restoration fund and set out plans to end the use of neonicotinoid pesticides that harm our precious pollinators.
Andrew George
I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted nations on this planet. The “State of Nature Report 2023” indicated that up to one in six UK species faces the risk of extinction. The Minister’s reply is very encouraging, but just last week the Chancellor, promoting the Government’s growth agenda, urged us to
“stop worrying about bats and newts.”
If it really does come to that, who speaks for the Government, and whose side is the Minister on—the Chancellor or threatened wildlife?
Mary Creagh
We have to end the false dichotomy between creating places for people and creating places for nature. The previous Government introduced biodiversity net gain, which means that when a developer builds somewhere, they must deliver a 10% BNG for nature. That is in its early stages, after just a year, but we are looking to see how it might be extended. With the nature restoration fund, we have established a more efficient and effective way to allow obligations related to our most important sites and species to be discharged at scale, which has the greatest environmental benefit and is a win-win for nature and people.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
I congratulate the Minister on announcing our plan to ban bee-killing pesticides. That is welcomed across Monmouthshire, particularly by our fantastic charity based in Monmouth, Bees for Development. Does she agree that where the Conservatives failed, this Government will restore nature and biodiversity for future generations?
Mary Creagh
I do agree, and I pay tribute to the people who are speaking for the bees in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We will deliver 30 by 30 on land in England. That means that we will protect and preserve 30% of our land for nature and long-term conservation and management as part of our contribution to international targets.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
When we thought it could not get any worse, the Government roll out their latest attack on our farming community and UK food production, setting the direction that they want to replace food production, with around 20% of farmland being dedicated to solar farms, tree planting, biodiversity offsetting and wildlife habitats, all to meet green targets. The figures are astonishing, with the Government proposing to take well over 1 million hectares out of food production.
The economic analysis already predicts that well over 12,000 farms will be lost within a generation as a result of this Government’s policies. Will the Minister acknowledge that hard-working farmers are being caught in the crossfire in this Government’s dash towards green targets, and does she recognise the fear among our farmers that their policies amount not to food security but food lunacy?
Mary Creagh
That is a lot of sound and fury, but this is something the Conservatives were working on in government. This has shades of the deposit return scheme, which was essentially the hon. Gentleman’s legislation, but those on the shadow Front Bench were absent without leave when it came to the vote. We have published a consultation on the land use framework. It has been welcomed by the National Farmers Union and by farmers for giving certainty and security—something that was sadly lacking from the previous Government.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
I thank my hon. Friend for his service on the Water (Special Measures) Bill Committee. He will know that the Bill creates new powers for the regulator, including banning the payment of unjustified bonuses for water bosses whose companies fail to meet environmental standards and ensuring that imprisonment is a sentencing option where environmental regulators are obstructed. That will hold water companies and their executives to account. In addition, we are doubling compensation for poor service to hold water companies to account for failure in their service delivery.
Darren Paffey
I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. Many of my constituents in Southampton Itchen have written to me, outraged at the 53% bill increase that Southern Water is proposing at a time when it and others continue to pollute our rivers at an alarming rate. This is simply becoming a national scandal. As part of the work of the coming independent water review, will the Secretary of State ensure that water companies get back to delivering reliable services for customers, rather than lining the pockets of executives and shareholders?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Bills, of course, are going up because the previous Government did nothing as our sewerage infrastructure crumbled and millions of pounds were allowed to be diverted to pay for bonuses and dividends instead of investment. This Government have ringfenced the money earmarked for infrastructure so that this scandal can never happen again.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Essex and Suffolk Water has issued a moratorium on commercial businesses pulling water out of the ground, which it says is due to the Environment Agency. The problem is that water-intensive businesses need water to grow. Aspall in my constituency has £10 million of investment ready to go to grow its cidery. Without access to water, it cannot make that investment. If this Government are serious about going for growth, will the Minister meet me to find a solution to the moratorium so that we can move forward?
Steve Reed
I am more than happy to ask the Minister for water, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), to meet the hon. Gentleman, who raises an important point. I have asked Sir Jon Cunliffe to look at how we can better manage this as part of the work he is leading.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
The previous Government did nothing as water companies discharged record levels of sewage into our waterways. The Water (Special Measures) Bill will create new powers, including banning water companies that pollute from paying bonuses, and bringing criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers. Ofwat has confirmed a record £104 billion investment to fix our broken water infrastructure and end the Tory sewage scandal once and for all.
Tom Gordon
In Harrogate and Knaresborough, the River Nidd regularly overflows with sewage. When I visited the Killinghall sewage treatment works last year, a key thing that came to light was that water companies are putting in infrastructure to manage the current sewage issue, rather than future-proofing. What steps will the Minister take to ensure we build sewage works that meet both current and future demand?
Steve Reed
The money announced in Ofwat’s final determination before Christmas will create record levels of investment in our water system to do precisely what the hon. Gentleman says, dealing with the current sewage problems while also putting in place the infrastructure to manage and meet future demand.
Ellie Chowns
As the Secretary of State knows, North Herefordshire is badly affected by water pollution, with devastating effects for the local economy. He also knows that agricultural pollution, not sewage, is the main problem in my constituency. He did not mention that in his answer, so I respectfully remind him yet again that the Government need to tackle agricultural pollution and sewage pollution in a joined-up way. We know the solutions—
Ellie Chowns
I apologise, Mr Speaker. I will get to my point. As the Minister did not answer the first part of the question, I had to raise it. In North Herefordshire, we know that the solutions require farmers, regulators and environmental organisations to take action together. Will the Secretary of State now commit the funding needed to take forward the Wye catchment plan, and will he visit North Herefordshire with me?
Steve Reed
The hon. Lady makes an important point. Our farming road map will look at how we can reduce run-off from agriculture, which is a major source of pollution in our waterways. We are looking at how we can move to catchment-based models, including for the Wye, where a great deal of important work has already been done, so that we can more effectively tackle all the sources of pollution that are causing such trouble for our waterways.
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
The first duty of any Government is to protect our citizens, so we are investing a record £2.65 billion over two years in building, maintaining and upgrading flood defences, which will protect 66,500 properties across England.
Zöe Franklin
Across my constituency of Guildford, the local flood forums work tirelessly, bringing together agencies and residents to address the growing concerns they have about flooding. Will the Minister provide detail on how the Government will ensure that constituencies like mine, which often miss out because they are semi-rural and urban, get the funding they need to address current flooding issues? How can we mitigate the growing flooding issues across Guildford in a holistic and sustainable way?
Emma Hardy
The hon. Lady is right to highlight that under the previous funding formula, rural communities often missed out on the defences they desperately need. We have set out plans to consult on a new formula that is going to be announced fairly shortly, and she will be very welcome to contribute to that.
Mr Joshua Reynolds
Will the Minister confirm what portion of the £2.6 billion allocated to flood preparedness will be used in my constituency of Maidenhead, specifically to protect the villages of Hurley and Cookham?
Emma Hardy
I think I will be getting a lot of questions like this today, Mr Speaker. We will announce where the 31 projects will be by the end of March. We will also be looking at where we have had to put money into maintenance and upgrading defences. We were left with flood defences in their worst state on record because of a complete dereliction of duty by the previous Government, so we have had to prioritise maintenance as well as building new defences, but I am hoping that the hon. Gentleman will not have to wait too long.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State deserve great credit for attracting the large investment that they have secured, but once they have finished the lap of honour, they will be aware that this is the first step up the mountain. The Minister is right that the Government have inherited flood defences that are in an appalling state, and the latest estimate shows that as many as 6 million houses are at risk of flooding. I call on her to get on with the flood improvements that we demand in Chesterfield. First, will she tell us more about how she will ensure the money will be spent wisely? Secondly, how will she ensure that the Treasury understands that this is not a one-year commitment, but something that we will need for the rest of this term in office?
Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and may I congratulate him on his recent engagement? He is right to point out the importance of money being spent wisely now to save money in the future. There are a couple of interesting factors: every £1 we spend on maintenance of flood defences saves £13 in damage prevention, and every £1 we spend on new defences saves £5 in damage prevention. Those are important statistics that I use frequently in negotiations about future spending reviews with Treasury officials.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
In the north of my constituency, between the Scottish border and Hadrian’s wall, lie the debatable lands, but in the centre of Carlisle lies a forgotten land along the River Caldew. It is forgotten because of the incompetence of the Conservatives, who failed to deliver the flood defences along the Caldew that were promised after Carlisle was devastated in 2015. Will the Minister remember the forgotten lands of Carlisle?
Emma Hardy
My hon. Friend makes a persuasive case, as she has done at every oral question time we have had so far. She is right to highlight the fact that not only did the previous Government leave our defences in the worst state on record, but they failed to spend some of the money that had been allocated. This Government are having to deal with that, along with the many other issues we are cleaning up.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Yet another wet winter across Somerset highlights the need for the Government to urgently deliver solutions to mitigate the impact of flooding on farmland and protect domestic food production. The Brue headwaters multi-benefit project, facilitated by the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West, is working with farmers and landowners in Bruton, Charlton Musgrove and Wincanton to address flooding issues and to hold workshops that focus on natural flood management, to slow the flow of water across the upper Brue, thus reducing flooding, sediment run-off and the associated pollution of water- courses. Despite those efforts, many farmers in the catchment, and indeed the county and the country, are angry at the level of inundation of land that could be prevented by better flood management. How will the Minister work to support farmers, build flood resilience and protect food security?
Emma Hardy
The hon. Lady is right to point out how angry farmers are and how they feel they have been let down by the previous Government on flood defences. The previous formula allocated funding only based on numbers of properties protected and paid little regard to rural areas. She also mentioned one of my favourite themes: natural flood management. We recently held a roundtable on that, with representatives from the NFU and the Country Land and Business Association, to talk about how we can better protect our rural areas in a more nature-friendly way.
Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
Under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, anyone in the business of breeding and selling cats as pets needs to have a valid licence issued by their local authority, and licensees must meet strict statutory minimum welfare standards, which are enforced by local authorities.
Mr Bedford
As a proud cat dad to two cats, one of which was beaten to the title of Purr Minister by Attlee, Mr Speaker’s cat, it has amazed me to find out that the 2018 regulations on animal breeding focus merely on dogs and not cat breeding. Can the Minister therefore assure me that he will look at updating the regulations to include cats?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the hon. Member for his question and for his references. The Animal Welfare Committee has provided its opinion on the welfare implications of current and emergent feline breeding practices, and we will be looking at those and coming back with measures in future. In passing, may I pay tribute to organisations such as Cats Protection, which does such wonderful work? I am told that it recently pointed the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), to her new kittens, Lily and Meglatron.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
There are 12.5 million cat owners in the UK, and hundreds of thousands of cats are killed on the roads every year. The previous Government agreed that it would be right to include cats in the Road Safety Act 2006, but they simply did not do it. This means that cats are regularly hit and, because there is no legal duty to report it, are just scooped to the side of the road. Does the Minister agree that this is something that we should do to bring parity to cats and dogs when it comes to safety on the road?
Daniel Zeichner
This is an issue that has been widely discussed. Our advice is that it would be difficult to enforce in practice, but I fully recognise the distress and concern that it causes.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The Secretary of State set out our vision to boost farmers’ profitability and sustainability in our plan for change when he spoke to the 2025 Oxford farming conference. That includes a cast-iron commitment to food security, a £5 billion agricultural budget over the next two years, a boost to profitability by making the supply chain fairer and protecting farmers in trade deals.
Edward Morello
Farmers in West Dorset are struggling with rising costs, the regulatory burden, market instability and supermarkets paying unsustainably low prices for what they produce. This forces many farmers to diversify away from food production in order to survive. Given the vital role that farming plays in both our rural economy and in food security, what specific measures will the Government introduce to stop the need for diversification and ensure that farming remains a financially viable and attractive industry for the next generation of West Dorset farmers?
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Gentleman makes an important set of points, but I point him to the speech that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made at Oxford, because he made the very strong point that farming needs to get a better return for the hard work that farmers do. Alongside that, diversification is important to allow people to get through the difficult times, which inevitably come up in a cyclical business such as farming.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
The increasing demand for biofuel feedstocks offers a huge opportunity for agriculture, particularly in feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel. With the welcome SAF mandate and revenue certainty mechanism, there is a real chance for growth in this area, especially if we support rapid conversion at Grangemouth. What steps is the Minister taking to secure a scalable supply of feedstocks, and how he will remove barriers to their use in the production of SAF?
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, but we need to make sure that we get the right balance between producing food and using our land for other purposes. That is why it is so important that a land use framework was brought forward. We have a consultation going on for the next 12 weeks, and I am sure that he and others will contribute to it.
Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)
To have growth in agriculture we need healthy animals, and for that, farms need biosecurity. Crucial to that is the Animal and Plant Health Agency, which deserves our thanks in these challenging times. With the alarming recent foot and mouth outbreak in Germany, avian influenza again surging, bluetongue still with us and African swine fever at our doorstep, we must act urgently. Please can the Government release the further necessary £1.4 billion to redevelop the APHA headquarters in Weybridge? The programme was started under the Conservatives, with £1.2 billion committed in 2020. For the sake of agriculture, animal health, rural mental health, biosecurity and national security, please will the Minister act now?
Daniel Zeichner
The hon. Gentleman makes an important set of points about the biosecurity needed to protect our country. Over the past few weeks we have had a series of questions across the Dispatch Box about the foot and mouth outbreak in Germany and avian influenza. We have had this discussion about the investment in Weybridge, and I am delighted that this Government have brought forward a £280 million investment there. Of course, we need to do more in future, but what on earth were the previous Government doing over the past 14 years?
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
The truth is that confidence among farmers has been far too low for far too long. That is why this Government are setting out the sustainable long-term plan for farming. Again, I point people to the Secretary of State’s address at the Oxford farming conference. We will continue to progress our priorities over the coming weeks.
David Reed
Farmers across Devon are rightly concerned about Labour’s planned changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief, particularly the serious impact on family farms and on the sustainability of rural communities. In early December I wrote to the Secretary of State to invite him to meet Devon’s farming community, at an event to be organised in conjunction with the NFU in Devon, to provide clarity on the policies’ objectives and to address their concerns. I am yet to receive a response. I ask him directly now: will he come to Devon, meet local farmers, and explain how these policies will not undermine their livelihoods and the future of British farming?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the hon. Member for his question, which is one that I have been asked at the Dispatch Box many times over the past few weeks. I have been to meet farmers in Cumbria, and last week I met farmers in south Cambridgeshire. I would love to meet farmers in Devon, so I am happy to add him to the list for my grand tour across the country to reassure people that there is a strong plan to ensure that farmers have a viable future, which they did not have under the last Government.
Mr Speaker
On that point, when Ministers make such tours, I hope that they will ensure that local MPs are made aware of the fact, because that did not happen in my case.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
Metal recyclers are regulated by local authorities and the Environment Agency and must meet specific treatment standards. We are ensuring that online marketplaces and vape producers contribute fairly towards the cost of recycling waste electricals, including metal components, and the sale of disposable vapes will be banned from 1 June.
Alistair Strathern
Six times in the past 12 months, Hitchin has had to endure repeated fires in industrial estates often triggered by lithium-ion batteries. It is clear that we need much tougher regulations to ensure the safety of those sites and, given the inherent risk that their businesses now pose, consideration of whether a time-limited licensing scheme would better enable local authorities to ensure that their location remains appropriate with evolving land use. Will the Minister meet me to ensure that we can make progress on this important issue?
Mary Creagh
I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend. Battery-related fires risk lives, livelihoods and the environment. The Environment Agency is currently reviewing approximately 2,000 metal recycling permits. The Hitchin shredder site is midway through its review, and a revised permit will be issued shortly. The Environment Agency has also produced new regulatory guidance on metal shredding and will consult on guidance for waste batteries in the spring.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In Northern Ireland we are fortunate to have fairly good regulation of metal recycling businesses. Ards and North Down borough council, for example, do that exceptionally well. Other businesses across my borough, and indeed in Belfast and further afield in Northern Ireland, do the same. I know that the Minister loves going to Northern Ireland. Has she had an opportunity to speak to the relevant Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive to discuss what we are doing to help here?
Mary Creagh
The hon. Gentleman knows my affection and my origins in County Fermanagh, the lakeland county. I would be happy to talk to Minister Muir about what we can learn in England from the good practice that seems to be happening in Northern Ireland.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
Over recent weeks we have announced a series of reforms delivering on the Government’s new deal for farmers, ensuring that, in line with World Trade Organisation rules and domestic procurement rules, we can ensure that procurement is used to back British farmers.
Bill Esterson
Farmers and growers in my constituency want to sell to hospitals and schools, but over the past few years they have found that increasingly difficult, not least because of the procurement chapters in the trade agreements that were concluded by the Conservative Government. Will my hon. Friend confirm that, under this Government, growers and farmers will be able to sell to public bodies and play their part in keeping Britain fed?
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; there is a real opportunity here, with £5 billion of purchasing power in the public sector, so we are looking at ways of ensuring that happens. It was a real surprise for us to find that the previous Government had not even measured the amount that was being bought—that is the starting point. We will start to make that happen, and we will get that huge opportunity for British farmers.
Rishi Sunak (Richmond and Northallerton) (Con)
I welcome the Government’s focus in this area. One of the barriers that small agricultural businesses in my constituency face in supplying the public sector is the complexity of the contracting process. The Crown Commercial Service made significant improvements to its portal last year, but I urge the ministerial team to build on that progress to make it easier, particularly for small companies, to provide food to the public sector. Ultimately, we all want to see more of that.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman not only for his question, but for his interest in and attendance at DEFRA questions—we are honoured to have him here. I am very happy to look at what he suggests and to work towards making those proposals work. We know that it is complicated within World Trade Organisation rules, but there is a real prize to be had here.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
The first role of any Government is to protect their citizens. Yesterday we announced that we are committing a record £2.65 billion to build and maintain around 1,000 flood defences, to protect lives, homes and businesses—a 26% uplift per annum on what the previous Government were spending. We are immediately using £140 million to unblock over 30 projects that are ready for delivery but stalled under the previous Government. We are launching a consultation to update the funding formula so that we can speed up new schemes and ensure that rural and coastal communities are properly included. The previous Government left our flood defences in the worst condition ever recorded. This Government will put them right.
Darren Paffey
Levels of E. coli and faecal matter in the River Itchen remain disgustingly high. I commend the Friends of the Itchen Estuary group for their work to highlight the issue. Like me, they want designated bathing water status in order to protect the river, so will the Secretary of State update us on when that application process will open again and on what changes we can expect?
Steve Reed
I pay tribute to the Friends of the Itchen Estuary for their advocacy on this important issue. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ran a consultation on reforms to the Bathing Water Regulations 2013, which closed on 23 December 2024. We are currently analysing the responses and considering how any proposed changes may impact the application and designation process, and we will of course respond fully in due course.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
The head of the Dover Port Health Authority warned the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee this week that if funding is not secured with seven weeks, food security checks at the border will be stopped. That will mean unchecked and potentially dangerous meat appearing on supermarket shelves and in restaurants at a time when there is foot and mouth disease in Germany. When will the Secretary of State protect our borders and confirm that funding?
Steve Reed
The National Farmers Union and other interested parties have quite rightly raised concerns about the discovery of foot and mouth disease in Germany. We are relieved that there has not been a further spread of that outbreak, but we are taking all appropriate measures at the border to ensure that this country remains safe in terms of biosecurity, and we will continue to monitor the situation and take appropriate action to ensure that there can be no repeat of what happened around 20 years ago, when a foot and mouth outbreak in this country devastated farming and cost the economy a total of £14 billion.
Victoria Atkins
I do not think the Secretary of State either understood my question or knows the answer, because I asked him when he will confirm the funding. Compare this relaxed approach with the Prime Minister’s seeming desperation to pay more than the entire DEFRA budget to surrender the Chagos islands. Does the Secretary of State really support taxing British farming families for dying, slashing winter fuel payments for rural pensioners, and hiking taxes on rural businesses to pay £9 billion to a foreign Government on some dodgy legal advice from Labour lawyers?
Steve Reed
If the shadow Secretary of State really cared about value for money, she would not have wasted £500,000 on relocating her office in the Department of Health, a project that was purely about her own personal vanity.
Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
My heart goes out to my hon. Friend’s constituents, who are clearly suffering terrible public health consequences from the stink at that site. There is an ongoing investigation into the cause of odour issues that have impacted the community in Fleetwood, which escalated in January 2024. The Environment Agency has told me that it expects odour issues to reduce within the next seven days. Should that not occur, it will consider any and all appropriate regulatory interventions to reduce the impact on the community. It has also launched—
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
I thank the hon. Lady for her important question. The Government are developing a series of interventions to reduce emissions, so that everybody’s exposure to air pollution is reduced. We are also conducting a comprehensive review of how we communicate air quality information, to ensure that members of the public and vulnerable groups have the information they need to protect themselves and understand the impact on air quality. Of course, no further decisions have been made regarding other developments.
Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)
Mary Creagh
I visited a fly-tipping site in Lichfield where people have been trapped in their homes. Fly-tipping blights communities, harms wildlife and places huge costs on taxpayers and businesses. Councils dealt with over a million incidents in 2022-23, up 10% on three years ago. I do not believe that the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime is fit for purpose, so I have asked officials to look at how we strengthen that regime to crack down on waste criminals.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Thoroughbred horses are high-health, high-welfare animals, and they should be treated as such to allow cross-border travel without physical border checks. Can the Minister commit today to recognise their high-health status, put welfare first and reduce this barrier to trade?
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
My near neighbour raises an important point—this is a very high-value sector. A commitment was made to designate thoroughbred horses as high-health animals as part of the border target operating model, and we will provide an update on the timeline for implementation by the end of the summer.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and for the work he is doing in championing what is obviously a crucial issue for his residents. I would of course be happy to meet him.
Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
Constituents in Witney were extremely distressed to receive letters this week from Thames Water saying that their bills are going up by £19 a month from April, putting more pressure on household bills. Does the Minister think that is acceptable, given that the restructuring plan in the High Court is putting £800 million to £900 million of interest expenses on to this company—
Mr Speaker
Order. This is sub judice, and the hon. Member should not go into the actual detail of the application before the Court at the moment. Can the Minister say anything? If not, we will have to move on.
Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)
Mary Creagh
It is not appropriate for me to comment on a specific planning permission case, but I do encourage those developing energy-from-waste facilities, including those that already have permission, to consider the evidence that DEFRA published over the recess, the new standards that we have introduced and the Government’s circular economy opportunities when determining whether their facility is still required.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
May I take the Secretary of State back to the subject of illegal meat imports? On Tuesday the Select Committee was told that at Dover this work, which covers only 20% of arrivals, is being done in live lanes, despite the fact that there is a border control post at Dover that is sitting unused, and the funding for Dover Port Health Authority is due to expire at the end of March. Can we at the very least sort out the financing of this for the next financial year?
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his question. The issues at Dover are significant and long-running. The funding was not resolved ahead of the general election, and there is an ongoing discussion. We are very aware of the challenges, but we are on it, and we will make sure that we are talking to those at Dover Port Health Authority.
Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)
Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend, who is right to highlight how the previous flooding formula discriminated against rural communities because it was based purely on the number of properties protected, not on creating the right solution in the right area. That is exactly why we wish to reform the formula, and we will be announcing a consultation very shortly.
Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
Given that the Office for Budget Responsibility refused to endorse the £22 billion black hole figure—in fact, it refused to say that there was any black hole at all—will the Secretary of State tell the House what possible justification there can be for the removal of agricultural property relief, which will do untold damage to the growth prospects of family farms in my constituency and across the country?
Steve Reed
The right hon. Member is fully aware of the appalling state the public finances were left in at the end of his Government. This Government have had to take very difficult decisions to balance the finances so we can get growth that will benefit the entire economy, including the farming sector, which was on its knees after 14 years of Conservative rule.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
The Solicitor General (Lucy Rigby)
I would like to start by congratulating US Attorney General Pam Bondi on her confirmation yesterday. The Attorney General and I look forward to working closely with her on our long list of shared priorities.
CPS prosecutors perform vital work to serve the public and deliver justice for victims. We have taken steps to strengthen the CPS workforce, including by boosting staff numbers in specialist rape and serious sexual assault units, as well as by being tough on crime, supporting victims and restoring confidence in the criminal justice system. All these things are part of this Government’s mission to make our streets safe, and the CPS has a key role to play in that mission.
Douglas McAllister
Will the Solicitor General join me in welcoming this Government’s increased funding of the Crown Prosecution Service for specialist sexual offence prosecution units? Does she agree that we must continue to tackle violence against women and girls across our nation, and will she join me in paying tribute to the dedication of our prosecutors and police on the front line who are confronting these crimes?
The Solicitor General
Absolutely; I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to police and prosecutors not only in his constituency, but right across the United Kingdom. He is right to welcome the increased funding that we have secured for the CPS. Our recently agreed settlement will ensure that the CPS can recruit more specialist prosecutors, delivering that vital work and putting those who commit these abhorrent crimes behind bars.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Given the backlog in Crown court appearances, and the increasing tide of knife crime as well as criminal activity against women and girls, what steps are the Department taking to ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service is adequately provided for so that justice is seen to be done in the wider community?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Member makes an important point; this Government are working very hard to do that. The settlement for the CPS that I referred to was an extra £49 million, and it is spending some of that on increasing the number of prosecutors who are able to do the important work to which he refers.
Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
The Solicitor General
The scale of violence against women and girls in this country is intolerable, and the Government are treating it as the national emergency that it is. The CPS has begun securing convictions of offenders who breach domestic abuse protection orders—a scheme that the Government introduced in November 2024 in order better to protect victims of domestic abuse. Although there is much more to be done, that is just one example of the clear action that the Government are taking to meet our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.
Maya Ellis
The national conviction rate for domestic abuse cases is woefully low, standing at 4.5%, but the picture is even worse in rural constituencies such as Ribble Valley, where the overall conviction rate is only 3%. What does the Solicitor General regard as the unique challenges in rural areas, and what steps is she taking to tackle them specifically?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend raises an important issue. She is right to highlight the unique risks faced by women in rural areas, including her constituency; increased isolation can bring with it more risk. To tackle violence against women we need to address the overall number of prosecutions, which unfortunately is still far too low. That is why, working with the CPS and the police, we have brought in the domestic abuse joint justice plan—which I am pleased to say is already leading to a modest increase in referrals of domestic abuse cases—to improve the investigation, prosecution, and handling of domestic abuse cases.
Leigh Ingham
In June 2024, 60% of rape investigations were closed because the victim dropped out. On top of that I have heard harrowing stories from my constituents who went to court over their sexual assault, and who felt humiliated and were further traumatised by that process. What work is being done to ensure that victims of sexual violence are treated with empathy and respect during the court process?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend asks a pertinent question, and I am sure the whole House will be sorry to hear of the examples that she raised. She is right to say that all victims ought to be treated with empathy and respect, because victims’ loss of confidence in the criminal justice undermines the entire process of justice. I am working with the CPS to ensure better support for victims in rape and serious sexual offence cases, including by hiring victim liaison officers in teams prosecuting such cases. I had the pleasure of meeting some of those victim liaison officers while visiting the CPS in Cardiff, and I was able to hear first hand about the vital work they are doing to support victims.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
My constituency is blighted by the shocking crime of child sexual exploitation, and rebuilding trust among victims in our criminal justice system is vital if victims are to come forward. Recently, eight men from my constituency were sentenced for the horrendous gang rape of two children and received shockingly short sentences; one was as low as three years. I have written to the Attorney General on this issue. Does the Solicitor General agree that these weak sentences are hugely damaging trust in our justice system? Will she commit, via the Attorney General, to reviewing them?
The Solicitor General
The example that the hon. Member refers to is indeed heinous. The conduct of those who have been involved in such crimes has rightly shocked and appalled people right across the country. He refers to a referral to the Attorney General’s Office, and it is therefore not appropriate for me to comment on that specific case further.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
I have had many victims of domestic abuse write to me, following lengthy periods of inaction from the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other organisations, which have left victims at risk and feeling horribly anxious. How will the Minister ensure that prosecution rates improve and victims have confidence in the criminal justice system?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Member makes an important point. I am sorry to hear of the examples that she raises. This Government have a historic mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and we are taking a series of important steps to work towards the increased number of prosecutions that she refers to. For example, we are introducing specialist rape and sexual offences teams in every police force; working to increase referrals with the recently launched domestic abuse joint justice plan; fast-tracking rape cases; and introducing free independent legal advisers for victims of adult rape. I referred earlier to domestic abuse protection orders, and the first convictions for breach of them are already being seen.
Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
The Solicitor General
The SFO does crucial work to tackle complex fraud, bribery and corruption. I have met senior SFO staff on multiple occasions in the past two months, and I recently visited SFO HQ to understand more about the ways it is putting the latest technology to use in tackling economic crime and returning stolen funds to victims. Under the new director of the SFO, the SFO has opened seven new overt investigations and charged 10 defendants in cases involving more than 800 victims.
Gregor Poynton
My hon. Friend will know that fraud does not stop at the border, and residents in my Livingston constituency are incredibly concerned by the increase in fraud and economic crime and the devastating effects they can have on people’s lives. What are the UK Government doing to tackle fraud in Scotland?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is right that fraud does not acknowledge borders, particularly when it comes to the increasing harms associated with online fraud. That is why it is so important that the SFO works closely with the Scottish law enforcement authorities. In that respect, and in others, this Government are fully committed to strengthening the Union.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Solicitor General for that reply. We in Northern Ireland understand that economic crime is used by paramilitaries to fund their organisations and criminal groups. In America, Al Capone was put in jail not for the crimes he committed, but for tax evasion and financial issues. Will the Attorney General target paramilitary groups for their efforts to raise money illegally?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Member makes an important point. This Government take economic crime incredibly seriously, including when it links to the serious type of activity to which he refers.
Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
The Solicitor General
The Attorney General’s Office has a rigorous process for identifying and dealing with conflicts and potential conflicts that arise from Law Officers’ former practice. As part of that process, the AGO adopts a cautious and beyond reproach threshold to any conflicts or potential conflicts. These arrangements are long-standing and part of a standard practice that has applied across successive Administrations.
Jack Rankin
Three former Law Officers have criticised the Attorney General for not declaring his earnings, labelling it as “irregular” and a break from “normal practice”. Who is in the wrong: the three former Law Officers or the Attorney General?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Member will know that the Attorney General ceased all private practice following his appointment. The hon. Member refers to fee agreements, and he will know that there are different arrangements and requirements for declarations for Members of the House of Lords and for Members of the House of Commons. It does not matter which type of fee agreement is in place between a lawyer and their client, because the entirety of those agreements—whether a conditional fee agreement, a damages-based agreement, on a fully paid basis or when acting pro bono—will always be caught by the conflicts process. The requirements for the purposes of the House of Lords are the same for all peers and they apply just as much to the shadow Attorney General as to the Attorney General.
Mr Holden
Does the Solicitor General agree with the recent Policy Exchange research paper “Conflicts of Interest and the Law Officers’ Convention” authored by Dr Conor Casey, a senior lecturer at Surrey law school, and supported by three former Ministers who are all KCs, that invoking the Law Officers’ convention on questions about the potential conflict of interest relating to the work of the Attorney General would be an error, as such questions do not fall within the scope of the convention?
The Solicitor General
As I have said, the Attorney General’s Office has a rigorous process for identifying and dealing with conflicts and potential conflicts that arise from the Law Officers’ former practice. The Law Officers’ convention, to which the right hon. Member referred, exists for very good reason, which is to enable the Government of this country to receive full and frank advice. In any event, the Attorney General has been clear that he does not agree with that report. In particular, he does not agree that a Law Officer would indicate whether they have recused themselves from a particular matter, because that in itself would breach the Law Officers’ convention.
Patrick Spencer
My constituents in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich are decent, tolerant and thoughtful people, but they are left wondering how the Prime Minister has appointed an Attorney General who is a friend and a Labour party donor as well as someone who has represented Gerry Adams, Shamima Begum and Hamas and clearly has questions to answer regarding outside earnings. Does the Solicitor General think that the AG was an appropriate appointment?
The Solicitor General
Again, unfortunately the Opposition are falling into the trap of believing that barristers are their clients. That is a deliberate conflation of representation and endorsement. As the hon. Member will be fully aware, barristers are not their clients in the same way that surgeons are not their patients. That is a foundational principle of the British legal and judicial systems, and Opposition Members ought not to undermine that.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
Does the Solicitor General agree that the UK legal system is the envy of the world and a key engine for growth in our economy, and that the Conservative party risks undermining a fundamental principle of our legal system that everyone has the right to representation and that lawyers can represent their clients without fear or favour?
The Solicitor General
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. The Conservative party would do better to talk up our excellent British legal and judicial systems rather than consistently seeking to undermine the foundational principles to which he referred.
Helen Grant (Maidstone and Malling) (Con)
The Attorney General has admitted to recusing himself from certain matters; he has also maintained absolute silence about which matters those may be. In these circumstances, we must ask ourselves: is that the level of transparency that our democracy demands? What safeguards exist when the Attorney General’s past clients and present duties overlap? Who, independent of the Attorney General himself, scrutinises those critical decisions on recusal, or do we face the concerning spectacle of the Government’s chief legal adviser marking his own homework?
The Solicitor General
As I have outlined, the Attorney General’s Office has rigorous and long-standing processes in place. Upon appointment, the AGO compiles a list of matters in which the Law Officer has previously been involved, by searching cases, cross-referencing with information obtained by the Law Officer’s chambers or firm and working through the list with the Law Officer themselves. The Office works with the Government Legal Department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office to obtain additional information and compile the final list of conflicts and actions associated with each case. As the shadow Solicitor General knows, the Attorney General cannot publish a list of his former clients due to client confidentiality. [Interruption.] Opposition Members groan, but client confidentiality is a fundamental principle. Absolutely ridiculous.
The shadow Solicitor General mentioned recusal. The Attorney General has already indicated in the other place that he has recused himself from matters. The Law Officers’ convention prohibits me from listing those matters. No other Law Officer has ever published a list of the cases that they are recused from
Helen Grant
The Solicitor General, her predecessor and every Conservative Law Officer from the previous Administration rightly and properly understood their duty to declare previous earnings. Why does the Attorney General refuse to declare moneys received from his practice as a barrister? Why does he not acknowledge whether he continues to receive such payments when his predecessors routinely declared both? Why does this Attorney General think that there is one rule for him and another rule for everyone else?
The Solicitor General
The Attorney General is in the House of Lords, so the rules that apply are different from those that apply in the House of Commons. That is the difference between the Attorney General and the previous Solicitor General and me. Those requirements are the same for all peers, including the Attorney General, and they apply just as much to the shadow Attorney General. The Lords Commissioners for Standards said that they considered the complaints made by the shadow Justice Secretary about the peers code of conduct, and dismissed them.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is past 10.30 am and we need to get through some more questions.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Solicitor General
This Government are committed to strengthening relations with devolved Governments and fostering greater collaboration, built on mutual respect and trust. As the hon. Member would expect, the Law Officers very regularly meet our counterparts to discuss our shared priorities.
John Lamont
The Scottish National party’s deposit return scheme was a complete shambles, which the last Conservative Government stopped, preventing it from hurting Scottish businesses with more regulation and higher costs. The SNP Government are now facing legal action over the scheme, with businesses seeking hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation. I appreciate that the Solicitor General cannot comment on a live case, but will she confirm that the SNP Government will be solely responsible for any costs that may be incurred in handling the case?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Member is right that I cannot comment on the specific matter that he raises, but I am happy to look at it and to write to him.
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
The Solicitor General
New technology has the potential to bring transformative benefits to the criminal justice system, as it does to public services more broadly. With regard to artificial intelligence, both the CPS and the SFO are keen to explore the efficiency opportunities that this new technology can bring, while being mindful of ethical considerations.
Sarah Coombes
We have seen a sickening rise in predators using AI technology to generate child sexual abuse images. I am glad that the Government recently announced measures to close the loopholes in this area, but will the Solicitor General assure us that the whole criminal justice system is using every new technology and AI, as well as tough sentences, to crack down on it and protect children and victims of this horrific abuse?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is right to raise this extremely important point. That is exactly why I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that this Government will be the first in the world to make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
The Solicitor General
The Government are committed to keeping everyone in this country safe, whether they live in a town, a city or a rural area. That is why we are putting more police officers and police community support officers on the beat, and it is why we have bolstered the Crown Prosecution Service’s workforce. With specific regard to rural crime, we are committed to implementing the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, and to the continued funding of the national rural crime unit.
Dave Robertson
As I am sure the Solicitor General knows, fly-tipping is the most commonly reported rural crime. In 2022-23, the last year for which there is full data, there were well over 13,000 significant multi-load incidents; I use the phrase specifically, as it is an internal description. Those incidents cost more than £4 million to clear up, yet just 22 custodial sentences were handed out in that time. What assurances can she give me and my constituents that the most egregious examples of fly-tipping, like those we saw in Lichfield two weeks ago, will result in jail time for the perpetrators?
The Solicitor General
Fly-tipping blights communities, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue. I know that he has also raised it with the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, but I am happy to arrange a meeting with his local chief Crown prosecutor to discuss the matter further.
Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
The tragic hit-and-run case of Ryan Saltern in my rural North Cornwall constituency, as well as many other cases across the country, highlights a concerning problem in our legal system. The driver failed to stop, render aid at the scene, or even call 999, leaving Ryan for dead. The case was heard in a magistrates court, where the driver received a four-month suspended sentence. Ryan’s parents, Helen and Mark, and sister Leanne have campaigned tirelessly on the issue. Will the Solicitor General please look into the issue in conjunction with the CPS and the Department for Transport, and meet me to discuss her findings?
The Solicitor General
This is a profoundly tragic case, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising it. My heartfelt condolences go to Ryan’s family. I know that they and others have been campaigning for changes to the law in this area, and supporting families who have been through similarly tragic circumstances. I will discuss the case that the hon. Member raises with my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and ensure that he receives a full response.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
The Solicitor General
Whether online or in person, stirring up hatred or inciting violence will not be tolerated. The Government are determined to take swift and robust action to stamp out hate crime, and perpetrators will face the full force of the law.
Tom Gordon
February marks LGBT History Month, and last night, many people came together in Speaker’s House to hear about the progress that has been made in tackling hate crime against the LGBT community. Will the Solicitor General outline what steps have been taken to ensure that trans people in particular feel safe, and that perpetrators of hate crimes towards trans people are brought to justice?
The Solicitor General
The CPS prosecutes all cases that are referred to it, provided that they meet the full code test for Crown prosecutors. I think we would all admit that there is more to do regarding the incidents to which the hon. Member refers. The CPS and police national hate crime leads are committed to joint working to increase the number of police referrals to the CPS for hate crime offences.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
The criminal legal aid advisory board has asked the Government to raise fees in rape and serious sexual offences cases to address the shortage of advocates. Prosecutors often earn 30% to 40% less than defence barristers in the same case. Does the Solicitor General think that she should have a look at fees to ensure that there is not a shortage of advocates, particularly in these serious cases?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is right to identify this as a problem. I know from discussions with RASSO charities in my constituency that the shortage of counsel is a direct contributor to cases being adjourned or delayed. It contributes to the unfortunate slow pace of justice, and to victim attrition. Ministers in the Ministry of Justice have committed to work with the Bar leadership via the criminal legal aid advisory board, and to look at longer-term reform of legal aid.
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Foreign Secretary to make a statement on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The Minister for Development (Anneliese Dodds)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important matter, and for the urgent question being granted. The whole House will be well aware that for the people of Gaza, so many of whom have lost lives, homes or loved ones, the last 14 months of conflict have been a living nightmare.
The UK is clear that we must see a negotiated two-state solution, with a sovereign Palestinian state which includes the west bank and Gaza, alongside a safe and secure Israel, with Jerusalem as the shared capital. That has been the framework for peace for decades. Our priority remains ensuring the fragile ceasefire continues, that all the hostages are released, that much-needed aid gets into Gaza and that we can rebuild that pathway to sustainable peace. Palestinians must determine the future of Gaza, with support from regional states and the wider international community.
We would oppose any effort to move Palestinians in Gaza to neighbouring Arab states against their will. There must be no forced displacement of Palestinians, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza strip. Palestinian civilians should be able to return to and rebuild their homes and their lives. That is a right guaranteed under international law. Gaza is home to 2 million Palestinians and remains an integral part of what must become a future Palestinian state, with Palestinians living next to Israelis in peace and security. The US has played a critical role in negotiating the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, alongside Qatar and Egypt. As hon. Members may know, the Prime Minister reiterated that in his call with President Trump. We must now work together to ensure the ceasefire is implemented in full and becomes permanent.
The UK is investing in the ceasefire by doing all it can to support the surge in aid that is needed. Alongside our existing support, on 28 January I announced a further £70 million in funding to ensure healthcare, food and shelter reaches tens of thousands of civilians, and to support vital infrastructure across the Occupied Palestinian Territories and neighbouring countries.
We are also concerned at the expansion of the Government of Israel’s war aims and operations in the west bank. Stability is essential at this crucial time. We recognise Israel’s right to defend itself and the continuing threat posed by armed groups, but it must show restraint and ensure the scale and conduct of its operations are commensurate to the threat posed. Civilians must be protected and the destruction of civilian infrastructure minimised. The UK remains opposed to illegal settlements, their expansion and settler violence.
In conclusion, our attention must now turn to how we secure a permanently better future for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, grounded—to reiterate the point a final time—in a two-state solution.
Andy McDonald
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement.
The context in which we approach this question is following 16 months of bloodshed and the deaths of almost 50,000 Palestinians, and a welcome temporary ceasefire. So the remarks of the US President, in conference with the Israeli Prime Minister, that the US will
“take over the Gaza Strip”
to create a
“Riviera of the Middle East”
and that
“1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza”
should live in “other countries”, are reckless and dangerous. That has emboldened the Israeli Defence Minister Katz overnight to further propose the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. The remarks are generating fear and tension in the Palestinian population, and across the middle east—as evidenced by the statements of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others—and will cause concern and more determined demonstrations in the UK.
The US President has also restored arms shipments, ended funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council. Netanyahu says that Israel will redraw the map, and the Israeli Defence Forces have detonated whole streets in the Jenin refugee camp in the west bank. In such dangerous circumstances we should be careful, calculated and accurate in our use of language. Forced displacement of the type advocated, which has already occurred within the Gaza strip, is a breach of international humanitarian rights and a war crime. Advocating the expulsion of a people is also justly described as ethnic cleansing, and can only be achieved through yet further appalling violence. I acknowledge that the Government will wish to maintain their diplomatic relationship with the US, as a long-standing friend, but it is the role of friends to be honest with each other, and the UK must use its influence.
The Prime Minister’s remark yesterday that the Palestinians “must be allowed home” is most welcome, but the Government must go further. Will the Minister say that the UK rejects the President’s remarks, and those of the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister? Will she confirm that recognition of the Palestinian state is an urgent necessity in resolving the conflict? Will she confirm that the borders of that state are the 1967 borders set out in UN Security Council resolution 242? Finally, when will the UK Government respond to the International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his many points. Of course, he is right to underline the appalling suffering that so many Gazans have experienced over recent months. We also recognise the suffering of the hostages and their families. This has been a truly horrendous time for Gazans, Palestinians and Israelis. The ceasefire must be held to, not just in phase 1, but in phases 2 and 3, and ultimately we must see a two-state solution.
My hon. Friend talks about the role of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. I reassure him that the UK continues to work with all partners in the region towards peace, which is so important. He mentioned UNRWA. I am sure he is aware of the UK Government’s position: we believe that UNRWA must continue to operate, not just in Gaza but on the west bank and, in relation to Palestinian refugees, in the region more broadly. He also mentioned the situation in Jenin. We have been very clear: there must be de-escalation. We are deeply concerned about the potential for further instability because of recent developments.
In my hon. Friend’s primary question around displacement, he referred to the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday. The Prime Minister could not have been clearer in what he said; like so many of us, was moved by
“the image of thousands of Palestinians literally walking through the rubble to try to find their homes and their communities in Gaza. They must be allowed home. They must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two-state solution.”—[Official Report, 5 February 2025; Vol. 761, c. 745.]
The UK’s position has been crystal clear. I do not believe that there is any confusion around it, and I appreciate that my hon. Friend was not suggesting that there was.
My hon. Friend asked about the UK’s position on recognition. He will be aware that we have stated that position a number of times in the House, including at length in the statement by the Foreign Secretary on the ceasefire deal when that was agreed. We are very clear: the Palestinians have the right, just as the Israelis do, to their own sovereign state where they can live in security. We are determined to ensure that recognition at the time when that is most conducive to achieving a two-state solution, which is the right of both those peoples.
Finally, on the subject of the ICJ, my hon. Friend will be aware that the Court’s determination is a very detailed judgment, which it took many months to come to. As behoves such a judgment, it is important that the Government consider it in detail. That is exactly what we are doing, and we will update colleagues as soon as we have come to a determination on that.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
The ceasefire remains fragile. There continues to be a long road ahead. We want the agreement to hold, and that means that each and every hostage must be released, in accordance with the terms of phase 1 of the agreement, and the subsequent phases.
The videos we have all watched of the released hostages being reunited with their families are immensely moving. We cannot even begin to imagine the pain that they have suffered since 7 October 2023. We also hold firmly in our thoughts the hostages who remain in cruel captivity at the hands of Hamas, and the families who continue to anxiously await news of their loved ones. The awful news that eight hostages will not make it home alive must be unbearable for the families.
We reiterate our call for the Government to do everything in their power, with partners, to push for humanitarian access to those who are still being held hostage. The UK should offer whatever practical support it can to facilitate the smooth release of hostages. The testimony of Emily Damari about the location of her captivity is also very serious, and a thorough and independent investigation is urgently needed. I would be grateful for clarity from the Minister on how the UK Government are formally responding, beyond calls for an investigation.
On the subject of aid to Gaza, can the Minister give us an update on three points? First, what is the turnaround time for British aid—the time between it reaching warehouses in the region and its entering Gaza? Secondly, what metrics, if any, are the Government using to monitor the distribution of that aid when it has entered Gaza? Finally, since the ceasefire, have additional types and categories of aid been delivered?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for all her questions, but also for the concern that she expressed about the situation of the remaining hostages and their families. When I was in Tel Aviv, I had the privilege of meeting the brother of Emily Damari, as well as other hostage families, and obviously their suffering has been extreme. As the right hon. Lady said, it has been particularly harrowing for the families of the eight hostages who have died. I know that the whole House will recognise the pain and suffering that has been undergone by the very large number of Gazans who have lost their lives. A great many people are, of course, unaccounted for. For many of us, the situation is unimaginable, as we try to put ourselves in the shoes of those returning to their former homes, in some cases trying to find out whether their family members are under the rubble. What a horrific experience they must be going through.
The right hon. Lady asked three questions, with which I will deal in a moment, but she also rightly pressed me on the issue of Emily Damari’s captivity and the allegations that she had been held in UNRWA facilities. Commissioner Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, has said that claims that hostages were held in UNRWA premises are “disturbing”, and I agree with him. I welcome UNRWA’s call for independent investigation of any misuse of its facilities, and indeed there have been investigations previously: the Colonna review investigated other allegations, and the UK has worked with UNRWA to ensure that those investigations were thorough, and that the appropriate changes were made.
Let me turn to the right hon. Lady’s questions. She asked about the turnaround times for UK aid getting into Gaza. Certainly we have seen a far speedier throughput, but I am sure that she would agree that we need to see commercial shipments of goods getting into Gaza; that is necessary if there is to be delivery of food and other supplies on the scale that is required. We continue to push the Government of Israel to enable that to happen as quickly as possible. As for the metrics being used when it comes to the distribution of that aid, we are working closely with trusted partners, and as the right hon. Lady would expect, we continuously monitor the distribution of UK supplies. Much of our activity has been undertaken jointly with other countries, as well as with UN agencies, and we work closely with them to ensure that aid is delivered where it is needed.
Lastly, the right hon. Lady asked whether there had been a change in types of aid. We need access for tents in particular, as well as other forms of shelter and medical supplies. When I was in Jordan, I saw medical supplies that it had not been possible to deliver to Gaza, and we need access for those. We have seen improvements in some areas, but given the scale of the challenge, we need to see further improvements, especially in relation to water and sanitation where there has been a great deal of destruction. Urgent action is needed to improve the position.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
To those Members who were seven minutes late, please do not embarrass each other by standing.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
We have seen a really worrying escalation of violence on the west bank, just at the time when this fragile peace has been found in Gaza. Large parts of Jenin refugee camp have been completely destroyed by Israeli security forces, and thousands have been forcibly displaced. UNRWA services have been interrupted. What measures is the Minister taking to ensure that Palestinians can live safely and securely in their homes on the west bank?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. She has considerable expertise in the area of humanitarian support, as do many other Members in the Chamber. As I said in my previous response, the UK is very concerned about the situation in Jenin, which we continue to monitor very carefully. We are clear that peace and stability on the west bank is in everyone’s interests—it is in the state of Israel’s interests, and in the interests of Palestinians. On 18 December, in a statement at the UN Security Council meeting on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the UK called on Israel to stop illegal settlement expansion on Palestinian land, and we are considering all options for taking further action.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
President Trump’s proposals for the forced displacement of Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants would constitute a grave violation of international law, and threaten the fragile ceasefire and the return of the hostages. Will the Minister condemn them?
The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and to a state of their own, as has been British policy for decades, so will the Government finally commit to an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders? The welcome ceasefire has given us the opportunity to flood Gaza with aid, but the freeze to US aid funding is reportedly impacting the humanitarian response; non-governmental organisations are being forced to lay off aid workers. What has the impact been on the humanitarian response in Gaza, including on British-funded programmes, and what conversations are the Government having with our American partners to persuade them that abolishing US aid would be a dire mistake?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the important points she raised. The UK’s position on the right to return could not be clearer. I quoted the Prime Minister’s remarks, which were most definitely that Palestinians must be allowed to go back to their homes and communities in Gaza, and must be allowed to rebuild. That is in line with international law. There is no doubt whatsoever about the UK’s position on this.
The hon. Lady asked about the position on recognition. I responded to that when answering my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald). The UK has been clear that we believe it is important that both Palestinians and Israelis have the sovereignty that is required for them, and the security that is necessary in order to live in peace. We will ensure that the UK’s decision on recognition is a contribution to the process towards a two-state solution, which we desperately need to see.
Finally, the hon. Lady asked about US aid. I was grateful to her and other Members for coming to our briefing yesterday with the Minister for the middle east, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), in which we covered this matter. The UK notes the US decision to pause foreign aid funding for three months, pending a review. There has been a lot of commentary about that. It is a fast-moving situation, and we are monitoring it very closely indeed, as the hon. Lady would expect. Of course, this is a matter for the United States. The UK is very clear that we must continue to do what we can to support people in Gaza, must provide life-sustaining support, and must work with a whole range of partners on this, and we will continue to do so.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
Vast swathes of infrastructure in Gaza have been destroyed. What work are the Government undertaking on supporting the Palestinian people to rebuild their homes and communities, as is their right under international law?
Anneliese Dodds
This is a critical issue. Of course, we need the ceasefire to be held to. As I said, we have to move through phase 1 to phases 2 and 3, but we also need to ensure that there is day-after-next-phase planning in Gaza, so that we can see the building up of Gaza’s governance and security institutions and, of course, infrastructure, as my hon. Friend rightly stated. We are clear that Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction must be Palestinian-led. We have supported the Palestinian Authority in particular on this. I am very proud that UK expertise has been supporting that work, so that this important reconstruction can continue at the required pace and scale, but we need to see the ceasefire holding to enable that.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
What practical support are the Government giving to Egypt now that the Rafah crossing has reopened for medical emergencies? When that happened previously, it put enormous pressure on the Egyptian health service and caused some civil unrest in Egypt. As the right hon. Lady knows, Egypt is also under pressure on its southern border due to the conflict in Sudan. Does she agree that support for Egypt at this critical time is very important?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for underlining Egypt’s role in this incredibly difficult humanitarian situation, and particularly in relation to medical evacuees from Gaza. He is also right to underline that Egypt is now housing many refugees from Sudan too.
I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the UK is seeking to work with Egypt. We have supported the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population with £1 million, delivered through WHO Egypt, to support medically evacuated Palestinians from Gaza. We are exploring further support for the Egyptian system, which is gearing up to receive large numbers of medical evacuees.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The world is watching, so let us be clear in this House that the UK’s reaction to this brazen attempt to further rip up international law will echo for generations. With 61,000 Palestinians killed, the ceasefire hanging by a thread, and now a blueprint to ravage Gaza, ethnically cleanse Palestinians and resettle the land, where exactly have diplomacy and refusing to sanction Israel led us? Palestinians are now facing mass expulsion, reoccupation and resettlement, all while the international rules-based order has been ripped to shreds.
Anneliese Dodds
I believe it has been incredibly important for the UK to engage diplomatically in relation to this conflict. It is absolutely right that we have sought to work with partners on these issues, that we have supported statements within the UN Security Council, that we have worked with partners in the region, that we have sought to achieve change, and that we sought to ensure the ceasefire was agreed.
We need to see more hostages released, we need a surge of aid into Gaza and, ultimately, we need to work with other countries towards the two-state solution that is so necessary. I believe our work has been important, and I believe that Members would not have forgiven the UK Government if we had not engaged determinedly with those actions.
My hon. Friend asks about the UK’s position, particularly on the right to return. We have stated very clearly, including at the highest level with the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, that those who are walking through the rubble to get back to their homes and communities in Gaza must be allowed home. Of course, in saying that, the Prime Minister is restating international law.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Does the Minister accept that we got here after 16 months of weakness and vacillation by both this Government and the previous Government? As we contemplate the hundreds of thousands of people who are returning to their homes to dig out their relatives from under the rubble, the welcome return of the hostages, and the 40,000-odd orphans—and even more amputees—does she recognise that the hot air we have heard from both Governments, frankly, got us to a situation in which the Israelis are demolishing buildings in Jenin with people still inside and in which the President of the United States is openly contemplating the forcible transfer of Palestinians?
If the right hon. Lady accepts that vacillation, will she confirm a couple of things for the avoidance of doubt? First, are Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, entitled to the same protections under international law as everybody else? Secondly, do we still affirm our support for UN Security Council resolution 3236, which guarantees the Palestinians’ safety, security and sovereignty in their own land? If so, when will she stop just talking about it and actually take action to enforce these matters in law?
Anneliese Dodds
As the right hon. Member is aware and as we have discussed previously, this UK Government have taken a different approach from the previous Government on matters of accountability. We were very clear that the UK’s arms export regime had to be held to and operated in line with international humanitarian law. That underwrote the decisions we took in the autumn: we said we would examine that regime and deliver on it, and we examined that regime and suspended a number of licences. He is also aware about the new UK Government’s different position on the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and UNRWA, and he is aware that we resumed funding for UNRWA.
I do not want to labour the point because so many hon. Members want to ask questions, but it is important that the UK has engaged in diplomacy and sought to work with our partners. I believe hon. Members would expect the UK Government to do that and to engage with the UN on these matters, rather than to walk away. I would underline that international law is universal: it must be—that is its founding principle. It operates regardless of circumstance or which population and individuals we are talking about. On the right hon. Member’s last point, we have been very clear about the right to return.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
The television footage of many thousands of Palestinian men, women and children walking back to northern Gaza was a powerful reminder not just of the forceable displacement they have already suffered, but of the extraordinary resilience of that people. That is why there is real anger among Palestinians today that, yet again, the very existence of their homeland is being subject to the whims of another colonial power. I am pleased that the Minister has confirmed that the UK has an unshakable policy on the right of return of those Palestinians, to rebuild their homes and their lives, but would she agree with the UN Secretary-General, who said today that staying true to international law is
“essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for again raising the images that so many of us have seen on our television screens of Palestinians returning to their homes in Gaza. As the Prime Minister explained, in many cases they have no choice but to walk back to their homes because of the destruction of roads and other infrastructure, but many of those homes have been destroyed. My hon. Friend is right that the experience of displacement has been felt by very significant numbers of Gazans: up to 90% of Gazans have been displaced at least once and some up to nine times. To underline yet another time, the UK’s commitment to international law is very clear. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have restated that, and I restate it again today.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for her response to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) on USAID, and grateful to know that the impact assessment of the US Government’s decision about USAID is ongoing, particularly in relation to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. As part of that assessment, should the Government consider a return to 0.7% of gross national income for overseas development assistance? If the US is no longer a reliable global partner, then surely the UK should be.
Anneliese Dodds
On a return to 0.7% of GNI being spent on overseas development, the hon. Lady will be aware that my party’s position—the position of the Government—is that we are determined to return to that level of spending as fiscal circumstances allow. We are clear that we must play a part in humanitarian questions and, more broadly on development, we must seek to work in partnership with other countries. We are doing that and have ensured that has fed into our decisions for next year’s one-year spending review, and that will be the case for the longer-term spending review as well.
Dr Zubir Ahmed (Glasgow South West) (Lab)
The Prime Minister was quite clear when he said at that Dispatch Box that the right of Gazans to return and remain on their land is absolute. As they return, there are many hundreds of thousands of psychologically and physically damaged children, which is unprecedented in recent memory. What can we, the British state, do to help them?
Anneliese Dodds
I know that my hon. Friend will be concerned about this issue given his considerable medical expertise. The UK has been acting to ensure that we are doing our part to support children in Gaza, and we will continue to do so. We are having urgent discussions with our partners on this, and those discussions extend to the concerning issues around psychosocial trauma that has been experienced by children and ensuring that those vulnerable children receive the support that they need in the future.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It is welcome news that some hostages have been released, but the shocking scenes that we have seen of brave young women surrounded by terrorists demonstrate that Hamas are still in charge in Gaza. The question now turns to how we ensure that the Palestinian people can return to safe and secure homes, that the terror tunnels are destroyed and that Hamas play no part in the governance of Gaza. Given that Hamas are in charge, and that President Trump has made an announcement about how all this could be done, what will the British Government do to come up with a counter proposal that is both reasonable and achievable?
Anneliese Dodds
I share the hon. Member’s concern about those scenes, and I am sure that other Members in the House do so as well. The UK Government have been very clear: Hamas must not play a part in those future governance arrangements. We have been seeking to work in a practical manner with the Palestinian Authority, especially making sure that they have the expertise that they need for their reform programme and working towards the reconstruction and recovery that is so important in Gaza.
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
The Minister is right to say that the past 14 months in Gaza have been a living nightmare and that we need a safe and secure Palestine alongside a safe and secure Israel. I agree absolutely that there must be no forced displacement of Gazans. Will the Minister say more about how we are focusing on the key issue here, which is how the UK is supporting a ceasefire and the rebuilding of Gaza?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her important question. The UK has sought to invest in the ceasefire. That was the reason why, just last week, we announced additional humanitarian support and support in relation to much-needed services in Gaza, so that we could ensure that that surge in aid, which is so necessary, is not just there now, but sustained. That is important, so that we can progress from phase 1 of the ceasefire to phase 2, then phase 3, and ultimately towards a two-state solution.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
No amount of rowing back by the US State Department can change the fact that what the United States President intimated earlier this week amounts to ethnic cleansing. Are the UK Government of the same view that, if prosecuted, his plan would amount to ethnic cleansing? If not, what do the UK Government understand ethnic cleansing to be? I have heard an awful lot of warm words from the Government and ambition about what we believe in, what we stand for and what we have delivered around the immediate humanitarian crisis, but let us not forget that the horrors that have happened over the past 18 months are due to the vacuum created by international inaction over the plight of the Palestinians for the last 50 years. What will this Government do to change that drastic situation?
Anneliese Dodds
A few moments ago, I listed the decisions that the UK Government have taken that were different from those of the previous Government. We have been determined to ensure that we are very clear about the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. We have also removed that ban on UNWRA funding, and supported moves at the UN, through the Security Council, that have been specifically focused on trying to push forward the two-state solution that is so important. I refer the hon. Gentleman to my previous remarks about the Prime Minister himself underlining the importance of that right to return.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Yesterday, we welcomed the Prime Minister’s comments about how the Palestinians must be allowed home and must be allowed to rebuild. We should be with them in that rebuild and on the way to a two-state solution, yet settler violence against Palestinians continues to increase. Will the Minister confirm that this Government have no intention of lifting the sanctions that the UK has imposed on Israeli settlers and settler groups, and will the Government even consider expanding them?
Anneliese Dodds
My hon. Friend will be aware that the UK has imposed—I believe it was in the autumn—sanctions against those who had engaged in and promoted violence as settlers. We condemn that activity and believe that it reduces the prospect of a two-state solution. Of course, for me to talk about future sanctions designations from the Dispatch Box would reduce their efficacy, and therefore I will not do that here.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the clarity of her answers today. We are all aware that Iran played a major role through its antisemitic regime in funding Hamas and Hezbollah, with the stated aim of destroying the state of Israel. If there is to be faith in the reconstruction of Gaza, people who want to do that will have to have faith that there is a secure situation. The attitude of this White House towards Iran is different from the previous one. What action are the Government taking and how are they involved in ensuring that Iran is not able to re-establish itself to fund and arm the groups that specifically want to destroy the state of Israel?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his comments. The UK Government are clear that Iran has long destabilised the middle east. That has obviously been done through military means, but it has also given financial and political support to its proxies and partners, including Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, which he mentioned, and the Houthis in Yemen. We will continue to work with international partners to encourage de-escalation. Long-term peace and security in the middle east cannot be achieved without addressing Iran’s destabilising activity—the UK Government are clear on that.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
Trump has lifted the lid on Israel’s real plan: the ethnic cleansing—the forced displacement—of Palestinians. Nobody can claim any longer that they did not know or do not know what is going on: a genocide. All the warm words in the world about a two-state solution will not stop it; only sanctions will, as the world’s top court demands. That means bans on Israeli settlement goods entering this country. It means sanctions on trade and an arms embargo. Without doing that, people in this House will never be able to say that we did everything we could to stop these crimes that will echo down the generations. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will finally treat Israel as they have rightly treated Russia and impose widespread sanctions?
Anneliese Dodds
On my hon. Friend’s question about forced displacement, I was very clear earlier about the fact that the UK Government are absolutely determined to ensure that there is not forced displacement. That would be contrary to international law. Gazans must be allowed home and, in the words of the Prime Minister himself,
“must be allowed to rebuild”.—[Official Report, 5 February 2025; Vol. 761, c. 745.]
My hon. Friend asked about the situation in relation to arms exports. He will be aware that on 2 September we suspended a number of export licences to Israel for use in military operations in Gaza, and I refer him to my previous response on sanctions designations.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
President Trump’s comments earlier this week were grossly irresponsible and dangerous. Does the Minister recognise that forcible displacement of a population under occupation constitutes ethnic cleansing and is a war crime? Will she clearly and unequivocally condemn the remarks of President Trump? Will she recognise the state of Palestine, as an essential step to the long-term sustainable peace that she has articulated support for?
Anneliese Dodds
As I mentioned just a few seconds ago, we have been clear that any attempt to prevent Gazans from returning home to their communities, and to suggest that they must remain and be housed in other Arab states, would be contrary to international law. I am sure that the hon. Lady understands that. Not only has she heard me say it, but she heard the Prime Minister say it yesterday, and the Foreign Secretary has said it many times.
The hon. Lady asks about our approach to recognition. I agree with her that the lever of recognition is important and will be crucial for the two-state solution, which will be so important to peace in the region. That is why the UK is so carefully considering how we go about that; we know that ultimately both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in sovereign states, in security, and we will ensure that our actions are as strong as possible to get us to that outcome.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Minister’s unequivocal commitment to a two-state solution. The Government are right to reject anything that risks undermining the ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. However, no top-down political solution will be sustainable unless we build trust between Israeli and Palestinian communities and support the peacebuilders of the future. The Prime Minister has committed the UK to taking a lead on an international fund for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Will the Minister provide an update on the progress that has been made on that fund?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he said about the clarity of the UK’s position. I know that he and many others in the Chamber are passionate about peacebuilding. That is an area in which the UK has a certain amount of expertise, derived from those who have been peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and other contexts, and it is important that we seek to contribute to it. Of course, the most urgent thing is to ensure that the ceasefire is held to and that we move from phase 1 to phase 2 to phrase 3. Of course, in future it will be important to do what we can to contribute to peacebuilding. He is right about the Prime Minister’s announcement; we are right now considering how we can ensure that that is delivered.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
Many constituents, including Maggie Gardiner, have kindly contacted me about their deep concern for the wellbeing of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who has been detained by the IDF. I have written to the Foreign Secretary about that, and I know that the Government have raised the issue with the Israeli authorities. What explanation has been received in those meetings, and what further work is the Foreign Secretary undertaking to obtain more details on that important case?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent for raising that important issue, which many Members and the general public are concerned about, as he says. As he rightly states, the UK Government have raised that issue with Israeli counterparts. We are concerned about the situation. We believe that there needs to be clarity on why any individuals, including medical staff, are being held. It is also crucial that the Red Cross is able to visit those who have been detained. We have made that point very forcefully.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
Since the ceasefire in Gaza, there has been open warfare against civilians in the west bank, dehumanising of the whole Palestinian population, and the threat of ethnic cleansing through a second Nakba. Surely we can expect a proportionate response from the UK Government, starting with the advisory opinion, recognition and the banning of trade with settlements.
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the situation in the west bank. We are deeply concerned by the intensity of IDF military operations in the west bank, as well as by attacks from Palestinian militants. We recognise Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried about the methods that Israel has employed and about reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. We are clear that it is in no one’s interest to see further conflict and instability.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I welcome the commitment that the Minister has given the House and the determination to show our opposition to Trump’s disgraceful approach, but I am disappointed that she does not see this as the ideal moment to commit to recognising the state of Palestine. What is being done across Government to reassure the communities in this country who have suffered outrageous abuse since 7 October 2023?
Anneliese Dodds
I want to underline to the hon. Lady that, as we have made very clear, Palestinian statehood is the right of the Palestinian people—it is not in the gift of any neighbour—and is essential to the long-term security of Israel as well. The UK is working with partners to support a path to long-term peace and stability with a two-state solution.
The hon. Lady rightly raises the issue of abuse, and the UK Government of course condemn any form of abuse. We have seen a disturbing rise in antisemitism, and also in Islamophobia. All forms of hatred must be condemned and acted against, and we are working hard against that hatred, particularly through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
How do the Government address Amnesty International’s concerns that economic activities with illegal Israeli settlements contribute to both their sustainability and their growth, thus undermining Palestinians’ rights, and that business enterprises involved with Israel’s illegal settlements may be involved and complicit in international crimes?
Anneliese Dodds
We are very clear that Israeli efforts to undermine a two-state solution through settlement building, settler violence and punitive economic measures are unacceptable. We are aware that settlement expansion reached record levels in the past year, which was very disturbing, and of course it has been accompanied by an increase in settler violence. Our position on this issue has been clear, but I will reiterate it briefly: we know that settlements are illegal under international law. They present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability of a two-state solution.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The current ceasefire is clearly welcome, but it is fragile, given that Israel seems determined to pursue a policy of expansionism. We have seen the bombings in Jenin and the expansion into southern Lebanon, as well as into the buffer zone of the Golan heights, and Israel will only be emboldened by the irresponsible ramblings of the new US President. Does the Minister agree that we are witnessing ethnic cleansing, and can I urge the UK Government to lead at the United Nations with a new resolution for a Marshall plan to ensure the rebuilding of Gaza on the terms of the Palestinian people?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue of the role that the UK can play in the recovery and rebuilding of Gaza. As I mentioned, we have been working with a range of partners on that issue, seeking to support the Palestinian Authority and contributing experts to their endeavours. The World Bank has conducted an updated damage assessment; we are looking very closely at that, and seeking to work with the World Bank and other partners on this issue.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)
Diolch, Mr Speaker. Any proposal that would oversee the forcible transfer of the entire population of Gaza would clearly constitute an egregious breach of international humanitarian law, but it would also amount to ethnic cleansing. The Government have previously emphasised the importance of a rules-based international order underpinned by adherence to international humanitarian law, but how do they hope to defend and strengthen that order when yet another permanent member of the United Nations Security Council seems intent on dismantling it?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his words, and for making it clear that the UK Government do indeed support a rules-based international order. That is critical to international law, including international humanitarian law, as we have been discussing. We have repeatedly made that position clear, and we will continue to hold to it, including within the UN and with all of our partners.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
We know that the ceasefire is incredibly fragile, and that there have been breaches with impunity—in particular, we think about the people of Jenin at this time. Does the Minister recognise that the lack of recognition of Palestine now is denying people across Palestine the protection that they need?
Anneliese Dodds
That protection is critical at every stage. The UK Government have been absolutely clear that we have seen far too much death and destruction in Gaza—we are now seeing truly heart-rending scenes of people trying to return to communities that have been destroyed, and we have seen over 46,000 people being killed. That population requires our support, and I do not believe that is contingent on political circumstances.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
I would like to thank the Minister for her update yesterday, which was greatly appreciated. Does she agree with me that we are standing on the precipice of a new and dangerous world order, leaving behind one that based global peace on global justices that we have recognised? Close to 48,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, while hundreds of thousands are returning to the rubble that was once their homes and, as we speak, mothers are looking for their children in the rubble.
At the same time, the most powerful man in the most powerful country in the world is behaving like a gangster. He is talking about displacing these people from their land, replacing their homes with beachfront properties, and creating casinos and a riviera. Is this not the time to categorically use the same words we use for other conflicts, and call this out for what it is: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people? We must immediately recognise a Palestinian state, and can we stand up to President Trump and tell him that Gaza is not for sale?
Anneliese Dodds
As I stated in response to the question from the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake), the UK has been and will continue to be an advocate for the international rules-based order, which is incredibly important. We need to see those rules upheld by all, and of course we will continue to advocate for that at the UN in relation to all countries. We have been very clear about our position, which is that it must be possible for people to return, and I agree with the hon. Member about the horrendous situation so many Gazans are facing, which we have already talked about during this urgent question. I would just underline again what the Prime Minister said very clearly yesterday: when it comes to Gazans returning to their homes and communities, they must be allowed home.
Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)
The comments made by the President of the United States about a riviera of the middle east undermine the hard work towards a two-state solution that, as the Minister has said, is the only way to have a lasting peace in the region. Can she confirm that it will be for the Palestinian people to determine the destiny of their country?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for asking me to confirm that it will be for the Palestinian people to determine the future of Gaza, and absolutely, we have been a crystal clear on that. Indeed, as I stated previously, we have been working with the Palestinian Authority on this.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her answers during this urgent question. Let me make it clear in the first instance that, not having seen the full detail of Trump’s plans for Gaza, I believe I need to see more detail, and I think we should all look at that more astutely. However, I very much want a future for Gaza that sees a barren wasteland of death and destruction become something of value, with jobs, an economy and safety. Israel needs a secure border that safeguards Israeli citizens so that Hamas terrorists, murderers, rapists and child killers cannot murder Israeli people. We should remember that China and Iran have stood alongside Hamas. Will the Minister consent to keeping an open mind on a dialogue with a fresh approach to help those in Israel and the Gaza strip?
Anneliese Dodds
I am sure that Members across the House want to ensure that there is an economically viable situation in Gaza in the future. That is one of the many reasons why commercial operations have to be allowed to resume, and it is really important that the Government of Israel enable that. We of course need a situation of security and sovereignty for Gazans and all Palestinians, as I said before, as well as for Israelis. The hon. Member talks about economic empowerment, and this issue has been crucial for the UK Government, as I saw for myself when I visited Palestinians in the west bank. I saw some of the support that the UK has been engaged in there, and we will continue that work.
Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) for securing this important urgent question. Over the last 16 months or so, we have seen Palestinian people displaced from their homes and communities—on many occasions not just once, but perhaps twice or three times—so for the President of the United States to suggest a further forced displacement seems to me to be not just illegal, but incredibly cruel. In diplomacy, we believe that timing is everything, so in order to give the Palestinian people some protection from outside actors who seem to wish to dictate what should happen to them, is it not now time for the international community and our Government to recognise Palestine as a state and give it all the international support and strength that that would provide?
Anneliese Dodds
My hon. Friend is right to refer to the levels of displacement. As I said previously, 90% of the population of Gaza has been displaced, some two or three times, and some up to nine times. When we consider the impact on whole families of having to move so many times, I am sure we are all disturbed by that. She is right to say that timing is important—of course it is—which is why the UK Government are considering this so carefully. We must use the mechanisms available to us to ensure, above all, that we get to a two-state solution and the peace that is the right of Palestinians and Israelis.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
The devastation in Gaza needs a strong international coalition focused on reconstruction, humanitarian aid and a pathway to a negotiated two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state, not speculation about handing over territory and forced displacement. On humanitarian aid, two pieces of legislation have now come into effect that will ban UNRWA operations in areas under Israeli occupation. What actions are the Government taking to prevent the largest humanitarian aid operation in Gaza from collapsing, with the devastating consequences that would have on Palestinians?
Anneliese Dodds
My hon. Friend is right; Gaza’s recovery needs will be vast, and they are extremely serious. The UK is engaged with partners on assessing those needs, and working together so that we can ensure that the unprecedented scale of destruction in Gaza is remediated. That will require innovative financing mechanisms, for example. Above all, it must be a process that is driven by Palestinians. My hon. Friend talked about UNRWA, and I discussed that situation with the emergency relief co-ordinator a few days ago. We continue to work with partners on this, and the UK Government’s position on UNWRA has been articulated a number of times from this Dispatch Box: we believe that it must be able to continue to operate.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
Let us be clear: Palestinian land belongs to the Palestinians, and any implication that they should be forced from it should be unequivocally condemned. Individual Palestinians are routinely forced from their land by illegal settlement building in the west bank. Will the Minister join me in unequivocally condemning illegal settlement building in the west bank?
Anneliese Dodds
Yes, and having seen that activity for myself, with the impact it has had on Palestinians and their families, the violence that has often accompanied it, and the economic damage it has done, I am well convinced of that, as indeed the UK Government have been—they have stated that many times.
Business of the House
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)
The business for the week commencing 10 February is as follows:
Monday 10 February—Second Reading of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
Tuesday 11 February—Consideration of Lords message to the Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords], followed by consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Arbitration Bill [Lords], followed by a debate on motions to approve the draft Neonatal Care Leave and Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 2025 and the draft Statutory Neonatal Care Pay (General) Regulations 2025.
Wednesday 12 February—Second Reading of the Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords].
Thursday 13 February—General debate on LGBT+ history month.
The House will rise for the February recess at the conclusion of business on Thursday 13 February and return on Monday 24 February.
The provisional business for the week commencing 24 February will include:
Monday 24 February—Remaining stages of the Crown Estate Bill [Lords].
Colleagues may also wish to be aware that the business on Wednesday 5 March is expected to be an estimates day (1st allotted day).
Jesse Norman
This week we have seen a Government who talk about growth but have proved themselves unwilling to support transformational investment at the AstraZeneca plant in Liverpool. At the same time, they appear keen to expand the sums being paid in relation to the Chagos islands to a number some 250 times larger than that being considered for AstraZeneca. I can see the degree of shame and embarrassment about that on the Government Benches, and their concern that important cities in this country are being deprived of local investment as a result.
In business questions on 28 November, I raised the issue of the assisted dying Bill and highlighted a host of procedural defects in the way it was being rushed through the House by the Government. The Bill was published barely two weeks before the vote on Second Reading, as the House will recall. No impact assessment or legal issues analysis had been published. The promoter of the Bill had circulated a document purporting to answer questions, but which actually left a host of important questions entirely untouched. Those questions included the Bill’s impact on the medical profession and the relationship between medical staff and patients, and the impact on the provision and regulation of the different drugs and drug cocktails required. The questions included the involvement of the judiciary in the process and the balance of probabilities test for coercion that the Bill proposed.
It is not surprising that the Bill was and is being opposed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Secretary of State for Justice, with the former saying:
“I do not think that palliative care, end-of-life care in this country is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose, without being coerced by the lack of support available.”
I am sorry to say that the Leader of the House responded to my remarks in a very patronising way, suggesting that it was somehow inappropriate and “political” for me to raise these matters at all. Of course, that was nonsense. I was not taking and do not take a position on the underlying issue. The whole purpose of business questions is to highlight and debate the passage of legislation through this House. But the Leader of the House’s defensiveness was itself revealing. It showed the extent to which the Government are quietly and wrongly standing behind this private Member’s Bill.
If we fast-forward two months, what do we find? A Supreme Court justice has told the Bill Committee that it is not clear what the judge’s role is supposed to be in this legislation. They called the judicial protection “largely illusory” and echoed many other legal experts in highlighting the lack of capacity in the High Court. The Government’s own chief medical officer specifically warned the Bill Committee that the NHS should not be rushed into becoming what would amount to a death service and said that most doctors would not wish to take part in the final stages of an assisted dying process, and emphasised the medical vagueness of the idea of qualifying people as terminally ill. We have heard about the serious potential for misdiagnosis through the horrendous case of Peter Sefton-Williams, who was incorrectly diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given as little as six months to live. Those were not my words; they are testimony on the Bill by leading experts from a range of fields.
All this has been made much worse by the rushed and secretive way in which the Bill Committee has been handled. The membership is disproportionately weighted towards supporters of the Bill. The schedule has been highly congested, with back-to-back sittings that do not allow MPs to prepare. Some of the sessions have been held in private. Attempts have been made to prevent key institutions, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists, from appearing in front of the Committee at all. The effect of all these measures is to impede and inhibit external and internal scrutiny, and we now hear that the impact assessment will now not be published before Report stage. All these things are shocking attempts to undermine and short-circuit the proper scrutiny of the legislation.
The Leader of the House has said in terms that the Government are not supporting the legislation. She should therefore have an undiluted interest in ensuring that such an important and controversial Bill is properly handled. After all, she, more than any other, is supposed to be the custodian of proper parliamentary scrutiny of legislation. Will she therefore now act to address these obvious failures, or will she stick to her position that everything is fine and there is nothing to see here?
Lucy Powell
May I start with a couple of business questions updates? After my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) asked me to join her in congratulating “Bake Off” star Dylan Bachelet, they both joined me this week to taste some delicious cakes in my Leader of the House’s office bake-off. Dylan is not only an inspiration to young people from Aylesbury; I can report that he has extremely good taste, because he chose my lemon drizzle as the winner.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) for coming to see me this week with a copy of a Stone Roses record after we had exchanged nice words about Revolver Records in his constituency. I hope that hon. Members across the House can see that I am open to nice invitations celebrating constituencies and communities.
This week marks LGBT+ History Month, which is a chance for us to reflect and remember the contribution of the LGBT community and the discrimination that they still too often face. The Labour party is proud to be the party of equality, having abolished section 28 and introduced civil partnerships, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 among other things.
Turning to the remarks of the shadow Leader of the House. First, let me take head on some of his misleading allegations about the process for the assisted dying Bill. As he is well aware, the House agreed by a clear majority that the Bill should proceed from Second Reading to Committee. That was the will of the House. That Committee is now convening, and in an unprecedented procedure for a private Member’s Bill it has been taking written and oral evidence to begin with. It will begin many weeks of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, which is again unprecedented; it will be a lengthy Committee stage.
The make-up of the Committee, as set out in the Standing Orders, reflects the vote on Second Reading and the party make-up of the House. Many would argue that its make-up has been overly conscious of that. As I have said at the Dispatch Box on a number of occasions, while the Government have a neutral position on the principles of the Bill, we have a responsibility to ensure that any Bill passed by the House is workable and operable. That is the role that we will play through the Ministers representing the Government on that Committee.
It is extremely regrettable and ill-advised of the shadow Leader of the House to use his privileged position at the Dispatch Box to give such a political, one-sided and misleading account of what is a difficult, technical, important issue of conscience to the country and to the House. On the day of the Bill’s Second Reading and since, I think every colleague across the House—perhaps apart from him—has recognised that we and our procedures showed themselves at their very best in debating that important matter.
The right hon. Gentleman could have used his moment at the Dispatch Box to mark another important anniversary. It may have escaped people’s notice, but next Monday will mark 100 days since the Leader of the Opposition took office. I wondered how the right hon. Gentleman thought that was going. I am not sure why he did not celebrate all her brilliant achievements—perhaps it is because, like the rest of her leadership, they have gone completely unnoticed.
Oh no, sorry, we have learned a few things about the Leader of the Opposition: we now know what she is against. She is against maternity leave; the triple lock; abolishing hereditary peers; our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will protect young people from abusers; rights and security for workers; investment in the NHS; and—oh!—sandwiches for lunch. She has got a couple of things right: she admitted that her party made mistakes in government—indeed it did—and accepted that it had no plan for growth. This morning, despite saying that there would be no new policy until 2027, she has finally come up with one.
I gently advise the shadow Leader of the House that until the Conservatives accept that they got it badly wrong on immigration and that all their rhetoric and targets in the last Parliament were just hot air, I do not think that anyone will take the Leader of the Opposition’s ideas seriously. One hundred days is normally a moment for reflection and consideration, so he might want to reflect on that and agree that his party picked a bit of a dud.
Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)
As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on babies (pregnancy to age 2), I have had the privilege over the past few months to meet leaders from across society who have incredible passion and energy for Government policy that relates to babies from pregnancy to age two. Will the Leader of the House consider a debate on the impact of all angles of Government policy on babies from pregnancy to age two, given the significant impact of that time on long-term health and wellbeing outcomes?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and for all her campaigning on these matters, which she takes incredibly seriously. This Government consider the early years to be really important, as well as maternity and paternity leave and ensuring that parents can do their jobs and be parents. The early years are the most important in a child’s life. I look forward to working with her on that.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
I draw the attention of the House to the register of my interests. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government made a statement to this House in which she said that she had agreed to delay the local elections in some areas for one year. I must confess that I am a bit confused, because my local council, Essex county council, is one of those areas. The briefing papers for the extraordinary full council meeting of Essex county council that took place on 10 January state:
“The Leader is minded to support the proposal to postpone the elections in order to maximise capacity for the transition process, whilst noting that this would lead to a two or three year postponement.”
That is rather longer than the one year that the Secretary of State announced yesterday. Essex county councillors are usually elected for a four-year term and a postponement —really, a cancellation of elections for three years—would extend their terms of office by 75%. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time on the principles of democracy in the United Kingdom?
Lucy Powell
First of all, I thank the hon. Lady for raising the issue of police community support officers in Essex last week. I am sure that she and many colleagues across Essex will be pleased with the news, subsequent to her raising the issue last week—I am sure that is not unrelated—that those PCSOs have been saved from the axe. In fact, last Friday the Government doubled the money available for neighbourhood policing.
The hon. Lady raised the elections that are now not going to happen in Essex. We set a very high bar for the postponement of any elections this year. This is a one-year postponement. In the case of Essex, it is so that the greater Essex mayoral authority can be established. The intention is for elections for that mayoral authority to take place in May 2026. I know that these changes take time and can cause difficulties in local areas, but the devolution revolution that is coming her way through those changes will bring extra jobs, growth, better services, better transport and more power to her communities in Essex. I hope she will welcome that.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent comments about supporting and enabling the expansion of nuclear power stations in the UK through small modular reactors. The science and technology is well proven but other aspects must be developed alongside, including the provision of appropriate grade nuclear fuel and a permanent solution for nuclear waste. In recent days, I have met representatives of Urenco, a specialist provider of uranium enrichment and fuel and nuclear waste services, which is developing plans for the UK’s first geological disposal facility. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on all aspects of the nuclear jigsaw, to ensure a joined-up and sustainable energy future?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the nuclear industry and nuclear waste disposal. We need to put some rocket boosters under nuclear power in this country. It is vital to our future energy security. He is right that we have to do that alongside rigorous safety standards for waste disposal and other matters. I will ensure that he and the House are kept updated on these important matters.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
In addition to the business that the Leader of the House has announced, in Westminster Hall on Tuesday 11 February there will be a debate on the cost of energy, and on Thursday 13 February there will be a debate on HIV Testing Week, followed by a debate on the prevention of cardiovascular disease. When we return after the recess, on Tuesday 25 February there will be a debate on maternity services, and on Thursday 27 February there will be a debate on rural crime, followed by a debate on women’s health.
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for announcing the date of the estimates day debate. I am aware that at least six Select Committees are considering putting in a request. For new colleagues, estimates days are an opportunity to debate the work and spending of Government Departments. Applications do not have to come via a Select Committee; the Backbench Business Committee has put the application form on our website, and applications will close, because of the recess, on Friday 21 February. We will consider applications on Tuesday 25 February.
We have a queue of debates for the Chamber; in fact, as things stand, we could allocate debates for every Thursday through to beyond May. I note that the Leader of the House has not yet announced what time the Backbench Business Committee will be allowed after the recess, but in the event that we are offered Thursday 27 February, we have pre-allocated a debate on the three-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, followed by a debate on St David’s day. If we are offered Thursday 6 March, we will have a debate on International Women’s Day, followed by a debate on political finance. I suggest that the Leader of the House would be well advised not to upset any of those sponsors.
The Leader of the House does excellent work in advising Government Departments on responding not only to the questions that we raise in the Chamber but to letters and questions raised elsewhere. However, this week the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), met a group of Hindus from Bangladesh because of the atrocities in Bangladesh. I raised the matter in business questions, and Mr Speaker allowed an urgent question on the subject the following week. I think it would be courteous of the Minister to give a statement to the House on what subsequent action she is taking. Equally, I gently ask the Leader of the House to ensure that when we ask questions and she diligently writes to Departments, we actually get answers to our questions, because both the quality and the length of time that it takes to get a question answered seem very poor at the moment.
Lucy Powell
I thank the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee for, as ever, advertising his forthcoming business, and for explaining how estimates days work. That is especially important for new colleagues, for whom the forthcoming debate will be the first such occasion. I hear his lobbying about the allocation of days, which I will take very seriously, as I always do, especially in relation to International Women’s Day. I do not want to upset the sisterhood by any means.
The hon. Gentleman continues to raise many issues relating to the Hindu community, in this case in Bangladesh. He was successful in getting some responses. I will raise with the Foreign Office whether further information could be given in a statement, and ask that the House is kept updated. He is right that I take extremely seriously the timely and proper response that I expect from Ministers to parliamentary questions and correspondence. I will always chase those responses. I keep track of the letters that I send after business questions and matters that are raised with me, and I take them up robustly. I gently say to him and other colleagues that we have seen an over 50% increase in the number of parliamentary written questions since the election, as well as a huge increase in correspondence, so a bit of time is needed to deal with that. If anybody wants to raise a matter with me, I will chase those letters. I have quite a good track record of getting responses when they are not otherwise forthcoming.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I am sure you are aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I hope the Leader of the House is, that we are currently undergoing a digital refresh of computer equipment and laptops here in the House of Commons. I was rather disturbed to learn that the equipment that is handed in is crushed and sent to landfill. Digital poverty is a multifaceted issue that impacts all aspects of life: for younger children, educational platforms cannot be accessed; job opportunities are harder to access, because 90% of jobs are only advertised online; and for older people, healthcare services and supporting information are all severely restricted without digital access. Therefore, may we have a debate on what we can do—not just as a Government, but this House, too—to increase access to the internet and the digital services that are essential to lifting people out of poverty?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend raises the really important issue of the digital divide. Digital inclusion is vital. More and more services are moving to digital platforms as we are in the digital age. If they are not accessible to everybody, then they are not able to serve everybody and we should absolutely address that. I am not aware of the particular issue he raises—the digital hardware of the House not being wiped and reused, and instead going to landfill—but I will look at it immediately after business questions and get back to him on what more can be done.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
I am hugely concerned, my constituents are hugely concerned and the Cheshire police force is hugely concerned about the rising number of serious sexual attacks by those here illegally in this country and those who have been housed in immigration centres in Cheshire. May we have a debate on the rising risk in Cheshire, a review of legislation to remove foreign offenders, and the risk assessments undertaken on the threat posed by individuals placed in accommodation centres in Cheshire?
Lucy Powell
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising this issue. I am aware of some of the incidents that have happened in Cheshire and how alarming they must be for the local community and the local police force. They are absolutely totally abhorrent and unacceptable in all those cases. She is right to say that there is a range of issues that can be taken further. We have brought forward the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which will make returning those who are here illegally and those who commit crimes when they are here much easier. We are making great strides on that. We are taking real action on violence against women and girls, ensuring criminal sanctions are appropriate, and we are putting more police on the streets. There are also particular issues with asylum hotels and the companies that run them, which I will take up for her.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
Like much of the rest of the country we have a housing emergency in Rochdale, with 22,000 people on the waiting list and many, many children living in temporary accommodation that is unfit for family life and costs the taxpayer a fortune. Does the Leader of the House agree that, while the £500 million of new funding in the Budget for affordable and social housing was very welcome and long overdue, we need a debate in Government time on the need for the coming spending review to ensure more stable, secure homes like the council house that I grew up in?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I hear the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) talk about this issue regularly. She rightly makes the point that council housing used to be seen as the poor relation, but these days it is actually a luxury to get a council house. That is why, as part of our target to build 1.5 million new homes, a huge boost in social and new council housing is absolutely at the heart of meeting that target. As he says, having a secure, affordable home is the bedrock to a successful life.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
As the Leader of the House will be aware, the community infrastructure levy is a requirement to make a contribution towards essential infrastructure. However, in West Berkshire, Waverley, Horsham and Bracknell Forest, there is evidence that exemptions that should have been given were not, resulting in residents being charged incorrectly and then chased by debt collectors for recovery of those fines. Will the Leader of the House allow a debate in Government time to discuss that important issue? Will she also congratulate Councillor Jeff Brooks, the leader of West Berkshire council, who has so far refunded £200,000 to residents who were incorrectly charged?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who have been incorrectly charged and then chased down for those debts, but I am pleased to hear that some of that is now being put right. I know that there is a debate in Westminster Hall on the regulation of the bailiff sector, where he may want to raise some of those issues. However, I will happily raise what he has mentioned with Ministers and ensure that he gets a full reply.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
Like most MPs, one of my favourite things is to visit schools in my constituency. Recently, I was at Sir Graham Balfour school in Stafford where one of the students spoke to me passionately about how school sport and physical education benefit not only physical but mental health. Inspired by his campaigning, will the Leader of the House agree to a debate on improving access to PE and sport in schools?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning the issues raised with her on her recent school visit. PE not only plays a vital role in ensuring our young people have access to a broad curriculum that can help them better succeed in education, but is critical to mental and physical health and to our preventive work, and the Government are committed to that. I am sure that the subject would make a good debate were she to apply for one.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday is widely believed to herald not just the widespread cancellation of democratic elections, but the introduction of far more powers for Government to centralise decision making and impose it on local authorities, as well as a massive reduction in the number of councillors representing local people in local authorities and the abolition of whole tiers of local authorities for which the Government have no electoral mandate—and that is on the basis of putative savings for which there is no proof, so the chaos of that reorganisation will have to be paid for by cuts in public services. When will the Government provide a full day’s debate on the proposals for devolution and local government reorganisation across the country on a scale that we have not seen for some 50 years? Certainly, that merits a full day’s debate and a vote at the end of it.
Lucy Powell
I am sorry the hon. Gentleman does not welcome our real commitment to devolution, ensuring that local communities have more power over the things that affect them, such as their local services, transport, economic development, and joining that up in a way that provides strategic benefit to those areas. I respect the hon. Gentleman, but I gently say that under the Government that he supported, local government was absolutely hollowed out after years and years of austerity, with local council after local council going bankrupt, month after month. We have given a record, long-term settlement to local government and alongside that we are unashamedly pushing power out to communities. We have had several statements to the House already. There will be a Bill forthcoming that enacts many of the measures, and ample time for debate, but I will ensure that the House is kept fully up to date.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)
Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the publication of the Hughes report, which found that the children left disabled by valproate and the women injured by pelvic mesh implants for life should be given urgent financial compensation. One year on, we are yet to see an official Government response to that report. The Leader of the House will know how important it is that women are listened to by healthcare professionals. Surely she agrees that when they are dismissed and left physically damaged by those who were supposed to have protected them, financial redress is deserved. Will she grant a debate in Government time to allow MPs from across this House—we all have constituents who have raised this with us—to discuss the recommendations of the all-important Hughes report to mark this significant occasion?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue and for her many years of important campaigning and leadership, which I know has been a great comfort to the many women—and not just women—who have been affected by this scandal. As she has said, the Hughes report was a significant watershed and a line in the sand. I will certainly inquire about the whereabouts of the Government response to that report, and will ensure that the House is updated at the earliest opportunity.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
As we make the important shift to new renewable energy, which we know is needed, there are a number of concerns on both sides of the House about the siting and appropriateness of battery energy storage systems. My own constituents have been left shocked by the planning inspector’s decision to green-light an application, against the democratic will of the council, for a battery energy storage system on the green belt at Chapel Lane. May we have a debate in Government time to enable us all to air our views and concerns?
Lucy Powell
Let me first thank the right hon. Lady for raising with me recently some matters relating to correspondence and the lengthy wait for replies. Having raised the issue myself, I have now been assured that she should have received those replies in the last couple of days. I know that she has been raising the question of the battery storage application in her constituency for some time. As I am sure she will recognise, I cannot comment on a specific application, because the inspectorate has listened to the appeal and the findings are available on its portal. The Government make no apology, however, for wanting to get the infrastructure that we need into our communities as well as the housing, which is why we are reclassifying some suitable green belt as grey belt, although we do have very strict criteria. I will continue to ensure that there is ample time for the House to debate these matters which are so important to it.
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)
I regularly hear from parents in my constituency whose children are struggling to access the mental health support that they deserve, in some cases waiting months or even years for their first appointment with child and adolescent mental health services. However, I know that they will be encouraged by this Labour Government’s commitment to cut waiting times, introduce mental health support in schools and open a network of Young Futures hubs. As we mark Children’s Mental Health Week, may I ask if the Leader of the House will allow time for a statement on the Government’s progress in improving mental health support for children and young people?
Lucy Powell
I certainly join my hon. Friend in marking Children’s Mental Health Week, and he is right to raise these important matters. Mental health services, especially those for young people, have been the poor relation for far too long. I think that all of us, as constituency MPs, parents and others, recognise that the mental health crisis among our young people deserves the attention that it needs, which is why we are recruiting more mental health workers. I think that this would be a very good topic for a debate.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Next week is Mind Your Head week, which aims to raise awareness of mental health challenges facing the farming community. The theme this year is “positivity, resilience, and love”.
Women in farming occupy many roles both on and off the farm, balancing childcare, caring responsibilities and non-farming work. They often have to manage gender inequalities in agriculture, and in some cases are victims of domestic violence and rural crime. Their voices and mental health struggles are rarely heard, but a new study conducted by the University of Exeter seeks to shed light on this important issue. Will the Leader of the House grant us a debate in Government time on the mental health. of women in farming?'
Lucy Powell
The hon. Lady has taken the opportunity —an important opportunity—to raise an issue which I am sure will be of interest to many Members on both sides of the House: the role that women play in farming and how vital that role is, and some of the challenges that they experience, often in silence or without recognition. I am sure that this too would be a very good topic for a debate.
Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)
I recently met constituents who are increasingly concerned about the anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh. Since last August, there have been reports of more than 2,000 incidents of violence, most of which have been targeted at the minority Hindu community. Furthermore, I have seen deeply perturbing reports of the arrest and continuing custody of the former leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Chinmoy Krishna Das. The UK champions freedom of religion for all, and no one should be at risk of violence or targeted because of their beliefs. I note the response from the Minister for the Indo-Pacific, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), on this issue in December. Will the Leader of the House either update the House, or ask the Foreign Secretary to make a statement on his assessment of the situation, and on the action that his Department has taken to engage with the new Government in Bangladesh, so that they can support the right of people of all religions to live freely?
Lucy Powell
This Government take these issues extremely seriously. My hon. Friend the Minister was in Bangladesh recently, where she made it very clear that the Bangladeshi Government should take more steps to protect religious minorities. The anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh that my hon. Friend has described has already been raised twice during business questions, and is raised with me frequently. I will ensure that the Minister for Development updates the House at the earliest opportunity.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
May I echo the call from the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for a Government response to the Hughes report on the use of sodium valproate? My constituent Charlie Bethune has been not only an incredible carer for his daughter Autumn but a doughty campaigner on this issue, which he is raising today in the Scottish Parliament. He believes that because the harm caused by sodium valproate was diagnosed across the United Kingdom, there should be a United Kingdom response to those who have suffered, and he fears that there may be a different response in Scotland. When the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care makes a statement, will he seek to co-ordinate with the devolved Administration, so that we have a unified response?
Lucy Powell
Let me take this opportunity to thank the right hon. Gentleman for all his tireless campaigning on these matters, on which he has worked with his constituent and others over many years. I will absolutely ensure that the House is updated on the Hughes report and issues relating to sodium valproate, and I will ensure that it covers the position UK-wide, and that there is co-ordination. I will get back to the right hon. Gentleman on that.
Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)
In the 1950s, Kettering had five cinemas, but since the Odeon closed its doors last week, we have none. Our swimming pool was built in 1984 and is in desperate need of investment, while our art gallery and museum have both been closed for some time. Constituencies like Kettering have been hit hard by the Conservatives’ cultural vandalism, and my constituents are missing out as a result. Will the Leader of the House grant time for a debate on the huge importance of access to local culture and sport?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is right: access to culture and sport is at the heart of thriving communities and happy places and people, and I am sorry to hear about what is happening in Kettering. As she will know, we have a manifesto commitment to replace the community right to bid with a strengthened right to buy assets of community value, and I think that would help in cases such as this. The subject of access to local culture and sport is raised with me regularly during business questions, and although the Backbench Business Committee’s time is oversubscribed, I think this would make an extremely good subject for a Backbench Business debate.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I should first declare an interest, as chair of the Scotch whisky all-party parliamentary group. The Scotch whisky industry is obviously a heavy user of UK-produced glass, and is trying hard to increase its recycling. There is cross- party support for the extended producer responsibility measures—I was a member of the Delegated Legislation Committee that considered them—but concern has been expressed to the APPG about the practicalities of extended producer responsibility, and the risk of its becoming a tax, rather than bringing about the circular economy that we all want. Speaking as a Scottish MP who saw the collapse of the deposit return scheme in Scotland and has heard the concerns expressed by businesses, may I ask for a debate in Government time on ensuring that we secure the right outcomes from extended producer responsibility?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Lady for raising these important issues for the Scottish whisky industry and producers of glass in this country. We had a debate on the Floor of the House about that scheme recently, and I know that some of those issues were raised then, but I will ensure that Ministers have heard her concerns about extended producer liability and will get her a full response.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
In a week when we are reminded of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, we have also learned about the scandal of companies issuing false fire safety certificates, or EWS1—external wall system—forms. I understand that there is no official register of those certificates, yet tens of thousands of homeowners are affected by the issue, and face their properties being uninsurable and unsaleable. Can we have a debate in Government time on this scandal and the need for an official register of these certificates?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. There are many tall buildings in my constituency of Manchester Central, so I am unfortunately all too familiar with the issues around EWS1 forms and the whole risk-assessment industry that has grown since Grenfell Tower. He can rest assured that the Government take these issues incredibly seriously. We issued a remediation acceleration plan just before Christmas, but I will ensure that there is ample time for the House to debate these matters.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Applications for battery storage facilities are flooding into the Scottish Borders. There are also plans for a massive 50-mile route of pylons across our unspoilt landscape. Local residents are concerned about the impact on their communities and on the natural environment. They feel that the Labour and SNP Governments will not protect them. I know that the Leader of the House looks for invitations, so will she visit the Scottish Borders to meet local residents, so that she can see for herself the impact that these developments will have on these communities and the environment?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. One of his previous invitations was to Center Parcs— I might take him up on that one. He does regularly invite me to his constituency. He raises a matter that is very serious to his constituents. We all have to recognise that there is a difficult balance to strike, and difficult issues to face, when it comes to getting the infrastructure that we need to be a clean energy superpower, and to have lower bills, job security and, crucially, energy security. There will be some difficult decisions around the grid, pylons and so on. We have to strike a balance, which is why we are exploring how to ensure that communities that need the infrastructure in their locality can benefit from the lower bills that it will bring.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Back in 2021, residents in Kidsgrove were promised a portfolio of projects as part of the Kidsgrove town deal. To date, residents have experienced delay and confusion. They rightly want more openness and transparency from Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the delivery of town deals, so that local people can see real delivery, and not more delays?
Lucy Powell
I am really sorry to hear about the challenges with the Kidsgrove town deal. What we have seen with the town deal model is a bidding war—a competitive, dog-eat-dog situation—that is not working or delivering for communities. That is why we are putting record levels of investment into communities through local government funding and moving towards long-term, stable core funding, so that local communities such as my hon. Friend’s in Kidsgrove can have long-term certainty about funding.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Government’s expressed political support for Heathrow airport expansion has sparked concerns that they might be getting ready to expand Luton airport too, despite the fact that the Government’s own climate advisers say that no net expansion of airports should go ahead until there is a climate emissions framework in place. Have any Ministers indicated that they intend to publish a climate emissions framework, and if so, when? Will the Leader of the House use every lever in her power to ensure that, in due course, this House has a debate on that emissions framework before any new airport expansion is given the green light?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that issue. She will be aware that applications such as the one from Luton airport are to be considered in a quasi-judicial capacity by the Secretary of State for Transport, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment directly on that. However, I can assure her that any decisions on airport expansion would be taken in the context of our legally binding emissions targets and a whole range of criteria that she will be aware of, but I will ensure that any such decisions are brought to this House first for scrutiny by her and others.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
On Sunday, my constituent Jagtar Singh Johal will celebrate his 38th birthday. This will be his eighth birthday in solitary confinement while arbitrarily detained in an Indian prison. Can the Leader of the House raise his case with her Cabinet colleagues, and ensure that our Government continue to raise Jagtar’s case at the highest levels with the Indian Government, to accelerate my constituent’s return home to his family in West Dunbartonshire?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the difficult and tragic case of Jagtar Singh Johal, who is in prison in India. We have raised this issue with Prime Minister Modi on a number of occasions, and on every occasion we underline the need for an urgent resolution. I will ensure that my hon. Friend has a full update from Ministers, who will bring that to the Floor of the House if necessary.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I would like the Leader of the House to know that a number of my constituents have contacted me regarding the prescribing of antidepressant medicine in the UK and the iatrogenic harm caused to patients by antidepressant medication. Many are now diagnosed and suffering from conditions including post-acute withdrawal syndrome and post-SSRI—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—dysfunction. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) held a Westminster Hall debate on this issue only last year. However, given the severity of the concerns raised, will the Leader of the House consider a full debate in Government time on this very important matter?
Lucy Powell
I think every MP in the House will have had constituents contact them about the use of anti- depressants, how they are prescribed, their effects, and whether they are fully understood by those they are given to. This is a really important issue, and I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman gets a full response, but I think this would make a very good topic for a debate.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend knows how much I value and enjoy our hospitality industry in South Shields. It is a major employer, contributing more than £80 million to our local economy, so we must keep it in business, but she will know that many in the industry are worried about upcoming tax changes. I know that this Government are committed to supporting businesses, so can we have an urgent debate on how we can mitigate the impact of these changes on the hospitality industry?
Lucy Powell
Like my hon. Friend, I fully support the hospitality industry. I recognise the unease and worry of many in the industry about how difficult business is at the moment; we have seen demand fall over recent years and costs go up as inflation went through the roof under the previous Government. We had to take difficult steps in the Budget to fix the foundations of the economy and ensure much-needed investment in our public services. We have tried to mitigate the impact of those steps as much as possible for small businesses, and 50% of the smallest businesses will not pay any additional national insurance contributions; in fact, many will see cuts. I hope to work with her and others to continue to reassure the hospitality sector.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
Last week, I met the Harrogate branch of the National Autistic Society and heard first-hand stories of issues faced by people with autism, including getting a diagnosis, getting help and support into employment, and stigma. Will the Leader of the House provide Government time for a debate on the challenges that autistic people face and how we can do more to support them?
Lucy Powell
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s meeting with the Harrogate branch of the National Autistic Society. Autism and other special educational needs and disabilities are regularly raised in these sessions. We have already had some debates. The Government and local authorities are putting more support into special educational needs, which could help to support people in his community. I will ensure there is ample time to debate these issues.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
Can we have a statement on knife crime, and particularly the proposal for knives to be sold with rounded or blunted tips to reduce the risk of death or serious injury if they are used as a weapon?
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Idris Elba, whose powerful documentary “Our Knife Crime Crisis” raised the issue last week, as well as the group of judges, surgeons, psychiatrists and university researchers who have, over the last decade, made the case for phasing out pointed kitchen knives, which are far and away the most common murder weapon in England and Wales?
Lucy Powell
The issues of the knife crime epidemic—that is the only way to describe it—are profound, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising them. I join him in supporting the work of Idris Elba, who recently met the Prime Minister in Downing Street as part of the coalition to tackle knife crime.
We are doing a range of things, and my hon. Friend will be aware that we have already banned zombie-style knives. We are banning ninja swords, and we are bringing forward further measures in the forthcoming crime and policing Bill. We also have to do more on prevention through education, the Young Futures programme and youth hubs around the country, so that our young people stop carrying knives.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
I put on record my sheer admiration for my constituent and local community champion, Julie Meares. I first met her four years ago, when she wanted to make sure we had a proper community centre in the centre of Braithwaite. We got there with her dedication to improving Braithwaite, and I went to the opening of the new Keith Thompson community centre.
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Julie Meares? Can we have a debate in Government time on the importance of community hubs and community centres, which play a vital role in improving society and providing a space for us all to get together in our local communities?
Lucy Powell
I join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating Julie Meares and all those who have supported the community centre in Braithwaite. I think we would all like to spend a bit more time in this place celebrating volunteers like Julie. They are the backbone of our communities, without whom we would not have the places that we all enjoy living and working in.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
Illegal e-scooters and illegal e-bikes are a menace to many of our communities, including mine in Southend West and Leigh. Just this week, Essex police has moved from education to enforcement, and nearby Basildon council has decided to end its e-scooter trial. E-scooters are a good, environmentally friendly way to get around, if implemented properly. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time to discuss this important issue?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is right that e-scooters can be a plague on our communities. We will legislate to ensure that e-scooters are used responsibly and safely. We will also make it easier to seize vehicles, including e-scooters, that are ridden dangerously on the pavement or left abandoned. These measures will come forward soon, and there will be ample time to debate them.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Businesses in Bath are increasingly worried about shoplifting, but online fraud is also a huge worry, and it is surging. Nearly 70,000 cases were reported in 2023-24, with victims losing an average of £800. Can we have a debate in Government time to understand the extent of the problem, what the Government propose to do about this surge, and how we can protect our constituents?
Lucy Powell
Retail crime was effectively decriminalised by the previous Government, and we are taking steps to reverse that through our crime and policing Bill, which will also have measures on online fraud. The Bill will be introduced imminently, and there will be ample time to debate these matters.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
What action can be taken when a previous Member of Parliament continues to promote themselves in the constituency where they lost their seat, retaining the portcullis insignia and the title in their publicity?
Lucy Powell
I was appalled to see the pictures and the evidence that my hon. Friend sent to me of her predecessor effectively parading around her constituency as an MP or a shadow MP, or other such things that do not exist. Using the portcullis symbol in that way is absolutely against protocol. I take this matter very seriously, and I know my hon. Friend has raised it with the House authorities and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I will ensure that action is taken and get back to her.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
For the last 25 years, Falun Gong practitioners in China have suffered relentless persecution at the hands of the Chinese Communist party. Reports from human rights organisations highlight that millions have been subjected to imprisonment, forced labour and torture simply for practising their faith.
The expansion of this campaign beyond China’s borders is deeply troubling. Leaked reports from China’s Ministry of Public Security indicate that the regime is now escalating efforts to eliminate Falun Gong worldwide using a network of spies, social media, disinformation and harassment of practitioners—even here in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is not just an attack on religious freedom; it is an affront to British values, democracy and the rule of law. Will the Government urgently investigate and counter the influence of the Chinese Communist party’s transnational repression within our borders, including its attacks on Falun Gong and its attempts to censor Shen Yun performances?
Lucy Powell
As ever, the hon. Gentleman raises an important issue of freedom of religion or belief. I reassure him that the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary raised human rights and matters of freedom of religion or belief on their recent visits to China, and that these issues are taken very seriously by this Government. I thank him for continually raising these issues in this House.
Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)
The police station in Corby was closed down in 2017. It was replaced by a policing hub on the second floor of a public building, and that hub is now open for only two days a week. People on bail are asked to take selfies to demonstrate that they are meeting their bail conditions. Frankly, that is not good enough for the people of Corby. Public perception of local policing has been shattered, and there is now a view that local police are somewhat remote. Will the Leader of the House support my campaign to bring a police station and a dedicated response unit back to Corby, to return to true local policing?
Lucy Powell
We have to be honest that a phenomenal number of police stations were closed under the previous Conservative Government, and that community policing was left on its knees. We are determined to fix that, which is why we are bringing in more neighbourhood police officers and more police community support officers so that people can feel reassured by having police out on the beat.
My hon. Friend may want to raise some of these issues when we debate the forthcoming crime and policing Bill.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. It would be helpful if the remaining Members could keep their questions very short, so that I can get you all in.
Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)
Croydon’s youth engagement team is a council-run service that provides critical support for young people across Croydon, including keeping kids away from being groomed by gangs, supporting a youth assembly that gives kids a civic voice, and providing a youth hub in New Addington, in my constituency. Those services are now under threat because Croydon council deems them to be non-statutory and needs to make savings. Will the Leader of the House allow time for a debate about long-term funding settlements for youth services and how we can ensure they are given the statutory protections that they need?
Lucy Powell
After years of cuts and austerity, we have seen the decimation of youth services and youth hubs in many of our communities, so it is not surprising that knife crime and other issues have increased as a consequence. My hon. Friend knows that this Government are committed to prevention education and to bringing youth hubs to every community.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I would like to draw the Leader of the House’s attention to the experience of a constituent of mine who was a victim of domestic violence. The perpetrator, who went to prison for his violent crimes, is named on a joint tenancy agreement with a local housing association along with my constituent, yet my constituent has been told that there is no way to remove him from the tenancy without his permission, which he refuses to provide. Will the Leader of the House set aside Government time for a debate to discuss that extremely concerning matter, so that victims of domestic violence, such as my constituent, will not be put through further trauma?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear about that case. I assure my hon. Friend, his constituent and other survivors of domestic abuse that we will be strengthening the rights and protections available for women in co-habiting couples, including addressing issues around joint tenancies, so that they can remain in their homes. I look forward to letting my hon. Friend know when those measures will be introduced.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
Cultural and community institutions in the heart of central London face an uncertain future. The Jubilee Hall gym, Central YMCA and the Prince Charles cinema all have uncertain futures because of the complex property ownership structures in which they exist. Central YMCA faces closures tomorrow, so will the Leader of the House support me with my call to meet the landlord, so we can come together to discuss a sustainable, long-term future for that institution?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is right that we need to put more power back into the hands of local communities and local government to ensure the long-term future of community assets, like the ones she describes.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Sam Elliott, a 16-year-old from Buxton, in my High Peak constituency, who ran a marathon across the month of January to raise important money for Prostate Cancer UK? Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, so will the Leader of the House join me in encouraging all men to check their risk on the Prostate Cancer UK website? It takes 30 seconds, but it could save their lives. Will she support me in considering a debate on tackling that most important risk to men’s health?
Lucy Powell
I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Sam Elliott, who ran a marathon across January to highlight the issue of prostate cancer. My hon. Friend is right that early diagnosis and screening could save many lives. It is vital that we get more early diagnoses of that important cancer, as this Government intend to do.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
Inglis Bridge in Monmouth has been closed since September, causing a one-mile detour for children going to school at the Osbaston Church in Wales school. As the Leader of the House will know, it is difficult enough getting ready for school, and getting kids, prams and bikes out of the door, without having to go a mile along narrow pavements around Monmouth. It is also difficult for wheelchairs users to access the green space at Vauxhall Fields from Osbaston while the bridge is closed. Will the Leader of the House support my request to the Ministry of Defence, which owns the bridge, to provide funding to refurbish and reopen it as soon as possible?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend rightly highlights the importance of that bridge to her community, and its closure is causing huge disruption for many of her constituents. I know she has been touch with Defence Ministers about the matter, and I will follow that up for her, so we can get that bridge in Monmouth open as soon as possible.
Chris Ward (Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven) (Lab)
Last week I visited a local sixth-form college in Brighton, and one of the first questions I was asked was when the House will vote on introducing votes at 16. I did my best, telling the students that we had a manifesto commitment and that I hoped the vote would be later this year. Will the Leader of the House do one better and confirm when we will have a vote in this House?
Lucy Powell
I know that this issue is close to my hon. Friend’s heart and that it is something he strongly supports, as I do. Votes at 16 was an important measure in our manifesto, but he will know that it has not been identified in a Bill to be introduced in this Session. I hope that an elections Bill, including votes at 16, will be forthcoming in the next Session and that we will all get a chance to vote for that measure, as I know he and I both will.
Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
My constituent Alison Parr has had the most appalling time trying to obtain free prescriptions on the NHS, to which her profoundly disabled daughter, Ruby, is perfectly entitled. Please may we have a debate in Government time on how the NHS and all public services can be made fully responsive to the needs to disabled people?
Lucy Powell
I congratulate my hon. Friend on holding more Change NHS consultations in her constituency than any other Member has held in theirs. As a result of those meetings, she has raised the important issue of free prescriptions. I will raise her concerns with the relevant Minister and ensure that she gets a full response.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
Dates-n-Mates is a fantastic charity that operates across Scotland, including in Falkirk. It provides hundreds of events every year that offer friendship and opportunities for adults with learning disabilities. The real asset of the charity is its workforce, including John Clarke, who started as a service user and is now the Falkirk director, and some 40% of the workforce of Dates-n-Mates are adults with learning disabilities. When I met John, he spoke to me about the challenges that adults with learning disabilities find in the workplace. From interviews to starting a new job, even those with years of expertise, like John, often struggle to be taken seriously and are deprived of suitable opportunities. Will the Leader of the House support me in securing a debate in Government time on what the Government can do to level the playing field for adults with learning disabilities in the workplace?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in thanking John Clarke for all the work he has done over the years to raise awareness of these issues through Dates-n-Mates, which is a great name for an organisation. My hon. Friend will know that we are actively encouraging employers to create disability-inclusive workplaces. I will ensure that he and the rest of the House are kept up to date with those matters.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
Although Leigh and Atherton are a part of Greater Manchester, they are also close neighbours of Warrington and St Helens. The road network designed around our factories and mills now struggles with the increasing amount of traffic and congestion. Will the Leader of the House commit to holding a debate about improving public transport and connectivity in those areas, which will be popular with Members including our Cheshire and Merseyside neighbours?
Lucy Powell
I am a close neighbour of my hon. Friend, and my husband works in Warrington and uses those roads regularly. I share her frustration that the road networks in the north-west, around our region and across many parts of the north of England are in a poor state, and insufficient to cope with the increased traffic that she mentions. I will ensure that the relevant Minister has heard her pleas, but this subject would make a good topic for a debate.
Tom Rutland (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Lab)
My constituents in East Worthing and Shoreham, and all those served by Southern Water, face a 47% increase in their bills after years of mismanagement by the company and the previous Government. Will the Leader of the House assure me that the Government will ensure that the additional money that my constituents will be paying will be put into fixing our broken water system, not into the pockets of executives and shareholders?
Lucy Powell
Water customers in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and in many others, have been left to pay the price of many years of Conservative failure. The Conservatives allowed water companies to spend billions of pounds on bonuses and shareholder payouts, instead of investing in our crumbling infrastructure. I assure him that the money raised from increased water bills will go to water infrastructure.
Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)
Yesterday’s meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee took some interesting and informative evidence from representatives of the space industry in the UK. The launch of the first commercial space rocket from SaxaVord spaceport in Shetland is likely to take place before the end of the year. The industry has potentially great commercial benefits for the UK and is very important to our integrity as a sovereign nation. One of the key asks of the representative we spoke to was that there should be a Minister for space, who could help them to navigate the various jurisdictions they have to speak to, cut through the number of local authorities and other authorities they have to deal with, and simply be a champion for their industry. Will my right hon. Friend raise those matters in Government?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; space has transformed in strategic importance over the past decade. The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation has responsibility for co-ordinating space policy right across Government, and I know that he will be putting rocket boosters under this policy area in the future.
Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)
Stockton is rightly famed for its high street, the widest in Britain, with amazing independent stores such as Chic & Crafty, Regency Records, and the Book Dragon supported by our business improvement district. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending Stockton borough council for its investment in a new park and health diagnostic centre in Stockton, road improvements in Norton and £20 million for Billingham town centre, all of which will benefit from this Government’s commitment to cracking down on retail crime and investing in Cleveland police? Will she also find Government time for a debate on high street renewal?
Lucy Powell
Not one to miss an opportunity for another pun, I shall say that I know that Stockton high street has a reputation far and wide for what it offers. My hon. Friend is right to raise these issues. I am glad to hear that Stockton is getting the investment in its town centre that it so desperately needs.
UK-EU Relations
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the UK’s relationship with the EU. On Monday, in Brussels, the Prime Minister attended an informal retreat with the 27 EU leaders and Presidents von der Leyen and Costa. This marked a clear step forward for this Government’s reset of the UK’s relationship with the EU. He is the first British Prime Minister to join a meeting of European Council members since the UK left the EU. The Prime Minister discussed the common threats that the UK and the EU face, and the value that closer UK-EU co-operation on security and defence could bring. These were points that he also discussed earlier in the day, when he met the Secretary-General of NATO.
With the EU’s 27 leaders, the Prime Minister outlined a number of steps to increase co-operation on shared threats, including cross-border crime and illegal migration, while delivering growth and security at home. He called on Europe to step up and project strength, to keep up the pressure on Putin, alongside sustained military support to Ukraine, to put it in the strongest possible position this year. He set out a strong case for European security and defence: an ambitious UK-EU security partnership; a deeper role for Europe within NATO; the continued importance of small groups such as the joint expeditionary force; together with a continent-wide increase in defence investment. The Prime Minister was clear that the UK would play its full part in European defence and was ready to work together with the EU.
On Tuesday, we announced that the UK will welcome the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission to the UK for the first UK-EU leaders’ summit, which will take place on Monday 19 May. This first summit will provide an opportunity to further strengthen the relationship between the UK and the EU, for the benefit of all our people.
On Tuesday, I attended the UK-EU forum in Brussels to discuss the shared challenges and opportunities facing the UK and the EU, opposite my EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič. I made the case that this Government will be guided by what I am calling “ruthless pragmatism” —working in the UK’s national interest to make people across the UK safer, more secure and more prosperous. The Government’s position is that it is in the British national interest to improve our economic, safety and security relationships with our nearest neighbours. We reject the ideological approach of the past and will take a hard-headed assessment of the British national interest.
As the Leader of the Opposition recently said:
“We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.”
She said:
“Those mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.”
This Government will end that chaotic, dogmatic decision making. We should be guided by the principle of mutual benefit, finding collaborative solutions to our common problems. We should be open-minded to proposals that deliver better outcomes for the British people, within the manifesto on which this Government were elected.
This Government have been clear that we are not hitting rewind. We are not undoing Brexit and we are not rejoining the single market or the customs union, but we are looking to make Brexit work in a ruthlessly pragmatic way. That is the spirit that we are taking into the discussions with the EU—not a zero-sum game, but a win-win for both sides, with people across the UK and the EU benefiting. Yesterday I met my EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, and discussed how we can best work together to enhance co-operation in areas of mutual benefit. We are committed to staying in regular contact as we progress this work.
This Government were elected on a mandate to increase national security through strong borders, to increase people’s safety and to increase prosperity through growth. Our European friends have mutual interest in those priorities. It is those priorities that form the three pillars of the reset in our relationship: security, safety and prosperity. And I am pleased to say that on all three of those issues we are making progress. And work is happening right across Government, from the Prime Minister to the Chancellor at the Eurogroup and the Foreign Secretary at the Foreign Affairs Council.
There have been nearly 70 direct engagements between UK Ministers and their EU counterparts since we came into government, and we look forward to many more, including at the upcoming UK-EU summit. Some people make the false argument that we need to choose either America or Europe, but for this Government the UK’s national interest is paramount and demands that we work with both.
The Prime Minister made the point on Monday evening that the world today is very different from that in 2016, and even in 2024. In this time of change, this Government are stepping up to build alliances in a bid to make people safer and more prosperous. That is the core of our national interest, and I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
I thank the Paymaster General for advance sight of his statement, and I am grateful to him for coming to the House today to give us a rendition of the speech that he gave in Brussels on Tuesday—I am sure that it sounded even better accompanied by a cool glass of Belgian Chardonnay and the promise of a long continental lunch.
I note that the Paymaster General described the Prime Minister’s meeting with 27 EU leaders this week as being an “informal retreat”. An informal retreat indeed—that is, one suspects, how these words will come to characterise this Government’s negotiations with the EU. The last Conservative Government took us out of the EU and, despite the attempts of the Labour party to frustrate the will of the people, into an era of our being a sovereign nation, which has brought major benefits.
Under the Conservative Government, we secured more than 70 trade deals with other countries around the world and, since leaving the EU, UK trade has increased from about £1.04 trillion in 2015 to £1.74 trillion last year. We ended the supremacy of EU law, we delivered on our promise to leave the common fisheries policy, and we delivered the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe. We turned a page, and it is vital that the Labour Government do not turn it back.
The Paymaster General talks of ruthless pragmatism in our negotiations with the EU. I wonder whether this will be the same ruthless pragmatism that is bringing us the Chagos deal.Will it be the same ruthless pragmatism that has caused the Government to spend £9.4 billion a year on above-inflation pay rises for unionised sectors without any promise of reform? Perhaps it is the same ruthless pragmatism that saw the collapse of the £450 million AstraZeneca deal last week. When Labour negotiates, our country loses.
I have a great deal of respect for the Paymaster General—I hope he will do better than his friends and colleagues. He has talked to us about security, safety and prosperity—all very nice, but enough of the platitudes, let us talk about the plan. What do the Government actually want from the negotiations? What are the tangible gains they hope to make, and what are their red lines? We have heard about the customs union and a single market, but he knows that that is not enough. He says the Government “are not hitting rewind”, but we know the Government are open to dynamic alignment and a role for the European Court of Justice because he has twice declined to rule that out in this House. Going back to the ECJ for GB would be completely unacceptable.
On defence, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the NATO Secretary-General’s plea to step up and project strength. Is that what the Government will do? I know the Secretary-General has been asking European countries for a marked increase in defence spending. What is the Government’s response to that? Will he confirm that NATO remains the cornerstone of our defence arrangements?
There was no mention of fish. A word of advice to the right hon. Gentleman: fish are very important, and they will be very important in these negotiations. What is the Government’s position? Will he commit to there being no reduction in our current fishing rights? It is reported that our friends and allies in the French Republic have said that nothing can be negotiated until fish are negotiated. Will he confirm that he has told them firmly and politely, “Non”?
There is no mention of free movement. I noticed the other day that the Home Secretary ruled out a youth mobility scheme. Is that Government policy or was that just the Home Office freelancing? I ask because last week in Westminster Hall the right hon. Gentleman seemed to be pretty open to the idea. What is the Government’s position?
On the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention—PEM—a Minister told the “Today” programme on 23 January that the Government were “not seeking” to join PEM. Later that day, the right hon. Gentleman said that the Government
“do not currently have any plans to join PEM”.—[Official Report, 23 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 1091.]
On 26 January, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the Government were considering joining PEM, but then on 3 February, the right hon. Gentleman said in answer to a written question from the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) that the Government
“do not currently have any plans”.
I would be grateful if he could tell us what the Government’s position is, and if he cannot, perhaps he would be good enough just to make up another one.
The Opposition believe there should be no backsliding on free movement or compulsory asylum transfers. We believe that no new money should be paid to the EU. We believe that no reduction in our current fishing rights should be given away. We believe in no rule-taking, dynamic alignment or European Court jurisdiction. We believe in no compromise on the primacy of NATO as the cornerstone of European security. That is what the Opposition believe; it is time for the Government to tell us what they believe. A future Government will not be bound by a bad Labour deal.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I thank the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for his contribution. Of course NATO remains the cornerstone of our security; that has been a cross-party position for decades. He asks about plans and red lines. I refer him to our manifesto, which was put to the people last year, that contains those clear red lines of no return to freedom of movement, the single market or the customs union. He can see in that examples of what the Government are seeking to negotiate.
The hon. Gentleman talks about negotiating international agreements. There are many people from whom I would take advice about international agreements, but I hope the House will forgive me if the Conservatives—the party that managed to send hundreds of millions of pounds to Rwanda and all they got in return was sending some volunteers and most of their Home Secretaries there—are not at the front of the queue for giving advice on how to negotiate international agreements.
I give some credit to the Leader of the Opposition, who strikes a markedly different tone on this issue from that struck by the hon. Gentleman today. She admits freely that the last Government left without a plan for growth, and that, frankly, they ended up making it up as they went along. I was surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not begin his remarks by repeating that apology. Perhaps he has a different view than the one taken by his leader.
The hon. Gentleman talks about the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, but he was part of a Government who negotiated a role for the European Court of Justice in the Windsor framework. He talks about standards. This Government are committed to the highest standards, whether that is on product safety, employment rights or consumer rights. We believe in a race to the top on standards, not the race to the bottom that would be the dream of the Conservatives.
As the Government move forward, our test is the national interest. It is about making Britain safer, more secure and more prosperous. There is another test for the Leader of the Opposition, however. I see that she has put out a social media video about tests, which is worth a couple of minutes for mild entertainment if nothing else. The test for her is whether she will face down the ideologues in her party. Is she going to show some political courage and back the national interest, or is she just going to back down in the face of the ideologues in her party? On the basis of the hon. Gentleman’s contribution, I am not optimistic.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)
I very much welcome the statement from my right hon. Friend, but the reality is that he has inherited a deal with the European Union that has knocked about 4% to 5% off our economic output each year. Certainly, the Business and Trade Committee heard in Brussels last week a clear message from the business community that we need to be as specific and as ambitious as we can be ahead of the reset summit with the President of the European Commission. What plans does the Paymaster General have to bring together the British business community and, indeed, the trade union community so that the Prime Minister can go into his summit with President von der Leyen clear-minded about just how ambitious our wealth creators want him to be?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The Chair of the Select Committee is entirely right about the involvement of civil society, trade unions and businesses. I am sure that he will have seen the comments of the managing director of food at Marks & Spencer only today, who said:
“We wholeheartedly support the Government’s plan to negotiate a Veterinary Agreement; the benefits would be significant, there is no discernible downside, and we will offer whatever help we can to aid the negotiations.”
There was a time when the Conservative party was on the side of business—clearly no more.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. I welcome much of the statement’s content—that the Government are serious in their commitment to resetting our broken relationship with the European Union—but what the Liberal Democrats want is action. The European Union is our closest neighbour and largest trading partner. I sense that the Minister knows that we have to get on with repairing the trading relationship which was so badly damaged under the former Conservative Government, so please let us get on and do it. The botched Brexit deal has been a complete disaster for our country, especially for small businesses, which have been held back by reams of red tape and new barriers to trade, costing our economy billions in lost exports. The Minister talks of pragmatic negotiation. Surely what is pragmatic is to drop the Government’s red lines and agree a new UK-EU customs union. It would be the single biggest step that the Government could take to unlock growth, and I cannot think of anything more pragmatic. Liberal Democrats will continue to call on the Government to do the right thing.
We are also disappointed by the Home Secretary’s comments at the weekend on ruling out a youth mobility scheme. Does that represent the Government’s stance? A youth mobility deal would be good for our economy, especially our tourism and hospitality sectors, while providing young British people with the opportunity to work and study abroad. It would be a win-win. Not only that, it is what the British public want. New polling shows that two thirds of the UK population are in favour of such a scheme. Does the Minister not agree that introducing a youth mobility scheme is exactly the kind of pragmatic negotiation that the Government should be prioritising?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am grateful as always for the contribution of the hon. Lady; we had a fine debate in Westminster Hall last week. All I would say to her about speed, though, is that this Government are acting on the red lines in our manifesto around the single market, customs union and freedom of movement, on which we were elected and which delivered this majority last July. I looked at the Liberal Democrats manifesto and its plans for the relationship with the European Union, and it contained four steps. If we were choosing to do this in four different phases, we would be moving a lot more slowly than we are at the moment, so I hope the hon. Lady will welcome the progress we are making.
I know there is a lot of speculation on the issue of youth mobility. Of course, we consider sensible proposals in accordance with our red lines, but our position remains the same: there are no plans for a youth mobility scheme, and we have been clear that there will be no return to freedom of movement.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I guess I should not be surprised to hear the Conservatives trying to defend an impossibly bad deal for British business, which is why I am so relieved that the grown-ups are going to Europe and working out what is in the national interest. May I press the Minister on something that it is very clearly in the national interest to resolve with our European partners? National Grid estimates that it will cost the UK Exchequer £5 billion to £8 billion over this Parliament to have a differential emissions trading scheme between us and Europe. Pollution does not respect borders, and we all want to tackle the climate crisis. Can he confirm that resolving the issues around the carbon border adjustment mechanism will be on the agenda for the summit in May?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know has campaigned on this issue. Energy is very much a priority for the discussions—specifically the emissions trading scheme and linkage. The existing trade and co-operation agreement commits the UK and the EU to considering that.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
The Minister rightly speaks about the importance of NATO, which is key to our defence strategy. However, I have real concerns about the negotiations taking place on the defence strategy and on working with the European Union. We on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly have often spoken about the role of PESCO—the permanent structured co-operation—and the procurement strategy. Different countries procuring different elements can run into some constitutional problems, which can be a problem over generations of procurement, and it is important that protocols are made now for how those two things interact. I ask the Minister not to sign up to European programmes without ensuring that we build in protocols, so that PESCO cannot undermine article 5 decisions. As it stands, the ideology of PESCO stands in the way of article 5 decisions. If the Minister would like to speak about this further, I would be happy to meet him.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I would be more than happy to speak to the right hon. Gentleman—I acknowledge his expertise in these matters. He refers to interoperability, which is hugely important. He will have seen that the Prime Minister met the Secretary-General of NATO on Monday. That sends out a signal that NATO remains absolutely fundamental; it is the foundation stone of post-war security and of our approach going forward. What we seek to do will be complementary to NATO, to build on our collective strength in these dangerous times.
Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)
British businesses are clear that they want the Government to cut paperwork, tackle the trade barriers that they face, and lower the cost of selling goods and services to our trading partners in the EU. The Leader of the Opposition said last week that the Conservative Government left the EU without a plan. Does the Minister agree that that is typical of the chaotic economic management of the Conservatives, and that once again it is up to the Labour Government to clean up their mess?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At least the Leader of the Opposition was candid about the chaotic decision making under the previous Government. Together with our friends and neighbours in the EU, we have over £800 billion-worth of trade. It is clearly in our national interest to lower trade barriers pragmatically in that space.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I am pleased that this Government are moving away from the ideological fantasies of the Conservative Government and taking a pragmatic approach to EU-UK relations. Passive divergence—doing nothing when regulations move forward in the EU—is increasingly a concern for British businesses. It leads to huge trade barriers in emissions trading, for example, which is badly hurting the UK economy. What does the Paymaster General propose to do about passive divergence?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
We are not doing nothing. There are areas where this Government will be in a world-leading space. Let us look, for example, at what we are doing on employment rights and product safety. As I indicated earlier to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), the Government believe in a race to the top on standards, not a race to the bottom.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
I welcome the increased number of British officers now working with Europol. Will the Minister tell me more about how we will work with our European partners to tackle transactional crimes such as people smuggling and drug trafficking?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend raises an important point. I am pleased that we have already increased our National Crime Agency presence at Europol. The speed with which we can share data is hugely important. When crimes are committed, those early hours and days are so important for catching those responsible. We want to work with the EU and international partners so that criminals have no place to hide on our continent.
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
Those in the fishing industry will have noted not only that the Minister did not mention fish in his statement, but that he did not respond to the question from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), about fishing. Will he give an assurance to those in the industry that there will be no sell-out—whether on fishing grounds, quotas, days at sea and so on—and that he will do absolutely nothing to worsen the industry?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The hon. Gentleman is right to mention fishing. I can tell him first and foremost that I will engage with the fishing industry and its representatives about the issues that they face, particularly in selling into European markets. We will of course advocate for the interests of our fishers, and ensure that we fulfil our legal obligations on the marine environment.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
As a result of the previous Government’s bad deal, companies in my constituency tell me about the impact that the barriers to trade with the EU are having on their businesses, hitting profits and affecting jobs. Does the Minister agree that it would be foolhardy for this Government not to tackle those barriers and back British businesses?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We speak to businesses, and they want fewer barriers to trade. It is astonishing that the modern Conservative party does not seem to share that view.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
I welcome the Minister’s statement on closer co-operation with the EU on defence and security, but on the day the Bank of England cut its growth forecast from 1.5% to 0.75%, does the Minister agree that the single biggest thing we could do to turbocharge our economy in the medium and longer-terms is to form a customs union with the EU?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
We were elected on a manifesto that set out clear red lines, but of course there is significant economic advantage, not just to the United Kingdom but to citizens all across Europe, in the reset that we are now looking to take forward. Whether in making our citizens more prosperous, or in making them safer and more secure, that work will deliver for Britain.
Chris Ward (Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the Minister’s statement. Isn’t it nice to finally have a Government who want to work with, rather than alienate, our European partners? In that spirit, does he agree that there is a chasm between the thin, last-minute deal that the previous Government negotiated—which the Leader of the Opposition now derides as a deal “without a plan”—and the red lines that he and his Government have set out? That is the landing zone that I hope the Government will get to as soon as possible.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The chaos of the previous Government did extraordinary damage to this country on the international stage, and frankly it sullied our international reputation. I am pleased that the Leader of the Opposition at least understands the chaos that the Conservatives caused our economy. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this Government take a completely different approach. We were elected on a manifesto that we will now seek to deliver.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answers to all our questions—he always replies in a positive fashion. As for my question, he probably knows what is coming, but I will ask it anyway. The thorn in the side of any restoration of good faith with the EU lies in the abhorrent Northern Ireland protocol and the EU’s grip on Northern Ireland. That may well exclude Northern Ireland from any trade deals with the United States of America, with which we already have multimillion pound supply deals in place. Will the Minister confirm that allowing Northern Ireland to have her place in the United Kingdom, and an end to the game that is hurting the people of Northern Ireland both financially and constitutionally, are at the top of the agenda for good relations?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that Northern Ireland is always at the forefront of my mind. Since I came into office, I have visited Belfast twice; I chair the inter-ministerial group, which obviously includes the Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland; and the Windsor framework taskforce sits within the Cabinet Office, so I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the interests of the people of Northern Ireland are fundamental to this Government. I would also suggest to him that successful negotiation of a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement would be of significant benefit to the people of Northern Ireland.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I welcome the Paymaster General’s statement today. I notice that he said that there are currently no plans for a youth mobility scheme with the European Union. As a former Erasmus student myself, may I urge him to look at the schemes that are already in place with countries ranging from South Korea to Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand, and the immense cultural, economic and societal benefits that come from those schemes, which do not rub up against the Government’s red lines on single market access, customs union membership or freedom of movement?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and if we look back over recent decades, there have been many people in this House who have had the benefit of studying abroad. As my hon. Friend has also pointed to, though, the red lines upon which this Government were elected are fundamental.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the Paymaster General for that statement.
Backbench Business
Coalfield Communities
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. This is a very well-subscribed debate, so there will be an immediate time limit of five minutes for Back-Bench contributions. That, of course, does not apply to the mover of the debate, but I hope he bears that comment in mind.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for coalfield communities.
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. As ever, I will seek to follow your instructions, as gently as they were put. I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this debate this afternoon, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it time. It will give Members of this House the opportunity to make the case for the coalfield communities up and down our United Kingdom to get the opportunities, investment, focus and support that they need and deserve.
Newcastle-under-Lyme is nestled within the north Staffordshire coalfield. Our ancient and loyal borough has a rich history that is intertwined with coalmining. In the early 20th century, our coalfield supported more than 50 pits, employing more than 20,000 men and boys. Newcastle-under-Lyme was home to several notable collieries, including Silverdale colliery, which was among the last deep mines in the area and closed in December 1998. The pit wheel monument stands proud as a reminder of the past and gives hope for the future. We also have the Minnie pit monuments up in Audley, in the northern part of my constituency.
Just a fortnight ago, I was privileged to have the opportunity to attend the commemorative events to mark the 130th anniversary of the Diglake colliery disaster, which took place in Bignall End in Newcastle-under-Lyme on 14 January 1895. That disaster saw 77 men and boys lose their lives, and is commemorated every year. It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect and remember, and I am very grateful to the Reverend Joy Ventom and the church wardens, led by Bob Alcock, at Audley Methodist church for hosting such a brilliant weekend of remembrance, featuring the excellent Audley brass band.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this really important debate. He is reflecting on the historic past of the coalfields, which is absolutely integral to any of us who represent coalfield communities. However, does he agree that what people in the coalfields want is not mainly a focus on their past, but a Government with a sense of ambition for their future? What we really need to see in the coalfields is that the Government’s industrial strategy recognises the unique contribution that they can make, so that we can focus on a bright future for our coalfields as well as our proud past.
Adam Jogee
I thank my hon. Friend. During the election campaign, he came to support me and saw many of the communities to which I am referring, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. It is important that we know where we have come from, but it is more important that we set the path to where we want to go.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme on securing this debate. Through his wife if nothing else, he will know the strong industrial connections with coalmining at Ballycastle and Coalisland—the name is a giveaway. Some of those rocks are some 330 million years old. Does the hon. Member agree that while these issues are devolved, it is crucial that we have a joint UK strategy to protect our coalmining towns and villages across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Adam Jogee
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. My wife is a wise and wonderful woman, so he will be reassured to know that I learn lots from her. I agree that we are one United Kingdom, and that this issue requires one approach.
At the commemoration last month to which I referred, the order of service contained a poem from Captain John William Roberts, whose grandfather died in the disaster and whose daughter, Maisie Farrell, was at the memorial with me despite suffering a stroke in recent months. I am pleased to say that she is on the road to recovery. Staffordshire women are made of strong stuff— I should know, as I was born to one—and I wish Maisie well in her recovery to full health. It just so happens that Maisie is Newcastle-under-Lyme born and bred, and is a close friend of my family. I want to share a small part of that poem with the House:
“Diglake Disaster:
That bitter day in January, Christmas not long gone
We went to work joking and singing—clogs echoing to mirth
How could we guess early, subterranean Niagara sweep lads away
By the nature of its vector, trap mates without escape?
While we struggled in icy water, choked for clear air, agony of heart,
Burning in our mind we were separated for ever from loved ones.
This mixed group of men, not able to see Easter—”
It ends,
“Bequeath our generation acts, they knew we could perform—
Advancing wisdom, better leaders, unselfish goals
Thus, take up the human charter: embrace our task.
The words of Captain John William Roberts, ACF.”
What a tribute those words are to the sacrifice of those men and boys who died, and to the shared experience of miners right across our United Kingdom, from South Wales to the east midlands and from Yorkshire to the jewel in our kingdom’s crown in north Staffordshire. Those miners worked hard, they powered our economy, and they showed what grit, determination, dignity, strength and commitment look like. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) alluded to, we have a duty to give back to the communities that gave us the men and boys, and the strong women right beside them, without whom our country would never have developed in the way that it has.
Adam Jogee
I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) first, because I am smart, and then I will give way to the right hon. Member from Scotland.
Carolyn Harris
Very wise.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I am being contacted by a growing number of mineworker constituents who were enrolled in the British Coal staff superannuation scheme, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare (Gerald Jones), and all those constituents are understandably disappointed that they have not received the same justice as their former colleagues in the mineworkers pension scheme. That inequality is unfair, particularly as almost 5,000 women who worked in the industry and who were paid less were in the British Coal staff superannuation scheme. Does my hon. Friend agree that urgent action is needed to bring some parity to the situation?
Adam Jogee
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and I will touch gently on that issue. Her intervention speaks to her commitment to standing up for those most in need of a strong voice.
I will now happily give way to my friend from Scotland.
David Mundell
I commend the hon. Member on securing this debate. I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I have many constituents who are in exactly the same position, although the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) did not mention Scotland, which has a proud mining tradition. Communities in my constituency, such as Sanquhar, Kirkconnel, Kelloholm, Coalburn and the Douglas valley, have often felt very overlooked. Does the hon. Member agree that often in these communities, people are still forward-looking, wanting to make those communities turn around and be regenerated? They have not given up on them, and the Government—in London and in Edinburgh—should not either.
Adam Jogee
I am grateful to my friend from Scotland for making that point. I look forward to working with him, and to his supporting the Government as we seek to do exactly as he said—get these communities back on track, in the place and with the support that they need and deserve.
Last Friday, I met the widow and two of the five daughters of the late Jimmy Flynn at the weekly coffee morning at St Giles’ church in Newcastle-under-Lyme. I hope that one day, you will join me there, Madam Deputy Speaker—they do a good fry in the morning. [Interruption.] Not quite an Ulster fry, but we look forward to joining the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for one of those soon. Mr Flynn was a miner, and over a cuppa, his widow and daughters told me about his life, his work, and the fact that their dad and their husband—alongside all those who worked down the pit—worked “bloody hard every day.” That they did.
I cannot talk about Newcastle-under-Lyme’s mining history without celebrating the fantastic Apedale heritage centre, which is on the site of a former coalmine. I also want to acknowledge the Apedale valley light railway; I very much enjoyed riding on a steam train on a recent visit. Despite the coalmines ceasing to operate, their legacy remains an integral part of my community, our heritage and the lived experience. That legacy reflects a community built on hard work and industrial prowess by good people, driven by decency, respect, strength and skill. I am proud to honour the memories of those who went before us, and to represent their descendants and their ambitions in this place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) has had to head home to meet workers at Royal Stafford, who have had bad news this week. He has asked me to pay tribute to the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, which has supported a number of community organisations in his constituency.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), who has been a steadfast and diligent champion of former miners and coalfield communities up and down our United Kingdom. It has been a pleasure working with him, and with Sophie Jackson in his office—and with my team, since my election to this place—on getting justice for members of the mineworkers pension scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) mentioned. I thank the Prime Minister and all those on the Front Bench for the leadership that they have shown. I want to acknowledge Professor Steve Fothergill and Chris Whitwood for the excellent work that they do supporting the Labour group of coalfield MPs—a group on which I lead for the west midlands.
Some 5.7 million people live in Britain’s coalfields—one in 10 people in England and Scotland, and one in four people in Wales—but almost half of coalfield communities are among the 30% most deprived communities in the United Kingdom. Yesterday, I had a very helpful discussion with Tash and Roshni from the Local Trust. We talked through the figures in my community—in Cross Heath, Knutton and Silverdale, where the challenge of tackling injustice and inequality is most serious for us locally, just as it is serious in places across the country. I would be grateful if the Minister touched on the community wealth fund, and how we can ensure that money from it is directed at supporting disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Where will the money go, and how will it be allocated?
Education has such an important role to play. I was at St Thomas Boughey school in Halmer End last week, and I heard about the challenges that it faces when it comes to funding, staff recruitment and retention, and ensuring that the smart young people who go to the school can work and live in, and contribute to, the community in which they were raised. I look forward to welcoming some of those young people to Parliament later this month. My community has a university, Keele University. How do we build a bridge between the funding that universities can attract and young people who want to study in the community that they live in?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East said, we need justice for the British Coal staff superannuation scheme members, and I have told the Prime Minister this directly. The BCSSS has more than 40,000 members who formerly worked in the mining industry, including a number of my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I have promised that I will fight their corner. I urge Ministers to speed up efforts to transfer the £2.3 billion investment reserve in the BCSSS to the members who earned it, deserve it and need it, as more and more former miners die each year. That is important, because a significant number of BCSSS members were required to transfer to the BCSSS, as we have heard. If they had not been forced to move, they would have had access to their own money when this new Labour Government made the right call on the MPS. They deserve it, and this Government, although they have been in power for only a few short months, must now get on with it. I will do whatever I can to help. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield said, we want real action, not empty words; we want a proper commitment, not hollow promises; and we want our communities properly invested in, not forgotten. A new Government with a majority of this size presents us with an opportunity to finally get the settlement we need, the focus my constituents deserve, and the future my constituents have earned.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent opening speech on a topic that is so important for all our communities. I am sure that he is as shocked as I am to learn of the severe health inequalities in coalfield communities; the average life expectancy is around a year less than the national average, and around three years less than that in the south-east. For the north-east, it is even worse. Does he agree that for these communities, these health inequalities are the long-term legacy, and that is why we need to ensure that coalfield communities are properly supported, even in this day?
Adam Jogee
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who is 100% correct. I am looking forward to working with her to make sure that we get the progress that we all want to see, up and down the country.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am mindful of your instruction, but I want to touch briefly on four issues that I know many colleagues will expand on, and I want to leave time, believe it or not, for everyone else to have their say. First, on worklessness, a common assumption is that unemployment, however defined, is no longer a problem. So far as the former coalfields are concerned, this simply is not true, but the nature of the unemployment problem facing communities such as ours has changed. In the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of pit closures, there were large numbers of people out of work on unemployment- related benefits. These days, as the Department for Work and Pensions data presented in “The State of the Coalfields 2024” report showed, an exceptionally large number of people out of work are on other benefits.
Across former coalfield communities such as mine, 16% of all adults of working age are out of work on benefits. The biggest number is those who are out of work on incapacity benefits—there are just over 400,000 people in that situation in former coalfields across the country, and people in that group account for around one in nine of all adults of working age. That goes to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). It reflects poor health—I mentioned health inequalities in the House this week—but also hidden unemployment, because in parts of the country where good jobs are more readily available, many of those with health problems or disabilities are able to secure such jobs. Estimates from Sheffield Hallam University point to a real level of unemployment in the former coalfields that is double the rate in south-east England, which says everything that we need to know.
A consequence of the shortfall in local job opportunities is a reliance on commuting to neighbouring areas and further afield. Net out-commuting from the former coalfields —the balance between flows in each direction—accounts for about 350,000 people. The jobs available in former coalfields also tend to be less well paid, with 53% of employed residents working in manual jobs compared with a GB average of 46%, and just 36% here in the capital. It is important to note that the average hourly earnings of coalfield residents are around 6% lower than the national average, as we have heard. We have serious work to do. My challenge to those on the Front Bench is this: we need stronger policies focused on growing the local economy in former coalfields, including by tackling high levels of economic inactivity.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. Would he agree that the example of Nissan, in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), shows that when high-quality manufacturing jobs are put into former coalfield areas, people from those areas are among the most widely respected workforces in the world? Global investors think that they are among the best workforces they can get. The tragedy is that there are not more companies like Nissan in former coalmining areas.
Adam Jogee
My hon. Friend is right. Those workforces are not just respected; they are brilliant, skilled, smart and hard-working. They deserve the opportunities that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield have noted, and that I know all colleagues in this House want to see.
My point about policies to tackle high levels of economic inactivity leads me to the next important issue when it comes to improving Government support for coalfield communities, which is local growth funding. We all want to see our economy grow, and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have my support in pushing that agenda, but growth must be driven and shared across all parts of our United Kingdom. As the Government prepare for the spending review, I urge those on the Front Bench to ensure that, at the very least, present spending is maintained.
The primary focus of local growth funding needs to be economic development and regeneration, driven by a mix of investment in people, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), in place, in infrastructure and in business support. The investment in our communities should be fairly allocated on the basis of need, not competitive bidding, and there should be full and timely consultation on the allocation formula. Funding needs to be allocated over a longer term than was the case under previous Governments. The commitment in the Budget to setting five-year capital budgets, to be extended every two years at regular spending reviews, is a welcome step.
The Government’s intention to rationalise the number of local growth funds is also welcome, because it makes sense to allocate funding at the sub-regional level at which most local economies operate. Some will be surprised to hear me say this, but in some ways we need less government. We need a lighter touch in managing this vital funding. The expertise, knowledge and experience of local people and local leaders, including elected mayors—the Minister will enjoy my saying that, for once —should be respected, and they should be given greater discretion, within a broader framework set by the Government.
Mrs Hodgson
My hon. Friend has mentioned commuting and infrastructure. Following on from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), those things are important in connecting people from Durham to jobs in Washington at Nissan, and at other great companies there, such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems. Does he agree that there has been under-investment for years in the infrastructure that he is talking about, and especially in transport infrastructure, which makes projects such as the Leamside line, which our Mayor of the North-East supports, so important for creating the connectivity that we need?
Adam Jogee
My hon. Friend is correct. We were talking about less government. As the Minister knows, I have some concerns about local government reorganisation, and I look forward to speaking to him about that in greater detail. That said, I call on all local leaders in Staffordshire to engage with the subject seriously, respectfully and wisely. As we have heard from interventions, we need to focus on the livelihoods of the many, not the jobs and power plays of the elected few.
I turn to the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation, a national body that should not be confused with local miners’ welfare institutes, which are independent charities. Concerns about CISWO have been aired on several occasions by a number of colleagues. I have met members of its board and its chief executive, and it would be wrong for those concerns not to be noted in the debate. I urge the CISWO leadership to consider how they might better support local welfare schemes when they run into difficulty, including looking at recycling funds locally when land and property is sold off, and at how CISWO might engage better with local authorities to support regeneration initiatives in former mining communities.
The Coalfields Regeneration Trust got to work in 1999 in response to recommendations made by the coalfields taskforce, which was established by the late Lord Prescott. As we know, Lord Prescott was laid to rest last week, and I acknowledge his service to our country. The trust’s focus over the last 25 years has been to support communities living with the consequences of the rapid mine closure programme that took place from the mid-1980s onwards, under the Government of Mrs Thatcher. It has invested hundreds of millions of pounds, reaching over 2 million people with community projects and activities aimed at improving health, skills and employment opportunities. It also supports thousands of vital community assets and organisations.
Between 1999 and 2015, the CRT received funding from the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments for its work. It continues to receive funding from the Scottish and Welsh Governments, although that has reduced in recent years, but it no longer gets funding from the UK Government. That has had a huge impact on its ability to deliver across England, and resulted in a significant reduction in its programmes of support. Where the previous Conservative Government failed, I urge this new Labour Government to deliver. I urge Ministers to look at a sustainable, long-term and comprehensive package of funding for the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. Will the Minister arrange for me, my hon. Friend the Member for Easington, and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust to meet relevant Ministers at the earliest opportunity?
Today I want to honour the proud and rich history of mining in Newcastle-under-Lyme and north Staffordshire —a region where generations of hard-working men and women carved out a legacy of resilience, determination, and community. I want us to remember the huge potential, and the brilliant people who deserve the highest-quality public services. They deserve the investment and focus that our big cities get, and they deserve a Government who will never walk by on the other side. This debate gives us a chance to reflect on the past, and to invest in the future. As we remember the miners who risked their life every day, we acknowledge the role that they played in shaping the industrial strength of my region and the nation as a whole. Their sacrifices remind us of the value of hard work, perseverance, and the unyielding spirit of north Staffordshire and our United Kingdom. We have a responsibility to lead where they left off, and we have no time to waste.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I was a miner from the age of 17 until I came to this place—a period of over 30 years—and I also have a connection with the National Union of Mineworkers.
It will be crystal clear from this debate that there is an absolute need to continue with support for the coalfield communities, whether that is the Orgreave truth and justice campaign, the pardoning of the sacked miners, CISWO—a fantastic charity that needs a complete and utter overhaul—the MPS, or whether it is looking again at the BCSSS scheme, the general social deprivation and poverty in the communities, or the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. Those issues will be covered in much more detail by my hon. Friends, but I want to take the time I have to paint a picture and take people back to the proud past, because we in the coalfield communities are very proud of our past.
The communities were built from the wage packets of the miners. What we have lost is something we have to describe today, as well as what we want back to fulfil that pride in our communities and the people we proudly represent. We were the people who fuelled the industrial revolution, and the communities were savagely destroyed by a Government driven by political ideology. There was little that the collieries did not touch, and when I left school there was pretty much full employment. When the schools opened their gates, the pits opened theirs. Following in the footsteps of our forebears, we felt like we were contributing to the wealth of the nation —we really were contributing to the wealth of this nation, and many paid the ultimate sacrifice in doing so.
People were given the finest apprenticeships you could ever imagine—qualifications in working underground that could be transferred across the globe, and training in skills that no piece of paper could ever quantify. I learned from the very best. My education from the age of 17 was from miners with huge intellect. Most were without a single written qualification, and written off as uneducated by people who should know better, but these were absolute working-class geniuses, believe me.
It did not stop at political debate. The men who we looked up to imparted to us many life skills. They taught us the value of work. I am talking about miners underground who taught the younger generation coming through about the value of work, the value of contributing to our local communities, and the perils of stepping out of line. The coalfields largely policed themselves, and if you got into trouble on a night out, you were in trouble when you went back to work. Employment at the pit gave miners and their families the security of a colliery house—good-quality terraced housing that stretched the length of the communities, and all owned by the coal board. With decent rents, those houses were kept in good order and gave the security of a home to miners. Those are basic things, and local communities, coalfield communities, are now suffering greatly because of the huge loss.
The communities had a thriving social scene, and if someone wanted to wet their whistle, there were plenty of places where they could have a pint. The clubs are gone—clubland has disappeared, miners’ welfares are disappearing, and we have to get something back. The communities enjoyed a whole host of pursuits, whether that was whippet racing, pigeon fancying, leek growing, onion growing, billiards, pigeon racing, jazz bands, brass bands—it was amazing what the miners were able to contribute to this country. That is why we need specific intervention from the Government into those coalfield communities that are dying on their feet. We should never forget the contribution that coalfield communities delivered to the country, often at a great cost, and they really need that levelling-up that is constantly promised.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I congratulate my good and hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this important debate on coalfield communities. It is very oversubscribed, and I wish we had more time. I thank the Backbench Business Committee, the Industrial Communities Alliance, Coalfields Regeneration Trust, and the House of Commons Library for the useful briefing paper it produced. I also thank my fellow coalfield MPs for their sterling work on behalf of their constituents.
Our mining communities not only have a proud past, but with the right leadership and investment we have an exciting future. After 14 years of Conservative Government, coalfield communities have been left grappling with relentless austerity and a rigged levelling-up agenda, which in practice meant that resources never reached the places in my community that needed them most.
Today, I want to talk not only about the challenges that our communities face, but the potential within them to drive economic growth, attract investment and create jobs that can transform lives and revitalise local economies. Some 30 years after the pit closures, the talent, resilience and ambition of our coalfield communities remains undiminished. It is not just about righting the wrongs of the past, but harnessing the energy in the community to build a stronger, greener and more prosperous economy.
I must say something about the British Coal staff superannuation scheme. To their credit, my Government—this Labour Government—have already demonstrated their commitment to coalfield communities. For too long, successive Governments have denied pension justice to retired miners and their widows. Money that should have been providing security in retirement was instead filling the Treasury’s coffers.
Mr Perkins
My hon. Friend generously thanked coalfield MPs, but I would like to repay the compliment to him, because his leadership on the mineworkers pension scheme has been exemplary. We are all happy to support him as the chair of the APPG. I put on record how important a part he played in that significant commitment that this Government made.
Grahame Morris
My hon. Friend is kind and generous, and I thank him for that, but this is not about me; it is about the communities we represent.
We have to give credit that, at the recent Budget, the Chancellor righted the wrong on miners’ pensions and the MPS and delivered on Labour’s manifesto commitment on the mineworkers pension scheme surplus. The decision to transfer the MPS investment reserve fund was a moral obligation, and it resulted in an economic boost. In my constituency, the decision is injecting £5.6 million into the local economy every year through increased pension payments to the 3,755 MPS members—retired miners and widows—in east Durham. That money is now being spent in our high streets, local shops, cafés and pubs, boosting the economy, creating jobs and supporting growth. However, this pension justice issue is only partially settled. There is a similar issue with the British Coal staff superannuation scheme, which has 40,000 beneficiaries who are former British Coal staff and their widows. Since 1994, the Government have taken out £3.1 billion from that scheme, without contributing a penny.
I say with all respect to the Minister, and specifically to the Treasury, that it is time to release the £2.3 billion BCSSS investment reserve, so that all former mining staff can receive a pension uplift. Time is of the essence. Thousands of retired miners have already died, with 2,000 in the BCSSS passing away each year, including many women who were among the lowest-paid workers in the coal industry, having worked in pit canteens like my mother, or in administration and auxiliary roles. When we say numbers, they are meaningless, perhaps, to civil servants and ministerial advisers, but I know these men and women. They are men like Eamon Kavanagh, now in his 80s, who was an absolute stalwart, not just of Murton colliery, but the Seaham collieries; Bill Waites, who was a good friend of my late father; and my dear mother, who is 88. Time is of the essence to settle this issue. It is about fairness, pension justice and putting money back into communities that powered an industrial revolution that made Britain great, fuelled economic growth, and were the foundations on which our nation’s wealth was built.
On a positive note, we are moving from coal to clean energy. We can lead the green industrial revolution. The closure of the coalmines marked the end of an era, but just as we powered the last industrial revolution, it is now time for our communities to lead the next one, as we transition to a clean and green economy. Indeed, in east Durham, we have already been laying the foundations for this future. Mine water heat, an innovative low- carbon energy solution, is being developed in Seaham and Horden. If properly supported, it could provide sufficient heat for all properties in the UK’s coalfield areas, offering a sustainable and affordable alternative to traditional energy. Then there is Power Roll, a start-up based on the Jade enterprise park in Murton that is pioneering lightweight, flexible solar technology that does not rely on rare earth metals. This is British innovation at its finest, ready for reinvestment to scale up production in a gigafactory. With the right support, we can create new green-collar jobs. We have heard about white collar and blue collar; let us have green-collar jobs and position the UK as a global leader in renewable technology.
Jade Botterill (Ossett and Denby Dale) (Lab)
I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important debate. I am proud to see so many colleagues speaking so passionately about their communities. Despite years of under-investment from the Conservatives, most of whom could not be bothered to show up to the debate today, it is nice to see people on the Government Benches who feel the same commitment to rejuvenating their communities and, importantly, to celebrating the social, economic and cultural contributions of the areas we have grown up in and now have the privilege of representing.
I was there when Kellingley, the last deep pit in the UK, closed a week before Christmas back in 2015. I spoke to some of the 450 miners who had been made redundant, whose fathers and grandfathers had worked down the pit. The devastating, ruthless impact of closures was clearer to me that day than ever before. The mine was not just a place of work, but the heart of the community. Built around it were schools, sports teams, brass bands, social clubs, places of worship, families, friendships, hope, security and prosperity. When Kellingley closed, I saw on the faces of the men and their families the fear that the death of the industry would take the community and the culture with it—the culture and the industry of his father, and his father before him. However, they rejected victimhood. The next day, the miners, the families, their friends and their community marched together and met at the miners’ welfare club.
For too long, people in post-industrial northern towns were promised nothing but empty slogans. Successive Conservative Governments ignored them, neglected them and insulted them, but they refused to be forgotten. Although Kellingley is not in my constituency, many mines like it were closed in similar circumstances and with similar results right across Ossett and Denby Dale. I cannot help but imagine that the scenes were similar on each occasion. Caphouse colliery in my constituency closed in 1985. In that refusal to be forgotten, the mine was converted into a museum, conceived, created and now staffed by ex-miners. It is run by Lynn Dunning, who embodies the often-forgotten role of women during the strikes. We must remember those who helped heat our nation for generations. With good old Yorkshire miners taking people down the shaft at the mining museum, there is not a better place to remember our rich industrial history.
Yes, that is a plug to visit the National Coal Mining Museum in my constituency. It remains a place where we are reminded of our community’s contribution to this country. Every time I visit, I am filled with pride, anger and determination: pride in my region’s national contribution and the spirit of hard work, humour and solidarity still present in the ex-miners who remain there today; anger at the arrogance and ignorance of previous Governments who decimated our communities without a thought for what would come next; and determination to change this great injustice and to give our community not just what it needs, but what it has earned.
We do not need to just preserve the legacy of coalfield communities; we must also fight for the dignity of retired miners who made that proud legacy possible. Other Members have spoken eloquently about the action taken to end the historical injustice of mineworkers and their pensions, which former mineworkers in my patch often raise with me. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Keir Mather) has been fighting for his constituent, Tony Rock, whose compensation case in the past few years has been delayed and delayed by the Department for Work and Pensions as his health worsens. That sort of case must become a thing of the past, and my Labour colleagues and I will keep fighting until retired members across Yorkshire receive the dignity in retirement they deserve. I know that this Government share that feeling and are acting, and I was proud to run on a manifesto that made a concrete commitment to miners and mining communities.
This Government’s approach must go further, and does, to revive these communities for generations to come. That is why we are investing in schools and hospitals, roads and rail, high streets and homes. We are restoring pride in our town centres, combating antisocial behaviour and crime. We are financing the green industries of the future to ensure that what happened to the mineworkers never happens again. We are committed to growing the economy in towns right across our country, and not just London. As people in my area know all too well, strong communities must be nurtured generation after generation, but people in post-industrial northern towns such as mine often feel ignored and forgotten by the powerful. It is my job in the House to ensure that those thoughts and feelings are heard. I am committed to never treating them with the same injustice they experienced at the hands of uncaring, short-termist Conservative Governments.
Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I am pleased that we have the opportunity to debate such important matters. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing the time and commend him on an excellent speech.
In the villages and towns that make up the wonderful constituency of Airdrie and Shotts, a common theme consistently arises when knocking on doors: the memory of coalmining, the community spirit and cohesion that existed, and the suffering and devastation felt as a consequence of the cruel Tory policy of rapid deindustrialisation. Airdrie and Shotts, like other constituencies we have heard mentioned, sat at the centre of an industrial heartland: in this case, central Scotland. In such communities, young men and women entered skilled employment in their own home town. We are asking the Government to support further the regeneration of coalfield communities, using modern educational and employment techniques, in the hope that that will become a reality once again.
The working people of Airdrie and Shotts have been treated as an afterthought for too long. They have been let down by Conservative and SNP Governments who acted in self-interest rather than the interests of the nation. I am delighted that we now have a Government who will ensure that the people of Airdrie and Shotts can mark the legacy of its coalmining past but strengthen, modernise and deliver a more prosperous future.
In my family, we remember my late grandfather Jimmy Stevenson, who worked down the pits for over 40 years; my late father-in-law Drew McCracken, who worked in mines across central Scotland for 40 years, scrambling and digging in 18-inch seams, and who carried his brother up the mine after he was killed; and my brother-in-law Derek McCracken, who worked for 10 years in the mines around Plains and Caldercruix. We owe it to them and the other miners to create a new future.
It often goes unnoticed that the inequality faced in former coalfields is staggering. While there are many means of measuring the scale of challenge facing former coalfields, I found particular interest in a figure provided in “The State of the Coalfields 2024”. It highlights that Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, which were analysed together for the purposes of the report, was the joint lowest area for jobs for people of working age, with 44 employee jobs for every 100 working-age people. Indeed, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire witness an above average out-of-work benefit claimant rate and are identified in the report as areas where extensive deprivation exists. That is a direct consequence of 14 years of Tory Government: they deepened the inequalities that have scarred constituencies such as mine for decades.
However, Scotland as a whole is a country where health inequality is felt on an unimaginable scale, where the inequalities are deep and divisive in equal measure and where there is no worse time to be poor and in need of healthcare. With one in 14 people in Airdrie and Shotts alone in bad or very bad health, the former coalfields that I represent are held back by ill health because of a Scottish Government who have allowed NHS waiting lists to soar. Almost one in six Scots are waiting, waiting and waiting.
There is no doubt that the challenges facing my constituents are significant. There are social and economic barriers, because Governments have not undertaken anywhere near enough work to break them down, but I firmly believe in the potential of Airdrie and Shotts and its people. It is a constituency with skilled workers, talented young people full of potential and an older generation who remember its industrial and coalmining past while wanting the best for its future.
I thank the Coalfields Regeneration Trust for the work it does to raise awareness of the struggles faced in constituencies such as Airdrie and Shotts. I must also thank the UK Labour Government for delivering a Budget that sees Scotland receive its largest funding since devolution and a pay rise for working people across my constituency. I look forward to working with the Minister and others to regenerate former coalfields and constituencies such as mine. I encourage the Government to work closely with the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, which does excellent work in our communities, as we embark on a plan for change, away from the years of social, economic and health barriers blocking the progress of our former coalfield communities.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important and timely debate. I echo his comments about our hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for his work championing our coalfield communities, which, until this Government were elected, had been forgotten.
I speak as the proud daughter of a former coalminer on behalf of the coalfield communities in Amber Valley and thousands of former coal industry workers across the country. My dad and the constituents of Amber Valley have a common link: a rich mining heritage. Whether it is constituents like John Edwards from Heanor, Colin Smith from Langley Mill or Ian Walker from Ripley, all parts of Amber Valley share this common bond. Our communities were built on the hard work and dedication of our mineworkers, engineers, technicians and support staff who powered our nation through challenging times, often at great personal risk.
In October, we saw long-overdue justice served for the members of the mineworkers pension scheme when the Government agreed to return its £1.5 billion investment reserve. That decision resulted in a well-deserved 32% increase in pensions, and an average increase of £29 a week for each member. That is already improving the lives of many of the former 772 mineworkers in Amber Valley. It has directly benefited my family, too, and I know that it means a lot to my dad to get that recognition. However, the same cannot be said about the members of the British Coal staff superannuation scheme. The hard work of those engineers, technicians and support staff ensured that men like my dad who went down the pits every day returned safely to the surface. Indeed, some members of the BCSSS also worked underground.
We have done right by the MPS men who went down the pits, but have we truly supported the women, who were often paid less than their male counterparts and are an equal part of the coalfield communities? As my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) pointed out, women in the coal industry—the majority of whom are BCSSS members—deserve pension justice, too.
The parallels between the MPS and the BCSSS are obvious. Both schemes were established during the privatisation of British Coal in 1994, with the Government acting as guarantor, yet while the MPS members have seen their investment reserve rightly returned, BCSSS members such as my constituents John, Colin and Ian continue to wait. The trustees of the BCSSS have formally requested the return of the £2.3 billion investment reserve. That request is not only reasonable but consistent with the precedent set by the MPS decision. This is a matter not just of financial contribution but of justice, fairness and honouring the contributions of all those who helped build our nation’s energy infrastructure.
I urge the Government to act swiftly and decisively. Let us commit to a full review of the BCSSS surplus sharing agreements and transfer the investment reserve to its rightful owners: the scheme members. That action would provide a significant boost to the pensions of more than 40,000 former coal industry staff, enhancing their financial security and quality of life in retirement. I urge the Government to consider quick action, as many in receipt of those pensions are in their 80s or older. It is heartbreaking that thousands of miners, including colleagues of my dad, did not live long enough to receive the benefit of the MPS surplus. I know my father would not want his colleagues, who kept him safe and supported him, to be forgotten. I urge the Government to consider righting this historic inequality, so that all members of our coalfield communities get the justice that they deserve.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
It is an honour to speak in this debate as the Member of Parliament for Cannock Chase, an area deeply proud of its mining heritage. Collieries were our dominant industry from the mid- 19th century right up until the early 1990s. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this debate and enabling us to speak on behalf of our coalfield communities. As a fellow Staffordshire MP, I know that he is a dedicated advocate for the town and villages that he represents. He referred to the Diglake mining disaster; in Cannock Chase on 1 October we will mark the 95th anniversary of the Grove colliery disaster in the North Lanes area of Norton Canes, which claimed the lives of 14 men.
My constituents are rightly proud of where they live. Often, generations remain in the area for their whole lives, which shows the real sense of community and local identity. However, my constituents often tell me that we desperately need investment in the bread-and-butter infrastructure that supports thriving communities, such as capacity at GPs, dentists and primary schools, good quality roads and regeneration of our town centres. Regeneration is vital because in all too many coalfield communities there is still a feeling that, decades on, we have not all recovered from the rapid destruction of the coalmining industry in the 1980s and 1990s.
At the 2019 general election, many of my constituents were tempted by the siren song of levelling up from the then Prime Minister. My constituents have been crying out for the promise of big-bang regeneration across communities such as mine for a very long time. Our main town of Cannock was successful in securing £20 million from the levelling-up fund in 2021, but the reality of the fund has been far more complex than even my local council envisaged four years ago. First of all, its rigidity in awarding funding to one town pits communities against one another and does not reflect the more balanced approach to regeneration that councils such as mine would take if given the freedom. Secondly, the focus on large, complex and therefore risky projects with fixed budgets, coupled with high inflation, has forced councils with LUF projects to repeatedly re-evaluate what they can deliver.
On several occasions, Members will have heard me raise the plight of the Prince of Wales theatre in Cannock and the Museum of Cannock Chase in Hednesford, which are threatened with closure. The museum, based in the buildings of the former Valley colliery, is a much- loved hub for our proud mining heritage. Our theatre is playing its part in keeping our heritage alive, too, such as in the new play “The Tunnellers”, which tells the story of the heroic men of the tunnelling companies in the first world war, many of whom worked on the Cannock Chase coalfield.
A redevelopment of our theatre was to be at the heart of our LUF project, but the effects of inflation to have forced the council to scale back the project, and the theatre is now set to close. Fortunately, a fantastic group of residents have formed a community interest company with a view to taking on the Prince of Wales. I pay tribute to them and, as I stated at a public meeting that I organised last Friday, I will continue to work shoulder to shoulder with them to secure a bright, sustainable future for the theatre, and our museum, too. I very much hope that our council will use the levelling-up funds to help secure the long-term future of the theatre.
The difficulties faced by Cannock’s LUF project underline the flaws of the funding model. I am encouraged to see this Government’s commitment to replacing the dog-eat-dog bidding wars with a system based on need and what our communities want. Alongside my colleagues, I hope to see coalfield communities benefit from local growth funding, maintained at the current level at least, long-term funding that does not lead to a rapid dash to spend by arbitrary deadlines, and the genuine empowerment of local councils, which will always know their communities better than Whitehall.
Finally, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, which has done fantastic work in our communities for 25 years, was forced by the previous Government to become a self-financing charity. Despite the inevitable scaling back of its capacity to invest, its brilliant model of generating income from building new industrial units for small and medium-sized businesses in coalfield communities is enabling it to carry on its fantastic work. The CRT’s objectives and investments perfectly align with this Government’s ambition for economic growth that is spread right across the country while bearing down on the barriers that all too often affect coalfield communities more than most.
Our communities, which once powered the nation, are bursting with potential and passionate, hard-working people with a diverse range of skills and a pride in our past, strengthened by hope for the future. I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who are once again unleashing that potential for the good of the people we all represent.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. After the next speaker, the time limit on speeches will be reduced to four minutes.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), for securing this debate.
Stafford also has a proud coalfield history. Many of my constituents were miners, who dedicated their lives to the mining industry both below and above ground. Today, like many hon. Members, I want to highlight my constituents who are members of the British Coal staff superannuation scheme, the BCSSS. At the general election, I was proud to stand on a platform that recognised the injustice of the mineworkers pension scheme. Following the election, I was delighted that swift action was taken to return the investment reserve to its rightful owners.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), I believe that the BCSSS is worth reviewing. It shares many of the same characteristics as the mineworkers pension scheme and has equally deserving members. I particularly want to highlight the nearly 5,000 women in the mining industry, the majority of whom were in the BCSSS. They were often among the lowest paid in the mining industry, but their contribution should not be overlooked. They deserve the same financial security and recognition in later life as their male colleagues.
The Minister has stated that the Government will review the BCSSS after the arrangements with MPS trustees have been agreed. I am so appreciative that the Government are open to exploring the scheme, I am contacted daily by constituents, desperately asking for clarity on the process. I hope that discussions will take place soon, but more directly, I am calling for transparency on timescales so that I can reassure my constituents that this is a priority for our Government.
Josh MacAlister (Whitehaven and Workington) (Lab)
I thank all Members who were involved in bringing forward this debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee).
The coastal coalfield of west Cumbria stretches 14 miles from Whitehaven up the coast to Maryport. The coal seams in my constituency were mined for over 420 years before the last mine closed in the 1980s. The miners and collieries of west Cumbria helped to fuel Britain’s economy for centuries and sparked numerous innovations. Entire towns and communities in my constituency were built out of the coal, iron and steel industries.
Our mining history is, however, also marked by terrible tragedy. Over 1,700 men, women and children are estimated to have been killed while mining coal in Whitehaven as a result of multiple major disasters, including at the Wellington, Haig and William pits. These terrible incidents are remembered to this day by members of the Pit Crack West Cumbria group, which organises annual remembrance events and creates a community for retired miners. Let me put on record my thanks to Dave Craddock, Joseph Ritson and others who are involved in the group. I also pay tribute to Patrick Robertson and others who are working to keep the memory of Workington’s mining heritage alive with their campaign for a mining memorial in Workington, which I wholeheartedly support.
Despite those tragedies, west Cumbria remembers our mining history proudly. Having witnessed the loss not just of our mining industry but, over time, the generation of new nuclear power—despite being the site of the world’s first civil nuclear power station—that loss is felt profoundly. When not replaced, that loss does something to the psychology of a community. People yearn for work that provides a sense of shared purpose.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
The hon. Member is being generous with his time. He speaks passionately about coalmining in Cumbria and Whitehaven. He will be aware that there is a chance in Whitehaven to open a metallurgical coking mine, which would produce coke for steel and cement in this country. Will he have a word with his own Government to persuade them to open the coalmine?
Josh MacAlister
The hon. Member’s intervention was perfectly timed, because I was about to say that it is in these communities that the easy soundbites of populists can take hold. I will answer his question in time.
Our response must be economic revival in coalfield communities that can generate a renewed sense of purpose and pride. The cynical promise of the last Government to my constituents was that they would reopen a coalmine that they knew would likely never come. They told my community that the best it could hope for was jobs in a dying industry—jobs that would be tied to exporting a volatile commodity that lacked a domestic market. My job, and the Government’s job, is to put other options on the table. I have produced an industrial plan for west Cumbria, and since the election I have commissioned and updated a more detailed version of the plan, which I will publish shortly. It sets out how we might secure new nuclear, upgrade the port of Workington, and fuel new advanced manufacturing and industrial jobs in the area. The plan would revive and diversify west Cumbria’s economy and boost our sense of pride—looking to the future, not the past, for the answers that my community deserves.
Those plans stand a chance of success only because we have a Government who are committed to an industrial strategy; who are serious about new nuclear power generation, as announcements earlier today indicate; and who recognise the vital role of upgrading our ports, and have set the national wealth fund on a footing to support those initiatives. The Government’s growth mission, actively backing those kinds of plans, offers an answer to revive our coalfield communities. I look forward to continuing to work with the Government to deliver this change for my community, and invite the Minister to west Cumbria to talk not only about these plans but the opportunity that the recently announced devolution deal might offer to revive the prospect of jobs and economic opportunity in my community.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this incredibly important debate. He is a true champion for miners across our country. My constituency of North West Leicestershire has a rich mining heritage, with most of the Leicestershire pits falling in my constituency. It fills me with great pride to stand in the Chamber, giving a voice to our coalfield communities. When I look to the colleagues who are present, I am reminded of not just how significant an impact the coalmining industry had, but how much that history unites us.
For my constituency, the legacy of the coalmining industry is literally written on the map, in the name of our main urban centre, Coalville. One of the first events that I attended as a candidate was the 125-year anniversary of the 1898 Whitwick colliery mining disaster. The ceremony unveiled a memorial to the 35 miners—men and boys—who lost their lives in that disaster. I pay tribute to them in this House today: William Bradshaw, Josiah Brookes, John Davies, William Greasley, William Moon, William Percival, Lewis Smith, John Tugby, Joseph Wilson, James Wright, Henry Wyatt, James Wyatt, William Belcher, Charles Clamp, William Davies, John Elliott, Thomas Greasley, Joseph King, William Limb, John Platts, Joseph Shaw, John Skellington, James Evans, John Richards, William Bostock, John Moore, Patrick O’Mara, Thomas Timson, Thomas Beniston, Edward Edwards, Benjamin Wileman, Henry Springthorpe, Samuel Stacey, William Stacey and John Albert Gee, who was just 13 years old, and lost his life after running back into the pit to warn others of the danger.
The Whitwick historical group has been unwavering in its dedication to ensure that the disaster is not forgotten. I pay tribute to the following members of the group for their tireless work: John Ivor West Colledge, Alan Michael Wileman and the late Lesley Hale. To support our coalmining communities, we need to preserve the history of those who powered our country. While we must support our communities to protect our industrial heritage, we have to provide a great path to the future. Most of North West Leicestershire bears the hallmarks of coalmining, with pit wheels dotted far and wide throughout the constituency. Snibston has one of the last remaining examples of above-ground operational workings of a pit.
Just outside my constituency is the open-cast mine on the edge of Measham, which closed in 2016. The mine was granted permission on the condition that contributions went to the Ashby canal and a community fund. Tapping into that money created by the mine will help to develop my coalfield town across my constituency and boost economic support. The national forest has also been a key driver for transitioning the industrial landscape to beautiful countryside. It is a fact, however, that our community is poorly served by public transport, and seemingly the best way to support my coalfield community is to preserve and restore the Stephenson-built railway line locally known as Ivanhoe. Opening up the railway line will be key to ensuring greater access to jobs and education for our future.
I was incredibly pleased that, as has been mentioned, the autumn Budget overturned the injustice on the mineworkers pension scheme. In my constituency alone, that has delivered justice for more than 1,500 families, giving them an extra £29 a week. Our attention must now be on delivering the same justice for members of the BCSSS. That would make a huge difference to my community; almost 800 people would benefit from it. No miner, widow or coalfield family should feel excluded from the pension money that was earmarked for them. I know how strong the coalmining community is in my constituency, and protecting our coalmining communities will be key to future prosperity.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this valuable debate. I am here to speak on behalf of 750 of my constituents. There is a sense of injustice, confusion and fear. These are the people who were ignored and missed out when the Chancellor announced last October that mineworkers who had paid into the mineworkers pension scheme will be paid out after years of campaigning, and receive their share of the reserves that have built up over decades.
In particular, I will talk about two Bassetlaw residents: Michael Houghton, who worked for over 20 years on the frontline as a qualified mechanical engineer, responsible for hundreds of staff and millions of pounds-worth of plant and machinery, and Tony Gibson, whose grandfather and father worked in the Durham coalfield, and who began his mining career at Bevercotes, Nottinghamshire in 1975, winning an award for the best final-year apprentice in the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire areas while still working on the coalface. At the age of 23, the youngest permissible age allowed by law, he was promoted to the staff and became a deputy, a move that took him from the MPS into the BCSSS. He is 66 in three months’ time, and will be at the lower end of the BCSSS pension age. He has suffered from two cancers: bowel and prostate. Both his knees have been replaced due to working on the coalface.
Both men transferred from the MPS to the BCSSS as they progressed through their mining careers. This happened to many people unknowingly. The sense of anger and injustice is palpable. They feel ignored and forgotten, their years of hard work and service devalued. My commitment to Michael and Tony, and to the 748 who stand alongside them, is that I will do everything that I can to right the even greater injustice that they were forgotten—overlooked, while 86,000 retired miners now receive their full pension entitlement. It has impacted on the managerial staff and overmen who worked at the pit, alongside the women who worked in the canteen and in the office, and of course their widows and widowers. When I met local BCSSS members, I heard their greatest fear: the ticking clock of time. As each day goes by, members pass on and their personal fight for justice goes with them. I ask the Government to recognise the sense of urgency and act now to right this unhappy wrong.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important debate. My constituency of North Durham has a proud mining heritage. In almost every village and town there are pit wheels or miner’s tub monuments. Many community halls and schools proudly house Durham Miners’ Association and National Union of Mineworkers banners, and hundreds of my constituents proudly attend the Durham miners’ gala every year, but alongside the celebration and pride, there is loss and tragedy, with monuments to commemorate tragic incidents in which many lives were lost in the service of mining.
The most awful of those incidents in my constituency was the West Stanley pit disaster. Sunday 16 February marks the 116th anniversary of the 1909 West Stanley pit disaster, which took the lives of 168 men and boys, and was one of the worst coalmining disasters in British history. The disaster continues to have profound importance in the local community’s collective memory. The headteacher at North Durham academy talked about families who go to look at the names of their ancestors on the monument. I pay tribute to the resilience, courage and spirit shown by the community of Stanley.
Hon. Members have spoken about the mineworkers pension scheme in detail. I am delighted that 630 former miners in North Durham are receiving an uplift to their weekly pension, and fairer payments for years to come. I welcome the fact that the Government are reviewing the BCSSS, but the investment reserve must be transferred to its members as soon as possible. That is now a political decision; changes to the scheme’s rules can be made only by the Government. I hope that the Minister can say what progress has been made on the review when he winds up the debate.
The decline of the coalmining industry, from its peak in 1913 when 165,000 men and boys worked in Durham’s 304 mines, was long and slow. That decline took place over a long period, and so did the economic damage that came with the closure of the mines. One of the most tragic policies to exacerbate the suffering of the communities in County Durham was the concept of category D villages; was a deliberate decision not to invest in them, and to run them down. Quite a few villages in my constituency were condemned, in public policy terms, in that way, and local people fought for the survival of their communities. My fundamental concern is that even now, so long after the closure of the last mine in Sacriston in my constituency in the 1980s, there has been very little systematic repurposing, economically, in those areas. Levels of poverty and deprivation are still far too high. Some of the economic activity that was intended to replace coalmining has in turn been shut down, such as the Ever Ready factory at Tanfield Lea.
I pay tribute to the CRT for the excellent work it does in communities like mine, supporting jobs and local economic growth. It supports 14 grassroots voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations in North Durham. It has submitted a proposal to the Government for more capital funding to help it expand its vital work over the next five years. I hope the Government will respond positively.
As I said in my maiden speech, there is a need for strategic economic regeneration, and a new economic purpose for regions like mine, and that requires the Government to think about economic growth that is focused on the regions that most need high-quality new jobs. They can do that through investment, infrastructure and procurement decisions, and that needs a joined-up approach across the whole of Government. I hope the Minister will take that into account.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing the debate. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for all the hard work he does for our coalfield communities.
My now older children groan whenever I mention the industrial revolution. They grew up hearing about it, because I always thought it was very important for them to understand their place. I could not think of a better place to raise them than the constituency of Leigh and Atherton. Its rich history is rooted in coalmining and textile manufacturing. That is probably one of the reasons why, between the times when I have been elected, I stayed in Leigh and regenerated one of our redbrick giants, Leigh Spinners Mill, to create a space for businesses and enterprises to thrive. If we are talking about regeneration, preserving historical structures is vital. They form part of our identify and help us to maintain a connection with the past.
However, there is no denying the impact of decline and the loss of industry on our towns. Industries have not been replaced, and communities are still grappling with the consequences. Our high streets, once bustling, are now burdened with vacant, decaying buildings with absentee landlords. Our road networks, originally designed around our factories and mills, struggle under the weight of increasing traffic and congestion.
As the chair of the Labour MPs group on local growth funding, I work alongside colleagues from across England, Scotland and Wales, many of whom represent some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. We are firmly committed to supporting the Government’s plans to reform local growth funding, especially after the failure of the previous Government’s policy. The Labour MPs group, in collaboration with the Industrial Communities Alliance, presented an ambition statement, which outlined key proposals for the upcoming spending review. Among the proposals is a call for funding allocation formulas that more accurately reflect the true needs of our communities, and a call for greater devolution of power to local leaders. After all, we have already made significant strides with our Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, and the long-awaited bus reforms.
The proposals are relevant not just to former coalfield areas like mine; they speak to all disadvantaged parts of our nation. Funding must be allocated fairly and based on need, not through a competitive bidding process that disproportionately benefits already affluent areas. Local growth funding must have one clear and overarching focus: economic development, regeneration and connectivity. I am under no illusion that a large financial institution will rock up to Leigh and create thousands of jobs—that is not going to happen—so how do we focus on connecting to areas where growth is happening, and how can we better support the businesses that we already have in our towns?
I am fully committed to the Government’s growth strategy, and am grateful that we now have a Government who are bold in their ambition to get this country working again. The Government have a unique opportunity to correct past injustices, invest in our future and build prosperous new industrial areas.
Elaine Stewart (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this most important debate. First, I need to declare my interests: I am a former communities manager at the Coalfields Regeneration Trust in Scotland, and I am the proud daughter of a miner and a canteen worker who worked in the pits from an early age, Ellen and John Orr.
I am delighted that support for coalfield communities is on the agenda again in this House. Those communities, once thriving hubs of industry, have faced decades of decline and hardship since the rapid closure of mines in the mid-80s. They are the communities that we live in and represent. Despite the resilience and determination of the people in these areas, the lack of meaningful action from previous Governments has left them struggling to rebuild and prosper. Throughout that time, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust has been a beacon of hope. Over the past 25 years, it has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in community projects. However, funding has significantly diminished in recent years in Scotland and across the country. Reviving our former coalfield sites means reinstating the support that the Conservatives took away, and increasing the support that the SNP is cutting yearly.
The Labour Government rightly highlight the importance of the growth agenda. That growth needs to be for everyone, everywhere. I urge the Government to look at the CRT’s investment plans. They are about investing to reverse the left-behind legacy in coalfield communities. One challenge is poor health. People living in coalfield communities still die one year earlier than the national average, and three years earlier than they would if they lived in south-east England. Economic inactivity is also an issue, with 600,000 people in the coalfield areas claiming disability living allowance or personal independence payment. Those figures are significantly higher than the national average. There is a brain drain from coalfield communities; many young people move away to study and never return.
The situation is particularly dire in areas of my constituency. The numbers sadly speak for themselves. In the coalfield communities of Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, there are only 41 jobs per 100 residents of working age, and one in four people claim out-of- work benefits. One in 13 claim the personal independence payment or disability living allowance, and one in three have no qualifications. One in 12 people are in bad or very bad health. However, every week, I see at first hand the positive impact that the Coalfields Regeneration Trust has in my community; for example, it is delivering and developing after-school and breakfast clubs in Drongan to address child poverty and support families. It is also looking to replicate that in a small coalfield village called Dalrymple.
Much more needs to be done, with the support of the UK Government. I will work with colleagues to make the case to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for increased funding for projects that focus on our community wealth-building model. Unlike previous Governments, we need to leave a lasting and positive legacy for our coalfield communities. We need to end the left-behind legacy once and for all.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Mining has long been deeply woven into the practical and cultural fabric of people’s lives in Chesterfield, as it has in all mining communities. I need only look out of the window of the Labour club where I base my constituency office to be confronted with the former Derbyshire Miners’ Association offices, and the statues of Chesterfield’s first two miner MPs. Indeed, until the election of Tony Benn in 1984, every Member of Parliament for Chesterfield in the 20th century had been a former collier.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) spoke about the educational role of the National Union of Mineworkers. That is one of the many legacies that have been lost as coalmining has disappeared. The union had a real commitment to making sure that its members were educated to the highest standards.
Evidence of mining in Chesterfield and Derbyshire ranges from tragic memorials to miners lost in our various tragedies to the dwindling number of miners’ welfare clubs and former offices on Saltergate. They serve as a reminder of the past—a window into a time when the region was dominated by the pits and the opportunities that they provided. It is important, however, that this debate also focuses on the future for coalmining areas, and on investments, such as the investment in junction 29A secured by my former colleague Dennis Skinner. It means that more people are now employed on the old Markham pit site than ever worked underground there.
This timely debate reminds us that the former coalfield areas, cruelly put out of use by the industrial vandalism of the Thatcher Government, have never been satisfactorily repurposed in any strategic way by subsequent Governments. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust recently reflected on the impact on health, not just for those with an industrial legacy, but for the one in five people in my constituency who are out of work due to long-term sickness. The same proportion have no formal qualifications. Those statistics paint a picture of what can happen when industry retreats from an area and no plan is made for what happens next.
I have heard former Conservative MPs talking about a benefits culture, but who created that? It was, of course, the Thatcher Government, putting all those miners out of work and expecting them to go on to incapacity benefit. The coalfields are fighting back, however. I pay tribute to John Burrows, the former Derbyshire NUM president and leader of Chesterfield borough council for six years, and his successor, Tricia Gilby. They were successful in attracting £25 million in town deal funds from the previous Government, and the dedication and success of the Staveley town deal board, of which I have been a proud member for the last five years, has brought about welcome investment that will support Staveley to support itself through the regeneration that we need.
However, I agree with colleagues that what we need is not occasional little pots of money, but a long-term strategic plan for re-energising coalfield communities. They are very different from cities, which Governments tend to find it easier to get investment into. We desperately need the new Government’s industrial strategy to speak to the needs of constituents like mine, and to set out a thought-through plan for coalfield communities.
I see a real opportunity for coalfields to be at the vanguard of the green revolution. The Government’s “clean power by ’30” mission alone will unlock £40 billion of investment a year and create thousands of skilled jobs. The coalfields have kept the lights on in this country over the last century, and there is so much opportunity for them to be at the forefront of doing that again. The people of Chesterfield have a proud history of working hard to keep the lights on, and they can keep that noble tradition going.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for arranging this debate. We share an office so I know how important this issue is to him and how frequently he speaks about the need for regeneration in coalfield communities—that is, when he is not arguing with my staff about how old he looks. [Laughter.]
Newdigate, Keresley, Baddesley, Birch Coppice and Daw Mill collieries provided jobs for many in my community until they closed. I am proud to have grown up and lived in a coalfield community that retains many reminders of its mining history. For many years I played tennis at the Grove in Atherstone, which was a former miners’ welfare club. I have also walked through the Miners’ Welfare Park in Bedworth and taken part in the weekly parkrun.
My grandfather was a miner and like many other mineworkers in the constituency, he lived in Dordon, which started off as just a row of houses until Birch Coppice pit opened. Coal mines brought opportunity to countless people, and many of my constituents worked hard underground in dangerous conditions throughout their lives. It was therefore crucial they got the pension they were entitled to. Dealing with the injustice of the mineworkers’ pension scheme means that 1,043 former mineworkers in my constituency now have the pensions they deserve. We must do the same for those members of the BCSSS, such as the 93-year-old former miner who called my office today.
Like many other coalfield communities, my constituency is still suffering from deprivation that was intensified by the mines closing. The “State of the Coalfields” report reveals that there are substantially fewer jobs in former coalfields than in most other parts of the country. Unfortunately, that is true in my constituency too, with only 63 jobs per 100 residents of working age. The problems that causes cannot be overstated. One in 16 people are in bad or very bad health, one in five are economically inactive due to long-term sickness and one in four have no qualifications.
By working with local businesses and schools, I am determined to break that cycle and to ensure that people in my area have local employment opportunities and leave school with qualifications that allow them to take up those opportunities. Otherwise, my constituency will continue to follow the same pattern that many other coalfield communities face, where people must leave the constituency for work and our towns and high streets suffer as a result. I am therefore here today to urge the Government to take further action to tackle the disadvantages and worklessness faced by coalfield communities, and to ensure that we hold ourselves to our promise to deliver the opportunities that our young people desperately need.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this debate and my many hon. Friends for their outstanding contributions this afternoon.
Clackmannanshire has a proud mining heritage and, like so many other places around the UK, the pit was at the very heart of many local communities. It was somewhere that was more than a workplace; it was a generational employer where comradeship and trust were the things that brave workers, who went underground and put themselves in danger to keep the country warm and moving, relied on. I am proud that the Government announced that the entirety of the mineworkers’ pension scheme would be handed over to ex-coalminers and their families—hundreds of my constituents will benefit—and the positive noises coming from Ministers about the BCSSS are welcome.
Clackmannanshire is like other heartlands that have been deindustrialised; the economic and social consequences of industry closing 40-odd years ago are still being felt today. Our young people face the challenge of finding local employment of the kind that will pay a wage that will allow them to contribute to the economy, to participate in society, and one day, perhaps, to buy a house and raise a family in comfort. Naturally, that being the case, there has been an exodus of young people, meaning that talent and potential leave local communities.
My inbox tells the tale of the social devastation that is commonplace in deindustrialised areas. Addiction issues, health problems, inadequate transport links, high suicide rates and people relying on emergency food parcels just to survive all point to Government failure to tackle deindustrialisation and the inequalities that it produces. If the 1980s and 1990s were the decades in which industry and manufacturing left communities like mine, the 2010s were the period when austerity ruled. Austerity was an assault on the poorest, the most disadvantaged and the most vulnerable in our society. Now we see reductions in opportunity, negative social mobility, low-wage employment, the gig economy, communities across the country ravaged as leisure centres close, and an unrelenting attack on the public services that are the very fabric of our communities. Then, of course, we had a pandemic whose true death toll can never be accurately calculated. Inequality has become even worse because of covid, and inequality is a very real killer.
Yesterday my constituency was yet again the victim of industry leaving, when the workers at the Grangemouth refinery were served their redundancy notices. On site, more than 400 highly skilled workers will lose their jobs, and when we factor in the wider supply chain, there will be nearly 3,000 job losses. Like the coal industry, a vital energy creator will be lost forever. A different decade, a different Government; nevertheless, strikingly similar social consequences will be the result.
Let me finish on a more positive note. With a capital investment of £50 million over five years, the Government have the chance to give the Coalfields Regeneration Trust an opportunity to help to partly reindustrialise coalfields communities that would create thousands of jobs. Our communities need to be invested in, not forgotten and consigned to history as somewhere that used to have industry. Our communities deserve an awful lot more than that.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Last weekend when I was out door-knocking in Eckington, one gentleman told me of his frustration with politics and his disbelief that it would ever achieve anything for him. I have to admit that I am sometimes frustrated by this attitude, because I do not believe that the answer is never to try, but I was none the less mulling over exactly why he had given up so much.
Also last weekend, I went to an exhibition and talk organised by women to show what they had done to support the miners. Like many members of my generation who grew up after the strikes, I was aware of them but, as with so much working-class history, we were never taught about them at school. It was therefore a huge privilege to hear Janet and Kate give such a fascinating talk about the huge role that they had played, and about the sheer strength of the mining community who had fought so hard to support each other during this period. How little they had, but how much they shared!
It is clear that the roots of my constituent’s apathy do not lie just in the past 14 years of Conservative-imposed national decline, but go all the way back to the miners’ strikes, when the British Government said, “We will take your jobs away and there is nothing you can do about it. Get on your bike, we are not interested, you are on your own.” If the Government in Westminster did that to you, why would you ever look at them again? The fact is that the closure of the mines did not just remove employment, but showed huge contempt for areas such as North East Derbyshire, and ripped the heart out of the social cohesion of communities. We in Labour knew when we came in that we had to deliver for those communities. One of their biggest champions was the late John Prescott, and I applaud his work in establishing the Coalfield Task Force and then the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, which has been doing excellent work ever since.
However, despite the general rise in living standards that we delivered, along with an improvement in the NHS and a huge push for aspiration, we could not close the gap between our coalfield communities and other places, and what work we did achieve was rapidly slashed by the coalition Government and many Tory Governments after that. Let me just say, as an aside, how disappointing it is, when I see so many of my Labour colleagues in the Chamber, to note how few representatives of the Conservative party are present—and how few representatives of smaller parties such as Reform, who profess to care.
My message to my constituent in Eckington, and to everyone else, is that I am not going to give up fighting for them and for the step change in opportunity that is so desperately needed in North East Derbyshire, and I know that I have hundreds of colleagues in the Labour party with me in that fight. In communities like mine, we do not need charity; we just need the tools to build our own future, and then we will just get on and do it. We need infrastructure so that we can access jobs, customers, markets and education. That is why I am campaigning for the Staveley bypass to better connect Staveley, Barrow Hill and Mastin Moor. That is why I am campaigning for more buses and better buses, so that so people in Killamarsh can get to work on time when work starts at 8 am—remarkably, the first bus is too late for that. That is why I am campaigning to make better use of our existing rail links, so that Dronfield, a town of 20,000, does not just have one train an hour to Sheffield. It is a 10-minute train ride, and we have one train an hour—it is ridiculous. That is why I am campaigning to explore bringing light rail back to communities across North East Derbyshire, to connect us from Clay Cross and Killamarsh to places such as Chesterfield and Sheffield.
It is about the social infrastructure that we have lost as well. We need youth facilities, to show early on that our Government care about young people. We need support for our high streets, so that they can be the heart of our communities. We need to crack down on petty crime and antisocial behaviour, so that we can feel safe. We need our rural roads to be safer, so that we do not see families devastated by loss.
Underlying this is the vital work that the Government have already started on fixing our NHS, improving our schools and growing our economy. For my constituents in North East Derbyshire, I am fighting for our Government to give them the tools they need, and we will put in the hard work together to build a better future. We have done it before, and I know we will do it again.
Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)
I was very pleased to support the application from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) to secure today’s debate, and I congratulate him on doing so.
My constituency is home to the proud former coalfield communities of Astley and Mosley Common, which I share with my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt), with other many parts of my constituency also historically linked to the mining industry. For generations, the Astley Green and Mosley Common collieries were cornerstones of the local area, providing thousands of jobs, economic stability and a focal point for the community. The local mineworkers were quite rightly respected for the tough, dangerous and essential work they did day after day down the pit.
I pay tribute to the great work carried out by the volunteers who run the Lancashire Mining Museum in my constituency, which I have had the pleasure of visiting on a number of occasions. Occupying the old Astley Green colliery site, the museum illustrates just how central the mining legacy is to the area’s identity. We must ensure that the sacrifices made by mineworkers and their communities to power this country are never forgotten.
The collieries in my constituency were closed more than 50 years ago. However, the impact on the local area lingers today. Former coalfield communities still suffer from a shortage of good-quality jobs, higher levels of deprivation and worse health outcomes. The “State of the Coalfields 2024” report showed that on average, hourly earnings in the former coalfields are still 6% to 7% below the GB average, and it found that the overall out-of-work claimant rate was 7 percentage points above that of south-east England. It is clear that the coalfields face a shared set of structural issues and challenges.
After 14 years of undelivered promises on regional inequality from the party opposite—although there are not many of them opposite us at the moment—our coalfield communities will now finally benefit from a Government who genuinely want to level them up. Legislation such as the Employment Rights Bill will positively impact our former coalfields, making work pay by delivering the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. I welcome the Government’s decision in the autumn Budget regarding the mineworkers pension scheme—a long-overdue decision that will see retired miners finally get the money they deserve. However, more can and should be done. The reinstatement of Government funds to the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, in support of their community wealth-building model, would provide much-needed stimulus to promote local growth, feeding into this Labour Government’s mission to secure growth and deliver rising living standards for working people.
To support our coalfield communities in the future, we must ensure we do not forget their shared past. There are many lessons to be learned from their experiences, particularly as we build the green industries of the future. Never again should communities be neglected and abandoned by the Government as they were in the 1980s. Adapting industries to the future can take many forms. My constituency is home to the iconic Eccles protector lamp. Despite no longer having mines, protector lamps are still produced in my constituency and, repurposed, for more than 25 years they have carried the Olympic flame—traditional skills, repurposed and put to continuing work.
The scars left by pit closures have never fully been addressed. Their damaging legacy continues to reverberate to this day. The need for new and continued support from our Government is clear. That is the least our proud coalfield towns deserve.
Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)
I declare my interest as a voluntary director of a nursery that is run from a venue supported by the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. It is a good example of the wider impact of investment in our coalfields. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important debate, and for all his hard work to drive this issue forward.
Nuneaton’s first shafts were sunk in the 1850s, and the last pit, Daw Mill, closed in 2016 after 160 years of service—of men going into the darkness to keep the lights of the nation on and the army of people working around them to support them and the industry. I know that they are delighted by this new Government’s rapid progress on resolving the disputes over the mineworkers pension scheme, and very much look forward to similar progress and updates from the Minister on the British Coal staff superannuation scheme.
I am proud to live in a coal village. It is a strong and vibrant community, and my constituents’ understanding of the sacrifice made by so many is embedded in our towns’ collective history and consciousness. The pit closures left a vacuum and a legacy of social, economic and health challenges which to this day have an incredible, indelible impact on my constituency.
The people of Nuneaton earn around £100 a week less than our neighbours and the national average. People in Nuneaton die younger and live less healthy lives, and children in Nuneaton leave school less qualified. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows similar trends to those mentioned by other colleagues: our young people choose to leave Nuneaton, and the devastating impacts of poverty are still felt by far too many families and children. These challenges are compounded by complex historical infrastructure decline. It has taken years of fighting to ensure that Daw Mill’s restoration order will be delivered.
Issues such as shared sewers and drains, land contamination and unadopted roads mar our beautiful villages and estates, eroding pride and leaving us feeling forgotten and unloved. Pat from New Arley has been almost housebound for years. She has to be carried on to the pavement because the unadopted service roads—the Arley backs—by her door are in such a poor state that it is dangerous for her to use her wheelchair and scooter. She has difficulty attending hospital appointments or seeing friends. These issues have been present for years, and sticking-plaster investment and quick wins will not solve them. Rectifying the widespread disrepair is no quick fix.
These abandoned service roads invite antisocial behaviour, drugs and theft. They are relics of a forgotten time when we had weekly coal deliveries, and they cause many issues and lengthy delays for our utilities. Fixing water leaks, overhead cables and supplies takes much longer than it should because of complexity; it can take days just to identify who is responsible for the land and to gain access. More support is needed to rebuild complex capital programmes and to work with highways authorities to adopt and maintain these areas, to prevent them from becoming forgotten wastelands. Yet new estates with similar issues and unadopted roads continue to be built.
We appreciate the investment we have seen from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust in Nuneaton, which has supported projects like the one to tackle long-term health issues by installing community cardiac facilities in Camp Hill. The power of our community and the ability to thrive in our coalfield communities is dependent on support nationally.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)
I am proud to represent several former coalmining communities. Abercraf, Cwmtwrch, Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Ystradgynlais, Pontardawe and Rhos are just a few of the proud former mining communities that I represent. I therefore thank the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this debate.
Across Wales, nearly 800,000 people—about a third of the population—live in former coalmining towns and villages, and I am very proud to come from a Welsh mining family. I will never forget my grandfather taking me to see his father’s grave in Maesteg cemetery. His father died aged 34 after working up to his waist in ice-cold water for several hours. The men and women of our coalfield communities made huge sacrifices to power this country, so it is right that we are discussing the future of their communities today.
To cut a long story short, Welsh mining communities have been left behind by successive Governments. Margaret Thatcher’s policies—the closure of our major industry in Wales and the failure to replace it with anything else—have left lasting scars. It is not hard to see why people in south Wales wonder whether their Governments are listening to them. This Parliament is an open goal for the Government to repair the damage done by Thatcherism. The Conservative party squandered many of its 13 years in power, carrying on with a London-centric banker-friendly form of growth that means younger generations have to leave for the cities, as my mum did 30 years ago. This Government must not repeat the mistake.
Across the former south Wales coalfields, the economic reality is dire. Wages are lower than the national average, job growth is sluggish and unemployment remains high. In fact, in the south Wales coalfields, there are just 46 jobs for every 100 working-age people. Nearly 800,000 people—a third of the entire population of Wales—live in those areas, which is why they are so important to the Welsh economy. Wales is £10,000 a head poorer than England, and fixing our former coalmining communities is key to fixing the Welsh economy. Coalfield communities deserve to be at the forefront of economic renewal. People in coalfield communities want the Government to show them that they matter. They are desperate for change.
With a splintering geopolitical order, we need a strong manufacturing base to keep ourselves safe, and there are many excellent manufacturing companies in my constituency. Recently, those from one such company that makes vintage motorcycle parts came to see me. They are currently having big problems exporting those parts to Europe, which is directly affecting the business and employment in my constituency. That is why it is so important that the Government do everything they can to repair our trading relationships with the European Union.
I am concerned that after years of failed promises from the Conservative Government to level up, the very idea of levelling up seems absent from Labour’s plans. Just last week, the Chancellor announced infrastructure projects in the south-east of England, while the Swansea valley, which I represent, has been left off the map for the south Wales metro project. It will be almost the only valley in south Wales not to have a trainline. The people of the Swansea valley deserve to have a railway line again too. It is time we invest properly in these communities and give them the opportunity to thrive once again.
I know from first-hand experience that communities in the coalfields are resilient and industrious. There are unique opportunities opening up to bring back jobs to our area. Let us take the Global Centre for Rail Excellence in Onllwyn, which straddles my constituency. That technology testing facility, located on the site of a former coalmine, could bring new jobs and manufacturing back to the Swansea valley, but it needs the Government, energy and money behind it. Public services, especially healthcare, also need urgent attention. The health impacts of mining have left a lasting legacy. We must ensure that these communities receive the care they need as we work toward a more sustainable future.
While the economic issues facing these communities are vast, many local residents also live with a distinct fear. In Wales and across the UK, the Aberfan tragedy of 1966 is seared into the collective memory of our nation, yet for many communities across south Wales the risk remains. Coal tips across the UK are still in need of remediation. The reality is that the risk of tip collapses is increasing due to climate change and more frequent, intense rainfall. In my own constituency, Godre’rgraig primary school near Pontardawe was forced to close in 2019 due to fears of a landslide. The children are still being taught in temporary cabins in a car park, which is completely unacceptable.
Many communities in my constituency feel similarly abandoned. In Gwaun Cae Gurwen, residents of Twynrefail place have been fighting for years for Neath Port Talbot council to adopt their road, but that has not happened. The road is in such a bad condition that the residents are concerned that they will barely reach their own front doors. Although I was glad that Labour allocated £25 million in funding during the autumn Budget to help remediate coal tips in Wales, it is a far cry from the over £600 million that the Welsh Government have said will be needed to make these tips safe for future generations.
Finally, I wish to turn to the issue of miners’ pensions. The British Coal staff superannuation scheme currently has more than 45,000 members across the UK, as many Members have already mentioned, including 4,000 in Wales and 146 in my constituency. Unlike their former colleagues in the mineworkers pension scheme, members of the BCSSS did not have their pensions unfrozen by the Government in the Budget. For many of these former miners, time is running out. Six miners in the BCSSS die every day due to health complications related to mining. Many fear that they will not live to see a resolution to this injustice. That is why the Government must act quickly; time is not with the miners or their families. Will the Minister confirm today when the Government will give these miners and their families the pensions that they worked for?
If the UK Government want to address inequality and prompt economic recovery across south Wales, they must start by investing in coalfield communities. Families such as mine have suffered the consequences of communities being left behind. We cannot afford to let this continue for future generations. Our communities in south Wales are strong, resilient and ready to succeed—they just need the opportunity to do so.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this debate. The House will know that Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner is not a coalfields constituency. Our mining tradition is far older. It goes back to the days of chalk. Its legacy today is seen in the impact of sinkholes in the local area.
Today’s debate is very much focused on the lasting legacy and impact of an era when coal was king. Although I do not represent a coalfields constituency, I certainly grew up in one. The old men with the blue scars and the hacking coughs from emphysema—or pneumoconiosis, as we now know it to be—were the background to my childhood. I feel lucky that I had a great-grandfather who, unlike many miners, lived a very long life. He started working in a pit at Cwmcarn at the age of 12 and carried on to the age of 70. He shared the impact of things such as the Universal Colliery disaster in Senghenydd on his life and the community in which he lived and grew up, and of seeing his brother die after being buried in a rockfall.
Although the industry created the enormous economic opportunities that have been described by many Members, we know that the environment was very harsh and difficult, and as we recognise in our many debates about climate change and the transition to net zero, it created a product that, although valuable and effective at generating energy, is enormously polluting.
Mr Perkins
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way. We have just had a very good debate, but it must be a considerable embarrassment to him that not a single Member of His Majesty’s Opposition thought that it was worthwhile attending to make a substantive speech. I appreciate that he is not a coalfield MP, and I appreciate that not many Conservative Members are, but does he not think that, if the Conservatives are serious about being ready to represent the whole country again, we should be hearing from some of their MPs in a debate such as this?
David Simmonds
As we see in all the debates that we have in this House, Members will attend to represent the interests of their communities and constituencies. I know that the same point has been made in the past about the lack of Members of Parliament from certain parties attending debates on farming and things such as that. We need to recognise that the central focus of this debate is on the historical impact and the way that we deal with that legacy. As the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, there are, to my regret, not many Conservative Members of Parliament who are dealing with those issues in their constituencies. That is a political fact. However, we will see them very active on issues that directly impact their constituencies on a daily basis.
Adam Jogee
I gently say to the shadow Minister that any party that seeks to lead our United Kingdom should be interested in, and committed to, issues that affect people across the UK. Irrespective of whether Members have particular challenges in their constituencies, more of the shadow Minister’s colleagues should have been here.
David Simmonds
I am sure the Government will wish to press that point.
In summing up, it is important, first, to recognise the impact that the end of the use of coal in British industry and energy generation has had; and secondly, to draw out of that history some lessons for what is often termed the just transition—the intended end of oil and gas as a significant player in our energy industries of the future. When I was growing up, the Thatcher Government’s engagement on investment was largely with the European Economic Community. I saw the roads being built and the blue flags appearing all over as the Government sought to bring in infrastructure investment to open up places like Cwmcarn—a valley off a valley, which is a challenge to access—and communities of coal board houses, where my sister and her husband still live to this day, so that people could access the growing industries and employment opportunities of the future. The Government at that time recognised that the infrastructure to create that access would be vital.
Grahame Morris
I must take issue with that. I served a number of years on Easington district council, and we were twinned with a similar mining area in North Rhine- Westphalia in Germany. When the Carl Alexander mine near Baesweiler closed, the local authority and the miners were given two years’ notice, grants were made available through the federal, local and national Government to retain the miners, and new industrial estates were built. It is interesting to compare that with what happened when our pits closed in Easington, Murton, South Hetton, Horden and Blackhall—we found out on the Friday that the pit was closing on the Monday, and thousands of men lost their jobs.
David Simmonds
I remember those debates, of course, as the backdrop to my experiences growing up, along with the miners’ strike and the various interventions that occurred. There is an opportunity—I will put it this way—to learn lessons from that and ensure that the new Government’s approach and future Governments’ approaches take those into account and handle those situations better.
Luke Akehurst
If we could move forward from the events of the 1980s, in the last Parliament, the Conservative Benches were full of Members representing former mining constituencies, including three of the constituencies in County Durham. Perhaps the reason those Members were not returned at the last general election was that Government’s sorry failure to deliver the levelling up they promised. Can the shadow Minister in any way defend the failure to economically regenerate mining areas that in 2019 had Conservative MPs for the first time?
David Simmonds
I am sure that all those former Members of Parliament, and, indeed, some of their Labour predecessors, would also be happy to answer for the work they did, some of which was successful and some of which was not, to bring new jobs, opportunities and educational chances to those communities. There are many things we can debate that have brought benefits to those communities. If we examine the statistics in the Library briefing on the impact and legacy in different coalfields around the UK, we see quite a different picture. There are some places where those interventions—based on the statistics—appear to have been effective because there are few, if any, super output areas listed that remain affected by those issues of poverty and ill health today, and there are other areas that have struggled to move on. We all know and understand why that is in some places. If the economy of an area has long been based on mining and natural resource, and there is no other direct employment opportunity there, something different needs to be found, and many Members have referred to the impact of that. I have touched on infra- structure as one element.
Rachel Taylor
An observation I have made as I have listened to the hon. Gentleman is that not one single Member of his party stood up for the thousands of pensioners who were not given the justice they deserve in the mineworkers pension scheme or the BCSSS. His party claims to stand up for pensioners, and yet it did nothing and said nothing for those mining pensioners who deserved a better deal.
David Simmonds
If the hon. Lady refers to Hansard for debates on these matters in previous Parliaments, she will find those points being raised by Members from across the House—rightly so—with a view to moving the debate on to the decisions that have been made today.
The Clapham review of the effectiveness of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust was a key opportunity to consider the role that local government in particular plays in the regeneration of our coalfields. Clearly, that challenge exists at a number of levels. The hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) referenced the large number of spoil heaps—some of which I can see from the garden of my parents’ house. A number of local authorities—and Governments, through local authorities —have sought to address that through planting and remediation to stabilise their spoil tips, for example, but there is still a job to do. As the years go by and the industries that produce those spoil tips become historical, we know that we must effectively address the risks that they continue to pose.
To conclude my remarks, I turn to the importance of learning from the work that the Coalfields Regeneration Trust undertook and from the points that many Members of all parties have made in debates about these issues over many years. We know that we are about to embark on a process. The UK has made progress in the decarbonisation of our economy since the early 1990s, when, as a leading nation, we began the major shift away from coal. In the 1950s, coal produced most of our energy; today, it contributes to none—our last coal-fired power station recently closed.
The Trades Union Congress recently passed a motion highlighting that 30,000 jobs were at risk in the oil and gas industry. We talk about the just transition—Labour Members are, in my view, justified in raising the problems that process has created—but we must lay the groundwork for it. I remember interventions during the miners’ strike, such as the distribution at my school of the EEC butter mountain. That is not an example of an effective economic intervention to address the needs of people in difficulty. If we are to have a just transition away from fossil fuels in the future, we must learn from the past mistakes of all Governments in respect of coalfields, and incorporate the lessons into effective policy for a better future for all affected communities.
The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon)
I thank all Members for a really thoughtful debate. When Members speak about their constituencies in the way they have today, we get a sense of the pride of place. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to it. The level of interest in the debate, and the fact that two time limits on speeches have been introduced, speaks volumes.
I know from my own experience of growing up in and representing a constituency with a fierce and proud industrial past, built on the back of the coal that fired it, just how much pride and sense of belonging comes with that. They were jobs—of course they were—but they were more than that; they were about people and place. That identity has stayed with the generations that have come since.
Between 1985 and 1997, the closure of 150 collieries resulted in approximately 250,000 job losses. That was not just about employment; those closures meant the loss of the vital social facilities that the National Coal Board and the trade unions had provided for those communities. That is why the Government are taking concrete action to support coalfield communities and secure the future prosperity of former mining communities while honouring their remarkable heritage.
We really got a sense of that in the debate. My hon. Friends the Members for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery), for Ossett and Denby Dale (Jade Botterill) and for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) spoke about community and solidarity, as well as about heritage. It is that sense of belonging that we need to respect. Quite often—I hear this strongly when I go around the country—people feel not just that Parliament is a million miles away, but that the next town is a million miles away. The isolation that people often feel economically, socially and politically is profound, and we must do far more to meet that challenge.
This Government’s defining mission is growth, and we are determined that our coalfield communities are central to it. That is why we are working in partnership to invest in and empower the nation’s coalfields, so that they can kick-start growth in their area and increase living standards for working people. We have already announced planning reforms, devolution, our plans to make work pay, and settlements to fix the foundations of local government. That will also help coalfields to build their future and realise their full potential.
Michael Wheeler
Does the Minister agree that economic growth is only meaningful if it takes everyone in every community with it and people in every town feel the benefits, including the towns that we have talked about today?
Jim McMahon
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He is sat next to my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt); they are both Greater Manchester MPs, and we are all very proud of Greater Manchester. We all see the red dots on the skyline of Manchattan—as we call it, very proudly—and the booming city centre that is Manchester. However, the truth is that unless the social opportunities are there and people have the confidence and skills to compete in that new market that is emerging, it can feel a million miles away. That is really important, and we do see that.
A lot has been said about the mineworkers pension scheme. We recognise that for too long, our coalfield communities have been an afterthought, which is why this Government have reversed those historic injustices by transferring £1.5 billion to mineworkers pensions. Our manifesto also promised that the truth of Orgreave would come to light. The BCSSS was also mentioned, and I can say that the Minister for trade is taking that issue up with the urgency that Members have called for in this House. It was covered in a lot of detail by my hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw (Jo White), for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth), for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling). They all spoke, seriously and rightly, about the urgency that is required to resolve this issue. This Government have heard that message loud and clear, and I know that Ministers in other places are working on that.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance on the BCSSS. Before he moves off the issue of funding for growth, a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) and for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Elaine Stewart), raised the issues of fair funding and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust’s model for community wealth building. It is seeking a relatively modest £500 million in capital investment spread over five years, which it believes could create half a million square feet of new industrial space. Is the Minister minded to look at that proposal favourably?
Jim McMahon
We are absolutely committed to ensuring that every part of the country realises its full potential. Let us be clear: everybody in every part of the country has potential, but far too often, that potential is not met by opportunity. We will look at any projects and measures that aim to do what my hon. Friend has described in the coalfields to ensure that potential is met, and I can certainly take up that point and maybe follow up in writing.
The proud history of our coalfield communities must be matched with a proud future. Late last year, we published the English devolution White Paper, and a Bill will follow. That White Paper includes a reformed vision for the long-term plan for towns, which the autumn Budget confirmed will be retained and reformed as part of our regeneration programme. We are proud that through that plan, coalfield communities from Newark-on-Trent to Wrexham will receive a package of up to £20 million in funding and support. Furthermore, this Government are working with mayors where they are to produce local growth plans across their city regions, which sit alongside local coalfield communities, because we recognise that those are vital to our collective economic future.
That regeneration, and the long-term investment and co-ordination that are needed, were referenced by my hon. Friends the Members for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), for Leigh and Atherton, for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Elaine Stewart), for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Kenneth Stevenson). They recognise that of course, we can be proud of the history of our place—we all are—but the future is important too, and if we do not put the building blocks in place to rebuild industry and pride, we will miss a trick.
As was referenced earlier, no working-class person is waiting for a handout, but we absolutely deserve a hand up. We are sick and tired of being told to wait our turn, to behave and stand in line and to know our place, hoping that somehow, tomorrow, our turn may just come. Lesson after lesson and generation after generation shows that, for all those promises, it never comes. We cannot have power, wealth and opportunity constantly being hoarded by the centre, to the exclusion of our communities that are impacted by it.
That is why devolution is so important. If we do not break away from the centralising model of command and control, and the hoarding of power and opportunity, we will never make progress with our economy, society or political power in this country. This week, we are proud to be expanding the devolution priority programme, through which more mayors will be created, with the powers and the tools that they will need, as local leaders, to do what is right for their area. They will not have to come cap in hand to central Government, in constant, wasteful bidding wars.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones), I pay tribute to the late John Prescott, a working-class voice in politics. He took up that charge—that fight—and we all recognise the work that he did. Members of the House have our assurance that we stand with our coalfield communities and the excellent Members of Parliament who have spoken today.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Government support for coalfield communities.
Financial Education
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered financial education.
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people. Many members of that august body are on the Benches today, and it is worth pointing out that it is the second-largest all-party parliamentary group in Parliament, beaten only by that on the communal love for beer. There is a reason why the APPG on financial education is so popular: financial education is a profoundly important topic that affects the lives and life chances of our communities right across the country.
We cannot sugar-coat this: we are in a mess when it comes to financial education and financial literacy in our economy and our society, and we have known that for ages. This is going back a few years, I accept, but one of the reasons why I was first drawn to this topic is that I did not receive any lessons on personal finance at all during the whole of my education. In fact, it is true to say that I have been taught considerably more about the formation of oxbow lakes than about personal finance, debt management, budgeting, saving, compound interest, pensions and individual savings accounts. Those are things that grown-ups worry about, and that have such an impact on their lives, yet they were simply missing from my education.
I am afraid it does not stop there, because I have asked my children—aged 21, 18 and 15—about their financial education, and they have received none at all, so there has been no improvement, yet we know that this matters profoundly. We know that those unfortunate enough to grow up in a financially chaotic household have no education from their parents, do not understand debt, except for seeing the consequence of it, and do not understand budgeting. Prudent financial management then becomes a middle-class secret. If we care about the poor and the most disadvantaged in our society, financial education must be a core part of the curriculum in our schools.
We know that financial stress has a huge impact both on our economy and on our society. Way back in 2014, Barclays bank did research that showed that 17.5 million hours were lost to the economy because of financial stress. We also know that financial stress, or financial worries, is one of the core components of family breakdown and the break-up of relationships, leading to arguments in the home and distress caused to children.
Yet we know what the solution is. We have had loads of research. The Money and Pensions Service has said that attitudes towards money and finances are fundamentally established by the age of just seven. We know that financial education in schools is directly correlated with higher career earnings, reduced personal debt, increased pension savings and increased savings more generally. We have all been elected to this place, and we have all come here, I assume, to improve the lives and life chances of our constituents. The single biggest thing we can do for our constituents in our time in this place is get effective financial education into the core curriculum. I say that to the Minister, because she needs to reflect on what her ambitions are for her time in this place.
We have had a crack at it. Back in 2014, we, or our predecessors, thought we had done a jolly good job, because financial education was included in the national curriculum in secondary schools in England, and in primary schools in the devolved nations. Last year, on the 10th anniversary of that change, the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people undertook research to see what the impact of that inclusion in the national curriculum had been. The awful truth was that it was virtually negligible, because financial education was not in fact being taught. We made the mistake as policymakers of saying, “We’ve changed the policy—job done. That’s the solution”, but we did not take the next step and ensure that the policy was implemented effectively. Indeed, 55% of teachers responsible for implementing the national curriculum were either unaware of the requirement, or unsure of whether there was a requirement to teach financial education, and 62% of children had no recollection of having received any.
Why did we think we had solved the problem with policy, when in practice the change did not take place? Part of the answer is that financial education was included within personal, social, health and economic education, and it was not measured by Ofsted, and we all know that we get what we measure. Another part of the answer is that teachers lack confidence, because they too have not received financial education, and they are unsure about their personal finances. Far too often, financial education depends on there being a personal convert among the teaching staff. Some schools do a brilliant job on this issue, but too often that is wholly dependent on there being one member of staff who takes the bit between the teeth.
Just today, Young Enterprise, which operates the secretariat of the all-party group, published a report called “Making the Classroom Count”. It has done research, and has assessed the state of provision and how we can improve it. Its first conclusion concerns the curriculum in both primary and secondary education. This subject is too important to be left to the peripheries of the educational process; it must be recognised as a core element. If financial education is a core part of the curriculum, it must be measured as such by Ofsted. The second issue is accountability; we must inspect for financial education, because we get what we measure.
The third issue is guidance. There must be access to trusted teaching materials for hesitant teachers. Too often, the all-party group heard that teachers were not sure which resources, from the plethora out there, they should trust, and they are naturally hesitant about branded materials coming into schools. We need the Government to take a step forward and build on the work already being done on trusted resources. The fourth point is about awareness; the Government must be clear and express the fact that financial education is a core part of the curriculum. Finally—I put it last because it is the least important—comes money and resources. They are necessary—we need money to achieve things—but if the Government took steps one to four, we would be 95% of the way there.
There is a solution to the money side of things. I understand that the Chancellor is never keen to write a cheque, but we have the dormant assets scheme, and financial inclusion is a core element of the distribution of dormant assets. We also have the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which has offered to match-fund the element spent on financial inclusion. Surely there is a way that the Government can make best use of that money. The Government are reviewing the national curriculum, so now is the time for them to take a bold step, and not just have the policy, but ensure that it is acted on. Will the Minister include financial education in the primary curriculum? Will she undertake to measure what she wants to see in our schools, and require Ofsted to report on financial education in primary and secondary schools? Will she embed financial education in the curriculum, and not just in PSHE? Will she show some ambition, in the light of the 2029 OECD programme for international student assessment on financial literacy? Will she commit to the Government applying to join that scheme?
Will the Minister develop the good work of the Oak National Academy, which has produced about 42 online lessons to support financial education and literacy? Will she follow that up with a commitment to developing trusted paper resources for the educational sector? Finally, will she consider making proper use of the dormant assets fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and directing additional funding from those sources to financial literacy education in our primary and secondary schools?
I started by talking about ambition, and I want to finish on that, too. It is profoundly important for the life chances of our constituents over the next 10, 20, 30 and 40 years that we grasp this issue now. We spend so much time on tittle-tattle in this Chamber, making cheap debating points that may make the headlines in the evening, or tomorrow. I do not care whether this debate is reported, as long as we can get this simple change to our educational processes and deliver for our constituents. Now is the time to do it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I will start with an informal five-minute time limit; Members can help each other.
Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people, for securing this debate. I should first declare not only my interests—I am vice-chair of the APPG, and have been a trustee of Girlguiding Bristol and South Gloucestershire, and of a brilliant local youth work charity, the Foundation for Active Community Engagement—but my deep and long-standing interest in this subject.
Improving financial education for children and adults—our focus is on the former this afternoon—was the policy area among thousands of possible ones that I chose to focus on in my public policy master’s degree. Unfortunately, that was not because I thought financial education was going well, and that there could be lessons to apply to other policy areas, but because of how lacking financial education has been, including in my personal experience. There was a real lack of financial education at school in my otherwise excellent state education. Important information on different types of mortgages and the key differences between secured and unsecured loans should not feel new at the point of major financial commitment and, crucially, at the point of risk.
In January 2020, the TUC reported that total unsecured household debt—that does not include mortgages, and typically has higher interest rates—rose to £407 billion, the highest ever level in the UK, and that was before the pandemic. Despite financial education having been added to the secondary curriculum in England through PSHE in 2014, the Money and Pensions Service found in 2022 that only 38% of young people recalled receiving financial education at school. It is important to be clear that this quest for better financial education is not about placing a higher value on any particular financial choices above others, but everyone should feel capable and confident to make whatever financial decisions are right for them and their circumstances. That is too often not the case.
I believe that a person’s background should not determine their life chances and life choices, and the lottery of financial education quality is a huge barrier to making that a reality. The next generation should always do better than the last. If we act to improve financial education, it will help us to make good on that Great British promise for all young people—for those across the Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency, and beyond.
I mentioned financial education in my maiden speech and was grateful in recent months to have the chance to raise it in the House with our Secretary of State for Education. I asked whether the independent, and welcome, curriculum and assessment review would consider foundational life skills such as financial education at all key stages, along with the resources needed to teach them with confidence as part of its work. While none of us in the House can pre-empt the conclusions of that important review, I was glad to hear the Secretary of State’s confidence that the review would “carefully consider” what young people need in this area and any support that teachers may need for any reformed curriculum.
Reported teacher confidence is understandably low, as we have already heard this afternoon, in teaching a subject that many of them were not taught either. Again, understandably, research shows that teachers struggle to prioritise subjects that are not assessed and are within PSHE. Indeed, The Money Charity’s survey and in-depth interviews with teachers around the country in 2016 found that the prioritisation of assessed subjects was the most commonly identified barrier to delivering financial education, with 80% of teachers citing it. So even when financial education is on the curriculum at secondary level, it does not appear to be there firmly enough.
Teachers give so much and have so much to contend with, and I do not believe that anyone in the House would wish to further overburden them, or indeed the curriculum, by adding more stand-alone subjects. In my view, it is important to consider how financial education can be woven through existing relevant subjects such as maths to ensure that all young people receive the most relevant education to support them to thrive throughout life.
As the daughter of a retired headteacher, I know better than to delve any further into the day-to-day from these Benches, but the evidence suggests that the current approach is not working for anyone. Yet there is a wider issue, too. The University of Cambridge found that financial habits typically form from around age seven. That strongly suggests that early support is crucial if we are to break down this barrier to opportunity.
It is also worth noting that financial education is on the curriculum at both primary and secondary levels in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is in England in particular where we are lagging behind, though implementation remains a challenge more widely. While formal education is of course important, there is also a vital role for other organisations, from financial institutions to community organisations. A number are already playing their part, from GoHenry helping young people to save while taking part in money missions to build their long-term financial knowledge and wellbeing to HSBC and Girlguiding working together to help girls and young women build the two things I touched on earlier: capability and confidence. I was thrilled to speak at the launch of its new “I’m money confident” badge, even if I have no longer my own sash to sew it on to.
I will not be able to mention them all, but many more organisations are working in this space, not least Young Enterprise, which provides a diligent and creative secretariat for the all-party parliamentary group. I was also glad to hear recently from Aviva in Stoke Gifford in my constituency about its work with young people.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope you will not mind if I share my thanks to all the teachers and wider organisations using their time, resources and creativity on financial education as part of our collective pursuit of supporting all young people to thrive. I look forward to hearing other contributions to the debate and continuing to work for change in this important area and for a fairer future for all.
Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for bringing this immensely important debate before the House. I am sure that hon. Members will have seen the Barclays bank television advert explaining how money habits and behaviours are formed in young people by the age of seven, but Governments of all colours have continuously failed in promoting the teaching of sound financial management to young people. The education system is supposed to teach young people the game of life, yet currently we are not even teaching them the rules of the game before they play.
Previous Governments tried, with the coalition Government introducing it into the national curriculum in 2014, but little progress has been made since then. It is an indictment that one in two Brits were found to be unable to pass a financial literacy test run by the OECD. The UK is well below comparable western nations such as France, Norway and Canada; indeed, we rank alongside Thailand and Albania. How on earth can it be the case that, as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, that is where we sit?
Why is this of particular concern now? Technology has opened up a new world of consumerism. I am able to sit in the comfort of my own home and purchase pretty much any item I would like. It is the epitome of having the freedom to make one’s own financial decision. However, that freedom comes with an understanding of how choices will impact my own personal financial wellbeing. At the click of a mouse or even a touch of a screen, young people can make high-value purchases without knowing how it may impact them, because they are not taught the importance of budgeting and saving.
Young people are becoming addicted to buy now, pay later schemes, which allow them to enter into credit agreements without fully assessing whether they will be able to afford them in a few months’ time. There is also the additional threat of fraudsters targeting young people in the hope that they will not know how to deal with complex financial problems. Is it any wonder that 96% of young people worry about money daily?
We must do something about this. The ongoing national curriculum review should not remove any aspect of the financial education that already exists, since it remains an important part of school life for students. I am not the only one saying that, as 95% of parents believe that schools should be at the heart of developing better understanding of financial education for young people. Alongside keeping it on the national curriculum, better support for teachers and long-lasting improvement is needed. I hear of teachers having real concerns about their own ability to teach students about sound money. I strongly urge the Department and its partners to instigate better advice for teachers on how to improve the quality of these lessons.
Finally, as a strong supporter of apprenticeships and vocational training, I would like the Government to promote financial teaching in post-16 educational settings. Put simply, one in three students leave school at 16 for apprenticeships or employment. At a time of increased spending, they potentially lose all chance of being taught financial education. Is it any wonder that nearly half of all apprentices struggle to keep up with their bills?
It would be negligence of the highest order not to protect and strengthen the financial education provision for our young people. We must not stand idle and allow the next generation to walk into financial ruin through not understanding the thing that, whether we like it or not, makes the world go round.
Will Stone (Swindon North) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for bringing forward this important debate on something that we do not discuss enough. I was not hugely knowledgeable on it until my partner became a financial adviser; we have lots of financial discussions now. More often than not, she is telling me that I spend too much money on Warhammer. I say it is an investment—it is definitely not.
Those discussions opened my eyes massively, and some shocking things came up. For example, only 20% of self-employed people pay into a pension. That is a ticking time bomb, and we must address it. I really think that comes through education. As the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) said, our habits towards money are formed at an early age. The evidence for that is overwhelming, and as a Government we need to start getting on top of it. I saw my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) squint a little when Members were talking about changing what and how teachers should teach—he has a terrible poker face—but we need to look at how to introduce this across the board so that it does not put more pressure on teachers, because they are under enough under enough pressure as it is.
Some good things are going on in the private sector. We have great companies such as Nationwide, whose headquarters are in Swindon—something I am incredibly proud of. We also have Santander, which is not in Swindon, but it is still doing great work so I will give it praise. The Government need to work with some private companies to see what they are doing and what services they can offer alongside our schools, so that we can let our teachers teach and not overburden them.
I am really proud to be part of this debate. If we want to look after people and ensure that they do not suffer with mental health issues due to financial stress, we have to get a grip of this. I look forward to hearing what the Minister and other Members have to say.
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for securing this important debate. I find the statistics about what children remember of financial literacy education really sad. It is not that teachers do not want to provide the education but, as others have raised, there is stretched time in the current education system, and perhaps a lack of confidence among teachers.
I have a 17-year-old son, and have asked him a number of times whether he has had the opportunity to learn about budgeting at school. Perhaps this just speaks to the memory of a 17-year-old child, but he, like many of his friends, does not remember having had that important opportunity to learn how to budget—most likely, he did not. I sat down with him at the weekend to go through it, and realised how much we, as adults, take for granted the things that we have learned over the course of life. We should not be relying on the passage of time and the experience of life; we need to educate our young people about financial literacy from a really early age.
As a Liberal Democrat and as a mum, I think it is really important that we use the curriculum review to modernise it, and look at a curriculum for life. This is the perfect opportunity to include financial literacy. My personal view, which might raise eyebrows across the House, is that putting it into the maths curriculum might help young people to see maths as something that is relevant to their real lives. I am sure that we have all had conversations with teenagers who ask, “How is maths relevant to my life?” They say that it is not. Well, it very much will be when they get into adulthood and have to deal with mortgages, household budgeting and the rest.
The reality of household budgeting came to the forefront of my mind when I met with Christians Against Poverty in my constituency, which does fantastic work with people who have got into debt, often through no fault of their own—through the cost of living crisis and personal circumstances. However, at the root of it is often a lack of financial literacy. We clearly need to provide more opportunities for young people, as well as for adults, because we have already said that young people tend to get their financial education from their parents.
I ask the Minister to ensure that there is a deep commitment in the curriculum review to putting financial education into the curriculum in a way that will help children to remember it and take it forward in their lives. I also ask her to support adults to get the financial education that they need so that they can complete the circle of empowering themselves to be better with their finances, and empowering the next generation.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for bringing this crucial conversation to the Chamber. We are not born with the ability to open an ISA, choose a private pension or invest our savings. We do not have a natural intuition about how to save or manage debt, or how the tax system works, so why are we sending young people from school with little or no formal financial education?
Having worked for Leicestershire Training and Enterprise Council 25 years ago, where we supported young people and adults into education, and having held a number of roles in the social housing sector supporting tenant welfare, it is clear to me that there is a gap in people’s financial knowledge. I am really proud of some of the work that I did before coming to this place—particularly leading a team to set up the financial and digital inclusion project Moneywise for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, targeting individuals, including in my constituency of North West Leicestershire, who were digitally and financially excluded. From running that project, the lack of basic skills around financial education, and how much it was holding people back, became clear to me. Through the project, we were able to empower people to have a much more positive relationship with their finances.
As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, it has already become apparent to me that a lack of conversation and knowledge, and probably confidence, about long-term financial planning, is having a detrimental impact on our relationship with our finances. By providing financial education to young people, we have an opportunity to reset our relationship with money and skills. A study by Compare the Market and the financial education charity MyBnk found that almost two thirds of adults surveyed said that they did not recall receiving financial education at school. The same study found that only two in five respondents considered themselves financially literate.
There is hope, though. My son is currently studying core maths at AS-level, and we have had many conversations about financial management, from insurance to rent, and mortgages to savings, just because of that course. This is an issue that can unite us across party lines. Our young people deserve that. At the very least, they deserve a basic understanding of how to manage their future finances. It is not just current and future generations that could benefit; the Investing and Saving Alliance projected that, were the Government to prioritise financial education, we could inject an extra £7 billion into the economy each year. That would make a real, measurable and tangible difference to so many young people. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for securing the debate and for his valuable work on the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people.
One of my first jobs was working in advice services. Time and time again, people came to us for help after they had stacked up debt. Many people had the same story. It started out with not having a household budget and having to borrow on credit cards or through payday loans on astronomical rates of interest, and eventually they became caught in a spiral of debt and bad decision making. I would like to thank the wonderful staff and volunteers at the Citizens Advice service in my constituency, who do fantastic work trying to help people to get back on their feet after problems with debt. Work by BRANCAB —Bedworth, Rugby and Nuneaton Citizens Advice—and North Warwickshire Citizens Advice demonstrates that debt has changed for people in my constituency. Instead of loans and credit cards, the components of debt have moved, worryingly, to basic housing and utility costs. Before covid, financial capability was at the heart of what BRANCAB did and it won a national award for its work, until a lack of funding put an end to it.
My area has the fifth highest rate of insolvencies per 10,000 adults in the country, and 18 to 24-year-olds account for 12% of all insolvencies. This is why financial education is so crucial. Becoming insolvent before the age of 24 will have untold effects on their financial stability for years to come and we need to stop more young people falling into that hole. I support the recommendations of the Education Committee to review the content of the maths curriculum to expand the provision and relevance of financial education. That sentiment is shared by teachers at Polesworth school in my constituency. I support the work done by people such as Rob Boland, who runs Cotswold Independent Financial Services and works with the Personal Finance Society, which carries out important educational work around budgeting and tax, and staying safe from scams.
It is staggering that I have people coming to my surgery who have well-paid jobs but had no idea when they went to university about the impact of the debt they were signing up to with their student loan, or even what the interest rate meant. We must also recognise that our young people face new challenges. Social media has fuelled a get-rich-quick mindset, with influencers encouraging young people to try to make money quickly through risky schemes. That is exacerbated by the cost of living crisis. Perhaps if Liz Truss had spent a bit more time in financial education classes when she was at her grammar school in Leeds she would not have plunged the country into economic disaster. Too often we forget that our young people were hit hard by the crisis and are still suffering from financial insecurity.
I met sixth-form students at Nicholas Chamberlaine school in Bedworth recently. They talked to me about how much more difficult it was to find work at the weekends or in the evenings, and how they had never received any kind of education or help around personal finances. I am pleased that the Government have commissioned an expert-led curriculum and assessment review to ensure that young people leave school ready for work and ready for life. That, I know, is welcomed by local businesses in my constituency. It is time that we demystified everyday finances, so that everyone can be equipped with the skills they need for everyday life and do not have to turn to an advice service for help.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
I, too, thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for bringing forward the debate and for the work he does on the all-party parliamentary group for financial education for young people.
I would love to see a world where everybody is financially literate, where people understand their finances, manage them properly, invest, save, manage debt and protect themselves appropriately—in other words, where people are financially savvy. It is good for people and it is good for our economy. Financial education develops tools for life and creates good habits. It can help people deal with cost of living challenges and help break down barriers to opportunity too, because making the most of resources when there are fewer of them is paramount. Many people lack the basic skills of financial acumen and that disadvantages them through life. However, if someone has a strong grasp of financial concepts, they are less likely to get into debt, can make better decisions and prosper. That is why financial education is a must for adults and children alike. I have a number of ideas about how we can help educate adults too in that area.
According to the Government-sponsored Money and Pensions Service, 39% of adults—more than 20 million people—do not feel confident managing their own money. Some 11.5 million people have less than £100 in savings, and 9 million of us are in serious debt. A Legal and General report, “Deadline to Breadline 2022”, suggests that
“the average UK consumer is just 19 days from the breadline”
if they lose their income.
In my previous life in the banking sector, I knew only too well how a lack of financial management blights lives. I sadly saw several people throughout my career who did not plan and manage their finances appropriately or plan and protect their futures appropriately. When life took an unexpected turn and circumstances changed, I witnessed some incredibly sad situations where people lost everything. That story tells us of an urgent need for financial education programmes for adults and not just for children.
Of course, the key to having financially literate adults is to teach financial education in our schools. Although, as we have heard, it was added to the national curriculum in 2014, its delivery is patchy at best and it needs to be improved. A few years ago, I was invited to deliver a financial education session to a group of sixth-form students. Following the session, a few teachers came over, thanked me for what I had taught them and then asked me for some advice—and they were the teachers responsible for delivering that financial education to the pupils.
We have heard that financial education is included in the curriculum for secondary schools, but I too advocate for its inclusion in primary education. That could be done simply by embracing it in the maths syllabus. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people, I support the recommendations that financial education be a mandatory part of the English primary curriculum. Training has to be given to teachers and the subject should be promoted by the Government in both primary and secondary education.
I want to finish with a story of a person whom I admire for their brilliant financial management: a single parent who juggled finances to bring up two boys. She literally had different pots for different funds, from summer holidays to Christmas to birthdays to her contingency fund for a rainy day. Each week, she would use her perfectly crafted budget book to separate out her funds: so much for food, so much for bills and the remainder spread across her pots. She never relied on credit cards or borrowing. Her sons never wanted for anything, saw themselves as equals to their friends and would only really appreciate how stretched the family finances were when they got older. She had that skill embedded in her from a young age by her parents. That person was my mum.
Being financially educated early can have a profound effect on future generations. We need that change. It is an essential life skill, and I implore the Minister to consider that as part of the curriculum review.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for his obvious passion for the subject.
In October 2023, National Trading Standards released research showing that 73% of UK adults have been targeted by scams, and just over a third of those lost money as a result. The Government are cracking down on online crime and fraud, but clearly one other long-term solution is to make sure that everybody is financially educated and financially literate. If we educate our children and young people to be more confident with how and why they manage their money, over time they will be less susceptible to those frauds and scams, which, sadly, can only grow with the development of artificial intelligence.
As we have already heard, many young people form their money habits at a very young age, as young as seven or eight. I remember my parents teaching me the importance of saving, giving me a little savings book and making sure that every week I put away some of the £3.50 that I earned from my job delivering newspapers. Unfortunately, as we have also heard, parents who have not managed to acquire financial literacy sometimes pass on bad habits to their children, and up to a third of British workers live from pay cheque to pay cheque. I fear that we are not doing enough to help parents and young people to break that cycle. I am shocked to hear people working in food banks say that many users of their services would benefit hugely from financial education and literacy, and even some simple advice on how to draw up a budget and understand how to make sure they will have enough money when the bills are being sent out. Even simple things can make a huge difference so that people do not have to end up relying on food banks.
With the future as yet unknown, pupils entering secondary school this September will finish their GCSEs in June 2030 and their A-levels in 2032. If they decide to go on to university, they might graduate in 2035. I think it safe to say that, while we do not know for sure what opportunities will be available to them—things may well look very different from the way they look now—good financial education and literacy will stand them in good stead. Financial literacy education has previously been added to the national curriculum, but more must be done to ensure that children are taught the subject.
Financial education must have breadth, teaching students not only how to budget and all the good stuff like simple versus compound interest, but enabling them to understand the importance of saving for a pension, and to recognise an investment scheme that is protected by the Financial Conduct Authority, for instance, so that they can avoid some of the more “sparkling” deals online. The good news is that those who have received a financial education and remember it are more likely to save, feel confident about money and use a bank account. That shows that when effort is put in, it does indeed reap rewards.
The need for financial education is clear to everyone in the House and beyond. It is not a luxury but a necessity. I well remember being taught in depth about trigonometry, and I have to say that I wish I had been taught about pensions instead.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for securing the debate.
A typical weekend for me starts at the shop, but not a high-street one, although there are plenty of those in York. Instead, it is my toddler’s plastic shop full of fruit, veg and, of course, Yorkshire Tea. When I try to pay with cash, I am told, “No, daddy! Use card.” It is a world away from growing up, even in the 1990s.
We face a great paradox in this country. We have a world-leading financial services sector, but, according to a recent UK Finance report, the UK ranks 15th out of 29 countries for financial literacy among adults. It is imperative that we do better here at home. For too long we have struggled to bolster financial education in schools. My wife is a dedicated teacher, whose current battle is teaching children about the value and shape of a 20p coin. On a more serious note, however, I worry about the impact that social media has on children when it comes to financial advice. I call this the “Tiktokification” of financial education. We often see influencers giving out unregulated advice, driving the sale of harmful products plugged as “get quick rich” schemes. As a former regulator at the Financial Conduct Authority, I can say with some degree of certainty that regulators are not up to speed on this.
Let me now say something about the insurance sector. At the FCA, we saw that consumers had a poor understanding of matters such as “shrinkflation” when their policies did not keep up to date with their needs. Too rarely did they understand concepts such as auto-renewal. Far too many households, we find in Britain, are either under-covered or over-covered.
Markus Campbell-Savours (Penrith and Solway) (Lab)
My hon. Friend’s speech has made me laugh, as his speeches usually do.
Through my family and the community in which I grew up, I have seen that many people who fall victim to scams were once extremely savvy about financial management. The people who fall into these traps once ran their own businesses or had quite a mature understanding of these things. Financial education has its limits, so we still need very strong protections. When many people have more than one insurance policy for the same thing, are we not failing them? They do not need education; they just need people they can go to who can protect them and give them advice on issues they may never fully understand.
Mr Charters
I will come on to scams, but on the question of advice, I welcome the FCA’s advice guidance boundary review. Financial advice is often too difficult for consumers to access. We also need greater financial education on insurance.
I recently used Google Analytics to research search trends. Since 2004, there has been a rapid increase in the number of people searching “opt out of my pension.” How can we expect people to save into their pension when the benefits are so poorly communicated? The public are asked to fuel their car for a long journey, but when it comes to retirement, they do not know how far the road goes. We must make that cultural shift. With the forthcoming pension review, we must reinvent and reinvigorate our retirement savings. There is no more important time to educate people about pensions than at school.
Members will know that I am passionate about tackling fraud. Indeed, my old job was breaking fraud attempts in the private sector. Even now, as an MP, I hear heartbreaking stories of constituents who have fallen victim to scams. The British population is targeted by organised criminals from across the globe, which is driven by the popularity of the English language and the affluence of the UK. I know from a recent visit to City of London police that fraud and cyber-crime account for 50% of all crime—let that sink in. For too long, the UK has been a target. I praise the Minister for Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), and Lord Hanson for their important work. Greater public awareness of how to spot a scam, and socialising some of these concepts, is important.
I praise Martin Lewis for raising awareness of celebrity impersonation scams, and I praise his Money and Mental Health Policy Institute for doing much to remove the stigma of being scammed. Greater education ultimately means greater fraud awareness. Financial education is not the sole responsibility of this House, this Government or even teachers. It is down to firms, and I am heartened by my engagement with the sector. StepChange has also done important work on debt advice. I give a special shout-out to the Financial Inclusion Commission, which I recently joined. When it comes to financial education, we must ensure that the financial sector plays its part.
I close by returning to my son’s plastic greengrocery. I am doing my bit for the next generation, but I am just one household. We have to think of new ways to engage the generation of tomorrow on things like pensions, scams and insurance. This requires financial education in schools, and I hope to play my part in that debate.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) and my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) for securing this debate. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) that a 20p coin is heptagonal.
I support the need for further financial education in schools, but as Members may have sensed from my poker face earlier, I have a few caveats. Please take them as constructive, rather than destructive.
Having worked for a homelessness charity, I know that people cannot budget their way out of poverty, but this conversation is not just about budgeting. It is about the wider views and ideas on financial education. Members on both sides of the House have recognised the power of teaching young people about some of these pitfalls and scams, such as the impact of turning to payday loan sharks when times are tough. It is not about telling young people how they have to live their lives or what they have to do, but about providing awareness of the dangers that they face.
As many hon. Members will know, because I mention it in almost every speech I give, I used to be a teacher. I was a secondary school maths teacher for 15 years, teaching young people from year 7 to year 13, including teaching A-level maths and further maths, so I taught maths up to degree level. I absolutely love trigonometry. Wait until you get to further maths trigonometry, and sine and cosine rules, Madam Deputy Speaker—I can tell you, it is brilliant. I also specialise in statistics, strangely enough, despite my engineering degree. There is a misapprehension that the ability to teach maths equates—excuse the pun—to an ability to teach finance. If we were having the ordinary to and fro that we normally see in the Chamber, I would defend myself by pointing out that I can read a book, but I cannot teach English literature. Finance and maths both include numbers, but history and English both include words and they are different subjects.
When I chat to my Conservative friend—he is the reason I am in this place—we have very animated discussions about education. I once said to him, “What do you think is the most important skill for a teacher?” He said, “Well, discipline, and the ability to get marking done on time.” He came up with a whole list of things, but I said to him, “The one thing you have not mentioned is the ability to explain things clearly—surely that is the most important skill for a teacher.” I could teach the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham how to do compound interest, which comes up on the maths curriculum, but if I were asked to teach him how pensions work, I would struggle. That means not that I do not know how pensions work, but that I have not been taught the skills to teach that to somebody else. People do not naturally have the ability to explain things; they have to be trained in that skill.
I hope what I am saying, in a roundabout way, is seen as constructive, not critical. If we believe in financial education—[Interruption.] It is just like being back at school—put the phone in the box, Minister. You don’t have to really—[Laughter.] If we believe that teaching financial education is important in schools, then it has to be taught properly. The hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham correctly said that measures were brought through this place over 10 years ago, but the subject is not truly being taught in schools in the way that we would like it to be. I would like it to be a distinct, bespoke subject. At worst, it could be a module taught as part of a subject like business studies or economics—my wife is an economics teacher, so she will love me for that suggestion—rather than adding to the already extensive maths curriculum. I do not think it would be feasible to add financial education to the maths curriculum or that that would have the outcome that the House wants to see.
The hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham talked about the importance of financial education being measurable, and I could not agree more. One of my biggest frustrations as a maths teacher—have I got time, Madam Deputy Speaker? I will not go on a big story—was when a student would say to me, “Is this going to be in the exam?” That was frustrating because I genuinely love maths. I wanted to teach people that a2+b2=c2, not because it was going to come up in the exam but because it is truly interesting.
Chris Vince
I can see the hon. Gentleman was a model student.
We have to recognise the way the school system currently works. If young people think there will not be an exam on a subject, they do not think that subject is measurable. Equally, if teachers do not see that something is going to be measurable in an Ofsted inspection, it will be moved down the list of priorities. We have to recognise that a lot of teachers have a lot on their plates. If we want financial education to be on the top of the plate—the cherry on the top, perhaps—we need to ensure that it is measurable, accountable and taken seriously. I do not believe that bolting financial education on to the maths curriculum will make that happen; I would much prefer it to be a bespoke subject. I have rambled on enough but hopefully I have made my point.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I am not quite sure how I am supposed to follow the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). He was extremely entertaining and informative. I wish to thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for securing this debate. He spoke with passion and empathy for those who are struggling with financial literacy and made sure that this House knows how important that topic is.
All Members in this House have probably at some point come across somebody—perhaps a constituent on a doorstep, a family member or a friend—who says that people just do not get taught what they need to know in life at school. That is overdone slightly; the fundamentals of maths, science and literacy do serve us well in life, but there is truth in that statement. Some of the hard, practical, daily challenges of adulthood are often not addressed properly, at least not in an applied way, during our education. Nowhere is this more apparent than in financial literacy, which is, of course, distinct from numeracy. It is not just about adding and subtracting, or even working out percentages, but budgeting, debt management, saving for the future and investing. These are things that can empower people to make better decisions for their lives and set them up to achieve their goals. But we let people down when we view these skills as specialist rather than essential.
Let me focus on two elements in particular: investing and debt. The British seem to have a big problem with investing. There is an assumption that it is for traders or the rich, and our national conversation tends to shy away from it. Pensions is about the only arena in which it is discussed properly, but even then it is kind of pushed to the back of our minds. It is all about auto-enrolment and it is dealt with out of sight by others. I wish to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) about how few of the self-employed invest in their own pensions. That certainly happened to my parents who were self-employed all their life. I was self-employed too and, for the large bulk of my career, I did not invest in a pension.
If Brits were equipped with the knowledge and the skills to make relatively safe, sensible investments over the course of their lifetimes, the benefits to those individuals and to the economy as a whole would be enormous. Research by Moneybox reveals that two thirds of Britons are £65,000 worse off on average due to low financial confidence and knowledge. Astonishingly, it suggests that if these people were better equipped it would equate to a potential £2 trillion of extra spending power in the UK economy over their lifetimes.
Members might think that this difference merely correlates with the haves and the have nots, but Moneybox’s research found that, in most instances, the key indicator of success was financial confidence and not where people started in life. This alone should motivate us to improve the delivery of financial education in schools, but also to ensure that all adults can better equip themselves today. Although this is beyond the scope of the debate today, this is where the advice guidance boundary review could be crucial for Britain’s growth prospects. We must upskill all of Britain today and not only the citizens of the future.
Let me turn now to debt. The consequences of getting this wrong are grave. Our failure to equip people with the knowledge that they need to manage and escape debt puts the most vulnerable in our society at risk—risk of hunger, risk of ill health and risk of financial ruin. My inbox is full of emails from people who reach crisis point before seeking help. In each case, there were so many straightforward steps that they could have taken to prevent escalation, but a combination of shame and financial illiteracy leaves people stranded, helplessly watching on as their situation goes from bad to worse.
I wish to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Harlow about people not being able to budget their way out of poverty. He is absolutely right, but we can stop people from spiralling and making things worse. This point is deeply personal to me. I have seen my family suffer from the crippling nature of debt on more than one occasion—both as a child and as an adult. I sometimes think to myself that I just wish that they had reached out to me sooner. But I have a better wish than that: I wish that our education system and society more broadly talked about debt and how to deal with it far more openly.
When I visited my local citizens advice bureau in Wallington recently, staff told me how predatory companies are offering individual voluntary arrangements to people who are totally ill-suited to them. On the face of it, the attraction is clear. Instead of struggling with debt on multiple fronts, a person can make one simple regular payment to a company and that company will deal with everything for them. The trouble is that these companies do not always act in the individual’s interest. They have an incentive to sell IVAs, as they make money from them, and they end up being sold to people who have better alternatives, such as debt management orders. This practice needs to be regulated better, but we should also empower citizens to know better.
The Liberal Democrats support a modernised curriculum—a curriculum for life that ensures that children are equipped with the skills required for adulthood, with a focus on a better understanding of personal finance and financial responsibility. Clearly, financial education needs to start early and must become a key part of the primary curriculum. Research shows that money habits are set at the age of seven, yet there is no statutory requirement to teach personal finance in primary schools in England.
Furthermore, we must support teachers to deliver that education effectively. That means providing centralised guidance, teacher training and signposting to quality resources. The Government should back the national campaign to raise awareness of financial education and its benefits, and support initiatives such as My Money Week, which promotes financial literacy in schools and communities.
But the job does not end in school, and the urgent need to address financial illiteracy cannot be overstated. As the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) outlined, today’s young people are increasingly turning to social media for financial advice. Just last week, the financial wellbeing charity Your Money found that six in 10 young people follow so-called financial influencers, or “finfluencers”, which is difficult to say, with 77% trusting their advice. Alarmingly, one in 10 said that they would act on that advice without doing further research. If we do not fill the gaps, others will.
The Liberal Democrats will continue to push for measures that address financial exclusion. That can be done by supporting banking hubs, with their crucial offer of face-to-face advice, as well as by protecting funding for citizens advice bureaux, such as the one that I visited in Wallington. The evidence is overwhelming: financial education is not a “nice to have”; it is essential for the wellbeing of our citizens and the future of our economy. I urge the Government to act decisively and ensure that every child in the UK has access to the financial education that they need and deserve.
Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)
I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) on securing this important debate, and I commend him for his sustained efforts to drive up the quality and availability of financial education offered to our young people. There is sometimes a tendency in this House—perhaps an understandable one—to gravitate towards short-termism. It is therefore a sincere pleasure to follow my hon. Friend, who, along with his colleagues in the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people, has been doing such excellent work to promote reforms that take a longer view and are geared towards boosting the life chances of future generations.
Good financial education, delivered not only by schools, but by parents and families and within communities, has the potential to produce a generation wise to the dangers of credit card debt, alert to the practices of predatory payday lenders, and confident in their ability to open a bank account and budget appropriately. I believe that all of us in this place are truly committed to reducing inequality and ensuring that everyone has the best possible start in life, and I can think of few better ideas than ensuring that all young people enter adulthood with a sound grasp of how to manage their money.
The British public seem to share that assessment. A research survey of UK adults conducted by Santander revealed that a full 70% felt that better financial education in their younger years would have improved their ability to manage their finances through the ongoing cost of living crisis. Meanwhile, two thirds of young people believe that a lack of financial education has played a role in them amassing the debts that they hold.
Indeed, it is not just adults but children who are deeply concerned about financial matters. The London Institute of Banking and Finance reported in 2023 that 68% of children worry about money and their personal finances. That figure is hardly surprising when we consider that today’s children are the most digitally exposed in history; they face a constant barrage of offers to spend money in alluring but wasteful ways. Many of the apps downloaded on to the phones that our children spend so much time on are full of shining icons, inviting them to spend real-world money, with the tap of a finger, in exchange for worthless in-game currencies. Young players of online games are prompted to spend, in some cases, hundreds of pounds on loot boxes or so-called cosmetic items—that is, a virtual in-game weapon, or an outfit that is a slightly different colour from the default option. Financial literacy is clearly a skill that our children and young people need, to protect them and prepare them for the future.
Although there is undoubtedly still work to be done, I briefly draw the House’s attention to the solid foundations laid by successive Conservative Governments over the past 14 years. After all, the Conservatives left England as one of the top-performing countries in education. Under the Conservative Government, children in England were named the best in the west for reading, and were ranked best at maths in the western world in the 2023 TIMSS—trends in international mathematics and science study. It was a Conservative Government who created the national network of 40 maths hubs to support schools in improving their mathematics teaching. That network is a partnership between schools, colleges and other organisations that work together to provide support for maths teaching in their regions. The positive impact of those hubs on young people’s ability to manage and understand money and finance is obvious. We were clear that we intended to go further: at the last election, we set out a comprehensive plan to ensure that every child studied maths to the age of 18, so that they would leave school with good numeracy skills. That would help them to navigate their finances with confidence.
That is not to suggest that the entire burden of providing robust financial education can or should fall upon our schools. As is so often the case, families also have a central role to play in ensuring that children are imbued with good financial common sense. That does not need to be overly complex; simple measures, such as offering children small amounts of weekly pocket money, can help to normalise good habits such as saving and thinking carefully before making purchases. According to an ING survey of 12,000 parents across Europe, giving children pocket money reduces the risk of them getting into debt as adults.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am a great example of that. Whenever I was 16, my mum took me down to Northern Bank, as it was then, gave me £10—I could have bought a second-hand car for that in those days—and told me to put it in my bank account. Does the hon. Lady agree that if everybody had a mother like mine, they would be a lot better off?
Rebecca Paul
I thank the hon. Member for that great contribution to the debate. I agree that all those small things add up and make a difference to our financial literacy. I am a chartered accountant, but that is not what made me financially literate; it was the lessons I was taught by my family, and the jobs that I did when I was young. Members have given great examples of how they came to understand finance. In an increasingly contactless world, it is important that children and young people physically see and feel cash. That is the way in which value is tangibly understood.
To return to schools, financial education is not, as has been noted, a statutory part of the national curriculum in primary schools in England, but in contrast, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is very much embedded at primary level. Given the way in which our children are relentlessly pressured to spend money that they may not even have, and in the light of Cambridge University research suggesting that habits and attitudes towards money are formed by the age of seven, there is much logic to the argument that financial education—whether delivered by schools, parents or even community hubs and other organisations—should not wait for the later years, and should be continuous.
Teachers also feel that starting good financial education early is important for the future wellbeing of young people. According to a 2020 survey, 82% of primary teachers consider teaching financial education to be very important. We may hear more about that when the Francis review of the national curriculum is complete. I urge the Minister to answer the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham asked about the Government’s plans for the curriculum.
In secondary schools, the picture is somewhat different. In 2014, the then Conservative Government acted to ensure that financial education was placed on a statutory footing in local authority schools. However, the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people—which I once again praise as an outstanding example of everything an APPG should aspire to be—noted in its 2023 “Building Beyond Barriers” report that over half of teachers did not know that financial education was part of the curriculum at all. That is a matter of some concern.
It is certainly important that the topic of financial education is addressed in the classroom in an appropriate way. I have no doubt that our hard-working teachers are keen to play their part in delivering that content. The same report found that three in four teachers believed that they should play a leading role in imparting financial skills to children. The obstacles were reported to be inadequate training, limited funding and an understandable feeling that there is simply not sufficient time in the school year to deliver those lessons. In government, the Conservatives sought to mitigate the funding issue with an investment of over £1 million to embed and scale teacher training in financial education.
The Money and Pensions Service did excellent work developing and testing approaches to supporting teachers, and practitioners working with children and young people in vulnerable circumstances, to deliver financial education. Ultimately, though, we must acknowledge that the school timetable is already under intense pressure, and there are many competing calls on limited time. That is why I would argue that the good financial education that every child deserves is best delivered not only in schools, but in the family setting, in communities, and with the help of valuable resources.
I conclude with a simple message, which I hope underscores some of the excellent contributions that we have heard today: financial education is invaluable and transforms life outcomes. Research undertaken by Compare the Market tells us that today, just two fifths of young adults rank as financially literate. We can and must do better. Conservative Members will keep these matters under careful review, and I hope that the Minister will address the questions that have been raised. Once again, I thank all those who have spoken, and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) on securing a debate on this important subject. I also thank the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people for highlighting the importance of financial education through its focused inquiries, and I absolutely recognise that it is an esteemed APPG. I will endeavour to respond to the points that the hon. Member has made, but I also wish to acknowledge the many points made by hon. Friends and hon. Members from across the Chamber.
My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) spoke about people’s confidence in making the financial decisions that are right for them, and highlighted the fact that she mentioned financial education in her maiden speech. The hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) spoke about online purchases and the importance of making sure that we fully understand what is happening in that space. My hon. Friend the Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) spoke about self-employed people and the need to understand pensions. The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) spoke about the importance of financial literacy from an early age.
Many other hon. Members—my hon. Friends the Members for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack), for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), for Southend West and Leigh (David Burton-Sampson), for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) and for York Outer (Mr Charters)—spoke about investments, banks, parents, and various things to do with financial education for children and young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), a teacher himself, spoke passionately about financial education, and I should add that the alarm that went off was a school alarm. Of course, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul), also spoke about this important topic.
The skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour that help people to manage money and achieve good financial wellbeing begin to develop from an early age and continue to develop through childhood and the teenage years. Research shows that financial education in schools has a positive impact on children’s and young people’s financial capabilities. The Money and Pensions Service’s survey of children and young people found that those who recall learning about money at school were more likely to be active savers, have a bank account that they used, be confident with money management, and have positive attitudes towards money. It is so important to teach those things at the right time, and it is never too early to start. Young people may be making financial decisions about digital transactions and in-game currencies, and they need to be aware of the issues and potential dangers.
Maths underpins effective financial management, understanding of financial risk and the confident and competent application of financial skills and tools. The Programme for International Student Assessment shows a strong correlation between results in financial literacy and in maths, with an average correlation of 0.87 across OECD countries. The primary maths curriculum includes arithmetic knowledge that supports pupils’ abilities to manage budgets and money, such as knowledge to do with calculations involving money and percentages.
In secondary maths, pupils are taught topics such as how to calculate compound interest, which is relevant for personal finance.
The non-statutory primary citizenship programme of study at key stages 1 and 2 equips pupils to understand the sources and purpose of money and the benefits of savings. It makes it clear that financial contexts are useful for learning about making choices and exploring social and moral dilemmas. The national curriculum for citizenship at key stages 3 and 4 prepares students to manage their money well and plan for future financial needs. Key stage 3 covers the functions and uses of money, day-to-day money management, budgeting and managing risk. Key stage 4 covers income and expenditure, credit and debt, insurance, savings, pensions, and financial products and services. However, more obviously needs to be done to embed learning and ensure that children and young people fully understand it.
The computing curriculum provides the fundamental e-safety knowledge and thinking skills that empower children to make well-informed decisions about technology, which may include using it in a financial context. Through statutory relationships, sex and health education, pupils are taught about internet safety and online harms, such as the risks associated with online gambling and the accumulation of debt. Pupils also learn how debt is generated, collected, shared and used online.
Moving to the curriculum and assessment review, which has been mentioned by Members across the Chamber, high and rising school standards are at the heart of the opportunity mission for this Government. That is why we have established an independent, expert-led curriculum and assessment review, covering ages from five to 18, chaired by Professor Becky Francis CBE. The review seeks to deliver an excellent foundation in core subjects, including maths, and a rich and broad, inclusive and innovative curriculum that readies young people for life and work. The review group will publish an interim report in early spring setting out its interim findings and confirming the key areas for further work, and it will publish its final report with recommendations this autumn. We will take decisions on what changes need to be made in the light of those recommendations.
Ofsted inspections currently consider whether pupils are receiving a rounded education and evaluate the quality of education, including pupils’ achievement over time, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. All schools, regardless of category and phase, are inspected for their ability to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum. Ofsted inspectors evaluate the quality of education, and elements of financial education may be in scope when Ofsted conducts a deep dive into mathematics.
The Government’s Money and Pensions Service is an arm’s length body of the Department for Work and Pensions, with a statutory duty to co-ordinate the UK strategy for financial wellbeing. It published the UK strategy for financial wellbeing in January 2020, which is a 10-year framework to help UK citizens make the most of their money and pensions. One of the key themes of the strategy is supporting the financial wellbeing of children and young people. It set a national goal to ensure that 2 million more children and young people receive a meaningful financial education by 2030.
As a Government, we will consider further the suitability of the support available to schools in the light of the curriculum review outcomes. However, it may be helpful to the House if I set out what is already available by way of support. The Money and Pensions Service has published guidance setting out how schools can improve the financial education they deliver, and signposting to services and resources. The financial education quality mark, funded by the Money and Pensions Service and delivered by Young Enterprise, quality-assures resources for teachers and others to support the provision of financial education. Resources with the financial education quality mark are freely available on the Young Money resource hub.
Support for curriculum delivery is also available through optional, free and adaptable resources from Oak National Academy. Oak has completed its initial curriculum resources for maths, and it will be producing additional lessons on financial education and applying maths in real life contexts across key stages 1 to 4. Those are expected to be available from spring 2025, and lessons on finance and the economy also featured in Oak’s new citizenship curriculum, launched earlier this academic year. Teaching resources for those lessons will be released by autumn 2025.
His Majesty’s Treasury works closely with the financial services sector to ensure that providers play a role in supporting people to manage their money. In 2021, financial services organisations were the largest funders and providers of financial education programmes, with 46 programmes reaching 4.7 million children and young people, and a total spend of £7.5 million. In 2023, members of UK Finance, including banks and other financial service providers, provided financial education lessons to more than 4.1 million children and young people in schools and community settings.
On 5 December it was announced that the Government will develop a financial inclusion strategy, alongside a supporting committee to tackle the problem of financial exclusion. The Government will work with consumer groups and industry on the development of that strategy, which will aim to tackle barriers to individual and household ability to access affordable and appropriate financial products and services. As part of that, the committee will consider the role played by financial capability in consumer use and understanding of products.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham for securing this debate, as well as those who have contributed to it so knowledgeably and articulately. Many schools already have high-quality financial educational provision in place, but every child and young person should have every opportunity to achieve and thrive. The reforms I have set out will ensure that every child is set up for the best start in life, including a curriculum that is rich, broad, inclusive, innovative, and that readies young people for life and work. There is always much that needs to be done, and we must and do take responsibility. We will build on our early efforts and work at pace to ensure that every child has the qualified expert teachers they need.
We recognise that training needs to evolve so that teachers remain competent and confident to teach and adapt the curriculum. That is why the work of the Money and Pensions Service, through its data collection, national strategy and delivery plans is so important. We must continue to work closely across the Government and in partnership with others to ensure that we approach challenges in a co-ordinated and evidence driven way. We will consider what more we can do in the context of the curriculum and assessment review, with workforce reforms to ensure that the financial education pupils receive is relevant and taught with passion by confident and committed teachers.
Jerome Mayhew
I thank Young Enterprise, the secretariat of the all-party group on financial education for young people, the Money and Pensions Service, GoHenry, MyBnk, HSBC, Santander, Your Money, Money Wellness, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, AQA, UK Finance, and the Bank of England, who all briefed in advance of this debate. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove), my co-conspirator in the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) on her first outing at the Dispatch Box. I thought she did brilliantly.
When talking about financial education, I start with my own family. I realised that I may have gone a bit too far when one of my grown-up children confided to me recently that she feels physically sick every time she spends money, so I may have overdone it a little. Equally, 175 years ago, my forebear, Henry Mayhew, was declared bankrupt for the third time. His great friend was Charles Dickens, and it is said that the character of Mr Micawber was based on Henry, so I will end the debate with one of the more famous quotes from Mr Micawber:
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty-pound ought and six, result misery.”
How right he was.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered financial education.
Manufacturing and Engineering (Northern Ireland)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I usually have the graveyard shift down in Westminster Hall on a Thursday afternoon. I think this exceeds that, given the time. It is a pleasure to have this important debate. I am pleased to see the Minister for Industry, the hon. Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), in her place. She has seen my asks, so I hope she can respond to them. I am also pleased to see the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland here, too. I will try to focus on the pluses that we have, and I then have a number of questions to ask the Minister. As she has seen those in advance, I hope we can have a positive glass half-full debate. That would be great.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is not often we get to share time together, but you have me whether you like it or not, for at least half an hour or thereabouts. I am so appreciative of this time in the House to highlight the needs of the manufacturing and engineering industry in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has fast become a giant in aerospace. We have a skilled workforce, lower overheads and the perfect connectivity for business investment. That is what we have and that is what we do.
We have not only the manufacturing giant Spirit AeroSystems, but Wrightbus, Harland and Wolff and Thales—the list goes on. They are all supplied with specialist parts by a plethora of skilled smaller engineering firms that dot throughout the Province, in particular in Strangford. I must make clear from the outset that when I talk about the manufacturing industry today, I do not just mean the big firms; I am thinking of all the smaller firms that rely on this business. The impact on the local economy is massive. Indeed, Invest NI has highlighted that manufacturing accounts for some 11% of employment and 15% of gross value added, making it a key sector in the Northern Ireland economy. I underline that it is a key sector, and I cannot underline that enough. It is vital for Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland is home to five companies with the SC21 supply-chain quality system gold award, out of a total of nine across the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland is again, as the Secretary of State will know, kicking on and working above the standards that many have for the United Kingdom. With five out of nine, we have more than any other UK region. We offer a reliable, successful, and competitive supply chain, with expertise in key technologies.
For automobiles, we are the world-leading region for the supply of tyre pressure monitoring systems, and we have leading capability in the manufacture of complex aluminium castings, as well as key strengths in the production of composite vehicle bodies for leading sports car brands. We do much in Northern Ireland. We have world-class solutions in the design and manufacture of mobile bulk processing and wet-processing equipment. When people buy from Northern Ireland, they buy 60 years of leading the world in mobile bulk materials processing equipment, and we manufacture more than 40% of the world’s mobile crushing and screening equipment. Again, I want to say these things because Northern Ireland often leads the way, and it is always a privilege to come and tell not only the world, but this Chamber about that.
The low-carbon sector employs more than 12,000 people in more than 300 companies, with an annual turnover in excess of £1.7 billion. Northern Ireland companies have the capability of providing a range of innovative products and services to address the specific needs of the various energy and water supply chains. The wastewater sector in Northern Ireland had a turnover of £1.1 billion in 2019, a GVA of £0.8 billion and 7,000 employees.
Northern Ireland is one of the most diverse consumer goods sectors in the UK, offering a wide range of design and manufacturing-based companies. More than 4,800 people are employed in the sector. Our companies have developed manufacturing capabilities and design or technology-led products and continue to remain competitive in a global marketplace. While that is the foundation of the big picture of manufacturing in Northern Ireland, I also highlight that we are yet to meet our potential, which simply cannot be met without greater investment, knowing that for every penny spent, the local economy reaps the benefit in pounds.
With that in mind, I have been in contact with and met the GMB and Unite unions representing Spirit, who have indicated the support needed in the sale of business transition. Spirit AeroSystems facilities in Northern Ireland produce parts for a variety of aircraft manufacturers, with about 45% of production on the wing and fuselage for Airbus. That work employs—
Jim Shannon
I knew what was happening there; I just had not looked up at the clock. It is a pleasure to continue the debate.
I referred to the Airbus fuselage and how that work employs 33% of the 3,700-strong labour force. Labour-intensive contracts equate to some 47% of production—work for Bombardier and small aircraft manufacturers such as HondaJet and Rolls-Royce—and the remaining about 20% of work is in engineering IT, human resources, quality assurance and so on.
It is really important that we focus, if we can, on where we are. Boeing’s interest in purchasing Spirit is primarily about consolidating its own supply chain to ensure quality control. It has no interest in retaining production for its primary competitor, Airbus. Currently, Airbus’s intention is to take control of Spirit operations in its own supply chain; it has no interest in production for other aircraft producers.
Further challenge is posed by the fact that operations across Spirit sites are integrated. Workers are employed across different projects for different clients, so even if a division of activities under separate ownership were possible, it is unclear whether those operations could be sustained. That is one of our concerns. I look to the Minister and to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for some help on that. I believe the opinion of the unions is that the facilities must remain under one owner, as that is the only option that would guarantee and safeguard production. Airbus already operates a model that would make the retention of highly skilled jobs in Northern Ireland possible through, for instance, integration into the Airbus Atlantic group. That would include production sites across five different countries—that gives flexibility and strength across continents. Airbus already operates contracts with a variety of partners including, again, Bombardier, Dassault Aviation and ATR.
The Northern Ireland facilities are critical to Airbus and its future growth. Belfast is a vital supplier to the A220, and it cannot risk any disruption to production by taking control of the entire site. A single owner could avoid the outsourcing problems that have plagued Boeing, and disruption could also bring liability for hefty financial penalties. I have to underline that the workers in Belfast, who have given many years of service—their blood, sweat and tears—were the innovators and builders of the Airbus project. The unique expertise in Belfast cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. It is unique to us in Belfast, and it is important that it is retained as such.
According to reports, Spirit Belfast will be profitable if production increases to the planned-for 14 aircraft a month in 2025. The non-Airbus work at Spirit Belfast could be viewed as a bonus for Airbus, not a burden. Spirit Belfast has also recently signed two promising new contracts with successful aerospace companies that are likely to improve the plant’s profitability. Bombardier, which represents some 30% and growing of the work done at Spirit Belfast, has also been a customer for 35 years. There is clear continuity on the base and among the workforce.
All local political representatives and all parties across all of Northern Ireland, Spirit management and the Department agree with our demand for a one-owner solution as the best outcome for all workers, the aerospace sector and the wider Northern Ireland economy. However, to date, disappointingly—I say this with respect; I always do because that is the person I am—the chief executives of all the respective companies and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland have failed to engage with senior stewards or the workforce. If that has changed, I will be more than happy, but whenever I met them a few weeks ago, that had not happened. They appear to be leaving thousands of jobs and livelihoods at risk or of being dictated to by the market.
This decision is not acceptable; neither is it in the best interests of the 3,700 workers impacted. It is imperative that the next course of action is to maintain and future-proof the highly skilled jobs and the approximately 7,400 jobs intertwined via the supply chain in the Northern Ireland economy. That would continue a vibrant and historic aerospace sector in Northern Ireland. The workforce need the support of central Government. I am quite sure that the Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will reassure us.
Why is this important? Spirit AeroSystems is a linchpin of the economy in the greater Belfast area. Statistical analysis from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, “Structure of the Northern Ireland Economy 2020”, published in September 2024, estimates that for every job sustained in the non-automobile vehicle production sector in Northern Ireland, almost two more jobs in the broader economy, local services and the supply chain are sustained through indirect and induced employment. For every one job, there are two more out there, so we get three for the price of one. Considering the high value-added nature of Spirit’s activities, with very developed local supply chains both regionally and across Britain and Ireland, that ratio is even higher. It is estimated that the 3,700 jobs at the company’s site in Northern Ireland sustain a further 7,400 indirect and induced jobs in the wider service economy and supply chain, based on the NISRA type II employment multiplier for manufacturers of other transport equipment.
The data is clear, and we need the help. Any threat to Spirit’s operations in Northern Ireland translates to a potential threat to more than 11,000 jobs in the wider economy. Such a threat would be devastating for the Northern Ireland economy, as the wages bill for the Spirit workforce alone amounts to approximately £250 million a year, contributing a large percentage of the region’s total economic consumption. It is not small fry; it means a lot to the Northern Ireland economy, as does the skill factor of those jobs.
The total expenditure of the company is estimated to be at least £600 million a year. The loss of this productive activity would have a huge impact on the Northern Ireland economy. This is key, vital and really important. Based on the 2024 NISRA estimate from a type II economic multiplier for the manufacture of other transport equipment, a reduction of £600 million in demand would reduce Northern Ireland’s gross value added by £1.4 billion. That is more than 3% of the region’s total annual economic output. That illustrates the vital importance of this sector.
Spirit’s production is also a critical element of Northern Ireland’s heavy industrial base and a key driver for exports. It is vital to the realisation of any regional manufacturing or industrial strategy that may be agreed at the Stormont Executive. These jobs represent some of the best employment opportunities for individuals who come from the working-class areas of Belfast and the wider community. The Secretary of State and the Minister know that—we all do. The cross-community employment at the sites benefits all working-class areas, with the jobs created having a profound impact on the transition away from a conflictual society. I know the Secretary of State is committed to that. I want that for our society. This is part of how we do that: we give people jobs and opportunity across the community, to help the community to heal and to move forward. I would certainly like to see that.
Youth employment opportunities in the aerospace sector are always attractive to young workers from all communities who are seeking to improve their lives. Just before Christmas, my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and I visited the Thales factory. I was really impressed by their commitment to opportunities for apprentices. They are helping apprentices to earn a wage, and they look after student fees. They do not want just an apprentice; they want someone for their entire working life in that factory.
I am concerned that any loss of these skilled jobs would cast a very dark cloud over communities in Northern Ireland that are still emerging and transitioning from the legacy of conflict, at a critical juncture in the history of Northern Ireland. I never doubt that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is committed to finding a way forward. This is part of the healing process, moving forward and bringing us together. I ask the Minister gently to get involved—I do not mean that aggressively—and I ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to expend every effort to advance a one-owner entity and ensure that, whoever buys Spirit AeroSystems’ operations in Northern Ireland, the vital social and economic importance of the jobs that it provides is fully recognised and safeguarded. That is in the interests of all stakeholders, and this great mother of Parliaments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It must be the overriding priority in the coming weeks and months.
I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all those who have attended tonight: the Minister, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and his shadow, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who has a deep interest in Northern Ireland. I speak as the MP for Strangford, and on behalf of the business and homes involved. It is not just about jobs; it is about every one of the 11,000 people who have a home, a mortgage and a family. Those people contribute to Northern Ireland, and want to contribute positively going forward. They are supported by the manufacturing industry, which, importantly, needs the involvement of the Government to secure a good deal. With a new US Administration and a desire to enhance relations between our nations, I believe that now is the time for action. I look to the Minister with the greatest respect, in anticipation of what she will tell us.
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for introducing today’s debate in his usual style of gentle persistence, and for the birthday message that he sent me back in December. I think he is the only Member of Parliament who sends birthday messages to every MP. The care with which he treats all of us is an example to us all.
I have a list here of all the good things about Northern Ireland manufacturing. The hon. Member has listed most of them already. For the benefit of the House, I will not repeat the case that he has made; I will just set out a few things about the Government’s approach. First, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and I, and others, were in Northern Ireland when we were able to announce a successful outcome on the Harland and Wolff deal. When we first came to power last July, it was one of the early industries in distress that came across our desks. We were faced with the possible collapse of Harland and Wolff, and there was absolutely no way we could allow that to happen. We all worked very hard to ensure that there was a deal that worked both for the Ministry of Defence, in terms of the fleet solid support contract for Navantia, and its commercial interests and what it could do, and for the workers of Harland and Wolff.
We did not do that because we are good people and we did not want to see job losses, although those things are true; we did it because the four Harland and Wolff sites are of incredible strategic importance to us. As it happens, I was in Methil yesterday, the Harland and Wolff site in Fife, where there is a huge future for offshore wind. The site can build part of that future. Sometimes we look through misty eyes at what has happened in the past in Belfast, and what Harland and Wolff used to be. The way we see it is: let us look at what it can be in the future, and how important it is. Of course it is important for people to have good well-paid jobs, but it is the talent and expertise they bring—which I see in spades in Northern Ireland every time I go; the enthusiasm, the talent, the training and the apprenticeship programmes—that mean we can build the future we want to see. They will be very important for our defence, but the whole ecosystem the hon. Gentleman talked about is very important for our future.
What support can the Government bring to ensure that people continue to flourish and thrive? First, we want to work collaboratively across the nations in a way that is productive and useful. I chair the business and industry inter-ministerial group in the Department for Business and Trade. At our first meeting, the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland were there, too. What we can do collectively that helps all our nations is really important.
Secondly, the Government set the structure, through the industrial strategy, and a direction of travel that industry can understand. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are developing the industrial strategy. There are eight growth sectors where we think there is the biggest capacity for growth. We are working on honing down what the sub-sectors are within that. Advanced manufacturing, defence and green energy are all key areas that we have identified as opportunities for growth and Northern Ireland has such a role to play in that space. That architecture, which will provide the long-term stability over the next five to 10 years, will be really important and helpful.
The third bit of architecture is our universities, colleges, catapults, Innovate UK and all the other networks that help us to come up with new ideas and new businesses. I met Catapult Network chief executives this morning. They told me about—they were keen that I mention it in this debate, as I said I was coming here—some of the innovative work going on through the catapults in Northern Ireland. They are working with Invest Northern Ireland on hydrogen, which will accelerate supply chains for the hydrogen economy. They are working with Queen’s University Belfast to ensure that Northern Ireland’s manufacturing businesses can connect into national capabilities and help address future challenges. There is a lot of good work going on there.
The next bit of architecture is how we help all those businesses in Northern Ireland to export. I was in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago, alongside Invest Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland businesses, which were taking their huge talent and, I hope, doing some good deals. There was a business—I might get this wrong and have to tell Hansard to correct this—that makes kit that washes sand. It has washed 99% of the sand that needs to be washed—I am going to stop trying to go into detail!—in Qatar. It was a very small business in Northern Ireland that was, basically, providing a service to Qatar that nobody else could do. That was quite extraordinary, but that is the talent we have coming out of Northern Ireland and we want to work with Invest NI on that. We need to get the right architecture in place to ensure the future is bright.
I think what the hon. Gentleman also wants me to talk about is how we protect what we have. He made a very good case on Spirit and how it is not just the jobs, but the supply chain and all interactions. He used some very interesting statistics on the potential impact of closures. What I will say in this space is, first, that we all want the same thing. Secondly, just to correct the record, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn) has met the trade unions to talk about that. I was at Spirit on 19 December and talked about the future. I have talked to all interested parties in this space. Collectively as a Government—the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds)—we are trying to do what we can. It is a complex situation, as we know, and there are layers of complexity in terms of who does what. We are trying to do what we can. Government can only do what they can in trying to bring people together, come up with solutions and talk to those interested parties, but I think we are pushing in the right direction. Although I cannot click my finger and have the answer that the hon. Gentleman wants this evening, I can give him the commitment that we are doing what we can. If he has suggestions as to further meetings we could hold and things we could do, of course, I would be very happy to do that. I am having conversations regularly on Short Brothers and Spirit AeroSystems, as the hon. Gentleman would expect. I am talking to the aerospace industry, Boeing and all the interested parties.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I am happy that the meeting has taken place. Whenever I met them—it would have been three or even four weeks ago—they informed me that the meeting had not taken place. I am glad that it has, because that is better. When it comes to moving forward in Northern Ireland, things only ever happen when we all work together. That is important.
I also thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for what they have done in relation to Harland and Wolff. We appreciate that. I know it was complex and difficult, and that there were things they could not say when we asked in the past and things were happening behind the scenes. Could the Minister be involved in those contacts with Spirit and Unite and the GMB unions, again with the Secretary of State? That contact is important. I say to the Minister that she should bring people with her. If we bring people with us, we always win the case.
Sarah Jones
I am always happy to meet the trade unions. I think I spend more time with trade unions in government than I did in opposition. We are forever meeting, usually in very happy circumstances where we are all trying to push to the same end in terms of building industry and creating growth. I am therefore always happy to meet and to do that. Of course, it is not just Ministers who are in conversation; I should say that the officials are also talking to all the interested parties, just to see what can be done. But I will not deny that it is a challenge.
The two-pronged approach of trying to ensure we have the architecture to build our manufacturing and our industry in Northern Ireland, alongside trying to see if we can find a solution when it comes to Spirit, is the right thing to do. We should not ignore one or the other; we need to try with both and that is what we will do.
Encouraging new investment into Northern Ireland is also part of the picture. The Government’s investment summit and the work through the Office for Investment and the Minister for Investment really focuses on the strengths of a region and an area—the strength of a nation in this case—and the wonderful manufacturing ecosystem that we should be able to build on and which should be a very attractive proposition to investors who want to come in and expand.
I could talk more about some of the other examples of good practice and exciting things that are happening in Northern Ireland, but I do not want to keep the House longer than is necessary. The hon. Member has made the case very well, and I agree with everything that he has said.
Jim Shannon
I suppose the thrust of all the good things—we do not deny them but welcome them because they are good things—is to have the sale as one entity. On behalf of the workers, I especially ask the Minister to commit to looking at what more can be done for the Spirit workers. They are skilled, they are experienced and they are critical to Northern Ireland’s manufacturing base. That is my request to the Minister: to sell it as one entity and keep the workers.
Sarah Jones
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. He is now looking at his phone. I do not whether the unions are messaging him during the debate, but if so, it is very effective.
Of course I will do whatever is useful in this regard. Commercial decisions are being made; we cannot influence all of them, but we can do what we can, and we are trying. We have a very skilled workforce that we do not want to lose, and I am happy to meet, work with and walk alongside our colleagues who are working in Northern Ireland.
I thank the hon. Member for initiating the debate. It is always a joy to talk about what is happening in Northern Ireland, and even more of a joy to be there and see it. I look forward to doing that again soon.
Question put and agreed to.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 90, in clause 48, page 108, line 24, at end insert—
“(3) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must issue statutory guidance on the decision-making process that must be followed when directions are given under section 96 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.
(4) Guidance issued under subsection (3) must include details of—
(a) how actual or potential conflicts of interest arising from the role of local authorities in directing admissions to schools they maintain and those they do not are to be identified and managed; and
(b) how the best interests of children and young people are to be prioritised in all decision-making.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 49 stand part.
New clause 45—Power to direct admission not to have regard to maintained or academy status—
“In section 96 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 (direction to admit child to specified school), after subsection (2) insert—
‘(2A) A direction under this section may not take into account whether a school is a maintained school or an academy.’”
Neil O’Brien
We heard some concern about clauses 48 and 49 in our evidence sessions. One of the issues is the potential conflict of interest between the local authority being both the regulator of the local system and, at the same time, a provider of some of the schools but not others. Sir Dan Moynihan said,
“there is potentially a conflict of interest if local authorities are opening their own schools and there are very hard-to-place kids. There is a conflict of interest in where they are allocating those children, so there needs to be a clear right of appeal in order to ensure that that conflict can be exposed if necessary…Some of the schools we have taken on have failed because they have admitted large numbers of hard-to-place children…I think there are schools that get into difficulty and fail because there is perceived local hierarchy of schools, and those are the schools that get those children. That is why there needs to be a clear right of appeal to prevent that from happening.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 73, Q158.]
Luke Sparkes from Dixons also made roughly the same point.
Amendment 90 would require the Secretary of State to set out statutory guidance on
“how actual or potential conflicts of interest arising from the role of local authorities in directing admissions to schools they maintain and those they do not are to be identified and managed; and… how the best interests of children and young people are to be prioritised in all decision-making.”
New clause 45 would write into the legislation:
“A direction under this section may not take into account whether a school is a maintained school or an academy.”
Neither measure would fundamentally change the clause, but they require a solution to address that potential conflict of interest and ensure that things are fair, and are seen to be fair.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
I rise to speak to amendment 90 and clauses 48 and 49. The clauses aim to strengthen local authorities’ existing powers to direct a school to admit a child and provide a more robust safety net for vulnerable children by ensuring that school places can be secured for them more quickly and efficiently when the usual admissions processes fall short.
Amendment 90 seeks to require the Secretary of State to publish statutory guidance as to how local authorities may exercise their direction powers impartially and in the best interests of children and young people. I note the concerns of the hon. Members that this new power may give rise to conflicts of interests in local authorities’ dealings with the schools that they maintain and those that they do not. I also agree that it is important that local authorities exercise their direction powers appropriately and in the best interests of children and young people.
I reassure hon. Members that legislation, as well as the school admissions code, already sets out mandatory requirements as to how local authorities may exercise their direction powers. They are intended for use only as a last resort and may only be used where admissions cannot be secured through the usual processes. To ensure that decisions are made in the best interests of a child, section 96 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 already requires local authorities to ensure that they choose a school that is within a reasonable distance of a child’s home and provides education suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any specific educational needs that the child may have.
Furthermore, in considering which school to place the child, there are several other factors that local authorities are already required to take into consideration. For example, local authorities are unable to direct a school from which the child has been permanently excluded, or if it would mean that the school would have to take measures to avoid breaking the rules on infant class sizes. Furthermore, they are unable to direct a school’s sixth form if the child does not meet the relevant entry requirements.
In relation to a looked-after child, local authorities cannot direct a school where the child has been permanently excluded from that school previously or where the schools adjudicator deems the admission of the child would result in serious prejudice following an appeal by the school against the direction.
Furthermore, section 97 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 sets out further processes that a local authority must adhere to when considering exercising its direction powers. These include various requirements on consultation, including requiring the local authority to consult with the governing body of the school, the parent of the child and the child themselves, if they are over compulsory school age, before seeking to direct a school. Governing bodies are also provided the opportunity to appeal against any decision by the local authority to direct a child into their school.
Clause 48 enables the same requirements to apply equally in relation to a decision to direct an academy, including making it clear that academy trusts will have the right to appeal to the schools adjudicator against a local authority’s decision to direct their school. Those requirements will all be reflected in the school admissions code, which we intend to amend following Royal Assent. We also intend to work closely with the sector on any further changes that may be needed to fully implement the new powers.
Any change in the code will require a full public consultation and will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny before coming into effect, so I hope that the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich are reassured that we will take action to ensure that the statutory school admissions code will be amended accordingly and continue to set out clear guidance on how local authorities may exercise their direction powers following Royal Assent. We therefore do not consider the amendment necessary and kindly ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to withdraw it.
I turn to clauses 48 and 49. Local authorities have statutory duties to ensure that children in their area have access to a suitable education, but the levers are currently not available to them to achieve that, as they are not always effective. That can result in too many children, many of whom are vulnerable, being left without a school place for too long. Every day lost in a child’s education is one that they cannot get back. Powers of direction are intended to be used only as a last resort in those rare circumstances in which families are unable to secure a place through the usual admissions processes.
The purpose of clauses 48 and 49 is to create a more robust safety net for vulnerable children by giving local authorities the levers they need to secure school places for children more quickly and efficiently when the usual admissions processes fall short, ensuring that no child falls through the cracks. Clause 48 extends the current powers of local authorities to direct a maintained school to admit a child and to enable them to direct academies in the same way.
Although most children will secure a place through the usual admissions processes, vulnerable and hard-to-place children can sometimes struggle to do so. In circumstances in which those children have been refused entry to or have been permanently excluded from every suitable school within a reasonable distance, the local authority has the power to direct a maintained school for which they are not the admission authority to admit that child.
However, where a local authority wishes to place a child in an academy, it currently must request that the Secretary of State uses her direction powers under the academy’s funding agreement to compel the school to admit the child. That additional step can create further delay in getting a child into school. Enabling local authorities to direct academies themselves without needing to go through the process of requesting the Secretary of State to invoke her direction powers will ensure that school places for unplaced and vulnerable children can be secured quickly and efficiently. It does not make sense for local authorities to continue to need to ask the Secretary of State to make such direction for an academy.
Clause 49 further streamlines local authorities’ admission direction processes and makes them more transparent by enabling local authorities to direct a school where the fair access protocol fails to secure a school place for a child. The fair access protocol is a local mechanism for securing school places for children struggling to secure one through the usual admissions processes. The school admissions code requires all local authorities to have a fair access protocol in place that has been agreed with local schools and specifies the categories of children, including vulnerable and hard-to-place children, who are eligible to be considered for a school place under the fair access protocol.
Clause 49 will also enable future iterations of the admissions code to specify circumstances in which local authorities are able to direct the admission of a child where the fair access protocol has been exhausted and fails to secure a place for them. It will also allow the admissions code to set out a more streamlined directions process for children who have come out of care, so as to provide these often still vulnerable children greater parity with children currently in care. As mentioned, we intend to work closely with the sector in implementing the changes to the admissions code, which will include a full public consultation and require parliamentary approval.
I hope that I have reassured hon. Members that clauses 48 and 49 will provide a more robust safety net for vulnerable children by ensuring that places can be secured for them more quickly and efficiently when the usual admissions processes fall short, minimising time out of school and reducing the likelihood of children falling between the cracks. As I have mentioned, to ensure the powers are used appropriately, clause 48 will provide academies that disagree with a decision to direct admission with a formal route of appeal to the schools adjudicator, giving academies the same route of redress as is currently available only to maintained schools. That safeguard will ensure that local authorities use their powers appropriately and place children in suitable schools where they can thrive. I commend clauses 48 and 49 to the Committee.
New clause 45, which was tabled by the hon. Members for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, aims to ensure that where a local authority is considering directing a school to admit a child, it does not take account of whether the school is a maintained school or an academy. The hon. Members appear to be concerned that a new power for local authorities to direct academy schools may give rise to potential conflicts of interest.
As I have mentioned, the power is intended for use only as a last resort, and may be used only where admissions cannot be secured through the usual processes. Under public law principles, local authorities are already prevented from taking irrelevant matters into consideration when taking decisions, and in most circumstances, whether a school is an academy is not likely to be a relevant factor in determining whether to direct a school to admit a child. Furthermore, as I set out earlier, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 and the school admissions code already set out several requirements as to how local authorities may exercise their direction powers. Those include relevant factors that they must take into consideration when deciding to direct a school, as well as the processes they must follow when making a direction.
Local authorities can already request that the Secretary of State direct a pupil into an academy on their behalf, and we know from experience that local authorities use this route only where they consider that it is in the best interests of the pupil, and after careful thought and consideration about the impact on the school. However, the new right for an academy trust to appeal to the independent schools adjudicator where they disagree with a direction for them to admit a child will provide independent oversight of local authorities’ decisions to direct.
I hope that the hon. Members will be reassured that appropriate checks and balances will be in place to mitigate any risk of the misuse of the power by local authorities, and kindly ask that the amendment be withdrawn.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
While we were in Bill Committee on Tuesday, the Education Committee was meeting—there are many people with a lot of interest in the Bill, and rightly so—to hear from three panels of witnesses. I draw the Committee’s attention to the second panel. On the panel was Sam Freedman, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government who worked at the Department for Education from 2010 to 2013 as a senior policy adviser; she is also a senior adviser to Ark schools, although was appearing in a personal capacity. Also on the panel were Daniel Kebede, who is a former teacher and the general secretary of the National Education Union, and John Barneby, who is the chief executive of Oasis Community Learning.
The witnesses did not agree on everything, but all three commented on the benefits of these provisions. John Barneby said that Oasis follows
“local authority admissions at the moment, because we believe in equity of offer, and we want to work in partnership. That is not the case everywhere…My hope is that, out of this policy, we will get to a place where there is a fair distribution of children with special educational needs and disadvantaged children across all schools, so that all schools are truly inclusive and have the capacity to meet the needs of all children.”
He thinks the Bill will go some way to doing that. He also said that there has been a risk raised around the allocation of students, particularly with falling student numbers, but he thinks that
“on the whole, local authorities act responsibly around this.”
Neil O’Brien
I think Sam Freedman is a fella rather than a lady. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 48 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 49 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 50
Functions of adjudicator in relation to admission numbers
Neil O’Brien
I beg to move amendment 84, in clause 50, page 110, line 4, at end insert—
“(4A) Where making a decision the adjudicator must take into account—
(a) the performance of the school; and
(b) whether the school is oversubscribed.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 83, in clause 50, page 110, leave out lines 8 to 13.
Clause stand part.
New clause 46—High performing schools to be allowed to expand PAN—
“In section 88D of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 (determination of admission numbers), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) Where a school—
(a) being a primary school, has over 60% of its pupils meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined in the Key Stage 2 national curriculum assessments,
(b) being a secondary school, is performing above +0.5 on Progress 8,
wishes to increase its published admissions number, the admission authority must reflect that wish in its determination.’”
New Clause 47—Limits on objections to changes to PAN—
“In section 88H of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 (reference of objections to adjudicator), after subsection (2) insert—
‘(2A) No objection may be referred to the adjudicator which—
(a) objects to an increase in a school’s published admissions number; or
(b) objects to a school’s published admissions number remaining at the same level.’”
Neil O’Brien
Clause 50 is one of the elements of the Bill that we are most concerned about. The Government’s impact assessment says:
“Demographic changes mean there is an increase in the number of surplus places in primary schools...We want the local authority to have more influence over the PANs for schools in their area”.
For the benefit of people following the sitting, PAN is the published admission number—the number of pupils a school takes on each year.
The impact assessment continues:
“This would include scenarios where...a school’s PAN is set at a level which creates viability issues for another local school”.
In my mind, that line creates many questions. In a city like London, there are roughly 2,700 or 2,800 state schools, and cross-authority moves are very common. If I have an excellent and oversubscribed school, and someone else’s requires improvement and is struggling to attract pupils, how on earth are they to know that it is my school that is creating viability issues for their school, rather than one of the other hundreds of schools nearby? Indeed, how are we to know that the viability issues are not entirely to do with the struggling school, and how is the schools adjudicator to make such decisions? In reverse, how are the pupils from a thriving school to be shared out fairly if there are multiple struggling schools in the area? As soon as we start to think about it, these are massive questions.
The impact assessment makes it clear that this measure is a huge departure from the path we have been on since the reforms of the late 1980s, which gave good schools the ability to expand without the local authority blocking them. The impact assessment says:
“The Adjudicator will also have the ability to set the PAN for the subsequent year”
and
“some schools may find that their PAN is not set for them as they would wish. They may feel that they are able to take more pupils and thus receive greater funding. It could also limit the ability of popular schools to grow.”
Those are the Government’s words, not mine. They continue:
“If a school is required to lower their PAN, some pupils who would have otherwise been admitted will be unable to attend the school. This will negatively impact on parental preference, especially if the school was the parent’s first choice.”
The Confederation of School Trusts has pointed out that the impact assessment does not account for the potential risks of reducing PANs for popular and successful schools. Our amendments address exactly that point. Once again, rather than the normal split between the regulator and the provider, the local authorities will be both. Politicians in some local authorities—this is not a secret—have never much liked the academy programme or school freedom. It would be very tempting for them to try to push down numbers in academies, particularly to protect the schools that they run even if they are not the best ones or the ones that parents want. For all those reasons, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the former Labour leader, was positive about the clause on Second Reading. However, for the reasons that he is positive about it I am rather nervous about it.
Amendment 84 would write into the Bill:
“Where making a decision the adjudicator must take into account—
(a) the performance of the school; and
(b) whether the school is oversubscribed.”
It would make it clear that we need to deal with the issues now, at this point of democratic decision and transparency, and write those principles into law rather than leave it to Ministers and regulations, meaning that the handling of highly significant issues could easily later shift, with little scrutiny, under a different Secretary of State.
New clause 47 would stop objections to stable or growing PANs, and new clause 46 would at least exempt high performing schools and allow them to still expand. A striking thing about the clause is that it is not just allowing appeals against schools expanding for the first time—a massive move away from the principles of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998—but even allowing appeals against schools just staying the same and carrying on doing what they are doing. That can now be challenged, and the only reason to do that is to share out the pupils in order to help other schools be more viable.
Will the powers be used? Yes, absolutely they will, because the context, of course, is the forecast decline in pupil numbers. Indeed, the impact assessment gives that as one of the rationales in London and other urban areas. The declines are forecast to be quite steep. Often local forecasts turn out to be wrong, but in some London boroughs the forecast is for more than one in 10 or even one in eight pupils to disappear over the next four years. In that context, the temptation to prop up some schools by pressing for reductions in others will be very strong, particularly for local authorities that do not like school choice much, but even in others, too.
At present there is nothing in the Bill to reassure us or school leaders that this will be done fairly between local authority and non-local authority schools, or fairly reflecting how well schools are performing or fairly reflecting how popular they are. There is nothing but the suggestion of future guidance, which the House will not be able to amend and which can shift with the views of whoever is Secretary of State at the time. There is some deep history here. It was Mrs Thatcher who announced the reforms that the Government are starting to undo today. It was initially called the local management of schools. When Mrs Thatcher announced it, she said,
“We will allow popular schools to take in as many children as space will permit. And this will stop local authorities from putting artificially low limits on entry to good schools. And second, we will give parents and governors the right to take their children’s school out of the hands of the local authority and into the hands of their own governing body. This will create a new kind of school funded by the State, alongside the present State schools and the independent private schools. They will bring a better education to many children because the school will be in the hands of those who care most for it and for its future.”
Did those reforms work? Well, the former Education Minister, Lord Adonis, who wrote about the creation of the school freedom, concluded:
“Local Management of Schools was an unalloyed and almost immediate success…school budgets under LMS were based largely on pupil numbers, so parental choice came to matter as never before.”
Several times during our debates I have heard Labour Members say that they believe in “standards, not structures”. We heard it in the last sitting and I have heard it from Ministers. But let me quote from another great socialist thinker, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who says in his memoirs,
“We had come to power in 1997 saying it was ‘standards not structures’ that mattered. We said this in respect of education, but it applied equally to health and other public services. Unfortunately, as I began to realise, when experience shaped our thinking, it was bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How a service is configured affects outcomes.”
This clause strikes at one of the most foundational school reforms of the last 40 years. It strikes at school choice by making the size of schools not a matter for parents in choosing and voting with their feet, but instead for local councillors and the schools adjudicator. You strike at parental choice and you strike at one of the most powerful engines for school improvement.
Although I understand what Ministers are trying to do, this is currently being done in the Bill without any of the basic safeguards we would expect on how they will make those decisions. I understand what Ministers are trying to do, but I think this is one of the worst clauses in the Bill, and I really hope that Ministers will rethink it.
Catherine McKinnell
Clause 50 covers the ability of the schools adjudicator to set the published admissions number of a school where the adjudicator has upheld an objection to it. This provides an important backstop to ensure that all children are able to access a place at a school where they can achieve and thrive.
Amendments 84 and 83 relate to the matters the adjudicator must take into account when deciding on a school’s published admissions number and the means by which those requirements are placed upon her. I will discuss each of these matters in turn, but there are clearly important connections between the two.
Amendment 84 would requires the adjudicator to take into account the school’s performance and whether it is oversubscribed when deciding on what the school’s published admissions number should be following an upheld objection. School performance and parental demand are clearly important factors that adjudicators should consider when determining objections to published admission numbers. Indeed, previous adjudicator determinations on schools reducing published admission numbers show that the adjudicator regularly takes these matters into consideration where they are relevant to a case.
However, specifying that the adjudicator must only take account of these factors and no other factors could hinder effective decision making and damage the interests of schools and communities. Although the expansion of good schools is to be celebrated, we know that in some areas schools are unilaterally increasing their admission numbers beyond what is needed, damaging the quality of education that children receive at nearby schools by making it harder for school leaders to plan the best education for their children.
Therefore, it is right that the adjudicator’s decisions about the level at which to set the admission number following an upheld objection should also consider the wider impact on the community. For example, this could include potential impacts on parental choice if the quality of education that children receive at other schools nearby is affected.
Furthermore, there are other factors that it may be important for the adjudicator to consider or that provide necessary safeguards for the school that is the subject of the objection, such as statutory financial or capacity requirements. For example, primary schools are required to comply with the statutory infant class-size limit and we would want the adjudicator to ensure that any published admission number they set enables the school to comply with this important duty.
Neil O'Brien
The Minister talks about schools expanding “beyond what is needed”. How will she determine whether a school’s expansion is “beyond what is needed”? Is it the presence of any “surplus” school places in that local authority area?
Catherine McKinnell
As I have set out, these are matters for the school adjudicator to determine on when objections have been raised with them. Schools adjudicators are independent, which is an important factor in this process. They have significant experience of considering objection cases and they are ideally placed to take objective, transparent and impartial decisions.
Neil O'Brien
It was the Minister herself who said “we know” that some schools had expanded “beyond what was needed”’; she did not say that an admissions adjudicator had determined that. In response to my challenge, she referred to the admissions adjudicator, but it was she herself who said “we know” that some schools had expanded beyond the point that was “needed”. How does she know that? On what basis does she say that?
Catherine McKinnell
Obviously, the purpose of the clause is to ensure that those decisions are made independently by the schools adjudicator. I think the hon. Gentleman should acknowledge that he is objecting to an independent adjudication on these matters, which is entirely the purpose of this legislative provision.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
We recently saw a case of a ghost school in Nottingham, funded under the previous Government, built but then never opened, because only two pupils applied to join. Does the Minister agree that that is an example of the current system failing?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Clearly, it is really important that we have good schools available to every child in every local area. That is clearly a challenge. A significant number of children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, are not having their needs met within their local school, and they consequently have to travel as a result. As constituency MPs, we have to deal with the families who get in touch because they cannot get a place at their local school and the challenges around that. It is clearly in the interests of everybody that we have a system that manages that, but also that we have an adjudicator that takes an independent view and decides on what would be the right outcome in a particular circumstance.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
Does this part of the Bill not go to the principle that local schools should meet local needs?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend puts it very well. Indeed, that is the case that we are making. That means having good and great schools, and that is the ultimate aim of all these provisions: to ensure that every child has a good local school in which they can achieve and thrive. There needs to be some way in which that is managed on a community-wide basis. I would be surprised if the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston were seriously objecting to that in principle.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I seek some clarity. The Minister seems to be saying, “Leave it up to the independent adjudicator. They will decide.” Is she saying that the Government will not issue guidance on the criteria on which an independent adjudicator should decide?
Catherine McKinnell
No, that is not what I said. I was responding to the specific question asked by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston.
These measures are being introduced to support local authorities with effective place planning. In answer to the question raised by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston about how we know that this challenge needs action, a 2022 report commissioned by the Department for Education under the previous Government reported that
“unilateral decisions about PANs and admissions…was identified by 89% of LAs”
as a barrier to fulfilling their responsibilities for mainstream school place planning. Some 13% of local authorities reported that
“this occurred regularly, 41% occasionally, and 34% rarely”.
Local authorities were more likely to report that this barrier was more common when working with academies. Those are the findings of the Department’s own report, which was commissioned under the last Government.
To be clear, the measure is not about removing any and all surplus places from the school system, including where it is useful, for example, in ensuring parental choice and flexibility in the system to accommodate future demand for school places. This is about ensuring that the places on offer in an area adequately reflect the needs of that local community. Where there is large surplus capacity, that can have a detrimental impact on good schools. It could result in significant upheaval for children and damage local parental choice. This is about supporting local authorities to ensure that they have the right amount of school places in their local area. There is already a statutory obligation on that. This measure will support local authorities to achieve that.
Neil O'Brien
The Minister is talking about within local communities and within local authorities and so on. I raised the issue of how this is supposed to work in London. The Government talked about using this power where
“a school’s PAN is set at a level which creates viability issues for another local school”.
Local is not defined. How is the schools adjudicator to work out whether it is one school that is creating
“viability issues for another local school”
in a setting like London, where there are many schools nearby, or whether some of the viability issues are to do with the school’s own performance, perhaps, because it is not a very good school? How on earth is one to identify fairly in a city like this, with vast flows between boroughs, where the problem is coming from for a “failing” school?
Catherine McKinnell
I recognise the challenge of falling rolls in some London boroughs, which the hon. Member rightly identifies. It just goes to make the case even more strongly: partners have to work collaboratively to ensure that we manage demographic changes properly and that children are at the heart of all decisions.
The measures in the Bill will give local authorities more levers to help manage surplus capacity. For example, the Bill will ensure that if the schools adjudicator upholds an objection that the published admission number of a school is too high to support the community need, the adjudicator will then be able to set the published admission number for the school. Schools and local authorities will be under new duties to co-operate on school admissions and place planning as part of measures to the Bill already debated and passed.
Neil O'Brien
What share of “surplus places” is too high in the eyes of the Minister? Will she set out in guidance what “too high” looks like? What is her view on too high—is it 1%, 2% or 3% surplus places?
Catherine McKinnell
The guidance will set out how local authorities will determine their published admission number. It will also support local authorities with effective place planning, which will be set out in the admissions code. The new delegated powers will set out to adjudicators what they should consider when setting published admission numbers within that context.
I can reassure the hon. Member that adjudicators are experienced at considering these types of issues as part of their existing role. They already do this. They consider both objections to published admission number reductions and requests by maintained schools to vary their published admission number downwards in light of major changes in circumstances. They have an in-depth knowledge of admissions law and play an integral role in ensuring that school admissions are fair and lawful. Many have wide experience of the education system at a very senior level. The hon. Member should not be so concerned that these matters cannot be adjudicated, which seems to be what he is suggesting.
Neil O'Brien
I am not suggesting that they cannot be adjudicated. I am pointing out to the Minister that for them to be adjudicated in a completely new way will mean something very different will happen to our education system. At the moment, the adjudicator can be brought in if a school dramatically wants to cut its numbers. That is fair enough. We need to make sure that all pupils have a place to go to school. But this is something completely new. There is an objection not just to expanding, which is an attack on the principle of school choice, but to schools wanting to keep their published admission number the same.
This is a completely revolutionary change. The adjudicator is not dealing with these kinds of things at the moment for academies, so it is a huge change and a move away from the principles that have allowed good schools to expand and the voices of those who say, “There are too many surplus places; you can go to a worse school and not to your first-choice school” to be squashed by the process of school choice and competition.
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Gentleman has made his concerns known. I do not think he is making any new assertions. It might be helpful if I continue setting out why we do not accept the proposed amendments.
Catherine McKinnell
Perhaps at the end if there are still questions I would be more than happy to address them.
Damian Hinds
It is a different but related question. There are falling rolls, initially in primary over the next few years, and then it will happen in secondary. There will be some difficult choices that someone will need to make. Sometimes that will mean varying the numbers in every school, but I am afraid that the scale of the change in some local authorities, particularly in urban areas and this city, is such that some schools may convert and become special schools, for which there is demand and need. Some may become early years settings. It might be the case—I hope it will not be, as it is always a difficult thing to do—that total education capacity has to reduce. Will it be the schools adjudicator who decides the school that closes?
Catherine McKinnell
Local authorities make decisions about place planning within their local area. There will be a duty on all schools within a local area to co-operate with the local authority on place planning and admissions. The clause and the Bill extend to academies the ability to object to the school adjudicator, which gives them the ability to present their case where there is a challenge. Clause 50, which I will come to shortly, includes a delegated power that enables the Government to make regulations that set out factors that the adjudicator must consider when setting the published admission number of the school after it has upheld an objection.
Neil O’Brien
To be clear, is it the case that under the clause the schools adjudicator will have the power to set the published admission number to zero—in other words, to close a school?
Catherine McKinnell
Where the adjudicator upholds an objection to the published admission number, I cannot foresee a circumstance where that might be the case—
Catherine McKinnell
It will very much depend on the local context. Obviously, it will be for the adjudicator as an independent professional to take that decision for maintained schools. To be clear, for academies it will be for the Secretary of State to end a funding agreement, and for maintained schools it will be for the local authority to determine.
Amanda Martin
Will the Minister confirm that the power to set place numbers includes all schools in local authority areas? It is not just academies but maintained schools. There seems to have been an idea throughout the whole of this debate that maintained schools are somehow a lower echelon of education—
Amanda Martin
Thank you, Sir Edward. It seems to have been implied that only academies might want to expand, but local authority schools might also want to expand. If it is not right for the pupil numbers within the local authority area, it should not be allowed.
We were asked for examples of where it has happened already. In Hackney in 2024, the expansion of some schools and academies—[Interruption.]
Amanda Martin
We were asked for examples of where schools have been closed. We have not even thought about small rural schools that are affected by expansion. Local authorities that represent rural communities must be able to ensure that there are schools across the county, because that is good for everybody.
Specifically on London, the expansion of some academies and schools in Hackney in 2024, particularly as part of a shift towards academisation, has contributed to the closure of certain local schools. St Mary’s Church of England primary school—
The Chair
Order. That is very interesting, but it is an intervention. In a Committee, you can speak as often as you like, but I think we have got the point now and the Minister should carry on with her speech.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She makes powerful and important points relating to the challenges she has experienced in her local area. That is why the changes are necessary to ensure we have a fair system.
The usual approach from Opposition Members is to act as though this is a new thing that has just been invented. This is not a new role for adjudicators. They already consider these issues, not just in proposals to reduce admission numbers—
Catherine McKinnell
Can I finish making one point? Adjudicators do that when schools seek to vary their admission arrangements once they have been determined. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the theoretical prospect—
Catherine McKinnell
It is a hypothetical prospect of a published admission number being set at zero. That will be dealt with as part of regulations and we will set out more detail in those, but we will address that.
Catherine McKinnell
I can get back to the actual substantive response to the amendment, or we can carry on with this debate in the meantime.
Neil O’Brien
This is a substantive point. I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; we are doing the proper business of a Committee here. Let us be clear: the whole point of the clause is to address situations, such as those in London, where a local authority has one in eight of its primary school pupils disappearing within four years, and schools closures will be a part of that. The Minister said that this is not new, but it absolutely is. At the moment, a primary school cannot have its PAN challenged by the local authority if it just wants to keep it the same. In the future, under this clause, the local authority can say, “We want to close this school. We are going to challenge your decision to keep your PAN the same. We think you should shut.” Under this clause, the schools adjudicator will have the power to set its PAN to zero.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister says that the Secretary of State can shut schools in other ways. The schools authority, under this law, will have the power to set a PAN to zero. I did not hear the Minister say that, according to guidance, that should not happen. Will she say that now?
Catherine McKinnell
To deal with the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises, he is wrong that this is a new power.
Catherine McKinnell
If the hon. Gentleman will let me a finish a sentence, he will see. The hon. Gentleman is repeatedly putting words in my mouth by taking snippets of sentences without listening to them entirely. He is concerned that this is intended to address simply matters that might affect London.
Neil O’Brien
Of course it is not. This is stupid. It affects the entire country.
Catherine McKinnell
That is the point I am making. These challenges affect local authorities right up and down the country. The research the previous Government undertook into this matter demonstrated that local authorities, which have a statutory obligation to provide suitable school places for all the children in their local area, face widespread challenges in meeting that obligation because of the challenges in the current system, which the clauses seek to address. Yes, this is a new statutory duty, which is why we are legislating, but it is not a new role for adjudicators. That is the point that I have made a number of times. I am not saying this is not a change, as we are legislating to change things, but it is not a new role for adjudicators. They are well experienced in managing many of these considerations.
The fundamental point is that school closures need to be managed very carefully through significant change or prescribed alteration processes. As I am sure the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston is aware, academies are maintained through contractual arrangements. The parties to the funding agreements are the Secretary of State and the relevant academy trust, and there are no third-party rights given to a local authority under that funding agreement. Any decision relating to the termination of a funding agreement sits with the Secretary of State.
The purpose of the Bill is to put a new requirement on schools, academy trusts and local authorities to co-operate on place planning and admission matters. We expect them to work together to manage the supply of school places and, where necessary, that may include making plans to close a maintained school or academy, if that is the right decision for a particular area.
Amanda Martin
I have already mentioned the three expert witnesses who commented on this issue. Although they probably have very different opinions on other elements of the education system, all were in agreement. Does the Minister believe that the clause, unamended, means that local authorities can perform fair place planning for all pupils, whether in rural, suburban or inner-city areas, to ensure that there is still access for all pupils and that it is done in a fair way, whether a school is maintained or an academy?
Catherine McKinnell
Absolutely, and it is right that where an objection is put to the adjudicator about a published admission number and the adjudicator upholds it, they consider the wider impact on the whole community—for example, how it might affect parental choice or the quality of education for children affected by any decision. The adjudicator should clearly consider other factors that may provide necessary safeguards for a school that is the subject of an objection, such as their financial or capacity requirements. As I will discuss when I turn to amendment 83, that is why clause 50 includes the power to make regulations that set out what the adjudicator must and must not take into account when taking a decision on published admission numbers that must be set where an objection to the published admission numbers is held. I hope that when we get on to the next clause, many of the concerns of the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston will be allayed.
We are clear that the regulation-making power represents the best approach to ensuring that all relevant actors are given due consideration by the adjudicator and that the requirements placed on the adjudicator can still be amended easily to respond to the ongoing needs of the sector and of the schools and the communities they serve. Importantly, we want to work with the sector to ensure that we have fully considered all relevant factors of concern when we develop the regulations to set out requirements on matters that the adjudicator must and must not consider when deciding on the published admission number of a school. That will ensure that the requirements on the adjudicator are clear and comprehensive.
The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston tabled amendment 83, which would remove from the Bill a delegated power to enable the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out factors that the adjudicator must and must not take into account when assessing the published admission number of a school or where they uphold a published admission number objection. That is relevant in the context of the hon. Member’s amendment 84, but, as I have tried to do in the discussion we have had—and as I would have already done if we had got to it—I will explain a little more our intentions for the regulation-making power and why we consider it the most appropriate way to address the issues raised in amendment 84.
It is important that the adjudicator, admission authorities and local authorities are all clear on what factors the adjudicator will take into account in her decision making, so that the decisions are made on a clear and transparent basis. In many cases, a school’s performance and parental demand for places, as the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston set out in amendment 84, will clearly be important factors for the adjudicator to consider when considering an objection to a school’s published admission number. However, as I have mentioned, there are many other important considerations, not just for the area but for the school itself, that must form part of the adjudicator’s decision making.
Let us be clear: these are difficult questions. They concern, for example, important matters such as the school’s capacity, the impact of the proposed admission number on the quality of education for children at neighbouring schools, and more practical matters such as compliance with regulations in terms of class sizes. Importantly, regulations to specify what the adjudicator must and must not take into account will ensure that any relevant impacts on the admission authority and school that are the subject of the objection are given due consideration before the adjudicator decides on the published admission number.
The complexity of the factors is best set out in regulations to ensure that they remain flexible and responsive to changes in any related legislation and in the wider context. For example, if we want to ensure that adjudicators take account of a school’s need to comply with infant class-size regulations, we want to be able to respond to any changes to those regulations. Similarly, if future demographic changes mean it is important for the adjudicator to think about how they consider issues such as a school’s capacity, regulations can be amended to ensure that the adjudicator takes into account all relevant considerations at that time and is not bound by outdated rules.
The regulations, and any changes to them, will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Including these matters in regulations will ensure that, if necessary, we can respond quickly to feedback from the sector, and where wider circumstances change, while ensuring that a clear level of rigour and parliamentary oversight can still be achieved. Given the argument I have set out, I respectfully ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston not to press his amendments.
Clause 50 provides that where the adjudicator upholds an objection to a school’s published admission number, it can specify the new PAN, which must then be included in the school’s admission arrangements. That is vital to ensure that all communities have the places they need so that children can access a local school where they can achieve and thrive.
Broadly, the ability of admission authorities to set their published admission numbers works well. In many areas, published admission numbers work effectively, and admission authorities and local authorities co-operate well to support local need. The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has a concern about the clause’s impact on the ability of good schools to expand through an increase to their published admission numbers; I reassure him that the Government are absolutely in favour of good schools expanding where that is right for the local area.
David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)
The Minister just mentioned areas where schools already collaborate well with local authorities, and I am pleased to say that St Helens is one of those areas. From my experience as council leader before coming here, and since then as a Member of Parliament, I am aware that maintained schools and academies work together collaboratively very well, both with each other and with the local authority. Does the Minister agree that the clause is simply about ensuring that that remains the case and that local authorities have the support they need to ensure that local schools work for local families?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. The focus here has been on where it goes wrong, but actually, in the vast majority of cases, local authorities are collaborating well, because fundamentally everybody has the same goal, which is to provide an education that enables children to achieve and thrive. That needs to be delivered for every child in a local area, and clearly that is what this legislation is intended to achieve.
Where local authorities need more places in an area, we and they would clearly encourage high-performing schools to work in collaboration with local authorities to meet that need. However, where admission authorities act unilaterally, without recognising the needs of or impact on their local communities, that can cause problems, not just for local authorities or neighbouring schools but, ultimately, for children and parents.
In some areas, local authorities struggle to fulfil their responsibility to ensure sufficient school places, because the published admission numbers set by individual admission authorities do not meet local needs, despite there being physical capacity in schools. In other areas, schools are increasing their admission number beyond what is needed, risking damage to the education that children receive at nearby schools by making it harder for school leaders to plan the best education for their children. In the worst-case scenario, it could lead to perfectly good schools becoming unviable and therefore reduce choice for parents.
Where agreement cannot be reached locally, and a local authority or another body or person brings an objection to a school’s published admission number to the schools adjudicator, the adjudicator must, as now, come to their own independent decision as to whether to uphold the objection, taking into account the views of all parties, the requirements of admissions law and the individual circumstances of the case. It is important to note that the measure does not enable local authorities to directly change the published admission number of any school for which it is not the admission authority. The adjudicator, not the local authority, is the decision maker and they will take an independent and impartial decision. The provisions of clause 50 ensure that where they uphold an objection to a school’s published admission number—
Damian Hinds
So it is not the local authority; it is the adjudicator. I am wondering, as we are talking about serving communities, where the line of democratic accountability is.
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman is perhaps questioning the very long-standing process—it has been in existence for quite some time—for the role of the adjudicator in making these decisions where it cannot be decided within a local authority area on a collaborative basis. Obviously, the ideal situation is that local authorities and all the schools within the area are able to co-operate and collaborate to ensure that any individual admission number is set at the right level for the local community, taking into account the broader context. There is clear democratic accountability in that. Where that process breaks down, the adjudicator is there to be an independent arbitrator. Those requirements are set out in law; the framework that they work to and the factors that they consider are set out in guidance that is subject to parliamentary scrutiny. It is clear and transparent, and the adjudicator is bound by the laws in that case.
Catherine McKinnell
Does the right hon. Gentleman mind if I just finish? It may answer his question.
In the instances I just described, the powers in the clause provide a direct route for an independent decision, resulting in a clear outcome for parents, admission authorities and local authorities.
Damian Hinds
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I do mean these questions genuinely, in the spirit of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill and trying to ascertain unintended consequences, intent and so on. If the adjudicator now has responsibility for ensuring that the number of school places in an area is what is needed and is fair, does the adjudicator also have a say in allowing a school to open?
Catherine McKinnell
It is the local authority that has the responsibility to agree published admission numbers with the schools in its area. Obviously, academies are their own admissions authority, and will set their own published admission number. The adjudicator becomes involved in the decision making where appeals are made to a school’s chosen published admission number. The adjudicator is then required to come to a decision, based on a very clear framework of factors to consider, as to whether the published admission number is fair in the context of the particular school and the local community. What was the right hon. Gentleman’s specific question?
Damian Hinds
Does the adjudicator also have a say in allowing a school to open?
Catherine McKinnell
I cannot envisage a scenario where an adjudicator would adjudicate on the opening of a new school. If it adjudicates on the published admission numbers of existing schools, I cannot foresee a scenario where there would be an appeal to the adjudicator for a school that does not exist.
Neil O’Brien
If I can put it in my words, there is nothing in the Bill to stop the local authority applying to the adjudicator to stop the first year PAN of a new school. If I say, “I want to open my new school and the PAN is going to be X,” the local authority could say, “No, I think it should be half of X.” There is nothing to stop that, even in the first year. It could even be that the local authority says, “No, the first year number should be zero.” There is nothing in the Bill to stop that happening, so, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire says, it does apply to new schools.
Catherine McKinnell
I apologise, but I still do not see the relevance to how an adjudicator could open a new school. I am more than happy to write to the hon. Gentleman after I have considered the issue further.
Damian Hinds
It may help if I say why I asked the question. The adjudicator will be worrying, “I need to make sure that a school over here isn’t creating unfairness or making another school unviable because there are too many school places in this area.” If someone else comes along and says, “I’m going to open a new one,” that will make the school even more unviable. Logically, if I am the adjudicator and the Government are tasking me with making sure that we are not making schools unviable, surely I should be able to veto a new school coming into the community.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification. It is not that the adjudicator makes the decision about whether to open a new school, which is how the question was originally posed. The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the hypothetical outcome that the adjudicator’s involvement in a decision could result in—
Damian Hinds
No, I am asking directly: could the adjudicator stop a new school opening on the grounds that we have tasked the adjudicator with making sure that there is not excess capacity in an area, which might make one or more schools unviable? Logically, surely the adjudicator ought to be able to stop the problem getting even worse—in the eyes of Ministers—by refusing a new school opening.
Catherine McKinnell
I will have to take away that question, and I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman with a response. Obviously, the adjudicator currently has a role in certain cases—for example, where a local authority is involved in the foundation of a school. I will look at the specific example that he raises, and I am happy to write to him with a response.
Neil O’Brien
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for her offer to write on this point. To avoid disturbing her flow any further, can I ask her to explain something? If a school is not happy with the decision of the adjudicator on its PAN, what will the appeal process look like for that school?
Catherine McKinnell
Adjudicators’ decisions are legally binding and publicly available. Ultimately, adjudicators are appointed by the Secretary of State, who is accountable for those decisions. That responds to the question from the right hon. Member for East Hampshire about democratic accountability.
I presume that the outcome in the case that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston raises would be a legal challenge to the decision. Obviously, he and the right hon. Member for East Hampshire are testing the possible outcomes of this measure to the very limit, which comes across as rather extreme in most cases. The purpose of the clause is to simplify, clarify and make more transparent the levers that local authorities will have to set planning numbers in their area, ideally to reduce the number of challenges and issues that arise.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Other than the Government Whip, the hon. Member for Lewisham North, I am the only London MP in the room. There has been a lot of discussion about London schools and the challenges that we have, and one of the reasons why I have been listening quietly is that I have a lot of sympathy for both sets of arguments that have been put forward.
I want to pick up on the point about new schools opening in areas where there may already be surplus capacity. In defence of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, I do not think that this issue is just theoretical. I talked to a director of children’s services about a borough —it neighbours the one containing my constituency—where there is already a funding application in the pipeline for a new free school. At the same time, an academy has just decided to expand its PAN. That director of children’s services was saying, “Actually, I welcome the duty to co-operate,” but it throws up the question posed by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire: would the adjudicator urge Ministers to turn down the application for the free school because an existing academy is already expanding its PAN? I do not say that to make a political point; it is a genuine question that will need some clarity from Ministers, albeit subsequent to this debate.
Catherine McKinnell
I appreciate that the hon. Lady refers to a real potential scenario, although I would certainly put it in the hypothetical category at this stage. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator can only take a decision where there has been an objection. That is the point I was making. It cannot decide whether to open a school; it can take a decision only where an objection is made specifically to the adjudicator on the basis of the proposed published admission number.
Subject to the passing of this Bill, new school proposals put forward by the local authority outside the invitation process—I do not believe we have got to those clauses yet; we are coming to a whole additional debate on that—will be decided by the schools adjudicator, to avoid any conflict of interest and to ensure that any objections to the proposals are considered fairly. Obviously, it will have the legal framework within which to operate in order to make those decisions. That is an established part of the current system.
For other possible scenarios, we will provide guidance on the factors that we expect decision makers to take into account in the variety of decisions that may be required. That will be based on the existing guidance for opening new schools and will include the vision for the school, whether it is deliverable and affordable, the quality of the education, the curriculum and the staffing plans. Those are all the factors taken into account when determining the opening of a new school.
However, I appreciate the challenge on published admission numbers, in particular, being a factor to be taken into consideration. As I said, I will confirm in more detail how that might work in practice, but the fundamental point is that it will be set out in guidance. If there is a challenge to a decision by an adjudicator, that will be by way of judicial review.
Moving on, new clause 46, tabled by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, seeks to ensure that where high-performing schools, as defined in his new clause, wish to increase their published admission number, their admission authority must reflect that in the determined admission arrangements. I can reassure him that, as I have said already, this Government support good schools expanding where that is right for the local community. We understand the importance of admission authorities being able to set their own admission arrangements, including their published admission number.
Admission authorities will consider a variety of factors in arriving at the most appropriate number for their schools and must consult where they want to make changes, taking the feedback into account before they make their final decision. Where, for example, a multi-academy trust or local authority is setting the PAN for an individual school for which it is the admission authority, it is right that it takes into account the views of that school, but that can be done by informal engagement or by a formal consultation process if necessary.
The school admissions code requires governing bodies to be consulted on changes to a school’s admission arrangements where they are not the admission authority. However, that does not mean that those views should override any relevant factors, such as budgeting or staffing, that a trust, governing body or local authority, as the school’s admission authority, may need to take into consideration as part of its final decision.
If the school feels that it has not been heard and the admission authority has reduced the published admission number where the school feels it should be able to offer more places, it would be open to the school itself, like any other body or person, to object to the adjudicator for an independent resolution. We expect most issues to be resolved locally, through engagement and collaboration, and, given the existing, effective routes for schools to influence the published admission number set for them by the local authority, we do not think the new clause is necessary. For the reasons I have outlined, I would ask the hon. Gentleman not to press it.
Finally, I turn to new clause 47, tabled by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, which would prevent objections from being made against an admission authority where it proposes to increase its PAN or keep it the same as the previous year. Through clause 50 we want to ensure that the number of places on offer in an area adequately reflects the needs of the local community. As the hon. Member is aware, at present, any body or person can object to the adjudicator about a school’s determined admission arrangements, including the school’s PAN. However, current regulations have the same effect as his new clause of preventing objections where a PAN is increased or retained at the same level as the previous year. We intend to amend those regulations to allow the local authority to object to the adjudicator where a PAN has been increased or has stayed the same as in the previous year. This is intended to facilitate the measures set out in clause 50 to provide a more effective route for local authorities to object to the independent adjudicator about a school’s PAN.
The current circumstances in which the system operates are complex. In some areas there is a surplus of places, whereas in others, some admissions authorities are not offering sufficient places to ensure that all children can access a local school That means that both PAN increases and decreases can impact on the local school system in different ways, and that even where a school’s PAN has not changed from previous years, changing demographics can mean that that number no longer meets the needs of the local area. However, local authorities often lack the levers to deliver on their duty to ensure that there are sufficient school places, or to manage the school estate effectively. So, if the PAN does not work in the interests of the local community, the local authority should be able to object to the adjudicator, regardless of whether the school intends to increase, decrease or keep the same PAN, and that will ensure fairness and the most appropriate decision on the allocation of places.
Our proposed changes reflect local authorities’ important role in ensuring that there are sufficient places, and that the number of places offered in an area meets the needs of the community. That is why we are proposing a limited change to the regulations to lift this restriction only for local authorities, not for all bodies or people. The route of objection will be a last resort for local authorities. We expect local authorities and schools to work together to set PANs that are appropriate, and we will update the school admissions code to support that.
As the House has previously confirmed in passing the relevant regulations, the flexibility of the current regulations has worked well, enabling the Government of the day to be responsive to changing circumstances in the interests of parents and communities. New clause 47 would prevent the Government from exercising the flexibility provided for by the existing legislative framework, leaving local authorities with limited ability to act in the interests of the local community and seek an independent decision on the PAN of a school where they consider it does not meet the community’s needs. The changes that the Government propose to make to the regulations will of course be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
In the light of those arguments, I respectfully ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to withdraw his amendment, and I commend clause 50 to the Committee.
Neil O’Brien
I pay tribute to the Minister for the reasonable way in which we have conducted this important debate. We have a huge disagreement with clause 50, which we think is a major mistake. We also have concerns about the process. We believe that it is better for this House to debate these big issues about what fairness is and looks like, and for that to be dealt with through the transparency of primary legislation, rather than its being left to the Secretary of State at any given moment to pass these things in regulations. I am therefore keen to press amendment 84 and new clause 46 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Crown Estate Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Will everyone ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode. We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. No food or drinks are permitted during sittings of the Committee, except for the water provided. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk or, alternatively, pass their written notes to them in the room.
The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. It shows how the clauses and selected amendments have been grouped for debate. The Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group will be called to speak first; in the case of a stand part debate, the Minister will be called first. Other Members are then free to indicate that they wish to speak by bobbing which, as you all know, means standing up in your place.
At the end of a debate on a group of amendments and new clauses, I shall call the Member who moved the lead amendment or new clause again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate whether they wish to withdraw the amendment or the new clause or to seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment or new clause in a group to a vote, they will need to let me know. I hope that explanation is helpful.
Finally, I remind Members about the code of conduct relating to registered interests. If any Members wish to declare an interest, they should do so now. As there are no interests, I will call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee for the Bill.
Ordered,
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 11.30 am on Thursday 6 February) meet at 2.00 pm on Thursday 6 February and 9.25 on Tuesday 11 February;
2. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 11.25 am on Tuesday 11 February.—(James Murray.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(James Murray.)
Clause 1
Power of Crown Estate Commissioners to borrow etc
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 1, page 1, line 26, at end insert—
“(3) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must limit borrowing by the Crown Estate under this section by regulations made by statutory instrument, and these regulations may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(4) The first set of regulations made under subsection (3) must limit borrowing to a net debt to asset value ratio of no more than 25 per cent.”
This amendment would limit the amount the Commissioners may borrow by regulations subject to the affirmative procedure for statutory instruments.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 1, line 26, at end insert—
“(3) The Treasury must by regulations limit borrowing to a net debt to asset value ratio of no more than 25 per cent.
(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
This amendment would limit the amount the Commissioners may borrow by regulations.
Clause stand part.
James Wild
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss, and to get the Committee started this morning. The clause amends the Crown Estate Act 1961 to remove certain statutory restrictions on the commissioners’ powers, and it clarifies and expands those powers in certain respects. Specifically, it broadens the Crown Estate’s investment powers and confers a broader power to borrow, subject to Treasury consent.
As well as moving the amendment, I will speak to the clause. The Crown Estate Bill was conceived under the previous Government, and I am pleased that it has now progressed to this stage. We support the objective of the clause, which is to increase the Crown Estate’s ability to compete and invest, so that it maintains and enhances the value of the estate and the income derived from it.
As the Committee knows, assets managed by the Crown Estate are not the property of the Government, and nor are they part of the sovereign’s private estate. Since George III, the assets have been held in right of the Crown—in other words, they are owned by the Crown as an institution, not personally by the monarch. The concept of the Crown encompasses the interests of both the sovereign and the Government. That is why appropriate scrutiny of the Crown Estate is important. The Estate has assets worth £15.5 billion and a portfolio of 185,000 acres, and it manages roughly 7,400 miles of coastline. It is also the largest contiguous owner in the west end.
The Crown Estate returns all its net profits to the Treasury. In 2023-24, it recorded a net profit of £1.1 billion. Over the past decade, it has generated £4.1 billion for the nation’s finances, which is a laudable record, but there is the potential to do more. The Crown Estate estimates that the changes in the clause will enable it to generate £100 million per annum in additional revenues to the Treasury by 2030. That is forecast in the original business case that led to this legislation. It is therefore right that we should help to modernise the Estate as it aims to create lasting prosperity for the nation.
At present, the Crown Estate is limited to making investments in certain types of property and certain restricted types of security held on the Crown Estate’s behalf by the national debt commissioners. The Estate’s powers to borrow for the purposes of discharging or redeeming incumbrances affecting the Estate are very limited. The Bill will modernise the Estate by removing those limitations.
Although we support the borrowing power, we are concerned that there is a lack of parliamentary oversight over the borrowing levels. This is a new power. The Crown Estate should be prudent on the level of borrowing. The purpose must be supporting the Estate’s duty to maintain and enhance its value for maximised return to taxpayers. That is why we have tabled amendment 4, which would limit the amount the commissioners may borrow instruments. Specifically, the amendment would limit borrowing to a net debt-to asset value ratio of no more than 25% initially.
When pushed by Baroness Vere and other noble Friends in the other place, the Government stated that a limit on borrowing is better placed outside legislation and that controls would be set out in the memorandum of understanding between the Crown Estate and the Treasury. On Second Reading, the Minister repeated that, saying:
“There will, as has been noted, be a memorandum of understanding in place between the Treasury and the Crown Estate, and that will govern how borrowing powers will be exercised.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 805.]
The target borrowing level in that MOU sets out that the loan-to-value ratio should not exceed 25%. Given that the Government agree that there should be a limit, we should introduce robust safeguards in statute to protect against unconstrained borrowing. An MOU between the Treasury and the Crown Estate is easily altered at the stroke of a pen. If Parliament is being asked to remove the restriction to allow the Crown Estate to borrow, I struggle to see the logic in why the Government think that the cap they have committed to should not initially be set in legislation, with the ability to amend it by secondary legislation, if necessary. I would be grateful if the Minister could address those concerns and confirm whether the Government have considered this proposal since Second Reading.
A limit must be subject to the affirmative procedure, which is a proportionate step that will ensure that the Crown Estate can access that borrowing to maintain and enhance the value of its land, property, and interests for the benefit of the nation. However, borrowing can be risky, and this is a new power, so it should be subject to some controls and we should be cautious. I contend that amendment 4 is a perfectly reasonable check on the borrowing power, and I hope we can get the Committee off to a positive start, with the Minister accepting it.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Amendment 7 is similar to amendment 4, and is supportive of its essence. It is about introducing a sensible borrowing limit for the Crown Estate commissioners by capping their net debt-to-asset value ratio at 25%, with any change to that limit requiring parliamentary approval.
As we have just heard, clause 1 as it stands grants the Crown Estate significant new powers to borrow and access financial assistance from the Treasury. Although investment in the Crown Estate’s portfolio—particularly in areas such as offshore wind—is welcome, it is vital that we ensure fiscal responsibility and protect the long-term value of these assets for the nation.
Amendment 7 is about introducing proper safeguards. The Crown Estate manages over £16 billion in assets, and its revenues contribute directly to the Treasury and public finances. Without a clear borrowing limit, we could risk unchecked debt accumulation, which could ultimately undermine the Estate’s financial sustainability and reduce the returns it provides to the Exchequer. A 25% debt-to-asset ratio is a reasonable cap and allows for investment and growth, but prevents excessive leveraging that could put the Estate’s finances at risk. Crucially, the amendment also ensures parliamentary oversight. Any changes to the limit must be debated and approved by both Houses, rather than left solely to the discretion of the Treasury.
This is not about preventing the Crown Estate from borrowing; it is about ensuring that borrowing is responsible, transparent and aligned with the long-term interests of the nation. Given the Crown Estate’s unique status and the importance of its revenues to the public purse, it is only right that Parliament retains a say over any significant increase in borrowing capacity. The amendment would only confirm assurances that were provided in the other House by Lord Livermore. In his work with Baroness Kramer, we were assured that there would be a cap on borrowing to 20% of the loan-to-value ratio in the updated framework agreement. Amendments 4 and 7 reflect those promises, and I urge the Government to support amendment 7 to safeguard the financial integrity of the Crown Estate and ensure that borrowing powers are used wisely and with proper oversight.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee with you as Chair, Ms Furniss. I will turn to the amendments in a moment, but I will first briefly address why clause 1 should stand part, and what it would achieve in amending the Crown Estate Act 1961.
The clause amends the 1961 Act to clarify the powers of the commissioners and remove certain statutory restrictions in respect of borrowing. Those changes are central to the aims of the Bill, which are to modernise the Crown Estate and to remove limitations on investments, to ensure that it can meet its core statutory duties. Those duties—which it is right for the Crown Estate to pursue in the national interest—are to maintain and enhance the value of the estate and the returns obtained from it.
The Crown Estate is a commercial business, independent from Government, that operates for profit and competes for investment. However, limitations placed on it by the Crown Estate Act 1961 currently risk its ability to compete and invest most effectively, meaning that it is less able to deliver returns for the public purse than it might otherwise be. The clause therefore makes two main changes.
First, the clause clarifies the investment powers of the Crown Estate commissioners by expressly conferring powers that are currently implicit in the 1961 Act. That ensures that the commissioners have the power to do anything that is designed
“to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to,”
discharging their statutory duties, including their core duties to maintain and enhance the value of the estate. The clause also removes restrictions on the commissioners’ powers to invest.
Through those broader investment powers, the Crown Estate will have greater flexibility to invest in new growth opportunities—for example, in digital technologies, to support the acceleration of offshore energy through digital mapping of the seabed. These broader powers will also unlock the Crown Estate’s ability to under de-risking activities, such as surveys and grid co-ordination, which will increase the frequency of offshore wind leasing and support the clean energy mission.
Secondly, clause 1 inserts a proposed new section into the 1961 Act that would grant the Crown Estate the power to borrow out of the national loans fund via the Treasury, or otherwise subject to Treasury consent. It also authorises the Treasury to provide financial assistance to the commissioners. That change will unlock the Crown Estate’s ability to compete more effectively, by enabling it to borrow as its competitors currently can.
The clause has been carefully drafted to include the requirement for Treasury consent prior to the Crown Estate accessing debt. That strong safeguard will ensure that borrowing is carefully considered and controlled. Furthermore, as borrowing will be from Government at commercial rates, the interest paid by the Crown Estate will outweigh the cost to Government of the borrowing.
Any borrowing undertaken by the Crown Estate will be for investment in activities that will drive increases in its revenues, thereby also increasing the profits it generates and provides to the Government, which will help to provide funding for our public services. That will be a net benefit to the public finances, and builds on the Crown Estate’s long track record of delivering significant returns to the public purse year after year. As the shadow Minister mentioned, that has totalled more than £4 billion in the last decade.
I will now turn to amendments 4 and 7, which were tabled by the hon. Members for North West Norfolk and for South Cambridgeshire respectively. The amendments would place a legislative limit on borrowing, through regulations, but it is the Government’s view that limits on borrowing are best set outside of legislation. For that reason, a limit will be set in the memorandum of understanding between the Treasury and the Crown Estate, with the cap set at no more than a 25% net debt-to-asset value ratio. That document has been made available in draft to aid the House in its scrutiny.
The primary safeguard built into the Bill is the requirement for Treasury consent. We are also retaining the requirement for the Crown Estate to maintain and enhance the value of the estate, while having
“due regard to the requirements of good management”,
as set out in the 1961 Act. Taken together, those elements provide clear guardrails and strengthen the important fiduciary duty of the commissioners not to take decisions that could endanger the estate or compromise its core duties.
To underscore the point—given that the two Opposition Members raised questions about this—the Bill is clear that any borrowing undertaken by the Crown Estate can only be from the Treasury or otherwise with Treasury consent. The Treasury will, of course, ensure that any borrowing is consistent with our wider fiscal rules. Therefore, in addition to the requirement to secure Treasury consent, the draft memorandum of understanding between the Treasury and the Crown Estate sets out additional guardrails. For instance, it says that the borrowing should “target a sustainable range”, and is “not to exceed 25%” of the
“Loan to value ratio (defined as the ratio of net debt to asset value”
As with any public sector borrowing, the Treasury will ensure that this is consistent with managing public money principles, to ensure value for money from the taxpayer. On that basis, I hope hon. Members will not press their amendments.
James Wild
I am disappointed to hear the Minister’s response. He did not quite address the point that an MoU —I appreciate that he has provided a draft to the Committee—can simply be changed if Ministers and the Crown Estate decide they want to change the level. Only in the last week or so, we have passed into law the charter for Budget responsibility, setting out the Government’s fiscal rules in statute, so I am not sure why there is an in-principle objection to setting out such borrowing in legislation. I think that that would be a prudent step, as we and the Crown Estate embark on a new period with this borrowing power. I will therefore push my amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
James Wild
I beg to move amendment 5, in clause 2, page 2, line 11 at end insert—
“(5A) The Commissioners must notify the Chancellor of the Exchequer of any proposed changes to the remuneration framework governing remuneration of the Chief Executive set out in the Framework Document.
(5B) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must lay before Parliament any notification received under subsection (5A).”
This amendment requires Commissioners to notify the Chancellor of the Exchequer of any changes to the remuneration of the Chief Executive, who must lay that notification before Parliament.
James Wild
The clause amends schedule 1 to the Crown Estate Act 1961. Specifically, it will increase the number of commissioners from eight to 12 and require them to be paid out of the returns generated by the Crown Estate, rather than out of money provided by Parliament, as is the case currently.
Clause 2 is intended to bring the Crown Estate’s operating practice in line with best practice for corporate governance. Subsection (2) seeks to provide the flexibility to allow the board to include a combination of executive and non-executive directors, to reflect its increasingly diverse activities. Subsection (2) also removes the requirement for the second Crown Estate commissioner—a post currently held by the chief executive—to be the deputy chairman. This measure seeks to satisfy best practice standards, whereby the roles of chairman and chief exec should not be exercised by the same person.
We are supportive of the changes, and I put on record again my thanks to Baroness Vere of Norbiton for pushing the Government to give assurances that the chair of the Crown Estate commissioners could be added to the Cabinet Office’s pre-appointment scrutiny list. I understand that we are waiting for the Treasury Committee to set a date for the pre-appointment hearing for Ric Lewis. Subsection (3) requires the salaries and expenses of the commissioners to be paid out of the returns of the estate to reflect the Crown Estate’s commercial freedom and function, and to place the commissioners in a position that is more consistent with general commercial practice.
I turn now to amendment 5, which is tabled in my name. As I have set out, as well as modifying the governance, clause 2 alters the way in which the commissioners are paid. Parliament will no longer need to approve the salaries and expenses of the commissioners and their staff. However, I believe that some form of parliamentary oversight is needed. At present, the estimate details supply finance and is voted on by Parliament at the beginning of the financial year. Amendment 5 would simply require the commissioners to
“notify the Chancellor of the Exchequer of any proposed changes to the remuneration framework governing remuneration of the Chief Executive set out in the Framework Document.”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer would then be required to lay before Parliament any such notification.
Currently, the remuneration policy and framework for the Crown Estate’s staff is the responsibility of the board’s remuneration committee, and the framework document states:
“The Committee will share any planned changes to the remuneration framework with HM Treasury to seek their agreement.”
Given that Parliament will no longer be needed to approve the salaries, does the Minister agree that it would be sensible to ensure that Parliament is at least notified of any changes to the remuneration policy that affect the chief executive?
At present, the framework document sets out that the
“maximum remuneration of the Chief Executive should be in line with or below that of the lower quartile of an appropriate benchmark group agreed with HM Treasury.”
It also states that
“the clear majority of the Chief Executive’s total reward package should be conditional upon performance, with a significant element of that conditional upon long term performance”,
given the Crown Estate’s primary duty. The Opposition support rewarding success and the delivery of targets, but any such changes to the policy should be considered by Parliament.
On Second Reading, the Minister said:
“As the Crown Estate is statutorily an independent, commercial organisation, which returns hundreds of millions of pounds in profit to the Exchequer every year, continuing the success is crucial and it requires the organisation to have the freedom to compete for the top talent in the commercial world.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 805.]
We absolutely agree on that, but I struggle to see how ensuring that Parliament is simply notified of changes to the chief executive’s pay policy will restrict the Crown Estate’s ability to compete for top talent. It is about transparency, and it would simply provide much-needed scrutiny to a process for which there is currently parliamentary oversight, given the statutory purpose of the Crown Estate. I would welcome support for our amendment, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
James Murray
I will turn to amendment 5 in a moment, but I will begin by briefly setting out what clause 2 seeks to achieve. The clause makes changes to the Crown Estate’s governance to bring the Crown Estate’s constitution in line with best practice for modern corporate governance. The clause makes three changes, which I will deal with in turn.
First, the clause increases the maximum number of commissioners on the Crown Estate’s board from eight to 12. That will provide the Crown Estate with the flexibility it needs to satisfy best practice standards for modern corporate governance. For example, the change will allow the Crown Estate’s board to include a wider combination of executive and non-executive members, both to reflect its increasingly diverse and wide-ranging activities and to enable it to adopt appropriate committee structures.
However, I assure the Committee that although we are increasing the number of commissioners, we are not changing the way in which they are appointed to the role, except for the new commissioner roles introduced by clause 6. The exact number and the respective roles of the commissioners within that new maximum will remain subject to the public appointments process. As such, additional commissioners will be appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, as is usual practice. That also includes the new commissioners with special responsibility that we will consider in our debate on clause 6, for which there will also be a process of consultation with the relevant devolved Government. The chair will face additional pre-appointment scrutiny, as the Financial Secretary confirmed in the other place.
Secondly, the clause removes the requirement for the second Crown Estate commissioner, a post currently held by the chief executive, to be deputy chair. This change will align the Crown Estate with best practice standards that set out that the roles of chair and chief executive should not be exercised by a single individual.
Thirdly, the clause will require the salaries and expenses of the commissioners to be paid out of the return obtained from the Crown Estate, rather than out of money provided by Parliament, which is the current position. Changing the source of funding for commissioner salaries is intended to demonstrate more clearly the relationship between the relevant expenditure and Crown Estate income, while also reflecting the Crown Estate’s commercial functions. However, the pay of the chair and other non-executive commissioners will continue to be set by Treasury Ministers. In line with the UK corporate governance code, that will not include any performance-related element.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
Clearly, the highest standards of independence and probity will be required of the chair in order to execute their duties, particularly given that we have not brought back to Parliament the ability to raise debt on the assets of the Crown Estate. I feel duty bound therefore to ask the Minister whether he is aware of media reports that the Chancellor’s preferred candidate for chair is a recent Labour party donor who gave £15,000 to the Labour party in 2023 and £30,000 to the Foreign Secretary. It is not unreasonable of the shadow Minister’s amendment to seek that level of transparency by asking for any future changes to salaries for chairs to come back to Parliament.
James Murray
The hon. Member asks about the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, to which I was just about to turn. If he will allow, I will address the amendment and that will answer at least some of the questions he raises in his intervention.
Amendment 5 would require the commissioners to notify the Chancellor of the Exchequer of any proposed changes to the remuneration framework for the chief executive set out in the framework document and for such notification to be laid before Parliament by the Chancellor. I will set out the current arrangements on remuneration for the chief executive of the Crown Estate.
How the chief executive is paid is a matter for the Crown Estate’s board in the first instance. However, the pay is set with reference to the agreement between the Treasury and at a level that is at the lower end of the Crown Estate’s comparable peers, reflecting the national significance of the organisation. The framework document between the Crown Estate and the Treasury is clear that the Crown Estate
“will share any planned changes to the remuneration framework with HM Treasury to seek their agreement.”
I think that very much delivers on the spirit of the amendment.
The Crown Estate’s annual report and accounts already include as a matter of course a comprehensive report on remuneration and details of the chief executive’s pay. Taken together, those arrangements already deliver on the essence of the amendment and I hope that, with that explanation, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
The primary intention of the Bill is to modernise the Crown Estate and ensure that it is best able to operate in a modern, commercial environment. These changes are central to that aim.
James Wild
I am grateful for the contributions on this point and for the Minister’s response. I have read the framework agreement closely. At the moment, the Crown Estate will notify the Treasury of changes and ultimately the Treasury will come to Parliament through the estimates process to approve the pay, based on that policy.
What is going to change is that the Crown Estate will be paying from within the income it generates. While the Treasury may still know that there has been a change, no one else will necessarily know. Although I take the point that the annual report will detail any changes, there will be a lag—the policy could have been in place for some time before that happens.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 3, page 2, line 17, at end insert—
“(3B) In keeping the impact of their activities under review, the Commissioners must have regard to—
(a) the United Kingdom’s net zero targets;
(b) regional economic growth; and
(c) ensuring resilience in respect of managing uncertainty, risk and national security interests.”
This amendment would require the Crown Estate Commissioners, in reviewing the impact of their activities on the achievement of sustainable development, to have specific regard to the United Kingdom’s net zero targets, regional economic growth, and resilience in respect of managing uncertainty, risk and national security interests.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 6, in clause 3, page 2, line 17, at end insert—
“(3B) In complying with the duty under subsection (3A), the Commissioners must—
(a) set and publish sustainable development objectives in relation to their activities,
(b) take all reasonable steps to meet these objectives, and
(c) have regard to the relevant environmental legislation for the UK, England, Wales and Northern Ireland in relation to making these objectives.
(3C) For the purposes of subsection (3B), ‘relevant environmental legislation’ includes—
(a) the Climate Change Act 2008,
(b) the Environment Act 2021,
(c) the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and
(d) the Environment (Wales) Act 2016.”
This amendment would require the Commissioners to set sustainable development objectives for their activities, having regard to the Climate Change Act 2008, Environment Act 2021, Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Environment (Wales) Act 2016.
Amendment 8, in clause 3, page 2, line 17, at end insert—
“(3B) Any framework document published by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Crown Estate and the Commissioners must define ‘sustainable development’ for the purposes of this Act.
(3C) The definition under subsection (3B) must include reference to a climate and nature duty.
(3D) A ‘climate and nature duty’ means a duty to achieve any targets set out under Part 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008 or under sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act 2021.”
This amendment would ensure that this act’s Framework Agreement must define “sustainable development”, and that the definition must include reference to a climate and nature duty.
Melanie Onn
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss, and to speak to this amendment. Its intention relates to the additional funds that the Crown Estate will be able to unlock—something I welcome to improve investment in the country, rather than it being tied up by coming back into the Treasury to then be redistributed. It aims to ensure that there is an arrangement for funding from the Crown Estate, in projects and activities that it is already engaged in, to support the local regions where those are taking place.
It does not seem to me unreasonable that consider- ation should be given, as part of the Crown Estate’s considerations, to the UK’s net zero targets, as is expected of other organisations. Net zero is one of Government’s key missions, so to have some sympathy and some similarity in the way that organisations are expected to conduct themselves in relation to their overall objectives seems straightforward.
The amendment also adds the gentlest of additional check-ins for the Crown Estate to ensure that those wider community benefits that have the opportunity to generate lasting change in coastal communities are part of the Crown Estate’s considerations. There are so many benefits from this Bill—it is very welcome for that reason—and they should be specifically included.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
The Crown Estate, until now, has made decisions on the leasing of the seabed based mainly on price and cost and nothing else. This Bill will change that by asking commissioners to “keep under review the impact of their activities on…sustainable development”.
Amendment 1 simply clarifies “sustainable development” and slightly expands on what that means for, for example, net zero targets and economic growth. I ask the Minister to consider that and to assure us that that is what the Bill is intended to do, and that it will be the progress and direction of the Crown Estate.
Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. Ms Furniss. I rise to speak to amendment 6, tabled in my name. The amendment would amend clause 3, which relates to the regard of sustainable development that the Crown Estate commissioners must have when undertaking their activities. It would require the commissioners to set sustainable development objectives for their activities and require them to have regard for UK-wide legislation, such as the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021. I note that is also the intention of amendment 8.
In addition, amendment 6 would require regard for devolved legislation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. For Wales, that would include the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Environment (Wales) Act 2016. Shockingly, child poverty in Wales is set to reach its highest rate in 30 years by the end of this decade, with more than 34% of children living in low-income families. That is 5% up on the current rate, and means that around 32,000 more children in Wales could be pushed into poverty.
The activities of the Welsh Crown Estate could be geared towards helping to address rising child poverty by having regard to the seven wellbeing goals of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, such as to develop a more equal, prosperous and resilient Wales. More broadly, this amendment draws inspiration from measures within the Scottish Crown Estate Act 2019, which legislates to ensure that management of the Scottish Crown Estate’s assets is done so that it is likely to contribute to economic development, regeneration and social and environmental wellbeing.
The Crown Estate manages a huge amount of land and natural assets. It is only right that it works with existing devolved legislation across all nations to meet sustainable and wellbeing goals, and to do so by fulfilling clear objectives. I urge the Government to incorporate this aim into the Bill.
Pippa Heylings
I will speak to amendment 8, which is similar to amendment 6. It would strengthen clause 3 by ensuring that sustainable development is properly defined within the Crown Estate’s framework document and that this definition explicitly includes a climate and nature duty.
The Crown Estate plays a pivotal role in the management of our land, seas and natural resources. It is well known for its ambition around nature recovery. It is a key player in our offshore wind expansion, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management, but in areas in which there are multiple competing uses and values, including fishing, marine protected areas, and even highly protected marine areas. Therefore we need reassurances, as were obtained in the other House, that clause 3 does not just require commissioners to keep under review their impact on sustainable development without clearly defining what that means in practice.
I must acknowledge where this amendment started in life, which is with Baroness Hayman’s work in the other House. After much debate, it was agreed that sustainable development must be kept under review by the commissioners, but with a reference to the framework document in which a definition would be provided. Baroness Hayman said:
“What matters is the impact we have and how much we have shifted the dial in terms of what the Crown Estate achieves in support of the Government’s climate and nature objectives.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 November 2024; Vol. 840, c. 1448.]
This amendment seeks to provide clarity and accountability for what was agreed verbally in the other House—that the definition would not be on the face of the Bill, but would be in the updated framework agreement. We need that to ensure there is a consistent benchmark against which decisions can be assessed, in line with the public duty to our climate and nature targets. As the definition within the framework agreement would specifically refer to, those are the climate targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the nature restoration goals under the Environment Act 2021.
This would mean that the Crown Estate cannot simply pay lip service to sustainability; it must actively contribute to decarbonisation, biodiversity protection and the UK’s broader environmental goals. Climate change and nature loss are economic risks, as well as environmental ones. Embedding clear, enforceable sustainability duties in the Crown Estate’s framework, according to our existing legislation, will ensure that its investments and operations support long-term resilience and prosperity. This amendment strengthens the existing clause. It does not seek to define it on the face of the Bill, but assures us, as happened in the other House, that the definition is within the framework agreement.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
I will also speak to amendment 1. I add my voice to the request for assurances from the Minister on the alignment of sustainable development with the UK’s net zero goals, and also on community benefits. I agree with him that we must not lay too narrow a scope on the Crown Estate and seek to limit its opportunity as a key revenue driver for the UK economy. Goodness knows, we need it after 14 years of Conservative failure.
I am really concerned, however, about the potential bypassing of deprived coastal communities in the revenue from the Crown Estate to the Treasury. It would be nice to get reassurance from the Treasury of the Government’s plans to ensure that coastal communities closest to many of these huge revenue opportunities will see some of the benefits of that growth.
Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under you on this Committee, Ms Furniss. I would like to echo the final points—not some of the other points, obviously—of the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth regarding reassurances from the Minister about the economic benefit that these offshore projects will create for local communities. I represent a coastal community with the beautiful Fylde coastline, and north of us is Blackpool and Fleetwood. The Crown Estate owns significant amounts of seabed off the coast of Fylde. There are a number of projects under way, including the Morgan and Morecambe wind farm, which will cable through Fylde constituency to get to the national grid.
These amendments reference the Environment Act 2021 and regional economic growth. Can the Minister give reassurances that when projects such as offshore wind go ahead—they could be further encouraged by these amendments—local communities will be taken into account regarding the economic benefit? At the minute, a lot of the projects end up being opposed by and very unpopular with local communities, because all they see is the environmental damage being done to their area, countryside and coastline, and there is no economic benefit left from residual cabling that runs through areas. Although I welcome some of what the amendments try to do, I seek assurances that, at the heart of this, we have the communities who are negatively impacted by these projects seeing benefit as well.
James Wild
Clause 3, the first of several clauses added on Report in the House of Lords, will amend section 1 of the 1961 Act to require the commissioners to review the impact of their activities on achieving sustainable development.
The Chair
Order. Can I stop the shadow Minister? We are talking about only amendments 1, 6 and 8. The debate on clause 3 stand part will come later.
James Wild
Okay. Amendment 1 would require the Crown Estate commissioners to have regard to net zero targets, regional economic growth and ensuring resilience in various areas. Instinctively, I am a bit sceptical about putting more obligations on the Crown Estate, given that its primary purpose is to generate a return for the nation. As I mentioned in passing, clause 3 already applies a sustainable development duty. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes spoke pretty persuasively, so I look forward to the assurances that the Minister might give before we see whether the Committee divides on the amendment.
James Murray
With your permission, Ms Furniss, I will briefly add to the comments that I made in the previous debate, because the shadow Minister asked about the appointment of the chair. On 23 December, the Government announced Ric Lewis as our preferred candidate for chair of the Crown Estate. The Government also confirmed that the appointment would be subject to a parliamentary pre-appointment hearing. Under paragraph 9.2 of the governance code on public appointments, political donations should be publicly disclosed if the successful candidate has made a significant donation or loan to a party in the last five years. That will happen if the appointment is confirmed, following the Treasury Committee’s report, and a subsequent announcement is made. Thank you for your patience, Ms Furniss.
Amendment 1, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid and South Pembrokeshire (Henry Tufnell), and to which other hon. Members have spoken, would require the Crown Estate commissioners, in reviewing the impact of their activities on the achievement of sustainable development, to have specific regard to the UK’s net zero targets, to regional economic growth and to ensuring resilience in respect of managing uncertainty, risk and national security interests. I was glad to meet my hon. Friend on Tuesday to discuss the amendment. The Government understand the motive behind it, but it is important first to set out the context for clause 3. I will be brief, as I realise that we will debate clause 3 stand part later.
The Government and the Crown Estate welcomed the addition of clause 3 on Report in the other place, as a clarified and enhanced accountability on the Crown Estate to deliver environmental, social and economic outcomes. The Crown Estate is already a trailblazer in its efforts on tackling climate change and supporting the environment, which I will address in more detail later. Clause 3 will require the commissioners to keep under review the impact of their activities on the achievement of sustainable development in the UK. It is important to note that the public framework document that governs the relationship between the Crown Estate and the Treasury will be updated in the light of clause 3 to include a definition of sustainable development and to confirm that the Crown Estate will continue to include specific information on its activities in its annual report.
The Crown Estate Act 1961 established the Crown Estate as a commercial business, independent from Government, that operates for profit and competes in the marketplace. It is analogous to a private sector commercial operator. The commissioners operate under a clear commercial objective, as set out in the Act, to “maintain and enhance” the value of the estate. At the same time, the Crown Estate can and does focus on activities that closely align with wider national interests, including on the environment, net zero, our nation’s energy needs and sustainable economic growth. As a public body, the Crown Estate seeks to work with the grain of prevailing Government policy.
In addition to its core commercial objective, the Crown Estate operates under a duty in the 1961 Act to have
“due regard to the requirements of good management.”
This obliges the Crown Estate to maintain and enhance the value of the estate responsibly. Good management practices include maintaining a strong governance structure, adhering to best practices in risk management, and fostering a culture of accountability and transparency.
It is important for the Bill to stand the test of time as new, relevant areas of concern on the environment, society and the economy emerge over the coming decades. These currently include net zero and regional economic growth, which are given regard by the Crown Estate and should be covered in its annual report. The general term “sustainable development” was chosen because it is broad and captures the widest range of relevant concerns across the environment, society and the economy, now and as priorities in those areas evolve over time.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
I recognise that it might not be the place of statute to outline some of the specifics brought up by the amendment, but does the Minister agree that the spirit of the amendment is well in keeping with the mission of this Government and, moreover, that of regional economic development in particular, which spreads to all corners of Britain? That is important, and it is incumbent on the Treasury more widely to ensure that that takes place, particularly through the channel of supply chain development.
James Murray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A priority of the Government is to ensure not only that there is economic growth at a national UK level, but that all regions and nations of the UK benefit from such economic growth and the increase in productivity. We want to ensure that people right across the country are better off and have more money in their pocket through greater investment and growth in their local areas. He makes an important point.
To return to the definition of “sustainable development”, I will briefly address the point made about that by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. I assure her that that definition will be published on Royal Assent of the Bill, at that point. It was, however, a deliberate decision not to specify specific targets or objectives such as net zero on the face of the Bill, given that the Crown Estate is already required to “maintain and enhance” the value of the estate responsibly. Referencing specific targets would risk complicating the Crown Estate’s existing clear commercial objective.
As I have already noted, the Crown Estate is required to pay its entire net profits to the UK Consolidated Fund every year, worth more than £4 billion over the past decade. That supports the UK Government’s spending on policy priorities, including net zero and, indeed, regional economic growth.
On national security interests specifically, it is important to be clear that the Government are responsible for ensuring that national security interests are managed effectively at a UK-wide level. It would not be appropriate to require the Crown Estate to have a specific regard in that matter. As I have noted, while the Crown Estate has goals under which its strategy can align with wider national policy objectives, the 1961 Act provides the Crown Estate with independence and autonomy. The Government believe that it should continue to operate in that way, as a commercial business independent of Government. This requirement would encroach on that independence by drawing the Crown Estate into interests managed directly by the Government.
The Government believe that the Crown Estate’s existing duties give it a clear focus, leading to a consistently significant return to the Exchequer to support the funding of public services and priorities. The duty to have due regard to the requirements of good management, alongside the new requirement to keep under review the impact of its activities on the achievement of sustainable development, are already sufficient to cover the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes. I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.
I turn to amendments 6 and 8, tabled respectively by the hon. Members for Ynys Môn and for South Cambridgeshire. Amendment 6 would require the commissioners, in complying with proposed new subsection (3A) of the 1961 Act on sustainable development, to
“set and publish sustainable development objectives in relation to their activities…take all reasonable steps to meet these objectives, and…have regard to the relevant environmental legislation for the UK, England, Wales and Northern Ireland in relation to making these objectives.”
It would further specify that the relevant environmental legislation includes the Climate Change Act 2008, the Environment Act 2021, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Environment (Wales) Act 2016.
Amendment 8 would require any “framework document” published by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Crown Estate or the commissioners to define “sustainable development”, and that that definition include a reference to a “climate and nature duty”. It further specifies that such a climate change duty would mean a duty to achieve any of the targets set out under part 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008, or under sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act 2021.
The Government understand the intention behind amendments 6 and 8, but a key purpose of the 1961 Act was to repeal various detailed statutory provisions that had built up over the 150 years previously, which were hampering the effective management of the estate. By focusing the commissioners’ duties on enhancing the estate’s value and the returns generated, the commissioners have a clear objective for which they can be held to account. It is an important principle that giving an organisation too many objectives will make it far less effective than giving it clear and focused priorities. As I have already noted, the Crown Estate is a commercial business, independent from Government, that operates for profit.
Pippa Heylings
To seek clarification, is the Minister saying that, unlike what seemed to be the agreement reached in the other House, we will not seek, through this legislation or any burden put on the Crown Estate, to ensure that it has a climate and nature duty, such as other bodies have? That will not form part of the definition of sustainable development he said will be published on Royal Assent.
James Murray
As I mentioned, the definition of “sustainable development” will be published on Royal Assent. Perhaps we can return to any questions that the hon. Member may have on that definition at that point.
The fundamental point that I am seeking to make is about ensuring that the Crown Estate can operate effectively. By having clear and focused priorities, it will operate more effectively than having too many objectives, which end up meaning overall that it will perform less well in the public interest. As I have noted, the Crown Estate is a commercial business. It is independent of Government and operates for profit. Although it has goals that, under its own strategy, can align with national policy objectives, fundamentally, the 1961 Act grants the Crown Estate independence and autonomy.
The Government have accepted the amendment to require the commissioners to keep under review the impact of their activities on the achievement of sustainable development. However, expanding the Crown Estate’s core purposes in legislation, in particular with additional duties or objectives that may unnecessarily complicate or conflict with the achievement of the core commercial objective, would risk undermining that core objective being achieved.
Any actions that undermine the core commercial objective risk undermining the very funding that is used to support environmental and other policy objectives. The Government believe that the Crown Estate should continue to operate in this way—as a commercial business, independent of Government—because it has shown itself to be a trusted and successful organisation, with a proven track record and effective management.
As I noted, the Crown Estate is already a trailblazer in its efforts to tackle climate change and support the environment, and it is required to pay its profits into the UK Consolidated Fund each year. Furthermore, I confirm that the requirement under amendment 8 for any framework document between the Treasury and the Crown Estate to define sustainable development has already been agreed by the Government.
As confirmed on 5 November on Report in the other place, the public framework document that exists between the Treasury and the Crown Estate will be updated in the light of that amendment to clarify that “sustainable development” means regard for the impact of the Crown Estate’s activities on the environment, society and the economy. It will also make it clear that that regard includes, where relevant, consideration of relevant legislation, such as part 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008, which deals with the targets set for 2050, and section 56 of the Climate Change Act and sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act 2021, which also deal with specific environmental targets. The framework document will also make it explicit that the Crown Estate will include in its annual report a report of its activities in relation to sustainable development. For those reasons, I trust that hon. Members will be able to withdraw their amendments.
Melanie Onn
I do not intend to press the amendment to a vote. I accept the point about the Crown Estate being a commercial business, but I am less persuaded that it is unable to cope with an additional objective. When I think about other organisations in the public sector and the number of objectives that we set for them, I am fairly sure that a commercial business has the wherewithal to be able to manage that. However, I accept the potential for an impact on the returns of that commercial business. The Minister has given indications regarding the annual report, and I hope that he will have heard today the determination of Members from coastal communities and the importance of this to them. He will be aware of the strength of feeling about the necessity of ensuring that we have real delivery and community benefits from the extended powers and facilities that we are providing to the Crown Estate.
We will not press the amendment to a vote, but, when it comes to accountability, we know where the Minister’s door is and I am sure we will happily knock on it should the need arise.
The Chair
Amendment 8 has just now been debated with amendment 1. Pippa Heylings indicated that she might press amendment 8 to a Division. Will she wish to move it?
Pippa Heylings
We have received assurances that we will have the chance to discuss the sustainable development definition at the time of Royal Assent and that the framework document will pay due regard to climate and nature duties in relation to our targets for 2050 under the Climate Change Act and to our nature restoration duties under the Environment Act; that is good. I urge the Minister to consider that it is an economic choice to consider climate and nature up front, not only that we then raise the money to provide for environmental funding post operation. That is something that we should all embrace, in particular in the Treasury.
Melanie Onn
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
Before we come to amendment 9, I impress on the Committee that this is grouped for debate only with new clause 10. Clause stand part will be debated next.
Pippa Heylings
I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 3, page 2, line 17, at end insert—
“(3B) In pursuit of the objective under subsection 3A, the Commissioners must assess the adequacy of protections against coastal erosion in areas affected by their offshore activities.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 10—Marine Spatial Planning: coordination—
“In relation to any decisions made about marine spatial priorities, the Crown Estate must—
(a) ensure that the decisions are coordinated with the priorities of the Marine Maritime Organisation, and
(b) consult any communities or industries impacted by the plans, including fishing communities.”
This new clause ensures the Crown Estate collaborates with DEFRA’s Marine Spatial Prioritisation through the MMO.
Pippa Heylings
Given our conversations in this debate about the importance of considering our coastal communities in relation to the new powers that are to be given to the Crown Estate, I draw attention in particular to an example on the north Norfolk coast, the fastest-eroding coastline in north-west Europe.
Key sites, vital to our energy infrastructure and security, lie on that coast. For decades, Bacton gas terminal has been a cornerstone of the UK’s gas network, ensuring the smooth distribution of supplies arriving from overseas. Just along the coast, in Happisburgh, we find the landfall sites for the Norfolk Boreas and Norfolk Vanguard wind farms, which will generate 1.4 GW and 1.8 GW of power respectively—critical contributions to our renewable energy future.
To protect Bacton’s vital infrastructure, a £20 million sandscaping project moved 2 million tonnes of sand, shielding not just the terminal, but the villages of Bacton and Walcott. In Happisburgh, however, despite its pivotal role in our transition to clean energy, no such protections have been put in place. Already, 40 homes have been lost to coastal erosion, and the latest national coastal erosion risk-mapping data shows that even more of the village is at risk in the years ahead. The amendment would ensure that, as we harness the power of North sea wind, we also safeguard the fragile North sea coast, protecting the communities that host that vital infrastructure.
I will also speak to new clause 10. We have heard about the importance of considering coastal communities within all the decision making, and this new clause on marine spatial planning co-ordination would ensure that the Crown Estate’s decisions on marine priorities were properly co-ordinated and aligned with the Marine Management Organisation, which has the mandate for mediating use priorities on our seabed and along our coast. Affected communities, in particular our fishing communities, would therefore be properly and fully consulted through the Marine Management Organisation.
Similar to the land use framework, this would be a sea use framework for the marine spatial plan that the Marine Management Organisation is mandated to under-take. We need a joined-up approach to decision making, with marine plans balancing economic, environmental and social interests. The Crown Estate must therefore work in full co-ordination with the marine spatial prioritis-ation framework of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Jayne Kirkham
The Crown Estate has started to consult, and is publishing plans before it takes decisions about where to put floating offshore wind stations, for example. Can the Minister assure us that that will be the case in the future, and that when the Crown Estate is planning to build out in the ocean, there will be consultation with fishermen and environmentalists? I think that is the intention, as discussed on Second Reading.
Pippa Heylings
I thank the hon. Lady for that point, which we discussed in the Chamber. The crux of this amendment is that there is a mandate for the Marine Maritime Organisation, which is the body that mediates. The Crown Estate is being given new powers for borrowing and investing, and therefore has a vested interest in the prioritisation of activities that are allocated along the seabed and our coasts. That is good, given its amazing, award-winning geospatial mapping prowess.
We have just heard examples of how it is showing the Government scenarios for the economic income and gain that can be gathered from different uses. However, despite that prowess, the Crown Estate should not be the one to prioritise or make the final decision about which activities take place. Communities and other users must be fully consulted. The MMO is mandated to do that, and DEFRA has the marine spatial prioritisation framework, within which the Crown Estate should contribute and co-ordinate. That is the assurance we seek through this amendment.
James Wild
I rise briefly to speak to amendment 9, not least because I represent North West Norfolk, which is next door to North Norfolk where I grew up. It is sometimes quite difficult to get the local names correct, but Happisburgh is actually pronounced “Haysborough”, rather than “Happisberg”. I wanted to get that on the record, because people there feel quite strongly about it—it is a mistake that is inadvertently made quite a lot.
It is important to protect national assets such as those at Bacton from coastal erosion. I would expect the Crown Estate already to be taking account of such requirements, and the Government to be doing likewise through their wider planning and strategic approach to coastal erosion, so I look forward to the Minister’s response on how coastal erosion will be prevented.
James Murray
I rise to speak to amendment 9 and new clause 10.
Amendment 9, tabled by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, would mean that in satisfying proposed new subsection (3A) of the 1961 Act, which states,
“The Commissioners must keep under review the impact of their activities on the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom”,
the commissioners must assess the adequacy of protections against coastal erosion in areas affected by their offshore activities. I very much understand the concerns reflected in the amendment, but protections against coastal erosion are not the responsibility of the Crown Estate, and therefore the amendment is not relevant to the Bill.
The UK has dedicated statutory bodies under each devolved Administration with responsibility for ensuring adequate protection against coastal erosion. The Crown Estate always collaborates and complies with the relevant statutory authority for any assessment of the impact of offshore activity on coastal erosion, and the potential for coastal erosion should be considered as part of marine licensing, which is considered by the relevant regulator, depending on the jurisdiction. However, the statutory responsibility falls on the relevant body in each devolved area.
The Crown Estate becomes involved in coastal defence only when the statutory bodies responsible for coastal erosion wish to construct defences. In such cases, the Crown Estate typically grants leases to those bodies for defence works.
Although the Crown Estate is not responsiblefor coastal erosion, the Government are committed to supporting coastal communities and are investing ausb record £2.65 billion over two years in building, maintaining and repairing our flood and coastal defences. Shoreline management plans are developed and owned by local councils and coastal protection authorities to provide long-term strategic plans that identify approaches to managing coastal erosion and flood risk at every stretch of the coastline. Shoreline management plans have recently been refreshed with updated action plans, following several years of collaborative work between the Environment Agency and coastal groups.
The Environment Agency has published the updated national coastal risk map for England, which is based on monitoring coastal data, the latest climate change evidence and technical input from coastal local authorities. There are also strong safeguards to manage the flood and coastal risk through the planning system. I hope that on that basis the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire feels able to withdraw her amendment.
I turn to new clause 10, which would require that in relation to any decisions made about marine spatial priorities, the Crown Estate must ensure the decisions are co-ordinated with the priorities of the Marine Management Organisation and must consult any communities or industries impacted by the plans, including fishing communities.
I can confirm to the Committee that the Crown Estate and the Marine Management Organisation already have well-established ways of working together to ensure effective collaboration for marine spatial planning and prioritisation. The Crown Estate’s collaboration with the Marine Management Organisation and other relevant statutory bodies is governed by the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, which establishes the framework for marine planning and licensing in the UK, and requires the Crown Estate to have regard to marine policy documents such as marine plans in its decision making. It is also governed by the habitat regulations, which require the Crown Estate to conduct plan-level habitat regulation assessments for leasing or licensing activities.
Furthermore, the Crown Estate and the Marine Management Organisation jointly agreed a statement of intent in 2020, which is reviewed periodically to provide a focus on priorities and opportunities for alignment, as well as longer-term ambitions. The statement of intent complements a memorandum of understanding agreed in February 2011, which sets out a framework to encourage co-operation and co-ordination between parties in relation to the sustainable development of the seabed and rights managed by the Crown Estate, based on active management, shared information and effective marine planning and management by both parties.
In addition to the Crown Estate’s relationship with the Marine Management Organisation, there are also various regulatory requirements on developers leasing areas of the seabed from the Crown Estate to engage with the Marine Management Organisation through a number of routes. Those include through marine licensing; developers must obtain marine licences from the Marine Management Organisation for activities that could impact on the marine environment. The process involves consultation with statutory bodies and adherence to marine plan policies. As part of a marine licence application, developers must also conduct environmental impact assessments for projects that could significantly affect the environment, which includes consultation with the Marine Management Organisation and other relevant authorities to ensure compliance with environmental regulations. Developers are also encouraged to engage with local communities, statutory bodies and other stakeholders throughout the planning and development process to address concerns and ensure compliance with marine plans.
This new clause therefore duplicates existing regulatory requirements and practice. I hope the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Mr Snowden
I feel sympathy with the contributions from both the Minister and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. There are some issues at the heart of what the amendment and new clause are trying to achieve, but whether they are within the scope of the responsibility of the Crown Estate is an equally valid point. New clause 9 talks about coastal erosion and, while that is an issue, there is also the issue of coastal damage caused by projects where the seabed in particular is licensed. Again, Morgan and Morecambe off the Fylde coast will lead to years of work trying to rebuild sand dunes that will be cabled and tunnelled through for a new cabling corridor. The dunes will be completely damaged due to activity coming in to connect to the national grid.
Furthermore, the new clause talks about consultation. This is where I really do have some sympathy with the Minister, because that is not the responsibility necessarily and primarily of the Crown Estate. The root cause of the issue is that there are already regulations in place for consultation to happen where licences are being issued. The consultation happens; people consult and then they just ignore local communities and industries. Nothing changes, and perfectly valid objections and alternative routes for cabling corridors coming in from the sea are just ignored—but that is a broader issue rather than specific to this point.
Pippa Heylings
I will not press either of these amendments to a Division, but I would like to call attention to the fact that, given the greater borrowing and investment powers, the existing frameworks and regulations under which the Crown Estate has been co-ordinating the Marine Management Organisation need to be considered. I think we can all recognise that the situation has changed hugely. Therefore, I urge the Government to consider how they will ensure that there is greater consultation on decisions around prioritisation of what happens where, that greater weight is given to that, and that more resources and powers are given to the MMO to ensure that that happens. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 11—Sustainable development: community benefits—
“(1) Before making any investment decision, the Commissioners must assess—
(a) plans for community benefits for local communities, and
(b) plans for community benefits for coastal communities of offshore activities.
(2) In section 3(1) of the Crown Estate Act 1961, at end insert—
“(1A) The Commissioners must transfer at least 5 per cent of all net profit generated from the Crown Estate’s activities to local communities impacted by those activities.”” —(Pippa Heylings.)
This new clause would require the Commissioners to ensure their activities benefit local communities, including coastal communities, and that 5% of any profits would be transferred to local communities.
James Murray
Clause 3 amends the Crown Estate Act 1961 to require the commissioners to keep under review the impact of their activities on the achievement of sustainable development in the UK. I have referred to various aspects of clause 3 as part of our earlier debate, so I will try to be brief. As hon. Members know, this clause was added as an amendment in the other place, based on productive debates that reflected the important role that the Crown Estate has in stewarding our natural environment. As I noted earlier, the Government believe that the Crown Estate’s existing duties give it a clear focus, leading to a consistently significant return to the Exchequer to support the funding of our public services.
At the same time, the Crown Estate can, and does, focus on activities which also closely align with wider national interests, including on the environment, net zero, our nation’s energy needs and sustainable economic growth. As a public body, the Crown Estate seeks to work with the grain of prevailing Government policy. That said, it is right that the public and private sectors make every contribution they can to achieving our climate change targets, and the Crown Estate should continue to be a national trailblazer in that regard. The Crown Estate has committed to becoming a net zero carbon business by 2030, aligning with the 1.5° target, and will prioritise activities that help to enable a reduction in national carbon emissions, such as building net zero homes, transitioning its holdings to sustainable agricultural practices and working in partnership with the Government to meet the national renewable energy targets.
Regarding the biodiversity targets in the Environment Act, the Crown Estate is committed to delivering a measurable increase in biodiversity by 2030. It will publish its delivery plan to meet that goal later this year, which will include commitments to restore habitats in line with targets in the Environment Act. The Crown Estate also published its approach on nature recovery last autumn, where it committed to delivering increased biodiversity, to protecting and restoring freshwater, marine and coastal systems and to increasing social-wellbeing benefits from nature. However, the reforms introduced by this Bill are not intended to alter the fundamental statutory basis of the Crown Estate as a commercial business independent from Government.
The commissioners operate under a clear commercial objective, as set out in the 1961 Act: to maintain and enhance the value of the estate. As I have already noted, the Crown Estate operates under a duty in the 1961 Act to have due regard to the requirements of good management. Alongside its core commercial objective, the duty obliges the Crown Estate to maintain and enhance the value of the estate responsibly. It is the Government’s view that these existing statutory requirements and this clause are the best approach.
New clause 11, tabled by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, would require the commissioners to assess plans for benefits to local communities and, in the case of offshore activities, coastal communities before making any investment decisions. It would also require the commissioners to transfer at least 5% of the Crown Estate’s net profit to the local communities impacted by its activities.
At present, local communities benefit from onshore and offshore developments through the economic advantages that such developments bring, including job creation and increased business for local suppliers, and individual developers also contribute to local initiatives. The Crown Estate has also specifically designed the leasing process for its offshore wind leasing round 5 opportunity in the Celtic sea such that developers must make commitments to deliver social and environmental value as part of the development of their new wind farms. Those commitments will be monitored, reported on and enforced throughout the lifetime of the relevant round 5 developments.
The Crown Estate is committed to proactively working with the local communities and partners to enable employment and skills opportunities. For example, it has allocated £50 million through the supply chain accelerator to stimulate green jobs and is developing a green skills pipeline, from a GCSE in engineering skills for offshore wind, seed-funded by the Crown Estate and developed with Cornwall college, to a post-16 “Destination Renewables” course with Pembrokeshire college. The Crown Estate is also partnering with the employment charity Workwhile to create green construction apprenticeships.
The Crown Estate already works closely with communities, charities, businesses and the Government to ensure that its skills initiatives are sensitive to market demands and emerging technologies and to keep them relevant and effective. The Government consider it important that the Crown Estate retains that flexibility in how its skills initiatives are funded and delivered, to ensure that it can contribute to skill training in the best possible way and, importantly, without conflicting with its statutory duty to maintain and enhance the value of the estate.
On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire feels able to withdraw her new clause. It is the view of the Government that the existing statutory requirements and this clause are the best approach going forward. I commend clause 3 to the Committee.
Pippa Heylings
The Minister might have pre-empted my speaking to the new clause. The new clause would ensure that local and coastal communities see real benefits from Crown Estate activities by requiring a proper assessment of community benefits before investment decisions are made and by mandating that at least 5% of net profits be transferred to impacted communities.
For too long, communities, particularly coastal communities, have borne the impact of large-scale offshore developments without seeing a fair share of the financial benefits; we heard that earlier today. The Crown Estate generates billions in revenue from offshore wind farms, marine industries and land developments, yet too often local people see little direct return. The new clause seeks to redress that imbalance and would ensure that those communities benefit from our journey towards net zero, taking people with us.
First, the new clause would ensure transparency and accountability by requiring that the Crown Estate formally assess community benefits before making investment decisions. That would mean that local communities would no longer be an afterthought. They must be considered from the outset in decisions affecting their livelihoods, identity, infrastructure and environment.
Secondly, the new clause would establish a concrete financial commitment by mandating that at least 5% of the profits generated by the Crown Estate’s activities must be reinvested in local communities impacted. That is a fair and proportionate measure, recognising that those communities are often on the frontline of change, whether it be from offshore energy projects, tourism pressures or rural land use shifts. The kickbacks could be revolutionary for towns and villages across the UK and would be a real testament to how clean energy can level up communities.
The new clause is about not just fairness, but economic regeneration. It would provide a direct funding stream to support local jobs, infrastructure, training and environmental projects, and ensure that prosperity generated from our shared natural resources is not centralised in Whitehall or in corporate boardrooms, but flows directly back to the people and places most affected.
If the Government are serious about levelling up and supporting coastal and rural communities and economies, they should have no issue backing the new clause. It is practical, and it would enable us to manage the different developments. It does not seek to block development; it would ensure that development happens fairly and sustainably, with proper co-ordination.
James Wild
I will briefly speak to new clause 11. On Second Reading, we heard a lot of debate and discussion about the role of community benefits. As I mentioned, I represent a coastal area where there are existing community benefit schemes through the operators of the offshore wind projects that operate on the East Anglian coast.
The Energy Secretary, who seems to be on a one- man mission to put solar farms on farmland and to put pylons across the countryside with no regard to the impact on communities or nature, has said that the Government will bring forward their own approach to community benefits. I am a strong supporter of community benefits, and I look forward to the Energy Secretary coming forward with that plan. It seems to be the best approach and context in which to address the important points raised by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire.
James Murray
I thank the hon. Members for their comments. To reiterate, the Crown Estate already works with communities, charities, businesses and the Government to ensure that its skills initiatives are sensitive to market demand and to emerging technologies. It is important that the Crown Estate retains this flexibility in how its skills initiatives are funded and delivered, so that it can contribute to skills training in the best possible way and, importantly, as I have referred to several times, without conflicting with its statutory duty to maintain and enhance the value of the estate. As we know, the Crown Estate already pays its net revenue surplus into the Consolidated Fund. That is a total of more than £4 billion in the last decade, and local communities already benefit from investment by the Crown Estate. I point hon. Members to the partnership between Great British Energy and the Crown Estate; they will work together to co-ordinate agencies and stakeholders to create jobs and ensure that communities reap the benefits of clean, secure, home-grown energy.
I repeat my encouragement of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire not to move her new clause, as I believe the Bill and the existing measures and statutory requirements achieve the outcomes that are best for this country.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Annual reports
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 4—Partnership agreement: the Crown Estate and Great British Energy—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must lay before Parliament any partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy.”
This new clause requires the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay before Parliament any partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy.
James Murray
Clause 4 requires the commissioners to include in their annual report a summary of their activities and of any effects or benefits resulting from their activities under any partnership between them and Great British Energy, which I referred to in our debate on the previous clause. This requirement will only apply in relation to a year in which such a partnership was in operation. Following productive debate in the other place on the new partnership between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy announced last year, this clause was added by the Government. The Crown Estate is keen to ensure that details of this partnership are publicly available on an ongoing basis, and the Government agree it is sensible to require the Crown Estate to include the relevant detail in its existing annual report. That is the intention behind clause 4.
New clause 4, tabled by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, would require the Chancellor to lay before Parliament any partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and GB Energy. As I am sure the hon. Member will appreciate, partnership agreements are highly commercially sensitive. It is therefore right that any agreement is not made public or laid before Parliament, as to do so would likely prejudice the commercial interests of the Crown Estate or GB Energy and risk the aims of the partnership, which are to speed up the process of delivering clean energy and to invest in clean energy infrastructure. The Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero will set out further detail on GB Energy in due course. I hope the hon. Member feels able not to move his new clause as a result.
Clause 4 is a sensible change to the Bill that reflects the desire to ensure that relevant information related to the nationally significant partnership between GB Energy and the Crown Estate is made publicly available. I commend the clause to the Committee.
James Wild
As the Minister said, clause 4 was added on Report in the House of Lords to require the Crown Estate’s annual report to include activities under the partnership between the Crown Estate and GB Energy. I will also speak to new clause 4, which is in my name.
Clause 4 does introduce an important layer of transparency, as the Minister said, ensuring there is a specific report on the activities of the commissioners under that partnership during the year, and on any effects or benefits experienced during the year that are a result of those activities. This is a welcome step, and we support the clause. However, the reporting requirement would only apply in years when a partnership between the commissioners and GB Energy was in operation. This means we will not know what has been agreed until the partnership is operational. Parliament—I think not unreasonably—needs to see an agreement when it is finalised. That is why I have tabled new clause 4.
New clause 4 would simply require the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay before Parliament any partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and GB Energy. This new clause is of fundamental importance. Without being able to see the details of the partnership agreement, we do not know what has been agreed and the impact on the duties of the Crown Estate. On the day that the Bill was introduced, the Government, with a lot of fanfare, announced the partnership between the Crown Estate and GB Energy. Indeed, Ministers claimed that the new GB Energy partnership would “turbocharge energy independence” and
“unleash billions of investment in clean power.”
However, currently there is a distinct lack of transparency over how this partnership will work and what difference it will make. I am concerned that this partnership may have been created for political, rather than economic, purposes.
James Wild
My point about the new clause is trying to get some transparency about what those proceeds might be. I do not whether the hon. Member can enlighten me as to from where they might be coming and which projects will be invested in, or how many jobs will be created. He might apply for the job of the chairman of GB Energy, because the current one does not seem to know the answer to any of those very important questions. We are being asked to legislate to support a partnership between the new entity of GB Energy and the Crown Estate, so I make no apology for seeking greater transparency.
When pushed on Second Reading, the Minister confirmed:
“Although the partnership agreement itself will not be published, given that it will be commercially sensitive”—
I think he said “very commercially sensitive” this afternoon, or “highly”—
“the Crown Estate has committed to publish information relating to the partnership as part of its existing annual report.” —[Official Report, 7 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 806.]
But at all stages of the Bill’s passage and in the amendments that have been tabled, the Government have had to be pressured to be more transparent. Given that the Bill makes significant changes to the operation of the Crown Estate and reduces parliamentary oversight, I do not see why Parliament should not have sight of an agreement. It is simply not good enough to hide behind excuses of commercial confidentiality.
If the Minister is genuinely concerned about the conservative nature of this—[Laughter.] He probably is! I should have said: if the Minister is genuinely concerned about the commercially sensitive nature of the agreement, perhaps a redacted version could be laid before Parliament, for example, or the full version could be provided to the Public Accounts Committee. I had the pleasure to serve on that Committee for over two years, and it was not uncommon for similar agreements to be provided in confidence to the Chair and the Committee to give assurance, on behalf of other Members of the House, that this was a bona fide commitment that did not need to be drawn more widely to public attention, noting the strictures there may be about commercial confidentiality.
I have spoken to the current Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), about this, and he would be very happy to receive a copy of the partnership agreement and continue to operate—as he has done over a decade or more as deputy Chair—by recognising and respecting confidentiality and the basis on which it is provided. It would provide assurance for all Members of the House that one of the pre-eminent Committees of the House has oversight of the agreement. If the Minister is not minded to agree to our new clause—I detect that he is not—perhaps he will look at the feasibility of a taking a redacted version of the agreement, or a similar approach, to the Public Accounts Committee.
In advance of this Bill Committee, I wrote to Dan Labbad, chief executive of the Crown Estate, to seek clarity on the partnership agreement. I am grateful that he took the time to respond. I asked whether the Crown Estate is planning to agree to invest a certain amount with GB Energy. His response was:
“Any arrangements the Crown Estate enter into with GBE will be expressly subsidiary to our statutory duty to maintain and enhance the value of the estate, but with due regard to the requirements of good management…We will ensure that the Crown Estate continues to deliver on our wider obligations”.
Can the Minister confirm that the Crown Estate’s statutory duty will always have primacy? Without the agreement being laid before Parliament, we will not have the transparency to see whether commitments have been given, and to judge and assess whether they meet the criteria.
I also asked Dan Labbad how the Crown Estate will decide between projects that GB Energy backs and other projects that may have a higher rate of return. I note the comments from the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay, but it may be that the Crown Estate could identify non-GB Energy projects that may generate a greater return for the taxpayer and our constituents. In that case, it should be investing in those, not a political project under the Energy Secretary. Dan Labbad said:
“The Crown Estate will have a clear business plan in relation to the partnership… The consideration of which projects fulfil that business plan will take into account our statutory duty to maintain and enhance the value of the estate…and the obligation upon the Crown Estate to secure the best consideration, having regard to all the circumstances of the particular case at the time.”
“All the circumstances” is rather broad, and “take into account” could be seen as rather weak. Can the Minister confirm whether he has seen a copy of any such business plan? Would he expect to? I fear the answer will be no, but would he be prepared to lay a copy of it before the House so that Members can scrutinise it?
Finally, I asked Dan Labbad about the new division’s decision-making process, because the new clause is about trying to get underneath the bonnet of the agreement. He said:
“The Crown Estate’s agreement with GBE is such that activity undertaken through the partnership will not undermine the Crown Estate’s independence. The intention is that both parties will seek agreement on investment decisions whilst retaining their own independence. The Crown Estate will not be compelled to agree to anything which it does not wish to agree to in fulfilment of its statutory duty.”
“Compelled” is a very strong word to use in that context.
On one level, the responses could be seen as reassuring, but I think back to the exuberant press release I referred to earlier and the excitement in the announcement of what the partnership could deliver and what the Government thought it could do. Can the Minister clarify how much he expects the Crown Estate to invest in the Energy Secretary’s personal investment fund? Can he rule out Ministers pressuring the Crown Estate, whether that be through GB Energy and the chairman they have appointed or the chairman of the Crown Estate, who will shortly be going before the Treasury Committee? Can he rule out pressuring any of those people to invest more than the Crown Estate considers to be prudent?
I have raised my points briefly. I could go on for longer, though I am not sure the Committee would enjoy that. We are asking reasonable questions about this “groundbreaking partnership” agreement—I am looking at the exciting press release in front of me. It is incumbent on the Minister to provide some clarity and assurance on this—and I hope, having listened to the argument, accept that it is not unreasonable to place before Parliament a partnership agreement that can be redacted and before the Public Accounts Committee the full agreement. I look forward very much to the Minister’s response.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Christian Wakeford.)
Crown Estate Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing new clause 4—Partnership agreement: the Crown Estate and Great British Energy—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must lay before Parliament any partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy.”—(James Wild.)
This new clause requires the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay before Parliament any partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy.
James Murray
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. In his remarks, the shadow Minister essentially set out a similar question, rephrased in a number of different ways, about the publication of the partnership agreement between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy, and I would like to remind him of some of the points we discussed before lunch.
The Crown Estate is keen to ensure that details of the partnership are publicly available on an ongoing basis, and the Government agree that it is sensible to require the Crown Estate to include the relevant detail in its existing annual reports. I would also emphasise—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman feels that this is less important than we do—that partnership agreements are highly commercially sensitive. It is therefore right that any agreement is not made public or laid before Parliament, as to do so would likely prejudice the commercial interests of the Crown Estate or GB Energy and risk the aims of the partnership, which are to speed up the process of delivering clean energy and investing in clean energy infrastructure.
Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)
The shadow Minister talked about the agreement being presented to the Public Accounts Committee in confidence. I am not sure how it would create commercial issues for GB Energy or the Crown Estate if the agreement was viewed in private by the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and its members.
James Murray
We have considered the importance of making sure that the details of the partnership are publicly available. Because of the highly commercially sensitive nature of partnership agreements, the Government have set out that the way forward is to ensure that the commissioners include in their annual reports a summary of their activities, and of any effects or benefits resulting from their activities, under the partnership between the Crown Estate and GB Energy. We believe that that measure fulfils the aim of making sure that the information about the partnership is publicly available.
The work of GB Energy and the Crown Estate is very important for achieving some of the Government’s goals. They will work together to speed up the process of developing clean energy projects by co-ordinating planning, grid connections and leasing to de-risk projects for private developers to build. That will unlock private investment, speed up the deployment of clean energy infrastructure, boost energy independence, save costs for families, create jobs and tackle the climate crisis.
I hope that the Opposition would support some of those goals, although it was drawn to my attention that the shadow Minister campaigned against national grid infrastructure last year in his constituency. He teamed up with Liz Truss to do it; it was the shadow Minister and Liz Truss. Am I going to get sued now for having referenced that? I do not know whether the shadow Minister would like to express his regret at having campaigned against national grid infrastructure, which is obviously so important for the energy transition. Perhaps that is why this debate has touched a particular nerve on the Opposition Front Bench, but that is for him to say, not for me to speculate about.
What I do not have to speculate about, and what I can say with great certainty, is that the Great British Energy and Crown Estate partnership is very important for this Government, and the measures in clause 4 ensure that the relevant information is publicly available. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Salmon farms on the Crown Estate
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
James Murray
Clause 5 would require the Crown Estate commissioners to assess the environmental impact and animal welfare standards of salmon farms on the Crown Estate on an ongoing basis. Where that assessment determines that a salmon farm is causing environmental damage or has significant animal welfare issues, the Crown Estate would be required to revoke the relevant licence. The commissioners would be required to make the same assessment of any applications for new licences for salmon farms, and where they determine that an application may cause environmental damage or raises significant animal welfare concerns, the Crown Estate must refuse the application.
During the Bill’s passage in the other place, peers felt it necessary to amend the Bill to add clause 5. The Government understand the objectives behind the clause, but we are unable to support it, as it would duplicate existing protections. Fisheries policy is also largely devolved, and therefore responsibility for this issue in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland rests with the relevant devolved Government. At present, virtually all salmon aquaculture in the UK takes place in Scotland, and the management of the Crown Estate in Scotland is also a devolved matter.
For those reasons, the clause would have almost no impact in practice on farmed salmon in the UK. As it stands, it risks impeding an already thoroughly regulated industry, while having little to no positive impact, due to the territorial realities of the Bill. Therefore, I do not recommend clause 5 to the Committee.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again so soon, Mr Mundell. As the Minister noted, the clause was added in the other place, particularly following the efforts of my noble Friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean. It was backed by peers from across the parties, and Labour peers may have supported it as well. The Minister says that it duplicates provisions that exist. Given that the Government said in the House of Lords that they support its objective, it is clearly disappointing to see them removing these provisions, with the message that that sends about the importance of protecting the future of wild Atlantic salmon.
Question put and negatived.
Clause 6
Commissioners with special responsibility
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
James Murray
Clause 6 amends the Crown Estate Act 1961 to require the appointment of commissioners with special responsibility for giving advice about England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That responsibility would be in addition to the other responsibilities of a commissioner. For appointments relating to Wales and Northern Ireland, no recommendation may be made to His Majesty, unless Welsh Ministers and the Executive Office in Northern Ireland have been consulted.
The legislative changes brought about by clause 6 ensure that those on the board of commissioners of the Crown Estate continue working in the best interests of Wales and Northern Ireland, alongside performing their existing duties as commissioners. The clause, which was added as an amendment, following Government support in the other place, will bring knowledge of the devolved nations even more directly to the board table and will supplement the expertise of the Crown Estate’s director for the devolved nations, who is based in its recently opened office in Cardiff. The clause will ensure that the board of commissioners of the Crown Estate continues working in the best interests of Wales and Northern Ireland. I therefore commend it to the Committee.
James Wild
This is a pretty straightforward clause. It is one of those that were added to the Bill in the other place to improve it, and I hope the Minister might learn the lesson of those clauses as we come to consider the new clauses shortly.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7
Extent, commencement and short title
James Murray
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 7, page 4, line 4, leave out subsection (4).
This amendment removes the privilege amendment inserted by the House of Lords.
James Murray
These are very straightforward matters to debate. Government amendment 3 removes the privilege amendment inserted by the other place. Clause 7 sets out the Bill’s extent, commencement period and short title in the usual manner for such legislation. I commend Government amendment 3 and clause 7 to the Committee.
James Wild
Thank you for calling me to speak again, Mr Mundell—it is good to get the exercise. There is not much to add on this very straightforward clause and amendment, other than that the commencement date, which brings the legislation into force automatically within two years, could usefully be applied to other legislation from the last Parliament. Quite a lot of private Members’ Bills and other pieces of legislation were passed that have not been commenced. I could expand on that issue at length, Mr Mundell, but you would rightly say that it was not in scope. However, car parking regulations, for example, have not been brought into the code of practice or into effect. Having a clear date in legislation to say, “This will happen, as long as the Bill passes,” is a good thing to do.
Amendment 3 agreed to.
Clause 7, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 2
Territorial seabed
“After section 3A of the Crown Estate Act 1961 (inserted by section 1 of this Act) insert—
‘3AA Restriction on permanently disposing of interest in seabed etc
(1) The Commissioners may not without the consent of the Treasury permanently dispose of—
(a) any part of the territorial seabed, or
(b) any interest, right or privilege over or in relation to the territorial seabed,
which forms part of the Crown Estate.
(2) Accordingly, without that consent, any purported disposal of a kind mentioned in subsection (1) is void.
(3) In subsection (1), “territorial seabed” means the seabed and subsoil within the seaward limits of the United Kingdom territorial waters.’”—(James Murray.)
This new clause requires the Crown Estate Commissioners to obtain consent from the Treasury before they permanently dispose of any of the Crown Estate’s interest in, or rights or privileges in relation to, the territorial seabed.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—Limit on the disposal of assets—
“After section 3 of the Crown Estate Act 1961, insert—
‘3A Limit on the disposal of assets
(1) The Commissioners must inform the Treasury if the disposal of assets of the Crown Estate will be of a value totalling 10% or more of the Crown Estate’s total assets in a single year.
(2) The Treasury must approve of any disposal of assets above the threshold in subsection (1) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer must lay a report before Parliament within 28 days of being notified by the Commissioners.’”
This new clause requires the Crown Estate Commissioners to notify and seek HM Treasury approval for the disposal of assets totalling 10% or more of the Crown Estate’s total assets.
James Murray
New clause 2 relates to the seabed, which is obviously an important asset held by the Crown Estate. Specifically, the clause will prevent the Crown Estate from selling the seabed without obtaining consent from the Treasury. During the Bill’s time in the other place, there was significant interest in the ability of the Crown Estate to dispose of unique national assets such as the seabed.
It will be no surprise to the Committee that the law on the ownership of the seabed is incredibly complex. As such, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury committed to explore the matter further and, if required, to bring forward a legislative provision to restrict the Crown Estate’s ability to sell the seabed.
I am pleased to say that the clause delivers on the commitment made by the Financial Secretary by putting special protections in place for the seabed. It does that by requiring the Crown Estate commissioners to obtain consent from the Treasury before they permanently dispose of any part of, or the Crown Estate’s interests in or rights and privileges in relation to, the territorial seabed.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
Could the Minister give examples of when the Crown Estate might consider selling the territorial seabed?
James Murray
I will come in just a moment to some of the scenarios that the new clause might cover.
As I said, the new clause ensures that the Crown Estate commissioners must obtain consent from the Treasury before they permanently dispose of any part of, or the Crown Estate’s interests in or rights and privileges in relation to, the territorial seabed. To be clear, that does not mean that the Crown Estate could never be permitted to dispose of a seabed. To answer my hon. Friend’s question, national or local interests may be best served by such a sale, including, for example, to another part of the public sector to enable local infrastructure development. Any such sale could, under these measures, take place only with the agreement of Ministers, and it is right that they are decision makers on such sales.
I should also make it clear that the clause would not fetter the Crown Estate’s existing right to agree licences or leases in relation to the seabed, which by definition do not represent a permanent disposal of the asset. The ability to agree long-term licences and leases for the seabed will continue to be an important feature of the Crown Estate, to attract significant investment needed for offshore clean energy developments.
New clause 3, tabled by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, seeks to limit the ability of the Crown Estate to dispose of assets without Treasury approval. Specifically, it would require the Crown Estate to seek consent for the disposal of assets totalling 10% or more of its total assets in a single year, and that the Treasury lay a report before Parliament within 28 days of being notified of disposals above that threshold.
The Government’s view is that imposing a limit on disposals would undermine the flexibility needed to enable the Crown Estate to operate commercially and meet its core duties under the Bill. There may be instances where it makes commercial sense to dispose of high-value assets, particularly when the Crown Estate takes a long-term view of the business and its strategy.
I recognise that the new clause would not prohibit disposals above the specified limit, but would require the Crown Estate to obtain Treasury approval. However, as I have set out for the Committee, the Crown Estate is an independent commercial business, and it is not the Government’s intention to materially alter its independence in such a way that the Treasury is required to approve its business decisions.
However, I do understand that there may be concerns about the Crown Estate’s ability fundamentally to change the nature of the estate. I reassure the hon. Member that the core duty of the Crown Estate—to maintain an estate in land and to enhance and maintain the value of that estate—is unchanged by the Bill. I hope that that provides the appropriate reassurance and that he feels able not to press new clause 3.
The Government are thankful for the constructive engagement of the Opposition on the matter of disposals. That has led to special protections being put in place for the seabed. I therefore commend new clause 2 to the Committee.
James Wild
I will respond to Government new clause 2 and to new clause 3, which was tabled in my name. As we heard from the Minister, Government new clause 2 will require the Crown Estate commissioners to obtain consent from the Treasury before they permanently dispose of any of the Crown Estate’s interest in, or rights or privileges in relation to, the territorial seabed. The Government moved this measure because of the extensive debate in the other place about the sale of certain assets, and particularly the seabed. We welcome the constructive approach taken by Ministers; Lord Livermore gave a commitment in the other place, and it has been honoured today, so we will support the new clause.
Although we welcome the new clause, we still have concerns about the disposal of other assets. My new clause 3 would require the Crown Estate commissioners to seek approval from His Majesty’s Treasury for the disposal of assets totalling 10% or more of the Crown Estate’s total assets. It would also require the Chancellor to lay a report before Parliament within 28 days of being notified of such a disposal by the commissioners.
As previously noted in Committee, the Crown Estate owns some of the nation’s most vital assets. It is somewhat surprising to find that there are few safeguards to prevent the Crown Estate commissioners from deciding to sell critical assets. That is why the debate in the other place, which exposed the issue of the seabed and brought about new clause 2, was so important. However, the Crown Estate has lots of other assets, which Members may wish to refer to and which they may think also deserve special attention.
In the original business case for modernisation of the Crown Estate, which is publicly available, it was noted that the Crown Estate was planning £1.4 billion of disposals, which—coincidentally enough—equates to nearly 10% of its portfolio. In the other place, my noble Friends suggested a disposal limit of anything greater than £10 million. The noble Lord Livermore responded:
“It is the Government’s view that imposing a statutory limit on disposals in this way would undermine the flexibility required by the Crown Estate to ensure that it can operate commercially and fulfil its core duties under the future Act.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 November 2024; Vol. 840, c. 1411.]
The Minister made a similar argument in his speech, but I am not sure that it is right. Given that the assets are held for the benefit of the nation, there should be some form of greater transparency if they are to be disposed of. Reporting to Parliament and seeking approval from the Treasury for disposals over a set percentage would provide such transparency.
The disposal of assets by the Crown Estate should be properly scrutinised, given its important role and statutory purpose. When I asked the Crown Estate about its planned disposals—the £1.4 billion referred to in document on the modernisation of the Crown Estate, which any Member may access—it said that it was unable to disclose its plans. Members might guess that the old “confidential, commercially sensitive” reason was given. That raises concerns about transparency. Will the Minister confirm whether he knows which assets were included in that figure and whether the Crown Estate plans further disposals? I asked the same question on Second Reading, and the Minister replied to most of my points, but that is one he did not reply to. Perhaps he will do so on this occasion.
Having reflected on the debates in the other place, we have changed our approach from a £10 million cap to a 10% cap, after which new clause 3 would require approval and a report to Parliament. That is a modest measure, which would not inhibit the commercial freedom of the Crown Estate to take such decisions if it wants to. It owns assets such as Great Windsor Park and others, and who knows which it may decide to sell at some point in the future? Such assets are held in right of the Crown, so this is not about the sovereign’s private income, but about the income generated for the taxpayer. Transparency is something that the Government should endorse.
James Murray
I thank the shadow Minister for his comments, but imposing a limit on disposals would undermine the flexibility needed to enable the Crown Estate to operate commercially and meet its core duties under the Crown Estate Act 1961. As I mentioned earlier, there may be instances where it makes commercial sense to dispose of high-value assets, particularly when the Crown Estate, by its nature, takes a longer-term view of the business and its strategy.
James Wild
The Minister talked about flexibility, but the Crown Estate would not suddenly decide tomorrow to sell some asset; it will have a business case and a process. That business case will go to the Chancellor, who will get advice rapidly—within a matter of hours or a day—either approve it or not, and report to the House. I do not see what the flexibility issue is.
James Murray
I point the shadow Minister to the way the system currently operates. The Crown Estate operates independently from Government, but there is a long-standing, constructive and transparent relationship between it and the Treasury. That ensures that the Government will be consulted on any potential sale of a nationally significant asset. That is underpinned by the Crown Estate’s framework document, which makes it clear that the Crown Estate should inform the Treasury
“of any matters concerning spending, income or finance that are novel, contentious or repercussive.”
That is an important point to highlight in terms of the way the system currently operates.
However, I return to my earlier point, which is that the Crown Estate is an independent commercial business, and it is not the Government’s intention to materially alter its independence in such a way that the Treasury is required to approve its business decisions. I reassure the shadow Minister and others on the Committee that the Crown Estate’s core duty, which is to maintain an estate in land and to enhance and maintain the value of the estate, is unchanged by the Bill.
Finally, to respond to the question about the £1.4 billion of disposals outlined in the business case, those published as part of the Lords stages relate to non-strategic assets.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 2 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 3
Limit on the disposal of assets
“After section 3 of the Crown Estate Act 1961, insert—
‘3A Limit on the disposal of assets
(1) The Commissioners must inform the Treasury if the disposal of assets of the Crown Estate will be of a value totalling 10% or more of the Crown Estate’s total assets in a single year.
(2) The Treasury must approve of any disposal of assets above the threshold in subsection (1) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer must lay a report before Parliament within 28 days of being notified by the Commissioners.’” —(James Wild.)
This new clause requires the Crown Estate Commissioners to notify and seek HM Treasury approval for the disposal of assets totalling 10% or more of the Crown Estate’s total assets.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 12—Devolution of Crown Estate powers to Wales—
“(1) The Crown Estate Act 1961 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 7 (powers of Minister of Works in Regent’s Park) insert—
‘7A Commissioners’ functions in Wales
(1) The Treasury must set out a scheme to transfer all the existing Welsh functions of the Crown Estate Commissioners (“the Commissioners”) to the Welsh Ministers or a person nominated by Welsh Ministers.
(2) The existing Welsh functions under subsection (1) are the Commissioners’ functions relating to the part of the Crown Estate that, immediately before the transfer date, consists of—
(a) property, rights or interests in land in Wales, and
(b) rights in relation to the Welsh zone.
(3) The Secretary of State must by regulations set a date to implement the scheme under subsection (1) to the transfer of functions to the Welsh Ministers or a person nominated by Welsh Ministers.
(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.’”
This new clause would require the Treasury to devolve Welsh functions of the Crown Estate Commissioners to Welsh Ministers or a person nominated by Welsh Ministers.
Llinos Medi
The new clause places a duty on the Treasury to transfer management of the Crown Estate in Wales to the Welsh Government within two years of the commencement of the Bill. This would correct the glaring imbalance in the constitutional settlement of the UK whereby Wales is unable to direct and benefit from its own natural resources in the way that Scotland can. There is an overwhelming majority in favour of devolving the Welsh Crown Estate; it has been called for by the independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales, the national infrastructure commission for Wales and the Labour Welsh Government. I note, sadly, that the Welsh Government have failed to submit any written evidence in favour of devolution to this Committee.
Half of all Welsh councils have passed motions calling for the devolution of the Crown Estate, with more preparing motions for the coming weeks and months. Devolution is also supported by 58% of the population of Wales, according to the latest polling—a clear majority. The Government have argued consistently that devolution of the Crown Estate would “fragment the market”. I note that that is the same position as the previous Conservative Government, which is why the former Labour Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Hain, was right when he said, during the Lords Bill Committee, that this position
“reflects old, centralised, conservative, anti-devolution Whitehall thinking.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 2024; Vol. 840, c. 18.]
Scotland is also a proof of concept that a devolved Crown Estate does not impede investment or fragment the market. If there can be a smooth and orderly transition of the management of the Crown Estate to Scotland, why not the same for Wales?
On Second Reading in the Commons, the Government argued that devolution would complicate existing processes and potentially delay grid connectivity reform, as well as the further development of offshore energy. Let me take those points in turn. First, with proper planning and a guarantee by the UK, working with the Welsh Government, to protect reserved interests, including the national grid, it would reduce the risk of impediments to ongoing reforms. That is why new clause 5 includes provision to ensure that the Treasury acts to secure reserved matters, such as the national grid, as part of the transfer of the management of the Welsh Crown Estate to the Welsh Government.
Secondly, on the potential further delays to offshore development in Wales, a devolved Welsh Crown Estate creates the opportunity for it to be strategically integrated into the planning of sub-sectors, including offshore wind in Wales. Looking again at Scotland, devolution has allowed for greater alignment between marine energy planning and licensing for renewable energy projects, such as offshore wind. With a devolved Crown Estate, the Scottish Government have taken a sectoral marine planning approach for offshore wind. They have made a specific plan for offshore wind development that provides the strategic frameworks for seabed leasing for commercial-scale offshore wind by Crown Estate Scotland. While England, Wales and Northern Ireland will have various forms of marine plans that the Crown Estate must have regard to, they cover a wide variety of policy areas and are not sector-specific.
The Welsh Government have a number of other areas that overlap with the responsibility of the Crown Estate in conducting early development of offshore wind. Those include their devolved responsibility over Welsh ports and responsibility for education in Wales, including skills and apprenticeships. These are crucial for the development of robust local supply chains for offshore wind projects. Wales could integrate a devolved Welsh Crown Estate into Welsh devolved plans and responsibilities, leading to a more strategic and joined-up approach to offshore development. In this way, devolving the Crown Estate is about not just profits from renewable licensing, but driving economic development in Wales. That would surely be a more attractive proposition to developers. The Government cannot continue to hide behind the excuse that devolution creates uncertainty. Yes, devolution will mean change.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member recognise that the potential devolution of the Crown Estate in Wales could cause no end of issues for the fair distribution of supply chain and economic benefits in communities, alongside their Celtic neighbour in Cornwall, for example?
Llinos Medi
That is why we have asked for a two-year approach, so that we can work together. It has happened in Scotland and it is possible. I think it is only fair that we ask the new UK Government, who want to devolve local authorities and regions in England, for devolution of the Crown Estate in Wales as well. It was another Labour Secretary of State, Ron Davies, who said:
“Devolution is a process. It is not an event and neither is it a journey with a fixed end point. The devolution process is enabling us to make our own decisions and set our own priorities, that is the important point.”
I urge this Labour Government to heed those words and support my amendment to devolve the Crown Estate to Wales.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
I will speak to new clause 5 and to new clause 12 which calls for the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales. While Scotland has controlled its Crown Estate since 2017, Wales has been left without these powers, despite the fact that vast Crown Estate assets lie within its borders. It is time to correct that unbalance and bring Wales into line with Scotland. Devolving control of the Crown Estate would not only recognise Wales’s status as an equal nation, but deliver substantial economic benefits to communities across Wales. Under the current system, profits from the Crown Estate flow directly to the UK Government.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
As my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay partially explained, there is an issue relating to, for example, the Celtic sea, where the Crown Estate has great interest in floating offshore wind. That lies between Wales, Cornwall and the south-west, so where would the line be drawn? It would open up a huge number of complexities that would be very difficult to solve.
Pippa Heylings
Nobody is saying that this is easy, but it is possible, and it has happened with Scotland. As many Members have said to us, given that we have territorial devolution and powers over the land, why not the seabed as well? There are ways of managing this, so complexity should not get in the way of ensuring that we have fairness in the distribution of economic benefits.
This funding is desperately needed, particularly given the historical underfunding of Wales on issues such as infrastructure. The success of devolution in Scotland speaks for itself; since 2017, when Scotland gained control of the Crown Estate, it has generated more than £103 million for public finances, so let us think what could happen for Wales if it was able to retain the profits generated by the Crown Estate within their borders.
Wales is expected to generate at least £1 billion from offshore wind energy leases in the coming years alone. Keeping some of that money within Wales could add £50 million a year to the Welsh Government’s budget—funds that could be directly reinvested in public services and local communities.
But this is not just about the financial gain; as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn said, devolving the Crown Estate would open up opportunities for greater investment in renewable energy projects. That is particularly important for coastal communities, which have long suffered from the decline of traditional industries. When they see direct benefits from renewable projects, they are far more likely to support them. That would create jobs, opportunities and sustainable development, delivering long-term economic stability, especially for the coastal regions of Wales that need it most.
The devolution of the Crown Estate has widespread support across Wales, from the Liberal Democrats in this place and the Welsh Parliament to Plaid Cymru, a majority of local authorities in Wales and even to the Welsh Labour Government. There is clear and overwhelming backing. In addition, opinion polls consistently show that the majority of the Welsh public are in favour of seeing the Crown Estate devolved, and it is clear that the people of Wales want to see this change. We want to work together, and I urge the Government to support this new clause and allow Wales to benefit from the powers and financial resources that it so rightly deserves.
James Wild
I will not detain the Committee for long. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn referred to the previous Conservative Government’s position, which has not changed today. The proposal would introduce an element of risk in spinning out assets and revenue streams. We heard about the particulars of the Celtic sea, so this is not the right proposal for this time.
James Murray
I thank the hon. Member for Ynys Môn for tabling new clause 5, which would require that within two years of the day on which the Act commences, the Treasury must have completed a transfer of the responsibility of the management of the Crown Estate in Wales to the Welsh Government. It would allow the Treasury, by regulations, to make provision about the transfer relating to reserved matters as necessary, and would require it to make provision to ensure that the employment of any person in Crown employment is not adversely affected by the transfer of responsibility.
I also thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire for tabling new clause 12, which would require the Treasury to set out a scheme to transfer all existing Welsh functions of the Crown Estate commissioners to Welsh Ministers or a person nominated by Welsh Ministers. The Welsh functions would consist of the property, rights or interests in land in Wales and rights in relation to the Welsh zone.
The Government believe there is greater benefit for the people of Wales and the wider United Kingdom in retaining the Crown Estate’s current form. Both new clauses would most likely require the creation of a new entity to take on the management of the Crown Estate in Wales which, by definition, would not benefit from the Crown Estate’s current substantial capability, capital and systems abilities. It would further fragment the UK energy market by adding an additional entity and, as a consequence, risk damaging international investor confidence in UK renewables and disrupting the National Energy System Operator’s grid connectivity reform, which is taking a whole-systems approach to the planning of generation and network infrastructure. Its reform aims to create a more efficient system and reduce the waiting times for generation projects to connect to the grid.
Llinos Medi
For clarification, does that plan not include Scotland, which has already been devolved?
James Murray
I thank the hon. Lady for that question, but we must consider the proposal before us in terms of the situation we face now, rather than consider decisions that have been made in relation to another nation in the past. We are considering not only the challenges but the opportunities for generating renewable energy in connection with assets closer to Wales or closer to England. The Government believe that having a united approach, through retaining the Crown Estate’s current form, is the best way to improve lives for people in Wales and across the rest of the UK.
As I was saying before the hon. Lady intervened, our reforms aim to create a more efficient system and reduce the waiting times for generation projects to connect to the grid. I am sure she would not want to see those waiting times increase. The cumulative impact of the changes that she and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire are suggesting in their new clauses would likely significantly delay the pathway to net zero.
Furthermore, the Crown Estate’s marine investments are currently made on a portfolio-wide basis across England and Wales. To devolve to Wales would disrupt the existing investments, since they would need to be restructured to accommodate a Welsh-specific entity. To devolve the Crown Estate at this time would risk jeopardising the existing pipeline of offshore wind development in the Celtic sea planned into the 2030s. The Crown Estate’s offshore wind leasing round 5 is spread across the English and Welsh administrative boundaries in the Celtic sea. It was launched in February last year and is expected to contribute 4.5 GW of total energy capacity, or enough to power 4 million homes.
In addition to energy, the extensive jobs and supply chain requirements of round 5 will also likely deliver significant benefits for Wales and the wider UK. Lumen, an advisory firm to the Crown Estate, has estimated that manufacturing, transporting and assembling the wind farms could potentially create around 5,300 jobs and create a £1.4 billion boost for the UK economy.
Devolution would also delay UK-wide grid connectivity reform. The Crown Estate is using its data and expertise as managers of the seabed to feed into the National Energy System Operator’s new strategic spatial energy plan. For Wales, the Crown Estate is working in partnership with the energy system operator to ensure that its current pipeline of Welsh projects, the biggest of which is the round 5 offshore wind opportunity in the Celtic sea, can benefit from this co-ordinated approach to grid connectivity up front. It would not make commercial sense to introduce a new entity, with control of assets only within Wales, into that complex operating environment, where partnerships have already been formed. Furthermore, the Crown Estate’s assets and interests in Wales, as compared with its assets in England, are of a fundamentally smaller magnitude, which would likely not be commercially viable if the costs were unsupported by the wider Crown Estate portfolio.
The Crown Estate, in its present form, has the ability to take a longer-term approach to its investments and spread the costs of those investments across its entire portfolio. A self-contained, single entity in Wales would not have the same ability, nor would it benefit from the expertise that the Crown Estate has developed over decades in delivering offshore wind at scale. A devolved entity would be starting from scratch, midway through a multimillion-pound commercial tendering process, at a time when the Crown Estate is undertaking critical investment in the UK’s path towards net zero.
For example, the commercial viability of all three 1.5 GW floating offshore wind project development areas in the Celtic sea, which straddle the English and Welsh administrative boundaries, benefited from the Crown Estate’s significant investment of time, expertise and capital to enable entry to market. UK floating offshore wind, which is an emerging offshore technology that the Crown Estate is supporting, would be particularly vulnerable to market disruption.
It is also important to underline that income generated by the whole Crown Estate benefits the people of Wales. As I have noted, the Crown Estate pays its entire net profits into the UK Consolidated Fund each year. That means that much of the revenues already support public services in Wales, either through supporting UK Government spending in reserved areas or through the funding provided under the operation of the Barnett formula and the Welsh Government’s block grant funding.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
On that point, does the Minister agree that a lot of the concern and anxiety expressed so far stems from the idea of huge opportunities for revenue generation by the Crown Estate passing through deprived rural coastal communities and going to the Treasury? Will he comment on how a place like Cornwall, which is not subject to the Barnett formula, will benefit from all the resources from something like the Celtic sea?
James Murray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that a collective approach to projects such as those in the Celtic sea, which cross English and Welsh administrative boundaries, can increase a return for the UK Consolidated Fund, which benefits people in Cornwall, Wales and other parts of the UK. It ensures that we get the best return on our investment through Crown Estate activities. Our concern about the proposition in the new clauses is that it would undermine such revenue generation for all our public services, as well as disrupting the emerging market in offshore floating wind at a critical time, when what investors need is stability, certainty and confidence to invest in a growing sector, not organisational change that might undermine the investment they seek to make.
To pick up further the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth, were Wales to benefit only from the income generated in Wales, it would likely receive zero or negligible benefits for several decades to come, because Welsh assets are relatively new and it will take them time to mature—in the order of 10 to 15 years. The Crown Estate has shown itself to be a trusted and successful organisation, with a proven track record in effective management and profit generation, which are valuable outcomes that we need to be careful not to undermine.
As I set out earlier, the Government supported the inclusion of clause 6, which will require the appointment of a commissioner responsible for giving advice about Wales. I will not repeat what I have already set out, but it is important to underline that that will help to ensure that the board of commissioners for the Crown Estate continue to work in the best interests of Wales, alongside their existing duties as commissioners. That will certainly strengthen the Crown Estate’s ability and mission to deliver benefits for the whole UK.
I am aware that hon. Members may not agree with the points I have made, but I hope that I have set out clearly why the Government believe the existing structure remains the best approach. I hope hon. Members feel able not to press their new clauses.
Llinos Medi
I thank the Minister for those comments; I will come back on a few of them.
This debate is about fairness. We are asking for fairness and equity for Wales, and parity with Scotland. It is important to give a bit of history. Our natural resources in Wales have been extracted from our communities yet, as I mentioned earlier, by the end of this decade 34% of children in Wales will live in poverty. If the money we are discussing was spent back in Welsh communities, it would have a dramatic effect.
Llinos Medi
I beg to move, that the Clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require the Crown Estate commissioners to transfer all profits generated by the Crown Estate in Wales to the Welsh Government on an annual basis. Although figures for the profits generated in recent years by the Welsh Crown Estate are not available, the figures from across the whole Crown Estate show that overall profits have increased dramatically. Since 2021, there has been a 408% increase in Crown Estate profits and therefore the profits from Wales have likely seen a similar level of increase.
Even if one accepted the Government’s argument that devolution of the management of the Crown Estate would involve too much risk, that does not justify profits generated on assets in Wales not remaining in Wales. Therefore, will the Government outline whether they support the principle that all profits generated through Welsh natural resources should be kept in Wales, as is the case with Scotland?
Some argue that Wales would not benefit financially from the devolved Crown Estate given the impact on the devolved Welsh budget. However, the Scottish model already demonstrates how profits from the Welsh Crown Estate could interact with the devolved Welsh budget. In Scotland, all profits from the Scottish Crown Estate are paid into the Scottish Consolidated Fund and redistributed for public spending. These profits interact with the Scottish block grant adjustment mechanism, which was agreed with the Treasury under the 2016 Scottish fiscal agreement.
The mechanism removes a portion of the block grant as the profits from the Scottish Crown Estate increase, to avoid Scotland gaining twice over. That is due to the Scottish budget benefiting from a Barnett share of the expenditure in England, supported by Crown Estate revenues arising from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Crown Estate Scotland has estimated that net revenue profits in 2023-24 will be £113.5 million. The current reduction to the Scottish block grant under the adjustment mechanism will be £10 million, which should result in an estimated usable revenue from the Crown Estate Scotland for the Scottish Government of £103.5 million.
If Wales followed a similar approach to Scotland, it would likely gain additional revenues from the Crown Estate and would have only a small proportion removed from its block grant in return. That would occur through a Welsh block grant adjustment mechanism to be negotiated between the Welsh Government and the Treasury. Will the Government look at opening discussions with the Welsh Government on retaining profits in Wales and establishing a fair block grant adjustment mechanism to account for rising profits over time? It would be up to the Welsh Government to decide what to do with the money from the Crown Estate.
Plaid Cymru has proposed targeting investment into deprived communities in rural Wales and our deindustrialised valleys, and using the money to develop a Welsh sovereign wealth fund. However, that is not within the scope of the new clause. I hope the Government will listen and agree to the new clause, thereby endorsing the principle that profits generated in Wales should remain in Wales.
James Wild
I am up now. I will not detain the Committee long. We did not support new clause 5, so it follows that we do not support new clause 6, although it raises a thought in my mind. The east of England, which is home to the largest offshore wind sites in Europe, is perhaps not getting its fair dibs. That is probably something I need to reflect on for another time.
James Murray
I thank the hon. Member for Ynys Môn for tabling new clause 6, which would require that the commissioners must transfer all net revenue profit generated from the Crown Estate’s activities in Wales to the Welsh Government on an annual basis. As The Crown Estate’s operations are not divided into business units for each nation, calculating the exact net profit figure attributable to Wales is not straightforward, because most of the associated costs cannot easily be disentangled from the Crown Estate’s overall costs and would, in places, require subjective judgment.
Furthermore, as I set out earlier, given that the Crown Estate takes a long-term approach to investments, it is anticipated that its investments in Wales could take up to 10 to 15 years to see an appropriate return. Therefore, if net profits were transferred to the Welsh Government now, they are likely to be zero or negligible. I hope that explanation was helpful and that the hon. Member feels able to withdraw the new clause.
Llinos Medi
I am unsure how the Minister can say that we would not receive any profits when the Government cannot work out what profits Wales generates. It feels a bit difficult to understand that argument.
I am fighting the corner for fairness for Wales. We have lost all our natural resources and that has been feeding the UK machine. Unfortunately, we are seeing poverty on the rise and deindustrialisation in communities. The new clause would see the profits that are generated given back to those communities, to be spent in those communities and on their future.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 8—Publication of lease fees—
“In section 2 of the Crown Estate Act 1961 (reports and accounts), after subsection (4) insert—
‘(4A) In their accounts the Commissioners must publish details of all individual lease agreements with public bodies in—
(a) Wales,
(b) England, and
(c) Northern Ireland.
(4B) The information provided under subsection (4A) must include the value and name of the agreement.’”.
This new clause requires the Crown Estate to publish, in its annual accounts, a list of all lease agreements it has with public bodies in Wales, England and Northern Ireland including each lease’s name and valuation.
New clause 9—Publication of separate reports for England, Wales and Northern Ireland—
“In section 2(1) of the Crown Estate Act 1961, at end insert—
‘(1A) In addition to the report under subsection (1), the Commissioners shall produce a report on the performance of their functions each year in each of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
(1B) The Commissioners shall lay—
(a) a copy of the report in relation to England before both Houses of Parliament,
(b) a copy of the report in relation to Wales before Senedd Cymru, and
(c) a copy of the report in relation to Northern Ireland before the Northern Ireland Assembly.’”.
The new clause would require that the Crown Estate Commissioners report separately for each country and for the devolved legislatures to have the report laid before them.
Llinos Medi
I note that since 2021 the net revenue profit and asset value data for Wales has not been published by the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate says that the reason for this is that:
“While in the past, we have produced illustrative figures for Wales, we have since shifted our focus to a more holistic approach to assessing value and increasing our investment, and we realise that such figures are not a fair reflection of value. The previous Wales numbers we published have not included a cost allocation.”
In an answer from September 2024 to my written question asking about the merits of producing regular disaggregated assets and revenue data for Wales, the Government said:
“To achieve efficiency in its operations, the Crown Estate runs many of its functions at a whole enterprise level. As a result, separate financial statements for Wales would not reflect the fact that expenditure is incurred for the benefit of the whole portfolio, and it is not possible to disaggregate net revenue profit attributable to Wales.”
I also note that the Government accepted an amendment to the Bill in the House of Lords to include national commissioners for England, Wales and Northern Ireland on the board of the Crown Estate. The amendment also grants Welsh Ministers and the Executive Office in Northern Ireland the right to be consulted about the Welsh and Northern Irish appointments. Therefore, can the Government outline how these national commissioners will be able to advise on the affairs of each respective nation if there is no process by which the Crown Estate can measure and delineate the profits and costs incurred separately in England, Wales and Northern Ireland?
New clause 7 would address this gap by requiring annual reporting of both asset value and revenue across all nations under the Crown Estate, and by doing so, it would require the Crown Estate to develop a way to measure asset value and revenue in a consistent manner. I hope the Government will accept this amendment to strengthen the ability of national commissioners to fulfil their intended role to advise and act in the interests of the nations they represent on the Crown Estate board.
I turn to new clause 8. Under the current arrangements, many public bodies, such as local authorities, pay lease fees to the Crown Estate simply to lease the land in their own area. However, details of these are not routinely published. In response to my written question in October 2024, the Government noted that,
“Publishing details of those fees would risk prejudicing the commercial interests of both The Crown Estate and the local authorities involved.”
However, local authorities are able and willing to provide this information through freedom of information requests. These FOIs have revealed that in 2023 local authorities in Wales paid fees amounting to well over £300,000 a year. At a time when council budgets are under enormous pressure, how can these fees be justified? This is public money that vital council services such as housing, education and social care are being deprived of.
We should be having a debate on the merits of these fees. This has to start with total transparency and a full account of what is being charged and where. That is why I have tabled new clause 8, which requires the Crown Estate to publish in its annual accounts a list of all lease agreements it has with public bodies in Wales, England and Northern Ireland, including each lease’s name and valuation. I ask the Government to support my new clause for the sake of transparency and to agree that, where public money is being spent, the public should be able to see where this money is going.
New clause 9 is similar to new clause 8. It would require that the Crown Estate commissioners report separately for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and that the devolved legislatures have these reports laid before them. The Crown Estate already produces highlights reports for Wales and Northern Ireland. This amendment would place this type of reporting on a statutory footing by ensuring that these reports are made available to both the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly, and would allow for greater transparency and engagement between the Crown Estate and the devolved legislatures. Diolch.
James Murray
New clause 7, tabled by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn, would require the Crown Estate to disaggregate reporting in its accounts to show capital and revenue figures for the activities of the Crown Estate in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. At present, the Crown Estate’s operations are not divided into business units by nation. It would therefore not be straightforward to disaggregate reporting in that way. It would be a complex task, requiring a series of highly subjective judgments to be taken. Although it is possible to identify gross revenues from each nation, reporting them without any representation of the costs associated would be entirely misleading. However, the Crown Estate does publish broader information relating to its activities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as part of its annual report and accounts. The Government’s view is that it remains appropriate for the Crown Estate to continue its reporting on a whole-business basis. I hope that that explanation is helpful and encourages the hon. Member to withdraw her new clause.
Llinos Medi
This is a leadership discussion—it is about the leadership we are asking the Government to show in giving Wales the fairness it deserves. We are asking for clarity around public money. I am a bit concerned that there should be a commercially sensitive discussion around public money, which is meant to be transparent. We can get it through freedom of information requests, so it should be easy to collate that information so that the people of Wales and across the United Kingdom can see how their local authorities are spending their money on the Crown Estate and where that is spent afterwards.
In addition, I am unclear about the role of the commissioners. The information that we are asking for in these new clauses would strengthen the role of the commissioners and give them the ability to fulfil their role for the benefit of those regions whose concerns they are there to voice. I will press this matter to a vote.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
My decision is that new clause 12 is sufficiently similar to new clause 5 as not to justify a separate vote, so we will move on to the remaining procedures.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
James Murray
May I take this moment to thank all hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for their attendance and their contributions? I also thank you, Mr Mundell, for chairing the Committee. I thank the Treasury officials, the House of Commons officials and everyone else for making the Committee run so smoothly.
James Wild
I am grateful, Mr Mundell, for your chairing this afternoon, and I am grateful to Ms Furniss for chairing the first session this morning. I am grateful for the support, help and advice of the Clerks and for the contributions and responses provided by the Crown Estate during the passage of the Bill. I look forward to reconvening with Members for its remaining stages, which I understand will be on 24 February—they will be a pleasure. I am grateful to the Minister for getting on the record my strong opposition to the 100 miles of pylons coming from Grimsby to Walpole in my constituency and the need to look at underground options.
The Chair
As ever, it is a disappointment to me that I can take no further part in these proceedings.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 85, in clause 51, page 111, line 7, after “authorities” insert “, including academy trusts,”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 48, in clause 51, page 112, line 4, at end insert—
“(5) After section 7A (withdrawal of notices under section 7), insert—
“7B New schools to allocate no more than half of pupil places on basis of faith
A new school for which proposals are sought by a local authority under section 7 must, where the school is oversubscribed, provide that no more than half of all places are allocated on the basis of or with reference to—
(a) the pupil’s religious faith, or presumed religious faith;
(b) the religious faith, or presumed religious faith, of the pupil’s parents.””.
Clause stand part.
Neil O'Brien
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I will begin by asking a question up front, so that the Minister has time to confer with officials if she needs to in order to reply.
We learned during the debate on clause 50 that, as well as existing schools, local authorities will be able to go to the schools adjudicator regarding school openings. Will a local authority be able to object to the published admissions number of a school in another local authority, or is it limited to schools within its own area? Possible answers are: yes, they will be able to object about another authority; no, they will not be able to; or, the Government have not decided yet. As drafted, the Bill does not tell us what the Government’s intent is.
I will now speak to our amendment 85 and clause 51. Local authorities can already establish local authority schools if there is really no one who wants to start a new school, although, as the Government’s notes to the Bill rightly say, the current legal framework for opening new schools is tilted heavily towards all new schools—mainstream, special, and so on—being academies. As we have discussed, clause 44 repeals the requirement to turn failing local authority schools into academies; clause 51 is effectively the other half of that shift away from academisation. It ends the rule that new schools must be academies and allows local authorities to choose to set up new local authority-run schools instead. Both changes will reduce the flow of new schools into the best performing trusts. For that reason, we think it is a mistake.
Ministers keep saying that they want greater consistency —that seems to be one of the guiding principles of the Bill—but in the long term the combination of clause 51 and clause 44 will leave us with two types of school. That will sustain the confusion that we talked about in previous debates, where the local authority is simultaneously the regulator and a provider in the market it is regulating. The schools system is currently a halfway house: more than 80% of secondary schools are now academies, but less than half of primaries are, so just over half of all state schools are academies, and most academies are now in a trust.
I understand why Ministers have moved to find a legislative slot, and I know that anti-academies campaigners and people who do not like academies will welcome the clause. My question is where this is taking us in terms of a structure for the system as a whole. The Minister will say, “We want the flexibility to set up local authority schools,” but the combination of clauses 44 and 51 means that, in the long term, we will continue to have two types of school, rather than continue the organic move of recent years toward a system that is clearly based on academies and trusts, and trusts as the drivers of overall performance. That became apparent during the Government’s announcement the other day of their consultation on the new intervention regime. Ministers are now talking about RISE—regional improvement for standards and excellence—as one of the drivers of school improvement, leading to lots of questions about where the balance is between RISE and trusts, and what happens where the advice of a RISE team contradicts a trust’s views about what should be done in the case of a school with problems.
We have rehearsed a lot of these issues before, but I am keen to get an answer from the Minister about whether, in the case of new school openings in a different local authority, another local authority would be able to send the question of that school’s PAN to the schools adjudicator under clause 50. I am also keen to get the Minister’s sense of the finality of the system. Are Ministers happy for us to have just local authority schools and academies in the long term, and do not think that that is a problem they need to address? Do they not have a vision for the final situation, or do they have some other vision that the Minister wants to set out?
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. Broadly, the Liberal Democrats welcome clause 51 and its counterpart, not least because we desperately need new special schools. The previous Government approved fewer than half of the 85 applications from councils to open SEND free schools in 2022. This is a real part of unblocking that, so we agree with the Government. We tabled amendment 48 because a potential loophole is created in the now well-established rules on faith-based selection. Those rules apply to academies and will continue to do so, but under clause 51 not all new schools will be academies. The amendment would bring all new schools into line with the current established principles of faith-based selection for academies. It is a very simple amendment. I think the error was made inadvertently during drafting, and hopefully the Government will support it.
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
I rise to speak to clause 51, because there are some points I wish to raise about this part of the Bill allowing new schools to have 100% faith selection.
Clause 51 allows new schools to be opened without ideological restrictions on their type; they could be academies, community schools or voluntary aided schools, which in my view is extremely welcome; but it also creates the ability to open new 100% faith-selective schools, which worries me. The current 50% cap on faith selection for academies was introduced by the Labour Government in 2007, and further embedded into free schools in 2010 by the coalition Government. The Education Act 2011 mandated that all new schools must be free schools, extending the cap’s reach. That 50% limit was supported by all three main parties.
A scheme of local authority competitions similar to the one proposed in the clause operated from 2007 to 2012, in which we saw 100% faith-selective schools open. For example, Cambridgeshire county council ran a competition for a new school in which a 100% selective Church of England school won out over a proposal for a school with no religious character; the resultant school opened in 2017 and is still 100% faith selective. Another 100% religiously selective school was approved in the Peterborough council area. This has happened when the legislation has allowed for it.
We heard in the first evidence session that the Catholic Education Service would seek, in areas of oversubscription, to use 100% faith selection. We heard from the Church of England that nationally its policy is to stick to 50%, but its structure means that dioceses can put forward proposals for new schools, and they are not bound by that national policy. Members might be sitting here thinking, “So what? What is the problem with 100% faith-selective schools?” The problem is that 100% faith-selective schools are less socioeconomically diverse than might be expected for their catchment area, and less socioeconomically diverse than schools that are subject to the 50% cap. Compared with their 50% selective peers, 100% faith-selective schools are also less ethnically diverse than would be expected. Faith selective schools remain less inclusive across multiple factors. In my view, 100% faith selective admissions only exacerbate inequalities in the school system.
The Sutton Trust found that faith schools are less inclusive of disadvantaged children. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator found that faith-selective schools are less inclusive of children in care. The London School of Economics found that faith-selective schools are less inclusive of children with special educational needs and disabilities. Faith-selective admissions also disproportionately favour wealthier families, because they are socioeconomically more selective than other types of school. Compared with other schools, faith-selective schools admit fewer children eligible for free school meals than would be expected for their catchment area.
Many faith-selective schools operate a system of scoring for religious attendance and volunteering. In my view, this activity is simply easier for those with more economic or social capital—those who do not work weekends, nights or shifts, and who have a professional background where one is very happy and comfortable going into a new environment; perhaps one went to church as a child. At least since the 1950s, data shows that church attendance is higher among wealthier people. This religious activity is less easy to take part in for those who work shifts or weekends and those who do not have the cultural or social capital to enter confidently a situation that is new or perhaps culturally alien. I am focusing on church attendance because the religious majority in our country is Christian, even though actual religious belief is low.
Faith-selective schools encourage and embed educational inequalities, and that is why I am concerned about lifting the 50% faith-selection cap. I merely ask Ministers to consider this.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I rise to speak to amendment 48, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Twickenham. There are two main reasons people seek to limit school admissions on the basis of faith. The first is that some people do not like religion, organised religion, or the involvement of the state with organised religion. That is a matter of belief for some people. The second is that it is sometimes said that faith-based admission policies shut out others from good schools. There is sometimes a sense that it is academic or social selection by the back door. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale alluded to that. Some people—I am not saying this is the case with the hon. Lady—talk about the second issue when really they have in mind the first. One can be a proxy for the other.
Damian Hinds
Before the hon. Lady corrects me, I did not say she was doing that.
Lizzi Collinge
I do not wish to correct the right hon. Gentleman. I believe he is correct that the two get confused. I have both of those beliefs.
Lizzi Collinge
However I am very clear the evidence I am quoting is on the second of those. I would happily provide the right hon. Gentleman with the sources of evidence, should he like to peruse them.
Damian Hinds
I understand, acknowledge and respect what the hon. Lady says but, believe me, I do not need to see any more evidence on this subject, on which I have in my time perused large volumes. It is one of those issues—we talked the other day about another one—where the answer one wants can be found in the data.
Let us step back a moment. All liberal democracies permit freedom of religious belief, but the way it manifests is different in different countries. There can be an approach such as that in the United States or in France, where secularism in education is written into law or the constitution. We in this country have taken a different approach. We have always allowed denominational schools. In fact, we have not just “allowed” it; denominational schools and faith schools have always been a key part of the system. The biggest name in primary education in Britain is the Church of the England; the biggest name in secondary education in England is the Catholic Church.
It is not just in education that our country has this tradition. In international development, for example, the Government work closely with organisations such as Christian Aid, World Vision and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. In children’s services, the Children’s Society used to be called the Church of England Children’s Society, and Action for Children, formerly National Children’s Home, has its roots in Methodism.
Before there were state schools, there were faith schools, often attached to monasteries or cathedrals. The Education Act 1944 formalised this position, sometimes known as the dual system, whereby faith schools could be a full part of the state school system while retaining their religious character. There is a distinction between what are known as voluntary aided schools and voluntary controlled schools, and different degrees therefore of independence for those two. VA tends to be mostly associated with the Catholic Church, but there are lots of Anglican VA schools, and VA schools of five or six other religious denominations as well.
It is understood traditionally and generally, but not entirely correctly that with a VA school, the Church provides the land and the state provides the building, and that there is a sort of co-ownership—it is obviously minority ownership on the part of the religious organisation. In reality, over time that system was eroded and changed to a cash contribution in which, typically, 10% would come from the Church, which then became 5%. I think there were some cases in which it was 0%, but broadly that tended to be the situation. Sometimes Churches complain about that, saying, “Why should we have to contribute to this school, when any other school being created is fully funded by the state?” I think that is a good rule for two reasons. First, it is a privilege to be able to have a school that is fully state funded for pupils within a faith, but it is also a guarantee of independence. It means that no future Government can come along and say, “We are going to change all these schools into fully secular schools,” because they are part-owned—albeit a small part—by that religious faith.
Lizzi Collinge
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the question of schools having a faith element, being run by a Church or by any faith group, is different from the question of whether, in their admissions policy, a school may discriminate against one child and in favour of another based on the professed faith of their parents? Does he agree that those are two separate issues?
Damian Hinds
They are different but related issues. For the avoidance of any confusion, when we talk about schools being “run” by a Church, there was a time when clerics ran schools, but things are not really done in that way today.
Some of the top-performing schools in the country are denominational schools with faith-based admissions. There are some very poor-performing faith schools and some brilliantly performing non-faith schools, and obviously it varies from year to year, but on average, faith schools tend to slightly outperform the average. The hon. Lady can correct me if I am wrong, but there is a feeling that this is where she and others get the idea that that is possible only if there was some unfairness in the intake of children the schools accept.
Damian Hinds
I suppose, having said that the hon. Lady can correct me, I cannot really stop her.
Lizzi Collinge
The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. It is not a belief that the profile of faith schools is different from other schools: it is true. If we look at the rates of free school meals and the wealth profile of parents and compare them with peers—if we compare apples with apples—the data shows that. Does he recognise that?
Damian Hinds
As I said earlier, there are all manner of datasets. I do not have my full Excel complement with me today, but I can trade with the hon. Lady and counter what she said with other statistics. In particular, anybody who suggests that the intake of a Catholic school is higher up the socioeconomic scale than the average does not know a whole lot about the demographics of the Catholic population in this country. We have a remarkable amount of ethnic diversity because of immigration patterns.
By the way, there is no such thing as 100% faith selection; that happens only if a school is oversubscribed. If a state-funded school has spare places, at the end of the day, it is obliged to let anybody come along. However, if a school is oversubscribed and we lose the faith admissions criterion, the nature of the school will change. That goes to the heart of the hon. Lady’s question. There is something intrinsic to having a faith designation and a faith ethos in a school. Some people—I accept that the hon. Lady is not one of them—believe that such things contribute to what happens to those children, their education and their wellbeing, and they are reflected even in that small average premium in terms of results.
Back in the days of the free schools and before them, as the hon. Lady mentioned, a 50% cap was put in place, known commonly as the 50% faith cap. That reflected the fact that with free schools there was a different situation, because now any group could come along and say, “We want to open a school.” It seemed a sensible safeguard to have a cap. However, all the way through it has remained legally possible—not a lot of people know this—to open a voluntary aided school. That proposition was tested in law in 2012, after the coalition Government came into office, with the St Richard Reynolds Catholic college in the constituency of the hon. Member for Twickenham. Once a VA school is opened, it can convert to an academy.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman’s excellent speech. Amendment 48 does not seek to prevent faith schools from opening. It would simply apply the cap to any type of school—academy, maintained, voluntary aided or whatever.
For me, the main driver for that safeguard is social cohesion and ethnic diversity. We have talked a lot about Church schools, but there are other faiths that seek to set up schools in certain areas of the country where, without the cap in place, they would not get much racial diversity. That is worrying for community cohesion. I say that as somebody who has a strong personal faith. I send both my children to a Church of England school—mainly because it is in front of my house, so they can leave the house 30 seconds before the gate shuts—but I feel uncomfortable with its level of faith selection. As we heard in oral evidence from Nigel Genders, it is important that state-funded schools be for the whole community and be open to everyone.
Damian Hinds
That is a view. It is a perfectly legitimate view that some people hold, but it is not a view that I hold, nor is it a view that we have held historically in this country. Going back to 1944, to 1870 and even further, we have said that we believe in diversity of provision. That includes the Church of England and the Catholic Church, but it also includes other faiths. Some of the top-performing schools in the country are Jewish schools or Muslim schools.
Munira Wilson
I think the right hon. Gentleman thinks I am arguing that we should abolish faith schools. I have not made that argument. He is saying that this is not how we have done things in this country, but since the coalition and before, we have had a 50% faith cap. All the amendment seeks is clarity in legislation that that 50% faith cap will remain in place for any new school that opens. I realise that it was the Liberal Democrats who forced the Conservatives to put the cap in place for free schools, which is probably why the right hon. Gentleman will oppose me. For me, it is about social cohesion and about honouring the fact that we should serve all our communities. I am not opposing the establishment of new faith schools; I am just saying that they should have a cap of 50% on faith-based admissions.
Damian Hinds
I assure the hon. Lady that on this occasion I am not holding her Liberal Democrat party membership card against her. That is not the basis on which I am making these points.
The hon. Lady said that whatever type of school opens, it should have a 50% cap. By definition, there is no such thing as a VA school with a 50% cap, because being a voluntary aided school means having control over admissions in that way. It is not true that we have necessarily had the 50% cap all the way through; I point to the VA school that opened in her very constituency, and there have been others since then. The reason why only a small handful of VA schools have opened over the past couple of decades is that there was no money for it. To get money to open a school, it had to be a free school.
In 2018-19, the then Secretary of State, fine fellow that he was, created a small capital fund for the voluntary aided schools capital scheme. The reason related to patterns of immigration, particularly Polish and eastern European immigration. In the old days, it was Irish immigration—that is where I come from—but there have been many other waves from different places. As a result of eastern European immigration, there was a demand for Catholic schools in certain parts of the country. Those people, who had come to this country and made their lives here, and of whom there were now generations, were not able to access such schools in the way they could have in other parts of the country. Under that scheme, there were applications from five different faiths; at the time, one was approved and one put on hold. I contend that it is a good system that we have the cap for that tranche of schools—they are not going to be free schools—to retain those safeguards, but it is still possible to open a denominational school, of whichever faith, in circumstances in which there is great need in a particular area.
We talked earlier about local authority areas and their difference in size. Birmingham, which is one massive local authority area, is very different from an individual London borough. For the consideration of faith school applications, it ought to be possible to look over a wider area, because travel-to-school distances are much longer on average.
I want to check with the Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, that the Government’s proposals will not preclude the opening of new voluntary aided schools. I am afraid I must conclude by saying that, for reasons that the hon. Member for Twickenham will understand and that have nothing to do with her party affiliation, I cannot support amendment 48.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I rise to support clause 51 and to question the nature of the amendments.
The block on new local authority-run schools could only have been introduced for ideological reasons. Its removal is hugely welcome. If one model were of substantially better quality than the other, there might be a basis for such a block, but the facts speak for themselves: that is not the case. There is now a statistically negligible difference between the number of good and outstanding academies and the number of good and outstanding schools of other models, including local authority schools. It is plain for all to see that they are as good as each other, so the argument no longer holds water that one model is worse than the other and that legislation is therefore needed to block it.
I fully relate to the experience mentioned by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, where the only option is a free school application that then gets shut down. In my Southampton constituency, we put forward an excellent bid—all the advice throughout the process deemed it excellent—for a free special school. We are all painfully aware of the need for extra places for those with special educational needs and disabilities. With a free school application as our only option, we dutifully engaged, only to have that option shut down to us in the end. That pushes the responsibility back on existing schools to expand, entirely at the cost of already cash-strapped local authorities.
The clause is a sensible restoration of parity of esteem between different school models. On the rationale for objections and scrutiny, I have to say that am left a little confused by the Opposition’s positions and arguments. They question the local authority’s being both the regulator and provider of schools. If they do not support that, what is their solution? Is it for the local authority to become redundant and have no role in planning, so we therefore have centralisation back to the Department for Education? Or is it that we continue to prohibit local authority schools from opening, thereby reducing the mixed economy and maintaining their free school presumption, which got us into this situation in the first place?
I am glad that we have clause 51 in the Bill. It is a strong response to a real need. It takes account of the reality of quality and democratic accountability in school place planning and the opening up of schools. It reflects the fact that we have excellent teachers in local authority maintained schools, every bit as much as in other models of school where they choose to work. It opens up opportunities for multiple bids from school providers. That reflects the position set out in the preceding clauses, which is that we want to get back to a position of collaboration, not unbridled competition, in the provision of education for our children.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
I thank the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston for tabling amendment 85. When a local authority thinks that a new school is needed in its area, it will be required to seek proposals for a new school from proposers other than local authorities. That includes academy trusts, as well as other bodies such as charitable foundations and faith bodies. Local authorities will be required to seek proposals for different types of school, including academy schools, foundation schools and voluntary schools.
I appreciate that the hon. Member may be looking for assurance that proposals for new academies will be sought and welcomed as part of the new invitation process. I can absolutely reassure him on that. We are simply ending the presumption that all new schools should be academies and allowing proposals for all types of school, so that the proposal that best meets the needs of children and families in an area is taken forward. All types of schools have an important role to play in driving the high standards that we want to see in every school, so that all children are supported to achieve and thrive.
I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham for tabling amendment 48, which seeks to restrict the proportion of places that can be allocated on the basis of faith to a maximum of 50% for all new schools established following a local authority invitation to establish one. In practice, it would only make a difference to a new voluntary aided foundation and a voluntary controlled school with a faith designation.
I recognise that the hon. Member is seeking to ensure that new schools are inclusive and that all children have access to a good education. That is very much a mission that we share. The Government support the ability of schools designated with a religious character to set faith-based oversubscription criteria. This can support parents who wish to have their children educated in line with their religious beliefs. However, it is for a school’s admission authority to decide whether to adopt such arrangements.
The removal of the legal presumption that all new schools be academies is intended to ensure that local authorities have the flexibility to make the best decision to meet the needs of their communities. Decision makers will carefully consider proposals from all groups and commission the right new schools to meet need and to ensure that every child has the opportunity to achieve and thrive. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for Twickenham will not press her amendment.
Clause 51 will end the legal presumption that new schools should be academies. It will require local authorities to invite proposals for academies and other types of school when they think that a new school should be established and will give them the option to put forward their own proposals. The changes will ensure that new schools are opened by the provider with the best offer for local children and families. They will better align local authorities’ responsibilities to secure sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools. We are committed to ensuring that new schools are opened in the right place at the right time, so that all children have access to a core offer of a high-quality education that breaks down the barriers to opportunity.
I turn to hon. Members’ specific questions. There was quite a wide-ranging debate on the amendments, which is typical of this very assiduous Committee. As I said on the faith schools cap provision, we want to allow proposals for different types of school that will promote a diverse school system that supports parental choice. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire said, we have a rich and diverse school system. Our priority is driving high and rising standards so that children can thrive in whatever type of school they are in. We will work in partnership with all types of school, including faith schools, as part of that mission.
Proposers, including faith groups, will be able to put forward a proposal in response to an invitation from the local authority and where the local authority thinks that a new school should be established in the area. As is already the case, faith groups can put forward proposals for a new voluntary or foundation school outside the invitation process, for example where they think that there is a need for particular places to replace an independent school or to replace one or more foundations or voluntary schools that have a religious character.
Although designated faith schools that are not subject to the 50% cap are not restricted in the number of places that they can offer with reference to faith when oversubscribed, it is for the admission authority to decide whether to adopt such arrangements. Indeed, there is real variation: some choose to prioritise only a certain proportion of their places with reference to faith in order to ensure that places are available for other children, regardless of faith, while many do not use faith-based oversubscription criteria at all. Regardless of the admissions policy set by the admission authority, faith schools remain subject to the same obligations as any other state-funded school to actively promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs, and to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. That will apply to all schools as part of the changes introduced by this Bill.
Let me say in response to concerns about faith schools being less socioeconomically and ethnically diverse that, to be fair, it is not true of all faith schools. Catholic schools are among the most ethnically diverse types of school. Faith schools tend to have intakes that reflect wider intakes; they draw from a much larger catchment area, which can often create a more diverse intake. The Department does not collect data about the admission policies of schools with a religious character, and we do not have any data on the proportion of children admitted to a school on the basis of faith or how many are able to access a preferred place on the basis of their faith. That means that there is no data to support capping faith admissions on the ground that they are restricting children and parents from accessing the school of their choice.
On the role of the adjudicator, which I think the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston asked about specifically, we will set out details in regulations, but it is our intention that local authorities will be able to object to the published admission numbers in another local authority.
I hope that I have responded to all the concerns that have been raised. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Neil O’Brien
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 48, in clause 51, page 112, line 4, at end insert—
“(5) After section 7A (withdrawal of notices under section 7), insert—
‘7B New schools to allocate no more than half of pupil places on basis of faith
A new school for which proposals are sought by a local authority under section 7 must, where the school is oversubscribed, provide that no more than half of all places are allocated on the basis of or with reference to—
(a) the pupil’s religious faith, or presumed religious faith;
(b) the religious faith, or presumed religious faith, of the pupil’s parents.’”—(Ian Sollom.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 53 and 54 stand part.
Schedule 2 stand part.
Clause 55 stand part.
Catherine McKinnell
Clause 52 requires local authorities to publish proposals when they want to open a new maintained nursery school. It also sets out the circumstances in which local authorities or other proposers can publish proposals for other new schools outside of the invitation process described in clause 51.
Local authorities will be able to publish proposals for a new community, community special, foundation, or foundation special school to replace one or more maintained schools, or to establish a new pupil referral unit to replace one or more pupil referral units. They will not be required to follow the invitation process unless they choose to, or they have already launched an invitation process that they could publish the proposals in response to. It also allows other proposers to propose the establishment of a new foundation, voluntary or foundation special school at any time, unless there is a live invitation process that the proposals could be submitted in response to. Local authorities and other proposers will not need to obtain the Secretary of State’s consent before publishing proposals, as they do now in certain circumstances.
The clause also enables regulations to set out the action that local authorities must take to publicise proposals that have been published under these arrangements.
These provisions give local authorities the flexibility to decide which route to establishing a new school is most appropriate when they are replacing an existing maintained school or schools. They also preserve the ability of other proposers to put forward proposals to the local authority for a new school, for example to meet the need for a particular type of place.
Clause 53 applies a restriction on opening new schools under section 28 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to pupil referral units, so that pupil referral units can be established only by following the same statutory procedures, introduced by clauses 51 and 52 of the Bill, that apply to other types of school maintained by local authorities. That means that, where a local authority thinks that a new alternative provision should be established, it will be required to invite proposals from proposers for an alternative provision academy, and will be able to decide whether to publish its own proposals for a pupil referral unit to be considered alongside any academy proposals received.
Clause 53, along with clauses 51 and 52, brings pupil referral units within the statutory arrangements for establishing new schools, providing clarity and transparency about the process by which new pupil referral units can be opened, putting them on an equal footing with alternative provision academies, and better aligning a local authority’s responsibility for securing sufficient places with its ability to open new schools.
Clause 54 introduces schedule 2, which amends schedule 2 to the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to ensure that there are clear and fair processes for the consideration and approval of proposals made under sections 7 or 10 of the 2006 Act, as amended by this Bill, for the establishment of new schools.
Where proposals for a new school have been invited, schedule 2 will ensure that any proposals are considered equally, without the preference being given to academy proposals that there is now. This will allow decision makers to select the best proposal that meets the needs of children and families, regardless of the type of school it is.
In situations where local authorities have chosen to put forward their own proposals alongside others, or there are proposals for a new maintained school to have a foundation that the local authority would have a role in, the Secretary of State will make the decision, to ensure a fair, unbiased outcome.
Schedule 2 also requires the local authority to refer any proposal to the Secretary of State that has not yet been determined, providing an effective backstop in case of concerns over any decision making or delay. Where a local authority put forward proposals outside of an interpretation process, or if there is a proposal outside the process where the authority would be involved in the proposed school’s foundation, they will be required, as now, to refer the proposal to the schools adjudicator for decision.
Schedule 2 makes it clear that, before approving proposals for an academy, a local authority must consult the Secretary of State and seek confirmation that she would, in principle, be willing to enter into a funding agreement for that academy. That mirrors current arrangements and ensures that local authorities can be provided with all relevant information from the Department for Education on an academy trust making a proposal.
Clause 55 puts in place transitional arrangements for moving from the current arrangements for establishing new schools to the new arrangements. Where proposals for a new school have been sought by a local authority or published by a proposer or a local authority under the existing provisions under the Education Inspections Act 2006, and a decision on those proposals has not yet been made by the time the new provisions come into effect, the new arrangements will not apply and the proposals will be determined under the old arrangements. The clause also allows consultation that has been carried out under the requirements of the existing provisions of the 2006 Act, and before the new requirements come into force, to satisfy the requirements to consult under the amended provisions.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 57 and 58 stand part.
Amendment 11, in clause 59, page 115, line 18, at end insert—
“(2A) Section (Abolition of common law defence of reasonable punishment) comes into force at the end of the period of twelve months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”
This amendment is consequential on NC10.
Clauses 59 and 60 stand part.
New clause 10—Abolition of common law defence of reasonable punishment—
(1) The Children Act 2004 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 58 (Reasonable Punishment: England), omit subsections (1) to (4).
(3) After section 58, insert—
“58A Abolition of common law defence of reasonable punishment
(1) The common law defence of reasonable punishment is abolished in relation to corporal punishment of a child taking place in England.
(2) Corporal punishment of a child taking place in England cannot be justified in any civil or criminal proceedings on the ground that it constituted reasonable punishment.
(3) Corporal punishment of a child taking place in England cannot be justified in any civil or criminal proceedings on the ground that it constituted acceptable conduct for the purposes of any other rule of the common law.
(4) For the purposes of subsections (1) to (3) “corporal punishment” means any battery carried out as a punishment.
(5) The Secretary of State may make regulations for transitory, transitional or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of this section.
(6) The power to make regulations under subsection (5) is exercisable by statutory instrument.
58B Promotion of public awareness and reporting
(1) The Secretary of State must take steps before the coming into force of section 58A to promote public awareness of the changes to the law to be made by that section.
(2) The Secretary of State must, five years after its commencement, prepare a report on the effect of the changes to the law made by section 58A.
(3) The Secretary of State must, as soon as practicable after preparing a report under this section—
(a) lay the report before Parliament, and
(b) publish the report.
(4) The Secretary of State may make regulations for transitory, transitional or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of this section.
(5) The power to make regulations under subsection (4) is exercisable by statutory instrument.”
This new clause would abolish the common law defence of reasonable punishment in relation to corporal (physical) punishment of a child taking place in England, amend certain provisions of the Children Act 2004 relating to corporal punishment of children and place a duty on the Secretary of State to report this change.
Catherine McKinnell
Clause 56 contains a provision for the Secretary of State to make changes consequential on the provisions of the Bill to other legislation, as well as to existing primary legislation. It has been drafted to allow the Secretary of State to make consequential changes to other Acts preceding this Bill or those that are passing before Parliament in this Session. It is always possible that necessary changes to legislation may be identified after a Bill’s passage. Given the breadth of legal areas that the Bill covers, it is prudent to provide a failsafe should anything have been missed. Without one, there is a risk to the coherence of the legislative landscape that the Bill creates. The clause sets out that regulations making changes to primary regulation are subject to the affirmative procedure, and that those making changes to other legislation are subject to the negative procedure.
Clause 57 contains a financial provision necessary to the provisions of the Bill that require expenditure. It sets out the expectation that Parliament will fund any expenditure and any future increase in it incurred by the Secretary of State in relation to this Bill.
Clause 58 sets out the territorial extent of the provisions in the Bill. It is a standard clause for all legislation. As the Committee is aware, Westminster does not normally legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the relevant devolved Governments. However, there are no provisions of this Bill that engage that process.
Clause 59 sets out when the provisions in the Bill come into force. The general provisions on extent, commencement and the short title come into force on the day of Royal Assent. Subsection (2) sets out the provisions that will come into force two months after the Bill is passed. All the provisions will come into force on a day or days to be appointed by the Secretary of State through regulations. Those regulations may appoint different days for different purposes or different areas. The Secretary of State may also make regulations that provide for transitional or saving provision in connection with commencement.
Clause 60 provides that the short title of the Bill will be Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2025. For the reasons outlined, I commend the clauses to the Committee.
On new clause 10, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss removing the common law defence of reasonable punishment. Keeping children safe could not be more important to the Government. We are already taking swift action through these landmark reforms to children’s social care. It is the biggest overhaul in a generation. The Government are committed, through our plan for change, to ensuring that children growing up in our country get the best start in life through wider investment in family hubs and parenting support. This landmark Bill puts protecting children at its heart.
To be absolutely clear, the Government do not condone violence or the abuse of children, and there are laws in place to protect children against those things. Child protection agencies and the police treat allegations of abuse very seriously. They will investigate and take appropriate action, including prosecution, where there is sufficient evidence of an offence having been committed. Local authorities, police and healthcare professionals have a clear duty to act immediately to protect children if they are concerned that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.
This Bill will put children’s future at the centre of rebuilding public services, requiring higher standards for all children in need of help and protection. It is a key step towards delivering the Government’s opportunity mission to break the link between a young person’s background and future success.
We do not intend to legislate on the defence at this stage, but we will review the position when we have evidence from Wales of the impact since it was removed. Wales will publish its findings by the end of 2025 and we will look at them carefully. We recognise that parents have different views and approaches to disciplining their children. We need to consider their voices, and those of the child, trusted stakeholders and people who might be disproportionately affected by the removal of the defence, in making any decisions.
Let us also be clear: those children who have been abused or murdered by their parents would not have been covered by the defence of reasonable punishment. Crown Prosecution Service guidance is very clear about what is acceptable within the law to justify reasonable punishment.
The Bill introduces many measures to keep children safe—for example, requiring local authorities to have and maintain children not in school registers; improving information sharing between agencies; making sure that education and childcare settings are involved in local safeguarding partnerships; and making it a requirement for every local authority to have multi-agency child protection teams. Nationally, we are rolling out the vital multi-agency family health and child protection reforms through the Families First partnership programme from April 2025, and we are delivering parenting support through our family hubs programme in several local authorities.
The protection of children is critical. The Bill takes important steps to improve safeguarding. On that basis, I invite the hon. Member for North Herefordshire not to press the new clause.
On amendment 11, I appreciate what the hon. Member has set out in relation to having a delayed implementation for the removal of the defence of reasonable punishment. As I mentioned in response to new clause 10, we do not intend to legislate at this stage, but we will wait for Wales to publish its impact report on removing the defence, which is due at the end of 2025. We will look at the evidence of the potential impact before making such a significant legislative change. When we review the position, we will ensure that due thought and consideration are given to ensuring that there is an appropriate implementation period. On that basis, I invite her not to press the amendment.
Neil O’Brien
I rise to speak only to clause 56, which is a big old Henry VIII power. I am sure that their lordships will want to explore it in detail. In the interests of time, I have not tabled an amendment to it at this stage and I will not go into lots of detail, but it is always important to note such things. It is no small thing to give the Government the power to amend primary legislation without coming back to the House. Of course, there are certain limits to what they could do by means of such measures, but it is a big deal.
I place it on the record that the Minister will be well aware of some of the concerns about the clause that are coming to us from civil society. I am sure that she will have seen the comments from Jen Persson, the director of Defend Digital Me, on the information powers in the Bill. When we make laws in this way, it relies on someone noticing and raising an objection to Parliament to get any kind of democratic debate, and we can only stop such things in hindsight.
As the Minister will know, Defend Digital Me has put forward 30 different areas and proposals that it has concerns about, particularly on the information side. On previous clauses, we debated the constant unique identifier and eventually using the NHS number for that, and other things that we have objected to, such as the requirement to give information about how much time a home-schooled child is spending with both parents.
I will not reconsider all the debates that we have already had, but all those important decisions will potentially be in the scope of this Henry VIII power. I am keen to move on to the new clauses, so I will not go any further now, but I am sure that the Government will receive lots of probing questions on this point as the Bill moves to the other place.
Munira Wilson
I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, adding the Liberal Democrats’ support for putting equal protection into law for children. I do not understand why we would have a different level of protection for adults versus children. They are the most vulnerable children in our society. The Children’s Commissioner and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have been very clear that children should be protected. This is not seeking to interfere with parents in terms of how they discipline their children; it is about protecting our most vulnerable. The Children’s Commissioner has strongly called for this, particularly in the wake of the tragic case of Sara Sharif.
I really hope, when the Minister says that the Government will actively look at this during this Parliament, that that is the case. I suspect that there are Members in all parts of the House—I note that the new clause has cross-party support—who will continue to press her on this matter, because it is a basic issue of children’s rights and equal protection in law.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I rise to speak to demonstrate the cross-party support that has already been referred to for new clause 10 and consequential amendment 11 in the name of the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato), and I would like to start by congratulating and thanking her for her important work on this issue over many years.
Giving children equal protection from assault cannot happen soon enough. Although we tabled amendment 11 as a probing amendment, I cannot urge the Government strongly enough to grasp this opportunity, in this Bill on children’s wellbeing, to take this forward and put it into law.
Taking the essential step of giving children equal protection from assault has very widespread support not only among the general public, but among all sorts of organisations that advocate and work on behalf of children, including the NSPCC, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Parenting and Family Research Alliance and the Children’s Commissioner, to name just a few. We heard from the Children’s Commissioner herself in oral and written evidence just how strongly she feels about this matter. I share her view that it is totally unacceptable that in 2025, children have less protection from assault under English law than adults do. The existence of the “reasonable punishment” defence perpetuates ambiguity in the law. It leaves children exposed to potential harm and undermines efforts to safeguard their wellbeing. New clause 10 would remove this outdated defence and provide clarity, consistency, and equal protection for children under the law.
The Minister talked about wanting to wait until we have evidence from Wales, and of course, as she acknowledges, it is only in England and Northern Ireland that children do not have this protection. Scotland and Wales have already passed legislation on this matter—indeed, Scotland did before Wales, in 2020. The Minister mentioned waiting for evidence to come from Wales as to the impact of this. There is very clear evidence—worldwide, in fact—on the benefits of giving children the same protection from violence as adults. I believe there are 65 countries worldwide that give that protection, and there are decades of evidence on that topic. I am sure she has received that evidence and I warmly invite her to peruse it very carefully.
Many studies show that physical punishment is not only ineffective at managing children’s behaviour, which is what some parents may intend, but actively harmful. It is associated with increased behavioural problems, increased risks of mental health issues and increased risks of more serious assault. The current, grimly outdated legal framework complicates the matter of addressing improving safeguarding efforts and makes it harder for professionals to assess and effectively address risks to children. The Minister referenced the roles of professionals in safeguarding children, and there is significant testimony from those professionals about how unhelpful this ambiguity in the law is. Fundamentally, there is an inequality here. If an adult hits an adult, it is assault; if an adult hits a child, they can claim the defence of reasonable punishment.
Catherine McKinnell
I will respond initially to the question raised by the hon. Member for—
Catherine McKinnell
On clause 56, it is always possible that necessary changes to legislation might be identified through a Bill’s passage. As I said, it is therefore prudent to have a failsafe should anything have been missed. This power is limited and narrow: it can be used only to make amendments that are consequential on the Bill’s provisions, which will be voted on, and it is in line with usual practice.
Regulations made under the power that amend or repeal any provision in primary legislation will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. We have carefully considered the power, and we believe that it is entirely justified in this case. It is needed to ensure that we are able to deal with the legislative consequences that may flow naturally from the main provisions and ensure that other legislation continues to work properly following the passage of the Bill.
Damian Hinds
I have never been so warmly welcomed. [Laughter.] We talked a few sittings ago about the NHS number and the database of children, and there are a lot of wide-open questions about the scope of that. Is that all children? How will it be used? In turn, that could potentially affect a lot of other pieces of legislation.
Bearing in mind the massive controversies we have had in this country in the past over ID cards, privacy and so on, will the Minister write to the Committee setting out specifically what some of the issues in relation to that might be? We do not want find ourselves having agreed to do something that we did not realise we were agreeing to do.
Catherine McKinnell
I think I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that that is not the case. The inclusion of similar powers is common and well-precedented in legislation. Powers to make consequential amendments can be found in several other Government Bills, such as the Renters’ Rights Bill and the Employment Rights Bill, as well as in Acts presented under the previous Administration, such as the Health and Care Act 2022, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is fully supportive of.
I turn to new clause 10 and the contributions from hon. Members. I absolutely appreciate the case that is being made, which is why we are open-minded on the issue, but we do not intend to bring forward legislation imminently. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire spoke about the successful implementation in Wales. I am interested in how she knows that to be the case, because we are awaiting the publication of the impact assessment. We are very keen that legislation is evidence-based and has its intended effect. That is why we are waiting for the evidence that will come from Wales.
The hon. Member mentioned a number of international examples. I have an example from New Zealand, which removed the reasonable punishment defence in 2007. Data suggests that 13 cases were investigated between 2007 and 2009, with one prosecution. It is important that we look at how this measure works within the context of each country that it is applying it. Obviously, we will look very closely at the implementation in Wales—the impact it has and the difference it makes—and will also then look at how that will apply specifically within an England context before proceeding with legislation.
Ellie Chowns
There are two points that I would want to make. Is the Minister really arguing that whether we should protect children from violence depends on whether an impact assessment shows that there are a certain number of prosecutions or whatever? Is this not about the fundamental equality of protecting children in the same way that we give adults legal protection against assault?
Secondly, the impact of giving that equal protection is surely not something that should be measured in the sense of how many prosecutions there have been over how many years. This is not about getting more prosecutions; it is about shifting the culture as a whole to recognise that there is no justification for violence against children—none.
Catherine McKinnell
Keeping children safe could not be more important, and it could not be a greater priority for this Government. The question is how that is best achieved. That is the evidence that we are awaiting from Wales—to see how impactful the change made there has been.
I will give another example, from the Republic of Ireland, which removed the reasonable punishment defence in 2015. There is limited data on the impact, but a poll in 2020 suggested that a relatively high acceptance of slapping children remained.
Absolute clarity and an evidence-based approach is what the Government seek to take. That is why, within this legislation, we have absolutely prioritised real, tangible measures, which we can put into practice without delay, to significantly improve the chances of any harm coming to children being minimised. I listed those measures in my opening response on this clause. As the law stands, quite frankly, any suggestion that reasonable punishment could be used as a defence to serious harm to a child, or indeed death, as has been asserted, is completely wrong and frankly absurd.
Ellie Chowns
The Minister cited an example from Ireland. I do not think anybody is arguing that abolition of the defence of reasonable punishment will, in and of itself, stop all violence against children, but we are arguing that it is an important component of what must be done to stop violence against children. The Children’s Commissioner and all the other people I have cited have made very powerful arguments to that effect. Professionals working in the sector have talked about how the ambiguity of the current law is actively unhelpful to them in offering support and intervention to families in which this might be an issue.
Going back to the point about needing to wait for an impact assessment, does the Minister think there is any universe in which it could be more beneficial for children to keep the defence of reasonable punishment than it would be to abolish it? Surely it is logical to expect that ensuring equal protection for children will move things in a better direction, alongside all the family support required to make a sustainable long-term change.
Catherine McKinnell
As I have said, we need to wait and look at the evidence before making such a significant legislative change. The protection of children is critical. The Bill takes significant steps to improve safeguarding. The context in England is different from Scotland and Wales. Therefore, the changes would need to be considered very carefully in the light of the evidence and how they would tangibly impact the protection of children in England. We are awaiting the impact assessment and will take action accordingly.
Abusive parents are caught under the existing legislative framework. The challenge in this area is that parenting is complex. I can attest that it is one of the most difficult jobs anyone can do. Parents know their children, and they want to get it right with their children. As the hon. Member for North Herefordshire acknowledges, parenting programmes and support is what we are focused on. We are putting in place support for parents to be good parents, because that is what the vast majority want to be. When that is not their intent, there are laws in place to prevent harm from coming to children. I absolutely accept the arguments being put forward today. We have an open mind and will look at the evidence and take a very careful approach to this. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 56 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 57 and 58 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 59
Commencement
The Chair
It is on the amendment paper—it is there for all to see. We debated it in a previous group, and I presume the Government now want to support it. If everybody is happy, I will call the Minister to move amendment 93 formally.
Amendment made: 93, in clause 59, page 115, line 17, leave out paragraph (h) and insert—
“(h) section (Pay and conditions of Academy teachers) and Schedule (Pay and conditions of Academy teachers: amendments to the Education Act 2002) other than paragraph 6 of that Schedule;
(ha) section 46;”—(Catherine McKinnell.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 92 and NC57.
Clause 59, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 60 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 6
Care leavers not to be regarded as becoming homeless intentionally
“(1) In section 191 of the Housing Act 1996 (becoming homeless intentionally)—
after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1ZA) But a person does not become homeless intentionally in a case described in any of subsections (1A) to (1C).’;
in subsection (1A), for the words before paragraph (a) substitute
‘The first case is where—’;
after subsection (1A) insert—
‘(1B) The second case is where the person is a relevant child within the meaning given by section 23A(2) of the Children Act 1989.
(1C) The third case is where the person is a former relevant child within the meaning given by section 23C(1) of that Act and aged under 25.’;
in subsection (3), in the words before paragraph (a), after ‘person’ insert
‘, other than a person described in subsection (1B) or (1C),’.
(2) The amendments made by this section do not apply in relation to an application of a kind mentioned in section 183(1) of the Housing Act 1996 made before the date on which this section comes into force, except where the local housing authority deciding the application has not yet decided the matters set out in section 184(1)(a) and (b) of that Act.”—(Catherine McKinnell.)
The Housing Act 1996 requires local housing authorities to assist persons with securing accommodation in certain circumstances and limits the requirement in relation to persons who have become homeless intentionally. This amendment would prevent the limitation applying in relation to certain young persons formerly looked after by local authorities.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Catherine McKinnell
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
As I am sure colleagues will be all too aware, homelessness levels are far too high. Homelessness can have a devastating impact on those affected. The Government are determined to address that and deliver long-term solutions to get us back on track to ending homelessness. Care leavers are particularly vulnerable to becoming homeless, with the number of care leavers aged 18 to 20 becoming homeless rising by a shocking 54% in the past five years. Young care leavers are also more likely to be found to have become intentionally homeless by local authorities, meaning that local authorities are not required to secure them settled accommodation.
This Government take corporate parenting seriously, and recognise the key role that local authorities play in providing care, stability and support to care leavers—like any parent would. We are introducing the new clause to ensure that, where a council is their corporate parent, no care leaver can be found to have become intentionally homeless. This is an essential step to ensure that those care leavers are not held back by their start in life and get the support they need to build a secure and successful future. I therefore recommend that the new clause be added to the Bill.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
Become, the charity for children in care and young care leavers, strongly welcomes the new clause, as does the YMCA, which supports around 1,000 care leavers a year with housing.
In its written evidence to the Committee, Become pointed to a freedom of information request that it submitted to all tier 1 local authorities in England last year, which showed real variation in whether they disapplied homelessness intentionality assessments for care leavers. Become provided examples of hearing from care-experienced young people who have been assessed as intentionally homeless for moving away to university, not keeping in touch with their personal advisers or turning down offers of accommodation that was not appropriate for them. That contradicts local authorities’ duties as corporate parents, and contributes to the disproportionate risk of homelessness that care-experienced young people are subject to.
I thank Become for its evidence, which provides powerful insight and an argument in support of the new clause. I hugely welcome it being added to the Bill.
Damian Hinds
Will the Minister confirm that the new clause will also apply to the small group of young people who are leaving the young justice system and returning to their home area?
Darren Paffey
Briefly, I warmly welcome the new clause. Colleagues will be aware of my interest in this area. From years of working alongside those who fall foul of laws and principles on paper that they never see, but that make a material difference to their lives and outcomes, I know that this will be a positive change. It builds on years of work, including not only the work of various charities already mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North, but the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) and no doubt countless others, and will be warmly welcomed. I am excited to be able to report to those in my constituency on the work of this Government in making sure that care leavers have better outcomes. I look forward to working with Ministers in the future to work out how we can get from this point to other areas that will make a positive material difference to their lives.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank hon. Members for their contributions, and absolutely agree on the importance of this measure and the difference it will make to children and young people as they move into the sometimes challenging transition to adulthood, having experienced care and on leaving care.
In response to the question from the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, the amendment will impact children classed under the Children Act 1989 as relevant children or former relevant children who present for homelessness assistance. That would cover young people aged 16 to 24 who have been looked after by a local authority for a period of at least 13 weeks, or periods that amount to 13 weeks, since their 14th birthday, at least one day of which must have been since they attained the age of 18.
The answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question would, therefore, be subject to those parameters, but I imagine that in most cases it would apply to young people leaving the criminal justice system. He is right to raise that as a concern. Indeed, the purpose of the measure is to disapply the intentional homelessness test for care leavers who are within that scope. Care leavers who have left the youth justice system would quite rightly be included, given that they will experience similar challenges to other care leavers in establishing themselves in a secure adult life.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I was struck by recent data that shows that care leavers are particularly vulnerable to homelessness, as we have heard in this Bill Committee. Latest Government data show that the numbers of care leavers aged between 18 and 20 becoming homeless have increased by 54% over the past two years. Can the Minister outline how this very welcome measure will enhance and strengthen joint working between the children’s and housing departments, and outline a bit more some of the impacts of homelessness on care-experienced people and care leavers?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is worth looking at the data: in 2023-24 there were up to 410 households that included a care leaver who was found to be intentionally homeless. We appreciate that disapplying the intentional homelessness test means that local authorities will have much greater scope and ability to work with these young people and to support them into a more secure adult life. That clearly involves having a secure home, so I hope that hon. Members are willing to support this clause.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 6 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 57
Pay and conditions of Academy teachers
“Schedule (Pay and conditions of Academy teachers: amendments to the Education Act 2002) amends Part 8 of the Education Act 2002 (teachers’ pay and conditions etc) in relation to the pay and conditions of teachers at Academies (other than 16 to 19 Academies).
Part 8 of the Education Act 2002”.—(Vicky Foxcroft.)
This clause replaces Clause 45 and introduces the schedule to be inserted by NS1.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 1
Implementation of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, take steps to implement each of the recommendations made in the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
(2) The Secretary of State must, after a period of six months has elapsed from the passing of this Act and at 12 monthly intervals thereafter, publish a report detailing the steps taken by the Government to implement each of the recommendations.
(3) A report published under subsection (2) must include—
(a) actions taken to meet, action or implement each of the recommendations made in the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse;
(b) details of any further action required to implement each of the recommendations or planned to supplement the recommendations;
(c) consideration of any challenges to full or successful implementation of the recommendations, with proposals for addressing these challenges so as to facilitate implementation of the recommendations; and
(d) where it has not been practicable to fully implement a recommendation—
(i) explanation of why implementation has not been possible;
(ii) a statement of the Government’s intention to implement the recommendation; and
(iii) a timetable for implementation.
(4) A report published under subsection (2) must be subject to debate in both Houses of Parliament within one month of its publication.
(5) In meeting its obligations under subsections (1) and (2), the Secretary of State may consult with such individuals or organisations as they deem appropriate.”—(Munira Wilson.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Munira Wilson
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I rise to speak to the new clause, tabled in my name and in the name of a number of my colleagues. Briefly, it goes without saying that, on all sides of the House, we are horrified by child sex abuse and what Professor Alexis Jay uncovered through her seven-year-long investigation. We are also horrified that so little progress has been made to date in implementing the 20 recommendations she set out. The new clause therefore seeks to create a legislative commitment, with clear timescales and regular reporting to Parliament, on progress in implementing that report. It is an attempt to approach the issue constructively.
I was disappointed, to put it mildly—in fact, pretty outraged—that Conservative colleagues sought to weaponise the issue on Second Reading to try to kill off the entire Bill. I hope that this is a much more constructive approach. However, I recognise that shortly after my tabling the new clause following Second Reading, the Government made further announcements, including that Baroness Casey will undertake a rapid review and that they will be setting out a timetable.
On that basis, I am happy to withdraw the new clause, but my party and I will continue to hold the Government’s feet to the fire. These girls have been abused, and I am in no doubt that the abuse is ongoing. That needs to be tackled, and justice needs to be served, so I hope that the Government will implement the recommendations and set out a clear timescale.
Ellie Chowns
I rise to speak in support of the new clause, while recognising what the hon. Lady who tabled it has just said. In doing so, I am particularly mindful of a constituent of mine who came to see me in January to tell me that she had given evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Frustrated does not even cover how she felt—she was incredibly upset at the lack of progress on implementation under the previous Government, and she was frustrated to find that progress now is still not fast enough.
We have a huge responsibility to all who suffer child sexual abuse, and in particular to those who have been brave enough to come forward and give evidence, trusting that that evidence would help to make changes. I hope that the Minister can clarify timetables for implementation.
Catherine McKinnell
As the Prime Minister has made clear, we are absolutely focused on delivering justice and change for the victims on this horrific crime. On 6 January, the Home Secretary outlined in Parliament commitments to introduce a mandatory duty for those engaging with children to report sexual abuse and exploitation, to toughen up sentencing by making grooming an aggravating factor and to introduce a new performance framework for policing.
On 16 January, the Home Secretary made a further statement to the House that, before Easter, the Government will lay out a clear timetable for taking forward the 20 recommendations from the final IICSA report. Four of those were for the Home Office, including on disclosure and barring, and work on those is already under way. As the Home Secretary stated, a cross-Government ministerial group is considering and working through the remaining recommendations. That group will be supported by a new victims and survivors panel.
The Government will also implement all the remaining recommendations in IICSA’s separate, stand-alone report on grooming gangs, from February 2022. As part of that, we will update Department for Education guidance. Other measures that the Government are taking forward include the appointment of Baroness Louise Casey to lead a rapid audit of existing evidence on grooming gangs, which will support a better understanding of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country, and to make recommendations on the further work that is needed.
The Government will extend the remit of the independent child sexual abuse review panel, so that it covers not just historical cases before 2013, but all cases since, so that any victim of abuse will have the right to seek an independent review without having to go back to the local institutions that decided not to proceed with their case. We will also provide stronger national backing for local inquiries, by supplying £5 million of funding to help local authorities set up their own reviews. Working in partnership with Tom Crowther KC, the Home Office will develop a new effective framework for victim-centred, locally led inquiries.
This landmark Bill will put in place a package of support to drive high and rising standards throughout our education and care systems, so that every child can achieve and thrive. It will protect children at risk of abuse and stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks in service. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Twickenham is content to withdraw her new clause, and thank her for that. Allowing this Bill’s passage will indeed go a long way to supporting the young people growing up in our system and to protect them from falling through the cracks that may leave them vulnerable to this form of abuse. Indeed, across Government, we will continue to work to take forward the recommendations and to reform our system so that victims get the justice they deserve.
Munira Wilson
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 2
Provision of free school lunches to all primary school children
“(1) Section 512ZB of the Education Act 1996 (provision of free school lunches and milk) is amended as follows.
(2) In paragraph (4A)(b), after ‘year 2,’ insert ‘year 3, year 4, year 5, year 6’.
(3) In subsection (4C), after ‘age of 7;’ insert—
‘“Year 3” means a year group in which the majority of children will, in the school year, attain the age of 8;
“Year 4” means a year group in which the majority of children will, in the school year, attain the age of 9;
“Year 5” means a year group in which the majority of children will, in the school year, attain the age of 10;
“Year 6” means a year group in which the majority of children will, in the school year, attain the age of 11;’” —(Ellie Chowns.)
This new clause would extend free school lunches to all primary school age children in state funded schools.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Ellie Chowns
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 2 would extend the provision of free school lunches to all primary school children, from year 2 up to year 6. It was tabled in the in the name of the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher)—I thank him for his work on this—and has been supported by 43 hon. Members across the House. In addition to this high level of support from MPs, the No Child Left Behind campaign, which underpins new clause 2, is backed by more than 250 civil society leaders, from unions to charities, from medical bodies to faith leaders, and from mayors to councils. This widespread backing is unsurprising, because the case for universal free school meals is, in fact, overwhelming.
Let us start with the need, which is acute. I am sure colleagues remember how during the pandemic Marcus Rashford ignited the campaign for free school meals, pointing out that we could fill 27 Wembley stadiums with the 2.5 million children who were struggling to know where their next meal was coming from—a shocking indictment.
That shameful legacy of child poverty from the last Government continues, with hunger in schools still endemic. University of Bristol research shows that one in five schools runs a food bank. That figure, I am told, is higher than the total number of community food banks being operated outside schools by organisations such as the Trussell Trust and the Independent Food Aid Network.
The National Education Union explained that its members see the struggles of children in poverty every day. Some 80% of teachers asked said that they had provided food for hungry children out of their own pockets—is that not extraordinary? One of those teachers said:
“So many of our children arrive tired and hungry. I find the issue with food so awful. I stock my school kitchen every week with fruit, cereal, milk, biscuits...the number of children who pop in to see me and then ask for food has grown over the last two years. It is heart-breaking.”
It truly is.
New clause 2 is therefore a probing amendment to make the case for a universal approach as the best policy response for three key reasons. First, it is immediately good for children. Secondly, it is an effective long-term investment. Thirdly, it is basically just efficient. I will briefly explore those arguments.
Universal provision is good for children; it immediately helps children to learn, grow and thrive in school. For example, we have recently had the roll-out of free school meal provision to all children attending primary state schools in London. Initial research evaluating that roll-out, which was published a couple of months ago, found that the policy helped with children’s readiness to learn and ability to concentrate. It helps children to do what they are supposed to be doing in schools—learning.
The Department for Education evaluation of the pilot undertaken by the last Labour Government found that pupils in schools where all children received free school meals made four to eight weeks’ more progress in maths and English over two years. That is an extraordinary improvement in progress. In that pilot, the poorest children were those who made the most progress, reducing the attainment gap. In areas with means-tested provision, the effect on attainment was negligible, so we have strong evidence for the benefits of universality.
On the health benefits—this is really shocking—research by The BMJ found that less than 2% of packed lunches met the school food standards. That represents an extraordinary nutritional shortfall in what many children are eating. A policy of universal free school meals would be a major opportunity to increase healthy eating. Ensuring that every child in a school has access to the same food also helps to reduce the stigma and shame that comes from singling out pupils through means-tested provision, and gives pupils a better sense of belonging in school.
Those are the immediate benefits of universal provision, but there are also really strong long-term investment benefits from it. The evidence shows that these universal systems reduce inequality and deliver wider economic prosperity beyond the classroom. PwC—that well-known radical institution—produced an analysis showing that, for every £1 invested in universal free school meals, £1.71 is generated in core benefits, such as increased savings for the NHS and for schools, and increased lifetime earnings and tax contributions. Other expert research also shows that the provision of universal free school meals increases pupils’ lifetime earnings, with the biggest increase again for the most disadvantaged children, thereby reducing inequalities for a generation after school. It is such a powerful policy for reducing inequalities.
I have banged on in other Commons debates about the value of public procurement for investing in our wider UK food and farming sector. When food is sustainably sourced, there is a huge potential benefit; work from Food for Life demonstrates that every £1 spent creates £3 in social, economic and environmental value, mostly in the form of jobs in the local economy.
The third key argument for universal free school meal provision is simply that it is more efficient. We know that providing free school meals helps to end a situation where children fall through the gaps. Means-testing is always going to miss some children and families and, in England, the genuinely draconian eligibility criteria for free school meals means that one in three children living in poverty are still considered too well-off to access free school meals. That is extraordinary. Restricted eligibility, complicated registration processes and stigma also block countless families from accessing support. A universal provision would end this situation where far too many children fall through the gaps.
Free school meals, by the way, would also be massively more efficient in reducing administration. Schools would be able to get back administration time with all children’s meals being provided in the same way at the same time, as one mechanism, and we would get rid of problems around school lunch debts. These universal policies are also easier to defend and protect from erosion by future Governments, who might seek to freeze thresholds or restrict eligibility. In the UK, Wales and London are leading the way in the provision of free, universal, healthy meals at lunch time for every child in primary school as a means of reducing inequalities. England needs to catch up.
I sincerely hope that the Minister will consider new clause 2 ahead of Report to build on the excellent progress on breakfast clubs included in the Bill. Would it not be even more efficient and beneficial—nutritionally and economically, and for all the other reasons I have outlined—to ensure universal free school meal provision when children are already in school? It certainly would be at primary level, which is the case made by this amendment.
I and my party support a policy of extension of universal free school meals to all children, because hunger does not stop at age 11. This amendment focuses particularly on primary school-age children. We know children cannot learn effectively when they are hungry and school dinners help children to focus. They bring the community together and help children to connect with their peers and to build bright futures. Our children learn and play together—they should eat together, too.
Munira Wilson
Briefly, I very much support the ambition in this new clause. After all, it was the Liberal Democrats, in Government, who introduced universal infant free school meals; we have always had the long-term ambition of extending that to all primary school children. However, I recognise the cash-constrained environment that the Government are operating in. That is why, when we get to it, I will be speaking to new clause 31, which looks at increasing the eligibility for children to receive free school meals. However, I want to put on the record that we do support the intent of this provision in the long term, for all the reasons the hon. Lady has just laid out.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I turn to new clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), on the important topic of expanding eligibility for free school meals, specifically universal provision, which the hon. Member for North Herefordshire has moved today.
Under the current programmes, all pupils in reception, year 1 and year 2 in England’s state-funded schools are entitled to universal infant free school meals. That benefits around 1.3 million children, ensuring that they receive a nutritious lunch-time meal. In addition, 2.1 million disadvantaged pupils—24.6% of all pupils in state-funded schools—are eligible to receive benefits-based free school meals. Another 90,000 16 to 18-year-old students in further education are entitled to receive free school meals on the basis of low income. Those meals provide much-needed nutrition for pupils and can boost school attendance, improve behaviour and set children up for success by ensuring that they can concentrate and learn in the classroom and get the most out of their education.
In total, we spend over £1.5 billion on delivering free school meal programmes. Eligibility for benefits-based free school meals drives the allocation of billions of additional pounds of disadvantage funding. The free school meal support that the Government provide is more important than ever, because we have inherited a trend of rising child poverty and widening attainment gaps between children eligible for free school meals and their peers.
Lizzi Collinge
Does my hon. Friend agree that the value of school meals is much more than the nutrition that they give, and even more than children’s educational achievement when they are properly fed? It is also about building a set of behaviours, a sense of community and an ability to interact with others. It is absolutely vital that when children sit down for a school meal or a packed lunch, that is part of their social development.
Stephen Morgan
I know my hon. Friend is a real champion of children and young people in her constituency, and she is absolutely right. When I visit schools across the country, I see the benefits of school meals. Not only do children sit and eat together, but they learn how to use a knife and fork. She is absolutely right to point out the wider benefits that the free school meal programme brings.
The number of children in poverty has increased by over 700,000 since 2010, with more than 4 million now growing up in low-income families. We are committed to delivering on our ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty by tackling its root causes and giving every child the best start in life.
Tom Hayes
So eager am I to find out which schools in my area are the early adopters that I am currently on a little coach trip around all of them. I have visited four in the last seven days, and I have spoken to people about their experiences and aspirations under this Labour Government. It is brilliant to speak to teachers who now feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel—teachers who have held on for so long in recent years, hoping things will get better. With a change of Government, they now have a change of education policy, and the provision of free breakfast clubs is a true indicator of that.
Teachers say that they want to go further and faster with the provision of breakfast clubs, but they also realise that they need to take time to get it right. Although I obviously welcome the intent of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, I believe that moving forward with free breakfast clubs and free school lunches could put too great a strain on schools at this point, because I recognise that the roll-out of free breakfast clubs is restricted to early adopters in the first phase.
Stephen Morgan
I know my hon. Friend is a real champion of children and young people in his constituency, and of the Government’s ambitions on breakfast clubs. I hope that he will work closely with schools in his constituency as we roll out breakfast clubs in his patch and, indeed, across the country. He makes a number of really important points about the vital need to get the infrastructure in place for free school meals. We know that that is some of the learning from the work that the London Mayor has been doing.
Damian Hinds
I want to ask the Minister about two things. First, he talks about the disadvantage gap widening at the present time. Entirely coincidentally, I happen to have the numbers on key stage 2 and key stage 4. Of course, there are different ways that we can measure these things. I am looking at what is known as the “disadvantage gap index” for key stage 2 and key stage 4. I would be interested to know what definition he is using, from which he concludes that the Government inherited a widening disadvantage gap.
The second thing I want to ask him about is free school meal eligibility. We all absolutely recognise the value of free school meals. The Minister mentioned some of the extensions of eligibility that happened under the previous Government. The one that he did not mention was universal credit transitional protection. Even though unemployment came down from 8% to 4.5%, and the proportion of people in work but on low pay halved as a result of the increase to the national living wage, eligibility for free school meals went up, so the incoming Government have inherited one in three children being able to get a free school meal, as opposed to one in six when Labour were last in government. Notwithstanding this new clause, which the Government will not accept, what will they do to make sure that the same number of children as now can continue to get a free school meal?
Stephen Morgan
I am referring to a persistently high disadvantage gap. I will point out that this Government take child poverty extremely seriously. It is a stain on our society. That is why I am so proud that this new Labour Government have introduced a child poverty taskforce led jointly by the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We will end child poverty. It is a stain on our society, and we are committed to making sure that we do everything we can and are publishing a strategy in due course.
With regard to transitional protections, I say to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire that my Department recognises the vital role played by free school meals and encourages all eligible families that need support to take up that entitlement. To make it as easy as possible to receive free school meals, we provide an eligibility checking service. On transitional protections specifically, we will provide clarity to schools on protections ahead of the current March 2025 end date.
The new ministerial taskforce has been set up to develop a child poverty strategy, which will be published in spring 2025. The taskforce will consider a range of policies, including the provision of free school meals, in assessing what will have the biggest impact on driving down rates of child poverty.
I appreciate the continued engagement of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud on the issue of expanding free school meal provision to more pupils and on school food more broadly. He has raised concerns about obesity in particular and will be aware that the school food standards, which other Members have mentioned, apply to all food and drink served on school premises and, crucially, restrict foods high in fat, salt and sugar.
We are taking important measures through the Bill to ensure that the standards apply consistently across all state-funded schools. We are also clear that breakfast clubs are in scope of the standards. We recognise how important this issue is and want to ensure that free school meals are being delivered to the families that most need them. However, given the funding involved, that must be considered through the child poverty taskforce and the multi-year spending review. We remain committed to ensuring that school food is prioritised within Government. That is most clearly demonstrated through our breakfast clubs manifesto commitment, aimed at state-funded primary school pupils, which we are working hard to deliver.
Ellie Chowns
I welcome what I believe I heard: that the Minister maintains a relatively open mind on this question and will continue to look into it. He said that the effectiveness of the free school meal policy would be evaluated in the light of whether it was an effective mechanism for tackling child poverty. I want to re-emphasise that my arguments are not just about impact on child poverty. In considering expansion of free school meals, will he evaluate their effectiveness in terms of the full range of their potential benefits—not just the impact on child poverty, but health benefits, wider economic benefits and so on?
Stephen Morgan
As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach under review and learn from what the evidence and data tell us. I can assure the hon. Lady that I met with a number of stakeholders, including the London Mayor, to understand the impact that the roll-out in London is having on not only household incomes, but children’s outcomes.
The hon. Member for North Herefordshire asked about specific points on the school food standards. It is important that children eat nutritious food at school. The school food standards define which foods and drinks must be provided and which are restricted. They apply to food and drink provided to pupils on school premises and during the extended school day up to 6 pm. As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach to school food under continued review.
The hon. Member for North Herefordshire asked about the sustainable sourcing of food. This Government’s ambition is to source half of all food served in public sector settings from local producers or from growers certified to meet higher environmental standards where possible. We have committed to supporting schools to drive up their sustainable practices on food. Schools can voluntarily follow the Government’s buying standards, which include advice around sustainable sourcing. We mentioned earlier the Mayor of London’s roll-out of universal free school meals, and we are looking closely at evaluations and new evidence emerging from the scheme, including Impact on Urban Health’s recent evaluation. I have met with those stakeholders and heard of their experience of participating in the programme.
Finally, on whether the free school meals offer is more generous from devolved Administrations than in England, education, including free school meals policy, is a devolved matter. In England, we spend over £1.5 billion annually delivering free school meals to almost 3.5 million pupils across primary, secondary and further education phases. As with all Government programmes, we keep eligibility and funding for free school meals under review.
Ellie Chowns
I thank the Minister for his response. As I said at the start, I tabled this as a probing amendment and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 3
Reporting of local authority performance regarding EHC plans
“In the Children and Families Act 2014, after section 40 insert—
“40A Reporting of local authority performance
(1) Local authorities must publish regular information relating to their fulfilment of duties relating to EHC needs assessments and EHC plans under this part.
(2) Such information must include—
(a) the authority’s performance against the requirements of this Act and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 relating to the timeliness with which action needs to be taken by the authority in relation to EHC needs assessments and EHC plans;
(b) explanations for any failures to meet relevant deadlines or timeframes;
(c) proposals for improving the authority’s performance.
(3) Information published under this section must be published—
(a) on a monthly basis;
(b) on the local authority’s website; and
(c) in a form which is easily accessible and understandable.”” —(Ian Sollom.)
This new clause would require local authorities to publish their performance against the statutory deadlines in the EHCP process.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Ian Sollom
I beg to move that the clause be read a Second time.
I am moving new clause 3 on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman). The Children and Families Act 2014 sets out timeframes for local authorities to decide whether to do an education, health and care plan needs assessment, and then for the resulting education, health and care plan to be issued. Local authorities have six weeks from application to decide whether to carry out an EHCNA, and a total of 20 weeks from application to issue an EHCP. Across England in 2023, however, only 50.3% of EHCPs were issued within that statutory 20-week deadline. Some places perform much worse than that—in Essex, only 0.9% were issued within the 20-week deadline.
New clause 3 is about reporting that. Transparency is a first key step in accountability, so publishing local authorities’ performance in relation to those statutory deadlines is the aim of the amendment as that first step. It is essentially a free change because local authorities already have the information gathered, so there should not be any additional resources needed. It could in fact help, because it would cut down on freedom of information requests, for example, which are a burden on councils. It will also cut down on the level of communication required with concerned parents constantly contacting to ask when their child is going to receive their EHCP.
Also included within new clause 3, local authorities will have the opportunity to explain any reasons and lay out their plans for improving performance. That kind of transparency helps direct resources well, and I think it is a good, sensible step,
Catherine McKinnell
I totally agree it is vital there is publicly available data regarding local authority performance on EHCPs. That is why we publish annual data on each local authority’s timeliness in meeting their 20-week deadline. Local authorities identified as having issues with EHCP timeliness are subject to additional monitoring by the Department for Education, which works with the specific local authority. Where there are concerns about the local authority’s capacity to make the required improvements, we have secured specialist special educational needs and disabilities adviser support to help identify barriers to EHCP timeliness and put in place practical plans for recovery.
Furthermore, when Ofsted and Care Quality Commission area SEND inspections indicate there are significant concerns with local authority performance, the Department intervenes directly. That might mean issuing an improvement notice or statutory direction or appointing a commissioner, deployment of which is considered on a case-by-case basis.
We are clear that the SEND system requires reform. We are considering options to drive improvements, including on the timeliness of support and local authority performance. We do not believe increasing the amount of published data and reporting on EHCP timeliness alone would lead to meaningful improvements in performance. We are working closely with experts on reforms. We recently appointed a strategic adviser for SEND who will play a key role in convening and engaging with the sector, including leaders, practitioners, children and families, as we consider the next steps for future reform of SEND.
In response to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, I absolutely respect the intentions of his amendment and the desire to see much greater timeliness and support for children with SEND and their families. We are working incredibly hard—this is a priority within the Department for Education—to get much better outcomes. We do not believe that this amendment will achieve the desired outcome, although we share the intention behind the amendment.
Munira Wilson
I appreciate what the Minister is saying. I agree with her that this is not a silver bullet. This will not suddenly improve the system. This is about transparency and accountability where, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire pointed out, there are some councils that are missing the targets by such a long chalk, and is about setting out the reasons for doing so. We know in some areas that frankly NHS partners are not working constructively with local authorities to help deliver EHCPs on time.
As the Minister looks at reforming the system—and I know from my discussions with her and the Secretary of State that the Government are working hard on this—could I urge that they seriously consider this provision. It is about transparency and accountability for parents, which I think is really important.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention and the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire for the way in which he presented this clause. We share the ambition for children with special educational needs and disabilities to get much better service, from their local authority and on their education journey. We recognise there are significant challenges for those who seek to deliver that being able to do so, which is why we are looking at reform in a whole-system way. We are looking to drive mainstream inclusion within our school system and to reduce the waiting times for assessments, which we know is led by the Department of Health and Social Care. This is a cross-departmental effort involving the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Work and Pensions, and clearly the Department for Education has a key role in achieving a much better outcome for children with special educational needs. We absolutely take away the intentions of this amendment, but would appreciate it not being pressed to a vote as part of the Bill. The conversation about special educational needs and improving the outcomes for children will, however, without doubt continue.
Ian Sollom
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Vicky Foxcroft.)
Westminster Hall
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Rail Services: Open Access Operators
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered open access operators for rail services.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I am sure you will witness a stimulating debate.
I start by drawing attention to the progress made on the east coast main line, where today three privately owned open access inter-city operators compete with the Government-run LNER. This successful and mature model is now 25 years old and sees open access operators connect towns and cities across the north that were traditionally not served, or that endured poor inter-city connections. Open access is a great success. The statistics reflect that on many fronts, and I will come on to the detail.
One group of towns that open access has not yet reached consists of Grimsby, Cleethorpes and the intermediate stations. I am determined that the Brigg and Immingham constituency and the wider northern Lincolnshire area enjoy more direct and fast trains connecting with London and other key cities. I have been campaigning for such a service since 2011 and remain committed to delivering this key and long overdue connection. I hope Members will indulge me if I focus on this constituency matter for a few minutes before moving on to the wider arguments.
From a Grimsby point of view, it matters not whether the service leaves the main line at Newark and runs via Lincoln, or whether it leaves at Doncaster and takes the route through Scunthorpe. Either route will also serve Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Barnetby and Habrough. Habrough is just two miles from the country’s largest port, Immingham. For that reason alone, it surely deserves a direct service to the capital.
Some years ago, Grand Central submitted an application to run services via Doncaster, which was turned down by the regulator. I have been raising this issue with successive Ministers for many years, and I have been given no end of reasons why it cannot happen. First, there was the question of capacity on the main line. That is not a problem if the existing services to Lincoln are extended to Cleethorpes, however, because they already have a path from King’s Cross through to Newark. LNER ran a trial of their Azuma units through to Cleethorpes and found no serious issues, other than at Market Rasen, which requires a new footbridge and some work on the platform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) may have something to say on that during the debate.
It now appears that the problems at Market Rasen are being put forward as the reason why services cannot go ahead. If the reported costs of between £15 million and £20 million for the work at Market Rasen are to be believed, Network Rail needs to improve its procurement process and find new contractors. Quite simply, those figures are ridiculous, and it sounds more like a tactic to convince Ministers not to go ahead. I trust that the Minister will address that point in his response.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this debate, and I am very pleased to support him in it. He has been a long-standing campaigner on this issue. On the point about platform improvements at Market Rasen, is he aware of other areas in the country that are getting modular platform extensions, which are proving to be much cheaper than the price he mentioned?
Martin Vickers
My Member of Parliament makes an excellent point. There are indeed other examples, up and down the country, where modest improvements have been made at minimal cost. It needs the Secretary of State to realise the economic benefits to the area, and she will surely see that this is an easy win to deliver on the Government’s growth agenda.
The establishment of Great British Railways represents the biggest change in the way we run the railways since privatisation 30 years ago. We must keep and improve what clearly works, and we must not weaken or undermine key roles, such as that of the rail regulator, so that we can make GBR fit for purpose, alongside open access, and deliver the best services for passengers across the country.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
My hon. Friend is speaking very well about the usefulness and benefit of having a good rail system. He will be aware of the new timetable that the national rail operators are proposing. For my constituency, Berwick-upon-Tweed is the most important station, although it is in England. It will be losing services to London, and the journey time will be increased to allow greater capacity for links to Edinburgh and Newcastle. Does he agree that we need to ensure that small towns across the UK do not lose rail connectivity for the benefit of larger hubs?
Martin Vickers
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the key arguments in favour of introducing more open access operators, which have widened the number of destinations served.
If we drill into the latest passenger and financial figures, we see that there is a key lesson for those who are designing and planning GBR. We can all agree that we need better trains serving more places, with more reliability and competitive fares. But there is a huge caveat. This hinges on Ministers choosing to copy the east coast operating model, which, as I mentioned, has proven such a success; there are evidence-based statistics to show that. The Chancellor and the new Transport Secretary must take note of that model if they want to avoid a future of soaring subsidies and flatlining passenger numbers. It should now be encouraged and rolled out across Britain’s railway network, including, of course, northern Lincolnshire. Office of Rail and Road statistics show that where inter-city trains do not compete for passengers, services are expensive, require big subsidies, have struggled to get their finances and passengers back since covid, and endure poor passenger satisfaction. Importantly, the east coast main line has seen the fastest post-pandemic recovery on the network, enjoys the highest passenger satisfaction as LNER’s subsidy continues to fall, and could soon be subsidy-free.
The Minister will know personally about the benefits of open access competition, because Grand Central connects Wakefield with London, in competition with LNER. Those services provide valuable choice and competition for his constituents, who can choose between operators when they travel. The services also help to deliver inward investment, growth and regeneration, as direct rail services are invaluable when investors look at locations outside London.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
We all agree that better choice and more services—in particular, direct services—are an objective that we all want. Unfortunately, in Keighley, we do not have any open access provision at the moment. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we achieved a direct link between Skipton and London or Ilkley and London, with more opportunities through open access, it would not only be better for the commuter, but deliver better economic growth in my constituency and lead to cheaper rail prices for commuters in my constituency?
Martin Vickers
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and highlights yet another group of provincial towns that would see benefits for their local economy and for leisure.
I hope that open access rail policy features among the Chancellor’s new tests on how to deliver growth across the country. As a Yorkshire MP, the Minister will know of the clear benefits so far across the county—whether it be in Hull, Bradford, York, Doncaster or Selby—where open access has established and grown large rail markets. The new evidence shows that rail competition delivers not just growth on a significant scale, but a critical competitive discipline whereby all passengers enjoy choice and more routes. In 2016, the Competition and Markets Authority produced a 200-page report on passenger train competition and reached that very conclusion. I would not normally urge the Government to look to Europe for good practice, but Italy and Austria are two countries where the benefits of open access can be clearly seen.
Replicating the east coast model could help to prevent any risk of GBR sliding into financial and sector decline, which should be a huge concern for the Treasury. Crucially, open access is also a key component for British train building. Just before Christmas, the Prime Minister welcomed a significant £500 million investment in new train build at Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe plant, but it is important to consider that that private sector order was for new trains to serve existing and new open access routes. An option on a follow-up order worth a further £500 million depends, I understand, on more open access routes being awarded by the regulator.
Melanie Onn
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time, and I am pleased that he has mentioned the Italian rail system. Obviously, Italy is very similar to Grimsby, and we would certainly benefit from the kind of rail system that operates in Italy, which is very smooth and good value for customers. Italy has good stock as well.
If we are to achieve a direct rail service from Cleethorpes to King’s Cross, for which the hon. Gentleman has campaigned for many years, open access operators need quick decision making in order to be able to place their stock orders with manufacturers to make sure that they can get services up and running for passengers quickly. Does he agree that the Minister should look very closely at these things and make decisions as quickly as he can?
Martin Vickers
I agree that Italy and Grimsby are very similar. I will come to the hon. Lady’s point about the speed of the regulator’s decision making, which is absolutely crucial.
In addition to my desire and ambition for direct services to my constituency, it is vital that the significance of open access is fully acknowledged, and that nothing is done to weaken or undermine it. Why would the Government not want more unsubsidised, direct and fast rail connections across the country? Why would they not want to secure hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in forward orders for new trains to be built in Britain? Why would they not want GBR to face robust and innovative competition on key routes, which would inevitably see standards rise, and fares and subsidies decline?
Passengers in York, Hull, Wakefield, Bradford, Doncaster, Sunderland, Newcastle and Edinburgh all now enjoy up to three competing high-speed train services to London, where open access services compete with Government-run LNER. A plan to introduce a new and fast open access service to connect Sheffield and Worksop with King’s Cross is awaiting the green light, as is one to connect Rochdale with London Euston, and one to connect Cardiff with Edinburgh. Hopefully, the plans will be swiftly approved so that passengers can enjoy more direct fast trains and real fare competition, and they will all help those cities’ respective leaders to make their case for inward investment. Sheffield has not enjoyed a direct service to King’s Cross since 1968, and a new service would rival the existing East Midlands service between the city and London St Pancras.
In debates and at Transport questions, we frequently hear tales of woe about Avanti and the services that it offers travellers on the west coast main line. That could change if we took the east coast main line as a model, and I urge Ministers to get on with it. New economic analysis from Arup shows what can be achieved. Hull Trains’ open access service, which connects Beverley, Hull, Selby and Doncaster with London, has delivered between £185 million and £380 million in extra local benefits since it was approved by Tony Blair’s Government in 2000, and those figures are expected to grow to between £325 million and £700 million by 2032. Prior to Hull Trains’ operations, there was just one direct daily train in each direction between London and Hull. Similarly, the Blair Government oversaw the approval of new and fast Grand Central services to the north-east and Yorkshire in the mid and late 2000s.
On average, Hull Trains’ fares are 30% cheaper than those for traditional services. As I said when I met representatives of Hull Trains a couple of weeks ago, they could do for the south bank of the Humber what they have done for the north bank. Direct rail links have boosted inward investment and done more for levelling up and regeneration than a host of Whitehall schemes. There are also significant environmental benefits, as more people abandon the car and coach, and instead use the well-priced high-speed trains. The popular and fast Lumo open access service between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh continues to eat into the aviation market and delivers a crucial modal shift from air to rail.
I welcome the fact that many colleagues wish to speak in this debate, and I make the point that the Office of Rail and Road has recently approved new long-distance open access services up to Stirling on the west coast main line, and between London Paddington and south Wales on the Great Western line. The Go-op application to run new open access services between Weston-super-Mare, Taunton and Swindon has also been approved. We need to speed up track access applications for operators, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) said, because they can take up to five years. That is another example of where the Government could boost their growth agenda. The last thing that is needed is more barriers to open access. Let us speed up the process and get Britain moving.
A recent survey conducted by Virgin showed that around two thirds of all passengers welcomed competition between train operators on price and quality. That is encouraging, and it shows how an independent regulator can deliver good decisions in the national interest. A key question for the Minister will be: is more open access to be encouraged and approved, and will an independent regulator retain powers over this critical area after GBR is established? If decisions on open access are subsumed into GBR and taken off the regulator, many of us will be concerned that the hand of civil servants and other rail planners who have been proven wrong in the past in their opposition to open access will stifle and weaken this valuable part of the railway sector. If GBR is to be genuinely at arm’s length of Whitehall, as Ministers pledge, the future of the regulator and open access will be a key test.
I look forward to Ministers’ working with me and colleagues across the House to encourage and deliver new open access inter-city services to northern Lincolnshire and destinations across the country.
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this important debate on open access operators.
Rail transport in the north has suffered long-term neglect, with new plans left to gather dust. From George Osborne’s northern powerhouse speech in 2014 onwards, they have essentially been an unfunded wish list passed from one Government to the other. But under our new Government we have Great British Railways on the table, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how we will incorporate open access operators into our plans, because the north-south divide is real.
Total Treasury spending on rail in Yorkshire and the Humber last year was £1.25 billion, compared with £9.3 billion for London and £3.1 billion for the south-east. The current funding structure for transforming regional transport also makes it very difficult for areas such as the one that I represent in Scarborough and Whitby, incorporated into the York and North Yorkshire combined authority, to address the desperate lack of connectivity that exists. The main funding scheme that the Government inherited is the city region sustainable transport funding settlement, but combined authorities like ours do not qualify as they are not a city region. That funding gap has left York and North Yorkshire struggling to even plan a transport strategy. I hope that the Government will address that in the spending review.
Open access operators could step in to help. Coastal communities such as Scarborough have suffered for too long from poor rail services, and that has had a major impact on our economies. I have been campaigning for a half-hourly service between Scarborough and York, which would be taken for granted in other areas, but it seems an impossibility. The line was opened in July 1845. It took just one year and three days to complete the 45-mile route, but TransPennine Express, which now runs services on the line, today appears to have little of that urgency about it.
Scarborough is, of course, our first coastal seaside resort and is beautiful. We also have the North York Moors national park on our doorstep. The growth of staycations and holidays means there is real potential for visitors, as well as for the residents who are crying out for a better service. With the creation of Great British Railways, we have the chance to have one body responsible for the strategic direction of our railways, ensuring, as the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham said, that infrastructure and services work together and drive regional growth. I urge the Government to look at open access operators, because although they currently account for only 0.6% of total passenger journeys, they have massive potential to open up new routes, such as the Scarborough to London via York route. Look at the success of Hull Trains: in 1999 there was only one train a day between Hull and London, and now there are seven each weekday and six at weekends. As the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham said, new direct services are being approved and opened all the time.
I appreciate that there is a question whether open access services put extra pressure on network capacity and I look forward to the Minister’s response. However, unless we look at how we serve coastal communities such as mine, given the poor connections we will not move forward. If any operators are listening, I would love to see a direct service between Scarborough and London.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The hon. Member is making a really important point about coastal communities. Rural communities find themselves in a similar situation, where they may have lost a direct service. Wrexham, Shropshire and Midlands Railway has an excellent plan to run a direct-to-London service through Wrexham, Shropshire and the Midlands but it is taking an inordinately long amount of time for it to get through the Office of Rail and Road. Does the hon. Member agree that we need not just keen operators but to process their applications quickly, to give the people the service they deserve?
Alison Hume
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. She makes an important point about time. Time is of the essence as we strive to deliver better rail services. Perhaps we need a little of the spirit of the 19th century’s rail pioneers to fully connect coastal communities at last.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), for securing this important debate and for emphasising the national importance of open access. His point about Hull Trains and the opportunity it has given us is very powerful. I want to speak about our little local problem, to which he and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) alluded.
Originally, there were two trains every day going up and down to London via Lincoln and Market Rasen, ending up in Grimsby. That was then cut to one train and we were given a solemn promise that that train would never be taken away, but decades ago it was taken away. I have been campaigning for decades to get that service up and running again. We are talking about a catchment area of a quarter of a million people with no direct train to London. I cannot think of any other country in Europe that would have such a situation for huge conurbations like Grimsby and Cleethorpes and a place like Market Rasen—which is a small station but serves a vast rural area, perhaps 20 miles in every direction, going all the way to Louth. Yet every time we have been to see Ministers with campaigns, over many years, we get fobbed off with every single excuse. I cannot count the number of times we went to see the Transport Minister in the last Government; now I am boring this Minister instead, but I will go on boring him and we will go on making this point.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham said, we were first fobbed off with the view that there was no capacity on the main line. Yet the Azuma train runs perfectly well to Lincoln and it would make no difference to capacity on the main line if that train carried on to Grimsby via Market Rasen, so that point does not hold. We made some progress eventually and I thought that we finally had a commitment that this train would happen. Indeed, we had a test run in June 2023. I was there—I saw it. Everything worked perfectly smoothly. The train arrived from Grimsby, there was no problem, we had our photograph taken, everybody was very happy, but we have still had no progress.
Now we have had this bolt from the blue: it is no longer the capacity point, but apparently we cannot have this train because the platform in Market Rasen is too short and there is no bridge. That is an absurd point. I go all over the country and I see trains stop at short platforms, and they announce, “Will you please go to the first four carriages because it’s a short platform?”
Then we got the excuse that if the Azuma train stopped at Market Rasen, it would somehow cover the pedestrian crossing, which is apparently unacceptable. Is somebody going to try to go across the railway line and climb underneath the train to get to it, stopped at the platform? It is ridiculous. I am not sure that it is even possible to climb underneath a train. Are people going to sprint down the track, leaving the platform altogether, to get round the back of the train? This is all just ludicrous. There is absolutely no reason why the train could not stop there, blocking the existing pedestrian access. Perhaps once in 100 years there might be some sort of injury; in fact I doubt whether there would ever be any injury. So, why are we stopping the whole service because, apparently, the existing pedestrian access could be blocked?
It is funny—the operators never give an explanation. They say, “Oh, we now have a problem with the disabled access and it must be in a certain part of the train.” But surely there are solutions. This is a sort of not-can-do attitude, which is driving the country crazy.
Whenever we write to bodies such as Network Rail, instead of their having the attitude of, “Let’s work together, let’s make this work,” once again we get fobbed off with ridiculous excuses and they never actually explain their actions. Then they say, “We have got to build a bridge.” All right, they build a bridge. Then they have come up with a ridiculous figure of £24 million. How could it cost £24 million to build a bridge? This is only a small country station with just one footbridge. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham campaigned for years for a bridge, did he not? And he got it for far less—£1 million, was it not?
Martin Vickers
My right hon. Friend will remember from the last Parliament that I campaigned for a footbridge over Suggitts Lane in Cleethorpes. Thankfully, I was supported by the then Prime Minister—Boris Johnson—who on one famous occasion at Prime Minister’s questions said:
“Suggitt’s Lane is never far from my thoughts”. —[Official Report, 23 October 2019; Vol. 666, c. 963.]
I hope that the Market Rasen situation will not be far from the Minister’s thoughts.
Sir Edward Leigh
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. This is a serious issue. There is absolutely no reason why the great conurbation of Grimsby and Cleethorpes should not have a direct train to London, and there is no reason why the good people who live in the rural areas around Market Rasen should not have a direct train.
What has actually happened—one might argue that this is not really LNER’s fault—is that since we have had the Azuma train going directly from London to Lincoln, our indirect service has got worse. There are more delays and there is a reduced service. It really is hard work to get from that part of my constituency to London.
So, enough of excuses. We had a tremendous relationship with the Transport Minister in the last Government and we look forward to our relationship with this Minister in this Government. There is nothing party political about this matter. What we are doing—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham and I—is begging the Minister to please intervene to knock some heads together to get this train going and stopping. That is all we ask.
Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)
It is an honour to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this Backbench Business debate and I thank our colleagues on the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. Along with other colleagues here in Westminster Hall today, the hon. Gentleman has made such a good case for increasing open access services to his constituency and beyond.
In my contribution today, I will celebrate the successes of an open access agreement that benefits my constituents in Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend. So, I am showing off a bit, but I make no excuse for doing so. First, however, I reaffirm my support for the Government’s legislative action on public ownership since taking office. I supported the overhaul of our broken rail system in the voting Lobby and I still support it today.
Open access was left out of the scope of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024. It is worth noting that in the year 2022-23, domestic open access passenger services accounted for only 0.6% of passenger journeys and 2.4% of passenger operator revenues. Throughout the legislative process, Ministers advised that they saw a continuing role for such arrangements where they add value and capacity to the network and, during a statement on railway performance in November, the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), cited FirstGroup’s Lumo as a successful example.
The Lumo service runs between Edinburgh and London via Newcastle. Of course, Members know that most trains running to and from King’s Cross on the east coast main line are operated by LNER. However, Arup estimates that at least £480 million of economic benefits have been realised since FirstGroup’s Lumo launched in 2021. Lumo has built capacity as a complementary service on a core route in the UK, running five services a day. It has given my constituents additional choice by increasing the number of trains to the capital, for instance adding a new option for travellers between Newcastle and London to leave before 6 am and arrive in London at about 8.30 am.
Open access arrangements, if done properly, should drive up the number of journeys on our rail and not abstract value from existing services. According to FirstGroup, Lumo has helped to generate 6.2 million additional journeys, with 3.9 million of those taking place on Lumo services. Overall usage of the east coast main line rose by 18% in the 12 months to September last year compared with the year 2018-19, including an 11% growth in the usage of LNER services.
Modal shift will play a critical role in our journey to net zero. Decarbonising the grid, which this Labour Government have taken firm action on, is a sizeable part of that journey. Encouraging behavioural change in the transport sector represents some of the other hard yards that we must cover.
I support the Secretary of State’s ambition to ensure the benefits provided by open access operators outweigh the impact they have on taxpayers, and to ensure the ability to operate the network efficiently. I have sought today to advocate for a successful example of open access, which has benefited my constituents and the broader region.
On that broader region, I thank FirstGroup for the investment of £500 million into new British-built trains by Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on his part in securing that successful investment. I hope FirstGroup can gain approval from the regulator to serve more destinations, as that would lead to a £460 million follow-on order for new trains.
The most efficient use of our east coast main line is deeply important for me and all other north-east Members of Parliament. Growth and productivity in the north-east of England have been held back by our infrastructure. In closing, therefore, I seize this opportunity to lobby the Minister for the reopening of the Leamside line, which would be a game changer for the north-east, freeing up capacity for more LNER and Lumo trains to operate on our busy east coast main line.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) for securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. We have heard lively contributions from across the House, and underlying all of them is a simple truth: in the UK, open access rail operators have a clear track record of improving services, increasing access and driving economic growth.
However, the recent letter from the Secretary of State to the Office of Rail and Road makes it very clear that the future of open access services in this country is at risk. Although the Government’s position is just one of the issues that the ORR has a statutory duty to consider, the fact that the Government are asking the ORR to take a more cautious approach is clearly a concern. I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s views on that point and any assurances that he can give.
Although the Secretary of State might have legitimate concerns regarding capacity and abstraction, I fear there is an ideological element to her intervention. The Government are in danger of being led by doctrine rather than facts. Again, an assurance would be gratefully received.
As we heard from the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham, the record of three open access operators—Lumo, Grand Central and Hull Trains—competing against the Government-owned franchise LNER on the east coast main line has shown how competition for passengers drives down fares and drives up passenger numbers. Research has shown new open access operators competing on the same routes as incumbents typically offer fare reductions of 20% to 60% in the long term.
At a time when fares are sky high, competition helping to drive down costs for passengers should be encouraged, particularly when it is compensated for by a commensurate increase in passenger numbers to more than cover the revenue lost per customer. On the east coast main line, passenger numbers bounced back faster than in any other area after covid, due in no small part to the competition on that part of the network.
Open access is not only good for passengers, but good for the planet. Cheaper tickets and better access to services, since Lumo has been running services from London to Edinburgh, have meant that rail’s market share, compared with air travel, grew from 35% in 2019 to 57% in 2022.
That is not just a UK phenomenon. Unlike the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham, I am delighted to look to Europe for inspiration. In Italy, competition between the open access operator Italo Treno and the Italian state operator has driven a 90% increase in passenger numbers between Rome and Milan, while in Spain competition between Ouigo and Iryo on the Madrid-to-Valencia route has resulted in fares 50% lower than on routes with no competition. It is somewhat ironic that, while Europe is liberalising its railways and seeing positive results, we are potentially moving in the opposite direction.
Open access rail can also play a vital part in increasing services to many of our other underserved communities. As we have heard from the hon. Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) and for Brigg and Immingham about Cleethorpes, from the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) about Skipton, and from the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) about Scarborough, there are many towns and regions in this country where open access can make a real contribution to improving connectivity across the country. With an eye to revenue, private companies have found gaps in the timetable and delivered for residents where the Government have not.
As we have seen in this debate, any changes to open access arrangements by the Government are likely to provoke ire from their Back Bench colleagues in Hull, Sunderland and elsewhere. The hon. Members for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon), for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and for Scarborough and Whitby know the value of open access, and I am sure they will keep the Minister’s mind concentrated on its importance.
The same will be true of MPs representing areas where open access is still in its infancy or gestation. In Somerset and Wiltshire, concerned residents are taking the lack of rail provision into their own hands, with the formation of Go-op, the first ever co-operatively owned railway operator, which plans to increase vital regional services in an often neglected area. Meanwhile, in north Wales, the proposed Wrexham, Shropshire & Midlands Railway will bring back direct services from London to Wrexham, helping to bring passengers and further growth to a town already on the up—although, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) noted, it has taken far too long to get through the bureaucracy and get the service approved.
While we will hear from the Minister about concerns regarding capacity on the network, there are definitely areas with capacity for a greater number of services. Take the channel tunnel, for example: the French owners of the tunnel, Getlink, have said that it was designed for double the capacity, and an application for a new open access operator on the line to compete with Eurostar is with the regulator. Introducing welcome competition on the line will help to grow international train services to and from the UK and to reduce ticket prices.
It is clear, therefore, that open access should have a part to play in the future of the rail network. While my party and I are agnostic regarding rail nationalisation, the Liberal Democrats firmly believe that the private sector should play a part where there are clear benefits for passengers. We should be led by evidence, which shows that open access operators have made a positive addition to the network, and that the regulator has been successful in addressing concerns about abstraction. The Government, in their upcoming Rail Reform Bill, must therefore ensure that a fully functioning, properly resourced regulator is maintained.
As we move to a model where 75% of rail activity is under public ownership, we must ensure that that near-monopoly does not crowd out others, such as freight and open access. Not only is maintaining a competitive element on the railway good for passengers, but it will help the Government to guarantee that GBR is delivering the best outcomes, and—of course—grow the economy.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck, especially because it is my first speech from the Front Bench. I am told that you never forget your first time, but I do hope the Minister is gentle on me.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) for securing this debate. He has been a strong advocate for open access rail services, and I welcome his contributions today. He rightly highlights the importance of these services to regions across the country. I am told that in 2013 he was among a group of MPs who wrote to the Office of Rail and Road in support of expanding long-distance open access services. While I think we would all agree that more progress would have been welcome, it remains vital that Members like my hon. Friend across the House ensure that regulators are doing everything they can to encourage competition.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of open access intercity train competition on the east coast main line, connecting London, the north-east and Scotland. The benefits are clear: lower fares, more choices, more routes, increased innovation and higher passenger satisfaction. This proven model should be used as a blueprint in shaping Great British Railways and the upcoming railways Bill. It remains frustrating that, despite its success, the model has not been replicated on other intercity main lines.
As a Conservative, I value competition. When opportunities arise to introduce it into our transportation systems, we should take them. The evidence is clear: open access services create new travel opportunities, especially for underserved or more rural communities, such as my Farnham and Bordon constituency. These services support economic growth and encourage a shift to greener transport. That is why it is encouraging that new services were approved in 2024, including two entirely new routes on the west coast main line and the great western main line, along with eight approvals for smaller-scale improvements.
Recently, the Prime Minister and the Transport Secretary visited the Hitachi factory in Newton Aycliffe to celebrate FirstGroup’s £500 million order for 14 new Class 80X units, which will be a key part of their open access plans. Those units will operate on Lumo’s east coast main line services, as passionately described by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon), and on the newly secured London Paddington to Carmarthen service, launching in December 2027. Crucially, the expansion of services means more British train orders, boosting domestic industry. I urge the Minister and his Department to continue supporting further applications to sustain that investment.
A regulatory framework that supports the sector’s investing in UK-built rolling stock and improving passenger services ultimately benefits both fare-paying passengers and the wider economy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) mentioned. The Government must ensure that they facilitate services that serve the public interest. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), I will also focus on a couple of local issues—he has said that he bores on, but if anyone has the right to bore on, it is the Father of the House, and long may he continue to do so.
Southwestern Railway has been chosen as the first service to be nationalised this year, but the Government remain unclear about the impact that will have on open access services. My constituents in Farnham and Bordon rely on regular and reliable trains from Farnham, Liphook, and Haslemere stations to commute into London. As it stands, those services are frequently disrupted by strike action from the Labour party’s largest donors. While the fate of Southwestern Railway may be sealed, the potential Guildford to Heathrow terminal five connection, which would greatly benefit my constituents travelling to the airport, is under threat if open access services are restricted. I hope the Minister can reassure my constituents that nationalisation will not stifle open access operators, which play an important part in filling gaps in the delivery of rail services.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham said, the Minister’s own Wakefield constituency benefits from popular open access intercity services, which have led to lower fares, greater choice, and better connectivity with London and the wider region. Furthermore, the open access operator at Wakefield has invested in station facilities. Despite that, the Government’s overall approach to rail has marched towards centralisation and nationalisation. While the merits of that direction are a debate for another time, it is worth noting that the Government, both before and after the election, have recognised the value of open access services. The key question is whether that recognition will translate into tangible support for expansion.
In September 2024, the former Transport Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) clearly stated in a written statement to the House:
“Open access operators have a proven track record in driving competition and better passenger outcomes, and where there is a case that open access operators can add value and capacity to the network, they will be able to.”
Does that position still hold with the new Secretary of State and her Ministers? A clear reaffirmation would provide much-needed confidence to the businesses ready to invest.
Open access operators not only add financial value but improve accessibility and convenience. In my own constituency, there is a strong case for reopening the Bordon line and the station, or at least for a rail-bus link from Bordon to Liphook to enhance connectivity and increase train usage. We should remain open to innovative transport solutions that improve infrastructure just as we do with open access. However, despite positive statements in the past, the Secretary of State’s letter to the ORR in January raised concerns, signalling a shift in tone from the earlier commitments. Furthermore, some troubling rhetoric has emerged.
Last year, a rail union leader described open access firms as parasitical during testimony to the Transport Committee. The RMT has also explicitly campaigned for Great British Railways to absorb open access operations and rail freight. The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), in her usual BAFTA-nominated style, referred to the spirit of the 17th century, but the danger with these unions is that they will take us back to the 1970s, and I am sure none of us wants to go there. Given the Government’s previous concessions to the rail unions, it is fair to question whether open access services could be curtailed in future negotiations. Can the Minister assure us that these services will not be sacrificed in such discussions?
Another concern is that while the UK seems to be moving towards greater state control, as has been mentioned, Europe is heading in the opposite direction, embracing private sector involvement in rail. A European Commission report published in September last year highlighted that open access competition led to a 31% reduction in ticket prices in Italy and a 41% increase in service frequency in Austria. The report’s conclusion was clear that open access competition,
“across a variety of different cases, both decreased ticket prices and improved the quality of the service as compared to the situation prior to the start of competition.”
The Government have now raised concerns about the impact of open access on overall rail revenue, as we heard mention of today. However, the ORR has conducted thorough cost-benefit analyses, including cost consultations, on the monetised impacts. If the new Secretary of State is questioning these findings, is it because the Government believe that the ORR has made errors in awarding the contracts, or is this part of a broader policy shift?
The future and independence of the regulator is critical. Under plans for Great British Railways, will the ORR retain its authority over open access applications? Any move to transfer these decisions to Great British Railways or to the Department would undermine transparency, accountability, and independence, and the Opposition would strongly oppose such a change. The Government’s position, I am afraid, remains unclear. Are they a genuine supporter of open access operators, or do they merely tolerate them as a costly inconvenience? We need clarity.
With the ORR currently considering 13 applications, can the Minister confirm whether new guidance is forthcoming? More importantly, can he reassure the sector that any new guidance will not obstruct the growth of successful rail businesses that offer more choice and lower fares for passengers? The Government face a choice: embrace the benefits of competition and build on a proven success story, or retreat into centralisation at the expense of passengers. I urge Ministers to choose the former.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Simon Lightwood)
It is an absolute pleasure to see a fellow sand dancer in the Chair today, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this debate on open access—a matter of importance to many in this House and their constituents. I also welcome the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) to his place on the Opposition Front Bench. I look forward to our sparring in future debates.
Open access can open up new markets. We only need to look at Hull Trains, where the private sector identified opportunities that the Government had missed, to see how open access can benefit passengers and grow the market. However, it is also true that parts of our rail network are growing increasingly congested and, although open access operators can generate new income from the network, they can also abstract revenue from existing operators, including those funded by the taxpayer. We therefore need to ensure that there is a balance when we consider new open access applications. The Secretary of State was clear about that when she wrote to the Office of Rail and Road on 6 January.
Some Members have raised concerns over the Secretary of State’s letter, so let me be clear: the letter did not signal that the door had been closed on open access. Indeed, the letter makes it clear that there remains a role for open access, but new applications will have to demonstrate that their benefits are sufficient to justify any money they abstract from Government-funded services or the negative impact that they could have on publicly funded infrastructure projects. They must also demonstrate that they will not damage performance by increasing the complexity of the running of the network. I am aware also that the Secretary of State’s letter caused some concern with freight operators, so let me again be clear that the letter related only to passenger open access.
The benefits of open access to passengers on the east coast main line have been highlighted by hon. Members. I have already mentioned Hull Trains, but it would be remiss of me not to mention both Grand Central and Lumo, which also run on the east coast main line. Both those operators have increased choice for passengers. For example, Lumo now offers choice between short-haul flights and rail with its fast services between London and Edinburgh.
Open access services will increase choice and provide benefits for passengers on other parts of the network. Services have already been approved to operate from London to Stirling on the west coast main line from later in 2025, and between London and Carmarthen from 2027. We are also aware of, and considering, a range of new applications that have been submitted by open access operators. These include proposals on the east coast main line and also more broadly across the country, including on the west coast main line. Whether these applications are successful is currently a matter for the Office of Rail and Road in its role as an independent regulator. Alongside a range of other stakeholders, the Department will provide views. The Office of Rail and Road will consider them alongside its statutory duties and will make decisions in due course.
Both open access operators and the operators contracted by the Department deliver services to passengers, but there are key differences. Open access operators are not bound by public service obligations. Whereas an operator delivering services for the Department will be required to serve all stations on a particular route, an open access operator can choose which stations to serve. For that reason, it is not possible to simply replace the Department’s operators with open access operators. Were we to try to do so, we would risk depriving certain communities of any rail service at all.
Although constrained to a degree by the availability and capacity on the network, the lack of public service obligations means that open access operators can design their timetables to maximise commercial opportunities. That means that open access operators can choose within wider operational constraints what time they wish to run their trains and at which stations their trains will stop. That freedom means that they can be more challenging for Network Rail in setting the timetable. We have seen delays in agreeing the timetable for the east coast main line precisely because there were so many competing demands, including open access operations.
It is not just timetabling that is more complex. When Network Rail wants to undertake engineering works, it needs to ensure that the views of all operators are factored in. Obviously, where there are multiple operators with different operating models—for example, there are those with a greater focus on weekend and leisure travel rather than commuting—Network Rail will find it harder to keep everybody happy. That can reduce efficiency and increase journey costs, as Network Rail may have to close the network over a number of weekends and nights, rather than for a single block, to ensure that all operators are treated fairly.
I have talked about possible operational challenges. I want to be clear: we expect, as does the regulator, that Network Rail will make all efforts to manage the network in the most efficient manner and in a way that will accommodate the optimum number of Government-funded services. Although open access operators can drive new revenue to Government-funded services, they can also abstract revenue. The Office of Rail and Road recognises this through its “not primarily abstractive” test. The test is not binary and failing it does not mean that open access operators will not get access to the network, but it does highlight the potential impact on the taxpayer.
We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to move the railways on to a financially sustainable footing. Therefore, if we see applications that will abstract a significant amount from the Government’s operators, we need to carefully consider whether, when providing the Government’s view, we can support the application. Where there are wider socioeconomic benefits that arise from open access applications, we will, when we provide our views to the Office of Rail and Road, balance these against the abstraction, but we have to be honest about the financial pressures the railways face and factor them into our considerations.
I appreciate that I have just talked at length about the challenges that open access can create as well as the benefits it can bring. I highlight the challenges not to say that open access is bad—there can be real benefits—but as a Government, we need to be mindful of the full implications of each new open access application.
People have said that the move to public ownership means that the Government will seek to take open access off the network. I can categorically say that we have no intention to remove open access operators from the network. We were clear during the passage of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 that it only applied to operators contracted by the Government. I know that there has been speculation that we would look to bring open access operators into public ownership when their existing rights expire. Again, I reiterate that that is not our intention. Regarding our future plans for access to the network, we intend to bring forward a consultation on our proposed railways Bill shortly. That will provide Members with the opportunity to review, consider and respond to our proposals. I cannot pre-empt the consultation, and ask for Members’ understanding in this matter.
I will now address some of the specific issues raised by Members today. We have talked about the complexity of timetable challenges. Obviously, open access can and does make that a little bit more complex and challenging at times. Regarding passenger growth on the east coast main line, although open access operators have opened up markets on that line, they are by no means the sole reason for passenger growth. The Department has invested heavily in infrastructure, leading to improvements in resilience and reliability, and has taken the lead on fare trials on LNER to simplify the passenger offer. Underpinning all that is the fact that demand was already present on the east coast main line, even before the intervention of either Government or open access operators. On charges, open access operators pay variable access charges, but do not fully cover the costs of fixed- track access charges towards long-term maintenance of the network.
International comparisons were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn). Although there are examples of open access competing with state-backed operators to offer choice to passengers in Europe, it needs to be noted that there are many differences between the British network and the rail networks in other countries. That makes it really difficult to make direct comparisons. For example, some countries operate completely separate rail networks for inner city and local services, creating a totally different environment for comparison than that here in Britain.
In terms of additional services in her constituency, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) talked about the potential for open access to step in. We are clear that where there are gaps and it can be accommodated, we will consider that positively. GBR will look at the entire network to ensure it is used as fully as possible.
I am sure the Rail Minister will have heard the message from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon) on the Leamside line. If not, I will make sure that I mention it to him. I thank her for her enthusiasm for public ownership and GBR. GBR will ensure the highest level of customer standards and operational performance as a directing mind for our railways. It will have a relentless focus on delivering for our passengers and, crucially, for freight as well.
Some Members raised, quite rightly, the speed at which the ORR is making decisions. We recognise that it can take too long for decisions to be made by the ORR, and we are working with operators, including open access and Network Rail, and the regulator to improve that. I believe it was the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who raised new services for Cleethorpes and Grimsby. We are working with industry to understand the timetabling, financial, operational and infrastructure issues that need to be resolved. I recognise the frustration, but we are actively considering what can be done.
Open access plays an important role on the network and it will continue to play an important role on the network. We look forward to considering and providing our views on new applications and to our continued work with open access operators. However, we must and will balance the benefits of new applications with the impacts that they have on both the taxpayer and the operational efficiency of the network, in line with the letter that the Secretary of State sent to the regulator. I am incredibly grateful to all hon. Members here for their contributions. They have given us further food for thought and a useful insight into the benefits of open access to their constituents.
Martin Vickers
I thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in what has been a very worthwhile debate. This is the shadow Minister’s first time on the Front Bench, and I am sure he will go far. I emphasise that the demand for a direct service to Grimsby and Cleethorpes also has widespread support in the business sector. The Hull and Humber chamber of commerce did a survey some time ago and there is overwhelming interest.
The Minister mentioned the problems with abstraction from the main operator, and that was one of the reasons the Grand Central Rail application was turned down eight to 10 years ago. He talked about the impact on the taxpayer of the subsidy, but with LNER the subsidy is going down at the same time that there is greater competition, so I urge him to bear that in mind. It is, as I say, an easy win for the Government’s economic growth strategy.
I thank everyone for their presence. I will now rush off to King’s Cross to catch the train, but unfortunately I will have to change at Doncaster. The one advantage of changing at Doncaster—a station I know very well—is that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) and I often exchange interesting gossip about life at Westminster there.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered open access operators for rail services.
Low-income Countries: Debt Cancellation
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered debt cancellation for low-income countries.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the momentous Jubilee 2000 debt campaign brought together people from all walks of life, trade unions, churches, community groups, and even the odd rock star and celebrity, with the sole purpose of demanding debt relief for the world’s poorest countries, which are suffering extreme poverty caused by debt payments. The campaign was a resounding success and resulted in more than $130 billion of debt cancellation for 36 low-income countries, equating to an average 75% debt reduction for each country, allowing them to invest in health, education systems and other public services.
Although the Jubilee 2000 campaign was widely celebrated, and world leaders felt that some good had been achieved, it later became clear that the symptom had been dealt with but not the cause. The current state of affairs is alarming. The World Bank’s latest international debt report stated that developing countries spent a record $1.4 trillion to service foreign debts, and that interest payments alone have soared by nearly a third to $406 billion, leaving many developing countries having to cut vital services, such as health, education and environmental programmes. The pressures are felt most greatly by the poorest and most vulnerable countries, which paid a record $96.2 billion to service their debt in 2023. Of that, $34.6 billion was in interest alone—a staggering fourfold increase on the figure a decade ago. Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s chief economist, said:
“In highly indebted poor countries, multilateral development banks are now acting as a lender of last resort, a role they were not designed to serve. That reflects a dysfunctional financing system”.
According to a report on the global debt crisis published recently by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, 3.3 billion people now live in countries that spend more on debt servicing than on health and education, and the most food-insecure countries have seen the highest increases. Debt servicing is expected to consume 55% of low-income countries’ budgets in sub-Saharan Africa by 2025.
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. When countries such as Ghana and Sri Lanka end up having to receive a 17th International Monetary Fund bail-out package, it is clear that things have to change.
A complicating factor in dealing with debt relief is the role of private creditors, which have exploded on to the international debt scene since the success of the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Today, 61% of global sovereign debt is owed to private creditors such as hedge funds, asset managers and investment banks. Private lenders’ terms and conditions are often far more onerous than those of multilateral lenders, leaving low-income countries at the mercy of exorbitant interest rates and quick repayment schemes.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he has done in this incredibly important area over a long time. He talks about the impact of rising interest rates on low-income countries, to which could be added the impact of covid and dealing with climate change, and the private sector operators. Does he agree that when countries such as the UK choose to forgive sovereign debt, speculators and private sector operators should not profit from that but should follow this country’s lead?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will come to that later in my speech, but she is absolutely right. We need to treat private creditors in the same way we treat bilateral and multilateral creditors.
Private credit schemes are proving to be very lucrative deals for private creditors. In 2023 alone, private creditors received $68 billion more in interest and repayments from low-income countries than they had actually lent to them. That in itself is bad enough; what is worse is that when a defaulting country seeks debt relief there is nothing to compel private creditors to agree to be bound by any agreement reached by multilateral and bilateral creditors. In fact, there is no obligation to compel them to act in good faith or at all.
One stark example is the case of Sri Lanka. In 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its sovereign debt, which led to the most serious economic crisis in the country’s history. Sri Lanka sought debt relief from its creditors, with 47% of it owned by private creditors. Despite reaching an agreement with its bilateral creditors, the private creditors refused to accept any debt relief and sued Sri Lanka in the US courts to prioritise their debts. As a result, the private creditors will receive 30% more in debt repayments than the bilateral creditors, while Sri Lanka had to seek a bailout from the IMF. Sri Lanka will have to slash its public sector spending and spend 30% of its Government revenue on debt repayments, which the IMF regards as unsustainable. It is morally repugnant that private creditors behave in such a way, deliberately hampering the ability of a low-income country to get back on its feet at a time of crisis.
Sri Lanka is not alone in its experience at the hands of private lenders. Following the covid pandemic the G20, realising that international debt needed to be urgently dealt with, set up its common framework for debt treatments as the main global framework for dealing with resolving debt crises. The expectation was that all creditors would co-operate in collectively agreeing debt relief for countries that sought relief under the framework. Despite progress being made with bilateral and multilateral creditors, Chad and Zambia, which both sought debt relief under the framework, found that their private creditors would either drag negotiations out or offer debt relief that was significantly less than what was agreed with the bilateral or multilateral creditors.
Chad failed to get any debt relief from its main private creditor, the UK-based company Glencore, and Glencore will be repaid 50% more than Government creditors. Zambia had been negotiating a debt relief agreement for more than four years when it finally reached agreement with bondholders. One of the private companies was paid 13% more than Governments, including the UK, while other private lenders, including UK-based Standard Chartered and Investec, are still to agree debt relief with Zambia. Ethiopia and Ghana have experienced similar behaviour from private creditors.
The behaviour of private creditors is contrary to the spirit of the framework and has resulted in a loss of confidence in the framework’s efficacy among other debtor countries. To date, only four countries have sought relief under the framework. The truth is that private creditors have no incentive to agree to debt relief, because if they hold out, they get the interest payments and principal repayments as agreed. If there is a default, they can sue in the UK or US courts for enforcement action against the defaulting country, which will also be lucrative for them.
For private creditors, it is a win-win situation; for low-income countries, it is lose-lose. Expecting private creditors to voluntarily enter into debt relief arrangements is like telling an alcoholic not to have a drink. Urgent legislation is required to compel private creditors to enter into and be bound by debt relief agreements.
I have talked a lot so far about sums of money, but we must remember the human cost of investment not going to low-income countries as a result of debt re-servicing—for example, the rise in infant mortality due to cuts in health spending. UNICEF has stated that if a country has defaulted on debt repayments that remain unresolved for more than three years, the infant mortality level rises by 11.4% over that same period. Chronic under-investment in education leads to a less skilled, less healthy and less productive workforce, resulting in a lost generation, making it harder for them to escape poverty.
So what needs to be done to resolve the debt crisis? In its excellent 2023 report entitled “Debt relief in low-income countries”, the International Development Committee came up with some recommendations. The first such measure would be the reform of the governance of financial institutions that control international debt, such as the IMF. The conditions imposed by the IMF on debt bail-outs often have dire effects and make things worse for the debtor country by placing more emphasis on the short-term repayment of debt, rather than on the long-term infrastructure development of a country that could provide it with lasting security and protection from indebtedness.
Secondly, there is a need to create a level playing field by passing legislation to compel private creditors to actively participate in the debt relief process by preventing them from suing for more money than they would get if they accepted debt relief on the same terms as other lenders. In 2010, the Labour Government passed the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act, which did exactly that for debt that was owed prior to 2004. My ten-minute rule Bill is an updated version of the 2010 Act. As more than 90% of bonds owed by countries eligible for debt relief are issued in the UK, it would have a significant impact on low-income countries and could be transformative in allowing money spent on servicing debt to go into health and education systems and to be spent on the environment. It would cost the Treasury nothing and, at a time when aid spending is seeing little if any increase, it would be a sure way of getting money to the most vulnerable countries. There is no justification for treating private creditors differently from other lenders.
Thirdly, there needs to be a public global debt register to record the details of all global sovereign debt. The need for transparency is urgent, and it would help populations in debtor countries to hold their Governments to account over entering agreements with predatory private creditors.
Fourthly, there should be a framework for the automatic cancellation of debt servicing when highly indebted countries are hit by catastrophic events such as climate-related disasters like Storm Beryl. It cannot be right that while a climate-vulnerable country is struggling to get back on its feet, it is forced to make debt-servicing payments. Instead of making these countries apply to international institutions for debt cancellation, debt cancellation should be automatic. Given that in 2024 the total external debt serviced by all African countries was $104 billion, of which $47 billion was owed to private creditors, and the entire UK aid budget to Africa was £993 million, something needs to change; otherwise we are just servicing the debt owed to private creditors.
Chi Onwurah
I thank my hon. Friend for his generosity in giving way, as well as the excellent points he is making. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Africa, I have noted with concern the language around the increased migration that we have seen over the last few years, and we are all concerned to see the way in which criminal gangs exploit vulnerable migrants. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that by allowing the extraction of so much value from countries in Africa, we are not aiding and supporting economic opportunities for Africans in their own countries and are therefore contributing towards increased migration?
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The lack of investment as a result of debt servicing leads to people seeking opportunities that are not available in their own country, so I totally agree with my hon. Friend on that point.
Before I conclude, I thank CAFOD, Christian Aid, Debt Justice, UNICEF and Save the Children for their excellent briefings ahead of this debate, and for their support in relation to debt cancellation. I conclude with these questions for the Minister. Will the Government support my ten-minute rule Bill to prevent private creditors from being able to sue for enforcement in the UK courts for more than has been agreed in relation to debt relief with bilateral and multilateral lenders? Does the Minister agree that there should be comparable treatment for all creditors? Also, do the Government support a public global debt register for transparency? Does the Minister support the reform of the governance of the institutions, such as the IMF, that set the terms and conditions of bail-outs?
The UK has a unique position in being able to use its global reputation to bring about change on the international stage in relation to debt cancellation, as it did 25 years ago. We led the way then, and it is time to do so again. We cannot afford not to. The global south is looking to us for action, and it is time for us to act.
Esther McVey (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms McVey. I commend the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for leading the debate. I spoke to him beforehand, and he told me that he led a debate in this Chamber two weeks ago. I had the debate last Thursday, he has the debate this Thursday, and I have the debate next Thursday in the same time slot—I think he and I are competing for the graveyard shift on a Thursday afternoon. I think that is two each. Maybe it will be exceeded—I am not sure—but well done to him, because this is a subject that we are all interested in, and that is why we are all here.
It is a pleasure to see the Minister in her place. I wish her well in her new role, and we look forward to her response on a matter that I know is close to her heart. I am confident that she will do her best to encourage us all. I also give my well wishes to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell). I suspect he is newly appointed—I hope I am right about that—and I wish him well in the role.
The United Kingdom has been involved in various initiatives aimed at providing debt relief to low-income countries over the years, including in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. We continue as a country to work alongside LICs to ease pressure, which is something we should be proud of. Many will know that we are known for our generosity to other countries. We will always do our best to support, and it is a real pleasure to discuss that. Indeed, Northern Ireland—you will probably know this, Ms McVey—is one of the most charitable regions. I am not saying we are better than anybody else, but we are generous when it comes to charitable giving, and I just wanted to put that on the record.
In December 2024, the World Bank warned that developing countries spent a record £1.4 trillion—my goodness, that slipped off my tongue quite easily, but it is an astronomical figure—to service their foreign debts in 2023, and that interest rates had risen to a 20-year high. It concluded that 38 low-income countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, are in debt distress.
Debt cancellation is a reserved UK-wide policy, but Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales contribute to the UK’s foreign aid and international development budget, which largely includes the debt relief initiatives for the LICs. The Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network has long advocated for the UK’s involvement in providing debt relief to countries struggling with high financial burdens. Has the Minister had the opportunity to hold any discussions with the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network? It is a good organisation that does great work, and it is always encouraging for such organisations to have engagement with Ministers.
It is interesting to look at the at the root cause of the debt. The sad reality is that for many countries, such as those in Africa, it is poverty. It is as simple as that, as graphic as that and as real as that. Poverty in Africa is a long-term and complex issue that impacts millions of lives every day. Political instability, uneven distribution of natural and Government resources, sometimes corruption, and climate change all contribute to this issue. Those who are most affected are often those in rural and remote areas.
There are incredible charities out there, and the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green mentioned some of those that contribute regularly. I want to talk about some of the church groups that contribute through their missions. I think first of Eden missions. Every year, I am fortunate to have engagement with those from Swaziland. A young people’s choir comes over and they do some fundraising when they are in our constituency. We do our best to help and support them in every way we can. Every one of the children in that choir has AIDS, because their parents passed it on to them. They are fortunate to have the drugs that help them. Even with those disabilities, their voices are something special.
I think of the Elim church missions. In the Strangford constituency, there are so many—the best thing might be just to name all the churches. There is the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, the Roman Catholic Church and Baptist churches as well. Then there are the independent churches, which contribute greatly. We see massive Christian faith-based volunteerism and energy to support projects in Africa.
I think in particular of Elim, because I engage with it every year whenever it comes to Northern Ireland. It provides schooling, health and work initiatives. That charity does so much. It prepares people for life and for jobs, whether on the farm, as a doctor or teacher, or whatever it may be. It gives people the opportunity to know how to sow the seeds and reap the crops, so that they can live. When they come to Northern Ireland, we see their smiles and we cannot help being lifted individually.
Those are just some of the people who do this work, along with all the other charities and more that the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green spoke about, and that others will speak of as well. I have no doubt that every one of us could name groups that work beyond belief to provide aid and support to these communities at a local level. In the conversation about debt relief, however, the policies come straight from the Government. These groups do their work outside of Government, but the Government and the policymakers in this House are of massive importance at international level.
The UK has worked incredibly hard to introduce schemes that ultimately write off or suspend large debt from certain countries. I will give four countries as examples— I think the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green mentioned them too. Zambia, Ghana, Chad and Ethiopia have applied to the common framework, which followed on from the debt service suspension initiative that was introduced in 2020. Thus far, an incredible $12.9 million in payments have been suspended, which will go a massive way to easing pressure and providing a little more financial security for those countries. They are struggling—and, as I said, more often than not the reason is poverty. When it comes to Governments repaying debt, where is the tax coming from if people are on the poverty line to such an extent that they cannot pay it?
From 2001 to 2010, at least 49 low-income countries owing debts to the UK had all or part of their debts forgiven. The total amount of debt owed to the UK is now $1.8 billion. There are calls for the UK to strengthen legislation on debt repayments. I know the Minister will give us some thoughts on how the Government can help when it comes to debt repayments. Compelling private creditors to be involved in debt relief schemes is one of the options.
The International Development Committee said that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is “uniquely placed”—that is the Committee’s opinion, and it is mine, too—to legislate, because 45% of sovereign debts, a large amount, are governed under English law. Is that the Minister’s intention? If we have the ability to legislate, as I understand we do, I suggest, very respectfully, humbly and kindly, that we should.
The scale of debt that is owed is huge. We have done our bit recently to ensure fairness to other countries. I thank the Minister and the Labour Government, and the Conservative Government beforehand, for all that they have done. Debt has a huge impact on the development of LICs. We must take that into consideration without forgetting that there are other means through which we can receive payments back. For example, would it be an option for countries to give us something back in kind? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s plan to ensure that we protect LICs without putting the development of our own country at risk.
Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this debate.
African nations face a debt crisis caused by global factors—a debt crisis that is leading to more poverty, more hunger and war. They cannot renegotiate the debt, because it is held by private lenders, each of whom, through no fault of their own, has only one incentive: to hold out for a better deal in their fiduciary duty to their shareholders. As the debt is issued in London, we can help private lenders break out of that trap by mandating that all of them must accept the outcome of debt negotiations. That will help us to end the African debt crisis, build functioning states and reduce extreme poverty, all without spending a penny.
Before being elected to this place, I worked as an economist in the Finance Ministry of Somaliland, one of the poorest places on Earth. I helped to write its budgets, its economic policy and its national development plan, and I saw that ending extreme poverty requires an effective Government, as we have seen in India and South Korea. A Government who raise their own revenue are far more effective than a Government who receive it in international aid, because with taxation comes representation.
African nations are stuck, unable to reduce poverty because they are spending one fifth of their revenue—more than they spend on healthcare—paying down debts. They are trapped in that debt because of global factors: post-covid supply shocks, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and rising global interest rates. Debt repayments are up by 30% since 2019, and have more than tripled since 2010.
African nations, like any debtor, need to renegotiate their debt. If that debt was owed solely to other nations, that would be relatively simple, but it is not; it is owed to an unknown multitude of private creditors. Each of those creditors has a fiduciary duty to gain the highest return for its shareholders. Each individual private lender is trapped. They have to hold out, let others take the haircut and try to get the full amount for themselves. They are not bad people and they are not evil, but they are trapped within a system that no individual has the power to break out of.
Today, we can give them that power, because 90% of African debt governed by the common framework is issued under England’s legal jurisdiction. We can help to end the debt crisis without spending a penny by changing British law so that private lenders have to abide by the outcome of debt negotiations. Where before, private lenders were trapped, damned if they did forgive and damned if they did not, they would be free to implement sensible debt renegotiations.
I know that some will disagree, and I will take their arguments head on. Some will say that the status quo—things like collective action clauses—is sufficient. That view is wrong. Ghana and Zambia have been waiting 12 months for private lenders to come to the table. They are still waiting. Chadian private debt is not owed in bonds, which means it is not governed by CACs. The current system is not fit for purpose.
Others will say that the proposed reforms would mean that debt would no longer be issued in London. If that were true, it should have happened after we passed the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010. It did not. Nations lend here and seek to have their borrowing issued here not because we have weak legal protections, but because we have the strongest and deepest legal system in the world, with centuries of case law. That is why, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) pointed out this week, 95% of African bonds are issued in England and Wales. This solution can work, and that is why the IMF and the World Bank support it.
I was an economist working in one of the poorest nations on earth during its worst drought in living memory. Yes, I saw people starve, but I also saw a nation being built from its own revenues, making budgets and implementing policies. A state that could end extreme poverty was and is in the making in Somaliland. That nation saw its economy grow by 16% in real terms between 2012 and 2020, despite a global pandemic. That reduction in poverty is about more than numbers—it is fewer people scratching around in the dirt desperately hoping that something will grow so that they can feed their children. That is what ending extreme poverty means.
We can end extreme poverty. When my father was born into rural poverty in India, he had a one in four chance of dying before his fifth birthday, while 70% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today, a child born in the same place is 10 times less likely to die, and only one in 10 of the world’s people now live in extreme poverty. We can end extreme poverty in the years to come by changing British law to end this debt crisis.
We can live up to and indeed continue the legacy of the former Members for Sedgefield and for Dunfermline East, who helped to cancel £30 billion of debt in 2005. Giving African nations the ability to use their own revenues, build their own Governments and create nations can end poverty. By making sure that private lenders can and must participate in debt renegotiations, we in this place can help to end extreme poverty for free.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
I commend the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for organising this debate on a vital and extremely timely topic. As all hon. Members present are likely aware, we face the most acute debt crisis in history. According to CAFOD, more than 3.3 billion people are living in countries where they are forced to spend more on debt servicing than on providing for their citizens. Such high debt-servicing costs prevent those countries from spending on vital public services such as education and health, and investing in sustainable development goals.
Private lenders make up the largest group of creditors, with many based in the UK and 90% of their contracts governed by English law. Many hon. Members will also be aware that 2025 has been declared a jubilee year by Pope Francis. It is 25 years since the last jubilee debt forgiveness, known as Jubilee 2000, when 40 countries called for the cancellation of third-world debt. Biblically, an important part of the jubilee celebration was the cancellation of debt to give those in need a fresh start. We are told in the Bible not to be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards others, but instead to be open-hearted and freely give what is needed.
For this jubilee year, Pope Francis has made debt cancellation a priority, stating:
“More than a question of generosity, this is a matter of justice.”
We must act now to end the vicious cycle that these countries are trapped in. Without being able to invest in development, countries are unable to grow their economies or fully escape debt. Furthermore, while in debt distress, countries may look to quick solutions that involve exploiting or exporting their natural resources to do so—extracting fossil fuels, mining or logging—and, in the process, worsening climate change. That disproportionately affects those in the global south, but also affects us here at home.
The UK has a significant role to play in solving this problem. As we have heard, 45% of all foreign sovereign debt is governed under English law. The Government have promised to tackle unsustainable debt and must hold private lenders and creditors accountable for that. Furthermore, the previous Government cut international aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income—an act that withheld billions of pounds from those most in need. We must restore our aid spending to what it was before, and restore our leadership in the field of international development; in doing so, we will restore our reputation as a kind and generous nation.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey. I start by commending my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for bringing forward this crucial debate, and for his continuous campaigning on this matter.
I chair the APPG for Afrikan Reparations and I have long called on the UK Government to engage in discussions around reparative justice. I have said time and again that reparative justice is about just that—justice. It is about more than handing over money; it is about addressing the structural inequalities that colonialism created and still perpetuates, and changing those global structures that keep the global south in its situation. Those inequalities have been instrumental in creating the debt that we are discussing today.
Reparative justice is about addressing disparities that are starkly evident in the fight against climate change, particularly in the context of our international financial system, which is, quite frankly, a relic of the 20th century. Worsening droughts in east Africa, tropical hurricanes in the Caribbean, and tsunamis in Asia show how Britain’s former colonies remain disproportionately vulnerable to the frontline effects of crises that they did little to cause. Not only did we engage in colonial crimes, but we remain a leading historical emitter.
The UK could take responsibility by reframing reparative justice within the context of climate justice. We could fund large-scale restoration projects, compensate for biodiversity loss, and help nations to adapt to climate change. That form of reparative justice could remove the burden of debt that is preventing those countries from fighting the climate emergency themselves, by building infrastructure to defend against some of the environmental challenges that, if we do not get our act together, will be permanent.
Some of the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries are seeing their debt payments grow twice as fast as their climate support—they do not stand a chance. When faced with extreme weather conditions every year, such as deathly floods and droughts, they are forced to borrow more and more to support their people and rebuild their infrastructure—adding to their already insurmountable debt.
In 2022, I joined a parliamentary delegation to Kenya with CAFOD and saw at first hand the impact of famine and drought on the people living in Marsabit County. Their agriculture and their livestock had been decimated—the country had been decimated—by one of the worst droughts in living memory. The situation that we all saw on the ground in Kenya brought home the devastating ramifications of the climate crisis, and the inequities that it is rooted in—inequities that we benefited from and have sustained since.
Kenya is not a notable emitter of carbon dioxide and does not drastically contribute to climate destruction. In fact, it is responsible for just 0.03% of global carbon dioxide emissions to date—around 160 times less than the United Kingdom. Yet man-made climate change, for which the UK has historical responsibility, is causing untold levels of destruction in that nation, and its debt crisis means that, like many other countries mentioned today, it is unable to take meaningful steps to address it. In 2021, its debt repayments were more than five times the amount of money the Government were spending on measures to tackle the climate crisis. Like many other countries, it is fighting this crisis with both hands tied behind its back.
Countries in the global south will face an estimated $290 billion to $580 billion in climate-related loss and damage ever year by 2030—every single year. At the start of the covid-19 pandemic, the G20 agreed a scheme to suspend debt payments for over 70 countries, but because private lenders were not made to participate on equal terms, countries that applied to the scheme had under a quarter of external debt payments suspended.
As hon. Members have mentioned, over 90% of the bonds owned by countries eligible for debt relief, under G20 schemes, are governed by English law. That means that they are under our control, and we can actually do something about them. The UK could play a leading role in addressing the debt crisis, instead of standing by as private creditors are bailed out. The Government should be supporting efforts to cancel debts for all climate-vulnerable countries with unsustainable debts by expanding the G20 common framework to include middle-income nations, and strengthen it to ensure that private creditors participate. To be frank, we know that the situation for the average person in some so-called middle-income nations is still dire.
I call on the Government to enhance the UK’s commitment on international climate finance overall and to encourage other countries to do the same. That should be done through a comprehensive financing facility to offer unconditional grants, not more debt, to countries facing climate disaster, to push for automatic debt payment suspension and relief for countries in the event of a climate-related disaster, and to introduce legislation to stop private creditors from suing those same climate-vulnerable countries. The UK’s role as a major historical emitter, a former colonial power and a current global leader places a special obligation on us to put climate justice at the heart of the global response to the disaster we now face.
Some people ask: why reparative justice and not simply aid? That is because aid has not worked, and when a duty is put on people to do something, and when they understand that they owe somebody something as a matter of justice, they are more likely to do it. Aid has become an industry. Aid itself is subject to supply and demand, and so many countries are not benefiting from it in the way that they should be. We need to look at this issue as one of reparative justice, and we the UK have to pay what we owe.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for bringing this important issue to the House, and I praise his work on raising awareness of it.
For decades many low-income nations have struggled under the weight of unsustainable debt, spending billions servicing debt that prevents them from addressing the needs of their people or responding to the climate emergency, threatening a wave of political instability. It also prevents them from long-term investment in healthcare, education and infrastructure—the essential pillars of progress and stability.
Lower-income countries have been facing increasingly unsustainable debts since the 2008 financial crisis, with debt payments increasing by over 200% between 2010 and 2025—reaching the highest level since the mid-1990s. That is no surprise when we consider the combination of the covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the global monetary tightening that has exposed vulnerable economies to insurmountable debt challenges, as private capital inflow stopped and sovereign defaults ensued for already vulnerable frontier communities.
The Liberal Democrats were the first to call for debt cancellation and have been calling for faster and stronger action on the global debt crisis ever since, because the case for debt cancellation is clear. It provides immediate relief, allows Governments to prioritise social investment and fosters long-term economic growth. Over the long term, it allows those countries to become less reliant on overseas development assistance from countries such as the UK. History shows that when debt relief is granted, countries are able to improve public services, reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development goals. When countries are crushed by debt, however, that leads to instability, mass migration crises that end up in the UK, and economic stagnation that affects us all.
Faster and stronger action on the debt crisis is particularly important in Africa. In 2023, African countries spent over 50 times more on external debt than they received in aid from the UK, and 50% more than the total aid to the region. That is why we are clear in our support of aligning the UK with the African Union’s push for full debt cancellation.
The current mechanism for debt cancellation, via the common framework, has been too slow in its progress on cases, with only four countries having applied and only three reaching agreement—Zambia, Ghana and Chad, with Ethiopia still in talks. Clearly, the Government must improve those mechanisms, and I note that the International Development Committee 2023 report on debt cancellation for low-income countries made recommendations for the previous Government. Many of those remain outstanding, so I hope the Minister will address that today.
I hope that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s upcoming development review will focus closely on the critical interplay between debt and development in its strategy. That is essential, because this Labour Government have presided over a further real-terms cut to the official development assistance budget, making it even lower than it was under the last Conservative Administration. Under this Government, there has been an absolute cut in the level of support being provided to the world’s poorest people.
Low-income countries have been put between a rock and a hard place for too long, forced to service ever-increasing debts with less and less overseas development assistance from the likes of the UK and now, of course, the US. That has compelled such countries to service debt rather than helping their most vulnerable people, plunging those nations into further poverty.
I sincerely hope the Minister can reassure us today that the Government will return to spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA. I hope that the news that there will be no new funding at the Nutrition for Growth summit this month is not a harbinger of the trajectory of the Government’s spend on international aid, and that the UK will return to its role leading on international development, particularly given the USA’s apparent retreat. I look forward to hearing what she has to say shortly.
I draw to a close by re-emphasising that although the UK’s ability to act independently is limited by international agreements, it has significant influence over debt restructuring, with 45% of all sovereign debts governed by English law. I look forward to hearing how the Government intend to strengthen the common framework and address the root causes of debt accumulation, including unfair trade policies, exploitative lending practices and lack of financial transparency. It is time for a new financial framework that stops the cycle of debt dependency, and it is time for Britain to restate its commitment to the world’s poorest.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, for the first time as a shadow Minister.
I commend the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this debate. Constituency names have changed; I have always known him as the hon. Member for Enfield Southgate. He spoke with real passion today, and he brings with him knowledge and expertise about a topic that we must all focus on more carefully. It is a sensitive issue, and we must ensure we get it right. It should not be a party political issue; we should be looking for solutions. I think that today’s debate has contributed to that important discussion, so I thank him for securing it.
As has been mentioned, Britain is a nation that has always been known for its Christian compassion. At the same time, we have always advocated the principle of helping others to help themselves as the best pathway to providing long-term sustainability, particularly for developing nations, many of which have been mentioned in the debate.
So many contributions have been very powerful, particularly that of the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), who spoke about Somaliland. I met representatives from Somaliland recently. It is so important that we use our knowledge and expertise to help developing countries to develop the type of economy that will generate wealth and prosperity. Having such debts around their necks will not help them to get out of their problems and become prosperous in the future. The hon. Gentleman drew on his expertise, and I commend him for it.
Others have spoken about issues such as colonialism. To be frank, I am not convinced that the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) should focus on colonialism. There are other, more unifying things that we should talk about. Britain can lead the way in this if we get things right, but talking about Britain’s past wrongs—they are subjective, and there are a lot of good things that Britain has done—and tying everything to colonialism is a divisive route to go down. Let us look at solutions and advocate ideas that offer a way forward, rather than creating political division.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
This is not necessarily a divisive issue. When we ask those who are suffering the most from these matters, we find that they believe that it is difficult to move forward because of some of the wrongs that have been done to them in the past. It is simply about recognition and looking at ways to tackle this issue, and at how we can deliver recompense for the wrong that we have done. It is not about being divisive; it is just about accepting what went wrong and understanding that we have a duty to make it right.
Esther McVey (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that this debate is about debt cancellation for low-income countries.
Andrew Rosindell
I respect the hon. Member’s point, but she did say that we should pay what we owe. All kinds of arguments can be put forward about what we owe, but it is a matter of opinion. Today we should bring unity and look for solutions, rather than making this a political issue. We can achieve more for developing countries if we work together, rather than looking at where things have gone wrong or right in history and at who may owe what, depending on what is going on in the world today. I do not think that will get us very far, so we should move on from that and focus on how we restructure the repayment of debt, and how we can develop a better system globally to deal with this issue, rather than looking too far back into history.
It has been clear to me, right from when I stood for Parliament for the first time, that this issue needs to be addressed. That has been confirmed by the passion that hon. Members have shown in today’s debate. Debt relief deserves serious consideration, and the Opposition recognise that. Unsustainable debt burdens can be huge and significant impediments to economic development and growth, trapping nations in a cycle of poverty. However, I believe that we must approach this matter in a responsible way, with both caution and pragmatism.
If pursued, debt relief must be conditional and tied to a strong policy of fiscal responsibility measures, so I hope the Minister will provide assurances that any recipient countries would be expected to implement sound economic policies, tackle corruption and take steps to prevent future over-borrowing. I do not think the Minister can disagree that without those safeguards, we risk creating a system in which there is financial mismanagement in perpetuity. We should focus on rewarding the expense of responsible governance. Making the hard-pressed British taxpayer foot the bill is not acceptable to most of our constituents, and we need solutions. We need to solve these problems and not see this as a one-way street.
If the United Kingdom taxpayer’s money is involved, I want the Government to tell us how they will ensure that such relief also serves the interests of the British people. During these difficult economic times, we must justify every single penny spent by the Government and always be mindful that it is our constituents’ money, not the Government’s. Debt relief must become not an open-ended commitment, but a strategic tool that strengthens bilateral ties and ensures geopolitical stability.
I hope the Minister can tell us how the Government intend to prioritise sustainable development, and what mechanisms are in place to monitor that. I also hope she will agree that the focus should be not on perpetual aid or blanket debt forgiveness, but on fostering economic self-sufficiency. That is the only sustainable way forward. We must also consider how the United Kingdom can play a meaningful part in helping low-income countries to develop their domestic industries, improve resource management and reduce their reliance on foreign debt. Without those structural changes, would debt relief simply serve as a temporary fix, or would she prefer to have a system that offers a sustainable solution? That is what the Opposition want.
Jim Shannon
I would never wish to be anything other than supportive of what the hon. Gentleman says, but everyone who has spoken so far has mentioned the charities and groups that contribute and sometimes fill the gap. May I ask, respectfully, if some recognition could be given to those groups?
Andrew Rosindell
The hon. Member touched on this in his speech earlier, as did the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes. That is another new constituency name, and I think it includes Chippenham. Is that part of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency?
Andrew Rosindell
It is in Wiltshire, so it is in that part of the world—a great part of the world.
Many churches and faith organisations, not just Christian, do a huge amount in all our constituencies to help raise funds to alleviate poverty. In my constituency, churches and the Christian organisations take the lead in this, and it is a wonderful thing. If we are to alleviate world poverty and deal with the restructuring of international debt, it has to be a collective thing. It is not just about Governments; other sectors must be involved in these discussions. We must all give credit to the charities, church organisations, faith groups and other parts of the voluntary sector that raise money week in, week out, to help to alleviate poverty and for disaster relief in different parts of the world. As Members of Parliament, we all know that from our constituencies. I commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and all Members for the charities, churches and organisations in their constituencies that do that incredible work.
We simply cannot ignore the geopolitical dimension. The belt and road initiative from the People’s Republic of China has created debt dependency, threatening many sovereign nations around the world. Will the Minister tell the House how the Government intend to counterbalance Beijing’s influence and provide a credible alternative to Chinese financing, which is of great concern? Will debt relief and the belt and road initiative feature in the Government’s China audit? Can she also confirm that any UK-backed debt restructuring would promote transparency, fair economic partnerships and long-term stability?
Beyond individual cases, will the Government tell us how they plan to advocate for more responsible lending and borrowing practices that ensure that relief leads to lasting improvements rather than repeated crisis? Does the Minister also accept that we should be looking beyond debt cancellation and focusing on investment incentives, infrastructure partnerships and trade agreements that enable these countries to generate revenue and pay their debts? How will the Government ensure that their approach fosters economic growth rather than continued reliance on external assistance?
It is crucial that any policy pursued by His Majesty’s Government is effective and responsible. Debt relief can be a force for good when structured correctly, but it must be part of a broader strategy that promotes economic resilience, accountability and sustainable development. The Government must navigate these challenges while always ensuring that British interests remain protected.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Emma Reynolds)
Thank you for calling me, Ms McVey. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, and I am sure not the last.
I thank the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for drawing attention to these issues and for bringing this debate on debt cancellation to Westminster Hall today. I also thank the other Members, whose speeches have made for a rich discussion on this issue. I will mention them briefly and then hope to come to everyone’s questions, should time allow. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his kind words about my appointment—I am still early in my time in this role. I also thank him for underlining the importance of the role of charities in the development work that they do in low-income and vulnerable countries.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) spoke with great passion about his experience working in Somaliland. He brings great insights to the House after working in that capacity previously. I thank the hon. Members for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) and for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) for stressing that the UK needs to restore our leadership on international development. I will come to some of their questions later in my contribution.
I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for raising crucial points about the situation that many low-income countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change find themselves in. I will say a little more about that, too.
The Government are highly concerned by the debt challenges faced by many low and middle-income countries, with 3.3 billion people living in countries that spend more on servicing their debt than on health or education—a point made by many hon. Members. Among low-income countries, 10 are currently in debt distress and 25 are at high risk, and there is an urgent need to address the vulnerabilities. As a Government, we are fully committed to tackling unsustainable debt burdens in a way that supports development needs and helps countries address those vulnerabilities.
We are acting in three key ways. I will attempt to answer questions, particularly from my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green who secured the debate, when discussing the three key ways. The first is on addressing liquidity challenges; the second is on ensuring effective debt restructurings; and the third is on promoting debt resilience.
First, on addressing liquidity challenges, we are working with international partners to address immediate liquidity pressures facing many countries, which are crowding out vital spending on climate, health and education. We support the IMF and World Bank’s three-pillar approach, which is designed to support countries with high debt repayments. The first pillar is focused on action from vulnerable countries to improve revenue mobilisation and implement sound economic policies. The second focuses on ensuring that countries receive new flows of finance at concessional rates from international financial institutions and other development partners. The final pillar looks at providing case-by-case action to reduce the cost of existing debt burdens where needed.
Secondly, we are working to address debt vulnerabilities through improving the effectiveness of debt restructurings for countries in debt distress. The G20 common framework remains the best mechanism for co-ordinating debt restructurings to address unsustainable debt burdens, but further progress is needed.
The UK is working closely with the G20 and other international partners to ensure the framework delivers more timely, orderly and predictable debt restructurings. I know that is high on the priority list of the South African G20 presidency this year. The UK will be pressing for rapid implementation of the lessons learned from the common framework, which were agreed under the Brazilian presidency of the G20 last year.
The private sector, which has been mentioned by many hon. Members, must also play its part in debt restructuring efforts. We are actively engaging with private sector partners—for example, through the global sovereign debt roundtable—to ensure continued private sector support for addressing the debt challenges faced by countries, leveraging the City of London’s leading role in sovereign debt markets.
Several Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green, mentioned the issue of private creditors and whether we needed legislation to force them to participate. The Government are not currently seeing evidence that private creditors are refusing to participate in debt restructurings. Recently, private bondholders have agreed to debt treatments for common framework countries, including Zambia and Ghana. We are working closely with the private sector through bilateral meetings, engagement with representative institutions and Paris club discussions.
Hon. Members also raised the issue of comparable treatment by private creditors. I reiterate that both Zambia and Ghana have reached agreements on debt restructurings with their private bondholders. Official creditors have deemed these comparable with their own restructurings.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green raised the need for UK leadership on debt relief, and we heard that from others, too. I highlight that the UK has a strong track record of pushing for effective and holistic solutions to debt challenges, including supporting the IMF’s three-pillar approach for countries facing liquidity challenges and pushing for more effective co-operation and co-ordination under the G20’s common framework. The UK also co-ordinates debt treatment through our membership of the Paris club and our commitments to the G20 common framework in partnership with other creditors.
This is a key point: unilaterally writing off debt owed to the UK would not be in the interests of the UK taxpayer—the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), mentioned the UK taxpayer, of course—which would be subsidising ongoing payments to other creditors if done unilaterally. The Government are therefore working closely with borrowers, official and private creditors, and the IMF and World Bank to strengthen the wider debt architecture and provide timely and co-ordinated restructurings for countries, where needed to support holistic debt sustainability for low-income countries.
The third way that the Government are pursuing this issue is through tackling unsustainable debt by promoting greater resilience in debt markets. In response to the shadow Minister, I mention that the UK is committed to provide sovereign financing on sustainable terms and to act in an open and transparent manner to support global debt sustainability.
We are playing a leadership role internationally in several key ways. The hon. Members for Melksham and Devizes and for Esher and Walton asked what the UK was doing to provide leadership.
Jim Shannon
My contribution, not that it was better than anybody else’s, put forward the idea that the countries we are helping with debt might be able to supply us with some goods as a way of paying us back, rather than making a financial repayment. Is that something that the Minister and the Government would look at?
Emma Reynolds
I am not sure that is something we are actively considering, but I will check and write to the hon. Gentleman.
In December 2024, we were the first country to publish our self-assessment against the G20’s operational guidelines for sustainable financing. In line with those guidelines, we publish annual reports on the total stock of debt owed to the UK, including reports on our new sovereign lending transactions.
Finally, we are committed to provide sovereign financing on sustainable terms, adhering to the OECD’s sustainable lending principles. My hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green also suggested creating a private sector transparency register. The UK supports all initiatives to improve debt transparency and is open to considering proposals for such a register. We also acknowledge the ongoing work by Georgetown University in this area.
The UK has led the way in promoting debt resilience through the introduction of contractual innovations, an approach that the IMF has found to be working well. Under our G7 presidency in 2021, the UK developed two contractual innovations together with private sector stakeholders. The first relates to external shocks, which my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green mentioned in his speech. Climate resilient debt clauses help to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable countries by suspending debt repayments in the wake of external shocks, which frees up fiscal space for the country. The UK has led the way by including CRDCs in our own lending and calling for all lenders to adopt CRDCs by the end of this year.
Second, the UK helped to develop majority voting provisions, which are for use by the private sector specifically for syndicated lending. MVPs allow a majority of creditors to bind the minority to the terms of a restructuring and thereby mitigate the risk of a minority of creditors holding out in a restructuring scenario, which hon. Members mentioned in their contributions, and enable more efficient debt restructuring processes.
On Monday, at her speech at the London Stock Exchange, the Minister for Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), announced that the FCDO will provide technical assistance for borrower countries that intend to include majority voting provisions in their contractual agreements with private sector lenders.
I will now turn to a couple of questions that were asked during the debate. I apologise if I do not get to answer all the questions in the time available; I promise to write to hon. Members if I do not get to all of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green asked about reforming the governance of international organisations. We agree that more needs to be done. First, we must change the international financial system in order to deliver a fairer deal for developing countries, including by using our board seats at the IMF and the World Bank, for a bolder approach on unsustainable debt. Secondly, we need to ensure that our system is more representative of those most in need, so we will make the case for not only fairer outcomes, but fairer representation in how we represent them.
The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton, asked whether the Government would return to spending 0.7% of GDP on development, which the last Labour Government were very proud to commit to and reach. This Government remain committed to restoring ODA spending to 0.7% as soon as fiscal circumstances allow. Although the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts show that the tests have not yet been met, we continue to monitor these forecasts closely and remain one of the top ODA providers in the G7.
There were a number of questions about climate, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill, and I want to make a few comments about that. To strengthen the resilience of vulnerable countries and free up fiscal space when responding to shocks caused by climate change, the UK has led the way in encouraging the broader adoption of climate resilient debt clauses, which suspend debt repayments, on a cost-neutral basis, in the wake of exogenous shocks. We welcome creditors who have committed to providing CRDCs, and encourage others to follow suit.
My hon. Friend also said that the common framework should be expanded to middle-income countries and offer an automatic suspension for countries that apply for restructuring. The UK is fully committed to making the common framework a success. We support expansion of the framework to middle-income countries and providing automatic debt standstills for countries that apply for restructuring under the framework. We continue to push for those reforms in the G20. I hope that answers her question on that point.
I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Romford, for his contribution—I think this is the first time that we have debated this way. He asked about reassurance on sound economic policy and preventing corruption. We agree that any lending and policy must be agreed on a sustainable basis. First, the scale of debt treatments is set under the IMF’s debt sustainability analysis. Secondly, the UK is committed to acting in an open and transparent way, as we have shown by publishing our own self-assessment against G20 guidelines. The hon. Gentleman asked a number of other questions. He was talking about open-ended commitments and sustainability. I think we all agree we want to reduce the reliance of low-income countries on foreign debt. That is what this debate is about, and we want a sustainable solution. He asked about the role of China specifically. I am happy to write to him, in a follow-up to his questions, on that. All I will say now is that it is really important that we work with all international partners on this issue, because only by working multilaterally will we have success in the sense of providing sustainable solutions. We do not think we can act alone.
I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions during today’s important debate. Together with the international community, we must work actively and urgently in order to address the significant debt challenges faced by vulnerable countries, and the Government are committed to doing just that.
Bambos Charalambous
I will be brief. I very much welcome the Minister’s responses, certainly in relation to financial institutions and reforming the IMF, representation, how we look at debt, and transparency. In relation to external shocks, I think we should look at automatic cancellation of debt when a country is facing a climate event, for example. I very much hope that that can be looked into, long term.
On comparable treatment, I know that the Minister has taken that on board and will be looking into it further. I disagree with her on legislation in relation to private creditors. Private creditors have not shown themselves to be responsible in this matter. I have given examples of private creditors who have not engaged in the G20 framework in the way they were expected to. I hope that, if the Minister does have regular meetings with them, she is able to convey this message to them. Until we see changes, I certainly will be pursuing legislation through my private Member’s Bill, the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill.
We have had a good discussion today, and I thank all Members for contributing as they have, to show the unanimity on what we would like to see done. I think we all support debt cancellation and would like to see more done to help low-income countries—the most vulnerable ones—to get back on a level footing so that they can develop their economies as we would like to see them develop.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered debt cancellation for low-income countries.
Written Statements
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Armed Forces Recruitment
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Luke Pollard)
As the world changes, and the threat the UK faces evolves, we must ensure our armed forces recruitment is right for the 21st century.
Recognising this, we are today announcing two new initiatives to remove outdated and unnecessary barriers and fast-track bright candidates into UK defence.
The first is a brand new fast-track entry into military cyber careers to boost UK cyber defence.
Cyber represents a new frontline, with our military systems targeted every day by adversaries. UK networks are facing growing numbers of “sub-threshold” attacks—more than 90,000 in the last two years.
Fast-tracking cyber warriors into our military will help bolster our capabilities in response to these growing threats and address a global shortage of cyber talent.
The new, bespoke entry route we are opening today will see basic training reduced from 10 weeks to around one month, after which recruits will undergo three months of specialist training. This will be conducted at the Defence Cyber Academy in Shrivenham.
By the end of 2025, new recruits will be embedded into operational roles, either securing Defence’s networks and services at the digital headquarters in Corsham or conducting cyber operations to counter those who would do the UK harm as part of the National Cyber Force.
The scheme is open to any aspiring cyber professionals and those with existing digital skills and will play a crucial role in maintaining a competitive edge in our national cyber defence capabilities.
Secondly, we are announcing the award of the contract for the new tri-service armed forces recruiting service (AFRS). Joining the armed forces will become quicker and easier under a new first-of-its kind recruitment service that cuts red tape and transforms the way people sign up to serve.
The first ever tri-service recruitment service will provide a streamlined, single-entry point for prospective recruits, with the aim of attracting the best talent from across the country into the armed forces to strengthen national security. The service will launch in 2027, replacing the individual schemes run by the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force.
Existing processes have struggled to meet the evolving needs of modern recruitment, with inefficiencies and delays leading to fewer than 1 in 10 applicants joining in 2023.
Under the innovative new recruitment service, candidates will complete one application and one medical evaluation via a single, digital system—offering a more straightforward process that seeks to retain applicant interest.
Our ambition is for those who apply to serve our country to receive a conditional answer within 10 days and a training start date within 30 days.
The new contract will ensure better value for taxpayer money and better outcomes for our armed forces. The Ministry of Defence will mimic the Cabinet Office’s standard model services contract, allowing for decisive action on supplier-caused performance issues through profit-based performance goals and contract break-clauses.
Developed in partnership with Serco, the new programme will ultimately help to ensure that the UK military remains ready to face emerging threats while enhancing the support for those who serve.
AFRS will also see service personnel playing an active role in the recruitment process, leveraging their unique skills and experience to engage the next generation of military professionals.
This Government are deeply proud of those who serve our country and we are determined to fix the crisis in recruitment and retention we inherited.
These are just the latest actions this Government are taking to put people at the heart of defence. Since July we have delivered the largest pay rise for service personnel in over 20 years—including a 35% pay increase for new recruits—scrapped more than 100 outdated policies that slow down or block recruitment, and are progressing through Parliament legislation to establish an Armed Forces Commissioner to champion service personnel and their families.
By making it quicker and easier for people to sign up to serve, while maintaining the very highest standards, we will strengthen our armed forces and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad.
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Nuclear Energy: Consenting and Regulation
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
The UK’s nuclear sector is at the beginning of a significant expansion in both civil and defence nuclear programmes and will play a key role in delivering the Government’s clean energy superpower mission. Given the sector’s contribution to economic growth, this Government will ensure the right enablers are in place, including effective and proportionate regulation and a suitably flexible planning framework.
The Prime Minister is commissioning an independent taskforce to look at the regulatory framework and regulations affecting nuclear across both civil and defence sectors. The task force will examine how to deliver nuclear faster and cost-effectively in support of growth and innovation, while maintaining the UK’s high standards of nuclear safety, security and non-proliferation. It will be led by an independent expert and will report to the Prime Minister and present options to me, the Defence Secretary, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury to consider in summer 2025.
To improve the planning framework for nuclear infra-structure, today I laid a draft national policy statement (NPS) on nuclear energy infrastructure, called EN-7, before Parliament.
The energy NPSs set out national energy planning policy and form the framework for my decision-making on applications for development consent for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIP) concerning energy under the Planning Act 2008. EN-7 sets out the policy for considering development consent applications for new nuclear fission infrastructure. It introduces a criteria-based approach, removes the deployment deadline for new projects, and expands the range of technologies covered to include small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors in addition to the existing gigawatt-scale reactors. The new planning framework is robust, transparent and agile and will empower developers to identify potentially suitable sites against a robust set of criteria ensuring safety, sustainability and the mitigation of impacts on the host community.
This is the beginning of the formal parliamentary procedure to designate it and bring it into force as provided for in the Planning Act 2008. From the day on which the draft EN-7 is laid, Parliament will have a “relevant period” according to the Planning Act 2008 to review the draft EN-7, raise questions and make recommendations. The relevant period for EN-7 will start on 6 February 2025 and elapse no sooner than 23 June 2025, provided I have discharged my duty to lay a statement before Parliament addressing any resolutions passed by either House or recommendations made by parliamentary Committees regarding the draft EN-7. A public consultation on EN-7 will run alongside this stage of the parliamentary procedure. Officials will summarise responses to this consultation for interested parliamentary Committees once they have all been received.
After the relevant period has elapsed, the NPS will be laid in Parliament in its final form for approval by resolution by the House of Commons, or by deemed consent by the House of Commons following a 21-sitting-day “consideration period”.
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Energy Infrastructure Planning Projects
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
This statement concerns an application for development consent made under the Planning Act 2008 by Rampion Extension Development Ltd for the construction and operation of an offshore generating station comprised of up to 90 wind turbine generators, off the coast of West Sussex.
Under section 107(1) of the Planning Act 2008, the Secretary of State must make a decision on an application within three months of the receipt of the examining authority’s report unless exercising the power under section 107(3) of the Act to set a new deadline. Where a new deadline is set, the Secretary of State must make a statement to Parliament to announce it.
The statutory deadline for the decision on the Rampion 2 offshore wind farm extension project was 6 February 2025. I have decided to allow an extension and to set a new deadline of 4 April 2025. This is to allow time to request further information.
The decision to set the new deadline for this application is without prejudice to the decision on whether to grant or refuse development consent.
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Official Development Assistance: Programme Allocations 2024-25
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Minister for Development (Anneliese Dodds)
The FCDO annual report and accounts 2023-24, published in July 2024, set out that the FCDO would provide updates in due course on its 2024-25 official development assistance spending plans. FCDO ODA (£000) Regional programmes Africa 1,545,073 Democratic Republic of the Congo 107,471 Ethiopia 216,900 Ghana and Liberia 16,125 Kenya 79,126 Malawi 50,388 Mozambique 49,207 Nigeria 116,972 Other African countries1 1,753 Africa Programmes and Expertise Department 138,184 Rwanda 31,238 Sahel, Sudan and South Sudan Department2 102,100 Sierra Leone 29,805 Somalia 142,645 South Africa 14,033 South Sudan 134,125 Sudan 140,315 Tanzania 55,963 Uganda 45,681 Zambia 41,715 Zimbabwe 31,327 Americas 85,955 Brazil 87 Caribbean Development Team 84,000 Colombia 1,295 Other American countries3 573 Overseas Territories 97,633 Overseas Territories 97,633 Europe 31,900 Turkey 18,900 Western Balkans 13,000 Eastern Europe and Central Asia 264,056 Central Asia4 12,686 Eastern neighbourhood5 14,330 Other eastern European and central Asian countries6 290 Ukraine 236,750 Indo Pacific 279,718 Bangladesh 61,200 India 2,000 Indo Pacific Regional Team 43,780 Indonesia 44,771 Myanmar 65,041 Nepal 60,138 Other South Asia Countries7 195 Other South East Asia and Pacific Countries8 2,593 Middle East and North Africa 852,545 Afghanistan 171,000 Egypt 4,000 Iraq 5,175 Jordan 68,000 Lebanon 56,075 Middle East and North Africa regional team 31,000 Occupied Palestinian Territories 129,000 Pakistan 98,753 Syria 145,542 Yemen 144,000 Regional Programmes Total 3,156,880 Policy priorities, international organisations and humanitarian British investment partnerships 1,147,195 Centre for Delivery 697 Development and open societies 76,328 Trade and economic security 14,426 Economics and evaluation 8,902 Education, gender and equality 499,423 Energy, climate and environment 433,304 Europe 389,000 Health 980,736 Humanitarian, migration and food security 307,436 International finance 999,126 Multilateral and human rights 13,945 Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation 22,000 Research and evidence 499,356 Policy priorities, international organisations and humanitarian total 5,391,874 Non-departmental public bodies and scholarships total 224,300 BBC World Service total 76,900 Multilateral subscriptions to international organisations total 84,029 Other central programmes total 35,362 Crisis reserve total9 15,000 Integrated Security Fund (ISF) total10 316,135 Total 9,300,480
ODA is central for delivering the Government’s mission to help create a world free from poverty on a liveable planet, working in a modern, genuine partnership with the global south. FCDO’s ODA spending will be used to achieve better development outcomes as part of a coherent international approach, with a strong focus on poverty reduction and accelerating progress on the sustainable development goals. Our approach to development will deliver inclusive growth, tackle the climate crisis and address irregular migration.
Plans to reduce asylum costs are creating more space in the ODA budget to spend on our international development priorities overseas. This is reflected in the FCDO’s ODA programme budget for 2024-25 and 2025-26.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I are determined that the FCDO’s ODA spending will reach those who need it most, listening to our partners, and focusing on where the UK can have the biggest impact, delivering value for money for the British taxpayer.
Since coming into office, the Foreign Secretary and I have reviewed the FCDO’s ODA plans for the current financial year, 2024-25. Our objective has been to prioritise predictability and stability in budgets after years of turbulence under the previous Government. We have therefore not reduced planned budgets except in relatively few areas where circumstances meant teams were unable to deliver their full budgets, or where some reprioritisation has been required to respond to changes in operating context. With these exceptions, reductions from previously published spending plans identified in the data below are a result of the previous Government’s decisions.
Instead, our focus has been on ensuring any reallocations or increases in spending needed to meet the Government’s commitment to spend 0.5% of GNI on ODA each calendar year have been targeted effectively. For example, we have delivered a major increase of £113m in humanitarian funding for people in Sudan and those who have fled to neighbouring countries, doubling our commitment to Sudan and the region this year.
I would now like to update the House on our indicative 2024-25 ODA spending plans. Due to the dynamic nature of the FCDO’s global work, programme plans are continually reviewed and adjusted in-year. Final out- turn data and future planned allocations will be published in the 2024-25 FCDO annual report and accounts in summer 2025.
1. Other African countries includes Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Eswatini, Guinea, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, and the Gambia.
2. Included in Sahel, Sudan and South Sudan Department are the regional programmes—allocated separately to the country allocations: Sudan; South Sudan.
3. Other American countries includes Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Latin America Department, Network Ops, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.
4. Central Asia includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
5. Eastern neighbourhood includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova.
6. Other eastern European and central Asian countries includes Belarus and regional spend which cannot be attributed to a single country.
7. Other south Asia Countries includes Maldives and Sri Lanka.
8. Other south-east Asia and Pacific countries includes Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Fiji, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Tonga, Vietnam and Vanuatu.
9. The crisis reserve for 2024-25 was set at £50 million with £35 million allocated out to the approved countries in-year.
10. From April 2024, CSSF was renamed to the UK Integrated Security Fund (ISF). ISF spend by regional, cross regional and non-discretionary theme is reported in the ISF annual report.
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Improving Social Housing Quality and Strengthening Tenant Voice
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Angela Rayner)
Alongside our commitment to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation, the Government are determined to drive a transformational and lasting change in the safety and quality of social housing.
The Government recognise that many social housing landlords provide safe and decent homes to their tenants, ensure they receive services that meet their needs, and act quickly to resolve complaints.
We appreciate the vital role that providers of social housing play, and we commend those who strive continuously to ensure they are fulfilling their core purpose and are treating their tenants with fairness and respect. We remain committed to working in partnership with the sector to improve the quality of life for those living in social housing across the country.
However, it is not in dispute that far too many tenants still live in homes that are not well managed or maintained and often struggle to secure adequate redress. English housing survey data makes clear that in 2023, 7% of social rented homes had a damp problem and 4% had hazards rated at the most dangerous category 1 level. It is imperative that we take action to address this indefensible situation.
This statement sets out the next steps the Government intend to take to clamp down on damp, mould and other hazards in social homes by introducing Awaab’s law to the social rented sector. It also updates the House on other measures we will introduce in due course to drive up the safety and quality of social homes.
Awaab’s law
I wish to pay tribute once again to the parents of Awaab Ishak, Faisal Abdullah and Aisha Amin. They have tenaciously and courageously fought to secure justice, not only for their son but for all of those who live in social housing.
Awaab’s law is vital legislation that will empower social tenants to hold their landlords to account using the full force of the law if they fail to investigate and fix hazards within their homes within set timescales. It will also allow tenants to access the housing ombudsman if their landlord does not adhere to strict timelines for action.
While progress is also dependent on a more fundamental change in the culture and values of social housing providers, Awaab’s law will play an integral role in ensuring that all social landlords take complaints about hazards seriously; respond to them in a timely and professional manner; and treat tenants with empathy, dignity and respect.
Over 1,000 responses to the consultation on Awaab’s law were received from social housing landlords, social housing tenants, industry experts and members of the public. The Government thank everyone who took the time to respond for their constructive engagement on this critical policy.
We have carefully considered all the responses submitted to the consultation and have been working closely with campaigners, social housing tenants, and social landlords to ensure the implementation of this landmark reform will be effective, proportionate and of lasting benefit to social housing tenants. We will publish shortly the full Government response to the consultation alongside further detail on Awaab’s law and guidance to support implementation.
The Government will bring Awaab’s law into force for the social rented sector from October this year. We intend to act as quickly as possible to bring all relevant hazards within the scope of new legal requirements, but to ensure its effective implementation we will implement Awaab’s law through a phased approach.
This sequencing will allow us to apply the protections that Awaab’s law provides to damp and mould earlier than would be the case if we sought to apply it to a wider group of hazards from the outset. It will also provide for an initial period of testing and learning to ensure the reform is being delivered in a way that benefits social tenants and secures the lasting legacy that Awaab Ishak’s family have fought so hard for. As we progressively extend the application of Awaab’s law, we will continue to test and learn to make sure the new legal requirements are operating effectively.
While we believe a phased approach is the best means of putting in place a law that works, we appreciate fully that both social landlords and tenants want clarity and certainty about when all hazards will be covered by Awaab’s law. The proposed phasing will be as follows:
From October 2025 social landlords will be required to address damp and mould hazards that present a significant risk of harm to tenants, within fixed timescales. From the same point in time, they will also have to address all emergency repairs, whether they relate to damp and mould or any other hazard, as soon as possible and within no longer than 24 hours.
In 2026, requirements will expand to apply to a wider range of hazards beyond damp and mould. The hazards we expect to extend Awaab’s law to in this second stage of implementation include excess cold and excess heat; falls; structural collapse; fire, electrical and explosions; and hygiene hazards.
Then in 2027, the requirements of Awaab’s law will expand to apply to the remaining hazards as defined by the HHSRS (excluding overcrowding). The full list of hazards can be found in schedule 1 to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005.
It is important to stress that the phased approach to introducing Awaab’s law set out above in no way means that social landlords have any leeway when it comes to meeting their existing duties to address dangers to health and safety present in their homes before Awaab’s law is fully implemented.
Awaab’s law establishes timeframes for social landlords to act. It will also be enforceable through routes such as the housing ombudsman and, ultimately, the courts. However, social landlords already have a duty to keep their homes fit for human habitation and free of category 1 hazards and to remedy disrepair. The Government expect those duties to be met. Social landlords must ensure that their homes meet the decent homes standard, and it is critical that they take action as quickly as possible to resolve any issues of concern in the homes they let and to guarantee the safety and comfort of their occupants.
We intend to lay regulations in Parliament to implement Awaab’s law on the basis of the sequencing outlined above as quickly as possible and will work to provide the sector with clarity and the necessary time to prepare ahead of the damp and mould requirements coming into force in October. Precise timings on the commencement of each phrase will be set out in those regulations.
Transforming social housing and putting tenants at its heart
Every social housing tenant deserves to live in a home that is decent, safe and secure and to receive a high-quality service from their landlord. However, it is also critical that tenants have a strong voice and that more is done to build trust and transparency between landlords and tenants.
Change is already under way. Having listened and heard both the Grenfell community and the family of Awaab Ishak, we are acting on the lessons so painfully learned from these entirely preventable injustices.
Since April 2024 a new consumer regulatory regime has been in force for social housing. The regulator of social housing now proactively seeks assurances that registered providers are meeting the outcomes set by consumer standards and it has stronger powers to hold social landlords accountable for providing quality homes and services to their tenants.
The consumer standards not only require landlords to provide an effective, efficient and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvements service, but also to take tenants’ views into account in their decision-making and give tenants a wide range of meaningful opportunities to influence and scrutinise their strategies, policies and services.
Alongside this, the Housing Ombudsman Service now has stronger powers and greater capacity to ensure social tenants have faster and easier access to redress when things go wrong, and that landlords take appropriate action when the ombudsman finds evidence of mismanagement.
In the coming months we will bring forward further reforms designed to drive up standards across social housing to build greater trust and transparency between landlords and tenants. The Government will:
Consult on a new decent homes standard and minimum energy efficiency standards, to ensure tenants’ homes are made safe, warm, and free from disrepair;
Legislate to require social landlords to carry out electrical safety checks at least every five years, as well as mandatory appliance inspections on all electrical appliances that are provided by the landlord;
Introduce new access to information requirements for private registered providers, so tenants can request information about the management of their homes, to support them in holding their landlords to account; and
Set new standards for the competence and conduct of staff, to ensure tenants are always treated with dignity and to support the creation of a thriving, professional and skilled social housing workforce.
We are also taking powers through the Renters’ Rights Bill to extend Awaab’s law to the private rented sector. We will be consulting in due course on how to apply Awaab’s law to privately rented homes in a way that works for the sector and is fair and proportionate for tenants and landlords.
Lastly, we must make sure that tenants’ voices are heard. We already have a range of initiatives in place including our social housing resident panel and our Four Million Homes tenant education programme and Make Things Right communications campaign, which supports tenants to better understand and exercise their rights. The Government are exploring what more might be done to strengthen tenant voice so that tenants can speak for themselves on a more equal footing with other interests and can more effectively influence policymaking and regulation.
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Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Altrincham
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent commencement of this section until a full impact assessment is published for schools and universities.
Lord Altrincham (Con)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 35 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Barran and to support Amendment 43 in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. Amendment 35 would delay the commencement of Clause 2 until an impact assessment had been published to fully assess the impact that this tax will have on schools and universities. Amendment 43 increases the employment allowance to £20,000 for universities.
The Government have quite a lot going on in education, with changes to private schools, academies, standards, teacher recruitment and mental health services. This Bill introduces a tax on education, breaking with the long tradition of avoiding taxes on education where possible, which are to the detriment of children and society. This tax increase will be implemented in the middle of a school year, which will put the most vulnerable schools at risk, regardless of how they are funded later. The policy has clearly failed to consider the impact an immediate tax rise will have. The IFS recently published a study indicating that, in the 2025-26 academic year, costs will outweigh funding. Since staffing costs tend to take up a large proportion of a school’s budget, there can be no doubt that this jobs tax will play a role in this funding crisis.
I turn to universities. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has mentioned previously, this tax increase will cost universities an estimated £372 million a year, as calculated by Universities UK. This is quite a vulnerable sector, as we know. For example, Coventry University has shared that the increase in fees will provide £1.5 million to £2 million in additional income, but the increase in national insurance that it faces will cost £3 million. The Government have given with one hand and taken with the other, as universities expected this fee increase to support their finances. Instead, it will be more than wiped out by the tax increase, when universities across the country already face financial difficulties.
Ultimately, our students will be forced to pay the price for these decisions, whether through further increased fees or a reduction in teaching staff for universities to sustain themselves. It is disheartening that the Government are not supporting our young people to pursue higher education. I am concerned that this group is already quite vulnerable in society, with youth unemployment sitting at around 14% in the final quarter of 2024, compared with the national unemployment rate of 4.4%. We talked about this and the problem of NEETs earlier in Committee. The rate of unemployment for our young people is already three times higher than the national average. To increase costs on education will leave the more highly educated people in this group who cannot find a job in more debt than before. In the 2022-23 academic year, there were 2.9 million students across our universities and nearly 400,000 staff. This Bill will have a negative consequence on all of them.
I urge the Government to think carefully about the choices they are making and the impacts this will have across society. We ask them to pause and consider the impact on schools and universities, just to be sure that it does not affect performance, given the vulnerability of young people at the moment and the Government’s objective to increase the number of teachers in the system. I beg to move.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendments in this group: Amendment 35 from my noble friend Lady Barran, which asks for the new employer rates to begin after the tax year in which an impact assessment is published in respect of schools and universities, and Amendment 43 from my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, to which my noble friend Lord Altrincham has added his support and which asks for a higher education allowance. I do so not only because the education of children is an obligation for their parents, who must ensure that children of compulsory school age are receiving an education—most do this in schools—but because, in this country, with its tradition of support for freedom of conscience as an enabling state, not a domineering one, Governments have gone hand in glove with the right of parents to decide what sort of education is best for their children. In these matters, the state has enabled parents to choose, rather than forcing them into state institutions through financial penalties or totalitarian laws.
That view has been part of the political arrangements for education when, irrespective of who is in power, the tradition has been that, where the law requires, the state enables. Barring the often political and ideological debates over education, it has done so through, among other ways, funding. Initially, it was a grant in the mid-19th century. That was followed in the 1870s by Gladstone’s Liberal Party introducing the obligation on parents of elementary education, but he refused the demands of what he called the “Prussian element” in his own party, who wanted to supersede the voluntary schools and replace them with a comprehensive, uniform state system. Thus, he allowed to survive, and indeed encouraged, what we now call voluntary schools: independent schools and Church schools which have educated children in this country for centuries. He expressly supported the right of parents to choose the best education for their children. Voluntary schools would be supported and supplemented by the new board or state schools.
That principle continued to inform education law in this country throughout the 20th century. Indeed, Britain’s history is a proud one. The education of children and young adults was often at the public’s expense, supported by those who could or would pay—be that the monarch, the guilds, the city corporations, the ratepayers or, later, in our own centuries, the taxpayer. In fact, until relatively recently, this country was an exemplar in educating its people irrespective of their parents’ means.
Under Elizabeth I, that tradition was recognised in law at the very start of the 17th century, when education was designated in law as a charity. Under the Tudors, some of the most famous schools had been just that: public schools. Winchester and then Eton were founded by the monarchs of the day to educate, as I recall, 70 poor boys so that their school education would equip them to go on to one of the universities of the day and be employed, I think, mainly as professional clerks in the Church, at the monarch’s service—a precursor to the Civil Service.
Anyway, many of those schools—Anglican, Catholic and dissenter—continue to flourish today, as Gladstone would have wanted. Not only were these schools regarded as the foundation of the education system, they were supported and encouraged in law through public funds. However, even if the funding systems changed, they were never penalised by discriminatory tax, as will happen under what this Government propose, not only in the extension of VAT but in the discriminatory penalty of the new NIC rates.
Despite stiff competition, they continue to be popular with parents, educating hundreds and thousands of children across the whole country. An impact assessment would reveal the true cost to children’s education and allow for a pause before this unthinking rush to destroy what works well and, as we have heard many times in this Room, continues to supplement what the state does and what the general taxpayer can afford.
There are 2,600 independent schools in the UK, mostly catering for the early years and primary stages of school. They educate more than 620,000 children, nearly 7% of UK school pupils and half of the parents who were at maintained schools: 25% in Edinburgh, 13% in London and 20% of all sixth-formers in the UK. They teach well. I will not go through the Ofsted reports on each of these schools but, on the whole, they do very well—better than maintained schools do on the whole, I am afraid, although some excellent maintained schools have done wonders recently; I take my hat off to them. They provide a school education to the highest potential of each individual student—just as the principles of the 1944 Act put it—which their parents judged was right for them.
I understand that one policy of this Government is an ambitious concentration on growing the public sector, with large pay increases—an aim of this Government that may go counter to the priority of economic growth for the whole economy. Perhaps the Minister would like to say, now or in writing, how many of the 28,000 new public sector appointments between July’s and October’s Budgets included new teachers and new doctors. Without good-enough teachers in our schools, maintained or independent, children at every stage of their education—early years and compulsory—will suffer.
Unless the Government listen and think again on these modest amendments, children’s education at this vital early and compulsory stage will suffer, as some independent and voluntary schools will be forced to lay off staff and will probably try to raise their fee income to make ends meet. They are the target of penal taxation, with the imposition of VAT and the new employer NIC hike. They are discriminated against because maintained schools will have these rises funded.
These amendments do not seek to run a coach and four through the measure. They are not demanding the outright abolition of the employer’s new NICs or the employment allowance, but they seek to improve the legislation. Wherever they are educated, we see the fruits of an education suited to the individual child. It is an essential stepping stone to adult life in which the recipient flourishes, and so the whole of society benefits. Education is not only a private good for a child; it is a public good for all of us and all who live in our country.
These are modest amendments designed to assess and ameliorate the impact on the independent sector—not to deny the Government their measure, but to do due diligence and mitigate the damage of an otherwise flawed measure. I hope that the Minister and the Government, in the spirit of the historic Labour Party, will be at one with the tradition of responsibility for the education of the young, in whatever institutions of the country they inherit, and will stop short of a new tax levy that will penalise those institutions and the education of our children. I hope that they will assess fairly the impact of the proposed measure on independent schools and will think again.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 35. I declare an interest as a member of council at UCL.
On the first day of Committee, I spoke in support of my noble friend Lord Storey’s amendment on education, including universities, as the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, mentioned. That amendment would have excluded specified groups, including universities, from the rise in the employer’s contribution. We prefer exclusion to the delays promoted by Amendment 35. We prefer exclusion because of the disastrous damage that this Bill will quickly inflict on, among other things, our higher education system. We are uncertain whether similar damage will be inflicted on our further education system. Some additional money appears to be promised to FE, but it is not clear how it is going to be allocated. There is talk, for example, of it being used to fund a pay rise.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government recognise the great value of UK higher education in creating opportunity and social mobility, as an engine for growth in our economy and in supporting local communities. The Budget provided £6.1 billion of support for core research and confirmed the Government’s commitment to the lifelong learning entitlement, a major reform to student finance that will expand access to high-quality, flexible education and training for adults throughout their working lives.
The Secretary of State for Education has also confirmed that maximum fees will rise in the academic year 2025-26 for the first time since 2017, from £9,250 to £9,535 for a standard full-time undergraduate course. This was a difficult decision that demonstrates that the Government are serious about the need to put our world-leading higher education sector on a secure footing. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, asked for some specific figures in terms of the additional funding; I will happily write to him with those.
This amendment would, however, introduce new pressures that would have to be met by either higher borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. In addition, creating new thresholds or rates based on what sector a business is in would introduce distortion and additional complexity into the tax system. Likewise, delaying commencement of this Bill would reduce the revenue generated from it and, as with the previous amendment, would therefore 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 said in previous days of this Committee, 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 previous changes to taxation, and the Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments.
In the light of the points I have made, I respectfully ask noble Lords to withdraw or not press their amendments.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, before he sits down, would the Minister care to comment on the impact—indeed, the double whammy—of taxation for the independent school sector? After assessing the imposition of that, it is now going to be impacted by national insurance too. Can he also comment on the impact on the teachers in terms of pension provision?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I apologise—I did not catch the start of the noble Lord’s question. I am not quite sure what the question is.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
The Minister did not comment on the impact on the independent schools sector, which is already reeling from the impact of the VAT that has been imposed on it and the assessments that have been made, including independent schools talking about pension provisions for teachers.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am not sure that I would share that characterisation from the noble Lord of the VAT policy. We have published an impact assessment for both that policy and this policy. We have no intention of publishing further impact assessments.
Lord Altrincham (Con)
I thank noble Lords who have spoken on this group. I thank my noble friend Lady Lawlor for reminding us that education is a public good and for her little history lesson on the delicacy of our educational settlement, not just in the 19th century but going all the way back to Queen Elizabeth I and before; it was most helpful. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, who reminded us that, for this section of the Bill and more broadly, the consequence of these tax rises is policy-driven unemployment. We already know that jobs are going to come out. The noble Lord pointed out that 10,000 jobs may come out of higher education; with 10,000 here or there, the numbers could build up quite quickly.
It is in that context that we ask the Government to approach this area with great caution. The Minister has responded that they have looked very carefully and are aware of the issues, and they are, in their judgment, proceeding with great care. In the light of the Minister’s comments, I thank him and beg leave to withdraw.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
“(2A) After section 1(2), insert— “(2A) For an employer in the social care sector, the employment allowance for the tax year is—(a) £20,000, or(b) if less, an amount equal to the total amount of the liabilities mentioned in subsection (1)(b) which are not excluded liabilities.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Neville-Rolfe to this Clause, would increase the employment allowance for employers in the social care sector from £10,500 to £20,000. This amendment seeks to probe the Government’s openness to supporting those providing social care and the cost of that to the Exchequer.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I rise to move the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Altrincham, and to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley. These amendments are not merely technical adjustments; they represent a critical step in recognising and supporting the social care sector, which remains indispensable to our society.
Amendment 47 proposes an increase in the employment allowance available to employers in the social care sector, raising it from £10,500 to £20,000 per tax year. This increase is of profound importance. Our social care providers are grappling with rising operational costs, staffing challenges and the ever-present need to deliver high-quality care to some of our most vulnerable citizens. By enhancing the employment allowance, we are providing smaller employers with essential financial relief that will help to sustain their operations in the light of the brutal national insurance increases, retain skilled and valuable staff and invest in the quality improvements that our social care users so desperately need.
For too long, the funding constraints on social care providers have meant that many have had to make painful compromises, such as reducing staff numbers, cutting back on training or deferring vital infrastructure improvements. These compromises ultimately diminish the quality of care provided and place additional strain on an already overstretched system. Increasing the allowance would acknowledge that social care is not a peripheral service, but a core pillar of our public support system, deserving of the same robust backing as the NHS, which is being compensated for the additional NICs charges.
Moreover, this amendment recognises the unique cost structures within the social care sector. Unlike other industries, social care providers face significant regulatory and operational burdens. They must meet stringent care standards, invest in specialised training and often operate in environments where margins are exceptionally thin. They are the backbone of a sector that touches so many lives. The Local Government Association estimates that the NICs charges create £1.77 billion in additional costs for councils, with £637 million for directly employed staff and £1.13 billion through indirect costs, via commissioned providers, including £628 million for adult social care alone. These are big figures.
There is also an important symbolic dimension to these amendments. By focusing on the social care sector, we are sending a clear message that the care of our elderly, our disabled and our most vulnerable is a national priority. This sector has often been on the back foot, underfunded and overlooked. Today we are recognising its importance and taking concrete steps to bolster it. In doing so, we honour the dedication of countless social care workers who deliver care with compassion, often under extremely challenging circumstances.
In conclusion, these amendments will provide a much-needed boost to the employment allowance for social care providers and introduce a mechanism of accountability that will ensure that the measures are delivering the intended benefits. They are a testament to our commitment to support a sector that is foundational in the well-being of our communities. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting these amendments, recognising that those struggling with disabilities and an ever-ageing community, partly thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, need our help. We need to invest in a stronger, fairer and more caring society.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 47 and my own Amendment 65, which is yet another request for an impact assessment. I raised the issues that small businesses and charities will have at our last session, but I shall focus on the social care sector, for some of the reasons that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has explained. This sector faces particular challenges, and to apply a one-size-fits-all to every employer in the UK is in this instance simply heartless and smacks of a policy rushed through without proper consideration of the particular issues in the sector.
The recent Budget, while providing additional funding to social care, does not go far enough to meet the needs of a sector facing increased costs from the rising national living wage and employers’ NI contributions. There is the £600 million grant, which we assume is to be shared between adult and children’s social care, but it is far from sufficient to address the estimated £3.7 billion increase in costs facing providers due to the changes announced in the Budget, which represent the 10.6% increase in pay from April 2025.
We know of course that councils will be expected to fill much of this gap through council tax precepts and local revenue, but, even with the £600 million grant, there is still a £1.3 billion shortfall that local authorities have. That figure relates only to the basic costs of providing care, with no consideration of inflation, the resources required to address ongoing workforce challenges, or the increased capacity, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe mentioned, of a growing ageing population. Because of this, there are reasons to believe that the estimates of a £2.24 billion gap for older person residential care is a conservative figure. If this is added to the homecare deficit, reported to be £1.76 billion, and the unquantified gap for working-age adults, the total gap between the average fee paid by local authorities and the actual costs of providing care could be significantly higher than the £4 billion.
I appreciate that these figures are so large that it is possibly difficult to take them all in and relate to them. If I may, I shall look on a micro basis at organisations I happen to know about personally. I am sure that each of us has a connection with such an organisation locally. In my case, I have connections with Jewish Care, which is Anglo-Jewry’s leading health and social care charity for the Jewish community in London and the south-east. It touches the lives of 12,000 people every week—including, of course, Holocaust survivors.
Jewish Care operates nine care homes, which provide a range of services, including fabulous residential care and also dementia care, mental health care and nursing care. It manages four retirement living schemes and an assisted living scheme, nine community centres and three centres for people living with dementia. My interest is that I was a trustee of Jewish Care, and I am still a proud fundraiser for it. I have been a patron for more than 25 years. I am grateful to Jewish Care for sharing with me its concerns, which reflect those of the whole industry.
In context, Jewish Care raises some £20 million in revenue donations—voluntary gifts. The total increase in workforce costs as a result of this Budget is estimated by Jewish Care at £1.1 million. The increase in the percentage for NICs from 13.8% to 15% increases the workforce costs by £400,000 and the lowering of the threshold, which we all know about, results in a further £700,000—hence £1.1 million.
Of course, it is disproportionately affected because it is a large employer with very many part-time staff. The immediate impact is that carers’ salaries will not be raised, as would otherwise have been the case. It will also force the charity to make choices about how care homes are operated and, just as importantly, to divert investments in other community-focused services. One specific example is that, until the announcement of the NI increases, it was planning to open a much-needed dementia day centre. It was all planned and ready to go, but these additional costs have forced Jewish Care to put that on hold. This is real damage that the Government are causing to people’s lives, and it is particularly poignant because both Wes Streeting and the Prime Minister proclaimed themselves, as recently as last June, just before the election, to be huge supporters of this charity and its objectives.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I am speaking here as a winding speaker. The Committee will know that, on Monday, we discussed this whole sector in great detail, and the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, has echoed the numbers and essentially the substance of that first discussion.
We on these Benches take a very different conclusion about an impact assessment with a potential delay attached and £10,000 per institution. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, gave an example of one of his particular interests facing a £1.1 million additional charge, so I do not think that £10,000 is going to make a ha’porth of difference to it. We think that the proposals are completely inadequate. We have always said that we need the exclusion of this whole sector from the changes in the NICs levies, and on that we stand our ground.
I shall say again to the Minister, who often replies that the Government have given an extra £600 million to this sector, that the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, and I have exactly the same figures, and the cost of the NICs Bill alone for this sector, according to the Nuffield Trust, is £900 million. So we are already £300 million behind, and that £600 million was meant to fill a whole lot of other cost gaps that continue for this sector, which is so crucial to our society.
I was interested to listen to the Conservatives on this issue. I was looking it up today: migrant workers make up 32% of care workers in England. Those figures are from November 2024. As I understand the policy announcement today, I am sure that the Conservative Party thinks that these are wonderful people to be able to look after our elderly and empty the bedpans, but they will be throwing them out of the country as soon as they have finished work, because they will not be permitted to become British citizens. So to me there is some interesting contradiction in this respect for the individuals and the assessment that they are not fit to be British. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, sees no conflict in that, but I suspect that many others will see it, and I am sure that my party does: when we tell these people that they are valued and respected, we really mean it.
Once again, we do not think that these amendments are adequate to the need, and we stand our ground on the amendments that we first moved—but then, of course, under Committee rules, withdrew—on Monday.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I shall address the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lords, Lord Altrincham and Lord Leigh of Hurley, which seek to increase the value of the employment allowance for those providing social care, and the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, which seeks to require the laying in Parliament of an impact assessment on social care providers 12 months after commencement and every 12 months subsequently.
As a result of the measures in this Bill, combined with wider Budget measures, the Government have provided a real-terms increase in core local government spending power of 3.5% in 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. Increasing the employment allowance for specific sectors would introduce new pressures that would require either higher borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. It would also add complexity to the tax system.
The Government of course carefully consider the impacts of all policies, including the changes to employer national insurance. As I have said previously, 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. In light of those points, I respectfully ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. I hope he will take away noble Lords’ concerns about the social care sector, because there seems to be agreement that we have a problem. I thank my noble friend Lord Leigh for his careful analysis and his examples of individual carers from Jewish Care, the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group and Age UK, whose work in Wales and Scotland he also mentioned.
There is a strong case for looking at this area again. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, may differ on how we should do it, but there is agreement on the problem. The Minister confirmed the figure that I used at Second Reading, explaining that the cost of NICs would outweigh the £800 million for social care—which we were very glad to see in the Budget. That is not a great net position.
The proposal for an annual assessment of the impact on social care is not a bureaucratic requirement, but a vital mechanism of accountability and continuous improvement. By compelling the Chancellor and the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament an annual report detailing the impact of these provisions, we can ensure that there is an ongoing dialogue between policymakers and those on the front lines of care delivery.
It serves several key purposes. First, it provides transparency, which I think the House is increasingly interested in, and allows Parliament and, by extension, the public to understand how policy changes are affecting social care providers in real time. This level of openness is essential to maintaining public trust and ensuring that government policies are working as intended. Secondly, it creates a framework for evidence-based policy-making. By regularly reviewing the impact of the increased employment allowance, the Government can adjust their approach to ensure that their measures are effective. Finally, importantly, it signals to social care providers that the Government are committed to monitoring and supporting their performance through not just lip service but concrete measures. The challenges facing the social care sector are not only multifaceted but serious, and demographic changes mean that the demand for social care services is set to rise dramatically in the years ahead.
An annual impact assessment would ensure that we remain vigilant. It would provide a structured opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the allowance increase and other changes, to identify unintended consequences and to take corrective action if necessary. I have spoken at length but, in the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment for today.
Baroness Noakes
“(2A) After section 1(2), insert— “(2A) If the person is a public authority, the amount of the employment allowance in subsection (1)(2)(a) is £20,000.(2B) A public authority means 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.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would give a higher employment allowance to persons carrying out functions of a public nature.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 55 and 56. I thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for adding her name to these amendments.
They deal with two aspects of the employment allowance: public authorities and the employment of people with personal or household care. We heard earlier in Committee that, under the National Insurance Contributions Act 2014, the employment allowance is not available to public authorities and that the term “public authority” includes bodies in the private sector whose activities are at least 50% the performance of functions of a public nature. GPs and NHS dentists have been cited as among those caught by this definition. Amendment 55 would remove this exception for public authorities so that they would be able to claim the employment allowance and Amendment 54 would create a £20,000 level of employment allowance for public authorities.
The effect of this Bill is that all public authorities will pay the higher rate of national insurance calculated on the lower secondary threshold, but none of them will get an employment allowance. Amendment 55 would give them an employment allowance of £10,500, while Amendment 54 would increase that to £20,000. We know that the Chancellor intends to spend around £5 billion each year on reimbursing public authorities, which are classified to the public sector. Since my amendment would reduce the national insurance costs borne by those public sector authorities, it would simply reduce the amount of money that the Chancellor would have to reimburse in her money-go-round and offer a practical benefit for public authorities in the private sector. This would not be a full exemption, which the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has argued for in relation to GPs and dentists, but it would soften the blow of the national insurance increases. If there ever was a justification for excluding GPs and dentists from the employment allowance, that went out of the window when the Chancellor introduced her jobs tax.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I think that the amendments we discussed on Monday would have covered the public authorities issue but I am not absolutely sure, so clarification from the Minister would be extremely helpful. Can he also clarify for us the protections put in place for micro-businesses? The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is usually right when she identifies these issues. It is beginning to sound as though the sector is somehow not qualifying for that level of protection. It would be most helpful to understand that.
Lord Altrincham (Con)
I thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for her amendments in this group; for her extremely well-made case as to how we might look to soften the blow for public services and the private sector; and for drawing attention to so many areas on the edge of public services that will be affected, such as dentists and childcare jobs. This is where the impact will be widely felt across the country.
On Amendments 54 and 55, the Government have stated that the purpose of this Bill is to repair the public finances. A key aspect of this plan is to ensure that public authorities can continue to operate efficiently without being overly burdened by rising employment costs. By increasing the employment allowance for public authorities to £20,000, we would reduce the financial pressure on them to provide essential services. Increasing the employment allowance specifically helps offset rising staffing costs, which are expected only to grow as the Government invest more in public services.
As the Government focus on boosting public sector capacity to meet future challenges in depopulation, the higher allowance would support that goal. It would provide greater flexibility to focus on improving service quality and enhancing delivery without worrying about escalating employment costs. The proposal aligns with the Government’s goal of unlocking economic growth. The ability to support and maintain a strong and capable public sector workforce means that these services can continue to contribute positively to the wider economy. This tax increase will inevitably drive policy-driven unemployment, which we have talked about, as already evidenced in the recent jobs numbers.
I understand that the Minister believes that the Government had no flexibility when they produced their Budget and made these tax choices. However, as the months have passed, the economic situation has changed and there has been quite a bit of wage inflation. As such, these proposals to increase the employment allowance could be cost-neutral to the amount of money raised, and should certainly not be immediately dismissed as unfunded policy decisions.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Noakes, seek to expand the eligibility of the employment allowance to domestic workers and the public sector, and to increase the value of the employment allowance for organisations carrying out functions of a public nature.
As we discussed on the previous day in Committee, the employment allowance was introduced in 2014 by the previous Government. Currently, eligible small businesses with employer national insurance bills of £100,000 or less receive £5,000 of employment allowance, which means that they can deduct £5,000 from the total employer national insurance that they pay on their employees’ wages. This Bill increases that employment allowance to £10,500 from April 2025. It also seeks to expand the employment allowance to all eligible employers by removing the £100,000 eligibility threshold, which will simplify and reform employer national insurance so that all eligible employers now benefit. All of the remaining eligibility criteria remain unchanged.
As has been the case since the employment allowance was introduced in 2014, organisations operating wholly or mainly in the public sector are not eligible to claim it. As we discussed during the previous session in Committee, eligibility for the employment allowance is not determined by sector but depends on the make-up of an individual business’s work. The HMRC guidance explains that this is based on whether an organisation is doing 50% or more of its work in the public sector.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, asked for some specific figures in relation to that. The number of those claiming the employment allowance varies from year to year because the amount of work done in the public sector varies from year to year. It is for individual businesses to determine the amount of work that they do in the public sector, therefore data is not collected in the way the noble Baroness asks for.
The noble Baroness also asked for specific additional assessments. As I have said many times before—she is no doubt sick of me saying so—the Government have provided the impact assessments that we intend to provide and do not intend to provide any further such assessments. I am not aware of any plans for a specific information campaign, in the way that she asks for, but I am very happy to take her suggestion back and discuss it with colleagues.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
I thought that the Minister was about to sit down, so I apologise if I moved too soon. I would just like to clarify something. In the situation described by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, where somebody employs a nanny, a carer or whatever else, I have always worked on the assumption that the employment allowance at £10,900 would, in effect, negate any employer’s national insurance on that individual. If that is not correct, it would be helpful for me to understand that. I thought that that was how the micro-business protection worked; if I have got it wrong, please let me know.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I think that I have an answer for the noble Baroness but I would like to double-check it so, if she does not mind, I will write to her to be absolutely certain on this point.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
In conclusion, the Government have provided £4.7 billion of funding to support public sector employers with increased employer national insurance. Expanding eligibility for, or increasing the value of, the allowance would come with additional costs and would reduce the revenue generated by this Bill; this would then require either higher borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures. In the light of these points, I respectfully ask noble Lords to withdraw or not press their amendments.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
I am not going to thank the Minister for that reply because he has given us no more information and no justification for why employers who employ people for domestic or household care should not get the employment allowance. He has given no explanation as to why private sector public authorities do not get an employment allowance, other than it was put in the 2014 Act. Both these categories are significantly affected by the other contents of this Bill, so I had hoped that the Minister would respond with some rationale for why the Government think it is right that these categories of employer should not qualify for the employment allowance.
This is rather typical of the way in which the Minister has conducted the whole of this Committee. Since this is the last time we will speak in it, I would like to record that it has been more than disappointing. We normally expect Ministers to give us, or offer to provide, information. We do not normally expect Ministers simply to repeat, parrot-like, three or four set lines that are shuffled for whatever the particular amendment is, but that is what we have received. We are in Committee, so I will of course beg leave to withdraw my amendment, but I would like to record that this is no way to run a Committee.
“Review of effect on people with protected characteristicsThe Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a review of the impact of the measures contained in this Act on people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require a review of the impact of the measures in this Act on people with protected characteristics.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 68 I will also speak to Amendment 69, which is also in my name. Amendment 68, like a number of other amendments that we have discussed today, calls for a review of the impact of the increase in employers’ national insurance, particularly the effect on people with protected characteristics.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, these two amendments require the Chancellor to prepare a report to consider the effects of the Government’s changes to employer national insurance contributions on the climate and on those with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
I will be brief. I come at the matter from a different perspective. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is often arguing in favour of more tax and less growth, which obviously is not where I come from. Equalities are well looked after by the 2010 Act and we have equality assessments on nearly everything. I have suggested on some occasions to the Minister that a growth and productivity assessment would be a useful addition to getting delivery of his number one mission of growth.
The impacts of this Bill will be felt by employers and particular sectors, including part-timers, many of whom are women, as the noble Baroness has said. We have discussed that at great length. However, a review of the kind that she proposes is a huge stretch. It sounds bureaucratic and speculative. I also believe that it is inappropriate to try to improve work on climate change in this Bill by yet more bureaucratic processes on top of those which are already set out in the Environment Act. We need to focus instead on the impact of this brutal jobs tax on the sectors that are smarting under its prospect. That is what we are doing. I look forward to hearing how the Minister feels about these amendments.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I will first address the amendment seeking to require the Government to review the impact of the measures in the Bill on people with protected characteristics. The Government carefully consider the impact of all decisions on those sharing protected characteristics, in line with our legal obligations and our commitment to greater fairness and opportunity. The Government are committed to meeting their obligation to the public sector equality duty, and Ministers are confident that the Government have met the obligation for the changes in this Bill.
Turning to the amendment requiring a review of the impact of the Bill on the environment and green jobs, as I have said previously, an assessment of the policy has been published by HMRC in their 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 the previous changes to national insurance and previous changes to taxation, and the Government do not intend to provide further impact assessments. In light of these points, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendments.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the comments made earlier about the quality of debate and response that we have received from the Government in this Committee. I must express agreement with those statements. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for responding here. I point out that these amendments very much reflect her Amendment 64, which concerns the impact on economic growth, so I am not sure that the arguments about increased bureaucracy and resource cost will apply equally to her amendments.
None the less, let me pick up the points made by the Minister. He said, in referring to the effect on people with protected characteristics, that the Government are considering this carefully. I invite this Committee to consider some of the reports that have come out this week on the lack of trust—among young people in particular—in our Government and our so-called democracy. If we are to win back trust and have people feel that the Government are acting for the common good, not for a few special interests, the Government will need to show their workings. If the Government do indeed care, they need to demonstrate that they care, which is the kind of thing that this review would do.
On Amendment 69, I say again in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that the economy is a complete subset of the environment. There are no jobs on a dead planet. There is not much point in assessing economic growth if there is nothing living for it to grow in. We are in Committee so I beg leave to withdraw my amendment, but I will be back.
Lord Fuller
“Impact of this Act on local authoritiesThe Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament an impact assessment of the cost of the provisions of this Act on local authorities.”Member’s explanatory statement
This probing amendment seeks to respond to concerns about increased costs for local authorities.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, since the Great Reform Act of 1832, local authorities have been an integral part of our nation. Joseph Chamberlain unleashed the powers of municipal entrepreneurialism in the 1800s, bringing gas and clean water to the growing metropolis of Birmingham. A new council in Stevenage was created for the first new town, complete with a traffic-free zone opened by Her Majesty the Queen; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, has done her bit to shape that town since. To bring us right up to date, the leader of Cornwall Council—another Taylor: my friend Linda Taylor, who has announced that she is stepping down in May—has championed a space port in her county. I congratulate her on those efforts and thank her for her service to the local government family. All those activities are about the 140 things that local authorities do for every family in every street and in every neighbourhood.
For the past 14 years, I have been a vice-chairman of the Local Government Association’s economy and resources panel. Alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, I led all the district councils in England for our respective parties during Covid, and I remain a councillor, so I know that council finances in England are under pressure like never before. Reductions in grant funding, increases in the scale and complexity of service demand, and the recent spike in inflation and wage costs have created the perfect storm for our town halls.
The fundamental challenge facing the sector is that cost and demand pressures are rising faster than funding. Although inflation has fallen steadily since its peak in 2022-23, significant cost and demand pressures remain in the system in council services. In essence, council revenues tend to grow linearly with the growth in the wider economy; lately, however, costs have grown geometrically in councils, with the demands from homelessness, children’s social care, adult social care and home-to-school transport growing fast and likely to get even worse. The Covid overlay is, of course, a further aggravation.
There comes a moment where the lines of income and demand diverge so much that the gap becomes unbridgeable. That moment was already upon us before the national insurance announcements, and I want to explain its serious and consequential effects. Of the 140 activities undertaken by councils, three are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all the cost: social care in adults and children, and special educational needs. These pressures have seen the greatest increase in cost.
We should get some numbers on the record for the Minister. Increases in cost and demand in adult social care have risen by £3.7 billion—that is, 18%—in the five years since 2019. Spending on children’s social care has increased by 25.7% in real terms in the five years from 2019 to the current year. Growing numbers of children with education, health and care plans mean that money spent on home-to-school transport has risen by 62.7% in the five years to this year. Taken together, the increased demand for services for children with special educational needs and disabilities results in an unexpected current account deficit of £5 billion this year for those services.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, I apologise if it is inappropriate to speak now, when I have not paid any attention to this debate previously—there is a good reason for that, which I will explain in a minute. I declare my interests as they pertain to this: there are a number, but the two main ones are that I am a vice-president of the LGA, so clearly I agree with some of what my noble friend Lord Fuller said, and I am also a non-executive director of a care company owned by another council. I could have spoken in a number of these debates, but I have chosen to speak now only because my noble friend Lord Fuller was speaking, and somebody has to put what he said in loads of words into a few short words. That is no disrespect to my noble friend, who is obviously much more eloquent than I will ever be.
I have not spoken before because I do not agree with my side on everything. I do not think it is the Ministers’ fault, or my colleagues’ fault when they were Ministers, or the coalition’s fault when they were Ministers. All the pressures facing public services have been in the system for at least 20 years. In 2006, before the 2008 crash, we had a declining budget for public services; all the political parties have fingerprints on that. I do not want to get involved in the debate about whose fault it is, why we are here and how we got this far. I really love civil servants—I was a NED in a department for a while—but it is their fault that the Government are now doing the wrong thing. The Government have created a jobs tax that will increase unemployment because it was an easy model that has been sitting on the shelf for the best part of 15 or 16 years. Other Governments resisted going down this route; the current Government have been caught on the hop and are acting against their own stated aims.
I really do not want to criticise the Government or the Civil Service, but if we are to have more money to spend on public services, which everybody agrees are underfunded, we have to get it from somewhere, so somebody is going to pay more. Hopefully, we will all make more, so we can all afford to pay more, but this will not give us more. It will end up giving us less, because people will be laid off and we will have to pay their benefits. We will get worse public services and more expensive benefits—nobody wins, but it is an easy solution to a big problem. So, while I agree that we are going to play Committee games and not move any of these amendments, at some point we will end up going through a Division Lobby and we will vote against the Government—not because we do not like them, but because we think they are being sucker-punched by people who have an easy solution that will not fix the problem.
This is a hard problem; we have to find the proper solution to it, and NI is not the way to get better public services. For those reasons, I have to agree with my friend John—my noble friend Lord Fuller—but I cannot speak as eloquently as he can.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly on this issue. I find myself in agreement with both my noble friends Lord Porter of Spalding and Lord Fuller, because they are both right. My noble friend Lord Fuller puts his case with great elegance and eloquence, and has experience of having led a district council and being involved with the District Councils Network. We have something in common because I was also once vice-president of the Local Government Association and had the great honour of being a Front-Bencher for Communities and Local Government in the other place.
I want to focus on a particular aspect that concerns me about the unintended consequences of these fiscal changes and their effect on local government. There are huge demographic pressures that no government can get absolutely right, because no government can deal with, for instance, the problem of unaccompanied children that faces councils such as Kent County Council; social care for the over-85s, the number of whom is going to double in the next 20 to 25 years; children’s transport services, with the number of children who are given statements for special educational needs; and, of course, pensions in local government. These are all issues that any party in government is going to have to deal with, irrespective of how well-meaning Ministers are and how hard civil servants work.
My concern stems from what has happened recently in Peterborough, where the gap between the available budget and spending is around £20 million, which, for a small unitary, is a significant amount of money. The reserve has been reduced, over just one year, from £45 million to £14 million. My worry is about what Lord Macmillan, Harold Macmillan, described in 1985 as “selling off the family silver”. The problem with such a broad-brush fiscal change as this is not that it will necessarily force many authorities into a Section 114 situation where they are, de facto, bankrupt, but that it will force them to dispose of very important long-term assets, which they will never get back.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I also support my noble friend Lord Fuller’s amendment. Local government finance is in a parlous state, with more than 70% of funding used for adult and children’s social care, which, due to demographic pressures, is growing substantially above GDP and inflation. In some places, this is exacerbated by housing costs due to the housing shortages across the country.
The latest local government finance settlement has not helped, as the additional government funding is the worst I can recall, after taking account of national insurance, since I became chair of the Local Government Association in 2019. I agree with my noble friends’ comments on this. Yet the financial pressures on local government continue, forcing many councils to put up council tax by the maximum of 5% and, in several cases, to seek additional rises above that. National insurance rises pose a particular burden on local councils. The LGA, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Fuller, estimates that the cost is around £1.7 billion, of which around £1.2 billion is indirect. The Government have committed to fund the direct costs of the national insurance rise but, as my noble friend Lord Fuller mentioned, that does not even cover the full direct costs.
I emphasise that figure of £1.2 billion. There has been some commentary that it needs to be absorbed by suppliers. Frankly, that is not realistic. For instance, in one of the biggest areas—social care staff and care workers—you have agencies that just are not capable of absorbing that level of cost. They will have two options: get a price rise from the council, or stand away from their contracts. We councils cannot afford that so we will inevitably be forced to pay the extra amounts of money.
For example, in Central Bedfordshire Council—where I am a councillor and therefore declare an interest—the shortfall is around £2 million for the direct costs after the financial settlement. I talked to the finance director yesterday and he estimated indirect costs of around £10 million. To put that in context, that is more than a 5% council tax rise will generate. So, even after such a rise, we will not cover the national insurance rise.
That will inevitably mean that we will have to look at cuts to our essential services, the majority of which are statutory—the classic potholes, parks, libraries, et cetera. They are all up for grabs, so to speak. That is just not fair on our residents, who are paying additional council tax and seeing cuts to their services. I support the amendment, so that the impact of the national insurance rise can be truly worked out on a council basis and then properly funded.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I realise that I am very much in danger of becoming repetitive, but this is the last grouping that we will deal with today. If I may, I always feel like cheering on the noble Lord, Lord Porter, every time I hear him speak, which may put him in jeopardy, but it is probably reflected by voices across the Committee.
The issues being raised are crucial. I will not repeat the discussion that we had last Monday and Wednesday, which covered this same area in great detail. However, the amendments put forward then, which would basically exclude adult and child social care, housing associations, charities and others from the changes in the employers’ NICs threshold, would answer very many of the problems that local authorities are going to face. While I understand that this amendment seeks an impact assessment, we go for exclusion of these various necessary services and on that, once again, we stand our ground.
I thought that there might be some mention of town and parish councils in this group, which will get no protection at all from the increases in employers’ national insurance that they will face. We put forward an amendment last week that would exclude them from this. Once again, I ask that town and parish councils not be overlooked in the process of understanding that the public sector will be protected. With the changes that the Government are mooting in going to strategic authorities, town and parish councils will be the only real local government layer left, quite frankly, where somebody within a community knows that community, speaks to the people in it and acts on their behalf. Because they are funded purely through tax rather than through some government grant, the Government have not given them the off-set for the additional costs that they will have to carry. They amount to so little—£10 million a year. The Government would not even notice it. Without that, because they have no other sources of income, they will absolutely be required to increase their taxes by between 1.5% and 3.5%.
These councils should not be overlooked. They might be very small, but they are vital. For many people in this era, they are the connection to politics in a world where there is so much cynicism over politics and people do not feel the reality of it any more. I hope very much that the Conservatives, having made such strong statements on the effect of all these changes, will consider coming into the Lobbies with us on Report.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 70. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Fuller has joined the Committee today and spoken with such passion and eloquence, and I support his proposal for an impact assessment of the costs involved with this Act on local authorities. It was also good to hear from my noble friend Lord Porter; as a former civil servant many years ago, I was amused by his comment about policies hanging around in a drawer. I particularly remember that when I used to go to the Council in Brussels; there were a lot of proposals that used to hang around for a long time.
I agree that the jobs tax is the wrong approach, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Jackson that there are some tricky issues in parts of local government. I have to say that I have often been an admirer of local government, particularly councils, over a long career.
This week the Government confirmed £502 million of funding to help local authorities to cover the increased costs of directly employed staff due to the changes in the national insurance contributions. Ministers have also allocated £13 million separately to mayoral combined authorities, with some allocations to follow in due course. As we have heard, local authorities will need additional support in the face of the jobs tax. I welcome the fact that Ministers have brought this support forward, but we have heard from my noble friend Lord Fuller that that the allocation is totally inadequate. He called it a £1.226 billion headache, while my noble friend Lord Jamieson, also very experienced in this area, explained that it is just not possible to absorb these sorts of costs, for example, by reducing prices to suppliers. Services will inevitably have to be cut.
I shall highlight some examples where we believe the allocations will fall short. Hampshire County Council is facing a £10 million increase in costs due to the increase in NICs but the allocation it has received from the Government is just £7 million, leaving a £3 million shortfall, which I suspect is quite typical. My noble friend Lord Jackson talked of the likely demise of the lido in Peterborough and of libraries that are closing, although I am glad to say that, so far, we have kept our libraries open in Wiltshire. We are also hearing reports from Kensington and Chelsea and Harlow councils that they are facing a shortfall following the announcement of the allocations.
Clearly the Government’s additional allocations need to cover every penny of the increased cost to local authorities, otherwise they are going to have to cut services. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister could commit to engaging with MHCLG to seek assurances about what is happening and how that could be improved.
Councils, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Fuller, have been treated a lot worse than sectors like the police, the Civil Service and the National Health Service. This is a case in point for the argument we have been making throughout Committee where the Government have failed to produce thorough and comprehensive impact assessments. Mistakes like this can be made. The new refusal of the Treasury to provide essential information in debates like this, when such major changes are taking place, is extremely disappointing, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said, in her usually trenchant way. The Minister needs to listen to the Opposition when we call for a proper assessment of the impact of this policy on our local authorities. We want to know about other sectors too, but local authorities are this particular group’s concern and we will be returning to the charge.
The truth is that the Bill is very damaging. It will have perverse effects that will reduce the expected national insurance and tax take, as we have heard from the OBR, and it will have a negative effect on jobs, prices and growth. I hope the Minister will think further in the light of these four days of debate before Report.
I should say that I have enjoyed this Committee because of the insights it has given into many sectors and their challenges. It has been an extraordinary cross-cutting debate, and I look forward to Report on 25 February after our much-needed winter break.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate and for the local government expertise that has been shared with the Committee. At the Budget and the recent local government finance settlement, the Government announced £2 billion for new grant funding for local Government in 2025-26. This includes £515 million to support councils with the increase in employer national insurance contributions.
The LGA figures set out by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, are an external estimate rather the Government’s, and I cannot comment on those figures. However, the Treasury is of course engaging closely with HMCLG, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, asked. The Government have committed £4.7 billion next year to provide support for departments and other public sector employers for additional employer national insurance costs. This applies to those directly employed by the public sector, including local government. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, said, independent contractors, such as those services contracted out by local authorities, will not be supported with the costs of these changes. This is exactly the same definition as with the changes to employer national insurance rates, under the previous Government’s plans for the health and social care levy.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, so often councils and other organisations indulge in special pleading for an exceptional case here or a particular need there. This small debate on my Amendment 70 has shown the gravity of the situation that councils find themselves in. It is the cumulative impacts of this exceptionally damaging proposal which will harm the most vulnerable and those in greatest need. The debate has also shone a light on the efficiencies that councils have taken in aggregate since 2010. Over £24 billion-worth of annual savings have been made by councils, if one takes into account inflation in that period. It has allowed them to keep the wheels on the wagon while suffering a 22.2% reduction in core spending power.
However, there comes a moment when you cannot keep trimming the fat—there is no more fat to trim. This £1.227 billion additional burden on council-tax payers, who are paying their council tax out of their own taxed income, is a real number. I do not dismiss it, as the Minister suggests when he says that it is just an external number and that the Government do not believe anything that does not come out of the Treasury. We heard that argument on the agricultural property relief, for example. “Just trust us on this” is not something that we want to do.
We cannot keep hollowing out local government. I proposed a remedy. Through the Section 34 mechanism, this assessment can and should be made. We can then have a debate, not just for this year but in those following the comprehensive spending review, on what the additional burdens will be. We need to get down to real numbers. I mention Harlow, simply because my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe did so. Harlow’s increase in national insurance contributions this year on a £10 million or £11 million budget is over £1 million—and the Government have just given them £198,000. That is the quantum of the shortfall. Not only has that cost been made but their core spending grant has been cut by 21%.
I will not say much more, but we have placed a marker on this point. I am disappointed that we have not answers to all the points. Not having an answer to those questions which I and my noble friends asked invites representations on Report. I expect my noble friends and I will return at that point. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town
Introduction: Baroness Bousted
Recruitment of Teachers
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Barran
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve recruitment of teachers.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, teachers are the most important factor in a child’s education. We are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament. We have made good progress, implementing the 5.5% pay award and announcing £233 million for trainee bursaries. The best recruitment strategy is a strong retention strategy. We have increased early career retention payments and are reducing teacher workload and improving well-being.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, but could she be a bit clearer about the Government’s target of 6,500 new teachers? As she rightly pointed out, retention is extremely important. In the last year for which I think there is published data, there were just over 44,000 teachers recruited while just over 43,500 left the profession, leaving 469,000 in the profession—an increase of 27,000 since 2010. Can we be clear about the timing of the Government’s target of 6,500? Is that 6,500 more teachers net by September 2028 compared to September 2024? Will she also confirm whether those teachers will be going into shortage subjects in secondary or across primary, secondary and colleges?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The first thing we can be clear about is that this target was neither made nor met by the previous Government. Secondly, we are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this Parliament. Thirdly, she is absolutely right that retention is key. This is why the targeted retention incentive, worth up to £6,000 after tax per year for early career teachers, is being provided in key STEM and technical subjects, in disadvantaged schools and all FE colleges.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend will agree that the curriculum and assessment review will be a very important factor in recruitment and retention of teachers. Can she update the House on that? Does she agree that there is an earnest hope that the results of the curriculum and assessment review will lead to much greater teacher agency, which will in itself improve retention and probably recruitment?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I strongly agree with my noble friend. The curriculum and assessment review is important to ensure that teachers have a curriculum that promotes high standards in reading, writing and maths and is strong and knowledge-rich. It also provides the opportunity for innovation, expertise and, as she said, the agency of teachers to provide the absolutely best, broadest and richest experience for our children. That is a clear objective of the curriculum and assessment review.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has inherited a situation where we have the highest number of teachers leaving the profession and the fewest people wanting to go into teaching. As she rightly pointed out, we have a shortage of teachers of specialist subjects. Is it not time that we no longer look at sticking-plaster solutions but at the whole picture? If we are to make teaching a profession that people want to go into, we have to deal with workload problems, the salary and some of the problems that teachers face in terms of their role increasingly becoming one of social workers. If we do that, more and more people will want to become teachers.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I completely agree with the noble Lord about the challenges, not just that individual teachers have in the classroom, but that we have in attracting people to and keeping them in the profession. He has identified a range of areas that we need to make progress on as a Government and on which we are already taking action. I have mentioned some of the proposals around retention. The noble Lord is right about teacher workload and well-being. Our improved workload and well-being for school staff service, developed alongside school leaders, contains a whole range of resources to enable schools to review and reduce workload and improve staff well-being. On the other pressures that happen outside school but which children bring into school, we will have the opportunity during the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to consider the other initiatives that the Government are taking to support the most vulnerable children, strengthen our children’s social care services and, through a whole range of other provisions, make sure that children are able to arrive at school appropriately supported and ready to learn.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, two-thirds of modern language teachers are EU nationals. The shortage of qualified MFL teachers is second only to maths. Schools and teacher organisations have told the APPG on Modern Languages, which I co-chair, that the cost of a visa can be prohibitive and the process difficult to navigate. Would the Minister agree to look again at an overhaul of the visa system or a visa waiver, which would provide urgent relief in unblocking the supply chain of language teachers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
It is certainly the case that there has been a disappointing failure to address the shortage of modern foreign language teachers. That is why, for example, one of the things that the Government will do is extend bursary and scholarship eligibility to all non-UK-national trainees in languages. That means scholarships and bursaries worth a considerable amount of money. I note the noble Baroness’s point about visa costs. I think what is more important is that it is clear to domestic or international potential modern foreign language teachers that this is a country in which their efforts will be reasonably well rewarded and that they will be provided with all the other support necessary to carry out that important role of language teaching.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
My Lords, we will hear from the Tory Benches and then Labour.
Baroness Fleet (Con)
My Lords, I do not think that the Minister has fully answered my noble friend’s question. Is it 6,500 more teachers by the end of this Parliament?
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, the House of Lords Select Committee on the future of seaside towns back in 2019 identified a real problem with the retention of teachers in coastal and remote communities. Could the Minister outline the Government’s approach to this issue now?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that there are clearly areas of the country where there are particular challenges, both for children and for the teachers teaching them. Therefore, this impacts on retention. That is why, for example, in terms of the targeted retention incentive, we are focusing it on teachers within the first five years of their career, which is the point at which many teachers decide if they will stay on or not. We are focusing on STEM subjects and on those teachers who come and are willing to stay in those areas and schools that are most disadvantaged. I am sure that some of the schools that my noble friend referenced would come within this category. Therefore, there would be support to retain teachers.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister will know, there is a shortage of teachers in the vital subjects of art and design and music. What plans are there to increase the level of the ITT bursary in those subjects, because they certainly lag behind others?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I certainly recognise the problem that the noble Earl identifies. I have to admit to not being completely clear about the bursary to which he refers; perhaps I could write to him further about that. All the provisions in terms of honouring the pay award, ensuring reasonable workload, flexible working and the retention payments that I have spoken about are the ways in which we can get people into the classroom and the ways in which we can keep them there.
Moldova: Russian Interference
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Suttie
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of reports of Russian interference in Moldovan politics.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, Moldova is on the front line of Russian hybrid aggression. Moscow is seeking to degrade Moldovan democracy through disinformation, illicit financing and political subversion. The FCDO has established a cross-government task force to monitor these threats and help Moldova tackle them. This financial year, we are providing £35 million of humanitarian development and defence support to Moldova. We remain steadfast in our support for Moldova’s sovereign choice to pursue freedom, independence and closer ties to Europe.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Last Friday, I spoke to a Moldovan friend in Chiinău who runs a project to strengthen the rule of law in Moldova. The funding for that project has now been suspended by the US State Department. Given the decision of the Trump Administration, does the Minister agree that it is more vital than ever to work with our European partners to strengthen institutions, judicial reform and parliamentary democracy in Moldova, as they are key weapons in resisting the disinformation and hybrid threats coming from Russia?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. It is impossible to look at what is happening in Moldova and not consider at the same time what has happened in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere. Russia tried everything it could to distort the outcome of the polls that were held earlier this year. Parliamentary elections are approaching, and Russia will have learned from what worked and what did not during that earlier process. We need to step up and use every tool that we can to protect Moldova and make sure that the people of Moldova get the Government that they choose.
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, Russia is more easily able to interfere because it occupies part of Moldova: Transnistria. If, as we hope, negotiations with Ukraine start this year, does my noble friend the Minister agree that it makes sense, in the same or in a parallel process, to deal with the frozen conflicts in the region—not only Transnistria but South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia—with the aim of promoting peace in the Black Sea region?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I thank my noble friend, and I commend him on his decades of work providing peace, security and humanitarian causes in many places around the world. He is completely right that the frozen conflict in Transnistria should be seen alongside other conflicts in the region. His words are wise, and the Government will heed them.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, further to my noble friend’s Question, with regard to the parliamentary elections that are due before July, the head of the Moldovan intelligence service warned the Moldovan Parliament in December that the very same tactics that were used in the presidential and pro-EU referendum would be used by Russia. One of those tactics is vote-buying. Can the Minister say more about the practical assistance that the UK is giving, with our European partners, to ensure that money is not laundered through any of the institutions, in either the UK or Europe, and that there is no illicit finance, which has been used for the very tactics that the Minister referred to?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is completely true that every trick in the book was used during the previous elections, and we expect this to happen again. This included vote-buying, voter suppression and bomb threats at polling stations in this country, where Moldovans sought to cast their vote. We are doing everything we can, including, as he says, looking at illicit economies. Our expertise in cybersecurity will be significant in the coming months.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, we have also seen reports this week concerning allegations of Russian interference in German politics. Can the Minister confirm whether the Prime Minister discussed the issue of Russian interference in international politics with our European partners during the meetings with EU leaders this week?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister discusses these issues regularly with European partners, as does the Foreign Secretary and Minister Doughty, who is responsible for Europe. This is of great concern to us. Russia’s appetite for this kind of activity seems limitless. It does not respect national borders; it will be active in its disruptive activities anywhere that it thinks it can be.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, Russia’s response to the election of a pro-western Government in Moldova was characteristically callous. It cut off the supply of gas to Transnistria, leaving 350,000 people with no power in a freezing climate. In November, we entered into agreements with Moldova on migration, defence and security. Beyond that, can my noble friend the Minister outline what we are doing to support the EU as it begins to implement its recent agreement of a two-year strategy for energy independence for the Moldovan Government?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is true that the energy supply to Transnistria was interrupted and that this has had a devastating impact, not just on the population in Transnistria but throughout Moldova. We are working very closely with EU partners on this. We applaud the EU’s announcement this week of a €310 million support package. We are working principally on our cybersecurity capability to be able to support and protect democracy in Moldova as it approaches elections but, as my noble friend would expect, we will continue to work hand in glove with EU partners.
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my register of interests. The Minister referred to the Caucasus. What reassurance can she give to the Government of Armenia that the current instability with Azerbaijan will not be allowed to be used as an opportunity for Russia to once again get greater influence in Armenia?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We firmly believe that it is up to the people of a particular country to decide what direction that country takes. We know why Russia is doing what it is doing: it does not like the idea of Georgia and Moldova facing away from it and leaving its sphere of influence. Sadly, that is being very effective; estimates are that around 10% of the poll in Moldova was influenced by Russian activity. This is having a very real impact, and the geopolitics of it are wide-ranging. Its impact, particularly on the conflict in Ukraine, is something that we should all be incredibly mindful of.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said about support for Moldova. Given that Russia has been pursuing a very aggressive policy to try to undermine Moldovan democracy for many years, could we have an assurance that that support will continue? What about a high-level visit by the British Government to Moldova to show real solidarity with what it is up to?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
That support will continue, and my noble friend will be very pleased to learn that the Foreign Secretary was there just a few months ago. My honourable friend, Minister Stephen Doughty, was there in October as well. This support will continue. We are, as we have said many times, steadfast in our support for Ukraine. It would be no good being steadfast in support for Ukraine while not being very active and doing everything we can to support Moldova, because these issues are not independent of one another.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Intelligence and Security Committee published a report some years ago on Russian interference in British politics. It was heavily redacted, even though it stated there had been extensive Russian interference. Would it not be appropriate to publish some of those redacted parts to inform the British public of how the Russian threat affects us, and that it is still continuing?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The noble Lord raises a very interesting question, the answer to which I do not have for him today, but I will take it away because he makes a very strong case.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, when I worked with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy in Moldova some six years ago, I detected and had a strong sense that there was a high level of fear among the Moldovans because of Russian influence and aggression. Will my noble friend the Minister continue to provide assurances to your Lordships’ House that the UK Government will provide all support, along with EU partners, in building democracy there in a practical and political way?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Yes we will, and we do need to be practical because this is urgent. The next elections are happening in a matter of months’ time. The results last time were impacted by Russian activity, estimated to be about 10% to 15% of the ballot. This is intolerable for any democracy, and the UK must stand firm and stand up for what is right, including our democratic values.
Syria
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Hodgson of Abinger
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assistance they are providing to Syria to support a peaceful transition to inclusive and representative government.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, at this critical but fragile moment for Syria, the United Kingdom is supporting a Syrian-owned political transition process, leading to an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative Government. We are engaging intensively with the interim Syrian authorities and international partners, to whom we are underlining the importance of including key groups, including women and ethnic and religious minorities. We are consulting the interim authorities about what additional support they need to deliver a peaceful transition, including through our Syria envoy, who was in Damascus again last week.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
I thank the Minister for his response, and I am glad he agrees that it is important that Syria has a pluralistic and inclusive Government. There are indeed many strong women’s groups in Syria, but around the world we are seeing women’s rights rolling back. How will the UK help to ensure that women in Syria will have sufficient representation in the Government after the transition, and that they will be able to contribute on an equal footing to the men there?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. Support to women and girls continues to be at the heart of UK’s policy and programmes in Syria. UK support is through INGOs, Syrian civil society—she mentioned the women’s groups—and the United Nations. Women’s empowerment and political participation are vital. We regularly engage with civil society, including on the position of the women’s groups that the noble Baroness mentioned. The United Kingdom’s special envoy for Syria met the head of the women’s affairs department in Damascus last week, and they discussed the ways to empower and support women in Syria and build their capacity to take on an active and influential role in society.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, it is not enough to talk to just one woman; we have to have a coalition of the women’s groups, like we had to do in Northern Ireland, as there will be no way that the women can be at the peace table with just one woman. It has to be a coalition of women. Also, I would like an undertaking that no aid will be stopped, because of pressure from the United States, for maternal and women’s health, women’s education, and children’s health. Can the Minister please give me an indication that this will be so?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. I repeat that support for women and girls continues, and will continue, to be at the heart of our policy and programmes in Syria. But I emphasise that we have long supported Syrian civil society and will continue to do so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, says, that means that we move towards a more pluralistic solution. My noble friend is absolutely right: we need to engage the broad range of women’s organisations.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, first, the self-declared President of Syria is also head of a proscribed terrorist organisation that restricts the rights of minorities and women. Has the Government’s assessment of proscription changed with regard to that organisation? Secondly, given the news from the United States yesterday that the Trump Administration are now preparing to withdraw from Syria 2,000 troops who are part of the anti-terrorism work with the UK, what are our contingency arrangements to reduce terrorism in that part of Syria if the US troops are withdrawn?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The fact that HTS is a proscribed terrorist group does not prevent the United Kingdom engaging with the interim authorities in our efforts to help secure a political settlement. Of course, as the noble Lord knows, the Government do not routinely comment on whether a group is being considered for proscription or de-proscription. We are absolutely focusing on how we can consistently advocate for an inclusive political transition, underlying the importance of protecting the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. The US decision to pause foreign aid and funding for three months pending review is, of course, a matter for the US. The first duty of any Government is to keep the UK safe, working with allies to ensure stability in Syria and to ensure that Daesh’s territorial defeat continues and that it can never resurge. That is our absolute priority.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, it is great to see all the work being carried out and continued with civil society in Syria, but how are His Majesty’s Government working with regional partners to counter the influence of hostile state actors, such as Iran and Russia, in Syria?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The noble Earl is absolutely right. We are concerned about increased tensions, particularly in northern Syria, and the impact those may have on civilians and stability in the region. So we are in regular contact with Turkey and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Our priority is constantly to focus on de-escalation.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
Would it not be easier to monitor and, one would hope, influence developments in Syria if we were to reopen the embassy now?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
What we need to do is constantly evaluate the situation. As I have mentioned twice already, we have a special envoy there—she was in Damascus last week—and we will continue to evaluate the situation so that we can ensure that, when that transition into a more permanent solution or more permanent Government happens, we will consider what the noble Lord asks for.
The Lord Bishop of Chichester
My Lords, Syria is home to some of the oldest and most significant Christian churches in the world, although Christians now number only 2.5% of Syria’s population. Although small in number, they see themselves as an integral part of the people of Syria and its identity. In view of this, will the Minister ensure that policy and statements about Syria robustly identify its Christian communities and history as an important part of its identity and life and in need of special protection, rather than simply being assimilated as Syrians defined as citizens of the state?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate raises an important point. Of course, the FCDO has consistently advocated for an inclusive political transition and underlined the importance of protecting the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, both publicly and as part of our engagement with international partners and the interim Syrian authorities. We are of course concerned by reports of attacks on minorities and attempts to stoke sectarian tension, and we are monitoring the situation closely, but I reassure the noble Lord that we are absolutely focused on this. Certainly, that has been picked up by the Foreign Secretary and me.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for his Answer to my Written Question last month on this very topic. I am glad to see the commitment of the British Government to this. Will he reinforce the notion, with which I am sure he agrees, that the high-quality education of girls is absolutely central to making sure that Syria functions well into the future and that we have educated women who can play an effective part in Syrian politics?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful for her comment on my response to her Written Question. We continue to support those in need across Syria, where safe to do so, through NGOs and UN organisations. We are providing food, healthcare, protection and other life-saving assistance. We are absolutely focused, as my noble friend said, on supporting the education programmes that she referred to, in addition to agricultural livelihoods.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is not just a good and nice thing to involve women in political processes: it has been shown that deals made that include women are more sustainable by the very fact that they are inclusive. What plans does the Minister have to equip women in Syria and give them the proper tools to be involved in any peace deals, since they cannot come in without that training?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, we are supporting, through INGOs, Syrian civil society organisations and the UN, programmes that provide for women’s empowerment and political participation. We are absolutely focused on giving those tools. The debate on this issue focuses on the vital point that women need to be included for a sustainable peace in Syria.
Valdo Calocane: NHS England Report
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to publish a full version of NHS England’s report regarding Valdo Calocane.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, I offer my sincere condolences and, I am sure, those of all in your Lordships’ House, to the bereaved families of Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates. Our thoughts are also with the three survivors who sustained serious injuries in the horrendous attacks that took place in Nottingham. Yesterday, NHS England published in full the report of the independent investigation into the care and treatment provided to Valdo Calocane.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for her reply and associate myself with her condolences to the families and the other injured persons. This is a thorough report of 300 pages. Short of naming any names, I do not think there is anything more to be said. However, I have three points. First, the report indicates the difference in the balance between patient rights and community safety, and I would like the department to take that point firmly on board. Secondly, it appears that some of the treatment decisions were taken by individuals but could probably have been better taken by multidisciplinary teams to test the individual judgment against a wider group of experts. Thirdly, the report mentions equality, diversity and inclusion factors and the extent to which they cut across medical decisions. Will the Minister come back to this House, perhaps in six months’ time, having asked her services to look at these three points and any others because there are far too many lessons-to-be-learned reports from which lessons never seem to be learned?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I assure the noble Lord that officials are working with NHS England and partners to set out the next steps regarding how future mental health homicide reports should be published and to ensure that we act as transparently as possible in line with our legal obligations and with engagement for families. That is very important for the future. The three points the noble Lord raises are very relevant and are being dealt with thoroughly in Committee as we take the Mental Health Bill through this House. I am confident that your Lordships’ House is on top of this matter, as are the department and all concerned. There has already been progress on the CQC report published previously, and all the recommendations in this report have been accepted in full.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, these Benches share in the condolences to all those affected by this tragedy. This is a watershed moment, but I am not sure whether the culture of the NHS has changed, given that yesterday a senior official said,
“the system got it wrong”.
No. Individuals in the system got it wrong. What extra mechanisms will the Government put in place to ensure that every individual is held accountable for this and future tragedies in each ICB area?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I understand the seriousness of the points the noble Lord makes. As he is aware, the report to which we are referring is concerned with the care and treatment provided by health services to Valdo Calocane rather than questions of culpability. More broadly, I remind your Lordships’ House that the Prime Minister has committed to establishing a judge-led inquiry into these attacks. We absolutely understand the importance of an inquiry. Having met the families myself, it is crucial to provide families with answers and ensure that this cannot happen in the future.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Calocane report is a devastating mix of horror at state failures. It echoes everything from the grooming gangs to Southport, and you just think, “How could this have happened?”. The Minister said that we are dealing with this in Committee on the Mental Health Bill. I query that because the report has only just come out, and it seems to me that the Mental Health Bill will need to change to reflect the lessons learned, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said. Otherwise, we are ignoring it. Will the Minister reflect on how that is happening?
Secondly, did she notice the worrying detail that staff were nervous about forcing treatment because debates here in Westminster on racism in the mental health system meant that they stayed back—they were silent—because this patient was black? Can the Minister assure us that those kinds of politicised issues should now be swept away from all service provision and that we will tell staff that the ethnicity of the patient does not matter and that they have to act according to procedures?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the opportunity to clarify that my reference to the Mental Health Bill discussions was in relation to the three points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, rather than the detail of the report. As I said, the recommendations have been accepted in full, and there is a programme of work to take them forward and for full reporting back. In respect of the further comments the noble Baroness made, it is of course the care of the patient that matters and protection for both the patient—whoever they are—and the public.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, it is a tragedy that, on average, 120 people are killed every year in Britain by people suffering mental illness. As the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, flagged last night on a different but relevant topic, the risk of tragedy can never be zero, so mitigation of risk is key. I hope the Minister will commit, perhaps in the Mental Health Bill, that full and complete reports on crimes committed by those who have been treated under the Mental Health Act 1983 should always be published because that is the best way to decrease the likelihood of them happening again. I should flag that in 2006 the High Court refused a request to have a patient’s medical history deleted from a published report.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am grateful for the reflections of the noble Earl. I said earlier and am happy to emphasise again that the department is working with NHS England and partners to set out the next steps regarding how we will do exactly what he is speaking of, which is how future independent mental health homicide reports should be published, because it is so important to be transparent. Transparency is key, not just for bereaved families but to ensure that it drives improvements to services to help prevent tragedies. I certainly share the intention of the points raised by the noble Earl.
Baroness Browning (Con)
The Minister will know from the Mental Health Bill discussions that there is quite a strong feeling about the abolition of community treatment orders, which were introduced into the 1983 Act by the 2007 amendments. I had reservations about them when I sat on that Bill in another place. I continue to have reservations about them, and this case is indicative of the difficulties and dangers of trying to administer strong medications to people in the community.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness and for all her contributions to the Mental Health Bill. Perhaps I could use this opportunity to say, in answer to her question but also to a previous question, that improving patient rights is not in conflict with public safety. That is something that I know we are very mindful of about the Bill. As the noble Baroness is well aware, and as we have debated many times in this Chamber, there is a case, when to protect people from themselves and to protect the public, action must be taken, and that should not be shied away from.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, as the terms of reference of the inquiry are developed, could the Minister outline whether they will cover the key questions that have been raised about the criminal justice system? Do we need to look, for instance, at renaming the offence “manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility”, with the cry that he has got away with murder? Will it look at the sensitive issue of, when somebody is not culpable for getting as ill as he did, which is what the court found in the unduly lenient sentence judgment, whether we need to explain to the public why we do not send people to prison but only to hospital in those circumstances?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
As the noble Baroness is aware and as I have already confirmed, the report is totally focused on the care and treatment of Valdo Calocane. The questions about sentencing are of course a matter for the courts, but I am sure that my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice will be interested in the noble Baroness’s comments.
AstraZeneca
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister realise that AstraZeneca’s move to reverse its decision to establish a £450 million manufacturing facility in Speke has come as a tremendous setback to my home area, to Merseyside and to the UK? I am very glad that the Minister is answering this Question, because he is widely respected for the work he did as Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government for five years, and also for the research he has done and the work he did in the life sciences sector.
Does the Minister realise that attracting inward investment is one of the most competitive areas across the globe? Is it true that the Treasury, in a last-minute bid to cut the amount of the grant by what is described as an infinitesimal amount, sabotaged the deal? Will he please explain to his colleagues at the Treasury that we need to re-establish an attractive business environment in the UK, rather than the increased tax burden and the Employment Rights Bill which is going to destroy jobs? He alone can probably explain what went wrong. Does he realise that Dr Clive Dix, the former chair of the Covid-19 Vaccine Taskforce, has said:
“The Government had an open goal”,
and have scored “an own goal”? What went wrong?
The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)
Clearly, I understand this area rather well. It is disappointing that the AstraZeneca deal fell through. The deal was first raised in 2020 and was then offered in 2024. Subsequent to that, AstraZeneca changed its mind on how much work it wanted to put into the UK, including reducing the R&D component, which meant that there was a reduction in the offer that came from the Government. I understand that there are a number of reasons why this particular deal fell through, but I also reassure noble Lords that there is a very active programme of attracting investment, including discussions with AstraZeneca which are ongoing on other matters.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests as chairman of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research. Is the Minister content that His Majesty’s Government are doing enough to support global investment in UK life sciences, not only through fiscal measures but through their own investment in securing the infrastructure and capacity for clinical research in our country and the base for fundamental and translational research in our universities through funding for the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the Medical Research Council? Is the Minister able to reassure us that these matters will be considered very carefully in any future comprehensive spending review?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. Yes, I am very aware of the need for funding in this area and for attracting external inward investment. The noble Lord may well know that a number of companies have been attracted to the UK recently, such as Eli Lilly, with a big deal of £279 million. Last week, Moderna opened its new facility in Harwell within two years. There is a lot going on in terms of inward investment, and the noble Lord is quite right to point out the importance of both NIHR and MRC funding as part of that process.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, when the former Chancellor announced that AstraZeneca was set to inject £450 million into the establishment of a new manufacturing plant in Liverpool, the metro mayor hailed the investment as a vote of confidence in the work of the Liverpool combined authority, providing the new investment and jobs for local people that the plant would bring. Just days after the Chancellor laid out billion-pound plans mainly for the south-east, the so-called “golden triangle”, AstraZeneca, as we know, pulled out of Liverpool. Can the Minister tell us whether the metro mayor was involved in the discussions over AstraZeneca, and if not, why not? Secondly, how do the Government plan to develop the city’s life sciences and pharmaceutical sector?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I reassure the noble Lord that the metro mayor was aware of the discussions with AstraZeneca. It is important to remember that AstraZeneca will continue to produce vaccines in Speke. It is not that AstraZeneca has pulled out of there; it is that the new investment has not come there. I have recently been speaking to metro mayors about how we can make sure that the R&D funding is supportive of what metro mayors are trying to achieve.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, the Minister is a little bit complacent because, as he knows, the investment was for future-generation flu vaccines and not for existing vaccines. As the Lords Science and Technology Committee said recently, this raises “troubling concerns” about the UK’s lack of
“capacity to manufacture vaccines for future biological threats”.
What are the Government doing to ensure a portfolio of vaccine technology can be manufactured in the UK and that we are not just relying on mRNA?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord—that is the first time I have been called complacent about vaccines. There is a lot going on: the Moderna investment in a new facility at Harwell; the BioNTech investment; the recent announcement of £60 million by GSK with Oxford; and there is a review of all the vaccine facilities across the country. It is absolutely essential to get this right, as the noble Lord has said, for future pandemic preparedness, as it is a key area. AstraZeneca remains, of course, with its major R&D base in this country, and I will be speaking to it again shortly.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I would call my noble friend the Minister a very dedicated public servant and not a bit complacent. Does he agree that a number of pharmaceutical companies, not least AstraZeneca, have benefited a great deal over the years from UK investment, including in universities and including through the purchasing power of the NHS, which is not inconsiderable? What do the Government plan to do to introduce an element of contingency into those relationships? Have the Government considered perhaps even their own state manufacturing capacity?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her question. The UK is fortunate to have two very large pharmaceutical companies in this land, and we have many biotechs starting up as a result, because many of the people in those biotechs were trained in the big companies. As my noble friend quite rightly points out, the relationship with the NHS is important. All of these things create an ecosystem for life sciences investment which we are very keen to continue. The history of state-run manufacturing facilities is not one that generally leads to advanced manufacturing and efficiency.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister give us more detail as to why AstraZeneca pulled out? He said there were a number of reasons, so I wonder if he could go into more detail.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Yes, I am happy to do so. The first was the restructuring of the deal because of the AstraZeneca decision to put less into R&D, which meant that there was a proportionate decrease in the state funding, which I think most people would think would be an appropriate position in a deal. Secondly, I think that it has expressed concerns about the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing and access programme. It was also concerned about NICE’s decision to refuse approval for its recent drug Enhertu. But I think noble Lords would agree that it is not appropriate for the Government to link decisions on individual drugs to investment in other parts of the system.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, would the Minister confirm that the chief executive of AstraZeneca has said that it was a purely commercial decision and that a potential grant of £80 million should not be significant to a company that has made a profit of nearly £9 billion and increased its profits by 38% in the last year? Surely it is the company’s responsibility, unlike what has been suggested by the unfortunate spokesperson for the Opposition?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I think it is undoubtedly a commercial decision. Having been head of R&D for a multinational pharmaceutical company, I know exactly how these decisions are made. It will have been a commercial decision as to where it needs to make the right investments for its vaccine manufacturing. I think the small change in the deal from the UK Government was probably a minor part in the overall decision-making.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Given the fact that the project will not now go ahead and that we wish to be self-sufficient in the production of vaccines, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that we will be self-sufficient in producing vaccines going forward and not dependent on imports?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I refer the noble Baroness to the answer I gave earlier: the Moderna facility in Harwell is a massive new vaccine investment in this country; there is the BioNTech deal to bring that company here as well; and there are several other opportunities, including the life sciences innovation manufacturing fund of up to £520 million, which people are applying for at the moment. There is a lot more going on in vaccines now than there has been, but I am absolutely not complacent about this. It is an area we need to get right and an area where we need to make sure that the vaccine facilities are being used to produce vaccines on a daily basis—there is no good at all in having plants lying idle, waiting for something to happen.
Chagos Islands
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the leader in the Times this morning says that this agreement is
“the worst negotiated by a British government in living memory”.
It goes on to say that the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General
“have taken leave of their senses”.
Current Labour Cabinet Ministers describe the deal in off-the-record quotes to the BBC as
“‘terrible’, ‘mad’ and ‘impossible to understand’”.
At a time when Labour Ministers seem to spend half their time at this Dispatch Box bemoaning the supposed black hole in the public finances, how does it make any sense whatever to spend up to £18 billion leasing back an island that we already own?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
I was an Opposition Front-Bench Spokesman for 12 years, so I know how this goes. I do not think I ever resorted to reading out a Times leader from the Dispatch Box as my primary source. Perhaps the kindest thing I could do is to invite the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, to come to the FCDO, to put the kettle on and to brief him properly so that he knows what is going on. I could point him in the direction of a communiqué issued by the Mauritian Government, which stated:
“Mauritius has never said that the financial package in the agreement between Mauritius and the UK on the Chagos Archipelago had doubled as alleged”.
I also point out that the cost of this is not for nothing; it is to buy a security arrangement that has served this country very well, alongside our allies, the United States, for very many years. It is a base and an arrangement that we are committed to. In order to secure the future of that base, we need to come to a legally sound agreement with Mauritius.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, the dogged perseverance of the previous Conservative Government to cede sovereignty over 11 rounds of negotiations—insisting on 11 rounds of negotiations before the general election—is in some ways admirable. What was not admirable was that the Chagossians were excluded from all parts of those 11 rounds of discussions on the ceding of sovereignty. Could the Minister confirm to me, first, that the funding package that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, referred to was agreed by the previous Conservative Administration and inherited by the current Government, and—
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
This is a question to the Minister, not to the Opposition Front Bench.
Secondly, can the Minister confirm that, to avoid the Chagossians becoming a political football again, if any agreement is reached as a result of the pause, either with the United States or the Mauritian Government, it will be for Parliament to vote on it, to ensure that the Chagossians can have representation in the debates here in Parliament?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The negotiations were conducted state to state. Regrettable though it may be, it is a fact that the Chagossians were not party to that, and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is right to remind us of it. The Chagossians have been terribly treated since their forced removal all those years ago. My own view is that it is better and fairer to the Chagossians to be clear that, as long as that base is there on Diego Garcia, there will be no ability for them to resettle that island. That is the fact of the situation that we are in, and to give any hope of anything otherwise would be irresponsible and a mistake. But, as the noble Lord says, there will be a process, and the involvement of both Houses of Parliament will be needed as we put the treaty before them and make the appropriate legislative changes that are needed for this deal. As the noble Lord says—and I look forward to it—the voices of Chagossians will be heard through their representatives in this House and in the other place.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I am sure there are great complexities behind this issue which maybe we have not been fully briefed on. One curiosity is that the Chagos people do not feel great fondness for Mauritius at all. It is 1,000 miles away, and it is a puzzle as to why we have somehow got tangled up with Mauritius, with its present inclinations in the direction of China. Should we not be much more acutely aware than we are of the intense Chinese interest in every move in this area, where they see great advantages for themselves? Indeed, they see it as a major part of the general hoovering-up of small islands around the world, including many in the Commonwealth, as part of their grand strategy to dominate the maritime area. Should we not be a bit stronger on that?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is precisely because we need to ensure the legal certainty of the Chagos archipelago and the ability of the base to operate and function fully. That is so important to security, as I am sure the noble Lord agrees, and is not something that our adversaries would wish to see established. This deal strengthens our presence and arrangements in Chagos.
I am aware that the Chaggosians in this country do not, in large part, agree with this deal and, as the noble Lord says, they do not feel an identity or affinity with Mauritius. These things happened during decolonisation, and that is why we find ourselves in our present legal situation. However, it is also true that there are Chaggosians living in Mauritius who take a different view. There is not one view of this deal from the global Chaggosian community.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)
My Lords, have our NATO allies commented on this deal?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We are working very closely with our allies in the United States. Jonathan Powell, our National Security Adviser, is in Washington at the moment working through the deal with the Americans. It is right and understandable for any new Administration to want to know every precise detail of this, because it has a profound impact on security and the stability of the base on Diego Garcia.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, why were this Government so keen to reach an agreement when, because we did not contest it, the UN court case was only advisory? Why is there this rush on the part of the Minister and her ministerial colleagues?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We have been through this in the House several dozen times, but I am happy to take the question again. I invite the noble Lord to consider a situation where we had allowed for the legal processes to continue. The advice that we received was that it was likely that the advisory decision would be followed by a decision to which we would have to adhere. Our view—this is a judgment—is that we would be in a stronger position to negotiate ahead of a binding judgment rather than afterwards. Noble Lords can disagree with that, but it is the reason for our timing. It is also the reason for the 11 rounds of negotiation under the previous Government. It is also true that there are Members opposite and Members in opposition in the other place who know that very well.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I am always grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the very careful tone with which she discusses these very sensitive subjects in a non-partisan way, despite obscene provocation to the contrary. I wonder whether she agrees that it is all very well to talk about ICJ rulings being advisory and to laugh them off, but we would not have been in the ICJ without the overwhelming support of the UN General Assembly. If we want the global South, and countries in Africa in particular, to think differently about China and to respect us going forward, we need to respect institutions such as the UN General Assembly.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very clear point. For the record, I am happy to come here and take questions and challenge on this issue—it is important and right that the Government are held to account on it. She made a point about the geopolitics of this, with which I agree. One also needs to think about the practical, day-to-day functioning of a base in the middle of the Indian Ocean and our reliance upon third countries to enable it to function as well as we need it to. There would have been an impact on that, should we have waited for a binding judgment.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)
My Lords, the Chagos archipelago contains some vital marine habitats, and in the past I have recognised the difficulties of marine protection in the area. Can the Minister give us any indication of the level of marine protection that has been agreed in this treaty?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
That is an important point. There will be marine protection considerations in the agreement, because the waters around the Chagos Islands are precious and need to be protected. It is difficult when there is also a base there, but the protections that we would need to secure to enable the base to function securely and without interference could also serve the marine environment well.
Southport Attack
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to your Lordships’ House. I reiterate the shadow Home Secretary’s message in the House of Commons. He said that we must keep in our thoughts and prayers the innocent victims of this despicable act: Bebe King, just six years old; Elsie Dot Stancombe, who was seven; and Alice da Silva Aguiar, who was only nine. Their lives were cruelly and senselessly cut short while attending a Taylor Swift dance class. I know all Members of this House will once again wish to extend their deepest condolences to their families and honour the memory of these young children, whose futures were stolen from them.
This tragedy underscores the necessity of a robust and transparent investigation to ensure that lessons are learned and that no stone is left unturned in holding accountable those responsible for any failures that may have contributed to this heinous act. I welcome the inquiry announced by the Home Secretary a couple of weeks ago and note the Security Minister’s confirmation in the other place that it will begin on a non-statutory footing but transition to a statutory footing. Does the Minister have any information about the timeline for this transition? Can he assure the House that this inquiry will be given the necessary resources and authority to investigate thoroughly? Furthermore, does he agree that it is vital for this House to be kept regularly informed about the inquiry’s progress and findings, transparency being essential to restore public confidence?
I am also pleased to hear that the Prevent thresholds are being reviewed. The lessons learned review highlighted several critical areas for further investigation, particularly the apparent mismatch between the focus of Prevent referrals and the actual threat landscape. Does the Minister share the concern that this imbalance indicates a misalignment in how resources are being allocated within Prevent? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the review addresses this and that Prevent is laser-focused on tackling the most pressing and dangerous threats? Will the review also examine the training and guidance given to Prevent officers to ensure that they are well equipped to assess and respond to credible threats? Furthermore, could the Minister clarify whether there will be any changes to how information is shared between local authorities and counterterrorism units to improve early identification and intervention in cases of radicalisation?
I am sure the Minister agrees that we must do everything in our power to prevent future tragedies, and I look forward to his assurances that the Government are committed to acting swiftly, decisively and transparently.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I have a sad sense of déjà vu, as this is a very real echo of the earlier Question from the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. I respect the insightful comments from noble Lords on that similar issue.
The whole country was unified last summer over the horror of events in Southport. It was indeed a brutal and senseless act of violence. We owe it to the memories of Alice, Bebe and Elsie to do everything we can as a society to ensure that such acts of brutality are not allowed to be repeated. Sadly, they appear to be repeating. We want communities to feel safe and individuals to go about their daily business, like Taylor Swift dance classes in the summer holidays, without fearing that there are dangerous people out there intent on hurting them.
It is deeply troubling that the Prevent learning review makes it clear that warning signs were missed in the lead up to that attack in Southport. These Benches have long raised concerns about the failures of Prevent. Indeed, as, the elected mayor of Watford when Prevent was first introduced, I remember the trouble that we had with our Muslim community in trying to get it to accept what Prevent was trying to do. It has had a very troubled journey through its many incarnations. For that reason, we welcome the decision to publish the learning review.
We also welcome the creation of the new Prevent commissioner. We are very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, will serve as interim commissioner. He is highly skilled and experienced in the complex issues that he will need to navigate that tricky road. I would welcome some details from the Minister on what powers the commissioner will have to enforce any recommendations and to ensure that they will be enacted. Recommendations must lead to actions and actions to swift, successful resolution with full transparency and accountability. Often, we do not have a very good track record in that regard.
Looking more widely, we have to ensure that our national security strategy is fit for purpose, given the wide range of threats we now face as a country. We clearly need to tackle extremist ideology, but not to forget those who are motivated not by any particular ideology, but rather by an obsession with violence or a hatred of society. Will the Minister say what the Government can do? What are they going to do to prevent people slipping through the net?
A point that often is not made is that we also have a duty of care to those individuals whom we ask to decide, for the safety of society, whether an individual is a threat to life. What is being done to support those people in that role? What training are they given to ensure that they can make the best possible decision on behalf of us all?
Finally, after the tragic murders in Southport last summer and the disorder on the streets afterwards, we saw communities coming together in far greater numbers to clean up the streets and affirm belief in something bigger than themselves. Protecting communities must be at the centre of everything that the Home Office does. What is being done to reassure the public that they remain safe from threats? What is being done to ensure that incidents such as this are not exploited by groups or individuals who would wish harm upon our communities?
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for their contributions. Like them, I want to start with the victims of this crime. They should be for ever in our thoughts when we deal with how we respond to these issues. Bebe, Elsie and Alice need to be remembered at all times. I remind the House that the perpetrator, whom I shall not name today, is now serving 52 years, a sentence passed by Mr Justice Goose in the Crown Court. That perpetrator will have a significant sentence as the result of the crimes he committed.
I am grateful for the welcome for the inquiry from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. The noble Lord asked me particularly about the timeline for the public inquiry. As the Home Office has already said, the inquiry will be non-statutory. We reserve the right to change it to a statutory inquiry if circumstances require. I hope that the noble Lord will know, because I have said this before, that the choice of chair, the terms of reference and the timeline for the inquiry are important matters that I will report back to this House on in due course.
Our first priority is to consult the families and the coroner who is undertaking a statutory duty in relation to this incident. We will therefore, at some point, be able to answer the noble Lord’s questions in a way that I cannot at the moment, but I commit to bringing this back to the House in due course.
The Home Secretary swiftly commissioned a review shortly after the murders which has brought forward 14 recommendations. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned two particular issues: data sharing and training. Recommendation 1 addresses data sharing and putting in place some measures to help with that. Recommendation 3 is about improving training. Having discussed the implementation of the 14 recommendations with officials, I can give a commitment that this House will have a report back by—I hope—this summer on the finalisation of those recommendations and the resulting practical action. The Government accept all 14 recommendations to be implemented in due course.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lord mentioned the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who I am pleased to see in his place. I know he has a busy schedule looking at the issues we are discussing at the moment. The noble Baroness asked about the powers of the recommendations that the noble Lord may make. He is the interim commissioner. We have asked him to look at what happened in this case, and also to do a quick sprint on Prevent more generally. He, and whoever is appointed as the permanent commissioner, will have powers to make recommendations. I am still of the view that recommendations are to Ministers who will decide on those recommendations and be held accountable for them. I suspect that, in due course, there will be agreement on the outcome of any recommendations made. That will help to review independently, and to decide politically the way forward.
The noble Baroness also mentioned widening Prevent’s essentially terrorism role to look at other issues where people may have mental health challenges, be obsessed with violence or general hatred or have a whole range of other issues driving them that are not related to Islamist or far-right terrorism as we know them. We are looking at this and how it can be adopted. This is another issue that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, will look at in order to give what I hope will be a considered response to difficult and challenging issues.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, made a point about the community. What really impressed me about Southport after the attack was that the religious, civic and ordinary communities came together to reject the violence that had occurred in their town. They showed that the violence emanating from the violence in their town was also not acceptable or applicable and was rejected by the community. That was a valuable lesson. As political leaders, we need collectively to reject those who would exploit difficult issues for political ends. I am acutely aware that we have our political differences, but we should be standing together against terrorism, violence and the type of actions that led to the deaths of these three young girls.
I take some comfort from the response of the Southport community, while having to recognise that there are lessons to be learned because of mistakes that were made. As ever, those mistakes need to be rectified to ensure that we make positive change for the future. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, can assist the Government bringing his expertise to this area.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, this case, terrible as it is, shows the fine line that can exist at times between mental illness and terrorist offences, particularly where a single person is involved.
Prevent has struggled at times when police officers are trying to make decisions, based on intelligence or factual evidence, when mental illness is involved. I wonder whether the Minister might look at the unit in the Metropolitan Police called the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, may consider it. It was created in 2006 and has about 20 people in it. It was designed to protect royalty against people who become fixated on them. It is led by psychologists and psychiatrists. It makes a medical assessment of the threat, rather than just a criminal assessment as a police officer might do. It has police officers and mental health nurses who are able to access data from the health service as well as from the police. That balanced approach can be quite helpful. Sometimes, the way forward might be treatment, sometimes it should be criminal investigation with the consequences that might follow. This process has been quite well established for about 20 years, but it has never extended beyond royalty-fixated threat assessment. I wonder whether we all might learn from it.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe; he brings immeasurable expertise in his contribution to this debate. I will say two things in response. First, the Prevent programme still has to focus primarily on people who are being radicalised through a range of means and pose threats on both Islamist and extreme right-wing fronts—that is the main focus. But, secondly, this case shows that there are potential areas where we need to look at other issues, including misogyny, concerns around violence and its worship generally, and people just wishing to inflict hate on society for a range of reasons that are not politically or culturally motivated. I take what the noble Lord said, as there may be lessons that we could learn from it. I would be very grateful to discuss—with both the Metropolitan Police and the noble Lord, if he wishes—how we can widen the debate on looking at potential areas. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, will look at how we can draw a wider circumference around the support mechanisms to help with cases that fall outside the broad areas of Prevent but which still lead to the types of actions that Prevent is designed to prevent.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and others for understanding that not everything can be squeezed into the rubric of “terrorism”, with its ideological motive and so on. I will make a small point on a previous point my noble friend made in reference to the sentence of 52 years. It is quite important to remember, and for the public to understand, that this was, rightly, a life sentence with a minimum of 52 years before any consideration of release; one would not always get that information from reading the newspapers. I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for making that clear.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. The 52 years is a minimum; it is a life sentence. Indeed, in his sentencing remarks, Justice Goose indicated that he felt that it was highly unlikely that the individual convicted would be released. That is a matter for well downstream. The concerns that we have around Prevent are things that we can resolve to stop that type of activity taking place in the future. As my noble friend knows, the reason a whole-life tariff was not imposed was because of the age of the perpetrator at the time of the event. I suspect that, if he had been older, a whole-life tariff may well have been given by the judge. My noble friend was right to add further definition to my comment, which was not meant to undermine in any way the sentence given.
Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. My thoughts are with all those affected by this tragedy in Southport. I am sure that the Minister will accept that there is a big difference between the decision-makers involved in Prevent—who are referred over 19 cases a day, and therefore 7,000 cases a year—and a reviewing officer who is looking at one particular case with the benefit of hindsight. I share the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, has about the decision-makers in such cases. Indeed, I do not think that it came out clearly in the review’s executive summary on the government website that, in this case, all the procedures and policies were followed by those involved in the decision-making. Therefore,
“it is the subjective decisions that have come into focus”.
Can the Minister explain how the Government will address the issues around subjective decision-making in such cases? Also, what does he think the impact will be on the considerable number of cases that these officers have to deal with now? Prevent is apparently expanding its definition to include a fascination with mass violence, in addition to concentrating on the areas of, say, Islamist and right-wing terrorism, which the Minister said the Government want Prevent officers to concentrate on.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord and for the experience that he brings to this issue. He raised two points; I will first answer the latter one about the potential widening of the definition. We are dependent ultimately on further advice from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, downstream. As I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, it will still mean that the focus is on Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorism, because those two issues are the most extreme areas that we need to resolve and deal with; they are where most cases come from. In the light of that, there may be—as in the first part of his question—additional pressures on case officers to look at how they work with different types of activity, which they may not be used to working with to date and on which they may need further training and support.
I hope that the noble Lord will have a chance to look at the 14 recommendations in the executive summary. The second states:
“Further training should be considered regarding the circumstances where visits to individuals during the initial assessment can be conducted”.
That further training aspect, alongside the other 13 recommendations that we have now accepted and will implement by this summer, will look at the range of issues that the noble Lord mentioned in the first part of his question.
School Accountability and Intervention
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Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, no one in this House will disagree with the Government’s aspirations for every child in this country to receive a great education and to leave school with the qualifications and confidence they need to go on to the next stage, whether that is education or work, and to realise their potential. No one would disagree that this needs to be done as quickly as possible.
Indeed, under the previous Government, one of the top priorities of the Secretary of State was to reduce the number of children studying in schools that, at that time, were judged to be “Inadequate”—or “2RI+”, as we called them in the jargon; everyone has their secret language—or those that had had multiple Ofsted judgments below “Good”. In the past two years in office, we reduced that figure by over 200,000 children to around 500,000. I am glad that the Government are continuing with that focus, but I suggest that the figure is not the 300,000 that the Government are talking about; it is around 500,000. Just the redefinition that the Government have brought means that 200,000 fewer children risk not getting the intervention that their school needs.
Where we part ways on the ambition is on how we get there. One of the first actions that this Government took was to stop intervention in schools that were judged to be “2RI+”. These are literally the schools where the Government are now saying that they need to see change and will potentially intervene. Some of these schools were “2RI+”, but many had had four, five or more judgments and had had never been “Good” in their history. That is two full cohorts of children going through a school that is judged not to be “Good”.
While the Statement talks about earlier intervention, fostering a self-improving system and putting in support from the RISE teams, in reality, last year’s decision to stop intervention into “2RI+” schools will slow things down, and it will be the children in those schools who pay the price. It will be interesting to see whether the new Government can maintain the pace of the previous Government in reducing the number of children in stuck schools: not by taking action in those schools, but by actually moving them to “Good”—or “Secure”, in the new Ofsted language.
When the Minister responds, could she confirm what the Government’s target is for the number of children in these schools over the next 12 months? What reduction does she expect from the Government’s activity? Can she also comment on Ofsted’s proposals for multiple monitoring visits if a school is in special measures? I think I have understood correctly that six visits are proposed in two years or, if a school requires significant improvement, five visits in 18 months. We were talking earlier in your Lordships’ House about teacher recruitment. How does she think teachers will feel about having so many follow-up visits?
Ofsted has said that it plans to look at nine different areas of school performance, including explicitly looking at attendance, which, of course, we warmly welcome, but nine areas and five possible grades for each mean 45 potential outcomes for schools. Even the most resilient teachers and leaders describe this as stressful. I fear it could end up being almost meaningless, and that is not what Ofsted, the Government or schools want or need. What consideration did the Government or Ofsted give to rethinking the inspection process and having a much more risk-led approach to inspection, rather than the universal blanket approach that we followed in the past?
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill risks making things worse, with the proposal to replace the duty on the Secretary of State to intervene in a school that is judged to be in special measures with just a power. We have already seen the Secretary of State reverse a decision to intervene in a school when threatened with a judicial review. The whole system risks being paralysed by JRs and, again, it will be the children who suffer.
The guidance the Government have put out so far makes it clear that the department will not intervene based on academic performance. The noble Baroness and all her colleagues in the department, and those on this side of the House, all care passionately about the disadvantage attainment gap. I urge the Minister to talk to her colleagues about this. She has heard me say—probably more than once—that there are schools in the same local authority, with the same profiles of deprivation, which have radically different levels of attainment for their pupils. Those attainment gaps are not one-offs: they are sustained over time. It would be really helpful if the Government could set out what they propose to do about this.
I really do not doubt the Government’s commitment to raising standards for every child, but I hope that they will use the consultation period to rethink this approach, which risks ending up with confusion, delay and poorer outcomes for the children in stuck schools. I am reminded of a sponsored academy that I visited in Sefton, one year to the day after it had become an academy and joined a strong multi-academy trust, in this case the Dixons Academies Trust. I asked the pupil who was showing me round what it would have been like if I had visited a year ago. She looked at me in horror and said, “You wouldn’t have been safe in the corridors, miss”. That is the reality for children if we delay intervention, and this Government need to think again.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, not having been a Minister, I am not sure of these terms such as 2RI+, but perhaps I will learn.
In Oral Questions this morning, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised the question of teachers—a very important topic. Not only do we need good teachers, but we also need good schools. It is important that we retain a robust inspection system. Inspections should remain a vital part of the accountability process for schools and councils, and we should extend inspections to multi-academy trusts. However, their purpose needs to be thought through carefully. Where a school is struggling, poor inspection results should lead to greater support. We very much welcome the new regional teams to turn around the so-called stuck schools in England, which have received back-to-back negative judgments from Ofsted.
We would abandon the idea that a school’s performance should be reduced to a single grade. Instead, inspections should identify how a school is performing across a wide range of issues, such as curriculum breadth, provision for SEND pupils, teacher workload and pupil well-being, so that parents can decide for themselves whether a school suits their child’s needs. We should lower the stakes of a school inspection so that deciding to intervene in a school or change its governance arrangements does not depend on a single grade. Instead, inspectors should work alongside schools, councils and academy trusts as critical friends, providing the evidence that a school needs to identify its strengths and weaknesses and how it needs to improve.
Does the Minister think that the proposals outlined by her Government can really change the culture around Ofsted inspections? The framework does not include SEND provision or SEND inclusivity as a stand-alone assessment area. As we try to fix the SEND crisis, should this not form a key part of any assessment of schools?
Safeguarding will be assessed separately from other elements of the Ofsted report. How will this be organised and who will carry it out? Can the Minister reassure the House that safeguarding will remain a key area being assessed?
We must remember that Ruth Perry took her own life after an Ofsted inspection. Given everything that has been said following that heartbreaking tragedy, it is important that, after the 12-week consultation, we get this right.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for her recognition that this Statement represents the objective that, I believe, is shared across this House: to ensure that every child in every school is getting the very best opportunities to learn; and that, where there is a need to improve the provision being provided in a school, that happens as effectively and as quickly as possible. That is because every day that a child spends in a school that is not performing as well as it needs to is a day lost to that child at a crucial part of their life.
It is with that objective in mind, of course, that the Government outlined on Monday the consultation on the approach that will be taken to accountability, intervention and improvement, alongside the consultation being carried out by Ofsted on the revised inspection framework. The development of the report card will provide considerably more information, granularity and insight for parents in determining that most difficult of choices—where they want their child to go to school—and for the schools themselves and others to determine areas of improvement and where they need to see more work. As the noble Baroness said, one of the most important priorities is to able to intervene and improve schools as quickly as possible and appropriately. I will come to that in a moment.
The noble Baroness started with a reasonable barrage of statistics. I will do my best to respond to the suggestions that she made but I may well need to follow up some of those points subsequently in a letter. The first thing she said was that the number of pupils in underperforming schools was 500,000, not 300,000. To be clear, the figure of 300,000 was for those schools that are stuck in a period of persistent underperformance. This Government are unwilling to allow that consistent underperformance to continue and we have been clear that we need to have a wider range of improvement tools than has been the case previously.
The noble Baroness characterised the RISE teams as being within the department, but these are teams based in regions, made up of people who have enormous background in and experience of school improvement, many of whom come from multi-academy trusts and who are in a position both to support the turnaround of schools that are not performing adequately and to ensure that those schools that are not seeing improvements over a period of time are challenged and supported to make that improvement. To be clear, for those stuck schools, if, after two years of this targeted intervention, they were not improving, once again, the option of structural intervention and change would be considered.
What the Government are also proposing in this consultation is that up until September 2026, where schools would previously have been in categories of concern, where they are in what we might have thought of as special measures—in other words, where there is not the capacity of the leadership within the school to improve it—there will be immediate structural intervention, but where the leadership could enable that to change, they will be subject to immediate academisation. After September 2026, when we have the RISE teams fully up and running, for those schools where the leadership has the potential to change, we would expect the RISE teams to be focusing on and targeting them to make sure that there is improvement.
Of course, the reason for taking this more sophisticated approach to improvement is precisely because, while there is clearly evidence that being academised can lead to improvement, there is also evidence that in many cases, that can take too long, given the urgency of improving education for our children. Some 40% of academisations take more than a year to convert; 20% take more than two years. We cannot wait for those structural changes to happen, important and impactful though they might be. We need to ensure that children’s chances are improved as quickly as possible.
On the specific questions about the Ofsted consultation, it is important to emphasise that it is a consultation that builds on the Big Listen, which makes important recommendations; for example, about how the inspection will now focus, as noble Lords have said, on nine areas. This is a consultation, but I support the move from a single headline grade, where the emphasis was literally on a headline, which was of course very low in information for parents making that decision but very high stakes for schools, and very much did not encompass the nuance of where a school might be doing well, where it might be more challenged or where it might have exemplary practice that needed to be shared more widely. There is consultation on these areas, but I think the fact that they will now include absence, attendance and inclusion—to respond to the noble Lord’s point about the significance of ensuring that there are improvements around SEND, I think that partly covers that point—is important.
On the safeguarding point, I will write to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness about the specific questions about the proposals for follow-up visits. The noble Lord rightly mentioned the tragic death of Ruth Perry, and the campaigning work of her sister, Professor Julia Waters, has been important for ensuring that Ofsted thought carefully about the approach that it was taking. One of the issues highlighted there was the impact of the safeguarding measure on the overall headline grade. One of the reasons for the different approach to safeguarding that Ofsted is proposing is to avoid that position, where a failure on safeguarding would have the impact that it had in that particular case, while also recognising that it is important that schools are assessed on the basis of the quality of their safeguarding.
On the point about whether or not the Government should have a duty or a power to academise, we will of course have the opportunity, when the Bill comes from the other place, to look in detail at the intention of Clauses 43 and 44, and I look forward to doing that. I just push back against the noble Baroness’s suggestion that in some way or other there has been a pause in this Government’s commitment to intervening where necessary and to ensuring that all our schools are improved. In the case that both she and her right honourable friend in the other place identified, it is not as clear-cut as she says that there was a revocation of the decision to academise. In fact, that was a quite considerable change of circumstance in that particular case.
Let me respond to the point that the noble Lord made about the pressure on teachers. My experience as a teacher, having been on the receiving end of an Ofsted inspection, notwithstanding that it was some time ago, is that, yes, it is stressful, but no teacher wants to teach in a school that is not doing the best for its pupils, and having an improvement, inspection and accountability regime that ensures that teachers are able to successfully support the children who need it will be good for teachers, good for parents, good for schools—and, most importantly, good for children.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on giving so much attention to school standards and to some urgency on school improvement, but does my noble friend agree that by far the most important quality that is needed in any school is first-class teachers? Perhaps she could reassure the House that the consultation will not be just about Ofsted, although obviously there will be a lot of consideration of some of the issues about changing the Ofsted structure. What will be done to improve in-service training for teachers who are not achieving what they should be and who are neither inspiring, nor exciting, nor encouraging their children’s aspirations successfully? This needs to happen, especially for disadvantaged pupils. Can she tell the House a little about what is being done, apart from the RISE scheme, to improve both school leadership and the quality of classroom teaching?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point about teachers. In fact, probably less than an hour and a half ago, we were engaged in a discussion across the Dispatch Box about the significance of teachers. She is absolutely right. What I would say about these two consultations running side-by-side with respect to teachers really goes back to my final point in my previous response. I think it is valuable for teachers to have not just that headline grade that was previously the case with Ofsted, but the more granular understanding of where there are strengths within the school, where there are areas for improvement, where, as I said, there is exemplary practice that needs to be shared more widely—and, incidentally, how they can get access to that good practice in other areas, to improve their practice and their school.
My noble friend also makes an important point about training. We are as a Government working on how to not just recruit additional teachers but keep them in the classroom and ensure that they are able to improve and gain in competence and skill. That is why, in looking at and reviewing the national professional qualifications, we will want to consider those forms of training and opportunities for continuing professional development that will really focus on the areas that teachers need and that will make the most difference to the pupils they are teaching.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I apologise—twice: once for being late for this debate and once for being a bit keen. Ofsted is a real problem, and there is quite a simple solution. A friend of mine, who is a teacher, told me a story. They were told, “Ofsted is coming tomorrow. The school will be open all night”. That is not a fair reflection of the school or the teachers. If Ofsted goes in twice, the first time is a snap inspection. It sits down with the leadership and talks through where they are going wrong and where they are going right. Nine months or a year later, Ofsted goes back, and that is the inspection that gets published. That takes the pressure off everybody and gives a fair result. Will the Minister reflect those ideas back to the consultation? I think they will listen more to her than to me.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Given the noble Lord’s background as a teacher, I am sure that Ofsted will listen to his response to the consultation, which I hope he will make. While I have some sympathy with the concerns of teachers about the arrival of Ofsted—having experienced it myself, as I have already said—I am not wholly convinced that students can afford to wait nine months between the preparatory conversation and the point at which some judgment is made. Frankly, if things are going wrong, it is important for students and parents that those are identified at the appropriate time, and, if things are going right, it is important that those are shared as widely as possible.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, on the move from the duty to intervene to the power to intervene when a school is inadequate, the schools the Minister outlined that have taken a long time often have complicated land or financial issues, as I am sure she is aware. Trusts already go in before the legal status has changed, and for schools that go through the process relatively quickly, there are occasions when the fact that everybody knows there is a duty to academise speeds things up. The Minister will be aware that, by virtue of these contracts, the Department for Education is now a regulator; it regulates schools. Is there another example of a regulator, such as the Charity Commission or the FCA, that does not have a duty to intervene and merely relies on these powers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness will know from her experience that the ability to academise a school does not depend on a duty in every case, and nor did it do so under the last Government. The 2RI policy was a power for academisation to happen in those cases, not a duty. I am not sure I would characterise the department in quite the way she did; nevertheless, it comes back to this point: what is the most appropriate range of interventions that can be used to ensure that the improvement we see in the schools that need it is as speedy, well supported and appropriate as possible? For example, the distinction between schools that have the leadership capacity to improve themselves, and those that do not, is an important one. The RISE teams, with their targeted interventions for schools that need it, and their broader universal offer to direct schools looking to improve in the right areas, are an important addition to ensure that all our schools are improving quickly.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
I remind noble Lords of my entry in the register of interests as the chair of the multi-academy trust E-ACT. My noble friend will know that some argue that the Secretary of State has oversteered back towards a model of school improvement based on fear. What reassurance can she give that Ofsted will go further to ensure that inspections are more consistent and more supportive, and when can we expect much-needed universal inspections of MATs, with a move to more risk-based inspections, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Importantly, as a result of the Big Listen, Ofsted is also publishing as part of the consultation considerably more information on how schools will be assessed. For example, publication of toolkits and the consultations gives schools much more of an opportunity to know the basis on which they are going to be inspected, and more of an idea about what counts as good and where improvement might be needed. My noble friend is right: that will be an important way of ensuring that balance between challenge and an appropriate way for schools to understand what needs to happen in order to improve. We are committed to introducing MATs inspections, and we will engage with the sector and bring forward legislation when time allows. This is an important area, like the Ofsted consultation and the department’s consultation, and we are genuinely open to ensuring that this works appropriately, gets the balance right and ensures that children’s education is being improved.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, the proposed five-tier report card for schools is receiving much airtime, but can the Minister tell us what is being done to measure the effectiveness of Ofsted inspectors? This follows on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Knight. Should there not be an appraisal system with report cards, bearing in mind the many negative anecdotes from headteachers about inspections that we have heard about during this short debate, and bearing in mind the sensitivities, particularly with multiple inspections, that affect headteachers?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The quality of the inspections that Ofsted carries out is important, as is the capacity and training of Ofsted inspectors to provide that. That, of course, is the responsibility of the chief inspector and the structures in Ofsted, but I am sure that everybody takes the noble Viscount’s point that there needs to be quality in those who are inspecting our schools, as well as the expected quality in those who are directly delivering education.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
Further to the comments by the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Berridge, about the need for forced academisation, does my noble friend agree that there is no evidence that the only help available to an underperforming school is for it to become an academy? Support is available in the maintained sector—an issue we will come to in more detail when the schools Bill is developed—but it is a fallacy to suggest that that is the only hope for underperforming schools.
It is appropriate that the two consultations published this week were published on the same day, and that the consultation periods ended on the same date. However, I am a bit concerned about the Ofsted proposals. I know that the report is based on the Big Listen, but as I understand it, some aspects of it are already being trialled in certain schools. Does it not bring into question just how accurate it is to describe the document as a consultation, if, as it seems, some people have made decisions already?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I can assure my noble friend that, in both cases, they are genuine consultations. The objective of ensuring that all our children are in good schools is shared not just across this House but by parents, teachers, inspectors, school leaders and many others involved in the education sector, and that is why I can assure my noble friend that this is a genuine consultation. Here, trialling can sometimes be part of the consultation, to determine whether things are running successfully. Personally, I think it is possible to trial and pilot, and to consult, to get the broadest input into ensuring that the right decisions are made after that.
Creative Industries: Creating Jobs and Productivity Growth
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Baroness Thornton
To move that this House takes note of the contribution of the creative industries to the Government’s growth mission and to creating jobs and productivity growth.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to open this debate. I very much look forward to the three maiden speeches by my noble friends Lady Griffin, Lord Lemos and Lord Brennan, and, of course, to the speech of my noble friend Lady Twycross. I thank the Library and the many organisations that have sent briefings to us all—many briefings, because, of course, the creative industries cover such a huge area of our national life and our economy.
Some of us will probably recall a teacher or a person who first opened our eyes to the pleasure of music, art, design, or some form of creative endeavour. In my case this was Miss Bickerstaff, who was the music teacher at Frizinghall Middle School in Bradford, which I attended between the ages of 11 and 13. She took us to St George’s Hall in Bradford to hear the Hallé orchestra. Before we went, she played some of the music to us and explained what we were about to hear. I still need only to hear the opening chords of “Night on the Bare Mountain” or “Fingal’s Cave” and I know exactly what it is I am listening to, for which I am very grateful.
Thankfully, the English teachers at the comprehensive I went on to attend bothered to take us to the local theatres. I admire teachers so much, because we must have been such an unruly bunch. We went to see not only the Shakespeare we were studying but, being Bradford, plays such as JB Priestley’s “An Inspector Calls”—I have to say, it took years for me to work out exactly what was going on in that.
While I am recalling my home city, I must, of course, rejoice that Bradford’s year as City of Culture is taking place now. The Bradford district was selected by the Government in May 2022. Bradford 2025 is taking place throughout the Bradford district, which covers 141 square miles across West Yorkshire, including Haworth, Ilkley and Saltaire, as well as Bradford itself. Bradford was also the first UNESCO City of Film, and the filming location for “Peaky Blinders”, “Happy Valley” and “The Crown”. We are one of the UK’s youngest cities; a quarter of our population is under 20 years old. Bradford 2025 is created for, with, and by the people of Bradford, and it has young people at its heart. Not surprisingly, the programme reflects youth, from education, skills and training projects to new artistic commissions centred on the lives, concerns and ambitions of young people today.
This year will see Bradford’s dynamic contemporary arts and culture, from dance and theatre to film, music and even food, because, of course, it is the curry capital of Britain. New cultural investment will have an impact long after the end of 2025. We have already seen significant investment in the region, and Bradford 2025 is set to serve as a catalyst for development, regeneration and change.
I encourage noble Lords to go to the Bradford 2025 website and to take part in some of the great activities on offer. For instance, each month a different artist will invite us to create a drawing inspired by a particular theme. I am afraid noble Lords have missed David Hockney inviting people to paint something beautiful and send it to him, but I am sure noble Lords’ artistic work would be much appreciated.
In many ways, Bradford is ahead of the curve in bringing to reality the contribution that our creative industries can bring to our localities and regions, to economic revival and to job creation. We are part of the recently announced funding for six mayoral strategic authorities—of which one is, of course, the mayoralty of our own mayor, Tracy Brabin, who has led trade delegations and cultural collaborations all over the world and is, of course, key to the success of Bradford 2025—which bodes very well for our region.
It was a pleasure, having been in the DCMS team twice in opposition—from 2013 to 2015, and most recently with the team led by the soon to be ennobled Thangam Debbonaire as shadow Secretary of State—to be a small part of Labour policy on the creative arts, and to witness the speeches and commitment of Thangam and the now Prime Minister, my right honourable friend Sir Keir Starmer MP, to the creative community at a wonderful event at the fantastic Guildhall School of Music and Drama last year. I regard this debate, partly, as looking to see what has happened in the last year and in the very early days of our Labour Government. I learned something new about our Prime Minister at that event. He spoke with passion about how coming to the Guildhall on a Saturday morning to learn to play the flute was an important awakening for him of the importance of music and of making music accessible to all children, even one like him. He caught the train into London on his own for lessons that his parents would have found difficult to afford. So, among his many talents as our Prime Minister, he is also a flautist.
So how could the creative industries not be integral to my Labour Government’s plan for economic growth? They bring £124 billion to our economy annually. We can see those commitments taking shape, even though we inherited a chaotic economy, and that the country needs to invest in the British success story that is the creative industries. We all know that there are very real challenges. Indeed, the industry has not held back in telling us the challenges it faces in the many briefings we have been sent, but many also acknowledge what a good start we have made.
We should start by treasuring the institutions and bodies this country has created over many decades, and in some cases hundreds of years, that are the envy of the world and provide a foundation on which to build and invest. The BBC contributed almost £5 billion to the UK economy last year, supporting over 50,000 jobs. It is the largest single investor in UK-made programming, and 50% of the BBC’s economic output is outside London. The National Trust is a great British success story, caring for almost a quarter of a million hectares of land, 780 miles of coastline, and more than 300 historic houses, gardens and archaeological landscapes. It has almost 5.5 million members, and, of course, the best scones you might wish for—although I am not sure the dining room here would agree with me about that.
The Arts Council invests money from the Government and the National Lottery to support creativity and culture. However, since 2017, arts funding from national bodies has been cut by 16% in real terms, so I very much welcome the review established by my right honourable friend Lisa Nandy MP, the Secretary of State, to be led by my noble friend Lady Hodge, a former Culture Minister, to explore how to improve access to the arts and culture in all areas of the country, to drive access to opportunity.
The Edinburgh Festival in Scotland is known all over the world, is innovative, brings forth amusement, and is a huge asset to the UK, and one we need to treasure. I will also mention the University of the Arts London’s College of Fashion, which is based in east London; the National Theatre and many of our leading theatres, drama schools and performing arts venues, from the Picturedrome in Holmfirth—I declare an interest because it is run by my brother-in-law—to the Salisbury Playhouse, the Exeter Northcott Theatre, the “end of the pier” in Cromer, of which I am very fond, the Royal Hall, Harrogate, the Playhouse Whitley Bay, and my local Hampstead Theatre; the Baltic; the Glasshouse; the British Museum; the Science Museum Group and its partner museums in Bradford, Manchester, York, Shildon and Wiltshire, which have over 5 million visitors a year between them; the Tate galleries in Liverpool and St Ives, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Tate Digital; the National Gallery; and the hundreds of small galleries, such as Cartwright Hall in Bradford, which all enrich our communities everywhere.
I need to mention Manchester, because it is already recognised as one of Europe’s largest creative digital technology clusters and, of course, has Salford. It is home to a fast-growing £5 billion digital ecosystem, and the ENO is moving to Manchester, so it is heading towards being an international powerhouse for the arts.
Wales Arts International is the international agency of the Arts Council in Wales and is a gateway between the arts of Wales and the world.
The video games industry is the fastest-growing sector in the nation’s creative industries. It is driven by creativity and innovation and generates £6 billion in gross value added. I hope my noble friend has noted the smart report from UKIE—UK Interactive Entertainment—about the upskilling and qualifications we need to create digital technologies by combining STEAM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths—to provide the skill set critical for a 21st century economy.
I have to end my by-no-means-exhaustive list by mentioning dance, opera, ballet and music. The Royal Opera House—under one of our Members, the noble Lord, Lord Hall—took opera and ballet out of its wonderful building in Covent Garden and broadcast it on screens all over the country and is now partnering with 150 organisations and reaching thousands of schools through teacher training. We are blessed with the Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Northern Ballet, English National Ballet, Ballet Rambert and, announced most recently, Sadler’s Wells East—many ballet and dance schools.
I know I will be in trouble for not mentioning something or other or a genre, but I think we can say with confidence that we are blessed. Our creative industries are integral to our regeneration, and the Government recognise this and have picked up the commitments made and are running with them. As Lisa Nandy said in her groundbreaking speech at the Creative Industries Growth Summit on 17 January at the Baltic and the Glasshouse:
“Arts and culture must be for everyone, everywhere. No matter your background or the place you live, we should all be able to experience the joys that dance, theatre, music, museums, even borrowing a book from a library brings”.
From film to fashion to music and advertising, our creative industries are truly world-class and play a critical role in helping us deliver on this Government’s mission to drive economic growth in all parts of the UK, but they face challenges and that is why we need a 10-year plan.
The first challenge is skills and education, which was mentioned in almost every brief we received about this issue. From digital games to the people in the BPI music industry, via the heritage industry and our need for specialist building skills to retrofit our special buildings for our net-zero future, there is a huge challenge, which I know that my noble friend will acknowledge—and her department is of course working very closely with the Department for Education.
Secondly, there is the huge issue of intellectual property and our music industry and the importance of the gold standard IP rights framework which is enshrined in UK law. We must maintain, protect and champion this, and I hope my noble friend can confirm this is a priority.
Thirdly, there is AI. I will quote our Secretary of State:
“we hear creators’ concerns and we recognise the worry that AI is an existential threat to livelihoods. There is no value without content. I want to assure you in the clearest possible terms: creatives are at the core of our AI strategy”.
We have to remove barriers to innovation and creativity. This is a pledge we have heard from across government, and I know my noble friend the Minister will be able to put some flesh on the bones of this pledge today. It must tackle things such as space to rehearse, funding to match needs, the time it takes to create and how the apprenticeship scheme fits in with the investment that is needed to make a business thrive and work in its early years.
I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Vadera has agreed to lead us through this new chapter as the next chair of our revamped Creative Industries Council. She and the titan that is Sir Peter Bazalgette have wasted no time in setting to work on the sector plan, which is our dedicated plan in the industrial strategy that will guide us forwards.
I look forward to having this debate again in a year or so’s time when we can see what our first steps have led to and how we are taking this drive for the creative industries forward. I beg to move.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, in looking forward to the trio of maiden speeches we have coming up in this debate. As recognised by the last Government and by this one, our creative industries are an absolute economic powerhouse, and I am sure we will hear many facts and figures and personal stories in this debate to pay tribute to that. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, managed to namecheck so many of the great institutions that we have in our creative industries that I shall try not to repeat that in the four minutes I have. Instead, I want to focus my remarks on the support the Government provide to the creative industries and how we can learn from the success of one aspect of that support.
In the UK, we benefit from a mixed model of funding for our arts sector: we have some state subsidy, particularly to ensure that everyone gets access across the country; we have tax reliefs, which stimulate new activity; and we have private philanthropy, which rewards and supports excellence and is something that could be extended with the right incentives in place. But, in the time available, I am going to focus on the second in that list—the success of the tax reliefs and credits that we have put in place to support growth in our creative industries.
By their very nature, our creative industries are innovative and inventive sectors and so respond well to tax reliefs which stimulate new creative work. This was recognised by the previous Government, which extended and built on the existing film tax credits to a wide range of sectors, including high-end TV, children’s TV, video games, theatrical productions, orchestral productions and exhibitions in museums and galleries. I am glad that this Government have committed to retaining them.
Each of those has a cost to the Exchequer in terms of forgone revenue—£12.5 billion cumulatively, which is not to be sniffed at. But research from industry and HMRC itself has shown that they have been successful at attracting investment to the UK that would have otherwise gone elsewhere. Crucially, the reliefs are globally competitive not just because of their headline rate but because of their perceived simplicity, consistency and speed of payment.
I think that point cannot be emphasised enough. Industry and government get the greatest benefit out of such schemes when they are simple and predictable. Too many forms of government support, whether it is through tax reliefs or credits or grant funding, are subject to too many different rules, criteria, application processes and timescales. We have endless—many of them put in place by the previous Government—pots and funds attempting to support sectors where we see high potential for growth, not just in the creative industries but beyond. Through a perfectly sensible desire to ensure value for money, we sometimes end up failing to see the wood for the trees and make it too difficult to access the support.
In the context of a difficult spending review coming up, I make a plea to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to make the case to the Treasury and learn the lessons of what can be and has been effective in these sectors. I am not arguing for new tax reliefs for every different sector that is as effective at lobbying as the creative industries—which the volume of emails in my inbox, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, can attest to. But to those who either tend to see public subsidy to the arts as a nice to have rather than making good economic sense or who see tax cuts for business as revenue forgone that could have been spent on public services, I say that smart, well-designed, internationally competitive tax reliefs can make an important difference to industries for the UK that create a wider ecosystem of talent and growth.
I hope that the enthusiastic support we might hear for some of these measures in this debate today can be a lesson for the Government to take away and think of in the future.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as per the register. I thank the noble Baroness for her excellent opening speech and for securing this debate, as it gives me the opportunity to draw attention to the children’s creative industry.
First, I congratulate “Horrible Histories”, which recently received a BAFTA special award for being one of the most successful children’s programmes, influencing millions of children over the years to love and to study history.
This debate also gives me the opportunity to recognise the contribution to growth made by children’s content creators in the UK over the decades. Many are attending the world children’s market Kidscreen in San Diego this month. More than 50 UK companies will be under the banner of UK@Kidscreen, organised by the Children’s Media Conference, which helps the children’s creative industries to survive and thrive.
However, we should not be fooled by this good news, because the survival of quality children’s content is not assured. The children’s creative industry is in turmoil. Writers, musicians, actors and technical staff are not working. All our past well-loved children’s content sectors are struggling; very few have commissions and the majority of the industry is on its knees. This is because children have migrated in huge numbers to platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Also, advertising revenue has fallen on the public service broadcasting channels and is being diverted to YouTube, which does not share the advertising revenue in the same way that the conventional broadcast system used to. This means that producers struggle to generate funding for projects that previously would have been supported by the PSBs.
YouTube does offer revenue, but it is nothing like the upfront guarantees of the old broadcasting system, so the children’s industry is in a race to the bottom. Low-cost content providers, who soon no doubt will be using AI to generate their content, now dominate on YouTube. Children are watching a mishmash of content built on influencers, cheap animation and, at its worst, deeply inappropriate and harmful material that affects their mental health and well-being. The Children’s Commissioner for England’s report on the recent riots revealed that violent, harmful messages, conveyed by some of the most popular social media channels, influenced the children’s behaviour.
Something needs to be done to bring us back to a situation in which our brilliant children’s creative industry can be financed to make great content. New relationships need to be built with the video-sharing platforms, encouraging them to acknowledge that they have a place in society and must make more prominent quality content that is positive, culturally relevant, age-appropriate for young people, impartial and fair. New platforms are the chief influencers of our children and they need to take responsibility for that.
The Government also have a crucial role to play before it is too late, so I ask the Minister: what consideration has been given to enhancing the children’s television tax relief from 24% to at least 34%? This would help attract investment in children’s production, particularly in the case of international platforms which no longer provide children’s content. What consideration have the Government given to encouraging platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ to donate part of their 30% European quota to children’s content—say, 10% of relevant UK content? Is this something that Ofcom could look into?
This is unlikely to solve the crisis on its own. If a level playing field for British media output is desired, some form of government intervention which goes beyond the existing PSB landscape is needed to bring into scope the platforms which children have migrated to. As I keep saying, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us not ignore the alarm bells and the warnings, for the sake of our children’s future. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to all the maiden speeches today.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Cryer)
My Lords, I apologise for interrupting but, because there has been some ambiguity about the speaking order today and a few changes made to it, I want to make it clear, so there is no doubt, that the speaking limit for Back-Bench speeches is now five minutes.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord; what welcome news we have just heard. We have already heard three extremely potent speeches and I agree with everything that has been said. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for this debate. I shall be picking up on David Hockney, and emphasise, without going into it any further, the importance of copyright and AI. To creative people such as me—I declare an interest as a composer—that is fundamental to carrying on our existence.
Like other speakers today, I want to celebrate what is good and wonderful in the UK. In so doing, I hope to emphasise what needs protecting and supporting. On which subject, I look forward to all the maiden speeches but particularly that of the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, who has done such fantastic work in the other place on behalf of music. I really look forward to hearing his maiden speech and working with him in future.
As I just said, we have in the UK an abundance of creative talent but it needs nurturing, especially at the grass-roots level. That is why I ask the Minister to look carefully at the plight of small venues up and down the country, where emerging talent can be fostered. Let us go to the other extreme: in a few days’ time at the Royal Opera House, we will hear a new opera, “Festen” by Mark-Anthony Turnage, one of our most acclaimed composers. It is this wonderful mix of the grass-roots level and the Royal Opera House, or no matter where it is, that we should celebrate and preserve.
In terms of preserving, the closure of university arts departments is a terrible worry. Most recently, it was the music department at Cardiff University. It followed in the wake of other universities, such as the University of East Anglia, which has such a splendid record in literature, with Ian McEwan, Angela Carter and Kazuo Ishiguro—a Nobel laureate, no less. He has now been joined by Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian-British citizen.
Our dramatists and actors are second to none. I went to the Hampstead Theatre the other night to see Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love”. Simon Russell Beale was magnificent as the ageing AE Housman. How lucky we are. In April, David Hockney, was has already been spoken about, will have the largest retrospective exhibition ever in Paris—some 400 pictures curated by Norman Rosenthal. So, there is much to celebrate but also, I fear, much to preserve. It is essential for artists to know the rules before they break them. This is something that Hockney always maintained: —that you need to be able to draw before you can paint. Funnily enough, His Majesty the King also believes very passionately in tradition and building on the lessons of the past. Whether you are an avant-garde artist or not, knowing those basics is essential.
That brings me on to why arts and music in schools are so crucial. This is the future generation who we hope will be able—once Brexit is amended—to tour Europe, who will be writing operas for the Royal Opera House, and who will have their music on the South Bank, but that is going to happen only if we put music back centre-stage in schools, hopefully on the curriculum but, if not, let us get peripatetic teachers to teach instruments. There are precious few instruments and even fewer teachers in state schools. I believe that music and the arts must not be the preserve of the rich. They must be open to everyone. That creates a more cohesive society. In my maiden speech 10 years or so ago, I mentioned a person in Wormwood Scrubs who was part of the Koestler Trust. I had managed to get a guitar to him, and he replied to me, “Thank you so much for this gift. If I had received this when I was 17 years old, I do not think I would be sitting here in Wormwood Scrubs serving a life sentence for murder”.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for introducing this important debate and, like everyone else, I look forward to the maiden speeches that are yet to come. I remind the House of my former interest, having had most of my professional career in the arts sector, and I should declare an interest that my daughter runs a company funded by the Arts Council. My noble friend Lady Thornton gave us many reasons to be cheerful. I was delighted to hear them, and I am glad to endorse them. We are rightly proud of what our creative industries have achieved. We have been blessed—a word she used several times—for many years, and still are, by the brilliance and originality of our people, the individual performers, writers, designers, producers, technicians, musicians and many others who have changed the face of the industries they work in.
This did not happen by accident. Most of them were nurtured, initially in school and subsequently through live arts organisations, large and small, sustained nowadays by armies of freelancers who make up the rich cultural ecosystem which this country has developed over decades and which, I am sorry to say, is now significantly depleted. We should not take our brilliance in the creative industries for granted. Others are already just as good or catching up fast, and we cannot rely on our historic success to keep us competitive. I ask noble Lords to notice the variety of Oscar nominations this year, just as one example, but let us also be delighted by the continuing brilliance of Aardman Animations. Who does not love Wallace and Gromit?
We are in the middle, as others have said, of the most significant technological revolution of our time: artificial intelligence. Maybe one day it will replace human creativity entirely, as we are now being warned it might. Meanwhile, the Government define creative industries as those,
“which have their origin in individual”—
I emphasise “individual”—
“creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.
That is a very significant element in this debate, as we have already discovered and will continue to discover. I am not going to mention the Data Access Bill, but I am just saying.
We are talking about people and what they create, which is why I want to talk a bit about education, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has done already. To grow innovators in all disciplines we need an education system that actively encourages curiosity, challenge and, above all, imagination. We know that over recent years focus on the EBacc has resulted in a serious decline in arts subjects in maintained schools. I say in maintained schools because that is not the case in independent schools, and that creates its own inequalities as we go forward. I refer the Minister to the most recent figures from the Sutton Trust. I very much hope that the upcoming curriculum review will start to put that right. I mean absolutely no disrespect to teachers and school leavers when I say that our education system has been too focused on knowledge rather than on inquiry. Teachers too often feel constrained to teach to the test, and we observe too much anxiety in young people about getting things right rather than thinking independently.
Do innovation and creativity not rely substantially on brave and unexpected imaginative leaps? Arts subjects, properly taught, demand intellectual discipline and critical skill, as others have already said, but they start and end with imagination. If we are to preserve the primacy of human thought and creative originality over artificial alternatives, we must first understand, value and support them from cradle to grave and do all we can to protect the livelihoods of our creators within a thriving cultural economy fed by a healthy, diverse pipeline of new talent. If we do not, we risk losing that pre-eminence which we are so keen to celebrate today.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, and her very good speech. I declare an interest as an alumnus of Central Saint Martins, and my mother has worked in the fashion industry for over 30 years.
I will speak today on the invaluable contribution of the UK’s creative industries, specifically the fashion sector, to the Government’s growth mission, the creation of good jobs and productivity growth. Fashion is more than an art form; it is a powerful economic engine, an incubator of global talent, and a force for innovation and sustainability if done in the right way. It is an industry that deserves the full backing of government policy to realise its vast potential.
The United Kingdom is renowned for its dynamic and avant-garde fashion scene. For decades, our designers, from Vivienne Westwood to Alexander McQueen, have challenged conventions, set global trends and positioned Britain as a beacon of creativity. Our Northamptonshire shoemakers are the envy of the world. The ability of this sector to continually reinvent itself through a fusion of traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge innovation—for example, the Manchester-based Private White V.C. and Hiut Denim in Wales—underscores its importance in the broader creative economy.
Beyond its cultural significance, the economic impact of UK fashion is formidable. The sector directly contributes £28.9 billion in GVA and employs more than 800,000 people. When considering its broader economic impact, it supports over 1.4 million jobs and £67.5 billion in GVA. Remarkably, fashion’s direct contribution surpasses that of the aerospace, defence and space industries combined. If we are serious about growth and job creation, this is an industry that cannot be overlooked.
However, to maintain and expand this success, targeted government intervention is essential. I urge the Government to consider the following measures. First, we must reinstate the trade show access programme and enhance embassy support for UK fashion companies abroad. Past programmes have demonstrated the significant returns on investment such initiatives can bring. Trade shows and sectoral missions empower businesses—particularly SMEs—to access international markets, driving growth and strengthening our global competitiveness.
Sustainability must be at the heart of our strategy. A textile-specific extended producer responsibility scheme would generate an estimated £150 million annually to fund circular business models, rewarding durability and penalising unsustainable practices, sometimes known as fast fashion. This is a vital step towards the Government’s aim of achieving net zero and aligns with our broader environmental commitments.
We need to increase funding for R&D, particularly through Innovate UK, with an emphasis on direct business benefits rather than solely academic research. Full funding for SMEs participating in innovation projects would democratise access to technological advancements and drive productivity across the sector.
Post-Brexit procurement rules should be reformed to prioritise UK manufacturers, particularly in the technical textile industry. This will strengthen our advanced manufacturing capabilities and bolster industries beyond fashion, such as healthcare and defence.
Vocational education must be placed on an equal footing with academic routes. A model akin to Switzerland’s system would ensure that the skills and growth levy effectively supports apprenticeships and training, addressing industry skill gaps and equipping our workforce for the future.
Reintroducing VAT-free shopping would provide an immediate boost to the UK’s fashion and textile industries. This policy would enhance tourism-related spending, benefiting both luxury brands and local manufacturers supplying these businesses.
Capital expenditure funding, as I said, should be directed towards expanding technical textiles and advanced manufacturing. Building on the success of the regional growth fund, such investment would reinforce the UK’s position as a leader in high-value manufacturing.
To conclude, our creative industries—and fashion in particular—are key drivers of economic growth, job creation and global influence. With strategic government support, the UK fashion sector can flourish, ensuring that our reputation as a powerhouse of creativity, innovation and sustainability endures for generations to come. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and to the three maiden speeches.
Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, five minutes is two minutes more than you need for a song to make you laugh or cry, make you fall in love or change your life for ever, so it must be plenty of time for a maiden speech. I thank Black Rod and everyone who works in this House, including my noble colleagues from across the House, for their extraordinary kindness to me over the past 48 hours, since I was introduced to this place.
I come from an immensely privileged background. Both my parents left school at 14 but, in our working-class household, education was everything, love was everywhere and music was the soul of our family. It still is, as my wife, Amy, and daughter, Siobhan, will attest. I mentioned the staff of this House earlier. I want to single out the cleaners, who too often are taken for granted. My late mother, Beryl Evans, was a miner’s daughter who worked as a cleaner. When I was first elected to Cardiff City Council in 1991, I took her to the mayor-making ceremony in the splendid surroundings of Cardiff City Hall. Overly proud of my achievement, I showed her around the grand marble building and asked her what she thought. She looked all around the cavernous halls and said, “Imagine having to clean this”. It is a lesson I have never forgotten.
My late father, Michael Brennan, was taken from his classroom in west Cork at the age of 14 by his father to work on the family farm, to the dismay of his teachers. But he could quote Shakespeare, and imbued in me and my three siblings—Colleen, Nuala and Patrick—a philosophy greater than any I learned from books or university when he recited his own mantra:
“Help the weak against the strong,
love the old when you’re young,
own a fault when you’re wrong,
when you’re angry hold your tongue,
stand your round and give a song,
and don’t forget where you come from.”
That is why I say I come from a privileged background, albeit more shovelry than chivalry. Part of that background as a young man was encountering my two now-ennobled comrades who introduced me as supporters in this House: my noble friends Lord Kinnock and Lord Murphy of Torfaen—two extraordinary people I am honoured to call my friends.
I am immensely proud to enter this House as a Labour Peer under a Labour Government, and I am proud to support that Labour Government. I am proud that my Government have put the creative industries at the heart of their economic strategy; recognising that, as well as being essential for our human souls, creativity and the arts are key components of economic growth and of what makes this country great. For too long, that essential insight has been undervalued in our national discourse. But in praising my colleagues in government, including the Prime Minister, who has spoken passionately about how music changed his life, I want to gently nudge my colleagues on the mechanism that underpins the economic success of our creative industries, namely the law of copyright in the age of artificial intelligence.
I want to make a plea for human intelligence and EI—emotional intelligence—over AI, artificial intelligence. AI is a great servant, including to the creative industries, but it would be a terrible master if we allowed it to become that. In a previous incarnation, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the other place, the Copyright (Rights and Remuneration of Musicians, Etc.) Bill, to update the law of copyright to ensure that musicians, songwriters and composers receive their proper share of the vast sums of money collected because of their creative genius. I declare an interest as a proud member of the Musicians’ Union and the Ivors Academy of songwriters and composers, who has received small, occasional royalties for my songwriting for the legendary parliamentary rock band, MP4.
Incidentally, I have been encouraged—not that I need any encouragement—to form a new band in this place, and various names have been suggested. The best so far is an echo of my political hero, Aneurin Bevan. The suggestion for the Lords rock band name is “Lower than Ermine”, which I thought was rather good, but I am open to further suggestions, as well as in search of a noble drummer.
Returning to the theme of the debate, I note that this House recently considered AI and the creative industries, and I simply add this: artificial intelligence creates nothing—it simply generates probabilities. There is no soul in the machine. To return to Nye Bevan once more, AI is a desiccated calculating machine. It is an exciting technology that will save lives in the field of health, but we should never allow those who profit from it to steal from the furnace of human creativity by scraping content to produce a facsimile of human creativity without reward for the artists we cherish. Rather than undermining our creators, let us consider how to enhance their value and remuneration.
In recent years, there has been a vinyl revival in the music industry. Instead of allowing tech companies to perform the equivalent of transferring a farmer’s land to an oil company for drilling without permission or compensation, let us instead introduce new VINL—voice, image, name and likeness—rights for our creators, whether national treasures such as Paul McCartney or Elton John, or new artists such as Imogen and the Knife or Welsh Music Prize-winning Lemfreck.
The creative industries are the fastest-growing part of our economy. The cake has been growing in size; let us not give it away to those who seek to steal it, and let us ensure that those who create the recipe and bake the cake get more than mere crumbs from the table.
Baroness Nye (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend on a powerful and very moving maiden speech. He will bring a wealth of experience to this House. My noble friend Lord Kinnock, one of his supporters, described him as being equally at home in the senior common room of an Oxbridge college as the saloon bar of a Welsh working men’s club. It was no surprise that his speech was about music: he is renowned as an expert on folk music, a musician extraordinaire and, possibly more importantly, the king of karaoke. We will also need to check our phones after this debate, as he became the first MP to win the social media MP of the year award, beating Nick Clegg and Jeremy Corbyn.
As he said, he is also a member of MP4, but he was possibly too modest to mention that it has raised over £1 million for charity. He is probably the only member of your Lordships’ House who has had a single that reached number two, sadly just missing that Christmas number one slot. The cover version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was recorded under the banner of Friends of Jo Cox, who, as noble Lords know, was so tragically murdered. As my noble friend said, they are currently looking for a drummer and, if anybody from the House would like to apply, I am sure he would be grateful. They do not have to be fluent in Welsh; he has that covered.
Turning to the debate, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing it. There are many illustrations of how the creative industries have benefited local communities around the country, as my noble friend Lady Thornton so eloquently described in the case of Bradford 2025. Last week in Hull, people were still talking about the impact that the City of Culture status had on the city, as it had in Glasgow and Liverpool previously. In fact, it was so successful that the Hull City fans took to chanting to away teams, “You’re only here for the culture”—not something you hear often on the terraces. Events such as these, as well as the landmark example of the move by the BBC to Salford—the largest relocation of any public organisation this century—have had an enormous impact on employment and business growth in the area, as well as, in the case of the BBC, the multiplier effect across Greater Manchester and the north-west.
The new Labour Government have recognised the transformative power of the creative sector in driving economic growth, and they have rightly designated it one of the vital eight growth-driving industries at the heart of their industrial strategy. The upcoming creative industry sector plan, led by my noble friend Lady Vadera and Sir Peter Bazalgette, will be of huge importance. Their proposals for tackling the skills gap will be crucial in ensuring the continued success and competitiveness of the UK’s creative industries.
The ecosystem of creative industries, however, works only if the pipeline of talent is strong, and our role as a global leader in the future depends on a sustained supply of national talent. We need to identify, nurture and develop this talent from an early age, which means that every single child in whatever school in Britain should have access to a proper creative education. I make no apology for repeating points so eloquently made by my friend Lady McIntosh. That is why the review of the curriculum announced by the Education Secretary is so vital.
The current EBacc is “regressive”, “severely limits learning”, ignores the skills needed for today’s workforce and fails poorer children. Those are not my words but those of the architect of the national curriculum, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. A broader curriculum, giving children and young people access to music, arts and drama, will reap enormous benefits, from improved language development to confidence building. The Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget about expanding the creative careers programme, providing 11 to 18 year-olds with the opportunity to learn more about the full range of jobs in the creative sector and directly engage with the workplace, is also necessary to broaden opportunity for all. As has been said, talent is everywhere but opportunity is not.
Over the past 14 years, there has been a serious decline in students taking arts-related GCSEs and A-levels; universities are cutting creative courses or merging departments; and, according to the Sutton Trust, a higher proportion of students in private schools than in state schools are taking creative subjects at university. With fewer students in state schools taking creative arts subjects, the number of specialist teachers has also declined. Specialist art teachers in primary schools are now a rarity and very little professional development is happening. I welcome the Government’s pledge to recruit 6,500 more teachers, but what steps are the Government taking to address the recruitment, retention and professional development of music, drama, art and design teachers, as recommended by the National Society for Education in Art and Design?
Sixty years ago this month, the very first Arts Minister, Jennie Lee, presented Parliament with the first policy for arts, entitled First Steps. It therefore seems fitting that now is the time for this Labour Government to enthusiastically take the next steps.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for securing this timely and topical debate. Productivity has become an obsession of mine ever since I became an accidental entrepreneur in the creative industries more than 30 years ago. I will say more on that in a moment, but first I welcome on board no fewer than three new Members of this House. I salute the noble Lord, Lord Brennan of Canton, for his excellent and thoughtful maiden speech; I much look forward to his creation of a new rock band in this place.
We have already heard how crucial our creative sector is to our economy in terms of GDP, jobs, growth and exports. That said, there are three areas of policy tension that I should like to highlight. First, I declare my interests as set out in the register, including chairing, advising and investing in a number of start-ups in the creative sector—I have the scars to prove it. These ventures range from film and theatre to online intelligence and a dog-lovers’ match-making platform. That is creativity for you.
I will start with government policy. It is positive that the creative industries are—quite rightly—one of the Government’s eight priority sectors, as is the announcement of £60 million of funding at the recent creative industries growth summit. But that pales considerably when set against the £2.8 billion increase in employers’ national insurance contributions that will hit this sector on 5 April—in two months’ time. It is especially painful for our creative SMEs, which will shoulder the heaviest increases because this tax on jobs now kicks in at £5,000 rather than £9,000 of each employee’s salary.
I have tabled amendments in Grand Committee for exemptions to this national insurance increase for all small businesses employing between 10 and 50 staff, which is the fastest-growing subsector of our creative industries. Given how competitive this sector already is, these measures will do serious damage, particularly to lower-paid jobs and part-time roles.
The second area of tension I should like to highlight is the need to protect IP and copyright in the face of AI and Web 3.0, yet at the same time embrace the opportunities, particularly to boost productivity, that these technology tools offer. For content generators, AI looks set to be a game-changer. I am already seeing its impact among the small, agile players, not just big tech. I encourage the Government to take a measured approach to strike that very difficult balance between protection, regulation, and growth.
The third and final area of tension relates to the original title of this debate, “Creating good jobs in every part of the country”. It is a noble ideal, but fair geographic spread of creative jobs across the UK is very difficult to achieve. Official data shows us that London and the south-east alone account for almost 70% of this sector’s GVA and more than 60% of creative jobs. Capitals and major cities tend to take the lion’s share in all countries, not just the UK. There is a natural clustering process in the arts and creative world that is often at odds with regional policies of levelling up. I simply advise the Government to be realistic in this regard, especially if productive, sustainable economic growth is their number one mission.
Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an honour to make my first contribution in today’s debate and I look forward to visiting Bradford, a city I love, with my fellow co-operator, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.
I led on the copyright legislation in the European Parliament, and Kevin and I worked together. With everything ranged against us—big money—we won that legislation. It was precisely about the proper remuneration of creatives and artists. This is not part of my speech, but I am thrilled that in this debate we are talking about the fact that we cannot maximise the economic contribution of the creative industries unless we nurture education, children, the arts and artists. I had the privilege of writing the creative industry strategy for the north-west of England, so I am passionate about the creative industries, but it needs to be about all of this.
I am sitting down due to my chronic arthritis, so noble Lords may have to catch me when I fall—and I am certain that they will.
First, I thank noble Lords from all sides of the House for their generosity. I also thank the clerks, doorkeepers, police and staff of the House, without whom I could not have found my way to any debate. I was trained as a young councillor in my 20s in Liverpool by a marvellous woman called Margaret Simey. She said to me, “Theresa, remember that the two most important people in any public building are the cleaner and the caretaker and you’ll never go wrong”. I am so grateful to my noble friends Lord Kennedy of Southwark—I am not a Londoner; I hope I said that right—and Lady Smith of Basildon for their wisdom and kindness.
The first economic impact study of the arts was commissioned in Merseyside in 1988 by the sadly late visionary Peter Booth. This led to evidence to place the cultural industries as a major driver for growth in the Objective 1 European funding programme for Merseyside in the 1990s, a first in Europe. It was European investment that transformed Liverpool when others disgracefully said that that wonderful city could go into managed decline. It culminated in Liverpool being European Capital of Culture in 2008, and I had the privilege of chairing economic and European affairs for Liverpool as a city councillor at that time.
As my colleagues, friends and noble Lords have said, to maximise the creative industries in the Government’s growth agenda—and I know our Ministers will take this—we need to invest in art and artists, designers, regional and youth theatre, writers and the commissioning of new work and cultural programmes in our schools that exclude nobody. It is the creators and the creatives who will drive the content of those industries in the future. We have to invest in people. I am delighted to see the noble Lady, Baroness Benjamin, here today. Her cultural, fun and creative approach to education so inspired me.
In the mass car factory closures of the 1970s, my father was made redundant. There was no plan, no just transition—literally thousands of people unemployed in an instant; they, their families and local communities facing destitution. My dad left school in Donegal at 14, as there were no more schools. A very bright, compassionate man, driven by work to support his family—unemployed. In my young teens, I remember him walking through industrial estate after industrial estate, looking for work.
I am passionate about the right to decent employment, the creative and green agendas, workers’ rights, gender, disability and cultural equality. As an MEP, we commissioned research which proved the link between cases of childhood asthma and the burning of dirty fossil fuels. I had the privilege of chairing and being the president of the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources. I became Energy MEP of the Year in 2017 for our work in fighting energy poverty. No one should be disconnected through the inability to pay. No one should have to choose between eating, heating or cooling their home. I also had the privilege of moving the resolution to declare a climate emergency across the EU, supported by 28 member states and all EU political parties, apart from the far right. Hearing “27 member states”, not 28, still makes me cry.
In AI, we need ethical and social frameworks. In creating jobs and productivity growth, and in the creative and green sectors we need a just transition, working with our trade unions in advance to train and upskill existing workers and to equip our existing and future workers and our children to access the high-GDP, clean jobs of the future and to drive economic growth and social cohesion—a just transition that leaves no worker, family or community behind. I look forward to working with you all in the future.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to be in a debate that has three maiden speeches. We have already had two brilliant ones, and I am sure the third will be the same. Both the earlier speakers have managed to do something which is quite hard to do in your Lordships’ House: to open up their background and explain their motivations and thinking, and to rely on their experience to show how fit they are to join us. I was very impressed by the speech we have just heard and the previous one from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan. I hope that we will have many more and that the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, will share with us the experiences that she has had, which are obviously very relevant and appropriate for us in this House. I look forward to it.
I declare my interest as a former director of the British Film Institute and I also want to join others in thanking my noble friend for securing this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton—who we will have to call “Baroness Bradford” in future—has certainly set a very high standard for what we are talking about. I want to follow her in a lot of what she said, but I will focus particularly on issues that have arisen because of work I have been doing recently.
I have spent nearly seven years in this Parliament helping the last Government get the Online Safety Bill through and making sure that the CMA had the appropriate complementary powers through the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. Unfortunately, I take the view that we now need to do a lot more.
The market power of monopoly and oligopoly new tech platforms, combined with a change in their approach from being passive mechanisms for promoting the better circulation of ideas and knowledge to becoming active political players, as seems to be happening in America, means that we have to think again. I argue today that, over the last 14 years, our cultural policies have lacked purpose and have been intellectually moribund. We urgently need them to be rethought if we are to see off the threats we see today from the tech giants, aided by GAI, and those who champion them, as they are clearly acting against our best interests, both individually and as a country.
They call themselves “the disruptors”. To defeat this new threat, we need to lead with an aggressive plan to grow and modernise our cultural industries. This means that the Government need to set out clear cultural objectives and invest in them, not just when there is a market failure but for an explicit, additional purpose: standing firm and signalling their support for British values. The following are just three initial suggestions, which I hope the Government will take on and develop.
Our broadcasting system is the envy of the world. Let us use it to promote and celebrate British values. Why not invest heavily in the BBC and public service broadcasting more generally? The forthcoming BBC charter review and licence settlement should wholeheartedly get behind the talent, skill and expertise of the BBC, which informs, educates and entertains us, to ensure that, at least in Britain, there is a system that provides truth, quality and reliable information about the world in which we live.
The BBC World Service already does a brilliant job flying the flag for truth and democracy. The recent cuts and changes of funding sources have affected that. We should reinvest in this precious resource and help it transition to the new technologies.
Our cultural institutions already mentioned—our archives, libraries, museums and galleries, both national and local—are storehouses of what human endeavour can achieve. Our copyright laws and respect for the rule of law are crucial to keeping us on the right path. We must preserve and enhance them, so that all the evidence of what we had and the risks we face if we turn our backs on it is there to see and study.
I have used the term “British values”, and I know it is highly contested. But these disruptors seek to undermine the things that we all hold dear: a democratic polity, respect for the rule of law, freedom of speech, human rights, kindness, positive intergroup relations, community life and universal education. So much that we hold dear is at stake.
The new technologies have improved many aspects of our lives in many ways, but there is a downside. We will need to work very hard to ensure that the controls now being exercised by a few individuals in charge of these new tech giants are not left unchallenged. We already have the tools to do it; we now need to recognise the role our cultural organisations could play and support them.
Lord Lemos (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am privileged to be making my maiden speech today. It is only a few days since my introduction, but I could not resist the opportunity of this debate. I refer to my entry on the register of interests.
First, I thank the staff and officers of the House for their warm welcome, especially the doorkeepers—and particularly the doorkeeper who kindly turned down my collar. Kindness and courtesy are hallmarks of your Lordships’ House and I promise to uphold those traditions.
My father brought the family from India to south London in 1963. This was a year subsequently made famous by Philip Larkin, but I was only five years old in 1963. My father was an Anglophile and a great admirer of British democracy. He soon became a lifelong supporter of the Conservative Party. My mother, on the other hand, supported Labour, but always accepted a lift to the polling station on election day from the local Conservatives—her small but important contribution to the ongoing class war. Both my parents would be surprised and proud to see me here today—perhaps even astonished—but not as delighted and proud as I am.
Like my noble friend Lady Andrews, who kindly supported my introduction, I worked with Lord Young of Dartington at the Institute for Community Studies in Bethnal Green. Michael Young’s view was that everyone, most especially himself, had to think about, to write about and to do lots of things, all at the same time. I acquired the habit of professional multitasking from Michael.
My main professional vocation has been researching and writing about public policy. For many years, I also worked in financial services, where I first met my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. He also supported me at my introduction. I am now proud to be chair of National Savings & Investments as well as of English Heritage. I will shortly stand down as lead non-executive director of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Noble Lords do not need me to remind them that prisons and probation face intractable and enduring challenges. The arrival of my noble friend Lord Timpson as Minister has given us all great hope.
I have also been deputy chair of the British Council, supporting my noble friends Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and Lord Kinnock, before taking over briefly myself. The British Council is, of course, the principal agency for promoting our creative industries internationally. I am the unremunerated chair of the Hofesh Shechter Company which undertakes more international touring than any other UK-based contemporary dance company. In 2025, 200,000 people will watch our dancers all over the world, including a full house at the Old Vic tonight.
International touring is increasingly difficult for theatre, music and dance. Tax and visa regulations have become immeasurably more complicated, extremely time-consuming and expensive. Everyone in the performing arts hopes that improving relations with the European Union will greatly simplify and speed up these arrangements. My noble friend Lady Hodge is reviewing Arts Council England. I hope she recommends that it publishes a strategy not just to remove these obstacles to international touring but, more importantly, to fulfil the potential of the performing arts as cultural exports of British creative excellence. Britain’s international reputation will be greatly enhanced, as well as our soft power on which we so rely. As other noble Lords have mentioned, creativity is the wellspring of many of the UK’s best prospects for economic growth. I hope the Minister will agree that when it comes to celebrating British creative excellence internationally, all the world’s a stage.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lemos. I warmly congratulate him on his magnificent maiden speech. It was characteristically crisp, succinct and to the point. As is evident from his speech, the noble Lord is indeed multifaceted and a multitasker, though with a very sharp intellect. I describe him as a Renaissance man with panache. He has devoted his career to public and social policy and to the creative arts with great distinction. The noble Lord is also an author. He has written some very good books with some creative thinking about prisons. I recommend them to your Lordships. Some 30-plus years ago, he worked with me at the Arts Council and the Civil Service Commission, and we have been friends ever since, so noble Lords can imagine that I am delighted that he is now in your Lordships’ House where he will make a magnificent contribution. We will all benefit from his enormous experience, expertise, good judgment and, of course, his sense of fun. I welcome him.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for introducing this debate. As we have heard, the creative industries generate jobs, innovation and growth, bring in inward investment, enhance our international standing and are a vehicle for our soft power. The strength of the creative sector is also felt regionally and locally, promoting opportunities for well-being, inclusion and the enjoyment of individuals and communities.
The Government have rightly identified the creative industries as one of the eight growth-driving sectors. Their positive announcements are very encouraging. However, as we have heard, regional disparities remain, and inequalities persist. We have heard about class inequalities. As we have also heard, the potential for growth is huge. To unleash this potential, we have to ensure imaginative, joined-up and focused action. The devil, as ever, is in the detail and in the execution of policies.
It is important not to lose focus on some of the smaller subsectors. As Creative UK and the Crafts Council have pointed out, certain subsectors, such as traditional arts and heritage sectors, may find it a challenge to demonstrate immediate, high, short-term growth but have long-term potential as incubators for the cultural and creative industries and as important enablers of growth. Equally important are initiatives to address skills shortages and access flexible finance. What is needed are flexible apprenticeships, vocational education, better funded creative arts education in schools and a more tailored approach to stimulate different subsectors ranging from music and theatre to games and the interactive entertainment industry. Equally important are digital education, humanities and research and development in universities because we must look after humanities in our universities.
This is a moment of huge opportunity to reimagine growth financing and find imaginative solutions to tackle regional disparities, particularly against the background of greater devolution. As has been suggested by the RSA and others, this requires joining up local clusters into creative corridors to enable collaboration and the transference and cross-pollination of ideas and skills. In other words, it is about creating an ecosystem for mutual benefit and systemic change. The Government’s announcements are right, but can the Minister say whether the issues that I have mentioned are high on the agenda? How are they being implemented? Are they ensuring that different policies do not cut across each other?
My final point is about something that others have alluded to: our gold-standard IP rights framework, which is the bedrock for creators and must be protected. While creative industries have embraced AI, generative AI, which uses models to create new content, is where issues are being experienced in relation to IP. Material is being used without permission or payment, which is plain wrong and unlawful and devalues human creativity. Arguments about this issue were forcefully advanced last week by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster, so I will not rehearse them. I know that the Government have launched a consultation, but strong concerns remain. It would therefore be helpful to get an assurance that the Government will not make any changes that jeopardise the creative sector and put undue burdens on creators. As everyone has said, the creative industries are extremely important for individuals. As the saying goes: if you have two pennies, use one to feed yourself and the other to feed your soul.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for this debate and congratulate all three maiden speakers. I declare an interest as a visual artist, but I am afraid that I have no drumming skills.
Any money put into the arts is to be welcomed, and individual arts projects, such as the centre for new writing in Newcastle, doubly so. However, £60 million in Treasury terms is not a great deal of money. The Government will not like me for saying this—or perhaps they will, I do not know—but at present they are largely doing the same thing as the previous Government by putting some money into the already commercialised creative industries, while the arts—in the shape of, for example, our theatres and civic museums, which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—lie under the threat of closure and urgently require funding.
SOLT and UK Theatre say that the addition of five council-owned venues to the Theatres at Risk Register 2025 was “sadly unsurprising”. They have urged the Government to commit £300 million over 10 years to addressing this one specific concern, which is five times the amount of money recently announced. Yet the amount of money needed to put all this right and to fund new projects would still be a drop in the ocean in terms of Treasury funding. As ACE studies show, every pound put into the arts generates £5 of tax revenue, while every job created in the sector creates another 1.65 jobs. There is the evidence that the arts, as well as the more commercialised industries, generate growth.
Of course, this Government should not need to be told that to stint on public investment in this sector is a false economy. I hope the Government are just making a start, but they could, and should, do an awful lot more, and more quickly, particularly where we are in danger of losing the infrastructure entirely. This includes the artists and so many others employed in the creative industries as freelancers, many of whom have seen a downturn in their income in recent years. Will the Government consider the appointment of a freelance commissioner for the creative industries to look at their concerns?
What plans do the Government have to engage with parliamentarians over the concerns of the Welsh National Opera, which urgently needs more funding? For ailing grass-roots music venues, I have three requests for the Government: first, if the voluntary levy on arenas does not work, it should be made mandatory; secondly, they should restore the 75% business rate; and, thirdly, they should put the agent of change principle on a statutory footing. Will the Government do these things?
Will the concern for the arts around Brexit be raised in the 19 May UK-EU summit, if not before? The Minister will know by now about the concerns of the creative industries in relation to AI. In terms of digital, I also draw the Minister’s attention to the debate on the smart fund, led by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, in the Data (Use and Access) Bill. The smart fund is a levy put on digital devices to compensate artists for copying their work, which would be a very useful additional fund. I would add to that debate that alignment with similar schemes in Europe could usefully be seen as a significant contribution by DCMS to a reset with the EU.
As was pointed out at the recent Carry on Touring event in the Lords, there has been a drop of 74% in artists touring the EU. At the very least, we need a visa-waiver agreement with the EU and the cabotage arrangements radically reformed. But, to be blunt, those who talk against free movement are, however unwittingly, talking against the creative industries, because this is not just about temporary mobility, itself beset with red tape, costs and delay; it is about those important long-term positions in Europe for artists, including classical musicians, which are so much a necessary part of their career structure, now offered only to those with EEA passports. Until we rejoin the single market, our British artists in every medium will always be at a significant disadvantage compared with their European counterparts.
An important part of the arts infrastructure abroad is the British Council—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lemos—the future of which is threatened. Will the Government ensure that assets will not be sold off, including buildings and its important collection of contemporary artworks, the loss of which would be tragic both for our culture and for soft power? The Government currently put far less money into the British Council than, for example, Germany does the Goethe-Institut. Will they review that? Will they cancel the £200 million still owed on the Covid loan? Not to do so would be yet another false economy.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a freelance television producer. I too add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for securing this debate. I also add my words of praise to the noble Lords who have made their maiden speeches today. They were tremendous, and I look forward very much to working with them all again.
I want to dedicate my speech to the television and film industry, which has been for so long a major spur to growth in the creative industries. In this country, we have some of the most skilled and creative production workforces in world, yet despite these great achievements, the sector is in crisis. Nobody even knows how many people work in it; there are thought to be at least 73,000 creatives and technicians, more than half of whom are freelance. However, a survey of its members by the union BECTU last year revealed that 68% were not working at that time. The situation was worse for the diverse workforce. The great cry last year, as the industry faced a huge commissioning downturn, especially in middle-budget programming, was “Survive ‘til ‘25”.
It is now ‘25 and the outlook for hundreds of smaller production companies and thousands of TV creatives grows even worse. A new survey by CREATe, at the University of Glasgow, reveals that directors are, on average, working for just half the year, down by six weeks from the previous year. Directors UK, which commissioned the report, says that 30% are doing unpaid development and script work just to get considered for a new contract. I have personal knowledge of talented and experienced colleagues working as delivery drivers and tutors to make ends meet between contracts. Another report shows that 64% are looking to leave due to worries about their mental health. Across the country, especially in the nations and regions, where so much of the middle-budget commissioning used to be placed, production companies have no commissions and are closing down.
Of course, lack of finance is at the root of this problem. Noble Lords know of the downturn in advertising in the commercial television sector and the reduction by a third of the BBC’s funding under the last Government. It is the responsibility of this Government to ensure that the sector is financially sound. I was very pleased to hear support for the BBC voiced by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. The BBC is the creative engine of the industry. I wonder about the present Government’s attitude towards it, having been so positive in opposition. I was astonished to hear the Secretary of State propose losing the BBC’s editorial independence with the taxpayer-funded model, only to retract the suggestion a week later. The Government are now consulting on funding options in the run-up to charter renewal. There have already been many reports and consultations on this issue; it should not take too long to come to some sort of conclusion. My preferred option is a household levy.
However, it is the structure of the industry that is causing so many other problems. Freelancing in TV is not like in any other industries: the variety and nature of contracts need special understanding. The terror of being labelled an unemployable troublemaker lurks in the back of every freelancer’s mind as they fail to report not being paid on time or being bullied at work. Although ScreenSkills does some valuable work, there is little training and no structured career development for most freelancers. If this valuable sector is to survive, I, like my noble friend Lord Clancarty, call on the Minister to think hard about setting up a freelance commissioner to fight the creatives’ corner. The good work done by the Small Business Commissioner shows what can be done for small companies, but she cannot fight on behalf of individuals.
Finally, I add my voice to many others in demanding that the Government safeguard the revenues of our creatives by ensuring that tech companies are made to adhere to our world-class copyright regime. The Government’s opt-out proposal will lead to the death of our second most successful industry, and I hope that the Minister will understand and support the widespread concern that there is about this. As we speak, creatives are being driven out of the television industry by lack of work and lack of prospects. I ask the Minister not to delay on implementing my suggestions before we see the destruction of one of the important parts of our creative industry.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for this debate, and it is great to see her on top form. My inspiration has always been the theatre. To be taken as a schoolchild to Stratford by our English teacher to see, for example, Paul Scofield’s “King Lear” or Vanessa Redgrave and Peter O’Toole in “The Taming of the Shrew”, established a lifetime interest. It was positively thrilling to listen to the three wonderful maiden speeches, from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, and the noble Lord, Lord Lemos—it is a privilege to have been here today for that.
I also congratulate the Government on recognising in their industrial strategy that the creative industries are one of the eight growth-driving sectors. We are world-leading in so many subsectors of the creative industries, but not really thanks to any government support up to now, and I echo the words of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, about supporting freelancers. I welcome the establishment of the Creative Industries Taskforce, and it will focus on areas such as crowding in investment, access to opportunity, people and skills, and supporting innovation. As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, I am aware of the great impact on the RSC of the noble Baroness, Lady Vadera, as its chair.
I will concentrate on our heritage sector, on higher education funding and on barriers to talent such as poor employment conditions.
We neglect our heritage sector at our peril. Creative UK has pointed out that our heritage sector may find it a challenge to immediately demonstrate high short-term growth, but it has long-term potential. It is right when it states that the heritage sector is
“an incubator for the cultural and creative industries”.
We are debating here in a historic Chamber of a historic building that, as politicians, we cannot even agree to leave to preserve our precious heritage and to ensure restoration and renewal is carried out in the most cost-effective way. It is a history of lack of political will and shameful neglect. Will the Minister accept that our national heritage is an important part of any strategy in our creative sector?
The cost of funding higher education courses supporting the creative sector is often comparatively high, with state-of-the-art studios and facilities, highly skilled technicians and specialist equipment, materials and space, yet they are not recognised as strategically important by the Office for Students. Its measure of quality also disadvantages creative subjects, with its narrow focus on the job that graduates are working in just 15 months after finishing their studies. While outcomes are important, this fails to recognise the unique make-up of the creative sector, which has a high proportion of start-ups and micro-businesses, and where graduates frequently see non-linear career progression, often working freelance or on short-term projects. Will discussions take place with the Office for Students about this prioritisation?
The British Academy and the University of the Arts London—it is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, in his place, because of his background in those colleges—have mentioned the importance of research and development. Despite the economic value of the creative industries, we undervalue and undercount them in terms of research and development. It is harder to capture and less well supported by policy levers such as tax credits. Will there be a shift in this prejudice?
Although most jobs in this sector are insecure and short-term, the industry need not be identified with a low-paid, precarious existence. Unpaid internships and working for exposure are prevalent. Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or the disabled should not be locked out of a creative career. Will there be discussions with the trade unions in the sector to improve conditions?
Finally, I find it is an absolute privilege to take part in this debate this afternoon, and it is wonderful to know the richness of experience and commitment that we have in our House.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an inspiring debate, and we are all lucky to participate. I must, of course, pay tribute to our three excellent maiden speakers today: my noble friends Lord Brennan of Canton, Lady Griffin of Princethorpe and Lord Lemos. We must also thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing us this debate. As she explained, the Government have made it clear that the creative industries are a cornerstone of their mission to create jobs and boost productivity.
Our film and TV sector is not just a source of entertainment but a powerhouse of economic and cultural significance, yet it is important that we do not take it for granted. Its continued success requires our urgent attention. I draw the House’s attention to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Donaghy and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, who emphasised the importance of the workforce and our need to support it in achieving its success.
I must therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to read a recent survey conducted by the organisation the Film and TV Charity entitled the Looking Glass Report 2024. I hope that she will commit to study the report and take action on the picture it reveals. It is an authoritative assessment of the mental health of behind-the-scenes workers in the industry, who provide the foundation of much of our creative industries’ success. Unfortunately, the survey paints a deeply concerning picture. The mental health of those working in our screen industries—television and film—is in crisis. The figures are stark: 64% of professionals have considered leaving the industry due to poor mental health, and an alarming 32% have already begun taking steps to exit the industry. Those are not just statistics; they sound a wake-up call that we must not ignore.
But amid these challenges there are signs of hope. Over the past five years, targeted interventions have started to shift working practices and culture in the right direction. Organisations such as the Film and TV Charity are leading the way, striving to create a healthier and more sustainable industry. Its work is invaluable, but it cannot be its fight alone. We must ask ourselves what more can be done. The Government have a responsibility to ensure that those who fuel one of our most vital sectors—as has been made so clear in this debate—are supported, protected and valued. This is not just about fairness or moral duty; it is about safeguarding the future of our creative industries. A thriving creative sector is built on the well-being of its people. If we fail them, we risk losing not just individuals but the very heart of our film and television industry. It is time for real meaningful action.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the three new Members of the House of Lords on their maiden speeches, which were exciting and interesting. I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing the debate today and to see that she is so well, having been quite ill. It was quite worrying for all of us and it is a pleasure that she is back here today.
I will concentrate on the funding, growth, jobs and productivity that the creative industries bring to the country. The Government must continue to invest even more in the creative industries, including in education at the very beginning of schooling, from play schools right through, as that is where children learn to become interested and to use the skills they have inherited. I was lucky as a child to be brought up in a house that was full of music and Irish culture. My father also enjoyed taking us to the films he thought were educational. So I, like many people, was very lucky.
On the economic contribution, in 2023 the creative industries contributed £124 billion in gross value added to the UK economy, accounting for 5.2% of the total GVA. The largest subsector was IT, software and computer services, contributing £49.1 billion, or 2.07% of the total GVA. Other significant subsectors included advertising and marketing, and film, TV, radio and photography, which brought in £21.2 billion. These figures are large, I am sorry, but they are important to know, and to have in Hansard, for the Government to understand why they must continue to contribute and give support to these industries, so that we do not lose them. Between 2010 and 2023, the creative industries grew by 35%, adjusted for inflation, outpacing the overall UK economy’s growth of 22% during the same period.
On employment and earnings, we have heard from other noble Lords how important employment is and how worrying it is that people in certain industries are not being supported and that there is not funding for this. We must support and encourage the BBC and others to create and commission new works, besides the ones we continually see every week that are repeated round and round. We must have some new work produced, contracts let and so on. Also, these programmes are sold abroad, which brings a big income for the UK. I agree with my noble friend about people having to take other jobs when they are not being contracts to write.
The creative industries are predominantly composed of small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the backbone of the UK’s economy. In 2023, 95% of businesses in the sector had fewer than 10 employees. Despite their size, these businesses have made substantial contributions to the economy.
Productivity in the creative industries, measured at GVA per hour worked, was £46 in 2023, higher than the UK average of £40. This indicates that the sector is more productive than the economy as a whole. What this industry brings to the country has to be noted, because many people laugh and think it is somewhere over there; it is key to what this country has to do. We have to look again at the whole question of VAT and visas; that is for another debate, but it is important.
The UK exported £46 billion-worth of services from the creative industries in 2023, accounting for 12% of total service exports. The largest export markets were the USA and the EU. Foreign direct investment in the creative industries was £5.9 billion in 2023, representing 10% of the total investment to the UK. I got these figures from the Library or the Economist, if anybody wants to check them out.
Although London remains a central hub, other regions have seen significant growth in the creative industries. For instance, the north-west and the West Midlands experienced notable increases in both employment and contributions from the sector between 2010 and 2023.
There has also been high tourism to Scotland, as one of our colleagues mentioned, and to Northern Ireland, which is becoming quite a place for theatre and music. It is important that we make sure we give subsidies to there.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for initiating this timely debate. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Brennan and Lord Lemos, and the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, on their inspiring speeches. I declare my interest as an artist member of DACS, the Design and Artists Copyright Society; here I echo the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and others on copyright and how we should protect our creatives.
I will focus on the impact of cross-border trade and regulation on our creative industries. Our creative sector is a pillar of economic growth and cultural influence, yet increasing trade barriers and excessive regulation are eroding our competitive edge. The UK art market exemplifies these challenges. London has been a leading hub for art transactions, supporting over 45,000 jobs directly and nearly 38,000 through ancillary services such as logistics, conservation and marketing. However, our market share has declined from 34% in 2008 to just 17% today, while art imports have plummeted from 24% to just 7% in the past decade.
While large institutions struggle, small craft businesses and independent artisans are particularly vulnerable. These enterprises, from ceramicists to jewellers, form the backbone of our local creative economies. A local potter shipping to European galleries now faces paperwork costs exceeding £100 per shipment, which is prohibitive for items selling for just a few hundred pounds.
The post-Brexit trading environment has significant obstacles. The combination of import VAT and customs checks has turned what was once a smooth process into a bureaucratic nightmare. Compared with major art markets such as New York and Hong Kong, our import procedures are more expensive and administratively cumbersome. This creates a significant disadvantage in attracting international business and investment.
A severe lack of specialist customs infrastructure for inspecting artworks and collecting import VAT has created significant barriers to art movement between the UK and the EU. Although comprehensive data is limited, the evidence from dealers, auction house and shipping companies reveals widespread disruption. Art handlers report major delays at inspection points that are ill-equipped for handling sensitive artworks, while the complex VAT system of collections has created costly administrative burdens for galleries and dealers.
A telling example is the relocation of a major art shipper from Wiltshire to Brussels, due to unsustainable delays at Dover and Folkestone. Where previously multiple weekly shipments entered UK warehouses for international distribution, they are now consolidated into a single weekly UK delivery from Brussels. These barriers have contributed to the closure of London art fairs, such as Masterpiece and London Art Week, and significantly impacted the ability of auction houses to source works of art for UK sales, with major houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s reporting substantial difficulties in importing art for London auctions. The ripple effect extends beyond the art auction houses; it impacts restorers, transporters, framers and other related businesses. The very ecosystem that sustains our creative industries is under threat.
Adding to this burden is overregulation. Although anti-money laundering laws serve an important purpose, they disproportionately impact smaller businesses. Many independent craftspeople now find themselves drowning in compliance paperwork. A small ceramics studio must complete the same complex documentation as a major gallery shipping million-pound artworks. Courier companies compound these challenges by adding their own layers of bureaucracy: charging additional handling fees, requiring duplicate paperwork and often holding shipments in customs clearance for longer than is necessary.
If we are serious about maintaining our status as a global cultural hub, we must act decisively. First, we must simplify import procedures. The reintroduction of zero rating for art imports would bring the UK in line with New York and Hong Kong. If this is not possible, extending temporary admission arrangements would significantly reduce burdens. Secondly, we must ensure proportionate regulations. Raising the AML compliance threshold from £10,000 to £30,000 would provide much-needed relief. Thirdly, we must create a simplified trade framework for small-scale creative businesses. A streamlined craft export scheme for shipments of under £5,000 would help thousands of independent artisans to maintain vital international connections. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on these things.
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing this debate and for her powerful introduction to it. I also congratulate my three noble friends who have held their premieres today so impressively—not so much a maiden over as a hat-trick, to mix my sectoral analogies. I draw the House’s attention to my interests in the register, specifically in this context as vice-chair of LAMDA, a director of RSMB, chair of the Theseus Agency and an adviser to WFO Services. One of my sons is also a screenwriter.
Speaking near the end of this stimulating debate, I am reminded how strongly the desire to support and grow the creative industries is shared on all sides of the House. I welcome, for instance, the continuity embraced by the new Labour Government in areas such as independent film tax credit, as well as the decision not to reduce tax relief for museums, galleries and orchestras that the previous Government had envisaged. The deep talent pool in the UK is the key factor in attracting investment and production, but stability of the fiscal rules, as the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, said, is also vital and those should be at internationally competitive levels.
That talent pool is founded on the outstanding education and training provided in the UK, whether through conservatoires or apprenticeships, and I welcome the initiative of my right honourable friend the DCMS Secretary of State to change apprenticeship rules to more easily relate to the timescale of individual film or television productions.
I will use the remainder of my time to talk about the vital importance of the development of film and television studios, particularly outside London and the south-east. The boom in the past 15 years in high-end television drama resulting from the growth of global streaming services, alongside the continuing high levels of feature film production, exposed a shortage of capacity in studios. Even if there has been some additional capacity built and some moderation in levels of production recently, the long-term requirement for quality studio space and related services is likely to remain high.
I therefore welcome the decision of my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister to call in the Marlow Film Studios project, turned down by Buckinghamshire Council. I am also watching with interest the progress of the planning application for the Camden Film Quarter—200 yards from my flat in Kentish Town. The concentration of film and television jobs in London and the south-east referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, should drive us, however strong the effect of cluster theory may be, to do everything possible to create vibrant and viable clusters throughout the whole of the UK.
One such opportunity is the Digbeth Loc. Studios project in Birmingham, driven relentlessly over many years by Steve Knight, the creator and writer of “Peaky Blinders” and most recently of “Maria”, whose deeply touching portrayal of Maria Callas is a vivid demonstration of the interconnection between different art forms—highly recommended even for those who are not opera lovers. “MasterChef” has already built its new home on the Digbeth site, and the “Peaky Blinders” feature film was shot there, using the great Victorian warehouses. The BBC is moving its Midlands headquarters to an adjoining site, the Tea Factory, and the HS2 terminal in Curzon Street is a few minutes’ walk away. Not only would the full development of Digbeth Loc. provide significant employment in the creative industries in a region in which such jobs are disproportionately scarce, but it could be a critical factor in the broader redevelopment of the area, creating quality housing and other commercial space—a vivid illustration in a microcosm of the impact that the creative industries can have on wider aspects of our society and economy.
The Government have provided £25 million of funding to the North East Combined Authority to support the Crown Works studios project in Sunderland, which I applaud, and have indicated that in the current spending review the West Midlands will receive priority funding in relation to the creative industries. Will my noble friend the Minister ensure that support for the Digbeth Loc. Studios is central to determining the funding made available to the West Midlands Combined Authority?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for her comprehensive introduction to this timely debate and I echo her paean of praise for her native city of Bradford and its programme as City of Culture. I too claim Bradford as my native city and I return as regularly as I can for a pilgrimage to Saltaire to its wonderful Hockney gallery there. With everyone else, I congratulate my three noble friends on their wonderful maiden speeches and look forward enormously to hearing more from them.
As others have mentioned, the creative industries contribute £124 billion to the UK economy and account for 2.4 million jobs across the UK. The statistics speak for themselves. Our creative industries are vital to our future prosperity and the Government’s growth mission. We are absolutely right to prioritise these industries in our industrial plan.
The Creative Industries Growth Summit last month set out £60 million of funding for projects and programmes across the UK, and that is a great start. To take just one example, the proposed new glassworks in Sunderland will create one of the few places in the UK with the specialist facilities for artists to create and produce glass. It will link Sunderland’s long glass-making heritage with its creative future, breathing new life into the city, and it has been widely welcomed by creative businesses in the area.
It is most certainly a step in the right direction, but we have a long walk ahead. Glass-making may seem rather niche in the grand scheme of things but, as we have heard, the creative industries in the UK cover a wide range, from the biggest in terms of GVA—IT, software and computer services—to the smallest subsector, which has the rather cosy-sounding title of crafts. This is a sector I am particularly interested in. It has some distinctive characteristics relevant to the wider picture. I hope the Minister will heed the concerns expressed so cogently by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. I declare that I am pleased to be a member of the APPG for Craft.
Crafts are a small subsector of our creative industries. They account for just 10,000 jobs in the UK and £0.4 billion in GVA. However, craft skills and businesses both service and power many other creative industries. Craft skills and services are applied in fields ranging from engineering, architecture and medicine to fashion and design. They may include textiles, furniture-making, metalworking and fabrication, ceramics, and printmaking to—as we have heard—support film, television, theatre and gaming, as well as delivering small-batch manufacturing.
Most craft businesses are micro-businesses with fewer than 10 employees. Many are sole traders or freelancers. They often operate in clusters that have grown out of traditional and heritage industries that are very localised. This is good for stimulating growth outside London, but their size also presents challenges for growth, not least in accessing training and skills development.
I raise the point about training because I know the Government are aware of a potential skills shortage within the creative economy. A report last year from Creative PEC—the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre—highlighted the decline in student numbers in creative further education right across the UK. It also showed low take-up of creative industries apprenticeships. Those aligned to the creative industries accounted for just 8.7% of apprenticeships in England, with the vast majority of these being in information and communications technology, leaving those in subjects such as creative arts and design very low indeed. This is alarming. Apprenticeships are vital to ensure the future of our creative industries. Yet the inflexible apprenticeship levy and its assumption that all businesses need a steady pipeline of 12-month apprenticeships does not serve the small businesses within the creative industries.
The Government’s intention to bring in shorter apprenticeships and to reform the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy is therefore really good news. The reformed levy should enable micro-businesses to offer more work-based learning for vocational and apprenticeship courses. More flexibility in the use of the levy will help creative employers identify where else the apprenticeship system can help them get the skills they need.
However, does this go far enough? What else can we do? Can the Minister tell us more about how Skills England will work with all those involved to keep in mind the distinctive nature of micro-businesses and help ensure a pipeline of skills in the creative industries?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the Whips for their flexibility that has allowed me to participate in this debate without having to sprint between the Moses Room and your Lordships’ Chamber. I declare my interest an as author. I am not sure whether trade non-fiction counts as creative sector, but it is certainly somewhere in the vicinity. My second book is on the way.
Like everyone, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for securing what has been a very rich debate and for her enthusiastic and optimistic introduction. Like her and a number of other noble Lords, I look forward to Bradford’s year in the spotlight.
The noble Baroness’s question has a fairly narrow focus, on the importance of the creative industries to jobs and growth. I shall leave the debate about a post-growth age for another day, but I will take a moment to stress the importance of the creative sector and of the opportunity for every human being to exercise their creative impulse beyond the economy. This is crucial to human well-being and flourishing—to human life.
Let us think about walking past a cheerful mural painted by a local artist working with local schoolchildren; we need much more public art in our country to enrich our society. Let us think about people visiting a town centre in order to see a temporary installation made out of waste plastic, of which there is far too much; that makes a political point, but it also builds a community. Let us think about people simply being able to express their anger and frustration at the state of the world and the challenges they face in a creative form, which can be absolutely vital for people’s mental health.
Something perhaps slightly less obvious to many people is that, while the Government are very focused on progressing science, the creative sector and the scientific sector are intimately interlinked. It is in the creative sphere that many ideas and developments of scientific thought happen. If noble Lords are looking for an example of this, I have to mention a great book I was reading recently: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It takes the scientific understanding of the intelligence of octopuses and starts to imagine, in ways a scientist never could, what that might actually mean. It is absolutely fascinating.
I will make three brief points in the time available. In particular, I want to pick up on a briefing from the BPI on an issue I have raised in other contexts: artificial intelligence, and the way in which so-called generative AI has, without apparent legal standing or justification, been taking the work of many creative individuals and using it for someone else’s purposes. Generative AI is plagiarism, and we need to see much more action in that space from the Government.
I also want to focus briefly—here I am drawing on a briefing from the Music Venues Alliance—on the collapse of the provision of small-scale venues outside London, and even within London. This particularly applies to music venues, but also to theatres. In another life, I was a reviewer of fringe theatre in London, and some of those venues are no longer functional. I wonder how many of the young actors I saw in those events are still able to be in the creative sector, and how many have been forced out.
That brings me to my final point, and it is one of the reasons why I particularly wanted to take part in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke about how many people, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, are locked out of a career in the creative sector. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, spoke about how many people are being forced into ill-health by the pressure and the uncertainty. Britain is not world-leading in trialling alternative approaches. The Irish Government are offering 2,000 artists a basic income of €325 a week over three years. The city of San Francisco is experimenting with a basic income scheme for 130 artists for 18 months, and in the Netherlands a music industry organisation is conducting a smaller scale trial. If we are going to have a functioning, healthy creative sector with a wide range of people involved, I put to the Minister and the Government that, surely, they could at least look at trialling a basic income as a way of allowing the creative sector to begin to flourish again.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, what an uplifting debate this is. We all agree on the importance of the creative industries, and we have heard some wonderful personal experiences. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and her emphasis on the mental well-being that the creative industries give us. Certainly, on Sunday afternoon, I felt a lot better after a visit to the Festival Hall and a Beethoven concerto.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for securing this debate and introducing it so effectively. I add my voice to the praises already heaped on those three wonderful maiden speeches. It is fitting that we should be having this discussion today, since tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the first royal charter to be given to the Arts Council. The driving force behind the creation of that body was not just a champion of the arts but a hard-headed economist: John Maynard Keynes. Keynes recognised, as many speakers today have done, that a thriving arts scene is not an indulgence but an imperative for a thriving economy.
The arts and our creative industries are inextricably linked. One might go so far as to argue that, increasingly, every industry must be creative to flourish. It takes creative thought as well as science to produce new products, and it certainly takes creative thought to market the results. There may not be a huge amount of innovation in a breakfast cereal that consists of 95% wheat, but when the country is told that not eating enough of it is responsible for Britain’s decline, it is a creative triumph. BBH, the agency responsible for that wonderful Weetabix ad, is actually British, but it is owned entirely by a French business now. That, of course, is one of the problems for our creative industry as well as for so many other sectors: in the end, they do not belong to this country.
We all agree that the creative industries will help to reverse the decline that we have seen in the UK—if cereal alone cannot do it, of course—so I will restrict my remarks to two specific areas. The first is the wonderful attractions this country has, which do so much to draw international visitors, and their money, to the UK. I declare an interest as a past chairman of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. Our museums, galleries, castles and historic houses are as much a part of the creative industries as the film production companies that use them as locations. They are creative industries as well—they are hugely creative in the exhibitions and the special events they stage—but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, pointed out, many of them are finding life tough. They are struggling with deficits accumulated during the pandemic, and local authorities cannot afford to fund them.
The chief executive of the Arts Council, Darren Henley, points out that it is a mistake to refer to such funding as subsidy; it is investment. But, even as investment in the community and the country, it is increasingly hard to find. So institutions need to be even more creative in finding means to survive and thrive. That may mean more sharing of their assets or more lending of objects, and it must mean more help from philanthropists. So will the Government look at doing more to encourage those who have a great deal of money—some of it quite recently acquired—to put more of it into these institutions? This sort of philanthropy is still not the badge of honour in the UK that it is in the US.
My second point relates to the need to grow creative businesses. Like so many other sectors, they stick at one stage and then get sold out or just stay at the same level. We need to get better at scaling up. We have talked about it for a very long time in the UK, and now we need to do it. One means of doing it—like others, I ask the Minister to take a bigger look at this—is improving the R&D structure for the creative industries. It needs to be much more imaginative, and there is certainly scope; the Royal Society has done some work on that that might help her.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make a short contribution in the gap. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Thornton, whose impressive and comprehensive maiden speech I had the pleasure of listening to from the vantage point of the Woolsack. I wish to say to today’s three maiden speakers how excellent they all were; they will all feel a lot better for having done it. Their speeches were all made remarkably soon after their introductions, and the House will be richer for their contributions in future.
Before Christmas, we had a debate with the same title as today’s, with the slight difference that in place of the words “creative industries” were the words “science and technology”. I therefore rise to make just one point: creativity and the industries to which it gives rise can be found everywhere—in maths as well as music. Incidentally, I cannot resist endorsing everything that was said about trying to improve the ability of our musicians, youth orchestras and so on to tour in Europe. Creativity is just as great in both, so I hope the House will not artificially think there is a separation between the debate we are having today on the creative industries and the one we had before Christmas on science and technology. As I say, the creativity is one and the same.
Mention has been made of artificial intelligence. AI is the product of human creativity, so it is all the more important that we do not let AI exploit human creativity. I hope that, when people think about the effect of the creative industries on the economy of the country, they will also see that the arts and sciences are two sides of the same coin. We must do everything we possibly can to support both.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)
My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for initiating this debate. She and I have served on committees together, and I know and appreciate her genuine support for culture and creativity. I congratulate and welcome the three maiden speakers, who are champions of the creative industries, which is such a great bonus for the rest of us who support them.
This is the first debate in this House on this incredibly important sector since the general election. We on these Benches welcome the new Government’s emphasis on the creative industries, as laid out in the industrial strategy Green Paper and by the Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy, who said in her speech at the creative industries growth summit that the intention is
“to unleash the power of our creative industries”.
We welcome the continuation of the previous Government’s tax reliefs and their extension to indie films and VFX, as well as the setting up of the Creative Industries Taskforce, mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, and the Soft Power Council—including the mission to harness UK expertise from the creative industries and drive the UK’s soft-power strategy. Essential to this is ensuring proper support for the British Council and the BBC World Service, both of which are facing serious challenges and are in need of sustained and secure investment, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Lemos, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. Will the Minister reassure the House of the Government’s absolute commitment to them?
The previous Government set up the CIC, which is important because it includes creative industry leaders, and is co-chaired by two of them along with the Secretary of State for Culture and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. However, the Department for Education has never been part of the mix—something that we on these Benches have consistently asked for and we ask for again. A thriving creative sector that will foster growth begins at school with our young people—including the very young, as my noble friend Lady Benjamin consistently tells us—and continues throughout their education.
Thankfully, the Secretary of State for Education understands the importance of returning arts and culture to the centre of the curriculum:
“There is a real issue around creativity in our state schools and the lack of access that state school pupils have to music, sport, art and drama. … I want to make that a really important part of the curriculum in the future”.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh, Lady Nye and Lady Griffin, will be pleased to hear that, because it appears that the STEAM/STEM argument has finally been won. Please let that be the case.
We on these Benches believe that Ofsted inspections should reflect this and give top ratings only to schools that can demonstrate excellence in creative teaching, as well as other subjects. Does the Minister agree? Of course, the problem with the skills pipeline continues post-education, so we welcome the Skills England Bill and reform of the apprenticeship levy—something mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick—but this must work for the creative industries. Does the Minister agree that, in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, the creative industries must be involved in the design of the new skills levy?
Something not mentioned so far is that there is a problem with the lack of diversity within the creative workforce. Changes to the apprenticeship levy and the education system will hopefully address this, but more needs to be done. Another part of this problem is that the world of the creative industries is one of freelancers, as mentioned so forcefully by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. The UK’s tax and social security framework is not set up to support freelancers effectively. Can the Minister agree with me, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, that what is needed is a freelance commissioner to champion their rights?
Another impediment to the creative and cultural sector’s contribution to growth is lack of funding, particularly at local level. Due to the necessary prioritisation of statutory responsibilities, cuts have fallen disproportionately on arts organisations. I am a trustee of the Lowry in Salford, a prime example of the importance of local culture and the contribution it can make to a community. Not so long ago, Salford Quays was a place of derelict, disused docks. Now, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, it is a thriving, creative hub and a creator of wealth, Media City—growth exemplified. The Lowry is more than a building, more than theatres and more than a gallery; it is a catalyst for transformation, not just physically, but in helping and inspiring young people into the creative industries through learning and engagement work. It generates growth in every sense. What has been central to that regeneration is a city council that had the foresight, the commitment and, crucially, the ability to back it. Will the Minister please take note of the excellent LGA report, Cornerstones of Culture, which recommends a return to local decision-making when shaping cultural provision?
We on these Benches believe wholeheartedly in devolution, but there is a risk in the implementation of the Government’s plans that local cultural organisations could be forced further to the fringes of public spending. How can the Government ensure that this will not be the case?
It is no surprise here that I am going to mention Europe, the calamitous consequence of Brexit, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Freyberg and Lord Berkeley, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and so many others, and the knock-on effect on the Government’s growth mission. The ability to access the continent through complicated paperwork, carnets, cabotages and visas is inflicting punishing costs and red tape and inhibiting the ability of creatives from across the sector to flourish. I echo what has been said here: I hope that change is coming. I am not going to mention the European youth mobility scheme, but noble Lords should please look at that again.
Like so many noble Lords, I cannot contribute to this debate without mentioning the existential threat to the creative world that is AI. As my honourable friend, Max Wilkinson, put it when he spoke in another place,
“the Government must not put at risk the value of human creativity”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/1/25; col. 60.]
My honourable friend conducted an experiment. He asked an expert what would happen if creators lost their intellectual property rights to AI. The expert told him that there was a risk of a loss of income and motivation, a devaluation of creative work, ethical concerns, legal uncertainty and domination by AI operators. The expert my honourable friend consulted was none other than Google Gemini. Does the Minister agree, as asked by so many people in this debate, that we should empower our creative industries to make their own choices about AI usage? They should be an opt-in, rather than opt-out, something, by the way, that my honourable friend Max Wilkinson’s expert, Google Gemini, supports. For human creators, an opt-in model generally offers stronger protection.
All nine sectors that the DCMS designates as our creative industries need to be celebrated and nurtured, but I will end with a special mention for TV. British talent in this area is admired across the world, and central to this are our PSBs. The origin of the word “broadcast” is “to sow seed widely”, and that is what they have done. They have brought the streamers to this country—growth. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned at the beginning, the BBC single-handedly brings incredible economic benefits. Will the Minister listen to the words of her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in supporting the future of the BBC and assure the House of her Government’s unequivocal support for a universally available BBC?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, this has indeed been an uplifting and enjoyable debate. We are all very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for bringing it before us, not least for the opportunity to hear three such excellent maiden speeches from our new colleagues. I had the pleasure of getting to know the noble Lord, Lord Brennan of Canton, when he was in another place and sat on the DCMS Select Committee there. In fact, I appeared in front of him and his colleagues when I was a minister. He asked me then about the Salisbury–Addison convention, if I remember, which I am sure will serve him well now he sees it from the other House of Parliament. As we heard, he is also one-quarter of the parliamentary band MP4. Another of his colleagues, my colleague Sir Greg Knight, stood down at the last election, so I was pleased to hear that he is already thinking about a lordly equivalent. I hope that he finds a drummer, but even if he does not, he will have heard plenty of people who are keen to bang the drum for the creative industries in our debate today.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
There is more coming, I am afraid.
I was also glad to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin of Princethorpe, who spoke powerfully about her experience in the European Parliament, which she will bring to scrutinising legislation here in your Lordships’ House, not least on the important issue of remuneration for artists and copyright. I understand that, because of a medical appointment, she is unable to be here to receive the praise that she deserves for her excellent maiden speech. She may have had to make it from a sedentary position, but it is very clear that she has already found her feet in your Lordships’ House, and we look forward to hearing more from her.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Quite. I had the pleasure of knowing the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, when I was at DCMS through his work as chairman of English Heritage, which is a brilliant custodian of so much of our inheritance in this country and our scheduled monuments. One of my happiest memories as Minister was attending what was billed, rightly, as not just the restoration but the reawakening of Belsay Hall in Northumberland and celebrating the work that he and his colleagues had overseen there. It is a pleasure to have him here among us in your Lordships’ House. As his speech showed, he is a man of many interests and many areas of expertise. I particularly look forward to his ongoing contributions on heritage and the arts. I am glad that he will be able to keep a particularly close eye on the 14th-century Jewel Tower, part of the Palace of Westminster that survived the fire of 1834 and is now in the care of English Heritage, just across the road from Peers Entrance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, was a passionate champion for all these sectors in her roles in the Opposition in the previous Parliament. We heard that again today in her powerful and eloquent opening speech. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, who mentioned that the original, longer form of the title pointed rightly to the opportunity for growth in every part of the country. The noble Baroness spoke powerfully for God’s own country of Yorkshire, but I was pleased to hear her mention Whitley Bay.
Indeed, there were a few mentions of the north-east of England, which hosted the growth summit at which the Secretary of State spoke last month, at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music, which celebrates its 20th birthday this year. I was pleased that at that summit the Secretary of State announced the recipients of the fourth round of funding from the cultural development fund, which was something that began in the previous Parliament. I was delighted to see that the centre for writing in Newcastle will be one of the recipients, building on the proud literary heritage of my native city.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and others spoke about the importance of the City of Culture programme and the wonderful opportunity that Bradford has this year to showcase its arts, heritage and all the new things that one of the country’s youngest cities is doing. I agree with her that all should visit and enjoy what it has in store.
When I saw the Motion, I worried that the creative industries are often narrowly defined. Even within DCMS, there is sometimes a gulf between the creative industries and the arts. It was wonderful to hear not just the noble Baroness but others talking about the performing arts, libraries, our heritage and so much more. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is always reminding us, they are so intimately interconnected that we need them all. That point came through from so many noble Lords’ speeches.
I was pleased, too, to hear my noble friend Lord Harlech speaking up for the fashion industry and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, talking about advertising. They are areas that often do not get quite as much attention. From architecture to publishing to computer games, there are so many areas in these isles that we should be proud of and seek to champion.
There were many areas of agreement. The creative industries were one of five priority areas for the Chancellor in the previous Government and they are one of the priority areas for our new Chancellor. We had a creative industry sector vision, and there is now a creative industry sector plan. Where we see things in that with which we agree, we will support them wholeheartedly. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, I was delighted that the Government have recommitted themselves to the tax credits. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has reminded us before, we owe much to not just Gordon Brown but Margaret Thatcher and previous Governments. It is wonderful to see them being extended, and my noble friend Lady Penn talked powerfully about the impact that they can have. We look forward to working with the Government and scrutinising their work on helping artists on touring and on broadening the curriculum and helping young people of all backgrounds to take up the life-changing opportunities of the arts.
I was pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Vadera, take up a role with the Creative Industries Council and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, reviewing Arts Council England. I look forward to welcoming Thangam Debbonaire when she is introduced as a noble Baroness. It is wonderful that we have so many rich voices, including the three we have heard today, adding to our debates in your Lordships’ House.
I was pleased about the establishment of the Soft Power Council but, like the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, I am worried about the reports that I have seen about the British Council and its finances. He asked some very good questions there. I wonder, if it is indeed thinking of selling off some of the artworks in its collection, whether one option might be to look at the acceptance in lieu scheme so that they could be donated to the state in lieu of tax but not lost from the public collection? I wonder whether the noble Baroness will take that idea back to the department to discuss it with her colleagues and those at the Foreign Office.
Where there are things with which we disagree, as the Opposition, we will point them out. I must pick up points that the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, and others raised about decisions that were taken in the Budget, not least on national insurance contributions. They are making the lives of creative organisations and small businesses, which often operate on very small margins, all the harder. I hope that the Government will look at the impact that their decisions are having on these businesses, which are struggling and which do so much good work looking after things on our behalf.
Earlier this week, my colleagues in the shadow team and I had a meeting with the Historic Houses association. These are small businesses, often families, which run houses for the enjoyment of everybody, supporting some 32,000 jobs and 330 apprenticeships and generating more than £1.3 billion for the UK economy. They are often the biggest employers in their rural areas, and decisions that make employment more expensive have a knock-on effect not just on their business but on the opportunities of young people in these often isolated areas.
I will pick up on the comments that other noble Lords have made about the implications of the Budget for grass-roots music venues, which are so important to the pipeline of talent that we enjoy. Last year, grass-roots music venues staged some 162,000 live events. We want to see many more in more parts of the country.
I began this week at Tate Britain, with the art funder Nesta, at an event called Mini Wonders about early years intervention and the role that museums and galleries can play. As noble Lords have discussed, skills start right at the beginning.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned the closure of university arts departments. I was pleased to see that Glassworks: Sunderland has been awarded some money from the cultural development fund. There is a national glass centre there already, which has been working with the University of Sunderland. The Education Secretary sits for a constituency in that city. I know that the vice-chancellor of the university has been advising the Government. There is a building there and a facility which was built only 25 years ago with public investment. This is a lesson to us about investment and the pressing capital needs of our cultural estate. We must make sure that we are investing in what we already have, as well as stimulating new activity.
On technology and AI, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, was right to highlight the importance of human endeavour. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, spoke of the threat to quality programming, especially for children. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, pointed to some of the many downsides. I know he will remain vigilant.
I wonder whether the Minister has had discussions with her colleagues at the Foreign Office about funding to the World Service, to make sure that its trusted and impartial voices can continue to be heard at the time when they are needed.
Noble Lords raised many important points, particularly in relation to freelancers and the workforce, about making sure that the arts are an attractive and viable career for people of all backgrounds. They listed a number of areas where small changes could make a big difference. The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, gave a number of examples relating to craftspeople. I have previously raised small changes, such as designating St Pancras as a CITES port, which would help. I wonder whether the Minister has seen the Scene Change report by the National Theatre, which sets out innovative ideas on exploring business model innovations in the arts.
It is clear from all the contributions, including those from our three new colleagues, that your Lordships’ House is brimming with ideas to help us continue to support these vital and thriving sectors of our economy. I am very grateful to noble Lords for their contributions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing this excellent debate. I agree with many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who expressed it very well: it has been a truly inspiring debate. I thank all noble Lords for their valuable and varied contributions.
It has been a particular pleasure to hear the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Lemos, Lord Brennan of Canton and Lady Griffin of Princethorpe. It is clear that they will make a hugely valuable contribution to your Lordships’ House, not least with their experience and expertise in the creative industries.
I was sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, was not named to fill the drummer vacancy. However, like him, I was pleased that my noble friend Lady Thornton mentioned Bradford being the City of Culture. This was echoed by my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. I have no doubt that many noble Lords will enjoy this year’s events, which will enable Bradford to tell the world its story and show off its local heritage. It may leave a long legacy, as my noble friend Lady Nye highlighted has been the case with Hull, and my noble friend Lady Griffin of Princethorpe raised in relation to Liverpool. My noble friend Lady Nye and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, also raised the example of Salford. These cities and the way culture and the creative industries have contributed to regeneration and pride in place are the answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, about why we should continue to push for regional growth in the creative arts. My noble friend Lady Goudie also mentioned regional growth, as did my noble friend Lord Chandos, who noted that the power of redevelopment can have much wider economic benefits for cities that benefit from the creative industries.
This was an incredibly positive debate, and I am delighted that we have had the opportunity to debate the creative industries. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, noted, this is the first debate on this topic that we have had since the election. I hope that we do not have to wait quite so long for the next one.
Our creative industries are powered by absolutely extraordinary people, from artists and technicians to games developers and production accountants. This Government recognise the huge economic potential of these industries, which support more than 2.4 million jobs and represent over 5% of the UK’s total gross value added. From advertising to glassmaking, it is clear that noble Lords are champions of the full range of creative industries. Our creative industries shape UK soft power—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, not least in relation to fashion, which he highlighted. The BBC reaches 450 million people a week, our museums are some of the most visited in the world, and the UK is the number one global exporter of books and the second-biggest music exporter after the United States. I join my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, and surely all noble Lords, in loving one of our exports: Wallace and Gromit.
The creative industries are already growing at a faster rate than the rest of our economy. As the Secretary of State said at the recent creative industry summit in Gateshead, if one thing underpins everything we want to achieve in government, it is growth. Our plan for change will kick-start growth through our industrial strategy. As noble Lords have noted, the Government have identified the creative industries as one of the eight priority growth-driving sectors.
As my noble friend Lady Thornton highlighted in her speech, the Secretary of State announced a new task force, co-chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette and the noble Baroness, Lady Vadera, to develop a creative industry sector plan. As a first step, we have announced a £40 million investment across start-up video game studios, British music and film exports, and creative businesses outside of London, as well as over £16 million for the cultural development fund, supporting transformative projects in Newcastle, Sheffield, Somerset and Sunderland. We are working closely with six priority mayoral strategic areas, which will receive additional funding to support the creative industries.
My noble friend Lord Chandos asked about film studios. I agree with him on the importance of developing studio infrastructure across the UK. We welcome the development of emerging hubs, including Digbeth Loc in the West Midlands. Today, BFI statistics revealed a £5.6 billion spend on film and high-end TV in 2024, with “Back to Black” leading the UK independent film charts.
The noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and my noble friend Lord Chandos referenced tax credits. The noble Baroness recognised the importance of the right mix of support through public funding and competitive tax reliefs. This Government have enhanced tax reliefs for independent film and visual effects. The Treasury continues to keep tax policy under review.
The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, discussed smaller subsectors, and I agree wholeheartedly that we must find the right mix of interventions that recognise the overall creative ecosystem and the specifics of subsectors. That is what we are doing as we develop our sector plans, so I hope I have given her some reassurance on that point.
On wider access to finance, the creative industries are a UK strength but they face barriers to unlocking growth. Too many creative businesses that want to scale up are unable to access the finance they need. This must change. To address that, we have announced that the British Business Bank will increase its support for the creative industries by investing in and supporting high-growth creative businesses, backing venture capital fund managers and supporting lenders.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, mentioned R&D. Our creative industries drive innovation, research and development, yet the overall share of UKRI funding for the creative industries does not correspond to the value they bring to the economy. To address this, the Government will strengthen investment in R&D for the creative industries.
Many noble Lords raised the importance of education, including the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, said, creativity involves children and young people. My noble friend Lady Thornton quoted the Secretary of State where she said that arts and culture must be for everyone everywhere. Too many young people currently do not have access to opportunities, and these are opportunities that I had and valued as a child, and I continue to value them as an adult. Children and young people from less affluent backgrounds struggle to get ahead.
We need the pipeline of talent highlighted by my noble friend Lady Nye. In many ways, this debate could also have been focused on the Government’s opportunity mission. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, highlighted how access to arts should not just be for the rich. It cannot be right that young people are currently denied opportunities because they do not have the economic means. The Government are determined to break down barriers and ensure that every child has the opportunities they deserve to achieve their potential.
We recognise that pathways into creative careers can start in school, which is why we have provided £3 million of new funding for the creative careers programme. In July, as referenced by a number of noble Lords, the Government launched an expert-led, independent curriculum and assessment review. It will seek a broader curriculum so that children and young people do not miss out on subjects such as music, arts and drama.
My noble friend Lady Nye asked about teacher shortages and the decline in specialist teachers. High-quality teaching is the biggest in-school factor that makes a difference to a child’s education in creative subjects. The Government are offering a teacher-training incentives package for the 2025-26 recruitment cycle, including a £10,000 tax-free bursary for arts, design and music.
As my noble friend Lady Thornton and others made clear, skills are a priority. Creative education underpins the development of a highly skilled workforce, for which the UK’s creative industries are internationally renowned. As the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, said, we need to be flexible in order to support creative industries, including the smaller subjects. We recognise that some skills programmes, such as the current apprenticeship system, do not always work for the creative sector. A 12-month apprenticeship is no good at all for employers who need skills for commissions that are shorter than this—a point made eloquently by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Chandos and Lady Warwick. As my noble friend Lady Warwick highlighted, the Government will transform the apprenticeships levy into a new growth and skills levy and will bring forward changes so that shorter apprenticeships are available from August 2025, recognising the particular needs of the creative industries.
Skills gaps and shortages are a major constraint on innovation and growth. In response to my noble friend Lady Warwick’s question, Skills England will form a national picture of where skills gaps exist and how they can be addressed.
In relation to the points on freelancers made by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and my noble friend Lady Donaghy, we recognise the contribution of creative freelancers and the challenges in the TV sector in particular. Our plan to make work pay will strengthen rights and protections to help freelancers, including the right to a written contract and action to tackle late payment.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
Is the Minister prepared to support the concept of a commissioner for freelancers, as was suggested by my noble friend Lord Clancarty and myself?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I will feed that back to the department; I cannot commit to it here and now, but I did hear and note that point. I will feed in points made during the debate to relevant Ministers and teams in the department but I cannot commit to that on the hoof in this debate, as I am sure the noble Viscount understands. I am liable to run short of time so, at this point, I will commit to writing to noble Lords with responses to the many questions asked and the really interesting points made throughout this debate.
Moving on to the question from my noble friend Lord Stevenson, the forthcoming BBB charter review will shape the BBC’s crucial role in the creative economy. This includes skills development, investment in the nations and regions, and continuing the BBC’s vital role as an anchor institution around a creative companies cluster.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lady Donaghy raised points about higher education and universities. It is important to understand the role of further and higher education in driving innovation in the creative industries, and we will being forward a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education to help us do this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised the importance of issues facing children’s TV. The Government recognise the importance of UK-made, high-quality content for children. That is why we are moving ahead with the implementation of the Media Act, which enshrines educational content in the new public service remit. As she noted, consumption is moving to platforms such as YouTube, where content can be more variable. We are discussing with these platforms what may be possible to promote high-quality programmes.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, my noble friends Lady McIntosh and Lord Brennan, the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, my noble friends Lady Griffin and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, the noble Baronesses, Lady Prashar and Lady Bonham-Carter, and others almost without exception mentioned issues around AI and IP protection. We hear creatives’ concerns over the impact of AI, in particular the use of copyrighted works in AI training. As my noble friend Lady Thornton said, the Secretary of State has been clear that creatives are the core of our AI strategy. In December, therefore, we published a 10-week consultation to engage AI and creative industry stakeholders on the impact of AI on the copyright regime to clarify the copyright framework for AI: ensuring creators have control over their work, transparency from AI developers and the ability to license their content and be paid for it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle asked for action, and I sense the urgency that noble Lords feel on this point. We are absolutely clear, however, that we will not make any decisions to proceed without confidence that an approach is workable and effective for rights holders. I look forward to updating noble Lords in due course on these issues.
Turning to the Arts Council England review, raised by my noble friends Lady Thornton and Lord Lemos, the review of my noble friend Lady Hodge will be supported by an advisory panel of great minds from across the sector and beyond, who will bring a mix of establishment and fresh voices to help in this work. The review will ensure that everyone can access and enjoy the arts, no matter who they are or where they live. It will also make sure the Arts Council is working effectively with local communities and supporting creativity at all levels.
In response to the request from my noble friend Lord Lemos, the full terms of reference for the review will be published in due course. This will set out the scope for the review, which will report to the Government in the autumn of 2025, and we expect to publish the conclusions of the review along with the Government’s response in early 2026. I will, however, feed my noble friend’s view in.
The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, raised the Welsh National Opera. We are pleased to see that it has received £750,000 from the Arts Council of Wales’s jobs protection and resilience fund. Minister Bryant has held a series of productive meetings with the Welsh Government, Arts Council England and the Welsh National Opera to understand how, within the parameters of the arm’s-length principles, we can best ensure a strong and secure future for the Welsh National Opera.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the grassroots music sector and, like noble Lords, clearly including my noble friend Lord Brennan, I really love live music. It brings a huge amount of joy to my life, and my summer is structured around concerts and gigs of all sizes. Some of the most iconic things about Britain internationally relate to our brilliant musicians, composers and songwriters past and present, but music must be part of our national cultural future, too. Britain’s best-selling artists start their careers in our grassroots venues. Ed Sheeran played at over 360 grassroots venues before reaching arenas; 150 of them have now closed. This is why the Government are urging the live music industry to introduce a voluntary levy on tickets for stadium shows to support a sustainable grassroots music sector. We welcome the progress made by industry in establishing the LIVE Trust to manage funds for the voluntary levy.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Lemos, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, raised issues relating to our EU exit, and in particular to EU touring. The Government are working to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU and to tackle unnecessary barriers to trade without seeing a return to freedom of movement. Improving arrangements for creative professionals, including musicians and crew, is a priority for this Government, on which we will continue to work closely with the creative sector.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
I asked the Minister when discussions will be held with the European Commission on this. Does she have any detail about when that might happen?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
May I write to the noble Earl on that point? I have reams of paper here, which I am not likely to get through in my limited time, but I will endeavour to write.
The noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, raised the point about philanthropy. I feel really strongly about this, and we are committed to supporting philanthropic growth across the country. The Secretary of State has publicly committed to a place-based strategy to create an environment that will encourage and support local communities and ensure that philanthropy reaches the areas that need it most.
The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, raised issues around the art market, not least in the context of us leaving the EU, and import and export issues. We recognise the challenges faced by the art market and the importance of maintaining the UK’s status as a major international hub. The Government have conducted a review of the temporary admission procedure, engaging extensively with the arts sector, and HMT is undertaking a review of money laundering regulations with impacted industries.
The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, asked about the British Council. The Government highly value the British Council as a UK soft power asset and are committed to working with it to ensure its financial sustainability. The FCDO is exploring all options with the British Council and HMT to ensure this, and I will feed in suggestions made during this part of the debate.
We have heard today what is needed to build thriving creative industries. As part of our plan for change in the industrial strategy, we are developing a creative industries sector plan to drive growth across the country. Culture and creative industries are a key part of the UK economy, not just nice things to have for personal engagement, although it is clear from the passion and enthusiasm across your Lordships’ House that creative industries add richness and enjoyment to our lives. We are clear that the foundation for the future success of the creative industries starts by breaking down barriers to opportunity, and we are ready to enact meaningful change.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today. I also thank the three stars who made their maiden speeches. We had emotional intelligence and the promise of a new band, huge experience in public services—and yes, I assure my noble friend that we will catch her if we need to—and multitasking. I think my noble friend Lord Lemos needs to know that, in this House, multitasking means that you are expected to be active on at least three Bills at once.
I anticipated that we would have a wide-ranging and erudite debate today, given the enthusiasm for and breadth of experience in the creative industries in your Lordships’ House. My noble friend the Minister had her work cut out—that was a gallop. Those of us who have been there before know that those 20 minutes seem a long time but actually, given that there were something like 25 speakers all asking questions, getting through most of them is a huge job. However, we need to remember that, at the end of the day, we are talking about something really joyful, positive and worthwhile. My noble friend illustrated in her response, for which I thank her, that the Government are mindful of the need to support the creative industries in a whole range of ways, some of which will require legislation, rules to be changed or some activity to just make things happen.
I put in to have this as a Labour debate in the summer, but other debates took place instead. The decision was taken not to have it then, but I am glad it happened now, because at least we have had some progress and announcements and we know where the pinch points are that we need to focus on in the next year or so. The challenge is making real the promises and ambition of the Government, and making them real everywhere. We are all ambitious here and the Government have to focus and take action.
I will finish by saying that some of our institutions are hugely innovative. I have, in the past, spoken about the National Theatre as an example of a national institution that runs apprenticeships for electricians, carpenters and all the people you need to make a large theatre and institution work. That is to its credit and is the kind of thing we want to see happening more often.
Camden, where I live, runs a music trust whose aim is that every child leaves primary school, as my granddaughter has just done, playing an instrument and reading music—and it succeeds. An investment was made years ago to set up the Camden Music Trust, and those are the initiatives we need to capture at local level, where we know that the decisions taken by local councillors will have a huge impact on those children.
There is a lot to do, but I think we have made a good start and I thank all noble Lords who have participated.
Water Companies: Fines
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Grender
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that fines paid by water companies are used to repair the damage done by sewage pollution.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I thank the vast number of Peers participating in this debate. Some, having discussed culture, felt a bit too squeamish to stay for this debate, which I understand.
In particular, I thank the Minister for responding, particularly given all the discussions already held in the context of the Water (Special Measures) Bill and the various attempts by others, including by Liberal Democrat colleagues, such as Tim Farron MP in the other place and my noble friends Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Russell, as well as the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to put a water restoration fund in the Bill. It is the principle of ring-fenced spending of fines to clear up the mess that we will explore in this debate, while acknowledging the real progress of the Bill, which contains so many things, including, for example, the addition of an environmental duty for Ofwat.
I appreciate the Minister responding to this debate, but perhaps wonder whether she could have put her feet up and instead insisted on leaving this debate to colleagues who answer for the Treasury. If the media reports are correct, it is the Treasury that has blocked the progress of the first wave of applications for the water restoration fund and that needs to explain why that is and what the implications are for other fines and clean-up funds.
Regardless of the discussions around the Bill, there remain some central questions I would like to explore today, prompted by two articles in the Guardian by Sandra Laville, Rowena Mason and Helena Horton. In both articles, the first on 19 January, the second on 22 January, it would appear that the Treasury intends to keep all fines, rather than use them to restore our rivers, lakes and coastlines. The articles go on to reveal that the small sum of £11 million is delayed. It is a small sum but a very important one to many organisations that want to help return our polluted rivers and seas to their natural state.
No doubt, the Minister is well aware that £11 million is less than 0.1% of the much talked about £22 billion black hole. I focus on that sum, which is small for a Government but large for charities and community groups, because of what it suggests will happen next with other fines and future funding. I appreciate I am labouring the point about it being only £11 million, which, of course, is much less even than the recent £168 million in fines to Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water for pollution breaches—and doubtless it is those very large sums that have caught the eye and perhaps imagination of the Treasury.
How will the Government meet the principle that the polluter pays if the fines to water companies are not used to repair the damage done by sewage pollution? Will the fines be used for the clean up? I particularly ask the Minister to answer why the first wave of funding for the Water Restoration Fund has been delayed for six months, leaving in limbo all the small charitable and community organisations which are willing and ready to help. What are the implications for future projects such as this? I thank the Wildlife Trusts, the Rivers Trust and the Lords Library for their briefings for this debate today.
The Liberal Democrats recognise the significant sewage pollution legacy that this Government have inherited from the previous Government. I am sorry to pull us back to creative industries once again, but if anyone has seen the recent superb Channel Four docudrama “Brian and Maggie” with key long-form interviews of Prime Minister Thatcher by journalist Brian Walden, they will recall that the water companies and their current state are clearly part of the Thatcherite legacy and—for the avoidance of doubt—not in a good way. At the time of their privatisation, the water companies were debt free but 35 years later they are mired in debt with borrowing that has grown to £68 billion with scandalous payouts of dividends to shareholders of an eye-watering £78 billion—easily more than three times the Government’s current black hole—with negligible levels of investment. I look forward to the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who will, I think, talk a bit about the current legal proceedings being taken by our colleague Charlie Maynard MP against Thames Water.
These debts and payouts have all happened while these water companies have presided over the biggest scandal of all: the often illegal and regular dumping of sewage. There were, for example, 1.5 million uses of storm overflows for a total period of over 11 million hours from 2020 and 2023. Indeed, in 2023, sewage spills into England’s rivers and seas more than doubled, leaving our natural environment and unique features such as our chalk streams struggling to survive and an Environment Agency without the financial and regulatory strength to act.
The Labour Party promised in its 2024 general election manifesto to put failing water companies under special measures to clean up water but, to do that, they surely need to use the fines and see through the applications from local communities to help. The Water Restoration Fund was set up in 2022 and Defra at the time said:
“ringfenced funds will go to Defra and will be invested directly back into environmental and water quality improvement projects”.
I refer the Minister to the letter written to the Minister, Emma Hardy MP, on 31 January by the Rivers Trust which asked why she has criticised the scheme for achieving nothing, given that this Government had not allocated the grants at that point. The trust said:
“The fact is that not a single penny of the Fund has been allocated to projects; decisions on round one funding were expected in July, but despite consistent requests for more information, the Rural Payments Agency has not been in contact with applicants for months. This is not simply a legacy of the previous Government, as decisions have remained outstanding for 6 months of the new Labour Government’s tenure”.
In Tim Farron MP’s constituency of Westmorland and Lonsdale, local charities are ready to be put to work, including the South Cumbria Rivers Trust, the Save Windermere and Clean River Kent groups, and the Eden Rivers Trust. Luke Bryant, assistant director of the West Cumbria Rivers Trust, has applied for two projects worth about £260,000. He told the Guardian that the cost to his organisation to prepare the bids had been substantial and said:
“This is a small amount of money for the Treasury. It has not been raised from taxpayers. It has come from fines for environmental damage water companies have caused, if money is not spent at local level on environmental restoration it would go against what people were led to believe was going to happen”.
Another scheme quoted in the Guardian is Supporting Wounded Veterans, which was waiting for news of two bids, for £250,000 in total, from water company fines. Both projects were due to start last summer. One of the schemes—still waiting—involves supporting six veterans who are suffering from PTSD and intend to work on a restoration project on the River Dart in Devon. The veterans have already received the training, but the whole project is now on hold. In the words of the CEO:
“There is outrage that this money could now go to the Treasury. It is a total breach of trust by the government”.
What will happen with future fines and will the polluter, in the end, pay? If the Treasury keeps these fines, the inevitable answer is surely that the polluter has been let off the hook. Local communities will not be funded, while the taxpayer and water consumers will end up either paying off government debt or having increased water bills. I have not come empty-handed but will hand over to my noble friend Lord Russell, who will lay out a possible compromise for the Minister, on what is quite a vexed and difficult issue, through the commission. I ask the Minister to strongly consider the option that he will put in front of her.
While Minister Emma Hardy has made it clear that a final decision will be made on water company fines and penalties, and water improvement, in the spending review, it is already clear that the Minister here has a great understanding of the urgency of this matter. She recognises that our polluted rivers, lakes and seas simply cannot wait. As Wildlife and Countryside Link puts it
“the restoration of Treasury control over water company fines would mark an environmental regression”.
I hope that the Minister, in her response, will be able to reassure us that, on this, the polluter in the end will pay.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to contribute to today’s proceedings and an equal pleasure to follow the opening speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. I am as interested as she is in the questions that she has posed to my noble friend the Minister, whom I am glad to see in her place. I am grateful also to the noble Baroness for affording your Lordships’ House a fresh opportunity to examine this question and to my noble friend Lord Sikka, who is unable to be in his place today, for providing me with some briefing materials on this subject. Characteristically, they anatomise forensically the behaviour of water companies and the regulator over the last few years in respect of the public, government and, it would appear, their own self-interest.
As I told your Lordships’ House yesterday in another context, earlier this week I was witness to an exchange on the UK’s priorities in respect of national security. One party to the conversation asked the other for an assessment of the UK’s highest priority challenges in the current geopolitical context. The latter, an expert on national security, responded by asserting strongly that we live in an age of impunity. To some extent, that phrase reflects a wide and growing public sense that many water companies are acting on just that basis too.
We heard some statistics from the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, but perhaps I may add to them. Since privatisation in 1989, customer bills have risen by 363%. Between £52 billion and £85 billion has been paid in dividends, while the same companies paying out to shareholders have accrued what I thought was about £70 billion in debt—I now know that it is exactly £68 billion. But this debt is not the consequence of investment into infrastructure; no new reservoirs have been built while this industry has been in private hands, for example, but that is only one of many condemnatory statistics.
That is the context in which your Lordships’ House is debating this subject today and in which fines of £168 million against Thames Water, Northumbrian Water and Yorkshire Water were proposed by Ofwat on 6 August last year. As my noble friend Lord Sikka mentioned in his Oral Question on 29 January, there are two key contextual factors in assessing the proportionality of that response. The first is that these three companies have over 400 criminal convictions between them, and the second relates to the fact that these fines were proposed rather than imposed. It is difficult to imagine another context in which three individuals or organisations with a record of such malfeasance would be permitted to negotiate the extent and timing of their punishment.
I understand that there is a process and legislation which Ofwat must follow, which my noble friend the Minister alluded to in her response to my noble friend Lord Sikka’s Question, but surely we must consider changing that process and the provisions that mean that Ofwat and a company in breach of its obligations can reach a regulatory settlement. A promise of future good behaviour and compliance is surely difficult to accept in lieu of a fine, given that all precedents suggest that these companies have acted, as their criminal conviction rate shows, with blithe impunity. I count myself an optimist, but as Disraeli once said:
“A precedent embalms a principle”.
All precedents suggest these companies are careless of their obligations, have a record of putting the interests of their shareholders above those of their customers and have neglected the environment and infrastructure for which they are responsible and on which we depend.
I will close my brief remarks with two specific questions for my noble friend the Minister, but before I do that, I will say that I am with those who believe that any fines, when actually levied and collected, should be channelled into a hypothecated fund, whether the Water Restoration Fund or something similar, in line with the “polluter pays” principle. I understand the pressure on public finances—I was the Chief Secretary for a period of time—and the temptation to divert this money towards the Treasury, but this money is badly needed to undo the damage done by the mismanagement and irresponsibility of the water companies.
I have a short question from my noble friend in relation to this. I know from public sources the record of proposed fines. How much money has actually been collected from fines since this process started? This is an issue of public equity. These companies are leveraging the strength of their own self-inflicted weakness. Companies, including Thames Water and South West Water, pollute our waterways, mismanage themselves to the point of financial collapse, demand permission from Ofwat to increase bills by 44% and simultaneously announce their decision to increase dividend payments to shareholders. That sounds to me more like corrupt self-indulgences by the medieval church than a modern industrial practice.
In closing, I ask my noble friend the Minister two further questions. First, during the passage of the Water (Special Measures) Bill, the Secretary of State said that the Government will
“ban bonuses if water company executives fail to meet high standards”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/12/24; col. 79.]
Last week, Thames Water said it will circumvent that ban by increasing basic executive pay. What is the Government’s response to that, and how will they enforce any ban? If I understand the answer my noble friend the Minister gave to that Question when asked at col. 253, the responsibility for ensuring that bonuses are not paid or performance is poor lies with Ofwat. Is she able to point to any occasion when that power has been exercised against a poorly performing company? How do the Government intend to ensure that this sanction is not circumvented by simply increasing executive basic pay?
Secondly, do the Government have any plans to end the practice whereby, in lieu of a fine, a company can agree a package of investment which has the ancillary benefit of increasing the value of the company itself and results in increased dividend packages for shareholders?
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, on securing this debate, and I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Browne. I welcome the Minister as ever to her position. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, has given such a warm welcome to the outgoing Conservative Government’s Plan for Water and the water restoration fund. I declare my interest as on the register: I am an honorary vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities; and I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Water.
We were fortunate enough to hear this week from Sir Jon Cunliffe, who has been charged by the Government to produce a report for the water commission by the end of June this year, and I very much look forward to his conclusions. In the meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Water, he told us that the model that was introduced by the then Conservative Government for water privatisation factored in a level of debt, and I think that is something to which he will refer. He has not been asked to review the water privatisation model in that sense of nationalising the water sector, and I think we should recognise that in the debate today.
I repeat my request to the Minister: when does she imagine that Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 will be introduced, so that there will be an obligation for all major new developments to have sustainable drains? That will help the situation and reduce flooding.
Some of the project bids invited by the previous Government are still on the table. For example, farmers were invited to make environmental improvements to prevent flooding downstream by slowing the flow, as we saw in Pickering in North Yorkshire, by creating dams, including by planting and felling trees. Can she confirm that such projects will benefit?
As I had long called for them, noble Lords can imagine my welcome for the Plan for Water and the subsequent launch of the water restoration fund as precisely the types of measure that would benefit farmers and local communities under ELMS and other schemes such as the SFI. A number of groups applied for these schemes to bolster their capacity and capabilities to deliver such on-the-ground projects, and they were invited to put forward bids by June 2024.
They were applied for by farmers and landowners—I imagine in Yorkshire, Northumbria and other parts of the country—but they never heard any more. Can the Minister say what has happened to those projects? As the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked, what has happened to the water restoration fund? Farmers, landowners and the environmental organisations working with them were led to believe that these were just the types of projects that the water restoration fund was meant to help.
I have read only the one report in the Guardian to which the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, referred, but if these reports are to be believed, it would be entirely inappropriate for the Treasury to hijack these funds and allocate them to other—I am sure very worthwhile—causes. The fact is that, as the Minister will know, it takes time, resources and money to put a bid in for such schemes as the projects invited through the water restoration fund did. They were invited in good faith to put in these bids in April 2024. I understand that the bids closed in June 2024. They were very exciting bids; they ticked a number of boxes for wildlife and the environment, and they were also appropriate to be conducted by farmers and landowners.
I have long believed that, if the ELM and SFI schemes and the water restoration fund are to work successfully, they should benefit local communities and reward farmers for the work they are already doing. The noble Baroness will be aware of the work of drainage boards in low-lying areas such as Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, possibly Cumbria and other parts of the country.
It sends out a very bad message from Parliament if one Government invite people to apply for these schemes and the next Government then do not allocate the money. I hope the Minister might be able to share the Government’s thinking in this regard and can confirm that these schemes are still viable and may still go ahead in short order this year.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, on this very topical Question. It is such a pleasure to see a Labour colleague, a Lib Dem colleague, a Conservative colleague and, I have no doubt, a Bishop colleague standing up and saying things that I completely agree with—it is so rare.
I am going to take a slightly different tack from my colleagues. It is very hard to convey the anger felt by not just hundreds of thousands but millions of people at the mess the water companies have made over the past 30 years. I say “mess”, because that is what the public have had had to deal with. This is about sewage-filled seawater, dirty beaches, polluted rivers, chalk stream ecosystems destroyed and sometimes even E. coli in our water supply. Of course, water companies have been amazingly efficient at siphoning off money for shareholders and employees. But this week, the public are fighting back.
I will focus on Thames Water, not least because last week I had a letter from it demanding £19 extra per month on my bill to pay for the work it should have been doing over the past decades and has not done. But my anger with it pre-dates that by quite a long way. Thames Water has £17 billion of debt and is at the centre of a public backlash against Britain’s privatised water industry, which created monopolies, so customers have no choice. It has increasingly polluted our environment with sewage amid justified accusations that profit has been prioritised over the environment.
Windrush Against Sewage Pollution is one of 34 clean river groups involved in a legal challenge in the High Court this week, in an attempt to push for temporary nationalisation of Thames Water. Obviously, I strongly support this. In court, the campaign groups will argue that Thames Water should be put into a government-handled special administration. The court hearing will decide whether to approve the £3 billion in emergency funding that Thames Water has been allowed so far. The judge will hear campaigners argue that the emergency loan will be far too costly for customers. I would add: why should we pay twice for goods and services that we have not had? Again, let us remember that Thames Water already has a debt of £17 billion.
The High Court judge will also hear from Britain’s biggest water supplier and groups of rival creditors on Monday before deciding whether to approve the rescue of this close-to-bankrupt company. Without the debt lifeline, Thames Water has said it could run out of cash by March. Last month, Thames Water was granted Government approval to seek the £3 billion cash loan, which the troubled company said was crucial to ensure that it had enough money to stave off temporary nationalisation.
Clean river campaigners led by Charlie Maynard, the Liberal Democrat MP for Witney, have made a written submission to the court. The case is closing today, with the decision in mid-March. Charlie Maynard, whose constituency has been at the centre of mounting anger over raw sewage pollution being pumped into the River Windrush, is backed by other MPs in the water company region, and 28 parish councils. Maynard said in the submission that he was opposed to the restructuring plan in the interests of the company’s 16 million customers and argued that servicing the emergency fund would not be financially sustainable in the mid or long term for the company, and that it did not make appropriate provision for the company to fulfil its legal obligations to provide water and sewerage services and not to pollute rivers. Ultimately customers will be forced to pay for the emergency loan, which comes with a 9.75% interest rate—absolutely staggering.
Thames Water said it was confident that its plan would succeed as it had the backing of creditors holding more than 90% of its secured debt, despite opposition from a group of much lower-ranked creditors. The judge must decide whether the dissenting creditors would be no worse off in the most likely alternative to the plan, which Thames Water has said is that the company is placed in special administration. Under government proposals, Thames Water would get access to additional funding, cash reserves and debt extensions, giving it breathing space to secure its survival in the long term. A lot of people would say that it did not deserve that, and that it actually deserves to go bankrupt.
Evidence provided to the court by Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University, said that Thames Water had failed on the capital maintenance of its assets and had
“profit maximised by gearing up its balance sheet at the outer limits of what was sustainable”.
He added:
“Thames used the balance sheet to mortgage the assets and pay out the proceeds in special dividends and other benefits to shareholders”.
Then, only today, another Thames Water fail: bottled water is being delivered to homes in parts of Surrey, after residents have been left without water. Supply problems in the area are said to have been caused by “multiple bursts” on the same pipe. People in that area may have low pressure or no water, Thames Water has said. In its latest update, it said:
“We remain on site, working to fix the pipe that has been damaged during the bursts”.
That is a considerate statement to its customers, who are quite used to it failing them completely. But it has promised that
“additional supplies of bottled water are available”.
There is absolutely no doubt that Thames Water did this damage, so presumably it has to pay to clean it up—in which case, the money that it pays in fines really has to go to the clean-up. It is not possible to repair all the damage to nature and people, because ecosystems have been destroyed. I really hope the Minister can explain to the Treasury just how annoyed millions of people are that this has not yet happened.
I very much support the whole idea of the restoration fund, and I hope that this Government go for it.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for securing this timely debate. It is a scourge on us all that sewage pollution is damaging so many of our watercourses and coastlines—damaging their ecosystems but also our enjoyment of them. I remember my first experience of such pollution when, as a young lad, I caught sticklebacks in my hands from the ditches around our Yorkshire village. One day, I went to my usual place of good stickleback hunting to find it putrid, with a storm drain leaking sewage and items—at the time, I did not understand what they were—floating in the ditch. The sticklebacks were gone for over a year.
The Rivers Trust reports that none of our rivers are now in good overall health. Its 2024 report, State of Our Rivers, notes that 54% of our nation’s rivers are impacted negatively by the water sector, mainly through sewage effluent. Surfers Against Sewage reports that there were 604,833 discharges of raw sewage into UK waterways in 2023, with the water in 75% of UK rivers posing a serious risk to human health. A BBC investigation 18 months or so ago found that three water companies illegally discharged sewage on dry days. Thames Water, Wessex Water and Southern Water collectively released sewage in dry spills for 3,500 hours in 2022. All three spilled on the hottest day on record.
Surely, with the right effort and the right pride in the boardroom and among shareholders and the workforce—and with the right investment in infrastructure—none of this needs to be the case. The American poet and writer Wendell Berry gave a twist to the golden rule, suggesting:
“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you”.
Boardrooms should perhaps have that as their inspirational quote on the wall.
So, as well as stopping the sewage pollution, the fines must be used to restore our rivers and damaged habitats. We need the polluter pays principle to be taken incredibly seriously, with the right level of fine, not only to prevent but to give enough funding directly through grants—to farmers, communities and conservation groups, as we have heard—to restore our rivers and damaged habitats and to enable our watercourses to begin to thrive again with the right interventions. It has been argued that it is cheaper to pay the fine after a discharge than to do the right thing in the first place. But the cycle of polluting, fining and restoration—and polluting again, fining again and restoring again—will not ultimately enhance our aquatic ecosystems, and it will do us, as people, no good at all.
As well as the fines, we need to embed culture change and good leadership. Allowing sewage pollution should be as damning an indictment on those responsible as not taking seriously their health and safety duties to their staff or the contamination of drinking water. There needs to be a culture of pride in our boardrooms to compete to have the least sewage released among their competitors. Investors need to take pride in supporting having the right infrastructure in place and the right investment in infrastructure, not in maximising financial returns at the expense of the environment.
St Francis of Assisi gave water a priority in his great canticle, “Song of Brother Sun”. He wrote:
“Thou flowing water, pure and clear,
Make music for thy Lord to hear,
Alleluia, Alleluia”.
When we finally take sewage pollution seriously, we might be able to add our own Alleluia. Until then, will the Minister agree with me that the choking of our river courses with sewage and swimmers and surfers dodging floaters need not only our lament but a culture change in the industry to give the highest protection to the intrinsic value of our nation’s seas, lakes, lochs, streams and rivers, those liquid threads of the water of life that wind their way through our landscapes and memories?
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. I do not think some of his quotes would apply to the beaches and rivers of Cornwall. They are a mess. I do not think South West Water knows the difference between a storm water pipe and a sewage pipe because it does not seem to be able to act on it.
I have a quick question for the Minister. South West Water is planning to build a desalination plant in Par because there is not enough water around. Noble Lords might laugh because it rains a lot in Cornwall, but apparently this desalination plant will solve all the freshwater problems. Why is South West Water allowed to spend a lot of money on building a desal plant, which could have serious effects on the marine and air environment and, of course, consume a lot of electricity, when it cannot even spend the money on sorting out the beaches and the drains?
I am told that it is because Ofwat allows water companies to spend as much money as they can find on capital projects, but they are limited on what they can do on maintenance. That seems absolutely crazy, especially in a part of the world where it sometimes rains more than the sun shines. My noble friend might not be able to answer the question because I have only just told her about this, but it would be good to have a letter at some stage to hear whether there are any rules that could possibly dissuade South West Water from building a desalination plant in one of the wettest parts of the country.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I thank my noble friend Lady Grender for bringing it and all who have spoken today. At heart, this debate is about broken promises: broken promises to small and medium-sized charities working to help clean up our polluted rivers, small charities that stand ready to help, that made funding applications in good faith to help undertake the work of beginning to restore our polluted rivers and streams some eight months ago, that have not heard a word back and that have not been treated with the respect that they deserve.
This Government need the good will of the third sector to help meet the challenges coming over the horizon, particularly the 30 by 30 targets. The last election was driven by anger at the wanton pollution of our rivers and streams by water companies that seemed immune to caring and to being held accountable. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, made it clear that these criminal activities have upset everybody, across all sides.
Between 2020 and 2023, England’s water companies used storm overflows more than 1.5 million times for more than 11 million hours. The Labour party’s election manifesto said:
“Labour will put failing water companies under special measures … give regulators new powers to block the payment of bonuses to executives … and bring criminal charges”.
Labour promised automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing, to deliver for nature and, most importantly for this debate, to
“work in partnership with civil society, communities and businesses to restore and protect our natural world”.
Much in the Water (Special Measures) Bill is welcome, but we still have the water commission to come for the longer-term solutions that Labour plans. I thank the Minister for her open and constructive engagement on that Bill. During that debate, I moved an amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lady Bakewell that sought to require all funds from the fining of water companies for environmental offences to be ring-fenced for the water restitution fund and spent on freshwater recovery. I said that,
“the Bill could be used to bolster the water restitution fund—the pot set up by the previous Administration to channel environmental fines and penalties into projects that improve the water environment”.—[Official Report, 30/10/24; col. 1199.]
In retrospect, I should have done more to ensure that we moved that amendment on Report, but I am pleased that we pressured our MPs in the other place to raise it, and I thank Tim Farron and other MPs who spoke on those matters.
I have a huge amount of respect for the Minister. Indeed, I sympathise with the position that she finds herself in today. As my noble friend Lady Grender has already said, it really should be the Treasury that is answerable for this debate today, as it is really the Treasury’s failures that are causing these problems. The Chancellor appears to have forgotten that she is supposed to be the greenest one ever.
It is not difficult to imagine how we got here. The Conservatives brought forward the water restitution fund but failed to impose any fines to make it do anything. Labour then won the general election and brought about legislation that raised the number and the values of fines over time. No doubt, the Treasury had concerns. Worries were probably expressed that if the first tranche of the £11 million promised was paid, that would set a precedent, and that the next tranche of £168 million would need to be paid afterwards, with maybe even greater fines after that. No doubt at some point, paralysis set in, and the argument between the Minister’s department and the Treasury was just not capable of being resolved.
The money involved in the first round of the water restitution fund is only £11 million. The Government did not remove the fund when they came into power, and the applications were made in good faith. I believe this Government are under a contractual obligation to meet those payments. I hope that this debate can help to sharpen the elbows, so to speak, of the Minister in her negotiations with the Treasury, but what we need today is absolute clarity on the £11 million pending in grant payments. Are they going to be paid? If so, when, and if not, why not?
Further forward, of course I would argue that all future funds should be provided to the charities to help with restitution, but I understand that this may not be possible. If there are further issues going forward, I suggest to the Minister that the commission that this Government have set up is tasked with looking at future fines and how those fines should be used, and that, in the meantime, all fines that are levied are made available for the charities that need this money.
This Labour Government need good co-operation with civil society on nature; it is our ally and partner in getting this stuff done. I strongly encourage this Government to think seriously about those working relations and to make that argument to the Treasury because we need this to be done, whether it is action on fly tipping, the protection of our SSSIs or our watercourses.
Finally, can the Minister please say what is happening to protect our chalk streams? Chalk streams should be getting a share of this money. I understand that the chalk stream protection fund is not happening, so can the Minister please say a word about the Government’s plans for the protection of chalk streams and when we will hear something further?
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for securing this important debate. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, because she highlighted the work of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution. I had no idea she would make this reference, but the River Windrush runs through the village I live in.
I believe that under our watch we committed to cracking down on pollution by water companies. We continue to work collaboratively and constructively with the Government to help guarantee that the country has effective measures in place both to tackle water pollution and ensure that water companies are properly held to account when they do not abide by the rules.
It will not surprise the Minister to hear that we believe government can always do better, whether that is His Majesty’s Official Opposition or the current Administration. We are proud of our record. We increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 7% in 2010, to 100% today. The Thames Tideway Tunnel is now complete—a £4 billion project that happened because we stood up to opposition to guarantee the scheme by an Act of Parliament.
Aided by improved monitoring, we took firm action against persistent polluters, delivering the strictest targets ever for water companies to reduce pollution from storm overflows. The Environment Agency can now use new powers to impose unlimited penalties for a wider range of offences. On that note, how does the Minister plan to ensure that the Environment Agency will chase all perpetrators? I understand, from a freedom of information request, that there remain outstanding around 465 illegal sewage charges that the Environment Agency is aware of, none of which has led to fines or enforcement action beyond warnings. Will the Minister commit to act on these?
We agree with His Majesty’s Government that much more must be done to tackle water pollution, which is why we have engaged constructively on both their Water (Special Measures) Bill and the wider review and legislation to which they have committed. My understanding is that the wider review will be completed this year and that the Government will bring forward the resultant legislation in 2026. Can the Minister confirm that this is still Defra’s expected timetable?
At this point, I should say that we are disappointed that we have been unable to secure agreement with His Majesty’s Government on the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, to strengthen parliamentary oversight of the remuneration and governance rules which will be established under the Water (Special Measures) Bill. I know that my noble friends Lord Roborough and Lord Blencathra will continue to work constructively with the Minister on that.
As mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, my noble friend Lady McIntosh, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, we established the water restoration fund in order to ensure that water company environmental fines and penalties are ring-fenced to directly improve our water system and prevent sewage overflows. Does the Minister agree that the water restoration fund, for spending on freshwater recovery, will help improve the quality of water in the UK? Can she please give a commitment today, as other noble Lords have requested, that all fines levied against water companies will go directly into the fund?
When this was debated in Committee on the Water (Special Measures) Bill, the Minister recognised that it was the previous Government that had established the fund in 2024 but she was unable to give your Lordships’ House more detail because the Government are still working on their spending review. Can the Minister please give the House an assurance that we will not be waiting much longer for these details?
The Environment Secretary from the other place has written to the chief executives and chairmen of every water company, setting out the performance improvements that he expects in 2025. Can the Minister say what percentage benchmark of improvement on sewage spills the Government will insist the water companies have to meet before they face fines and repercussions for non-compliance?
To finish, I thank the Minister for her tireless work to tackle this issue. We look forward to hearing her response on this most important subject.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to respond to this Question on the fines paid by water companies. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for raising this important matter and noble Lords for their interesting and valuable contributions and suggestions.
As we have heard in this debate, for too long water companies have discharged unacceptable levels of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas, with 2023 seeing record levels of sewage discharges. We have been absolutely clear that we will not allow poor performance within the water companies to continue. This is why we are taking forward a substantial reform programme to deliver better results for the environment, customers and wider society.
I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and others who have raised this that Defra is committed to the “polluter pays” principle. We have taken a number of actions already. In his first week in office, the Secretary of State secured an agreement from water companies and Ofwat to ring-fence money for vital infrastructure upgrades, so that it cannot be diverted to shareholder payouts and bonus payments. We are also placing water companies under special measures through the Water (Special Measures) Bill. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for his particular support in this debate for that work.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich mentioned the need for culture change, with which we absolutely agree. That is why the Bill is designed to drive meaningful improvement in the performance and culture of the water industry, as a first important step to enabling wider, transformative change right across the sector. I will not go into the detail of the Bill, as we have debated it so recently, and all noble Lords who have taken part are aware of what it includes. Collectively, its measures will provide the most significant increase in enforcement powers for the regulators in a decade. They will give them the teeth that they need to take tougher action against water companies in the next investment period as well as ensuring that they are able to recover costs for a much greater range of enforcement activities. I am afraid that I do not have the detail of those costs and fines at my fingertips.
On top of that Bill, last October, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Welsh Government, launched the independent commission on the water sector regulatory system, chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe. Noble Lords also referred to that today. It is designed to be wide ranging and look at ways to fundamentally transform how our water system works and to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good. It is expected to be the largest review of the water industry since privatisation. It will look into many of the concerns that noble Lords have raised today, including those from the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and my noble friend Lord Browne.
Last month, leading voices from the environment, public health and investment were announced as the new advisory group to the commission. We will publish a call for evidence in the next few weeks to bring in views from all parties on how we can reform. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, Sir Jon has also been meeting with interested groups. As noble Lords have said, we will get a report from the commission by the end of June, which will have recommendations that we can look at how best to take forward. I intend them to form the next piece of legislation that attracts further long-term investment and cleans up our waters for good.
Agriculture, road run-off, physical modifications and chemicals also significantly impact water quality and availability. These huge challenges will require a much broader approach to water management that goes beyond addressing a single issue. The independent commission is going to examine the strategic regulatory frameworks that underpin the water system, including the water framework directive and river basin management plans.
Importantly, the commission will also look at catchment-based approaches. I do not believe that we can resolve this without looking at these approaches to address the full range of demands on the water system and at how we can resolve things in an integrated and holistic way.
The public are, of course, rightly concerned to know where the money that they pay for their water bills is actually going. In December 2024, Ofwat published its final determinations for price review 2024, which sets company expenditure and customer bills for 2025-2030. This will deliver substantial, lasting improvements for customers and the environment, and will bring an approximately £104 billion upgrade for the water sector. This investment will mean clean rivers, seas and lakes across England and Wales. It will also create more jobs and provide more investment. This increased investment will fund the improvement of river water quality by improving more than 1,700 wastewater treatment works. It will also improve or protect more than 15,000 kilometres of rivers across England and Wales. Water companies will also invest £12 billion—a record amount—into improving more than 3,000 storm overflows across England and Wales. This will reduce bills by 45% compared with 2021 levels.
Beyond these measures, since 1 January, water companies are required to publish data relating to discharges from all storm overflows within one hour of discharge. This means that all storm overflows—of which there are more than 14,000 in England—are now monitored, with discharge data being published in near real time. Importantly, this will provide the crucial information that regulators need when they are making their investigations. It will also create an unprecedented level of transparency to enable regulators and the public to see where and how often overflows are discharging, and better enable water companies to be held to account. Combined with the measures in the Water (Special Measures) Bill to require monitoring of all emergency overflows, this will meet the Government’s commitment to ensure the monitoring of every sewage outlet.
Much of the debate was around the future of the water restoration fund. I will ensure that the department is aware of the strength of noble Lords’ feelings on this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned a number of specific projects. At this point, I need to declare an interest: my husband is a trustee of West Cumbria Rivers Trust, so I am very aware of local concerns in this area. Again, it enables me to represent noble Lords’ concerns to the department.
I reassure noble Lords that Defra is currently evaluating how water company fines and penalties can be reinvested in improvements to the water environment. We will announce a final decision on this in due course. It is important that the Government do not let companies get away with any illegal activity. Where breaches are found, the Environment Agency must not hesitate to hold companies to account. The regulators, the Environment Agency and Ofwat, have launched the largest ever criminal and civil investigation into water company sewage discharges at more than 2,200 treatment works. The EA has a dedicated team of more than 30 staff working on this. Where companies fail to meet their statutory or licence obligations, Ofwat has the power to take action through an enforcement order or financial penalties of up to 10% of the company’s annual turnover. The cost burden for water company fines is borne by their shareholders, not by charging customers.
I must keep an eye on the time but, before I conclude, there are a few questions I must answer. I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for his question but, as he said, I do not have the answer in front of me. I will need to write to him with the detail of the specific issue that he asked about.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, asked about chalk streams. The Government are committed to restoring chalk streams. We are continuing to invest in priority local projects to restore them—for example, through the water environment improvement fund, the Government are funding more than 45 projects during this financial year to improve chalk streams. This is worth £2.5 million of government investment, and each has an injection of private investment.
We are also committed to ending the damaging abstraction of water from rivers and groundwater wherever possible. Through the Environment Agency’s restoring sustainable abstraction programme, which was launched in 2008, so far a total of 110 licences that would affect chalk streams have been revoked.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked about Schedule 3. This Government are strongly committed to requiring standardised sustainable drainage systems in any new developments. I apologise to her, but I am unable to say more at this stage, other than that a final decision on whether to progress implementation of Schedule 3 at this time will be made in the coming months. I am afraid that I cannot offer any more specific information on that at the moment.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, once again for securing this debate. The speakers were not hugely numerous, but the passion was there—it is very important to note that. It is very clear from the regular number of questions and debates that we have in this House—and, no doubt, in the other place as well—that the concerns about the water industry, and the pollution from it, must be government priorities. I assure noble Lords that the Government are absolutely and fully committed to fixing the broken water system that they inherited. I reaffirm the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the damage caused by sewage pollution is repaired.
Lifelong Learning
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Knight of Weymouth
To move that this House takes note of the social, economic and personal value of lifelong learning.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to introduce this timely debate. I am very much looking forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Curran.
I must remind the House of my education interests in the register, including chairing Century Tech and advising Pearson, both of which have products used for lifelong learning. I also co-chair the All-Party Group on the Future of Work.
This debate is timely. It is timely because the new Government are getting on with the establishment of Skills England, and reintegrating it with regional and national industrial strategies as part of the essential growth ambitions for the country. It is timely because the Government are remodelling the apprenticeship levy to a more flexible employer-responsive growth and skills levy, and implementing the lifelong learning entitlement. It is timely because of some profound shifts in society caused by ageing and technological change.
These last big shifts point to the need for a significant focus on lifelong learning by this Government after years of neglect. In thinking about this, I am informed by the work of Professors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott and their prize-winning 2016 book The 100-Year Life; by a lecture given three months ago by Professor Lily Kong, president of the Singapore Management University; and by Professor Christopher Pissarides’s review into the future of work and well-being, which published its report just last week.
The 100-Year Life discusses the implications of more of us living to 100. Across the western world, we are seeing falling birth rates and rising life expectancy. Although that is not equitably spread, the trend is clear. If you want a reasonable pension, a lifespan of 100 requires working into your 80s; although that may be a regular reality in your Lordships’ House, a 60-year working life has wider implications, particularly the inevitability of multiple careers. As AI and other technology rapidly disrupts work, it is also not credible that knowledge and skills obtained into your mid-20s will maintain labour market value for a further six decades. A life of multiple careers needs an education system designed for lifelong learning. We need to move on from the three-phase life of education, then work, then retirement. We need a system that allows all of us to learn in work, to re-enrol in education institutions, to have our learning certificated and recognised as we go, and to navigate successfully through many new directions.
This is most important for our university sector. One of the legacies inherited by this Government from the previous one is an HE sector in financial crisis. The previous Government prevented student fees from rising with inflation, and, as a result, domestic students have become a loss leader and universities have hiked foreign nationals’ fees in response. We need to reverse this trend and protect the massive soft power benefit of these education exports. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on her leadership in allowing universities to raise fees.
However, the levels of debt that young people carry as they start out in work remains a problem for as long as we stick to the three-phase life. What if university was something we kept returning to throughout our working lives to enable us to pivot our careers? What if we then had a business model more like subscribing to membership of a university over many years, rather than a debt-financed, one-off degree front-loading a long working life? Part of necessary HE reform has to include new financial models based on lifelong learning that allow us to escape the burden of debt that is putting people off going to our great universities.
Beyond HE, our rigid educational system is matched by rigid funding and an education department that is motivated more by qualification outcomes than by people outcomes. The lifelong learning entitlement and the skills and growth levy are opportunities to change that. The Pissarides review argues for a revised and expanded lifelong learning entitlement to reflect the social right to learn, with wider and more flexible access to learning opportunities. Revision of the LLE is also called for by the Open University to make part-time learning easier; by the Learning and Work Institute; and by the QAA, which wants the funding threshold lowered from 30 credits and an opening up of eligibility to microcredentials and short courses.
The LLE has the potential to enable the interweaving of learning and earning throughout our lives. We also then need to add a strand of learning for leisure, so that we can enjoy a later stage of life, with some work alongside a healthy old age. Lifelong learning must not be solely about skills for growth; it must also be for family learning and for physical and mental health. It must include the arts and humanities, passion-based learning, sports and craft skills.
As lifelong learners, we need better metacognition to understand how we best learn, and thereby be better self-directed learners. This, in turn, goes to core intrapersonal skills of reflection and self-modulation. These are often best taught through the arts, sports and humanities. Resilience skills can be taught and should be nurtured from schools, through FE and HE, and into adult learning. As we all get old, the same skills will help us be healthier and care for ourselves longer, but we will also need to be better at caring for each other. We need these intangible assets of learning as much as the tangible assets of finance and qualifications.
Evermore capable machines are fast emerging, as robotics and generative AI imminently combine to create intelligent agile cyborgs. The competitive threat of these machines will be met only by being better humans. AI is great at what we assess in education, but it really struggles with basic human abilities such as physical perception and social interaction. These are the behaviours that we all have without thinking and that we recognise in others subconsciously. Studying the humanities teaches us about how humans behave and organise themselves. Studying the arts allows us to reflect on how we feel. Therefore, although the STEM subjects are vital in helping us understand what works and what we need, the arts and humanities are essential in understanding why we need and will use them. All this points to the need for more interdisciplinary depth in lifelong learning.
The UK and China are particularly stuck on a craving for narrow disciplinary and specialist knowledge. Our school curriculum is knowledge rich and organised by subject silos. This is further narrowed with A-levels as a reflection of how our universities organise themselves. But, as the Pissarides review says, skills diversity—that is, combining social and technical skills—
“is increasing across the board”
in work, including within “high-tech/digital roles”.
Most subject disciplines have existed for only the last 100 years or so and they do not reflect how we innovate or work. Nobel Prize-winning science tends to come from insights connecting across silos, not so much deep within them. Is it not time for our universities and further education colleges to have more flexible, modular courses, like the US system? Should a lifelong learning system not by design give parity to multidisciplinary learning alongside single disciplinary specialism?
This would be eased by more breadth in the 16 to 19 phase of secondary education and the adoption of digital portfolios to capture achievement as recorded by institutions, employers and awarding bodies. Digital credentials can be held by the individual and shared with whoever they give consent to. That consent allows digital access for prospective employers or admissions offices to drill into what a person can do and has done in a way that will give so much more insight than a paper certificate. Such a system can then live with a person as their ongoing record of lifelong learning and employment. AI tools would be able to match it to labour market opportunities and skills training that could, in turn, transform an individual’s potential to take experience from one career into the next.
Clearly, this all circles back to how the lifelong learning entitlement is rolled out, and the stakes are high. If lifelong learning does not become ingrained in more than the current 50% who take advantage of adult learning, and if it is not enabled by government and employers, we will see technology deskill people who do not have the capacity or confidence to reskill. Those not currently participating in lifelong learning are, of course, the least educated and those who need it the most. The result is enduring productivity issues, unaffordable numbers on long-term sickness benefit and widespread dissatisfaction: a belief that working hard, doing the right thing and trusting traditional democratic government is no longer worth while. That leads to toxic populism, and the vaccination against that poison is lifelong learning.
An education system that is lifelong by design will focus on more than just cognitive intelligence by nurturing more human qualities and interdisciplinary learning, and by integrating learners at whatever age with each other. What does that mean for each stage of our education system? For schools, it means a shift in accountability to value equally sport, the arts and applied learning, such as design and technology, alongside the abstract knowledge valued in the EBacc and Progress 8. Post-16, it requires a much bigger push on project-based qualifications, such as the EPQ, as part of the mix, incentivising voluntary work and more breadth than we currently get from three A-levels.
FE must be positioned as a more universal service for adults both young and old. Colleges should be at the heart of our communities and our local and regional economies. In many ways, we should see them as the platform from which to access a range of learning from the college itself, but also family learning, the University of the Third Age, the OU, other HE in hybrid form, the Workers’ Educational Association and so on. FE could also be the entry point for most businesses. We organise our skills system to meet the needs of large employers, yet less than a fifth of us work for these big businesses. FE should be where most businesses go to help them develop the talent pipelines that they need to compete and flourish.
Apprenticeships and T-levels have a key role to play in this future, but so do other qualifications. If I am right about digital portfolios, these could include certificated courses that are more agile than most regulated qualifications. If such courses are recognised by employers, that ought to be good enough for the rest of us.
Future skills are likely to be higher level. Future growth will predominantly come from technology that craves the excellent graduates from the likes of Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial—the golden triangle. However, as I have set out, the opportunities for new business models off the back of modularisation and a lifelong relationship with universities should be encouraged.
Adult skills are usually neglected in this context. The funding is meagre, and the stakes are now high. I am told that the DfE has warned combined authorities to expect cuts to adult education budgets next year. Deskilling will accelerate. Employers must be incentivised to invest in the ongoing learning of staff to develop them for new roles as old roles disappear. Individuals should feel empowered by the adult skills system to trust and not fear the new technology because it is creating as many opportunities for them as it has closed others down, and some of those opportunities will make it easier for them to pursue passions and build mental resilience through the arts and humanities.
This is a big part of the challenge for Skills England and the new growth and skills levy. The levy is the key: it is the opportunity for the new body to engage employers and show them that Skills England is an advance on IfATE. I urge my noble friend to resist any official push that the levy should fund only a narrow set of regulated qualifications. It must be highly responsive to the needs of employers of all sizes in a fast-moving labour market.
If the Treasury is listening—I emphasise “if”—it too will need to work hard on this agenda, especially for FE and adult skills. The price of underfunding will come back to bite through rising spending by the DWP and the economic uncertainty created by swathes of workers checking out and embracing populist politics.
This is critical for the future of our economy and to give individuals hope for their future. We are living at a time when uncertainty is the only certainty, and there has never been a more important time to promote and resource lifelong learning. As Kofi Annan said:
“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family”.
I beg to move.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on securing this debate, his insightful remarks and reminding us that all sectors of education need to evolve as our society changes. Lifelong learning has social, economic and personal value. It is long established but it has many of the qualities that the noble Lord demands: it is diverse, flexible, collaborative and constantly evolving to meet the needs of its customers. But it is frequently overlooked—although not today.
I am glad to note that, within the Government’s ambitious plans for reform of apprenticeships and for further and technical education, there is also mention of lifelong learning, responsibility for which I think is going to lie with mayoralties. The Government have equally ambitious plans for the wholesale reform of local government at the same time. I am looking at the Minister, who is smiling—it is not a gloomy day—and I am hoping that she is going to be able to reassure noble Lords that lifelong learning will not fall through any cracks.
Lifelong learning providers include local government, as we all know, colleges, schools, universities, extramural boards and, indeed, the voluntary sector. Courses can be part-time and short- or long-term, and they increasingly lead to qualifications. Grants are available for learning essential skills. There is a free courses for jobs scheme for low earners and the unemployed. Lifelong learning can be delivered, as we all know, remotely as lectures, courses and classes, and held in schools and colleges after hours, in village halls and—sometimes, in my own experience—in pubs.
The Open University was founded in 1969, and it has been one of the most revolutionary developments in lifelong learning. It enabled people—from their homes, with help from televised lectures and in-person courses—to graduate. The WEA, founded in 1903, has a distinguished record of providing pathways to qualifications and purely academic courses. The University of the Third Age has, since 1982, made an extremely valuable contribution to lifelong learning. It is run by volunteers, and its membership is now at nearly half a million.
The benefits of lifelong learning are wide-ranging. It can play a huge role in the future world of education the noble Lord described. It can certainly improve employment prospects, and research has also shown that it can benefit social skills and confidence and even improve mental health. One of the things that appeals most to me about it is that it is widely available and usually accessible, even in rural areas.
Our lifelong learning sector is unique, creative and endlessly adaptable. It has been a precious source of social mobility and more for generations. I ask the Minister to reassure the House that its unique nature and provision will not be threatened by all the activity going on in the education sectors that could affect its freedom and its effectiveness. I believe that she will be able to reassure me on that point. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for his widening of all our horizons on the contribution that education makes to our lives and to our nation.
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for securing this debate. I declare an interest as an employed academic at King’s College London. It is gratifying that so many of us want to speak even though we have only four minutes. But there is a slightly gloomy hinterland, which is that people like us have been talking about the importance of lifelong learning for a very long time, and meanwhile adult education spending and numbers are going down, part-time and adult HE numbers are down, and higher education provision in further education is down. So there is a lot to do.
Because I have only three minutes left, I will concentrate on the higher education, higher skills end of things, rather than the literacy, numeracy and ESL provision that makes up a very large part of current adult education.
I was a member of the Augar review, and our number one recommendation was the LLE—lifelong learning entitlement—about which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, spoke so eloquently. I still believe that this is a hugely important reform. It was a big relief, and enormously gratifying in the years before the last election, to have cross-party support and to have that support reiterated by the present Government. I have a slight worry that everybody is so busy thinking about how to reform it before we start, that five years from now we might still be talking about what the ideal structure would be. I urge the Government to get on with it, because until we try it, we will not find out what works and what does not.
Having said that, I will suggest a couple of things that could do with some attention and which are not to do with the design of the LLE, but more to do with the structure and supply of opportunities in the institutional landscape. If you look at a number of other countries that are not so different from us—Canada, Australia and the United States are obvious examples—there has been a significant increase in recent years in the number of people doing short but relatively high-level, what we would probably call level 4, courses in vocational areas. That has been possible because of the institutional structures as well as the funding mechanisms. Those countries basically all have systems not unlike ours in that it is a combination of state support and people paying fees, with more or less well-developed income-contingent back-up.
That teaches us that we have to look at the structures and incentives for our institutions to supply lifelong opportunities and not just at the demand that might be generated by making adult student funding more flexible. Whether or not we manage to transform our provision will be about demand and supply, but you cannot just wait for the demand to appear. You have to have incentives to provide the sorts of courses that people want.
There is a huge amount of talk about modules. My sense is that short courses and one-year courses are probably just as important, but we will not find out until we go out there. I would like to flag one recommendation of the Augar review that got nowhere, which was that institutions should be strongly encouraged, if not required, by the regulator to offer higher certificates and higher diplomas rather than treating anything other than a full degree as an exit award that is only really offered if you fail. For some reason that never got anywhere. I have never understood why the DfE did not like it, but somehow it did not and it never went anywhere. I would like to lob it back in.
What I would really like to ask the Minister—but I know she cannot tell me—is when will the regs be laid for the LLE to be activated? When will the roadshows start? Since I cannot get an answer to that, can she assure us that the DfE is considering structures as well as the structure of the lending?
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for bringing this debate and look forward in the spirit of lifelong learning to hearing other contributions this evening.
Lifelong learning is about social value, although we do not live to store up treasure just for ourselves. It is about economic value, although we do not live by bread alone. It is about personal value, although we do not live just for me but for the flourishing of others who are our neighbours. Faith communities play an important part in all these aspects of lifelong learning, through catechesis, engagement with social issues, basic skills training, youth work, volunteering and engagement with schools, FE colleges and universities. They are also crucially involved in spiritual value by fostering vocation and character.
Within faith communities, and certainly for Christians, there is a strong sense that each individual is uniquely and wonderfully made with a mix of gifts, abilities and motivations. Part of our searching in life is to find our vocation where we can find life in all its fullness. Our vocations can be multiple and overlaid with paid work, voluntary service to others and perhaps a role as a parent or carer, all of which need different skills. Different vocations emerge over time, sometimes requiring new skills and knowledge as people move into new careers and interests.
Vocation has an interplay with the second area that faith communities are so involved with, which is character. In his book The Road to Character David Brooks speaks about “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues”. Résumé virtues are those things that we put on our CV, such as our jobs and our qualifications, whereas eulogy virtues are those things about us that might, we hope, be said one day at our funeral. Brooks argues that we need to develop a healthy character.
As I turn the pages of the Gospels, I see how Jesus is continually shaping the character of his disciples, how they interacted and how they served others. St Paul, of course, spoke of a well-shaped character being seen in a person of love and joy, peace and forbearance, kindness and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I believe that we are continually shaped through a life of learning as if we are clay in the potter’s hand.
Does the Minister agree that vocation and character are two crucial areas for human flourishing and that faith communities have a vital part to play in fostering them as well as other aspects of lifelong learning?
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
I have a number of relevant registered interests. I am very pleased to follow the right reverend Prelate and to endorse what I thought was an excellent “Thought for the Day”, which I hope he will be able to get on Radio 4. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Knight on an excellent opening speech, and I endorse everything he said. I look forward very much to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Curran, who is surrounded by friends, so she should have no fear. Being in this place is a lifelong learning experience. I often come in literally to have a seminar, learning things I know nothing about, and go away at least somewhat enlightened. I believe that we should endorse that kind of experience from the beginning to the end of our lives.
I have had a few hiccups lately, so I may not make the 100 that my noble friend Lord Knight referred to, but I am going to do my best. During that time, as well as advocating for a massive shift in the skills agenda, as I have been doing inside and outside this House, I will return to my real love, which is lifelong learning. Just over 25 years ago, I had the privilege of publishing the paper: The Learning Age. The department was slightly bewildered as my noble friend Lady Shephard, as I like to call her, will remember because I succeeded her. No. 10 was not just bewildered; it was bemused about why I should be spending time and energy on lifelong learning. The truth is that our country has been built on it.
The trade union movement was the first to understand the liberation of learning and the way in which this transformed the lives of not just individuals but families and whole communities. After the miners’ strike 40 years ago, women were liberated in my home area of South Yorkshire by adult learning being made available. I hope my noble friend can reassure me that the two remaining adult residential colleges that have major outreach will be secured in an environment where devolution of funding to combined authorities leaves artificial boundaries that might undermine funding initiatives of that sort. My university, the University of Sheffield, was in part built on a levy by the trade unions in the area which put together what would now be worth millions of pounds to get that university off the ground in 1905. The history of people understanding what it was doing to them, their lives and their opportunity and community is something we should build on.
My noble friend Lord Knight and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, mentioned the lifelong learning entitlement. Please let us make it more flexible, more usable and, in the end, more successful, but let us also look at new ways of delivering lifelong learning. Artificial intelligence and technology are transforming the world of work, which is why lifelong learning will be critical for people to return to learn in all kinds of ways. However, artificial intelligence and technology can also deliver and help to spread the opportunity of lifelong learning, including to people who are confined to their home.
My final point, because of the time limit, is very simple. We need lifelong learning to keep us alert and alive and to stave off dementia. I have had a long-standing commitment in the area of dementia, so I know from every possible experience just what a difference it can make if people remain alert and alive at the end of their main working period and throughout their retirement. We have an obligation to ensure that this new Government do not make cuts in what has already been a devastated area of public funding. I appeal to my Government to not condemn austerity and then carry it through. Together, nationally and locally, through civil society, we can make this work.
Lord Bates (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on securing this debate and suggest to him that there is another reason why it is timely. The Chancellor spoke last week of the urgent need to remove barriers to economic growth. One of those barriers, I argue, is an outdated mindset around the contribution that older people can make to our economy.
The first state pension was introduced by the Asquith Government in 1908, and the retirement age was set at 70, when the average life expectancy of the population was around 50. Today, life expectancy is 30 years higher at 82 and yet the state retirement age is four years lower than it was a century ago. Moreover, that was at a time when most of the jobs required physical strength, which declines with age, whereas today most of the jobs are in the knowledge- and service-based sectors.
There are many examples in your Lordships’ House of the contribution that older people make. The average age of Members of your Lordships’ House is 71, and some of the sharpest and most insightful contributions come from Members well into their 80s and 90s. Lord Mackay of Clashfern is the wisest and kindest man I know. He retired aged 95 a few years ago; in my view, that was an early retirement and a loss to the House. The point is that we are surrounded by living examples who defy the prevailing societal norms and expectations of retirement.
Outside this House, there are many more examples. The Rolling Stones are still touring, and many in their 20s and 30s would find it a challenge to swagger like Jagger in his 80s. Sir David Attenborough made the spectacular “Planet Earth III” series for the BBC at the age of 97. So why do we have such an outdated and outmoded view of the economic potential of people and the valuable contribution they can make, as long as they feel able?
I declare an interest as a very mature student. I left school without any qualifications at 16 and earned my first degree at 37. I began a master’s degree in my 50s and I hope to finally complete my PhD later this year at the age of 64. It has been thoroughly joyful and rejuvenating experience—although my supervisors may not see it that way. We have irrefutable evidence that continuing to learn has huge health benefits, including improved mental health and physical fitness, reduced loneliness, delayed onset of dementia and an enhanced quality of life.
Before we hear the much-anticipated maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, I want to conclude with another living example, Dr Neville Brown. He is Britain’s oldest teacher and a pioneer of teaching schoolchildren with dyslexia. Last week, he celebrated his 90th birthday with students at the Maple Hayes Hall School for Dyslexics in Lichfield, which he founded 40 years ago. At his school, pupils who were once unable to write their name have gone on to attain good GCSEs, A-levels and university degrees. When interviewed by Lara Davies for BBC local radio, he said that he had absolutely no intention of slowing down or retiring because there are so many more schoolchildren who need his help. We can follow his example and, in doing so, unlock the potential for our golden generation to play their part in growing our economy, enriching our society and realising our full potential as a great nation.
Baroness Curran (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
I am very pleased to speak in this debate this afternoon, as I have embarked on my own programme of lifelong learning these past few weeks. Although this is my third parliamentary Chamber, I still feel the nerves and anxiety of the new girl. But any anxiety has been greatly assuaged by the kindness and graciousness with which I have been welcomed. That it has come from all sides of the House is greatly appreciated. My sincere thanks go to Black Rod, her amazing staff, the wise doorkeepers, the cleaners, the catering staff and the incredible staff in the Library. The support I have had from my noble friends Lady Smith and Lord Kennedy has been both encouraging and empowering—not words I usually associate with a Chief Whip.
I am sure my late parents could never have foreseen me standing here. They arrived in Townhead in Glasgow from Ireland with scarcely a penny in their pockets. They taught my three sisters and me the value of education, the dignity of honest labour, and a deep belief in equality for all. I owe so much to my family, especially to my sister Bridget, who is in the Gallery today, and who, since I could read, has thrust a book into my hand—books that I believe have changed the course of my life.
There is a part of me that is surprised that I am here: a working-class girl with no historic or familial connection to politics. That I have sustained this is because of the encouragement I received from my noble friends Lady Harman and Lady Liddell, who introduced me to your Lordships’ House. Both of them are icons of progress and change. I thank them for helping me in these past few weeks and the many years before.
My mother always said that Scotland had been good to her family. She understood only too well the benefit of government help—from family allowance paid to mothers, the provision of social housing and investment in state education—proving for me that the real measure of politics is less in the high rhetoric, or the flags flown, but in the lives changed.
I cherish my Irish roots, but my mother’s words gave me a deep love of Scotland. As I grew up, Scotland faced profound change. There was a clamour for a new kind of politics and a new parliament to address the injustice and inequality that had plagued our nation for too long. Those were exciting times, and I am very proud that on the Labour Benches we achieved that momentous 50:50 representation of women and men.
I served in the Scottish Parliament for 12 years, half of them in the Scottish Cabinet, and that Parliament made its mark early. My own work involved landmark legislation on homelessness and violence against women, and as Housing Minister we fundamentally altered investment in Glasgow’s dilapidated housing through a stock transfer. This would not have been possible without the actions of the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who lifted the stranglehold of the city’s housing debt. That was a clear demonstration of the value of the partnership we have built across the UK, reinforcing my deep belief in a strong, assertive Scottish Parliament, enhanced by the solidarity we must maintain across our nations and regions. Of course, these issues were to the fore during the heady days of the Scottish referendum. As shadow Secretary of State for Scotland during my five years in the other place, I argued then, and I will continue to argue, that the best interests of Scotland are served by leading in the UK, not leaving it.
More recently, I worked internationally to support political and parliamentary development. I recall women in Libya, Myanmar, Guatemala and other countries who, through years of conflict and oppression, have shown resilience, courage and commitment. In this work I found myself translated into different languages: Arabic, Portuguese, Russian and others. Occasionally, my English colleagues would ask for some translation too. I hope that in this House I will not need too much translation, because here voices from Glasgow should be heard. We should hear voices from other parts of the land too—from our inner cities and our rural communities, our islands and our coastal regions. We have to understand the ambitions, talents and aspirations across our land that are too often frustrated and unfulfilled.
It is why sustained programmes of lifelong learning are more important than ever. We must drive change now, as Labour Governments have in the past, to unleash the reservoir of ability and energy that I see every day. That is how we will navigate our way through a changing and turbulent world, fuel economic growth and offer a path to new skills, better jobs and increased prosperity for all.
Lord Monks (Lab)
My Lords, it is a real pleasure and privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Curran and the excellent maiden speech we have just been treated to. She is a graduate of a tough school. Clydeside politics is not for wimps and the faint-hearted, but it is a rich academy producing gifted political figures—my noble friend is certainly one of those. We all wish her son Chris very well; he is MP for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh. I am sure I speak for everyone in congratulating my noble friend on her powerful speech here today. We are looking forward to many other interventions by her in the work of this House.
I turn to the subject of today’s debate, lifelong learning, which is an area where the UK—let us be frank—continues to struggle compared to the best. Over my years at the TUC, I worked with industrial training boards, sector skills councils, the Manpower Services Commission and the Learning and Skills Council, among other prominent institutions that have been involved. None survived political change. Regular institutional upheaval has been a feature of our efforts at lifelong learning in this country, and in my view a very damaging one. It contrasts with some other leading countries and with the higher education world, which has enjoyed relative stability at the same time as there has been turmoil on the vocational front.
It is very depressing to see the decline in the number of students at colleges of further education and in the adult learning world—down by 70% over the decade that has just passed. It is a sign of a sector in trouble, and we are nowhere near achieving the parity of esteem objective that many of us have long sought. Even apprenticeships, the strongest brand in the vocational learning armoury, have been subject to many changes and alterations to the rules. It is complicated territory.
I hope the Bill being piloted through Parliament at the moment by my noble friend on the Front Bench will address these weaknesses and launch a new surge of interest in lifelong learning. I also hope that it will be the last of the regular institutional changes, which I believe have been a drag anchor on progress. Lifelong learning has not been a glamorous subject, and it needs to be. I saw a report produced for the World Economic Forum earlier this week. It forecasted that two-fifths of the existing jobs will be outdated by artificial intelligence in the next five years. That is 40%, and if it is anything like accurate, this shows graphically the scale of the challenges.
How are we to help the people affected to adjust and adapt to the new world? It will not necessarily be a brave new world for many of them. Then there are the cohorts of people who did not succeed at school and struggled to get decent work. Many of them are a long way from achieving some of the basic skills that are necessary for life. One of the pleasures I have had was handing out qualification certificates to successful students in the union learning programme that the TUC ran, supported by my noble friend Lord Blunkett when he was Secretary of State. At that stage, in our peak years, we managed to bring 250,000 students through the processes and through the different courses. I am sorry to say that tribal politics took over and that was abolished by Gavin Williamson when he was Secretary of State.
In my view, it is very important that we concentrate on this Bill—on making it succeed and tackle some of the problems that we have. The country deserves it and the people of this country, particularly the ones who missed out at school, really deserve it. It is vital that we get on with it.
Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord and particularly to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her maiden speech. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, she will find that this Chamber is an opportunity for lifelong learning every time we come into it. It is absolutely true to say that, every time I am here, I hear something new and learn something from noble Lords. So we look forward to her contributions, and I thank her for her passionate and well-argued speech. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on bringing this debate. I am sure that all of us could have spoken for much longer, had we been allowed, so he has hit on a popular topic. I declare my interest as chair of the board of the national Careers & Enterprise Company and a former chair of the East Midlands Institute of Technology.
In its briefing for this debate, the Learning and Work Institute said that, in 2022-23, 1.7 million people did not just change jobs but switched sectors. That is not just government reshuffles; it is people outside government who switched sectors and therefore had to embrace lifelong learning in order to learn how to do a new job.
In the time available today, the point I want to make is the importance of encouraging that attitude of lifelong learning that so many noble Lords have already spoken about, at both school and college, and doing so via careers advice of all shapes and sizes. As we have already heard, it is important that people of all ages understand that leaving formal education does not mean that learning ends.
The Careers & Enterprise Company, which, as I said, I have the pleasure of chairing, has been backed by successive Governments, including this one, and we thank the Minister very much indeed for her engagement so far. It is driving awareness and interest in key sectors through co-ordinated employer engagement, particularly in the delivery of modern work experience. The Careers & Enterprise Company is piloting the Government’s commitment to two weeks’ work experience in pilots across the health, construction and digital sectors. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, set out in his opening remarks, the advent, growth and acceleration of new technology mean that lifelong learning is becoming a reality for so many more of us.
The company wants to provide an efficient, evidence-driven basis for regionally driven, nationally led careers and skills systems. The point is that when our young people in schools and colleges visit modern workplaces and hear from employers, it is really important that they see lifelong learning in practice, as other noble Lords have said.
We also welcome the focus on local partnerships and the powers held by mayoral authorities to embed sustainable structures for lifelong learning. There is an opportunity here to learn from the company’s careers hubs, which are networked across all parts of the country. Their role is critical in furthering local skills ambitions with a place-based democratic structure through local and mayoral authorities. The company will work in partnership with every mayoral combined authority to make sure that mayoral priorities are represented, and to ensure a seamless transition from the careers system into the adult skills system.
To conclude, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Bates, lifelong learning, the subject of this debate, supports the Government’s growth agenda. My message to the Minister is that she has the support of us all when she next has to negotiate with the Treasury. We hope that it spends as much time on human capital as it does on infrastructure.
Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on securing the debate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her maiden speech. It is a short congratulations because I am already running out of time; I apologise for that.
In the mid-1990s, I was Permanent Secretary at what was then the Department for Education and Employment. In that role, I worked for several of the speakers in this evening’s debate—sorry, I should have said, “I was privileged to work for several of the speakers in this evening’s debate”. One of the department’s three objectives was lifelong learning—to create a learning society. I was passionate about it at the time, not just because those noble Lords were too but because it seemed to be a no-brainer, as they say now. It is the route to growth and increased productivity. It will deliver higher tax revenues—if the Treasury is listening—reduced welfare dependency, better public health outcomes and greater social mobility. It enables citizens to better fulfil their personal potential and improve their quality of life, and it helps older people like me to retain their independence. In a world that is being reshaped by AI and digital technology, lifelong learning has never been more important.
No other investment gives you that kind of return, so why is it proving so difficult to deliver a learning society? After all, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, said, we have tried every conceivable delivery agency, from training and enterprise councils to the Learning and Skills Council and now Skills England—I wish it well. We have tried a whole range of different qualification frameworks and incentives, but participation in lifelong learning remains stubbornly low.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to participation of 50%, but I think, year on year, it is somewhere between 40 and 50% of adults who say they are currently learning or have done so in the last three years, and 30% of people say they have never learnt since full-time education. With a new Government now focused on growth, the question is: how are we going to change that? What do we need to do differently? What are the lessons of history?
First, the Government need genuinely to believe that economic growth depends not just on increased investment in projects, which we have heard a lot about recently, but as much, if not more, on investment in people and in skills. They need genuinely to believe that, if they are to make the investment that is necessary to deliver it. The system needs significant additional investment to right the wrongs of the recent past. There has been a substantial real-terms reduction in spending on adult skills since the early 2000s, despite what we have all been saying in places like the House of Lords, and many of the incentives to learn, relearn and retrain have been withdrawn. The additional funding in the recent Budget was very welcome, but it is nowhere near enough to restore the situation.
Some of the new investment, if we are able to achieve it, has to go towards tackling the problem of flexible part-time learning. The current tertiary system does not support flexible learning. The catastrophic fall in the number of part-time students in HE has been worrying, and the Sutton Trust report, entitled The Lost Part-Timers, says it all. The lifelong learning entitlement is not perfect, but it is an opportunity to improve, so students can better fit study around work and other responsibilities. Can the Minister commit to implementing the lifelong learning entitlement in 2027? I think my Ministers would have said that this is a fairly relaxed target, so are we able to commit to that? Can we commit to credit-based fee caps to facilitate increasing demand for accelerated learning? Can we also protect the value of the student premium in the spending review to support institutions that are finding the increased costs of part-time difficult to cope with?
Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con)
My Lords, I would like to pick up on two points in this debate: first, the point made very well by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on how AI is changing the requirements for lifelong learning; and, secondly, how businesses play a hugely important role in lifelong learning.
As others have noted, the skills demanded by the labour market are rapidly changing and the jobs available in the future will be different to the jobs offered in today’s economy. The biggest driver of this change is AI and automation. As the Department for Education noted in its report on this subject in 2023, the jobs at greatest risk are in London and the south-east, with some of the most at-risk professions being management consultants, business analysts, psychologists and legal professionals. Many have yet to fully wake up to the impact that AI will have on the labour market and social norms. The inspiring story of someone in a low-paid service sector role, studying at night school to train as an accountant or lawyer, will fade away. In the future, the story is more likely to be that of a white-collar worker losing their job and retraining to become a bricklayer, plasterer or forklift truck driver. This has huge implications both for the type of lifelong learning required and also for the careers we encourage children to take up at school.
I went to a bookshop at the weekend with my daughters, aged four and seven, to see what careers were recommended by the books on offer. Much to their disappointment, Santa’s helper and dinosaur farmer were not suggested options. One of the books directed the girls towards some of the most at-risk careers as defined by the DfE’s AI report. Another described jobs that were unbelievably niche: professional sleeper, cow massager and sloth nanny. We need to encourage children towards the jobs of the 2040s, not the 1940s, and we need lifelong learning to train people for the careers of the future rather than the careers of the past.
I want to finish on an optimistic note. Shortly before Christmas, I visited a company which owns dozens of restaurants around London and Birmingham. I sat in on a training session for trainee managers, all of whom had begun in entry-level positions. I asked one of the participants what their ambition was, and they said, “To own my own restaurant”. I know they will do it. I came away inspired by the group’s positivity, their drive, their work ethic and their camaraderie. It was the very best of lifelong learning: a fantastic employer, helping people climb up the career ladder to move from trainee, to employee, to team leader, to manager, to owner. The essence of a good society is to make that ladder of opportunity accessible to everyone, and we should thank businesses for the important role they play in lifelong learning. We should also think carefully about careers education in schools. Let us harness the enthusiasm of Santa’s helpers to become toy designers and encourage dinosaur farmers to become vertical farmers. After all, even with AI, there will always be jobs in toys and food.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for securing this debate. I am interested in his suggestion of a subscription model for universities for lifelong learning, not just because, as someone who spent about 8.3 years full-time equivalent in universities, I would do rather well out of that model; none the less, I am going to stick with the Green Party’s understanding that education is a public good that should be paid for from general taxation—far more progressive taxation than we have now—rather than being a weight on the individual.
I commend the noble Lord particularly for the phrasing of the question, which looks at the social and personal value of lifelong learning, as well as the economic value. To be an informed voter, to be a parent able to help their children navigate a fast-changing world in the age of shocks, to contribute to your community as a citizen, lifelong learning is not a “nice to have”, or an add-on but an essential basis for health and survival, both individually and collectively.
However, I am going to turn one word around and focus on the importance of unlearning what we might previously have been taught—of acknowledging that science and knowledge are not one fixed certainty, or a tower built on solid foundations, progressing forward with stately certainty. As a society, as individuals, we need to unlearn much.
I am 58 years old, and much of what I was taught at school and early university, from the supposition of DNA providing a blueprint for life to the “primitiveness” of hunter-gatherer life and the inevitability of the tragedy of the commons, was demonstrably wrong. Much of the thinking of the 20th century—which often in the global North claimed universality but in fact was highly particular to the ideology and interests of the few at that moment—has been disproved or simply surpassed by the huge volume of knowledge generation we have seen in recent decades and, just starting, by knowledge recovery from indigenous and other cultures.
To give three examples: students are still taught, and the media extols in expensively produced wildlife documentaries and casual news commentaries, that life on this planet is built on the foundation of competition. Yet everyone should know that the 20th-century giant of biology, Lynn Margulis, developed our understanding of symbiosis—the co-operation between species—and of the source of mitochondria and chloroplasts, the origin and foundation of all complex life forms, and everyone should understand how soils are a co-operative production of more-than-human life and non-living entities, not an inert chemical substrate, as I was taught at university. If the very foundation of life is co-operation, not competition, our view of the world and our society has to change.
Then there is the so-called central dogma of US biologist James Watson, the physicist, eugenicist and misogynist—after whom, astonishingly, the new research centre at St Pancras was named—which has been substantively debunked yet is still widely taught.
There is also the tragedy of the commons, which is all too often taught as fact rather than the fantasy of Garrett Hardin, a would-be applier of coercive population control. We were told that holding resources in private ownership was the only way to protect them. Yet it was in 1990 that Elinor Ostrom, later a Nobel Economics Prize winner, published Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
The Minister frequently speaks to us about the Government’s curriculum review. I hope that it and indeed the curriculums and approaches of our colleges and universities, and the approaches to further education taken by everything from the University of the Third Age to sceptics in the pub, will all adopt knowledge for the 21st century, because that is what we need.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I am about to subject myself to a lifelong learning experience. These often end in disaster, so I apologise in advance if that is the case.
I have been hugely inspired by a lot of what we have heard, starting with the brilliant overview from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of everything that lifelong learning is about, and including the wonderful maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Curran. Compared to these, I felt my own planned remarks were so deeply pedestrian that I should try to do something different. I will therefore try to riff on one of the points that I was planning to make.
I hasten to add that I have mentioned before to your Lordships’ House that one aspect of lifelong learning that I have never experienced in a proper way is oracy. It did not exist when I was at school, so let us see how I get on.
One of the things that struck me most was the point that the people who pursue lifelong learning most are mainly those who need it least. I cannot resist mentioning my grandmother, in the context of the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bates. She started upholstery classes when she was well into her 70s and used to produce all sorts of wonderfully upholstered chairs and things for us.
It is very clear that take-up of lifelong learning is skewed by class, race, age and place. It is skewed also by lack of suitable provision, lack of awareness, lack of confidence, disability, disadvantage, poverty or bad experiences of education.
Before I came here, I used to work in a small business that provided employability training. We mainly worked with young offenders and young people who were at risk of becoming NEET—not in employment, education or training. Working with the young offenders was fine, because they were all in prison so we could get at them, but as soon as they left prison it was impossible to get them back. They went with wonderful ideas about what they were going to do with all the things on which we had worked, but then they disappeared. Even Nacro, which we were working with, could not get them to come to all the wonderful follow-up sessions that we had arranged.
It was similar with many of the NEETs, who had huge problems with family issues, substance abuse and generally chaotic lifestyles. We would arrange appointments with employers, training sessions or whatever, but they would still be in bed. We got to the point of sending taxis out to their homes to bring them in—not quite forcibly, but helping them to get in to benefit from what we had to offer.
I am arguing that the one thing that has been a little missing from this debate is how we get to the people who we are not reaching. I gather that 27% or fewer adults in deprived areas are engaged in learning. We ought to have a strategy, maybe as part of the post-16 education and skills strategy. I hope that any strategy pays a lot of attention to that cohort of people who are missing out and difficult to get to.
I will just mention one other example. Griffith Jones of Llanddowror was a Welsh preacher who set up circulating schools throughout Wales. Some 200,000 people went through those schools because they wanted to be there. How do we recreate that sort of desire to learn among the people who are not learning? I apologise for inflicting my very inchoate thoughts on your Lordships.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on securing this debate. This is a key issue that touches all our lives.
I congratulate the House of Lords Library on an excellent brief. It reminded me of the significance of the Workers’ Educational Association, which was used by my union’s education college. At that time it was avidly supported by the Communist Party. The WEA was good at what it did and supplied good teaching.
As so many people have told us, if you are an active Member of the House of Lords, you are engaged in lifelong learning. It is dead easy. As somebody said, “You come in here and you learn something every day”. In fact, I usually reflect that when I am speaking about something, there will be at least half a dozen noble Lords who are twice as knowledgeable as I am about the subject. That is just a fact of life.
The Labour Government’s policy and what they are attempting to do is pretty good. They are going to devolve funding. I suggest that this should not just be for skills, but that apprenticeship funding ought to be included. I would welcome the Minister’s views on this. Reforming the apprenticeship levy is long overdue; it needs to be made more relevant and more flexible.
Tomorrow is the 213th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, of whom I am a fan. He was a man who believed in lifelong learning. He was a supporter of the mechanics’ institutes, which encouraged working-class people to learn. Dickens gave wonderful performances of extracts from his novels, and of course he spoke from experience, as he tramped the streets of London learning about what life was really like on those streets—I am trying to keep an eye on the time.
I want to give a plug for something I do regularly in lifelong learning, which is “Learn with the Lords”. I go out and speak to young people. When I ask them why they think I am coming to talk to them, they usually tell me it is because I am going to educate them. I say, “No, no, you’re wrong; you’re going to educate me”, and that is what happens. It is very interesting talking to them about whether they think they should have votes at 16. You get a much more nuanced response to that than you would imagine.
I am not such a pessimist as some have been in this debate. First, I notice from my own children how people do not stay in the same job. They move and change, as my own son has done. In fact, at one point I had to give him a nudge. He had been at a company for eight years, obviously he was not enjoying it anymore, and now he is doing exceedingly well. We have to think differently.
The nature of apprenticeships is also changing, which is a good thing. You can be an apprenticeship lawyer, doctor, nurse or accountant, which is great. So we should not be too pessimistic. Of course, artificial intelligence will have an impact, but some skills will always be with us. I relish the fact that, after many years of trying, I still cannot hang a door. That is because I am not a very good carpenter and probably never will be. We will need carpenters—that is for sure.
The Government have to rise to the challenge. I am confident that they will do so. We in the Lords should be capable of giving them advice that they will listen to.
I want to congratulate my noble friend on her brilliant maiden speech. I did not have any trouble with the accent, but then, “I’m a cockney, aren’t I?”
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, it is always a joy to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, whom I thank very much for securing this debate on this important topic. As ever, I declare my interest as a state secondary school teacher; it is more like “Learn with a Lord” around our place. I also greatly enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, and welcome her to the next part of her lifelong learning journey, as everyone has been telling her.
We all know the value of lifelong learning. Professor David Snowdon’s nun study looked at the cognitive ability of nuns during their lives and analysed their brains after death. In one famous case, Sister Mary, who did sudoku every day, passed all the regular tests until her death at 102. Tests on her brain afterwards showed that she had full-blown Alzheimer’s. One explanation was something called “cognitive reserve”, the idea that lifelong learning can strengthen protective neurons, so that they, in effect, create patches around the damage to our brains that happens as we age; the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, touched on that. Think of the savings to the NHS if we can decrease the effects of brain deterioration.
I would say that I have been quite a good example of lifelong learning so far. After my degree, I took evening classes. I learned to ski and became a ski photographer. I learned Italian and married an Italian. I did courses to become a level 2 cricket coach. I retrained as a teacher on the School Direct scheme. I taught myself SolidWorks and—I emphasise this to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran—Excel. Working in the House of Lords has been a steep learning curve, particularly if you forget Lord Judge’s 75-word rule when asking questions. There was very little formal training there, certainly at college.
Derek Lewis, a friend of mine and chair of UHI North, West and Hebrides, says:
“Lifelong learning is now a necessity rather than an option because the pace of change in science and technology in particular makes the notion of a qualification for life nonsensical”.
Here we have a problem. I am confident that I know where I can get the training that I need. However, the Association of Colleges complains that the majority of adult learning takes place among those who are already educated to a certain level. Those with poor basic skills are least likely to seek support to address their basic skills needs, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, riffed. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, we need everyone to be able to access the type of learning that they need. Perhaps the Government could look at learning mentors, who could guide people through their long-term learning journey in the way they do with teachers—or at least, perhaps, a lifelong learning number. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that.
What about the sheer enjoyment of learning, which can lift people out of loneliness and poor mental health? That is where charities such as the Men’s Sheds Association can help: in reducing the stubborn numbers of male suicide. If we can get people learning and keep people learning, whether formally or informally, the societal and financial benefits will be immeasurable. We should all strive to be a Sister Mary.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for securing this debate; I felt that I was honoured to be listening to a first-class university lecture. Like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I have been inspired by many of the contributions today; it makes me quite worried about what I am going to say. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her inspiring maiden speech; I look forward to her future contributions.
We already know that education does not stop at 16, 18 or 21; it cannot be packaged into a few years and then set aside. We are all constantly doing it—every day is a school day, after all. Lifelong learning is just that: learning for life. I applaud any attempt to encourage this pursuit. Plenty of evidence suggests that lifelong learning positively impacts our communities. The Social Mobility Commission has emphasised that learning leads to better employment prospects. The Learning and Work Institute has demonstrated that lifelong learning has personal benefits, increasing individuals’ life satisfaction and, in many cases, improving mental health—an important consideration given the current mental health crisis.
As we have heard today, there are many personal, social and economic values that lifelong learning offers. Proposals to increase the access to funding for adult learning are an important step in the right direction, and it is clear that there is a push for increasing access to improving skills-based learning opportunities. After all, we are faced with a skills shortage across the country. The nation needs teachers, nurses, construction workers and many more. Lifelong learning may provide an opportunity to fill those gaps, to give those out of work, or those looking for a shift in a career, an opportunity to excel in a new environment.
As the Open University has informed me, older workers are the key to tackling skills gaps, especially in the public sector; yet currently, older members of society are the group least likely to participate in lifelong learning. More broadly, the number of those accessing lifelong learning is dwindling. Although there was a 0.7% increase in the number of learners in 2023-24 compared with 2022, this is still less than a third of the figures from the early 2010s, when over 3 million adults participated in adult education. If we are making funding available, and recognising the multiple benefits of lifelong learning, why do the numbers of those accessing adult learning remain so low?
Perhaps the answer is one that I raised before on this issue several years ago: the issue of physical access to learning environments. Many councils have explained that a key reason for declining numbers of adult learners is the lack of access that adults have to learning centres. They are too far away for people to attend. Adults might be inspired to retrain for a new skill, but if the classes are over an hour away, no amount of government funding is going to make learning more feasible or appealing to adults balancing everyday life.
Distance learning is a plausible solution to this issue and one that the Open University has modelled in its successful online degree programmes. There is also the changing landscape of how people want to learn. The trend towards online learning is undeniable. More and more people are looking for flexible, digital-first options that fit around their jobs, families and daily lives. We can look to Birbeck University here in London as a champion of this endeavour, with its promotion of short-term courses and evening classes—a key example of arranging lifelong learning around the needs of the learner.
The importance of the learner when advocating for lifelong learning is maybe something we have overlooked. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for referencing the personal value that lifelong learning may offer. The Government seem keen to align lifelong learning with the needs of the economy, which is commendable: we do, of course, want a workforce prepared for the challenges ahead. However, let us not lose sight of the individual learners themselves. Yes, lifelong learning should equip people with the skills that businesses and industries need, but it must also empower individuals, giving them the tools to grow, adapt, and fulfil their own hopes and dreams.
Truly effective lifelong learning serves not just the economy but the people who make up that economy. Learning, therefore, may encompass a broad range of skills, from woodwork to flower arranging or creative writing to drawing. Of course, in the past, universities have played an important part in supporting this through their extramural departments, many of which have now been replaced by skills-based short courses. We should actively encourage these endeavours and think more broadly about the benefits of fostering an environment that supports personal development alongside economic growth.
There is a lifelong learning issue which has irritated me for quite a while. I was recently elected a city councillor in Liverpool and, to my shock, everything for local residents is done online, to save money. Poor, elderly people, often in their late 80s, struggle to report issues or contact the council because they do not even know how to access the internet; yet the council, for very good reasons—it does not have the money—is not able to provide the training opportunities in the public libraries, which would actually serve and provide lifelong learning for those elderly people.
Finally, what about those who miss out on education —those who decide to enter the workforce at 16 and never receive their two years of free universal education? Could we look towards providing this later in life through grants covering the cost of further education, rather than loans for those who missed this opportunity for learning? Loans often stand as a barrier to learning, with prospective students worried about the burden of rising debt. Instead, let us think bigger and bolder. Let us not stop at funding, but also address access through digital innovation and support flexibility by embracing learning in all its forms, regardless of subject or interest. Investing in lifelong learning means investing in people, and that is something I am sure we are all keen to support.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on his tour de force opening speech. It fitted into the renaissance man—or maybe we should say renaissance woman—pattern in its breadth and insight, and it was a pleasure to listen to. I also, of course, welcome the maiden speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, who talked about the opportunity one has in politics to change lives. We heard some examples about how she has already done that, and I am sure she will do more. We look forward to working with her.
I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, about the dignity of some of what we have heard, including from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. With the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, having moved to a very successful career in riffing, I am going to take the pedestrian speaking slot which other noble Lords have left open. It is possibly because I am a bit damaged by having taken some legislation through this House that aimed to underpin lifelong learning. I hope the Minister will forgive me if I have some questions on where we are at and where we are going with that.
Of course, the principle of offering students, in the case of the lifelong learning entitlement, up to the age of 60 a tuition-free loan which gives them entitlement to four years of full-time education is widely welcomed, and we know that that is for a number of reasons. We all, I think, hope that it will allow those who might not embark on a three-year qualification to get staging-post qualifications to whatever level is right for them—in many cases, they might go all the way. It also offers those already in the workforce the chance to upskill, retrain and get high-quality qualifications. We heard from my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes and others about the number who change sectors or careers each year. Those two things, we all hope, will address the skills gaps that we have in our economy.
When we were in government we lived through one delay in the launch of the LLE. The noble Baroness has lived through another, but perhaps she can give the House some reassurance that applications will start from September 2026. Of course, some big tasks need to be done before the LLE can go live. The first is setting up all the systems within the Student Loans Company. I know, having worked closely with the Student Loans Company, how seriously it takes its responsibilities in this area, but it is a truly complex process. The second is to understand the Government’s vision for the LLE and how—as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and others—it will attract the types of learners who have not traditionally accessed lifelong learning and higher qualifications. It would be really interesting to hear where the Minister’s thinking is on this and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, what the incentives will be to drive those behaviours.
I remember trying—not altogether seriously, but just to test it out—to apply for one of the pilots that we ran when we were in government. It was almost impossible, despite Google’s best efforts, to find even the application form, so thinking about making it visible and accessible is important. I think we all fear that we will end up, in five or 10 years’ time, with the vast majority of people still doing three-year, full-time courses. You have to be quite brave to do a course that no one has done before, possibly at an institution where none of your friends, family or people you know have studied. That need for focus and tenacity to make this work will be so important, but the prize, as we have heard from across the House this afternoon, is obviously a huge one.
It would be helpful to hear the Minister’s thoughts on how the Government are going to track progress. We will stretch her talents, as a “Mastermind” winner—as she was unwise enough to disclose to those of your Lordships who were in the House last night—in a different way and invite her to paint a picture of what a successful higher and further education system would look like once the LLE is fully implemented.
I wonder whether the Minister could say a word about how the Government think that opportunities for skills development can be promoted regionally. I was very struck when I was campaigning in the election in the summer—in seats that were apparently marginal but perhaps turned out to be slightly less marginal than we had hoped—that there were streets I walked along where I felt that, if I lived on that street, I would not have much hope, including for my children. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, rightly said, this is where populism breeds if we do not have hope for the future. It is extremely important that that regional perspective is prioritised. We made some steps towards that in government, particularly through the institutes of technology that we established, which brought together colleges, universities and employers with a regional focus. I hope the Minister can reassure me that the Government are going to continue supporting those and not waste the investment that was made in them.
The Minister will be aware that some institutions are concerned about how the current regulatory system—I told noble Lords my speech was going to be pedestrian—will fit with the LLE. This is important. As the Minister knows, the continuation metric that the Office for Students looks at perhaps lends itself less well to an approach where students are doing shorter courses, then leaving education for a while and restarting. I assume that she will be able to provide reassurance that that is being reviewed ahead of the rollout. Also, could she say a word on maintenance support?
I think the Minister will be aware of unhappiness in the sector about historic underspends in the adult education budget. My understanding is that the evidence is that the mayoral combined authorities have been more effective in disbursing all their money, although I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight, was hinting that all might not be well in that department. Maybe the Minister could comment on that.
In closing, I will pick up on a few remarks made by your Lordships. My noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes talked about the work that the Careers & Enterprise Company does in building confidence, about our attitude to lifelong learning, and about making it the cultural norm that you learn through life wherever you were born and whatever advantages you did or did not have. All of us want to be Sister Mary—I am hoping that Wordle and Quordle, including Quordle Extreme, as well as sudoku, qualify me for avoiding dementia. I also want to pick up on the joy of lifelong learning that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, talked about. My husband, who is also in his 70s, started a part-time degree. When filling out his UCAS form, he struggled a bit to explain how he was going to use it, but he did focus on joy.
I look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s remarks.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, this being my fifth appearance at this Dispatch Box in the last two days, I was feeling marginally jaded before this debate, but I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that I am certainly not grumpy. I have been inspired by the quality of the debate, which started, of course, with the ambitious and wide-ranging vision set down by my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth. I thank him for bringing forward this debate with the opportunity for inspiration it has given us.
I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Curran on her excellent maiden speech. I was pleased to hear her talk about her international work on women’s development and participation, on which I was able to work with her in Lebanon. I thought we had become friends, so I was a bit concerned about her comments about Chief Whips, which, of course, I have been in the past, but I feel absolute confident that she will make an enormous contribution in this, her third Chamber. I know that her family will be enormously proud of her for everything she has achieved and, I am sure, will achieve in this Chamber.
As many noble Lords have said, lifelong learning is the continuous, self-motivated pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, insight and skills. It is the joy of asking questions, the thrill of gaining new perspectives, the unquenchable thirst for understanding, and the satisfaction of personal growth. It is not merely the pursuit of knowledge, important though that is.
Noble Lords also emphasised the breadth of the benefits from lifelong learning. I will start with the economic value. Economically, the value of lifelong learning cannot be overstated. Indeed, as a Government whose number one mission is economic growth, we are clear that growth will allow us to fix the foundations and rebuild Britain. It will fund our public services, bring investment to hospitals and schools, provide good jobs for more people, and, most importantly, raise living standards for everyone. But that will require us to invest in the human capital, as several noble Lords have argued, as well as the physical capital. It will also require us to respond to the change we see in our economy. Several noble Lords have commented on how industries are constantly changing and churning. Old jobs are dying and new ones are sprouting. New technologies are springing up, societal norms are progressing and maturing, and the volume of information available to us is proliferating at an unprecedented pace, so we must prepare for the future of our economy, not just for today.
Even today, over a third of job vacancies are due to skills shortages and 5.7% of the workforce has a skills gap. With an ageing population—I noted the willingness of Members of your Lordship’s House to focus on the older end of the age range, but they are absolutely right—in an ever-evolving economy that is undergoing an acceleration of automation and artificial intelligence, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, identified, the ability to learn and adapt is not just a valuable skill but a critical necessity for survival and success. To reiterate that point, 7% of UK jobs face a high probability of automation by 2030, rising to a staggering 18% by 2035, so economic change is necessitating an ever-increasing need for lifelong learning—and quite rightly, I have suggested.
The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, the first Permanent Secretary who I worked with as a Minister, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, both rightly argued that the direct relationship between economic growth and a well-educated and skilled workforce means that we need to keep persuading our colleagues in the Treasury about the contribution that human capital and skills make to productivity. Noble Lords can be assured that that is a case that we make and will continue to make in the run up to the next spending revue.
We learned as well that longer life expectancy means that many people may need or want to work longer, and those who continue to learn and reskill will stay ahead of the curve, capable of meeting the demands of tomorrow. At this point, I have to give the noble Lord, Lord Bates, every good wish with his PhD and also the husband of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. It is creditable to see the way in which people are continuing to study as they get older.
To return to economic significance, that is why this Government are devising an innovative and fit-for-the-future industrial strategy. We will ensure that, alongside that strategy aimed at delivering and investing in the high-growth sectors that will enable our economy to grow, we will encourage our workforce to continually learn, develop and adapt. We will not just be investing in individuals and the specific occupations necessary for delivering that industrial strategy but also enabling our economy to grow in that ever-changing landscape to procure a prosperous future for our communities, economy and nation.
Several noble Lords also talked rightly about the social value of lifelong learning because it cultivates a vibrant community. Noble Lords will know—several cited studies that show it—that lifelong learning is associated with higher levels of interpersonal and social trust, social connections and community engagement. It leads to greater social cohesion and integration and an appreciation for different religions and nationalities. It fosters civic spirit, too, particularly regarding local involvement and volunteering and democratic participation, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. It has also been shown positively to improve individuals’ political understanding and engagement. There is also clear evidence of the links between improving levels of education and reductions in crime and anti-social behaviour. These benefits make lifelong learning a huge harvester of social value, bridging gaps and transforming the lives of the many who engage with it.
On the individual level, lifelong learning is a key ingredient for self-fulfilment and personal growth, as we have heard from many noble Lords this afternoon. It is the key route to ensuring that talent meets opportunity and that your success is not determined by your background. That is why this Government are determined to break down barriers to opportunity. It is not often that you get a riffing Lord and a reference to Mick Jagger in the same debate, but the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, is the Mick Jagger of our Chamber today. More significantly, he also focused on the need to ensure that lifelong learning benefits those who are most disadvantaged and furthest from learning. He was right to draw our attention to young people who are not in education, employment or training. Of course, this Government’s youth guarantee is an important way of ensuring that opportunities are available to reduce the number of young people who fall into that group.
Our opportunity mission is aimed at breaking the link between a child’s background and their future success so that whoever you are and wherever you are from hard work will mean that you can get on in life. Whether that is by the traditional academic route through a degree or by acquiring new skills or retraining, it opens doors to new opportunities and enables and empowers individuals to unlock their full potential.
Learning also leads to better outcomes, individually and socially. Indeed, according to the OECD, better educated individuals live healthier and longer lives, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Having a degree reduces chances of excessive drinking, smoking and obesity—although perhaps not during your time at university. Graduates have better physical and mental well-being, and lifelong learning fosters an individual sense of identity and resilience, helping to deepen a sense of one’s purpose in life. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who has apologised for having a booked train that he has to catch, made that case very strongly.
I also thank my noble friend Lord Blunkett, who has a proud record of focusing on lifelong learning and adult learning. I will come back to that in a moment. Along with the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords, he focused on the diversity of provision for lifelong learning. It is, importantly, about state-funded provision but it is also about a whole range of other provision. There is the contribution of faith, as the right reverend Prelate outlined, and of our trade unions—the noble Lord, Lord Monks, was right to identify the contribution of the union learning fund. At a time when employer investment in training is falling, it is important for this Government to think about how we can bring together the contribution of unions alongside employers to ensure more investment and more ability for people in the workplace to have the skills development they need. There is also the Workers’ Educational Association. At the end of his teaching career, my father enjoyed his contribution to teaching in the WEA.
All these points make us focus on what the Government can do to ensure that there is commitment to and investment in the development of lifelong learning. We need to ensure that children and young people in our primary and secondary schools can engage in a wide-ranging and multidisciplinary curriculum, which is the objective of the curriculum and assessment review. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, identified the importance of careers, and I thank her for her work in and leadership of the Careers & Enterprise Company, which is making an important contribution, helping this Government to deliver on our commitment to two weeks of work experience, and to 1,000 additional careers advisers to develop the National Careers Service to provide people with the information necessary, throughout life, to be able to make those changes and have that opportunity to learn.
We will bring forward a post-16 strategy, which will more broadly describe the post-16 education and skills system that we want to see. We will consider how we deliver the skills that our country needs, now and in the future, and how we build a stronger skills system where everyone is supported to thrive in life and work, with the right support for reskilling to meet the challenging needs of the economy. This will include how we create a culture of lifelong learning by building clear and coherent pathways for learners of all ages, and increasing co-operation among skills partners within a framework of clearly defined roles and responsibilities. We will publish a vision paper for this strategy shortly and engage widely with all partners across the system to make this vision a reality and ensure that we develop a culture of skills and lifelong learning.
I recognise the points noble Lords made about our wide-ranging and remarkably diverse further education sector. As several noble Lords mentioned, we often see our FE colleges as the heart of our communities and as a magnet for businesses, opening up partnerships with employers to develop skills.
Our internationally renowned universities—the UK continues to place prominently in the top 10 and the top 100 academic institutions worldwide—are important. They deserve the commitment this Government have made to a sustainable funding model and reform. Everybody, not only students, benefits from a flourishing higher education sector. But we need to make sure that we broaden access to and participation in HE.
Several noble Lords rightly pushed the Government on the development of the lifelong learning entitlement. Our ever-evolving economy and its dynamic workforce need a higher education system that offers different types of provision to suit different individuals. That is why, as part of the Government’s work, we are introducing the lifelong learning entitlement, which will deliver much-needed transformational change to the current student finance system.
Quite rightly, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Wolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, wanted me to reiterate our commitment to delivering the LLE, as announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. I can assure noble Lords that we are working to launch the LLE in the 2026-27 academic year. The slight delay will allow us to improve its impact and effectiveness by ensuring that the policy and design fully align with the Government’s vision. It will enable us to refine our delivery and implementation plans, including, as the noble Baroness said, the work of the Student Loans Company in preparing for it.
Importantly, in terms of innovation, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others, that this needs to be an opportunity to ensure that we are not simply paying for a longer period of time in the same provision, but that we are giving education providers the push and the time to prepare innovative ways for people to access higher education. That is the opportunity of the lifelong learning entitlement. It is one that I am determined that we should push higher education providers to fully recognise.
In relation to skills, we must utilise local skills improvement plans, apprenticeships, and the growth and skills levy, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Young, to equip people with the skills needed to not only survive but thrive. I am looking forward to bringing forward more information about how the growth and skills levy will provide some of the flexibility to enable more employers to use it and more learners to develop the skills they need from it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, made an important point about how we promote skills. I am sure noble Lords are looking forward to next week, which is National Apprenticeship Week, when we will be able to promote particularly the benefits of apprenticeships. As we discussed only yesterday, we are determined that Skills England will help us unify the skills landscape and ensure that the workforce is equipped with the skills required to raise economic growth.
We must foster adult learning through the adult skills fund—notwithstanding some of the difficult decisions that we are having to make about the funding of adult skills. We are absolutely determined that adult skills continue to bear fruit, not only in supporting adult learners to gain the literacy, numeracy, digital and vocational skills that they need for meaningful employment but to drive sustained economic growth and innovation and to deliver the health, well-being and pleasure that many noble Lords have talked about being a result of lifelong learning.
It is the case that we need more devolution so that the nations and regions can make effective decisions about education which best reflect their needs. This will ensure value for money in spending resources and enable localised benefits in the opportunities of adult learning.
I hope I can reassure my noble friend Lord Blunkett on residential colleges. We recognise the important contribution that these colleges make to our system. They will feature as part of our discussions with mayoral authorities.
I finish by thanking noble Lords for the enthusiasm that they have shown for lifelong learning throughout the whole range of areas that we have covered. I assure them of this Government’s absolute commitment to ensuring that lifelong learning remains and develops as an essential part of this country’s educational offer: to offer young people, adults and the older ones among us the opportunity to learn, upskill, retrain and develop throughout the whole of their lives.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all the speakers in this excellent debate, who were expertly responded to by my noble friend the Minister. I am grateful for the kind words that some have said to me about my speech. I love the passion for lifelong learning that we heard all around the Chamber, and the sense of the widespread returns on investment—to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, focused on the key question of how we get to the hardest to reach. He has modelled taking the plunge and the risk of learning to do something new by getting on with it, and he pulled it off very well. Perhaps the answer to his question lies in taking the learning to where people are. My noble friends Lord Blunkett and Lord Monks reminded us that taking it into the workplace is one of the ways to achieve that. I am interested in what the DWP is trying to do with regard to how it can define job centres as a place where people can access skills and learning too.
I want to finish—and let those who have not already done so catch their trains—with my noble friend Lady Curran. She said that the measure of politics is lives changed. If the Government get this right, they can, in her words, release reservoirs of ability and energy into the economy and society.