Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
Businesses in rural areas offer significant potential for growth and are central to our economy. We are working across Government to unlock the full potential of rural businesses as part of the Government’s growth mission. We are committed to launching a business growth service inspired by the US Small Business Administration, which will operate in partnership with devolved Governments and the growth hub network in England to make it easier to access support from Government for all businesses.
Jamie Stone
In conversation this morning with Trudy Morris, the CEO of the Caithness chamber of commerce, she outlined the sheer importance of tourism businesses to the local economy and the farmers in Scotland. The concern expressed to me is on the rate of VAT on tourism and similar businesses, and although we do not know whether the Highland council will impose a tourism levy, that could be a double whammy. I do not expect for one instant hon. Members on the Front Bench to say, “Jamie, you can have a cut in the rate of VAT”—well, I dream sometimes—but I would be grateful for a meeting to discuss the nature of the problem and how we could possibly tackle it.
Gareth Thomas
I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, as I cannot fulfil his dreams right now. However, I am happy to meet him to talk about that issue. I recognise that there is considerable interest in that question from the hospitality industry, so I am happy to meet to hear, in a bit more detail, the particular concerns expressed to him.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
The Business Secretary, the Minister and the Chancellor have all said that they want growth, including in rural areas. I have searched high and low for business growth statistics since the Budget of broken promises, and I find that, in the last quarter, there has been a growth of 50% in the number of businesses that are in critical financial distress. Why does the Minister think that is?
Gareth Thomas
I say gently to the hon. Lady that the difficult decisions that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor had to take in the Budget were, interestingly, particularly well explained by her former colleague Kwasi Kwarteng, who made it clear that he thought they had to be taken because of the mistakes that he and the Conservative party had made when they were in government.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
It was a good night for Villa fans last night, so I congratulate anyone in the west midlands who supports the club, as my husband does.
The west midlands, in many ways, leads the country on manufacturing, and it has one of the UK’s largest specialist workforces. Whether in automotive, aerospace or the rail supply chain, it is an incredibly important area. We have invested in the west midlands investment zone—Made Smarter, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult; it is all there—but we want to keep breaking down barriers to growth in the area, which is why advanced manufacturing is such a key part of the industrial strategy that we will announce soon.
Shaun Davies
In Telford and the wider west midlands, we have a strong and proud British manufacturing base, as the Minister has just outlined. One of the biggest challenges that I hear from businesses is the uneven playing field between us and the rest of the world on pay rates and regulation. Clearly, no one wants a race to the bottom, so will the Government back British business to ensure that we sell more, make more and do that in the west midlands and in Telford in particular?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we do not want a race to the bottom. Advanced manufacturing jobs in the west midlands are well paid for a reason: there is a very highly skilled workforce and we want to protect and grow that. He is right that there is more that we can do. Some £2 billion was set aside in the Budget for the automative sector and just shy of £1 billion for aerospace. That will help; however, we can further reduce the barriers, whether around regulation, planning or trading and export, and we are working as fast as we can to do just that.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
In Staffordshire and the west midlands, we are the only part of the country that is a net exporter of manufactured goods. The threat from Trump on tariffs could have a significant impact on manufacturers right across Staffordshire and the west midlands. What action are the Government taking to ensure that we will continue to export our world-leading products?
Sarah Jones
The right hon. Gentleman is right that the west midlands is a big exporter to many different countries, including the US and others. Of course, we will keep talking with the US, as the Secretary of State has been doing, and will ensure that we are standing up for British industry and doing the right thing.
Callum Anderson (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The regulatory environment does not work as well as it should. Unnecessary red tape is choking competitiveness, creating unnecessary burdens for business and putting up barriers to growth. That is why we are introducing a Government-wide target to reduce the administrative costs of regulation by 25% by the end of this Parliament. That will be supported by a baselining exercise to understand the administrative costs of regulation to businesses. The Prime Minister will set out more details later today. This is just the beginning; details of our ambitious action plan to reform the regulatory landscape will be set out shortly.
Callum Anderson
Over eight years and four Prime Ministers, the last Conservative Government commissioned review after review into UK corporate governance and audit reform, and delivered absolutely nothing. For UK plc to be globally competitive, we need robust corporate governance frameworks which balance the needs of investors and society for information with the administrative burdens on companies. Will the Minister update the House on what progress his Department is making on bringing forward an audit reform and corporate governance Bill?
Justin Madders
As my hon. Friend is right to recognise, this issue has been around for some time, and the Government have announced their intention to publish a draft audit reform and corporate governance Bill for scrutiny in this Session. Investors and the public need access to truthful reporting from our most important businesses on their finances and related issues. My Department continues to progress that important work, and a timetable for the publication of the Bill will be confirmed in the usual way for draft legislation in due course.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Since leaving the European Union, we have been diverging progressively and passively —not making an active decision to diverge because it is good for us, but because we cannot keep up with the number of regulations coming through the European Union. That has been particularly disadvantageous for energy trading. What conversations has the Minister had with Government colleagues around aligning with the EU on emissions trading?
Justin Madders
That is an important question. The Minister with responsibility for emissions trading, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), is in charge of that matter, and it is one of the discussions we are having as part of the EU reset.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
Working across Government, we are determined to revitalise our high streets and support the businesses on them. We are working with industry to create a fairer business rates system that protects the high street and supports investment. We have introduced the Crime and Policing Bill, which will give better protection for businesses and retail workers against assault and theft. Our forthcoming small business strategy will set out our plan for further support for small businesses on the high street and beyond.
Dr Huq
From 5 am to 10 pm daily, the Patels’ newsagent, off licence and post office was an Acton staple—until Horizon slapped it with a £123,000 demand, and Mrs Patel had a series of mini-strokes. Will Ministers look into the fact that their compensation was rejected because Mr Patel was the postmaster, and show their love for high-street heroes everywhere by attending a tea organised by the all-party parliamentary group for ethnic minority business owners on 3 April? You are welcome too, Mr Speaker.
Gareth Thomas
I am grateful for my hon. Friend for raising the case of the Patels. I am keen that any sub-postmaster who was a victim of the Horizon scandal gets access to the compensation they rightly deserve as quickly as possible. She will understand that I cannot comment on individual cases, but if she wants to write to me about the specific case, I would be happy to look into it further and to discuss it with her.
Bradley Thomas
There are over 70 pubs across Bromsgrove and the villages. One of them—the Queens Head—faces a staggering £42,000 annual increase in the cost of business rates and national insurance contributions as a result of choices made by this Government. That is on top of increasing concerns around a banter ban. Will the Minister confirm that nobody will be ejected from a pub or hospitality venue for sharing a joke, and will he outline what steps he is taking to support pubs, rather than putting them out of business?
Gareth Thomas
I note in passing that 10,000 pubs closed their doors under the Conservative Government, so I do not think the pub industry is looking to the hon. Gentleman’s party for guidance going forward. On the specifics he asked about, he will be aware of our plan for business rates reform, which will help and make a significant difference to many pubs. On the so-called “banter ban”, I gently suggest that he should not believe everything that he reads in the newspapers.
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Pubs and restaurants are part of a thriving high street in Doncaster that is known for its iconic nightlife. Will the Minister set out what action the Department is taking to support hospitality and ensure that high streets continue to thrive, and may I invite him to Doncaster to see how nightlife is done properly?
Gareth Thomas
I will give careful consideration to my hon. Friend’s very generous offer. In answer to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) I mentioned business rates reform, which could make a significant difference for many businesses in the night-time economy. Another crucial issue that we want to tackle is the rising crime and antisocial behaviour on our high streets. As she will know, the Crime and Policing Bill, which is beginning its journey through Parliament, will make a significant difference in that regard.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
The high street trader John Lewis Partnership is announcing its annual results today. It is a highly successful business but this year it will not be paying a dividend to its partners, the workforce, because it has to absorb national insurance costs. Does the Minister understand the real impact that NI contributions are having on what his party likes to describe as “ordinary working people”?
Gareth Thomas
I say gently to the right hon. Gentleman and his Conservative colleagues that we had to take the difficult decisions in the Budget to increase employer national insurance contributions because of the mess that their party left the country in. The shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), helped to write the Liz Truss Budget that did so much damage to our country—we are trying to sort out the mess. The shadow Secretary of State still has not apologised for his part in that fiasco. He should take the opportunity to do so during these questions.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Yesterday, the owner of the hugely popular Rumsey’s, which is celebrating 21 years on Wendover high street in my constituency, emailed me to say:
“We estimate the changes coming in April will add 15% to our staff costs that we simply don’t have. Therefore we have had to sadly make redundancies, put in a recruitment freeze and implement staff hour cuts to offset this.”
With real-world testimony like that replicated up and down the country, will the Minister finally acknowledge that an urgent change of course is needed to support high streets, scrap the employer NI rise, save jobs and protect communities?
Gareth Thomas
I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that it would be interesting to know whether he now regrets the enthusiastic support he gave the Liz Truss Budget, which did so much damage to our country’s public finances. Our Budget in October last year started the process of sorting out those situations. I looked with interest at his website recently, which has a “My plan” section. It is completely blank. Although that is probably better given that he so strongly supported the Liz Truss Budget—there is at least a bit of progress.
Greg Smith
Well, that was no answer to my question whatsoever. It is almost as if Labour Members have not realised that they are in charge and that it is their decisions that are having this impact. Let me tell the Minister something else that Rumsey’s reported to me:
“The reduction in business rate relief will leave me no choice but to raise prices simply to break even, further limiting growth and accessibility for customers.”
I just do not know how much more the Minister needs to hear to understand the scale of the problem on our high streets. He talks of business rates reform, but the only business rate change we have seen is the devastating cut to business rates relief, which is hurting high streets now. Will he reverse it?
Gareth Thomas
Had the hon. Gentleman’s party been elected, retail, hospitality and leisure relief would have come to an end. We have extended retail, hospitality and leisure relief. We have set out in the Budget our plans to permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties on the high street from 2026-27. We are taking measures to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour on the high street, which his party could have done more to tackle but chose not to. We are bringing in new legislation to end the immunity for crime on the high street where shoplifters steal goods worth £200 or less, and we are creating a specific offence of violence against retail workers to try to make it easier for businesses operating on the high street.
Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)
More than 3 million workers are expected to receive a pay rise due to increases to the national minimum wage in April, protecting the lowest paid in society. After our changes to the remit, we accepted in full the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission, which considers the impact of rates on business, competitiveness, the labour market, the wider economy and the cost of living. Our impact assessments are available only by region—estimates by constituency are not available—but the simple truth is that workers in every constituency are better off under this Labour Government.
Kenneth Stevenson
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Just yesterday, Parliament approved Labour’s new deal for working people—the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. This will see a pay rise for more than 200,000 working Scots, many in the Airdrie and Shotts constituency, and a marked improvement to terms and conditions, which will be beneficial to our young workforce. Does he agree that with a Government committed to improving the pay, terms and conditions of workers across the country, the working people of Airdrie and Shotts will always get a better deal with Labour?
Jonathan Reynolds
The plan to make work pay is a core part of our mission to grow the economy, raise living standards and create opportunities for all, and there will be significant benefits for workers in insecure and low-paid jobs in central Scotland, including in Airdrie and Shotts. This plan is about making people stay in work. It is about making work more secure and more family-friendly, improving living standards and putting more money in workers’ pockets, but it is also about showing that politics can work for people who may have given up on this place as somewhere that can improve their living standards, their lives and those of their families. For that, I am very proud of this Government.
Luke Akehurst
The 6.7% increase in the national living wage in April clearly shows that this Labour Government are on the side of working people in North Durham and across the country and are making work pay. Can the Minister tell me how many families in north-east England will benefit from the increase in the national living wage and national minimum wage next month?
Jonathan Reynolds
I thank my hon. Friend for his support. Around 140,000 workers in north-east England will feel the benefits of this direct pay rise. I know his North Durham constituency well—I am no stranger to Chester-le-Street—and not only will his constituents get a pay rise, but his local shops, his restaurants, his pubs and more will get what they need most of all: customers who have got a bit of money to spend.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Last Friday, I spent the day visiting local shopkeepers in Kelso, many of whom employ their staff on the national minimum wage and the national living wage. Their biggest pressure just now is dealing with this Labour Government’s national insurance hike. They are facing a very difficult choice about whether they continue to employ people. What is the message from the Minister to those hard-working local shopkeepers?
Jonathan Reynolds
The thing I would cite most of all to the hon. Member’s constituents is the doubling of the employment allowance in the Budget and the threshold being removed, which means that some smaller businesses will actually be paying lower national insurance contributions than they would have paid before the Budget. However, I never shy away from the fact that the choices we had to make in the Budget were out of necessity, due to the black hole that was left behind. I am yet to hear any offer from Conservative Members as to how they would fill it.
At these questions, we will talk about tripling compensation for victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal only because the money is there. It was not there under the Conservative party. We will talk about money for the steel industry, standing behind that industry. Again, money was promised but not delivered. If promises are made, the resources to do those things have to be there. They were not there under the Conservative party. They are under Labour.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
Whether it be the increase in the minimum wage, the increase in employer national insurance, the increase in business rates, or indeed the changes made to the Employment Rights Bill, all of these measures collectively are negatively penalising many businesses across my constituency, whether in Keighley, Ilkley or further afield. As a result, redundancies are having to be made, or the price of products and services are having to increase, and these businesses cannot absorb the additional increase that this Labour Government are putting on them. Did the Government undertake any economic impact assessment of what all of these measures collectively would have on hard-working businesses across my constituency?
Jonathan Reynolds
As I have said to Conservative Members before, of course we are very sensitive to the aggregate impact of Government policy, because, frankly, having observed the Conservative Governments of the previous 14 years, I thought they completely missed this point and at many times had different Departments doing completely opposing things.
I want to say something specific on business rates. No business rates relief was planned had the Conservative party won the election. The reduction to 40% was an increase in what was in the national accounts—again, short-term decisions for short-term, partisan, political benefit; no serious plan for the future.
The hon. Gentleman will have seen the figures from the Insolvency Service this week, which are very interesting. They show that fewer people have been made redundant over the past 12 months than in the year before, so I am afraid that the doom-mongers of the Conservative party have been proved absolutely wrong by the statistics that we have.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The Government are committed to supporting microbusinesses to comply with the general product safety regulation. For Northern Ireland, we have published additional guidance for businesses, and we will publish an update in the coming weeks, in the light of feedback we have received. We will continue to engage with businesses to ensure that they can trade freely across the UK. Businesses targeting the EU market may use the Government’s export support service. Since October 2024, the Department’s export academy has delivered eight free online GPSR training sessions to almost 5,000 attendees.
Tony Vaughan
I thank the Minister for his answer. My constituent George Stevens runs a microbusiness in Lydd making handcrafted stringed instruments; it has been running for over 30 years and he has many EU customers. He is deeply worried about Brexit-related red tape, which is holding back his EU exports. Can the Minister give him an assurance that, as a result of the proposed measures, he will now find it easier to trade with the EU?
Justin Madders
Microbusinesses such as that of Mr Stevens are central to the Government’s growth mission. We are committed to strengthening our relationship with the EU and to tackle trade barriers and frictions, and we regularly engage directly with businesses and their representative organisations to understand the difficulties they face. Our export support services help small and medium-sized enterprises navigate opportunities in EU markets and get the practical help they need to do so. For example, the Unlock Europe programme, which was launched in December as part of the export academy, offers practical guidance to help UK businesses enhance their exporting potential to the EU.
Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
Our country’s very high electricity costs are another huge problem facing businesses in my constituency and nationally. Reintegrating our power markets with Europe’s through the single-day ahead coupling system would cost our country nothing, save costs for businesses, reduce carbon dioxide and make our power markets more efficient. Will the Minister take fast steps to reintegrate our electricity markets with those of our European neighbours?
Justin Madders
I thank the hon. Member for his tangential question relating to GPSR. He makes an important point about energy costs, and we are working closely with the EU on how to build on that, and of course the industrial strategy will also be looking very closely at how energy costs can be brought down for businesses.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The plan to make work pay is central to our plan for change, to grow the economy, raise living standards and create opportunities for all. It will tackle low pay, poor working conditions and job insecurity, creating long-term growth and investment to support businesses. Insights gained from our ongoing engagement with businesses will help us ensure proportionate and effective policy. Our plan to make work pay will ensure a level playing field, so that employers that are trying to do the right thing are not undercut.
Katie Lam
I sent a survey about how the Government have treated business to every registered company in the Weald of Kent, and they are terrified. Some 80% of them—four in five—are less likely to hire following soaring taxes and the truly dire Employment Rights Bill. The Regulatory Policy Committee found the Government’s own impact assessment for the Bill not fit for purpose. Will the Minister conduct a proper assessment of the damage the Bill will do, or should I send him mine?
Justin Madders
I am always grateful for advice. If the hon. Lady is conducting surveys, she might look at the one that said that 76 of her constituents supported the plans in the Bill to bring in day one rights for sick pay. The importance of this Bill cannot be overstated. We have a plan to bring businesses up to a standard where work is respected and people have security and dignity. If the hon. Lady cannot understand that, then she needs to get out a bit more.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
The Government are committed to simplifying the process and law around trade union recognition so that working people have a more meaningful right to organise through trade unions—of course, I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in this respect. Through the Employment Rights Bill, we are reforming the process for statutory recognition applications; with existing thresholds presenting too high a hurdle in modern workplaces, they are increasingly fragmented. We are also taking steps to strengthen protections against unfair practices during the recognition process, which we debated at length yesterday.
Josh Newbury
In January, Bidfood, a food wholesaler and major employer in my constituency, announced overnight that it would derecognise the GMB and Unite the union, removing the ability of thousands of workers across the country to collectively bargain through their trade unions. The unions fear that Bidfood workers could now be left at risk of fire and rehire before protections in this Government’s Employment Rights Bill come into force. Does the Minister agree that employers should not be trying to dodge protections under the Government’s plan to make work pay, and will he join me in supporting the GMB and Unite as they seek to protect their workers at Bidfood?
Justin Madders
My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment on individual cases, but I am deeply troubled by what he has said. I can be clear that the Government are determined to reset industrial relations, so that employers and trade unions work together in partnership rather than in conflict, as we have heard. We encourage all employers to engage with unions in the spirit of co-operation and collaboration. Working in that way benefits employers and workers alike. As he knows, the Employment Rights Bill will end the unscrupulous practice of fire and rehire, which has no place in a modern economy and workplace, so if any company is thinking of doing that, it should think again.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I very much welcome the Minister’s response. After I worked in my mum and dad’s shop, I joined the firm Henry Denny and I was required to join the union. I was not sure about joining, but when I did so I found out that the union backed me as a worker against the employers whenever they were bringing in things that were wrong. So I encourage everybody who joins a workforce to join a union, because it will protect them whenever they need help.
Justin Madders
The hon. Member could not have put it better. He has explained the benefits of trade union membership, which is something that Members on the Conservative Benches clearly do not understand.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
We are creating a fairer business rates system, reducing alcohol duty on qualifying draught products, and our forthcoming small business strategy will set out our plan to further support small businesses on the high street and beyond. In addition, through the Hospitality Sector Council, we are addressing, with business, strategic issues related to high street regeneration, skills, sustainability and productivity, and we have recently saved the pint.
Sir Edward Leigh
Obviously the Minister is working very hard, but he looks a bit tired, so may I offer him some Lincolnshire hospitality? Will he come and stay for a glorious weekend in one of our farm cottages, to enjoy our great skies and bracing air, and help our distressed farmers? Frankly, they need the income. The problem is that the Government have abolished the furnished holiday letting scheme, which was a tremendous encouragement for the countryside. I do not expect an answer now, but will he consider approaching his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to see if we can reinstate that in the Budget, to help our farmers and the countryside?
Gareth Thomas
Unusually for the Conservative party, the right hon. Gentleman has made an extremely generous offer. I am almost as tempted by that as by the offer from my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) to visit Doncaster. I am happy to look at the issue he raises and I will write to him with more details.
David Reed
The Crusty Cob bakery has been a constant in east Devon for the past 55 years, but last week the family-run business closed the doors on all nine of its shops, making over 100 local people redundant. The owners stated a panoply of issues, from manufacturing costs to reduced high street footfall and energy prices, but the kicker is the decision that this Business Secretary’s party has made to slam companies with increases to the national living wage and employer national insurance contributions. The effects of this Labour Government’s decisions are setting in and literally destroying working family businesses. Will the Business Secretary and the Minister please give a message to the Crusty Cob team who have just lost their jobs?
Gareth Thomas
I understand that this will be an extremely worrying time for employees of the Crusty Cob and their families. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that we are offering a 40% discount to retail, hospitality and leisure properties as part of our business rates package. We are going to reform business rates more substantially, with a permanently lower multiplier in 2026 that, while it clearly will not help the Crusty Cob and its employees, will help other businesses on the high street.
I am slightly surprised that the hon. Gentleman should be so opposed to an increase in the living wage—I do not know whether that is his party’s policy. I also gently remind him of the data from the Office for National Statistics, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, showing more people in jobs this year compared with last year.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
In the past eight months we have trebled the total amount of compensation paid and ensured that more than 2,300 victims who had as yet received nothing have now had some financial redress. We are making up-front, fixed-sum offers and interim payments where possible to speed up the delivery of redress. There is still a lot more to do, though, and we remain committed to ensuring swift and fair redress for every postmaster affected by the Horizon scandal.
David Davis
I thank the Minister for that answer. He and I will agree that the Post Office Horizon scandal is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in modern times, but the problems with the Post Office and its injustice extend far beyond that. Some 21 cases relating to the precursor system, Capture, which bear the same hallmarks as those in the Horizon scandal, have been referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I am afraid that the CCRC is famous for taking years to come to obvious decisions, so can the Minister tell me that it will deal with this in months? If not, will his Department intervene directly?
Gareth Thomas
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the issue of Capture. As he will know, we have published our response to the independent Kroll report on the Capture software issue and the way in which the Post Office responded to the data that came out of it. We have been meeting sub-postmasters who used the Capture system and who were the victims in that regard to talk through a redress scheme with them. We are also working closely with the Criminal Cases Review Commission and have made it clear to the Post Office that it must co-operate with requests from the CCRC so that we can speed up its deliberations on the 21 cases.
Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)
I recently met a constituent who is a former postmaster affected by the Horizon scandal. He has applied for compensation but feels that the process is taking too long, with unreasonable asks. Given the legal ruling that postmasters should be afforded the benefit of the doubt, what steps is the Department taking to ensure that compensation claims are processed fairly and without delays that could further affect the victims?
Gareth Thomas
As my hon. Friend will know, we inherited a compensation process that was perceived by many sub-postmasters as being slow, legalistic and adversarial, so we have already taken a series of steps to try to speed things up, particularly in trying to get out more fixed-sum payments—for example, we are moving in more staff to support work on the compensation process. If she would like me to look in more detail at her constituency case, I am very happy to do so.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
The Business Secretary met recently in Japan with Fujitsu, which developed the Horizon system and has offered to contribute to the compensation for victims. Can the Minister tell the House how much the Secretary of State has asked it to contribute, so that taxpayers are not on the hook for £1 billion?
Gareth Thomas
The hon. Lady is right to reference the discussions that my right hon. Friend had with the chief executive officer of Fujitsu. That company has agreed to begin talks about its contribution to the costs of compensation. She will understand that we also need to wait for Sir Wyn Williams’ inquiry to conclude, and for his recommendations regarding compensation from Fujitsu to be heard and understood. I am sure she will also understand that I am not going to give a running commentary on the discussions with Fujitsu, but I welcome the fact that it has agreed to begin talks.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)
Small businesses need a better deal—certainly better than the one they got from the last Government—and our small business strategy, which is due this year, is designed to do that. We have already provided more support through the British Business Bank; we have worked with the Federation of Small Businesses to take action on issues such as late payment and retail crime; and we have announced the creation of the new business growth service, which aims to transform business support services. Later today I will attend a small business summit in Sussex to progress those plans and meet small business leaders.
Alex Baker
Too many small and medium-sized defence businesses in my community struggle to access the banking and finance facilities they need, often on the basis of self-imposed ethical criteria. Will the Business Secretary join me in welcoming how many investors and financial institutions have responded to the campaign I am leading with my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) and 100 other Labour parliamentarians, calling on our banks and fund managers to broaden their approach to defence investment? Will he call on investors to take action so that we can defend our country, support Ukraine, and fire up our industrial base?
Jonathan Reynolds
I agree 100% with my hon. Friend and thank her very much for her question. She will know that my Department, alongside the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, convened a roundtable in December to listen to these perspectives, and now all three Departments are working together to ensure that the problems she has articulated do not occur.
It is essential that the British people do not think that the substantial, significant and historic investments in defence that this Government are making come in some way at the expense of domestic prosperity. There is no prosperity without security, but we should also acknowledge the tremendous economic contribution made by our defence sector—there is not a foreign and domestic split in that regard. I thank my hon. Friend for her outstanding leadership in galvanising parliamentary support for that campaign, and I hope it will have unanimous agreement in every part of the House.
Dr Gardner
As the Secretary of State is aware, the ceramics industry, including in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent South, is facing immense competition from imported counterfeit goods. Many of those goods contain false backstamps that mislead consumers and—as the GMB union has raised with me—threaten great British companies such as Dunoon, Duchess and many others. Will the Minister meet me again to discuss in more detail creating offences and tabling regulations to deal with imported counterfeit ceramic goods?
Jonathan Reynolds
My Department has a very strong relationship with the ceramics sector through the Energy Intensive Users Group. We have regular meetings with that group, and I would also like to mention the British Ceramic Confederation and our old friend Rob Flello, who is a strong voice for the sector. There are many challenges for the ceramics sector, not least decarbonisation, but on the subject of consumer protection, it is firmly against UK consumer law for firms—wherever they are located—to give consumers false information, such as through fake product markings. We have strengthened the regime in this regard, with new enforcement powers for the Competition and Markets Authority coming into force next month, but I will of course get my hon. Friend any meeting she requires.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
A constituent in Chorleywood recently contacted me after needing an emergency locksmith due to a broken key. Initially quoted £40 over the phone, she was later charged £1,460, and was only given the new key after making that payment. While I applaud this Government’s ambition to reduce regulation, can we ensure that there is appropriate regulation so that consumers are not unfairly overcharged, as in this instance?
Jonathan Reynolds
I, too, have heard the kinds of stories that the hon. Gentleman has articulated—there are definitely concerns in that regard. Broadly, the Government’s regulation agenda is not necessarily about deregulation, but about effective and proportionate regulation. I feel that our regulatory sector has grown a lot in recent years, and that it does not always compare well to those of other countries in terms of timeliness and business response. That is the agenda we are pursuing, but I will certainly write to the hon. Gentleman about the issues he has raised, which are very relevant. I appreciate the opportunity to do so and thank him for raising them today.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
Many families are supported by the work of my constituents, Alison and Kevin, who run a small care business. They tell me that they already operate on tight margins in a sector under huge pressure. The hike in employer national insurance contributions will force them to make tough decisions on staffing and simply reduce the amount of care they can offer. Kevin and Alison rightly say that this hike makes no sense at a time when the Government tell us that they want to move to community care provision and get people out of hospitals. Does the Secretary of State not agree?
Jonathan Reynolds
I thank the hon. Member for her question, and I thank Alison and Kevin for their important work. We already talked about the difficult choices that the Government faced and the unenviable choices that had to be made. Health and social care was a beneficiary of the additional revenue that needed to be raised to meet some of the challenges we face, but we are not casual about the impact of that, and we recognise the pressures that come from that. I would say that I do not agree. Taxes have to apply to every sector, and we cannot carve out certain sectors. However, I appreciate the pressures that she articulates. That is why the rest of the Government’s agenda is set to address all those factors.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
Small businesses are the backbone of the British economy. Up and down the country, we have success stories of innovative start-ups and family-run businesses that should be part of the Government’s plan to get Britain growing again. Under the Conservatives, the number of small businesses in my constituency decreased by 360 between 2021 and 2024. The Tories messed up our national and local economy. Is the Minister concerned that his Government’s national insurance rises will damage the economy, just as the Conservatives did?
Jonathan Reynolds
If we were listing the difficult things that small businesses had to deal with in the previous 14 years, we would be here for most of the day and the weekend, if we are being honest. Whether it is how the Conservatives handled Brexit, the mini-Budget or austerity, we could go on and on. I say to the hon. Member that we are not casual about what we have had to ask of business because of the unenviable situation we inherited, but the fundamentals of the UK are incredibly strong in political stability and openness to the world, and we have the changes we are making to planning, skills, regulation and energy to make sure we are delivering.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
The Treasury published a tax information and impact note in November 2024, alongside the introduction of the Bill containing the employer national insurance contribution changes. It sets out the impact of the policy on the Exchequer and the impacts on business, and that approach is consistent with previous tax changes.
Mr Carmichael
The impact I hear from SMEs in my constituency, predominantly in the visitor economy, is that they are anticipating cutting the hours of part-time staff or laying them off and reducing the number of seasonal employees that they will take on. Will the Minister take those concerns seriously and work with Ministers in the Scottish Government to ensure that the legitimate concerns of SMEs in my constituency do not blossom into a full blown crisis of confidence?
Gareth Thomas
I am always happy to work with the Scottish Government and other devolved Governments on how we can improve the business environment. I am sure the right hon. Member will join me in encouraging the Government in Scotland to mirror the changes we have made to business rates relief. Given the sizeable increase in the Scottish budget, it is somewhat surprising that the SNP has not been willing to support the retail sector through an extension of retail hospitality relief.
Frank McNally (Coatbridge and Bellshill) (Lab)
The Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security (Mr Douglas Alexander)
The Government are committed to supporting investment in Scotland in line with our growth mission. The Prime Minister recently announced that the National Wealth Fund will provide £200 million of investment in new opportunities in Grangemouth in particular. That announcement came alongside the recently announced £55 million grant for the Port of Cromarty Firth, the two investment zones receiving £80 million over the next five years and our expanded Office for Investment.
Frank McNally
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. The National Wealth Fund has recently invested £43.5 million in Pulpex Ltd to construct a sustainable packaging facility near Glasgow, which is a welcome move and will support jobs and growth. What further measures are planned to attract similar green industry investments in communities such as my own in North Lanarkshire, which has Scotland’s fastest-growing economy?
Mr Alexander
My hon. Friend is a tireless advocate for the communities of Coatbridge and Bellshill. I can assure him that the National Wealth Fund’s strategic partnerships trial will see each local authority within the Glasgow city region, including North Lanarkshire, being invited to submit project proposals, including for projects focused on, I hesitate to say, green jobs in Coatbridge.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)
My Department works night and day to deliver our plan for change by making Britain the best place to invest, work and do business. This Government have provided political stability and openness to the world, and we are continually improving the business environment.
Since the last Business and Trade questions, we have published a new steer for the Competition and Markets Authority so that it has growth and investment in mind, and more pro-business regulatory reforms will follow. In Delhi last month, I relaunched our trade negotiations with India, and I have just returned from Tokyo, where the Foreign Secretary and I announced a first-of-its-kind industrial strategy partnership with Japan. We are also ensuring that our “make work pay” reforms deliver for businesses and workers.
Finally, we have engaged closely with the new US Administration, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the new US trade representative, Jamieson Greer. The new US trade policy is challenging, but we believe that our decision to engage and seek potential agreement on a new economic deal between the UK and the US offers us an opportunity to ensure that the UK is the best-connected market in the world.
Joy Morrissey
Businesses across Beaconsfield, Marlow and the south Bucks villages are facing crippling costs from the Government’s national insurance tax raid and the Employment Rights Bill. Can the Secretary of State reassure or advise my businesses? Should they stop hiring, cut staff, increase prices, or all of the above?
Jonathan Reynolds
I would say that businesses in the hon. Lady’s constituency should contact their local Conservative MP and say, “What was your plan?” because I think we have had three oral question sessions where this has broadly been the only thing that the Conservatives have to say. I genuinely want to know: what was the plan to pay for Post Office compensation? What was the plan to pay for the steel industry? When the Conservatives commissioned the public sector pay bodies with the remit that they were given, got the findings back, hid them and did not tell the British people during the general election campaign, what was the plan? How would they have reconciled that? The small business leaders, and businesses of every size, in the hon. Lady’s constituency know how to make difficult decisions. What—
Mr Speaker
Order. Look, this is getting ridiculous. We are on topicals, and that is the worst example I have seen of an answer to a topical.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
I saw many incredible businesses when I went to the Exeter business park last year. When I was in Saudi Arabia in January, I was with a range of businesses that were promoting investment, including many from the south-west. There is more that we can do, but there are some brilliant people there who are doing brilliant things. I think we can go further, and I am certainly very happy to work with my hon. Friend on that.
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
How have we got to this point? After 35 weeks as Trade Secretary, 18 weeks since the US election, and an entire month since steel and aluminium tariffs were first announced, the Secretary of State is only now going to sit down with the Secretary of Commerce of our closest ally. While he has been correcting his CV, steelworkers and businesses are hurting today. This is a colossal failure of trade policy on his watch. Why has it taken so long, and when can we expect an agreement?
Jonathan Reynolds
The hon. Gentleman may have not seen the news recently, but the UK, led by our Prime Minister, has had the best engagement of any country with the new US Administration. Is it not good to see again a British Prime Minister who is respected on the world stage and delivering for Britain? We have had tremendous engagement with the new US Administration, and I am looking forward to meeting them in person next week.
Andrew Griffith
Once again, no answers come there forth. Over 1 million jobs in this country depend on trade with the United States, including thousands of jobs in our steel industry. The Secretary of State does not know when he is going to get a deal. Will he publish his red lines for that deal, his objectives and what he hopes to achieve from meetings next week?
Jonathan Reynolds
On steel and aluminium tariffs, the US Administration’s position is that there are no exemptions for anybody—that is across the board. I think they recognise the very strong case that we have, but that is their position.
No, I will not publish my negotiating red lines before a negotiation. Frankly, that is the worst advice I have ever heard in the House of Commons. The Conservative party fell out with the EU, would not deal with China and could not do a deal with India. It fell out with the United Arab Emirates and could not do a deal with the Gulf. It got nothing out of the US. It did deals with Australia and New Zealand, then disowned them. We will take no lessons from the Conservatives.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
My hon. Friend is a great champion of the social enterprise sector. She will know that we are committed to doubling the size of the co-op and mutuals sector. We recently met the recently launched mutuals and co-op business council to begin working with businesses on our plans to expand the co-op and mutuals sector. She may also be aware that our social enterprise boost fund is currently spending some £4 million on helping to support social enterprises that are already up and running.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
If the Government have to push forward with retaliatory measures against the United States for its steel tariffs, they must strike at the political allies of the President to meaningfully move on the conversation. Can the Secretary of State confirm whether Elon Musk’s Tesla is being considered as a potential target for retaliatory measures?
Jonathan Reynolds
We reserve the right to take any action in response to any changes to our trading relationships, but I do think we can look to the opportunity for the UK, which is greater than for any other country, to get to an agreement that improves our terms of trade with the US. I reserve the right to take any action, but I think we can look forward in a positive way to improving that trading relationship, and that right now is my message and focus.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
Mr Speaker
It was Chris Bloore’s turn. I am following the Order Paper, but I am going from side to side. Chris Law will come afterwards; he was not next.
Jonathan Reynolds
There are many Members called Chris.
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. As he will know, the creative industries are part of our industrial strategy. We are hugely proud of their soft power and economic impact, and of course we will get him the meeting he requests.
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
Gareth Thomas
We have had one or two questions on this topic, and the hon. Member will therefore not be surprised by my answer. I gently point out that the difficult decisions we took on employer’s national insurance contributions in the Budget were a direct result of the mess the Conservative party, which he supported so enthusiastically, left for this Government.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The Groceries Code Adjudicator’s annual survey shows high levels of compliance by the supermarkets. However, a statutory review will actually commence next month, and I would encourage her and all stakeholders to contribute to it.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
Jonathan Reynolds
The simple position is that we will represent the UK’s national interest in this matter. The US has objections about its significant deficits in manufacturing goods with China and the EU, but that is not the relationship between the US and the UK, so there is a chance for the UK to pursue a different policy —one that produces greater benefits for every part of the UK than perhaps are available to other countries. Of course we are cognisant of the overall impact—no one wants to see this type of turmoil in the global economy—but our job is to deliver for the UK, and that is exactly what we are focused on doing.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
Gareth Thomas
We know that rural businesses want to see more investment in bus services and better transport infrastructure. My hon. Friend will appreciate that the Chancellor announced in the Budget some £650 million-plus in funding for local transport, which is designed to support everyday journeys and improve transport connections. I am sure, too, that she will welcome the better buses Bill, which is coming in to give local authorities—
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
The Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security (Mr Douglas Alexander)
I can assure the House that we are in regular touch with the Scotch Whisky Association. We fully appreciate the significance and importance of that industry not just to Scotland but to the UK. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we are well served by a serious Prime Minister in these serious times, which affords us the opportunity for a dialogue in trade frankly not available to other countries.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)
President Trump’s new tariffs are double trouble for Britain’s steel and aluminium suppliers. They will dent £350 million of sales, but they also risk swamping the UK with over-subsidised Chinese steel diverted from America. What is the Secretary of State’s game plan now to redouble defences for our UK metal makers?
Jonathan Reynolds
I am incredibly grateful to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee for that question. He is right to say that the challenge here is not just the direct trade we have with the US, but the impact of trade diversion. He knows we already have 16 anti-dumping, anti-subsidy measures in place against 14 separate product categories. Once the annual tariff-free quota is hit, a 25% tariff applies to those. I can tell him and the House today, though, that I will support UK Steel’s application to the Trade Remedies Authority for a review of the steel safeguards—we do have to think about what will be coming—and a new one for the aluminium sectors.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
I am sure that Ministers will join me in welcoming the £90 million investment by dairy firm Arla in the plant in my constituency, which will create up to 90 jobs. Does not that reinforce the fact that agriculture remains at the heart of the rural economy in constituencies such as mine? Should not the Government be supporting that industry, rather than trying to destroy it?
Mr Alexander
I can assure the House that we do welcome the investment of which the right hon. Gentleman speaks. Speaking on behalf of the constituency of East Lothian, I recognise fully the importance of the rural economy and agriculture’s contribution thereto. That is why we are in regular dialogue with the NFU and other key stakeholders.
Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)
Together with the Startup Coalition, I recently held a roundtable with brilliant local start-ups working out of Future Space at the University of the West of England. Issues that they have been facing for a long time include accessing the same opportunities and support for growth as larger businesses. Would the Minister please set out what support his Department will be providing so that our very smallest businesses can thrive too?
Gareth Thomas
One of the big issues that small businesses wanting to scale up face is access to finance. We are actively working across Government on what else we can do to support businesses to get access to the finance they need, including through the British Business Bank.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
In my constituency, a planning moratorium has been in place for more than five years due to water pollution, with an estimated effect on the local construction industry of half a billion pounds, despite the fact that new house building is a minute proportion of the problem. Will the Secretary of State meet me and representatives of the Herefordshire construction industry to try to find a solution to this devastating problem?
Jonathan Reynolds
The frustration that comes across in the hon. Lady’s question relates to exactly the sort of problem the Government are fixing. I would be more than happy to work with her and any Secretary of State or Department necessary to unblock that for her.
Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)
Will the Minister outline what steps the Department is taking to help increase trade with the Asia Pacific, and in particular the Philippines, where a major local company in my constituency, Beaver Bridges, is hoping to expand and grow significantly, with the trade support of this Government?
Mr Douglas Alexander
I happen to be meeting the Philippine Government next week, although alas in London, not in Manila. The Department is working hard to agree a Government-to-Government financing framework partnership. That is just part of the work we have under way. If I can be of direct assistance to my hon. Friend and to her local business, I will of course be happy to speak to her.
Lauren Edwards (Rochester and Strood) (Lab)
The invest in women taskforce aims to drive investment in female-powered businesses at every stage. That includes putting more money in the hands of female investors, as we know that women back women. Does the Minister agree that one solution to tackling the gender disparity in investment decision-making roles is to set a minimum level of female representation for all investment committees that receive British Business Bank funding?
Justin Madders
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a strong correlation between the proportion of women on an investment committee and the proportion of female founders receiving investment. My Department leads on the investing in women code, whose 270 signatories commit to supporting female entrepreneurship. One of the key metrics we check is the gender balance on investment committees and investment teams. I am pleased to say that the code signatories significantly outperform the wider market in their support for female founders. Investment funds backed by the British Business Bank are expected to sign up to the code and the bank itself is a signatory.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
Over 100 jobs have been lost in Falkirk since September due the previous Government’s failure to keep their commitments to the bus manufacturing sector. We need a plan for bus manufacturing. Has the Minister engaged with the Department for Transport, the bus manufacturing industry or regional mayors, prior to launching the UK bus manufacturing expert panel?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend asks a very good question. I am very pleased that the Department for Transport today launched the new UK bus manufacturing expert panel. We need to support our bus manufacturing, both for the transition to net zero and for building our businesses in the UK. I am very happy to work with him on that.
Business of the House
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead 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)
I shall.
Monday 17 March—Remaining stages of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (day one).
Tuesday 18 March—Remaining stages of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (day two).
Wednesday 19 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill, followed by Opposition day (first allotted day, second part). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 20 March—General debate on knife crime among children and young people, followed by a general debate on coastal communities. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 21 March—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 24 March will include:
Monday 24 March—Second Reading of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
Tuesday 25 March—If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Great British Energy Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, followed by a motion to approve the draft National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
Wednesday 26 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will make her spring statement, followed by remaining stages of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.
Thursday 27 March—General debate on St Patrick’s Day and Northern Irish affairs, followed by general debate on the 10th anniversary of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 28 March—Private Members’ Bills.
Jesse Norman
I am sure the whole House will want to join me in recognising and thanking the salvage and nature recovery specialists who are even now scrambling to clear up after the disastrous collision in the North sea.
They say a conservative is a socialist who has been mugged by reality. If that is so, we are witnessing the extraordinary sight of a Prime Minister who is being visibly mugged by reality in slow motion before our very eyes. The Government’s brand of socialism started well from their point of view, if disastrously for the country: we had the union pay-offs, the rapid settlement of pay disputes in the public sector—for zero apparent efficiency benefits—and a heavily tax-and-spend Budget. The Chancellor was even so bold, as Members will recall, as to announce to the CBI that she would not be raising taxes or increasing debt over the course of the Government. As she said:
“I’m clear…I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”.
However, the Budget started to unravel almost as soon as it was published. We had the bizarre sight of a Government who were ever more committed to talking about growth while clubbing growth to death across a variety of sectors: through the national insurance rise and the £5 billion burden of the Employment Rights Bill, of course, but also through their loss of credibility in the markets, which has pushed up gilt yields by 25% since September. Great British Energy was announced, and did nothing. The Government made an unsuccessful attempt to claim credit for the achievements of the newly rebranded National Wealth Fund, which had been set up only weeks before. The system of infrastructure monitoring and planning has been dismantled, and there has been no news for three months on the decision on small modular reactors, which was due on 1 December or thereabouts. Can the Leader of the House update the House on when we can expect that decision?
Then President Trump got elected, despite—or perhaps because of—the special SWAT team of Labour activists sent over to campaign for his rival, and then the mugging by reality really began. The Energy Secretary was forced to pare back his ruinously expensive zero-carbon energy plans; the Prime Minister had to announce his plan for change; the Government were forced to accelerate their defence spending plans in order to address the situation in Ukraine; and so it continues.
This week, we have heard of the Government’s so-called Operation Chainsaw—or should that be butter knife?—to reshape the civil service. Next week, we will have hasty and almost certainly ill thought through cuts to welfare. Labour was red under the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), became a gentle cerise for voters at the general election and, now that reality is setting in, it is a pleasing shade of purple, with more and more patches of blue. The Prime Minister and the Government are becoming more Conservative by the day.
In sharp contrast, it is the Government’s policy towards rural areas that is most striking. We have seen the family farm tax and the disproportionate effect on hospices and social care services in rural areas arising from the rise in national insurance. Now, in the same week, we have seen new compulsory purchase powers to seize farmland and the abrupt and unexpected end of the sustainable farming incentives scheme. The Government are simultaneously reducing farm incomes, threatening farm holdings and forcing the sale of family farms through their inheritance tax changes. I am sad to say that even the £35 million allocated by the previous Government to clean up the River Wye—one of the natural glories of this country—has been cut to just £1 million. The Labour message is clear: do not be a farmer. Do not feed the country. Do not give us food security. Do not work every hour God sends, whatever the weather—we do not care.
The Leader of the House has been very clear that it is her policy not to answer Opposition questions, or even to answer questions about her policy of not answering questions. She ignored my questions yet again last week, but perhaps she can have a go at these questions now. Why have the Government taken such a punitive approach to the countryside? Are they doing so deliberately, or is it just by accident? Finally, will she come to visit some farmers in Herefordshire with me so that she can see the actual effect of these policies for herself? We will throw in some magnificent Shepherds or Rowlestone ice cream, as well, if that will make any difference.
Lucy Powell
I start by congratulating young carers across the country on their day of action yesterday.
I know the whole House will be as hopeful as everybody else in the country about Ukraine, as talks continue this week and over the weekend. I am sure we all welcome the resumption of military aid and intelligence sharing between the US and Ukraine. This really is an important moment for peace in the region and the ball is now firmly in Russia’s court.
The shadow Leader of the House spent most of his speech last week and this week giving a long lecture about why I do not answer his questions while actually failing to ask me very many at all. We had a couple of small questions today at the end of another diatribe that, as ever, took us through various myths and misinformation. He will know that this Government had to take some very difficult decisions to deal with an economy that no Government would want to deal with: high and rising debt; stagnant growth; low productivity; low wages; and public services on their knees. That is why we have had to take some difficult decisions to fix those foundations, but, most importantly, to get that investment back into our public services, as we desire to do.
The shadow Leader of the House again raised the point about national insurance, but I must point out to the House that he was a Treasury Minister when his Government raised national insurance not only on businesses, but on working people as well. I am sorry to tell him that this Government absolutely back British farmers. We are doing what we can to support them: we have increased the farming budget to £5 billion over two years, which is far more than the Conservative Government ever did; we have set out a new deal for farmers; and we are investing in our flood defences. We also have a plan for sustainable food, and he knows better than anybody that the sustainable farming incentive had a capped budget, which his Government did not announce. They failed to spend any of it, and, given the action that we have taken, it has been oversubscribed in the meantime. That is why we have closed that fund, but we are setting out a new fund after the spring statement next week.
I might give the shadow Leader of the House an alternative point of view on recent history. Order Paper aficionados will have noticed that Tuesday marked our 100th sitting day of this parliamentary Session —[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That is 100 days of boosting our public services, investing in jobs and growth, and reforming the state in favour of people and against vested interest. That is also 100 days of change and 100 days of putting the Government back in the service of working people.
We have had the most ambitious King’s Speech programme of any incoming Government. Ten Bills have now received Royal Assent, including: the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024, ending the scandal of free cash going to failed rail companies; and the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, ending bonuses for water bosses polluting our waterways. Very soon, we will have Martyn’s law, keeping the promise that we made to Figen Murray. And there is more on the way: strengthening renters’ rights; switching on Great British Energy; introducing new powers to tackle phone thefts; seizing off-road bikes; creating respect orders; banning knife sales; and introducing stronger protections against stalking and spiking. We are unblocking house building and energy infrastructure, which, for too long, has stalled. Yesterday, we completed our Commons stages of the Employment Rights Bill, giving people dignity and security in work. And that is just a few of the things that we have done.
Beyond that, we are fixing the big problems that the country faces: with waiting lists finally coming down; more GP appointments; breakfast clubs in school; a 25% increase in returns of people with no right to be here; more affordable housing and restricting the right to buy; finally getting rid of hereditary peers and cracking down on MPs’ second jobs; and the biggest devolution of powers in a generation. And that is just a snapshot of those 100 days.
Mr Speaker, you will be pleased to know that, in that time, we have made 115 statements to this place, because, like you, I respect the House of Commons and I respect that we make announcements here first. But what a contrast to the previous Conservative Government. They had to be dragged here to make statements. Their last King’s Speech was threadbare. The pinnacle of their ambition was to ban pedicabs in London, and they are not doing much better now, are they Mr Speaker? Hardly any of them turn up to debates. They are barely here for PMQs, although I do not blame them for that. They were a zombie Government, and is not the truth that they are a zombie Opposition now?
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
I recently met my constituent, Becky, who is profoundly disabled after her mother was given Primodos, a hormone-based pregnancy test that was popular in the ’60s and ’70s and taken by roughly 1.5 million pregnant women. It was directly linked to miscarriages and severe birth defects in a study commissioned by the University of Oxford in 2018. Will my right hon. Friend make time for a full debate on this scandal, or join me in calling for a full public inquiry?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. I am hugely sympathetic to families who have suffered from hormone pregnancy tests. She will be aware that Baroness Cumberlege’s independent review highlighted the healthcare system’s failure to listen to patients’ concerns around those tests. She will also be aware that the causal links have been reviewed many times, but I will ensure that Ministers get back to her with a full update.
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
As Members of Parliament, we have many issues that demand our attention, but few that can be more important than ensuring children are well fed with healthy, nutritious food. I am sure that Members across the House wish that all families are able to provide that every day for their children, but we must face the tragic reality that many children go hungry. In government, the Liberal Democrats were proud to introduce universal free school meals for infants. We ensured that every child could access a healthy lunch each day, because when children go hungry, they make less progress and have poorer behaviour and health outcomes.
A free school lunch may be the only healthy cooked food that some children get, or even their only meal of the day. That is shameful in a country such as England. That is why we have tabled amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would increase the after- tax threshold for free school meals to £20,000 a year, expanding eligibility for free school meals to a further 900,000 children. We are also committed to introducing auto-enrolment for those who are eligible for free school meals, ensuring that children are automatically considered eligible when their parents apply for relevant benefits or financial support.
Does the Leader of the House agree that no child should go hungry in 2025, and will she ask the Government to embrace cross-party working to support the Liberal Democrats’ long-standing calls for free school meals when the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to Parliament next week?
Lucy Powell
I thank the hon. Lady for raising such an important issue, which is of great concern to her and many others in the House. I am sure that in the coming days, not just with tomorrow’s private Member’s Bill but with the two days of debate on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we will have plenty of time to debate these sorts of issues in the House.
Free school meal eligibility should be looked at in the round. That is why this Government are developing a child poverty strategy, which includes free school meals. In the meantime, the hon. Lady will be aware that we are rolling out free breakfast clubs in schools, because she is right that having a meal inside a child can stop them feeling hungry, but it can also help them to learn, concentrate and do better at school. That is why we are committed to those free breakfast clubs, and to our child poverty taskforce, which will also look at free school meals.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
This Sunday marks Disabled Access Day and the importance of accessibility and inclusiveness for all. Sadly, disabled people in Luton South and South Bedfordshire cannot access Luton station because of the delays and failures of Network Rail in progressing the Access for All programme and installing lifts at Luton station. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time on how our plan for Great British Railways will improve infrastructure and ensure reliable, affordable and, importantly, accessible train services for everybody?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear of the frustrations and problems that my hon. Friend’s constituents have had with station accessibility, which gets raised with me in business questions regularly. The Government are committed to improving it. They are difficult challenges, and the Rail Minister is actively considering the best approach to the Access for All programme, but I will ensure that he has heard her question and that she gets a full reply.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
In addition to the business that the Leader of the House has announced, if we are given Thursday 3 April in the Chamber, there will be a debate on the impact of digital platforms on UK democracy, followed by a debate on access to sport and physical education in schools. It would be helpful if she indicated whether we will get Tuesday 8 April, the day before the recess, and the date for estimates in May.
In addition, on Tuesday, there will be a debate in Westminster Hall on retrospective accountability of the construction industry, which many colleagues are concerned about. On Thursday, there will be a debate on the prevention of drugs death and, in response to the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles), the first anniversary of the Hughes report on valproate and pelvic mesh. On 1 April, there will be a debate on eating disorders and on Thursday 3 April a debate on waste incinerators, followed by a debate on Government support for Thames Water. On 8 April, there will be a debate on persecution of Christians.
Today is Purim, when Jewish people throughout the world celebrate their deliverance from the first attempt of genocide of Jewish people at the hands of the then Persian empire. Tomorrow is Holi, when Hindus throughout the world will celebrate the deliverance of Vishnu from Holika, the evil witch who was consumed by fire. For colleagues who are going to Holi festivals for the first time, I advise them not to wear business attire because colours will be thrown and they will be coated in various different colours, and they will probably not be able to clean the clothes afterwards.
Will the Leader of the House join me in wishing Jewish people everywhere chag Purim sameach and all Hindus happy Holi?
Lucy Powell
I thank the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, as ever. He has announced a number of important debates that will be popular among hon. Members, on issues such as Thames Water and, as has been raised with me a number of times including recently, pelvic mesh and valproate. May I join him in the advice he gives to hon. Members and also in wishing those celebrating Purim and Holi the best of times this week?
On his question about 8 April, which is just before recess, I am not in a position to announce future business, but I will look very kindly on his request.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
I was delighted to meet my constituent Amy Scullard at the Pebble Brook Community Cafe last week. Amy helps run a peer support group in Aylesbury for parents and parents-to-be who are struggling with their mental health, as so many people do. Amy is an absolute inspiration and I look forward to joining her group in future. Will the Leader of the House join me in recognising the vital role that such mental health support groups play and will she continue to ensure that mental health gets the attention that it deserves in Parliament?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in thanking all those who run the Pebble Brook Community Cafe and all the vital work that they do. Perinatal mental health is a really important issue that people have come to know about more in recent years. I am a long-standing supporter of the first 1,001 days campaign and the importance that that brings. That is why we are so focused on the early years and some of the issues that my hon. Friend raises and I think that would make an excellent topic for a Westminster Hall debate.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
As a believer in parliamentary democracy, I fully support the Government’s right not to exploit shale gas deposits in the UK on environmental grounds. However, may we have an urgent statement from the appropriate net zero Minister on the Government’s decision from next week to start filling in and putting permanently beyond use the two existing shale gas facilities in this country, rather than keeping them in reserve for an emergency should a future Government ever need to exploit them?
Lucy Powell
May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for agreeing with the Government that we should not exploit fracking? That was in our manifesto and we are committed to not doing fracking. I will ensure that Ministers update him on those matters, as they have been doing, coming regularly to the House. We have had a number of statements from Ministers from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, who are keen to update the House as and when. However, I will ensure the right hon. Gentleman is updated on that particular issue.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
The prolonged time that the Disclosure and Barring Service takes to check the many applicants for work in vital public services in education, health and social care is impacting tens of thousands of people across the UK. Indeed, many applicants have had offers of work retracted due to the significant delays they have experienced. Will the Leader of the House allow a debate in Government time to address that critical issue?
Lucy Powell
DBS checks are an important part of many public service jobs, and it is disappointing to hear of the delays that my hon. Friend’s constituents have faced. In fact, those delays have been raised with me previously. Ministers are keen to hold the DBS to account where standards are not being met, so I will raise the matter with Ministers. My hon. Friend should be aware that, in some circumstances, his constituents can request a hardship escalation where the delay is affecting job applications.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
May we have an early debate in Government time on the ending of the radio teleswitch, upon which many people who rely on electric heating and storage heating depend? It was last debated in an Adjournment debate on 4 December. That spawned a ministerial roundtable on 5 February, which promised further updates, but none have been forthcoming. With just over 100 days to go, it would be good to know that there is a sense of urgency in Government.
Lucy Powell
I strongly hear what the right hon. Member says about the impending deadline, and I am sorry if this House has not been kept as up to date as it should have been. I will make inquiries and ensure that he and the rest of the House are kept updated.
Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)
In recent weeks, many of my constituents have shared their concern about the Consett Empire reducing its opening hours. The Empire is a real cultural centre of the community that makes arts accessible to local people and provides a hub to help combat loneliness. I continue to speak with officers, staff and trade unions about the Empire, but can we have a debate in Government time on what we can do to ensure that venues like the Consett Empire stay open and thrive?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear what is happening to the Consett Empire in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I agree with her that music venues and cultural hubs like that are vital to our high streets, communities and the cultural offer that we all want to see. The Government are committed to ensuring that we maintain such assets, but I will ensure that she gets an update on this particular issue.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I am concerned that the Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that there is a backlog of more than 30,000 pension credit claims still to process. That is in spite of assurances from the Minister in October that 352 extra staff had been deployed at the point of the Chancellor’s announcement to scrap the winter fuel payment. A further 537 staff followed that announcement, and in January it was announced that another 156 staff would be recruited. By my calculation, that is 1,045 staff and the backlog still remains. Will the Leader of the House make Government time for a debate or statement so that we can understand what is going on with the backlog? I am concerned that pensioners are still waiting for pension credit and winter fuel payments at a time when they desperately need them—the winter is still not over.
Lucy Powell
The right hon. Member will know that we saw an 81% increase in claims, and the latest statistics show a 64% increase in successful pension credit applications, which I am sure is something she will welcome. We have deployed an additional 500 staff to process applications, and there has been a huge increase there, which is to be welcomed. She will know that for any successful application, the moneys will be backdated to the day the person applied for it, so they will get that, but I will ensure that the House is kept up to date.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
May I, too, wish a very happy Holi to all the Hindus celebrating in the UK and across the world tomorrow?
An issue that is personal to me and to many of my constituents is Parkinson’s, and World Parkinson’s Day takes place on 11 April every year. I pay tribute to Parkinson’s UK for all it does to support people with Parkinson’s. Research suggests that personal independence payment assessors do not have sufficient understanding of the fluctuations in symptoms that people with Parkinson’s experience. Consequently, people with Parkinson’s are denied much-needed support. In fact, in almost every instance in which Parkinson’s UK’s expert social security advisers have assisted a member of the Parkinson’s community to challenge an initial PIP decision, it has been overturned in the claimant’s favour. As such, can we have a debate in Government time on supporting people living with Parkinson’s and other degenerative conditions, and about the social security support available to them?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in thanking Parkinson’s UK for its work. He is absolutely right. I am sure that every single one of us will, as constituency MPs, recognise the challenges for PIP assessors in properly assessing those with fluctuating and chronic illnesses. It is vital that those assessing access to benefits have the necessary training and understanding of chronic conditions such as Parkinson’s. I will ensure that Ministers keep him and the House updated on that.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
Dundee University in my constituency has one of the world’s leading life sciences departments, but it faces a significant deficit that is being compounded by nearly £3 million of employer national insurance contributions. May we have a statement from a Treasury Minister as soon as possible, and might a pause be put in place for establishments facing serious financial difficulties that will be seriously compounded by the rise in employer national insurance contributions?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear about the difficulties faced by the university in the hon. Member’s constituency. As he will have heard me say earlier, these are not decisions that any Government want to come in and make, but we have had to deal with the inheritance we found ourselves with and ensure that we get vital investment into our public services, particularly the NHS, which we found completely on its knees with such high waiting lists. The university, life sciences and research sectors have had very good settlements in Budgets over recent years, and they are expected to fund the national insurance rise from within their own budgets. I will ensure that he is kept updated.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
The Canal & River Trust manages 2,000 miles of waterway, including nearly 500 miles in the north-west. I recently met the trust and its dedicated volunteers, who highlighted confusion about ownership and funding difficulties. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking that organisation, and does she agree that a debate on that important part of our heritage would give it the focus that it deserves?
Lucy Powell
I absolutely recognise what my hon. Friend describes. I recently met the Canal & River Trust. I am not sure whether there is a canal that connects her constituency to mine, but I could definitely get on a barge and go from my constituency to hers—
Lucy Powell
And to yours, too, Mr Speaker—we are very well connected in our region in that regard.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: canals not only provide the blue space that many of our towns and city centres need, but offer tourist attractions and many other assets. We should support the work of the Canal & River Trust.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Many valued public servants work at Porton Down in my constituency. It was home to the Health Protection Agency when I first became an MP, then to Public Health England and then the UK Health Security Agency. In 2015, the decision was made to establish a new facility in Essex. I have been applying and will continue to apply for an Adjournment debate, but we could really do with a statement from a Health Minister on the future of the UK Health Security Agency, which is a vital facility for this country. My constituents need to know what is happening with it.
Lucy Powell
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has not yet been successful in applying for an Adjournment debate, but the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who chairs the Backbench Business Committee, and Mr Speaker are both in their places and have, I am sure, heard his plea. The future of the UK Health Security Agency, which does great work, is of national importance. I will ensure that he gets an update at the earliest opportunity.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I am honoured to be called after the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen). I thank the Leader of the House for mentioning Young Carers Action Day, which was yesterday. The hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) and I took an open-top bus tour with some young carers and got hailed on. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating my constituent Danielle, who won a prize in the national Show Racism the Red Card poetry competition for her poem “Like a Butterfly”, and does my right hon. Friend recognise the importance of creative writing in breaking down barriers and challenging division?
Lucy Powell
Absolutely, I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Danielle on writing an award-winning poem and all the young carers in his constituency and beyond. I heard on the radio this morning that AI thinks it can now do creative writing for all of us, but I am sure it cannot beat Danielle and the creative writing endeavours of young people.
Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
Earlier this week, I had a meeting with the UK Chamber of Shipping. Coincidentally, it was the day of the incident in the North sea, so obviously we discussed that, but the main point of the meeting was to discuss the impact of shipping on the UK economy and my constituency in particular. May we have a debate in Government time on the importance of the shipping sector to the UK economy?
Lucy Powell
The hon. Gentleman’s constituents and others will have been affected by the events in the North sea this week. As a great island nation, shipping is vital to the economy of this country, to our trade and to our standing. I am sure that Ministers would be happy to update the House regularly on these matters.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I have been working for several months to help a number of my constituents get the wheelchairs they need to have good-quality, independent lives. While I understand that it is the role of integrated care boards to deliver equality of service, the problem is much more widespread. The Wheelchair Alliance recommends that NHS England plays a more active role in ensuring that ICBs prioritise wheelchair services and dedicate sufficient resources to them. Will the Minister allow time to debate the many challenges people experience regarding wheelchair provision?
Lucy Powell
I am sure we can all recognise the frustrations that many people have with wheelchair provision. My hon. Friend is right: there is still far too much variation, including regional variation, in the quality and provision of NHS wheelchairs. A new wheelchair quality framework is soon to be published by NHS England, and I will ensure that she and the rest of the House are updated on that.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
My constituent Jennifer, an American citizen, came here in 2018 on a spousal visa, which was renewed in 2022. She applied for indefinite leave to remain in May last year. The Government website says:
“you’ll usually be told whether your application has been successful within 6 months.”
It has been 10 months. Jennifer’s now expired visa has given her employer concerns about her right to work, and that financial uncertainty is exacerbated by the fact that she cannot be added to the couple’s mortgage, which affects the works they need to do on their home. Jennifer has tried and I have tried, so I wonder whether the Leader of the House could try to raise this case with her colleagues in the Home Office to see what has happened, get it sorted and reduce the stress that this delay is causing Jennifer and her family.
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear of the frustrating experience that the hon. Lady and Jennifer have had. The hon. Lady will know that there has been a backlog in these cases. We have put in place extra caseworkers and are dealing with the backlog as quickly as we can. As ever, I would be happy to raise this case and see whether I can expedite an answer.
Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)
In my 2025 Cramlington and Killingworth priorities survey, residents consistently raised antisocial behaviour and off-road bikes. The measures in the Crime and Policing Bill will send a strong message that this behaviour will no longer be tolerated, but can we have a debate on the action this Government are taking to tackle the issue and ensure that the police have the powers and resources they need to remove these menacing bikes from our streets?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Like her, I welcome the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, which had its Second Reading earlier this week. The powers we are giving the police to seize and crush these menacing off-road bikes, quad bikes and others is probably one of the most popular things this Government have done in recent weeks among my constituents. She is right: we need to make sure that once the new powers are given, the police have the resources and can operationalise their intention.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Last week, it was announced that £600,000 of funding had been secured to resurface Huntingdon High Street, improving not only the look and feel of the high street but its accessibility. I wholeheartedly support that proposal, and it is great to see more steps being taken to make it attractive to new businesses. The funding was secured by Huntingdon’s BID—business improvement district—team, Paul Sweeney and Mags Clark, who have been doing fantastic work to improve Huntingdon and make it a vibrant and thriving town centre. I have worked closely with Paul, and his ongoing efforts to encourage local people back into town have been instrumental in its regeneration. Could the Leader of the House make time in the schedule to debate how we can regenerate our high streets?
Lucy Powell
Absolutely, and I join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating Huntington High Street and the local BID team on securing those funds. I know from my own constituency that BID teams do a really brilliant job in securing that kind of investment and having a plan to regenerate town centres, as is happening Huntington. I wish the hon. Gentleman well in that. I look forward perhaps to receiving an invitation in a future question to a new café or pub, or even a hairdresser, in his constituency which may flourish as a result. These are important matters that we will continue to debate in the House.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Last week I attended the community pub hero awards in Parliament and saw Terry Cole and Keith Fulwood from the Royal Oak pub in Chapel Ash in my constituency receive awards for best community fundraising hero and outstanding contribution for their voluntary work in supporting the NHS by delivering blood and medication on motorbikes, thereby saving lives. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the Royal Oak pub on its achievement and acknowledge the wonderful contribution our local pubs make to our communities? May I also invite her to have a drink in the Royal Oak the next time she finds herself in Wolverhampton?
Lucy Powell
I am always happy to pay a visit to a Royal Oak pub. I am sure we all have a Royal Oak pub in our constituencies, but my hon. Friend’s in Wolverhampton led by Terry and Keith sounds like it goes way beyond its role as a pub. It sounds like it is a community hub that does so much to support his local community, so I am delighted to join him in thanking them.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
In Northern Ireland we have the ludicrous situation of soldiers being investigated for engaging armed and dangerous terrorists without first exposing themselves to being murdered by those same terrorists. This is the tip of the iceberg of the demands for one-sided justice in Northern Ireland. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on defending historical truth and challenging the one-sided revisionism that is eroding trust in the justice system and distorting the legacy of the troubles and the memory of the innocent victims who lost their lives at the hands of bloodthirsty terrorists?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear that the hon. Lady is disappointed with the Government action in this area. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland believes that the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 needs reform and replacement, and he has been working closely with all the parties in Northern Ireland on that. He has updated the House regularly on those discussions and on his progress, and he will continue to be forthcoming in those conversations and to the House. I will ensure he has heard the hon. Lady’s question.
Martin Rhodes (Glasgow North) (Lab)
First, I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group for Fairtrade. The Government have inherited a wide range of trade negotiations with partners including the Gulf Co-operation Council, Israel and India, all of which will have implications for the UK economy, the environment and global trade. What efforts is the Leader of the House making to ensure there is adequate time in the Commons to discuss trade deals?
Lucy Powell
I am sure my hon. Friend appreciates that I take the scrutiny of Government trade deals and other Government action incredibly seriously. I hope he is aware that the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 made provision for statutory consultation and scrutiny by Parliament of these sorts of measures. However, as part of the work I am leading in the Modernisation Committee and elsewhere, I am always happy to consider other proposals to ensure that we have robust scrutiny by Parliament of any such deals.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
I recently enjoyed the privilege of meeting two inspirational constituents, Helen and James, who for the past 15 years have been foster carers to many children across Bromsgrove. When I met them I also met their lovely 11-year-old foster child Lizzie; she is very happy and confident, making clear the benefit of fostering in society. Lizzie raised with me the question of whether fostering can be included on the curriculum to reduce stigma so that children across society are aware of different family structures. Will the Leader of the House join me in praising the fantastic work of foster carers across the country, and please will she raise this question with colleagues in the Department for Education on behalf of Lizzie?
Lucy Powell
I join the hon. Gentleman in thanking Helen, James and all the foster parents in his constituency and all our constituencies. It sounds like Lizzie has found a great home to live in, which is what we want for every family. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that those who put themselves forward for fostering are some of the best people in our country and society. We owe them a huge debt and the children who are placed with them really are lucky. He raises their very good suggestion about how we can ensure that people are well educated about fostering and understand it, so that others aspire to foster. I will raise that with Ministers, but he might want to raise it himself during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill debate next week.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. I am proud to serve as a Target Ovarian Cancer ambassador and I do so on behalf of Diane Boothby from my constituency who is a survivor of ovarian cancer and campaigns tirelessly to raise awareness. On Tuesday, I will be hosting an ovarian cancer awareness drop-in event in Parliament. Will the Leader of the House have the opportunity to stop by, and will she consider whether there is an opportunity for a debate in the Chamber on ovarian cancer, a disease that is impacting more than 40,000 women in this country?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in thanking Diane for all her tireless work in raising awareness of ovarian cancer, and I thank everyone involved in the work of Target Ovarian Cancer. I will certainly try to pop by his event next week. We are committed to improving diagnosis and treatment for all cancer patients, and we will be publishing a new national cancer plan shortly. I will ensure he and the whole House are kept updated.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
In business questions last week I raised with the Leader of the House my concern at the last-minute cancellation of the cross-party talks on social care. Despite her very sympathetic response, I still have not received any communication from the Secretary of State. Does the Leader of the House think that she might be able to expedite the restarting of those crucially important talks to tackle the crisis in social care, so that I do not need to ask the same question at business questions next week?
Lucy Powell
The hon. Lady should keep on at me when we do not live up to what we say at the Dispatch Box. I have raised the issue with the Department of Health and Social Care and I will continue to do that for her. I am sorry it has been another week and she has not heard. The Secretary of State will be here shortly to give a statement on a related matter—not quite the same matter—so she may want to raise it with him. I thought that he might already have been in his place for her question. I will ensure she gets a quick response.
Claire Hughes (Bangor Aberconwy) (Lab)
I recently visited Ysgol Pencae in my constituency to talk to pupils about my role as an MP. We practised bobbing, which I have been doing this morning, and they asked some wonderful questions. The children at the school learn in the medium of Welsh, so as it is Your Vote Week, will the Leader of the House say bore da to the pupils at Ysgol Pencae and tell them what is her favourite thing about being an MP?
Lucy Powell
Bore da to all the children in my hon. Friend’s constituency, in Bangor, Aberconwy and elsewhere. Who would know that bobbing was such a skill, Mr Speaker? It keeps all our gluts in check, certainly for me at business questions. My favourite thing about being a Member of Parliament is being able to stand up, advocate for and represent my constituents. First and foremost, that is the job that we are all here to do.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
During Business and Trade questions earlier, we heard mention of the fantastic value of the export of our food and drink to the United States, which was a sound point. The food and drink industry supports tourism all over the UK, and the whisky distilleries provide fantastic local employment in some of the remotest parts of Scotland. Mr Speaker, next time you travel on London North Eastern Railway, the biscuits you eat will have been made by Mr Gary Reid of Perthshire. I declare an interest because my brother is a cheesemaker. May we have a debate on the food and drink industry in the UK, which is one of our greatest achievements?
Lucy Powell
Absolutely. We have great British food and drink, whether it is whisky or the great cheese that the hon. Gentleman’s brother makes. A big cheese-lover, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Withington (Jeff Smith), is sitting next to me on the Bench; the hon. Gentleman’s brother might want to give him a sample. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the many great foods and drinks we make in this country are a really important part of our exports around the world, to America and elsewhere. I will ensure that the House is kept up to date on these issues; they would make a good topic for a debate.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
I am sure you will agree, Mr Speaker, that one of the best parts of being a Member of Parliament is visiting our fantastic local schools. When I have done that in recent months, I have been shocked by what I have seen. I have seen pupils at Deanesfield primary school, my old school, learning in mouldy and crumbling portacabins. I have seen Bishopshalt school, a fantastic secondary school, with broken plumbing and toilets. Just last week, I saw pupils at Glebe primary school, which flooded in September, still learning in facilities that have not been put right by the council. Can we make time in this place for a debate about much-needed capital investment in school buildings and how we build on the fantastic legacy of the last Labour Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When we came into government we found the shocking state of capital investment in our schools really appalling. We know that we need to do more, and we are doing what we can initially. We have set aside more than £2 billion for the next financial year, which will probably only scratch the surface, but that will include funding for Hillingdon council to improve the maintained schools in his constituency. He is absolutely right to raise those issues.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
The Worth valley in my constituency is probably one of the most beautiful parts of the countryside, but it is under threat from the Walshaw moor wind farm, which is potentially the largest wind farm development in the UK, ripping through 235 hectares of protected peatland—one of our most protected natural carbon stores. Local campaign groups are staunchly and quite rightly against it, as am I. In the interests of party unity, I have written to all neighbouring MPs—West Yorkshire is a lonely place for a Conservative, as they all happen to be Labour MPs—but I have not had a response from any of them, despite writing to them back in January. Can we have a debate in Government time about the importance of raising our local concerns about wind farm developments and Labour’s announcement that it is removing the moratorium on wind farm developments?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to tell the hon. Gentleman that we stand proudly behind our lifting of the moratorium on onshore wind developments, because they are absolutely vital if we are to get the energy security, jobs of the future and lower bills for his, mine and everybody else’s constituents that we so desperately need. I am sorry that he has not had a reply to his correspondence, but we have brought in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which we will debate next week and which ensures that those affected by energy infrastructure near their homes will have other incentives and rights that they might want to consider. I am afraid we will have to keep going further and faster on these issues; that is vital to our future energy security and to lowering people’s bills.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Last week, my constituent Liz, from Bignall End in Newcastle-under-Lyme, came to my surgery and shared the story of her autistic daughter, who lives with selective mutism. Liz’s daughter was referred to the child and adolescent mental health services, but the services provided were not suitable for her needs. Can we have a debate on how we can specifically, properly and quickly improve mental health support for children and young people under the age of 18 in Newcastle-under-Lyme and across our country?
Lucy Powell
Supporting young people with their mental health needs is urgent and vital to tackling many of the issues we face, not just for the individuals themselves but for many other societal issues. We are bringing additional support for mental health advisers into schools as well as many other issues. My hon. Friend might want to raise that in the debate on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill next week.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
The community equipment services sector, with its organisations such as Millbrook, which serves constituents in my constituency, plays a vital role in working with local authorities and the NHS to help people to live independently outside hospital, providing essential equipment such as bed aids, bathroom safety equipment and mobility tools. That delivers significant cost savings to the Government. I met representatives yesterday who told me that rising national insurance contributions are placing extra strain on a sector already under pressure. They also told me that there is a mixed picture in the reuse of equipment, so there is loads of potential to save the Government money. Will the Leader of the House allow time to debate the use of community medical equipment to ensure that the sector is at the forefront of helping people out of hospital and back into their homes as part of its critical role in supporting a functioning health and social care system?
Lucy Powell
The hon. Member is absolutely right that early intervention and services in the community—those services that can help to keep people living independently at home, and that help with discharges from hospitals and care homes—are absolutely vital to our country and our health service, and to keeping people living well for longer. Many of those services, such as Millbrook in her constituency, are either charity or community services. This Government have supported many of those services through increased budgets for the national health service and for local government, but we need to do more to ensure that the services provided by people such as those supporting Millbrook are holistic, well supported and long term.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. We have an important statement coming shortly, but I would like to get as many Members in as possible, so can we have very short questions and perhaps shorter answers from the Leader of the House, please?
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
Yesterday, I was proud to vote for the Employment Rights Bill, which—among other actions—will ban fire and rehire tactics. However, Tory-led Devon county council is currently threatening over 800 of its employees, including many of my constituents, with those exact tactics. Will the Leader of the House allocate time in this House to discuss that disgraceful decision?
Lucy Powell
That sounds like a really disgraceful decision, and one that I am sure my hon. Friend and the rest of the House will stand up against. That is why we need the Employment Rights Bill—I am glad that it has now passed its Commons stages. We want to end fire and rehire for good, and I am surprised that the Conservative party voted against it.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
As the Leader of the House knows, there is strong opposition among residents in the Scottish Borders to plans by ScottishPower Energy Networks to build massive pylons along a 94-km route through the Scottish Borders. The regulator, Ofgem, plays a vital role in the decision-making process but, shockingly, is refusing to meet me or the local action group. Can the Leader of the House write to her Cabinet colleagues to try to encourage Ofgem to engage with me, and can she speak to Ofgem on our behalf and try to persuade it to speak to local residents?
Lucy Powell
I absolutely will—I am sorry to hear that Ofgem has not got back to the hon. Gentleman, and I will raise the matter with Ministers. As I am sure he appreciates, new infrastructure means difficult decisions in many of our communities, but we are determined to achieve the energy security and lower bills that we need. However, I will ensure that he gets a response.
Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)
Children and young people on the Isle of Sheppey face massive barriers to opportunity compared with those in more affluent parts of Kent. Last week, many families on the Isle of Sheppey were devastated to learn that children are to be sent many miles away to the mainland—several hours by public transport—for their secondary school places. I have spoken to parents, headteachers and local councillors about this, and although the issues are clearly complicated, the root of the problem is that many people at Kent county council do not understand the challenges that my constituents on Sheppey face. Will the Leader of the House advise me on how best I can raise the issue with Ministers in the House, and may we have a debate about the allocation system for secondary schools, particularly how it relates to areas of extreme need and deprivation?
Lucy Powell
I am sorry to hear that my hon. Friend’s local council seems to be so out of touch with the needs of families in his constituency. He will know that planning for secondary and other school places is a matter for local authorities; they do get funding to provide extra spaces where they are needed, but they have to do that in advance and be in touch with their local communities. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend will be able to raise those issues next week during the debate on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)
Wylfa is the best nuclear site in the UK, but the new national policy statement for nuclear energy has scrapped the list of best- suited sites. May we please have a debate in Government time on whether this Government are still committed to developing a new nuclear project at Wylfa?
Lucy Powell
This Government are committed to new nuclear energy and have recently made announcements on that endeavour. However, I will ensure that the hon. Lady gets an update on the nuclear proposals in her constituency, and that the House is also updated.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
In Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme I have been working hard to reconnect our communities. In January I submitted my proposal for the Doncaster East super-loop bus service to the Mayor of South Yorkshire. In February I met Hornsby Travel, a valued family-run bus company serving the Isle of Axholme. This year, it celebrates its 110th anniversary, recognised with a visit from Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Hornsby Travel, and will she support my efforts to ensure that my constituents have access to the transport links they need?
Lucy Powell
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Hornsby Travel on its amazing anniversary—there were cheers across the House when he mentioned it, so it sounds like a popular bus provider in his constituency. We have brought forward the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, currently passing through the other place, to ensure that local communities have the bus services they need.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Rental income from social housing is currently 16% below inflation. Homes for the South West, which includes Curo in my constituency, is under a contractual obligation to do repairs while also building new homes under increasingly stretched grant funding systems. It makes doing both nigh impossible. May we have a debate on how we can protect our tenants to get the repairs they need, while also addressing the social housing crisis?
Lucy Powell
That is exactly what this Government are trying to do, through a range of measures. We have the Renters’ Rights Bill going through Parliament at the moment. We have the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to support developers and those who want to build more housing, especially social and affordable housing. This Government are committed to supporting tenants and getting the new homes built that we need.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
This week, Union Yard, a new quarter of Aldershot, has opened, including the Makers’ Yard, a home for local creative businesses. That has been delivered by the previous and current administrations of Rushmoor council. Will the Leader of the House join me in sending best wishes to local residents Jess and Georgina of Kitschy Bits Boutique ahead of their opening in Makers’ Yard on Saturday? May we have a debate on what this Government are doing to support more retail opportunities for local creative businesses as part of our growth mission?
Lucy Powell
Absolutely, I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Jess and Georgina on their opening. She is right that local businesses on our high streets, especially creative businesses, are vital to the future of our town centres.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
Zoe is a bright and exceptionally politically engaged young woman in Falkirk. She has had to seek private diagnosis for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, following admission to hospital on several occasions for symptoms consistent with POTS. No national guidelines for POTS exist and, alarmingly, no dedicated clinical pathways for its treatment are available for patients such as Zoe. Will the Leader of the House support a debate to discuss the creation of national clinical guidelines for POTS patients?
Lucy Powell
I am really sorry to hear about Zoe’s experience. The situation in Scotland with the NHS is particularly worrying under the Scottish Government. The majority of services for POTS in England are commissioned by integrated care boards, but I will raise this matter with Health Ministers—they have all just taken their seats on the Front Bench for the forthcoming statement, so they will have heard his question.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Human rights violations in Algeria, particularly against the Kabyle Berber minority, are of growing concern. Reports highlight increasing repression, including arbitrary arrests, surveillance and restrictions on religious freedom, leading worryingly to Algeria’s placement on the US special watch list. A recent UK legal opinion has affirmed the Kabyle people’s right to self-determination under international law. However, this House has not addressed the Kabylia region since 1902. I do not think anyone in this House would remember that. Will the Leader of the House please urge the Foreign Secretary to make a statement on this matter urgently?
Lucy Powell
As usual, the hon. Member raises an important issue, this time in relation to Algeria. I am sure he will be reassured to know that the British ambassador regularly raises these matters with his counterparts in Algeria, including having recently met the Minister of Religious Affairs on 10 February.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
Last week, Redditch lost a giant. Arriving from Jamaica in the 1950s, Madge Tillsley MBE was a true pillar of the Redditch community. She was a trailblazer, a campaigning councillor and a source of joy to all who knew her. She made history as the first black mayor in Worcestershire in 1991 and is an incredibly hard act to follow in representing our town. Will the Leader of the House join me in paying tribute to Madge’s dedication to public service and our town and send condolences to her family?
Lucy Powell
Absolutely. I have read the tributes to Auntie Madge, as I think she was known, and I absolutely support my hon. Friend in sending our condolences, best wishes and thanks to her and her family for all her dedicated work.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
It was fantastic to be able to observe the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland resilience forum exercise Operation Mercury, a live emergency services exercise at our local barracks to test the response to a major incident on the M1. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking Leicestershire Police, Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service, East Midlands Ambulance Service and local authorities, as well as all the volunteers involved in the operation? Will she also thank our emergency services for the work that they do every day to keep us safe?
Lucy Powell
Absolutely. We all support the amazing work of our emergency services—fire, police, ambulance and many others—and I will absolutely join my hon. Friend in thanking them.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
Last year, Simone White, the daughter of one of my constituents, was travelling with her friend in Laos. Like many young people, they had chosen to go travelling in south-east Asia on what is a very popular tourist route. Tragically, after drinking shots in a Vang Vieng resort, she was taken ill and died of suspected methanol poisoning, becoming the sixth person who is believed to have died in this way at the resort. Unfortunately, young people’s awareness of the risks of methanol poisoning is very low. Will the Leader of the House commit House time for a debate on how we can increase awareness of methanol poisoning and ensure that no more families have to go through the pain that Simone’s family is currently experiencing?
Lucy Powell
I think we were all touched by this tragic case last November. Following it, we updated our travel advice, and we continue to press the local authorities for a full investigation so that we can prevent contaminated alcohol from being sold in this way in the future. Since November, the Foreign Office has been communicating the risks of methanol poisoning to people travelling abroad. I am sure the whole House will join me in sending our best wishes to Simone’s family.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
Cumbernauld theatre is a long-standing and vital cultural cornerstone, but it now faces the possibility of closure following a cut to its funding by Creative Scotland. Its work extends beyond performance, with an extensive outreach programme in the local community, and the petition to save it has now reached 10,000 signatures. May we please have a debate in Government time on the importance of local theatres and their role in increasing access to culture?
Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend has previously raised with me the importance of Cumbernauld theatre, which obviously is truly loved by her community. She will know that Creative Scotland and the cultural funds that it deploys are a devolved matter, and this is a shocking decision by the Scottish Government, for which they should be accountable. They have now had a huge increase in their budget, they have the powers, and they need to make better decisions in the interests of her community.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
During the holy month of Ramadan, will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the Almanaar Muslim cultural centre in north Kensington, which played such a pivotal role after Grenfell and throughout the pandemic, and which is now inspiring as a place of worship, a community kitchen, a nursery and so much more? Will she join me in wishing all Muslims in Britain Ramadan Mubarak?
Lucy Powell
I will absolutely join my hon. Friend in wishing all Muslims in Britain Ramadan Mubarak. I think every single one of us remembers the incredible work that the Almanaar Muslim cultural centre did in the wake of the Grenfell fire. When many others stepped aside, it filled the space, and we pay tribute to it for its continued work.
NHS England Update
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
With permission, I would like to make a statement on the future of NHS England.
Since coming into office, this Government have made big strides in fixing our broken NHS. Under the Conservatives, the NHS suffered years of industrial action, costing taxpayers billions and costing patients more than 1 million cancelled operations and appointments. We negotiated an end to the resident doctors strike within three weeks. We have delivered the 2 million extra appointments we promised in our first year, and we did it seven months early. After 14 years of rising waiting lists under the Conservatives, we are finally turning the tide, cutting waiting lists for five months in a row, cutting waiting lists through the winter pressures and cutting waiting lists by 193,000 so far and counting. We have agreed the GP contract with GPs for the first time since the pandemic—our first step to bringing back the family doctor—and we have delivered the biggest uplift in hospice funding for a generation.
However, there should be no doubt about the scale of the challenge ahead. We inherited an NHS going through the worst crisis in its history, so there is no time to waste. We inherited public finances with a £22 billion black hole, so there is no money to waste. The urgency of the crisis means we have to go further and faster to deliver better value for taxpayers and better services for patients—something the Conservative party cannot even begin to speak to a record on.
Lord Darzi’s independent investigation into the national health service traced the current crisis back to the 2012 top-down reorganisation of the NHS by the right hon. Lord Lansley. The Darzi investigation said the reorganisation was “disastrous” and a “calamity without international precedent” that “scorched the earth” for health reform,
“the effects of which are still felt to this day.”
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 established more than 300 new NHS organisations, created a complex and fragmented web of bureaucracy and, to quote the Darzi investigation,
“imprisoned more than a million NHS staff in a broken system”.
Today, we are putting the final nail in the coffin of the Conservatives’ disastrous top-down reorganisation of the NHS.
There are more than twice as many staff working in NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care today than there were in 2010—twice as many staff as when the NHS delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. Today, the NHS delivers worse care for patients, but is more expensive than ever before. The budget for NHS England staff and admin alone has soared to £2 billion. Taxpayers are paying more, but getting less. We have been left with two large organisations doing the same roles, with an enormous amount of duplication.
It is especially in times like these, when money is tight, that such bloated and inefficient bureaucracy cannot be justified. However, even if the Conservatives had not left a £22 billion black hole in the public finances, the Prime Minister would still be announcing the changes he is today, because every £1 that is wasted on inefficient bureaucracy—in good times or bad—is £1 that cannot be spent on treating patients faster, nor can it be spent on fixing our crumbling schools, lifting children out of poverty or putting money back into people’s pockets. There is always a duty on Ministers to get as much value for taxpayers’ money as is possible, and I cannot honestly say that it is achievable with the way that my Department and NHS England are set up today, nor can I say that the current set-up is getting the best out of the NHS.
I am sure Members will have heard their local NHS leaders complain about the top-down way in which the NHS is run. It is something I have heard for years. Now that I find myself at the peak of this enormous mountain of accountability, I do not just recognise the complaint; I agree with it. Frontline NHS staff are drowning in the micromanagement they are subjected to by the various and vast layers of bureaucracy.
In the Hewitt review, the former Health Secretary my right hon. Friend Dame Patricia Hewitt reported that one local service was required to send 250 reports and forms to NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care in a single month. That is time and energy that is not being spent delivering care for patients. The review also concluded that having two organisations doing the same jobs has led to
“tensions, wasted time and needless frictional costs”.
Since coming into office I have sought to correct that, by building a one-team approach between my Department and NHS England, working towards our shared mission of building an NHS fit for the future. Today, the Prime Minister has announced that we are turning one team into one organisation.
I acknowledge that there are talented, committed public servants working at every level of the NHS and my Department, including at NHS England, who I have had the privilege of working with over the past eight months. The reforms we are announcing today are not a reflection on them. They have been set up to fail by a fragmented system that holds them back. The actions we are taking today will change that.
Work has already begun to strip out the duplication between the two organisations, and bring many of NHS England’s functions into the Department. NHS England will have a much clearer focus over this transformation period. It will be in charge of holding local providers to account for the outcomes that really matter: cutting waiting times, and managing their finances responsibly. And it is tasked with realising the untapped potential of our national health service as a single-payer public service: getting a better deal for taxpayers through central procurement; being a better customer to medical technology innovators, to get the latest cutting-edge tech into the hands of staff and patients much faster; and being a better partner to the life sciences sector, to develop the medicines of the future.
Over the next two years, NHS England will be brought into the Department entirely. These reforms will deliver a much leaner top of the NHS, making significant savings of hundreds of millions of pounds a year. That money will flow down to the frontline, to cut waiting times faster and deliver our plan for change. By slashing through the layers of red tape and ending the infantilisation of frontline NHS leaders, we will set local NHS providers free to innovate, develop new productive ways of working, and focus on what matters most: delivering better care for patients.
I cannot count the number of Conservatives who have told me in private that they regret the 2012 reorganisation and wish they had reversed it when in office. But none of them acted. They put it in the “too difficult” box while patients and taxpayers paid the price, because only Labour can reform the NHS. And this Government are proving that only Labour can be trusted to reform the state. The Prime Minister has committed to cutting the number of quangos. Today, we are abolishing the biggest quango in the world.
I am delighted that Sir James Mackey will be leading the transformation team, as the Chief Executive of NHS England. Jim has an outstanding track record of turning around organisations, balancing the books, driving up productivity, and driving down waiting times. He is putting in place a new transformation team to drive change, and alongside Dr Penny Dash as the incoming chair, I am delighted to have such a capable leadership team of radical reformers to lead NHS England with me through this transformation.
I also take this opportunity to place on record my heartfelt thanks to Amanda Pritchard, who has shown an outstanding commitment to our national health service over her decades of service—which I know remains undiminished. She has also been a rock of enormous support, not only in the past eight months, but also in the past few weeks as we have worked together with Jim preparing for this change. I also place on record my thanks to her deputy Julian Kelly, who is one of the most outstanding public servants of his generation, along with the rest of the leadership team departing at the end of the month. They deserve our thanks and best wishes for the future.
Change is hard. There will always be cautious voices warning you to slow down. However broken the status quo is, there will be those who resist any change away from it. But we should be in no doubt: we inherited a national health service going through the worst crisis in its history. Patients are waiting unacceptable lengths of time for an operation, a GP appointment or an ambulance. This Labour Government will never duck the hard yards of reform. We will take on vested interests and change the status quo, so the NHS can once again be there for us when we need it.
The Prime Minister has set an enormously ambitious target for the NHS: to cut waiting times for operations from up to 18 months to a maximum of 18 weeks by the end of this Parliament. That will require us to go further and faster than even the last Labour Government achieved, but patients in our country deserve nothing less. The reform the Prime Minister is setting out today will mean fewer checkers and more doers. It will cut through the complex web of bureaucracy, and devolve more resources and responsibility to the frontline, to deliver better value for taxpayers’ money and a better service for patients. It will set the NHS up to deliver on the three big shifts needed to make the service fit for the future: from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.
The NHS is broken, but it is not beaten. Together, we will turn it around. I commend this statement to the House.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. It is disappointing, once again, that it was not made to the House first; in recent days, there have been numerous media briefings about this potential restructure.
Under new leadership on the Conservative Benches, we believe in a leaner and more efficient state. That means using resources effectively, reducing waste and preventing duplication, spending money where it is most beneficial. After all, the public understandably want to see the focus on patient care and not on backroom managers. Therefore, we are supportive of measures to streamline management, and we do not oppose the principle of taking direct control, but we need to know what steps will be taken to meet targets while all the upheaval happens. We need to know the specifics of what is being planned.
What are the timeframes for the abolition of NHS England? By what date will it be completed? How many people will be moved into different roles? How many people will lose their jobs altogether? How much money is that expected to save? Labour runs the NHS in Wales, which has the highest waiting lists and the longest waiting times in Great Britain. What lessons has Labour learnt from its failure in Wales?
NHS England, as the Secretary of State said, has just lost much of its leadership. Is that because they no longer had confidence in the Secretary of State, or because he did not have confidence in them? Perhaps he can tell the House whether Alan Milburn will keep his job in the upheaval. We also need to be clear that moving people into different roles will not fix the challenges that face the NHS.
The Secretary of State has spoken about taking direct control. That may help him ensure that the NHS stops wasting money on expensive diversity, equity and inclusion staff, and ensures that it provides dignity and privacy for female staff and patients, but what does it mean for clinical prioritisation? Will conditions that are less common and have less glitzy campaigns and fewer celebrity backers suffer because the Secretary of State now has political considerations? Does the Secretary of State have the bandwidth for this, given he has such a busy role already? How does the centralisation of power measure up with the commitment to give more powers to regional bodies and local integrated care boards?
In the first six months after entering office, the Government announced 14 reviews, consultations and calls for evidence, all of which require more staff. Are those jobs at risk, or are other pre-existing roles set to be cut? This announcement comes the same week as Labour’s Employment Rights Bill passes through the Commons. Is the Secretary of State getting a move on because he knows that red tape and bureaucracy will dramatically increase afterwards and make the decisions he has to take more difficult to deliver?
A drive to improve efficiency in the civil service and the management of the health service is welcome, but what about the NHS itself? The Government slimmed down our productivity plan and delivered a 22% pay rise in return for no modernisation or reform. How will those decisions improve efficiency? I asked the Department what proportion of people with a nursing qualification working in the NHS are in patient-facing roles, but the Minister said that they did not know. How can he use the skills and resources effectively if he does not know where those skills and resources are?
The Prime Minister is making a lot of noise about productivity and cutting waste, but he still refuses to set a target for cutting the civil service headcount. Thanks to the decisions he and the Chancellor took at the Budget, the size of the state is growing rapidly, not shrinking, while changes to national insurance contributions have diverted funding away from the frontline into compensating the Treasury. Ultimately, any restructure will be challenged by the Government’s continued failure to tackle immigration. While steps to improve efficiency in the healthcare service are welcome, these words ring hollow across Government.
Wes Streeting
I will take the more serious questions from the shadow Minister first. On timeframes, we will work immediately to start bringing teams together, as we have done with the one-team culture we have been building over the past eight months. I want the integration of NHS England into the Department to be complete in two years.
The shadow Minister asks about the reduction in the number of officials. NHS England has 15,300 staff; the Department of Health and Social Care has 3,300. We are looking to reduce the overall headcount across both by 50%, which will deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of savings. The exact figures will be determined by the precise configuration of staff, and we will obviously keep the House updated on that.
The shadow Minister asks about clinical leadership. One change we will be making with the transformation team is to have two medical directors succeeding Professor Sir Stephen Powis, whose departure from NHS England was planned long before these changes. There will be one medical director for primary care and one for secondary care, underpinning our commitment to the shifts we have described. I must say, there are enormous improvements to be made in clinical leadership for patient outcomes, patient safety and productivity, and I am demanding stronger clinical leadership to drive those improvements to productivity. Frankly, many consultants and clinical teams on the frontline will welcome that liberation—they are hungry for change.
The shadow Minister asks about the workforce data and complains that we have not been able to give her the precise answers. I agree: it is frustrating not having that precise information at my fingertips. I would gently remind her, though, on this as on so many things, that her party was in power for 14 years. She cannot very well complain eight months in given that they left us a woeful, embarrassing data architecture and infrastructure.
The shadow Minister asks about efficiency. Once again, she refers to the resident doctors deal as if it was a failure. The actual failure was leaving doctors on the picket line, not on the frontline, and wasting huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, with cancellations and delays to patients’ appointments, operations and procedures. We stopped that within weeks of coming into office. The deal does include reforms to improve productivity—if she is any doubt about the results, she should look at the fact that despite winter pressures, NHS waiting lists have fallen five months in a row.
Once again, we get the facile points about my right hon. Friend Alan Milburn, who is the lead non-executive board member for my Department. I honestly do not know why he bothers to pay for a mortgage; he lives rent-free in the Conservatives’ heads. They need to move on. By the way, just for the record: Alan Milburn has a record on the NHS that the Conservatives cannot even begin to touch.
The shadow Minister asks about confidence. I am delighted to be introducing a new transformation team. Different leadership challenges require different leadership skills. As I say, I have been really pleased to work with Amanda Pritchard for the past eight months, including on this transition; people should have no doubt about the confidence I have in her skills, talents and abilities, and I think she has a lot still to contribute to our NHS. We do not need to ask about confidence in the Conservative party; it is reflected in the scarce numbers on the Opposition Benches.
What is the lesson from Wales? The lesson is that when there is a Conservative Government in Westminster, the national health service suffers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is why we are creating a rising tide to lift all ships. I am sure we will see improvements across the United Kingdom. SNP Members, who are not in their place, do not have any excuses now. As I said before the election, all roads lead to Westminster, and the biggest funding settlement since devolution began is going down the road to Holyrood. There are no hiding places there for the SNP. If people want real reform of the NHS in Scotland, they should vote for Scottish Labour under Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie.
People can see here in Westminster the difference that new leadership provides. The shadow Minister laughably referred to new leadership in the Conservative party. Well, it is certainly leaner and meaner, but it is the same old Conservative party. The only thing that the Conservatives have shrunk is their own party. The only jobs that they have laid off are those of their poor party staff. The only thing that they are capable of changing—[Interruption.] Well, come to think of it, I do not think that there is anything they are capable of changing. Instead they look over their shoulder at a party leader who cannot even manage a five-aside team, let alone a country. The Conservatives are just so diminished as a party. I appreciate that it must be so painful for them to watch a Labour Government doing the things that they only ever talked about: reducing bloated state bureaucracy; investing in defence; reforming our public services; and bringing down the welfare bill. The public are asking: “What is the point of the Conservative party?” I bet they are glad that they chose change with Labour.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I applaud my right hon. Friend for his leadership and for the reduction in waiting lists, which we so desperately need. We all know that there is still a struggle with budgets in the health service—my excellently run Honiton hospital is facing a deficit for the first time in its history—so can he give more detail about how he will reform NHS procurement, so that we can use the purchasing power of the NHS to get more bang for our buck?
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the need to improve procurement. One thing that Attlee and Bevan could not have predicted in 1948 is that the single-payer model of the national health service makes it ideally placed for this world of artificial intelligence, genomics, machine learning and big data. We must unlock that potential so that we have new treatments, new technology, productivity gains and efficiencies, but we also have to get the basics right on procurement. We have to change the culture of profligacy, routine deficits and routine over- spending. That is why, today, the leadership of NHS England has summoned to London chairs and chief executives from across the country to get an immediate grip on the £5 billion to £6 billion deficit that was already being baked in for the 2025-26 financial year. Those chairs and chief executives have just become so accustomed to the idea that Governments will just come in and bail them out.
I said before the election that there would be no release of money in winter, because winter is predictable. The NHS was given additional resources and it must learn to live within its means. Despite howls of outrage before and since the election, I have kept to my word. I said that there would be accountability for people who think that the Government are there to bail them out. Having come from local government, where that culture would never be tolerated, I and this Government are bringing that same financial discipline to the NHS. We will not tolerate deficits. It is important that we get better value for money, while also making sure that, nationally, we are providing support through the procurement platform. That is how we will help the system deliver better value, and we will liberate frontline leaders to focus on the things that really matter, which are services for patients.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
The Secretary of State’s NHS shake-up is well under way. Many Members would agree that the NHS used to be the envy of the world, but years of Conservative failure have left patients suffering and unable to get the care that they desperately need. I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues therefore welcome steps to reform the NHS.
The new leadership of the NHS has much to do, but can the Secretary of State advise the House whether new legislation will be needed to scrap NHS England given that he told the shadow Minister that it will take two years to complete this merger? When will that new legislation, if it is required, be brought forward?
Any attempt to fix the NHS will ultimately fail if we also do not address the crisis in social care. The Secretary of State must show the same urgency in reforming social care as is being shown on the NHS. Where is that urgency? Long-promised cross-party talks have now been postponed indefinitely with no new date in sight. Care providers are hanging by a thread due to the rising cost of national insurance contributions. Does the Secretary of State agree that any attempt to fix the NHS will prove futile if we ignore the elephant in the NHS waiting room that is the crisis in social care? We will clear our diaries for cross-party talks, so will the Secretary of State give us a date today?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats for those questions. Much of the change needed can be delivered without the need for primary legislation, which is a relief because, as right hon. and hon. Members will have noticed, this Government have come into office with the most ambitious legislative programme of any incoming Government. Time is at a premium, given the business of this House and the other place. We will work immediately to move forward without changes to primary legislation, but we will need to make them. I am working with the Leader of the House and business managers to ensure an appropriate timetable that enables us to do the things that we need to do in a timely way, but that also safeguards the ambitious legislative programme that has already been set out.
The hon. Lady is right to talk about the importance of social care. She asked where the urgency is. It was to be found in the immediate steps that the Chancellor took on coming into office to stabilise the finances of my Department, with an immediate release of funding. It came with the Budget, which delivered an extra £26 billion for the Department for Health and Social Care, protected funding specifically for social care and boosted spending power for local authorities. It came with the biggest expansion of carer’s allowance since the 1970s, and an £86 million increase in the disabled facilities grant not just from next year but released in January for the remainder of this financial year. The urgency is reflected in the Employment Rights Bill, which makes provision for fair pay agreements to deal with the work- force crisis—work with employers and trade unions to prepare for that legislation and the introduction of fair pay agreements is already under way.
I regret that we have not convened cross-party talks. That is genuinely due to practicalities on the part of a number of parties involved. We will be in touch over the next week to make arrangements for Baroness Casey to engage with parties across the House.
Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent statement. As he knows, I am a working GP in Stroud. We clinicians are simply fed up with the micromanagement of our caring clinical role, and many hospital colleagues feel the same. We want to be free to deliver excellent clinical care. Does he think that the abolition of NHSE will reduce the admin task for doctors?
Wes Streeting
I do think that is the case. I also think that this is not just about form and function but about the opportunities for productivity gains through modern technology and practices. One of my frustrations is that whenever we talk about the exciting frontiers of life sciences and medical technology—this country’s competitive advantage, and how we need to build on that position— I am greeted with a weary sigh from poor frontline NHS staff, and managers for that matter, who say, “That’s lovely, and we agree with you, but we’d just like a machine that turns on reliably, and it would be nice to use systems that do not require seven passwords to deal with a single patient.” I feel their pain. We will prioritise that investment in technology.
Finally, we do want to liberate the frontline, and I am grateful for the leadership that GPs have shown in agreeing a contract with the Government for the first time since the pandemic, which contains substantial reform to benefit them and, even more importantly, their patients. We also have to liberate management in the NHS. As Lord Darzi said, it is not the case that there are too many managers, but there are layers and layers of bureaucracy between me as the Secretary of State and frontline staff. We have to liberate frontline staff and managers to help them be more effective, to manage their resources more efficiently and, most importantly, to deliver better and safer care.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
This is a bold change indeed. The job of my Committee is to help the Secretary of State to do it, so let me start by asking him to come in front of the Committee as quickly as possible—certainly before Easter—because there is a lot of detail that we need to drill down into.
On a more substantive point, the right hon. Member mentioned the financial reset that Sir Jim Mackey announced to integrated care boards just yesterday, which means that they need to cut their running costs by 50%. I am concerned that when my Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB struggled with money, the first thing it cut were the place-based teams. If we are to deliver the neighbourhood NHS that the Secretary of State and I both want, those are not the teams to cut. Will he send a signal to ICBs that cost savings should not be at the expense of the broader shifts in the 10-year plan?
Wes Streeting
First, I give the Chair of the Select Committee my assurance that I would be delighted to appear in front of her Committee at the earliest opportunity —that means soon. I appreciate that it will want to scrutinise these changes in more detail, and I would welcome the constructive challenge that it offers. I also reassure her that the direction that we are giving to frontline leaders is to deliver the three big shifts in our 10-year plan, and to ensure that as we take immediate steps to bring the finances under control, we do so in a way that lays the firm foundations for the future of the NHS that we need to build.
My cautionary note to Members across the House is that when we ask frontline leaders to reform and to change ways of working, sometimes that requires not just changes to the bureaucracy as it were—the easier and lower hanging fruit—but service reconfiguration in the interests of patient outcomes and better use of taxpayers’ money. Sometimes, they get those changes wrong. I have successfully campaigned against closures of services such as the King George accident and emergency department, which should not have closed and where we won the case on clinical grounds.
Sometimes, let us be honest, the public can get anxious, and Members of Parliament feel duty bound to act as megaphones and amplifiers for public concerns. It is important that we support and engage with local NHS leaders. By all means, we should scrutinise, challenge and ask questions, but we must give local leaders the support to do the task that we are asking of them on behalf of patients and taxpayers. The powers that I have to intervene in those frontline service reconfigurations are ones that I will use only in the most exceptional and necessary cases, and that is why I have not used them once in the past eight months.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
The crisis in our NHS goes deep. I am sure that the Secretary of State agrees that it is an existential crisis that poses a threat to the future of the NHS if fundamental change does not happen. While I strongly welcome today’s statement, what assurances can he give me and the House that the right people will be in the right place in leadership positions to drive the fundamental change that is necessary?
Wes Streeting
That is an excellent question. We are building an outstanding transformational team with Sir Jim Mackey, which will be announced very shortly. It will bring together some of the best leaders across the country, and expertise from outside the NHS, to drive the scale and pace of transformation that is necessary. My hon. Friend is right to say that it is existential, because we cannot allow the curve of cost and demand to continue to rise to the extent that it is. The NHS’s long-term workforce plan has one in nine people in our country working for the NHS. On the current trajectory, in 50 years’ time, 100% of the public would be working for the NHS. That is clearly not a sustainable position.
I tell people who resist this reform out of love for the NHS not to kill it with kindness. We have to bend the curve of cost and demand to ensure that our health services are sustainable for the long term on the equitable foundations of a public service, free at the point of use, that we will always defend. I also say to my hon. Friends on the Government Back Benches that if we do not get this right, goodness knows what will come next. The Leader of the Opposition says that she wants a debate on the funding model for the NHS. The leader of the Reform party—I am not sure whether he is the Leader of the Opposition yet—says that he is up for anything. I am sure he is. That should worry us.
To those who want to debate the funding model of our NHS and the equitable principle of it being a public service, free at the point of use, I say that we are happy to have that debate but the Government are unequivocal: under Labour, the NHS is not for sale. It will always be a public service, free at the point of use, so that when people fall ill, they never have to worry about the bill.
Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
May I commend the boldness of today’s announcement? If the NHS is to be turned around, it will need radical reforms. If the result of today is to replace bureaucratic overcentralisation with political overcentralisation, it will fail. But if we move to the decentralised model that we have for the police and schools, it could be the start of a real transformation.
Will the Secretary of State give the House more detail about the changes he has in mind? Are we going to get rid of the central targets that make the NHS the most micromanaged system in the world and make it impossible for managers to deliver real change on the ground because they are working to about a hundred operational targets? If that is the case, and we are going to decentralise the NHS, does the Secretary of State agree that there remains a vital role for a reformed Care Quality Commission to call out poor care whenever it finds it?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that thoughtful question. Let me say two things to him. First, democratic accountability matters, both in terms of patient outcomes and value for taxpayers’ money. One of the things that I, my Labour and many of my Conservative predecessors have reflected on a lot over many years is what the role of the Secretary of State, and Government, is in a national health service where clinical decisions should always be clinically led. It is the Secretary of State’s responsibility to be the champion for patients and for taxpayers and to ensure that the system as a whole delivers better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers.
The argument that I have started, however, which has ruffled some feathers within the NHS and even more so with some of our country’s most loved charities in recent months, is the fallacy that the Secretary of State can or should just fire endless instructions into the system, as if a Secretary of State or, for that matter, an NHS England could just pull some big levers and drive change in such a vast and complex system. That is a falsehood. Of course, we should set national strategic priorities on behalf of the public. We should ensure that there is more transparency and information so that patients, communities and staff can hold the system and themselves to account to improve performance. However, the overcentralisation has to stop.
In future, it will be for the Department and the NHS nationally to do the things that only the national health service can do, providing the enablers for the system as a whole. What we are presiding over and embarking on, however, is the biggest decentralisation of power in the history of our national health service. That will put more power into the hands of frontline leaders and clinicians, but even more fundamental and transformational, more power into the hands of patients. If we get that right, we will have an NHS that can truly be the envy of the world. If people continue to indulge in the fallacy that more targets from the centre or more—or indeed, less—political control is the answer, we will fail.
The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the CQC. It has got itself into a terrible mess and I know that that is not what he intended when he rightly made the decision to create the Care Quality Commission. That is why Sir Julian Hartley knows that he has our full support, not just in turning around the CQC as it is, but in reforming it so that it can be the best guarantee and safeguard of quality that patients and the public deserve. Dr Penny Dash’s forthcoming review findings will also help to drive that reform agenda at pace.
Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for making the statement today. I want to echo the thoughts of the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) that it would be helpful to see him in front of the Select Committee to outline his vision for NHS England. Will he tell us today how the new structure of the NHS will help us deliver truly excellent social care and also primary care, and what drivers he can use to make that happen?
Wes Streeting
It always worries me when my hon. Friend says he wants to see me in front of the Select Committee because he does not pull his punches, despite being on the Government side of the House. Let me reassure him that on primary care, I hope that we are beginning to turn what I think has been a deep anger, frustration and anxiety among primary care leaders about the state of the system as it is and a pessimism about its future into increasing amounts of quiet optimism and hope. I think GPs can see we are walking the talk, with the biggest funding uplift in a generation and the fact that we have worked constructively with GP leaders to reform the contract and agree that further, more radical reform is needed together. We will be embarking on that under the auspices of the 10-year plan. As well as delivering that significant achievement with GPs, the Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), is also in the very final stages of work with pharmacists to stabilise the community pharmacy sector, which is vital for the NHS’s future as a neighbourhood service.
May I also reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) that under the auspices of the 10-year plan for health, notwithstanding Baroness Casey’s work on the long-term future of social care, we have an eye on social care and the relationship between health and social care? People will not, therefore, be waiting until next year for the first Casey report or, indeed, later for the final Casey report on the longer term to see action from this Government on social care, particularly as it relates to the NHS.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I welcome the ambition of the Secretary of State. One area that I ask him to focus on is the future of the UK Health Security Agency. Over the last 15 years, it has evolved from the Health Protection Agency to Public Health England and now to the UKHSA. I found it impossible, both as a Treasury Minister and as a constituency MP, to penetrate the decision-making process around resource allocation, which I now believe is duplicative, as a move to a new site in Essex is being contemplated. That is an area where the Secretary of State can demonstrate to my constituents in Salisbury and at Porton Down that he means business and can resolve the future of UKHSA once and for all.
Wes Streeting
I would be delighted to speak further with the right hon. Gentleman, drawing on that valuable experience both as a constituency MP and as a Treasury Minister—always, for the record, my favourite people to work with—
The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)
What’s wrong with DCMS?
Wes Streeting
And my friends at DCMS with their considerable spending power. No, I will stick with the Treasury in my order of favourites, thank you very much. I know where my bread is buttered.
To return to the point made by the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I thank Dame Jenny Harries for her leadership of UKHSA. We are recruiting for an outstanding replacement and successor, and that is an opportunity to look in the wider context at some of the first principles. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the specific, traditional Porton Down versus Harlow decision, which has been running around the system so long that is now used in a case study for senior civil servant recruitment. The worst decision is indecision. It has plagued us for too long and I hope we can soon report back to the House with a decision on that for everyone’s benefit.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
I welcome the statement today from the Secretary of State. Clearly, there is massive duplication of functions across the many regulatory, national, local and regional NHS bodies and huge room for efficiency.
I want to press the Secretary of State on two points. First, will he assure me that the bonfire of bureaucracy will not stop effective local management of NHS trusts and community settings, as IPPR has found that locally the NHS is poorly and under-managed and clinical staff are backfilling admin and management roles? Secondly, as he mentioned, the roll-out of digital technology has been far too slow, with NHS Digital’s move into NHS England not directing change fast enough, so how will the change ensure that the Department of Health and Social Care grips the digital roll-out, accelerates it and ensures the proper integration of NHS digital functions?
Wes Streeting
That is a great question from my hon. Friend. We have to give people the tools to do the job. The Prime Minister set me and my hon. Friends in the Department an enormous challenge on behalf of the public. In turn, I am setting an enormous challenge for NHS leaders at every level, but particularly for frontline NHS leaders. We have to give them the tools to do the job in terms of data platforms and the technology that they are given to work with, ensuring that they have access not just to cutting-edge treatments and medical technology, but to the back-office productivity support that can drive efficiency and improvement and, frankly, liberate managers and frontline staff from the arcane systems they are working with.
Some of the very best people I have met in the last few years, shadowing this portfolio and now holding it in government, are NHS leaders, especially on the frontline. It is my responsibility to give them the tools to do the job. That is not just about financial resources; it means bulldozing through some of the regulatory barriers and overcentralised instructions that stop them making decisions in the best interests of patients, in terms of clinical pathways and value for taxpayers. I have given them an undertaking that I will have their backs, both on the decisions that they will have to take on the frontline and on bulldozing through the national bureaucracy that is tying them up in knots when we need to set them free.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on the changes announced today to cut unnecessary waste and bureaucracy. We all know and agree that healthcare should remain free at the point of delivery and, of course, that the NHS needs reform. Just last Saturday, I was in a care home in Boston with a lady—an expert—who knows Melanie Weatherley, and she was telling me about the unnecessary processes within NHS England on the frontline that constrain good care in care homes, impose unnecessary constraints on ambulances and block A&E wards. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the changes and reforms will include unnecessary processes on the frontline in care homes?
Wes Streeting
I can certainly give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. We have to cut through the unnecessary red tape that ties leaders and frontline staff up in knots, and we are absolutely determined to do that. Regulatory reform will form a big part of this Department’s agenda and the wider Government’s agenda. As to an NHS free at the point of use, he almost said it with a straight face. I am sure that he meant every word he said. I think he might want to have a word with his party leader, who is his successor and—who knows?—perhaps his predecessor.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
We must remember that NHS England came out of the Tory Government’s reforms that were intended to privatise the NHS. I want to thank NHS England staff for their work. I am sorry about the way in which they have heard this announcement, because it is their jobs that are being put at risk. We have to ensure, however, that we are not replicating NHS England across the ICBs of our country, and that ICBs are also reformed to transform the NHS through the three shifts that will be placed on them with the publication of the 10-year plan. How will my right hon. Friend ensure that we have the machinery to hold the system to account, but also to put those reforms in place?
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: if we just replicate NHS England as it is with all the challenges in its set-up in ICBs across the land, we will have failed. Frankly, if we replicate NHS England and the Department as they are today just in one organisation, we will have failed to meet the challenge of change. It needs to feel and act like a completely new organisation, culture and way of working to modernise the state, so that if Disraeli, Gladstone, Churchill or Attlee walked into Whitehall at the end of this Government, it would not look so much like the Government they worked in during the 19th and 20th centuries. That is the reality of Whitehall today; it is not a reflection on the people who work in it, but it shows why it needs to change, and that is also true of the NHS. I look forward to working with ICB leaders to reform their ways of working, clarify their priorities, give them clearer marching orders and ensure that they can deliver.
Finally, my hon. Friend mentions the staff of NHS England—indeed, this affects staff in my Department, too—and I thank her for the care she has shown. Change is always disruptive and it can be scary, and of course that is particularly the case when job losses are involved. I want to acknowledge that on the Floor of the House, as I have to staff across both organisations this morning. I know that the Permanent Secretary and the chief executive of NHS England have done so in recent days, and I will be holding a town hall with staff next week. This really is not a reflection on them. In fact, I think they will recognise in my description of our ways of working the many things that frustrate them. None the less, they are dedicated and talented people, and some of the best people I have ever worked with in any walk of life or career work in this system. I look forward to working with them in the coming weeks and months with the same dedication and professionalism they have always shown, so that we can all look back on this time with pride, knowing that we were part of the team that took the NHS from the worst crisis in its history to getting it back on its feet and making it fit for the future.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the worst and most intractable problems that the founders of the NHS had to deal with was the involvement of medical practitioners and consultants who were used to receiving a private income in a national service where they would not receive anything like the same remuneration? If he agrees, would he accept that there is a similar situation with NHS dentistry today? The Darzi report said:
“There are enough dentists in England, just not enough dentists willing to do enough NHS work, which impacts provision for the poorest in society.”
How does he think his reforms will help address that particular crisis, on which Members like myself and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) are being consistently and rightly lobbied by such formidable organisations as the New Forest branch of the women’s institute?
Wes Streeting
NHS dentistry is in a terrible state and, in fact, in many parts of the country it barely exists. There are lots of reasons for that, and it is a source of constant astonishment to me that the dentistry budget was underspent year after year despite that situation. The Minister for Care is working with the British Dental Association to reform the contract. I know that Members are frustrated at the pace, and so am I. We are trying to clear an enormous challenge; it is not going to be easy, but we are committed to working with the profession. We are rolling out the 700,000 urgent dentist appointments and supervised toothbrushing, as we promised and as the BDA has welcomed, but we have a lot more to do. That requires working with the profession—not simply tinkering with the system as it is, but fundamentally rethinking it and how we rebuild it into an NHS dentistry service that we can be proud of.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
I welcome the statement, particularly the commitment to ensure that as much money in the NHS as possible is spent on the frontline, where it can really affect patient outcomes. Nowhere is that more needed than in my constituency of Dartford, which is the fastest growing town in the UK. That extra population is imposing a huge strain on our local district general hospital at Darent Valley, despite the excellent efforts of the staff there. Could the Secretary of State outline how the changes will support the shift we need to see from services being delivered in the hospital to the community, thereby relieving the strain on hospitals like Darent Valley?
Wes Streeting
The frustrating thing is that we are delivering the wrong care in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is delivering poorer outcomes for patients and poorer value for taxpayers. People cannot get a GP appointment, for example, which might cost the NHS £40, and then they end up in accident and emergency, which could cost £400. If people cannot find a bed for a delayed discharge and rehabilitation outside of hospital, they end up stuck in a hospital bed, wasting away at greater cost. In fact, when I was up in Carlisle earlier this year, such intermediate care was being offered by a local social care provider, commissioned by the NHS, at half the cost and of a much better quality than the hospital bed that patients had been discharged from. That shift to the community is about delivering better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers, and that will be reflected in our 10-year plan.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I declare an interest as the vice-chair of the newly formed all-party parliamentary group on emergency care. A&E staffing across the country is dangerously low, especially at night, putting unacceptable pressure on staff, who warn persistently about the risks to patient safety. Hundreds of keen applicants are being turned away from emergency medicine training. Last year, there were 359 places for 2,718 applicants. Following this announcement, how quickly will emergency care and A&E departments see changes and have more permanent staff and consultancy places, but especially more training places?
Wes Streeting
We will shortly set out our emergency care improvement plan so that we can deliver the year-on-year improvements that people deserve. The long waiting times, not just in emergency departments but in ambulance response times and across the entire system, are completely unacceptable. I refuse to use terms such as “temporary escalation spaces” to describe the true grim reality of corridor care. That is a shameful situation, and I am genuinely sorry that patients are being treated in those conditions and that staff have to suffer the moral injury of working in those conditions. From the moment we came into government, we have worked to ensure that we got through the winter as well as we could. That is reflected in the fact that, despite the winter pressures, waiting lists fell five months in a row throughout the winter.
On the targets and standards challenge set out by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, ahead of the winter I was very clear with frontline leaders that patient safety must come ahead of performance targets—particularly the four-hour target—but the 12-hour target is absolutely related to patient safety, as I think the royal college would agree. We must work together to get waits of longer than 12 hours down as a priority, because those waits are directly linked to safety and patient outcomes.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I gently ask right hon. and hon. Members, and indeed the Secretary of State, to keep their questions and answers short so that I can get everyone in.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
Two GP practices have told me that they are waiting for section 106 money to be released so that they can improve their facilities, but that it has been stuck between decision-makers. Will the Secretary of State outline how the changes will help to release those kinds of delays and finally allow North West Leicestershire residents to get the facilities that they deserve?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that example. She is welcome to contact my office to see if we can expedite that kind of decision-making. In fact, Members will have seen the work that the Deputy Prime Minister is doing to speed up decision-making in local government, which has an impact and a bearing on the NHS. We will work together to speed that up, so that where resources are available, we get them out and deliver change as quickly as possible.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
My constituents are particularly concerned about the very bureaucratic approvals process for the new hospitals programme—through investment committees, then the regional NHSE team, the a department, then NHS capital assurance, then a joint investment committee, then the Treasury and then, finally, Ministers. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that this decision, which I welcome, will speed up that process, and that the business case for the multi-storey car park at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King’s Lynn will be approved so that work starts this year?
Wes Streeting
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair challenge on the bureaucratic nature of decision-making. We are working with Treasury Ministers and colleagues across Government to take an axe to that unnecessary bureaucracy. He will be absolutely fuming when he finds out who was responsible for it.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I am conscious that my former colleagues at NHS England will be concerned about today’s announcement, but I am very confident that the Secretary of State will do all he can to support them. It is an inescapable fact that the 2012 reorganisation led to inefficient layers of management in the NHS, delivering poorer care and greater costs to the taxpayer. How does he plan to cut excessive layers of bureaucracy, get resources to the frontline and, crucially, deliver better care for the people of this country?
Wes Streeting
That is a brilliant question. We have put in place a transformation team, led by Sir Jim Mackey, which we will work with to start fundamentally changing the way the NHS works, by shifting more power, resources and responsibility out of Whitehall and closer to the frontline and the communities where decisions are made, and by getting rid of the unnecessary bureaucracy that drives patients and staff to distraction.
Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. We all want to see a well-run NHS that delivers for patients, but as he knows, patients are being treated in corridors, staff are severely overstretched and too many people cannot get access to a GP or a dentist when they need one. In that context, I was concerned to read in the media last week that there are plans for £7 billion of cuts to services, and for ICBs to be asked to cut costs by 50%. Can he reassure us that, as we go into the new financial year, we will not see cuts to frontline services? When I meet the chief executive of Norfolk and Waveney ICB next week, will I hear that cuts to frontline services are being considered as a result of Government budgets?
Wes Streeting
The reports relate to the deficits sent into NHS England ahead of the 2025-26 financial year. Those are completely unaffordable for the NHS and completely unrealistic. Those financial plans are being revised as we speak, which is why leaders have gathered in London today to receive that message and that set of instructions. I am asking frontline leaders to improve services and reform ways of working, and they will have my support in doing that. As for the resources that are going in, I gently point out that the investment that the Chancellor unlocked for the NHS and social care in her Budget dwarfs that which was promised in the Green party’s manifesto.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
I held a public consultation in my constituency on the future of the NHS. Participants were crystal clear that we need to cut bureaucracy and get resources to the frontline. When they talk about the frontline, they mean not just hospitals but people out in the community, and, crucially for my constituency, GP practices. Will the Secretary of State share more about how he intends to make that shift?
Wes Streeting
There are 889 million reasons for GPs to be cheerful. That amount was the allocation for general practice before Christmas, and it has resulted in fruitful negotiations with GP leaders that will deliver the necessary reforms and better access for patients, particularly through online access to modern appointment booking. That is something to which we have become accustomed in every other aspect of our lives, and the NHS should be no different.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
It is an inescapable fact that one top-down reform is being fixed by another—one that will last about two years, according to the statement. Although I wish the reform every success, we must recognise that the experience of the NHS in Wales shows that reform on its own is no guarantee of success. The Secretary of State rightly said that change is hard, and it is inescapable, I am afraid, that while this reform is ongoing, the NHS leadership will be hugely distracted by turf wars, redundancies and the development of new working practices. What steps will he take to prevent that distraction from having a negative effect on frontline services?
Wes Streeting
The Government have come in with an ambitious reform agenda. As we embark on that reform, we are cutting NHS waiting lists—we have done that five months in a row. We are reforming the GP contract—those negotiations have successfully concluded. We are about to conclude community pharmacy, too. We have put in place a transformation team who are experienced frontline leaders with demonstrable track records—particularly in the case of Sir Jim Mackey—of delivering those changed outcomes. There will always be people who say that it is too hard, too difficult or a distraction, but that is how we have ended up with this status quo; that is how the Conservative party presided over the longest waiting lists and the lowest patient satisfaction on record while spending staggering amounts of public money. More money and no reform is not the answer; the lesson of the previous Labour Government is that investment plus reform delivers results. That is what this Labour Government are doing.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and pay tribute to NHS professionals in Harlow, particularly those at the Princess Alexandra hospital, for their incredible hard work every single day. Does he agree that NHS staff, who work incredibly hard, are failed by an overly bureaucratic and fragmented system, and that spiralling staff costs are partly a result of the need for additional agency staff?
Wes Streeting
We absolutely need to reduce the cost of agency staff in the NHS. That costs the taxpayer billions, and that money could be better spent on ensuring that we have the right staff in the right place, on better terms and conditions, and with permanent contracts. Where we do need flexibility, we should drive it through the NHS bank. We are determined to reform the way that works and deliver better staffing, better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I welcome any measures to reduce the bureaucratic overload in the NHS, so I congratulate the Secretary of State on coming forward with his bold plan. We must also take a sledgehammer to the business case process, which frustrates the delivery of services and new buildings for the NHS. Will he consider bringing NHS-owned land into use for new care facilities and step-down hospitals, for example, so that we can free up hospital beds and get people into the care they need at a much lower cost?
Wes Streeting
The hon. Member is absolutely right: the estate is vast, it is underutilised, and we need to sweat our assets more effectively. We also need to reform bureaucratic processes. There are lots of reasons why we need to have tough controls on things such as spending, procurement and value for money, to ensure that there is appropriate and effective use of public money. But businesses do not operate in this way; they are able to counter fraud, waste and poor value for money, and they do it much faster. That is what the NHS needs to do. Across the public sector, we need to use our estate far more effectively to deliver better value and better services for the public.
Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Health Secretary for the announcement he has made. As he rightly says, staff work incredibly hard and deserve our thanks, but we all recognise the huge strain that they and the organisation have been under. The health service is consistently raised as one of the top concerns by residents in my constituency. Can he share how today’s announcement, along with other measures he has previously announced, will build an NHS that is there when people across Cramlington and Killingworth need it?
Wes Streeting
We have to deliver improved services for patients in every part of the country. Her constituency and mine, which is on the London-Essex border, will have different needs, contexts and set-ups, and services may need to be shaped differently in order to meet those needs, but the standards should be consistent, the quality should be good and the safety should be guaranteed at all times. That is a far cry from where we are, and I genuinely think that decisions about services for her constituents will be far better taken much closer to her constituents and her community than here in Whitehall. That is why, as we are delivering month by month and year by year improvements in services for patients in every part of the country, we will also deliver the biggest devolution of power in the history of the national health service.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I really welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, and I am particularly keen that he looks at the multiple layers of sign-off and the bureaucracy that sometimes forgets patients are at the other end of it. Hospitals in England have had to rely on charitable fundraising to buy some of the most cutting-edge radiotherapy machines because of NHS England’s policies and bureaucracy. This year, highly advanced machines such as the CyberKnife, which have treated thousands of NHS cancer patients over the past 10 years, will need upgrading, but NHS England is refusing to include them in this year’s funding because they were all bought by charities. The Secretary of State talked about giving people the tools to do the job. Could he change that policy, so that our hospitals do not have to continue relying on charities for the latest technology?
Wes Streeting
This Government committed in our manifesto to doubling the number of diagnostic scanners, and we will deliver that over the course of this Parliament. NHS charities have a valuable role to play. Philanthropy has a valuable role to play as an additional source of support to the NHS. When public funding is as tight as it is, we need to look at how we can maximise the benefits and the impact of bringing together sources of public investment, private investment, voluntary sector and philanthropic investment to deliver the most bang for the buck. Without knowing the details of the specific case the hon. Lady mentions, I would not want to comment too strongly, except to say that we are committed to doubling diagnostic scanners through public funds, but I am not sure I necessarily share the view that NHS charities do not have a role to play.
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
I know from my experience of working on the NHS frontline how hard it has become over the years to get basic things done. Nurses and matrons spend hours and hours getting basic changes made to their workplace on the frontline. I therefore welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement. Will he ensure that by cutting bureaucracy, we can get more resources to where direct patient care takes place, which will help with the retention of nurses and healthcare assistants and see more patients being treated quicker and getting the care they need?
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some of the best innovation and improvements for patients I have seen has been led by frontline clinical teams that have had great executive leaders behind them, giving them the freedom and the tools to do the job. I hope that, as a result of these reforms, not only will we see the results for patients in the data, but staff and patients will feel the outcome and the difference in their experience of working in or being treated by the NHS.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for his positivity on getting waiting lists down and making the change that is needed. He referred to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. He will know that we in Northern Ireland are having the very same problems that he is sorting out today for England. I know that he is always keen to see the positivity that comes out of this place being shared right across this nation. Will he have discussions with the relevant Northern Ireland Minister, Mike Nesbitt, in relation to health back home, to ensure that we can follow the directives here, to make our health service in Northern Ireland every bit as good as this one will be?
Wes Streeting
I was recently in contact with Mike Nesbitt, offering some of that support and offering to work together to help improve the quality of health services in Northern Ireland, recognising that we have advantages of scale here in England. While recognising the devolution settlement, we want to work closely, just as we are working closely with our friends in the Labour Government in Wales to help them improve their services, and also learning from some of the things that the Welsh NHS does better than England.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
I commend this statement and thank the Secretary of State and his Department for the excellent work they are doing. It is not a moment too soon in Norfolk, because we have failing access to dentistry, it is difficult to get a GP appointment, and both the hospitals that serve my constituents have RAAC—reinforced aerated autoclaved concrete. With that in mind, may I invite the Health Secretary to Norfolk to meet healthcare professionals, to discuss the cumulative impact of so many challenges and to discuss how these reforms can help improve patient care?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question; that was a very kind way of reminding me that I had already made such a commitment and have not followed through, so let me rectify that immediately.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the boldness of his statement. It will take courage to bring about the change that my constituents desperately want, and it is great that Labour is showing that courage. My constituents, particularly those in Killamarsh, really struggle with access to GPs. Could the Secretary of State assure me that this will redirect vital resources from bureaucracy to serving those in need on the frontline?
Wes Streeting
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. That is the objective of what we are doing: to make better use of taxpayers’ money so that we can deliver better care for patients. That is not through bloated central bureaucracy, but through more frontline capability and services.
Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)
I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Of the more than 26 years that I worked in the NHS, six and a half were in NHS England, in its brilliant strategy team and with brilliant people. That is why my heart goes out to so many people who will have insecurity about their jobs following this announcement, even though I believe it to be the right one. This comes after years and years of chopping and changing at NHS Improvement and NHS England, as political leadership has switched from one person to another.
One of the things I am concerned about is the need to ensure that clinical leadership is still heard at the centre. As a nurse, I found it harder to get into NHS England. Doctors find it easier in their career structures. Moving NHS England functions into the Department, and moving off NHS terms and conditions, will make it harder for nurses, allied health professionals and other clinicians working in the NHS. What will my right hon. Friend do to ensure that the clinical voice comes right into the centre of Whitehall, along with the patient voice?
Wes Streeting
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, and I echo what he said about the talents of people at NHS England. I did not take this decision with the Prime Minister lightly. Indeed, it was not my instinct coming into government, but it has been shaped by what I have seen and experienced over the past eight months. Clinical leadership is vital, and that is not just doctors; it is also nurses and other clinical leadership. We have a brilliant chief nursing officer, who remains in place and will be part of that clinical leadership team. I can assure my hon. Friend that we do not want any political interference in what should be decisions for clinicians. What we need is the right political leadership to give that clinical leadership the tools, power and freedom to do the job that only they can do, and that they do best.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
This welcome reform cannot come quickly enough in Warwickshire where councillors, local health campaigners, I and others have been making the case for a doctor-led urgent treatment centre at our local hospital, the Hospital of St Cross, to complement the excellent nurse-led and GP out of hours service, but many of my constituents are concerned about having to travel to the larger hospital in Coventry and the long waiting times they find there. The integrated care board has a review of urgent care under way in Warwickshire, but I still do not know when it will be completed and my constituents want to know when urgent care at our local hospital will be upgraded. Does my right hon. Friend agree that his reforms to NHS England should equip ICBs more effectively to respond to local needs?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his perseverance in bobbing for so long; they should prescribe it on the NHS. I say to my hon. Friend that this is why I strongly believe in local decision making to make sure services are configured and designed to meet the differing needs of local communities while providing the same standard and quality of care in every part of the country. He also described the frustration of people who will often, including in the future, necessarily be living some distance from their general hospitals; that is why we have to shift out of hospital with the NHS being not just the national health service but a neighbourhood health service, with as many services as possible closer to people’s homes and indeed in people’s homes. That is the exciting future that is up for grabs, and that is the future we will realise thanks to the reforms we are making today. I am delighted they have been greeted with such support right across the House.
Victory in Europe and Japan: 80th Anniversaries
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stephanie Peacock)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement about the Government’s plans to mark the 80th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day.
This year, 2025, marks 80 years since the end of the second world war—80 years since victory in Europe on 8 May 1945 and since victory over Japan on 15 August.
“In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this,”
were the words of Winston Churchill when he marked the end of fighting in Europe on VE Day. Huge crowds gathered outside to celebrate, with thousands flocking to Buckingham Palace and spontaneous street parties erupting across the nation. Our late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II joined in the celebrations, a princess at the time, tiptoeing out of the palace with her sister Princess Margaret to join the celebrations on the streets of London. “All of us” she said,
“were swept along by tides of happiness and relief.”
The sacrifices made over the war were great. Without the combined efforts of the allied forces from Britain, the Commonwealth and beyond, the way of life we enjoy today and the values we hold dear would not have been possible. The total number of allied deaths, injuries and captures exceeds millions, and thousands of civilians lost their lives here at home. We are proud to remember the lasting legacy of peace they fought so hard to secure.
Each of us, in every community, has a direct connection to those who served in the second world war. Those service personnel who were called up and asked to risk their lives for our freedoms are not strangers: they are our parents, grandparents and the ancestors of our neighbours. I have always been very proud of my grandad, who served in the RAF, and I know the country feels equally proud of every veteran who risked, and often tragically paid, the ultimate sacrifice as part of that terrible conflict. It is the ancestors of our neighbourhoods and communities who led the effort on the home front, children who were evacuated, women who stepped into essential roles, and of course the Bevin boys, many from Barnsley, who worked down the pit to power the war effort.
As time passes and we approach 80 years between life today and the end of the second world war, the living memory of those who experienced the war fades further into history. This year’s commemorations of VE Day may well be the last where veterans who served their country during the second world war can be in attendance, and my generation will be among the last to have the experience of speaking directly to family members who fought for their country or contributed to the effort at home. It is up to all of us, here today and across the country, to keep their stories alive.
Just as people took to the streets in 1945, it is with great pride that I can announce the measures this Government will take to mark the anniversary in 2025. All of us have memories of how national moments of celebration can bring us together, from the Olympic opening ceremony in London 2012 to the Queen’s jubilee celebrations. These events unite us in our history, our story, and our common values. This year’s anniversary will be no exception. Clement Attlee said in 1943:
“Here in this country, although our political divisions were deep, in time of need we were able to transcend them in the interests of the whole community.”
The events this year will be a timely opportunity to remember those communal values: pulling together, a fighting spirit in the face of adversity, and compassion for our neighbours.
I am delighted to confirm that the Government have announced a programme of activities up and down the UK. Celebrations will start on the early May bank holiday, Monday 5 May, with the Cenotaph draped in flags overnight followed by a military procession and flypast. Street parties will be held across the country, echoing the celebrations of 80 years ago. As part of this, we all know the power of food to bring people together, and we will be working with partners including the Big Lunch to make sure as many parts of the UK as possible can celebrate. We are launching our new initiative, tip top towns, a call to action for community and volunteering groups to come together to get their town or village ready for the day, whether through bunting, litter picking or crocheted bonnets for post boxes.
The next day, iconic buildings will light up in commemoration, and 25,000 ceramic poppies will cascade from the Tower of London, recreating the beautiful installation from 2014. On 7 May there will be a special performance from the Parliament choir, with tickets available to the general public. And on VE Day itself, Thursday 8 May, there will be a service at Westminster Abbey, where we will come together to reflect on the values the second world war generation fought to protect. Celebrations will then conclude with a VE Day concert delivered by the BBC, mirroring the spontaneous celebrations that took place in 1945 and featuring a mix of music, poetry and spoken word. On VJ Day, Friday 15 August, the Royal British Legion will lead the nation in honouring those who fought and died during the war in the far east, with a service at the National Memorial Arboretum.
Veterans will rightly be at the heart of our commemorations and the Government are honoured to be working with the Royal British Legion and other partners to bring this to life. Indeed, to prepare for these events we are launching our “letters to loved ones” initiative to encourage schoolchildren and family members to explore their family histories, looking for old letters and artefacts to help them learn about life during wartime and share them on our website. This will come together at a joint event at the Imperial War Museum North with the National Theatre. To inspire young people to learn about what life was like during wartime Britain, we are announcing “Our Shared Story”, bringing together a range of educational resources, including materials for schools from the Royal British Legion, called “I’ll Remember.” “The Next Morning” will be a brand new National Theatre production written by award-winning screen writer and playwright James Graham, which will focus on the hopes, dreams and ambitions of young people after the second world war. And an immersive augmented reality experience will bring moments from VE Day to life.
We want the whole UK to feel included and involved in VE and VJ Day celebrations, wherever they live and whoever they are. I know events and services are happening across the devolved nations, including community initiatives in support of VE/VJ Day activity. In Wales, a VE Day event will take place at the Senedd on 8 May, and Scotland’s Salute concert, organised by Royal British Legion Scotland and Poppyscotland at Usher Hall in Edinburgh, will take place on 6 May. In Northern Ireland, grants have been made available by a number of councils to fund community initiatives in support of VE/VJ Day activity. Special exhibitions, talks and lectures will take place in museums across VE Week in all parts of the UK.
I thank my counterparts in the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Governments for their support and engagement, which will ensure all parts of the United Kingdom will mark this 80th anniversary. We will be working with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on the “For Evermore Tour”, which will focus on the stories and experiences of Commonwealth soldiers, many of whom continued to fight in the Pacific after the war on the European front had come to an end.
Together, we will make sure the legacies of those who gave their lives will continue to be told for generations to come. I am sure the House will join me in looking forward to these commemorations as an opportunity to come together as a nation, as Britain did 80 years ago, to honour veterans and reflect on the freedom and values that the second world war generation fought so hard to protect. I commend this statement to the House.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her excellent statement and for advance sight of it. As we approach the anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day, we look forward to the whole nation coming together to celebrate the end of the fighting in Europe, the surrender of Japan, victory over our adversaries and the end of the second world war. At times like this, we see Britain at its best, when the whole nation comes together to pay tribute to a generation who made unimaginable sacrifices, often laying down their lives in the service of this country and in the service of good over evil.
Both Victory in Europe Day and Victory over Japan Day should forever be etched in our memories. On VE Day, millions rejoiced across the western world, relieved that the years of conflict and immense hardship were finally coming to an end. Millions of people up and down the country, including our late Queen Elizabeth II, came together to celebrate the end of fighting in Europe. For a long time, Britain stood alone as it stood up to evil, but with support from our allies, we defeated Nazi Germany and liberated Europe from fascism. But while the celebrations on the streets went on, thousands of British, Commonwealth and allied armed forces were still involved in brutal fighting in the far east. We are forever in debt to those brave souls who fought to defend this country.
I pay tribute to all those who are currently serving in our armed forces. From putting themselves in harm’s way to spending time away from their families, their service and sacrifice deserves our deep gratitude. I reflect on those who continue to give their lives for our country, including individuals like Rifleman Joseph Murphy, previously of my constituency, who lost his life in Afghanistan while trying to carry a fallen comrade to safety, and my old school friend, Flight Lieutenant Rakesh Chauhan, an RAF officer who also lost his life in Afghanistan.
One of the hardest decisions we will ever have to make in this House is the decision to send our brave men and women to war. I reflect on the cries of anguish from Rakesh’s parents, which still reverberate within my heart. I also reflect on the difficult decisions that we will have to make, the sacrifices of our brave soldiers, from today and yesteryear, and the pain of the loved ones who are left behind. To all those serving, those who have served and those who have sacrificed, we say thank you.
We also remember the sacrifice of soldiers from the Commonwealth. When I walk down Whitehall, I often take a moment to look at the statue of Field Marshal Sir William Slim, the commander of the Fourteenth Army—the “forgotten Army”. The sacrifice of his troops at crucial battles like Imphal and Kohima can never be forgotten, and I hope events like the commemoration of VJ Day will help to reinforce our remembrance of the sacrifice of British and Commonwealth troops in defeating Japan.
By the end of the second world war, over 2.5 million soldiers from India had volunteered in the fight against evil. These celebrations must mark the heroic contribution of soldiers from modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Africa and Canada. Those troops, who were from Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and other faiths and backgrounds, fought side by side, irrespective of race or religion, to stand up for the values that we all hold dear: freedom, liberty and the rule of law, so I welcome the Minister’s announcement on our shared story. The stories of the second world war should be passed from generation to generation, and our young people must know about the sacrifices that were made in generations past, as they will have to face the challenges of tomorrow.
As we celebrate the conclusion of the second world war, it is right that we focus our minds on Europe’s first major conflict since 1945. It is hard to recall in recent memory a time of such danger and uncertainty. Our world has profoundly changed, and because of the tyranny of Vladimir Putin and his unjustified barbaric invasion of Ukraine, the spectre of war looms over Europe once again. The forces shaping our world—a warmonger in the Kremlin, conflict in the middle east and extremism poisoning young minds—mean that we must value our armed forces today, now more than ever. When we have these celebrations, I hope we can also celebrate peace in Ukraine.
I put on record the Opposition’s wholehearted support for the Government’s plans, as outlined by the Minister. We want the event to be a day of joy, reflection and celebration. Will the Minister join me in encouraging as many people as possible to take the opportunity to reflect on and mark this important anniversary in our history? Will she work with local government and local councils to ensure that those who need support with planning and want to celebrate can do exactly that? With the spectre of war looming over Europe, does she agree that we must value the contribution of our armed forces, now more than ever?
The 80th anniversaries are an opportunity to remember the sacrifice and sheer determination of the people who saw us through that dark period, and it is right that their service is properly commemorated. I pay tribute to organisations like the Royal British Legion and Troop Aid, who serve my constituency, which will help these events to take place. I look forward to working with the Government to ensure that we do right by our brave men and women in the armed forces.
Stephanie Peacock
I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the tone of his response. He is absolutely right that VE Day and VJ Day should be etched on our collective memory. I join him in paying tribute to our armed services personnel who are serving today, and I echo his comments on Ukraine. He is right to pay tribute to the sacrifice of British and Commonwealth soldiers and to outline how young people can get involved. It is important that young people can explore their connections and, of course, we want to encourage as many people to get involved as possible. In response to his specific question, we wrote to local government leads on 5 March. I am very happy to meet with them or any Member of the House to discuss our plans further.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
I whole- heartedly welcome the Minister’s statement. It will be a true day of national unity. Last week, I presented a long overdue official armed forces badge to 100-year-old veteran Eric Radcliffe. Will the Minister thank Eric for his service, and will she inform the House and my constituents in Leigh and Atherton about what is being done to ensure that the stories and experiences of brave veterans like Eric are not lost to time?
Stephanie Peacock
I am sure the whole House will want to join me in thanking and paying tribute to Eric. As I said in my statement, veterans are at the heart of the celebrations. We are working closely with the Royal British Legion to ensure that they are central to the plans, so they can get involved and we can hear their stories.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I associate my party with what is being planned—it is a great idea. I crave the indulgence of the House to mention my parents, both of whom served in the second world war. My father served in the aforementioned Fourteenth Army, led by Bill Slim, and was part of the second wave through Kohima. When I asked him what it was like, all he described to me was the terrible smell of corpses—that is what stayed with him. Completely to my family’s surprise, we discovered that my mother had worked at Bletchley Park. She was shocked and horrified when that came out, and she spluttered, “But I signed the Official Secrets Act.” My mother could never do a crossword, so we do not know how earth she got there. [Laughter.]
When we think about the period before the second world war, the word “appeasement” comes to mind. I am sure that the same word comes to the minds of all of us who have witnessed what has happened in these past months. We pray for peace, but it has to be a peace that works with allies and, above all, it has to be a just peace. The events of 1940 were a very, very close run thing. Had Hitler come across the channel, which he might have done had he not decided to turn east and head towards Russia, we might still be in a German state today—who knows? It was miraculous that we got through and won that war.
I close with a final suggestion to Ministers. There are precious few veterans, all over the UK, who still with us today. I am not sure whether I picked up what the Minister said correctly, but I suggest that we try to collate their memories, perhaps through local government culture departments, and they can be encouraged to write things down or make a recording. It might interesting to publish a book of their reminiscences and memories while they are still here, because from history we learn for the future, and their accounts will be crucial to the generations ahead of us.
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Gentleman paid a heartfelt tribute to his parents. The commemorations I have announced today acknowledge the value of lasting peace and how it can sometimes be difficult to achieve. In response to his suggestion, our “Letters to Loved Ones” encourages people to look into their own family history and to explore what life was like, and the Royal British Legion is leading on remembrance resources that will allow people to hear testimony direct from veterans.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her statement, which will be welcomed by the good and patriotic people of Newcastle-under-Lyme. The bravery, valour and sacrifice of those who defended our shores in the fight against fascism made them the heroes we remember today and every day. The Minister will know—she has touched on this already—that the war was won thanks to the service and commitment of people from across the then empire, now Commonwealth. What discussions has she had with the Commonwealth secretariat in relation to these commemorations to ensure that they pay due tribute to all those who made the ultimate sacrifice?
Stephanie Peacock
My hon. Friend rightly makes the point that we pay tribute to all those who served from the Commonwealth. As part of a stakeholder roundtable, I met the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. We are working in my Department and across Government with the Ministry of Defence, which we meet regularly, and we continue to work together.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
I thank the Government for these excellent plans. The ghosts of men who went to liberate Europe and never came back are all over Wiltshire—the county that I represent part of. Lord Alanbrooke’s diaries are full of the villages and towns that he visited during the war while supporting our troops who were preparing to go and fight in Europe, and Wiltshire was very much the launching pad for Operation Overlord. In addition to the plans that the Minister has set out, may I encourage her to consider ensuring that there is proper, senior representation from a national level in Wiltshire around D-day?
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point on behalf of his constituents. I am very happy to meet him to discuss the events taking place in his constituency and the ways in which the Government can potentially support them.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
The people of Aldershot and Farnborough have contributed in every major conflict for over 100 years, including the second world war. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the contribution of my community in that conflict? Will she also join me in congratulating Councillor Sophie Porter, deputy leader of our council, and Councillor Nadia Martin, our armed forces champion, who are part of our community’s plans to deliver a new beacon in Manor Park in Aldershot, which will be lit for the first time on 8 May? How can people from my community get involved in the national plans?
Stephanie Peacock
Having visited my hon. Friend’s constituency, I know how much it has contributed—Aldershot is of course the home of the British Army. She makes an important point about armed forces champions in councils across the country, who will play an important role. We wrote to local authorities last week, and we are keen to continue to work with them.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I commend the Minister for her statement, which will be truly welcomed by the people of Romford, many of whom served in His Majesty’s and Her Majesty’s armed forces—including my own father, Frederick William Rosindell, who served in the Royal Air Force in the second world war.
A part of the British isles was liberated in May 1945, which was described by Sir Winston Churchill as “our dear Channel Islands”. I did not hear any mention today of the Channel Islands in the Minister’s statement. Some 66,000 British subjects were liberated in Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, and 6,000 members of the British forces landed there as part of Operation Nest Egg—taskforce 135. There is no actual commemoration for those people who liberated those cherished British islands in the English channel. Will she ensure that the reunion of the Channel Islands with the United Kingdom and the wonderful liberation of those islands is also commemorated as part of VE 80 this year?
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Gentleman pays an important tribute to his father, who served in the Royal Air Force. He makes an incredibly important point about the Channel Islands, and I would be really pleased to meet him to discuss that further to see how we can pay a fitting tribute to and commemorate the role that they played.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
I welcome the statement and the work of the Government to remember the greatest of all generations. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Telford and Wrekin council on launching a £50,000 community fund to mark this event? In particular, will she thank parish and town councils, the Royal British Legion, Telford and Wrekin Interfaith Council and veterans’ groups for grabbing the opportunity to apply to that fund? Does she agree that our allies then and our allies now are very welcome to join us in marking this very special occasion?
Stephanie Peacock
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. It is fantastic to hear about the £50,000 community fund. There are lots of ways in which community groups can get involved, whether it be decorating their villages or towns or organising a street party. As I say, we will work with local councils to support local communities to do that.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her statement and for mentioning the Parliament choir, of which I am a trustee, and the concert we are planning as part of Parliament’s celebration of victory and VE 80. I note that though this Chamber was shattered by a Nazi bomb, the scarred arch at the entrance to it remains as a memorial to this House’s defiance throughout the war. I assure the Minister that our programme is a celebration, a commemoration and a noting of the international effort. We will be singing music by not just British composers, but those from the countries we liberated, such as Czechoslovakia and France, those from our allies, such as America, and those from countries we vanquished. We are doing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by J. S. Bach to include Germany in the celebration—the music played regularly by Myra Hess throughout the war at the National Gallery. We will be singing some Russian music too, as a memory that Russia was once our ally. We hope that one day Russia will be our ally again, but certainly under a different leader from the present one.
Stephanie Peacock
I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman was able to outline the important contribution that the Parliament choir will make. He is absolutely right to speak about how it is Parliament’s opportunity to both celebrate and commemorate. My hon. Friend the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism reminds me that we are watched over by the plaques for Members of Parliament who lost their lives during war.
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister and the Government for announcing these fitting tributes to VE and VJ Day and to all those who fought and died for our country. The West Bromwich Royal Naval Association club and the Oldbury Royal British Legion do really important work locally supporting and providing companionship for local veterans. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to them and in encouraging everyone to get involved in the celebrations that they will be organising?
Stephanie Peacock
I am absolutely delighted to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the West Bromwich Royal Naval Association club and the Oldbury Royal British Legion. I know from my experience in my own constituency of Barnsley just how important organisations such as those are at moments like this, and all year round, in supporting veterans.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
I thank the Minister for her statement. The second world war had a profound effect on so many lives. I think of my father’s two brothers, my uncle Anthony and my uncle James—my namesake—who fought in the Pacific in the US navy. Some 50,000 Scots lost their lives in combat, while around 6,000 civilians in Scotland were killed, many in bombing raids. In my own constituency, Peterhead and Fraserburgh were subject to heavy bombing raids, with Fraserburgh suffering the same casualty rate as London during the blitz. Can the Minister assure the House that all Government Departments will work to uphold the legacy of VE Day and look after all our veterans, especially those who find themselves homeless?
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Gentleman rightly outlines Scotland’s huge contribution. I am visiting Edinburgh next week, and I look forward to meeting my counterpart there. He is absolutely right that supporting our veterans today is incredibly important, and we work across Government on that. We are joined in the Gallery by Lord Coaker; we speak very regularly. This falls to not just DCMS and the MOD, but Departments across Government.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
Can I say how very welcome the Government’s announcement on the VE and VJ Day celebrations will be in Dartford? My constituency was very much on the frontline during world war two. The town and surrounding villages were a target for air raids by German bombers that could not reach central London, which often deposited their bomb loads on Dartford. Only today, part of Kirby Road and Hillhouse Road has had to be cordoned off due to a suspected unexploded world war two bomb. I pay tribute to the emergency services, which, even as we speak, are dealing with that situation. Many brave Dartford men and women fought and died in the war, and their memories are still strong. How can people use the VE and VJ Day celebrations to uncover wartime histories in their families?
Stephanie Peacock
My hon. Friend has outlined the huge impact that the war had. I said in my statement that my generation would be the last to grow up with family members and friends who fought or contributed; I remember on my first day at school, or certainly not long after I joined school, my first teacher talking about her experience during an air raid. That was really important to me growing up—it was part of my childhood that people talked about the second world war. That is not the case for today’s generation, which is why we have launched our “Letters to Loved Ones” initiative. That initiative encourages people to explore their family history—to look for letters and artefacts so that they can understand what life was like during wartime. We are encouraging people to share those letters and artefacts on our website, so that we can all learn from them.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
My father served on HMS Fearless, which was sunk, and although he survived, many of his comrades remain buried at sea. Will there be any initiative to address war graves at sea, given that there have been egregious examples of their being plundered for scrap and other things?
Stephanie Peacock
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about war graves at sea, and I would be very happy to meet him or write to him. I will certainly reach out to colleagues in the MOD to talk further about that issue.
Claire Hughes (Bangor Aberconwy) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her statement—it is so important that people across the country have the opportunity to celebrate VE Day and VJ Day. I was really pleased to hear that the UK Government are working with the Welsh Government. How can the Government ensure that veterans are at the heart of our celebrations in constituencies such as mine in north Wales?
Stephanie Peacock
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. Once again, I met the Royal British Legion this week to talk about how veterans can take part. The Royal British Legion has put a call out to all second world war veterans, who can express an interest. There will be activity, not just in London but in our devolved nations and across the country, and we want to ensure that we support veterans to get involved in whatever way they want .
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I congratulate all three Front- Bench spokesmen on their excellent contributions. Does the Minister know whether the BBC will be broadcasting some of the films—not jingoistic, but thoughtful and realistic—that were made and broadcast in cinemas during the war years? Will there be any reminder of the fact that the end of the war, though joyous for the liberated nations, did not mean the same thing for those countries in central and eastern Europe—including Poland, for which we went to war—that were left occupied by the Soviet Union, and that at the start of the cold war, only our alliance with America prevented a further conflict following? I hope some of those lessons will be carried forward in the commemorations that the Minister has outlined.
Stephanie Peacock
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words, and he makes an important point about taking lessons forward. That is something I will take away. He has asked about the BBC; as I mentioned in my statement, the BBC is working with us to deliver the concert on 8 May. Although it will be a commercial decision that I do not want to anticipate, I understand that there will be old films. I also mentioned the augmented reality experience, which will bring to life four well known VE Day photographs so that people can see them in colour and listen to an audio history that will go with them.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her statement. Northern Ireland played a pivotal role in the wartime effort, with 38,000 enlisting and our manufacturing industry shifting to produce warships, tanks, munitions, aircraft parts and so on. In my constituency, Lurgan’s stunning Brownlow castle served as headquarters for American troops and as the planning site for the D-day landings, and even hosted Eisenhower himself. Today, it continues to welcome Government Ministers, including the Secretary of State— I extend that invitation to the Minister. As we approach the 80th anniversary of VE Day, does the Minister agree that Brownlow House should be recognised and promoted nationally for its historic role, and that the Government should deliver on the promise of financial support for the restoration of its family wing, ensuring that its full history can be preserved and shared with the world?
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Lady has rightly outlined the huge contribution that people across Northern Ireland made, and as I outlined in my statement, a number of commemorations are taking place across Northern Ireland. I am due to visit Northern Ireland in April; perhaps I can reach out to the hon. Lady to take her up on her kind invitation. While I am not in a position to commit financial support today, I would be delighted to visit if the diary allows.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
As a veteran myself—albeit of a much later conflict—I welcome the commitment to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day and VJ Day. In my constituency, we had both RAF Bomber Command’s Pathfinder force and the US air force’s 303rd Bomb Group, which flew the first US mission over Nazi-occupied Europe in 1942. The US air force is still at RAF Molesworth today.
My question is about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In November, the Veterans Minister confirmed to me in a written answer that the CWGC’s budget for financial year 2025-26 would not be known until the MOD’s budget had been confirmed after the spending review. There are concerns about the increased level of activity this year, not only due to VE Day and VJ Day celebrations but the CWGC’s work in expanding the Loos cemeteries—the world war one war graves—in northern France. The French are building a new hospital and a canal, and are anticipating exhuming more British soldiers there who will need to be buried, so those cemeteries will need to be expanded. Could the Minister make representations for the CWGC’s budget to be uplifted for next year, so that we can ensure that work is done?
Stephanie Peacock
Of course, the whole House thanks the hon. Gentleman for his service as a veteran. He has outlined the importance of VE Day and VJ Day to his constituency of Huntingdon. His specific question about funding is of course one for the MOD, but I will write to the Department to relay his question.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As a former member of staff for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and commemoration, I welcome the Minister’s statement. Does she agree that the integration of the CWGC’s “For Evermore” project into the VE Day and VJ Day celebrations is a wonderful opportunity to draw the public’s attention to the CWGC’s relatively new online portal, through which descendants of the men and women of the Commonwealth whom it commemorates can now share in perpetuity their stories of the loved ones they lost? The CWGC is therefore connecting burial records with the life stories and photographs of those who are commemorated for future generations.
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Lady makes an important point, which I echo—the “For Evermore” project is a fantastic initiative. As she says, people can reach it online, and I understand that there will also be 150 mobile exhibitions, not just across the UK but across the world.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Our local Noak Bridge and Billericay councils have already signed up to the beacon lighting for VE Day. Will the Minister encourage all local councils across the country, including district, county and parish councils, as well as community groups to come together and do everything they can to make these celebrations something for their whole community? As I have been listening to other hon. Members, I have also been reflecting on our recent Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit to Singapore and Malaysia, during which we visited the Commonwealth war graves there. Perhaps the Minister could write to those organising all the international visits that Parliament is undertaking to ensure that parliamentarians visit war graves around the world as part of the celebrations, particularly this year.
Stephanie Peacock
The right hon. Gentleman makes a number of valid and important points. In my statement, I talked a little bit about how councils and local councillors can get involved. We are keen that street parties can take place, and we hope that local councils can be as flexible as possible when it comes to rules and regulations. We are also launching our new initiative, “Tip Top Towns”, to encourage people to decorate their local areas, whether that is with bunting or letterbox toppers. I should also say that grants are available for local communities for things like street parties and decorations; if they want to access those grants, they can make an application to the National Lottery Community Fund. I will also take the right hon. Gentleman up on his suggestion that I write that letter.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her statement, and for the energy and enthusiasm that she shows on behalf of this great nation. Over the years, my constituency has had a great history of service in the Army, RAF and Royal Navy—in the second world war, in every war since, and indeed during the troubles we have had.
The victory in Europe and the victory in Japan are significant milestones in British history, marking the end of the second world war and Germany’s surrender. It is crucial that we do all we can to remember and celebrate those events, so will the Minister consider allocating additional funds to devolved nations? I say that for a reason: my local council, Ards and North Down, is oversubscribed by a long shot when it comes to applications. We need to ensure that local councils have the capacity to fund the services and events that will celebrate those milestones, so that generations to come will not forget and, importantly, will be able to learn from the past.
I also extend an invitation to the Minister to come to Strangford—there is no better place. If she has the time, I have the time for her.
Stephanie Peacock
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. It is a huge privilege to make this statement on behalf of the Government, and I am proud to be announcing our activity on VE and VJ Days. It is hugely important to our whole United Kingdom, as he rightly says. We are working closely with the devolved nations, and I will certainly reach out to him when I am in Northern Ireland.
Farming
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of farming.
First, I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and place on record my appreciation for the Backbench Business Committee in allowing us this time in the Chamber. It might be helpful first just to explain to the House why I thought this was an important time to have a debate of this sort, and that was before I knew anything about what happened earlier in the week. The Select Committee that I chair has an inquiry titled “The future of farming”, and I had thought that this would be an opportunity for Members and others to shape the course of that debate and to contribute to the work of the inquiry. I still very much hope that is the case. I had also privately hoped that this might be an occasion when we could look beyond some of the changes that have occupied so much of the bandwidth in our political debate since the Budget, including the removal of the basic payment scheme and the changes to inheritance tax, double cab pick-ups and the ringfencing of agricultural budgets for devolved nations.
This debate is an opportunity for us to remind people just what we have got going with British farming, because there are some tremendous positives. We have the farmers here again today in Westminster, demonstrating how much they care about their industry and their community. For those who see this debate, whether in the Gallery or outside, I hope the message will go to them loud and clear that there are those of us in this House who want to see them stick at their efforts, because we are on their side, and it is worth it. Agriculture has one of the most resilient and resourceful workforces to be found anywhere. There is apparently an active debate within Government on how we make work pay and what the value of work is. If anybody wants to see the work ethic in action, they should go and spend a few days on a farm, because that is where they will see it clearer than anything.
We have heard a lot of concern in recent years about the balance to be struck between imported food and food produced domestically. Some of the trade deals were apparently underpinned by a thinking or an agenda that we did not need to produce as much or indeed any of our food domestically, and that we could rely on imports. Then, of course, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and we had a rather rude wake-up call. Since then, we have seen Donald Trump back in the White House talking about trade and tariff changes. Surely those things alone should make us understand the importance of a healthy, home-grown agricultural sector. We should not be offshoring to other parts of the world our standards of animal welfare or environmental protection.
Climate change is so often held up as some sort of stick with which to beat our farmers, but there is a real opportunity. Those areas of the world from which we are importing food are also undergoing the changes that come from climate change, and they will not be as able to produce the food that they would wish to export to us in years to come. In this country, we still have a good temperate climate, which is absolutely suited to that.
Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Farmers in Ely and East Cambridgeshire face the threats of flood and drought, which are made infinitely worse by the climate change that my right hon. Friend is talking about, in addition to all the other challenges that farmers are facing. Does he agree that the Government should invest in rural flood management and water storage, and work with farmers to help them manage water on their farms?
Mr Carmichael
I absolutely do, and my hon. Friend puts it perfectly when she talks about working with farmers. It seems that—this is as true for Governments north of the border as it is for those south of it—so much of what passes for agricultural policy is something that is done to farmers, rather than in partnership with them.
To get to the bright future that I believe farming can have, we have to get past the present. The decision to close the sustainable farming incentive scheme on Tuesday without any notice has provoked predictable and justifiable fury, but doing it with a press release that sought to present it as some sort of triumph added insult to injury. It was almost like a return to the glory days of the Soviet Union, when the Politburo would boast about their advances in meeting their targets in the five-year plan for tractor production. The Government have pulled the rug out from under farmers across England, and that comes on the back of the accelerated removal of the basic payment scheme in the Budget.
I am afraid that the Minister’s defence in the House yesterday around an uncapped budget is not adequate and does not tell the whole story. On 14 January this year, the director general for food, biosecurity and trade told the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that they had had almost 11,000 applications to the SFI, with 7,000 contracts offered. She said:
“If that continues at that scale there may come a point where the budget comes under pressure and we have to consider taking action.”
What has been happening in DEFRA since that time? The permanent secretary was open with the Select Committee. She said that future funding hinged on the spending review. How did we get from that point, where officials seemed to be warning us, to the point we got to on Tuesday, when we saw the scheme closed without notice?
The press notice announcing the closure of the SFI specified the budget as £1.05 billion capped. That is the first time I have been able to discover that that figure has been put into the public domain. Without that transparency, how on earth can farmers and their representatives possibly hope to regulate their behaviour, or know when the money will be running down and when they should be getting their applications in?
The frustration is that for some, this situation did not come out of a clear blue sky. It had been rumoured for some time, and it is well known that land agents, consultants and others had been quietly advising clients to get applications in to beat the deadline and the exhaustion of the pot. That is fine if a farm is big enough to employ a land agent or a consultant, but this is a busy time of year for small family farms, upland farmers and others. Those are the people who deserve and need the assistance more than ever, and they are the ones who have again been left behind.
Tom Bradshaw described DEFRA as “a failing Department”. That is strong language from a man not given to hyperbole, but the Minister would do well to take heed. In that evidence session on 14 January, we heard evidence from the permanent secretary, the director general for food, biosecurity and trade and the deputy director of policy, engagement and strategy. The Committee has not formally expressed an opinion, but it is fair to say from the informal discussions that followed that that session left few of us, if any, with the impression that it was an impressive leadership team entirely in command of their brief.
It was clear that the team understood the target and where they wanted to get to, but it was unclear how they would achieve their targets. We saw that with the various false starts and missteps on the road to the environmental land management schemes, although I acknowledge that much of the responsibility for that lies with Ministers from the previous Government. The permanent secretary called it an iterative process, which to my mind just seems to be another way for people to say that it is okay to get things wrong and to make it up as they go along. I am afraid that in the minds and eyes of farmers across the country, Tuesday’s announcement on the SFI simply reinforces that impression.
The future of farming could be bright, but we have to give farmers the confidence to invest and banks the confidence to lend. The Government have to acknowledge the damage that was done to that confidence by the Budget changes, especially in relation to agricultural property relief and business property relief. Anecdotal evidence has been growing for months. We have seen the closure of agricultural merchants and machinery dealers, and we have seen the number of first registrations of tractors fall. This week, we have the publication of the National Farmers Union’s confidence survey.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent contribution to this debate. Do the points that he is making not underline the issue that is faced in my constituency? Given the value of land, it is being bought up by private equity firms and pension funds for use in industrial tree production or solar farms. Land is lost to food production as a result of such developments.
Mr Carmichael
What the right hon. Gentleman refers to is the consequence of an agricultural policy that, despite aiming to do many worthy and worthwhile things, no longer has the concept of food production at its heart. Across this House and the different parties, we need to rebuild a consensus around getting food production back into agriculture. Climate change mitigation, nature restoration and the rest of it are all important parts of the context, but without food production at the heart of it, we will have the unintended consequences that he outlines.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
I would like to take the right hon. Gentleman back to the point that he was making before he was interrupted. Earlier today, at Business and Trade questions, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) asked what the Government are doing to assist the rural economy, but answer came there none. Is it not the case that the rural economy is interlinked and that if we damage one part of that economy—farming—we damage all of it? On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the supply of goods and equipment to farmers, there will be so many other industries affected if this persecution is allowed to continue.
Mr Carmichael
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It has to be properly understood that farming underpins everything in rural communities. To take the example of agricultural merchants and machinery dealers, these are successful businesspeople. They will be people who are part of the local Rotary club. They will have children in schools. They will be people who take on all sorts of leadership responsibilities within the community. If they cannot make their living in the countryside, we should not expect them just to sit around and wait for something to come along. Of course they will leave and the population will decrease, and we will be in a vicious downward cycle, which is the very opposite of what we need. It is also the very opposite of what a good, well-resourced and valued farming industry can provide for the country as a whole. If we are serious about the mission for growth, as the Government tell us, it has to be growth for everyone. It has to be growth across every sector and every part of the country, including rural areas and farming.
That allows me to come back to the point that I was about to make about the NFU’s confidence survey, which was published just this week. I am afraid it makes grim reading for anybody who cares about the countryside and agriculture. It tells us that 85% of landowners believe that the reforms to APR and BPR will increase their inheritance tax liability. Of those, 32% say they plan to reduce investment to mitigate the increase. The figure increases to 42% for mixed arable and livestock businesses, and to 49% for arable farms. Some 75% of employers expect to be impacted by the increase in employer national insurance contributions, 65% say they expect a reduction in profits because of the increase, and 43% expect to reduce investment to offset the additional costs. Again, that is on top of this week’s changes to the SFI and the basic payment scheme.
I would like to say quite a lot more about other aspects of the Budget, particularly the removal of the ringfence for devolved budgets, but I am reluctant to do so, given the pressure on our time this afternoon and the number of people who want to contribute to the debate. However, I have spoken about those issues before, so those who are interested in my views can refer to my previous contributions.
A small silver lining is to be found in the debate on APR and BPR, because it has forced us to think about the extent to which farming produces such a spectacularly poor return on capital. This is something we have all known for years, but now we have been forced to ask ourselves why it is the case. The hard fact of the matter is that 80 years of Government interference in the food market through agricultural subsidies has had the unintended consequence of keeping farmers poor and making supermarkets rich. I have a ten-minute rule motion next week to encourage the Government to introduce meaningful regulation in the food supply chain, and the Minister and his colleagues have recently spoken about their intention to see farm incomes increase. That is to be welcomed, but it will need a much more comprehensive and coherent strategy than we have seen thus far.
Not all confidence is about finances. We have seen a lot of doubt thrown into every sector of agricultural production in recent months because of the biosecurity threats that face this country. The poultry sector has been hit hard as a consequence of avian influenza. We have seen foot and mouth outbreaks on the continent. We see African swine fever moving across the continent, and it seems likely that we will see bluetongue disease back in this country soon. The vets on the frontline—those in the Animal and Plant Health Agency—do a remarkable job, and we owe them all a debt of gratitude, but so much more needs to be done.
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has heard evidence on this issue from port health authorities, local authorities and the APHA itself. We have asked the Department about the point at which Government software systems were updated to stop animal products coming from Germany, following the identification of a foot and mouth outbreak there. Despite getting answers to our letters, we have still not been told by the Department whether IPAFFS—the import of products, animals, food and feed system—was updated on 10 or 16 January. That is something that the Government should be able to tell us.
I have sympathy for the Government, because they are dealing with a brand new system. Essentially, we should be able to see this as a pressure test on it. If the system did not work perfectly everywhere, let us identify those parts where the pressure escaped. But in order to do that, we need more transparency and more candour from Government Departments. If the Minister can answer that question when he responds to the debate, I will be enormously grateful. If he cannot, it would assist the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee greatly if we were able to get that answer in correspondence.
Time really is against us this afternoon. I would have loved to have the rest of the afternoon, but we do not. I will conclude my remarks, but let me say on behalf of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that I very much hope that Members from across the House will continue to engage with our inquiry, because if food security is national security, as the Prime Minister keeps telling us, then our Committee is one of the most important Committees in this House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. After the next speech, I will be imposing a four-minute time limit, with the exception of Front-Bench speeches.
Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)
As the representative for North Somerset, I, like many in this debate, represent a rural constituency, and thus a great number of farmers, whom I have had the privilege of meeting on a number of occasions since July. The farmers of North Somerset have not shied away from expressing to me their wide range of concerns, going far beyond merely changes to the inheritance tax regime. From those meetings, I have grown increasingly concerned that the outcry over changes to inheritance tax in this House, and the time subsequently given to the topic, have distracted us from the more fundamental questions about the future of farming. That is why I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate, and for making it clear in his application that he wished to debate farming more widely than merely a discussion of the merits of the inheritance tax changes.
I start by recognising that farming is an issue that arouses great passion. We have seen that in our own constituencies during visits in the past six months, and even on the very roads that surround this building with the protests that seem to occur every other week. From conversations with farmers in my constituency, I have quickly gained an appreciation that we are talking about not just a profession, but a lifestyle and often a calling. The constituents I have met are often working the soil that their fathers, their grandfathers and the generations before them worked—in some cases, back even beyond the creation of this Chamber. It is thus understandable why there is a widespread feeling among farmers that too often this place, so distant to so many, does not listen to their needs, does not discuss the issues so pertinent to their livelihoods, and too often imposes its will arbitrarily on them. If we are being fair, I think all of us would admit that this is not a new sentiment since the autumn Budget; this goes back decades and has been directed at all parties in turn.
I want to use my speech to talk about an issue that may not be grabbing the headlines currently, but which, from discussions with farmers in my constituency, I believe constitutes the greatest impediment to a thriving farming sector. A concern I hear again and again, no matter the product a farmer may choose to specialise in, is the excessive power of supermarkets in contract negotiations and the raw deal farmers get as a consequence. Too often, farmers I have spoken to have been subject to a “take it or leave it” negotiating position from these mega-corporations, which are able to dictate price and impose unfair conditions on farmers. Many farmers I have spoken to have had perfectly edible crop rejected due to minor aesthetic defects, excessive delays in payments and indeed, as some have told me, even instances of entirely arbitrary cancellations of orders with no reason given. The fear of retaliation keeps many of these instances from seeing the light of day, and that fear has arisen due to the oligopolistic nature of the supermarket industry.
In the flow from farm to fork, the supermarkets act as a great gatekeeper, siphoning a cut from the passing traffic. While this issue is not unique to the UK—after all, a mere five companies control 80% of the global trade in grain—I think it fair to say that in recent years our constituents have become increasingly aware of the greedflation they see reflected every day in the increases in the prices they pay for food in supermarkets. These increases in prices are not benefiting the hard-working farmers who produce that food, but rather the shareholders, which are often not even based in the UK. Last year alone, we saw the big four supermarkets increase their profits by 97%, while farmers felt the continued squeeze from rising energy prices, rising fertiliser costs and rising labour costs—to name but a few things. If we are serious about improving the lot of farmers in this country, I think this is where we need to focus our attention and our efforts.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that not only do the big six supermarkets not have the interests of farmers at heart, but two of them did not even pay corporation tax last year? It is critical to address that in this wider discussion.
Sadik Al-Hassan
I thank my hon. Friend for a worthy contribution to the debate, and I completely agree. It is fundamental that we fix some of the problems in the supermarket supply chain that are affecting farmers, and that companies pay their fair share to this country.
Farmers continue to feel the squeeze from rising prices, and I think we must strengthen the Groceries Code Adjudicator and give it real teeth, and thus empower farmers to fight back and get the fair deal they deserve. To do this, it will need to be properly resourced, and to that end I suggest that we look again at the levy supermarkets pay, which has not increased since 2018, despite a dramatic rise in prices and profits.
The farmers I have met do not shy away from telling me how much they love their profession, and how sad they are that their children do not see it as a viable future career. If we are to secure the future of farming, we must secure the future workforce, and to do that we must make farming a profitable business. Without fundamentally rebalancing the scales of power between those who grow our food and those who sell it, farming will continue to be an unprofitable venture and an unattractive career for young people. I note that the next review of the Groceries Code Adjudicator will start after this month, and like the farmers of North Somerset, I eagerly await to hear how my hon. Friends in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs intend to ensure that it is fit for the future.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The importance of farming cannot be overstated. It is vital not only for farmers, but for all our communities, our economy and our national security. Farming allows us to keep food prices as low as possible in shops and supermarkets. Farming is the foundation of the rural economy. It supports tens of thousands of jobs not only on farms, but all along the supply chain. There is no national security without the food security that home-grown farming provides.
I have known this for all my years because I grew up on a farm. I saw my family and friends work extremely hard to earn a living—getting up before dawn and sometimes working until after the sun went down—and toiling in difficult conditions away from the limelight in protecting the environment and the countryside, often with little thanks or reward. That is the story of so many family-run farms across our country. It is a story of the Borders, of Scotland and of British businesses up and down the United Kingdom.
The Labour Government are putting the huge benefits that farmers deliver at risk. The future of farming is under threat because of Labour’s family farm tax, which will only compound the damage that the SNP has already done to rural areas across Scotland. Family businesses, which have often been passed down from generation to generation, will be hit hardest by Labour’s vindictive family farm tax. These small family businesses are the lifeblood of entire communities. They support jobs in local shops, the workers who rely on their trade for their own business to survive, and the businesses that maintain their equipment and supply their farms. They are more than family farms; they are community farms, because they benefit everyone in the local area. These facts have been ignored by the SNP during its 18 years in power, and they have already been ignored by Labour within a year of its being in power.
What does the future of farming look like once Labour brings in its family farm tax? The National Farmers Union estimates that hundreds of farms will face collapse because of this tax, and future generations will be denied the chance to farm their family’s land. If their farms do not need to be sold, farmers will still be discouraged from investing in their properties because that would only increase the tax their children will have to pay, and they may feel the need to save cash to cover future tax bills.
What will happen is that Labour will force farmers to sell their family businesses, our countryside will not be maintained to the same standards, the same volumes of high-quality food will not be produced, our environment will suffer as more foreign food has to be imported, other rural businesses in the supply chain will suffer from the decline in investment and ongoing trade, and food prices in shops and supermarkets will rise. In the end, Labour’s family farm tax will not just harm the future of farming, but the future of the economy and the cost of living for us all.
In conclusion, if the Labour Government were serious about supporting farms, they would listen properly to farming communities. They would listen to the single biggest thing that farmers in our country are demanding, which is to scrap the family farm tax, and restore the exemptions of APR and BPR. That is the only way to secure the future of farming. The Government should do the right thing, and scrap the family farm tax.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I have to introduce an immediate three-minute time limit, because I want to get everybody in on this important subject.
Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)
I am grateful to be able to contribute to this debate, given that I have 350 farmers in my constituency of Shrewsbury, which is famous for its food and drink sector, and not least for the nation’s favourite market. Shropshire overall has more farm holdings than any other county in the UK. I am very proud of some of our produce, and in particular I am proud of a new technology that is being used in our area of outstanding natural beauty, which is unlocking hilly and rocky terrain for new productive land use.
I have had the privilege to be invited to visit so many of our farms, and work alongside local support networks such as the Shropshire NFU, the Country Land and Business Association and our farmers support fund locally. Overwhelmingly, my farmers tell me one key message: farming is tough. Profit margins are so tight and they have struggled for years with high input costs—such as energy, fertiliser and animal feed, up by 44% since 2019—while food prices from the big six supermarkets have been decreasing since Brexit, leaving us with some of the lowest prices in Europe, further compounded by terrible trade deals with New Zealand and Australia.
Low productivity in farming is not just an academic description; it is a harsh reality for the 12,000 farm livelihoods that were forced out of business since 2010. To help us comprehend the scale of sectoral collapse under the previous Government: that means that more than 850 farms went under every year of their Government —16 farms closing every week. It has left farming with the lowest profitability of any sector in the UK. This has to change. For the sake of our hard-working farmers, and for the sake of our vital food security, we must revitalise farming with productivity, new technology and sustainability.
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
Given what the hon. Lady just said about the number of farm holdings, would she regard it as a sign of failure of this Government if that number is lower at the time of the next election?
Julia Buckley
I have just explained that it was 12,000 lower since the start of the previous Government, so by the hon. Gentleman’s own admission, presumably that is a catastrophic failure.
So let us support our farmers to deliver their high-quality food to high environmental and welfare standards into more markets, such as by the Government’s new procurement policy—
Claire Hughes (Bangor Aberconwy) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that given some of the challenges that we have discussed today, university research farms like Henfaes in my constituency will play a vital role in the future of farming? Does she welcome some of the grants announced by the Secretary of State for farming innovation and technology?
Julia Buckley
That is most interesting. That is exactly the direction of travel—to make farming more productive and profitable, we must embrace innovation.
Let us take support measures, such as the Government’s new procurement policy to “back British farming” from DEFRA, which will promise that 50% of public-funded catering must come from local farms that meet our high welfare standards. That means that every meal in every hospital, on every Army camp and in every prison will be supplied with at least 50% local produce from British farmers. I cannot wait to see the impact that will have at Royal Shrewsbury hospital and Nesscliffe Army camp in my constituency.
I am sure that Opposition Members have questions about yesterday, because following yesterday’s announcement from DEFRA, several farmers got in touch with me with questions about the proposed changes to the SFI schemes. I was glad to reassure any farmer who has applied that their grant will be forthcoming, as all submissions will be honoured from the budget, which has now been completely maximised—in contrast to last year, when the previous Government were unable to distribute the funds to desperate farmers, wasting £350 million. Under this Government, the entire budget has been committed three weeks before the end of the financial year, helping over 57,000 farmers. Ministers have clearly set out their approach, which will take on board feedback from farmers on the complexity and inconsistency of the previous schemes, and aim to provide a more carefully managed programme.
The new, improved SFI scheme will reopen this summer with a larger budget and a more targeted approach, delivered in a fair and more orderly way, ensuring value for money for taxpayers and investing in food production and nature recovery projects.
In my professional career before coming to this place, I worked for over 20 years to design, develop and deliver EU grant funding schemes such as these. In my professional experience, the most impactful schemes are those with a robust strategic objective, that are multi-annual in nature and take regular opportunities to review and improve technical specifications with feedback from applicants. I welcome this review and launch—
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this afternoon’s debate. I want to make three points.
Salisbury, my rural constituency, has farming at its heart. The universal feedback that we have had from farmers is that since this Government have come in they have been very, very disappointed. The changes to the APR and BPR have catastrophic implications for succession planning, and despite making really sensible suggestions the NFU has been completely rebuffed. Farmers are in absolute despair. That came before we had all the changes to national insurance and to the national living wage. The overall context for operating small businesses, which is what farms are, has been transformed. The level of exposure that farmers feel to these combined pressures is enormous.
Then yesterday we had the announcement of the suspension of the SFI—a key part of the environmental land management scheme. A number of farmers rang me up yesterday and said, “This is the end. What are we going to do?” One farmer I spoke to yesterday afternoon, who operates 27 farms, works with an agent to prepare documents to apply for grants, but those had not quite gone in, so he now faces grave uncertainty—a real black hole. This needs to be addressed urgently. The combined effect of the changes in the Budget and last night’s announcement has had a massive impact on the industry across the United Kingdom.
I want to use my remaining time to focus on where we need to go now. This is a debate about the future of farming, after all. I recognise that, post Brexit, we need serious thinking and leadership about reconciling food production incentives, environmental management and getting in place the right arrangements for trade. Transitioning from where we were before 2016 is not straightforward. But I urge the Minister to put some defined objectives into the public domain and make his officials accountable for delivering on them. That would help the Government to set a clear road map going forward and help famers know what food security really means from his perspective.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
Farming is the lifeblood of our local communities in my constituency. I recognise that farmers are often the guardians of the countryside and our natural heritage—farmers like Richard Evans in my constituency, a brilliant sheep farmer at Larling whom I met earlier this year and a leading voice in the Breckland Farmers Wildlife Network. That network is a farmer-led group collaborating to support farming and the environment. With 52 members covering more than 44,000 hectares of farmland in the Brecks, they recognise not only that they are custodians of a very special area for agriculture and food production, but that it is home to a huge range of species, many of which are found nowhere else in the UK.
On my visit with Richard, I was joined by representatives from Norfolk Rivers Trust to talk about how we can work together to support our rivers locally, including rare chalk streams, because farming has a significant impact on our waterways. However, for farmers such as Richard to continue their excellent work, we must move towards a future for farming that prioritises such farms. We cannot allow megafarms to dominate the industry and the landscape. A Compassion in World Farming study showed that there are more than 1,000 large intensive pig and poultry farms across the UK, a 20% increase since 2016. Norfolk has, sadly, been dubbed the megafarm capital of Europe. Residents in my constituency are very concerned about the increasing number of intensive farms and how they are contributing to biodiversity loss, as well as climate change, and air and water pollution. Very often such farming practices adversely affect people living nearby, especially because of the health hazard posed by ammonia.
We have a further proposed megafarm to be built in my constituency at Methwold. If approved on 3 April, it would become one of the largest in Europe. That application has received over 15,000 objections, including from all local parish councils nearby, as well as the World Wide Fund for Nature and Compassion in World Farming. If the council were to make that decision early next month, it would be a disaster. As I have said: no ifs, no buts, it cannot be allowed to proceed. This is not farming, this is industrialisation.
I also want to make reference to our county farms estate in Norfolk, which I am particularly passionate about. Once a mighty holding of more than 30,000 acres, it is now sitting at around 16,000 acres, which still makes it one of the largest council-owned farming estates in the country. I recently met Richard and Danielle Gott at their farm in Nordelph in my constituency, who have successfully farmed the land there for 26 years. We need to support farmers like Richard and Danielle and the next generation of farmers, such as their daughters Emma and Jessica. It is highly likely that with devolution the existing governance model will go. We need to give priority to entry-level farming as we move toward farming’s future.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing the debate.
“The future of farming” seems an apt title for this debate, given the grave concerns held by the farming community the length and breadth of Scotland and beyond over the Government’s proposed tax reforms to APR and BPR, and the inheritance tax coming in next year. The arguments against the proposals have been well rehearsed in this place. They have been put to Ministers time and time again, here and in other forums. A consistent theme, however, seems to be their complete inability to listen to, hear and act on those concerns. I do not blame the Minister in his place today; I blame Treasury officials. I think the Minister is an honourable man who is trying to do a good job for farmers, but I do not think he is being listened to by others. Even on the Government Benches, I understand that around 40 MPs representing rural areas have made their concerns known to the Treasury, and are calling for the £1 million threshold to be raised to protect smaller family farms, and for an amnesty for older farmers and those with serious health problems. That seems a reasoned and reasonable approach to me. But as I say, I do not blame the Minister for any of those things.
Research by farming associations has already called into question the accuracy of the data from which the £1 million threshold was chosen. Surely it is not outwith the wit of Treasury officials to return to their numbers and think again. But rather than back the Treasury into a corner here, let me offer the Government a very sensible and reasonable way out of this impasse.
Farming representatives, including NFU Scotland, which I met recently, are suggesting a clawback mechanism as an alternative approach to generating the required tax revenue. The mechanism would allow 100% relief on qualifying assets, but suggests charging IHT on all those assets if subsequently sold by the beneficiary within an agreed timeframe—they suggest seven years. The NFU says the proposal will meet the UK Government’s aims of raising revenue; avoid penalising elderly farm owners and risking breaking up family farms; prevent stifling investment in food production and environmental stewardship; and take away the incentive to use APR and BPR solely as a way of avoiding tax liabilities. It would also target individuals and corporations who are gaming the tax system by using the land to shelter from their liabilities. The Government do not have to cave in on this—there is time. They should simply agree to enter a new round of consultation aimed at honing their proposals, engage with industry representatives and consider how there might be some compromise.
Finally, I want to finish by referencing a discussion I had with the Minister recently on the need to kick-start the trade in seed potatoes, which has been so damaged by Brexit. The Government are making positive moves in the reset with the European Union. I hope the issue will be high on their priority list, to revive Scotland’s important seed potato industry.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)
I want to start my contribution today by picking up where I left off this morning in my question to the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders). At the heart of the problem facing farming and profitability is an unfair supply chain. As we heard earlier, the big six supermarkets are in effect acting like a cartel, forcing unfair prices on farmers and pursuing unfair practices towards family farms. Last year alone, the big six made a combined pre-tax profit of more than £5 billion. Of those big six, two—Asda and Morrisons —did not pay a penny of corporation tax.
As we know, supermarkets are price setters seeking maximum profits to drive down on the cost they are prepared to pay for home-grown, quality produce. At the same time, the costs of running a farm continue to rise, with soaring fuel, fertiliser and equipment prices. In a world where farmers and producers are struggling to make a living, and are relying on Government grants and subsidies so that they can survive from one year to the next, that cannot be seen to be fair or right.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter
I will continue, if I may.
We need to look properly, and with real scrutiny, at the supermarkets. Those practices need to change. We cannot allow farmers to bear the brunt of this system, while others in the supply chain benefit so disproportionately.
I want to address the issue of APR. Many, many farmers have raised their concerns with me directly. I have listened to those concerns in Suffolk Coastal and raised them directly with the Treasury and DEFRA. I remain committed to continuing to advocate for farmers in Suffolk Coastal over the months ahead.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter
I will continue.
However, it is important to reiterate that while the changes to APR are significant, they are not the root problem facing the farming industry. If farming was profitable, farmers would be less worried about paying a new tax bill. The focus must be on making farming more profitable. Without profitability, tax reliefs or Government support will provide only limited help. That includes ensuring fair prices for quality produce, protecting farmers from unfair competition and addressing rising costs, from fuel to fertilisers to equipment. I do not doubt that that will be a tough battle to fight when society often prioritises price over quality—people will happily spend more on a cappuccino than they will on a locally produced chicken—but if we want to protect British farming, we must change our approach.
The future of farming is essential, not only for the economy but for the very fabric of rural society itself. We must continue to put farmers first, ensuring they continue to feed and sustain us for generations to come.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I rise as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture, the deputy Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, and a former Minister for agritech and UK trade envoy. I am also from a farming family and I have no interests to declare other than a deep interest in my family’s ability to continue farming their farm in Suffolk.
Most of all, I am the Member of Parliament for Mid Norfolk, a fabulously rural constituency. I do not need to tell the Minister that, because he had the privilege of being the Labour party’s parliamentary candidate there three times. He knows what the House needs to know, which is that it is magnificently rural, with 130 villages and three towns. It is the absolute engine room of food, farming and food processing. From Banham Poultry to Cranswick, right through to the Goat Shed, Rosie and Alex Begg growing blackcurrants for Ribena, Carrick Farms, which supplies all the food to Darbys pub, and Novo Farina developing gluten-free flour, it is an engine of some of the most exciting activities and technologies in UK agriculture. It is that engine because for 50 or 60 years it has enjoyed a relatively stable framework of support. But history shows us, friends and colleagues, that if agriculture does not have that support, it is vulnerable. We had agricultural depressions at the end of the 19th century, in the 1920s and 1930s, and in the 1940s and 1950s.
We are at a most extraordinary moment for UK agriculture. We could be incubating a fabulous agritech industry. Across the world, there is a wall of money to invest in agricultural science and research. The world has to double food production in the next 25 years on the same land area, with half as much water and energy. We are home to 10 of the world’s top 30 research institutes—we are an engine room for those technologies. I say to the Minister that current policy will, overnight, massively reduce the market in the UK for those innovations. It will remove a great industry which is beginning to get off its feet and tackle the opportunity it has to be a global engine of innovation. If we are not careful, we will sleepwalk into it, despite the warnings of the pandemic, global supply chain shocks, the Ukraine war and now President Trump’s trade wars, as others have said. In the interests of food security, affordability and sustainability, we need to support our UK agricultural industry and show the world how to deliver more from less. That is why the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture, of which I am chair, has called for a tyre-screeching 180° U-turn to support the sustainable intensification of agricultural productivity. We need to produce more.
I can tell the Minister that in my beloved constituency, which he knows well, with the impact of the farm tax, the small business attack, the abolition of SFI and the massive subsidies for solar farms, it is beginning to look as though the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, with its 50% increase in housing targets, are trying to get farmers off the land to make way for solar farms and badly designed housing. This is a disaster for one of our most exciting industries—UK agritech—and I beg the Minister to take a stand for it.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
It is an honour to speak in this debate as a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I thank our Chair, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), for securing the debate.
The future of farming is not simply about keeping our fields green, livestock sheds full or supermarket shelves stocked, but about securing the future of our rural communities, protecting the environment and supporting the farmers who are the backbone of our nation’s food system. This Government inherited underspent farming schemes, resulting in hundreds of millions of pounds not reaching farmers’ pockets. A record 50,000 farms now use these schemes, and more money than ever before is being spent through the sustainable farming incentive and countryside stewardship.
The recent publication of the land use framework set out the changes and complementary use of land needed to achieve our environmental targets. Alongside support for the environmental land management schemes, the framework will help to drive improvements on food security, biodiversity, carbon emissions, water and air quality, and flood resilience. The Scottish land use strategy has shown that we also need clear policies to give certainty on how to deal with directly competing interests on land.
As we know, England is in the midst of a transition. If we are to make this transition successful, we must ensure that farmers are supported in this shift, ensuring new schemes are accessible, flexible and equitable. I welcome the progress the Government have made on freeing up bottlenecks in applications; as the MP for most of the Cannock Chase national landscape, I also welcome the extension of the farming in protected landscapes programme.
We know that any sector that does not have certainty in its workforce lacks certainty for the future. I commend the strides the Government have made on expanding apprenticeships across the UK, but our agricultural and land management sectors need to share in the benefits of that. Figures show that only 5% of the 285,000 people working in agriculture are under 35, and, with the twin pressures of climate change and global food insecurity, the next generation of farmers need to be equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Automation is another way of addressing these challenges, but the harsh reality is that smaller farms cannot shoulder the burden of the risk of investing in expensive new tech. There is good work being done on this, with 20 and 25-year agreements being signed with farmers to unlock long-term investment, which I hope will become the new normal. Without that certainty, farmers will not be able to do everything we want to see.
Lastly, I want to raise the long-term plight of abattoirs. It is not frequently spoken about, but while there were 2,500 abattoirs in the 1970s, there are now just 200, making it far harder for many farmers to keep their supply chains small and local, from farm to fork.
To bring my remarks to a conclusion, the reality is that for many, many years, our farmers have been worried about their future and the future of their sector. We need to ensure they feel confident that their concerns are being heard and addressed so that we and our farmers can achieve the world-leading ambitions we have for our agricultural sector.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
Farming is the backbone of this country, not only providing us with the food we need to feed our families, but acting as a steward of the land that we hold dear. Farmers do so much more than grow our food: they protect the countryside, create jobs and contribute immensely to rural economies.
My constituency may not have as large a farming population as some others, but believe you me, Madam Deputy Speaker: the farmers we do have are vital to the national picture, as the shadow Farming Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), recognised during his recent visit to some of my local farmers. Their efforts support local communities, provide employment and contribute to food security, and I pay tribute to each and every one of them. I also pay tribute to the farmers who took valuable time off the land today to bring their tractors down to Parliament and support us here in this debate. I suspect there may even be some sitting in the Gallery upstairs.
Changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief from April 2026 will have a profound consequence for family farms, including those in my constituency. The removal of the 100% relief above the first £1 million in agricultural and business property could mean farmers are forced to pay inheritance tax at 20% on the value of their property above the threshold, which will push many of them out of business.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the changes to agricultural property relief are completely contrary to what the Prime Minister outlined in his initial speech on Downing Street, where he said he wanted the Government to tread more lightly on people’s lives? Does she also agree that this policy is a false economy and that it ultimately risks concentrating farming assets in the hands of very few, which will make the market much worse for British consumers, society and food security?
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. I know he speaks and stands up for his local farmers very powerfully. Far from treading lightly, this Government are trampling over our farmers. This policy will lead to the break-up of long-established farms, with land being sold off to meet tax liabilities, which will, I fear, lead to the concreting over of our beautiful countryside.
Another topic that demands our attention is the use of agricultural land for the siting of battery energy storage systems. While I am fully supportive of the move to renewable energy, just as with solar farms, we must ensure that the siting of BESS, which are often large in scale, is done with care and consideration. In my constituency, a planning inspector has approved one of these battery storage facilities on green-belt agricultural land at Chapel Lane in Pheasey Park Farm ward against the will of the local council and the community.
Our land is finite, and we must balance the need for renewable energy with the need to safeguard land for agricultural use and food production. I urge the Government to take a more balanced approach to land use, ensuring that agricultural land remains available for farming and food production. I fear that the changes to the national planning policy framework and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will simply drive a coach and horses through our arable and green-belt land, disrespecting the views of local residents and risking our food security.
We can no longer take food security for granted. The war in Ukraine, global inflation, supply chain disruptions and extreme weather events are all contributing to rising food prices and shortages in some areas. Here in the UK, we currently produce just 61% of the food we need. We can no longer be complacent. It is time to stand up for our farmers. Just this week, the Government announced the closure of the SFI scheme—another kick to our farmers, who are leading the way on change.
Let me conclude—I could say more, and I would love to say more—by saying that farming is not just a job, but a way of life. No farmers means no food. It is time this Government axed the family farm tax.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
The economic fundamentals of farming must be a priority, and I call on the Government to focus on the key determinants of farm operating profitability. There are many drivers of what makes a British farm successful, but structural pressures—buyer oligopolies, price input volatility, international trade challenges, differentials in welfare and environmental standards and even our consumer culture—continue to threaten their viability. As a result, we have seen increasing consolidation, with many farmers shifting to larger, more arable-focused operations.
When it comes to trade, livestock farming has been hit particularly hard. The deeply flawed trade deal with New Zealand was a hammer blow to sheep farmers and our great British land industry, undermining domestic producers and putting British farmers at a competitive disadvantage.
Then there are the standards themselves. Our farmers operate to world-leading standards of animal welfare, food safety and environmental sustainability—standards of which we are rightly proud. Yet there is little recognition of the additional costs that those standards impose. Instead, we allow products from other countries with lower standards to flood our shelves, undercutting the British farmers who are doing the right thing. If we value high-quality British food, we must ensure that our policies reflect that through, for example, fairer trade deals, better labelling, financial support that compensates for those higher costs and being honest about the onshoring of emissions, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) outlined at the start of the debate.
Some farms are more profitable than others not just because of their scale and type of agriculture, but because of their operating environment—an operating environment that the Government play a crucial role in shaping. Access to targeted support for innovation and environmental land management can empower farms to thrive, yet, too often, the support fails to reach the farms that need it the most.
I welcome this Government’s successful deployment of SFI, which is something that the previous Government failed to do, but immediate visibility is needed for farms looking to implement the next wave of those initiatives. The power of supermarkets must also be addressed to ensure that farmers receive a fair return. Again, I must say that this is a massive cultural challenge and a shift that needs to take place regarding the value that we place on our food.
Consider, too, the geographical disparities. Farmers in Cornwall, for example, face unique challenges: smaller fields, which take great, often generational knowledge to manage; higher transportation costs; and greater exposure to extreme weather. Yet they receive the same market prices as larger, lowland farms with fewer overheads. Government policy must acknowledge that uneven playing field and ensure that support reaches those most challenging farms and geographies, which are essential to navigating our rural landscapes such as that in Cornwall.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this important debate.
I wish to follow on from what the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) said about trade deals. We know that trade deals, particularly the potential ones with the US, threaten to undermine our high animal welfare standards that we have spent years working so hard to establish. If we allow products that are produced to lower standards—such as hormone-treated beef or chlorine-washed chicken—to become the norm, that will undercut our farmers. This is not about protectionism, but about fairness. Not only are vets and farmers proud of our high animal welfare standards, but the British public are, too. We should not in any way be looking to compromise those.
The UK has already made significant strides in reducing antibiotic use in livestock without compromising animal welfare. Our veterinary and farming sectors have worked together to promote the responsible use of antibiotics. We are setting an example for the rest of the world to follow.
As the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance report in 2024 highlighted, sales and usage of antibiotics in food-producing animals remain low. In fact, the past 10 years has seen a 59% decrease in the use of antibiotics in animals and livestock. Long-term antimicrobial resistance surveillance carried out by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate shows that multi-drug resistance in animals is at its lowest level in a decade. Such encouraging statistics are a product of years of work and dedication between scientists and the farming community. This is a huge public health issue, and we should be ensuring that trade deals do not force our farmers to compete with countries that do not have the same judicious use of antibiotics as we do.
On Saturday, I visited the NFU in Hampshire at Ben Robinson’s farm where, like many lowland farmers, they are about to start lambing. This is the hardest time of the year for sheep farms—I grew up on a sheep farm. Those farmers will be working all day and all night. In farming, the amount of effort, time and work that farmers put in does not always result in profit, because so many factors are out of their control—international disease outbreaks, geopolitical events that put up fertiliser prices, poor weather, changing Government policy, and potential trade deals. I pay tribute to the Farming Community Network, which works so hard to support the mental health of farmers.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
On Friday, I found myself more than 1,000 metres under the North sea. I will explain why in just a moment, but before I do so, let me acknowledge the hard work that our farmers do across the country and acknowledge a point that hon. Members across the House have made, which is that, in recent years, farmers across Britain have faced a serious squeeze.
I have met local farmers and the NFU in my constituency and they put that squeeze down to a range of reasons, ranging from poor trade deals to poor policy. But one factor that I wish to focus on is the soaring cost of fertiliser, which is driven by global supply chain shocks, price volatility and an over-reliance on imports. These pressures are not just hitting farmers in their pockets, but threatening our food security and the resilience of our agricultural sector. But deep underground in North Yorkshire, there lies a potential solution.
Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting the ICL Boulby facility in my constituency, which produces the crop nutrient fertiliser, polyhalite, and exports it around the world. Polyhalite contains four essential nutrients—potassium, calcium, magnesium and sulphur—which are vital for plant growth. Not only that, but it is super low carbon. It requires minimal processing and zero chemical additives, meaning that it leads to healthier, more resilient soils. In fact, studies have shown that it can boost crop yields by 3% to 5% compared with standard fertilisers.
If we are serious about supporting British agriculture, we must back British solutions. That means a clear strategy on fertiliser security, investment in research, and support for innovation that reduces costs for farmers while strengthening our food system.
The ICL Boulby facility is currently the only operational polyhalite mine in the world, although a second—the landmark Anglo American Woodsmith project, also in North Yorkshire—is on its way and has a strong future ahead. I have been down both facilities and am struck by their ingenuity. Above, the wild, unbroken heather of the North York moors and the beauty of the North sea coastline are untouched by the operations in the depths of the earth below. I pay tribute to those skilled teams working underground in tough conditions to produce these exports, which are boosting our food security.
Britain cannot afford to be at the mercy of volatile global markets when we have the resources, the expertise and the ambition to build a more resilient, productive and sustainable farming sector right here at home. It is clear that polyhalite can play a significant role in supporting the Government’s goal to strengthen British food security. I hope the Minister will agree to meet me and representatives of the sector to discuss the challenges they face and the value of this export. I urge the Government to recognise the potential of polyhalite to support farmers in adopting British-made, British-mined solutions. Doing so would unlock further private investment, safeguard jobs and secure the UK’s position as a global leader in sustainable fertiliser production.
Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)
Decisions made in London are risking the future of farming in Wales. Changing the funding model for agriculture from one that is needs-based to one based on the Barnett formula could lead to a cut in funding for Welsh farming of about 40%. That is despite Wales having a higher proportion of farmers than other parts of the UK. The changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief will have a dramatic impact on the future of farming.
How can the UK Government justify those changes when they have no concrete data on their impact in Wales? That is why we need a Wales-specific impact assessment. It is crucial that the Government have accurate data to understand the real impact of the changes. How does this help economic growth in Wales? Ninety per cent of our land area is given over to farming. In 2020, gross agriculture output was worth £1.7 billion to the economy. The wider food foundation sector in Wales—businesses that produce, process, manufacture and wholesale food and drinks goods—turned over £9.3 billion in 2023, never mind the wider supply chain of agricultural mechanics, vets and animal feed producers.
Why are the UK Government undermining rather than supporting this industry and its growth potential? A Government who do not understand the agricultural economy risk the future of rural communities, too. Westminster policies that do not consider the particularities of the Welsh agriculture industry, in which 43% speak Welsh, trample over the future that we fought so hard for in Wales. Threatening the future of agricultural and food production further threatens the ability of families and young people to stay and work in their communities.
It is crucial that good-quality, fruitful farmland continues to be used for food security as land demand for non-agricultural purposes increases. The transfer of Welsh land to companies that do not have to worry about inheritance taxes is likely, if not inevitable. In my constituency of Ynys Môn, we are battling to keep valuable, fertile land away from developers’ plans for 3,700 acres of solar farm, which would have a negative impact on the local economy. This land has sustained us for generations in Ynys Môn, across Wales and further afield. There is a reason we are named Môn Mam Cymru—Môn, the mother of Wales.
Undermining Welsh farmers and agricultural producers risks missing a critical opportunity to shorten our food supply chains and improve our resilience. The Labour UK Government’s decisions show a significant lack of understanding of the importance of farming in Wales. Their inability to distinguish between tax-avoiding millionaires and corporations and hard-working people making a living from the land speaks volumes. The UK Government made the wrong decision. Now is the time to show that they truly support hard-working people, by listening to our farmers and reversing these ill-thought-out plans.
Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
I welcome this timely debate on the future of farming, in the week in which the SFI rug was pulled out from underneath farmers.
Surely the future of farming has to be young farmers. I have been in touch with some young farmers in my constituency to ask what they think I should talk about in this debate. I was sent a screenshot by Beth, who was partway through her SFI application. It said, “Thank you for doing your application. When you are ready, submit it. If we need to close applications, we will give you six weeks’ notice. We will publicise this on gov.uk and we will email you.” If that is not a broken promise, I do not know what is.
Louise, another farmer in my constituency, said that she was
“angry, disappointed, upset and exasperated…we have followed the Government’s advice to the letter, and been kicked in the teeth”.
Another farmer said:
“Pulling SFI is absolutely criminal—just more short-term thinking that forces us into decisions we don’t want to make.”
Ben said:
“yet another nail in the coffin for…family farms…with no warning environmental projects that had been in planning for months on our farm will have to be stopped….We cannot plan for the future when the rules keep changing.”
The future of farming needs to be S, F and I: S for sustainable, F for fair and I for in partnership.
Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
I think the hon. Member will agree that the shutting down of the SFI with no notice on Tuesday night is an awful situation. DEFRA has been either disorganised or sneaky, but either way it diminishes the trust of our farming communities in the Government.
Ellie Chowns
I could not agree more. This has diminished trust. It is vital to rebuild that trust because we need that sustainable, fair and in-partnership future for farming. It needs to be sustainable in environmental terms— we need to recognise the reality of the climate crisis and the nature crisis. We need to support our farmers to make the vital transition to nature-friendly farming. Farmers in North Herefordshire are at the forefront of that, but they need the Government to back them, not knock them off their feet with policy changes with zero notice.
We need farming to be sustainable environmentally, and sustainable economically. It is not acceptable that the rates of return on farming are so low for so many. The Government have a crucial role to play in tackling that. The Green party has long called for a doubling of the nature-friendly farming budget, because of all the extra benefits that farming provides socially, economically and environmentally. We need the Government to step up on that.
Farming needs to be fair, both internationally and locally. Internationally, our farmers must not be undercut by trade deals that let in products that undermine our animal welfare and environmental standards. We need to ensure that the Government stand firm on that. Farming needs to be fair locally, because access to farming support schemes has not been equal. It is hard for many farmers to access those schemes. Whatever replaces the SFI, I hope that the Minister will ensure that farmers have equal access, and the support that they need to access those schemes. [Interruption.] I see that the Minister is nodding.
Finally, the future of farming has to happen in partnership with farmers themselves—their voices have to be heard—and with the rest of Government. We need a fully joined-up approach to land use, food, farming and sustainability. It also needs to happen in partnership with nature, because without a thriving natural world, there is no sustainable future for farming.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I have often spoken about my deep connection to farming; it is in my DNA. I love the rural way of life and for 40 years, I have been part of a local farming community that values hard work, resilience and responsibility for the land. My granda always said,
“If the farmer isn’t doing well in this country, no one is.”
He is not a prophet, nor does he hold any of the grand titles or credentials so often revered in this place. What he is, is a farmer—one who understands all too well that agriculture is the cornerstone of our economy, and that when that cornerstone is broken, removed or chipped away at, the consequences are dire: our economy weakens, our rural communities suffer and our food security is placed at risk.
Trust in politics is hard-earned but easily broken, so when our farming community heard promises from the now Prime Minister at the National Farmers Union conference in 2023, they could have been forgiven for placing a certain degree of trust in this Government. Farmers could relate to the Prime Minister when he said,
“losing a farm is not like losing any other business—it can’t come back…You deserve better”.
He went on to say,
“We can’t have farmers struggling”
and he claimed that farmers
“deserve a government that listens”.
He talked about stability and certainty. Well, those words ring hollow, do they not?
The October Budget was a defining moment in this Parliament’s history, delivering the biggest hammer blow to farmers in a generation. The family farm tax grab, as it is now known, is an existential threat to the future of farming, and those who survive that blow will be strangled by the Government’s other disastrous policies. Let us consider the closure of the sustainable farming incentive this week and a new tax on double-cab pick-ups, which are a lifeline vehicle for many farmers. We can add to those a tax increase on fertilisers, a hike in national insurance contributions, cuts to business property relief and an ever-growing burden of environmental rules, regulations and requirements. To add insult to injury, while the Government speak about those things being needed to fill the black hole and rebalance the books, £536 million is going in UK aid to foreign farmers.
What good is so-called environmental progress if we end up importing more food from abroad—food produced to lower standards and with a far greater carbon footprint than what we can grow here at home?
This debate is rightly focused on the future of farming, but without urgent action there will be no future for many of our farming families. For generations, they have fed the nation and been stewards of our land, yet today they face relentless threats, and none more so than the family farm tax. I implore those across the way, on the Government Benches, who represent rural constituencies to rise up and fight back for UK farming, fight back for their rural constituents, and fight back for the men and women who feed us and for the circular economy that depends on farming.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Our farmers find themselves in an increasingly precarious position. Politically, we see a drip-drip of punishing legislation eroding our agricultural sector. The family farms tax has seen regular protests here in Westminster and those farmers do not come here to pledge their fealty, much as the Government would like them to. I note that the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) mentioned how unprofitable farming is. I do not know how he hopes they will be able to square the inheritance tax issue with an unprofitable business.
We have recently seen the announcement of the suspension of the sustainable farming incentive with only 30 minutes’ notice and of new compulsory purchase powers that will see yet more farmland concreted over. Dozens and dozens of solar farms are in the pipeline, which will all be easily forced through as nationally significant infrastructure projects because of a laughably low qualifying threshold that is now nearly 20 years old. The future of farming under this Government looks bleak. Diversification appears to be one of the few options available to farmers, and innovation is another.
I visited Vantage in Great Staughton in my constituency to discuss how advances in agricultural technology can have a positive impact on farming techniques, particularly as farms face manpower shortages, fewer resources and increasingly fewer available experienced farm workers. Will Mumford, a fifth-generation local farmer and the managing director, took the time last year to meet me and talk me through some of the local challenges faced by farmers and to highlight the opportunities presented by developments in agricultural technology. That gave me an opportunity to see a demonstration of Will’s robot tractor, the AgXeed AgBot 5.115T2—not a particularly snappy name, I grant you, and surely a missed opportunity to call it “RoboCrop”.
The AgXeed tractor is a remotely controlled robot tractor that ploughs a pre-programmed route. It is smaller than a conventional tractor and does not look recognisably like one, but there are multiple benefits to using such technology. Being remotely piloted, the tractor does not require a driver or, therefore, a cockpit, which makes it significantly lighter. The benefit of that is a smaller footprint and therefore reduced soil compaction, which in turn improves drainage and reduces flooding. A further benefit is how the tractor can be used day or night without the need for a human operator. At busy times of the year, it allows work to continue when resources are stretched. Many of our generational farmers increasingly see older family members unable to work the hours they once did, and automation within the industry can benefit those small family farms by reducing the need for reliance on additional farm workers, given the struggle to guarantee that resource.
RoboCrop is a clever and impressive piece of farm machinery, and though not commonly seen at present, it is now used in my constituency. That is just one example of forward-thinking sustainable technology that is making a difference for farmers like Will. We need the Government to take action to ensure that British farms can utilise groundbreaking technology like that to secure the future of British farms.
I want to see our farms, food security and rural way of life protected. I want to see the future of farming being able to display the innovation that has led the world in sustainable practices. For farms to succeed, we need farmers. Collectively, we must support and protect our vital farming sector.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I declare an interest as the wife of a farmer and agricultural contractor. Farming is a difficult job—unbelievably long hours and physically hard work in all weathers every day of the year—but it is a true vocation and labour of love that farmers do to provide us with food eat and food security.
Lincolnshire farmers are particularly important for food security, providing 12% of the UK’s food, 30% of its veg, 18% of its poultry and 11% of its wheat. Jobs in the food chain make up 24% of jobs in the Greater Lincolnshire area, and farmers locally care for 13,500 acres of farmed woodland and 2,500 miles of public rights of way, but all that is under threat. Food production is less profitable and, in some cases, it is not profitable at all thanks to this Labour Government.
John Lamont
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Throughout the debate, I have struggled to understand the point put forward by Labour Members that while they rightly acknowledge that farming is not profitable, they support a policy that will take even more cash away from farming businesses. Does she, like me, find those two policies hard to reconcile?
Dr Johnson
I find them extremely difficult to reconcile. In early October, I went to the “Farmers Weekly” awards in London where the Minister, in his red bowtie, gave a speech in which he said that the Government would have the farmers’ backs. I am sure he believed it was true when he said it, but within a month, he was unfortunately proven wrong with this Government’s Budget.
Many Members have talked about the profitability of farming. How will the family farm tax make farms more profitable? How will the family business tax, the drastic drops in delinked payments, the rise in the minimum wage, rising national insurance contributions, or the tax on double cab pick-ups make farms more profitable? They will not. How will closing the SPI payment scheme early and without notice, despite having promised to give notice, make farms more profitable and businesses more secure? It will not. The Government now talk about taking land without proper due consideration. That has led many farmers in my constituency to ask, “Why does this Labour Government hate farmers so much?” Why do they want to hurt our farmers so much?
Dr Johnson
I do not support the hon. Gentleman’s figures or think the Government will make farming more profitable. It is the classic socialist trick of saying, “We’ll give you some money here, and we’ll take some money there.” We have seen it with hospices and the NHS, and we see it with farming as well. They are taking money away in taxes left, right and centre, then giving a few pence over there and saying, “Be grateful, why don’t you?” I am afraid that it does not wash with farmers. Farmers are clever people, and they can see straight through it.
The effects of the Government’s policy will be reduced food security, the collapse of small businesses and the purchase of that land by larger corporations, and an increase in food prices for consumers rich and poor across the country. This is a debate on the future of farming. Many farmers in my constituency feel that, thanks to this Labour Government, they have no future in farming.
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
We believe in a future in which farming thrives—one based on stability, growth and sustainability. Sadly, Labour’s policies jeopardise all three. Whether it is the disastrous last-minute overnight closure of the sustainable farming incentive, the relentless family death tax assault on family farms, or the negligence towards rural businesses, Labour’s agenda harms the heart of rural Britain, including my Kingswinford and South Staffordshire constituency.
Labour’s short-sightedness in deciding to stop accepting new applications for the sustainable farming incentive—with just half an hour’s notice given to the NFU despite the promise of six weeks’ notice—is a clear sign of its failure to understand the long-term needs of our farmers. While thousands of farmers were looking to the SFI for support, Labour has chosen short-term political convenience over long-term sustainability. Our farmers deserve consistency and trust in the future, not abrupt cuts to vital programmes. We will continue to back farmers.
Labour’s inheritance tax policies are a direct attack on the heart of family farms. The planned cuts to agricultural property relief and business property relief will make it impossible for farmers to pass on their livelihoods and their businesses—the farms that they have been farming for generations—to their children without facing huge tax burdens. According to the NFU, someone who inherits an average cereal farm from their parents faces 10 inheritance tax payments, with each one representing 1.5 times what they can expect to make in annual profits. They are running at a loss to fund the Government. That is serfdom, not farming.
Dr Johnson
My hon. Friend is making a great and impassioned speech. The Government are saying that one can avoid the tax, but one does not know who is going to die and when. In fact, the generations do not necessarily always occur 10 years apart, which could compound the tax even further, could it not?
Mike Wood
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Clearly, the people who are best placed to avoid paying the tax are the very people who ought to be paying and contributing: the mega landowners. For the average cereal farmer, however, who could face inheritance tax bills of 1.5 times the value of their annual profits, the only recourse will be to sell land or machinery. That is so blatantly obvious that the fact that the Government do not see it makes it difficult to assume that the policy is down to incompetence rather than a deliberate strategy to dismantle family farms, particularly when combined with the compulsory purchase plans set out by the Deputy Prime Minister this week.
Labour’s policies threaten the future of farming, rural businesses and the communities that rely on them. The sustainable farming incentive, inheritance tax reliefs, biosecurity, and the damage caused to our high streets by Labour’s Budget—in each of those areas, Labour’s mismanagement is letting down farmers, their families and our rural communities. Rural Britain can thrive when farmers are supported, businesses are protected and communities grow stronger. We will continue to fight for that future, and I call on the Government to change course before it is too late for our rural way of life. We will continue to fight for our farming communities, including mine in Kingswinford and South Staffordshire.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for leading it. I am always so proud to stand up in this place and represent farmers in Strangford and across Northern Ireland, who are nothing but dedicated to their trade. I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers Union.
Farming is massively important in Northern Ireland, where it contributes £2.5 billion annually to the economy. Furthermore, we are pivotal to the agricultural output of the United Kingdom, accounting for growth of 5.6%, which is more than any other nation that contributes to this great United Kingdom. Northern Ireland exports large amounts of beef, dairy and poultry to GB, the Republic of Ireland and further afield. Lakeland Dairies in my Strangford constituency sends its milk products all over the world. That creates a sense of just how important our farmers are.
To state the obvious, it is no secret that I, my party colleagues and other Members across the House were shocked and saddened by the Chancellor’s decision in November to introduce inheritance tax for family-run farms. The fact is that 65% of farmers cannot and will not survive this. Living on a farm and having great relationships with my neighbours—every one of them spoke to me before this debate—and local farmers in my constituency, I know all too well the impact this will have.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is in fact my neighbour, for giving way. He talks about the number of farms that will be affected by this. It is far higher than the Treasury tells us. We know that the Scotland Office is compiling its own figures, to push back against the Treasury figures, which will no doubt be trotted out here again today. Is there not a fundamental problem here, as the vast majority of farms will be affected by this?
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and he sums up our views.
The decision to introduce the farmers’ inheritance tax will destroy the very essence of what so many farmers have worked hard to achieve. I have called on numerous occasions for the Minister to support us. He is an honourable man. He could be a friend of the farmers—we will see just how much of a friend he is—if he contacted the Chancellor and suggested to her that one solution is to increase the threshold from £1 million to £5 million. If that is done, farms will be saved, as will the future of family farms in Northern Ireland. Does he want to be the farmers’ friend?
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
I am the farmers’ friend.
Jim Shannon
When the Minister approaches the Chancellor and persuades her to increase the threshold from £1 million to £5 million, he will be my friend forever, and he will be the friend of all the farmers in my constituency. He needs to do that. The National Farmers Union and the Ulster Farmers’ Union have the solution.
If I can digress slightly, Northern Ireland has one of the highest tuberculosis rates in Europe, with over 10% of our herds affected annually. What discussions has the Minister had with the farming Minister in Northern Ireland, Andrew Muir, in relation to TB and avian flu, to ensure that we can overcome these setbacks together?
Our food security and farming industry matter. It is the young farmers who we are fighting for—I am fighting for my neighbours’ sons who want to have a farm for the future. There are so many expectations on farmers. I am pleased to see that there has been a boost in the conversations surrounding the declining mental health of our farmers, which is another massive issue. There is no doubt that our farmers need to be supported, not torn down by a Government who are meant to represent them.
To conclude, I am proud of our farming industry and grateful for it, and I want it to succeed. For those who represent rural constituencies or those who do not, the importance of agriculture cannot be disregarded, and we must make it a goal to preserve, protect and progress the success of farming across Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. We need the Minister to stand up for farming; we all look to him to do that. Go to the Chancellor, tell her what we need—to increase the threshold from £1 million to £5 million—and things will be better.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on opening the debate and on the thoughtful and knowledgeable speech he made. I also compliment Members on both sides of the Chamber for what they have said.
I was brought up on a farm. I was the wee boy who shooed the cows home to the faraway field. I represent the biggest constituency in the UK. I have an awful lot of farms and crofts in my constituency. Farming is part of our way of life. It is about the food we eat. It is about the fight against climate change. It is about our heritage and, in constituencies such as mine, it is about the tourism economy. The change of Government has been difficult before. Brexit did not help—we all know that argument—and botched trade deals have not helped either.
Much has been said about the taxation, and I will not repeat it, but I will remark on one thing that has been said, which is that land prices in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland are much higher than in other parts of the United Kingdom, so the effect of the taxation will be rather larger there.
To compound this, cuts to DEFRA’s day-to-day spending mean that many family farms and rural businesses will struggle. That is why my party is saying that we should raise the farming budget by £1 billion. If we can do that, perhaps we can help. We want to see a renegotiation of trade agreements to protect British farmers and a strengthening of the Groceries Code Adjudicator.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
First, I should declare that my partner is a conservation farmer in Somerset.
Having been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Vince Cable, the then Business Secretary who set up the Groceries Code Adjudicator, I recall his frustrations that the then Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer refused to grant the adjudicator the power she needed. Does my hon. Friend agree that the adjudicator will never be able to exercise meaningful control over the big supermarkets, which fund its operations through a levy, if the cost of a single investigation is greater than its annual budget? May I ask the Minister through my hon. Friend to remedy this decade-old wrong?
Jamie Stone
My hon. Friend brings knowledge from the past, which is very valuable to the debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland is also a champion of this cause, and what he says strikes a chord among farmers in my constituency. Getting a fair deal is fundamental to making farms viable for the long term. It is not that we want to do everything, but I hope that the Government will engage constructively with my right hon. Friend on this. It is too important to let this one go, and it could be an easy win for the Government and for all of us.
John Lamont
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, but does he agree as a fellow Scottish MP that our farmers are facing a double whammy? Not only do we have to deal with the vindictive family farm tax being imposed by the Government opposite, but we face the hostile environment that the Scottish National party Government are creating towards our farming communities in Scotland.
Jamie Stone
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, and what a pity it is that our SNP colleagues are not with us at this point, because we both might have something to say about that. There has been a lack of knowledge north of the border—or a lack of understanding, I believe—of things that are fundamental to the way of life in the constituencies we represent at the different ends of Scotland.
Time is short, but I want to conclude by mentioning three things that are causing my constituents some anxiety. In particular, I spoke with farmers this week and there has been recent publicity about what is known as lab-grown meat, produced from cells in a laboratory environment. It is thought that this could be upon us within two years. Yes, it is a way of producing food, but what does that mean for our livestock farmers? That needs to be looked at very carefully indeed.
The second thing I am duty-bound to mention is the low price of malting barley. This is the highest-quality barley and is used to make whisky. It is low priced because not so much is being bought by the whisky distillers, a reflection of the fact that they are not selling so many bottles of whisky.
Jamie Stone
My right hon. Friend is indeed doing his bit and never ceases to do so, but this again goes back to an earlier point: that farming is intermingled throughout the entire economy. If we can have measures from the Government to increase whisky sales and to encourage exports, such as getting good-quality Scotch whisky into the Indian market, that will in the long term benefit the growers of malting barley, which will make farms more viable again. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) is not with us, because, in all fairness, he did make that point.
The hon. Gentleman also made a point about seed potatoes. I welcomed the Windsor framework at the time and was thanked by the then Prime Minister for doing so. It meant we could get our seed potatoes into Northern Ireland, but I know from talking to seed potato farmers that there are markets in Europe crying out to get hold of high-quality Scottish seed potatoes. They are the best, because they are some of the safest from virus, eelworm or whatever. I will be extremely grateful to the Government if they use every measure at their disposal to try to improve sales.
Finally, I want to make rather a strange point. A number of farmers have told me that people who have worked on the farm, sometimes for decades, are now moving on to other jobs. People who drove tractors or used implements to cultivate fields are sometimes taking the option of going off to drive a digger for a builder, and a labour shortage is beginning to occur on some of our farms. That should be a worry not just for way farms are run presently but for finding new entrants into farming.
I again commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland for his speech and for bringing this debate before us. Farming is absolutely fundamental to the country and the way we feed ourselves, and in a world that, as we have seen, is quite dangerous to say the least, the more we feed ourselves and the less we rely on imports, the better.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this important debate. I thank him for bringing his expertise as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee to the discussion. May I welcome, although I am not supposed to, the farmers in the Public Gallery who have been known making their views, not all of them terribly happy, about various contributions during the debate, and the tractors outside? We cannot hear the tractors in the Chamber, but they have been tooting as loudly as they possibly can. I am not sure the tooting is to welcome the SFI scandal that emerged on Tuesday, but no doubt the farming Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), will be able to help us with that.
This debate should have been filled with positivity and confidence about the future of British farming. Instead, it has been overshadowed by this Labour Government’s farming fiasco. In just a few short months, this city-dwelling Government have destroyed families’ ambitions for the future, put at risk generations of expertise and custodianship and, less than 48 hours ago, ripped the rug out from underneath businesses immediately. This Government have treated farmers and the countryside with unashamed contempt, and that contempt has consequences.
The NFU announced this week that farm business confidence has reached historically low levels, and that was before the SFI scandal on Tuesday night. New tractor registrations are at the lowest level since 1998. When I visited the Lincolnshire Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers Association in January—the farming Minister apparently could not make it—manufacturers were telling me how people are not investing in new machinery as a direct result of the Budget. I am afraid RoboCrop will have to wait for the next Conservative Government.
Just as the Chancellor inherited the fastest-growing economy in the G7 and has ground it down into stagflation, so too the Secretary of State inherited a growing farming sector that had gone through massive change since Brexit, but was seizing the new farming and environmental opportunities available. After a few months of this city-centric Government, farming families are feeling “ignored, alienated and disrespected”, to use the Secretary of State’s own words. But where is the Secretary of State? I have been hunting high and low for him, but nowhere is he to be found. He had a major announcement yesterday, but he sent his poor junior Minister out to take the flak because the Secretary of State is missing in action.
Where are rural Labour MPs? [Hon. Members: “Here!”] We have heard about a rebel force—
Several hon. Members rose—
Victoria Atkins
Oh, I would not do that if I were you. We have heard about a rebel force of Labour MPs who are going to stand up to the Government on the family farm tax. This debate is their chance to show their support for their farmers, but where are they? A total of 10 Labour MPs have turned up and six have spoken—that is 1.4% of the parliamentary party.
The Labour Government’s farming fiasco policy can be summarised in three points: they will remove, without warning, farming and environmental schemes that help farms thrive and on which farms build their business cases; they will permit the state to seize farmland without consent or market value; and, if family farms manage to cling on despite that, Labour will tax farmers for dying.
Let us deal with the first point: the abrupt halting of the sustainable farming incentive and the massive cut to delinked payments. The Government sneaked the SFI decision out late on Tuesday night, before being dragged to the Dispatch Box by us yesterday. That is a chaotic and inept way for a Government to treat taxpayers, businesses and families. Yesterday, the Minister kept using the figure of £5 billion for farming over two years—2024-25 and 2025-26. Of course, the funding for the first year, 2024-25, was set by the previous Government, including the £300 million that was rolled over from the previous year. It is for Labour Ministers to set the budget for 2025-26 after the spending review. Will the Minister confirm that the DEFRA budget will not face substantial cuts in the spending review, given he has relied on that figure so much? If he cannot confirm that, then those figures are meaningless, as Ministers are counting money for 2025-26 that could be removed at a stroke by the Chancellor.
The decision on SFI has consequences, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) and my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) have made clear. David from Gloucestershire, a farmer, asks the Minister whether he should simply plough up his farm and turn his back on 25 years of farming with an environmental focus. He says:
“We are a small family farm…I won’t be able to afford environmental principles, everyone loses but the environment mostly.”
We have heard from hon. Members about how farmers have contacted them because they face a financial crisis as a result of this decision, yet the no-farming Minister told them that they should be celebrating—well, the tractors outside do not seem to be tooting in celebration at his announcement yesterday.
Let us move on to delinked payments, which were cut in the Budget. Tens of thousands of farmers who are not signed up to SFI in any of its iterations are still being subjected to a 76% cut in their delinked direct payments, leaving many in cash flow crisis, including tenant farmers. That was not mentioned at all by the hon. Members for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley), for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter), for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) or for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer).
An urgent issue facing the industry is the importance of biosecurity to the future of farming. The second case of foot and mouth disease in Europe is alarming, but we have heard nothing from the Government on that. Will the Minister confirm whether funding for Dover Port Health Authority has now been agreed, outline how he is preventing the rising trend of bushmeat being sold over social media platforms and explain why the Government continue to ignore our calls to increase funding for the redevelopment of Weybridge? I can reveal what the Secretary of State and the Farming Minister have been prioritising this week. They have issued a consultation not on SFI, the family farm tax or cuts to delinked payments, but on how to carry a chicken. I am sure everybody thinks that really is the national priority for farming at the moment.
Let us turn to the Government’s plans to undercut property rights and force farmers to sell their land at below market value. This is a policy that goes against the fundamental British principle of land ownership and puts food security and prices at risk—my hon. Friends set out the case on that.
We then move on to the points made about the family farm tax, which the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) criticised as being a distraction. The hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal seemed to be arguing for more taxes on farmers, but at least those Labour Members mentioned the family farm tax. The hon. Members for Shrewsbury, for South West Norfolk, for Cannock Chase, for St Austell and Newquay and for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland did not see fit to mention it, because they are ignoring the facts of life on this.
As Conservative Members know, this policy is having a genuine emotional and economic toll on farmers throughout the United Kingdom. One farmer told me:
“I’ve stopped encouraging my daughter to spend time on the farm so I don’t have to have the conversation of why she can’t take over in the future.”
This Government are robbing the next generation of farmers of their future, and this is also having a devastating impact on elderly farmers. It was shared in the Senedd this week that a farmer declined cancer treatment months before his death as he wanted to make sure that he died before these changes came into effect. That is desperately harrowing, yet we are being told this week in, week out by farming organisations, all because the Chancellor—who, by the way, refuses to meet farmers—is destroying British farming with her taxation policy. This is not just about the family farm tax: it is about the family business tax, the national insurance hike, the fertiliser tax and the double cab pick-up tax, which were all set out by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham. You name it, the Government will tax it. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said that farmers see no future in farming under this Government. In the words of one mid Devon farmer:
“At no time in all these years have I felt so deflated with the job.”
To the farmers despairing at this city-dwelling Government: please know that we Conservatives hear you, support you and will work with you to mend the outright assault on the countryside that this Labour Government are carrying out. Together, we will build a bright future for farming.
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and congratulate him on securing this very important debate on the future of farming. I will not say that I agreed with all his conclusions in his opening comments, although I listened to them closely, but I thank him and his fellow members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for their continuing work. I look forward to meeting his Committee in time.
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to talk about the very important role that farming plays in this country, because food security is national security, and our commitment to farmers is absolutely steadfast. It is the hard work of the UK’s farmers that puts food on our tables and stewards our beautiful countryside.
As we all know, though, the sector is facing high costs and tight margins. Farmers have struggled to get enough workers to pick fruit and veg, and frankly, they have been sold out in past trade deals. Farmland is increasingly at risk from severe flooding and drought, and this all comes as we face the biggest transition for farming in generations, moving away from the basic payment scheme towards more sustainable methods of farming. The underlying problem in the sector is that farmers do not make enough money for the hard work and commitment that they put in. We are absolutely committed to making farming more profitable, and that approach will underpin our 25-year farming road map and our food strategy, through which we will work in partnership with farmers to make farming and food production sustainable and profitable.
That road map stands on three principles, the first of which is a sector that has food production at its core. The role of farming will always be to produce the food that feeds our nation. The instability that we have seen, both relating to Ukraine and during covid, shows that food security truly is national security. The second principle is a sector in which farm businesses are more resilient and able to withstand the shocks that disrupt farming from time to time, whether it be severe flooding, drought or disease. We will help farmers who want to diversify their income to put more money into their business, so that they can survive those more difficult times when they come.
Daniel Zeichner
I am going to make some progress, because I know that time is short. The third principle is a sector that recognises that restoring nature is not in competition with sustainable food production, but is essential to it.
On our first strand—food production—our new deal for farmers is supporting them to produce food sustainably and profitably, and we are making progress. Statistics released earlier this week show that average farm business incomes across the country are forecast to rise in the first year of this Government. That is welcome news, but we recognise that there is more to do. That certainly will not happen overnight, but over recent weeks, we have announced a series of new policies. We are extending the seasonal worker visas for five years, and we are making the supply chain fairer, an issue raised by my hon. Friends the Members for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter). In the next few weeks, we will see new regulations for the pig sector, making sure that contracts clearly set out expectations and only allow changes if they are agreed by all parties. Of course, we are also introducing a new regulator alongside the Groceries Code Adjudicator, building on the work of the existing regulator—the Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator, which is already in place.
We are using the Government’s own purchasing power to back British produce, working with the Cabinet Office to create new requirements for Government catering contracts to favour high-quality, high-welfare products that British producers are well placed to provide, as was outlined very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley). That will mean that British farmers and producers can compete for a fairer share of the £5 billion a year that the public sector spends on food, with that money going straight into farmers’ bank accounts to boost turnover and profits. We will never lower our food standards in trade agreements, but will promote robust standards nationally and internationally, and will always consider whether overseas produce has an unfair advantage. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) and by others.
We are investing in the UK agri-technology sector, and I listened closely to the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman)—there is always much that we agree on. As we announced last month, we are looking to put in a further £110 million in farming grants, and we are also strengthening the wider British tech sector, a point that was made well by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer). These reforms will support farmers to make more money from the food they produce.
On the second strand, diversification, farmers must be resilient against future challenges if they are to remain financially viable and strengthen food security. We know the threat from flooding, drought and animal disease, as well as the geopolitical tensions that increase demands on our land for energy generation. We are investing to help farm businesses build resilience against animal diseases that can devastate livelihoods and threaten our entire economy—we are all mindful of the issues with bluetongue and avian flu. On the recent case of foot and mouth that we saw in Germany and the one in Hungary, I spoke to the Hungarian Minister earlier this week, and we have put in place all the appropriate precautions. As ever, though, if the shadow Secretary of State wants a briefing with the chief vet, that is always available in these cases.
We are investing over £200 million to set up a new national biosecurity centre, modernising the Animal and Plant Health Agency facilities in Weybridge, which will be vital for protecting farmers, food producers and exporters from disease outbreaks that we know can be devastating to businesses. We are helping keepers of cattle, sheep and pigs in England to improve the health, welfare and productivity of their animals by expanding the fully funded farm visits offer. We have also announced new ways to help farmers to remain profitable and viable, even in a challenging harvest.
We will consult on national planning reforms this spring to make it quicker for farmers to build new buildings, barns and other infrastructure to boost food production, and we will ensure that permitted development rights work for farms to convert larger barns into whatever is required or suits their business planning, whether that is a farm shop, a holiday let or a sports facility. We are working with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero so that more farm businesses can connect their own electricity generation to the grid more quickly, so that farmers can sell surplus energy and diversify income.
The third element is nature. Restoring nature is vital to food production; it is not in competition with it. Healthy soils, abundant pollinators and clean water are the foundations that farm businesses rely on to produce high crop yields and turn a profit. Without nature thriving, there can be no long-term food security. That point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy). We now have more than half of all farmers in environmental schemes. That includes 37,000 live SFI agreements, meaning that 800,000 hectares of arable land is being farmed without insecticides, 300,000 hectares of low-impact grassland is managed sustainably and 75,000 km of hedgerows are being protected and restored. That is important for nature.
We have already had a discussion about the SFI cap. It is set at £1.05 billion for 2024-25 and 2025-26. As we discussed yesterday, that cap was reached this week with a record number of farmers in the scheme and 37,000 live agreements. Every penny is now paid to farmers or committed for payment through existing agreements or submitted applications. We will continue to support farmers to transition to more sustainable farming models, and we will announce details of the revised scheme after the spending review.
Victoria Atkins
The clarification that everybody wants is this: we saw the figures last night, and they cut across two years, so what is the money for this financial year—2024-25—that the Minister describes as a cap? What is the value that he reached on Tuesday night that led to that announcement?
Daniel Zeichner
We have been far more transparent in disclosing how the budgets work than the previous Government. The figure was disclosed last night, and the shadow Secretary of State can look closely at that. As she will know, we have to monitor things closely over multiple years. What we cannot and will not do is play fast and loose with the nation’s finances. We are taking no lessons from the Conservatives about how to manage public money in this country. This is about using public money in a way that supports food production, restores nature and respects farmers for the effective business people that they are, while ensuring that we stick to our budgets.
We are also improving other farming schemes. The Government have announced an increase in higher level stewardship payment rates across a range of options for this year. We will reopen the ELM capital grant scheme and open the rolling application window for the countryside stewardship higher tier later this year. We are continuing with the important landscape recovery projects that were awarded funding in rounds 1 and 2, as well as some of the other funds referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury).
It is those three strands that will create a resilient, profitable sector for decades to come. I look forward to continuing this important discussion with Members from all parts of the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Alistair Carmichael to quickly wind up.
Mr Carmichael
Since I opened this debate, Douglas Paterson, a seventh-generation farmer in my constituency, has sent me a copy of a letter addressed to his great-grandfather from 10 Downing Street, dated 5 March 1917. It states:
“Dear Sir,
We have now reached a crisis in the war when to ensure victory, the heroism of our armies at the Front must be backed by the self-sacrifice and tireless labour of everyone at home. To this end the production of each quarter of wheat and oats, and of each bushel of potatoes is of vital importance.”
The letter finishes by saying that
“the Government is confident that Farmers will at once step forward and do all in their power to utilise their services to the best advantage.
The farmers of this country can defeat the German submarine and when they do so they destroy the last hope of the Prussian.”
It is signed “D. Lloyd George”.
The fact that we can stand in this Chamber today and debate this matter is a testament to the fact that Charles Paterson and his generation did step forward, and it is why we have a solemn and historic duty to ensure that his great-grandson can continue to do the same. I can think of no better definition of what is meant by “national interest”.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of farming.
Mental Health Support: Educational Settings
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered mental health support in educational settings.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and the MPs from across the House who supported its application. I also thank Emily Horsfall, my team and the staff at the Mental Health Foundation for their support in preparing for today’s debate.
There should be no doubt that good mental health and wellbeing are as critical to the progression of our young people as physical health is. Protecting mental health at an early age can have a defining impact on lifelong resilience and ensure positive mental health outcomes. At a time when young people up and down the country—especially girls and young women—face a barrage of challenges from what feels like a never-ending conveyor belt of demeaning and misogynistic content on social media, the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis, this is a timely debate, and I thank hon. Members who have stayed in the Chamber to contribute to it.
Much of what I will say today reflects my conversations with young people, parents, teachers and professionals in my constituency of Redditch and the villages. When they approach me on a visit, when I am food shopping in Tesco or at one of my surgeries, they display courage and determination to build a system that is fit for purpose and which will ensure that all children get the support they need to have the most fulfilling lives possible. I hope this debate can be about how we can support our schools and education professionals, who are not trained mental health professionals but are so often on the frontline, to ensure that our children get the best support they can at the most appropriate time.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this issue. I was just looking at some of the stats for Northern Ireland in order to support his argument. In 2023, pupils with disabilities reported lower levels of general wellbeing across all measures than those who are not disabled. Does he agree that access to pastoral care teams, who are equipped and trained to help those with declining mental health due to disabilities, would be one way of addressing this very issue?
Chris Bloore
I think that is the first time the hon. Gentleman has intervened on me, so I feel very honoured. I absolutely agree with him, and I will talk about other affected groups later in my remarks. I thank him for his intervention.
I hope this debate can be about how we support our schools and education professionals, but I also hope that the discussion raises awareness about the challenges facing young people. I know that some people like to hand-wave away any discussion about mental health problems among children and young people. Since the announcement of this debate, I have read previous debates elsewhere, and a few people have whispered in my ear that they do not believe that children are resilient enough these days. Well, I simply do not buy that argument. I know it makes some uncomfortable when young people talk about their mental health challenges, but it can only be positive that awareness and the mainstreaming of mental health conditions have given so many across society the confidence to have honest conversations about how they are feeling and the impact that others’ actions can have on their mental health.
What do the statistics tell us about the state of our young people’s mental health? NHS statistics show us that about one in five children and young people aged eight to 25 had a probable mental disorder in 2023, and that the number of urgent referrals of children and young people to emergency mental health services has tripled since 2019. The uncomfortable truth is that waiting lists for children and adolescent mental health services can be a postcode lottery. For instance, in November last year, the average waiting time for a child to receive a referral for a first appointment in Hereford and Worcestershire was seven weeks, compared with the national average of five weeks. From freedom of information requests, we know that one child waited almost two years for an appointment. Referrals at the Hereford and Worcestershire health and care NHS trust have increased by 118% in the last five years—a trend that is reflected across the country.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this Backbench Business debate. That statistic of one in five young people having a mental health condition must concern us all. I hear from my own constituents in Shipley that they are waiting a long time to get their children seen on the NHS—whether for an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder assessment or to get medication—and during that time the children are unable to participate in school. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that children and young people get access to mental health support and that we get waiting times down so that they can participate properly in school?
Chris Bloore
I absolutely agree. This is about parity between mental and physical health. We would move heaven and earth if those children had physical injuries, and we must do more to assess and treat the mental health conditions from which young people are suffering.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the need for parity between mental health and physical health. Does he agree that there is actually a connection between the two? Quite often, poor physical health can impact the mental health of a young person, and vice versa.
Chris Bloore
I agree entirely. Many of the young people I have spoken to have suffered from long-term physical conditions or illnesses that have had a detrimental impact on their mental health.
There is evidence that the severity of mental distress has increased. Admissions to acute medical wards for children and young people with mental health concerns increased by 65% between 2012 and 2022. The mental health report by the Association of Colleges, published in September, found that 90% of respondents reported an increase in disclosure of mental health issues in 16 to 18-year-olds and 86% did so for those over 19. Most colleges are increasing their mental health resources, but the need for joined-up and well-resourced services is urgent. The report found that almost a third of colleges reported at least one death by suicide in the previous year. It is distressing to consider that such an escalation can and does happen, and that is why this debate is so important.
Despite the expansion of children and young people’s mental health services, increased demand means that the NHS estimates that less than half of those with such needs are being supported. The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition found that certain groups have an increased likelihood of being impacted by mental health challenges, such as children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, those from racialised and LGBTQ+ backgrounds, neuro- divergent young people, those with physical or long-term conditions, young carers, children in care, and refugee and migrant children.
Children in kinship care arrangements also have a high prevalence of social, emotional and mental health needs similar to those of looked-after children, but owing to their lesser entitlements and a lack of access to suitable support, their experience and needs should be considered when designing vital mental health support in education settings. The complexity of the issues that may impact on a child’s mental health is the reason why mental health charities have been campaigning for a cross-Government mental health approach for such a long time, and I hope this Government will deliver on that.
Why are education establishments so crucial to this debate? The Centre for Mental Health has published research showing that 75% of lifetime mental health difficulties occur before the age of 24 and that 50% occur before the age of 14. That is why education settings are critical in addressing this national crisis. Of course, schools and colleges are seen as places where children learn academic skills, but they are also safe places for some to seek support.
Currently, mental health provision in education settings in England is varied. Mental health support teams can be found in almost 50% of schools, and they have proved highly effective. Research published by Barnardo’s has demonstrated that for each £1 invested, the Government have saved £1.90. The education and health officials I have spoken to said that we must reach England-wide coverage of MHSTs as soon as possible. If this was done in combination with the Government’s promise to deliver a school counsellor in every school, that would be a powerful indicator of their commitment to tackling the crisis.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way on this hugely important subject. As I am sure is the case for other Members across the House, I find that children’s mental health is one of the subjects that comes up most frequently on the doorstep, with parents really struggling to get the mental health care that their children need. One of the questions that is asked most frequently is: how can we afford to increase mental health care? Does he agree with me that it is actually more cost-effective to provide timely mental health support than to end up treating people when they have been sicker for longer?
Chris Bloore
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I would argue that we cannot afford not to engage in early prevention and early intervention. It does save the Government money further down the line.
Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will know that suicide is the main cause of death for young people under the age of 35 in the UK. For those under 18, school is where they spend the majority of their life, and somewhere we have an opportunity to make change. Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the 3 Dads Walking, who have played a significant role in ensuring that this issue stays on the agenda and in tackling the assumption that talking about suicide makes it more likely to happen?
Chris Bloore
I thank my hon. Friend for that important contribution to this debate and I pay tribute to the group she mentioned. It is such a critical issue to the future of our young people. I congratulate anyone who comes into this space and makes a positive difference to the outcomes.
Despite the best efforts of many teachers, education settings are yet to have much of that dedicated support. The experience of some young people and their families shows that the support on offer in some schools is not sufficient. The Mental Health Foundation works with whole families to support them in developing their mental health together. Ahead of this debate, it asked two of the participants in one of its programmes in London, Bemi and her daughter Ayo, to share their own experiences. Bemi said that the Government
“say are going to invest in children’s mental health, but this isn’t happening. There is a lot of pressure on children”
these days. She said that
“it is having a toll on children’s mental health, and as a parent, I am also feeling this strain of seeing the constant breakdowns”
and the failure to access support. Her 13-year-old daughter Ayo suggested that schools needed to be much more proactive in asking about children’s mental health:
“Nobody is asking how we feel and never attempting to get to the root cause of things; they only pick up on when you are behaving irrationally but never try to figure out why you feel this way.”
School staff are often the first point of contact when a pupil struggles with their mental health, so they need to feel confident to support their pupils and be able to spot the signs of difficulties. Education Support, a charity supporting the mental health and wellbeing of teaching and education staff, found that 74% of staff often help pupils with personal matters beyond their academic work. Educators are filling in where there are gaps, further highlighting the need for joined-up and embedded services.
Anna Dixon
I totally agree with my hon. Friend that schools and teachers are at the forefront of the mental health crisis facing our children. I recently visited a local primary school, Burley and Woodhead Church of England primary, and I pay tribute to the staff there for the excellent work they do to support the young people with their mental health and to make it much easier for them to talk about it. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that schools have adequate resources to provide such support?
Chris Bloore
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; I absolutely agree. It is not just young people who are struggling. The additional workload of carrying out wellbeing checks, sometimes in distressing situations, is taking its toll on staff: 78% of all staff are stressed in education settings, rising to 84% among senior leaders. No one can do their best at work if they are mentally depleted, and healthy teachers can better provide high-quality support for their pupils.
What else can we do? We cannot ignore the other factors that have a significant impact on a young person’s wellbeing, which is why we need a whole-of-Government approach. Children and young people might be experiencing poor-quality housing and overcrowding, family members in low-paid and insecure work, or the inability to get a GP or NHS dentist appointment when they need it—all challenges that I am glad this Government are taking action to remedy.
But we can go further. “A Mentally Healthier Nation”, a report unanimously endorsed by mental health charities, calls for the roll-out of anti-bullying programmes across the country. Crucially, the evidence shows that these programmes work best when delivered in a “whole school” way. That is, rather than taking a narrow approach based on discipline, the student and staff body understands what constitutes bullying and its impacts, stands against it and has tactics to prevent it. These programmes have been tested and shown to be effective. They create healthier school environments, prevent mental health problems in the future and lead to economic gains. The costs of picking up the pieces of childhood bullying in later life are enormous, as are the losses to the labour market it can cause, as well as the toll of bullying in the here and now.
Young people can text Shout, a crisis line, for help when they are being bullied. Those who run the service report texters struggling with suicidal thoughts, urges to self-harm, insomnia and feelings of depression and anxiety. Some referred to the anger, shame, fear, confusion, vulnerability, hopelessness and frustration that resulted from being bullied. Others spoke about their lack of focus and poor performance at school as a result of their bullying.
We also need to look at innovative ways that have been developed to address the threats our young people are experiencing. In a world where so-called influencers like Andrew Tate can get their claws into our young men’s minds, we need to look to at work such as the Mental Health Foundation’s “Becoming a Man” programme. Currently operating in Lambeth and Islington, it works with young men aged 12 to 16 who face disadvantage and inequality that put them at greater risk of developing mental health problems. It creates a safe space for young men to come together and discuss issues about their lives, taking into account their lived experiences and the often difficult environments they navigate. It helps them to develop strengths such as integrity, self-determination, positive anger expression and respect for women. Early evaluations of this work are promising, and Government support is needed to grow the evidence base.
Schools have a vital role in understanding young people’s online experiences and how they might impact their mental health. The Girlguiding girls’ attitudes survey found that one in eight young people aged 13 to 18 had seen sexual threats directed at women and girls online, including those of rape. One in eight girls said that they had received sexual threats online from strangers or someone they knew.
Over a year after the passing of the Online Safety Act 2023, suicide, eating disorder, race hate and incel forums remain easily accessible, and it is not clear if and when action might be taken against them. Given Ofcom’s permissive approach, it is likely that school staff will need to understand what sorts of communities pupils are involved in and the impact they are having on them. At a time when 36% of boys say they have had Andrew Tate content shown to them by a friend in school, the onslaught against young girls’ self-confidence, value and worth goes further than being content on a screen; it is putting them at risk.
How do we pull all this together? Preventive mental health initiatives, perhaps overwhelmed by the complexity of the challenge, are scattered and rarely appropriately funded, and they often do not learn from each other. Sometimes, we even use localism as an excuse to neither fund systems nor hold them accountable. We must create a public mental health infrastructure. The Mental Health Foundation describes it as having a clear road map, led by evidence, in which every part of the system knows its own responsibility for reducing mental health problems, and is funded and held accountable for its delivery. That means re-examining the public health grant, which despite a welcome uplift this year is still well below 2015 levels. It means ringfenced funding for schools and the NHS tied to specific outcomes. It also means the roll-out of England-wide mental health support teams and counsellors in each school.
The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition responded to the NHS 10-year plan consultation, calling for the plan to financially support integrated care systems to deliver a comprehensive road map for mental health for 0 to 25-year-olds. The Association of Colleges found that more than 30% of colleges are not involved in their local suicide prevention plan, and 65% stated that they do not have a joint provision with their local NHS trust. It is clear that to keep children well and safe, our NHS services and their commissioning bodies must be fully integrated into mental health support in educational settings. Schools, colleges and universities should be included in local mental health strategies, and data should be shared freely.
I am excited by the Government’s pledge to roll out Young Futures hubs, which aim to bring local services together, deliver support for teenagers at risk of being drawn into crime or facing mental health challenges, and, where appropriate, deliver universal youth provision. These initiatives could represent the start of such an infrastructure and an implementation plan for a national network of these hubs. The Royal College of Psychiatrists states that the hubs have the potential to support some of the most minoritised children who might not be able to access CAMHS or school-based services consistently. I am pleased to see that the NHS remains committed to expanding access to children and young people’s mental health services, and that the operational planning guidance recognises that early intervention improves outcomes for children throughout their lives, reduces long-term pressures on health services, and benefits the economy and wider society.
I urge the Government to seize this moment and see if they can create a true network of mental health support across the country by getting anti-bullying programmes in place, following the evidence and committing to relentlessly drive down levels of poor mental health, and thereby build mentally healthy communities in our schools and beyond. Prevention, early help and treatment can help young people to deliver positive outcomes. Yes, many of the measures I have referred to today and those already announced by the Government will require significant investment, but the cost of inaction and the knock-on impacts on education and children’s social care would far outweigh any initial outlay. Now is the time for action.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I think eight Members are hoping to contribute. We will calibrate again. There will be a time limit of four minutes, because I want to make sure they all get in.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I thank the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing this debate and for talking about the importance of these programmes, and for mentioning anti-bullying programmes as well. I also thank the other hon. Members who have spoken about the wider mental health crisis and the extent to which teachers are picking up the pieces —these are all vital issues to talk about.
I am proud to say there has been some groundbreaking work on mental health support in educational settings in my constituency. A campaign led by young people and backed by Citizens UK secured funding for more counselling capacity in local schools, and is a genuine cause of city-wide pride. The £200,000 of investment from Brighton and Hove city council will support hundreds of young people with counselling across the city, including many in my constituency. I was very inspired by the work of the students pressing the councils for this support—notably Fi Abou-Chanad and Tally Wilcox, who put their case directly to the council—and spoke about them in my maiden speech. I am grateful to Brighton and Hove city council, which backed up its words with funds to support this vital work, and I am pleased that, following the pilot, it will now fund 2025-56 as well.
The key request now from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and Citizens UK is for Government-funded school counselling provision delivered by specialist children and young people counsellors and psychotherapists on a statutory basis. I welcome the pledges from the Government to introduce a mental health professional accessible in every school, and I hope we will see real investment in a national school counselling programme promised by Ministers today.
To conclude, I once again thank the hon. Member for Redditch for securing this debate, and once again pay tribute to the courage and campaigning of the young people who I know are out there all around the country, in all our constituencies, demanding support. Nothing could be of more value or more importance than investing in the thriving of the mental health of our young people, and particularly in schools.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Thank you so much for keeping well within the time limit. I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on securing this important debate and on his excellent speech.
The starting point for thinking about mental health services in educational settings must be an understanding of the foundational nature of good mental health and wellbeing in everything we seek to do in life. Challenges with mental health are corrosive in every aspect of our lives. Depression or anxiety can ruin the happiest of celebrations on the sunniest of days, prevent us from focusing on essential tasks, affect our relationships with friends, family members and colleagues and leave people feeling unable even to get out of bed in the morning. That is true for all of us as adults, and it is equally true for children and young people.
Good mental health and wellbeing is essential for accessing and getting the most out of education, yet our children and young people are suffering an epidemic of poor mental health and wellbeing, and it is holding them back. On visits to schools in our constituencies, I am sure all Members will have heard headteachers, senior leaders and teachers in our classrooms talking about the challenges the young people in their classes face with their mental health. That is borne out by the data, too. In 2023, one in five children aged eight to 16 had a probable mental health disorder such as depression or anxiety, while the rates of probable mental health disorder among young people aged 17 to 19 have increased over just five years from a tenth in 2017 to more than a quarter by 2022. In this context, I welcome the Government’s commitment to place a mental health professional in every school across the country.
However, I wish to raise some additional points that will be relevant to the effectiveness of that roll-out. The first is clarity on the level of qualification that the mental health professional in every school will be required to have, which I hope the Minister can provide. The second is on their remit: in addition to delivering services to young people, will they be expected to drive a culture across the whole school that is conducive to good mental health and wellbeing? That, as we all know, will involve the buy-in of the most senior school leaders.
There are also other areas outside school that are relevant to children’s mental health and wellbeing, including the crisis in our special educational needs and disability system, which is having a profound impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing. My Committee heard this week from children who had been hospitalised and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence not of their additional needs, but of being in schools that are unable to meet their needs. I know that the Minister is aware of the urgent need to reform our SEND system.
Mental health professionals in schools will also quickly be overwhelmed if we cannot get to grips with the crisis affecting our children and young people as a consequence of their addiction to smart phones and their access to social media, which we know is making them more anxious, less able to focus, more sleep deprived and more stressed out.
I welcome the measures that the Minister announced in response to the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), but I do believe that there is a need to go further with this urgent crisis, which is affecting the mental health and wellbeing of our children.
Finally, I wish to touch on the vital issue of CAMHS waiting times. We have GPs to prescribe antibiotics so that infections do not become sepsis, or blood pressure medication to prevent a heart attack or stroke, but when an infection has become a critical illness, or a patient has suffered a heart attack or stroke, we would not think for one second that it was appropriate to send them back to their GP. Yet that is exactly what happens to far too many children and young people who are seriously mentally unwell.
It is an unacceptable situation and, as well as looking at mental health and wellbeing support in education settings, we also need to look at how our NHS can deliver much more quickly and effectively for children whose problems are much more serious than that.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing this important debate.
It is time to acknowledge that special educational needs and mental health provision in schools is one of the great crises that we face today, although I do appreciate that there is a lot of competition for that particular accolade.
Financial pressures have significantly impacted CAMHS funding in my constituency of Horsham. Despite a modest 0.6% fee uplift for Sussex, the sector has faced a mandated 15% funding reduction—approximately £1.6 million—and that is coupled with rising staff costs due to higher national insurance contributions and an increase in the national living wage.
Meanwhile, demand just keeps on going up. Since September 2020, Sussex CAMHS has experienced a substantial rise in referrals, attributed to the pandemic and the easing of lockdown restrictions. This surge has adversely affected waiting times for initial assessments and treatment. The crisis is even sharper at the local education authority funding level. My local authority, West Sussex, has a dedicated schools grant deficit scheduled to go past £130 million by April. It is allowed to keep this off the balance sheet for another year, but there is only so long that we can maintain the fantasy that this service can be afforded without major central Government intervention.
Most of all, the pain is being felt at the school level, and by the children and families who experience the many failings and gaps in service. I have been contacted by no fewer than five schools in the past fortnight alone regarding this issue. Typical of their message is this from Holbrook primary school governing board:
“Schools, trusts and local authorities are overwhelmed by the rising number of pupils who are seeking additional support and the ever-increasing costs of providing assistance. Urgent action is required now to help solve the crisis in SEND, so the future of our children is not blighted by a system that is not fit for purpose.”
Having visited many schools recently, I noted that teachers are verging on desperation. I noted too their love for the children they are looking after. They desperately want to help them, but they are in an impossible situation. There is, I am afraid to say, an element of physical danger in some cases. This is not the children’s fault; this is our fault.
Horsham schools are asking for health services to take on more of the strain, because they are at breaking point. Although mental health provision in schools has clear benefits, we must ensure that this provision does not fall on school budgets. Mental health support teams cover about 44% of schools in the UK, and come from NHS budgets, not school budgets. That should become 100% coverage.
The pressure on schools to cope with more and more SEN children, with little or no extra funding, is set to undo every gain we have made in educational standards over the past decades. I appreciate that the Government are taking at least some action to assist the situation now, but I urge them to use every lever at their disposal to avert this crisis before it spins entirely out of control.
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on securing this debate, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for it.
I know from experience that our mental health system is overstretched and under-resourced. In fact, there has never been so much demand for mental health support from children and young people. In June, the number of active CAMHS referrals in England was a record 840,000. It is clear that this Government inherited a crisis in children and young people’s mental health. We all want young people to be happy, healthy and safe, and to be equipped with everything that they need to achieve and thrive as adults. But with half of mental health issues developing by the time that young people reach the age of 14, and three quarters before the age of 24, early intervention in mental health support for children and young people is essential.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
Last year, I met the parents of a young woman struggling with her mental health in my constituency. She was not in crisis, but she did need some additional support. Her school encouraged her parents to withdraw her because they could not provide the support, which her parents did because they did not know what else to do. That has left her out of education for over 18 months and severely in crisis. Does my hon. Friend agree that early intervention in schools is crucial for breaking down barriers?
Sojan Joseph
I agree, and I have many similar cases. I want to refer some real-life examples. There is an excellent exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall this week about the Mental Health Act, which has been put together by Mind. It features artwork and written pieces by people who have been detained under the current Act. I had the pleasure of meeting some of them on Monday, including a young lady called Afeefa. Afeefa is 19 but was first detained under the Act when she was 14. She spoke powerfully and movingly about the treatment that she endured while she was under section. When I asked her if there was one thing that could have helped her, she said without hesitation that if she had received mental health support at an earlier stage, her experience would have been very different.
I recall two examples from my experience of working in mental health system that demonstrate the difference that early intervention and support can make. They are of two young people of similar age: one is a teenage boy, who unfortunately has not been able to access the support he needs and, as a result, is struggling to cope. That is not only impacting on his mental health but is having a detrimental impact on his family, especially his parents.
By contrast, in the second case, the parents of a teenage girl who had been diagnosed with a mental health condition knew that I worked in mental health at the time and came to see me. I was able to ensure that she was referred to CAMHS at an early stage. As a result, both she and her parents are doing well. She is due to sit her A-levels in the summer. These examples underline how children who receive support quickly are less likely to develop long-term conditions that negatively affect their education, social development and health later in life.
I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has been clear that children’s wellbeing will be a priority for this Government. Research from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy indicates that children whose mental health difficulties are initially too complex for lower intensity interventions, but not complex enough to be referred to higher intensity interventions such as CAMHS, can easily miss out on the mental health support that they need. Ensuring enough mental health support for children and young people in educational settings will help to free up NHS time and resources, while making sure that we have a healthy and productive population in the future.
We should also make sure that support exists in the community. Can the Minister provide an update on the Government’s plans for Young Futures hubs? Does he agree that open access drop-in hubs could be an important step in providing community-based mental health support for children and young people?
There is clear evidence that the places and circumstances in which people are born grow, study, live and work have a powerful influence on their mental health. As Place2Be has said, children and young people from low-income families are four times more likely to experience mental health problems than children from higher income families, while one in four children and young people with a diagnosed mental health condition live in a household that has experienced a reduction in household income. This is why I want reform of the way that we deal with mental health. From Westminster, I would like greater cross-Government working to address the social detriments of our mental health. At a local level, I believe that greater co-operation between schools, colleges and universities, along with local health providers and others in the local community, can help create education settings that are effective at protecting young people’s mental health and general wellbeing. Taking that long-term approach will help create a society that prevents mental ill health for children and young people in the first place.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Due to the number of withdrawals, Members may have noticed that we have stopped the clocks timing speeches. There are two colleagues left, and I will allow you to police yourselves. Members on the Front Benches want to be up by 4.30 pm, so I will let you manage the time between yourselves.
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
I have just gone through my speech and scratched out quite a lot, but you will probably be pleased about that, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for his efforts to secure this important debate. Being an MP is a difficult job to define. It is true that there are 650 ways to be an MP and we are all finding our way, but in choosing such a subject for his debate, my hon. Friend shows his humanity and the man that he is. I commend him for that.
With debates such as this one, we can do good in this place. We have a profound opportunity to profile issues we and our constituents care about and amplify the voices of those in our constituencies who might not otherwise get the attention they deserve. We can show them that they matter and restore their trust and faith bit by bit. I love this job because we get to do that. It is therefore an honour to speak in today’s debate on a topic that is critical to the future of our young people.
Mental health in education settings is an issue that affects the entire country and one that demands urgent action. One in eight children and young people in the UK are living with a mental health condition, often left without the support, guidance and, critically, treatment they need to build resilience to thrive in our fast-changing world. For years, Governments failed our young people by not providing the certainty and the early interventions needed to support them mental wellness and the knowledge that when things go wrong, there is a safety net for them. The issue has only worsened since the pandemic, which amplified the strain on the mental health of young people, and too many students—we all see this across our families—are still not receiving the support they need. It is a crisis that we cannot afford to ignore. Too many young people are not in education, employment or training because they have been failed by a system so woefully unsupported during a time when anyone who has children or works with them knows that this is a crisis and has been for a long time.
Funding for mental health support teams represents a step forward in ensuring that young people receive the help they need, particularly at an early stage. However, we cannot overlook the fact that much more still needs to be done to ensure that children in towns such as Weston-super-Mare, Worle and beyond do not fall through the cracks any more. I welcome the Government’s progress in a short time, yet the reality is that not all schools are currently able to access those services, and even when MHSTs are available, the support is often not enough. I know that everybody across the House is impatient for those much-needed improvements. As constituency MPs, we see the pain of the previous Government’s failure on child mental health at surgery after surgery. We must ensure that the teams are expanded across the country, reaching every school and every student who needs help.
I pay tribute to all the teachers, support staff, volunteers and families across Weston, Worle and the villages for their crucial role in supporting the mental health of our young people. They are the ones who see students day in, day out, and the first ones to notice when something is wrong. Yet many teachers and teaching staff feel underprepared to deal with the mental health challenges in their classrooms. Staff should not feel that they are managing such challenges on their own, and it is vital that schools are supported not only with resource, but with ongoing professional development to help deal with the increasing prevalence of mental health challenges faced by their students.
We must also recognise that the mental health of teaching staff is just as important. Teaching staff work under incredible pressure, and the emotional and psychological toll of supporting students, often with their own challenges, can be overwhelming. If we expect teaching staff to support the mental health of students, we must ensure that they receive appropriate support too. We cannot pour from an empty cup.
The evidence is clear. Investing in mental health support in schools not only helps students emotionally and physically, but boosts academic outcomes and overall school wellbeing. It cascades out to families and well beyond the school gates. We cannot and must not fail more children and families by not taking this issue seriously.
The young people of Weston-super-Mare, like those across the UK, are bursting with potential. But without the right support for their mental health to help them navigate the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities of our fast-changing society—that is important; we often talk down, not up, the nature of our fast-changing society—that potential will not be realised, and we must equip them with those tools.
I look forward to the Government’s continued expansion of mental health support in schools, and I urge them to ensure that our teaching staff are given the tools and support they need to look after their own mental health, so they can continue to be the positive role models and carers that our students need. We trust them to look after our children every day. We owe it to them to ensure that they are looked after, too.
Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)
I first want to say how incredible it is that Members are stood here in the Houses of Parliament discussing the mental health of our young people, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for bringing forward such a critical debate.
In a previous role on the health scrutiny committee for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, it was clear to me that young people are waiting too long for treatment, and that is having a long-term detrimental impact on them. That is in addition to the increasing number of young people on too-long CAMHS waiting lists. We also need to look at specialist services, such as for those suffering with disordered eating, which has doubled in just a couple of years. It is clear that we need to improve early intervention for our young people. We have to ensure that young people discuss mental health not only as part of the curriculum, but with their peers. We also need to ensure that young people reach out for support when they need it. Just as importantly, we need to listen to them and act when they do reach out—often, young people are ignored.
Our children and young adults have experienced a global pandemic. We cannot ignore this period in their lives and the impact it has had on some of them. I have two teenagers, so I have seen it at first hand. By increasing mental health support in educational settings, we know that we can provide the foundations that our young people will need for their future.
We are discussing something that cannot always be seen on the surface and that is often viewed as off-limits. I often think about a group of young people I visited in an alternative educational provision setting in Moira in my constituency. From speaking to them, I know how difficult and tough life has already been for them at such a young age, but I also feel empowered by them—they were amazing young people. They knew the support they had received when they needed it had turned their lives around.
For some, school can be six hours of relentless bullying, abuse or loneliness. Sixty per cent of our 11 to 16-year-olds told Girlguiding that they had received negative comments about their appearance from other people, some of which were in a school setting. Nearly half of seven to 10-year-olds say they feel alone some or all of the time—seven to 10 is so little. Too often when we have conversations about mental health support, we just talk about teenagers. Mental health support needs to be available for young people of every age to help them build healthy habits, to help them talk about what they need from us, and to set out where they can go for support.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
That is a salient point. Before I became an MP, I worked with young people in youth work. Increasingly over the last few years, mental health issues that we normally saw in teenagers were affecting younger and younger children. One reason was younger and younger children having access to social media and not having the breaks we would have had as young people. My hon. Friend’s point is valid—will she tell me more about that?
Amanda Hack
Absolutely. The sad fact is that we always talk about teenagers, but if we can give that resilience to children as young as seven to 10, we might be able to prevent them from becoming poorly when they get older. We have to start those conversations as early as possible to build resilience and confidence in our young people. Putting mental health support in educational settings will mean not only that we can change the culture in schools for children struggling with their mental health, but that we will be able to see how young people can be supported in the right place, at the right time and in the right setting.
John Milne
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In my speech, I referred to West Sussex county council but neglected to mention that, as declared in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am still a member of that council. I want to put that on the record—my apologies.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. Now that he has put it on the record, it will be recorded as such.
We come now to the Front-Bench contributions. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on securing this incredibly important debate. I have spent much of the past five and a bit years in this place talking about children’s mental health, which, frankly, I do not think we can ever have enough debate about. It is so incredibly important.
We have heard many statistics from hon. Members today, to which I will add. OECD evidence, based on a survey of 15-year-olds, shows that UK students have the lowest reported wellbeing in western Europe. In 2024, the Children’s Society found that the happiness of UK children aged 10 to 15 was at its lowest since recording began in 2009-10. As we have heard, NHS reporting shows that a staggering one in five children—six in every classroom, on average—have a mental health disorder.
I would argue that it is not an exaggeration to say that we are heading towards a public health emergency as far as our children’s mental health is concerned. Yet, as is so often the case, children and mental health are both overlooked and low down on the priority list. The Darzi report highlighted that children account for 24% of the population but only 11 % of NHS expenditure. The latest evidence from Rethink Mental Illness states that people who need mental health are treatment eight times more likely to have to wait over 18 months than those seeking treatment for physical health. Despite that, the Government’s targets to bring down NHS waiting times exclude mental health. Given that more than 100,000 children are waiting for over a year to be assessed for mental health treatment, it is clear that children have been deprioritised, but as I have said repeatedly in this place, putting money into services that support children is the greatest investment we can make as a country. When budgets are tight, support for child and adolescent mental health should not be pushed aside.
I do not think it an exaggeration to call the situation a public health emergency. In public health, prevention and early intervention are absolutely key. That is where the role of schools, colleges and universities comes in. As we have heard, half of lifetime mental health conditions arise before the age of 14, so ensuring that mental health support is available in schools, from primary upwards, is a critical intervention. The Liberal Democrats have long called for a mental health practitioner to be placed in every primary and secondary school. In the light of the impact of online harms on our children’s mental health, we have made a strong case for the “polluter pays” principle, whereby big tech giants bear the cost burden of the measure. A trebling of the digital services tax would fund a practitioner in every primary and secondary school.
I am slightly confused because, as the Minister said during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, and as I have seen in Labour party material, the Government are committed to
“introducing specialist mental health support for children and young people in every school”.
However, Labour had previously committed to having a counsellor in every secondary school, and indeed the hon. Member for Redditch talked about having a counsellor in every school. I hope that the Minister will clarify that point of policy when he speaks in a moment.
My impression during the Bill Committee was that the Government intended to build out from the mental health support teams that were established by the previous Government. The Minister confirmed in Committee that only 44% of children and young people have access to such teams, which will rise to 50% in April, but he did not set out a timeline or a plan for how or when the Government will meet their commitment by ensuring that every school has access to specialist support.
MHSTs are brilliant. I have spoken to staff who work in those teams, both in my own constituency and in Carshalton, with my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). However, the reality is that MHSTs are spread far too thinly across a number of primary and secondary schools, with some schools only getting half a day or a day of support. That is not enough. Last year, one teenager in a secondary school in my constituency took their own life. Another school in my constituency had three teenagers end up in A&E in the space of about two months, having attempted to take their own lives. Clearly, that level of mental ill health requires much more acute intervention than therapy in school, but the reality is that if we start early—if we start young—with proper support, some of these truly awful incidents might be prevented.
The MHST model may well be the best model for support in schools, but I urge the Government to be ambitious in the resourcing of those teams, so that every school has the full-time equivalent of one person in the provision of this support. I know that many schools are trying to top up the resource out of their own funds, but with budgets being stretched ever further, sadly, mental health support is one of the areas that headteachers and governors tell me they are having to start cutting back on.
We know that the epidemic of mental ill health is driving the crisis of persistent absence in our schools. As the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) said, we have heard a lot in recent days about the million or so young adults who are not in education, employment or training, often because of mental ill health. For the sake of those young people’s futures, our economy and our society, we must do better, and we must do more.
I do not have time today to talk about school staff, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare, but we have a recruitment and retention crisis in our schools, and that is because many teachers see themselves as the fourth emergency service. We have to support them with their mental health if we want to stop that flow out of our schools. In higher education, I hope the Government will look at introducing a duty of care, because we have heard too many tragic stories of students taking their own lives and their loved ones knowing nothing about their mental health problems.
I pay tribute to the charities around the country that are plugging the gaps in mental health support. In my constituency, we have amazing charities such as the Purple Elephant Project and Off The Record working with children and their families. Anstee Bridge works across Richmond and Kingston with children who are no longer engaging with school. As I said, there have been a number of attempted suicide cases in my constituency, and when I have been to Anstee Bridge, I have heard many more stories of children attempting to take their own lives. These services are critical if we want to keep those children and young people safe and help them to recover.
I want to touch on two more points. Childhood bereavement is a really important and often overlooked issue. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), who has long championed the need for a register of children who have been bereaved. We know that childhood bereavement has a terrible impact on children’s wellbeing, potentially their mental health and their educational outcomes. I hope Ministers will look seriously at introducing a register, so that we know how many of these children there are, where they are and what support they need, because that information is not available at the moment. Additionally, there is no national mandate from the Department for Education for schools to have a bereavement policy, nor is there any national policy to support schools with this. I hope that will be addressed.
The hon. Member for Redditch mentioned children growing up in kinship care. The Minister will know that I have long been campaigning cross-party on support for kinship carers and children growing up in kinship care. Like other Members, my inbox has been filled recently with emails from constituents who have either adopted children or are kinship carers for children whose parents can no longer look after them and have benefited from the adoption and special guardianship support fund. It is a critical fund that carers often access to provide therapeutic support for children who have experienced terrible trauma, loss and instability. However, there has been no reassurance from Government about the future of that fund. I think at the moment we only have funding confirmed until the end of this month. There is a huge amount of uncertainty, and hon. Members from across the House have tabled written questions but there has been no clear answer on the future of this fund. I hope that when the Minister rises at the Dispatch Box, he will put on record the plans for the adoption and special guardianship support fund as it is crucial and we cannot lose it.
Our children cannot thrive and cannot achieve their full potential if they are not happy and if they are not well, so I implore the Minister to work closely with his counterparts in the Department of Health and Social Care to treat this public health challenge as an emergency. Our children and young people are only young once; they deserve the best future they can get. They cannot afford to wait; we need to prioritise this.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on securing this important debate in the Chamber. I should also declare an interest: I am a consultant paediatrician and have worked throughout my career with children usually at the point of severe crisis when they have been admitted through A&E to hospital following episodes of deliberate self-harm, such as cutting themselves or taking overdoses, and I have clearly seen the heartbreak for families as they have struggled to understand what they can do to best help their young person get better.
Over recent years there has been a decline in the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people and an increasing demand for mental health services. This is perhaps one of the big challenges of our era. Currently around one fifth of children aged eight to 16 are said to have a probable mental health disorder, up from 12.5% in 2017. This figure is even higher, at 22%, for people aged 17 to 24. The consequences of mental health issues for students range from poor academic performance and dropping out of university or college to self-harm and suicide, and we must do all we can to help.
I want briefly to talk about university students because university is supposed to be one of the most enjoyable and formative periods of a person’s life, but for many it is also when they leave home for the first time and when they are separated for the first time from their family and friends and their support networks. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that during the covid-19 pandemic students reported higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of happiness than the general population. The number of students saying they have a mental health condition has increased sevenfold in the last decade. Even before the pandemic students consistently reported worse mental health than the rest of the adult population, but these trends were greatly exacerbated by the impact of lockdown. Will the Minister update the House on what steps he is taking to support young people with mental health problems as they go to university or who develop mental health problems at university?
Despite the unprecedented challenges the previous Government faced, not least the pandemic, we made important strides in improving mental health services, in increasing the recognition and discussion of mental health problems, in increasing investment and in reducing stigma. Between 2018-19 and 2023-24, spending on mental health services increased by £4.7 billion which gave an additional 345,000 young people access to the mental health support they needed, and the number of mental health nurses increased by 30% since 2010, yet still we see that demand is outstripping supply.
Prevention is better than cure and we need to understand why we have such high levels of mental health problems in children. Can the Minister update the House on how the Government are working to identify risk factors for poor mental health and how they will support children and families to prevent it?
The last Government tried to detect mental health problems early and stop them escalating, expanding mental health support teams in schools, committing almost £8 million of funding for 24 early support hubs in ’24/25. These offered earlier open access mental health intervention without the need for a referral by a doctor or school. The drop-in centres offer vital advice to young people going through the trauma of stress and anxiety, giving them a space to go to when their problems first emerge. Can the Minister update us on what the Government are doing in terms of expanding the availability of these centres?
The Online Safety Act 2023 made very good progress in protecting children from harmful online content but there is much more to do on the topic of screen time, as has been mentioned by hon. Members this afternoon. Does the Minister agree that the mounting evidence we are hearing especially from health professionals about the impact of smartphones in particular on children’s mental health is very concerning? If so, will he support the Conservative amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to ban smartphone use in schools?
However, there have been some concerns that in the desire to support and enable individuals to have positive mental wellbeing, there is a danger that the pendulum has swung a little far and the boundaries between distress and disorder have become blurred. That means that there is a risk that those who are most unwell may miss out on the treatment they deserve and need because of the volume of referrals, as well as a risk of burdening others with unhelpful labels and prescriptions that could hold them back, without addressing the root cause of their very real need.
Some 84% of GPs are now said to believe that society’s approach to mental health has led to medicalising the normal ups and downs of life. The terms “wellbeing”, “mental health” and “mental illness” are often used interchangeably, so what steps is the Minister taking to distinguish between those terms in educational contexts, and to deliver public services to ensure that we can get the best outcomes for those affected, so people get the treatment they clinically require?
I pay tribute to the work that many charities do to support our young people with mental health problems. Will the Minister talk to the Chancellor about funding for those services? Dr Sarah Hughes, the chief executive of Mind, said that
“the implications of the NIC rise is eye-watering, at a time when we are trying to direct every penny towards delivering the best support.”
Such charities do immense work to create a mentally healthy society, putting everything they have into it, and the Government should recognise that huge investment, not destabilise it by introducing mounting costs that charities simply cannot subsidise.
It is important to recognise the connection between physical and mental health, and that those with long-term physical conditions are considerably more likely to have poor mental health. What are the Government doing to support children who have chronic illness to help improve their mental health?
In 2023, the now Education Secretary said that Labour wanted a trained mental health counsellor available in every secondary school. What steps have the Government taken towards achieving that aim? More specifically, why have they focused on secondary schools? In April 2024, Dr Patrick Roach, the general secretary of NASUWT, said:
"We also need to see improved support for pupils in primary schools to secure wraparound care for pupils at all stages of their education.”
What are the Government doing to support children in primary schools with their mental health?
Ahead of the last general election, the Labour party promised to establish Young Futures hubs, recruit 8,500 mental health staff and provide mental health support in schools. Why has so little progress been made on delivering those promises? When the Minister stood on a manifesto to establish the Young Futures hubs, which were said to have a cost of £95 million, and to provide mental health support in all schools, at a cost of £175 million, the Government said that they would fund that through revenue raised from applying VAT and business rates to private schools. Will the Minister confirm whether the revenue obtained from applying the VAT to private schools looks like it will be sufficient to expand the mental health support as described? If not, how do the Government intend to fund the measures they said they would implement?
In a speech to the Confederation of School Trusts on 7 November last year, the Education Secretary claimed that the Government would give
“every single child the very best life chances”
in
“a new era of child-centred government.”
How does she justify the impact on the wellbeing of those children who are forced to move schools due to the imposition of VAT on the private sector? Numerous think-tanks and mental health charities have noted that being forced to move school at a non-standard time can have a significant and long-lasting impact on children’s friendships, support networks and emotional development. What support is the Minister offering to those children?
Mental health issues among our young people are one of the defining issues of our time. As with so many other policy areas, the Government have promised a panacea, but so far they have delivered a sticking plaster.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing a debate on such an important subject, which rightly invites considerable cross-party support.
We know that one third of adult mental ill health originates before age 14, and six in 10 of those that suffer from mental ill health have their first onset by age 25, meaning that childhood and early adulthood is a critical period for early interventions and prevention. That is why this Government have set a bold new ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history, which of course includes their mental health and wellbeing.
We have seen increases in mental health issues in children. NHS surveys suggest that around 20% of 8 to 16-year-olds had a probable mental health disorder in 2023, up from 13% in 2017. The wellbeing and life satisfaction of children and young people also show cause for concern. Long-term reductions in the wellbeing of children and young people are a common trend across countries, and we have to acknowledge that England and the UK report among the lowest levels of average life satisfaction among participating countries.
There is no one simple reason for that, and rising mental health challenges are an international phenomenon. The ongoing impacts of covid-19, brought about by school closures and reduced opportunities for social and emotional development, are a factor, as are changes in health behaviours, such as low physical activity, increased eating and sleeping problems and increased screen time and social media use—points made by a number of Members this afternoon. There is also a wider range of contributing societal factors and ongoing national and global issues, such as the economic outlook, international conflict and climate change. The relative influence of those different drivers is complex, and taken together they show the scale of the challenge that we face.
Helen Hayes
Among children and young people who suffer the most acute mental health challenges are looked-after children and young people, all of whom will have experienced some kind of adverse childhood experience or trauma resulting in their being taken into the care system. My Committee heard evidence a couple of weeks ago from children and young people who talked about the lack of adequate assessment of their mental health when they are taken into care and when they move placements. They called for a strengthening of the regulations around that so that their mental health and wellbeing are properly taken into account. I have tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which we will discuss early next week. Will the Minister give a commitment to look at that and see whether we can make the support better for children who are looked after?
Stephen Morgan
I know that my hon. Friend is a real champion of looked-after children. We will certainly look at those proposals and at all the work the Education Committee does to support the most vulnerable children in society.
Prevention is vital, and schools and colleges can naturally play a preventive role in what they do from day to day. Attainment is a vital factor in longer-term mental health, as it helps young people to access the things they want to do in life, in further study and in jobs. The best schools and colleges set high standards and expectations, and support children to overcome barriers to their learning, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. We also understand that a child’s experience of school helps them to both achieve and thrive. Education settings also support the social and emotional development of their pupils through what is taught in lessons, extracurricular activity and pastoral support.
Pupils who are thriving, with positive subjective wellbeing and a strong sense of belonging, accomplishment, autonomy and good health, achieve better educational outcomes and are more likely to attend school. They are better equipped to face issues in their lives, which is important. Not every child facing mental health issues will need clinical interventions; the support that they get from their friends, families and school or college staff can be what they need. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge), I acknowledge and recognise the many thousands of school leaders, teachers and staff who are committed to promoting and supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils every day through the things that they do to make school a safe, supportive and inclusive place for children, by supporting their specific needs and by working with parents, families and other community services.
We know that as many as nine in 10 schools have a designated lead for students’ mental health and that more than three quarters of them have benefited from DFE-funded training, helping leaders to embed effective whole-school or whole-college approaches to mental health and wellbeing. Nevertheless, schools and colleges themselves need support with what to do and cannot deal with every issue that pupils have.
That is why, as a Government, we have committed to provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, so that every young person has access to early support to address problems before they escalate. That commitment will be delivered through the expansion of NHS-funded mental health support teams, which will work in schools and colleges to offer early support through evidence-based one-to-one and group interventions. They will liaise with specialist services and support leads to develop their holistic approach to mental health and wellbeing. Those functions, supervised by a clinical professional, are what make mental health support teams such a valuable resource. I have seen that important work at first hand on visits to education settings in Brighton, Manchester and Rugby. By April 2025, we expect those teams to cover over 50% of children and young people in schools and colleges, and plans for further expansion are being drawn up with the NHS to achieve 100% coverage as soon as is practically possible.
Munira Wilson
The Minister has referred to access to specialist mental health support. For the benefit of the House, could he clarify what level of resource he expects that to be—will it be half a day a week, a day a week, or full-time equivalent? The previous commitment had been a counsellor in every school.
Stephen Morgan
I can assure the hon. Member that there will be access to mental health professionals in every school. We are working on the detail of that as we speak, and will announce more in due course.
Stephen Morgan
I will make some progress, if I may. The pace of the roll-out of mental health support teams will be determined by local needs. It represents a substantial investment in workforce growth and training through this Parliament. Further announcements will be made in the spring.
Stephen Morgan
I am going to carry on.
We recognise that our pledge that every school will have access to specialist mental health professionals is not the whole answer. Schools are facing their own pressures, and rely on health professionals for diagnoses and treatment of their pupils’ mental health needs. We all know from our own postbags and inboxes, as well as from the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch, that the waiting lists for those referred for specialist support are too high. The Department of Health and Social Care is working to bring waiting times down and intervene earlier. In addition, the Government will put in place the new Young Futures hubs, including access to mental health support workers, and recruit 8,500 new mental health staff to treat children and adults.
As well as targeted mental health support, we must tackle the wider drivers affecting children and young people’s mental health. For instance, my Department’s comprehensive child poverty strategy will be central to unlocking opportunity and giving every child the best start in life. In addition, we recognise the importance of monitoring and understanding trends in the wellbeing of children and young people, and are already closely monitoring national data and research on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and encouraging schools to measure pupils’ wellbeing.
Since becoming the Minister for early education, I have seen and heard about incredible work going on in schools and colleges across the country, and have listened to the issues education staff continue to have. It brings me real joy to engage directly with children and young people across the country. My Department will continue to support education staff and provide a range of guidance and practical resources to help schools embed effective whole-school or whole-college approaches to mental health and wellbeing, such as a resources hub for mental health leads and a toolkit to help choose evidence-based early support for pupils. I recognise that there is interest across the House in a number of different forms of support, such as counselling provision, as we have heard this afternoon. We believe that schools are best placed to choose what provision best meets the needs of their pupils, but we will ensure that resources are in place to help schools do this well.
Siân Berry
Does the Minister agree that what has been announced today falls short? Access to services that are available in a local area—presumably by appointment, and in a different setting—does not constitute the same availability of support as having properly qualified counsellors in schools.
Stephen Morgan
I can assure the hon. Member that I have not announced anything today. As I mentioned in response to the intervention from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), we are working through the detail, but the commitment is to access to dedicated mental health support in every school. It was a real pleasure to visit the hon. Member’s constituency and see that work at first hand.
A number of Members are interested in the role of councils in this important issue. Local government’s public health responsibilities are an essential element of preventing ill health, promoting healthier lives and addressing health inequalities. The Department of Health and Social Care will provide more than £4 billion of public health funding in 2025-26, including over £3.8 billion through the public health grant to local authorities—an average cash increase of 5.4%, or a 3.0% real-terms increase in local authority public health grant funding compared with the last financial year. That represents a significant turning point for local public health services, marking the biggest real-terms increase after nearly a decade of reduced funding.
I thank all Members from all parts of the House for their contributions this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch spoke with real insight and passion about the support that children and young people need, and about the need for parity between physical and mental health, and he made a number of informed contributions based on evidence and research. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist), who for some time has spoken in this place on behalf of families who have lost loved ones due to suicide. I pay tribute to her work alongside the hugely dedicated campaigners that are the 3 Dads Walking. I have had the privilege of meeting those individuals, and they are inspiring in the work that they do.
We heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who made a number of points from her experience on the Select Committee and from visits to schools in her area. I look forward to her continued constructive engagement as we progress our ambitions on mental health in this place.
A number of Members made contributions on support for SEN children. Every child, regardless of their individual needs, deserves the opportunity to achieve, thrive and succeed. This Government are aware of the scale of the challenges in the current system, and we have made clear our commitment to addressing them.
In conclusion, I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch and all Members that this Government prioritise the health and happiness of children and their wellbeing. We recognise the need for further support in schools, so that all children can achieve and thrive, including in tackling the generational challenge of school absence and bolstering young people’s wellbeing and sense of belonging. We value the many contributions from across the House in the debate today, and I again thank my hon. Friend for securing it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The last few minutes go to Chris Bloore to wind up.
Chris Bloore
First, let me thank the Minister for his comprehensive response, but also for how his Department has helpfully answered the many questions that my office has put through to him. I also thank him for his candidness at the Dispatch Box, and I look forward to hearing a lot of the detail following the questions from Members from all parts of the House.
I will make reference in a quick speed-dating way to many of the comments that Members have made. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for her expertise and comments, particularly on SEND provision. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry) for raising awareness of the success that she and campaigners have had in her constituency. As a fellow former county councillor, I, like the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne), understand the challenges that county councils face, particularly in rural areas, and I understand his frustration. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for his focus on early intervention, and I support his viewpoint that cross-Government working is vital to making progress on this issue.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) for her intervention. I am sad to hear about students being told to unroll from school because provision is not available. That is simply not acceptable. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) for his excellent and heartfelt comments about representing his residents, and also for his timely comments about the work of teachers in our schools.
I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). She has a long history on this subject, and I have read many of her contributions over the past two weeks. I know that she is fully committed to this cause. I thank the Conservative spokesperson, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) for her thoughtful comments and for her expertise in the area in which she worked prior to coming to this place.
Finally, we have been talking in this debate about the life chances of our children. We have made so much progress in bringing discussions about mental health to the fore, and we know the difference that early intervention can make. It is okay not to be okay, and we have made progress with people feeling that they can say that, but it will not be okay if we do not make progress to support children in the long run by the time this Parliament is over.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered mental health support in educational settings.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on what mechanisms are open to Members under the Standing Orders of this place to obtain accurate information from Government Ministers. Earlier today, during the debate on the future of farming, the shadow Environment Secretary asked the farming Minister for the exact cap associated with the sustainable farming incentive, which the Minister claimed has now been reached. Astonishingly, the Minister was unable to give that information to the House, despite farming being in his brief. How can Members of this place ensure that Ministers provide accurate information to the House of Commons? If the Minister is unable to do so when requested, how can I request that he come back to the House to update Members when the exact information is known?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The hon. Member will know that the content of statements that Ministers make is not the responsibility of the Chair, but he has put his comments on the record. Of course, he can go to the Table Office, which will give him further advice on how he can put in probing questions for further clarity. No doubt those on the Treasury Benches have heard him and will relay that information.
I assume that the hon. Member alerted the Minister that he would raise this point of order. If not, he will no doubt do so very swiftly.
Contribution of Muslims to Communities
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The subject of this debate is the contribution of Muslims to communities, so I look forward to hearing it.
Dr Zubir Ahmed (Glasgow South West) (Lab)
Ramadan 2025—or 1446 AH, as many Muslims know it—is the first I am observing since being elected to this place as the Member of Parliament for Glasgow South West. As the only ethnic-minority and Muslim MP representing a Scottish Westminster constituency, I feel a sense of unique responsibility to espouse the positive role that Muslims play in our country, which should, but often does not, feel natural and easy to celebrate vocally.
According to the 2022 census, over 76,000 Muslims live in Scotland, and I am proud that 13,000 of them—almost one in six—live in my constituency of Glasgow South West. It is a vibrant and diverse community of people of all colours and ethnic backgrounds who find a way to be multicultural, but who still tend to coalesce seamlessly around our Scottish and British identity. Perhaps we have much to teach the rest of Britain, and I would welcome a visit from the Minister or one of his team whenever they have time.
Across the UK, there are 4 million Muslims, representing 6% of the total population. Their contributions are vast, particularly in the month of Ramadan, when many will redouble and amplify their efforts in their community and charity work. British Muslims donate £1.79 billion a year to charitable causes—four times more than the national average—and volunteer time worth £622 million a year. In that regard, I place on record my thanks to the many Islamic charities that are active in my constituency, including Islamic Relief, which diligently works not only on international causes, but increasingly on local causes.
Businesses owned by Muslims contribute £25 billion a year to the British economy, notwithstanding the fact that the UK is a world leader in Islamic finance, holding 85% of the European Islamic finance banking sector. As with every community, there are challenges around inequality, but vast strides have been made in education and in the participation of Muslim women in society. There has been a notable increase in educational attainment, with 32.3% of Muslims holding degree-level qualifications in 2021, compared with only 24% in 2011. That is largely driven by Muslim women coming into higher education—something that we can wholeheartedly welcome.
The story of Muslims is intricately woven into our society and is worthy of celebration. It is apparent in every walk of life, but perhaps most prominently in our NHS, where I worked as a full-time surgeon prior to my election to this place. That footprint was most palpable during the covid pandemic, when many served on the frontline despite knowing that they were at a disproportionately higher risk of harm. Many made the ultimate sacrifice, with Muslim doctors Alfa Sa’adu, Amged el-Hawrani, Adil El Tayar and Habib Zaidi—who had ancestry in Africa, Pakistan and the middle east—dying of covid in the course of their clinical duties.
Unlike this Ramadan, when mosques at night are resplendent with light and beautiful recitation of the Quran, in 2020 they went dark and fell silent, with many taking the decision to close their doors to worshippers to stop the virus and protect everyone in their community long before the Government told them to do so. Many, such as the Glasgow central mosque, which is a stone’s throw from my constituency boundary, transformed into testing and vaccination hubs, undoubtedly saving thousands of lives. That should not be a surprise, because despite recent rhetoric, it is important to place on record that the footprint of Muslims on the British Isles, and in serving British interests, has been long, enduring and, at times, existential for our country.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who is my office neighbour, for allowing me to move us down from Scotland to Staffordshire, in the heart of the country. I congratulate him on securing this debate. It is doubly important for me, as I am sure it is for all hon. Members, that you are in the Chair for this important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. The House is strengthened by both his presence and yours.
Newcastle-under-Lyme is home to many faith communities that do much good in bringing our community together. Since September 2023, we are home to the Newcastle-under-Lyme Islamic Centre at the masjid on Pilkington Avenue in the Westlands. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking those in the Muslim community in Newcastle-under-Lyme for all they do to bring our people together?
Dr Ahmed
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I wholeheartedly thank those in the Muslim community of Newcastle-under-Lyme for all their contributions—one day I may even get an invitation from my hon. Friend to go there.
At least 2.5 million Muslim soldiers and labourers are reported to have fought with the allied forces in the first world war and 5.5 million in the second world war. Nearly 1.5 million Muslims were killed in action, not including the many Muslims serving in other roles during the war. Among them was my grandfather, Imam Mohamed, who was interned by the Japanese while serving as a constable in the Royal Hong Kong police force during the second world war. In more recent times, that sense of service has been manifested in the election of Muslim MPs to this place. It would be remiss of me, Madam Deputy Speaker, not to mention your achievements as the first ever female Muslim Minister serving in a Government and, of course, as the first ever Muslim Deputy Speaker.
Despite the contribution I have described, with that shared history and those shared values, it is unfortunately a tumultuous time for many British Muslims. Over 6,000 anti-Muslim hate incidents have been reported in the last year. I see a sense of this increase in my own social media timeline, with an increasing diatribe of hatred directed at me—not so much because of the colour of my skin any more, as it was when I was younger, but because of my religion. Despite my being born here and serving in the NHS here, many question my place in Parliament because they do not deem enough generations of my family to have lived here for me to be British enough to serve in this place.
James Asser (West Ham and Beckton) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Like him, I have a very diverse community, as he knows, because he was once a resident there. My seat in east London has long had, as east London has historically had, a reputation for communities working together and supporting one another.
My hon. Friend has talked about the age of politics that we live in—a time of populism. Siren populist voices would like us to think that community engagement has gone. Does he agree that the work of the diverse communities from different parts of the world, and particularly of those in the Muslim community, with how they engage themselves in business, charity and social life, shows that up to be the lie that it is?
Dr Ahmed
I wholeheartedly agree, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In fact, the thrust of the conclusion of my speech will be how important social cohesion is. We must keep that at the forefront of our minds.
The rhetoric we see online has the ability, surreptitiously, to desensitise all of us, and that desensitisation is finding its way to places such at the dinner table, where it is becoming an increasingly acceptable form of conversation to indulge in anti-Muslim rhetoric. As it does so at those dinner tables, at Muslim dinner tables across the country people are questioning their place in this society. This trend should worry us all, because it undermines the fabric of our society, our cohesion and our identity as a country. We know from other forms of hatred that what starts with antisemitism or anti-Muslim hatred rarely stops there.
Uma Kumaran (Stratford and Bow) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend for his contributions to this House, and I echo the comments about how great it is that we have you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, for this important debate.
My hon. Friend makes the point about fighting the tide of hatred, which I have seen at first hand. In a previous life before I entered this place, I was very proud to work for our first ever Muslim-heritage elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. It is a testament to him that he has been fighting against this hatred and showing that London can stand as a beacon of hope against it.
It is really important that we are here today to celebrate the achievements of Muslim residents around our country, and there are many amazing organisations in my constituency of Stratford and Bow, such as the Minhaj Welfare Foundation, Soul Sisters and the British Bangla Welfare Trust. Would my hon. Friend join me in thanking them for their contributions to Stratford and Bow, and in wishing them a peaceful and blessed Ramadan?
Dr Ahmed
I thank my hon. Friend, a well-respected politician who represents all her constituents well, and I will definitely join her in congratulating those organisations, particularly the Minhaj Welfare Foundation, which also operates in my constituency.
As I was saying, this trend should worry us all, because of its undermining nature. We know that that kind of hatred, which begins as anti-Muslim rhetoric, does not stop with Muslims. It has a common denominator to divide and to fragment the bonds that have been forged over years, and indeed is a lightning rod to violence and civil disorder. This coming Saturday is a reminder of where that hatred leads if left unchecked. It will be the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand. On 15 March 2019, 51 innocent lives were tragically taken in that act of hatred—the youngest being just three years old.
That sickening attack on those attending Friday prayers was a dark day. But in that darkness came the light of the response by the now former New Zealand Labour Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. She enveloped the Muslim community in empathy, inclusiveness and acceptance in a way that Muslims living in the west had rarely experienced, and in a way that will never be forgotten. I remember, the following day, coming out of the operating theatre and being driven to tears by her compassion. She validated my existence as a Muslim in the west in a way that no one in this country could have managed at the time, and for that, Muslims far and wide will hold her in a special place in their hearts.
But we must not mistake compassion for weakness. In compassion there is often strength, and perhaps an even clearer vision of the future and a bravery to confront difficult issues and have the difficult conversations across communities, but most importantly within. We saw that sense of compassion and bravery in our country last summer in our Prime Minister, who acted so decisively during the riots to protect mosques, to protect those at risk of violent attack, and to mobilise the state quickly and effectively against anarchy. He attended the big iftar at Westminster Hall—the first time it has ever been held there—and tonight he is hosting an iftar at Downing Street too.
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend for securing this debate; it is fantastic. It would be remiss of me, coming from a small town in the west country, not to talk about the Muslim population in my town. In the context of what happened in the summer, I was really proud to be able to stand with the Muslim community in Weston-super-Mare, and also to see how the civic pride and civic duty of that community was not diminished by the hostility that they faced. I really want to pay tribute to the Ahmed family, and Aishah in particular, a 21-year-old. She has had Aishah’s Food Charity for years, feeding the people of Weston-super-Mare and supplementing the assistance that is provided in the context of the issues that we have with destitution. The family are amazing, and a huge asset to the town.
Dr Ahmed
I thank my hon. Friend for his warm words. I join him in commending the Ahmed family for all that they are doing to cement the bonds of community cohesion in his constituency.
The Prime Minister’s actions are a clear indication that this Labour Government, under this Prime Minister, value and share bread with all communities and are a friend of the Muslim community. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) for his tireless efforts over the last decade in tackling anti-Muslim hatred; he also is a true friend of Muslims across this country.
When hatred takes root in our society it diminishes us all. That is why I am glad that the Deputy Prime Minister is also taking action. Perhaps the Minister might be kind enough to outline some of the details of the new group set up by his Department to tackle anti-Muslim hatred in this country once and for all, led by Dominic Grieve KC, which is welcomed.
The Minister will know that this not just an issue for Muslims; it speaks to the wider issue of social cohesion. The Khan review of social cohesion in March 2024 argued that social cohesion is not just about protecting the democratic norms of our country; it has wide-reaching benefits for society as a whole, from helping achieve sustainable economic growth to reducing the threats of terrorism and hate crime, increasing societal resilience to shocks such as pandemics, improving public health, increasing volunteering and strengthening communities, social cohesion and a wide range of adjacent policy areas—areas that I know this Government take seriously. I believe recent events around the world demonstrate that we are at an inflection point in our country. We can roll over to the easy answer to the scapegoating a community, or conversely avoid, as has been done in the past, the difficult conversations that sometimes need to be had within communities. Neither of those attitudes serves any of us well. We should call out hatred when we see it online, at dinner tables, in changing rooms, in public spaces. But in a pluralistic British society, we should also be able to issue challenge to communities when we see failings. I am proud to be an MP on the Labour Benches, because I believe it is only this Government who can achieve that. Many communities with their own separate traditions, but still able to coalesce naturally into one British identity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) for securing this debate during such an important time for Muslim communities. What a pleasure it is to follow a speech that was thoughtful and reflective, but also challenging to us all in this place and in particular to us as a Govt. I look forward to feeding back on some of the points he raised. And I will, of course, take him up on his invitation to visit—I never miss a chance to go to Glasgow.
This debate is perfectly timed. It is only right that we honour and celebrate the contribution of British Muslim communities during the month of Ramadan, a time of reflection, devotion and communities. We have had a little tour in this debate: we started in Glasgow, but we have also been to Newcastle-under-Lyme, Weston-super-Mare and the east of London, and now I am adding a little bit of Nottingham. For Muslims across the UK and around the world, Ramadan will be a sacred period of fasting, prayer and charity. It is also a time that brings people together, strengthening bonds between neighbours, colleagues and friends of all faiths and beliefs, and of none.
Here in the UK, we see the vibrancy of Ramadan reflected in our public life: in this debate today, the Ramadan lights on Oxford Street, the historic Iftar recently hosted at Windsor Castle, and the many gatherings taking place across the country. They show how deeply embedded and richly valued these traditions are within our national culture. I think of my own in Nottingham. I think of the Al-Khazra mosque and how it throws its doors open during Ramadan because it is a good time for people are curious, perhaps about what they are reading and seeing, to come and understand Islam. Of course, food is always a great draw there, because it is fantastic. I also think of the work that Mufti Ahmed Peerbhai does to get people in, including myself, to learn about Islam and to talk and to educate, which is very, very important work. Ministers across the Government are honoured to be joining Iftars throughout this month, celebrating the richness of our communities and the values of compassion and generosity that Ramadan embodies, and, as my hon. Friend mentions, the Prime Minister is hosting an Iftar at Downing Street tonight.
It is also particularly fitting to have this debate during Muslim Heritage Month. This is a great moment to reflect on the immense contributions Muslims have made to Britain, past and present. Islam and Muslims have been part of Britain for centuries, from the early 1700s and the small communities of Muslim sailors and traders from Assam, Bengal, Gujarat and Yemen. Outside the port communities of east London—we have heard from colleagues from east London—South Shields and Liverpool and the community in Woking, Surrey, Muslim populations remained small. Indeed, it is surprising to hear that the first mosque in London did not open until 1895. As my hon. Friend noted in his own powerful personal story, it was only after the second world war, when many former soldiers answered the call to help rebuild the nation, that our Muslim populations grew substantially. From the soldiers who fought alongside British forces in both world wars to the innovators shaping our future today, the legacy of British Muslims is one of resilience, dedication and excellence.
I am furious that my hon. Friend has beaten me to the opportunity to embarrass you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure you do not want us to highlight your own personal achievements, but they are very important. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] You were, of course, the first female Muslim Minister to stand at this very Dispatch Box, and you are now the first Muslim person to sit in that Chair as Deputy Speaker. I think of the people who watch these debates and the importance they will place on that. Certainly, we think of the young girls and boys who will see you and see your example, and know that if you can do it, perhaps they can do it, too. To those who are watching I say, “You can, you must and you should. There are lots of very good examples in Parliament of people who look and sound like you who have done so much for our country and our democracy.”
We want to recognise that history. The Government are committed to doing so, which is why we support the creation of a Muslim war memorial. It will stand as a lasting tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Muslims who served Britain in times of conflict, ensuring that their contributions—too often forgotten—are finally given the recognition they deserve. We intend for the memorial to include an educational element to ensure that people of all backgrounds and ages are able to learn about and understand the sacrifices made by Muslims in the British armed forces during the two world wars and beyond.
Turning to the theme of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West clearly set out the contribution that Muslims make to the UK, but I will add a little bit myself, too. Whether in business, the arts, science or healthcare, British Muslims are at the forefront of progress and innovation. Their contributions to the economy are substantial, with Muslim-led businesses generating billions of pounds and creating thousands of jobs. A recent report by the Equi think-tank estimated that British Muslims generate £70 billion a year for the UK economy through income, business and charitable giving.
I think of Himmah, a charity in Nottingham that was recently awarded the King’s Award, with its food bank and what it does for my community to ensure that people where we live do not go hungry. I am looking forward—if that is the right word—to running the London marathon next month to raise funds for Himmah. I really, really wish I had started training. I currently don’t own a pair of trainers, which I believe is an impediment to the exercise.
That same Equi report noted the huge contribution that Muslims make to our public services, including education, social care and emergency response, filling more than 46,000 roles across our NHS, delivering essential care to our sick and elderly. Of course, my hon. Friend is a shining example of that—a surgeon who has made such a difference to so many people at the most challenging moments. We are very lucky to have had him serve in our NHS, and we are very lucky to have him serve in our legislature, too.
Adam Jogee
I wish the Minister all the best for running the London marathon—my father did it five times in the 1980s, so I am happy to get some tips for him after the debate. As he talks about the contribution made by the Muslim community up and down our country, would he join me in expressing a note of disappointment that there is not a single Member from any opposition party on their Benches this afternoon? We are meant to be one United Kingdom, speaking for all communities, and it is a real disappointment that nobody else is present to listen.
Alex Norris
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the kind offer of support. I have to say, I am not generally one for policing colleagues’ diaries, but I hope that during this period, colleagues from all political parties and none are able to use their platform positively to promote the important work of Britain’s Muslim community and to fight the rise of Islamophobia, which I will turn to shortly.
Before I do, I want to reflect on two things that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West mentioned. First, London is the west’s Islamic finance capital, with UK-based Islamic banks controlling assets worth nearly £6 billion, which is 85% of the total assets in Europe—what a great success story that is for our country. Secondly, I want to mention the practice of Zakat and the extraordinary charitable giving of British Muslims, who donate millions every year to support those in need, both at home and abroad. As my hon. Friend has said, British Muslims give four times more to charity than the average UK adult, donating more than £700 a year. During Ramadan alone, we can expect contributions to exceed £100 million—what a lifeline that is for those who receive that funding.
Civil society also benefits immensely from the leadership and activism of Muslim communities; I think of the Muslim councillors on my local authority, as well as colleagues in this place. It goes much deeper, too, with remarkable contributions to volunteerism and social welfare. Whether it is supporting food banks, as I mentioned, supporting homeless shelters, mentoring young people or engaging in community outreach, their service embodies the values of generosity and civic duty that strengthen our society and foster social cohesion, in a nice intersection between faith and our national values—I think we would like to think that those are British values, too.
None the less, as my hon. Friend has said, we know that, despite invaluable contributions, Muslim communities continue to face discrimination and prejudice within our society. Anti-Muslim hatred remains a real and persistent issue, affecting the lives of many. My hon. Friend talked about online hatred, and also about creeping normalisations, and we should stand against that, and we, as a Government, most certainly do so. It is impossible not to go back, certainly with the sixth anniversary of the horrific Christchurch terror attacks being on Saturday. That was a stark reminder of how online hatred can fuel real world violence. I remember being at Al-Khazra mosque in the days following the attack, talking to Muslim constituents and, indeed, to those who, like me, came in solidarity. They told me about their fears and how they felt when faced with the reality that that could have been them at Friday prayers. We also talked about the things that we had to do to stand against such terror and to make sure that they were safe in our city.
We have recently established a new working group to define and tackle anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia. I hope that this initiative reflects our unwavering commitment to ensuring that all communities in the UK can live free from discrimination and fear. My hon. Friend asked for a little more detail on this. As he said, the group is being chaired by Dominic Grieve KC, once of this place, which is really positive. The group will advise Government on how best to understand, quantify and define prejudice, discrimination and hate crime targeted at Muslims.
The context behind the establishment of this group is the fact that hate crime is at a record high in England and Wales, which is why we think that this is an issue that requires urgent attention. The work of the group will be measured in months rather than years. We want its members to come back to us as swiftly as possible to help shape our Government’s response to make sure that we are truly standing up against the rise of this hatred.
Adam Jogee
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again. He talked about the work of the group taking months, which is the correct approach as we want to make sure that this is done properly. Will he explain how Members of this House can feed into the process, so that we can be sure that the experiences that our constituents raise with us are also raised with the group?
Alex Norris
That is an excellent question. I will make sure that colleagues, through the Minister for Faith, Lord Khan, are able to have that opportunity. We are very good conduits of information and insight, because we see this every day in our constituencies, and, by definition, we cover the entire community. That is an excellent idea, which I shall make sure comes to fruition.
In conclusion, Ramadan reminds us of our shared values: kindness, unity and a commitment to justice. During this important time for British Muslim communities, the Government reaffirm their dedication to building a society where everyone, regardless of background or belief, is valued and respected. I hope that all those observing this debate have seen the strength of feeling across the House. I say to them, Ramadan Mubarak. May this month bring them peace, strength and countless blessings.
Question put and agreed to.
Repairs to Whitebarns Lane in Furneux Pelham
Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill (Eleventh sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
I remind Members to send their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk, to switch off electronic devices and to abstain from tea and coffee. It is Lent, after all.
Ordered,
That the Order of the Committee of 25 February be amended as follows—
In paragraph (1)(f) delete the words “and 2.00pm”.—(Gerald Jones.)
Clause 92
Code of practice
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
It is a pleasure to serve again under your chairship, Sir Desmond. After that remarkably collegiate agreement on the most controversial item of today’s business—I hope—I turn to clause 92.
The clause provides a vital safeguard for the new debt recovery measures. It inserts new section 80D into the Social Security Administration Act 1992, making provision for a code of practice. In the clause, we have made it a requirement that the code sets out how and when the Department for Work and Pensions will exercise its functions under direct deduction and driving disqualification powers, as well as its approach to penalties for non-compliance by banks, and how any information obtained will be used and processed. The code will also include further information on how safeguards and other provisions in the Bill will be applied, such as those on reasonable opportunity to settle the debt, and how those struggling with debt can be signposted to independent debt advice and money guidance.
We recognise the importance of transparency in the use of the new debt recovery measures. That is why, before issuing the DWP’s debt code of practice for the first time, as per our statutory obligations we will carry out a formal public consultation on a draft of the codes, to provide an opportunity for all interested parties to review them. Once finalised, all the relevant codes of practice will then be laid before both Houses of Parliament for 40 sitting days, before publication.
The clause is a key safeguard to ensure that the new DWP recovery powers are exercised proportionately, and it offers transparency for the public on their use. I commend it to the Committee.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
The clause requires the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice about the giving of notices to banks requiring the provision of information, the processing of information, the circumstances in which penalties may be issued to banks, and the circumstances in which the Secretary of State expects to exercise functions to disqualify a liable person from driving.
As we have said several times in Committee, it has been extremely difficult to scrutinise the Bill without the code of practice. Will the Minister confirm when it will be published? I believe he just did, but we will get it on record again. He said that it will be before the Bill is finalised, but it would be useful to know what sight we will have of it beforehand. What can the Minister say about how the code of practice will regulate the giving of information notices to banks?
We clearly agree that the Secretary of State should consult on the draft code, and the Minister has just implied that it will be a public consultation. It would be useful to know what form that consultation will take, and how it will be publicised to ensure that it can be seen by as many people as possible. Will it include a consultation on the impact of bank costs and what those should be, and give banks an opportunity to feed back at that point in time?
The Secretary of State must consult before the first code of practice is issued, which is welcome, but there is no suggestion that further revisions will be subject to any scrutiny. Will the Minister confirm whether that is the case? What oversight mechanisms exist to ensure that the code of practice is not changed for the worse in the future, and to ensure that Parliament remains informed?
When does Minister envisage that the powers in the Bill will first be used, given the delay that the code of practice consultation will necessitate? What might trigger a revision and reissue of the code, and who might be able to alert the Secretary of State to the need for that? The clause implies that the Secretary of State could revise the code, but what would be the trigger and who might be involved? Will there be a non-statutory review after a certain period of time as an initial check and balance?
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the Minister for his introduction to the clause and for his assurance that there will be a consultation; it would be helpful if he could explain the likely consultees. Also—Opposition Members have repeatedly raised this question—what are the key principles within that consultation and what areas is he keen to address with the code of practice? The Minister has alluded to that already, but a bit more flesh on the bones would be extremely helpful.
Often, people who commit fraud use other peoples’ accounts and abuse them, and are often financial abusers. Will the Minister flesh out how the code of practice will take that into account? Finally, I would be grateful if the Minister could expand on how the code of practice will take account of people with learning disabilities, covering both those who are able to operate the accounts themselves and those who may need a proxy to manage the account.
Andrew Western
Members have asked a number of questions, which I will do my best to cover. On the broader context and content of the code of practice, I outlined a range of areas such as a reasonable opportunity to settle debt, the exercise of functions under direct deduction, driver disqualification powers, penalties for noncompliance by banks, the use and processing of information and ensuring that that is compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR, as one would expect.
On the broader question of how we would work with people with vulnerabilities—the hon. Member for Torbay mentioned financial abuse and learning disabilities—there are a range of existing practices through which the Department supports people, as I set out in some detail on Tuesday afternoon. We have a vulnerability management framework and assessments of an individual’s vulnerabilities at all points throughout the process are built into our existing debt recovery practices, including a specialist team who work with customers who we know to be vulnerable. I think that the Department has sufficient infrastructure in place to deal with and support people who find themselves in those circumstances, either as victims of financial abuse or because of some of the disabilities that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
The hon. Member for South West Devon asked about the issuing of notices. The code of practice will give guidance on when notices are given and further guidance on how banks should comply. On the subject of consultees, it is important to say that we are in ongoing dialogue with banks and organisations such as the Money and Pensions Service about support for people who find themselves in debt. The public consultation will invite those who are already closely engaged with the subject to correspond with us further. That will include some of the stakeholders I have just mentioned, but we will accept evidence from anybody who wants to feed into that process.
I would not want to second-guess the cause of any future revision, but were it to become apparent that there were issues that we needed to contend with, grapple with and get right—whether they came out in discussion with stakeholders or in the practical application of the code—I imagine that that would be a sensible stage at which to do so.
I was asked about delay and when the code would be in place. We are looking at laying it before both Houses of Parliament for 40 days, so I am confident that delay will not be a particular challenge for us in recovering some of the figures that are scored against this measure. We anticipate that the draft code of practice will be available to Members before Committee stage in the House of Lords.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 92 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 93
Rights of audience
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Andrew Western
The clause inserts proposed new section 80E into the Social Security Administration Act 1992. That provision gives DWP officials right of audience and allows them to conduct litigation in the magistrates, county and Crown courts in England and Wales. New section 80E has been introduced to enable lay DWP officials to oversee civil claims and applications and appear in related court hearings on behalf of the Secretary of State in debt recovery matters. That is similar to the rights already provided to other Government Departments, such as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Child Maintenance Service, as well as local authorities.
The disqualification from driving power in clause 91 and schedule 6 of the Bill will be exercised by the court only on application from DWP, and there are other civil recovery mechanisms already available to DWP involving the courts. Those are generally routine proceedings, but, without the clause, DWP is required to instruct a solicitor in every case. However, the clause does not prevent DWP from instructing a solicitor for debt recovery proceedings where it would be appropriate to do so. That ensures that DWP can recover public money in the most efficient and effective way from those who evade repayments, thereby reducing costs for the taxpayer.
Rebecca Smith
As the Minister has just set out, clause 93 grants rights of audience and rights to conduct litigation in the magistrates court, county court and Crown court in England and Wales for, or in connection with, debt recovery proceedings to designated officers of the Secretary of State. That will allow DWP officials to be able to pursue the enforcement of debts via the court without the need to instruct solicitors, thereby ensuring cost efficiency in the recovery of public funds.
This is not particularly complicated clause, so I have just a few questions. We would like confirmation of the level of seniority of the officials signing off the decisions to bring litigation, and will the DWP officials bringing the cases have appropriate training to do so? Where court appearances are required, does the Minister anticipate a slowing down of recovery proceedings? I know he has talked about cost efficiency, but will this mean that it will take slightly longer? Will costs increase as a result, either in terms of what is owed by the person that the action has being taken against or the costs that might be necessary through the courts?
Finally, what consultation has there been with the Ministry of Justice around these new provisions in terms of capacity, the costs and the court backlogs? Will this measure create a problematic situation, or is the Minister confident that it will be okay going forward?
Andrew Western
I may have missed a question about costs, so will the hon. Lady please ask me that again if needed? The team members taking forward cases for us in the court will be HEO, or higher executive officer, level. That is the existing process, and that is the required level of authorisation for those using similar powers. This is not particularly new for us; it is just new for us in this space. A specialised DWP team will receive training in conducting litigation and appearing in court in addition to training on the new recovery powers. We already have the right to conduct and appear in similar tribunal proceedings, so we will share best practice when developing that training.
On the question of MOJ consultation and court pressures, whether we use solicitors or take them forward ourselves, the pressure on the courts will be the same, so there will not be a material impact on the court backlog. Clearly, the MOJ is aware of our intentions in this regard, but this is more about our ability to do that while minimising costs.
Rebecca Smith
My final question was about whether court appearances, regardless of whether that is with a solicitor or through DWP officers, will effectively slow down recovery proceedings. As a result, will there be some knock-on costs either for the person who the action has been taken against, if interest is being charged or anything like that, or for the Department in terms of staff and that sort of thing? I assume it will be a last resort, but it would be interesting to have an answer.
Andrew Western
It is very much the case that the power is a last resort. Where there are additional costs, we will be able to recover them. It is important to recognise the steps, as I outlined on Tuesday afternoon, that will have been gone through before the point at which we reach this process. If we were to go through a more traditional route outside these powers, it would add considerable time to the process. I remind Members that by the point at which we take somebody to court, we have reached out to them multiple times through debt management and at least four further times through debt enforcement, and we have offered at every break in the process the opportunity to agree an affordable repayment plan. That would be the case right up until this stage, so I can reassure Members that it would be a power of last resort.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 93 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 94
Recovery of costs
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Andrew Western
Clause 94 inserts proposed new section 80F into the Social Security Administration Act 1992 and relates to the recovery of costs from debtors. The clause simplifies existing legislation to ensure that the costs of court enforcement that DWP is already entitled to reclaim from debtors can be effectively recovered from the debtor, together with any costs incurred by DWP under the new direct deduction and disqualification from driving powers. The clause enables DWP to recover these costs from the debtor using any of the available recovery methods, to make sure that, as debtors’ circumstances change, the money can still be recovered. The clause ensures that the taxpayer does not pick up the burden for costs associated with pursuing debtors who refuse to repay public money, and that DWP can recover these costs from the debtor in the most effective way.
Clause 95 inserts new section 80G into the Social Security Administration Act 1992, providing technical interpretative provisions for the new debt recovery powers contained in part 2 of the Bill. First, it confirms that debt recovery provisions should always be read in a way that is consistent with data protection legislation. This is a relatively standard provision that deals with any unintended and unforeseen ambiguity or apparent conflict with normal data protection principles. Secondly, it confirms that references to “giving notice” can include, among other methods, service by post, as defined in the Interpretation Act 1978. That avoids ambiguity about how, for example, proposed deduction orders can be given to account holders for their consideration, which is a key safeguard under the new direct deduction order power.
Rebecca Smith
Clause 94 states that any costs incurred by the Secretary of State in recovering an amount under clauses 71 to 80 or schedules 3ZA or 3ZB of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 may be recovered as though they were recoverable under the same methods as the debt itself. Will it be done separately, and what might the cost to the Department be in putting that forward? Is there any limit to the costs that the Secretary of State can recoup in this way?
Clause 95 clarifies that provision does not require or authorise processing of information that contravenes data protection legislation, or the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The final line states,
“references to giving a notice or other document…include sending the notice or document by post.”
This also came up in the debate on Tuesday, so I would like to get it on the record. I assume I know the answer, but can the Minister clarify whether this includes electronic methods of communication also, such as email? If I may ask this, as I am intrigued, then why does sending by post need separate legislation? We have debated the subject twice now, and the answer is probably really straightforward, but as it is set out on its own line, it might be a nice idea to find out why it has to be legislated for. I ask that purely because I am nosy and would like to know.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Clause 84 states that costs incurred by the Secretary of State in taking recovery actions can be themselves recovered. Will the Minister clarify what happens in a case where the claimant is found to be not guilty? What happens to the costs then? Are they borne by the bank, the DWP or the claimant? Will he also clarify how the cost of the general trawl through all the accounts is apportioned?
Secondly, to go back to the issue of fraud versus error, and how they seem to be treated as pretty much the same throughout the Bill, will the Minister clarify whether, where it is the DWP’s error, a claimant would still end up paying the administrative charge? If that is the case, it seems quite unreasonable, so it would be great if the Minister could clarify those points.
Andrew Western
I am a little perplexed by the suggestion that somebody would be found not guilty or be charged. We are talking about debt recovery, so it is a slightly separate matter. It is not a criminal issue; it is a question of how, through civil powers, we can reclaim funding, so I am not sure that those questions arise. But if the hon. Member for Horsham wants to intervene on that, he is welcome to.
On the question of whether fraud and error are distinguishable in the reclamation of debt, the answer is no. They are treated in the same way, because this is about situations in which it has already been established that somebody owes us a recoverable amount and they have repeatedly refused to engage. I refer to my earlier comments about the number of times we would have reached out to somebody to get them to engage with the process. Parliament has previously resolved that overpayments of certain types of benefits are recoverable, and the Bill does not change that.
On the question about savings and so on, we would be able to recover all reasonable costs. There is no particular limit on what we can recover, and it is treated on the same terms as debt.
On the question of why we need to make a distinction for email, this is one of those situations in which I am grateful that I can sometimes reach out for answers. It goes back to the Interpretation Act 1978; we did not have email back then, so we need to set out separately, on a legal and technical basis, that post is specifically allowed, given provisions elsewhere. Yes, digital is still permissible, but we need to state specifically that post is acceptable as well.
John Milne
I used the word guilt, but can we forget that? I am referring to a case in which a claimant was investigated, so costs were incurred, but they were found not to be at fault, rather than guilty.
Andrew Western
I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to situations in which the court determines that the debt is not recoverable. I imagine that at that point we would bear the cost ourselves; it would not be recoverable from the individual. There is clearly some risk for us in that, as is perfectly usual, but by the point at which we decided to take somebody to court we would be able to demonstrate that a significant amount of effort had gone into attempting, through other mechanisms, to make them pay back what they owed the Department, so I hope we would have a very high success rate in that regard.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 94 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 95 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 96
Offences: non-benefit payments
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Andrew Western
The clause amends sections 111A and 112 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 to include non-benefit payments. This will enable the DWP to charge a person with an offence under either of those sections where it relates to a non-benefit payment. This is a key clause that, in conjunction with clause 97, will enable the Department to offer an administrative penalty where there are appropriate grounds to do so.
The Government take a fair and proportional approach to tackling fraud and error. We will always be tough on serious fraud, but for less serious first-time offences it is appropriate and fair that we have the opportunity to offer an alternative to prosecution. The person will always have the choice to accept or reject an administrative penalty, should they wish to do so. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Rebecca Smith
The clause makes it an offence for a person to fraudulently claim a non-benefit payment for themselves or another person by making false representations or providing false documentation. Generally, we support this provision.
A non-benefit payment is a prescribed payment that is not a relevant social security benefit and that is made by the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance. Will the Minister provide for the record some examples of the types of payment that would fall within scope of the Bill as a result of this measure? Will he reassure us that it will cover all payments, unlike the provisions on social security benefits, which apply only to the three benefits included in the legislation? The flip question is: does the Minister anticipate any exceptions that will not be covered? If any new non-benefit payments were introduced in the future, would they automatically fall within scope of this legislation? Earlier in Committee we had a similar debate about enabling new benefits to come into scope; would the same apply to new non-benefit payments?
Steve Darling
The Minister alluded to proportionality and not wanting to criminalise people in undertaking an administrative charge. As my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham alluded to, it would be helpful if the Minister unpacked a little more for the Committee where that proportionality kicks in.
Andrew Western
Where proportionality kicks in is already established in the Department. We have trained investigators who ascertain whether we are looking at deliberate fraud, its severity, and what is therefore the appropriate mechanism to seek recourse. We are talking about administrative penalties for situations in which we consider there to be a clear case of fraud, not error, so proportionality will not really be changed by the Bill. What will change is our ability to extend the existing processes to non-benefit payments.
The example of a non-benefit payment that we use most routinely is a payment from the kickstart scheme, which came about at the end of the pandemic and which I think it is fair to say was open to abuse. We saw some particularly egregious examples of that, so we want to make sure that any similar grant schemes—as opposed to benefit schemes—are within scope of these powers.
On the point that the hon. Member for South West Devon made about only three benefits being in scope of the Bill, that is only as it pertains to the eligibility verification measure. All benefits are in scope of the Bill more broadly.
Andrew Western
The clause amends the Social Security Administration Act 1992 to expand the types of overpayments that can be considered for an administrative penalty under sections 115A and 115B to include non-benefit payments, such as the grants that were paid through the kickstart scheme. Currently, the option to offer an administrative penalty as an alternative to prosecution is not available for non-benefit payments, so the DWP is required to refer all such cases for prosecution. Extending the scope to include non-benefit payments will enable the DWP to offer those who receive a non-benefit payment an administrative penalty as an alternative to prosecution, in appropriate circumstances.
The measure gives individuals or colluding employers the choice to accept the administrative penalty or have the evidence reviewed before the courts. The change is really about fairness. It will bring equity and parity to the way the Department tackles and addresses fraud and it will offer first-time offenders or those who commit low-value fraud an alternative to prosecution. It will provide the individual or colluding employer with a choice, allow the courts to focus on the most serious crimes, and enable the Department to resolve cases more quickly where appropriate.
Rebecca Smith
The clause makes provision to allow for a penalty to be issued, instead of prosecution, if an overpayment notice has been issued in relation to a non-benefit payment. This can occur only after the review period has passed and, if a review was sought, after a decision has been made and any subsequent appeals have concluded.
We support efforts to be tough on those who have taken advantage through fraudulent methods and gained from benefits they were not entitled to receive. Will the Minister explain in what circumstances a penalty would be deemed more appropriate than prosecution, and why? That said, we also do not want to unfairly hit those who have made a genuine error, so in what circumstances would a penalty be seen as appropriate, assuming the claimant engages with the process?
Has any consideration been given to the likely timescales for the repayment of moneys obtained following erroneous claims? How long does the person have? Would a repayment be allowed before a penalty was applied? From what the Minister just outlined, the answer is likely to be yes, because an entire process would have taken place first; I seek clarification on the timetable or the process involved, particularly for those who have made a genuine error, and on how they will be able to stop the train and settle what they need to without any penalties.
Andrew Western
On when a penalty will be considered more appropriate, there are clearly thresholds for our investigators’ interpretation of when somebody has committed fraud and at what level we consider that fraud to be.
On the hon. Lady’s point about genuine error, the clause is for situations where we consider that somebody has committed fraud, not error. The administrative penalty does not arise in cases of what we consider to be error. It may be that it is a first-time offence. It would certainly need to be a low-value offence, because an administrative penalty is capped at £5,000. It is worked out as 50% of the value of the overpayment, so the amount would always need to be below £10,000. For anything beyond that we would be looking at prosecution. How long a person has to pay back will depend on a range of factors. It is clearly dependent on their ability to pay the money back, and what their means of production is and so on. That would always be considered on a case-by- case basis.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 97 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 98
Amendments to the Social Security Fraud Act 2001: loss of benefits following penalty
Andrew Western
I beg to move amendment 36, in clause 98, page 61, line 21, leave out from “(a)” to end of line and insert “—
(i) omit the words from ‘section 115A’ to ‘or’, and
(ii) for the words ‘the corresponding provision for Northern Ireland’ substitute ‘penalty as alternative to prosecution in Northern Ireland’, and”.
This amendment updates a parenthetical description in section 6B(2)(a) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001.
Andrew Western
This straightforward amendment is a minor and technical change that looks to update section 6B of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 by removing the phrase “the corresponding provision”, which will no longer be needed once clause 98 is agreed, and substituting in appropriate wording.
Section 6B, as enacted, references two Acts in which a penalty is defined in legislation and which would attract the loss-of-benefit penalty. The first is the Social Security Administration Act and the second is the equivalent legislation for Northern Ireland. Clause 98 will remove reference to one of those Acts—the Social Security Administration Act 1992—to ensure that the loss-of-benefit sanction is no longer applied if an administrative penalty has been offered by the DWP and accepted by a benefit claimant. Doing so will mean there will no longer be corresponding legislation in section 6B(2)(a) of the Social Security Fraud Act 2001, as it will reference only Northern Ireland legislation. I assure the Committee that the amendment is minor and technical and will have no operational impact on the remaining provisions in the 2001 Act.
Clause 98 removes the loss-of-benefit provisions in cases where an administrative penalty has been offered and accepted as an alternative to prosecution. As it stands, the acceptance of an administrative penalty is compounded by a further four-week suspension of certain benefit payments. The suspension of benefits is made in addition to the acceptance of the administrative penalty and alongside the obligation to repay the overpayment. By removing the four-week loss of benefit in these cases, the clause allows for a more proportionate approach to less serious, lower-value fraud and to first-time offenders.
However, the loss-of-benefit penalty is not being removed in its entirety: it will still apply in cases that are convicted in court, with a potential loss of benefit of up to three years. Limiting the loss-of-benefit penalty to convicted cases will ensure that only the most serious cases of fraud face the harshest consequences, without imposing unnecessarily harsh sanctions on lower-level offenders. On that basis, I commend the clause to the Committee.
Rebecca Smith
The clause amends the Social Security Fraud Act so that if an administration penalty is accepted instead of prosecution, the individual does not lose their benefit provisions. From what the Minister said, it sounds like different scenarios are affected.
I appreciate what the Minister said about the different situations—for example, for a lower-level or first-time offence, someone might not lose their benefits—but the challenge is that this perhaps seems like a soft touch, depending on the situation. Does there not need to be a bit more discretion than just a threshold depending on each case being dealt with? What are the expected values of the penalties, and how do they compare with the typical benefits? Although we need to ensure that safeguards on affordability remain in place and that claimants can meet their essential living costs—that goes without saying —it is not clear why a penalty should automatically prevent the loss of benefits. Ultimately in these situations, there has to be a deterrent in addition to the penalty.
Government amendment 36 will update the Social Security Fraud Act 2001 to allow a penalty to be an alternative to prosecution in Northern Ireland. Our questions on that are the same as those for clause 98. I have nothing further to add.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
It is a pleasure to speak to this minor amendment. I just wanted to point something out about the wording of amendment 36. In clause 98(2) there are two instances of the letter (a). I know which (a) the Government intend the amendment to refer to, but I wondered whether the wording could be clarified.
Andrew Western
I thank the hon. Lady for pointing that out. I will take advice on whether a further amendment may be required but, as she says, it does appear obvious what I mean when I refer to that measure.
On the comments from the hon. Member for South West Devon, we want to make a change so that only the most serious cases fall foul of the loss-of-benefit penalty. That increases hardship for people but, when it comes to our ability to reclaim money, in practical terms it means we would have to wait four weeks before we could start deducting from a person’s benefits.
To to give some reassurance about thresholds, were we to consider that somebody’s fraud, even in a lower-value case, was particularly outrageous—of course, that is a judgment for our investigators based on the sorts of things they see each and every day—we do retain the ability to go straight to prosecution, particularly if we think the fraud is part of something more serious or organised.
The value of the penalty is £65, but if someone loses four weeks’ benefit, as at the moment, the impact is clearly more significant. I accept that, but I think there is a strong question of proportionality here, and of the need to prevent somebody from falling into further poverty —and potentially as a consequence of that being pushed into wider activity that may be, shall we say, unhelpful.
Amendment 36 agreed to.
Clause 98, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered,
That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Gerald Jones.)
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Ninth sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 14 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Would everyone please ensure that all electronic devices are turned off, or switched to silent mode? We now continue line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The grouping and selection list for today’s sitting is available in the Committee Room and on the parliamentary website. I remind Members about the rules on the declaration of interests, as set out in the code of conduct. I also remind Opposition Members that, if one of your new clauses has already been debated and you wish to press it to a Division when it is reached on the amendment paper, you should please let me know in advance.
Clause 51
Validation of fees charged in relation to qualifications
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Dame Siobhain, and to contribute to Bill Committee proceedings on this important piece of legislation.
I will briefly state the purpose and effect of the clause before I make some more detailed remarks. The purpose of the clause is to ensure retrospective power for the charging of fees currently provided on behalf of the Home Office and the Department for Education in relation to the comparability, recognition or assessment of qualifications obtained in and outside of the UK from any time to the point at which the Bill comes into force. The effect of the clause is that fees charged by, or under, arrangements with the Secretary of State in relation to the comparability, recognition or assessment of qualifications obtained in and outside of the UK will have been charged lawfully.
I will now lay out how this situation came about. In spring 2024, under the previous Administration, an issue was identified with the legal arrangements to charge fees for three services provided by a third-party supplier on behalf of the Home Office and the DFE. Those are the Home Office’s visas and nationality service, the Department for Education’s UK European network of information centres services, and the Department for Education’s non-UK early years qualifications recognition service. A statutory basis for those fees has not been in place for a part, or the whole, of the period of their being charged. Although we do not have an exact date from which that may have run, the estimate is from around 2008 to the present day.
Regulations have been made for the charging of services recently for the Home Office’s visas and nationality service, and are being made for the Department for Education’s UK ENIC services. The fee for the non-UK early years qualifications recognition service was removed. We are bringing forward the clause to ensure that fees charged before the Bill comes into force are lawful.
We recognise that retrospective legislation should be used with caution, however, we consider that there are important reasons for it in this case, and indeed, that it was assumed that there was a legal basis for those fees in the past. In considering whether retrospective legislation is the right approach, it is important to be clear that customers who paid a fee received a service that they were able to use as part of, for example, a visa or nationality application, or to understand the comparability of qualifications to support access to education or work.
Other options, such as repaying fees, would require placing a considerable and unfair financial burden on UK taxpayers, who have not, on the whole, directly benefited financially from income generated by these services. That is why we believe that this measure is the right course of action to ensure that there is no doubt about the charges being lawful while protecting taxpayer money and Government resource. I repeat the fundamental point that a service was received for the fee that was paid.
It is important to make sure that we learn lessons and ensure that that situation does not happen again. Both Departments now have robust guidance and processes in place to support policy leads where legislative powers are needed to support the charging of fees in relation to the provision of public services.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Clause 51 details the validation of fees charged in relation to qualifications. We support this measure.
The Chair
Great—we are off to a flying start.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 51 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 52
Financial provisions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 20, in clause 53, page 55, line 23, at end insert—
“(3) The Secretary of State may only make regulations under subsection (1) which amend, repeal or revoke an enactment contained in, or in an instrument made under, an Act of the Scottish Parliament following consultation with Scottish Ministers.”.
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to consult Scottish Ministers when making regulations under Clause 53 (1) which amend, repeal or revoke an enactment in or under an Act of the Scottish Parliament.
Clauses 53 and 54 stand part.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
Clause 52 enables money to be provided by Parliament for expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Bill and for any increase in expenditure attributable to the Bill. Clause 53 allows the Secretary of State to make consequential or minor amendments to the Bill by regulation. Clause 54 confirms that regulations under the Bill must be made by statutory instrument.
Regulations under the provisions of the Bill listed in clause 54(3) will be subject to the affirmative process and will therefore require a draft statutory instrument to be laid and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament before they can be made. I commend the clauses to the Committee, but I will answer any questions or queries the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire has in his speech on amendment 20.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
Dame Siobhain, we have to stop meeting like this. Amendment 20 is a rather simple amendment, and one that I hope the Minister takes seriously. Clause 53 has a massive and dramatic impact on Scottish legislation that has been passed under devolved powers by the Scottish Parliament. It says that the Secretary of State has the power to make regulations that are consequential on the Bill. Those regulations could,
“in particular, amend, repeal or revoke any enactment passed or made before, or in the same Session as”
the Bill.
The power granted to the Secretary of State is overly broad, affecting all legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament and Scottish statutory instruments over the past 25 years. Importantly, that includes enactments in or made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament as well as similar legislation passed by the Senedd Cymru and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is unreasonable that the Home Secretary could amend, repeal or revoke that body of law through regulations that bypass proper parliamentary scrutiny.
Requiring consultations with Scottish Ministers before making those regulations is the bare minimum and could help to identify potential issues and prevent unintended consequences. The use of Henry VIII powers —or James VI powers, as we would prefer to call them in Scotland—is unconstrained and could have significant implications for the law in Scotland. For that reason, it is crucial that the Secretary of State consults with Scottish Ministers and with other devolved Administrations before moving forward with those regulations.
Dame Angela Eagle
Amendment 20 seeks to add a requirement to the Bill that Scottish Ministers are consulted before any regulations are made under clause 53(1). I recognise the sentiment behind the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire and fully expect it. I support his general point about the importance of collaboration between the UK Government and the devolved Governments. The Prime Minister was clear when this Government were elected that it is our intention to ensure close collaboration between the UK Government and the devolved Governments. I hope that my counterparts in those Governments have felt that that rings true in the case of this Bill; I was pleased to discuss it with them in February.
I can assure the hon. Member that—he will be surprised to hear—this amendment is unnecessary. The standard power in clause 53(1) simply enables regulations to make any further necessary consequential amendments. Where such regulations amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation, clause 54(3) provides that the regulations would follow the draft affirmative procedure, requiring the approval of each House.
In line with normal practice, the Home Office and other UK Government Departments work with officials in the devolved Governments when legislation is being developed that would have an impact on the devolved nations, including where there is an interaction with legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd or the Northern Ireland Assembly. For this Bill, I and officials in the Home Office have had regular engagement with the devolved Governments. I put on record my thanks to the officials and my ministerial counterparts in the devolved Governments their constructive engagement and contributions to the development of this legislation. They are considering the Bill, and I have asked them to seek legislative consent in their respective legislatures where appropriate for certain measures.
I also note that since the relevant regulations cover only those provisions consequential on the content of the Bill, and since that content has involved continued engagement with devolved Governments over many months, what the amendment seeks is already accounted for. That said, I reiterate that normal practice would be for the devolved Governments to be engaged where legislation, including secondary legislation, is expected to have an impact on their nation. This legislation largely concerns matters that are reserved to this Parliament. For the areas where it does not, legislative consent motions are in the process of being considered in the devolved Administrations.
Given those reassurances and the general good will that has come out of the meetings we have had with all the devolved Administrations, I hope that the hon. Member will consider his concerns to be unjustified in this instance and will not push the amendment to a vote.
Matt Vickers
Clause 52 details the financial provisions. Clauses 53 and 54 set out the regulations. Clause 55 extends the Act to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Clause 56 details when the sections of the Act come into force. We welcome the clarity provided by the Minister on collaboration. We will not oppose these measures.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 52 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 53 and 54 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
I beg to move amendment 21, in clause 55, page 56, line 28, after “12,” insert “24, ”.
This amendment removes clause 24 (which amends the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001) from the power to extend provisions of the Bill to the Isle of Man by Order in Council.
Dame Angela Eagle
Government amendments 23 and 24 add to the existing provision at clause 55(4):
“His Majesty may by Order in Council provide for any of the provisions…to extend…to the Isle of Man.”
Certain provisions are, as appropriate, excluded from extension. The amendments make the same provision to extend provisions by Order in Council to the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey. That follows the Government receiving confirmation from the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey that they wish for a permissive extent clause to be included in the Bill. I am grateful for the engagement of officials and the consideration by respective legislative assemblies on these matters. Confirmation from the Isle of Man has been received before the introduction of the Bill, hence provision already being made at introduction.
Government amendment 21 amends the list of provisions excluded from extension by Order in Council with the effect that clause 24, which amends the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, may not be extended. That is on the basis that that Act does not have an equivalent permissive extent clause, and any extension would therefore not be required or appropriate. That is a little tweak to the Bill.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
I am surprised to be raising this issue and that I do not immediately know the answer. The Minister has raised issues with Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, but that poses the question: what about our other overseas territories and areas such as the Falklands? The Government clearly considered the impact of our complicated relations with some places when drafting the Bill, but what about the others? Have the Government considered all those issues?
Dame Angela Eagle
I assure the hon. Gentleman that we certainly have considered those issues. The tweak with the Isle of Man relates to a technicality that was discovered after the Bill was drafted. The two other amendments, which extend certain provisions to the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey respectively, were added after work was done between our Parliament and those legislatures to ensure that they were happy for that extension and wanted a permissive extension clause to be added. That is what the amendments do.
Amendment 21 agreed to.
Seema Malhotra
I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 55, page 56, line 28, after “39” insert “ and (EU Settlement Scheme: rights of entry and residence etc)”.
This amendment to the extent clause is consequential on NC31.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 25.
New clause 31—EU Settlement Scheme: rights of entry and residence etc—
“(1) For the purposes of this section ‘relevant citizens’ rights’ means the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures which—
(a) are recognised and available in domestic law by virtue of section 7A or 7B of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and
(b) are derived from—
(i) Title 2 of Part 2 of the withdrawal agreement or Title 1 or 4 of Part 2 of that agreement so far as relating to Title 2 of that Part,
(ii) Title 2 of Part 2 of the EEA EFTA separation agreement or Title 1 or 4 of Part 2 of that agreement so far as relating to Title 2 of that Part, or
(iii) Article 4(2), 7 or 8 or Chapter 1 of Title 2 of Part 2 of the Swiss citizens’ rights agreement or Title 1 of Part 2 of that agreement so far as relating to Chapter 1 of Title 2 of that Part.
(2) Subsection (5) applies to a person (‘P’) where—
(a) P has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom granted by virtue of residence scheme immigration rules,
(b) the leave was granted to P on the basis of requirements which included that P is a relevant national or is (or was) a family member of a person who is (or was) a relevant national,
(c) each of the requirements on the basis of which P’s leave was granted was in fact met,
(d) either—
(i) in a case where P’s leave was not granted on the basis that P is (or was) a joining family member of a relevant sponsor, P was resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands immediately before the end of the implementation period, or
(ii) in a case where P’s leave was granted on the basis that P is (or was) a joining family member of a relevant sponsor, the relevant sponsor was resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands immediately before the end of the implementation period, and
(e) the residency mentioned in paragraph (d) was not relevant residency.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2)—
(a) a person is to be treated as a family member of another person if they are treated as the family member of that person by residence scheme immigration rules;
(b) ‘joining family member’ and ‘relevant sponsor’ have the same meaning as in residence scheme immigration rules;
(c) a person is to be treated as resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands immediately before the end of the implementation period even if they were temporarily absent from the United Kingdom or the Islands at that time if their absence was permitted for the purposes of establishing or maintaining eligibility for leave under residence scheme immigration rules;
(d) ‘relevant national’ means a national of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden or Switzerland.
(4) In this section ‘relevant residency’ means—
(a) residency in accordance with Union law (within the meaning of the withdrawal agreement),
(b) residency in accordance with the EEA Agreement (within the meaning of the EEA EFTA separation agreement), or
(c) residency in accordance with the FMOPA (within the meaning of the Swiss citizens’ rights agreement).
(5) Relevant citizens’ rights—
(a) are capable of accruing and applying to a person to whom this subsection applies notwithstanding that the residency mentioned in subsection (2)(d) was not relevant residency, and
(b) are to be enforced, allowed and followed accordingly.
(6) Every enactment (including an enactment contained in this Act) is to be read and has effect subject to subsection (5).
(7) In this section—
‘EEA EFTA separation agreement’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 39(1) of that Act);
‘enactment’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (see section 20(1) of that Act);
‘the implementation period’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (see section 1A(6) of that Act);
‘the Islands’ means the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey or the Isle of Man;
‘residence scheme immigration rules’ has the same meaning as in Part 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 17 of that Act);
‘Swiss citizens’ rights agreement’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 39(1) of that Act);
‘withdrawal agreement’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 39(1) and (6) of that Act).”
This new clause ensures that an EEA or Swiss national or their family member who has immigration leave granted under the EU Settlement Scheme can enforce residency and other rights directly under the withdrawal (or other separation) agreement even if the person, or their family member, was not resident in the UK or the Islands in accordance with Union (or other equivalent) law at the end of the implementation period.
Clause stand part.
Clauses 56 and 57 stand part.
Seema Malhotra
I turn first to new clause 31, which is on EU citizens’ rights. It will confirm in law what the UK has in practice sought to do since the EU settlement scheme was established: to ensure that all EU citizens and their family members with status under the scheme have equal rights in the UK.
Part of this is quite complicated, so it may be useful to try to simplify it. In order to meet free movement rules, those who were here as residents from the European Union before the end of the transition period, which was the end of December 2020, needed to have been financially self-sufficient, studying or working for the previous five years. That meant that they had the rights of permanent residence in the UK. If their family members, who may have been partners or children under the age of 21, were also here before the end of December 2020, then at that point it was a bit like census day—it did not matter whether they were outside the UK; under permitted absence rules, they could have been abroad for whatever reason but coming back. The point is about the definition of meeting free movement rules. They were resident here and effectively living under EU law, so they would be eligible for rights under the EU withdrawal agreement.
The issue is a technical one. There is a cohort described as the extra cohort, rather than the true cohort. The true cohort is those who were self-sufficient, studying or working, and therefore ticked all the boxes of meeting free movement rules. But those who, for example, were not in work on 31 December—they might have lost their job, or there was some other reason why they were not technically meeting the rules—are described as the extra cohort. While they were not technically meeting those free movement rules at that moment, we moved forward with citizens’ rights after we left the European Union at the end of the transition period by treating those two cohorts as the same, as if it had been census day.
Those technicalities have meant that the withdrawal agreement rights apply completely to the true cohort, but arguably, given case law, have sometimes become a bit more complicated when applied to the extra cohort—who, as far as the UK is concerned, should be treated the same. It is important that we clarify in law that we treat the cohorts the same. At the end of December 2020 they might technically not have met all the definitions under the free movement rules, and therefore technically not have been complying with EU law, but for all intents and purposes they should still have their citizens’ rights. The source of those rights is the withdrawal agreement. New clause 31 clarifies that so that we do not have case law challenging it or defining it differently.
It was always the UK’s intention to treat those cohorts the same, but as case law has evolved it has become more difficult in practice. I thank other parliamentarians, including those in the other place, and stakeholders who have raised this issue. We want to ensure that there is clarity in law and that what we intend is actually the case. It is better all round to make the position clear. New clause 31 will mean that all EU citizens and their family members with status under the EUSS who were resident in the UK before the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020—I remind the Committee that we left the EU at the end of January 2020, but had the transition period until December 2020—will be considered beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement and accordingly have rights in UK law. That is regardless of whether they belong to what I have described as the true cohort—the vast majority, who were compliant with all aspects of the free movement rules—or whether they technically did not and fell within what we have called the extra cohort. The new clause means that they all be able to rely directly on the rights in the withdrawal agreement for as long as they hold EUSS status. I am sure that, like all of us, Dame Siobhain, you consider it important for your constituents to have clarity about their rights in law.
The Government take citizens’ rights very seriously, and we continue to work constructively with the EU to ensure that citizens’ rights provisions in the withdrawal agreement are properly implemented in the UK and the EU. The EUSS opened on 30 March 2019, when the withdrawal agreement was still in draft; some of us still remember those slightly heady days and late nights. From the start, the UK’s approach has been that, as the withdrawal agreement requires, all EU citizens resident in the UK before the cut-off date, which proved in the end to be the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020, are eligible for the EUSS, irrespective of whether they resided in the UK in accordance with EU law at the end of 2020. The EUSS, our scheme in the UK, does not therefore assess whether, at the end of the transition period, the EU citizen was exercising treaty rights in the UK by being a worker, self-employed, a student or self-sufficient, or whether they had an EU law right of permanent residence here, possibly on the basis of having spent five years working here.
The approach we took was fair and ensured a smooth transition. It was a priority for the whole of Parliament during that time that EU citizens with a right to be in the UK and British citizens in the EU did not have their lives disrupted by the consequences of Brexit. That approach has greatly simplified the operation of the EUSS, under which 5.7 million people now have status. It also simplified it for applicants and caseworkers. That is important, because we want consistency and accuracy in the processing of cases.
Just by virtue of these technicalities, two cohorts of EU citizens and their family members have status under the EUSS: the true cohort, who derived their rights from the withdrawal agreement, and the extra cohort, who were not within scope of the withdrawal agreement for technical reasons and derived their rights from domestic legislation. The UK has sought as a matter of practice to treat those cohorts the same in how we have interpreted and treated those cases in relation to their status in the UK, but as case law has evolved, very small technical points have had consequences where rights have been derived technically from the withdrawal agreement or domestic legislation.
The new clause will make the position clear in law. It removes the distinction in UK law between true and extra cohorts, making it clear that both are to be treated as if they were in scope of the withdrawal agreement at the end of the transition period in December 2020, meaning that they benefit from the rights contained in part 2 of the agreement.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
I do not think I missed it in the Minister’s speech, although I apologise if I did. Can she advise on how many people have applied for and been granted settled status under the EU settlement scheme?
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I have another question for the Minister. I believe that she said that the true cohort had about 5.7 million applicants, but I wanted to understand more about the numbers of those who would fall under the extra cohort, given that they will be benefiting from rights. Can she give a little more of an explanation as to why the issue has come to light at this point, and was not in the original drafting?
Pete Wishart
I want to ask one simple question: does the Minister remember the good old days, when we had freedom of movement across the continent?
Seema Malhotra
I thank hon. Members for those comments. I can clarify the numbers that I have; if there is anything that we have not covered, I can make sure that Members are written to. I mentioned that 5.7 million people now have status, but 4.1 million have settled status. We have met the requirements for that. On why the change has happened now, the main point is that the issue has been ongoing and we had to work out the best time to bring it forward. We have now been able to bring it forward as a new clause in the Bill.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
On the timing of this measure, does our experience not show us that it is better to do these things in advance rather than later, when migrants come out of the woodwork having been let down? That happened with the Windrush experience.
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I would probably put it slightly differently. This is an example of where we are being fair and generous—going beyond what was technically within the withdrawal agreement—because that is right for EU citizens who were here. In line with the approach that we took across the whole of Government, we should make sure that there is a smooth transition and security for EU residents here in the UK and also for British citizens in the EU.
I spent four years on the Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union—I was a veteran, from the first meeting to the last. Early on, citizens’ rights were important and central. Policy has sometimes become a bit more difficult because of case law—we cannot always predict where that ends up—so it is right that we look at where we can make the position clear in law, which is what we are doing today.
Katie Lam
Just to follow up on the numbers and check that I have understood this correctly, the Minister said that 5.7 million people have a grant of status, of whom 4.1 million people have settled status; presumably the remainder have pre-settled status. Are those numbers entirely the true cohort? Are the numbers of people that we are talking about today extra to that?
Seema Malhotra
The hon. Lady asks a good question. The extra cohort is a minority in that. There are estimates. I am not sure whether I have here the estimate of the specific number of the extra cohort, which it is quite difficult to have an exact number on. But I will make sure that she is written to about the best estimate or the best way in which we can consider it. The extra cohort is a minority, but it is important that we clarify that their rights, too, are derived from the withdrawal agreement.
Katie Lam
I thank the Minister; that is very helpful. As I understand it, settled status under the EU settlement scheme entitles individuals to welfare payments, social housing, surcharge-free NHS care and more. Of those people who have been granted settled status, is the Minister or anyone in the Home Office—or indeed anyone anywhere in Government—making an assessment of how many of those individuals are net contributors to the public purse, and how many are a net cost to Britain’s taxpayers?
Seema Malhotra
I will just make this point first. In a sense, the new clause will have a very limited impact on access to benefits for those with pre-settled status, or limited leave, under the EUSS. To access income-related benefits such as universal credit, they would be required to evidence relevant qualifying activity, such as current or recent employment or self-employment. Those with settled status, or indefinite leave, under the EUSS already have full access to benefits where eligible.
On the question asked by the hon. Member for Weald of Kent, I know there is broader research, and there is some data but not other data, and there are different estimates, but I am sure that she will know and appreciate that the vast majority will be working. Her question is also relevant to a more general question about those who are here and have settled status: how many are working? We know that there is different research, but the vast majority are self-sufficient.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I refer the Committee back to the oral evidence that we heard at the very start of our work. Experts were asked whether they felt that the available immigration data, which could have been improved over 14 years, was robust enough for making strong assertions. Time and again, we heard from experts that it is very hard to make assessments about the net benefit or net cost of immigration flows into our country. Do the Government intend to work alongside the Migration Advisory Committee to improve the quality of immigration data so that we can make such assessments on a more robust footing?
Seema Malhotra
Indeed, it is important to have data that can inform policymaking and public debate. This is a separate matter to the one of those who come to work, settle and contribute to our economy and society, which I know we all want to see—that is indeed what we see in our constituencies—but it is also important that those who come through humanitarian routes are supported to access employability skills and employment, so that they can support themselves and their families. It is important that we look at how joined-up we are and to what extent that support is in place.
Amendment 22 agreed to.
Amendments made: 23, in clause 55, page 56, line 29, after “to” insert
“any of the Channel Islands or”.
This amendment enables certain provisions of the Bill to be extended by Order in Council to any of the Channel Islands.
Amendment 24, in clause 55, page 56, line 31, after second “to” insert
“any of the Channel Islands or”.—(Dame Angela Eagle.)
This amendment enables certain amendments and repeals by the Bill to be extended by Order in Council to any of the Channel Islands.
Clause 55, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 56
Commencement
Amendment made: 25, in clause 56, page 57, line 15, after “35” insert
“, (EU Settlement Scheme: rights of entry and residence etc)”.—(Dame Angela Eagle.)
This amendment to the commencement clause has the effect of bringing NC31 into force 2 months after Royal Assent.
Clause 56, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 57 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 30
Conditions on limited leave to enter or remain and immigration bail
“(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).
(2) In section 3(1)(c) (conditions which may be applied to limited leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom)—
(a) omit the ‘and’ at the end of sub-paragraph (iv), and
(b) at the end of sub-paragraph (v) insert—
‘(vi) an electronic monitoring condition (see Schedule 1A);
(vii) a condition requiring the person to be at a particular place between particular times, either on particular days or on any day;
(viii) a condition requiring the person to remain within a particular area;
(ix) a condition prohibiting the person from being in a particular area;
(x) such other conditions as the Secretary of State thinks fit.’
(3) Before Schedule 2 insert—
‘Schedule 1A
Electronic monitoring conditions
1 For the purposes of section 3(1)(c)(vi), an “electronic monitoring condition” means a condition requiring the person on whom it is imposed (“P”) to co-operate with such arrangements as the Secretary of State may specify for detecting and recording by electronic means one or more of the following—
(a) P’s location at specified times, during specified periods of time or while the arrangements are in place;
(b) P’s presence in a location at specified times, during specified periods of time or while the arrangements are in place;
(c) P’s absence from a location at specified times, during specified periods of time or while the arrangements are in place.
2 The arrangements may in particular—
(a) require P to wear a device;
(b) require P to make specified use of a device;
(c) require P to communicate in a specified manner and at specified times or during specified periods;
(d) involve the exercise of functions by persons other than the Secretary of State.
3 If the arrangements require P to wear, or make specified use of, a device they must—
(a) prohibit P from causing or permitting damage to, or interference with, the device, and
(b) prohibit P from taking or permitting action that would or might prevent the effective operation of the device.
4 An electronic monitoring condition may not be imposed on a person unless the person is at least 18 years old.
5 In this Schedule “specified” means specified in the arrangements.’
(4) In Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act 2016 (immigration bail), in paragraph 2(1) (conditions of bail), after paragraph (e) insert—
‘(ea) a condition requiring the person to be at a particular place between particular times, either on particular days or on any day;
(eb) a condition requiring the person to remain within a particular area;
(ec) a condition prohibiting the person from being in a particular area;’”.—(Dame Angela Eagle.)
This new clause makes provision about the conditions which can be imposed on a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom or a grant of immigration bail.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dame Angela Eagle
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause encompasses the conditions that can be attached to permission to enter or stay and immigration bail. Where a person is liable to be detained, for example because they are in the UK without the required permission or are subject to deportation proceedings, they may be placed on immigration bail. Where appropriate and in accordance with our European convention on human rights obligations, those on immigration bail can be subject to measures such as electronic monitoring and curfews.
Where a person does not qualify for asylum or protection under the refugee convention but cannot be removed from the UK because of our obligations under domestic and international law, they are granted permission to stay. Irrespective of the threat posed by the person, our legislation prevents us from imposing the same conditions that they may have been subjected to while on immigration bail.
The new clause will end that disparity in the powers available to protect the public from the particular migrant who poses a threat. It also makes crystal clear the conditions that may be imposed when a person is subject to immigration bail.
Matt Vickers
The new clause makes provision about the conditions that can be imposed on a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom or a grant of immigration bail. The new conditions focus primarily on electronic monitoring, and we are supportive of those. However, given that the Government are repealing the provision passed by the last Conservative Government to mandate scientific age assessment, I am interested to know how they intend to ensure that the requirement that an electronic monitoring condition
“may not be imposed on a person unless the person is at least 18 years old”
can be delivered. As the Minister may have noticed, I am deeply concerned about the repealing of mandatory scientific age assessment provisions, and this is another reason why. Can she give us any timetable for when the Government might return to the issue?
Pete Wishart
I am a little disconcerted by this new clause. It is disappointing that it was introduced so late in proceedings; it should have been included in the Bill as presented on First Reading. Regardless of that, the new clause seems to fit a trend that I have detected with this Bill: there seems to be a cavalier attitude, approach and relationship with international obligations and some of our human rights commitments. Whereas I think everybody would accept that we want to target high-risk criminals and offenders, and the Government require the necessary powers to do that, they do admit that there are issues to do with the ECHR. I want to hear the Minister explain clearly what she means by high harm and risk. I think she has to give the Committee examples of the type of person who would fall foul of the new clause.
Human rights protections are in place for really good reasons. They have been designed and concocted to ensure that people get the protections regardless of what they may have committed in the past. We muck about with them at our peril. All that this cavalier approach to human rights will do is encourage those who want to get rid of our international obligations and our human rights entirely. I am looking at my Conservative friends; this does nothing other than encourage them and push this Government to go further.
We need to hear from the Government what they actually mean by the new clause. Given this watering-down of our commitments, we need to hear a real commitment from the Government that they stand by our international obligations and everything that is included in human rights for everybody we have a responsibility and obligation for.
Margaret Mullane (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. Given what we have seen play out in the last few weeks, I welcome the measures outlined in the new clause, which answers some of the issues highlighted by new clause 44, which was tabled by the Opposition.
I draw attention to the amendment of section 3(1)(c) of the Immigration Act 1971, which would put in a place a robust suite of measures to monitor and manage those coming into our country. Let us not forget that the new clause focuses on those who are coming here illegally and who are known to have been involved in criminality. The use of curfews, as well as inclusion and exclusion zones, with the possibility of extending conditions where the Secretary of State sees fit, will be a marked improvement on the incoherent approach currently in use. As we have debated in previous sittings, the provisions in the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 are not fit for purpose.
I believe that new clause 30, with greater intelligence and the duties of co-operation outlined in clause 5 relating to the role of the Border Security Commander, will create a foundation for better communication and data sharing between our intelligence agencies and their international counterparts. I feel that it will greatly improve on the current situation, in which, in the past few weeks, criminals and those with links to terrorist organisations have entered the country with limited restriction under the flawed legislation of the previous Government.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham and I welcome the new clause. British citizens must be safe, and they need a Government who act to protect them. I believe that the new clause will give them reassurance that we have the ability to impose tight controls and monitoring of an individual if it is deemed necessary by the authorities. We must have legislation that puts the security of our country at the top of the agenda, and the new clause gives the police the powers to impose electronic monitoring, curfews and movement bans on people who are perceived to be a threat when ECHR obligations are protecting them.
Tom Hayes
I want to comment briefly on the speech by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. I understand the importance of being sensitive to possible infringements and abuses of international law; indeed, in recent years, we have seen states around the world traducing it. However, I gently say to him—I hope it has not missed his attention—that the Prime Minister is a lawyer and, as a consequence of that background, he is deeply wedded to the law. In most of his speeches and statements, he refers consistently to the importance of the UK being a leader on the world stage by respecting international law.
I say that because the Committee has just repealed the Safety of Rwanda Act, which was deemed unlawful by the courts. We have a Prime Minister who deeply respects international law; around the world, we have states and actors who traduce it. Having a Prime Minister and a country that are so committed to it at this point in history is really important. I gently say to the hon. Member that it is important that we are sensitive to possible infringements of international law, but we ought not to overplay the possibility of it happening here in our country, when all the evidence from the last eight months should give us confidence and hope.
Matt Vickers
I would be interested in the Minister’s assessment of the operational utility of the new clause. What impact do the Government expect it to have on lowering the rate of abscondence from immigration bail?
Dame Angela Eagle
We have had a small but perfectly formed debate on the new clause. I seek to reassure the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire and explain to those who have made contributions the effect of the provisions.
I say gently to the hon. Member that the Bill is in compliance with international human rights laws. The powers in the new clause are necessary to protect the public from a very small cohort of migrants who pose a threat to them, but who cannot be removed because of our obligations under domestic and international law. In other words, they exist only because we are observing our obligations under international law. If we were simply to ignore international law and seek to deport people against the standards of international law to which we have signed up, we would not need to have these extra powers. We are debating new clause 30 only because we are adhering to international law. The hon. Member says that we are being cavalier about our commitment to adhering to international law. I gently say that he has got it pretty wrong.
In these cases, we will continue to frequently assess each person’s circumstances to ensure that they are removed at the earliest opportunity from measures such as a requirement to report, a curfew or electronic tagging, if it is safe to do so from the point of view of protecting the public. The powers will be used only in cases involving conduct such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, extremism or serious crime, or where the person poses a threat to national security or public safety. That is a pretty high bar.
The idea is that if somebody is on immigration bail and we are trying to detain them to deport them, but it transpires that we cannot deport them because of the threat to their safety and they have to be looked after here, it is wholly proportionate, if they present a real threat to the public, that the powers to electronically tag them or subject them to exclusion or inclusion zones can be attached to them. We are talking about people who come off immigration bail because we cannot deport them and, without the new clause, would suddenly find themselves much freer to cause the damage that we fear they may cause if they are left unwatched. That is the very narrow purpose of the new clause in the circumstances that I have talked about. To impose these tough restrictions there has to be a proportionality test, and of course all that is testable in law.
We are seeking to make certain that we can satisfy ourselves, more than we can at present, that that small category of people who, on a case-by-case basis, will be assessed to present this kind of risk can be properly managed and watched. In those circumstances, I hope that the Committee will agree to add the new clause to the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 30 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 31
EU Settlement Scheme: rights of entry and residence etc
“(1) For the purposes of this section ‘relevant citizens’ rights’ means the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures which—
(a) are recognised and available in domestic law by virtue of
section 7A or 7B of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and
(b) are derived from—
(i) Title 2 of Part 2 of the withdrawal agreement or Title 1 or 4 of Part 2 of that agreement so far as relating to Title 2 of that Part,
(ii) Title 2 of Part 2 of the EEA EFTA separation agreement or Title 1 or 4 of Part 2 of that agreement so far as relating to Title 2 of that Part, or
(iii) Article 4(2), 7 or 8 or Chapter 1 of Title 2 of Part 2 of the Swiss citizens’ rights agreement or Title 1 of Part 2 of that agreement so far as relating to Chapter 1 of Title 2 of that Part.
(2) Subsection (5) applies to a person (‘P’) where—
(a) P has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom granted by virtue of residence scheme immigration rules,
(b) the leave was granted to P on the basis of requirements which included that P is a relevant national or is (or was) a family member of a person who is (or was) a relevant national,
(c) each of the requirements on the basis of which P’s leave was granted was in fact met,
(d) either—
(i) in a case where P’s leave was not granted on the basis that P is (or was) a joining family member of a relevant sponsor, P was resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands immediately before the end of the implementation period, or
(ii) in a case where P’s leave was granted on the basis that P is (or was) a joining family member of a relevant sponsor, the relevant sponsor was resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands immediately before the end of the implementation period, and
(e) the residency mentioned in paragraph (d) was not relevant residency.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2)—
(a) a person is to be treated as a family member of another person if they are treated as the family member of that person by residence scheme immigration rules;
(b) ‘joining family member’ and ‘relevant sponsor’ have the same meaning as in residence scheme immigration rules;
(c) a person is to be treated as resident in the United Kingdom or the Islands immediately before the end of the implementation period even if they were temporarily absent from the United Kingdom or the Islands at that time if their absence was permitted for the purposes of establishing or maintaining eligibility for leave under residence scheme immigration rules;
(d) ‘relevant national’ means a national of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden or Switzerland.
(4) In this section ‘relevant residency’ means—
(a) residency in accordance with Union law (within the meaning of the withdrawal agreement),
(b) residency in accordance with the EEA Agreement (within the meaning of the EEA EFTA separation agreement), or
(c) residency in accordance with the FMOPA (within the meaning of the Swiss citizens’ rights agreement).
(5) Relevant citizens’ rights—
(a) are capable of accruing and applying to a person to whom this subsection applies notwithstanding that the residency mentioned in subsection (2)(d) was not relevant residency, and
(b) are to be enforced, allowed and followed accordingly.
(6) Every enactment (including an enactment contained in this Act) is to be read and has effect subject to subsection (5).
(7) In this section—
‘EEA EFTA separation agreement’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 39(1) of that Act);
‘enactment’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (see section 20(1) of that Act);
‘the implementation period’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (see section 1A(6) of that Act);
‘the Islands’ means the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey or the Isle of Man;
‘residence scheme immigration rules’ has the same meaning as in Part 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 17 of that Act);
‘Swiss citizens’ rights agreement’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 39(1) of that Act);
‘withdrawal agreement’ has the same meaning as in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 (see section 39(1) and (6) of that Act).”—(Seema Malhotra.)
This new clause ensures that an EEA or Swiss national or their family member who has immigration leave granted under the EU Settlement Scheme can enforce residency and other rights directly under the withdrawal (or other separation) agreement even if the person, or their family member, was not resident in the UK or the Islands in accordance with Union (or other equivalent) law at the end of the implementation period.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 1
Duty to publish a strategy on safe and managed routes
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, publish a strategy on the Government’s efforts to establish additional safe and legal routes for persons to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.
(2) A report under subsection (1) must be laid before Parliament.”—(Pete Wishart.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament a strategy on the development of safe and managed routes for people to seek asylum in the UK.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 6—Additional safe and legal routes—
“The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passage of this Act, make regulations specifying safe and legal routes through which refugees and other individuals requiring international protection can enter the UK lawfully.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying additional safe and legal routes, under which refugees and others in need of international protection can come to the UK lawfully from abroad.
Pete Wishart
The Government’s intention with the Bill is, as we have heard on numerous occasions—practically ad nauseam—to smash the gangs and disrupt their business model. In their attempt to do that, they have focused the Bill exclusively on what Ministers and various other Labour Members have called “deterrence measures”. That seems to include the further criminalisation of a number of new offences, and the extreme and exclusive focus on asylum seekers. Throughout the Committee’s proceedings, we have been encouraged to believe that all this is necessary for the Government to secure their objectives. We will see in time whether they are successful, but I have my doubts; the Bill is pretty much the same as others I have seen over the past 20 years.
The reason it is likely to fail is that what is entirely missing is the stark reality of those making the journey themselves. There is not even the remotest bit of curiosity as to why people are making such dangerous crossings or why they are prepared to put themselves and their families at such huge risk. Asylum seekers do not want to be at the mercy of these gangs and this vile trade—of course they don’t—but other than a few distinct and narrowly defined legal routes, asylum seekers are completely and utterly dependent on, and at the mercy of, the gangs.
Pete Wishart
That may well be the case, but I suggest to the hon. Member that Ukrainians are not getting on small boats across the channel because they have an effective and efficient safe route to get to this country that is not available to most other nations. There is no safe route, for example, for Eritreans or Sudanese people. There is just nothing available. The only means they have to get to the UK are small boats.
There is also the Hong Kong scheme. We do not see very many people from Hong Kong getting on board small boats to come across because, again, they have an efficient, effective scheme that is inclusive and deals with most of the problems. The Ministers also say that safe routes will do nothing to stop people getting on small boats and nothing to stop these journeys. No one is claiming that the establishment of safe routes would end all unsafe journeys. I do not believe that that is the appropriate test. It would not end small boat crossings, just as Ministers do not make ending all people smuggling and human trafficking the test of this new Bill, and their policy of smashing gangs and stopping the boats.
Safe routes cannot be expected to end all dangerous journeys or exploitation by smuggling gangs, and their capacity to reduce them depends on their accessibility. We also support safe routes because they are morally right—it is the right thing to do—and because safe routes save lives. The more available and accessible safe routes are, the more lives will be saved. Safe routes undercut smuggling gangs. The more available and accessible they are, the more they will do for the effort to smash the gangs and the people involved in this vile trade.
We have discussed the whole Bill in the last two weeks and it focuses primarily on increasing offences. Although tackling organised crime is necessary, it addresses only one side of the problem. Without safe routes, desperate people will continue to attempt dangerous crossings. We have a choice in front of us. We can continue with a range of policies that ignore the root causes of these journeys, or we can take meaningful action: expand safe routes, uphold our humanitarian commitments and make migration safer and more manageable. A truly modern and compassionate asylum system must include safe routes as a central pillar as well as all the other things this Government want and intend to do. Surely we should be looking to save as many lives as we can, and we know that safe routes save lives.
Chris Murray
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I have listened with interest to the points made by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. We need to go back to the evidence we heard from the researcher from the Migration Observatory who I keep quoting. He said that demand for channel crossings is essentially “inelastic”. The hon. Gentleman is predicating his argument on tackling the demand side of the equation. We have been told by the experts that policy will have only a limited impact on the demand, and that is particularly salient when we think about safe routes.
The hon. Gentleman is quite correct; we already have safe routes in this country. We have the Afghan scheme, but because that is not available to everyone from Afghanistan, some of those who are not eligible come across on unsafe routes. Although the Ukrainian and Hong Kong schemes are not specifically refugee schemes —they are analogous, I accept that point—they are open to a much broader cohort of people. There are some 254,000 Ukrainians and 120,000 Hong Kongers in the UK right now. Those figures are off the top of my head; I am ready to be corrected. It is because of the comprehensiveness of that safe route that we see such high numbers in the declines in the channel.
If we followed the hon. Gentleman’s advice, we would fall into the same logical trap as the Conservatives did with the Rwanda scheme. With Rwanda, the so-called message to the migrants was, “Don’t get on a boat—there’s a 1% chance that you’ll be sent to Rwanda.” First, it was not credible. Secondly, it clearly had no impact on people’s decision making. The hon. Gentleman is proposing that we say, “Don’t get on a boat—there’s a 1% chance that you can come in on a safe route.” I would argue that that would have the same impact on people crossing the channel.
The only way we could have a safe routes phenomenon would be to open them to a select group of people from a select few countries. That would basically be deciding who we thought was the most deserving and who was not, which is not how the refugee system should work. People’s cases should be judged on their merits and on individual circumstances. People can come from ostensibly safe countries but face things such as LGBT discrimination. People could be from a country at war but ineligible because they are one of the perpetrators of that war. We need to judge people on their cases.
Finally, the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said that safe routes are the only way to stop people getting on boats and freezing in the channel. Let us be really clear: that is the whole purpose of the Bill. However, the channel crossings are a new phenomenon. They were not happening five or 10 years ago, when we did not have safe routes either. The way to tackle people getting on those boats is by tackling the supply of boats and ways to cross the channel by tackling the gangs. Safe routes may have other values, but not for the purposes of stopping channel crossings.
Mr Forster
I am happy to support new clause 1—in fact, I enthusiastically support it. The challenge of speaking after the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire is that most of the things worth saying have already been said. In the evidence session I highlighted that safe and legal routes are a key part of us tackling the problem. The Ukrainian scheme is a clear example of success, as is the Hong Kong scheme, yet this Government, like the last one, seem reluctant to go down that route.
Tom Hayes
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh was just saying, that we listen to the refugee voice and think more broadly about what asylum seekers and refugees actually want?
In a previous life, I worked for an international development charity where I led UK campaigning on safe and legal routes. In so doing I took away a major learning, which is that the UK cannot be overwhelmingly the country that receives refugees and asylum seekers via safe and legal routes. That is in part because the UK alone cannot be asked to shoulder such a large responsibility, but also because many asylum seekers and refugees wish to return home and therefore want to be located in a safe country that is nearer to their home country. Is it not right that we think about this in a broader and international sense, rather than assuming that the UK has to always be the country that shoulders the responsibility, when there are other ways that we can support?
Mr Forster
I have some sympathy for what the hon. Member says. We talked about listening to the refugee charities. One of the notes that I made of our evidence session is that they criticised the Bill as only being half the story—saying that it tackles the supply but not the demand. They said that we needed an integrated approach, and to them this Bill was not that; it was a blunt instrument. They were sympathetic to some of the Bill, but they said that it will not fully solve the things that we want to solve.
I have sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s point that it might not be a full solution if the UK is the only country to agree safe and legal routes; but we made an agreement with Europe agreed about the Ukrainians. The hon. Member could have tried to amend the new clauses to say that the Government should be working with international partners to introduce safe and legal routes, but it seems that the Government want to dismiss any discussion of safe and legal routes whatsoever, even if working with partners.
Tom Hayes
Is it not the case that the Government do not think that primary legislation is the way to secure international negotiation about safe and legal routes? Actually, those conversations will be happening with the Government and partners. In fact, one of the highlights of having a new Government is a reset of our relationship with the European Union, which—in time, once it matures and restores—can help in negotiations for better routes for humanitarian assistance and support. Primary legislation is not needed for everything.
Mr Forster
I would really like to hear the Minister confirm that the Government are going to work with international partners to encourage a co-ordinated programme on safe and legal routes. One option, I would hope, is to agree to the new clause, but if the Government will not agree with this version, will they agree to consult on how to introduce safe and legal routes with partners? I am trying to be as moderate and practical as possible. A lot of requests from MPs do not require immediate action, but they do require the Government to consult. Is that something that the Minister would consider?
Mike Tapp
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East for making a compelling argument around the balance between our decency and humanity and not creating a pull factor that will cause more risk. I draw the Committee’s attention to our work as a Government with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has resettled individuals from Ethiopia, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. Combined with the other resettlement routes that we have in place, such as family reunion, the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, and the Hong Kong and Ukraine schemes, we have resettled over half a million individuals since 2015—I do not know the exact stats. There are ways to come here safely for people who need it.
When it comes to illegal migration, it is important that we take out the smuggling gangs. The Bill will help us do that with disruptive measures so we can get there first. This counter-terror approach is the right way.
Matt Vickers
SNP new clause 1 and Liberal Democrat new clause 6 seek to establish, within six months of the passage of this legislation, safe and legal routes through which refugees and other individuals can enter the UK. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said, it was very good that the previous Conservative Government set up the Afghan resettlement programme, which was a route that Afghans could use to come to the UK. However, in that same year, 2022, over 8,000 Afghans arrived on small boats—the second-highest number of people by nationality. The trend has continued, as Afghans were the top nationality arriving by small boats in 2023 and 2024. This shows that safe and legal routes do not necessarily lead to an end to crossings in small boats. The point is especially important now, as the EU has begun to take action to tackle illegal migration, such as looking again at the 1951 refugee convention.
Katie Lam
The fundamental question of safe and legal routes seems to be that of how many people the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire thinks Britain might need to let in to achieve the aims he sets out. There are over 120 million people in the world who have been displaced from their homes, of whom nearly 50 million are refugees. That is nearly three quarters of the population of this country. On top of that, the 1951 refugee convention now confers the notional right to move to another country upon at least 780 million people, for—as well as internationally displaced refugees and modern slaves—there are all those who could potentially face a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion, who may flee their home country. Some of those people—many of them, perhaps—are living lives that might seem to us in the UK unspeakably and unthinkably hard and sad. It is also true, though, that there is a limit to what this country is able to do to help through migration. The answer to global suffering cannot be that all those people come here.
New clause 1 calls for a strategy on safe and managed routes, but that does not reflect the challenge of these routes and the way that they are created. By their very nature, specific asylum routes are often opened up in response to specific circumstances: usually, emergencies that could not be foreseen and anticipated in a neat strategy. The hon. Member for Dover and Deal is right to highlight the work this country does with the UN to identify those in the world in the greatest need of our help and where that help, in the form of resettlement, would be most appropriate. It seems to me that it would be impossible to publish in advance a strategy for something that is mostly centred around emergencies that cannot be foreseen.
Pete Wishart
This has been a very good debate and we have got to the heart of some of the issues. I will push the new clause to a vote because, of all the things that those involved with the welfare of and looking after refugees and asylum seekers tell us, their main ask of this Government is to look at a strategy for safe routes. I think we are getting to the equation at the heart of all the issues that we are considering today: the demand side and the supply side.
We are supporting Government measures to ensure that they tackle the demand side—they might have useful armoury, like this Bill, to achieve that—but surely we should give even scant attention to the supply side: the reasons that so many people are coming here. The fact is that they have no other option but to get on an unseaworthy boat to sail across the channel to get to the UK, as they can only make a claim for asylum when they are based in the UK.
I am not asking the Government to open the country up to 247 million refugees. That would be absurd and ridiculous. I do not think anybody is suggesting that at all. All we are asking is for the Government to see if they could do something more to ensure that there are routes available for some of the most wretched people in the world who are looking to come to the United Kingdom, and that we do not leave them exclusively at the mercy of the people that I know the Government are sincere in wanting to tackle.
Pete Wishart
That is a very difficult thing to say. We have some rough ideas when it comes to the Ukraine and Afghan schemes. These schemes are really worth while. We have seen them work, because there are no Ukrainians crossing the channel—we have had five individuals. It is absurd and ridiculous to suggest that every single refugee in the world is going to come, but the Government—we passed this in a clause earlier—are putting a cap and a quota on people using these safe routes. They are not interested in opening up and developing these safe routes; they want to stop and put a quota on people using them.
Tom Hayes
Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that there is not a binary choice between, on the one hand, safe and legal routes to the UK, and on the other, getting into a death machine boat to reach the UK? Actually, we could have refugees and asylum seekers who travelled through safe and legal routes to other countries.
Pete Wishart
Absolutely. I think we are starting to get into territory where there is general agreement. With these amendments, we are asking the Government to look at what more they could do to achieve their clear objective of smashing the gangs. The gangs are successful and will adapt to whatever is put in their way by the Bill. These people know how to work this business. People have said it has only been going five years, but this business is developing at pace. They will amend their business model and practice to adapt to whatever the Government throw at them in the new criminalisation clauses. Their trade will probably get more lucrative as a response, so let us beat them. Let us take them on. Let us really spike their business model by offering an alternative way and means to secure entry to the UK so asylum can be claimed. All we are looking for is an opportunity to develop this and have a conversation.
Chris Murray
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is the same dynamic as the Rwanda programme? If we are offering only 1% of people safe routes, it is the same as saying to 1% of people that they will be sent back. The impact on those people’s decision making is exactly the same.
Pete Wishart
I have been listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I have been impressed by his contributions thus far in public, but it is utterly absurd and ridiculous to suggest that offering safe routes is somehow on a par with the Rwanda scheme. It disrespects the hon. Gentleman’s case to suggest there is any similarity about this. We are trying to ensure that the business model of the gangs will be smashed and tackled.
Matt Vickers
Who and where does the hon. Gentleman see the scheme applying to? It is very easy to go along with the case for compassion, but who and where? The hon. Gentleman says that he cannot give an indication of numbers or costs, but who are the priorities, and who exactly will benefit from such a scheme?
Pete Wishart
If we look at the international situation, we know the hotspots and the areas and issues that have difficulty, because there are people queuing up in France to come to the United Kingdom. Safe routes should not be the only solution; they are part of a solution. We also have to look at what we are doing on the ground in these countries about particular difficulties and issues. We seem to be making the situation 10 times worse by withdrawing international aid from a number of these countries, which will only put more pressure on these areas. The scheme is part of a package. It looks at the criminalisation clauses and uses safe routes as a means to assist that process, getting involved in countries where there are difficulties and issues and trying to help resolve the tensions and difficulties there. For every single organisation that works with refugees and asylum seekers and is concerned about their care, this is their main ask. We should listen to them.
Sarah Bool
The hon. Gentleman speaks passionately and with a great deal of compassion, which I respect, and I understand his point. However, I return to the point from this side of the Committee, which is that there is a limit to how many people we can look after and help. We also owe a duty to those who have already come into the country, and a duty to our own population, to offer them services. There is currently a real stretch, and I think that, without knowing the details about how many, and where they will come from, we will really struggle.
The Chair
Before I take an intervention from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, does the Minister want to contribute?
Seema Malhotra
Thank you, Dame Siobhain. It is a pleasure to speak to these new clauses, and to acknowledge the genuine questions and important aspects that have been raised in the debate so far. In particular, I thank the hon. Members for Perth and Kinross-shire and for Woking for tabling the amendments. Contributions also came from my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh and for Dover and Deal and from the Opposition.
The point I want to make on this subject is in response to both new clauses, although I recognise the slight differences. New clause 1 seeks to require a strategy, laid before Parliament, for the development of safe and managed routes for people to seek asylum in the UK, and new clause 6 seeks to require the Secretary of State to
“make regulations specifying additional safe and legal routes”.
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said that he was pretty good at predicting the responses from colleagues. I gently suggest that I might say some things that he may not expect about certain aspects of the subject. That is because some parts of what we currently do have not been raised at all in the debate. They are in relation to safe and legal routes, and how they are working, outside the Afghan, Ukrainian and Hong Kong schemes. I want to go through those points because they are important.
I also make a broad point in relation to, in particular, the comments and the question from the hon. Member for Woking about consideration and having a conversation. The Government will, as he knows, shortly set out our approach to immigration as part of considering how we bring down net migration, tackle abuse and put more controls in the system. The system has lost public confidence. I think we all know—the Conservatives themselves have acknowledged it—that we lost control of immigration. The system was and is chaotic. It is not just a problem in relation to how people feel about an immigration system that is not fair, controlled or managed; it is about the consequences for individuals, such as asylum seekers caught up in backlogs. Their lives are on hold until their claim is considered.
It is important to return to the subject of the utter chaos that the whole system has been in, and why the Bill is important to what we are looking to do to strengthen our borders and go after the smuggling gangs, which hon. Members have mentioned. Those gangs do so much damage to the lives of migrants. They also undermine our border security and make money—millions—from putting lives at risk. It is important that we look at how we are tackling the demand. Several hon. Members made that important point. I was surprised that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire did not talk about going even further with what he is suggesting.
Pete Wishart
I realise and understand that it is me standing between everybody else around here and lunch, so I will be brief. I am grateful to the Minister, and there is very little I disagree with her on: we have to tackle the upstream situations and do all we can to ensure that we alleviate some of them. I agree with all that. All I am seeking to do with the new clause is to add to the armoury for taking on the gangs. That is the intention of this Government, but without this new clause, the whole system is not complete; we are just leaving all those asylum seekers at the mercy of these illegal gangs and their vile trade. All I am asking is whether we can devise a strategy that would help the Government in their mission. I will press the new clause to a vote.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 4—Scottish visa scheme: immigration rules—
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must by immigration rules provide for the establishment of a Scottish visa scheme.
(2) A scheme established under subsection (1) must be administered under the executive competence of Scottish Ministers.
(3) No scheme may be established under subsection (1) until consent has been given by Scottish Ministers with respect of the criteria, extent and duration of the scheme.”
In conjunction with NC3, this new clause would require the Secretary of State to provide for a Scottish visa scheme administered under the executive competence of Scottish Ministers.
Pete Wishart
I thought we were ready for lunch! I am ill prepared. This Committee has a strong work ethic—I am desperately trying to find my notes.
The new clauses are practically the exact opposite of everything about this Bill. I am delighted, if quite surprised, that they have been selected for debate. As you would expect, Dame Siobhain, I am going to use the opportunity to promote this cause. Unlike everything about the Bill, the new clauses have at their heart the recognition of the value of immigration, how it is a benefit and why it is necessary to keep our communities and workforce healthy and sustainable.
Scotland has an emerging demography and population crisis, and that is only going to get worse unless we do something about it. With our falling birth rate, we are reaching the stage where we have too few working-age people available to look after an ever-increasing older population. We are already experiencing issues and difficulties in the health service; the care service in Scotland is heading for a workforce crisis; and hospitality outlets and businesses are closing in rural constituencies like mine because they have not got the staff. The simple fact is that Scotland needs more working-age people to refresh our population. If we fail to secure the people we require, we will be in serious trouble.
Scotland is not alone in this—we are just a little bit further along than some other nations. All over the world, advanced democracies are facing the same range of problems and are now positively addressing their own issues with a range of interventions that they hope might spare them the worst of the consequences. Ironically, the global population is still growing and it is uncertain when population growth will peak, but most predict it will come as early as the 2060s.
When I heard that we had a demography professor as a witness in our evidence session, I was quite excited, given my interest in population and demography, but he seemed to be more interested in eugenics than global trends. I think we almost got him to confirm that almost all predictions show that we will soon be heading to population decline. Given his particular and weird worldview, I do not think he accepted even that.
All reputable sources agree that the world population will soon peak and then fall rapidly. As population growth slows down, we are starting to see the difficulties occur. They will start to be felt in nations that experienced rapid growth in the 20th century, like the United Kingdom and most other European democracies. Already we see countries in Europe, such as Italy and Spain, starting to see the real difficulties of population stagnation. Even China is beginning to experience the wider impacts of population slowdown. Japan stands out as a stark example: it is not just at population stagnation, but population decline, which might see it fall from third in the GDP ranks to eighth, because of the impact on the economy.
Far from being a burden, by the end of the century we might be in a situation where immigrants could be at a premium—a highly sought commodity. I am sure that is a prospect that would make our Reform colleagues’ heads explode, as well as those of some Conservatives.
The conventional Westminster consensus view from both Labour and the Conservatives is that immigration is a burden—it is out of control and something that must be tackled and controlled. They might look at the general UK population trends and believe they validate the point. The UK population is currently 68.3 million. It is apparently going to grow by another 5 million to 72.5 million by the mid-2030s, then it is going to fall. But it is going to grow by that scale only because the Tories made such a hash of their mission to cut immigration that they inadvertently quadrupled it.
Chris Murray
I admire the hon. Gentleman’s forthrightness in putting forward his argument. I have thought about this issue for a long time. Two cantankerous Scotsmen talking about their hobby-horse while everyone else waits for lunch is an exquisite torture to subject the rest of the Committee to.
I was surprised even to see the new clause on the amendment paper—
Chris Murray
Because the Bill is about border policy and asylum policy, which have very little to do with visas, migration and the running of the immigration system. I do not think this Committee is the place for it, but I am learning that people sneak amendments in wherever they can in this place.
The new clause refers to the granting of visas
“to enable certain workers to work in Scotland only.”
First, let us be clear: that is absolutely a part of our immigration system. An international student who wants to study at the University of Edinburgh, or Queen Margaret University in my constituency, gets a visa to that university. I suppose they could commute from Worthing or Dagenham, but in reality they live locally. Equally, when people get a job, they get it on the basis of a specific role, so it is tied to that location. The immigrants we currently have in Scotland are obviously allowed to move around the country, as we have free movement within the UK, but we already have the component of their job location, so the new clause is completely irrelevant.
Secondly, we have had some international examples of a federated country or state introducing a specific visa system, such as Canada and Australia, and 20-odd years ago we had the Fresh Talent scheme in Scotland. The evidence is that specific systems are not very effective at either achieving the aims they set out or tackling any of the deep-rooted challenges that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire alluded to. All the evidence shows that such schemes are not the right tool to address those challenges.
To come to some of the points the hon. Gentleman made, we have to be honest about the challenges we face in Scotland. Even in this era of record-high net migration to the UK, the figure for which is 900,000—way higher than the goal the Conservatives set—parts of Scotland still struggle to attract migrants. When we had access to European free movement, or 300 million potential people to come and fill vacancies in our labour market, we did not attract them. We have been talking about demand and supply and migration, but the problem is not the supply of immigrants coming to Scotland. It is that we are not generating the demand for them to come to our part of the UK. That is what we need to work on.
The reason for that is the Scottish labour market: it is not dynamic or attractive enough to solve the challenges we have. I would argue that after 20 years of the SNP Scottish Government running our economy and leaking our taxes, that is the cause of our challenges.
Pete Wishart
I cannot let the hon. Gentleman get away with this, because it is utter and total bunkum. I ever so gently encourage him to look at the migration figures within the United Kingdom and at how many people are leaving Scotland and how many are coming from the rest of the UK to settle in Scotland. It is at a record high, and it is growing. We have never seen figures quite like this before. They are attracted to Scotland because we have a better health service, we have a better taxation system and there are more opportunities.
The Chair
I have given the hon. Gentleman a great deal of latitude in the Committee, and I suggest that what he is doing is not an intervention.
Chris Murray
I do not think it is the state of the Scottish health service that is attracting people to Scotland. Other Members are seeing what it is like dealing with the Scottish nationalist party. To a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail. To the SNP, the solution to every question is Scottish independence, or some specific Scottish legislation. Where there are specificities in Scotland, such as our health service and some of our labour market, there absolutely should be action from the Scottish Government to deal with it. However, this problem is not that. The issue is not that Scotland needs to become independent to attract people. We need to reform our labour market so that we can deal with the demographic issues.
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire makes the point that people are coming to Scotland now, but once again the SNP is making the mistake of seeing all of Scotland as some monolithic whole, rather than trying to think about what is happening in Scotland. My constituency of Edinburgh East and Musselburgh is seeing record population growth, at 15%, and it is 20% in the East Lothian part of the constituency. We are struggling to put in houses because we are so attractive and wonderful.
But other parts of Scotland are not finding that. The hon. Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West is present, and there are serious challenges in Inverclyde as population is declining. We are seeing a move in Scotland from the west coast to the east coast, as Scottish people move about, and we are also seeing international migrants focusing on certain parts. Some areas have vacancies, especially the highlands and the north of Scotland, because moving there is not attractive to people within Scotland. A Scottish visa could end up with everyone moving to Edinburgh, which would not at all solve the problems that other Members in the room face.
I made the point at the beginning that if we want to use migration to solve our demographic challenges, we are falling into the same mistake as the far right: we are forgetting that migrants are people. They are not just cogs that we put in a machine to be placed in and taken out at will. They are people who grow old, get sick, fall in love, move around and do stuff. We do not suddenly put people in and find that we have solved our demographic challenge. There are whole sets of things that we have to do. Most of all, the main point is that this is a debate that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire and I need to have at length over the course of this Parliament, not as part of the Bill.
Matt Vickers
SNP new clauses 3 and 4 seek to set up a separate visa scheme and immigration rules for Scotland. Can the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire explain a little more about how this would work in practice? Who does he expect or anticipate those “certain workers” to be? How does he expect that to work in isolation from the wider UK economy? What would prevent someone from applying for a visa to Scotland and moving to other parts of the UK? Is the SNP advocating that there should be checks on people moving between Scotland and the rest of the UK? Why is the SNP not spending more time getting those who are economically inactive into work, rather than reaching for the immigration lever?
Sarah Bool
I think that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire implied Professor David Coleman was talking about eugenics in the session. I want to put on record that he was not talking about eugenics and that he is an emeritus professor of demography; I know that was a line of questioning raised by the Minister. I want to put on record that that was not what he was there for. He was there to talk about his work with Migration Watch.
Sarah Bool
The Minister says that the professor is a eugenicist, but he actually explained a different relationship. It is important that that is put on record, because it is taking away from his role as emeritus professor for demography.
Katie Lam
I am a little surprised to see the suggestion from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire because my sense, from the rest of what he said in the debates we have had over preceding sessions, is that he would like to see less of a distinction between British people and those who come to this country as migrants. Indeed, his new clause 5, which we will debate after this, will explicitly set this out, particularly on the question of British citizenship. A scheme like the one he proposes in new clauses 3 and 4 would have the opposite effect, since any citizen of the United Kingdom can freely move between England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, living and working wherever they choose, and can change the location of their home or employment without permission or notice from any authority. We can pass from one area to another without being stopped or questioned, without having to evidence who we are, where we are from and going, and if and when we might return.
A specifically Scottish visa programme would presumably only work if none of those things were the case. Whatever the details, it would surely involve people coming to Britain but promising only to live and/or work in Scotland, over and above the situations where such things are already implied by the specific conditions of their visa—like the university at which they are studying or the company employing them, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh already laid out.
How would this be evidenced, tracked or enforced? Would individuals moving from a few metres into Scotland to a few metres into England be deported? Why would this be a specialist visa programme? If our friends north of the English-Scottish border are especially keen to attract people of working age, be they migrants or not, why would this be the right solution? What steps are already being taken to attract such people, or to make it easier for them to move to or work in Scotland?
Finally, I am interested in the view of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire on why Scotland currently has within its borders so few asylum seekers within the system. Given what he has previously said, it would be interesting to understand why he thinks that the number of asylum seekers—either in hotels or in dispersed accommodation in Scotland—is less than half of what it should be, proportionate to population of the rest of the United Kingdom.
Seema Malhotra
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for this important debate, Dame Siobhain. It is probably the fourth time we have discussed this matter. I want to acknowledge the persistence of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. He will be aware—perhaps this is one point I can acknowledge that he would have predicted my response—that we will not be introducing a Scottish visa scheme or devolving control of immigration policy. This has also been a discussion that we have had, and a point that we have made to the Scottish Government. In my remarks, I will perhaps make a few points that will be useful for his ongoing deliberations on this issue, and suggest how he may direct them towards working with the Scottish Government on some matters that it may be useful for him to be aware of.
The key point is that we must work together to address the underlying causes of skills shortages and overseas recruitment in different parts of the UK, and that is what we are seeking to do. The hon. Gentleman also knows that we believe net migration must come down—under the last Government, it more than trebled and reached a record high of over 900,000 in the year to June 2023. Immigration is a reserved matter, on which we work in the interest of the whole of the UK. The previous schemes that we have talked about have succeeded only in restricting movement and rights, and creating internal UK borders. Adding different rules for different locations will also increase complexity and create friction when workers move locations.
Pete Wishart
I will be brief, but a lot of the questions that were asked were relevant and deserve a response. First, it is not me that the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh needs to debate and speak to about this; it is Scottish businesses, business organisations and the political consensus in Scotland. The hon. Member should sit down with Jackie Baillie, who raised visas as a live issue during the general election campaign. I do not know what happened to that ambition from Scottish Labour. It seems to me that it was totally slapped down by the bosses down here in the Home Office, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. We do not hear about it as much anymore, but it was a real ambition from Jackie Baillie and the Labour party to secure this provision for Scotland. We only need to look back at the last Labour Government to see what imagination can do and what effective Government can deliver. We had the Fresh Talent scheme—a fantastic scheme that gave us a competitive advantage when it came to university students.
Seema Malhotra
The hon. Gentleman mentions the Fresh Talent scheme, which allowed graduates of Scottish universities to remain and work for two years after graduation without needing a sponsoring employer. In practice, many Fresh Talent participants did not remain in Scotland and took up employment elsewhere in the UK. That is precisely the challenge we are talking about.
The Chair
I remind the Minister that we have a hard return at 2 o’clock, so the longer we go on, the less likely it is that anybody is going to get an opportunity for lunch.
Pete Wishart
I will try to be as brief as possible, because I understand that we have got a time constraint.
Fresh Talent possibly did do that, but it would be different this time round because we have a distinct tax code in Scotland. We have Revenue Scotland as a result of further devolved powers from a few years ago. To address the questions from Conservative Members as to how a scheme would work, because of that tax code anybody who came in through a distinct Scottish visa scheme would be bound by that, and the obligations and qualifications would be to work in a list of occupations that is designed in Scotland.
Members are talking about this as if it has never been done anywhere else in the world. When I chaired the Scottish Affairs Committee, I took it to Quebec, and we sat down and examined exactly what happened there. We saw a fantastic scheme that has given Quebec, and particularly the Montreal metropolitan area, huge advantages over the rest of Canada. It works there and it works in Australia. Through imagination and making sure they are done in the right way, these schemes work and bring real benefits. International examples show that distinct tax codes that would allow people to stay within a distinct area in Scotland could be easily delivered.
We are going to continue to debate this issue as this Bill goes forward. The whole Scottish business community and the care sector are saying to us, “This is a priority.” It is not going to go away, but again it is rebuffed. Is a place on the Migration Advisory Committee really the best that the Government can with this range of difficult circumstances? I will be back to the issue and we will make sure that we take things forward. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Martin McCluskey.)
Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 11 / Noes: 4 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Chair
Welcome, everybody. I call the Minister to move the resolution of the Programming Sub-Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I welcome the opportunity to further discuss and scrutinise the Bill following Second Reading, and I thank the Committee for its time and expertise. I am also grateful to Members of the other place, who have already provided considerable scrutiny while also supporting the Bill.
I rise to speak to clauses 1 to 3. Clause 1 introduces schedule 1, which transfers statutory functions from the Institute for Apprenticeships—
The Chair
Order. I think the hon. Lady has got the wrong end of the stick on this one. She just needs to move the resolution of the Programming Sub-Committee.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 11.30 am on Thursday 13 March meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Thursday 13 March;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 20 March;
(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clause 1; Schedule 1; Clause 2; Schedule 2; Clause 3; Schedule 3; Clauses 4 to 14; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 20 March. — (Janet Daby.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Janet Daby.)
Clause 1
Transfer of functions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Schedule 1.
Clause 2 stand part.
Schedule 2.
Clause 3 stand part.
Schedule 3.
Janet Daby
I will begin again, Sir Christopher. I rise to speak to clauses 1 to 3. Clause 1 introduces schedule 1, which transfers statutory functions from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to the Secretary of State and makes minor and consequential amendments. It is our intention that functions currently delivered by IfATE will largely be exercised by Skills England on behalf of the Secretary of State. The functions are in chapter A1 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and include the duty to map occupational groups, and the duty to approve and publish standards and apprenticeship assessment plans.
Under the terms of the 2009 Act, the Secretary of State will also have the power to delegate functions to other persons. We intend to establish Skills England as an executive agency of the Department for Education. Despite IfATE’s success in embedding employees in the processes for designing technical qualifications and apprenticeships, the wider skills system remains too fragmented and complex. It is insufficiently responsive to the present and future skill needs of the economy, and we have major skill gaps. Employers report that more than one third of UK vacancies in 2022 were due to skills shortages. To address this, and unlock the potential for skills that drive growth and widen opportunity, we will create a new and more ambitious organisation: Skills England.
Clause 1 will enable Skills England to take on and deliver functions currently delivered by IfATE, giving it some of the key tools it needs to tackle these challenges as part of its wider remit. Skills England will provide an authoritative assessment of skills needed in the economy, and use those data and insights to develop and maintain a comprehensive suite of technical qualifications and apprenticeships, as a result of some of the functions transferred by the Bill. It will then work with key stakeholders to ensure that the identified needs for available training are reflected in regions across the country. That will ensure that the system becomes more responsive and better able to quickly and efficiently supply the skills most needed by the economy.
Skills England will work closely with the Industrial Strategy Council, so that we have the skilled workforce needed to deliver a clear, long-term plan for the future economy. It will also work with the Migration Advisory Committee to ensure that growing the domestic skills pipeline reduces our reliance on overseas workers.
To summarise, clause 1 will enable Skills England to take on and deliver the functions currently held by IfATE, where appropriate, alongside other functions. That will address the fragmentation that is holding the skills system back and restricting improved workforce development and productivity gains. Without this clause, it would not be possible to transfer functions from IfATE to the Secretary of State so that they can be exercised broadly by Skills England in the service of employers, learners and others.
Clause 2 introduces schedule 2, which makes provision for the transfer of IfATE’s property, rights and liabilities to the Secretary of State. It will ensure the functional continuity of property, rights and liabilities, including the many contracts that are critical to the operation of the skills system. The transfer scheme that the clause makes possible will mitigate the risk of delay and a lack of service continuity, which is essential for a smooth transfer from IfATE to the Secretary of State and the subsequent creation of Skills England.
Without this clause, the co-ordination of the transfer of IfATE’s property, rights and liabilities to the Secretary of State would be less straightforward and more burdensome. Without a transfer scheme, each matter, including contracts and licences, would have to be considered and transferred individually, which would be more time-consuming and could have an impact on value for money, the continuity of services and the delivery of skills products. That could mean the reduction in the quality of service received by employers, learners and others with an interest in the skills system. The transfer scheme that the clause makes possible will mitigate the risk of delay and a lack of service continuity, creating the minimum possible disruption for system users.
Clause 3 abolishes IfATE and introduces schedule 3, which makes consequential amendments to existing primary legislation that are required as a consequence of abolishing IfATE. It essentially closes IfATE so that the Government can establish and empower Skills England. Skills England will build on IfATE’s work with employers in all sectors to shape technical education and apprenticeships.
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)
I recently had the pleasure of visiting some fantastic apprentices at Hertford Regional college’s campus in Ware. I know that the college will be excited about the prospect of Skills England. Can the Minister say more about how soon we can expect it to come forward?
Janet Daby
It sounds as though that college is doing excellent work. The Bill is part of the process of delivering Skills England. It is our intention, following the Bill’s Royal Assent, to make commencement regulations promptly to bring into force the provisions that transfer IfATE’s functions, as well as the powers to transfer its assets and liabilities to the Secretary of State and to deliver those services through Skills England.
Skills England will be very different from IfATE, as I have mentioned. It will bring IfATE’s functions together with others that are not currently in statute to identify skills needs and to work with regional partners to ensure that they are being met. By bringing together those different functions in a single organisation, we can make a more responsive skills system that acts fast on the evidence to address skills gaps, uninterrupted by organisational boundaries, administrative hurdles and imperfect data flows. That would not be possible if the key functions were split across Skills England and IfATE. Clauses 1 to 3 are essential to achieving that transformation, so I commend them to the Committee.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. The Opposition have three main concerns about the Bill, which are all relevant to this group. First, there were good reasons why standards setting was put at arm’s length and closer to employers. As we heard from Members on both sides of the House of Lords, this Bill is a centralisation. Alongside other changes that the Government are making, it risks directly damaging the status of the qualifications.
Secondly, the Government are doing several things that will make it less likely that businesses will take on apprenticeships. Rather than fixing the problems, the Government are reorganising. Skills England will be the 13th skills body in 50 years. The Government are abolishing IfATE, which was created only seven years ago. This is yet more reorganisation, rather than focusing on the real issues. IfATE will now follow a long list of predecessors, including the Manpower Services Commission, the Learning and Skills Council, the Skills Funding Agency, skills advisory panels, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, training and enterprise councils and more, into the lengthening history of skills acronyms. We have a bad history of institutional churn in this country generally, and particularly in this area.
Thirdly, we have real concerns that this reorganisation of the machinery of government will lead to harmful delays in addressing some of the most important strategic issues that we face. Those concerns are in fact borne out by the Government’s impact assessment.
As the Minister just said, the first three clauses are all about abolishing IfATE. Clause 1 introduces schedule 1, which transfers functions from IfATE to the Secretary of State. It does not transfer them to Skills England, but to the Secretary of State.
The words “Secretary of State” appear, amazingly, 90 times in this short Bill. That is one reason why the Bill has come in for criticism from a number of different sides of politics. Instead of setting up Skills England as an independent body, which is what a lot of people—including many in the Labour party—assumed it would be, it is going to be part of the Department for Education.
In its briefing on the Bill, the Construction Industry Training Board noted that this was
“contrary to the previous characterisation of Skills England that was outlined in the…King’s Speech…and contrary to the vision for Skills England to be an independent body, established in law, with a cross-governmental role”.
Obviously, those two points are linked. If it is going to be cross-government, it is easier for it to be independent of the DFE rather than part of one Department.
The CITB makes an important point. IfATE existed to serve all employers, both public and private, and across every Department. In contrast, Skills England will be firmly part of the DFE. The chief executive officer of Skills England will be a job share between the two civil servants who currently run the post-16 skills bit of the DFE.
Likewise, the Institute of the Motor Industry, representing employers and professionals across the UK automotive sector, says in its evidence to this Committee that it has
“significant concerns about the abolition of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education…and the transfer of its functions to Skills England.”
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
Did the shadow Minister note the submission from the Association of Colleges, which offered very strong support for the Bill? As it represents a large proportion of providers of this education, its views should be taken into account.
Neil O’Brien
I saw that, and I wonder whether the hon. Lady noted in that submission the organisation’s pretty strong criticisms of the Government’s decision to cut adult skills spending. That is an example of what I was just talking about. Instead of addressing the real issues, we have reorganisation. I was not going to bring up the document from the Association of Colleges, but I am glad that the hon. Lady has.
Let me return to the Institute of the Motor Industry. Its evidence states:
“Without dedicated attention to the unique challenges faced by the automotive industry, Skills England risks creating further disconnection between education policy and real-world workforce demands.”
It talks about the risk of losing employer-led standards:
“Transitioning to Skills England could introduce additional confusion and delays, undermining apprenticeship approvals and disrupting funding streams critical to maintaining employer confidence.”
In fairness, that is what the Government’s impact assessment said. It stated that the issues around transition are likely to lead to delays, which will have a real-world impact. I will come back to that point in a second.
The criticisms from different people in industry of the move away from independence and employer ownership —those two things go hand in hand—take us back to the origin of IfATE. It was set up alongside the introduction of the apprenticeship levy. It was, in a sense, a quid pro quo. There was employers’ money and, in return, employer ownership of the system, for the first time. The move away from this being something independent and properly arm’s length to it being run by a bit of the DFE, by just some DFE officials, is a move away from that sense of employer ownership.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
Will the shadow Minister explain why he does not think that the rationalisation of unelected and largely unaccountable arm’s length bodies—quangos—is a bad thing? Why should the Secretary of State not be the person who is held accountable for post-16 skills education?
Neil O’Brien
That is a perfectly good question. Of course, this Government are a big fan of quangos and have, I think, created—net—28 more quangos since it came to office. Some can be the right thing to do, so I am not necessarily criticising the Government for that. In this case—I cannot remember if the hon. Lady was around when we were creating the apprenticeship levy—the reason why it was made independent of Government and an employer-owned body was that we were, for the first time, creating something that is quite common in the rest of Europe, the apprenticeship levy.
The levy is intended to stop—to be blunt—good employers who invest in their workforce and the skills of their workforce being taken advantage of by those who do not. That meant doing something controversial, which in effect was requiring them to pay into the levy—in many ways, it is like a tax—but they could get their money back through the apprenticeship levy. However, in return for that big change, requiring larger employers to put their own money into skills, we wanted to ensure that the whole thing would be truly employer-led, rather than politician-led.
Of course, current Ministers are brilliant—this is not any criticism of them—but we legislate for the ages, not for whoever is currently the Minister. Ministers change, and sometimes there have been instances—I am horrified to tell the Committee—where politicians have foibles or funny ideas of their own, which are not necessarily reflected in the wishes of employers and what they want from the skills system. That was why we put the system more into the hands of employers.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
It is interesting to hear the shadow Minister speak about business’s view of the apprenticeship levy. When I speak to businesses in my constituency, they tell me that the apprenticeship levy was not flexible enough and was not working, and it was preventing them giving opportunities to young people. That is exactly why so many businesses have welcomed the changes that this Government are bringing in. Has he not heard the exact same from businesses in his constituency?
Neil O’Brien
Even before we set up the levy, I always heard employers expressing concerns about the idea of a levy of any kind. In many instances, they would prefer just to keep their money and not spend it on skills at all. The fact that they were not spending on skills is the reason why we brought in a levy—it was quite a contentious thing, and quite a centrist thing in lots of ways.
As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out in its recent paper on the Government’s proposals to change the levy, the danger, if we start to make these things too open-ended, is that we completely collapse the concept. It notes what happened with things before, such as Train to Gain, where what we end up with is pure dead-weight—we get zero additionality.
To reduce the idea to absurdity, if we were to say that employers can spend the apprenticeship levy on whatever they like, there is no point in having a levy, is there? That is because we would have just gone around in a circle. There is no point taking money off people and saying, “You can do whatever you want.” The whole point of containing that expenditure to apprenticeships was, as well as wanting to prioritise apprenticeships, to avoid the very real problems that the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out with previous schemes such as Train to Gain, where we ended up with huge amounts of dead-weight. It did not work, and the amount of money spent by employers on such things went down.
I am absolutely ready to hear criticisms of, and improvements to, the idea of the levy. In a moment, I will talk about some of the challenges that will be thrown up by the Government’s proposals to move large amounts of money out of apprenticeships through the reforms to the levy.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
On the shadow Minister’s previous point, I spoke to businesses in my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages, and one pointed out to me that 90 pieces of paperwork were required, with multiple contract stages, just to get, for example, a plumber apprentice to take part in any scheme. The college in my constituency, which is outstanding and has a 72% completion rate compared with the national average of 58%, is doing strong work, but the businesses, in particular the small and medium-sized enterprises, are saying that the apprenticeship levy does not work for them and has excluded them from skills development. I am interested to hear what the shadow Minister has to say about that.
Neil O’Brien
As I said, I am absolutely ready to hear detailed thoughts and to have the detailed discussion about how one improves all these different things, and I am pleased that the hon. Lady’s local college seems to be highly successful in delivering these things. Every year, on average, twice as many people started apprenticeships under the last Government as started them under the previous Labour Government, so we did get a lot more of them, as well as higher quality. I do not know what the 90 bits of paper are, but I am absolutely ready to hear and to talk about ways we could improve those matters.
On the point about SMEs that the hon. Lady raised, that is exactly why last March we moved to 100% funding for SMEs—to make things easier for them. I agree with the hon. Lady: there is a lot to do to make it easier for SMEs to participate in the levy-led system. I am just not convinced that any of the concerns she raises will be addressed by shutting down IfATE or setting up Skills England. She might hope that they will be—I hope that they will be—but I do not see anything in this legislation that will fix any of the problems that she complains about. Obviously, we hope that collectively we will solve the problems in the system.
There are quite a lot of concerns—including concerns among those on the Labour Benches, which I will come on to—about the transfer of IfATE’s powers to the Secretary of State compromising the independence with which apprenticeships and wider technical qualifications, such as T-levels, are accredited, and diluting the voice of employers. As numerous people have pointed out, we would not and do not accept that on the academic side, where we have both independent exam boards and Ofqual creating and monitoring specifications and exams. This is yet another example of our treating the academic side—the route that most of us went down—differently from the technical side. As the Labour peer Lord Knight has pointed out:
“The problem that some of us have with the Bill is that it feels like the second half is missing. The second half is the establishment of Skills England as a statutory body…Being subsumed within a division of the Department for Education…is problematic. The Minister needs to reflect on it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC87.]
As another Labour peer, Baroness Blower, pointed out,
“the appropriate move from where we are would be to a statutory body”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC90.]
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, said that giving Skills England legislative backing
“would…cement the body’s independence.”
In contrast, the Bill originally introduced by the Government did not even include the words “Skills England”. The very act of a further reorganisation, even if one thinks it is a good idea, is likely to further compound the effects of the Budget and the decision to move apprenticeships money to other things. I will just rehearse that for a moment. Obviously, the Budget saw a £40 billion overall tax increase and the largest part of that is a £25 billion increase in national insurance, which is squarely targeted on part-time and lower-income workers. It hits exactly the tier of the workforce that is typically the apprenticeship kind of tier. Of course, apprenticeships do not require payment of national insurance, but when we see lots of employers, as we do now, shedding jobs in that tier, that is inevitably bad for the number of apprenticeships.
That is compounded by what the Government want to do in terms of taking money out of apprenticeships. There has been some confusion about that, because safely before the election, Labour in opposition had the idea that it was going to let employers take 50% of the money from the levy and spend it on things that were not apprenticeships. Then, as the election drew nearer, that idea seemed to disappear and did not feature any more. Lots of people assumed that it was gone. Then I assumed it was definitely gone, because I asked the current Minister—whom we have here today—in Westminster Hall whether the 50% target still stood, and the Minister said that the policy was under review. Then a couple of weeks later, in oral questions, when we asked the Secretary of State whether the 50% target still stood, she said that it did, even though lots of people in industry think that that is not the plan.
This whole question about how much of the money will be taken out of apprenticeships and put elsewhere is shrouded in confusion. I would love it—I would be delighted—if the Minister could talk about that point today and tell us whether it is still 50%. It is a binary thing: it either is 50% or is not. I would love the Minister to tell us the answer one way or another. At the moment, the levy raises about £2 billion a year. If the Government take 50% of that money out, they might think that is a good thing. They might say, “Yes, we want employers to be able to spend a billion quid on other stuff.” But if they take all that money out of apprenticeships, one thing they will definitely have is fewer apprenticeships. They could say it is fine—
Melanie Onn
The shadow Minister references the number of apprentices, and he pointed to the previous Government’s record on that, but, in my constituency, apprenticeship starts fell year on year under the previous Government. Lots of young people have been completely disenfranchised, having had their apprenticeships end early without getting to completion. There has to be some kind of change so that we are not failing young people. There has to be a review of the levy, which employers have said is far too restrictive. The hon. Member’s points do not actually bear scrutiny when we get down to constituency-level data, do they?
Neil O’Brien
I give the hon. Lady the national-level data—I think I did already—because I do not have in my head the data for every constituency. At the national level, we had twice as many apprenticeship starts every year under the last Conservative Government as we did under the previous Labour Government. The hon. Lady might say, “That’s not enough; it should’ve been even higher,” and I would perhaps even agree with her. I would have liked the number to be even higher as well.
The hon. Lady said that numbers fell. What we saw was that, even though the overall number of starts was twice as high under the Conservatives as it had been under Labour, absolutely, the shift from frameworks to standards and to a higher quality of apprenticeships did reduce numbers. It did not take them down to where they had been under Labour, but it did reduce them. However, that shift was essential, and I do not think that anyone wants to go back from standards to frameworks.
There was a damning 2015 Ofsted report, which the hon. Lady will remember well, that found that quite a lot of people—a lot of learners—had been on an apprenticeship for more than a year and did not even know they were on an apprenticeship.
Neil O’Brien
Such was the low level of quality—such was the total absence of any training or meaningful content in the apprenticeship. What we had was an abuse. What we had was employers being able to pay below the national minimum wage—below the rates even for young people—and, at the same time, not providing meaningful training and what all of us want, which is proper, high-quality apprenticeships. I do not think the hon. Lady is really going to argue for a move back to those previous frameworks—
Neil O’Brien
But, as she rises to her feet, perhaps she will tell me if she does want to go backwards to frameworks.
Melanie Onn
That is not what I am rising to my feet to say. It is interesting that the shadow Minister points out the differential rates of pay between young people and older people, because we have just had the Employment Rights Bill going through Parliament, during which Conservative Members were absolutely incandescent that we might seek to raise the pay of young people, equalise it and recognise fair rates of pay regardless of age.
I am interested in that 2015 report. The hon. Gentleman said “a lot of people”; was that the actual wording in the report?
Neil O’Brien
I am not sure what the question is. Is the hon. Lady asking whether what I said about the 2015 report was correct?
Melanie Onn
I was asking the shadow Minister to clarify the numbers. He refers to the report and makes a sweeping generalisation about it, so what exactly were the numbers? What is the accuracy of the report?
Neil O’Brien
Just to reassure the lady, the numbers are correct. Although I do not encourage people to use mobile phones in Committee, Sir Christopher, the hon. Lady can google her way to the 2015 Ofsted report. She can read it for herself and be chilled, as I was, by its description of the pre-reform system and the low level of quality that was being provided in it.
The hon. Lady tempts us off the topic to talk about wider issues. On those different rates, I would say that most systems around the world, including ours, have different rates of minimum wage by age. That is about making the so-called “bite” of the minimum wage similar for different ages. Different groups of people at different ages have different productivity levels and different typical rates of pay. Therefore, if a Government do not want to create large rates of youth unemployment—and most systems around the OECD do not—they end up with different minimum wage rates for different ages. That system has been there since the start; it was there when Labour created these things, and it was still there when we turned it into the national living wage, so none of that is novel.
I will say one thing about the Employment Rights Bill, since it has been brought up. We do not have the skills Minister herself with us, because, of course, she is in the other place, but I do just note that the Government have created a situation in which a lot of universities are facing industrial action—because the national insurance increase has wiped out all of the increases in fees, and one broken promise on fees is now being used to pay for another broken promise on tax. The Employment Rights Bill makes it easier to take industrial action. I think that a lot of universities, as employers, are dreading the impact. Having addressed that point, I will get back on topic.
Neil O’Brien
Sure. A shadow form exists at the moment, but that does not change the longer-term point that if we do not give it its own legislative basis and make it independent of the Department, all the criticisms and concerns about the dilution of the employer voice and so on still stand. I am not having a go at those who are setting up Skills England.
Leigh Ingham
On the point about independence, the chair has been announced as Phil Smith, the former CEO of Cisco. Surely that in itself is a sign of significant independence.
Neil O’Brien
A fantastic person—all good. It is like having NEDs—non-executive directors—in a Department; it is good to have external people. As I noted, however, the CEO of the organisation is literally not a civil servant; it is a job-share civil servant. They are people who currently work in the Department doing post-16 skills, so I am not sure about idea that this is an independent body. Can the hon. Lady tell me where Skills England is based? Physically, where is it located? Perhaps the Minister will tell us. Is it in Sanctuary Buildings, by any chance? Sanctuary Buildings is none other than the headquarters of the DFE. Is this, in fact a desk in an open plan office that is part of the DFE?
The Government can bring in good people. It is good to bring in good people. The DFE has some good NEDs, by the way, but that is not the same as having an independent institution. That is why Lord Blunkett and other Labour peers are warning that the Government are making a mistake. Those are their words, not ours. Lord Blunkett has a lot more experience of those things than me.
All I would say to the Minister and to hon. Members on the Government Benches is, instead of overturning what peers have put into the Bill, this might be one of those times when it is more sensible to listen to people on their own side, people with some serious grey hairs and a lot of experience, people in their own party, who are advising them that they are making a mistake here. Instead of overturning what they have done, the Government should allow it to stand. The criticisms being made by people in the industry and people with experience in education and skills are serious. I hope that the Government will listen to them, rather than simply overturning what they have done and ignoring them.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
We are debating clauses 1 to 3 stand part and schedules 1 to 3. The Minister, in her opening remarks, talked a lot about the intention to create Skills England, how it will operate and so on. That is not in clauses 1 to 3.
The Bill is all about transferring functions from the independent Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to the Secretary of State in central Government. Colleagues may have seen the, as ever, helpful and pithy descriptive notes from the House of Commons Library. Clause 1 introduces schedule 1, which will transfer statutory functions from the institute to the Secretary of State. Clause 2 introduces schedule 2, which will allow the Secretary of State to make schemes for the transfer of property rights and liabilities from the institute. Clause 3 will abolish the institute and introduce a schedule 3, which makes consequential amendments to the 2009 Act and other Acts.
The history of this sector is the history of many changes in the machinery of government and the creation of many quangos. There have been 12 in the past five decades. This one will be lucky—no doubt—13. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister helped us with some of the history and some of those previous bodies. I have a slightly longer list.
We have had industrial training boards, the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Commission, and the training and enterprise councils known as TECs—but those TECs were not the same as another type of TEC, the Technical Education Council, which existed alongside the Business Education Council or BEC in the 1970s. The two would merge in the 1980s to give us, of course, BTEC, the Business and Technology Education Council. There were national training organisations, the Learning and Skills Council, sector skills councils, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, the Skills Funding Agency or SFA, which would later become the ESFA, or Education and Skills Funding Agency, and most recently LSIPs—local skills improvement partnerships—and IfATE.
Pam Cox
The right hon. Member has missed one: the Statute of Artificers 1563, known as the Statute of Apprenticeships. We have been trying to do this for many centuries, and it is only right that each generation tries to do so. We are still not getting it right for our young people, hence the need for speed.
Damian Hinds
I am very grateful; who knows where this conversation might take us? Last time I looked, 1563 was not in the past five decades. The hon. Lady says that every generation should try to reform, and that may well be true. I do not know how many generations she calculates there are in a 50-year period, but as sure as anything, there are not 12, let alone 13.
Those many bodies over the years have been mirrored by a true panoply of qualifications and awards: traditional apprenticeships; modern apprenticeships; the YOP or youth opportunities programme; the YTS, or youth training scheme; City and Guilds; the TVEI, or training and vocational education initiative; the NCVQ or National Council for Vocational Qualifications; NVQs or national vocational qualifications, which are still in use; GNVQs, or general national vocational qualifications, which became BTECs and diplomas; the 14-to-19 diplomas, which are not quite the same thing as the Tomlinson diplomas; Skills for Life; traineeships; and all together between 100 and 200 recognised awards and organisations, excluding those that do only end-point assessments.
Peter Swallow
I simply wish to say to the right hon. Member that it was not too long ago when he was on the Government Benches and presiding over the very system in question. As he has helpfully elucidated for everyone, we are dealing with an incredibly fractured landscape, which is precisely the challenge that the Bill proposes to address. In all frankness, given the fractured nature of the landscape, which he eloquently identified, should he not support any attempt to bring it together?
Damian Hinds
Yes, but the Bill does not do that, and if the hon. Member thinks it does, I am afraid he is mistaken.
Some years ago, I used to sit on the Government Benches and was a Minister at the Department for Education, as the hon. Member said, and on many occasions I have had a close interest in these areas. There was a cross-party coming together in the early to mid-2010s, which resulted in the Sainsbury report. The noble Lord Sainsbury, as the hon. Member may know, is a Labour peer who devoted a great deal of his life and the work of his foundation, the Gatsby Foundation, to trying to improve something that in this country, historically and by international comparison, we have not been tremendously good at: technical and vocational education and training. The Independent Panel on Technical Education, which convened in 2015 to 2016, took a broad overview of exactly the fractured landscape that the hon. Member talked about. By the way, I have missed out the page of my notes where I was going to go through all the qualifications that someone could do at level 3 to age 18, which is a similarly sized list.
Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Member give way?
Damian Hinds
I had probably better go on a little, but I would love to hear from the hon. Gentleman. I promise that the Committee will have a chance so to do.
Unsurprisingly, that panel found that the technical and vocational education and training landscape in this country was over-complex. The example of plumbing was given, with 33 different qualifications that a young person could decide to do. Moreover, the panel found that the system was not providing for the skills that the country needed and that the technical and vocational education and training had become “divorced” from the occupations that they were there to serve, with no or weak requirements to meet employers’ actual needs.
The Sainsbury report, published in April 2016, set out a blueprint for what would be a major upgrade and simplification of technical and vocational education and training, to address the productivity gap in this country—we talk about this sometimes; there has been a productivity gap every year I have been alive, and I am in my mid-50s today—and indeed a major social justice gap. Although it was a blueprint, it was also a redprint because it had cross-party support. It called for a fundamental shift in how we did technical and vocational education, with coherent routeways from level 2 through to level 5 along 15 different sector routes, three of which would be apprenticeship only, through to 35 different pathways mapped as specific occupations—specific needs of the economy and companies.
Neil O’Brien
I, too, pay tribute to the work of Lord Sainsbury. Those points, which were inserted into what were then called the Sainsbury routes, drew on the experience of the best technical systems in the world, particularly those in Germany and Switzerland. What characterises those systems is the unbelievable level of employer ownership and the incredible constancy of the organisations, which are external to Government, that run them. The Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung has been around for, I think, 50 or 60 years. Are those not the characteristics of a good system—employer ownership and independence—and the things that Lord Sainsbury was talking about?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is right. If we take the full etymology, we can go back a lot further, to the creation of guilds centuries ago, which evolved into the modern system.
Laurence Turner
I have enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman’s recapitulation of the history. In the last Parliament, I attended meetings of the UK shipbuilding skills taskforce, which was sponsored by the Department for Education, and considered these matters in respect of that industry quite closely. Employers and employee representatives were unanimous that the GCSE entry standard requirements should be removed in that industry, but the inclusion of that recommendation was blocked because, we were given to understand, it would not be supported by DFE Ministers. Does he share my concern that the independence of the current system is more claimed than real?
Damian Hinds
No, I do not, but there is a definition of what an apprenticeship is. There are perfectly good reasons to have all manner of training courses, including entry-level ones, that do important things, but they are not apprenticeships. The shadow Minister talked about Germany. In our country, the minimum length of an apprenticeship is shorter than the typical length of one in Germany. The time off the job—the time in college—is shorter. As I say, we can add on other things, but we cannot stretch the definition of what an apprenticeship is indefinitely. I may come back to that later.
On the face of it, this is a simple Bill—it has 13 pages and is on a simple subject—so it should be fairly easy for a Committee to dispatch in a couple of Thursdays. I have no doubt that Government Members will take the opportunity to make speeches on this subject, and I am sure those will be rather good. Members may make what could be described as great speeches and what they say will be largely unarguable. I fancy that we may hear the word “mission” from them, perhaps even more than once. They will talk about the importance of skills in our economy, investing in the next generation, valuing every single person for what they can do and the value of joining-up across Government Departments.
That will all be correct, but it will be largely beside the point. To turn a great speech that includes those things into a truly outstanding speech in this Committee, they would have to explain why taking away the independence of the body overseeing the system that upholds the standards would make those entirely laudable and shared goals more likely to come about. I know of no reason to believe that it will, but I am keen to hear from anybody who has such an idea.
In the Labour manifesto, there were some very laudable aims. It said that it wanted to empower
“local communities to develop the skills people need”
and to
“put employers at the heart of our skills system.”
Labour said that it would
“establish Skills England to bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government”,
in order to deliver its industrial strategy. The manifesto said:
“Skills England will formally work with the Migration Advisory Committee to make sure training in England accounts for the overall needs of the labour market”.
It mentioned a commitment to
“devolving adult skills funding to Combined Authorities…alongside a greater role in supporting people into work”,
and Labour will
“transform Further Education colleges into specialist Technical Excellence Colleges.”
There are different ways that those aims could be achieved, and I would argue that there are better ways. The Government could, for example, keep IfATE as the standard-setting and upholding body, and create a new, small body, possibly inside the Treasury, to assess the needs of the economy and allocate funds accordingly. They could also strengthen the powers of local skills improvement partnerships, working closely with devolved authorities and mayors, to ensure that what is delivered at a local level in individual colleges matches what the local economy needs. I would have probably chosen that architecture, but plenty of other variations are possible.
To be clear, the Bill does not do any of those things. It simply abolishes the independent body that convenes employers to set the standards and then uphold them, and it hands those powers to the Secretary of State. It does nothing else—I say that, but it is not totally clear to me what it does to Ofqual, and we may debate that when we get to clause 8. I suggest that the Bill presents two fundamental questions: first, about independence; and secondly, about who should set the expectations and standards in any given sector of work—should it be the employers in that sector or somebody else? We will come to that debate when we reach clauses 4 and 5.
Ultimately, this is about whether we believe enough in the phrase “parity of esteem” to do the things necessary to achieve it. As I said in the House the other day, parity of esteem is not something one can just “assert”, and it cannot be legislated for. We cannot pass a law to give something greater esteem. Esteem is in the eye of the esteemer and it can only be earned. In part, that comes from knowing that the qualifications of the technical and vocational strand in our country are just as rigorous and have the same integrity as the academic strand.
By the way, independence is not totally a left/right issue. There are plenty of people on the right of politics who share the Minister’s desire not to have independent bodies. There is a general “anti the quangos” strand, and I have some sympathy for that. By the way, a debate is going on at the moment about removing the independence of the national health service and bringing it into the Department of Health and Social Care. That can be argued both ways. On the one hand, it will be harder for the NHS to do some things, particularly what they call reconfigurations, when they become subject to political pressure. On the other hand, it can be argued that there should of course be direct control from a democratically elected Government over the most important institution in our country. However, I think an independent body for upholding standards in education is in a separate bracket.
Neil O’Brien
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the context in which this is happening matters? We are talking about getting rid of a prestigious and independent institution, and at the same time, T-levels will not do what Lord Sainsbury hoped they will do. They were supposed to replace the existing standards but, in fact, they will be just another thing in the alphabet soup. We are seeing apprenticeships being made shorter again, and we are going back towards shelf-stacking types of apprenticeships. The mood music is already pretty ominous, and that is against the backdrop of Ministers getting more power by taking this back into the Department and abolishing independence. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an issue?
Damian Hinds
I do. Funnily enough, my hon. Friend anticipates my next paragraph. Any Government rightly want more young people to pass their GCSEs, get good A-levels, or start and complete apprenticeships. The truth is that the quickest way to have more people getting any qualification is to make it a bit easier, and there is plenty of history of that, I am afraid. The entry requirements or length could be reduced, the pass mark could be made lower, or the credits that count towards the outcome could be changed. One of the reasons we have independent bodies setting standards is so that that temptation cannot be succumbed to, and crucially, everybody can see that it cannot, so they can have total faith in the standards being upheld.
Essentially, the rationale for why there is an independent Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is the same one as why the Chancellor sets fiscal rules, or why Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent: it is specifically for the Government to keep themselves within certain tram lines. We do this for academic qualifications. I have asked the Minister this question I think three times, and I will ask it again today: it would not be acceptable, would it, to say, “I’m going to put the pass mark, standards and specification for A-levels in the hands of a Government Minister”? If that is not acceptable for A-levels, how can it possibly be acceptable for T-levels? And we still say that we believe in parity of esteem.
In the good, possibly great, speeches that we will hear from Government Members, one other thing they might say—in fact, they have already started to say it; they pre-empted me—is that apprenticeship starts have fallen since the peak, but that under this Government, they will rise. Well, of course they will rise. If we look at the time series over the last decade of apprenticeship starts, we are not comparing apples with apples; we are comparing apples with oranges, because we had major changes in what counts as an apprenticeship, with the move from frameworks to standards as well as the minimum duration and minimum time off the job.
In discussing the overall numbers, we should also mention that the falls were in the intermediate level and that there were rises in the advanced level, and especially in higher-level apprenticeships. If the specification is reduced, of course that will increase the numbers. To be fair, the Government are not waiting for Skills England. They have already been doing this, by bringing the minimum length down from 12 months to eight months. They have also announced what they are calling foundation apprenticeships, and I hope the Minister will be able to tell us exactly what those are—they sound a bit like traineeships, but let us hear it—and crucially, whether they will count towards the number of apprenticeships that are being undertaken in the country.
Janet Daby
Hon. Members have given me much to think about and feed back. I remind Opposition Members that one in eight young people are not in education, employment or training, a third of vacancies in our country are due to a lack of skills, and many people are in jobs for which they are underqualified. Young people need to know that when they undertake skills training, there will be a guaranteed job at the end of the process. We are committed to ensuring growth in this country. We want to get young people into work to ensure that they succeed and progress in life. We absolutely know that what we are trying to achieve with Skills England is the right thing to do.
I will attempt to respond to the various points that hon. Members have made. There have been previous arm’s length bodies with functions partially linked to those intended for Skills England, but none provides a direct comparison, given Skills England’s distinct remit.
Establishing Skills England is a manifesto commitment, and will support the delivery of the Government’s missions. As an Executive agency, Skills England will be subject to clear requirements on governance, transparency and accountability, and Ministers will be accountable to Parliament. The Government have put in the Bill a duty for the Secretary of State to publish information about matters they will take into account in deciding whether to prepare a standard or apprenticeship assessment plan without a group of persons. This new power will therefore be subject to the same level of transparency as existing powers being transferred from IfATE.
An Executive agency is a widely used model of arm’s length body. It has a clearly defined status and must be established and governed in line with official Cabinet Office guidance. Executive agencies are appropriate for the delivery of specialised functions separate from a primarily policy-focused Department, but within a policy and resources framework set by the Department, and for delivery of services to other parts of central Government using specialist skills. The Executive agency model will give Skills England the independence to focus on the delivery of its functions at arm’s length from the Department for Education, while ensuring sufficient proximity to the Department that Skills England can quickly and efficiently inform decisions on skills policy and delivery.
Skills England is operating in shadow form and is working extremely closely with IfATE, which also currently has a base in Sanctuary Buildings—the Department for Education. Following a vigorous recruitment process, in line with civil service guidance, we have appointed Skills England’s chief executive officers. Tessa Griffiths and Sarah Maclean have been appointed co-CEOs. They are senior leaders with long-standing experience in the public sector. Tessa and Sarah have been leading Skills England while it has been in shadow form, since last summer. They have driven the rapid progress that has seen Skills England start to deliver its important work ahead of the passing of this Bill. We do not believe in delay; we want to get on with establishing Skills England as an arm’s length body.
Skills England’s being run by CEOs at civil service director level is consistent with the approach taken by IfATE and other Executive agencies of the Department for Education. It is really important that I make those points so that there is a clear understanding of what is happening.
We considered, but ultimately decided against, expanding or otherwise retaining IfATE. We want to set Skills England up to build on IfATE’s work with employers, and to shape technical education and apprenticeships, but it will be very different from IfATE. It will have a much broader remit and will be more ambitious. It will bring IfATE’s functions together with others that are not currently in statute. We need to go further and do more to identify skills needs and work with regional partners to ensure they are being met. By bringing together those different functions into a single organisation, we will really be able to accelerate change. That will help the skills system to be more responsive to emerging skills needs. We need a flexible system that acts fast on the best available evidence to address the skills gaps that threaten to hold back our country. I am sure none of us wants to do that.
IfATE has worked with employers to design over 700 occupational standards. Skills England will build on that important work and retain a strong role for employers. But the skills system in England has matured since IfATE was created in 2017, and the scale and urgency of the skills challenge that we face means we need a new approach.
The Government are committed to delivering skills for the sector, as I have already pointed out, and we are listening to the needs of employers. This can be seen in our reform, growth and skills offer. Skills England will build on the work of IfATE and employers will continue to play a critical role in the design and delivery of apprenticeships and technical education. Indeed, that is already happening. The changes being brought about through the Bill have been designed in response to employer feedback and will simply mean that employers are not overburdened by repetitive and drawn-out processes, which we know can lead to disengagement.
I welcome the written submissions from the Institute of the Motor Industry, the Association of Colleges, JTL Training and the Royal Society of Chemistry. I thank those organisations for contributing to this important debate. I completely agree with the Institute of the Motor Industry’s view that Skills England must maintain an “employer-led ethos” with “strong industry collaboration”. That is why Skills England is already working, and will continue to work, closely with industry, while also building a clear picture of the challenges facing employers, including regional skills gaps, in order to support growth in our skills sector.
It is pleasing to hear the Association of Colleges, which represents more than 98% of further education colleges, express strong support for plans to establish Skills England and recognise the critical role that Skills England will play in the Government’s broader post-16 education and skills agenda.
Although many Members of the other place support the aims of Skills England, it is disappointing that peers voted for an amendment that would delay its full establishment. The Government are clear that employers need a fully formed Skills England now; they cannot wait. That is why we have tabled amendment 1 to overturn that amendment made in the other place.
Gaps in our economy are holding back growth and opportunity. We need the Bill to give Skills England the key tools that it needs to tackle them now, and not in 12 months’ time. Skills England has been operating in shadow form since July. Due to extensive transition planning over several months, it is ready to move fast to deliver the functions made possible by the Bill. Delay simply is not an option.
With regard to whether employers can spend up to 50% of levy funds on non-apprenticeship training, I do not want to put a target or limit on flexibility. It will be led by what employers need and driven by Skills England analysis. We have already introduced flexibility through new foundation and shorter apprenticeships, and we will continue to work with employers to understand where future flexibility will be most helpful.
Neil O’Brien
The Minister says she does not want to set a limit, but there was a commitment from the Secretary of State that employers would be able to spend up to 50% of their funds on non-apprenticeships. That was a Labour commitment. If I understand her, it will no longer be up to 50%; it will be some other number. Or is she saying that it will be up to 100%? Which of those things is she saying?
Janet Daby
What I am saying is that we have already introduced flexibility and we will continue to work with employers to understand where future flexibility will be most helpful. That will be worked through with Skills England. I am happy to get the hon. Member some further information.
The Chair
Order. The Minister is not giving way. As the shadow Minister knows, in Committee people may speak more than once in a debate, so if he wishes to come back after the Minister has sat down, he is free to do so.
Janet Daby
We are not centralising regulation of technical qualifications akin to IfATE. Skills England will operate independently of the Department for Education and will continue to work with IfATE to develop occupational standards. Skills England will have a new and transformative role in the skills system and will work closely with, but not duplicate, the role of the Department or regulators such as Ofqual or the Office for Students.
Neil O’Brien
We have mysteries wrapped in mysteries here. As well as the lack of clarity about the future caused by the Bill, even in this debate on one group of clauses, we have had an extraordinary statement by the Minister. Businesses would like to know how, in just a few months’ time—next year—they will be able to spend a couple of billion pounds of their own money. This is employers’ money. Labour have oscillated between, “We will let 50% of this go on other things”, “No, we will not” and, since being in government, “We are reviewing this. This is not our policy any more.” On the Floor of the House, the Secretary of State has been saying, “No, it is absolutely our policy—50%. That is the number.” That is what she has told the House. Now we have another position—a fifth—on the spending of this money: “No, that is not the number any more.”
Employers will be jaw-to-the-floor agog at what is going on in the DFE. What is the policy? This is billions of pounds of employers’ money, in a difficult economic situation, being spent imminently, and yet the DFE cannot say—the Minister literally would not take a further question on it—what the policy is. What an extraordinary situation. What a shameful situation. Unbelievable.
We have been saying that, down the line, there might be some things to worry about in this transfer of power away from an employer-led and independent system towards the tender mercies of the DFE, but employers have got something to worry about right now. The Government do not seem to know what their own policies are. On that basis, I really do want to press clause 1 to a vote, and we will vote against it.
Janet Daby
We have been listening to businesses and employers, and they are absolutely telling us that they want greater flexibility in our apprenticeship systems and in how employers can spend their levy funds. We are reforming apprenticeships to deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers, including through shorter and foundation apprenticeships. I have attempted to answer the shadow Minister’s questions, but he is not satisfied. I have also offered to ensure that we get some more information. I want to make one more point: we are not putting a target or limit on flexibility; this will be led by what employers need.
Neil O’Brien
I am not asking for a target; that is a complete mischaracterisation. I am asking for clarity on the Government’s own policy. The Government said that that they would allow employers to take up to 50% of the money and spend it on things that were not apprenticeships. Either that is still the policy or it is no longer the policy. Which of those two things is the truth?
Janet Daby
I will get back to the hon. Gentleman. I will make sure there is a written response.
Neil O’Brien
Absolutely unreal.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Tenth sitting)
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 14 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 14 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I congratulate everybody on arriving so promptly; I hope there is not too much indigestion about.
New Clause 5
British citizenship
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of this Act—
(a) ensure that illegal entry to the UK is disregarded as a factor for the purposes of assessing whether a person applying for British citizenship meets the good character requirement; and
(b) ensure that all asylum seekers with—
(i) indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom;
(ii) settled status; or
(iii) indefinite leave to enter the United Kingdom;
have a right to naturalisation after five years of residency in the United Kingdom, regardless of their country of origin or method of arrival.”—(Pete Wishart.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to change current Home Office guidance stating that people who enter the UK illegally, regardless of how long ago, will "normally be refused" citizenship (if they applied after 10 February 2025).
Brought up, and read the First time.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss
New clause 13—Good character requirement: illegal entry—
“The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of this Act, ensure that illegal entry to the UK is disregarded as a factor for the purposes of assessing whether a person applying for British citizenship meets the good character requirement.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to change current Home Office guidance stating that individuals who enter the UK illegally, regardless of how long ago, will “normally be refused” citizenship (if they applied after 10 February 2025).
Pete Wishart
I trust everybody enjoyed the five-course banquet we had in the 20 minutes available to us. I apologise if I seemed to be unnecessarily detaining the Committee and depriving them of a good and solid lunch; we will make sure that that does not happen again, Dame Siobhain.
It was with a gasp of astonishment that we learned of this Government’s intention to change the nationality good character requirement guidance—it came totally out of the blue. I think we are all still reeling a little bit, thinking about what this involves and what is at stake. It establishes a new standard that individuals who previously entered the UK illegally or without valid entry clearance, particularly in what is described as a “dangerous journey”, will now be refused citizenship. That is a huge departure from previous practice, where illegal entry was typically considered a barrier to citizenship only if it had occurred in the past 10 years. Regardless of how long a person has lived in the UK, their mode of entry could now be used to deny them the right to naturalise.
This policy has been implemented without prior consultation or parliamentary scrutiny—it is going to get a little bit this afternoon, but that is only because we have brought the issue to this Committee—and that raises serious concerns about its fairness and legality. The majority of refugees arrive in the UK through irregular routes; safe and legal pathways remain extremely limited, as we learned in the previous debate. By effectively banning these individuals from citizenship, this policy risks permanently disenfranchising those who have sought protection in the UK and who have built their lives here.
We already heard from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which wrote to the Committee to say that the decision to deny citizenship based on mode of entry contradicts the UK’s commitment under international law, particularly article 31 of the 1951 refugee convention. This article’s non-penalisation clause states:
“The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”
The denial of citizenship based on how someone arrived in the UK is a clear penalty, which goes contrary to the convention. The UNHCR notes that it previously highlighted in its legal observation on the Illegal Migration Bill 2023 that restricting access to citizenship under section 31 to 35 of that Act would constitute a
“penalty under Article 31 of the Refugee Convention and be in breach of that provision. It further stated that the provisions ran counter to Article 34 of the Refugee Convention and Article 32 of the 1954 Convention on Statelessness which requires States to ‘as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of’ refugees and stateless people”.
Despite the proposed repeal of these provisions, updates to the nationality good character requirement guidance issued in February 2025 appear to reintroduce similar barriers, further restricting pathways to citizenship for those affected. In addition, the policy change is likely to deter many from applying for citizenship altogether, given the high costs involved and the lack of an appeal process in case of refusal. Even if the guidance states that an exception may be made, which I am pretty certain is what the Minister will tell me, those who would be likely to obtain citizenship due to their personal circumstances will be deterred from applying.
Currently, a naturalisation application costs £1,605, with an expected increase of £1,685. That financial burden, combined with the uncertainty surrounding the application process, creates significant barriers for refugees and stateless persons who would otherwise seek to integrate fully into British society.
The application of the policy will go beyond individual applicants. Citizenship is a key factor in social integration, providing security, stability and full participation in civic life, including the right to vote in general elections. Without access to naturalisation, many individuals who have lived and worked in, and contributed to, the UK for years—if not decades—will remain in a precarious status. Although the Home Office guidance allows for some discretion in decision making, it provides no real criteria on how that discretion will be applied. The lack of transparency makes the process unpredictable and risks creating a system where citizenship decisions are inconsistent or arbitrary.
The changes also highlight the broader issue of immigration law being shaped through administrative guidance rather than through democratic scrutiny, which is our role as parliamentarians in this House. By changing the interpretation of the statutory good character requirement without parliamentary oversight, the Home Office has effectively reinstated elements of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 that were meant to be scrapped through this Bill. The lack of accountability is deeply concerning.
Granting citizenship is a key step in ending an individual’s status as a refugee or stateless person. It also benefits the host country by fostering economic, social and cultural integration while promoting social cohesion. Restricting access to citizenship undermines those objectives, and that is why I tabled this new clause.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
The new clause would require the Secretary of State to change current Home Office guidance stating that people who entered the UK illegally, regardless of how long ago, will normally be refused citizenship. The new clause states that illegal entry—in other words, breaking into this country—should be disregarded as a factor for the purposes of assessing whether a person applying for British citizenship meets the good character requirement. Effectively, both the Liberal Democrats and the SNP want to ensure that entering this country illegally is not a bar to gaining citizenship.
British citizenship is a huge honour and privilege, and the benefits that come with it have attached costs. Can hon. Members see what a pull factor this measure would create for making dangerous channel crossings in small boats? There is nothing compassionate about allowing small boat crossings to continue, and this new clause would do nothing but encourage more. The Labour Government are already repealing provisions in our Illegal Migration Act that prevented illegal migrants from getting citizenship. It seems that the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Government are all in agreement that illegal migrants should get British citizenship. Do the SNP and the Liberal Democrats agree with the Prime Minister that British citizenship is not a pull factor for illegal immigrants?
If people believe that crossing in a small boat will ensure that they can not only stay, but stay for evermore with all the attached benefits of British citizenship, they will continue to come in ever-increasing numbers. Even the Government’s own Border Security Commander has said that we cannot smash the gangs without a deterrent. British citizenship and all its associated benefits would provide an incentive for making that small boat crossing, inducing people to feed the model of the evil people-smuggling gangs. The Conservative party believes that British citizenship is a privilege, not a right, and certainly not a reward for illegally crossing the channel. We do not support the measure.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I want to put on record again the importance of the rule of law. This new clause would essentially allow someone rights when they have entered the country illegally. The rule of law and compliance with the law are fundamental within our system, so I cannot accept the premise that acting illegally should be waived or permitted. We are a country of fairness and there has to be fairness and equality under the law. This provision flies in the face of that. If we make an exception here, no matter how desperate the situation, we set a dangerous precedent.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West said, it is a privilege to have British citizenship, and so many people abide by the law. The system proposed by the new clause for those trying to enter the country via illegal routes fundamentally undermines that. We have to be incredibly careful in how we proceed with these things; if something is illegal, the clue is really in the name.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
I am happy to support the new clause tabled by my friend the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. I will also speak to new clause 13, which does essentially the same thing. This issue is about fairness and reasonableness. Ensuring that effectively no refugee or asylum seeker can get citizenship is not reasonable. Refugees will forever become second-class citizens if we allow that to go ahead. I am concerned that that would deepen divisions within society by disenfranchising our newest constituents and residents. The refugees I have spoken to in my constituency of Woking are so proud when they get citizenship, and it encourages integration. Banning them from citizenship, which is what current guidance amounts to, is wrong. I am happy to support both new clauses.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
To quote my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), British citizenship is—or at least should be—
“a privilege to be earned not an automatic right.”
Citizenship should be available only to those who have made both a commitment and a contribution to the United Kingdom. For example, it should be a fundamental principle of our system that people who come to this country do not cost the public purse more than they contribute to it. It should also be a fundamental principle of our system that those who seek to harm this country, to break its laws and to undermine what we hold to be fair and right should never be able to become British citizens. To state something so obvious that it sounds almost silly, those who have come to this country illegally have broken the law. The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party are proposing that we ignore that fact.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Northampton- shire just said, how can we possibly say that lawbreaking should not be considered when assessing whether someone is of good character? It seems to me outrageous, unfair and completely against what we understand to be the wishes of the public to turn a blind eye to the fact that someone has broken the law when it comes to determining their character and thus whether they should become a fellow citizen of this great country.
Separately, the Conservatives feel that the timeframe the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire suggests in new clause 5 is far too short. In line with our party’s wider policy, we feel that five years is not enough time to qualify a person for indefinite leave to remain. Immigration, as we are all well aware, was at well over 1 million people a year in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and net migration was at, or is expected to be, at least 850,000 people for each of those years. If we accept that the immigration policy of the past few years was a mistake, we should make every effort to reverse the long-term consequences. That is why the Conservative party is advocating that the qualifying period for ILR should be extended to 10 years, rather than the five years in the new clause.
Finally, I return to my earlier point about Scotland, the Scottish National party and the proof of its compassion as compared with its words. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire shook his head when I was speaking about the number of asylum seekers and where they are located. The latest data released on that is for December 2024. As I read it, in Scotland, there are 1,421 asylum seekers in hotels, compared with 36,658 in the rest of the country, and 4,262 asylum seekers in dispersed accommodation, compared with 61,445 across the rest of Britain.
I appreciate that that is challenging mental maths, so I will tell hon. Members that that means that Scotland houses only 5% of the asylum seekers currently accommodated by the state in this country. Scotland is underweight relative to population and dramatically underweight relative to size. Given everything that the hon. Gentleman has said that he and his party stand for, would we not expect the opposite to be true—that Scotland would be pulling its weight more, rather than less?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in response to the debate on new clauses 5 and 13. I want to clarify a few points. There are already rules that can prevent those arriving illegally from gaining citizenship. In February, the Home Secretary further strengthened measures to make it clear that anyone who enters the UK illegally, including small boat arrivals, faces having a British citizenship application refused. This change applies to anyone who entered the UK illegally, or those who arrived without a required, valid entry clearance or valid electronic authorisation, having made a dangerous journey, regardless of the time that has passed since they entered the UK.
Pete Wishart
I remember saying on Second Reading that this Government were carrying on in the vein of the Conservatives. Doing something so all-encompassing and denying as this is probably worse than what the Conservatives would ever produce. They did not conceive anything like this. They are capable of having the warped imagination that produced the Rwanda Bill, but they did not even come close to something like this.
As well as being a privilege, surely British citizenship should be available. What the Government are doing with the change to the good character reference is denying all asylum seekers and refugees the slightest opportunity to become a British citizen, except in narrowly defined circumstances, as the Minister pointed out. What about all the things about cohesion, and giving people opportunities? I thought that was the British spirit.
I am a British citizen. It is not a particular definition that I want to hold on to for much longer, but I am a British citizen. To me, it strikes me as just not British to deny a whole swathe of people in this country the right to achieve that status.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member realise how ironic it is for him to be lecturing us on British citizenship when he does not particularly want his?
Pete Wishart
I am sure the hon. Gentleman and I will have the opportunity to discuss these issues in the future of this Parliament and I very much look forward to that.
I did not hear anything at all from the Minister about anything to do with the quite stern rebuke to this Government from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in its written evidence. It is concerned that this measure drives a coach and horses through the UK Government’s commitments to certain sections of the various conventions. Is the Minister even slightly embarrassed about what has been presented to them?
This is a nasty, pernicious move by this Government, and it is not particularly in the spirit of what they are trying to achieve with the Bill. It is a continuation of the ethos of the previous Conservative Government. It even introduces through the back door certain aspects of the Illegal Migration Act that we are very keen to move on from. I hope that the Government reconsider this measure, and I will certainly be testing the Committee with a vote on the new clause.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 9—Participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations—
“(1) The Secretary of State must provide adequate resources to law enforcement agencies for the purpose of enhancing their participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations.
(2) The resources provided under subsection (1) must include technology for conducting improved surveillance on, and detection of, smuggling networks.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (1), ‘law enforcement agencies’ include—
(a) the National Crime Agency
(b) police forces in England and Wales; and
(c) the British Transport Police.”
This new clause would require the Government to allocate adequate resources to law enforcement agencies to enhance their participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations, including through technological tools for better surveillance and detection of smuggling networks.
New clause 10—Requirement to produce an annual report on cooperation with Europol—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within one year of the passage of this Act, lay before Parliament an annual report on cooperation between UK law enforcement agencies and Europol.
(2) A further report must be published and laid before Parliament at least once per year.
(3) An annual report under this section must include—
(a) actions taken during the previous year to cooperate with Europol;
(b) progress in reducing people smuggling and human trafficking; and
(c) planned activities for improving future cooperation with Europol.”
This new clause would require the Government to provide an annual report to Parliament detailing the UK’s efforts to cooperate with Europol, its progress in reducing levels of people smuggling and human trafficking, and its plans to improve future cooperation.
Mr Forster
I will be relatively brief. The three new clauses concern Europol, and the Liberal Democrats and I think that they are vital to ensuring that the Bill goes further and is more effective. Cross-border co-operation is key to reducing small boat crossings—something that the former Government made it harder for our country to do. However, the Bill misses the opportunity to better tackle them. We believe that this Government should strive for greater cross-border co-operation, including by working with Europol. Including that as part of the Bill seems a sensible step.
Matt Vickers
Liberal Democrat new clauses 8, 9 and 10 attempt to establish a joint taskforce with Europol and provide annual reports to Parliament to reduce levels of people smuggling and human trafficking.
Most Governments accept that international partnerships and cross-border co-operation have a role to play in solving the problem, but the new clauses could restrict the Government’s ability to negotiate in this regard while creating a cost by way of the need to provide further adequate resources to enhance that partnership and participation. They would also impose a responsibility to create yet another report. The National Crime Agency has said that no country has ever stopped people trafficking upstream in foreign countries. The Australians have done it, but that was with a deportation scheme. Why do hon. Members not think that a strong deterrent—that people who arrive in this country illegally will not be able to stay—would not be more effective in stopping people smuggling?
I realise that the Lib Dems seem to think that Europe has the answer to all the world’s problems, but surely even they must appreciate the need for a deterrent, rather than an incentive. In fact, as Europe reconsiders its approach to immigration by looking at what it can do to deter illegal entries, it is even more important that we do the same, rather than becoming the soft touch of Europe.
Katie Lam
In the light of the comments that Government Members have made on other provisions in the Bill, these new clauses seem to us completely unnecessary. Exactly as my hon. Friend just said, they do not seem to us appropriate for primary legislation and seem more likely to constrain rather than empower the Home Secretary and Ministers in their difficult job of securing the border.
Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I will keep my comments brief.
I read the new clauses from the hon. Member for Woking with interest. I understand the important point that has been raised—I think by hon. Members on both sides—about the importance of working internationally on this issue. I suppose my question to him would be: does he not think that an international outlook in tackling the issues that we have here, which is the sole purpose of the Bill, has already been exercised? In December last year, we agreed the Calais Group priority plan with our near neighbours and the joint action plan on migration with Germany. In November last year, we had the landmark security agreement with Iraq, and we also have a well-established relationship with our counterparts in France to work closely to prevent the dangerous crossings and reduce the risk to life at sea.
We have talked a lot about cause and effect, and I can really see the intention behind the new clauses. However, I question their necessity, as well as some of the suggestions made about the intention of the Government, who have really shown a pragmatic outlook about how we deter those crossings.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I wonder whether the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, and I mean that in two senses. First, they query whether this Government are committed to international human rights, when they have shown time and again that they are, although I understand that concern, given what has gone before. With this situation—where they are trying to prescribe, in primary legislation, the foreign affairs of this Government and the regularity with which they meet international organisations—I wonder too whether they are experiencing some post-traumatic stress disorder, because they know that the previous Conservative Government resorted to sticking two fingers up at our international partners and international agencies. I hope they will withdraw the new clause because they should feel reassured that this Government have a respect for human rights, international law and working with our international partners and agencies.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
I hope you, too, enjoyed a long and languid lunch, Dame Siobhain, after the way in which we overshot this morning’s sitting. This group of new clauses introduces requirements, in primary legislation, for the Secretary of State to put in place arrangements for closer co-operation with Europol, which includes seeking the establishment of a joint task force, providing adequate resources for participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations and the publication of an annual report.
Very few of us would quibble with what I suspect is the intended output of such clauses, but I would quibble with the means by which the hon. Member for Woking has decided to try to bring it about. He is putting things into a piece of primary legislation, which cannot be easily changed, moved or shifted about, and that creates more issues and less flexibility than what I am sure he is seeking to achieve.
I suspect that, with these clauses, the hon. Gentleman is using the Bill as a hook on which to hang requirements on the Secretary of State, so as to have a debate about how the Government will co-operate with international law enforcement agencies. I do not think he is really saying that we should be doing that in the quite rigid way that his new clauses suggest. I reassure him that we are doing what I think he wants us to do according to the new clauses, but in a much more flexible way that can be changed very quickly because it is not stuck in a piece of primary legislation. I think we also discussed it on day one in Committee.
The UK has a strong relationship with Europol, including significant permanent presence in the agency’s headquarters in The Hague. UK law enforcement agencies already collaborate with international partners through Europol-supported operations. The allocation of resources to that participation is an operational decision for law enforcement agencies, and certainly not one that should be included in primary legislation. There is regular interaction on both operational and strategic matters between Europol, this Government and the Home Office, including at the most senior levels.
As well as working with Europol, the Home Office will continue to work with a range of international bodies—including Frontex and operational work with many of the law enforcement agencies in European countries and beyond, for example—to deliver the Government’s border security objectives. That is because we recognise that border security is not just about one’s own border: quite often weaknesses in others’ borders along the traveller and migratory routes cause weaknesses for us. Indeed, sometimes visa regimes in other countries can cause problems in the UK. For example, the sudden appearance on small boats last year of large numbers of Vietnamese, who clearly had not walked from Vietnam, was caused by changes that had happened to visa requirements in other countries. Those things are interrelated. Fighting organised immigration crime is an interrelated operational, diplomatic and political matter, on which this Government are doing a great deal of work to try to strengthen it and make it more effective.
The UK regularly participates in operational taskforces with EU partners, and it is inappropriate to place on the face of a piece of legislation a statutory requirement to seek to establish a joint taskforce. That would force us to have a joint taskforce, whether or not we wanted one and whether or not it would do any good, thereby, in that case, diverting precious resources where they are not operationally needed.
I hope the hon. Member for Woking understands the points that I am making. The Border Security Commander will provide an annual report to Parliament, setting out their views on the performance of the border security system as it develops. Europol is an individual agency, among many with which UK law enforcement collaborates to achieve the Border Security Commander’s objective. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept my comments on his three new clauses in the spirit in which they are intended: we know what he means, but we think that we have a better way of bringing it about in a far more flexible way than through his new clauses. If he accepts that argument, I certainly hope he will withdraw the amendment.
Mr Forster
I do not quite get the reasoning that says that we do not need the amendment in order to work with Europol because we already work with Europol. The amendment is about empowering Parliament and making the Executive act, which is what we are keen to do. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 11
Removal of restrictions on asylum seekers engaging in employment
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the date on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a statement of changes in the rules (the ‘immigration rules’) under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 (general provisions for regulation and control) to make provision for asylum applicants to take up employment whilst their application is being determined, if it has been over three months since the application was made, with no decision made.
(2) Employment undertaken pursuant to subsection (1) is subject to the following restrictions—
(a) employment may only be taken up in a post which is, at the time an offer of employment is accepted, included in Appendix Immigration Salary List;
(b) there must be no work in a self-employed capacity; and
(c) there must be no engagement in setting up a business.”—(Mr Forster.)
This new clause would remove the restriction on working for asylum seekers, if it has been over three months since they applied.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Forster
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause is about allowing asylum seekers to work. It is commonly raised, by a lot of people, that this country discourages asylum seekers from working. It seems that it is viewed as being tough on them, but what it does is encourage an unacceptable welfare bill. We have a lot of research on it from the Lift the Ban coalition. Several years ago, it said that, actually, the fiscal gains from such a change would be significant. Originally it said that the gains would be £97.8 million a year, but that figure was later revised up to £108.8 million. I think the new clause would encourage work, lower the benefits bill for the taxpayer and ensure better integration.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what is causing that huge bill is not the fact that people cannot work, but that they are waiting for a decision? They are stuck in backlog, but if they got a decision that would obviate this discussion completely.
Mr Forster
I do agree with that. The system was broken by the previous Government; that is one of the very few things that the hon. Member and I completely agree on. We know that the system is broken, but we leave people stuck in limbo. Until the system has been fixed, let us enable them to work and use their skills to benefit our constituencies. If there were a quick decision in a matter of weeks, there would be no need for the new clause. But we know that is not going to happen. That has consistently failed to be implemented. In the meantime, we should let and encourage asylum seekers to work, for their benefit, the benefit of their families and the benefit of our constituents.
Matt Vickers
Liberal Democrat new clause 11 attempts to remove the restrictions on asylum seekers engaging in employment. It is yet another inducement for making that perilous journey, and another selling point for the people smuggling gangs as they make their pitch with the aim of profiting from the peril of others. New clause 11, coupled with new clause 10, seems to mark out a marketing plan for those evil and immoral people smuggling gangs.
Successive Governments have maintained that easing work restrictions could draw asylum seekers to the UK because they would believe that the reception conditions were more favourable. It creates a huge potential for an increase in applications from economic migrants whose primary motivation for coming to the UK is to benefit from work opportunities rather than to seek safety.
Do the Liberal Democrats not agree that lifting the ban will act as pull factor for migrants all over the world to come to the UK? Do the Liberal Democrats understand the impact that such a policy would have on other Departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? If the Liberal Democrats are worried about skills shortages, what plans do they have to get the 9 million economically inactive people already in the UK into those roles? What thoughts have the Liberal Democrats put into the measure, the legal issues it may introduce with employee rights, and the further challenges it will give the Home Office in swiftly removing those here illegally to their country of origin?
Katie Lam
In evidence for the Bill, Professor Brian Bell, who chairs the Migration Advisory Committee, spoke about what he sees as the incentives for people to come over here from France, which is of course a safe country. He spoke of the strong economic incentives to come to the UK and the challenge that poses for any Government because it would not necessarily benefit us to remove those incentives. He said:
“the unemployment rate is 7.8% in France and 4.4% in the UK. The gap is slightly larger for young people than for the population as a whole. I am sure the Government would not want to change that incentive, although the French probably would. If you have a buoyant economy relative to your neighbour, at least in the labour market, that is an incentive.” ––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 58, Q89.]
He went on to say that there are some things that we could do that might help, such as better enforcement of our labour laws, making it more difficult for people to work illegally.
What the hon. Member for Woking and the Liberal Democrat party are proposing is exactly the opposite of what Professor Bell was saying that we should do. Allowing asylum seekers to work before their claims are approved would make it easier for people to come here illegally and make money, and so it would increase the economic incentive for people to come, which we have heard is a pull—perhaps the primary pull—for people making those life-threatening journeys across the channel in the hands of organised criminal gangs. We consider it to be deeply wrong and counter to the aim of everything we are trying to achieve in securing the border against illegal migration. It is unfair and immoral.
Mike Tapp
This is another rare moment of general agreement with the hon. Members for Stockton West and for Weald of Kent. We will savour this moment. I will make some quick points on the new clause. It does create an additional pull factor for those seeking to travel. We do not know who is a genuine asylum seeker until their claims have been processed. The new clause would put a lot of people who are not genuine asylum seekers into our workforce to then be pulled away when the deportation takes place. Having asylum seekers in work may also create funding for others looking to travel over on small boats, as they may send money back to others in order to come over.
The answer to this question is in what we are doing already. The Home Secretary and immigration Ministers are working hard day to day at getting the Home Office back doing their day jobs again and speeding up the processing so that those who should be in work can be and those who should not be here are deported.
Sarah Bool
I have a few points about some of the legal issues around what it would mean if we allowed asylum seekers to work at this point. The Opposition already have concerns about the Employment Rights Bill and the day-one rights that will be accrued, so I wonder in this context how this would actually work. On another level, I wonder about how we would deal with tax that they pay and their national insurance numbers before they have had their asylum claims examined.
I see that subsection (2)(a) of the new clause talks about asylum seekers being able to take up a post that is included in the appendix immigration salary list. I wondered whether the hon. Member for Woking had more detail about what that means or entails—forgive me, I am not an expert in that area. I also note that they cannot do any self-employed work or set up a business. Although I can see the principle of what hon. Members were trying to achieve with the new clause, in reality I am not sure that, given how it is drafted, it would get them anywhere near that. I have quite a few concerns about it.
Pete Wishart
I wholeheartedly back the hon. Member for Woking’s new clause; I thought about tabling it myself, but he beat me to it. It is sensible and should be supported by the Committee—mainly because it is an utter waste that people with huge skills are languishing in hotels doing practically nothing all day. We host a number of asylum seekers and refugees in hotels in Perth, and I go and visit them. Can I just say to the hon. Member for Weald of Kent that Scotland more than has its share of the general number of asylum seekers across the United Kingdom? I do not know where she has got her figure from.
Pete Wishart
No, I will correct her and then she can come back on that. Scotland hosted 5,086 refugees receiving support from local authorities. That represents 8.3% of total asylum seekers. The population of Scotland accounts for something like 8.8% of the total population of the United Kingdom, so we are hosting almost the same number as our population share—that is quite remarkable given the distance Scotland is from where most of the asylum seekers come in. We have a proud record of supporting asylum seekers. Not only do we have our fair share when it comes to hotels, but we give free travel to asylum seekers in Scotland—something we are very proud of. I am happy to give way to the hon. Lady if she wants to come back on that, but I do not know where she is getting her figures from.
Katie Lam
My figures are from the Government release of the data for December 2024. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has those figures or can break them down, but they state very clearly: 1,421 asylum seekers in hotels in Scotland; 4,262 asylum seekers in dispersed accommodation in Scotland; and then 36,658 and 61,445 in the rest of the country.
Pete Wishart
I think the hon. Lady and I will have to trade these statistics privately, because the figure I have is 5,086 receiving support, and that is from the Office for National Statistics. That is where I got my figures.
Pete Wishart
No, I am not going into this. I know that we are testing Dame Siobhain’s patience, so we will discuss this privately and might come back to it at another date.
As well as it being the right thing to do, this new clause would also let us use the skills available to us by giving people the opportunity for employment. The people I have met in some of the hotels in Perth have brought a whole range of skills that would be easily utilised by the community in which they are placed. It makes sense to take this change forward.
In the new clause, the Liberal Democrats suggest that work should be available three months after an application is made. That might be a little bit generous. If I was drafting the amendment, I would go for the six months that has been generally agreed with the all-party groups. I think that what we have done is introduce this issue as a debate item, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Woking for that. It is something that should be seriously considered.
There have been a number of questions at the Home Office about this and from a number of Members—not just from the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party but from Labour. I know that we have quite a compliant set of Labour MPs on this Committee, but a number of them have raised this in debates and in questions.
Kenneth Stevenson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. Can he tell me how many people in Scotland actually work, and how many are employed by the state? Where are these jobs that he is talking about, in which people are going to be employed? His Government cannot really get people employed just now. They have not been able to do that. They have not provided it. I do not see where the jobs are, but I am happy to listen to where they are coming from.
Pete Wishart
Of course, the hon. Gentleman would not expect me to have those statistics at my fingertips, so, as Ministers say, I will write to him to let him know how many people are in work in Scotland. But I say to him that we have the fastest-growing employment rates in the whole United Kingdom—something that he and I should be very proud about, given what has been created in our nation. He only needs to go and speak to some of the people in the care sectors in his constituency; they will tell him that they are crying out for available staff to come and fill the holes within their own sectors, as is the case in the health sector and in a number of others.
Kenneth Stevenson
The hon. Gentleman is talking about the care sectors, and I take it that that includes palliative care as well. St Andrew’s Hospice is in my area; it costs £10 million to run it, and £3 million comes from his Government. That is an incredible shortfall. The hospice is talking about cutting numbers and not having as many staff as it would normally have, so where does the hon. Gentleman see all of these wonderful vacancy figures in care?
Pete Wishart
I am not entirely sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make. I think jobs being available for ordinary Scots is the general thrust of his argument and debate, but I would just challenge him to go and speak to people who are actually working and serving in the care sector—people in the NHS. If he is really interested, he could come to my constituency and speak to those in rural sectors, and in hospitality and catering, who cannot get the people to staff their businesses, which is forcing them to close, or to open part time.
That is the reality of the situation, and here we have, sitting in these hotels, people who could do these tasks and functions. Not only that, but some of them are accountants, doctors and economists. The range of skills available in each of these hotels is quite outstanding. They speak perfectly good English. All of them could do these tasks. I think it is just such a waste that they are doing absolutely nothing other than waiting the months and months—possibly even years—for their applications to be processed by this Government.
I know this Government have improved on what was happening under the Conservatives, but there is still a long way to go before we are anywhere close to an efficient system in which people are having their applications processed readily and quickly. Therefore, I support the new clause; I think it is a good one to bring forward, and I really hope that the Government listen.
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 11, tabled by the hon. Member for Woking, is about giving asylum seekers permission to work in the UK. The hon. Gentleman said that that would cut welfare bills, but he should be clear that those who are awaiting asylum decisions do not have direct recourse to social security, although we do have to spend money ensuring that they are not destitute while their asylum claims are processed.
Clearly, as hon. Friends on the Committee have pointed out, the answer to some of these issues is to recreate a fast, fair and efficient system of dealing with people’s asylum claims, rather than to have backlogs, particularly regarding appeals, which leave people languishing for months—and sometimes well over a year—awaiting asylum decisions.
To that end, it did not help that the Illegal Migration Act was so dysfunctional that it actually banned us from dealing with people’s asylum claims, and meant that this Government inherited a huge backlog of people—a perma-backlog, as I think we have heard during our debates on this Bill.
Clearing through that backlog and dealing with the resultant appeals for those who fail is the Government’s task at the moment, but, looking past the immediate task, my view is that the way to deal with this issue is to recreate a fast, fair and efficient asylum system. That is the first point that I want to make in answer to the hon. Gentleman’s new clause 11.
As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, our current policy allows asylum seekers to work in the UK if their claim has been outstanding for 12 months and the delay was no fault of their own, so there is already capacity to work for those who have been particularly delayed. Those permitted to work in that context are restricted to jobs on the immigration salary list, which is based on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee—it is usually to do with shortages and the need in the economy at the time.
The policy is designed to protect the resident labour market by prioritising access to employment for British citizens and others who are lawfully resident. Lawful residence is a very important part of the system. That includes, of course, those who have been granted refugee status, who are given full access to the UK labour market. That is in line with those seeking to work in the UK under the points-based system. We consider it crucial to distinguish between those who need protection and those seeking to come here to work, who can apply for a work visa under the immigration rules and come here legally. The UK’s wider immigration policy would be totally undermined if individuals could bypass the work visa rules by lodging asylum claims in the UK. The hon. Gentleman has to understand that context, because it is very important.
Unrestricted access to employment opportunities could act as an incentive for more migrants to come here irregularly on small boats or by whatever means, clandestinely—illegally, without permission to be here—rather than claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. Although I would be the first to admit that pull factors are complex, we cannot ignore that the perception of access to the UK labour market is among the reasons why people take dangerous journeys to the UK. Therefore, opening up the UK labour market to anyone who happens to arrive on the shores, no matter how they arrived, would not help us deal with that issue, and would create incentives for more and more people to chance their arm and come here in dangerous ways.
In addition, removing restrictions to work for asylum seekers could increase the number of unfounded claims for asylum, reducing our capacity to take decision quickly and support genuine refugees. I acknowledge the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raised, but the chaos we inherited from the Conservative party has led to the backlogs that we are trying to deal with at the moment.
We have been clear that individuals who wish to come to the UK must go through safe and legal routes by applying for the visas that are available. Where the reasons for coming to the UK include family or economic considerations, applications should be made via the relevant route so they can be checked and agreed in the usual lawful way—either the points-based system, or reuniting under refugee family or reunion rules. Allowing those who have come here in an irregular fashion to work, as if there were no difference between applying for a legal visa and getting proper permission to come before arriving, would undermine the entire basis of the rules and would create many incentives that no one on this Committee would like to see.
Given that explanation and the fact that we do allow asylum seekers to work when there is a delay of 12 months or more, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his new clause.
Mr Forster
I will start with some examples of best practice from elsewhere. In Australia, most asylum seekers have the right to work straight away, even though it is temporary. In Canada, they can apply for a work permit while their asylum application is being processed. The US allows asylum seekers to work after around six months. From June next year, the EU will require member states to let asylum seekers work after nine months. Some go further—Sweden allow them to work straight away. With a one-year restriction, we are out of kilter with the rest of the western world. That is why the new clause has been tabled. I would appreciate the Minister taking away the question about the last time we reviewed the one-year limit and the restrictions on it. How often is it reviewed? An answer to that would be useful.
Tom Hayes
I was listening carefully and had a lightbulb moment. Perhaps the Conservatives figured out what a deterrent was—it was crashing the economy and putting our country into such difficulty that it obliterated the pull factor. That might be a cruel thing to say. Does the hon. Member agree that we heard in evidence that there are pull factors in the UK in terms of our language, our diaspora and quality of life, and other countries may not have those same factors? If we agree to the new clause and make it easier for people who cross the channel illegally to work here, people may be even more incentivised to come here compared with other countries.
Mr Forster
I am happy to have given the hon. Member the chance to mention Liz Truss and attack the Conservative economic record. I take the point. If Government Members like the spirit of the new clause but do not like the detail, why have they not suggested that it should apply only to existing asylum seekers caught up in the backlog rather than new asylum seekers? I have not made that distinction. You are implying that there should be that distinction; you are not implying that, Dame Siobhain, obviously—the Government are implying that. I have not used “yous” for a while; I am afraid I did that time.
We will talk about this in a debate on a new clause that is still to come. The Government have identified that they need to improve the system. I completely agree. They have inherited a completely broken system. A further new clause tabled by the Liberal Democrats would put a legislative framework around the system, to try to improve it. If the Government are so concerned about allowing asylum seekers to work, I hope they will support that new clause.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 14
Report on impact of carers’ minimum wage on net migration
“The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, lay before Parliament a report on the impact of introducing a minimum wage for carers on levels of net migration.”—(Mr Forster.)
This new clause would require the Government to publish a report on the impact of implementing a carers’ minimum wage on levels of net migration.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Forster
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This is a minor new clause that would require the publication of a report on the impact of implementing the carers minimum wage on the level of net migration. As MPs, we want to understand the data and facts to enable us to scrutinise the Government. Without the data, we cannot do our job properly—it is as simple as that.
Matt Vickers
The Liberal Democrats’ new clause 14 would require the Government to publish a report on the impact of implementing a carers minimum wage on levels of net migration. It requires such publication within 12 months of the passing of the Act.
What outcome are hon. Members seeking to achieve with the new clause? What is the proposed minimum wage for carers that the Liberal Democrats would impose? Our care workers deserve fair pay. We are seeing the impact of the national insurance rise on the care sector and the organisations operating therein, who are now struggling to sustain themselves and deliver good jobs and good pay to the care workers they employ. What assessment has been done of the costs of such a minimum wage and how would the Liberal Democrats seek to ensure that this was fully funded?
Seema Malhotra
I am pleased to speak on new clause 14. It is unclear whether its intention is to commission a review of the impact of setting a minimum wage for new entrants or for settled workers in the care sector. I interpreted that its effect would be the Government commissioning a review into implementing a national minimum wage for workers in the social care sector. It is unclear whether it would apply to international workers or the whole labour market.
It is also unclear—I think this was the shadow Minister’s point—what the minimum wage for carers being referred to is; there are no sector-based minimum wage standards. The national living wage is currently £11.44 for people aged 21 or over. It is rising to £12.21 in April. International workers on a health and care visa are currently required to be paid £11.90.
I do not believe that it is necessary to lay a report before Parliament given that the Government publish details on migration on a quarterly basis, which will show the impact of changes in inwards migration. It will not be possible for that data to show the effect of this issue on net migration, as the figures will depend on other factors such as the number of people who choose to leave the UK, which might not be a result of care worker minimum wage requirements. It is also not clear whether the report would have to look at settled workers and other workers in the labour market as well as those who are on health and care visas.
We have already seen a significant reduction in the number of international care workers recruited for just over a year, and that is because employers have been unable to demonstrate that they have genuine vacancies that would guarantee sufficient hours to meet salary requirements. The most recently published data and statistics show that in the year ending December 2024, the number of international care workers reduced by 91%. The work that the Home Office is doing with the Department of Health and Social Care is increasing the role of regional hubs, with £16 million going into them. Regional hubs play an important role in supporting workers who may have left an employer or lost a licence to find other employment. That reduces the dependency on recruiting from abroad because we are already using those who are here on those visas and wish to work, alongside continuing to recruit home-grown talent.
Perhaps the Liberal Democrats are not fully aware that we are introducing the first fair pay agreement to the adult social care sector, so that care professionals are recognised and rewarded for the important work that they do. The Government will engage all those who draw upon care, as well as those who provide care. We will also consult local authorities, unions and others from across the sector. Fair pay agreements will empower worker representatives, employers and others to negotiate pay, and terms and conditions, in a responsible manner. Crucially, they will help to address the long-standing issues with sustainability of resource, recruitment and retention that we all know exist in the care sector. That will address the workforce crisis in that extremely important sector and so support the delivery of high-quality care. Fair pay agreements are an important first step towards a national care service.
I hope that clarifies the Government’s position and why it will not be necessary to lay a report before Parliament—and that certainly should not be required under this legislation, which is about stopping criminal gangs in their awful trade. I hope that the hon. Member will withdraw his proposed new clause and engage in this debate in other ways.
Mr Forster
I am happy to take the Minister up on that suggestion. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 15
A three-month service standard for asylum casework
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, implement a three-month service standard for asylum casework.
(2) The service standard must specify that 98% of initial decisions on all asylum claims should be made before the end of three months after the date of claim.”—(Mr Forster.)
This new clause would require UK Visas and Immigration to reintroduce a three-month service standard for decisions on asylum cases.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Forster
I beg to move, That the cause be read a Second time.
I highlighted this proposed new clause in a previous speech. The clause would ensure a three-month service standard for asylum casework, so that the Government can tackle the backlogs that they inherited. It would require UK Visas and Immigration to introduce that three-month service standard for decisions on asylum claims, to benefit both asylum seekers and the British taxpayer. The service standard
“must specify that 98% of initial decisions on all asylum claims should be made before the end of three months after the date of claim.”
That would help the Government as they rectify the mess they inherited. If the Government suggest that the period I have chosen—three months—should be six months, I am happy to talk about that. I think that setting a stretch target—the Government are setting several, such as the 1.5 million homes target—is appropriate.
Matt Vickers
The Liberal Democrats’ new clause 15 would require UK Visas and Immigration to reintroduce a three-month service standard for decisions on asylum cases, meaning that
“98% of initial decisions on all asylum claims should be made before the end of three months after the date of claim.”
We agree with the principle that asylum applications should be determined as swiftly as possible, but the raft of new clauses proposed by the Liberal Democrats, including the unfunded proposals to create additional “safe and legal routes”, would surely only increase the queue, and the time required to make initial decisions on claims. The Liberal Democrats do not appear to have any desire to remove those who have entered this country illegally. We can reduce decision times by deterring people, rather than inducing them to enter the country illegally. Is the proposed new clause an attempt to speed up the granting of citizenship, as per Liberal Democrat proposed new clause 13, rather than speeding up decisions so that we can deport those who have entered this country illegally?
Mike Tapp
It is worth noting that, prior to February 2019, there was a six-month standard time. That was abandoned by the previous Government around the same time that they decided to open the borders. Home Office Ministers have been looking to speed up processing as much as possible. The new clause would be unhelpful because the Home Office is often waiting on outside checks to be completed. The Home Office is, of course, seeking to speed up decisions, but its control is limited because it is trying to get through such huge backlogs. The second important point is that, if we legislate for this and an international event like the Ukraine situation occurs, we would not be able to speed up processing by putting some of the people already being processed to the back of the queue.
Dame Angela Eagle
The new clause—the hon. Member for Woking spoke about it, although I am not sure whether he tabled it—would introduce a new service standard to ensure that the majority of initial decisions on asylum claims are made within three months of a claim being lodged. It is good to make initial decisions, but if we are looking at asylum claims overall, and getting people through them in a fast, fair and efficient way, we also have to think about appeals, and think about such claims from the very start to the very end, rather than just the Home Office part. That is an important thing to consider. The new clause deals with only the first part of that. If one is looking at a system-wide approach, one has to look from the beginning to the end, rather than just at the initial decision in the Home Office.
I thank the hon. Member for the new clause and stress that we are in absolute agreement that it is important that our asylum process is fair, efficient, as fast as possible, consistent with fairness, and robust. We are committed to ensuring that asylum claims are considered without unnecessary delay. Delays are not always our fault, but they sometimes have been in the past. We are committed to ensuring that those who need protection are granted asylum as soon as possible so that they can start to integrate, rebuild their lives and contribute to our society in the way we all want to see happen. As such, I assure him that we are already taking important steps to achieve that.
The Government restarted processing thousands of asylum claims that were stuck in the perma-backlog that we inherited when we came into office, and we are clearing those at pace, making initial asylum decisions. We are also delivering a major uplift in removals when people fail and have no right to be in the UK; there were 19,000 removals between when we came into office on 4 July last year and the end of January.
The Government continue to restore order to the immigration system so that every part—border security, case processing, appeals and returns—operates fairly and swiftly. By transforming the asylum system, we will clear the backlog of claims and appeals, and that work is ongoing. We have taken action to speed up asylum processing while maintaining the integrity of the system, including simplifying guidance, streamlining processes, developing existing and new technology to build on improvements such as digital interviewing, and moving away from a paper-based system.
We have also changed the law to remove the retrospective application of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which created the perma-backlog that we had to deal with when we came into Government. That allows decision makers to decide asylum claims from individuals who have arrived in the UK from 7 March 2023, with claims to be considered against the existing legislative regime under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which caused much of the previous delay.
I hope that the hon. Member for Woking agrees that the work that we have put in place is starting to have a real impact. I have considerable sympathy with what he is saying in the new clause, but I hope that we will be able to get to a fast, fair and efficient system with the reforms that we are making now, rather than with the new clause.
Mr Forster
An Opposition Member and a Minister are not normally meant to agree this much, but I think we do. We probably will not vote the same way, but we generally agree. Last year, there was an asylum seeker who had waited 16 years for a decision on their claim. At the same time, there were 19 people waiting 10 years or more for a decision. That is how broken the system is, and I do not envy the Minister her job. The new clause would support the Government’s work, and I hope that Members will support it.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Forster
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I am happy to introduce new clause 16, which involves an exemption for NHS workers from the immigration skills charge. This new clause would require the Secretary of State to exempt the NHS as an employer from having to pay the immigration skills charge when sponsoring skilled employees.
Matt Vickers
Liberal Democrat new clause 16 would require the Secretary of State to apply an exception to the NHS as an employer from having to pay the immigration skills charge when sponsoring skilled employees. Do the Liberal Democrats not believe that we should be recruiting British workers to work in the NHS before we look to recruit overseas workers? Do the Liberal Democrats understand that this new clause could result in the NHS recruiting more people from overseas, rather than from our domestic population, further driving up those numbers? What assessment has been done of the costs of such a scheme, and how would the Liberal Democrats seek to ensure that it was fully funded?
Katie Lam
The hon. Member for Woking has tabled the new clause with a view to the role that migrant health and care workers play in UK health services. We are all deeply grateful to our doctors, nurses and care workers. They do rewarding jobs, but their roles can be difficult and gruelling, too. It is true that many people in the workforce are not British but have come to this country to do that work. We must thank them for helping to keep us and our families healthy and cared for, but it is our role in Westminster to look at the whole picture and be informed but not led by individual cases.
When we look at that picture, we see that the volumes for the health and social care visa are eye watering. Since 2021, more people have come to this country under the health and social care route than live in the city of Manchester—well over half a million, of whom many are dependents. Yes, that is because these jobs are tough, but it is fundamentally because they are underpaid. To quote the independent Migration Advisory Committee,
“the underlying cause of these workforce difficulties is due to the underfunding of the social care sector.”
Immigration alone cannot solve these workforce issues. Underpaying health and social care professionals is financially self-defeating, because the money the Government save in the short term is dwarfed in the medium and long term by the costs to the state. As we have discussed this afternoon, and as the Minister has heard me say in several different settings, after five years a person who has come to this country on a health and social care visa can apply for indefinite leave to remain. If they get it, and 95% of ILR applicants are successful, they will qualify for welfare, social housing, surcharge-free NHS care—everything. That must all be paid for, and the cost is far greater than those on such salaries will ever pay in tax and far more than they save the state with their artificially low wages. Those individual workers are also at risk of exploitation as a result of the poor pay and conditions that have been allowed to endure across the sector because we have brought in workers from abroad who are willing to accept them as the price of coming to Britain.
The next, related issue with the visa is the degree to which it is abused. The MAC describes its misuse as
“a significant problem and greater than in other immigration routes”.
That raises massive concerns about the safety of the patients and vulnerable people whom the system is charged with caring for.
The rules around the health and care visa need to be further tightened, not loosened through an exemption from the immigration skills charge, and they need to be enforced. That is for the good of healthcare workers and, as should be the Committee’s primary concern, for the good of their patients and the country. Exempting NHS workers from the immigration skills charge, or indeed doing anything that makes it relatively cheaper still to hire migrant workers, will make the fundamental problem in the health sector’s labour market even worse.
Pete Wishart
This afternoon seems to be a bit of a Lib Dem fest because of the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Woking. There is nothing wrong with that; in fact, I very much approve of this new clause.
To the hon. Member for Weald of Kent—I do not like to rebuke her, because that is not the sort of Member of Parliament I am, as you will know, Dame Siobhain—I say that so many people come through the health and care route because there is real need in the whole system. We need people to come and make sure that someone has those jobs. I challenge her to visit the NHS establishments in her constituency and find out the real difficulties that many health professional managers have in securing the staff they require. This new clause is a practical suggestion to deal with a real issue in our immigration system. It is unfair that those who come to do some of the most demanding and low-paid jobs in the UK are forced to pay that charge.
Pete Wishart
We know those jobs are underpaid, and that is why so few people in the general community whom the hon. Lady would class as British-born are prepared to do them. We are dependent on people coming to our shores to do those jobs, and our health service would fall apart if they all decided to leave. We depend on them, and it is unfair that they have to pay that extra and excessive charge. I hope that the Government will look at this new clause, because I think it is reasonably good and one of the few that would make a significant and practical improvement to the situation.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the hon. Member for Woking for tabling new clause 16, which would exempt the NHS from paying the immigration skills charge when recruiting skilled workers. I recognise that the intention is to protect the NHS and reduce the cost of recruiting those vital health and care professionals. As we all know, they do a fantastic and important job for all our constituents and families in looking after the wellbeing of people across the UK. It is worth recognising, however, that the new clause would run contrary to the Government’s position that we should reduce our reliance on international workers in all sectors of the UK economy, including the NHS.
The clue to what the immigration skills charge is for and why we have it is in the word “skills”, so removing it would send the wrong message. We would be removing an important tool to encourage employers to look first at the domestic labour market and at what more could be done to train and improve the skills of people already in the UK, rather than looking outside it and continuing our reliance on overseas trained workers to support our public services. In the light of what the immigration skills charge is for—to help and support the development of skills and, therefore, to support the growth of our skills and talent in the UK—I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider and withdraw the new clause.
Mr Forster
I will start with what I describe as the brass neck of the Conservatives for breaking the NHS, the immigration system and the social care system, and then criticising my proposal for tackling those problems. I find that extraordinary. We should reduce our reliance on foreign labour to support the workforce in the UK, including the NHS, but until we have done that, I do not believe we should make the NHS pay the immigration surcharge. That is the purpose of the new clause, and I hope some Members will support me.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 19—Victims of slavery or human trafficking: protection from immigration offences—
“(1) The Modern Slavery Act 2015 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 52 (Duty to notify Secretary of State about suspected victims of slavery or human trafficking), after subsection (2), insert—
‘(2A) The Secretary of State must make such arrangements as the Secretary of State considers reasonable to ensure that notification under this section does not include the supply of information to relevant persons or authorities that might indicate that—
(a) the victim has committed an offence under sections 24 to 26 of the Immigration Act, or
(b) the victim might otherwise meet the requirements for removal from the United Kingdom or for investigation pending removal.
(2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A), “relevant persons or authorities” include—
(a) a Minister of the Crown or a government department;
(b) an immigration officer;
(c) a customs official;
(d) a law enforcement officer;
(e) the Director of Border Revenue;
(f) the Border Security Commander;
(g) a UK authorised person; and
(h) the government of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom.’”
This new clause would prevent a public authority, when determining whether a person is a victim of slavery or human trafficking, from sharing information with immigration authorities and other public authorities that might result in deportation or prosecution for an immigration offence.
Mr Forster
We need to understand the impact of our immigration laws on victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. New clause 18 would require the Secretary of State to introduce legislation that incorporates into UK law the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, and to report compliance with the convention. New clause 19 would prevent a public authority, in determining whether a person is a victim of slavery or human trafficking, from sharing information with immigration authorities or other public authorities that might result in deportation or prosecution for an immigration offence.
I hope that the new clauses are taken in the spirit they are intended. If they fail—based on my experience in the last hour, I think they might—I hope that Ministers and their officials will work with their teams on our immigration laws to make sure that no vulnerable person who has been a victim of human trafficking or modern slavery falls through the cracks.
Matt Vickers
Liberal Democrat new clause 18 would require the Secretary of State to introduce legislation that incorporates the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings into UK law, and to report on compliance with the convention. New clause 19 would prevent a public authority, when determining whether a person is a victim of slavery or human trafficking, from sharing information with immigration authorities and other public authorities that might result in deportation or prosecution for an immigration offence.
We have seen the abuse of human rights legislation by criminals who want to remain in the UK, such as an Albanian criminal who was allowed to stay in Britain partly because his son will not eat foreign chicken nuggets. The judge in the case allowed the father’s appeal against deportation as a breach of his right to family life under the European convention on human rights. Foreign criminals pose a danger to British citizens and must be removed, but so often that is frustrated by spurious legal claims. The human right of our own citizens to be protected from the criminals is routinely ignored. How do the Liberal Democrats plan to stop the abuse of the clauses by people who know that their asylum claim is likely to be rejected, for example?
Pete Wishart
I rise in support of the new clauses, particularly new clause 18. There have been a number of references to ECAT throughout our proceedings. New clause 18 would give clarity and ensure that we are properly engaged in all the provisions of ECAT. It is designed to ensure that those caught up in human trafficking are protected, and that Governments do everything they possibly can to ensure that people are cared for and looked after. I fully support this important new clause.
Dame Angela Eagle
I think everybody in this Committee—I am being very generous—thinks that it is important to protect the victims of modern slavery, and we have legislation in our country to try to ensure that that happens. We also signed the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, and this country complies with the obligations under it.
The intention behind new clause 18 is to incorporate the convention into UK law, but UK compliance is already achieved by a combination of measures in domestic legislation, such as the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the Nationality and Borders Act, the criminal justice system and the processes set out in the modern slavery statutory guidance for identifying and supporting victims of slavery and trafficking. Implementation and compliance with those obligations does not require full incorporation into UK law, and therefore the amendment is not required. It will not really add a lot.
On new clause 19, the Modern Slavery Act provides certain named public bodies in England and Wales with a statutory duty to notify the Secretary of State when that body has reasonable grounds to believe that a person may be a victim of slavery or human trafficking. The information provided for that notification enables the UK to fulfil its obligations to identify and support victims of slavery and trafficking. The duty to notify is discharged for adults by making a referral into the national referral mechanism where the adult consents to enter the mechanism, or by completing an anonymous entry to that mechanism on the digital system where the adult does not consent. The information provided via the digital system is used to build a better picture of modern slavery in England and Wales and helps to improve the law enforcement response, so it is important that that information is collected.
The information does not include that which identifies the person, either by itself or in combination with other information, unless the person consents to the inclusion of the information. So that information can be put in there anonymously. Child victims do not need to consent to enter the national referral mechanism. As such, the national referral mechanism discharges the duty to notify.
If a person is identified in the national referral mechanism as a potential victim of modern slavery or trafficking, they are eligible for a recovery period during which they are protected from removal from the UK if they are a foreign national and are eligible for support, unless they are disqualified on the grounds of public order or bad faith. Bad faith refers to lying about one’s circumstances, and public order refers to an individual who could be a danger to society. We have had some discussion about that with respect to section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act, which the Government have decided to retain but have not yet commenced. I think we also discussed section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act.
When we came into government, the national referral mechanism decision-making process was in disarray, with a huge backlog. We ensured that 200 more caseworkers were allocated to deal with the backlog, and there has been a great deal of very good progress in getting that backlog down. The Minister for Safeguarding, my hon. Friend for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), is particularly concentrating on getting the national referral mechanism back on track as part of the battle against modern slavery.
With those responses, I hope that the hon. Member for Woking will withdraw the new clause.
Mr Forster
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 20
Humanitarian travel permit
“(1) On an application by a person (‘P’) to the appropriate decision-maker for entry clearance, the appropriate decision-maker must grant P entry clearance if satisfied that P is a relevant person.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), P is a relevant person if—
(a) P intends to make a protection claim in the United Kingdom;
(b) P’s protection claim, if made in the United Kingdom, would have a realistic prospect of success; and
(c) there are serious and compelling reasons why P’s protection claim should be considered in the United Kingdom.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2)(c), in deciding whether there are such reasons why P’s protection claim should be considered in the United Kingdom, the appropriate decision-maker must take into account—
(a) the extent of the risk that P will suffer persecution or serious harm if entry clearance is not granted;
(b) the strength of P’s family and other ties to the United Kingdom;
(c) P’s mental and physical health and any particular vulnerabilities that P has; and
(d) any other matter that the decision-maker thinks relevant.
(4) For the purposes of an application under subsection (1), the appropriate decision-maker must waive any of the requirements in subsection (5) if satisfied that P cannot reasonably be expected to comply with them.
(5) The requirements are—
(a) any requirement prescribed (whether by immigration rules or otherwise) under section 50 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006; and
(b) any requirement prescribed by regulations made under section 5, 6, 7 or 8 of the UK Borders Act 2007 (biometric registration).
(6) No fee may be charged for the making of an application under subsection (1).
(7) An entry clearance granted pursuant to subsection (1) has effect as leave to enter for such period, being not less than six months, and on such conditions as the Secretary of State may prescribe by order.
(8) Upon a person entering the United Kingdom (within the meaning of section 11 of the Immigration Act 1971) pursuant to leave to enter given under subsection (7), that person is deemed to have made a protection claim in the United Kingdom.
(9) For the purposes of this section—
(a) ‘appropriate decision making’ means a person authorised by the Secretary of State by rules made under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 to grant an entry clearance under paragraph (1);
(b) ‘entry clearance’ has the same meaning as in section 33(1) of the Immigration Act 1971;
(c) ‘protection claim’, in relation to a person, means a claim that to remove them from or require them to leave the United Kingdom would be inconsistent with the United Kingdom’s obligations—
(i) under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees done at Geneva on 28th July 1951 and the Protocol to that Convention (‘the Refugee Convention’);
(ii) in relation to persons entitled to a grant of humanitarian protection; or
(iii) under Article 2 or 3 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms agreed by the Council of Europe at Rome on 4th November 1950 (‘the European Convention on Human Rights’);
(d) ‘persecution’ is defined in accordance the Refugee Convention; and
(e) ‘serious harm’ means treatment that, if it occurred within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, would be contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under Article 2 or 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (irrespective of where it will actually occur).”—(Mr Forster.)
This new clause would create a new “humanitarian travel permit”.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr Forster
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This is a comprehensive new clause, and I am tempted to be brief in my introduction to it. My Liberal Democrat colleagues would like to suggest the creation of a humanitarian travel permit to counter the gangs that the Government are seeking to attack and undermine through the Bill. We need to support those who genuinely need to travel here safely, and this new clause is an appropriate way forward. As I say, it is long and comprehensive. Hon. Members might want to ask questions about it, or they might want to take it apart, but it is a genuine suggestion about how we undermine the gangs and encourage people to come here safely.
Matt Vickers
The Liberal Democrats have tabled new clause 20, which would introduce a so-called humanitarian travel permit. The Conservatives have previously drawn up schemes such as Homes for Ukraine and the Ukraine family scheme for families seeking refuge from the war. We do not need a specific permit for people across the world to use to come to the UK, so we do not support the measure.
Seema Malhotra
I will keep my remarks brief, because there is some overlap between this new clause and the debate we had on safe and legal routes. New clause 20 proposes a new humanitarian travel permit. As we have mentioned, the UK has a strong history of protecting those fleeing war and persecution around the world.
I talked about the UK resettlement scheme that we run in partnership with the UNHCR. When people are assessed independently by the UNHCR and accepted as refugees, they may then be allocated to the UK under that scheme; it is then for the UK to provide visas to them in advance of their travelling to the UK, so that they can come here safely.
We previously discussed why there is no provision in the immigration rules for someone to be allowed to travel to the UK to seek asylum, as I think the new clause seeks to provide. There are risks: we may be sympathetic to the international system that I just mentioned, which supports people fleeing very difficult and dangerous situations, but it would be difficult to consider protection claims from large numbers of individuals overseas who might like to come to the UK. It is the case that, as part of how the system works internationally, those who need international protection should claim asylum in the first safe country that they reach. That is the fastest route to safety.
Mr Forster
The hon. Member for Stockton West highlighted that the scheme proposed by the new clause is not dissimilar to ones that the previous Government introduced for Ukrainians and people from Afghanistan, which I found an interesting comparison. If it is appropriate for some specific countries, why would it not be appropriate to have such a scheme on the legal shelf in case we were to need it, especially as the world is more dangerous than ever before?
Mr Forster
I acknowledge that those schemes try to do that, but I do not think they are working—the exhibit for that is the number of small boats that we see and the number of people fleeing conflict. Those rules do not meet the framework that is currently required in the UK and in the world, hence this new clause. I am mindful of time, so I will be brief: I hope that hon. Members will support this new clause, which would be a good legal tool for attacking the gangs and protecting vulnerable people as they flee their homes in conflict.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Westminster Hall
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Young Carers: Educational Opportunities
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered educational opportunities for young carers.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I am pleased to see so many hon. Members from across the House here today, and I thank them for attending. I know that some have personal stories to tell, and I look forward to hearing them.
As many hon. Members will be aware, yesterday was Young Carers Action Day. We have held a number of events in Parliament with the support of the Carers Trust. This week, young carers visited No. 10 and wrote directly to the Prime Minister to ask for his support in ensuring that young carers and young adult carers are the golden thread that goes through everything his Government do. Students from Mark Hall academy in Harlow visited Parliament, and the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) and I took part in an open-top bus trip around London, which went very well until we were unfortunately attacked by hail.
A recent report by the Carers Trust has identified a number of issues that young carers face in educational settings:
“Caring has a significant negative impact on education…Awareness, identification and recording of young carers in educational settings is still too low…Support for young carers in education is worryingly inconsistent.”
Here are a few statistics: almost half of young carers—48%—reported being bullied in the past year; more than two in five—44%—frequently struggle to study for tests or exams because of the demands of their caring situation; and almost a third of young carers are regularly late for school because of those demands. Almost one in four young carers say there is no support at all for young carers in their school, college or university.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
It is estimated that there are around 2,000 young carers in Staffordshire, many of whom are hesitant to come forward for fear of disrupting their home lives. For those flying under the radar, it is even harder to get proper support. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Department for Education’s commitment to creating a more comprehensive register of young people will ensure that resources can be distributed more effectively, so that problem areas can be identified?
Chris Vince
I thank my hon. Friend for her useful and thoughtful intervention. She is absolutely right. One of the biggest issues for young carers is identifying them. First, young carers do not recognise themselves as being young carers. Secondly, as she rightly says, some young carers are worried about coming forward, as they feel that identifying themselves as young carers would somehow make it seem as though their parents are failing them, which is absolutely not the case.
I welcome the DFE’s commitment to better identifying young carers—it is great that young carers are now part of the school census—but we have to recognise that there is much more to do. In the most recent school census, 72% of schools said that they do not have any young carers, which cannot be right. Although we have made strides in this area, there is obviously much more we need to do. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.
As many hon. Members will be aware, since I mention it in most of my speeches, I spent the first 15 years of my working life as a secondary school maths teacher, teaching in various schools across Essex and working with students aged 11 to 18 with a variety of abilities. I have recalled to the House many times one parents’ evening in which a student of mine arrived with both his parents, who were severely physically disabled. To my shame—this is something I have carried with me— I had no idea, until that point, that he and his older sister were young carers.
Since then, I have worked to ensure that I am more knowledgeable about young carers and young adult carers. Before my election in July, I worked for a wonderful charity in Harlow and Essex called Action for Family Carers. It provides respite care and in-school support for children and young people who care for family members and loved ones with physical and mental disabilities.
Young carers and young adult carers play a hugely important role for their families and their communities, giving to the NHS in an invaluable way. We must recognise their impact in saving money for the NHS and in helping the economy, but too often, they do not get the recognition they deserve. There is an urgent need for better identification of young carers in the education system, as many do not even realise that they are young carers until it has already impacted their lives, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) said. For them, it is just normal—caring for a family member or a loved one.
I have visited several schools in my Harlow constituency that do a great job of supporting young carers, and I pay special tribute to Mark Hall academy, which allowed me to meet and talk to its young carers club. I also pay tribute to Purford Green and Holy Cross primary schools for their great work in identifying young carers, and to the many other schools across Essex where I have previously worked.
Some, but not all, schools do great work to identify young carers and have a designated young carers lead. It is vital that all teachers have knowledge of young carers and young adult carers, so my first ask of the Minister is to make training on young carers a mandatory part of teacher training.
It is important that schools have a designated young carers lead. Having spoken to young carers in my previous job and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for young carers and young adult carers, I know how much anxiety is caused by having to tell at least five different teachers why they are late or have not done their homework. One young carer recently told me that he feels embarrassed to tell people, and that he has to ask peers to keep the noise down in the school library because, for him, it is the only quiet place where he can get his studies done. He does not have that option at home.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
The hon. Member makes a valid and important point about schools having a young carers lead, and I am proud to say that every school in Gloucestershire has one. My constituent Christian, who I met yesterday, has been caring for his grandmother from the age of six, but it was not until he was 11 that he was identified by his school as a young carer. Does the hon. Member therefore agree that, although it is an excellent endeavour to have more leads, more still needs to be done?
Chris Vince
As soon as the hon. Member mentioned Gloucestershire, I thought of the fantastic young carers from Gloucestershire I met yesterday. He is right that having a young carers lead is useful where a school has identified a student as a young carer, but we need to do more to identify young carers in the first place. I was previously a teacher, and teachers have a key role in identifying young carers.
There is also a lack of structured support in schools, particularly during the transitions from primary to secondary or from secondary to further education. One of our young carers told the APPG about his experience of applying to university, and how the university website did not provide any case studies that were relevant to him.
When we talk about transitions, we are not just talking about moving through stages of education; we are talking about how the caring role can change—often, sadly, for the worse. It is the responsibility of people in positions of authority to recognise that and to act. As a former teacher, I know only too well how easily young people can slip through the cracks. I am committed to changing that, which is why we need targeted training for educators to better identify young carers and to equip them with the tools to make their lives more manageable.
Other professionals can help, too. Action for Family Carers, for example, ran a project to reach out to GPs. It seems nonsensical that when a parent visits a doctor’s surgery with an acute medical condition, the question of their children’s caring responsibility is not even broached.
To support young carers, there should be a dedicated point of contact in education—a trusted person in authority who students can approach to discuss any caring responsibilities that might affect their studies. Whether it is about missing a deadline or arriving late to class, having one person to communicate with would ensure that the right people are informed and the student’s needs are met. This simple addition could make a world of difference, and there are some great examples of schools that do just that, but it is not universal. There should be mandatory training for teachers, so that they can all help with the task of identifying young carers.
Finally, transition periods, especially from primary to secondary school and on to college or university, are tough enough for everyone but even more so for young carers without support. As young carers highlighted to the all-party group, the leap to university feels unattainable due to the lack of provision. We know that a number of young carers do not go to university because they are concerned about leaving those they care for behind, and when they do go, they choose universities that are close to home, which potentially limits their options.
Education should provide hope and opportunity for all, regardless of background or circumstance. Resources must be in place for those facing disadvantage, ensuring that those challenges do not become insurmountable barriers. It is important that young carers have the opportunity to be children as well.
Several hon. Members rose—
Gill Furniss (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for raising this important issue. I know it is a passion close to his heart, and he knows it is a passion close to mine too, as a parent of a young carer—I will come to that in due course.
Fewer than 1% of pupils are young carers, but it is important to remember that there will be many more we are unaware of who do not receive the support that they desperately need. Too often, the sacrifices and hard work of young carers go unnoticed and unsupported. Many children will be unaware of the burden their peers face as young carers. Many young carers will feel as if their friends are unable to relate to their home life and the extra pressures they experience outside the school gates. Again, that is something that I know, very close to home.
I pay tribute to the all-party parliamentary group for young carers and young adult carers. Its inquiry in the last Parliament, whose report was published in November 2023, found that young carers are struggling to balance their education with their caring responsibilities. Young carers are at risk of poor attendance, low attainment and more challenging experiences in education settings, such as bullying or social isolation. Young carers told the inquiry that they find it challenging to ask for help with their education at home and do not want to add extra stress to their family members, who are often also undertaking caring responsibilities.
There is no doubt that pupils’ school experiences, both inside and outside the classroom, are fundamental in shaping their first steps into the workplace. Evidence to the inquiry highlighted how issues with attendance, attainment and experiences in educational settings have a distinct effect on the likelihood of young carers pursuing or continuing their studies beyond 18, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow mentioned. It also affects young carers’ and young adult carers’ ability to enter and remain in employment, as well as their experiences in the workplace.
The recent report “Caring and classes: the education gap for young carers”, published by the Carers Trust, found that almost half of young carers at secondary school in England were persistently absent in 2022-23, which means that they missed at least 10% of their education. That is equivalent to one day off school every fortnight, and because they are missing school due to their caring responsibilities, it can be difficult for teachers to recognise when a pupil is struggling and to identify the support and help they need. I therefore welcome the work of the Young Carers in Schools programme, run by the Carers Trust and the Children’s Society. The programme helps schools to support young carers by ensuring that they attend and by helping to improve their wellbeing.
More importantly, the programme provides schools and teachers with a comprehensive guide to identifying young carers. As a result of the programme, 94% of the schools involved said that staff were more likely to know what to do if they identified a young carer, and 94% had a better understanding of the support required by young carers. I hope that with the combined support of teachers, schools, parents and carers, young carers will be able to reach their full educational potential, and I commend the organisations, charities and schools that support young carers throughout their childhood, both inside and outside school.
I want to mention two other matters. First, I was lucky recently to attend the Bromley Rotary club’s youth awards in my neighbouring borough, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon). The awards recognised 36 people from 17 schools for their outstanding contributions to the community. I was hugely impressed that the majority of those young people received awards because they are young carers—they care for family members and in many cases also raise money for local charities associated with their family member’s disability. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge would welcome it if I paid tribute to those awards, which started 10 years ago with only four schools participating. They have now grown, with 20 schools participating.
Lastly, closer to home, I am the parent of twins who are 11. My eldest daughter has cerebral palsy and a range of very complex disabilities. Her twin—two minutes younger—is the carer in many respects, because they have that doting twin bond. During covid they were six and their mum was undergoing chemotherapy, so it was a very intense period for my youngest daughter. Her sister needed full-time care support and no carers were allowed in the house. She dealt with that admirably. My daughter is lucky, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow said. We got by, and she was certainly my No. 2 during that period in keeping things going in the house. We got through it, and her secondary school, where she started last September, recognises carers—it recognises the contribution that she makes and the support that she may sometimes need.
Particularly with twins, the issues become more predominant as they get older; my daughter has a sister who speaks 12 words, while she speaks about 20,000, frankly. As the gap between them gets bigger, there is still the doting bond, and the feeling of, “That is my twin, and I will be there most probably forever to support them,”—even after I’ve gone. Being a young carer is so important to her life, so I see that situation first hand.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for young carers, and for securing the debate. It is a subject very close to both of our hearts, as he knows. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing this important debate. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to drop into his young carers event, which did an excellent job at increasing awareness. For example, it shared key findings, such as the fact that fewer than half of teachers agree that their school provides the support that young carers need.
In a previous job I had in the NHS, I used to meet young carers from time to time, and they always really impressed me in how they dealt with multiple issues. I highlight the work of a great group of young carers who are part of North Ayrshire Young Carers, which is a local group in North Ayrshire that helps young carers meet each other, organise fun activities and have a break together—letting young people be young people. Services for young carers often offer a range of support for anything a young carer might need, from walking groups and group stress management to guidance on how to apply for financial support if required.
The group reports that young carers say year on year that education is one of the biggest barriers that they face, and young carers feel that teachers do not understand their caring responsibilities, as we heard earlier. The Scottish Government estimated that there are at least 44,000 young carers in Scotland, and that 29,000 of them are under 16.
Young carers can have a range of extra responsibilities, as we all know, whether that means giving medication, looking after their other siblings, or providing emotional and physical care for the adults. Many young carers rely on local groups such as North Ayrshire Young Carers, not only for time out and breaks but for one-to-one advice and information on how to access funding and school support. There is still so much more that can be done to support young carers in the classroom: we can help educational practitioners to identify them, and help groups of young carers to continue their education by moving into further or higher education.
Many young carers report feeling stressed, lonely or tired, and they feel they are missing out on time with their friends or things at school. It is important that we do all we can here in Westminster to support young carers in education to combat that situation. I am delighted to see the debate taking place and highlighting what needs to be done to ensure that young carers get the right support as well as the educational opportunities that they deserve. I look forward to hearing other Members’ contributions.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss.
I thank the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing this important debate. It is fair to say that he has timed it well following Young Carers Action Day, which, as he mentioned, we both enjoyed yesterday, despite the hail on the open-top bus. What struck me about that trip around central London, talking to carers like Holly and Olly, is just how strong they have to be, because they have no choice. I find that humbling. Every time I talk to young carers, it is deeply humbling to realise what they are contending with at home, what they are managing to achieve at school and how they hold all that together.
It is absolutely right that we should do more to try to support them and to put the framework in place, through all the arms of government, to ensure that they can achieve their potential and feel that they are not letting down their families at the same time. Something that comes through loud and clear is that sense of guilt. I was talking to Holly about deciding whether to go to university, and she felt incredibly guilty about leaving her mum and her sister, who she cares for. But she went ahead and did it. She got into Oxford, and she is in her final year studying French and linguistics. She is an incredible young woman, and I think she will go far in life.
As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for care and carers, when I speak to young carers—and old carers— I feel very fortunate indeed. It is always a privilege to hear their stories. I am always reminded about how much more there is to do to support them. They make extraordinary sacrifices for their loved ones, but, as we have heard from hon. Members, they quite often do so to the detriment of their education and their futures.
In the 2022-23 school year, young carers missed an average of 23 days of school, compared with just 14 days for children without caring responsibilities. Perhaps even more concerning is that 39% of young carers in secondary school were considered persistently absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of school days. Those high levels of absenteeism are alarming, and the consequences are hugely damaging. Research shows a clear link between school absence and academic performance. Only 40% of absent pupils achieve their expected standards in reading, writing and maths at the end of key stage 2, compared with 65% of all pupils nationally. For young carers, the gap only widens as they move further through their education, and they fall further and further behind. They are 37% less likely to achieve high A-level grades and 38% less likely to obtain a university degree than their peers. If they care for a loved one for more than 35 hours a week, they are an astonishing 86% less likely to graduate from university.
Although some support is available in the form of discretionary bursaries for further education, it often comes far too late down the line, when the damage has already been done. The young carers school programme, run by the Carers Trust and the Children’s Society, is an essential initiative that works to reduce barriers by training local authorities and carers’ services. That is making a difference, but I hope that most Members agree that it is not enough.
Carers, teachers and local authorities all agree that support for young carers is lacking, particularly when it comes to understanding and identifying them in the first place, even before we get into looking at what their needs are. I hear time and again from carers that the lack of recognition is perhaps the most fundamental problem they face—not only recognition of them by others but realising in themselves that they count as a carer and that the support they provide is above and beyond what is normal. Too often when we talk to young carers they say, “I was just helping out my sister at school. She was having a meltdown and the teachers called me. I did not realise I was a carer.”
Although the previous Government committed to developing training modules for educators to better spot young carers, charities and schools, as we all know, are stretched far too thin to ensure consistent coverage across all schools. A key theme that came up on the open-top bus tour yesterday was how different parts of the country have a very different offer for young carers. I firmly believe that young carers deserve more. No child should be forced to choose between their future and helping their family. The previous Government left young carers behind, struggling with school absences, lack of support and barriers to higher education.
On top of that we layer the impacts of the pandemic, and, as the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) said, that put extra pressure on his family. I commend him for what he has said this afternoon and for everything that he and his daughter do to help the family.
We must ensure that young carers are recognised, supported and given the same opportunities as their peers. The Government have a real opportunity to do the right thing. Schools must play a more proactive role in identifying young carers, which is why I back our Liberal Democrat policy that requires every school to have an appointed, dedicated young carers lead. Meanwhile, higher education must be put within reach of young carers. To make that a reality, my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I believe we need to introduce a young carers pupil premium with targeted funding to support schools in offering academic and pastoral help for student carers. As with so many things, we must identify early and support early. This helps carers and it helps society as a whole, stopping problems before they have even begun and saving money in the process.
My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I believe that young carers deserve better. With the right support, they can thrive in education, achieve their ambitions and build bright futures, all while continuing to provide the support that they need and want to provide for their loved ones. It is time to give young carers the recognition and opportunities that they deserve.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing the debate, for his very good speech and also for the work he has done in support of young carers over the years. It was good to hear about that. I also pay tribute to other hon. Members who have spoken today and brought a wealth of insight to our debate, particularly the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis). He and I serve on a certain Bill Committee and I feel I am getting to know his family very well. The more I hear of them, the more I like them. I pay enormous tribute to him and his family for what they do in often very difficult circumstances and I am grateful to him for what he said.
I particularly pay tribute to young carers across our country. As the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) has just said, it is absolutely inspiring and humbling when we hear the testimonies of the unsung, often unacknowledged work—even by themselves, as she says—that they do. It is always great to have the opportunity to hear about them and from them. If any of the young people in the Gallery today are young carers, I pay tribute to them and thank them for what they do. I hope they feel that they are being properly acknowledged in Parliament today.
As we have heard, it is not just the additional responsibility and the weight of caring for a family member or relative that is all-consuming for young people. It is the sacrifices that come with that. For young carers, it often means missing out on social plans with their friends, not being able to commit to extracurricular activities outside the school day, and too often having to miss school in order to fulfil their duty as a carer. We have heard that point made.
The Carers Trust surveyed over 1,000 young carers and the results were saddening. A key finding was that almost a third of young carers reported that they always or usually struggle to balance their caring responsibilities with school, college or university work. We understand that there are 54,000 young carers in England and Wales, and their overall absence rate is 12%, compared with just 7% for pupils who are not young carers. That means that a young carer misses more than one school day per fortnight on average. This commonly leads to persistent absence: 39% of young carers were persistently absent in 2022-23, compared with 21% of those who are not young carers. That is twice as many. The impact is undeniable, not only on the educational attainment and opportunities of young carers, but on their sense of being included in the school community, which is so important.
I was saddened to read in the survey that 28% of young carers report that they either never had, or did not often have, someone at school, college or university who understood that they were an unpaid carer. An even higher rate—40%—said that they never got, or did not often get, help from their school, college or university, so even when it is acknowledged that they have caring responsibilities, many of them do not feel that they get any support from their institution.
As hon. Members have said, there is no doubt that more support needs to be instilled in schools, local authorities and communities. A point was made about the record of the last Government. I do not want to go too much into defensive mode, because I very much acknowledge the points made by the hon. Member for Mid Sussex—she is clearly speaking the truth on behalf of young carers, as other hon. Members have—but in government, we were determined that all young carers should receive the support they need to succeed in all stages of education. The pupil premium, which was introduced under the last Government in 2011, gave schools in England additional funding to improve outcomes for children facing disadvantages. It has supported the roll-out of support for many young carers.
I take the hon. Lady’s point—she may well be right—that it would be appropriate to have a targeted pupil premium for young carers, by making them automatically eligible for the pupil premium, and I would be interested in the Minister’s view. I understand that 60% of young carers are eligible for the pupil premium at the moment—that speaks to the disadvantage that many of them face—but it might be appropriate to be more targeted and specific about their eligibility.
Alison Bennett
It struck me as the hon. Member was speaking that an advantage of the proposal is that it would incentivise schools to identify carers. One of the problems we have spoken about this afternoon is the fact that many schools say they have no young carers. Does he agree that it would provide that incentive?
Danny Kruger
The hon. Lady is absolutely right: it would be a helpful incentive to identify young carers among the school population. I will come in a moment to further support that schools need to do that work.
As has been mentioned, there are bursaries, introduced by the last Government, to help with the costs of education, such as travel and books, childcare and residential costs when required. In the 2023-24 academic year, more than £160 million of bursary funding was allocated to institutions to help disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds with the cost of taking part in education. I recognise the hon. Lady’s point that those bursaries can come quite late in a child’s education, and that it would be good to be more proactive. It might well be that more work can be done to ensure that children and their families get the opportunity to apply for the bursaries, and to encourage schools to support them to apply earlier on, because I bet loads of families do not know that these bursary opportunities exist.
Another programme introduced by the last Government, in 2014, was the Young Carers in Schools programme, which addresses the need to ensure that schools do more to identify young carers and increase their engagement in school. The programme set out 10 key steps to help schools to identify and support young carers. Each step provides key practical tools that can be adapted to support the individual school. The hon. Lady made the point that provision can be quite patchy across the country, and I dare say she is right. Again, national schemes are great, but only in so far as they are properly applied, uniformly, to the best possible standard. I hope that the Department is working on ensuring that there is greater coverage of that useful programme.
The Young Carers in Schools award allows schools to gain recognition for their success in supporting young carers. I would be interested to hear from the Minister to what extent that programme has been successful. It also enables schools to share good practice. My understanding is that its impact is positive: 94% of schools said in response to a survey that their staff were more likely to know what to do if they identified a young carer and how to support them. That sounds improbably good, and it might be that that is a somewhat superficial response; nevertheless, it is encouraging to hear that schools are positive about that programme. There is also encouraging evidence about the impact on young carers themselves.
On higher education, there is depressing research, cited by the hon. Member for Mid Sussex, that shows that young carers are significantly less likely to graduate than young people without caring responsibilities. I understand that the Office for Students launched an equality of opportunity risk register, which identified 12 sector-wide risks that may affect a student’s opportunity to access and succeed in higher education. It made reference to young carers in six of those key sector risks, so there is obviously recognition of the extent to which caring responsibilities can impact on one’s opportunities in higher education.
More needs to be done to set out how education providers will improve equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they succeed and progress in higher education and onwards. There is clearly more to do to ensure that all young carers get the support they need to succeed. I urge the Minister to engage with young carers—I am sure she is doing so—schools and local authorities to identify what additional support young carers need, to ensure true equality of opportunity for every pupil.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
It is an honour and a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Ms Furniss. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing this debate on such an important subject. I thank him for his continued contribution to improving the lives of young carers and for sharing his professional experience and expertise. Much as we lament that he is no longer a maths teacher, we celebrate the fact that he is here in this place putting his insight and experience to such valuable use.
I thank each and every child and young person across the country who selflessly cares for members of their family. Our Government will do everything we can to ensure that you and your families have the support you need at home and in your education. We are determined, through our opportunity mission, to break the link between a child’s background and their future success. We want every child, including young carers, to be set up for the best start in life so that they succeed and thrive at school. We will tackle the disadvantage that we know persists in far too many places through excellent teaching, high standards and the generational challenge of improving school standards. We will build on the opportunities for growth that every young person should have, so that they can follow the pathway that is right for them, whether through a high-quality apprenticeship or by going to college or university. Hon. Members have rightly drawn out those points in the debate.
Underpinning all that, the Government are determined to build family security and ensure that every child, whether a carer or not, has a safe and loving home. To do that, we must tackle the scar of child poverty, which impacts far too many children and young people and their families.
The impact of caring on children and young people’s education, which has been rightly highlighted today, has been hidden for far too long. Too many young carers continue to be invisible to their schools and wider agencies. They fall behind their peers and fail to reach their full potential and unlock opportunities, despite improvements in the assessment of their need for support. It is unacceptable that any child or young person who selflessly dedicates themselves to supporting ill or disabled family members goes through childhood without support themselves. We must ensure that no child faces these disadvantages alone.
Adding those young children to the schools census has, for the first time, shone a light on their education. It has raised awareness in schools and given us much of the evidence that we have used for this debate, but we know that not enough schools are identifying and accurately recording the information on young carers in the census, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow pointed out, with 72% not recording any young carers in 2024.
We expect that data to improve over time, as the data collection becomes better established, but we are looking at the ways in which the data is entered and whether we can bring in technical changes to support more accurate reporting. We obviously have to do that without overly burdening schools, and we are determined to get that right. We also want to undertake further analysis of the data, and develop and publish young carers’ data on attainment measures alongside the data that we already publish on population, absence, exclusions and suspensions. We will continue to work with organisations such as the Carers Trust, which I know works directly with schools, to raise awareness of these new data requirements and maximise the impact.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow that schools should consider how they are recognising and meeting the needs of young carers. As set out in the “Keeping children safe in education” guidance, we require designated safeguarding leads to undergo training to provide them with the knowledge and skills to carry out their roles, and that includes being alert to, and having good knowledge, understanding and awareness of the needs of young carers.
On training for teachers specifically, the mandatory initial teacher training core content framework sets out the minimum entitlement of knowledge, skills and experience that all trainee teachers need in order to be in the best position to teach and support the pupils in their schools. Courses have to be designed so that trainee teachers can respond in the best way possible to the strengths and the needs of all their pupils.
From September 2025, all trainee and early-career teachers will receive a training programme that is underpinned by the initial teacher training and early career framework. That will set out the core body of knowledge, skills and behaviours that defines great teaching. That includes teachers learning that pupils’ experiences at school, and their readiness to learn, can be impacted by their home and life circumstances, and it will include an awareness of young carers.
We recognise that continuous improvement is important in this area, which is why we have committed to review the early-career teacher entitlement in 2027, including the content of the initial teacher training and the early career framework, to make sure that it is providing that best possible support for new teachers. As part of that, we will obviously consider the issues raised in today’s debate.
Responsibility for young carers cuts across education and health into both children and adult social care. The Children Act 1989 and the Care Act 2014 place clear duties on both of those social care services to assess and support the needs of young carers. Being a young carer was identified as a factor in almost 18,000 children’s social care assessments in the year ending March 2024. The needs of those young carers and their families must therefore be fully recognised within the “Children’s social care national framework” statutory guidance on the purpose and principles of practice for social workers.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) on securing this debate. The Minister is developing a really important point. When researching this topic, one of the things that terrified me was that 38% of carers report having had a mental health challenge while in an education setting. I therefore really welcome the Government’s promise to deliver a mental health professional or counsellor in every school. I just wonder whether the Minister could indicate when she thinks that might happen.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that people with mental health issues, including young carers and indeed the family members who they are caring for, are just not getting the help, support or care that they need.
We are absolutely determined to fix the broken system. We are already recruiting 8,500 more mental health workers, introducing access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, rolling out Young Futures hubs in every community, and looking to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983. We recognise that we must address the significant challenge that my hon. Friend raises, and if we are going to tackle that issue and achieve the differences that we want to see for the young carers we are talking about today, that is a good place to start.
An important part of that jigsaw is our manifesto commitment to introduce a single unique identifier to improve information sharing and link multiple sets of data between Government Departments and organisations more quickly and accurately, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham), who is no longer in her place, rightly referenced in her intervention. That is why the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill introduces provision for that identifier in law. The Bill will pave the way for the consistent identifier to be specified and for organisations to be required to use it, and to create a clear legal basis for sharing that information where we know that it will promote the welfare, wellbeing and safeguarding of children, including young carers.
We fully support the “No Wrong Doors for Young Carers” memorandum of understanding developed by the Carers Trust on behalf of the Local Government Association. It is vital that we improve joint working between adult and children’s social care services, health and other key organisations. We strongly encourage local authorities to sign up to that.
For the first time, the school census data is evidencing the impact on attendance, exclusions and suspensions. We know that young carers are far more likely to be absent from school and to have higher rates of exclusion and suspension than their peers. We recognise that absence from school is almost always a symptom of wider needs within a family. It is often the best early indicator of an unmet need that is manifesting in school—or, indeed, by that child not being in school—in a family that may not be in contact with other services.
Our guidance on school attendance highlights that schools should see absence as a symptom and prioritise attendance with strategies such as attainment, behaviour and support for disadvantaged pupils, including the use of the pupil premium and support for young carers. Schools should also consider whether additional support from other external partners—including the local authority; children and young people’s mental health services, which were rightly referenced; and GPs and other health services—would be appropriate and make referrals where necessary. That is of particular importance for young carers. Schools might be the first place to identify where there is a lack of needed support for a family.
As other hon. Members have, I pay tribute to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis), who spoke very powerfully about his family’s circumstances. We have no idea what may be going on in somebody’s home or life. Where that manifests in school, it is important to have the mechanisms in place to provide extra support where it might be needed. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) spoke powerfully about that too. There is an awful lot of agreement in the Chamber today about what we want to see.
Daily attendance data collection has been established to ensure consistent recording and monitoring of pupil attendance. We need to support the identification of patterns of absence so that we can help schools and local authorities to make the appropriate interventions. We are absolutely determined to have more children in school; children cannot get an excellent education if they are not in school. Where that is because of responsibilities at home or because a child is a young carer, it is absolutely right that we use the available data to target that support effectively to ensure that every child can be in school and to unlock opportunities for them and their families.
We have allocated £2.9 billion in pupil premium funding this year to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children. As has been discussed, young carer status does not attract pupil premium funding, but evidence suggests that around 60% of young carers are eligible through free school meals entitlement. The guidance to school leaders is absolutely clear, however, that pupil premium funding should not be restricted to just those who have eligibility for the funding; schools must use it to support all pupils where they identify needs. That will include young carers.
Access to higher education should be based on ability and attainment, not background. Opportunity has to be available to all. We must ensure that no group is left behind; everyone should be able to fulfil their aspirations. In the summer, we will set out our plans for changes to higher education, which will include the part that we expect higher education providers to play in improving access and outcomes for all disadvantaged students. In the meantime, I welcome the development at the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, better known as UCAS, to include young people with caring responsibilities. That inclusion, along with the school census, highlights the need for much better support for young carers. We especially want to ensure that they can make the best of their opportunities and possibilities beyond key stage 4.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow again for raising this important matter, and all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. I also thank my hon. Friend for his many years of campaigning and work on the issue. Young carers contribute enormously to the wellbeing of their families and communities, and to society at large. That is why we are all here: they deserve to be championed and to be assured that society will reciprocate and support them in return. I acknowledge that the education system, in partnership with agencies, needs to improve to meet the developing needs of children, especially our young carers. They must be at the heart of our opportunity mission.
Finally, I thank all those committed professionals and volunteers who support young carers—may they continue to do so. As a Government, we will continue to work with them to improve outcomes. To the many teaching and pastoral care staff in schools, to the early help, youth and social work professionals, to those working in local councils and in carers organisations throughout the country: I feel confident that, with your continued dedication and a Government who are committed to improving the lives of young carers, we will make strides to support this important group.
Gill Furniss (in the Chair)
I call Chris Vince, who has two minutes to wind up the debate.
Chris Vince
I thought I had two hours! I thank you, Ms Furniss, and all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) for a trademark passionate and powerful speech about his family, as well as the wider role of young carers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for paying tribute to the young carers services in her constituency. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for their contributions, and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) for his learned contribution as well.
I thank the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett); the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger); and the Minister for contributing to this important debate. I know from experience that what the Minister says is true: where there is greater poverty, there is greater need. We are seeing more and more young carers supporting a loved one with mental health issues.
We need more accurate data to understand the scale of the challenge. We also need to recognise that young carers have different caring responsibilities and often care for different people. They also often have needs themselves. I welcome the Minister’s statement about making knowledge about young carers part of teacher training.
When we speak to young carers, we cannot help but be struck by how thoughtful, articulate and caring they are. I apologise to anyone who had an ambition to become a tax lawyer or a bank manager, but when I speak to young adult carers about their futures, they often tell me that they want to be nurses, care assistants, doctors and teachers. I even met one yesterday who said that she wanted to be a politician. Sadly, however, we too often meet young carers who do not have any ambition, because all they can think about is caring for their loved one—that is something we need to take very seriously.
I will briefly mention the young carers covenant—otherwise the Carers Trust will tell me off—which identifies some of what I have asked for today. I also emphasise the importance of recognising the difference between young carers and care leavers; it is amazing how many people do not understand that distinction. Finally, I ask every hon. Member to keep talking about young carers in Parliament. Young Carers Action Day may happen only once a year, but our young carers do this work every single day.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered educational opportunities for young carers.
Board of Trade: Appointments
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)
I am delighted to announce that I have appointed a new Board of Trade.
The newly formed Board will be an advocate for UK businesses at home and abroad, championing the country’s 5.5 million SMEs and realising their export potential. This will help super-charge growth for the economy as part of the plan for change.
The newly appointed advisers have been hand-picked for their deep sector expertise and knowledge, representing some of the UK’s most successful businesses. They will play a crucial role in supporting the Department’s growth priorities, focusing on supporting small businesses and boosting exports.
The Secretary of State is pleased to appoint:
Omar Ali
Mike Hawes OBE
Dame Vivian Hunt DBE
Allison Kirkby
Paul Lindley OBE
Catherine McGuinness CBE
Michelle Ovens CBE
Mike Soutar
Sarah Walker
Dr Charles Woodburn CBE
In addition to the following ex-officio advisers:
Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Ian Murray MP
Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Jo Stevens MP
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Hilary Benn MP
The Lord Mayor of London, Alastair King
Minister of State for Investment, Baroness Gustafsson of Chesterton CBE
Minister of State for Industry, Sarah Jones MP
Minister of State for Trade Policy and Economic Security, the right hon. Mr Douglas Alexander MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets, Justin Madders MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Services, Small Business and Exports, Gareth Thomas MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Future Digital Economy and Online Safety, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Legislation) and Baroness in Waiting (Government Whip), Baroness Jones of Whitchurch.
The role as a Board of Trade adviser is unpaid and voluntary.
[HCWS517]
Horizon Shortfall Scheme
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
As the Minister for Services, Small Business and Exports (Gareth Thomas) has previously announced, the Department for Business and Trade is introducing an independent Horizon shortfall scheme appeals process to ensure all claimants have a fair opportunity to receive full compensation, in line with the recommendations of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board.
The Government are committed to taking swift action to ensure affected postmasters receive the financial redress they are owed, with minimal administrative burden. To this end, the Government will ensure that no income tax, capital gains tax, national insurance contributions, corporation tax, or inheritance tax will be payable on any compensation received through the appeals process.
The Government will legislate via secondary legislation to formalise this tax exemption shortly.
[HCWS519]
Victory in Europe and Japan: 80th Anniversaries
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stephanie Peacock)
The Government have announced plans to mark the 80th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day with a series of events and celebrations. It is my intention that we, as a nation, come together to mark this pivotal moment in our shared history.
Victory in Europe Day, which takes place on Thursday 8 May 2025, marks the allied victory in Europe. The news resulted in millions celebrating the end of the war, with street parties, dancing and singing across the country. The war in the far east did not end until 15 August 1945, with Victory over Japan Day.
The second world war touched every aspect of life and had a devastating impact on those who experienced it, and for the generations after. From the sailors, soldiers and aviators who fought, to the children who were evacuated, and all those who stepped into essential roles on the home front, we owe it to the second world war generation, who 80 years ago fought for our freedom and paid the ultimate sacrifice in giving generations lasting peace.
Through a series of national and local events, we will unite to pay tribute to the millions of people across the UK and the Commonwealth who served in the second world war. VE and VJ Day 80 will be an opportunity for celebration, as it was across the streets of Britain in 1945, but also of commemoration, as it will be one of the last opportunities to honour our living second world war veterans. There is also a younger generation for whom the events of the second world war—the sacrifices made, and the reasons for them—seem like distant history. It will be a time for us to come together to listen to their stories and reflect on their values that ensured the allied victory: service and selflessness across our nation.
The Government have announced a programme of events and activities that will mark these anniversaries and reach into and connect communities across the country through educational outreach, and cultural and creative activity. This will include a military procession and flypast on Monday 5 May, a Westminster Abbey service and a VE Day concert on Thursday 8 May, and a service at the National Arboretum in partnership with the Royal British Legion to commemorate VJ Day on 15 August. I am pleased today to announce further details of a truly inclusive national engagement programme that will complement this series of events, and I am delighted to be working with the devolved Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure that the commemorations are UK-wide. There are many exciting ways that Members of both Houses of Parliament, and members of the public, can get involved.
To ensure that all communities across the UK feel engaged in the stories of VE and VJ Day, the Government have already announced plans for UK-wide street parties on Monday 5 May through the Great British food festival, supported by the Big Lunch and the Together Coalition. Street parties, BBQs and community get-togethers will be held across the UK, made easy with the launch of the Big Lunch guide to bringing people together, which is full of event planning resources and tips, craft activities and conversation prompts for communities hosting local celebrations. Funding has been made available, through the National Lottery community fund’s Awards For All programme, for organisations to bid for grants to host events, activities and projects this year for communities to come together.
In order to prepare for those events, I am delighted to announce the introduction of “Tip Top Towns”, where we are inviting communities across the UK—whether town, village or city—to share how they are coming together for VE Day 80. We want the public, volunteer networks and community groups to take part in activities that will get them in the community spirit ready for 5 May, whether that be preparing community gardens, hosting craft events to create street party decorations, sprucing up their local areas or encouraging children to draw pictures to put in their windows. The public are invited to share their pictures of activity on our webpage and across social media using the #VE80 hashtag, with VE Day certificates available to all who participate. Young people will be at the heart of this, including uniformed youth groups, with a special VE Day commemorative badge being introduced by the Scouts.
The value of these commemorations lies in their ability to connect generations. It is vital that our young people understand the impact of the second world war, and that they have the opportunity to hear the stories of our living second world war veterans at first hand before it is too late. This is an opportunity for us to come together, to listen to the stories of those who lived through this period and to reflect on the values that secured the allied victory.
The Government have announced a number of new ways young people will be able to engage with veterans’ stories as part of the VEVJ Day 80 commemorations. It is my strong commitment that every young person has the opportunity to learn about and connect with the stories of their forebears, ensuring that the sacrifices and experiences of those who served are remembered and passed on to future generations through “VE Day 80: Our Shared Story”.
As part of the Government’s national engagement programme, the National Theatre is developing a new production and film, titled “The Next Morning”, which will focus on the hopes, dreams and ambitions of young people after the war and what that means for young people today. Written by James Graham, the fantastic writer of “Dear England”, it will offer a poignant opportunity for young people to really consider what the end of the second world war means for their own lives and their own ambitions.
The Imperial War Museums are also launching today a new initiative, “Letters to Loved Ones”, which will invite school children to explore their own family histories to find stories from the war and share them. This will culminate in a joint event at Imperial War Museum North on Wednesday 7 May, alongside the National Theatre.
To supplement this activity, a brand-new collection of educational resources to support young people’s engagement with VE and VJ Day 80, both inside and outside the classroom, will be developed. “VE Day 80: Our Shared Story” will include a range of resources, including the Royal British Legion’s “I’ll Remember —Discovering the Stories of VE and VJ Day 80”, the Imperial War Museum’s “Learning from Letters”, and Atlantic Productions’ new web-based augmented reality experience that brings moments from VE day to life—“VE Day 80: Immersive”.
In this 80th anniversary year, we must remember that while VE Day brought an end to the European war, the war continued to play out in Asia until Victory over Japan Day on 15 August. It is vital that we remember and honour those soldiers who continued to fight and to sacrifice, and within this we must not forget the hugely significant role played by the Commonwealth in allied victory. I am hugely grateful to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Imperial War Museums for all they are doing to work with us to ensure that the stories of VJ Day are preserved and honoured for future generations.
I am pleased to announce that the Commonwealth war graves will be undertaking a brand-new UK and international tour, “For Evermore”. A mobile exhibition, it will travel across the UK and the globe to the Pacific, bringing the stories of the second world war to life. Their brand-new app, “For Evermore”, will be updated to offer interactive tours of key Commonwealth war grave sites, allowing the public to explore history and connect with personal stories. At the heart of the tour will be the Torch of Peace—an enduring symbol that honours those who gave their lives, the importance of preserving their legacy, and a baton to share and pass stories to future generations.
In an increasingly uncertain and fragmented world, this anniversary has never been more important. It is only by learning from conflicts such as the second world war and listening to their devastating effects from those who experienced them that we bring the realities of conflict to life. We must ensure that their stories live on not just in books or paper, but in the hearts and minds of future generations. On this anniversary, we reaffirm our shared commitment to preserving the memory of the men and women across the UK and Commonwealth who served and sacrificed.
I look forward to seeing the exciting and creative ways in which communities choose to mark the 80th anniversaries of VE and VJ Day this year. Together, we will be able to make sure the stories and legacies of those who gave their lives will always have the same profound impact, as we continue to tell them to the generations to come.
The Department would welcome the support of colleagues across both Houses.
[HCWS520]
Terrorism Legislation Review
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
I would like to update the House on the report commissioned by the Home Secretary and published today by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation into law in the wake of the Southport attack.
The barbaric murder of three young girls in Southport last Summer is a scarring moment in our history. We think of those little girls, Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice da Silva Aguiar, whose lives were devastatingly cut short. We think of their families’ agony. And we think of those who survived the attack but live with physical and emotional scars.
In January, the perpetrator was sentenced to 52 years in prison for his horrifying crimes. It is highly likely he will never be released.
As the Prime Minister said, the responsibility for this barbaric act lies with the vile individual who carried it out, but that provides no comfort.
When the Home Secretary addressed the House on this matter in January, she set out the next steps the Government would take—including on establishing a public inquiry, on reforms to Prevent and on the legislative framework.
The inquiry will examine the issues raised in this case but also wider challenges around the rising levels of predominantly young men and boys fixated with extreme violence who may pose a risk to society. We are moving swiftly to set up the inquiry. It is expected to begin within weeks, once we have completed the important consultation with the families and victims. We intend to announce further details by the end of this month.
Within the wider Prevent system, we are learning lessons to get ahead of this changing threat, and to ensure we have the early intervention capabilities we need to keep the public safe. The Home Secretary has previously announced new measures to strengthen Prevent decision making.
Since then, we have extended channel multi-agency support to new cohorts, launched new pilots to ensure those below Prevent thresholds get the support they need, and appointed an interim Prevent Commissioner to bring robust independent oversight.
The appalling attack in Southport terrorised an entire community. The police and CPS determined that it was not an act of terrorism under the legal definition of terrorism set out in the Terrorism Act 2000, because there is no evidence that the perpetrator’s purpose was to advance a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause. The court accepted that conclusion.
However, we should be in no doubt about its seriousness. The judge described the attack as
“equivalent in its seriousness to terrorist murders”.
And as the Prime Minister and Home Secretary have set out, this case comes against a backdrop of growing numbers of cases of violence-fixated individuals and young people being drawn into extreme violence and radicalisation.
The Met Commissioner has warned of
“young men who are fixated on violence... grazing across extremist and terrorist content”,
while Five Eyes counter-terror partners have also warned about growing radicalisation of minors.
The most significant terror threat remains from Islamist extremism, followed by extreme right-wing activity, and we must be continually vigilant against these ideological threats.
But we also need to ensure that the legal framework is strong enough to respond to extreme violence where ideology is not apparent or is less clear.
In the light of this serious and growing problem, the Home Secretary announced to Parliament in January that she had asked the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation to examine the legal framework around terrorism and the powers available to tackle this kind of extreme violent attack. The reviewer has published that report today.
First, we are grateful to the independent reviewer for his thorough analysis of the terrorism framework in response to this horrific attack and his important conclusion, which the Government accept, that the law does need to change to respond to the rise in extreme violence in cases where ideology is unclear or cannot be proven.
Jonathan Hall KC concludes that the legal definition of terrorism is already wide and should not be changed any further. The Government accept his conclusion.
However, the independent reviewer considers there is a gap in the wider criminal law. The Prime Minister has been clear that if the law needs to change to recognise this new and dangerous threat, then we will change it—and quickly.
The reviewer notes there is no offence currently for possession of an article in private with intent to carry out a mass casualty attack, or other offence of extreme violence.
We are grateful for his consideration of this point and his conclusion that this point is already being addressed by a new measure, currently before Parliament in the Crime and Policing Bill. This will make it an offence to possess a bladed article with intent to cause unlawful violence and applies whether the possession is in public or private.
The reviewer also concludes that within existing criminal law
“there is a real and not theoretical gap for lone individuals who plan mass killings”.
On that basis, he recommends that the Government consider creating a new offence where an individual intends to kill two or more persons and prepares for such an attack. We accept and strongly support this recommendation. I can confirm we will fix the legislation to close the gaps identified.
Finally, the independent reviewer draws attention to the challenges of communicating transparently and effectively following an act of extreme violence in the digital age.
It is a cornerstone of our democracy and our tradition of trial by jury that trials are fair, and justice is served. For that reason there have long been restrictions on what can be said before and during a trial.
However, the tragic events in Southport in July last year showed how social media is putting those long-established rules under strain, especially where partial or inaccurate information appears online.
That is why the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General have asked the Law Commission to expedite elements of their ongoing review into contempt of court, and why counter-terrorism policing are also already considering what information can be released in the aftermath of major incidents.
The Government have been clear that we wish to maximise transparency and ensure that public authorities are able to take into account the wider risks to public safety to counter misinformation and disinformation. We are grateful to the Law Commission for agreeing to accelerate their consideration of this important issue and will carefully consider their findings when they are published later this year.
I would like to reiterate our thanks again to the independent reviewer for his comprehensive report and contribution to our efforts to fully learn the lessons of this terrible case. As the Home Secretary has already set out, today’s report is an important step in the search for answers, and to tackle horrific acts driven by a fixation on extreme violence.
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Flood Recovery Framework
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Written StatementsRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)
I would first like to thank all of those who supported local communities in the wake of severe flooding following Storm Babet in October 2023 and Storm Henk in January 2024, and who have done so again after more recent flooding. My thoughts remain with householders and business owners impacted by flooding, which is a devastating experience for all those affected. It is important that we recognise the enormous amount of effort that has gone into supporting households, businesses, farms and communities to repair and recover from these floods.
In the days that followed Storms Babet and Henk, Government activated the flood recovery framework to provide funding support to households, businesses and farms in the worst affected areas of England.
To date, across all the framework’s schemes (community recovery grant, business recovery grant, council tax discount, business rates relief and the property flood resilience scheme), the Government have supported over 8,500 homes and businesses across 130 local authorities, reimbursed over £8.2 million and committed a further estimated £18 million in future payments. In addition, the farming recovery fund has provided £57.5 million to 13,000 farmers via a one-off recovery payment to support recultivating productive agricultural land, following Storms Babet and Henk and the exceptional winter weather in late 2023 and early 2024.
As is normal practice following events of this scale, a post-activation review has been undertaken which has identified a number of administration process changes and policy questions for further consideration.
In response to feedback from local authorities and hon. Members, we have acted swiftly, agreeing measures to enable faster identification of eligible areas by allowing local authorities to provide verified flooded property data directly to Government, extending the time to claim business and community recovery grants by one month so that support can be provided to all those in need, reducing the administrative burden on local authorities by reducing the frequency of reporting and improving communications with councils through targeted, regular engagement and direct links into Departments.
We will keep under review our support for those who have had their homes and businesses devastated by flooding. Climate change means we are likely to see more frequent severe weather and flooding and it is vital that we have the right measures in place to support communities.
[HCWS518]
Great British Railways
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Young of Cookham
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have for open access operators following the creation of Great British Railways.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Scott of Needham Market) (LD)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the Minister, the speaking time limit for the following debate is four minutes. When the screen flashes, your time is up.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, for a debate on open access, many noble Lords have applied for the vacant slots. I am delighted that the Minister is in his place to pronounce on the quality of the bids.
Open access did not exist under British Rail, but privatisation, in which I played a modest role, allowed open access train operators to run passenger services. They identify available capacity and apply to the ORR, which then consults on the proposals and analyses their feasibility and benefits. New services have to pass a rigorous abstraction test to ensure that they will add passengers to the railways and grow total revenue, rather than removing passengers and fares from existing services. Open access operators then pay access charges to reflect the additional cost that their use of the railways incurs. They get no direct subsidy and carry the commercial risk of running the railway.
Applications are considered in accordance with statutory duties, including protecting the interests of users of railway services; promoting the use of the network for passengers and freight; and promoting competition and improvements in railway service performance. The final decision rests with the ORR, and neither the DfT nor Network Rail, nor the franchised operators, has a veto.
In 2000, the first open access operator entered the market: Hull Trains. Since then, there have been real benefits from open access—especially to underserved areas that provide the only direct link to London—for cities such as Sunderland, Hartlepool, Halifax, Rochdale and Pontefract, helping regeneration in those areas. With a cancellation rate of less than 1%, open access rail operators are the most reliable. They have focused on affordable fares, with Lumo’s average £40 fare between London and Newcastle as opposed to the £195 walk-up fare. These lower fares from open access operators have in turn attracted a broader demographic to rail travel.
Importantly, we now have a mature, evidence-based, 25 year-old case study on the east coast main line, where three open access operators compete with the Government-run intercity operator, LNER. Passengers travelling to the north and Scotland from King’s Cross enjoy robust fare competition and a choice of operators. Importantly—the Treasury should take note of this—LNER’s subsidy continues to fall, despite it facing robust on-track competition.
There have been wider benefits, promoting the Government’s growth agenda. FirstGroup has invested £0.5 billion in new rolling stock, securing jobs in the north-east, with a further £0.5 billion awaiting a decision. Open access operators account for around 19% of all new train orders placed in the UK in the past five years, although they provide only 0.9% of passenger services.
Last year’s Office of Rail and Road report said:
“An economic appraisal of the impact of open access operators in 2022 concluded that open access operators had been beneficial to the UK economy, and that this was particularly apparent for flows not already directly served by a franchised operator. Our 2023 report noted the particularly strong post-pandemic recovery for open access operators”.
All of the leading European countries with state-run operators, including Germany, France and Spain, have increasingly used open access as a vital tool in complementing their national service operators.
I turn now to the Government’s proposals, which dramatically change the terms of trade and put at risk the benefits that I have outlined. There should have been no cause for alarm because, in September, the previous Secretary of State said that,
“where there is a case that open access operators can add value and capacity to the network”,
as assessed by the Office of Rail and Road,
“they will be able to”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/9/24; col. 18WS.]
However, that is not what is proposed.
The consultation document of 18 February says:
“GBR will become the decision maker for key decisions on access terms that are currently led by the ORR: the duration and form of access rights, developing and setting the access charges framework and the design of performance incentive regimes contained in track access regimes”.
Then, we have the historic understatement:
“For GBR to have the space and authority to take access decisions on the best use of its network, the ORR’s current role must change”.
GBR will, in due course, absorb Network Rail and all the franchised train operators. It will have a massive conflict of interest in deciding whether an open access operator should provide a new service. We know this because, in the last 10 years, Network Rail opposed all 10 applications to the ORR for open access, which then approved five of them, with the DfT either opposing or not responding. The letter which the Minister circulated yesterday—to everyone except me—opposed nearly all the applications. These are the organisations which will decide in the future.
The ORR—the final arbiter, at the moment—will have its powers curtailed. Instead of being the referee, the ORR can overturn a decision only if GBR has not followed its own processes or has acted irrationally. But those processes could include a large increase in track access charges, making a proposition unviable. It could change the abstraction rule, again making current services uneconomic. The ORR would be powerless to intervene. Its role has been crucial to the success of open access, and it will be marginalised. This would be self-harm for the railway, the regions and passengers.
Behind all this is the Treasury—the controlling mind of the new regime, if ever there was one. It is the Treasury which insisted on the letter to the ORR in January, with its primary objective of minimising subsidy, setting aside the wider obligations of the ORR to promote competition and better use of the network. The consultation document does not refer to competition law or the CMA, which will remain in place. In the absence of a strong independent regulator, there is a risk that we could see more competition law challenges, which will be inherently unpredictable for operators and GBR.
Investors need certainty and confidence about the terms with which they engage with GBR. If we want to encourage investors in schemes such as Heathrow southern rail, which will be needed if there is a new runway, there will need to be a strong and independent regulatory regime to protect investors’ rights. These new reforms remove existing certainty and could shrink freight, the private rail sector and wider economic growth.
There is a devolution angle to all this. If the mayoral strategic authorities are to be empowered to take control over more railway operations, as Andy Burnham would like, they will need confidence about the terms on which they can access rail infrastructure that they do not own, and a strong independent regulator will be needed, overseeing the prices proposed by GBR that devolved authorities will be charged, and their ability to run trains extending across their own and GBR’s networks.
I noticed with alarm the press release of the RMT—which the Government were so eager to placate last July—headed, Why Open Access Rail is Incompatible with the Government’s Rail Policy. That is, by the way, the very same union that, in 2020, demanded
“urgent Government intervention to support the open-access sector and to protect all jobs at Grand Central and Hull Trains”.
The Minister needs to make it clear he does not share the view of the RMT.
To sum up, do the Government accept the need for a genuinely independent regulator if we are to continue to reap the benefits from open access? Can he confirm that he is genuinely open to persuasion on the proposals in the consultation paper?
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for tabling this debate. Much of his involvement took place in the mid-1990s. At that time, he was my ultimate boss, and I became the ultimate student of this operation, in which, on the basis of the somewhat bizarre writing of an excellent letter, we could have been involved as well.
My simple answer to the Question is that open access should be phased out as quickly as reasonably practical. It is a bit of a shock to be informed that I am agreeing with the RMT on that matter. Rail privatisation was a product of the political doctrine of the day: that private ownership and competition would solve all our problems. My personal view is that privatisation as a generality has failed. Rail privatisation has failed, at best, bizarrely, and, at worst, disastrously. The bizarre part of it comes from the track being given to Railtrack, which is a sort of private sector company which went broke and then turned into Network Rail, which is a pretend independent company that was nationalised not by the Government of the day but by the ONS, which said that so much of it was tied-up with the Government that it was really a nationalised company. It dumped £34 billion on the national debt, which virtually nobody seemed to notice.
There was little pure competition in the railway throughout this process; open access was the closest, and was therefore pursued. There was some slack in the system and some open access operations emerged. It is my view that they undoubtedly cost the taxpayer money and that there was not much benefit. In future, they will inhibit total system optimisation.
Any operator of open access will need long-term stability of their rights, whereas the great thing about Great British Railways is that it will eliminate all the conflict in optimising the railway. There will be a single guiding mind. The only disputes in future are likely to involve open access operators, since they will be the sole source of external commercial pressure. This will absorb a disproportionate amount of management effort. The only case for open access is doctrine, and it is a doctrine I do not share.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions as my contribution. First, will he confirm that the regulator has objectives, but, in fact, all holders of the post have concentrated on the one about promoting competition to the exclusion of other duties?
The regulator costs the taxpayer £30 million a year and has 350 staff—in fact, it gives rise to much greater costs, as illustrated in the Williams review of the costs of running a railway. Because its decisions have the force of law, they compromise constructing a properly integrated railway timetable with an emphasis on connections, reliability and economic use of railway infrastructure. Is it true that the regulator allocates open access paths regardless of their impact on other trains on the network? Can the Minister confirm that this has delayed improvements to the timetable on the east coast main line for three years, costing the taxpayer a very large sum of money—hundreds of millions of pounds?
Are the regulator’s assumptions about revenue forgone and the generation of additional revenue sound? Have these been tested independently and properly verified? I believe that this is not the case and that, in fact, they are underpaying for access and exaggerating the revenue that they are generating for the system. I am not seeking to deny that there should be access from destinations not previously served by franchise operators, or to strike anybody off the railway map. I am particularly concerned that freight should have proper, guaranteed access to the network.
Railway regulation has not been a good thing for the railways. Indeed, regulation generally, as carried out by previous Conservative Governments, has been shown to be defective in almost all cases and for all utilities. We have to look only at the feeble responses of Ofcom and the power utilities to underline that case.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I feel a bit nervous speaking in this debate, alongside a former Secretary of State who was a major contributor to the railway we have; the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who ran London Regional Transport; and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who is extremely wise and was one of the great modernising managers of the old British Rail. What am I going to say?
I am going to say that I do not want to see a return to a monopoly British Rail, but believe it is essential that the railways have a guiding mind and that decisions on access have to be taken in a single place if railway capacity is to be used most efficiently. At the same time, I think there should be a mechanism, as was in the Labour manifesto, whereby companies can make open access proposals that will be treated on a fair basis by the guiding mind.
It seems to me that the present system does not really work that well as an alternative to the monopoly. Open access operators pay marginal costs, not full costs, for use of the network. There is a risk that, if they are not adding to total passenger use on the route, public subsidy increases if the franchise operators are losing business as a result. That is a real problem. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Young, dismisses it. It is a real issue: it is not just the Treasury; it is a public issue as well. I would like to see something like what is proposed in the White Paper, possibly with strengthened rights of appeal. But there is a role for open access.
The key point about the guiding mind is that investment decisions have to be taken on the basis of what maximises use of the railway. There are many cases where open access proposals would make sense only if there is additional investment to provide additional capacity. I would like to see that. I agree that many provincial cities have benefited from a direct link to London, and that should not be taken away. I want to see an end to the Eurostar monopoly with more competition on services to the continent. I strongly support freight opportunities. There was a very good piece in the Financial Times yesterday about how parcel services are going to be operated from passenger stations. All that is to the good. We need a guiding mind, which we are getting through setting up Great British Railways, but we need the possibility of fair open access as well.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am glad to have this opportunity, which my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham has afforded us, to further consider the role of open access operators. Many of us were participants in the debates on the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, where we had at least two opportunities to talk about this—from my point of view, always in the context of the role that open access operators have played and can continue to play in enabling the passenger railway system to have competition as an element in its activity. As I said during the course of that Bill’s passage, privatisation has not always worked. In particular, it has not worked where there has been an inability to secure competition. The key to privatisation is the link to competition. Where competition can be achieved, it is the most effective potential outcome.
In this particular instance, while the Government are, effectively, taking back into complete public ownership those areas that they regard as not susceptible to competition, it would be a serious mistake to remove opportunities for competition, because they drive innovation and better passenger outcomes. Indeed, in their briefing for the King’s Speech, the Government more or less said exactly that. The question is: are the Government now committed to that?
Only a few weeks after we completed the passage of that Bill, we found that the Secretary of State was sending a letter to the Office of Rail and Road—the Minister kindly sent it to us, to remind us—in effect saying that she had priorities. When I read the letter, I find that her priorities are not the same as what the Government said in their manifesto and King’s Speech briefing. They are particularly focused, and are intended to focus the Office of Rail and Road on what she regards as the difficulties associated with it not covering the cost of fixed-track access, which my noble friend talked about. She said that her expectation was that
“you give due consideration”—
to these priorities—
“whilst respecting your statutory duties. I wish to see the impacts on the taxpayer and on overall performance for passengers—such as potential congestion on the network—given primacy”.
This is clearly in order to say, “Don’t consider all your statutory duties. Don’t consider the statutory duty on competition”.
During the passage of the Bill, the Minister very kindly responded, saying that it was not the Government’s intention to remove the statutory duty for the promotion of competition. There is a real risk that the Secretary of State has put herself in a position where she has asked the Office of Rail and Road not to undertake its statutory function in balancing its statutory duties in considering open access applications.
Happily, the Office of Rail and Road issued its guidance at the end of January and made it very clear that it will continue to balance its statutory duties, and rightly so. I cannot see that it has any option to do otherwise. In my view, the Secretary of State’s letter was wholly inappropriate and should not have been issued. If the Government want to change the decisions being made in the interim by the ORR, they should have issued new guidance. They had the power to do so, but they chose not to.
When we see the Great British Railways Bill and changes to the Railways Act, I hope we will continue to see competition, and the benefit that open access operators can give to the network in promoting competition.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for securing this debate. I have to agree with him, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and some of my colleagues that we are in grave danger of losing sight of what we are trying to achieve: a better deal for the passengers and freight customers.
There was a very good article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, quoting people from freight—I shall mention that in a minute. It goes on to say that Great British Railways will do a good job in co-ordinating but more than one body is involved. There is the infrastructure manager, which will still be owned by the Government. There are the government-owned railway undertakings and open access railway undertakings, and there is freight. That is not a monopoly; it is four different groups of people who need some independent body, which at the moment is the Office of Rail Regulation, to determine who gets priority on the track.
It is very easy to say that there is no capacity on the track. I did not have much chance this morning to read the 30 pages that the Minister sent us yesterday, but access is very difficult in some places, as noble Lords have said. To cite the Daily Telegraph, Tim Shoveller, the chief executive of Freightliner, said that,
“giving a state-run passenger railway the responsibility to allocate routes would undermine its ability to compete with HGVs”.
He says that Great British Railways will
“inevitably favour route applications for its own passenger services”.
That is just a normal way of doing business—and this is why it is so important to have an independent regulator with statutory duties to be able to make decisions on behalf of the whole sector.
My noble friend the Minister’s latest suggestion was that the regulator would be able to recommend to Great British Railways. Recommending to government, as we all know from experience, sometimes works but not always. It is about sustaining investment in the private sector, which is still there in the rolling stock companies and in freight—all freight is in the private sector—and still there in the open access. The last thing about that is that government in this format does not have sole discretion as to which stations should be served and which trains should run where. This is a matter on which many people have different views, and I am sure that many noble Lords will keep on talking about it today.
The Minister needs to think again and retain the role of the Office of Rail Regulation as a statutory consultee in something that to most of us is a competition issue. It needs to be fair and seen to be fair—and I hope that my colleagues in the Department for Transport will look at this and not insist that they can trample over the Office of Rail Regulation and get what they want, because they would rather have an extra train to Edinburgh when, in fact, you could have cancelled one of LNER’s trains and allowed Lumo to go in. Who is to say which is better? It is for the regulator to decide. I look forward to my noble friend’s comments.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that he is not alone in feeling a little nervous in speaking today. Like everyone else, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Young on securing this debate. It is an honour to briefly take part in what feels a bit like a relaunch of the band that we had for the passenger railway services Bill.
Like others, I express my gratitude to the Minister for circulating the notes yesterday. Today I would like to talk about the future confidence in open access. As recently as last month, the Minister in the other place said that open access operators “can also abstract revenue”. It is not the first time that such words have been mentioned. There are also examples of new bids being opposed by DfT. When you combine that with the noise and broader sentiment of the wider public ownership reforms, a narrative—at least to me—begins to build that one day, despite all the assurances, the beady eye of government will fall on them as the last bulwarks of capitalism, which have escaped public ownership up to now.
As has been touched on, investment from a private sector entity requires certainty if it wishes to invest and even expand. That made me think of one related example that is in the news: Heathrow. I am obviously not involved in the discussions on expansion, but surely a key part of the success of the current, and potentially larger, airport will require long-term assurances of open access, not only as part of the feasibility of the proposed expansion but for the success of what would become a larger airport, and having the connectivity it needs. The same issue of certainty applies to all providers, to secure investment and, ultimately, a better service.
What assurances can the Minister give to existing services that open access is here to stay? Current open access providers may well be safe for now, but what happens when their agreements come up for renewal? The Government state that economic growth is their priority, so when there is a discussion on the so-called abstraction of a provider, do they take into consideration the wider financial benefits that these services provide to areas as well as the negative impact that the withdrawal of the service would have on the cost to taxpayers in providing an alternative?
I am also grateful, as ever, to the Minister for recently forwarding a copy of the current rail consultation document. I do not wish to rehash the debates that we had on the rail Bill, and I am sure the Minister is unbelievably delighted that when the GBR Bill comes forward we will have plenty of the opportunities to talk about wider reform. Can the Minister give any indication of when that Bill will be introduced and when the Government see it taking effect?
Is not the point of the whole reform agenda to fix problems with our rail system? Today the Government announced that they are cutting NHS England, which has around 13,000 staff, and they are doing so for efficiency reasons. Later this year—soon, we hope—we will see GBR, but when you combine Network Rail and the TOC staff, you are potentially seeing over 80,000 staff. What assurances can the Minister give that, when we see this reform, there will be speedy change and costs will be kept down, when we have such a vast quango?
Finally, as has been touched on, the consultation refers to the importance of freight and says that there would be a growth target, which the previous Government also talked about. Does that mean that that target would be included in the Bill when we see it?
Lord Mann (Lab)
My Lords, this is a debate when we can again lament the passing of the great Lord Prescott. I came down this morning on a Prescott express. One of the greatest, most transformative achievements of the last Labour Government was Hull Trains and the way it transformed the economy in the area that I represented. I do not think that, I know it—I live there.
Since the 1850s, there has been no train from Worksop to London, other than the royal train occasionally stopping there—none, for any passenger. There is a proposal for it to be brought in by Hull Trains. A letter of 4 February says, in reference to the “Hull Trains 27th Supplemental Agreement”:
“DfT analysis suggests that the proposed Hull Trains London-Sheffield services”—
the one that would connect Worksop directly to London for the first time in nearly 200 years—
“does not meet the threshold … We estimate abstraction of approximately £1.77m per annum … with EMR most negatively impacted”.
I am mathematical economist and I should like the Minister to give me the entire economic analysis and the presumptions it is based on. That says that people from Worksop go via Sheffield to London. I know the train drivers; my office was next to the train station in Worksop. I had to decide how to get to London by train. The ASLEF national negotiators—quite a number of them because of freight—were based in Worksop and had to make weekly, often daily, decisions about how to get to London by train. Huge numbers of staff from the railway industry live in Worksop and they were in the same situation. None ever went via Sheffield. It is simply not true. I stood at the station as an MP regularly, often constantly surveying the commuters. I know who goes into Sheffield and who goes the other way. I know where they park. I know most of the people by name. They do not go that way, so that figure is based on false assumptions and false economics.
The truth is that the Government are meant to be about levelling up. When I brought businesses into my area, I argued the case for a direct train service via Retford into London—if I could have done that via Worksop, it would have been even better—and it succeeded, with major companies coming in. That was the argument—I was there; I was making the argument with those companies. Laing O’Rourke is on the Sheffield side of Worksop, by the way. There is huge new investment on that industrial estate, including it. Cerealto, which came from Spain, is there. All they wanted was an improved service down the east coast main line. No one considered the East Midlands Railway.
I have nothing against Sheffield or that route. Point to point, it is dramatically longer, which might be the reason why people went the other way. The other route is far quicker and far shorter. The Hull Trains model has brought huge economic benefits. It has shifted the housing market. The Government want loads more houses with loads of land. That area is happy to have housing. It wants nuclear fusion there, which will involve massive investment—billions—and 3,000 new jobs. Again, connecting Worksop to London is an economic objective even more than a social one. It is convenient for getting down to the football, the theatre and all that kind of thing that people might want to do, but it is about the economic basis of it. I know every single major company that came in—I was there—and I know that this was part of the argument. These figures are wrong. There needs to be that flexibility.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for bringing this timely Question for Short Debate. It is a topic of much conversation in transport circles, as this debate shows. Open access railways have allowed private companies to operate train services independently of government contracts, and to date they have been competing with franchise services. However, they are going to be competing with the publicly run Great British Railways services, and that is where the rub may be.
My noble friend Lord Bradshaw and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, flagged some serious questions about regulation, which I hope we will hear clear answers on today. Noble Lords will recall that, at all stages of the passenger railway services Bill—it feels like a reunion here today—my colleagues and I stressed from the Lib Dem Benches that we were agnostic as to who actually runs the railway. We want real improvements, centred on the passenger.
As I read the DfT’s consultation paper, A Railway Fit for Britain’s Future, the Government are clear that a new, simpler framework will enable GBR to take decisions on the best use of its network. It goes on to say:
“GBR will take access and charging decisions in the public interest”.
In addition to those obligations, the Secretary of State can issue specific directions and guidance on access to and use of the railway when relevant. Presumably, those directions could be for no open access passenger services at all, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the RMT would support. Presumably it would be at the whim of whoever is Secretary of State, depending on what their view is of open access and what is allowed.
The only thing that is certain is that open access operators will have to fully pay towards long-term maintenance costs for the network and central support costs, which is something we would probably all agree with. However, the only open access that seems to be protected is around freight services—although, if you talk to the freight sector, it is not confident in that at all. There is nothing in this paper that suggests there is any future for open access operators. What assurance can the Minister give the sector today about its future? Even if the Government do not want to see any new open access operators, what guarantee can they give to the routes that already exist today, which, as we have heard, do so well serving places such Hull, and despite the quote that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, read from the Labour manifesto, which showed some commitment to open access?
The other issue I want to pick up, which is the crux of this debate, is that it may come at a cost to the taxpayer in attracting passengers away with open access trains, as the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, pointed out. The contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Young, provided contrary evidence that that was going to be a threat. I thought that I would add some international experience. Last year, a European Commission study looked at Spain, France, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Germany and other examples of rail on the continent. It showed that ticket prices decreased overall with the introduction of open access competition; that frequency has increased hugely on routes such as Vienna to Salzburg and Stockholm to Gothenburg, as well as in other places; and that the more trains there are available, the more passengers will see trains as a viable option and will demand increases. It has shown that open access really can add to the railway.
I conclude my remarks by saying that open access operators have a role to play in our future rail system, as long as they pay their way. They can also see investment in rolling stock and innovation in a way that will be healthy for the passenger. At the end of the day, what do we want? We want a service that is reliable, affordable, efficient and passenger-centred. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this debate.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for securing this important discussion.
His Majesty’s Government’s approach to railway reform has raised concerns, in particular around the potential risks of phasing out existing open access operators and rejecting new ones. Open access operators such as Lumo, which has a 96% customer satisfaction rating, have consistently delivered some of the highest levels of passenger service. On the basis that His Majesty’s Government’s stated commitment is to place passengers at the heart of the railway reforms, we naturally assume that they would wish to encourage and support open access operators, rather than restrict their role.
A fundamental aspect of the open access system is its ability to introduce new direct routes and foster competition, ultimately enhancing the passenger experience. Of course, this must be weighed up against the potential impact on taxpayer-funded operators. To ensure a fair balance, the Office of Rail and Road applies the “not primarily abstractive” test, requiring new services to generate at least 30p of new revenue for every £1 abstracted from existing operators. This test ensures that open access services contribute genuine growth to the industry, rather than merely diverting passengers from other operators.
Let us take as an example Lumo, which launched in 2021 between London and Edinburgh. Since its inception, Lumo has generated more than 6 million new rail journeys, which noble Lords will agree is a remarkable achievement. It has driven a significant modal shift from air travel to rail travel. Nearly half of all journeys on this route are now made by rail, up from one-third in 2019.
Crucially, Lumo’s success has not come at the expense of existing operators. Revenue on the London to Edinburgh corridor increased by 55% between 2019 and 2024. Moreover, LNER’s own revenue has grown, demonstrating that Lumo has expanded the overall rail market, rather than siphoning off passengers. Similarly, Hull Trains, which has operated between London and Hull since 2000, has been a resounding success. By 2010, revenue on its route had increased by nearly 300%, and, for every £1 of revenue abstracted from other operators, Hull Trains generated an additional 51p to 67p of industry revenue—far exceeding the ORR’s minimum threshold. Since 2019, Hull Trains has seen a 42% growth in passenger journeys, significantly outpacing other operators. This success has been supported by investment in new rolling stock, enhancing capacity and service quality.
Although some may view the abstraction of revenue from taxpayer-funded operators negatively, it is vital to consider the broader benefits that open access services provide. Free markets and increased competition lead to lower fares, faster journey times and substantial value-of-time benefits for passengers. Open access operators consistently achieve higher passenger satisfaction, thanks to their agility and customer-focused approach. Even when accounting for lower fares, open access operators on all three routes examined have generated revenue well above the 0.3 NPA threshold set by the ORR. His Majesty’s Official Opposition suggest that the evidence speaks for itself.
His Majesty’s Government are vocal on the subject of growth, investment, passengers and the environment, so I must ask the Minister this: will they please put passengers first? The ORR has praised open access because of the black-and-white data.
Finally, can the Minister please advise the Committee on when we will have sight of the passenger standards authority? What will those standards be, and how will they be enforced? The appetite of the new authority to hold GBR to account is what will matter. How, in tandem, will Great British Railways hold nationalised operators to the same high standards of service that passengers expect and deserve?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Young, on securing this timely debate on an important subject. I offer him my wholehearted apologies for the omission of the letter that I sent everybody else; it was an administrative error but I it has, I believe, been rectified. I apologise to him for that.
The context of this debate is the live consultation document, A Railway Fit for Britain’s Future, which was published a few weeks ago and on which the Government welcome contributions. I hope all noble Lords here today will respond to the consultation document. It is not immediately apparent to me that everybody has ready every word of it, from what I have heard—perhaps that is reasonable—but it is important that noble Lords respond to it because it raises some of these subjects absolutely directly.
Having said that, I am not going to repeat large quantities of what is in the consultation document, for the obvious reason that it is in the public domain. People will respond to it; the Government will then consider their responses fully. It would be better if I spent my time looking at elements of the issues in front of us that noble Lords have raised.
I start with the noble Lord, Lord Young, who asked whether I share the RMT’s views. He deftly pointed out, however, that it appears to have two views that are contrary to each other at once. I can therefore say without compunction that I share some of its views but not all of them. It is entitled to its views because it represents the hard-working staff of the railways as their trade union, but they are not the determinants of future government policy.
The noble Lord expressed genuine concern about competition and asked whether I am open to listening to responses to the consultation. I am open to that; I have listened extraordinarily carefully to what noble Lords have said here today, and I believe that aspects of what they have said should influence the way we draft the legislation, following the responses to the consultation. It would be foolish and unnecessary for us to produce a consultation if we did not intend to listen to what people had to say about it.
The other thing I would say about the consultation is that it is over 30 years since a substantive railway Bill was in either House. It behoves us to do a good job this time because it may be a long time before there is another; you never know.
I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, had to say. His descriptions of some of the history were quite correct. I can correct him on only one material fact, which is that Network Rail slid into the public sector with a debt of £54 billion, rather than £34 billion; I remember remarking that it was higher than the national debt of New Zealand at the time I became the body’s chair. The noble Lord was right in describing that, in those days—at the time of the original privatisation of the railway and subsequently—there was some slack. It is true that quite a lot of additional services could be put into the timetable simply because there was plenty of room for them.
I always listen to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, extraordinarily carefully. He was a very senior railway manager when, sadly, I was still at school; he knows perfectly well how to run a busy, complex railway, and his memory is not diminished an inch by the effluxion of time since he did that. I do not think he is entirely correct to suggest that the ORR is concentrated on only one of its objectives—that would be doing it a disservice. But he is certainly entitled to a view about the extent to which it has balanced its objectives. He is indeed right about the east coast main line timetable. I had to answer a Question in the House only two days ago about the level of service at Alnmouth and Berwick. The last Government invested £4 billion to improve the capacity of the east coast main line. It has taken four years to get an agreement on that timetable, and that is because the number of people with rights on the east coast main line is so great that it required a huge meeting of railway operators. In the end, it also required the Secretary of State and I, as Ministers, to make a decision which on any normal railway would be taken by the railway administration. The noble Lord asked whether the ORR’s regulatory assumptions are sound and independently verified. They have been tested twice independently and found satisfactory at least.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned freight. The propositions about open access, whatever they are, do not apply to freight where the Government have already stated that they intend to have a target to increase freight. I believe we have also heard here that freight operators are apparently more comfortable with the regime proposed in the consultation paper.
I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, very carefully. I too want to see more trains on HS1 and through the Channel Tunnel, and the department is working as hard as it can to see that there are more trains and that any obstacles to further competition on the routes through the Channel Tunnel to Europe are removed. There are some things we can do, and we are proposing to do them.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, talked about what was in the King’s Speech and what, effectively, the Secretary of State wrote subsequently to the chair of the Office of Rail and Road. Opinions vary on this letter, but I think she and I are clear that what she said in the letter was not that there should be no open access. It did not say that we disagree with it; in fact, the consultation paper says that in the right circumstances, open access has a valuable part to play. But it would be negligent of her, and certainly negligent of me, not to reflect the fact that the railway post-Covid is costing the taxpayer an enormous amount of money. All of us in this Room, whatever political side we are on, cannot celebrate a railway that consumes twice as much public subsidy as before Covid. We need to do something about it. It is proper for the Secretary of State to reflect on the fact that one of the legitimate concerns of both the Secretary of State and, indeed, the ORR ought to be the whole cost of the railway to taxpayers. She talks about a balance: on the one hand, opening up new markets, driving innovation and offering choice to passengers, but also a balance that is mindful of the abstraction of revenue to taxpayers, as well as the charging mechanism. That letter sets out her views, which I do not think are anti-open access; it makes clear the role that the Government believe open access ought to have and the basis on which we are consulting.
The concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, were principally about freight, which I have already covered.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, said that the private sector was under threat. I say to him that, in fact, four-fifths of railway expenditure is in the private sector and, very largely, that will continue. The Government’s proposals to take passenger services into public ownership are not the same as taking the private sector out of the railway. Network Rail spends a huge amount of money with many private sector organisations to maintain and improve the railway and that will continue, as will freight operations and so forth.
The noble Lord also talked about the costs of GBR as a potentially large public body—I prefer that word to “quango”, having chaired two such public bodies. There is a considerable saving to the public purse from managing the railway better. The fact that every meeting on the railway needs 20 people in it to decide anything, because of the proliferation of different contracts, is a huge cost and a huge barrier to effective management of the railway.
As chair of Network Rail, I had a difficulty with the ORR, because we were told at one stage that there was a belief that the law suggested that there were only two dates on which you could change the national railway timetable a year. That is completely inflexible and militates against the public getting a good service from the railways, simply by baking some arthritic processes into what ought to be a dynamic situation to deliver better services to passengers and freight.
The noble Lord, Lord Mann, talked with considerable passion about Hull Trains, and I respect his passion about that because it is clear that Hull Trains has produced a huge benefit for the city of Hull over the years it has been working. His observations about Worksop are probably more difficult, both for him and for me, but one of the issues with some proposals that the department has seen, but which will currently at least be considered by the ORR, is that the department at least considers that they will abstract from other services. The danger, of course, is that you offer a better service to a small number of people and the result of it is a higher cost to taxpayers and/or a reduction in services to others. Those are balances that railway administrations have had on their minds since 1830 or so, and they are considerations that GBR will have to have.
One thing that is obvious to me is that, in the course of further setting out how the new railway will work, you need a really comprehensive access and use policy. The consultation document says that GBR will have to have such a policy, that it will have to behave in accordance with it and, at the end of it, if people believe that it has not behaved in accordance with it, that will be appealable. In certain circumstances, the ORR will continue to be able to direct GBR to do something different.
I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, that it is the passengers in the end—well, it is the passengers to start with—who ought to be the real consideration of the railway. One reason I am passionate about the case for reform is that passengers are not well served by the current circumstances. The railway costs too much to run, it is arthritic and it is slow—as I said, every decision needs huge numbers of people involved. When the east coast main line timetable is put in, it will justify the £4 billion of public investment put into the line because there will be a third train to Newcastle as a consequence. That is good for passengers. It will not affect Lumo, because Lumo will still run and its access rights will continue. Open access can of course add value.
I listened carefully to what the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said. I must have read most of it before somewhere, in a number of documents principally put out by FirstGroup. The only thing I would say to him is that he is of course right about some of that. There is no doubt that Lumo, which did get open access provision, has made a real difference in the air competition to Edinburgh and it is to be absolutely commended for that. The number of routes on the railway where that is true is very limited, but it behoves us to want open access where it adds to the railway—and to be careful about it where it adds to the total taxpayer subsidy and would otherwise make the railway more congested and less reliable for passengers.
I close by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Young, again for his debate. I apologise once more that everybody else got a letter addressed to him before he did—I am really sorry about that. I thank him for raising the subject and allowing me to respond.
National Youth Strategy
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in developing a National Youth Strategy.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Scott of Needham Market) (LD)
My Lords, the time limit for this debate is one hour. With the exception of the opener and the Minister winding, noble Lords have three minutes, which is very tight. When the clock flashes, time is up.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, this short debate today gives us the opportunity to ask the Minister to provide more information to Parliament and of course to the public about the Government’s plans for a national youth strategy, the nature of their consultation process and the progress they have made.
In answer to my Oral Question last October, the Minister stated:
“This Government are committed to empowering young people to make a difference in their communities and are working with them to develop a new national strategy for young people”.—[Official Report, 31/10/24; col. 1208.]
That is a positive: the Government are partnering with young people to help develop the strategy and are managing a listening exercise to enable young people to have a say on decisions that affect their lives. It was, however, disappointing—the Minister will expect me to refer to this—that the Government decided to wind down the National Citizen Service from March this year. The service was a success and had cross-party support. Its closure will leave a hole in youth services this year while we await the publication and implementation of the Government’s plans.
I am grateful, as always, to organisations with expertise in this area for providing briefings for our debate today. I know that Peers have received expert briefings from organisations including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Girlguiding, the National Youth Agency and Youth Access, as well as other organisations.
In the run-up to the general election last year, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award launched its research paper, Youth Voices 2024. The findings showed that young people are ambitious for their own futures but continue to feel unheard and unsupported on the very issues that will define their lives and careers. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award asks that the national strategy should include a youth pledge, committing to put youth voices and representation at all levels of policy and decision-making on the issues that impact young people. Today, I ask whether the Minister will consider responding positively to that recommendation.
I note that the DCMS has launched a survey, which it describes on its website as a
“national listening exercise to let young people have their say on support services, facilities and the opportunities they need outside the school gates”.
That sounds a very useful survey and I certainly support it; it was announced eight days ago and closes on 16 April. Although it is welcome, I hope that young people will know enough about it and will want to engage with it, to make it as valuable as it can be. It is, of course, a one-off specifically related to the drafting of the national youth strategy paper. I do not criticise that, but I hope that the Minister will reflect further on the request of the DoE Award that that kind of relationship with young people should be a continuing process.
At the moment, rather surprisingly, it is unclear how the national youth strategy will work in practice—work is under way—so I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the following issues. Will the deficit in funding from the closure of the National Citizen Service be restored, or will that loss of further funding from the youth sector be a permanent reduction in funding? Which measures under the national youth guarantee will be carried forward, given the closure of the National Citizen Service? Does the Minister expect that the strategy will be accompanied by funding additional to that which was detailed in the initial announcement, as we now await the multiyear comprehensive spending review this summer?
How will the strategy work cross-departmentally? That is something I have always been interested in, having been a Minister myself; I know the importance and complexity involved in that. How will the cross-departmental work align and feed into initiatives such as the Young Futures programme, the child poverty strategy, the violence against women and girls strategy, the 10-year health plan, the curriculum and assessment review and indeed the Online Safety Act?
How are the front-line youth workforces, which are out there working so hard, being consulted about the national youth strategy and how it will become operational? There is also some uncertainty about when we might have sight of the national youth strategy or indeed, I appreciate, an interim version of it.
Last November, Ministers said that they were kick-starting—I thought it was rather unfortunate to use a rather violent image, but never mind; football was on their mind, as that was the season, so there we are—the process of consultation. We heard from the Secretary of State on 16 January this year:
“My officials are reviewing the evidence base, which they will consider, and we are launching the strategy in the summer, with an interim report expected in the spring”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/1/25; col. 46.]
However, we then heard from the Minister, Stephanie Peacock, on 11 February:
“We have now begun our engagement with young people and the sectors that work with them, as part of the co-production process”.
On the face of it, although I do not think this was intended, it looks as though those two statements are contradictory with each other. It would be nice to have some clarity on that. It sounds as though it is cart before horse happening there.
In the February debate, Stephanie Peacock went on to announce:
“We will provide more information to MPs within the next month regarding the development of the national youth strategy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/25; cols. 104-05WH.]
Even by my maths, I can see that that month has come and gone, so is the Minister able to deliver that further information today? By the way, I think that Members of the House of Lords, not just MPs, would be pleased to see that worksheet as well.
I appreciate that producing a national strategy is a difficult process, especially when one has carried out a wide and clearly well-drafted consultation process. I support the Government’s intent to co-produce that strategy with those who matter—the young people. However, it would be helpful to everyone, not just parliamentarians, for the Minister to be able to clarify what information will be available and when that is likely to be. I know that spring can extend a long way into the distance, but people, particularly young people and those who work with them, want to know the kind of information that is going to be provided publicly. It is crucial that there is clarity for young people to be reassured that the listening exercise really has borne fruit and that the delivery of the strategy will be funded appropriately. I appreciate the difficulty of that in the current climate, with decisions that have had to be made because of our need for the defence of this country, and of course we debate those matters elsewhere.
If a shortage of time prevents the Minister from answering all our questions today—and I suspect it might—then I would be grateful if she might respond to noble Lords in writing and place a copy in the Library of the House. In the meantime, I look forward very much to hearing all other noble Lords who are contributing to this debate.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, this is such an important issue. We have let down a generation of children and young people. The National Citizen Service, good as it was, and the International Citizen Service, good as it was, were never going to be a replacement for decent youth work activities where young people live, grow up and go to school. Therefore, we have seen disadvantaged children in this country fall behind even further. There are more of them living in families that have poverty and lack of opportunity these days, and I am shocked at how the eye on what was happening was taken off the ball in the past 14 years.
We know that children in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods make significantly less progress at both primary and secondary school. We know that they are more likely to be in lower-income households and that they are subject to more violence. There is a concentration of the poorest families and children with the poorest outcomes living in a clear set of neighbourhoods. I urge the Government and the Minister to think about this as they develop their strategy.
I really welcome the strategy—there is quite a lot of information for parliamentarians on the website, if you read it carefully, about how they should be engaging with young people in their constituencies or localities on what sort of services are needed and what is missing. It is important that they are invited, and we are invited, during the consultation to do things to help that along—and I shall be doing some of that work over the next few weeks. Will the Minister work on the cross-government involvement and the involvement of civil society?
I was at an event yesterday with AllChild, a place-based children’s and young people’s charity doing really interesting work. It is very enthusiastic about the strategy and needs to be involved. I hope that the Minister will talk to the DfE about training and skills development for those who will be needed to work with young people, whatever we come out with. As somebody who did that for a decade before I came to this place, I could cry when I see how much it has been neglected of late. Furthermore, will the Minister make sure that the Government recognise and understand the importance of place-based work for young people, so that where they grow up and where they go to school there are services that open up opportunities for them?
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the national youth strategy, particularly as it has a significant amount of co-production with young people themselves—although I find it hard to pin down what they will actually produce.
Like others, I have received helpful briefings from a number of organisations, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award—which calls itself DofE these days, rather confusingly—as well as the Scouts and OnSide, which runs 15 youth zones across the country. I will focus on enrichment activities carried out by organisations such as these, including sports, arts and cultural activities, volunteering, social action and adventures away from home, which I hope will form a prominent part of the national youth strategy.
There is clear evidence—for example, from a recent DofE report—that these activities can help to address some of the major challenges facing young people and schools. Such challenges include: absenteeism from schools; the growing numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training; mental health challenges; and the lack of essential life skills that are needed for work, which employers so regularly complain about. Enrichment can be particularly valuable for young people with special needs or from disadvantaged or challenging backgrounds, who may need the extra support that youth organisations such as OnSide can provide. Much of its work is targeted at young people needing extra support.
All I have time for are some more questions for the Minister. First, how will the strategy ensure that the benefits of enrichment activities are fully available to all young people? Will the Government consider the idea of an enrichment guarantee, as proposed by several youth organisations?
Secondly, how does work experience, surely a key enrichment activity, fit with the national youth strategy? Having run work experience programmes myself, with both schools and other bodies, I know how crucial it is in preparing young people for employment, and quality is just as important as quantity.
Thirdly, I was concerned to hear Professor Becky Francis, the chair of the curriculum and assessment review, say at a recent APPG meeting that enrichment was outside the review’s terms of reference. How will the Government ensure that enrichment activities, including work experience, are recognised as an essential complement to, if not part of, the curriculum? Might they consider providing guidance to schools on the use of enrichment activities to improve attendance and tackle other issues facing schools?
I am rapidly running out of time, if not of questions, so I will just end with one more. How will the success of the national youth strategy be defined, and then measured?
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, there is no doubt that the announcement of a national youth strategy which will be with us by the summer is good news. The Minister will therefore forgive me if what I have to say may sound a little carping. I have three areas of concern. Where is the funding to come from? What plans are there to co-ordinate the different government departments that may be involved? How is the success of this venture to be evaluated, even in the short term?
On funding, the Government have committed £85 million, plus £100 million to come from a frozen assets fund. The demise of the National Citizen Service will remove perhaps hundreds of millions of pounds from the wider sector, including funding for about 250 youth organisations, much of which was due at the beginning of the new financial year in April. Are the £50 million savings predicted by the removal of the NCS additional to the Budget figures announced?
A further worry is which department is responsible for dispensing the budget. It would seem that the broad remit described would involve several government departments—for example, employment, health, mental health, crime, justice, education and other youth work would, by my count, involve at least five different government departments.
We all know that the best policies in the world can get lost, or modified beyond the original aims, in the business of governance. I have long argued that a Minister for children should be appointed at Cabinet level, thereby giving the planned strategy the weight it deserves and the guarantee of implementation across government. What assurances can the Minister give that the report scheduled for the summer of this year will be implemented in its entirety?
Last November, and before the announcement of the national youth strategy, UK Youth convened the Joined Up Summit. Some 500 leaders and decision-makers from all sectors, together with a representative group of 16 to 25 year-olds, discussed what, in their opinion, the strategy should include. After 15 years of brutal cuts to local government youth work budgets—by about three-quarters since 2010—the consensus was that major investment was now needed. It was agreed not only that such a strategy had to go beyond engagement to empowerment but that young voices must be heard and included from the design and implementation to the evaluation stages. Can the Minister say that this will in fact happen, despite cost and co-ordination issues that may arise?
Finally, I will look briefly at priorities. Who is doing the prioritising and what might the criteria be? It is estimated that three-quarters of youth clubs have closed down. The impact of this is profound. If young people, especially in rural areas, have nowhere to go where they can be both safe and engaged, the inevitable result is street gatherings. Recent research demonstrates that violent gangs and knife crime are significantly more frequent and more serious in those urban and rural areas lacking any youth facilities. I am sure I will get into trouble over this, but I must just say that surely somewhere for the youth to go must take precedence over, for example, one-to-one therapy on gender-change issues?
Recent surveys of generation Z people indicate support—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Scott of Needham Market) (LD)
The noble Baroness has reached her time limit.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
I am speaking so fast that I can hardly hear myself talk.
My most important point is this. In view of the fact that our youth is somewhat disillusioned, which we know from research, whatever else we do, we have to get this strategy right.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, my contribution will be a little tangential to this history of what I would call a civic service.
A year ago, on 7 March, I put down an Oral Question, taken on the Floor of the House, about whether His Majesty’s Government had any plans to introduce compulsory, or some other form of, military service. The answer came back clearly: “No. We rely on people being recruited and being volunteers, and we have very good Armed Forces”. At the time, I said that it seemed to me that “warning signals” were coming up and that we would need to review this.
The timing, a year on, is absolutely dead on. Now we move on a year and what do we find? We have a serious lack of men and women for our Armed Forces. We also know from looking at the television that, in today’s world—including in what is happening on the front in Ukraine against Russia—it is men and women and the numbers on the ground that remain important, not just armaments and things flying through the sky. The time has come when we might have to look again at some form of youth service, though not through a copy of the 1948 Act.
I remind the Minister here of what the Minister at that time, Mr Isaacs, said during the passage of the then Bill:
“Primarily, the need for the Bill arises from the fact that the regular components of our Forces have seriously run down, owing to the fact that there has been no regular recruitment during the war”.
Our forces are the same but for other reasons. He then referred to
“the need for the nation to build up efficient, well-trained reserve and auxiliary Forces”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/3/1947; col. 1671-73.]
That was rightly accepted on an all-party basis.
Today, our country and Belgium are the only two countries that have no form of military training. Everyone else in NATO has all sorts of different kinds. My request to the Minister and the Government—which will, I am sure, have the support of my party—is that this matter be looked at in the context of today’s situation on the ground. I repeat the final words that Churchill said, having supported the then Bill all the way through:
“We should have carried far more weight in the councils of peace if we had had national service”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/3/1947; col. 1697.]
We have a Prime Minister who is carrying weight in the context of what I am talking about. The challenge is there for the Government. All I say for myself is that I will do anything I can to help on that front.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for securing this debate. I draw the Committee’s attention to my register of interests: I am the chair of trustees for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and I chair Sport Wales.
As the chair of trustees for the DoE, I see at first hand how deeply young people care about their communities and how they want to shape a better world for all of us. We have put young people at the heart of all our work; I hope that the Government will continue to do the same. Yet, as a generation, they continue to face unprecedented challenges: the lasting impact of Covid-19, rising levels of anxiety and mental health problems, and the cost of living crisis, not to mention a politically turbulent global landscape—and all the while trying to navigate an increasingly digital and atomised world.
At the DoE, we are proud to be part of the Black Youth Alliance, a coalition of leading youth organisations. Together, we share a vision: a future where young people feel safe, respected and heard, and in which they can successfully navigate the undeniably tough time that is adolescence, developing the skills and capabilities that they need to thrive in life and work. Now, more than ever, we need to step up and recognise that young people need and deserve a truly sustainable and effective youth strategy that puts young people at the very heart of policy.
We should perhaps learn from the work happening in Wales. In 2016, Wales set a global precedent by appointing the world’s first Future Generations Commissioner, a role dedicated to safeguarding the interests of young people and future generations. At Sport Wales, we have continued proudly to support the commissioner’s work, and our School Sport Survey shaped the Vision for Sport in Wales. The School Sport Survey 2022 gave young people a powerful voice on sport and well-being, as well as providing an insight into their attitudes and behaviours. It has helped the wider sector better understand how to create a more inclusive and impactful sporting opportunity for young people.
I commend the Government on prioritising the views of young people at the current stage of this consultation. I ask the Minister: can our Lordships’ Chamber be assured that they will continue to engage with young people at every stage of this process to ensure that this will be a youth strategy that delivers equal access for all?
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, the idea of asking young people what they want is obviously a great one, and I support the national youth strategy as far as it goes. My problem is that a lot of young people simply do not know the opportunities that should be available to them. Some have a very privileged life and go to great schools where huge numbers of facilities are available to them, and some do not and do not get the opportunities to go to the theatre or play an instrument. If they knew much about them, they would probably find them life-changing. The schools into which Andrew Lloyd Webber has gone, with his mission to give everybody a musical instrument, have benefited hugely from that. But did those young people really know that their lives would be changed by playing in an orchestra? I suspect not. It is that sort of issue that needs addressing, and that is why a children’s Minister in Cabinet might well be a good starting point.
However, the starting point that we have now is a national youth strategy to which the nation’s youth will be asked to contribute. I shall therefore contribute remarks relating particularly to the idea of democracy, which is what this is all about. A survey from the Electoral Commission this year found that a third of 11 to 17 year-olds had not heard any mention of politics in their school in the entire last year. That is a year in which there was an election in this country and in the United States—one of the most important in a long time—and their schools did not even talk about it. So it is not surprising that, when the Electoral Commission asked 11 to 25 year-olds whether they would like to know a little more about how politics and democracy work in the country in which they live, 74% said that they would.
My question to the Minister is: what will she do about enabling those children and young people to understand the democratic process, before going deeply into the national youth strategy and asking them all to opine on any number of things? The Electoral Commission found that the majority do not believe that the Government do anything very much and a third do not understand at all what the British Government do. It is not surprising if they feel completely alienated. My suspicion is that this exercise risks only increasing the cynicism among a large number of youngsters.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, three minutes is not enough time to cover all aspects of the subject we are looking at, but it will come as no surprise to noble Lords that I will focus on employment for young people. Whatever youth strategy is developed, agreed and delivered, it must help to stop the flow of young people becoming NEET. Nearly 1 million of our young people are in the NEET group. What does that cost in finance, in economic terms for business, in personal issues and, of course, in social cohesion?
Many young people today grow up in families where they are loved, nurtured and supported at different times in their journey in life. But let me tell noble Lords this: many young people are not—I have met them. Many young people, sadly, are left to their own devices, with no guidance. They do not have a clue what life holds for them. They have every potential to become NEET, to be involved in crime and gangs, to have health issues, and to be economically inactive. I could go on.
I met someone from the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme—the young man is over there—and he showed me a quote from a young person who said, “Is it a surprise I’ve got mental health issues, when I haven’t got enough money to live on?”. The issues that they face are absolutely phenomenal. Young people are on a journey. Whether it is starting out in their early years, or whether they are categorised as NEET, it is a journey, and it is one on which they need somebody to be with them, to take them through the highs and lows of life.
In my book, it is about the destination. For me, the destination is that, whatever services a youth strategy provides, it should help young people to transition into the labour market, not leaving them at any point if something goes wrong. I have seen it work: it is cost effective, and if we measure the return on the investment needed, I am telling you, it is magic. I will give your Lordships just one example. I worked on a project where 76% of the young people we got into work were still there a year later. They did not fall out, and the money we invested in keeping them there was well, well worth it. Eighty-five percent of them drastically improved their attendance at school, and 60% of them got five GCSE’s at grade A to C. Ninety-six percent of them are currently involved in education, employment or training. The youth strategy will cover a number of things, but let us get them into work, keep them there and give them a future.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, in my limited time, I shall reflect on how the arts can empower the next generation, particularly in light of the lasting harm caused to young people by the previous Government’s misguided EBacc policy, which systematically diminished the value of creative subjects in schools.
As the Government embark on their ambitious national youth strategy, we have a rare opportunity to put arts, culture and creativity at the forefront of national renewal. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, these are not just enriching experiences, but essential tools for fostering confidence, ambition, collaboration and the generation of ideas—vital skills for a challenging world. They bring out the best in every child, rather than excluding those who do not fit the mould.
The national youth strategy is rooted in a simple but powerful idea: young people should have a say in shaping their own futures and communities. We often discuss youth policy in terms of crime prevention, mental health and economic mobility, yet arts and culture also serve as powerful tools for tackling these challenges. They can also help to solve the special needs crisis, which consumes so much local authority spend. Creative engagement supports mental well-being, reduces anxiety and fosters social connections. Most of all, it bolsters self-esteem.
In our efforts to dismantle barriers to opportunity, we must support initiatives such as the better youth spaces programme, ensuring that every young person has a safe, inspiring place to create and collaborate, regardless of their postcode. The expanded creative careers programme will provide real pathways into industries that contribute over £125 billion to the UK economy.
Through practical guidance, mentoring and work experience opportunities, the programme connects education with industry while breaking down historical barriers to entry in creative fields. This approach recognises that, while talent exists everywhere, opportunity does not, and aims to bridge that gap. At a time when our society can feel divided, the arts offer us a shared language to celebrate diversity—including neurodiversity—bridge differences and cultivate pride in our local and national identities.
The Fabian Society’s recent report Arts for Us All by the independent Arts and Creative Industries Unit rightly advocates for a cultural pass for young people, mirroring successful models in France, Germany and Spain to increase cultural participation among young people. Let us ensure that every young person in Britain can access the creative experiences that will shape their confidence, career and community, regardless of where they come from.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a patron of Career Connect and patron of the Royal Life Saving Society UK. A new national youth strategy that engages and empowers young people is not only welcome but essential. This approach, which rightly seeks to place decision-making power in the hands of those affected, offers a valuable opportunity to learn to nurture the future pillars of our nation. I commend the efforts made thus far to co-produce the national youth strategy alongside young people. The national listening exercise, the online survey extending to those with special educational needs and disabilities, and various workshops have demonstrated an effort to consult and collaborate with young people, which is to be applauded.
While the Government have committed £85 million from government funds and £100 million from the dormant assets scheme to improve youth outcomes, there are concerns about whether that funding will be sufficient to address the diverse needs of young people across the country. The decision to wind down the NCS programme from March 2025 has raised concerns about the continuity of support for young people. The new strategy needs to ensure that the services previously provided, which were working well, are effectively replaced or improved on.
The pressures of social media and new technologies are growing ever present. How will the strategy address these challenges to support young people’s mental health and well-being?
I turn to the topics of co-ordination and collaboration. Effective collaboration with various stakeholders is crucial for the success of the strategy. Ensuring effective co-ordination among these groups, as noble Lords know more than most, can be complex. What will “good” look like?
Finally, following the pandemic, young people were denied valuable experiences. The strategy must address the long-term impacts of that disruption on their development and opportunities.
I am delighted to say that we welcome the national youth strategy, particularly its commitment to include the voice of young people from the outset. We also welcome the commitment to better co-ordinated youth services and policies at local, regional and national level.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for securing this important discussion.
As my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott has highlighted, it appears that we are at a genuinely critical juncture where statistics suggest that approximately 987,000 individuals aged between 16 and 24 are not engaged in education, employment or training. This group of citizens not only face personal challenges but represent a material loss to our nation’s productivity and social cohesion.
It is of huge concern that many young people in our country appear to be in silent crisis. His Majesty’s Official Opposition recognise the huge importance of nurturing our future hard-working and upstanding members of the community, ensuring that they are equipped with skills and values while being offered the opportunities that are necessary to lead fulfilling lives and contribute meaningfully to our society.
It is therefore a great loss from our perspective that in November last year His Majesty’s Government ended the National Citizen Service scheme, introduced by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton as part of his big society initiative. The scheme had an approval rating of 93% and delivered over 1 million experiences to young people, and participants have taken part in over 18 million hours of volunteering. The programme helped our youth to feel valued and purposeful, with my noble friend Lord Cameron describing the decision as a deeply backward and regrettable step. With all due respect to the Government, His Majesty’s Official Opposition agree. On our watch, we committed to allocating £500 million over the period 2023-26 to fund the national youth guarantee, which sought to ensure that every young person in England aged between 11 and 18 had access to regular clubs and activities for after-school enjoyment, experiences away from home and opportunities to volunteer.
We have a number of questions for the Minister. What were the key reasons behind the decision to abolish the National Citizen Service scheme, given its role in engaging over 1 million young people since its inception? How does the new national youth strategy differ from the NCS in terms of objectives, funding and reach, and how will it ensure the same or greater levels of youth participation? The NCS provided structured opportunities for personal development, social mobility and civic engagement. How does the new strategy plan to replace or enhance those elements?
Can the Minister please clarify how the funding previously allocated to the NCS is now being used under the national youth strategy, and whether there will be increased investment in grassroots youth services? Lastly, given the need for consistency and long term planning in youth development, how do the Government intend to measure the success of the national youth strategy, compared to the impact assessments previously conducted for the NCS?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for initiating this debate and for her ongoing commitment to this subject. It is clear from the debate that, although there may be a difference in our views on how to deliver youth services, there is a collective understanding across your Lordships’ Committee that this is a really important issue and potentially that something needs to change. I thank noble Lords from all sides of the Committee on their interesting and considered contributions. This feels very timely, given recent announcements by Youth Minister Stephanie Peacock, mentioned by a number of noble Lords.
Like many noble Lords here, I have witnessed the crucial and transformative role that youth services play in young people’s lives. Our Government strive to support this sector so that young people are able to be part of a supportive community and have access to positive and enriching activities. This work on the youth sector will help to deliver on the Government’s missions, spreading opportunities, making our streets safer and taking pressure off health services. I was pleased to hear young people’s mental health referenced.
This work will be in partnership with the development of the young future hubs, the curriculum review and further work that our Government have committed to in order to improve young people’s lives. That is why, in November, we announced a co-production of a new national youth strategy. This aims to set out an ambitious long-term vision for young people for the next 10 years and put them at the centre of decision-making on policies that affect them. As noble Lords will be aware, we are co-producing this strategy with young people and the youth sector. This approach will be key to making sure that this strategy supports and recognises the real experience of young people across this country.
Since we last spoke on this topic, we have made excellent progress in our engagement with young people. We have identified how we can work better at reaching those whose voices may not generally be heard and at establishing our way forward. Ministers have met with iWill ambassadors and young people in Bristol. Alongside this, a variety of focus groups have been held across the country, thanks to our regional youth work units. So far, we have heard from young people that they want to see clear solutions, to have access to safe spaces and to feel like the Government are listening to them. This strategy aims to achieve that, and more.
To ensure that young people’s voices are at the heart of the process throughout, we have appointed 13 young people to form a youth advisory group. They have been selected for their impressive contributions in the public space. These members have experience across key areas, including advocacy, violence prevention, social mobility and mental health. An expert advisory group will work alongside the youth advisory group to help to guide the national conversation with young people, providing expertise and challenging our thinking throughout the strategy development.
The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, referenced the national youth survey, which was launched on 5 March. It asks young people what they need to be able to thrive. This survey has already had just over 6,000 responses in the past week, and we clearly hope to get many more. We will collate these and all future responses to shape our strategy, which will be published in the summer.
We are engaging with young people up and down the country through one of the most ambitious listening exercises for a generation, making sure that we reach young people where they are. An expert consortium with cross-sector partners will facilitate widespread youth engagement, working with 10 youth collaborators who are recruited to ensure that all activities are genuinely co-produced. Alongside this, the consortium is also collating data and insights via an evidence review, ensuring that the new national youth strategy builds on what has gone before.
In response to my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top on cross-government engagement—a point also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—I say that there has already been extensive cross-government work between the DfE, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, DHSC and others. There is great collaboration and huge enthusiasm to join up on key strategies for young people. We have also shared an engagement toolkit so MPs can hold their own discussions with young people or share the toolkit with organisations in their constituencies who work with young people. I encourage Members of your Lordships’ House to do the same.
In response to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about why this had not been circulated to Peers, we had hoped to circulate the same pack through an all-Peers email but, understandably, there are very strict criteria, which I understand the pack failed to meet. I will, however, send it to all Peers present today and will place a copy in the Library.
It is vitally important that we reach young people from all parts of the country, and I welcome your Lordships’ support in achieving this aim and in forwarding the toolkit to your networks. Our national youth strategy will be designed to meet young people’s needs, so we are shaping the content of the strategy around what we learn from them. The strategy will ask 10 to 21 year-olds, expanding to the age of 25 for those with special educational needs and disabilities—a group that was highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We are asking young people what they need from the Government and what issues are most prevalent in their lives.
The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, rightly mentioned cross-government liaison. We are working with other government departments to ensure that our strategy provides insights on a variety of issues, from tackling anti-social behaviour to improving physical and mental health, to help us make the biggest impact possible on young people’s lives.
On some of the specific points raised by noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, among others, mentioned enrichment. The Department for Education is working to make sure that all children and young people have access to a variety of enrichment opportunities at school. The £3.4 million Enrichment Partnership pilot aims to improve the enrichment offer to up to 200 secondary schools in three education investment areas. It seeks to enhance school enrichment offers, remove barriers to participation and unlock existing finding and provision. As somebody who benefited hugely as a young person from music in schools and other enrichment opportunities, I agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Wheatcroft, on the importance of this area.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, raised a lack of understanding or of engagement. It is important for us politicians to recognise that we are responsible for this—it is not necessarily always the young people. I think that was the way in which the noble Baroness approached the issue. We agree that it is essential that pupils develop an understanding of their place in a democratic society so that they can become responsible citizens in a modern Britain. The national curriculum for citizenship provides essential life skills to prepare pupils for adulthood. Pupils also learn the skills of active citizenship through practical opportunities to address issues of concern to them within school and in the wider community. Recruitment to citizenship initial teacher training courses remains unrestricted, enabling providers to recruit future citizenship teachers without constraints from government. The Youth Parliament is DCMS’s key mechanism in the department for engaging with young people and ensuring that their voices are heard in policy and decision-making; I believe that it met relatively recently in the other place.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, also raised the question of whether there should be a children’s Cabinet Minister. The Prime Minister has been clear that we already have one who sees their own role as the Children’s Minister, and every department in the Government is expected to care and genuinely cares about young people, championing their access to opportunities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in particular, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, highlighted the importance of us addressing the need for employment opportunities for young people. The Government are determined to break down barriers to opportunity for all young people, and we fully recognise the importance of supporting young people at risk of becoming economically inactive at an early age or struggling to find work. Additionally, through the dormant assets scheme, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the Youth Futures Foundation has supported over 25,000 young people facing barriers to accessing quality, employment and training since 2019. As part of the Building Futures programme, up to 5,000 young people will be supported to stay in education, employment or training, with intensive mentoring and one-to-one careers coaching.
Returning to the national youth strategy funding, while the local government finance settlement for 2024-25 makes over £69 billion available to local authorities in England, we are investing within DCMS through the national youth strategy. The detail and scale of the funding commitments included in the strategy will be shaped by engagement with young people and the youth sector, and it will be dependent on spending review decisions. While this strategy will take a long-term view of these issues, we are also working hard to provide support during 2025 to local authorities, through our local youth transformation fund to build back lost capability. We have committed over £85 million of capital funding to create fit-for-purpose spaces in places where it is most needed. This includes the better youth spaces fund and completing the youth investment fund projects already started.
As referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, there have been significant cuts over the past 15 years, and spending by local authorities on youth services has decreased by 73% over the past decade. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, referenced the reasons behind the closure of NCS. Last year, this Government made the decision to wind down the National Citizen Service programme from the end of this financial year and to close the National Citizen Service Trust when parliamentary time allows. We recognise the impact NCS has had on a generation of young people. It has enabled over 1 million 15 to 17 year-olds to connect across backgrounds, build confidence and gain vital life and work skills, and those involved should be truly proud of these achievements. However, as my noble friend Lady Armstrong highlighted in the strongest terms, the challenges young people face today are vastly different from when NCS was created. The world has changed and we need a youth strategy and youth organisations that reflect that.
Today’s complex challenges require us to adapt, focusing on cocreating a new strategy with young people to better co-ordinate funding and support where it is needed most. By working across government, civil society and business, we can empower youth more effectively. Today’s debate, which I really welcome, has focused on our commitment to a national youth strategy. This Government are working hard to deliver on our national missions. Supporting the next generation to access the right opportunities forms a cornerstone of this work. Through the new national youth strategy, we are working collectively across government to set a new direction for young people, listening to what they need and responding to those needs with both universal and targeted youth provision.
With noble Lords’ indulgence, I have just a couple more comments before I conclude. We have made excellent progress through our commitment to hearing young people on the things that matter. We have launched one of the most ambitious listening exercises in a generation and are truly excited to share the results in a few months’ time. This debate has been a great opportunity to showcase the role of youth provision in the lives of young people, and I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for securing the debate, and all Members who have attended and taken part.
Sale and Display of Human Body Parts
Lord Boateng
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the offence caused to the indigenous peoples affected by the sale of human body parts in public auctions, and their display and retention in public collections.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, this Question and its answer are not to be confused with, and set no precedent in relation to any issue with, the Benin Bronzes or the Elgin marbles, important though they are—they also demand a just and equitable resolution. This Question is about a shared and common humanity, basic common decency and the sanctity in death of the human body in all its parts, in any shape or form, of any age, race or religion. It is about respect for diverse belief systems and the spiritual longing in us all for rest and resolution. The trade in human body parts is an affront to all of the above and is, literally and figuratively, an abomination. The retention of those human parts in any shape or form, without the option of return or decent disposition according to the wishes and sacred rites of their community of origin, is deeply offensive.
The question was put this way by one affected person:
“How would you feel knowing that one of your family members is in some strange place and more importantly hasn’t been afforded the right burial? This has an impact on the psyche of a group”.
This question was put some years ago by Ned David, then chair of the Torres Strait land council. He was recalling the comments of an elder among his people. It is a good question, and I wonder how any of us in this Room would answer it. How would the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, answer it? One of his ancestors was a governor in Virginia—at that time the site of numerous skirmishes with the native indigenous peoples of the state. Another was a soldier in the Russo-Turkish war. If history had turned out another way, could the noble Earl’s ancestor’s scalp have turned up for sale in a public auction in Oxfordshire—the site of numerous attempts to auction human body parts—or on the world wide web where, I fear, scalps are on sale to this very day? If, on a visit to the Ottoman Naval Museum in Istanbul, a quite remarkable museum that I have been to on a number of occasions, he was to find his noble ancestor’s skull in the shape of a goblet—because that is the reality for many people in this day and age—how would we feel?
The offence is real and the hurt continues from generation to generation. This abominable trade must stop, and the continued retention and objectifying of the remains of indigenous peoples in our public collections, against the will of their descendants and the originating communities concerned, must cease. The legislative and other obstacles to their return should be removed. I hope the Minister’s answer will give us some cause for hope that this will now happen, albeit belatedly.
As a first step, the guidance issued to museums by the department needs to be strengthened so there is a presumption in favour of the return of human body parts, whether modified or not, on request by the affected persons and originating community groups, and we need a national data base so that we know what is held in our public collections—because at the moment we do not. Will the Minister undertake to do that and convene a group of experts to advise her department on the way forward on this and other issues affecting human remains, and will Ministers ensure that the voices of indigenous communities affected are heard in this process? Will the Minister agree to meet, with me and other interested parties, some of those indigenous groups when they visit Britain, as I know they intend to, in June and October this year?
The Government of which I was a part sought, almost a quarter of a century ago now, to give effect to a joint statement by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain and the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, saying that we
“recognise the special connection that Indigenous communities have with ancestral remains, particularly where they are living descendants”.
There has been insufficient progress since that statement was made by the two Prime Ministers, albeit the Minister’s distinguished predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, produced some excellent recommendations and charted a way forward, which sadly was not followed up by the subsequent Conservative Government, despite several opportunities to do so. I hope that the expectation is that the Minister will give us some indication that, in response to this grievous and continuing wrong and this gaping hole in legislation, the need to implement our international obligations will be met and recognised by this new Labour Government.
But the good news—and there is good news—is that despite this dismal tale of theft, disrespect, and the continuing retention of the parts of fellow human beings in public institutions and their hideous and deeply offensive sale as objects of curiosity in public auction and on the world wide web, there are some outstanding examples of good practice to be found in the work of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and of a number of charities that have worked over many years to address this issue. The Honouring the Ancient Dead initiative, or HAD, offers museums the opportunity to register the human remains that they hold, and the work of Survival International and the organisation Routes to Return are cases in point—plus the work of campaigning journalists, such as Patrick Pester, who have exposed the worst excesses of this odious trade.
We can build on this good practice, and I hope that the Minister’s answer indicates that our Government will do just that—but the bad practice needs to be addressed also, by museum trustees themselves now, as a matter of urgency. They should not have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to change their current practice and interpretation of all too often ambiguous law to do the right thing. Chief among these recalcitrants, as in other matters, is the British Museum—forever seemingly on the defensive and on the back foot, and ripe as an institution for long-overdue reform.
Take this as an example: the museum’s returns policy starts with the presumption that the collection will remain intact. As a result of that, it has refused to hand over several—indeed, there are seven—preserved Māori tattooed heads, as well as the skulls of two named individuals from the Torres Strait Islands that have been decorated for use in divination. One of the descendants of those persons from the Torres Strait Islands said this:
“They are bastards, mate, bloody bastards. I can’t say anything good about them, man. They’re just—well, they’re the British Museum. I guess no one tells them what to do, eh? There’s not an ounce of humanity in that group. They’re bloody thieves. They stole it. They nicked it. There’s no way in the world they have any right to hold on to those remains”.
I conclude with that. Those are the words of an indigenous person affected. We need to hear them. We need to give effect to our signing of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. We need to make ourselves an example of best practice, which we can do with the good will, talent and expertise that is to be found in the museum sector in this country.
I hope that, in her answer, the Minister will enable us to build on those relationships and that capacity so that we have a sense of pride in a common humanity—in a shared past and a lived present that is a source of pride rather than a source of shame, and which is rooted in respect for the bodies of our ancestors.
Baroness Black of Strome (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for raising this important issue and securing this short debate. I am an anatomist who led a large teaching and research department for 15 years. I am also a forensic anthropologist. So I understand the legislation surrounding human remains, their ownership, their display and the macabre fringe community that finds this subject of interest and value.
The law regarding both the purchase and the sale of human remains is fragmented and remains largely unchallenged until an incident occurs, which is not rare. This weakness is exploited by those who seek financial gain from the sale of the dead. Most human remains are housed in museums or licensed anatomical premises, where they are regulated or have guidelines for a code of conduct, but the legal status regarding those held privately remains ambiguous and open to both commoditisation and exploitation.
If death occurred within the last 100 years, human remains fall within the remit of the Human Tissue Act 2004 —the HTA. Therefore, those who died prior to 1925—in the lifetimes of my grandparents—do not carry such protective legislation. It is also important to note that the HTA requires consent and makes only sale for the purposes of transplantation illegal.
What about those remains that fall outside these restricted boundaries? There is a buoyant market in the sale of body parts from the deceased. In 2012, Etsy led the way by banning the sale of all human remains; eBay followed suit in 2016. Both deem it unacceptable to be responsible for the sale of any part of a human.
What is being bought? Where do these remains come from? Are they people or are they property? In English law, there is no property in a human body. However, if an element of skill or technical process is applied to the remains, they can be classified as an object of art and legally bought or sold—so there is precedent.
In 1998, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales upheld a conviction against an individual who stole anatomical specimens from London’s Royal College of Surgeons on the grounds that the application of skill to create the specimens technically made them property and that, therefore, their removal was a legitimate theft. Is it not ironic that the law recognises the skills but not the propriety of the deceased person who became property?
Real human bones as objects of alleged art can be found for sale mainly online but also in curiosity or Gothic shops, where they have been turned into lamps. Skulls are carved with symbols and images or dentally altered to look like vampires. There is jewellery made out of human teeth and bones. There are skulls with their teeth removed and coffin nails drilled into each cavity. There are human bones turned into pieces for Ouija boards or chess sets, as well as wind chimes made out of human ribs. There are also—I apologise for the image—earrings made out of freeze-dried human foetuses. We are not just talking about the skeletons of adults; these are also the remains of children, babies and foetuses. It is shameful, deeply disrespectful and unacceptable to any decent person.
Where did these remains come from? There is an increase in vandalism of graveyards and forced entry into crypts and mausolea. Twenty-one skulls were stolen from an ossuary in a Kent church, with the intention to sell them on social media. Each human skull can sell for around £l,000, and if there is mummified skin or hair attached to it, it can fetch more. A child’s skull will fetch over £4,000. The majority of specimens in private hands, however, are the result of trade from impoverished societies. They may be trophies from antiquarians of the past or, more likely, originate from the medical supply trade of the last 150 years. At its peak, India was exporting over 60,000 skeletons each year for the instruction of medical and dental students. It was a lucrative colonial trade route, from remote Indian villages to the distinguished medical schools of the West. India placed a ban on sales in 1985 but, prior to that, almost every doctor and dentist trained in the UK had access to a real human skeleton that they had purchased.
Hundreds of thousands of human remains are in circulation, sourced mainly from India without consent. The means of acquiring these remains was unethical by today’s standards and, I would argue, by any standard. They were acquired by our medical schools and they have, in turn, been handed down to family members and frequently, of course, brought out to decorate at Halloween. Over time, though, people have started to become uncomfortable about the box of teaching bones in the attic, the skeleton hanging in the school biology laboratory or the articulated foot in the doctor’s surgery, and they wish to divest the responsibility for housing the remains of these unnamed deceased. Even the anatomical departments now shy away from the use of real human remains, replacing them with plastic teaching skeletons.
What should we do with all those real bones? Museums will not accept them without a licence and neither will anatomy departments. So the artists, the collectors and the macabre curiosity sellers will buy them and sell them—thousands of them. The Human Tissue Act 2004 provides no assistance for the management of these remains, even though they were purchased for the purpose of instruction in human anatomy—indeed, traders often quote the Human Tissue Act to legitimise their sale. The critical issue, as we have heard, is surely about dignity, decency and respect for the remains of those who have gone before us, and our responsibility, as the living, to speak for the dead and protect them from exploitation. How can we tolerate desecration or mutilation of human remains with impunity, when, as a society, we will send somebody to prison for 10 years for desecrating a statue?
We have a precedent in law that bans the sale of ivory but, ironically, we have no legislation that bans the sale of human remains, except for transplantation. Surely the overarching responsibility is to ensure respect for the deceased, and it should not be measured by how long they have been dead or whether we can attribute a name to their bones. I therefore hope that the Minister will take heed and help us take a global lead in instigating an outright ban on the sale and purchase of any part of a dead body. Surely it is unconscionable to do anything less. It should be a very simple process that would affect only the traders, because museums and anatomy departments do not sell human remains.
I think we should set up a task force of experienced personnel who can advise the Government and help find the best way forward. We could create an amnesty for the material that currently exists in our private collections, but I think that we must, surely, create a robust legal framework that bans the sale of the dead and addresses what is currently held in these private collections. It is no accident that when we choose to bury those we love, we trust that they will “rest in peace”. That should apply to all. We already have precedent and some guidance to work with; we just need to become international leaders, with a strong moral compass, through a simple mechanism that protects and prioritises the dignity and decency of, and respect for, the dead.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome, who made an extremely powerful and obviously expert speech. I will come back to her point about the chance of global leadership here. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this debate and apologise for missing the first few seconds of his speech—I will get my printer sorted out one day.
It is disappointing that there are so few speakers in this debate. In the Chamber, they have just finished a debate on the UK’s global position, and I had to drop out of that to be able to take part in this debate. But what we are debating here is important not just as a moral or a legal issue; it is an issue of major importance to the UK’s standing and place in the world and to the way we are regarded by particularly significant parts of the world—parts that it is crucial to work with to defend human rights and the rule of law when major global players seek instead to impose the rule of might and the cynical interests of corporations over the well-being of the human and more-than-human world.
I feel it is important to declare my own position here. I come from a white settler background in Australia, and I grew up on unceded lands that were stolen from the Aboriginal people. My speech will focus particularly on public ownership of human remains—the noble Baroness, Lady Black, already covered private ownership very well. In acknowledging my Australian origins, I will begin with a single tale—it is just one, and there are many more—of the genocide with which white settlers established themselves on the Australian continent. It is a story of one man and of barbarous settler behaviour.
On the land of the Bunuba people in what is now Western Australia, Jandamarra became a famous leader of the indigenous resistance. For three years, he was hunted by settlers and police, until in 1897, when he was aged about 24, he was cornered by the police, shot and killed, and his body was beheaded. His skull was sent as a colonial trophy to a private museum in a gun factory in Birmingham. The factory was demolished in the 1960s and Jandamarra’s skull has disappeared. Bunuba elders and researchers continue to this day to search for that skull. His story is very important to indigenous people and other people in Australia. It was first put on stage as a play at the 2008 Perth International Arts Festival and, more recently, it was staged with the Bunuba people by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. That is my telling of an indigenous story.
I also want to put on the record the words of another indigenous leader from another continent, with another coloniser: Mnyaka Sururu Mboro. Speaking for his ancestors, in Berlin, last year, he opened a symposium on colonial human remains with these words:
“Free us from the museums. Free us from the basements where they spray us now and then with disinfectant. Free us from the universities, from the clinics where they keep us on the shelves with the skulls of monkeys, gorillas and orangutans. Free us from the depots where we cannot breathe. Bring us back home and rest us in peace forever”.
At the conference where those words were said, he also told a story told to him by his grandmother about an acacia tree where she, with hundreds of others, was forced in 1900 to witness the hangings of 19 regional leaders, among them Mangi Meli. He was regarded as the most senior, so he was the last to die. After he was hanged, the Germans chopped off Mangi Meli’s head and took it for their colonial collections. There is no record of it after that.
Two different colonised nations, two different awful colonial powers, two remarkably similar stories. There is a huge issue there, which has already been well covered by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. He focused this debate on remains such as those of indigenous peoples, and I note that the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations has said that it should become an offence to sell ancestral remains or put them on public display without consent, and the noble Lord, Lord Boateng set out some other legal steps that should also be taken. The APPG rightly says that that would be a modest form of reparation for past wrongs—the kind of wrongs that I was telling the tale of—together with the return of the remains, whenever possible, with appropriate treatment by the communities from which they were taken.
Rightly, the APPG also points to the issue of Egyptian mummies. Perhaps, until we heard the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Black, we might have thought that we had made some progress since the days when mummies were ground up for medicines or even to colour paint. There was a colour of paint called Mummy Brown, made from the flesh of mummies mixed with white pitch and myrrh, from the mid-18th century into the 20th century.
It is worth noting that last year the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney—I declare an interest as it is one of my former sites of study—decided to remove fragments of mummies from public display, and has been seeking to rename its so-called mummy room to something more respectful. They removed a mummified foot that had been donated in an old biscuit tin, the preserved feet and partial shins of a child, a partially bandaged adult head and a mummified hand that had been donated in a separate biscuit tin. As the curator there said, the ancient Egyptians are not around as a people today to object to this disrespectful treatment, but that does not mean that we should not look more broadly than just at those remains for whom there are identifiable peoples who are still able to speak for them, such as the voice I quoted from Berlin. It is not just about those remains; we should be thinking about all remains.
As I started off by saying, this is a geopolitical issue and an issue of reparations. Most foundationally of all, it is an issue about what kind of society we want to be. It is not about the remains at all; it is about us and what we are like. If we are going to be respectful of human life of the past, the present and the future; what is in our museums; what our children visit and view; what our scholars study; and how they are presented with the past, that has an impact on the nature of our society today. We often hear talk about being world-leading. If we were to take the steps outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Black, we would be world-leading and we would also be taking steps to improve our own society.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this important debate. I will speak to the two issues posed by this Question for Short Debate separately—namely, the sale in public auctions; and subsequently the display and retention in public collections.
As it stands, businesses and auction rooms decide whether to prohibit the sales of human body parts, taking into account the consent and licensing provisions of the Human Tissue Act 2004. There are some gaps in that Act, in that it bans commercial dealings of human tissue only in the context of medical transplantation, rather than sales as artefacts. However, in many cases—not all, but many—where a business is perceived to be in the wrong when selling human body parts, the solution is that they withdraw their auction lot. In fact, we saw this in October 2024, when an auction house in Oxfordshire withdrew human and ancestral remains from a sale following criticism from native groups and museums.
The director of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which holds such items in its collection and is in dialogue with communities over the future of such remains, said that she was “outraged” at the proposed auction and praised the decision to remove the items. She said that the sale was “ethically really problematic” for many communities worldwide, and went on to say:
“The fact these objects were taken is really painful, and the fact that they were being put on sale is really disrespectful and inconsiderate”.
This is a live, worked example of challenging constructively and the complainants were indeed within their rights to do so. It illustrates that, generally speaking, the sensible free market appears to be operating with a measured approach and in an appropriate way that does not necessarily need to come under closer regulatory control. I quote Tom Keane, an auctioneer and valuer and the owner of the Swan auction house:
“We looked into it, we respected the views expressed and we withdrew the items”.
However, I very much take on board the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Black, that there are clearly some extremely disturbing practices in other sale markets, which obviously need to be addressed.
On the display of human body parts, I highlight the great importance of museums in their educational function. Museums preserve historical artefacts, and I would hope that their trustees are sensitive to the subject of displaying human body parts; their intentions should be honourable. Through the display and retention of human body parts, we learn the lessons of the past. The British Museum, for example, has a truly magnificent collection of mummified bodies and Egyptian art, inspiring everyone, young and old, to learn about the pharaohs, the curse of Tutankhamun, Cleopatra and, most recently, Thutmose II. Through these displays and exhibitions, future Egyptologists learn about ancient burial practices and techniques.
The British Museum holds and cares for more than 6,000 human remains. They mostly comprise skeletal remains but also include bog bodies and intentionally or naturally mummified bodies, as well as objects made either wholly or in part from human remains. The key phrase here is “cares for”, whether it is the curator, the learning and participation team, front of house, the conservation or restoration technician, the museum technician or a fundraiser. While I cannot speak for everyone involved, I hope that the majority of those individuals treat body parts with the extreme respect and courtesy they rightly deserve as playing a part in the rich and varied history of the past. Losing this reminder of history could have a detrimental effect on people’s learning about the time it represents.
I quote a British Museum spokesperson, who said:
“The museum is mindful of ethical obligations and closely follows the guidance set out by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Human Tissue Act 2004, which ensures that human remains held in its care are always treated and displayed with respect and dignity”.
Most importantly, many museums, such as the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, are reaching out to communities whose human remains they display, so that the communities themselves can let the museums know how they would like those museums to care for them, or whether they would like them to be repatriated.
Finally, I highlight by way of an example—we have many different arguments here—the removal of a mummy from Spain’s National Archaeological Museum. The 11th-century remains of a 40 year-old chief of the Guanche, the indigenous group who populated the archipelago before the Spanish arrived, was moved from display in Madrid in response to new decolonisation laws. The president of the Government of Tenerife denounced the mummy’s removal to a warehouse as “inadmissible”, describing the mummy as
“a symbol of our ancestral culture … with an incalculable historical and cultural value for our people”.
Obviously, this is a subject that must be treated with the utmost respect and sensitivity. We have heard arguments on both sides of the coin. It is our wish that we try to find a workable solution that honours the views and feelings of those directly affected by this issue while attempting to retain the educational value, where appropriate, of any items by mutual consent between museums and communities. Clearly, work also needs to be done on what is acceptable for all parties involved so that everyone is happy with the outcome.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Boateng for securing this debate on this sensitive and hugely important topic.
I begin by echoing the Deputy Prime Minister who, speaking in the other place last year, declared the sale of human body parts, regardless of their age and origin, to be abhorrent. I am personally appalled by any disrespectful treatment of human remains and agree wholeheartedly with the Deputy Prime Minister’s view. As my noble friend said, this issue is about basic human decency. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome, I genuinely cannot see how we have more stringent law around the sale of ivory—the briefing I got mentioned birds’ nests and birds’ eggs—than around human remains. It feels completely out of step with where we should be as a society.
I know the Museums Minister met with Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP this morning to talk about this topic. The Secretary of State and I have also spoken, and I have read with interest the report Laying Ancestors to Rest, published by the APPG for Afrikan Reparations yesterday. Its recommendations will inform the Government’s consideration of the issues raised today and is very timely. It is clear that the practices that prompted this debate impact many people, with the potential to cause significant distress and offence to communities across the globe. As a result, this topic should be given the respect and attention it deserves.
In response to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, about the number of speakers in this debate, I point out that the time allowed for speakers as a result of the number of speakers means that noble Lords have had more time, which feels more appropriate than a more rushed debate. I was in the youth debate immediately before and people had three minutes each; this feels much more appropriate so that we can go into a bit more depth on this important issue. However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that this is about the type of society we want to be.
On the issues in my noble friend’s Question, I will discuss the treatment of human remains, first in museums and secondly at public auction, before turning to what I hope are some helpful next steps we will take as a Government in the coming weeks. I apologise that some of this reflects the current position we are in and not necessarily where people might wish us to be.
Although I acknowledge that museums are operationally independent of the Government and that decisions relating to their collections are for their trustees to make, I expect them to be respectful in the way they care for and display human remains. I agree with my noble friend Lord Boateng that this country should lead in relation to best practice—a point also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Black. Arts Council England clearly requires museums to abide by the long-established code of ethics, overseen by the Museums Association, as a prerequisite for museum accreditation. All museums in England are able to remove human remains from their collections. National museums in England, which otherwise have legal restrictions on the disposal of items in their collections, were permitted by the Human Tissue Act 2004 to remove human remains from collections, provided that they are reasonably believed to be the remains of a person who died fewer than 1,000 years ago.
My noble friend Lord Boateng and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, referenced the Pitt Rivers Museum, which has, for example, taken steps to remove all human remains from public display and is working to contact descendant communities to agree ways forward. As noble Lords will be aware, DCMS issued guidance for the care of human remains in museums in 2005. This encourages museums to establish an advisory framework to assist in determining repatriation claims and provides a set of criteria that need to be taken into account in assessing claims. I read this guidance this morning, and it is clearly 20 years old; the world has changed substantially, as yesterday’s APPG report makes clear. It is also clear that, sometimes, incomplete collections and databases make it really difficult to know what and where human remains are held—which, in this age of digitalisation, seemed surprising to me, although I am not an expert.
My noble friend Lord Boateng referenced the British Museum and the issue of the tattooed Māori heads. DCMS Ministers regularly meet with the British Museum’s chair and directors, and I will ensure that this is raised with them, as well as other issues raised during the debate.
As I mentioned earlier, the majority of museums in England would be able to return mummies and mummified remains. However, the cut-off date in legislation is currently a thousand years from the date the relevant sections came into force. Although many museums do undertake extensive and detailed work while looking at the return of human remains, documentation establishing the provenance of some human remains is often incomplete, lacking detail or incorrect. As a result, the research and identification process is a challenging and resource-intensive task. I am not underplaying the importance of that task; it is a vital piece of work to ensure that the human remains are treated with appropriate respect.
Since the introduction of the Human Tissue Act 2004, a number of successful repatriations of human remains have been made. For example, the Natural History Museum has returned the remains of just under 600 individual people to a number of countries, including to communities in Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii. They are continuing with detailed provenance investigations to inform potential future returns.
I understand that museums often hold repatriation ceremonies when returning ancestral remains, to try to ensure that the communities involved feel that they have an opportunity for healing and to honour their ancestors. We are in regular contact with relevant museums and we support them in their work to return human remains. This includes recent meetings to discuss the concerns raised, the communities impacted and recommendations for further action.
The topic of the sale of human remains via auction houses, online or by any other means was spoken to at length by the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome. As she made clear, while the Human Tissue Authority created by the Human Tissue Act in 2004 regulates the public display of human remains, it does not cover sales or purchases, as the Act does not regulate the sale of human remains that were not intended for transplantation.
Over the course of the week since I started preparing for this debate, I have been appalled by the type of objects that are readily available online. In my view, it is appalling and unacceptable. UK auction houses have to set their own standards and best practice in this area, taking into account the consent and licensing provisions of the Act as it stands. As DCMS officials have already relayed to the sector’s representative bodies, the Government expect all organisations and individuals to act appropriately and respectfully in relation to these sales.
I turn briefly to the UK art market—this is not art, in my opinion. However, we have one of the largest art markets in the world and play host to some of the most renowned institutions for the study and practice of art. This Government are committed to maintaining this reputation and want us to be a global centre of expertise, both in arts and in culture.
Although the sale of human remains is rejected by representatives of the UK art market, recent events, including, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Boateng and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, in Oxfordshire, have demonstrated that some auction houses are involved in the sale of body parts. This is hugely concerning. This Government call on all auction houses to scrutinise their activities rigorously and for anyone trading in human remains to consider very carefully the ethical implications of this deeply disturbing activity for those communities impacted.
As a Government, we must also consider how we can work together to address these issues, which cut across multiple departments. The Health Secretary met with Bell Riberio-Addy, MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, in December, following concerns she raised in the other House on the topic of the sale of human remains online and via auction. In the last year, and again over the past few days, DCMS officials have raised the sale of human remains with the British Art Market Federation, the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers and the Human Tissue Authority, as well as discussing the display and care of human remains from indigenous and other peoples in public collections with representatives from the museums sector.
We are now in a position to set up a cross-Whitehall meeting of relevant Ministers and policy officials to discuss a range of options, including legislative change, to prohibit the abhorrent sale of human remains and to further protect the dignity of those remains belonging to indigenous peoples.
I once again thank my noble friend Lord Boateng for bringing this topic to my attention and the attention of my department and the Government.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down—she has given a very encouraging response to the Question—will she address the question of a possible meeting between indigenous communities, when they visit the United Kingdom in June and October, and her and other Ministers, because that would be hugely encouraging to this conversation? It must be said that when in the past they have met representatives of the British Museum trustees, they have not returned with an answer that was acceptable to those indigenous communities, and it would help them to meet with Ministers.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I was just coming to the point that I would be very happy to invite my noble friend to meet me, or another Minister from DCMS, to continue this conversation. I would be very happy to facilitate a meeting of the type he has requested. I am happy to commit to a meeting myself. I will pass on the request to other Ministers, as is appropriate in my view, rather than committing my colleagues to specific meetings, but I am very keen to work with him to discuss pathways forward to address some of the hugely disturbing and distressing practices discussed today, which should be for the past, not the present day.
Biodiversity and Conservation
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Grayling
To ask His Majesty’s Government what is their strategy for biodiversity and conservation.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to launch this debate today. I am going to bring together a number of themes that I followed when I was in the other place, and which I have been very committed to continuing here. I hope that the number of noble Lords here this afternoon indicates to the Minister and her colleagues just how passionately many of us feel about getting biodiversity and conservation right.
I want to start by pushing the Minister on a subject that I worked pretty hard on in the last Parliament. Some progress had been made, but not enough, on bottom trawling in marine protected areas. Bottom trawling is a way of fishing that is devastating to the creatures and ecology of the seabed. It does immense damage, and it is extraordinary that it is still permitted in many of our marine protected areas. The public would expect those areas to be protected but they are not; they are hugely exposed to some of the most industrial fishing techniques. Boats come from other countries with vast nets that drag along the seabed, causing damage to fish, other sea creatures and the ecology of seabed, whether it is plants or corals. We were not able to address this while we were a member of the European Union, but we have been able to since we left, freed from the rules of the common fisheries policy. It is an issue on which we had started to make progress. The Dogger Bank, for example, was one of the first marine protected areas to see a proper ban on bottom trawling, and I very much believe that that work needs to continue.
That work needs to continue carefully, because I am acutely aware that there are a number of communities around the United Kingdom that use small fishing boats—local people with local livelihoods—and I would not want to see those damaged or destroyed. But of course, a small trawler coming out of a port in Devon, for example, does not do anything like the damage that is done by a huge industrial trawler, so it is very possible to shape rules that leave smaller boats the flexibility to operate as they always have done in local fisheries. Frankly, in reality, those communities have always wanted to protect their surrounding marine ecology, because that is what delivers their livelihoods. However, these large vessels should not be coming into our marine protected areas, and I have two requests for the Minister today.
First, the previous Government made a start, and I was pleased with it, but they did not move fast enough, and I challenged them on a number of occasions to get a move on and extend this ban to the other marine protected areas. I very much hope that the Minister and her colleagues will do that expeditiously, because it is fundamental to our marine ecology.
I turn now to an issue that I hope the Minister will take up with her colleagues in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. There is no doubt that, as part of the Government’s much-advocated reset of relations with the European Union, we will come under pressure to grant back substantial fishing rights to other countries. Without judging the rights or wrongs of that, it should not include rolling back environmental protections. I know there are those who wish to fish for sand-eels in the Dogger Bank, but to go back to that kind of fishing would do huge damage to what is a very precious ecology. I do not believe that any of us, whether a Brexiteer or a remainer, want to take a step back on environmental standards. To walk away from the protections that have begun to be put in place as part of that negotiation would, in my judgment, be a huge mistake. I urge the Minister to work with her colleagues to make sure that that does not happen.
That is my first priority: that we get on with the protections that are needed for our marine protected areas and make sure we do not step back from them. The second point—which is very topical this week—is around the issue of biodiversity and development. This is always a difficult balance to find. There are safeguards that have been put in place. One of the things I pushed for in the last Government, and which I am glad was put in place and would ask the Minister to make sure is protected, was a safeguard against the ability of a developer to clear a site before they apply for planning consent. I suspect those of us who have been in the House of Commons have all experienced this—a developer buys a small plot, completely bulldozes it and gets rid of any nature on the site before they even get planning consent. There have been very real examples of serious ecological damage being done. There was a case in the south-west—I used to be the hedgehog species champion in the other place—of a large number of hedgehogs that were killed by industrial strimming of a site to clear it ahead of development before planning consent could even be granted. So, whatever comes out of the planning Bill, I ask the Minister not to compromise on that.
There is another particularly worrying concern in the planning Bill. Departments do not always read across what others are doing, as I know, so I want to draw it to the Minister’s attention. I cannot believe it is an intentional consequence of what has been brought forward this week, but it is a real consequence. In a system in which each developer has to pay a fixed tariff into a nature restoration fund for a particular type of site, with no flexibility in it, a developer with a good record of trying to look after the environment, who would spend money on a nicely landscaped pond, wooded areas and amenities among the housing, has to pay the same tariff as somebody who comes and bulldozes the site and builds over everything. That makes no sense at all. Every developer would then have the incentive just to bulldoze. I am sure that is not what the Government intend, but as the measure comes forward, I would ask her to talk to her colleagues and officials and see whether that can be addressed. None of us would want that situation; we want developers to behave in the most responsible way possible. We want to see a proper balance, so that we see proper investment in nature and developers treating nature sensitively.
There is one other big question around conservation that emerges from this week. None of us really understands where biodiversity net gain fits alongside the new systems being put in place. Biodiversity net gain was one of the things that I felt was a positive step forward taken by the last Government. It takes away from the developer to ignore the nature side of things. There are now established structures in place that not only put money into compensation funds—that is one avenue—but invest in specific projects around the country. I do not think it is clear yet—and it is certainly causing anxiety—what the role of biodiversity net gain is alongside the new funds that are being put in place. We have legally binding targets for 2030. The Government’s idea of having funds that can be reinvested in nature and facilitate development without ignoring the nature issues is potentially beneficial. We will debate the detail of that as the legislation comes through the other House and this House. But it is important to explain early on precisely how that fits together with what is already there.
There are two or three points to wrap up with. On the farming front, there is obviously a significant question around the changes we have seen this week. We must not see a situation where farmers lose the incentive to look after their land in the most nature-positive way. Clearly, we want them to grow food successfully and effectively. I am a passionate believer in regenerative farming, for example. The Minister’s department needs to take great care that, in dealing with some of the funding challenges that I know it has, it does not disincentivise or halt investments that would otherwise take place.
There are also issues in the planning system that could be smoothed out. For example, at the end of the previous Parliament, we heard a lot from farmers who said, “I’d quite like to address my water issue by building a small reservoir on my farm”, but the planning complexities in doing something like that—even though it could help solve some of the pollution problems in nearby rivers—are enormously difficult.
Finally, I have two quick requests of the Minister. First, the work on deforestation and forest risk products has not yet been completed and finished properly. We very much want to see that happen quickly. Secondly, there is a piece of unfinished work on ensuring that the due diligence principle also applies to financial institutions that invest in forest risk areas. I would be grateful if the Minister and her colleagues in the Government could make sure that that happens as well.
Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for opening this debate, which I very much welcome. Following on from his many detailed points, I am going to speak more broadly about the UK’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan, launched in Rome last week.
I am going to speak broadly because, to me, if we have this strategy, at least we know the direction in which we are going. In any strategy to reverse and halt nature loss, we have to be clear on three things: first, the aspirational outcomes; secondly, the actions that we will take to achieve those outcomes; and thirdly, a way of measuring progress towards achieving them. I believe that, in the UK, we currently have the first and second in place through domestic legislation and international commitments, as well as the policies that they have borne, but we are still a long way off the third—namely, measuring progress towards achieving these outcomes and understanding the most critical question in saving nature: what works?
In the 120 years since the first nature reserves and national parks were created—we have been trying to do this for 120 years, so it is quite easy to look at this as an historical timeline—three different strategic aspirations associated with reversing and halting nature loss have developed, all of which are in use today. The first aspiration, which emerged around 120 years ago, was to save and protect the most rare, vulnerable, threatened and iconic aspects of nature, be they species, habitats or landscapes. Historically, this was done by creating national parks and AONBs; the modern equivalent is absolutely our 30 by 30 commitment. That is what we are trying to do. In the past two years, many statutory instruments have come through under the Environment Act. We know where we are with them. Broadly speaking, we also know how we are doing; in most cases, it is not very well, but at least we can measure how we are doing.
A second framing emerged in the 1990s. This had a strategic aspiration to reverse and halt the loss of nature by conserving and restoring the ecological processes that underpin biodiversity. It was argued that, without these, we would not have thriving, resilient nature. Here, I am talking about rewilding, restoring large herbivores as ecosystem engineers—beavers, even—and creating wildlife corridors. However, as far as I can tell, we still do not have in the UK the metrics for measuring the success of the measures that we have put in place.
I give noble Lords one example: the rewilded Knepp estate. I do not how many noble Lords have been there but, if you visit it, you really understand what a thriving, biodiverse environment looks like, as well as how we have halted nature loss and restored after its decline. However, if the estate’s success is measured using the BNG tool and/or the species abundance list, as we are supposed to do and as people have done, it comes out as a low-quality habitat full of obnoxious weeds. So we do not have a way of measuring it.
The third and final framing came out in the early 2000s, with the strategic ambition to halt the loss of and restore nature that provides important ecosystem services that are essential to human well-being. This includes things such as creating wetlands to clear nitrates from rivers and creating a carbon market. Policies associated with this include ELMS and, in cities, policies focused on restoring green spaces for people’s health and wealth-being. We have signed up to this aspiration. Target 11 of the global biodiversity framework is:
“Restore, maintain and enhance nature’s contributions to people”.
However, as far as I can tell, we are not measuring that either. We have no metrics in place to look at this issue.
We have all of these strategies, ideas and aspirations in our most recent UK national biodiversity strategy and action plan, which is great—it was celebrated in Rome last week—but, at present, we are simply unable to determine how two out of three of these aspirations are working. That is a big problem. I urge the Minister to come up with new ways of measuring progress on those two framings because, anecdotally, two of the ecological processes—ELMS rewilding and corridors—are working a lot better right now than protected areas. So we really need to understand what works and how we should move forward.
I have one final point. I know that I am over the time limit, so I will soon be quiet, but I really welcome the Government’s statement this morning on AI. It is a tool that we should be using in nature, such as using datasets to work out what works. We should use this as an opportunity.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, on getting this debate. I am sad to say that nature does not seem to play much of a role in Labour’s aspirations for its term of office. The Prime Minister cannot stand tree-huggers like me and Rachel Reeves talks as if she wants to squash frogs and newts under the wheels of progress. It does not look good at the moment. Lots of people enjoy the countryside, litter-pick and clear paths. I do not think that they understand where Labour is going regarding biodiversity and nature; they see this as an issue that Labour cannot connect with.
Only yesterday, riverside campaigners discovered that, under new rules proposed by this Government, the precious waterways that they seek to clean up and protect would be unlikely ever to achieve bathing water status and thereby win the extra testing and safeguards of the Environment Agency. If these rivers are not safe for people, they are definitely not safe for wildlife. They are not great for fish and all the other ecosystems there. This is only a small issue, I guess, but this Government are aiming to undermine attempts by campaigners to use the EU-derived Bathing Water Regulations as a driver to clean up our toxic rivers, which of course suffer from sewage pollution, agricultural run-off and urban run-off.
Another proposed change by the Government is in their Planning and Infrastructure Bill. They want to move away from individual ecological assessments in the planning process and look at big plans, with lots of money being spent on nature somewhere else. This could inflict significant damage on UK biodiversity, as the developer will be allowed to erase biodiversity in one place as long as they do something that looks good in another place. I saw this at work when I was a councillor. It is a scam. Nature always loses out. Labour is moving in absolutely the wrong direction. Of course, this approach would violate international and domestic, legally binding commitments to restore and protect nature.
I want houses built and I want our energy system upgraded to cope with a massive increase in renewable energy. I also want those houses and renewable energy sources to be owned by local communities, not by developers who slow the whole system down. However, this Government appear to want to bypass the communities that protect their local landscapes and their rivers and biodiversity. When we are already one of the most nature-deprived countries in Europe, I am worried that the changes to the planning system in favour of developers—as well as the other backward steps that this Government are planning to take—will make things much worse. This is not what I expected from a Labour Government, and I do not think it is what a lot of Labour voters expected either.
I have two questions. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the urgency in tackling toxic pollution continues against the ongoing threat to our coastlines from underreported spills from oil and gas developments in the North Sea? We really are not protecting our marine protected areas. As I said earlier this week in the Chamber, only 5% of marine protected areas are actually protected, while the others are vulnerable to bottom trawling.
Secondly, the tanker collision is another shocking reminder of the polluting power of big oil, so I am curious as to why the Government have gone ahead with the last round of offshore oil licences in and around marine protected areas. I am more than happy to help Labour in any way if it would like some of our Green Party policies, which are so superb at protecting nature and biodiversity.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Grayling for enabling us to discuss this important subject. Nature-based solutions and the enhancement of our biodiversity are our greatest ally in tackling climate change and mitigating flood risk, yet we are in the midst of an ecological crisis both in the UK and globally. Over the past 50 years, the UK has lost nearly half of its biodiversity, making it one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. This is not just an environmental issue; it is an economic and social one, where the integrity of our natural environment should be enmeshed with the implementation of policy in order to support our food security, public health and economic stability.
The introduction of biodiversity net gain is a step in the right direction, requiring developers to leave nature in a better state than they found it. Biodiversity net gain is already starting to drive investment in habitat restoration. However, we must ensure that it delivers real, measurable improvements on the ground. That means robust enforcement, clear biodiversity metrics and a genuine focus on local nature recovery. This is not about box-ticking exercises or distant offsetting. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Grayling said about needing clarity on this subject.
Local nature recovery projects are another crucial piece of the puzzle. These projects give communities the tools to restore their own landscapes, whether through tree-planting, wetland creation or species reintroduction. However, ambition needs funding, which is why the Nature Restoration Fund must be expanded and made easier to access. Right now, too many projects are struggling to get off the ground due to bureaucracy or short-term funding cycles. If we are serious about reversing biodiversity loss, we need to match policy ambition with financial backing.
Of course, public funds alone cannot deliver the scale of restoration needed. The private sector must play a bigger role. For that to happen, though, we need the right financial incentives. One of the most effective ways to unlock private investment is to integrate the UK Woodland Carbon Code and the peatland code into the UK Emissions Trading Scheme. This would give businesses a clear, regulated pathway to invest in nature-based carbon sequestration, ensuring that woodland creation and peatland restoration received long-term financial support. At a time when public funding is tight, this is a market-driven solution that could deliver major environmental and economic benefits.
Beyond our borders, the UK must continue to play a leadership role in global nature finance. At the Cali COP, we made real progress by securing a deal on resource mobilisation and launching the Cali Fund for nature. This new funding mechanism is designed to direct financial resources into biodiversity projects worldwide, particularly in countries on the front line of ecological collapse.
Here at home, there are further steps that we can take to drive nature recovery. Much of the debate is at the broader scale of biodiversity environment level but within our natural world are populations and individual sentient animals. We must develop and manage our natural world. Here I acknowledge the important Bill that my noble friend Lady Helic will bring forward in due course on a close season for hares. I urge action as soon as possible to resolve the long-standing inconsistency in our laws for animals. A close season for hares is long overdue: the shocking screams of hares as they are shot during driven shoots in February, at a time when does are pregnant and lactating, is an anathema to an animal-loving country.
I look forward to hearing how the Minister responds to this debate.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
It is a genuine pleasure to follow and hear from my noble friend. I declare that I am a long-time supporter of and campaigner for the Conservative Environment Network. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Grayling on securing this debate and giving his cracking rallying cry at the start; it has been a fantastic debate thus far.
I want to start on a positive, as I always try to do when it is this Minister. I congratulate her because, finally, someone has delivered beavers. They have been released and, what is more, they were released on my birthday. I am very grateful for that present.
In a Question the other day, another of our furry friends was referred to. It is a heartfelt joy to see my noble friend Lady Helic speaking in this debate. I do not wish to steal her thunder—I could not do so even if I tried—but, as has been noted, she has a Private Member’s Bill on a close season for hares. Having suffered significant population decline where their wider habitats are threatened, they are a crucial part of the ecosystem. As has been said, the period is to reflect the breeding season when leverets—the baby hares—are dependent on their mothers and will not survive if the mother is killed for fun. Other parts of the country have this measure in place, as do vast swathes of the EU. I appreciate that it is for the Whips to decide when that Bill will appear for Second Reading but I would like—as we heard in the Chamber the other day, I am not alone in wanting to see something happen—to put in a plug: for those who have concerns, let us have that debate.
As has already been said, there is, as ever, concern about the future of British farming, not least with the recent announcements on SFI. I want to sense check something, because the Government, when they announced the ending of the scheme, said that it was successful—more so than ever before, they said—yet it appears to be too successful and was immediately scrapped. I do not quite understand that and I want to just check if the Government still believe in nature, not to mention farmers who are already feeling immense pressure.
Another issue, which has already been covered by other speakers, is bottom trawling. Like the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, I find it bizarre that we allow this practice in marine protected areas and still call them that. We seem to be in a position in which we say these areas are protected because we are able to monitor their activity, even when the majority of the MPAs see the activity take place. If the notion of bulldozing does not make Governments move—and I use the word “Governments” because it happened under us, I am afraid to say—then what about the economics? One report said there could be a benefit of between £2.5 billion to £3.5 billion over 20 years if the sites were protected from all damaging activity. Can the Minister say whether there has been any assessment of the benefits to sustainable fishers from the UK banning bottom trawling? Can the Minister give reassurances that we will not cave to the ramblings from nos amis français, will not retreat in the so-called EU reset and will learn from the Greeks, who are seen to be much more ahead and stopping it completely?
I will make a broader final point about nature and, crucially, rewilding. In a few days, it will be World Rewilding Day. We can make a difference on nature and biodiversity, but it is not only because we should feel better about ourselves—it is real. It is jobs and growth, health and food, it can educate and inform, and everyone can play their part, because nature is our ally. It is why beavers, rewiggling rivers and putting in nature help tackle the effects of weather, but also what we do to our country. It is about finding a way for man and nature to work together. I know we will study this when the planning Bill is discussed, but I am frustrated to hear endlessly some Ministers say that nature is blocking the building of homes—that, in effect, we cannot have both. The two are totally compatible and can prosper together.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, on introducing this debate and I thank my noble friends for supporting my Private Member’s Bill, but above all for supporting hares. I recognise the Minister’s personal commitment to biodiversity and conservation, and I really welcome it. I thank her for all our conversations; I have walked away positive, but I do not know whether we are going to get anywhere. However, I thank her very much.
Global biodiversity is in freefall, driven by habitat destruction, intensive agriculture and unsustainable land management. The State of Nature report has, sadly, identified Britain as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. This is a matter of national heritage, ecological stability, and rural sustainability.
I commend the previous Government for pioneering the global biodiversity framework and embedding legally binding targets through the Environment Act 2021. I also welcome the current Government’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan, but if we are serious about halting biodiversity loss we must focus on specific, meaningful actions. That is why I too urge the Government to address the plight of one of our most iconic yet vulnerable species: the hare.
Hare populations have declined by over 85% since the late 19th century, decimated by modern farming, habitat loss and unsustainable shooting practices. Despite this alarming decline, this is the only game species in England and Wales without a statutory close season, meaning that they can be shot legally throughout the year. This is both an animal welfare and a biodiversity issue. Hares are not just part of our national heritage; they play a crucial role in biodiversity. Their grazing habits promote plant diversity and their foraging improves soil health.
The Born Free Foundation has highlighted the suffering inflicted on hares, which others have already mentioned, particularly when they are killed during the breeding seasons. Leverets, which are entirely dependent on their mothers for survival, are left to slowly starve to death or fall victim to predators. Current protections are fragmented and ineffective, and voluntary codes, although welcome, have failed to prevent the indiscriminate killing of hares.
Like many others, I believe that a statutory close season would bring England and Wales into line with the best practices elsewhere, ensuring that biodiversity commitments are not undermined by avoidable cruelty. Furthermore, studies show that introducing a close season, as elsewhere in Europe or in Scotland, has already had an impact on improving hare numbers. A close season would not hinder farmers but enhance clarity and consistency, licences could still be granted to prevent crop damage, and the legal framework would provide better enforcement against the brutal and illegal practice of hare coursing, which farmers have long endured.
With that in mind, will the Government introduce a statutory closed season for hares? Will they commit to a review of the current regulatory framework to ensure consistency across all game species? If we are serious about restoring biodiversity, we cannot allow inconsistency to undermine our ambitions. A close season for hares would be a small but vital step—practical, proportionate and long overdue.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, bracken is a plant that deserves admiration. It is thought to be largely unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs and it has been found on every continent except, to date, Antarctica. It is found across the UK, from a garden to an almost inaccessible hillside.
Bracken supports specialist flora and fauna and is welcome as part of a mosaic of vegetation types. However, it can out-compete other vegetation due to several biological adaptations. If there is no effective management, this can result in dense monoculture stands with the loss of sensitive and diverse species—which, in comparison to the mosaic, are biological deserts. The Lake District is an example of an area which is suffering from this, but it is far from alone.
Currently, there is no reliable estimate of the area of bracken in the UK and of whether, and by how much, it is increasing. Farmers and land managers were able to use Asulox, which was an effective control method, especially as it was possible to apply it from a helicopter. With its withdrawal from the UK market, they believe the plant is spreading at a rate of up to 5% each year, and the many problems associated with bracken are mounting.
Bracken can block access for walkers. It reduces the amount of land available for livestock grazing and nature, especially for red-listed species such as curlew, lapwing and raptors. It provides a habitat for sheep ticks and tick-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease, which are increasingly impacting on people, livestock and wildlife. Bracken is highly toxic and there are strong links to certain types of human and mammalian cancers. The toxic exudates from bracken risk polluting water and drinking water supplies. Bracken is a source of fuel for damaging wildfires, and in the right conditions burns at a high temperature with a long flame length, producing a highly irritating deep yellow smoke with carcinogenic and cyanide properties. Limestone pavements, a priority habitat, can be damaged, as can any underground archaeology or structure, as Historic England warns us.
Successive Governments failed to grasp the problems of this pernicious weed because Asulox was available. Now an opportunity presents itself to assess all the problems scientifically and holistically. Farmers and land managers will be only too willing to help with the delivery of an approach that keeps bracken in check, and this will help achieve the Government’s goal in the 25-year environment plan of
“creating or restoring 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat outside the protected site network”.
However, farmers and land managers need to be given the necessary information, tools and support.
The proposed UK strategic bracken framework is welcome so far as it goes, but it risks looking at the problem only from the nature conservation angle, which is not good enough. As bracken is a hugely and surprisingly complicated subject, a cross-sector approach to its future management is essential. Only the Government will enable that. Therefore, will the Minister convene a conference of all interested groups so that the many issues can be addressed and placed in context, and an effective way forward identified?
I thank my noble friend for arranging this debate: it is hugely important. We will lose a lot of expertise on this particular subject when the hereditary Peers go, but I just ask the Government, when they consider anything to do with the environment, to please base it on sound science rather than emotion.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, what an interesting debate, from beavers to bracken. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for bringing this essential debate and for raising the important issues of bottom trawling, biodiversity net gain and forest risk products.
Biodiversity is the heartbeat of the planet, and famously we are one of the most nature-deprived nations in the world, as the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, mentioned. One in six of our species is indeed threatened with extinction. Five years on from our 30 by 2030 commitments, we have not really made progress, as just 2.93% of land and 9.92% of our oceans is protected.
My worry is, despite the strong words in Labour’s manifesto of a “nature emergency”—I welcome progress on some issues—whether we are really seeing the robust action, the legislative requirements and the funds to meet the monumental scale of the challenge. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is right to raise the issue of the mixed messages from Labour on growth.
We welcome the UK’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan, but how does it fit with the overall government strategy? The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is absolutely right to raise the issue of strategy in this debate and ask what works. I understand Labour’s need for a short, sharp review, but this is separate from the environmental improvement plan, and, outside that framework, it is largely powerless and will soon be outdated. Will it be incorporated into the EIP? The Wildlife and Countryside Link says it is not clear whether the actions in this plan will add up to achieving the UK’s global nature commitments. The Office for Environmental Protection is clear that we are largely off-track, and the scale and the pace of the effort is not sufficient. The OEP’s recently published progress report is also very damaging. When will the Government respond to the OEP’s annual report?
We call on the Government to commit to incorporating all international biodiversity targets in the revised environmental improvement plan. This should include allocation of responsibility for delivery, along with evidence-based policies needed to achieve that delivery.
We need rapidly co-ordinated, properly funded, large-scale action. The polluter must pay. The Government must bring stronger legal protections and must provide the resources required for the Environment Agency to do the work it needs to do. We are running out of time. Fly-tipping, plastic pollution, sewage, forever chemicals, habitat loss and overfishing—the list goes on. The rapidly changing climate is compounding these problems. The window is closing fast, and we must do more to meet our biodiversity targets and commitments.
I conclude with some key points. Budgets are essential. I am particularly worried about growing pressures on the Defra budget, particularly for nature-based solutions. We must get nature-friendly farming right. We need our farmers; we must support them. They need certainty and reliability from this Government. The cut to the SFI budget, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, does not improve these relations.
When will we get a chemicals convention? We also need to stand up for climate science. The UK Government need to lead the world on this and stand up to Trump: stand up for truth.
Fly-tipping is an issue I have raised before, but when can we expect some legislation on this issue? It is blighting our countryside and is out of control. We need more on plastic pollution to encourage the circular economy. I welcome Labour’s commitment on woodlands and tree planting, but that has to happen.
I come to my final two points. Access to nature is vital, particularly in our cities. I call on the Government to include people, work with civil society and bring in citizen science; not only is it cost effective, it just makes sense.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as a farmer, forestry developer, landowner, owner of fishing rights and investor in Circular FX, Cecil and Agricarbon, which provide services to the natural capital industry. I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Grayling for securing this timely and important debate on the Government’s strategy for biodiversity and conservation. As Conservatives, we hold a deep-seated belief in our responsibility to preserve and enhance the natural heritage entrusted to us; that is why we brought forward the Environment Act 2021.
I must bring up the dreadful news on SFIs from Defra this week, as it impacts directly on the topic of this short debate: we expect farmers to deliver most of these improvements. Many were already facing unexpected financial hardship from the massive reduction in delinked payments, but this latest news adds many more who were expecting to transition to SFIs this year but had not yet applied. I ask the Minister: what assessment has been made of the impact of the SFI announcement on the financial viability of the farming industry? What impact will that have, in turn, on compliance with the legally binding commitment, delivered in our Environment Act, to deliver the 30% improvements in biodiversity and nature recovery? If incentives to benefit nature restoration and biodiversity largely target action by farmers and landowners, how can pausing them help?
The Government have committed to a nature restoration levy, which will possibly—I hope we will hear—replace the current biodiversity net gain system that we created. We on these Benches have grave concerns about its creation, as articulated by my noble friend Lord Grayling, and also about placing its administration with Natural England rather than with local authorities. How can the Minister reassure us that this will deliver better outcomes for nature?
Atlantic salmon populations have collapsed by over 75% in our rivers over the last 50 years, as evidenced by reported rod catches, and despite almost all fish being caught and released over recent years. The Atlantic salmon is a crucial indicator of the health of our river catchments and it is now on the IUCN red list. What specific measures will the Minister take to address water quality, pollution, selective restocking and habitat degradation in our rivers to support its and other species’ recovery? I urge the Minister to identify the salmon as a keystone species for biodiversity and nature restoration efforts. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, might agree with this strategy, given her comments on water quality. I note my noble friend Lady Helic’s comment that the hare is probably also a worthy inclusion as a keystone species to gauge the success of nature restoration.
I fully support the comments of my noble friend Lord Caithness: bracken can be a scourge, and it is depressing that its presence is so widespread in locations where we should really be planting trees in order to fulfil our strategy of restoring our woodland cover. My noble friend Lord Grayling mentioned the renegotiation of our TCA with the EU prior to mid-2026. I agree with his environmental comments and add that we also expect this Government to negotiate a deal that delivers complete zonal attachment in our exclusive economic zone for British fishermen.
Given this Government’s disappointing financial decisions, and as my noble friend Lord Courtown rightly highlights, we need more private sector finance to replace the public purse. It would be helpful if the Minister could help us understand what role she sees for private sector finance to replace public finance in biodiversity and conservation improvements. I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply to this short debate and the many questions posed, in writing if necessary.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, just said, there have been many questions and I have only 12 minutes to respond. I shall do my best but will of course write with any outstanding remarks that I need to make. I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for tabling today’s debate. It has been a very thoughtful and interesting debate, with many different contributions, all of which have huge merit as we discuss how we restore biodiversity in our country. We know it will be a challenge—we have very challenging targets—but I want to assure noble Lords that the Government are committed to protecting nature, because we rely on biodiversity for food, for regulating our climate, for pest control and for many more things that support our ecosystems.
In England, as noble Lords will know, we have committed to ambitious targets to halt the decline by 2030, to reverse the decline by 2042, to reduce the risk of species extinction by 2042, and to restore and create over 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats by 2042. We are honouring commitments to protect 30% of the UK’s land and sea by 2030—the 30 by 30 target; although it will be very challenging, it is extremely important.
The revised environmental improvement plan was mentioned. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, asked about the rapid review. In revising the plan, we aim to be clear on the role of the enablers—for example, green finance, which was mentioned by noble Lords. That needs to be implemented across government. We need to look at how enhancing nature supports the wider outcomes that the Government want, including for energy and growth. We will clarify Environment Act target delivery plans and update the interim targets to cover the five-year period from the completion of the review, in line with our statutory requirements. We will also clarify exactly how we intend to deliver the environmental improvement plan.
Local nature recovery strategies were mentioned. Those are being prepared currently and will be published. They will cover England, and the idea is to draw on the same data and principles as the land use framework, providing a key mechanism to enable progress. It is important that we join up all the different strategies and principles that we are taking forward. However, we are not waiting for the revised environmental improvement plan or the finalised land use framework to act. We have challenging targets, and we know that we need to take action on three fronts: to restore and create wildlife-rich habitats; to tackle pressures on biodiversity; and to take targeted action for specific species. Various species have been mentioned in the debate.
We know that our environmental land management schemes are crucial to enabling much of this. A number of noble Lords mentioned farming. An announcement was made this week on the SFI. A lot of questions were asked, but there will be a Statement on this issue on Tuesday and we can explore it in more detail then.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, asked about planning and the Nature Restoration Fund. On Tuesday, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill was introduced. The idea is that, through the Nature Restoration Fund, the Bill will provide a more efficient and effective way for obligations related to our most important sites and species to be discharged, at a scale whereby that action has the most impact. This will benefit development and nature recovery, where both are currently stalled.
I turn to fixed tariffs and the importance of developers behaving responsibly towards the environment. Developers must deliver a 10% increase in biodiversity, and the provisions are designed deliberately to discourage certain behaviours. Often with such issues, we need to see what happens in practice, but that is what the provisions are designed to do. I hope that helps reassure noble Lords.
The noble Lord asked about biodiversity net gain and the Nature Restoration Fund and how they will work together. The idea is that BNG and the Nature Restoration Fund will work in a joined-up manner, to maximise outcomes. The development section of the Nature Restoration Fund specifically addresses environmental impact and biodiversity net gain and will continue to apply. This is to ensure that developers are incentivised to reduce their biodiversity impact on site and to secure future residents’ and local people’s access to nature. That is extremely important to ensure that people do not lose that. We want to continue to seek opportunities to grow biodiversity net gain.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about the planning Bill and the impact it will have on nature. We are absolutely committed, when it comes to that legislation, that steps will be undertaken to deliver positive environmental outcomes. I encourage the noble Baroness to read the National Planning Policy Framework, in which the environment is central.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about the metrics around biodiversity. We have 55 individual measures comprising 29 indicators at the UK level. England and the UK biodiversity indicators are accredited official statistics and cover a wide range of species, including birds, butterflies, mammals and plants, in addition to habitats and the extent and condition of protected areas, as well as indicators for the response to pressures such as pollution and climate change. I hope that is helpful.
The water industry was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough. I assure him that we are doing a lot of work around this. He will be aware of the work that Sir John Cunliffe is doing. We absolutely recognise the importance of salmon and of Scottish businesses in this area. Clearly, we need to work together on this.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned pesticides. We are taking action to ensure that pesticides are used more sustainably—for example, we have committed to ending completely the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides that we know carry substantial risk to pollinators. We published a policy statement last year that sets out the next steps around pesticide commitments.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked about bracken—
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and others talked about beavers. I am really pleased that we have been able to set out our approach to the wild release and management of beavers in England. Beavers can bring enormous benefits, and I am pleased that we have management tools in place so that they are in the right place and can be managed properly.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, talked about bottom trawling, and other noble Lords asked about it, too. The noble Lord asked whether we would complete the previous Government’s work on this. At the moment, we are considering our next steps to manage bottom trawling, along with other fishing methods, where it could damage MPA features or benthic habitats, in the context of our domestic and international nature conservation obligations. We are keen to carry on working closely with fisheries and marine stakeholders, as well as environmentalists, as we develop future plans for fisheries and the marine environment.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, asked about the impact of the EU reset on fisheries and environmental standards. I cannot talk about what we are discussing on the EU reset, but, clearly, all these things are taken into consideration.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, also asked some questions around bottom trawling. The first two stages of the Marine Management Organisation’s offshore by-laws programme introduced by-laws in marine protected areas. Currently, our figures say that this protects 10.87% of English waters from bottom-towed fishing. Clearly, it is something that we need to be working on.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, asked about deforestation. We recognise the urgency of taking action to ensure that UK consumption of forestry commodities is not driving deforestation. I hope we will soon be setting out our approach to this.
A number of Members asked about green finance, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, and the noble Lord, Lord Roborough. We recognise the huge importance of mobilising private finance into nature’s recovery. We are doing a lot of work on this and will be grateful to work with noble Lords on suggestions for how we can move forward.
The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, mentioned the Cali Fund. We are working closely with businesses across a lot of sectors to see how we can take this forward.
There were a number of other questions, but I have only 10 seconds left. I want to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, that I absolutely heard what she has been saying about hares. There needs to be consistency—we completely appreciate that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, spoke about rewilding. We have our own rewilding project at home. I personally have seen the benefits that rewilding in the right place can bring. I end by saying that, two weeks ago, we found that we had curlews.
Capital Investment and Share Ownership
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to implementing an updated public-private partnership model to attract capital investment and to open share ownership to more people.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are committed to working in partnership with the private sector to deliver the infrastructure that our country desperately needs. We will set out our approach to unlocking greater private investment in UK infrastructure in the 10-year infrastructure strategy, which will be published alongside the spending review in June.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for that response. I wonder whether I can persuade the Minister to move rather faster with the suggestion, which some of us have been pursuing, that we need to review the structure of the PPPs that we had under the previous Labour Government. We need to extend it so that we have wider participation of not just government departments but cities and mayors. On the other side of the fence, we need to extend the private side and give individual citizens the right to shares in these new ventures. Is the Minister prepared to meet a small group of us to talk in advance of the review?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. As I say, the Government will publish a cross-cutting 10-year strategy for the UK’s social, economic and housing infrastructure in June, alongside the spending review. It will help to drive growth, deliver net zero and support improved public services by providing more coherence across different types of infrastructure than has been the case in the past. Of course, I am more than happy to meet my noble friend and the group he mentioned.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, some public/private partnerships have worked very well. The contract for difference system has been very good at getting a huge amount of private sector investment into the offshore wind sector. Others have proved far less successful. For example, there have been crippling costs for schools that have had long-term, low-quality, high-cost maintenance programmes. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell your Lordships’ House how the Treasury is learning from this. How is it involving the private sector in developing the right risk and reward structures for the right projects? How is it involving local authorities, which often end up picking up the cost of these public/private partnerships
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right in much of what he says. The private finance initiative was a specific public/private partnership model that was developed 20 years ago. The Government are actively managing the legacy PFI portfolio and learning lessons from that. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority believes that there is an opportunity for the public and private sectors to reset relationships, improve performance and deliver high-quality public facilities and services. Of course, lessons have been learned from the past. On 24 March the National Audit Office will publish a report called:
“Lessons learned: Private finance for infrastructure”.
Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)
The PFI has been a very mixed bag, but parts of it have been highly successful. Unfortunately, the Treasury’s approach to negotiating run-off in PFI has led a large number of top-flight managers in these good PFI projects to leave the industry altogether and seek work elsewhere. What steps are the Government taking to make sure that there is no further attrition?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As the noble Lord says, many of the private finance initiative contracts are coming to an end within the next decade. It is important to prepare early for a seamless transition to the public sector to protect taxpayers’ money. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority is responsible on the Treasury’s behalf, providing oversight and support to the portfolio of operational PFIs. It carries out regular health checks and, to date, around 215 expiry health checks have already taken place.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, a variety of Governments have tried to introduce private sector investment into water sector projects. The Pickering Slow the Flow pilot scheme that I was involved in at a later stage was hugely successful in factoring in a number of public partnerships. Can the Minister look at this to open up, for example, supermarket involvement and farmers contributing to flood resilience in catchment areas?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am very interested in what the noble Baroness says, and I will look at that further. As I say, the 10-year infrastructure strategy will be the point at which we set out the Government’s approach to private investment in infrastructure. I cannot say more than that at this point.
Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)
My Lords, does the Financial Secretary agree that, generally, the quality of PFI projects has improved over time, with an increasing number transferring risk successfully to the private sector and the projects being delivered on budget and on time? Given that the ONS now classifies pretty much all PFI projects as being on balance sheet, can he encourage the Treasury to provide sufficient expenditure cover in the spending review to support innovative public/private partnership proposals?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As the noble Lord describes, there have of course been positive examples of PFI projects. For example, more than 100 hospitals were built by the previous Labour Government’s PPP programme. The Government are absolutely committed to harnessing private investment and restoring growth. On the latter part of his question, as I said before, the 10-year infrastructure strategy will be the point at which we set out the Government’s view of that, and it will be published alongside the spending review in June.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that we should be wary, not least because of the experience with PPI in things such as schools and hospitals, which several noble Lords have mentioned, about the establishment of public/private partnerships? Can I encourage him to be a little more forthcoming? What does he see as the risks? How will the Government assess value for money for the new schemes, perhaps with the help of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which he mentioned, whose work I respect?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am afraid the noble Baroness cannot encourage me to be more forthcoming. As I have said, the 10-year infrastructure strategy will be the point at which we set out the Government’s approach to private investment in infrastructure. I think she will agree with me that private investment is vital for the country’s infrastructure. The Chancellor has established the British Infrastructure Taskforce, made up of some of the UK’s biggest financial companies. That will support the Government’s infrastructure goal and ensure that the strategy is credible and deliverable.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, of course the public/private partnerships and PFIs had risks, and of course there were failures. That is almost inevitable in any new experimental and radical approach to funding services. But the truth is that over the last 20-odd years, the level of services to people in Britain has been much higher because of our engagement with the private sector. Can I therefore encourage my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues not to be deterred when it comes to infrastructure? There is no doubt in my mind that huge added value is possible if we are prepared to be bold in public/private partnerships.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for those words, and I agree with much of what he said. The Government remain absolutely committed to harnessing private investment and restoring growth. We will work in partnership with the private sector while ensuring that projects provide value for money for taxpayers, now and in the future, and that appropriate lessons are learned from the past.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, is not the key to a successful private finance initiative the appropriate transfer of risk? To ensure that happens, it is important to have the people in the Treasury or elsewhere with the necessary skills to negotiate the appropriate contracts. In wishing the Government well in taking this forward, I ask them to give consideration as to how they will achieve that.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord is right. He is far more expert in these matters than I am, but I absolutely agree with him. Clearly, the public sector needs to be an intelligent client when it is negotiating with the private sector. That skill set is vital both within the Civil Service and in the skills we can draw on. As I mentioned, the Chancellor has established the British Infrastructure Taskforce to try to help with skills and advice. It is made up of some of the UK’s biggest financial companies, and it will support the Government’s infrastructure goals and ensure that the strategy is credible and deliverable.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the disastrous Blair PFI NHS hospitals scheme. I do not think there is much awareness that about half the money is still to be paid off. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, referred to the cost to local government. The Minister is probably aware of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research figure: local government is paying £13.5 billion. The institute also found that £1 billion had been made in pre-tax profit by a handful of companies, often registered in Guernsey and Jersey. Is PFI not simply a benefit to the financial sector?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I think it was probably a benefit to the people who were able to be treated in the 100 hospitals that were built as a result of it. As I say, the private finance initiative was a specific public/private partnership model that was developed 20 years ago. The Government are actively managing the legacy PFI portfolio, and we are learning lessons from that.
National Insurance Pension Underpayments
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Davies of Brixton
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of underpayments of National Insurance pension where entitlement to that pension is based on a spouse’s National Insurance record, and the underpayment is caused by “official error” by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, everyone should receive the state pension payments to which they are entitled. This Government understand the importance of putting right any errors. DWP became aware of issues with historic state pension underpayments in 2020 and took immediate action to investigate and correct the problem. A legal entitlements and administrative practices exercise—LEAP—began in January 2021, and DWP completed the vast majority of cases by December 2024 as planned. The exercise has now closed.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her Answer and welcome the good news. The problem is that this is only one aspect of the sheer complexity of state pension entitlement for spouses’ pensions. Because of the history, that largely affects women. Does my noble friend agree that the department should perhaps be doing more to inform people so they can find their way through the maze of entitlement?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My noble friend raises a really important point. There is a lot of complexity, particularly in the old basic state pension. With the new state pension, your entitlement depends on your own national insurance contributions in the majority of cases, so in future it gets a lot more straightforward. Most people claim their new state pension online, so getting it is mostly automated. However, under the old state pension, if you did not have enough pension in your own right, you could inherit it from a civil partner or a spouse, or a divorced partner or a late spouse. That has led to all kinds of complexities. We are making sure that before someone reaches state pension age, the Pension Service writes to them to tell them what they have to do to claim their state pension. As part of that process, they have to give us the details that enable us to work out if they are still carrying forward any entitlements from partners’ contributions as well as their own.
So, we are really committed to making sure there is clear, accurate, accessible information out there about the state pension. There is lots of it online, on GOV.UK. There is even a tool called “Your partner’s National Insurance record and your State Pension”, which, while not imaginative, is a pretty clear description of what it does. If anyone would rather not go online, they can ring the Pension Service, which will talk them through it. We are really determined to help people get this right.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, will the Minister give an assurance that beneficiaries who have been denied the benefit to which they are entitled will be paid in full, however far back it goes?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, some of the cases in the LEAP exercise go back to 2006, so this is already going back a very long way, but I can reassure the noble Lord that that the exercise went back through the book. This is really complicated, as I am sure he understands, but, in summary, the exercise specifically addressed women who reached the state pension age ahead of their husbands. That was not uncommon because, in those days, the retirement age for women was 60 and for men it was 65, so the woman got to the state pension age first. If she did not have enough pension in her own right and her husband reached the state pension age, she could then have inherited more state pension from his contributions. After 2008, that should have been done automatically by the DWP. Earlier, people had to claim, but where the DWP failed to do that automatically, the department has gone back through the entire book and made payments to all those people. That is what the system has been doing.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, there seems to be errors and more errors—a tower of errors without end. State pension underpayments have also arisen where there are errors in NI records, because of missing home responsibilities protection. The Minister mentioned pensions for women. Can she tell us how much the department has so far paid in arrears to those affected mothers? When does she expect this correction exercise to be completed?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
That was slightly different: it was about an error in people’s national insurance records. The DWP itself discovered during a fraud and error exercise that there were some historic errors in recording where people should have had home responsibilities protection in their national insurance record, which in turn would have affected their pension record. The Government have now contacted all the people they have identified as potentially missing HRP and invited them to make a claim for those missing periods. HMRC issued over 370,018 letters to potentially affected customers, and there have been approximately 493,813 hits on the GOV.UK HRP online checker. So far, the DWP has received 19,491 cases from HMRC and processed 11,694 of them, paying arrears of £42 million. I hope that answers the noble Lord’s question.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, recent statistics from the DWP demonstrate that 13 million people are receiving state pension payments. Saving adequately for retirement remains a challenge for many, particularly, as has been said, for single women and for those with gaps in employment, such as women taking time out to raise children and people suffering ill health. That is why the previous Government lowered the threshold for auto-enrolment to 18, with an opt-out, to enable retirement savings to commence earlier. As the Minister knows, the deadline of 5 April is fast approaching, before which people under the age of 73 can apply to buy back some of those lost years of contribution going back to 2006, and those benefits could make a huge difference to people’s lives. What is the level of uptake for this? Thinking about the warm words that the Minister gave about publicising DWP products, as it were, what more can she do to publicise this and make sure that the deadline is met?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I thank the noble Viscount; there have been good questions today. With the transition from the old state pension to the new state pension, it became more important that people had their own national contribution records in full, because that is what their pension will depend on in future. The previous Government set a deadline—originally April 2023, if memory serves me—by which people had to decide whether to apply to buy back missing years. That deadline was extended to April 2025, so it is coming up on 5 April. I can assure the noble Viscount that there is a surge of people wanting to buy years back; in fact, HMRC and the DWP are working together to ensure that everybody who wants to pay money to fill those gaps in their record can do so. Not only is there the online tool I mentioned earlier; customers can identify gaps and make payments automatically without even contacting the DWP or HMRC, or they can phone us. We have increased resources to about 480 people working across the Revenue and the DWP to manage the high volume of calls coming in.
To reassure not just the noble Viscount but anyone listening out there: as long as people contact the DWP ahead of the 5 April deadline, they will be able to fill gaps back to 2006. In addition, we have launched an online call-back form; people can simply register their interest and the DWP will call them back within eight weeks. Again, provided they register that interest before 6 April, they will be able to fill those gaps if they want to.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said. The Answers to some Parliamentary Questions I tabled to the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, suggested that HMRC did not hold these records centrally, so I am delighted to hear that work is ongoing. May I press the Minister further on what she just said? I am delighted to hear about the increased resources, but there is an intricate calculation to be made: for some people, it will not be worthwhile paying the extra voluntary national insurance contributions if they consequently miss out on pension credit. Recognising that the timeline is fast approaching, can the Minister assure me that sufficient resources are in place to help people make that calculation?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes an excellent point; I would expect no less, since she has rather more experience in this field than I do. She is right that there will be some people, in limited circumstances, for whom this becomes a marginal issue. A significant amount of information is available online from the DWP about the different sets of criteria, but I will check on the points she made and see whether we need to do anything else to make sure that the information is out there.
Independent School Fees: VAT
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the results of imposing value added tax on independent school fees on 1 January.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, before I call the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for the third Oral Question, I should remind noble Lords that there are active legal proceedings relating to the policy of applying VAT to private schools. Part of my role is to decide whether, in specific circumstances, it is appropriate to waive the application of the sub judice rule, under which we do not debate matters before the courts. In view of the national importance of this issue, I have decided to grant a waiver of the rule to allow reference to this matter on an ongoing basis. It is relevant to my decision that a similar waiver has been issued in the House of Commons.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as president of the Independent Schools Association, whose 700 members—mainly small schools—are now at serious risk of damage or closure.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
My Lords, the result of imposing VAT on school fees has been to help raise revenue to fund the Government’s objective that every child has access to high-quality education, including the 94% of children who are educated in the state sector. The Government have published a tax impact and information note setting out an analysis of the impacts of this policy. The Government’s costings, set out in a detailed costings note, have been certified by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. We remain confident in those assessments but will of course continue to monitor the impact of the reforms.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, what are the Government to say to the mother of a child with special needs whose independent school is closing because of their education tax? She writes to me: “Shell-shocked does not cover it. My child is autistic. State secondary was an utter disaster. She felt safe and happy. Her heart is now broken”. What are they to say to the head of a small independent school in Derbyshire with 120 pupils, who writes to me: “I am battling to save my life’s work”? How would members of the Government feel if they were forced to move their child to a new school in the middle of an academic year, particularly if exams were in the offing? How should the sudden imposition of an unprecedented education tax on 1 January, after a rushed consultation last summer when schools were on holiday, be described? One word does it: cruel.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question, and I pay tribute to his involvement in this sector. As he will know, probably better than me, there has historically been a significant turnover within the private school sector, with around 3% of private schools—roughly 75 in the UK—opening and closing each year, with the overall number of private schools remaining stable. Since this policy was announced in July, private schools have continued to open in England in line with historic trends.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister and the Government for their recognition of the unique role that the Music and Dance Scheme schools play in enabling talented young dancers and musicians to pursue their dreams, whatever their background. Is the Minister aware of the recent demonstration of the success of that scheme in the outstanding achievements of Jakob Wheway Hughes, who is a student on the scheme at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts? He won not one but three of the prizes at the prestigious international ballet competition, the Prix de Lausanne. Will the Minister join me not only in congratulating Jakob on his success but in noting the role that the Music and Dance Scheme has played in achieving that success?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. Of course, I will join her in congratulating Jakob. As she knows far better than I do, the Music and Dance Scheme provides grants and help with fees at eight schools and 20 centres for advanced training. The Department for Education has decided to adjust its Music and Dance Scheme bursary contribution for families with a relevant income below £45,000 a year to account for the VAT that will be applied to fees, ensuring that the total parental fee contribution for families with below-average relevant incomes remains unchanged for the rest of this academic year.
Lord Addington (LD)
I am not a Tory, thank you. I remind the House of my declared interests in this field. Special educational needs is one of the big sectors where the private system has been used by the state system to reinforce its own effectiveness. You get support only if you have an EHC plan. These are agreed by everybody as being extremely expensive and difficult to implement. Why are the Government giving support only to those with special educational needs who ask for such plans to be imposed on the state system and encouraging people who do not have them in the private sector to take them out?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
The policy remains as it was. It will not impact pupils with the most acute additional needs. Where pupils’ places in private schools are funded by local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales because their needs can be met only in a private school, local authorities will be able to reclaim that VAT. In terms of those without one of those systems in place, on average, the Government expect private school fees to increase by around 10% as a result of this measure.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I am not a Tory either. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that the scare stories coming from opposite, like many of their scare stories, have been proven to be wrong? The Press Association’s review of schools has shown that there has not been a major transfer from the private sector to the public sector. In fact, in the public sector in England, more pupils have got their first choice of school this year than last year. The private schools that are closing are doing so for reasons other than the increase in fees. The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, is shaking his head, but he is wrong.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As always, I agree with everything that my noble friend says. All the comments that we have heard to date about the Government’s assessments being incorrect have been proven to be wrong. On the number of pupils who would move from one sector to another, that is absolutely in line with what the Government’s assessment said. On the amount of VAT that would pass through to the fees that parents pay, that is absolutely in line with what the Government said. On the number of schools that would close, that is absolutely in line with what the Government said. As my noble friend said, many councils now say that there has been no obvious impact from the addition of VAT on private school fees, and more pupils are receiving their first choice of school than they did last year.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We have plenty of time. We will hear from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and then we will go to the Conservatives.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, while I welcome any relief for the music and dance schools, does the Minister accept that the £45,000 cut-off point for a whole family is too low? When will that be reviewed? Should not the Government do everything possible to encourage UK students into our creative schools, including the Yehudi Menuhin School, whose remarkable students we had the privilege of hearing in the Lords last week?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Earl for his question. I agree with the second part of it that we should encourage people into those schools. In terms of what the Government can do, the Department for Education has already acted and adjusted its scheme, and it will continue to maintain that for the rest of the academic year.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Many of our Armed Forces educate their children privately because that is the only way they can ensure continuous provision of education because of the extraordinary lives we ask them to lead and the sacrifices they make for the safety of our nation. While the MoD pays a continuity of education allowance, that covers only a proportion of the parental cost. The imposition of VAT on private school fees has added to the expense of the balance which Armed Forces personnel are paying, magnified if they have more than one child being educated. Is this really the best we can do for our Armed Forces personnel?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I agree with much of the sentiment that the noble Baroness expresses. The Government greatly value the contribution of our diplomatic staff and our serving military personnel. The continuity of education allowance provides clearly defined financial support to ensure that the need for frequent mobility, which often involves an overseas posting, does not interfere with the education of their children. As the noble Baroness will know, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office have both increased the funding allocated to that allowance to account for the impact of any private school fee increases on the proportion of fees covered. The noble Baroness raises the proportion of the fees paid by the parents. As she will know, on average, the Government expect private school fees to increase by around 10% as a result of this measure, but many schools, as we have seen so far, have fully or partially absorbed VAT costs. How individual schools fund this additional cost is a commercial decision for them.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
Does my noble friend agree that, although this is a critical area, it should be confined to those serving overseas and should not include those spending a substantial amount of time in the UK but still having their fees subsidised by either the MoD or the Foreign Office?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. As I have said, the continuity of education allowance is designed to provide clearly defined financial support to ensure that the need for frequent mobility, often involving overseas postings, does not interfere with the education of the children involved.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, VAT on independent school fees is an unpleasant, class-based change of the kind sometimes adopted by the party opposite. This increased private school fees by 12.7% this January, according to the ONS. We will debate this matter next week with the Finance Bill, but does the Minister not feel rather embarrassed that his Government are the first one to tax education?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
If the noble Baroness wants to talk about what she is embarrassed about, I am very happy to talk about the previous Government’s record over the past 14 years. This was a necessary decision that will generate additional funding to help improve public services, including for the 94% of pupils who are in the state sector.
Tell MAMA: Funding
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask His Majesty’s Government why they have ended funding for the charity Tell MAMA.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare that, while I chair the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I am speaking in a personal capacity today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)
My Lords, funding for Tell MAMA has not ended. We have made £1 million available for Tell MAMA this year, subject to it signing the grant funding agreement. I had a constructive meeting with Tell MAMA yesterday. It would be remiss of me to disclose the details of that conversation, but I am hopeful of a swift resolution. Combating hate towards Muslims is a priority for this Government. We will soon open a call for grant applications to provide a comprehensive service to monitor anti-Muslim hatred and support victims. We encourage Tell MAMA to apply.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the Minister, but does he agree that, when Ministers have meetings with parliamentarians to discuss government policy, this should be done in good faith and with candour? Last week he had a meeting with parliamentarians to discuss his Government’s advisory group on Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred. I asked him a direct question about Tell MAMA and its lack of inclusion in the Government’s advisory group. He was evasive at best, so I am delighted that he has confirmed to the House today that he has not ended funding for this moderate group that does vital work in the community. Will he also confirm that the funding will be forthcoming immediately, as Tell MAMA had the grant confirmation letter in September and is running out of money? Will he also reassure the House that moderate Muslim groups are as worthy of the government support as the others that they have hand-picked for their advisory group?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, let me clarify that the meeting we had last week was a drop-in for all Peers and parliamentarians, where I spoke specifically about the work we are doing to define anti-Muslim hatred and the commission that has been set up, chaired by the former Attorney-General, the right honourable Dominic Grieve.
On the question that the noble Baroness asked, all organisations must sign a standard government agreement before receiving government funds. Following extensive negotiations, we reached agreement with Faith Matters on its grant funding agreement, but the organisation has yet to sign it. As soon as it is signed and returned, we will instruct payment. Following yesterday’s meeting, I am confident this will be resolved soon.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for what the Minister is able to say, given the current situation. I understand that there are two concerns about this organisation. First, there is a lack of community engagement: they seem to be self-appointed spokespeople. Secondly, there were concerns about financial irregularities. This is a sensitive area. What can the Minister tell the House about those two concerns around this organisation?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord made an interesting point, but it would be remiss of me to comment on negotiations we are having with Tell MAMA. I had a very productive meeting with Tell MAMA and its legal representative. It was very productive and hopefully everything will be resolved soon.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, would the Minister be prepared to let us know, and publish and put a letter in the Library about, the terms, conditions and criteria that are applied not only to this group but to similar organisations? The Community Security Trust does similar work for the Jewish community. It might be helpful to have some clarity on that, so there is no risk of other organisations finding themselves in the same situation.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, because this is a competitive bidding and an open-ground process, that will be published as we open that process for people to apply for government services. Everyone is welcome to apply. The service is going to continue and everyone is invited to apply, including Tell MAMA.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for what my noble friend the Minister said. Could he confirm—he has probably said it already, but just to make it quite explicit—that, first of all, there is a commitment from the Government that they want to see an independent third-party reporting system for anti-Muslim hate, in which members of the public can feel confident? Secondly, could he confirm that the Government are seeking to ensure—as any sensible Government would—that they are getting the best value for money from a bidding process that ensures that the services are effective and highly respected?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend makes an excellent point. We remain steadfast in our dedication to delivering comprehensive monitoring of anti-Muslim hatred and providing support for victims of it. We are committed to providing a comprehensive service to monitor anti-Muslim hatred and provide support. We will soon be opening a call for grant applications for future work in this area. Further details will be provided in due course. Moving away from directly awarded grants to an open, competitive grant process will ensure greater transparency and value for money in our grant partnerships.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I understand that the decisions on funding for third parties can often be very challenging. Obviously, the Minister cannot give us details of what is being discussed at the moment. I am very pleased to hear that discussions are still going on with Tell MAMA. What concerns me about the Government’s new way of working with third-party funding is that there could be a period of time when these services are not being provided, as you move from one provider to another. Tell MAMA measures and monitors anti-Muslim hate crime very well. I would want to know that the Government are still doing that, if there is a period of time with nobody there. More importantly, I would want to know that the support that Tell MAMA gives to the Muslim community and victims of hate crime is still there.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I can reassure the noble Baroness and the House that the service of monitoring and reporting of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred will continue. I understand the point the noble Baroness made. Of course, I cannot predict the future of applications. The process is going to go live and open for a competitive bidding process to secure the best value for public money.
The world has changed since 7 October and the Southport disturbances. It is only right for us to have the opportunity to go out to the market and find the best value for money. But I can confirm that there will be a continuous service of reporting and monitoring of anti-Muslim hatred.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s launch of a new working group to provide a definition of Islamophobia. I ask the Minister: whom does this group plan to consult, both within and beyond the Islamic community, to inform that definition and ensure that it accounts for the lived experience of the Muslim community?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate asks a very important question. It is an independent group chaired by the former Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve KC. It is for him to decide, but it is pretty clear that any definition of anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia should have multiple perspectives from multiple communities and absolutely uphold our fundamental right of freedom of speech.
Baroness Gohir (CB)
My Lords, first of all, I thank the Minister for attending the launch of Muslim Heritage Month earlier this week. I also commend the Government on starting the work on the definition of Islamophobia, or anti-Muslim prejudice.
I am really glad that the Tell MAMA funding has been reviewed. I had been raising red flags and concerns about the Tell MAMA project for one year, with a 10-page letter and 30 questions—Oral Questions and Written Questions. I am glad that has now resulted in an open bidding process. By the way, it is not a charity. Can the Government provide assurances that whoever is selected has community buy-in? Hopefully, it will be several organisations, because the Muslim community is very diverse and large.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an interesting point. I confirm that we will set out further details soon on the open bidding process.
I congratulate the noble Baroness on launching her Muslim Heritage Month. We appreciate the work Tell MAMA has done. It is a providing a very important service and it is welcome apply to the open grant process.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, the press reports that the police have expressed alarm about this cut. Could the Minister confirm this will be taken into consideration when the Government are looking at the matter in the future?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I cannot comment on particular press reports, but the question of police views is a very important point. Any monitoring or reporting of hate crimes for any religion should always have a good relationship with police forces across the country, wherever that occurs. To add to the point that the noble Baroness made, it is important that the community feels confident during the whole process to report any instances of hate crimes. We want to protect everyone, whichever religion they are from. Everyone should be safe and made to feel safe.
North Sea Vessel Collision
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister and am glad to be able to respond to him in place of my noble friend Lord Moylan, who is unable to attend the House today. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for her reply to my question on this topic earlier this week as the incident was first being reported. The Official Opposition are grateful for all the efforts that Ministers have made to keep us informed of developments. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that sympathy goes to all those who have been affected by this tragic incident, especially the family and loved ones of the sailor who has been lost at sea.
I also thank the selfless emergency workers and volunteers who responded to the incident, including our land-based emergency services and His Majesty’s Coastguard. I especially wish to mention the bravery of the crews of the Bridlington, Cleethorpes, Mablethorpe and Skegness lifeboats, who set off without hesitation into that vision of hell that we all saw reported. The RNLI is a universally respected institution, and I am in awe of the commitment of its volunteers to saving lives at sea, often at great personal cost.
The Minister in another place was able to confirm that the “Solong” had broken free of the “Stena Immaculate” and was not likely to remain afloat, with tugboats on scene to ensure that the vessel remains clear of land. Can the Minister provide the House with an update on the status of the “Solong” and the “Stena Immaculate”? When this Statement was given in the other place, we did not have much detail about the events that took place in the lead-up to the collision. Can the Minister set out in some more detail the Government’s understanding of how this collision occurred? I appreciate that the captain of the “Solong”, a Russian national, has been arrested and that part of this incident is consequently sub judice, but your Lordships’ House would like reassurance from the Minister that lessons are already being learned, even at this early stage of the investigation.
I turn to the environmental impact of this incident. Reports of a jet fuel spill are very concerning. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government have established the cargo of the “Solong” and any associated risks to the environment? Has there been any material leak of bunker fuel from either vessel and has that risk now been avoided? Can he indicate the risks to marine and bird life that are currently of concern to the Government and what actions are being taken to mitigate them? Are local communities and fishermen being adequately informed of what they need to be aware of and what they can do to help?
Finally, I hope that the undoubtedly substantial costs of dealing with this incident will be recovered from the insurers of the vessel or vessels found liable. Can the Minister confirm this?
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, the scenes that we have witnessed in news reports are deeply concerning and our thoughts are with all those affected, particularly the family of the crew member who is presumed dead. The situation has moved on considerably since Monday. It is not even the front page of the news. I also pay tribute to the Humberside Local Resilience Forum, the emergency services, the Royal Navy, Border Force, the Environment Agency and all others who are working tirelessly to manage this crisis. Their swift response has been vital in minimising loss of life and limiting environmental damage, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.
This event is a stark reminder of the immense risks faced by those in the maritime sector—men and women who work long, demanding hours to keep our country moving, often without recognition. While investigations are ongoing and the internet is awash with different theories, from technical faults to human error and worse, urgent government action is required to reassure local communities and mitigate the wider impact. My right honourable friend in the other place, Alistair Carmichael, Member for Orkney and Shetland, highlighted the devastating impact of the MV “Braer” disaster off Shetland back in 1993, underscoring the justified fears that are now felt by communities along the North Sea coastline, which will be hoping for reassurance that the incident can be contained.
This incident also raises serious concerns about maritime safety, regulation and enforcement. Reports indicate that one of the vessels involved may have had failed multiple elements of routine safety inspections, including unreadable emergency steering communications, inadequate alarms, poorly maintained survival craft and improperly marked lifebuoys. Given these alarming deficiencies, will the Government review the effectiveness of port state control measures and enforcement procedures to prevent substandard vessels from continuing to operate in UK waters? What is the timescale for any such review?
Beyond safety concerns, as we have already heard, the environmental impact of this disaster could be severe. I welcome the formation of a tactical co-ordination group and its engagement with key agencies, but greater clarity is needed on how the Government intend to address the environmental challenges arising from this incident and supporting affected communities.
What immediate measures are being taken to protect the east coast marine life and fragile ecosystems from potential pollution? Furthermore, can the Minister provide assurances that financial support will be made available to cover the economic and environmental losses, particularly for those whose livelihoods depend on these waters?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, for their responses and their commendations of those involved, which I echo. I offer my sincere thanks, and, I am sure, the thanks of your Lordships’ House, to all those who have responded to this incident on the front line, from His Majesty’s Coastguard to the local emergency services, merchant vessels in the vicinity and those who crew them, and the RNLI, which is a wonderful institution.
This is a challenging and ever-changing situation, and I hope that I speak for everyone in this House when I say that the continuing efforts are both brave and hugely appreciated. I also thank our international partners for their many offers of assistance to the United Kingdom, and for the support from the maritime community. Finally, I thank civil servants from across government in several departments working on the response. Their efforts are also greatly appreciated.
Following the collision of the motor vessels “Solong” and “Stena Immaculate” in the North Sea on the morning of 10 March, my department and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency have co-ordinated a government-wide response. The current position is that salvors are assessing the condition of the vehicles to plan the next steps of salvage operations. Concurrently, the Government are conducting environmental assessments to ensure that all risks are appropriately mitigated and that the effects of the incident are effectively addressed. There is currently no evidence to suggest that there are national security implications, but as the investigation continues that possibility will be constantly borne in mind. Both vessels now appear to be relatively stable and salvors are assessing their condition. There is no suggestion that, apart from what has been widely shown on the media, there is any substantial pollution. The aviation fuel which did not combust appears to have evaporated. I have read suggestions this morning that containers have fallen off the “Solong”, but that does not appear to be the case.
I turn to the noble Lord’s questions. We need a proper investigation to assess how this occurred. One might be able to draw some conclusions from the fact that one of the two ships was at anchor, but it would be wise to wait for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch to conclude its investigations. Although one of the ships is US-badged and the other is Portuguese, both those maritime agencies have rightly concurred that the MAIB should have precedence. The noble Lord referred to the arrest of the captain of one of the vessels, which renders that subject sub judice.
Will lessons be learned? Yes, indeed they will. One of the purposes of a thorough investigation is to ensure that lessons are learned. As with every accident investigation, some of them you might conclude immediately while some will take a great deal of research to work out what happened, why it happened and how you stop it from happening again.
The current environmental impact is mercifully small, and we are very lucky for that. There does not appear to be any significant spillage of either the jet fuel from the “Stena Immaculate” or any of the fuel or oil from the bunkers of either of the vessels concerned. Consequently, the current effect on marine and bird life does not appear to be significant, but I can confirm to the House that everything is ready in case that subsequently proves not to be the case. There is a lot of activity, including activity across nations, to make sure that we are ready in case anything like that should happen.
For example, the German coastguard has provided the support of a specialist counterpollution vessel, “Mellum”, which can operate in toxic environments, as well as additional surveillance aircraft. That vessel has been tasked to stand by and undertake air monitoring of the “Stena Immaculate”. However, no air quality measures have been reported, and it looks as though currently—due to the wind direction and distance from the coast—there is a very low risk to public health from either the plume or the spill.
I can assure both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that we seek to ensure that every possibility is considered, both looking backward from the time of the accident and from now looking forward. This includes keeping the local community in general, and those who use the sea and care about marine and bird life, fully informed about this so that they can gain confidence from the actions of this Government and the other nations involved. As would normally happen, we will seek for the cost of all of this to be recovered from the insurers of the vessel or vessels found to be at fault. I hope I have covered all the points that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness raised, but if I have not, no doubt they will come up in further questions.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Statement. He said, correctly, that we have been very lucky on this occasion, in the midst of what is a tragic misfortune, in the sense that the fuel dispersed was aviation fuel, which has a propensity to evaporate compared with other fuels that would have been a real disaster for the environment. On a separate issue, has it been necessary to take any measures to ensure the openness and safety of shipping lanes or routes, and if so, what measures have been taken?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I omitted to say, which was entirely my fault, that we must all be extraordinarily sad about the plight of the missing seaman from one of the vessels, who is now unfortunately presumed no longer alive, despite the massive and brave attempts of the maritime community—the RNLI and others—to seek to rescue them. I am sure the House will join me in great sorrow about that.
The shipping lanes are now open again; there has been no need to take any measures to reopen them. One of the vessels is still where it was moored, and the position of the other is being constantly monitored to make sure that it is not a hazard to more shipping and that it is under control. There is a tug with the “Solong” that is able to control the latter’s position. The shipping lanes in and out of one of Britain’s most important ports are open and functioning.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am very happy that the Minister reported that there does not appear to have been much environmental damage. However, we see again and again that these cargo ships are often quite badly maintained. When crashes happen, the spillage and the environmental damage from them is very severe, but the ships’ insurance can never cover all the impact on marine life and coastal areas. Are stronger regulations part of the Government’s thinking so that, when this sort of thing happens next time, the insurance companies bleed through the nose for the cost of keeping an inadequate ship afloat?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I will say two things. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, referred to the previous defects on the motor vessel “Solong”. Although those defects were identified in an inspection made in Dublin in July last year, we also know that a more recent inspection of that ship in Grangemouth last October showed that those defects were rectified. That is a good reassurance; it does not completely answer the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about whether the ships are perfectly maintained at all times, but it does show that the inspection regime appears to demonstrate some characteristics that I am sure the House would welcome.
On the noble Baroness’s point about insurance, this will not, we hope, be the incident that bears out her theory. Of course we should be concerned that maritime insurance is capable of covering all of the consequences of an incident such as this. I will reflect on what she said and talk to my honourable friend the Maritime and Aviation Minister about whether there is anything the Government feel they need to do as a consequence of this incident in respect of insurance.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister comment on the role of professional salvors in a situation such as this?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
All I can say is that they are a completely necessary set of organisations and have some pretty brave people who assess on a continuing basis what can be done. They are an essential part of the maritime community, if only demonstrated by an event like this.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, it is very disturbing to see the visual displays of the Portuguese-registered vessel heading directly to the tanker. One sees this and, having a little knowledge of aviation, it would seem that someone in authority must be watching the movements of maritime traffic in a similar way to avoid this sort of collision taking place. Was anybody or any authority watching a screen as the Portuguese ship closed on the tanker? That seems to be very alarming, particularly in our own waters.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord’s observation is very reasonable in the circumstances. However, I am not tempted, and I do not think your Lordships’ House should be tempted, to draw any conclusions about how the accident occurred, nor what might be put in place to stop something like this happening again. Clearly, if you are the master of either of these vessels, or of any other vessel in the ocean, you are responsible for the conduct of the vessel and the way it is navigated. We should leave this for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch to properly investigate and draw some conclusions. If there are conclusions that need action from any government body, your Lordships’ House can be reassured that the Government will take that action.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)
My Lords, I served on the board of the Harwich Haven Authority for six years. During that time, we had a lot of difficulty with local authorities that, for financial reasons, were reluctant to run robust emergency planning exercises, but what has happened really demonstrates their value. Could the Minister do some checking to find out what the current position is with the emergency planning and local resilience fora?
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, the VTS systems have sight of the entire seaway but operate within their own zones. This incident happened outside the Humber authority’s zone, but it would have had sight of it—perhaps there is another question there for the Minister. Finally, on the point from noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about port state control, it is always worth remembering that these are international matters carried out by the International Maritime Organization. Perhaps the Government can have a conversation with it to ensure that, where defects are picked up, they are constantly monitored to having been rectified.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I defer to the noble Baroness’s knowledge, which in this area—the latter part of what she just said—is greater than mine. The information I currently have is that the Humber Local Resilience Forum was stood up very quickly and has held a strategic control group. The membership is widespread and includes the police, fire and rescue, local authorities, the Red Cross, the health service, MHCLG, His Majesty’s Coastguard, the Royal Navy and other organisations. By all accounts, this seems to have worked very well in this circumstance, and there cannot be any criticism of the bodies that have come together and worked extremely hard—and are still doing so, because this event is not over yet.
Lord Mountevans (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for his update, but we seem to have been extremely fortunate in this incident. From a lifetime in shipping, I know that a conflagration involving a cargo of jet fuel is one of the most serious things that can happen at sea, so we have been extraordinarily successful and probably fortunate. It is early to be congratulating anybody, but it appears that all the emergency agencies—the MCA, the coastguard, the RNLI and the local environmental resilience plan—all seem to have functioned extraordinarily well, so we are very grateful for that. But this points to the dangers to so many ports around the UK of potential grey action. Will the Minister be thinking about that following these events?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I concur with the noble Lord, and I will.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, these vessels have massive momentum due to their huge size. Can the Minister please inform the House whether there are speed limits of any kind in these shipping lanes, particularly off the coast or near ports such as Hull?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am not aware of the answer to the noble Lord’s question, so I will write to him.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, first, can the Minister confirm that the SOSREP system instigated in the report by Lord Donaldson of Lymington, Safer Ships, Cleaner Seas, is in place?
Secondly, in addition to the noble Lord, Lord West, we have at least three maritime experts in the House of Lords. The noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, was a Royal Navy submarine commander; the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, recently retired as chairman of the Baltic Exchange; and the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, is an Elder Brother of Trinity House. Can the Minister explain why the Government want to get rid of them?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s representative for maritime salvage and intervention convened a salvage co-ordination unit yesterday morning to oversee the salvage response to this incident, working alongside the vehicles’ owners, insurers and salvors. Following the separation of the two vessels, an operational decision has been taken to form two salvage co-ordination units, one for each vessel. I believe that competently answers the noble Earl’s first question.
The second question is being discussed in this place most days of this week, next week and the week after, and I will defer to the Leader of the House on that one.
Lord Geddes (Con)
My Lords, I would not dream of adding my name to those my noble friend Lord Attlee just mentioned, but I did spend all my commercial life in the shipping industry, so I may have a slight knowledge in this subject. Can the Minister confirm that the inquiry will look into the question of negligence, be it on the part of the owners—he referred to the state of the vessel—or the captain, because either could have been negligent in this context?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I have every confidence that the inquiry will look at all the relevant aspects of this really significant incident and will include all the parties, including the two that the noble Lord describes.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, further to the question from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will the Minister confirm that he can take advice from every source and all the experts? They do not have to be Members of this House to give advice.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that question. The answer is that a significant number of experienced bodies and people are involved in making sure that the consequences of this incident are fully investigated, and that the safety of the environment, the two ships and their remaining cargoes are looked after. I do not think there is any doubt that the nation is served well by a number of the bodies I have mentioned and that they are working professionally and extremely hard to resolve this incident with no damage to the environment and no—or, sadly, at least no further—loss of life.
Viscount Thurso (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend on the Front Bench mentioned the “Braer” incident, and I remember well the “Ascania” incident off the coast of Caithness. Both events led Alistair Carmichael and me to lobby for a tug to be based at Kirkwall. Can I follow up with the Minister on an answer he gave earlier? Like many who live on the coast, I follow the shipping, and I see it on the horizon or one of many radar apps. Is it not now time to look, in busy shipping lanes such as the channel, the North Sea and the Pentland Firth, at some form of equivalent to air traffic control, so that somebody has an eye out and some form of warning can be given based on that?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
It is very tempting, in an age when so much is instantly available on every sort of media, including social media, to draw some conclusions about not only how this incident occurred but what should be done to make sure that such a thing never happens again. It is really important for us all to be continent and to allow the Marine Accident Investigation Branch to do its investigation, draw all the necessary conclusions and follow through on the actions required from those.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, this was a never event: it really should not have happened if the AIS was working properly. I am conscious that the MAIB will be investigating this carefully, but from what the Minister has said I hope that the Nairobi convention has now been triggered and that a wreck removal notice will be applied so that the costs can be fully recovered. Going further back to the points made about the assessment in Grangemouth, it is concerning that the safety of seafarers was not rectified before MV “Solong” left that port. As a consequence, one crew member from that boat is now assumed dead. Will the Minister consider working with the Minister responsible for maritime to re-evaluate the criteria on which boats will be released when the safety of crew is at risk?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
As I have said, we should wait for the investigation to draw conclusions, because that is the proper and only way of dealing with this. On the defects of the motor vessel “Solong”, I did not say that the defects identified in the inspection made in July last year in Dublin were not rectified until the more recent inspection; I said they had all been rectified by the time of a more recent inspection. Again, we should not draw conclusions. The investigation will look widely at all the causes of this and the conditions of these vessels. Speculation on some of this is, frankly, very unhelpful. We need to leave all the professional and brave people to deal with this incident as it is occurring, and we need to leave the Marine Accident Investigation Branch the time and space to carry out the proper investigation so that we learn all the things that need to be done as a consequence of this incident.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, as the Minister has rightly said, we should not leap to any conclusions or make any speculative changes right now, but these two maritime ships surely would have contained black box recorders. Where are we on finding those recorders to mitigate these disasters in the future?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My understanding is that vessels such as these have such a thing, but currently neither has any crew on board, clearly, and the activities are primarily based on keeping the vessels floating and preventing the terrible consequences of any part of what is on them or in them polluting the environment. Of course, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch will look for those as a matter of urgency, will hopefully find them intact and will therefore be able to have a really good understanding of what went on on each vessel in the hours and days leading up to the incident.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Following on from the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on the issue of emergency planning exercises, there has been a long gap since the last disaster in the North Sea, but we had the “Herald of Free Enterprise” disaster, which was catastrophic, and then the fire on board a DFDS ferry as well. The level at which these emergency exercises are taking place seems to be fairly patchy. Is there a role for the Emergency Planning College at Easingwold to co-ordinate these activities to ensure that they are happening across the country?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I do not have information in front of me about how long it has been since there was such an emergency planning exercise and how often they have taken place. I am sure that, in general, there must be a role for the college at Easingwold, which has a very high reputation both nationally and internationally. The Government will of course look at that, but I hope your Lordships’ House will take some considerable comfort from the fact that, actually, the deployment of all the people who needed to be deployed to deal with this was very immediate and appears, at least so far, to have been very successful.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, the Minister has confirmed that the “Stena Immaculate” was at anchor, and it seems clear that it was. We know that a lot of large ships are often at anchor off estuaries. Can the Minister at least confirm that the “Stena Immaculate” was anchored in a normal place, or was its place of anchor rather abnormal?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am not sure that I can confirm that without leafing through the vast amount of information in front of me. I believe that what the noble Viscount says is true, but why do we not leave all the detail of this to the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, so it can properly assess all the factors that have gone into the incident occurring and what has happened since then? That would be absolutely the right thing to do, because the more speculation there is at this stage, the harder it is for it to distinguish the facts from the speculation.
Syria
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Government for this important Statement on the situation in Syria. As my right honourable friend the Shadow Foreign Secretary said in the other place:
“This is the first statement on Syria offered by the Government this year, and frankly, it could not have come soon enough”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/3/25; col. 664.]
We have witnessed some of the deadliest violence in Syria in recent days, since the beginning of this dreadful conflict.
The reports that hundreds of civilians have been killed in clashes, including many Alawite civilians, is, of course, deeply troubling. I am sure we have all seen the horrific videos of that violence that have been circulated. The Syrian people have now suffered 14 years of conflict and, of course, decades of oppression. The situation will need to be monitored closely to prevent backsliding into further conflict on ethnic and religious lines.
The Government have decided to establish contact with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the interim Administration in Syria, so can the Minister confirm whether the Foreign Office has raised this escalation in violence with the interlocutors in the current Syrian Government, and if so, whether our Government have clearly conveyed a set of expectations of how the temperature should be taken down and how stability can be restored? Are there plans for Ministers to visit Damascus any time soon, for instance?
We note, of course, that the Government have announced that they are lifting 24 sanctions on entities linked to the deposed Assad regime. Does the terrible violence of recent days change the Government’s assessment of the merits of lifting such sanctions? Before the Government lifted them, did they consult US and European allies or partners in the region? Were the sanctions lifted at the request of HTS, and are there plans to lift further sanctions? Can the Minister also be clear with the House about precisely what conditions, criteria and evidence are being used to drive their various decisions?
On the vital subject of HTS’s progress in countering drug trafficking, does the Minister know whether Syrian Captagon, an extremely harmful pharmaceutical drug, is still in production, or has HTS managed to prevent Captagon being produced in Syria and distributed to the wider region?
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Government for the Statement. Obviously, we have national security, regional and humanitarian interests in respect of Syria, and I wish to ask the Minister questions on all three areas. It very welcome that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, from the Home Office, is also present. First, on national security, it is worth noting that there seems to be positive news on Syrian internal security, in the form of the agreement with the Kurdish groups, but it is too early to say what the consequences will be. Part of the UK interests has been working with our American allies to ensure that detainees who were recruited by Daesh and were active members are not presenting any future threat to the United Kingdom. What reassurance have we received from the US Administration that troops will still be in place? What contingency arrangements will the UK have for our national security if the Americans pull out?
On the loosening of sanctions, is there a public statement on our assessment of the groups that form the functioning, de facto Government of Syria, which we had previously considered to be terrorist organisations? How will we ensure that the loosening of economic sanctions does not result in profiteering by those considered to be terrorist groups? What mechanisms will be in place to ensure that, as I called for previously, we support local civil society groups that are helping the local communities, rather than channelling through to what until very recently had been—and in many respects still are—terrorist organisations that want economic support for their own groups, rather than for the benefit of the people of Syria?
A critical part of ensuring that we are safe is reducing the prospects of recruitment for terrorist organisations within Syria, so what support are we providing for transitional justice mechanisms as a result of responding to the crimes of the previous Assad regime? Are we supporting an enhanced UN transitional assistance mission? It is welcome that the UK will be participating in the pledging meeting that Minister Falconer has referred to. It is worth noting that UK support for the Syrian crisis had been at scale. As recently as 2019-2020, the UK had committed £380 million. This year, it is £103 million. According to HMG’s Development Tracker website, that is likely to go down to £55 million in 2028. Therefore, are we proposing new additional funding at the donor conference, or are we simply going to reassert our committed funds as part of the £103 million?
With regard to regional interests, the territorial integrity of Syria is of significance to the UK. What reassurance have we received from the Israeli and Turkish Governments that they believe in the territorial integrity of Syria, especially when it comes to Lebanon? Are we supporting the reconstruction of Lebanon? I would be grateful if the Minister considered meeting with me and a number of Lebanese MPs with whom I am in contact, especially female MPs, who are seeking ways of reconstructing Lebanon—especially the border areas—that avoid enhancing confessional divisions. We have a potential opportunity to look at Syrian and Lebanese reconstruction, and I hope the Minister will respond positively to that.
I hope the Minister does not mind me raising an issue of concern. Last week, I asked a question about the ODA commitment to vulnerable countries where UK interests could be at risk. I raised concerns about countries such as Lebanon, where UK support is likely to reduce dramatically as a result of the Government’s decision. The Minister said —I can quote from Hansard—that I was talking “complete nonsense” and my supposition was “frankly, ridiculous”. I looked at the support for Lebanon. In 2019-2020, it was £188 million; last year, it was £6.75 million; this year, thankfully, it is £47 million; but next year and the year after, it will be zero. So when I ask questions to Ministers in this House using government information that is available today on Development Tracker, I hope they will respond in a temperate manner.
Finally, when it comes to humanitarian support, I strongly welcome the stated position of the Government that seeks an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative Government, but I know that the Minister will recognise that that is some way away. So, with regard to the support that we are providing to the Syrian people for education, can we find ways of benchmarking UK engagement, both diplomatic and for education and humanitarian assistance, so that education reform can include independent oversight of curriculum reform, the removal of content inciting hatred or violence, and fair representation of women and minorities? There is an opportunity for our support to be linked with development assistance that can benefit all parts of Syrian society and move away from the hatred and violence which have afflicted the country so badly in recent years.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
I am grateful to both noble Lords for their words. I think we all agree that the situation in Syria is incredibly fragile, to say the least, and that we all want a stable elected Government to be in charge in Syria. We are some way from that at the moment, and everything this Government are doing is aimed at bringing about that situation, which we all want to see.
The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, asked why this is our first Statement on Syria. I kindly and gently point out that there are mechanisms within the procedures of this House for him to raise whichever issues he wishes, and I would be very happy to arrange some training for him, should that be welcome.
There is clearly deep concern about the events of recent days, and we are working closely with our allies and partners in the region and beyond. Noble Lords asked whether we have spoken to the interim Government in Syria. We have and, as the noble Lord encouraged us to do, we have raised our concerns about these events and have sought to bring about the peace and stability that we all wish to see. On his question about ministerial travel, I will not comment on our intentions about ministerial travel to this part of the world. There are obvious reasons why we do not always announce ministerial travel ahead of time.
On sanctions, of course we keep our sanctions designations under review. The decisions that we made following the fall of the Assad regime were to remove the designation from some entities, such as the Central Bank of Syria, because we want to enable the reconstruction and economic development of Syria, which has been so badly harmed for reasons that we all know. It is important that the new regime in Syria and the Government we hope will follow will be able to invest in their country to grow and prosper in future. We took that decision, but, clearly, we keep all these things under review.
On chemical weapons, we are working with the OPCW on that. We are very concerned that chemicals do not fall into the hands of people that none of us would wish them to, so we are working with others on that.
On the comments from the Liberal Democrat spokesman, we agree and welcome the statements from the PKK about downing weapons, but, as I said, the situation remains incredibly fragile. On troops, it is for the future Syrian Government to determine which nations, in what capacity and where they may have a presence in Syria. Since December, we have spent more than £62 million in additional humanitarian assistance, which will include support for justice measures so that evidence can be obtained and secured for use in future proceedings.
The noble Lord is correct when he makes points about national security. I do not think I have ever been intemperate in this Chamber, but I am entitled to call nonsense nonsense when I hear it. That is not intemperate. That is in the spirit of frank exchange, which I think we all wish to engage in. I felt that in his question last week the noble Lord was asserting that we were not putting national security front and centre in our decision-making. I was pointing out to him that our decision to reduce the overseas aid budget was done to support our defence budget, which I argue is in the interest of national security. If he found that intemperate, I am glad that he was never in the other place, where I think he would have had a very difficult time.
This is a critical, fragile moment for Syria. The country faces significant challenges as it transitions after almost 14 years of conflict. Stability in Syria is firmly in our interests. The UK remains committed to the people of Syria and will continue to stand with them in building a more stable, free and prosperous future.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s Statement. On justice and accountability, following what the charity Aid to the Church in Need has described as a “black and painful day” for Syria, with entire families killed in the violence, does the Minister welcome the importance of the decision by Syria to appoint an independent commission of inquiry into the horrific atrocities committed in the coastal areas against ethnic and religious communities, including Druze, Christians, Alawites and Ismailis, and welcome the arrest of some of the perpetrators? Can we give direct support to this holding to account, the collecting of evidence, reporting mechanisms, transparency and measures necessary to prevent similar incidents in the future? Might we be able to work with others to create a route through which the UK can monitor the situation of egregious human rights violations and religious freedom, making UK aid to Syria and the lifting of any sanctions conditional on introducing measurable improvements in the situation of human rights in Syria, which, as we have heard, are crucial to its future?
Can the Minister also say a word about Turkish bombing of civilian areas in northern Syria and the continuing danger posed by ISIS operatives in camps in Syria, some of whom are UK nationals and the subject of a current inquiry by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I hope the Minister will agree to engage with and whose proceedings I hope she will follow with care?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, on northern Syria, of course we are acutely aware of the fragility of that situation and want to make sure that we do not see a vacuum created that is filled by Daesh and others. The noble Lord is right in what he says about Aid to the Church in Need and its work, and we commend it for it. We have encouraged the Government in Syria on the commission, the investigations and the collection of evidence, for the reasons that he gave. We can, we should, and we will continue to do that.
On the conditionality of humanitarian aid, that is a difficult situation. There are around 16 million people in need of humanitarian aid in Syria, and I think it is important that we continue to play the best possible part that we can in supporting those people, but I take the point that he makes.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister said, the situation in Syria is very fragile and therefore it is proper and sensible that His Majesty’s Government engage with the interim Administration. However, I think it would also be useful to maximise engagement with civil society in Syria. Can the Minister say a little more about the Government’s engagement in that area, including, of course, the Christian community in Syria?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is true that in the situation that Syria finds itself in, the ability of civil society to work closely with communities is essential. My colleague Minister Falconer is talking to civil society groups and working through any agencies and relationships that he has to support this because they are vital in establishing a stable future for the country.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, the Minister is aware, obviously, that Syria is facing the world’s largest refugee crisis, with a truly staggering 14 million Syrians having fled their homes. Over 6.2 million have fled abroad, including many to this country. Among their number are some of the brightest, best and most qualified Syrian citizens, who are needed for rebuilding their country. This leads on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Reid. What steps will the Government take, working with civil society, the new President, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the UNHCR, to find a way of trying to smooth the return of many of these very able and capable people?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
That is a really interesting question. It is wonderful that we are in a situation where we can even begin to have those conversations, when you consider the journey that Syria has been on. It is early days, but we will work with whoever we need to to enable the reconstruction and rebuilding of Syria, not just physically but of the society in Syria. There is still a long way to go—we are in the early stages—but the suggestions made by the noble Lord are good, and I will follow them up.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I think the Minister recognises the very—perhaps disproportionately—central position of Syria in Middle Eastern politics over many years. Will we not allow ourselves, as we have sometimes in the past, to be a bit marginalised? One way of ensuring that we keep our finger on the pulse in Syria is to reopen the embassy in Damascus at the earliest possible moment. I know there is a special representative, but that is not the same as having somebody on the ground who is able to keep an eye on what is happening. Will the Minister say what action the Government are taking about the Government of Israel’s action to extend part of the Golan Heights beyond what was originally dealt with in Security Council resolutions to occupy some parts of Syrian territory?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
On the issue of reopening the embassy, which closed I think in 2012, that is quite difficult. I do not have an update on that for the House today. The noble Lord will appreciate that these are very early days. As he would expect, we keep these things under review. On Israel, it would be right for what we hope will be the inclusive, politically diverse new Government in Syria to make those decisions when they are elected. It is right that we allow them time for that process to complete and for a new, fully representative Government in Syria to make their position known on behalf of the Syrian people when it comes to those issues.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, further to the Minister saying that the Government are consulting community workers and organisations, are they insisting that women make up 50% of those groups? At the last peace talks in Ukraine, there were no women at all, and we have made an undertaking here that women have to be part of all the peace talks. I do not believe that women would give away some of the intellectual property of their country so easily if they had any say in this, so it is important. Also, women will talk about investment, education, schooling and other issues that would never otherwise be discussed at the peace table—just closing down the conflict. We want to close it down, but we have to do it in the right way so that that country can continue, after all that has happened, to become a country of its own, where children will go into further education and its GDP will be much improved. It cannot continue in this way.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We know now, from many contexts in recent history, how vital it is that women are included and central to these processes. My noble friend has made a very strong case. It is important that women have a say and are able to lead in the future rebuilding of their country.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, we of course want to see peace in Syria, but I will sound a note of caution. Recent events have demonstrably shown, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, articulated, the threat to minority faiths within Syria. Indeed, ironically, the previous dictator was secular, in that he protected and afforded protection for Christians and Alawites. The ideological base of the current leadership and organisation, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, is Daesh. The Minister talked about Daesh and its dangers; we have seen it before. We have seen it in Libya and Iraq, and we may, regrettably and tragically, see it again in Syria, so I caution that, as we move forward on engagement, let us not forget the ideological base that drives the current Administration.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I do not think anybody is getting carried away with optimism at the moment. The noble Lord is absolutely right to remind us just how precarious this situation is. We proceed with some hope, given where we have been, but it is always worth being reminded just how fragile this is and of the dangers that remain as we go forward.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I totally agree with my noble friend Lord Ahmad’s words. This is fragile but, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, there is potential, for the first time in decades. In their Statement, the Government are rightly looking for stronger moral leadership characteristics. They say that
“anyone seeking a role in governing Syria should demonstrate a commitment to the protection of human rights, unfettered access for humanitarian aid and the safe destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles, and combat terrorism and extremism”.
I hope that person exists in Syria—or anywhere else, for that matter—but, as my right honourable friend the shadow Foreign Secretary asked on Monday, how confident is the Minister that the chemical stockpiles will be destroyed, for the benefit of the whole region?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Confidence is a very difficult thing to measure in situations such as this, but perhaps the best thing to do is to say that we are mindful of the dangers that the noble Lord outlines. It is still right for this Government to have clarity and high ambition for the people of Syria, because they have suffered so much and desperately need a Government with the qualities that we outlined in the Statement.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, before we leave this Statement, may I pursue the Minister on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, raised? I referred in my earlier question to the presence in Syria of the camps, which are of course held together by the Kurds, without whom the people who were responsible for genocide in northern Iraq and northern Syria would be free and on the loose all over again. What are we doing to ensure that they are brought to justice, as has happened in some cases in Germany and Holland but not in the United Kingdom?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We are working with our partners and allies on this. As the noble Lord knows, decisions have been made, particularly on the citizenship of certain individuals, which I think is what he is getting at. Those decisions have been made; I do not have anything further to add today.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, before we leave the subject, may I ask a quick supplementary? There are Syrian community and civil society groups in this country. Will the Minister find out who they are and work with them on this agenda?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I know some of them very well. Many have made an enormously positive contribution since they arrived in the United Kingdom, setting up businesses and becoming leaders in the community. For some of them, there may be choices to make now, and I am very happy to work with whoever wishes to on anything that would help improve the chances of a lasting and stable situation in Syria.
United Kingdom: Global Position
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Lord Howell of Guildford
That this House takes note of the United Kingdom’s global position.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful in advance to those who have kindly agreed to participate in this debate—at least, I hope I stay grateful when I hear them. I am especially looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town, which will follow immediately. We will all listen with the greatest interest, in view of his wisdom and experience.
We are at an extremely dangerous moment in history, when the issue is the survival of world order of any kind. Some of the wisest minds, not just in America but on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, tell us we are at the edge of an abyss. One of the best-selling books in America has been Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy. It was published more than two decades ago, but some would say this anarchy, in international affairs, has already arrived very promptly.
This is a new world in which we have to make our way, guard and protect ourselves more strongly than ever, contribute to others, set examples, define our purposes, and preserve our unity. We can forget about it all going on in faraway countries of which we know nothing; it is all very near, on our doorstep. Forget even the language of East and West, as though they were split into two halves of an orange, the idea so favoured by American academia, or the patronising concepts of North and South, developed and developing, all implicitly dividing the world between them and us—now an utterly flawed approach in this multipolar age.
How can that idea make any sense at all any longer when scores of countries, aspiring to liberal values in their own ways and not wanting to be beholden to either of the 20th-century hegemons, America or China, are not in the Atlantic West at all? They are in the East, the South and all around the world. They call themselves the neo-non-aligned, which in fact is most of the world’s 191 nations, large and small. The danger to Ukraine is the danger to them. What is happening is not just a European issue, as some seem to think. What they want in this digital age is not great power bullying, but independence and freedom from being put in ideological boxes or spheres of influence. As Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former UN Secretary-General—a man I much admired and who was much underestimated—once said, everyone needs a country to love. That is one message to guide us through the labyrinth in the digital age, in direct contrast to all the talk from a past era of the great powers fixing it, of blocs to align with, or of spheres of influence to conform to.
Forget too all the patronising talk about tilts to the Indo-Pacific, or pivots to Asia and the developing world, as though we are doing them a favour. That is the language of the past, when might was still seen as right and the West thought it was the master of the world. Forget about the historic confrontation between capitalism and socialism that much preoccupied the last century, when even Russia and China now have their own twisted forms of capitalism, even if they do not admit it. That debate is over too, and another one has begun on how to make liberal market capitalism—our sort—far more stable, far fairer and much more widely shared, and how to escape its massive unpopularity, especially among the young. Capitalism, for us, ought to be not a defeat but a matter of victory.
I believe we can compare this age with the printing press revolution of the 14th century, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution all rolled into one—although, of course, it is coming far faster and affects a far greater number of the world’s people on a far bigger scale than ever before. Among other things, it has changed the nature of international influence and pressure. We call it soft power, or some do, although, of course, it goes along with hard military power and smart power—the mix of the two. This House of Lords can claim a lot of credit for opening up this debate with our seminal report of March 2014, Persuasion and Power in the Modern World. It certainly seemed to have an impact on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which promptly set up a department to supervise soft power.
We are, as a consequence of our policy blindness, still suffering from a gross underestimate of the future importance to us of the Commonwealth network: the best and largest soft-power greenhouse of all, with some of the world’s fastest-growing economies among its members. This becomes the ultimate kind of association, both of peoples, professions, institutes and Governments, and of the comity of nations which a common language, with a common culture embedded within it, sustains and nourishes. No binding treaty is needed for the basic voluntary atmosphere of friendship and instruction that lies behind it.
Under past and present Governments, there has been some distinct and welcome progress in our repositioning journey—joining organisations such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example—although the cost of that has been getting policy with our European neighbours badly wrong. Relations with greater Europe are a neighbourhood, common-sense problem. It is plain sense that we must stay on the best possible relations with our continental neighbours—all of them. Of course we must co-operate in dozens of sensible and practical ways, as I know this Government are trying to do and we saw attempted by the previous Government—not with great success. The European Political Community, of which we are an active member—in fact one of the leading members—could prove the gateway to a thousand constructive outcomes of European co-operation without getting too bogged down again in outdated Brussels procedures.
The ingredients to make all these new relationships and alliances work are trust and mutual respect, with a strong and agreed set of rules and commitments, but that is just what has gone missing. It is as if the new strongmen of the globe—Trump is one, Putin another and Xi Jinping a third—all want different rules and methods, their own, and all with the least possible restraints on their actions. In fact, it now looks as though even America’s vaunted constitutional checks have gone on holiday, as the country is led into an outright trade war by one man’s say-so.
Can we protect ourselves, with all this lack of trust and respect swirling around and across the Atlantic, pulling the world we knew apart? Does America have all the cards in the Ukraine situation, as its President seems to think? Do we, for example, hold a better and friendlier set of world connection than the USA does—or shortly will, if the Trump hallmark is grabbing Greenland, kicking Mexico and trying to swallow Canada, a nation that happens to a powerful member of the Commonwealth with King Charles as its constitutional head? That is disrespect for you—that is the language we have to talk—not to say bad manners as well.
Anyway, in a networked, hyperconnected and technology-dominated world we do have some cards, and by common consent the Prime Minister has played some of them, so far, with great skill. Mr Zelensky—caught in the firing line between President Trump and Vice-President Vance—also has a card or two, although, alas, he never had the chance, in the Oval Office train crash, to play them.
The list of issues which should make America pause before pursuing a course of playing the big nation 20th-century battalion game is a long one. Many other items not listed here arise, not least that great nationhood arises from serving the world, rather than overriding or threatening it. We shall see how Mr Putin responds to President Trump’s latest threat about ruining Russia. Judging by his past performance, I do not think he will accept it very well, but we will see. Maybe he sees a gain for Russia in it; maybe he will go for it. To make America great again, it must be ready to serve freedom as it did in the past. At the moment, frankly, it is being led in the opposite direction.
We are not alone in facing this central challenge of the digital age with its contradictions and its transformative powers, which continue to unfold at a great rate, but we have a role emerging from the turbulence to replace the one we are alleged to have lost in the last century, with that famous put-down remark from Dean Acheson about having
“lost an empire but not yet found a role”.
We can pioneer popular social capitalist reform, which is the underpinning of stable democracy—neither works without the other. We can help rebuild the world institutions of the last century—as we helped to build them in the first place—with the UN very much included, to address climate change, the quandary of the world as super-mass immigration takes over and other 21st-century issues, such as worldwide energy transition.
We can construct and keep in daily or hourly use a dense world network, the densest ever in the hyperconnective age—with every old link, new tie and new nation on the face of the globe, especially our fellow Commonwealth members—always being ready to assist, guide and support. We can respond to populist pressure all over the world by clear democratic reforms here that keep all who wish in constant touch with a strong and trusted parliamentary democracy at work and in detail.
We can design our defences for employing the highest technology and safeguarding the civilian order and its supply chains as never before. We can boost enormously our reserves and the linkages between the military and civilian worlds. In the 1930s we kept our reserves at around 200,000 long before the war began; they are now at 37,000. The expansion must begin.
Crisis is opportunity We are in a very advantageous position to make the best of the present upheavals, with our global links, friends and experience, providing we build on the assets bequeathed to us. If we are smart and creative, there was never such a new dawn and clear horizon, for all the world’s uncertainties, and never such an open sea for a nation such as ours. I beg to move.
Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is with great humility and a profound sense of responsibility that I rise to address this House for the first time. I am deeply grateful for the privilege of joining your Lordships and extend my sincere thanks to those who have supported me on this journey. In particular, I thank the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip, who was also one of my sponsors, for their warm welcome. I also thank my other sponsor, my noble kinswoman Lady Pitkeathley, who, in her wisdom, decided that the Lords was such a good idea that she sent for reinforcements. The kindness and patience of the doorkeepers, officials and staff have made these first steps so much less daunting.
The subject of today’s debate—the United Kingdom’s global position—challenges us not only to assess where we stand but to consider how we move forward. We do so at a time of great uncertainty—as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, set out for us—and our history shows that our ability to thrive depends on creativity, adaptability and leadership. To maintain our standing, we must embrace these strengths now more than ever.
Entrepreneurship has been a lifelong passion for me, though my path to it was unconventional. I started in music—writing, recording and playing in bands, including in Camden, chasing that elusive big break. Like many in the arts, I quickly learned that dreams alone are not enough. Resilience, reinvention and the willingness to take risks—and sometimes embarrass oneself—are just as important.
That spirit carried me through my career, from introducing universal banking services while at the British Bankers’ Association to sourcing helicopters for the Prime Minister during the 2001 and 2005 general elections and to manufacturing table tennis tables in China. In many ways, music and business share the same DNA—good ideas, hard work and not a little luck; and, always, a team.
That belief in collaboration led to one of my proudest achievements: Camden Collective. This initiative emerged from a simple but pressing problem: too many talented entrepreneurs, particularly those without post-university networks, could not afford the space to develop their ideas. Drawing on my own experience with dyslexia, we turned a challenge into an opportunity, transforming empty high street spaces into free workspaces.
More than just pop-up offices and shops, we created a thriving community of innovators, doers, and dreamers. Our first rule, “don’t be an arse”, is not just a joke; it sets a cultural tone where collaboration trumps ego. That ethos has helped hundreds of businesses take their first steps, and I believe it can help shape the future of entrepreneurship in the UK.
Another of our Camden projects is the Camden Highline—a proposed new park in the sky, running between Camden Town and King’s Cross along a disused railway viaduct. Inspired by New York’s High Line, and sharing its design team, it embodies the kind of bold, imaginative thinking that I think can redefine urban spaces and strengthen our international reputation as a hub of creativity.
Technology, particularly AI, is transforming innovation. The UK has world-class AI research and a thriving start-up ecosystem, but our productivity gap remains a challenge. While top firms advance, many businesses struggle to adopt new technologies, limiting our competitiveness. I see both sides of this divide—start-ups I work with already leverage AI, while many traditional businesses, such as those in the business improvement districts I run, face hurdles in adoption. AI’s benefits must be widely shared. The Government’s AI growth zones are a strong start, but hubs must also be placed in urban centres, near innovation clusters such as King’s Cross, where research institutions and tech firms can accelerate progress.
AI can transform public services, as we have heard alluded to today. Standardising AI-driven processes across government would boost efficiency and service delivery, positioning the UK as a leader in AI-supported governance. Smart AI regulation offers a chance to reinforce our global position and while some, particularly in the EU, take a more restrictive approach, the UK can lead with a pragmatic, pro-innovation path. As a songwriter, even at my modest level, I understand creative concerns—I really do—but, if handled well, this could be a rare Brexit silver lining.
As I take my place in this House, I hope to bring a spirit of creativity and adaptability to my work here. The UK’s global standing will be secured not by nostalgia for past glories but by shaping the future. By embracing innovation, supporting entrepreneurship and ensuring that opportunity is shared across society, we will not only strengthen our economy but reaffirm the values that have long made Britain a leader on the world stage. I look forward to playing my part in that effort.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, it gives me great joy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on the occasion of his maiden speech and to have the privilege of formally welcoming him into the Chamber. He and I have known each other for some 30 years, and our paths crossed because of our shared passions for policy, the creative industries and the arts. He has had a much more successful career than I have, getting his hands dirty working in his community, genuinely shaping the lives of so many people in Camden and beyond, and coming up with creative thinking.
It is a testament to our friendship that he recalled to me the other day that I once bumped into him and lamented to him, “Why do I have so many lefty friends?”, which will not surprise my friends on these Benches. It is a joy to have him join us in the House of Lords. It would be churlish of me and against the spirit of welcoming him to point out that he is a nepo Peer and that his wonderful mother sits in the Chamber with us today. It would also be grotesquely hypocritical because I am also a nepo Peer, having followed my own late father, who was a life Peer, into the House of Lords. I make that point because I know what a wonderfully additional heart-warming moment it is to come into a Chamber that would have formed part of his life even before he formally joined us. I look forward to debating with him for many years to come about the importance of the creative industries. I also welcome his speech because of his focus on the future, on innovation and on the strengths that Britain has today, here and now in the 21st century, rather than looking back necessarily on past glories.
A friend of mine, the academic James Crabtree, who specialises in south-east Asia, sent me a diptel this week on WhatsApp from a recording of a meeting between Senator Barry Goldwater and the Prime Minister of Singapore in which it was remarked that the British might have lost their muscle, but they are able to think. It is an echo of the remark that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, made about having lost an empire but looking to find a role.
In opening this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, gave a brilliant speech—one always says a speech is brilliant when it entirely reflects one’s own worldview. Everything the noble Lord said about how Britain moves forward in what he quite rightly identified as one of the most dangerous periods, certainly in living memory for me, is absolutely right. We must play to our strengths and not look back on past glories.
We are a strange country. We have, in some ways, a surfeit of self-confidence and, in other ways, a chronic lack of confidence. I always say that what makes Britain great is not our past but what we have today, which is part of our heritage: the rule of law, the English common law, leadership in artificial intelligence—to which the noble Lord referred—our universities, our research base, our Armed Forces and the Premier League. These are the kind of things that people around the world look to Britain for. The remark from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that everyone needs someone to love should perhaps be framed and put in the Foreign Office, because that is Britain’s opportunity.
This week, as chairman of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, I was lucky enough to preside over our annual business summit. We welcomed the Malaysian Minister for Investment, Trade and Industry, and a Malaysian delegation, because Malaysia is chair of ASEAN this year. It was very telling for me. Somebody came up with a statistic, which I am not sure necessarily bears scrutiny, that about half a million Malaysians have benefited in some shape or form from British education. Given that the population is about 32 million to 34 million, that may be excessive, but the point was made, and the Minister then asked: “So why are only 0.6% of our imports from Britain?”
The fact is—I hope I am not getting over my skis when I say this—that there are many countries that love Britain. When you are in the Middle East or south-east Asia, you will constantly meet people who say how highly they hold the United Kingdom in regard, and how much they almost regard it as a second home. That is our strength. We can, in this moment of crisis, wake up and realise that we are not the 51st state. We have influence across the globe, and we should maximise that influence.
In my final remarks, let me play to my strength in terms of my passion for culture and talk about Britain’s soft power. We can exaggerate soft power. I always tease Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, a man I hold in the highest regard, who talked a great deal about soft power. He once lent the Iranians the Cyrus cylinder, a very important cultural artefact in Persia. I always tease him that, shortly after he lent it to them, they arrested six Royal Navy sailors who they claimed had breached Iranian territorial waters. But the point was made; we lent it, and we got it back.
I have talked about the importance of the British Council in this Chamber in the last few weeks. I have talked as well, many times, about the importance of the BBC World Service. Soft power will not get us everything we want to achieve, but it is a wonderful front door to engage so many different countries in dialogue—countries that respect the United Kingdom, and dare I say it, some of which do love us.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue at a crucial time. I also welcome the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, and look forward to hearing a lot more from him in the future.
We have a long history and a clear footprint around the globe, even though our reach and capacity have diminished. Our global position has been defined by our interconnection with America, Europe and the Commonwealth. However, whatever was special about our relationship with the United States is now over; trust is broken. That does not mean that we should cease to have a relationship with America but, from now on, it will be on different terms and that is irreversible.
I have always taken the view that the UK’s most important ties, by force of geography, history and culture, are with our neighbours across a narrow stretch of water, as opposed to a vast ocean. During our 47-year membership of what is the EU, the UK carved out a unique, semi-detached position. We threw that away with Brexit and now run the risk of being isolated from both the USA and the EU. By leaving the EU, we weakened both ourselves and the EU.
I commend the Prime Minister for his efforts to co-ordinate with European partners and maintain good relations with the White House, and they have been rightly praised. I understand it when he says he is not seeking to choose between Europe and Washington. However, what he must avoid is allowing President Trump to dictate in any way how we reset our relationships with the EU and Europe, either on trade or defence and security.
Historically, the UK has reached around the globe, but we have sadly neglected that in recent decades. It is surely time to revitalise our relationship with the Commonwealth. The savage cut in aid compromises that, but we must look to commit more in promoting trade, investment, diplomacy and culture—soft power—to show that we value our membership. I recently spoke with a member of the Government of one of the smaller Commonwealth countries and asked what benefit they perceived in King and Commonwealth. I was told that it was a matter of complete indifference, as it made no impact. That is a travesty and should surely change.
There is, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, said, a legacy of goodwill towards the UK in many parts of the Commonwealth and around the world, which we fail to reciprocate adequately. I note that the King met Justin Trudeau in London recently and has been seen in public wearing Canadian uniform and insignia. King Charles is the King of Canada, and I have seen suggestions in the Canadian media that, as their king, he should publicly support Canadian sovereignty and independence. Is there any protocol to prevent him doing that? Surely Canadian Ministers can advise him to do so.
No relationship is perfect. The UK has friends that we have undervalued, and it now appears that we have others that we have overvalued. Our global position should be based on relationships we can trust, even when there are differences. As the world has changed, the UK cannot afford to be dogmatic about negotiating closer links with the EU. We need to build our own defence capacity and reset our relationship. The UK knows what it is like to have continental Europe occupied by dark powers. That was the case when I was born and for more than half my life. Our destiny requires the vision to create the means to prevent that happening again.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, it is customary to congratulate the holder of a debate such as this one, and I do so with all the more enthusiasm on this occasion, since that person is the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who was instrumental in setting up your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee and was its first chair. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on his thought-provoking maiden speech.
As for the timing of our debate, that too is pretty good. With the publication of the global strategy review from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, only a few weeks away, that report and this debate are together linking Britain’s hard and soft power, which must always be considered together if we are to get a full picture.
The first thing to be said is that the word “global” in the title of today’s debate has nothing whatever to do with that silly slogan of “global Britain” dreamed up by Foreign Secretary Johnson to characterise post-Brexit Britain. Britain’s global role has existed since the 16th century and had nothing whatever to do with whether we were inside the EU or outside it, even though we had a lot of pretty tempestuous relationships with the other countries of Europe along the road. Nor does it have much to do with that other emanation of Johnsonian imagination—the Indo-Pacific tilt, which overlooked that, if you tilt towards something, you necessarily tilt away from something else, in this case Europe. President Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has upended that tilt comprehensively.
The decision at the end of last month to substantially increase defence spending deserves full support, but the decision to finance that exclusively by a massive cut in our overseas aid budget, which had already been plundered to pay for Ukrainian refugees in this country, is going to inflict great damage on our soft power and influence around the world. The least the Government should do now is to commit themselves to increasing the 0.3% of GNI as soon as growth picks up.
One of the biggest challenges we face around the world is the damage being inflicted by the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from multilateral organisations and programmes, from the World Health Organization to the Paris climate accords to the UN’s Human Rights Council—and there could be more to come. Together with the cuts in US aid, these are serious decisions which will weaken western influence, whether or not it is replaced by Chinese involvement, and they will impact some of the poorest people in the world. We will need to do what we can to sustain and strengthen these multilateral organisations, moving ahead, if necessary, without the US, in a plurilateral framework with other like-minded countries; for example, at the World Trade Organization for the proposed pandemic convention, and at the UN. Can the Minister say whether that is the Government’s policy?
In all this we will need to work in close co-operation with and keep in sharp focus our European partners, with the Prime Minister’s aim of a security and defence pact with them at its heart. What is the proposed timetable for moving ahead with that and how does it relate to the handling of the fighting in Ukraine?
To conclude, in all this we will need international partners. Britain is no longer a great power, as it thought it was, perhaps for a little bit too long. But we are a significant middle-ranking power, so we need representation around the world, and that will need to be taken into account in this summer’s spending review, avoiding such pretty useless substitutes as regional representation. We must nurture our main instruments of soft power, such as the BBC World Service, which should be financed by the taxpayer and not the licence holder, and the British Council.
In all this, we should show awareness of how others see us and not just of how we see ourselves.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Howell on securing this debate, though I fear I cannot quite share his degree of optimism. I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on a most accomplished maiden speech. We look forward to hearing many more. It is of course a privilege to follow the noble Lord who has just spoken, who brings his considerable expertise to bear on our discussion of these issues.
The global position of the United Kingdom has changed beyond all recognition in the last few weeks. That is because the world has changed beyond all recognition in the last few weeks. We are at a turning point comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but this turning point is not, alas, for the better. It is making the world a more dangerous place than it has been since 1989, or perhaps even longer ago than that.
The great certainty that has dominated all global strategy since 1945 has been that the United States has been the leader of the free world. It has seen its role as the guarantor of a rules-based world order which it helped to devise. Of course, it has made mistakes—not all of its interventions have had beneficial results—but, on the whole, both it and the world have benefited enormously. Millions more people now live under freedom and many more millions no longer have to suffer the grinding misery of poverty. Of course, the United States has not been the sole author of these benefits, but without its leadership, it is very doubtful whether this progress could have occurred.
This great certainty has gone. It grieves me to say what I am about to say. I lived in America for a year as a young man. Both my children are married to Americans. All my grandchildren are dual citizens of the United Kingdom and the United States. But the last few weeks have made it clear that the United States is no longer a reliable ally of this country.
It is not the act of an ally to impose tariffs on friendly countries. It is not the act of an ally to threaten to take part of another country’s territory—Greenland—by force. It is not the act of an ally to vote with Russia, North Korea and Iran in the United Nations against a motion that recognises that Russia invaded Ukraine. It is not the act of a freedom-loving country to withdraw intelligence and military assistance from a democratic country that has been invaded by a tyrant.
It is foolish to pretend that we can rely on a country which is led by a man who rejoices in his unreliability, who revels in his unreliability, and who uses unreliability as a weapon of choice. The Prime Minister has spoken of himself as a bridge, and his efforts have been commendable, but a bridge needs firm foundations at both ends, and those firm foundations no longer exist on the other side of the Atlantic.
So what is to be done? It is clear that we, in common with other countries, not only European countries, must spend more on defence. It is true that we have been freeloading on the United States for far too long, but I am afraid that this new need for increased defence spending must have as its objective not merely the need to convince the United States that we are paying our fair share of the costs of NATO but the ability to defend ourselves and play our part in the defence of Europe without the United States.
The changed attitude of the United States is said to be in order that it can devote itself to the challenges it faces in the Pacific, in particular from China, but its democratic allies in the Pacific have hardly been reassured. South Korea is reportedly considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons since it no longer considers the United States a reliable ally, Japan’s nervousness is palpable, and what confidence can anyone now have for the future of Taiwan?
But we and the rest of the world will be poorer, too. That is an inevitable consequence of a damaging trade war, and the extra spending on defence which is now essential will have to be at the expense of other elements of government spending to which we have become accustomed.
The United Kingdom’s global position has changed in the last few weeks, and it has changed for the worse. We are weaker and we may become poorer. But we can—we must—also become more self-reliant. In doing so, we can yet provide a degree of leadership to like-minded countries which do not see international relations as a series of transactions but recognise that we share a system of values which is worth cherishing, sustaining and defending. That would be an honourable role to which we can and should aspire.
Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)
I join in congratulating my noble friend Lord Howell. On this occasion, as on many others in his long career, he has shown himself to be one of Parliament’s thought leaders. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on this pleasant family occasion.
Disraeli warned us of those who fall into their anecdotage. I hope the House will forgive me if I offer one anecdote from my own experience as Minister of State in the Foreign Office. When I was the first British Minister to return to Aden in 1990 after our rather disgraceful scuttle from that place in 1967, leaving our local allies in the lurch, I was given in my briefing a saying from the area of that time of final British retreat. The saying was this:
“It is always better to be the enemy of the British than their friend. If you are their enemy, there is the possibility of being bought. If you are their friend, there is the certainty of being sold’’.
That is the way it goes with retreating empires. It is, one might say, something the friends of the United States are now learning, or have learned, from the end of the Vietnam War onwards, via Kabul and now to Ukraine. Once a nation, still immensely powerful though it may be, decides for better or worse that it has had enough of overseas adventures, its allies had better watch out: as Taiwan should now watch out, as Israel should now watch out, and as Europe, Japan and South Korea must watch out.
As Robert Tombs wrote eloquently in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, there have been plenty of warning signs, which we in Europe have ignored. Trumpism expresses the turning point in a style that would have shocked previous Presidents, but however expressed, something irrevocable which was a long time in the making has now been done. America is going home. The structures it supported and which its friends took for granted can no longer be relied upon. Trust has been broken in a way that cannot be recreated.
Doubtless, it will not always be quite so difficult as now. Trump will not last for ever: he will not be exempt from Enoch Powell’s law that all political careers end in failure. But his successors will not be able to recreate the status quo, even if they wanted to, and it seems unlikely that they would want to. Now, we in Britain have to find those who most closely share the same real interests as ourselves and build alliances on this shared interest. First and foremost, those who share our interests are our neighbours in Europe, all under threat from Mr Putin.
After Suez, our last big adventure in imperialism, when an infinitely more powerful imperial US cracked the whip and told us to behave, we and France drew different conclusions. Broadly, we decided to stick to the US, albeit as a very junior partner, and France went with Europe. Now we will have no choice other than to become a little more Gaullist. Doing what we can, of course, to keep relations with the USA as good as we possibly can, we have to cast our defence and industrial lot back in with our neighbours. I do not mean by trying to rejoin the EU: that bus has departed. We must also make the best possible technological and defence-industrial alliances that we can elsewhere, notably with Japan, Turkey, South Korea and, if possible, India, as well as Canada, New Zealand and Australia. We also have to maximise our Commonwealth network, as my noble friend so eloquently put it.
My final point, however, is my most important. To make ourselves safe, we have to make ourselves richer. Our position ultimately depends on our wealth. We have a lamentable debt situation, including, as Roger Bootle has pointed out, in the decline of our net overseas assets. We have to strengthen and change the nature of our economy. I do not think we have yet begun to realise the scale of change required if we are to be able to defend ourselves. It is not 2.5% or 2.6%; it will be much more. It will mean profound changes in our society. We have a sort of consensus on defence at present among the Westminster parties, but do we have the social cohesion to accept the burdens that we are going to have to carry? Can we find the people to volunteer for the radically reformed and enlarged armed services we will need? Do we have the industrial muscle still to rebuild our defence industries?
We are going to need a new national unity if we are to succeed. Success cannot be taken for granted, but perhaps this ancient House, just a little distanced—as it should be—from the delights of short-term political infighting, might be one place where the building of a new national consensus might begin.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and I follow in every sense what the noble Lords, Lord Howard and Lord Waldegrave, have just said.
In this crisis we need to hope for the best, prepare for the worst and learn from the past. I hope that Putin buys the ceasefire compromise and comes to accept Ukraine as the legitimate sovereign state it is, but we need to prepare for a future in which his appetite for territorial gain has only been whetted. The analogy, I think, is Munich in 1938: Hitler settled for one-third and nine months later came back for the other two-thirds.
We need to contemplate a future in which America, perhaps in the hope of pulling apart the Beijing-Moscow relationship, finds itself closer to the autocrat in the Kremlin than to the democrats in western Europe. At Munich last month, Vance told us that the real threat to Europe was not Russia but the enemy within—our corrosive liberalism. Musk says that America should quit NATO and America has left planning for some NATO exercises. So far, Trump has said only that America will not defend NATO’s free riders, and for America to follow Musk’s advice would be remarkably quixotic. America is right to resent the free riders, but it is America that drives the bus.
The NATO supreme commanders have always been serving US officers reporting to their commander-in-chief, and Congress accepted the Washington treaty only when that was spelled out to it. The alliance has been, from the start, a very effective means of projecting US power—too effective for de Gaulle’s taste. The American military and the American arms industry would be horrified if Musk got his way, and we should work to see that he does not. We should work to strengthen Europe’s contribution to the alliance, as Peter Carrington and Helmut Schmidt did with their Eurogroup and European defence improvement programme when Congress first got stroppy about the free-rider problem. But we also need to prepare for the worst, as the noble Lords, Lord Howard and Lord Waldegrave, have been saying.
European security is our security and we need a new structure that we should be defining now—but not in a way which might precipitate the very eventuality that concerns us, so not too much of the performative strategic autonomy talk that we hear from Paris. The best analogy may be 1948 and Ernest Bevin’s Western Union treaty. What would Bevin do now? I will make three guesses. First, obviously, we rearm. Obviously, 2.5% of GDP will not be nearly enough; in the 1970s, we were at 5.5%. Secondly, we demonstrate commitment. In the 1970s, we were still honouring Bevin’s WU commitment to keep 55,000 troops forward-based in continental Europe. The Baltic states must feel now rather as the West Germans did then—and they were very glad to have our forces on the ground. Thirdly, we need to strike a security deal with the EU in May. With the continuing cold wind from the east and new blustery winds from the west, we Europeans need to huddle together.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
May I remind noble Lords that this is a timed debate and we have to finish it by 3.19 pm? I am gently reminding noble Lords that the advisory speaking time it is four minutes.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Howell for tabling this important and timely debate, and for his wide-ranging and insightful introduction. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, to his place and look forward to his future contributions.
With events moving at the pace they are and the related dynamics of established alliances and partnerships being severely tested, the United Kingdom’s position in the world remains both crucial and pivotal. Therefore, I found myself really willing on the Prime Minister when he met President Trump. That was difficult for me—I am sure my noble friend Lord Howard will relate to this. Imagine a Liverpool fan cheering on an Arsenal one, particularly with current events, but it shows the importance of leadership.
To me, we see our place in the world through key pillars: in our positioning and the strength that it brings to the global stage; and in foreign, defence and development policy. It remains my absolute firm belief that, with vision, leadership, investment in relationships, the leveraging of experience and the conviction to exercise strength and independence when it matters, we have an extremely important role to play. We play it as an economic power within the G7 and the G20, and as a strategic dialogue partner. I agree with my noble friend Lord Vaizey on this. We have been a dialogue partner with ASEAN since 2021. Our trade stands at £46 billion and the CPTPP was agreed in 2023. These successful new partnerships provide opportunities in this changing world, and I look forward to the Minister’s update in this respect.
The second pillar is our role as a defence power within key multilateral organisations, our status as a P5 member of the UN Security Council and a central role in the Commonwealth of Nations. Yet, sadly, the role of the UN has become marginalised and diminished, at times watching from the sidelines. The recent General Assembly vote on Ukraine showed, for the first time, countries such as the US and Israel voting with Russia, not with the UK. It showed that post-Second World War norms no longer hold. I would welcome again the Government’s perspective on this.
Regarding our development power, may I welcome officially the noble Baroness to her new position as Development Minister? I feel this also strengthens the voice of the Lords around the Cabinet table. Over many years, the UK has led on a broad spectrum of relief and development initiatives. The current change in budgets, which I fully understand, poses the question: what does it mean for our initiatives? I would welcome the Minister’s perspectives, particularly in areas that I led on such as PSVI, where survivors benefited in areas such as DRC, Ukraine and Sudan.
Finally, on soft power, as others have said, we brought a focus in challenging misinformation, providing important news and empowerment through the English language. In the area of human rights, I was proud to serve as the first Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief. I say to other noble Lords that, yes, I worked with the first Trump Administration; it was then that we established the international alliance on freedom of religion, and I pay tribute to my dear friend Ambassador Sam Brownback in that respect.
We also established the human rights sanctions regime. I say to the Minister quite directly that there are individuals and groups responsible for egregious abuse of human rights. While I know that the Minister cannot speculate, can she reassure your Lordships’ House that those levers will continue to be used against such groups? They include, to give one example, the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan, which targets minority faith communities in vile, hatred-fuelled attacks.
To conclude, we must play our part in finding solutions and leading on convening parties, whether on Ukraine or the Middle East. It is a real strength of our country, and we are recognised and respected for this. The world is changing, and I pay tribute to our partners, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on recent initiatives. Such examples also show a shifting of power and a realignment of alliances. The UK must embrace new partnerships and continue to play our part as a leader among nations.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this most timely of debates. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, to this House.
There can be no doubt that the United Kingdom’s place in the world order has been in question for some time. In relative terms, we are a small country; however, it is equally true that we always punch well above our weight. Indeed, the world has been reminded of our unique status in recent weeks because of the lead role that our Prime Minister has played in standing up for Ukraine and bringing European allies together in defence. I pay warm tribute to Keir Starmer for the diplomacy and foresight he has displayed in his handling of the current occupant of the Oval Office. Equally, I commend him on his loyalty to the Ukrainian people and, of course, President Zelensky. I hope that the cross-party unity on display in this House and in the other place can be maintained as the Prime Minister’s efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine continue.
There can be no question but that all European nations now need to increase defence spending by a significant degree. This should have happened long ago under our previous Government, but at least the step change is now finally under way. Noble Lords will be aware that His Majesty’s Government recently awarded Thales Air Defence Ltd, a world-leading defence contractor based in Belfast, a £1.6 billion contract to supply 5,000 missiles to Ukraine. While this will undoubtedly bring great help to the Ukrainian war effort, it will bring significant benefits to the Northern Ireland economy. The announcement was warmly received back home by all Ulster parties other than Sinn Féin/IRA, somewhat ironically given its previous fondness for explosive devices. Northern Ireland has a proud history in the production of armaments and, of course, ships and aircraft to the Ministry of Defence. I sincerely hope that the Province will be at the front of the queue for future defence contracts as our military spending is redoubled in these serious and worrying times.
I wish to make one final point. It has come to greater public attention in recent weeks that the Republic of Ireland—alongside Austria and Switzerland, it must be said—is not contributing in any tangible way to the security of an increasingly threatened Europe. Indeed, the Republic of Ireland has the lowest defence spending in the European Union at around 0.2% of GDP. Yet the Republic of Ireland is receiving all the security benefits of the rest of the European continent, paid for by others, including hard-pressed United Kingdom taxpayers.
I recently tabled a Written Question, answered by the Minister, who I am delighted to see in her place, asking what discussions His Majesty’s Government has had with the Irish, Austrian and Swiss Governments about their financial contributions towards protecting the security of Europe. I will not hold her somewhat generalised reply against her. However, given the UK’s renewed and enhanced leadership position in recent weeks, surely it is time for our Prime Minister to take a leaf out of President Trump’s book and demand that our closest friends, particularly the Republic of Ireland, climb off the fence and pay their way for the security of their own citizens. Indeed, I was surprised that the President did not make this point directly to the Irish Taoiseach during his visit to the White House yesterday. I hope that Sir Keir will do so when Mr Martin next crosses the threshold of No. 10.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, over the past two months, our world has tilted on its axis. A lot of our assumptions were overthrown and a lot of our “isms” are suddenly “wasms”. We were perhaps ready for a new US Administration to withdraw from Ukraine—that had been flagged up in advance—but other things have come as a shock: to side with Russia while attacking NATO allies; to instruct the NSA to stop treating Russia as a threat and to downgrade it as a source of cyberattacks; to vote with North Korea, Belarus, Russia and the world’s delinquents in the United Nations on a motion that even China was not prepared to support; to make aggressive territorial demands on Denmark; and to wage actual economic war against Canada.
I take this opportunity to salute the Minister for the tone she took yesterday on the question of Canadian trade. I could see that she had all sides of the Chamber with her. It is not a question on which anyone in this country can be neutral. I also salute the Administration for the mature and responsible attitude they have taken during these very sudden changes, these very mercurial times. We have not lost sight of the prize that we have—a potential trade deal with the US and closer associations with what is still by far the world’s strongest country and our biggest market. But we have still stood up for the values that, as a country, we pride ourselves on having exported—as the heirs of a liberal and democratic tradition that stretches back through the Bill of Rights even before the Great Charter to the folkright of common law.
Where are we left as such a country in this world that has been so suddenly shaken up? The question assumes some urgency when you look at some of the defence procurement decisions that have very long lead times. We have always assumed until now that if there were a serious war, we would be part of a wider western coalition, a US-led coalition. So, yes, we could manage Aden emergencies or Falklands Wars or Sierra Leone conflicts. But if it got serious, when it came to things such as strategic lifts, satellites and, of course, nuclear spare parts, we always assumed we would have the US deterrent there. Can we assume that we will be able to rely on it 30 or 40 years from now when the current nuclear deterrent expires; in other words, what procurement decisions should we be making now? Can we be certain that we would be able to rely on our American friends? I would hope we could, but I am less certain of it now than I was two months ago.
I hope we would be able to rely on liberal and democratic countries in western Europe, but, again, can we be certain of that? You would think the EU would be bending over backwards to draw us into a defence and security arrangement, given its relative exposure to Russian threats and revanchism. But it is sticking to the line, as far as I can tell, that it will not talk to us at all until we agree to open our fishing grounds. Now, is that a mature and responsible attitude? Does it show signs of having adapted to this new world?
On whom can we rely? The only thing I can say with certainty is that 30 or 40 years from now, we will not be quarrelling with the countries that have always been our strongest supporters and closest allies; namely the other large Commonwealth realms of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Somebody was telling me that if we were to make our nuclear system autonomous on the model of the French one, it would roughly double the budget. Well, we could roughly double the budget by sharing our GDP responsibility with those three countries.
Here I should declare an interest as president of the Conservative Friends of CANZUK, which launched at the other end of this building last night. CANZUK stands for closer co-operation, military and strategic, among those four countries, as well as free movement of labour—the right to take a job in another country—and an enhanced free market.
I end with a suggestion to the two Ministers, who both know, I hope, in what high esteem I hold them. Next year is the centenary of the Westminster Conference, which began the transformation of the British Empire into a voluntary Commonwealth. Is that not a splendid opportunity for His Majesty to invite the Prime Ministers of his four largest realms and show that our song is not yet sung—that we are only just getting started?
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for securing this debate and for his wise and characteristically thoughtful introduction. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, for his forward-looking maiden speech. One thing he and I have in common is that his mother was also my supporter when I was introduced to the House.
In this very short time, I want to emphasise three points. First, we have been witnessing significant changes in the global order for some time. The jolt to the world from the stance taken by the Trump Administration should be seen not in isolation but, to some extent, as symptomatic of the broader changes we have been witnessing for some time. Rebalancing of economic and political power over a number of decades, accelerated by globalisation, has created both prosperity and insecurity; conflicts, pandemics and climate change are aggravating factors. Technological advances have enhanced connectivity, interdependence and interpenetration. All these have contributed to geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts.
We have been invested in the current order for almost eight decades and, understandably, instability and a changing scenario are causing anxiety. But now there is an opportunity to reposition ourselves and have multiple engagements to shape the emerging multipolar world. A change in mindset, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and fresh and bold thinking are required to protect our national interest and that of the international community. Engagement with both multilateral institutions and the multipolar world is an imperative to influence and shape the international norms, rules and laws. The need for an active and agile foreign policy is both evident and urgent, based on the analysis provided by the noble Lord, Lord Howell.
My second point is about the need to strengthen our influence through soft power. While in some instances boots on the ground may be necessary, and we have to strengthen our defence capabilities, in the long run, to keep peace, soft shoes on the ground will yield better results. This is increasingly important in our volatile world, where there is more need for deeper understanding, mutuality, collaboration, co-operation and new partnerships. We have decades of experience in the exercise of soft diplomacy and building intercultural relations.
We were leaders in this space through the British Council well before Joseph Nye talked about soft power. But recently the UK has dropped to third place behind China in business, trade and governance. These are signs that we need to bolster our soft power strategy. The Government have established the Soft Power Council, but this requires just as much attention as defence, because hard and soft power go hand in hand. All the institutions that are the engine of our soft power need support and revitalisation.
Thirdly, we have been a force for good, offering a fair and balanced voice; our values and governance were a beacon. In recent years, we have squandered our reputation to some extent, and now is the time to recover it. We should not underestimate either working through the Commonwealth to achieve our objectives or the importance of our broader strategic relations with India and the global South.
Finally, we should not see ourselves as a mid-sized power. Our hyper-interconnected world is no longer about power; it is about networks and what we can bring to the table that is distinctive. We have many distinctive assets, as has been mentioned. The role played by the Prime Minister in the current crisis is one illustration of what we are capable of. The change and turmoil provide an opportunity to shape and negotiate our global influence and to be optimistic in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, suggested; I very much hope that the Government will pay heed to what he said.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Howell for his debate. I apologise to the House for being slow in getting to my seat.
The kaleidoscopic view of the world today resembles that observed by Alice—probably more through the looking-glass than in wonderland. The 28 February scenes in the Oval Office suggested a bid by President Trump, vying with President Putin, for a role as one of the characters. The weakening of democracy in so many countries, and its absence in many others, increases the risk of anarchy—which is, by definition, unstable and so permits, and indeed promotes, alternative forms of rule.
The Second World War resulted in the resounding defeat of fascism. The subsequent founding of the United Nations sought to banish fascism for all time. Article 2.4 of the UN charter calls on all UN states to refrain
“from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
That could not be clearer. Yet today, fascism has re-emerged and is a growing threat to world peace, security and prosperity. Putin’s Russia not only ticks every box—tyranny, brutality, intolerance and territorial expansion—but, by its ruthless diplomacy, has managed to convert and expand the BRICS group of countries into an anti-western alliance.
Perhaps the greatest threat from fascism now comes from political Islam. I emphasise that political Islam is not part of the religion of Islam. Political Islam has attempted to highjack the theology of Islam to support its own ideology. This ideology originated in the 18th century as Wahhabism, a reform movement. It was relaunched in 1928 with the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the first act of which was to kill the Egyptian Prime Minister. It attempted to kill Nasser, and in 1981 it assassinated President Anwar Sadat after he had attempted to make peace with Israel.
Since that time, the Muslim Brotherhood has acted as the political front for many violent organisations. A turning point was the unexpected launch of the Islamic State—ISIS—in April 2014. Formed from the Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda, it rejects national borders and has declared its ultimate aim as the creation of a worldwide caliphate. The ideology and presence of the Islamic State is expanding widely and rapidly, especially in sub-Saharan African. The nature of the fascist lifestyle that it seeks to impose is demonstrated daily for those who live under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It is crucial that we understand, and pay the cost of resisting, the twin threats of fascism led by President Putin and by political Islam. The UK, with our long history as a world leader and as one of the P5 members of the UN Security Council, has a crucial role to play.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for securing this debate and in congratulating my noble friend Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town on an excellent maiden speech that was a very good example of how, if you have something worth saying in your Lordships’ House and you can deliver it with a strong, confident voice, a measured sense of self-deprecation and a sense of humour, you have a far better chance of it being heard.
In the short time available, I shall focus on the UK’s position in Africa, but hardly comprehensively. In that context, today’s proceedings take place against a sobering backdrop. Over 80% of USAID projects have been cancelled, with the surviving 18% now falling under the auspices of the State Department. Accompanying this cull has been a presidential narrative about the subversive nature of USAID’s activities that could have been dictated by the US’s strategic adversaries. Germany and France have cut aid over several years and, owing to a combination of fiscal stringency and a darkening international picture, we have been forced to allocate money away from aid and towards defence—a decision I support reluctantly.
Meanwhile, in September last year, China pledged $51 billion in loans and aid to Africa. Russia’s Africa Corps provides security assistance in countries including Libya, Niger and Burkina Faso, while its new African Initiative—a self-described “Russian news agency”—deepens Russian influence through propaganda, civil society networks and outreach. Russia opened embassies in Burkina Faso and Equatorial Guinea last year and new missions are due to open in Niger and Sierra Leone this year, with missions in South Sudan, Gambia, Liberia, Comoros and Togo due to open shortly thereafter. It is clear, therefore, that our strategic adversaries plan to fill any vacuum left by a western retreat from engagement in Africa.
Aid matters for three reasons. First, we have a humanitarian duty to help those suffering from appalling poverty, conflict, natural disasters or climate change. Secondly, we are defined in the long term by what we do as a country rather than by our aspirations. Thirdly, even by the most cynical calculus of self-interest, foreign aid enhances the UK’s soft power and promotes peace. It makes conditions less fertile for terrorism and in some cases keeps frozen conflicts from kindling into flame. In this sense, foreign aid should be defined as national security spending, rather than just as empathy translated into hard currency.
Foreign aid is often an early warning system, alerting us to the prospect of an outbreak of conflict or terrorist violence. Given, as I have said, that Russia and China are prepared to step into any vacuum left by western powers in Africa, we will have to work extremely hard to ensure that our cut to aid and the reallocation of funds to defence do not resemble someone selling their burglar alarm in order to buy a baseball bat. Based on the most recent forecasts for GNI, the aid budget will now be around £9.2 billion, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to continue their work in Sudan, among other existing commitments.
Before I finish, I want to ask two questions of my noble friend the Minister, whom I am delighted to see in her place. First, what discussions have taken place as to the future balance between spending on regional and country-specific programmes and spending on our multilateral commitments? In assessing what capacity we now have, it would be helpful to know whether the Government envisage that balance changing. Secondly, what discussions have taken place with the EU as to whether there is scope for UK participation in future CSDP missions? Collective action is more important than ever at a time when we are finding it more difficult to act alone or within the framework of our traditional alliances.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, and thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for initiating this debate. I start with a quote from Lenin: “Don’t mourn, organise.” The past few weeks have demonstrated that we need to look fundamentally at what we are organising our defences for. In particular, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, will read this debate and, if necessary, rewrite considerable portions of his report which he is about to give to the Government. I am not sure that we should be planning for war; we need more thorough planning for peace, to make sure that the voice of Britain is listened to in the world.
We are too stuck in the language of the past—the language of Bevin, Attlee, NATO and Churchill. We need to move into the future. Our future is as a medium-sized—number seven in the world—important regional power. Our home defence needs—as I would prioritise them—are the Baltics, the Nordics and the northern Europeans. We need to look, for instance, at our ability to protect our undersea assets. We need to look at playing a much more active part in the Arctic Council.
Most of all—and I recognise that this would have to be done very privately—we need an independent British nuclear deterrent. We can no longer rely on the system we have relied on up to now. We have to acknowledge that the French got it right. It will cost us quite a bit of money. Although I just told you to forget Ernie Bevin, let us remember that he said, “I want a bomb with a union jack on top”. We have to look at this as part of our defence capacity.
Yesterday, in the Times, the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, gave a good list of Britain’s overseas commitments which still exist. We know that the only way that we could defend the Falklands is by a nuclear threat. We also know that we could not make it with the present structure of our defence forces. We need a stronger defence and an independent nuclear deterrent. We need to negotiate at least to get France and Germany into the Five Eyes agreement; it is too skewed at the moment.
There is a big challenge ahead. I am glad that, for once, I have been able to make a speech without annoying everybody. I strongly believe in British defence. We need to strengthen our military forces and our soft power, particularly through the British Council and the overseas service of the BBC. This is a huge challenge, but I am sure that the Minister—whom I congratulate on her elevation—will be up to convincing her colleagues to face it.
Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for securing this very timely debate. I congratulate noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on his very enlivening and to-the-point maiden speech.
In the very short time available, I am not going to try to deliver a verdict on the UK’s global position. In light of what Mr Trump has been up to, I want to make a couple of points about the fundamentals of UK security, on which our role in the world hangs.
Since the inauguration of the 47th President of the United States, I have been more worried about what is happening than I can remember since the Cuban missile crisis, when we feared for our lives. It is not true to say that that is the case today, but I fear the growing threat to our freedoms from an aggressive and highly militarised Russia, in alliance with China. It is a different world. The UK is lucky to not be on the front line geographically, but the Kremlin’s ambassador in London has made it clear that it has the UK in its sights. We can expect, at the very least, increased espionage, cyberattacks aimed destabilising our politics, services and military capabilities, and incidents on and under the sea, as well as, potentially, more attempted assassinations.
It is a long-standing Russian policy to interfere in other people’s societies. I have no doubt that the UK can cope with this level of threat, though we need to do much more than is currently the case to strengthen the resilience of national infrastructure against attack. That is a task for not just the Government but the private sector. The imponderable question is whether this country and other European countries have the political will to generate sufficient military capability to deter overt Russian attack against the background of a much-reduced contribution to our security. Hitherto, as Europeans we have sought collectively to do just enough to keep the US on board without suggesting that we could do without it.
It is very clear that this level of effort will no longer suffice, whatever colour Administration is in office in Washington, now or in the future. What is much less clear is whether in the foreseeable future we will still be operating within the integrated framework of NATO or whether in effect the US will opt out of the Article 5 guarantee, which will also imply the removal of the nuclear umbrella and the effective end of NATO. At one level, it would be helpful to know what we are up against, but at another I dread to know the answer, which I doubt would be founded on any well thought-through American national security strategy. For all our doubts about Washington and what is going on at the moment, the Prime Minister is being well advised to present policy based on the assumption of continuing full-blooded American commitment to European security. However, as others have said, I hope that we are thinking hard about less optimistic scenarios.
What happens next in Ukraine could bring answers: this is my last point. There are several possible scenarios. It is unlikely that the Russians will flatly reject a ceasefire, through which lies an apparent path to the lifting of sanctions and the potential end of isolation, but it is doubtful that they will act in good faith. They will spin out talks to gain territory, they will make the guardrails of a ceasefire as weak as possible and they will set out to find pretexts for resuming fighting, based on claims of Ukrainian breaches. The likelihood of fighting resuming is high. Events after that could be fateful. Will the Americans back the Ukrainians hard, or will they try a Minsk? A Minsk could be the end of the road for the defence of Europe as we have known it. Credible American backing for any ceasefire is essential. On this key issue, the UK is indeed showing the leadership that this House wishes to see, and I congratulate the Government on pursuing it.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, and hope that he enjoys his time here. We are in rather difficult times, so we look forward to further contributions.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for making possible this important debate. It is more than important. It is an extraordinary debate. It would have been inconceivable, months or even weeks ago, for the House to be united in saying the things that it has said about our position in the world, and particularly the position of the United States. Matters are changing fast—as we speak, even. These are unprecedented times, in which America has joined the autocracies and dictatorships of the world in a belief that might is right, abandoning the rule of law, abandoning international free trade, abandoning liberal democracies, attacking its own allies and clearly adopting the same expansionism as that of Xi and Putin. It is as if the America First movement in the 1930s had seized power just when the Americans in practice came behind us to defeat Hitler when those America First politicians had argued for them to abandon Europe to Hitler. The wrong side has taken control. It is unimaginable that this Chamber would be united in these concerns, yet that is obviously so.
I will touch on the two big issues. The first is trade. It is absolutely evident that there is nothing about what Trump has said—and he is saying it more today—that suggests that this country can expect a genuinely good trade agreement with the United States. If he has one, it will be based entirely on self-interest and on us surrendering any measure of our interests to do a deal. We have to recognise that we need to work with all countries that believe in the rule of law, free trade and international institutions to build an alliance around trade. We cannot compromise our position by thinking that we can somehow sit on both sides of the Atlantic—that is just not an opportunity now available to us.
My second point is on defence. People have often misunderstood what NATO is about. The most important element that NATO provided was, effectively, an anti-proliferation treaty that said a member state could rely on America to defend it and therefore did not need the bomb. France has a few bombs—independently. Britain has a smaller few, which are not independent of America in any event; we cannot in practice use them without it.
The truth is that the offer to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, the Baltics, Britain, Germany and France—all of those other democracies—was, “We will defend you and therefore you don’t need the bomb”. Even more importantly, not only do we need a defence alliance across Europe and other likeminded countries that has a nuclear deterrent—we are going to have to think about that now—but behind the nuclear deterrent was the promise that, if Russia or China used nuclear weapons at any point, the first response would be a non-nuclear one: an overwhelming shock and awe attack.
This was said to Russia when it threatened a nuclear attack at the start of the Ukraine war. Russia was told, “You will be taken out by a non-nuclear response”. But the only country in the world capable of providing that is America, and it is quite apparent that we cannot rely on it to do so; indeed, it is very unlikely that it would do so. Therefore, our defence now needs to work with our likeminded allies around the world to build a non-nuclear capability to respond to and stop these “might is right” countries, of which America now is one.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I remind all noble Lords that they must stick to their advisory speaking time of four minutes, because we have to finish the debate by 3.19 pm.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Howell on securing this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on his interesting maiden speech. My noble friend Lady May set out a powerful vision for our global position in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017—already eight years ago. She reminded us that our history and culture are profoundly internationalist. She suggested that our previous place in the European Union had come at the expense of our global ties and of a bolder embrace of free trade with the wider world.
Her view very much chimed with my own, which was much influenced by the years I spent in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, representing the investment bank Kleinwort Benson. The relationship between the UK and Japan had already largely recovered from the Second World War, and many Japanese harboured affection for Britain and the similar elements within our national identities. The influence that we could bring to bear, and the respect in which we were held in Japan, did not in any way derive either from our membership of the EU or from the special relationship that we had maintained since the phrase was coined by Winston Churchill in 1946. Things have changed since then more than any of us had ever dreamed possible. The new Administration in Washington has destroyed our certainties and made us and our other allies around the world sit up and rethink everything.
It is not just because I am one-quarter American that I venture to suggest that it is too early to say that the special relationship is over for good, but it is very clear that the UK and our allies will have to do much more of the heavy lifting in Europe, and that we will all have to spend much more on defence. It was reassuring to hear the Secretary of State for Defence say that he is determined to continue to work with the US to deepen our defence ties. We should also give credit to the Prime Minister for the leadership he has demonstrated in working with other allies such as Australia in assembling a coalition of the willing to protect a ceasefire in Ukraine.
It is clearly necessary to increase our defence spending significantly, and I welcome the Prime Minister’s mentioning a 3% figure, although I was impressed by a recent speech by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, in which he pointed out that a recent study suggested that NATO countries need to spend 3.7% of their collective GDP now in order to maintain defence capabilities at a level necessary to meet the challenges we face. It is important to continue to work with our European and transatlantic allies through NATO, because this is the most likely way to maintain US commitment to the alliance and because Canada and the US are both even nearer than we are to another area of growing instability, the Arctic and High North.
I do not believe that the global aspirations adopted by the last Government after Brexit were unrealistic. The tilt to the Indo-Pacific was greatly welcomed by our friends in the region. It was well matched by our accession to the CPTPP, in which Japan played a larger role than is appreciated by many. The CPTPP can become an engine of growth, and it is exciting that, following Britain’s accession, other countries such as Indonesia and South Korea have applied or stated their intentions to join. In carrying out the planned reset of our EU relationships, it is important not to yield to the siren voices asking for dynamic alignment with EU rules, because that would put the kibosh on our effective participation in CPTPP. Now that the UK has joined, eight out of 12 CPTPP member states are Commonwealth countries. My noble friend Lord Howell is a strong supporter of the Commonwealth, and I, too, believe that we should work with its members and through its organisation to support more stability, more free trade and more prosperity around the world. Working also with our other friends and allies, we should not underestimate how much we can achieve.
I, too, congratulate the Minister on her promotion and look forward to her winding-up speech.
Lord Mountevans (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, most warmly on securing this debate and join in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley. It is timely to review Britain’s global position. The world is changing rapidly around us in many ways. We face the additional challenges posed by a highly unusual new Administration in Washington, hitherto one of the most fundamental of the UK’s international defence relationships.
We have been favoured relative to many countries with our raw materials: coal, oil and gas, and now, wind. We have an abundant and, overall, very talented workforce. We have a significant number of exceptional universities, and Britain has a proud heritage of remarkable innovation. Brand Britain and the whole edifice of history, achievement and professionalism; the monarchy and the Royal Family; Parliament, our historic buildings, the laws of England and the courts; our scientific innovation record; the BBC, which does such a brilliant job in international broadcasting; our universities, the British Council and many technical and professional institutions; our Armed Forces and much more—all are positive and impressive. However, as earlier speakers have cautioned, at this critical time we must not sit back and rest on our laurels. I recall the famous quotation from Lampedusa’s The Leopard:
“For things to remain the same, everything must change”.
Perhaps not everything, but many things will need to change. But how do we achieve the right sort of change and minimise the risks of what might be called bad change?
First, we must grow our economy and our prosperity. Fundamental to this is growing aspiration among more of our countrymen. Many of them are content but could, dare I suggest, aim higher. Homeworking and the long tail of Covid have been very detrimental to our economy and our society. There are of course occasions when homeworking is justified, perhaps in particular circumstances or specific sectors, but overall, society, businesses and organisations are better served by the team working together, stimulating problem-solving, encouraging mentoring and growing skills together.
Also fundamental is working not necessarily harder but, as the Americans say, smarter. We need to grow and sustain a favourable environment for business in all sectors, many of which are critical, because business is the key to growth. I have profound respect for the Minister, but I have to tell her that the Budget was very unhelpful to business. In her new position, on which I warmly congratulate her, will she urge the Treasury to look more positively on UK businesses when awarding procurement contracts?
The defence and strategic aspects of Britain’s global position have been discussed admirably already. I will turn my attention to soft power, which has become so important, and specifically to the City of London, an important national asset in many ways. The City of London is a significant contributor to UK soft power. Financial services account for 13% of the UK’s economic output and employ nearly 1.1 million people, with a further 1.4 million in related professional services. Financial services contribute to growth not only of our economy but internationally, and thus to export markets. The new Soft Power Council is to be welcomed and offers a valuable opportunity to enhance the nation’s global influence. Its composition should be broadened and strengthened to include key businesses, ensuring a more comprehensive and representative approach to enhancing the UK’s global influence.
The City Corporation supports UK international engagement through visits by the Lord Mayor and the policy chairman to key global markets. The Lord Mayor’s overseas visits are often accompanied by business delegations to help strengthen trade relations, foster economic partnerships and showcase London’s financial expertise and wider offer on the global stage. The City Corporation is building a new courthouse on Fleet Street. The development will increase capacity in London’s courts and project an image of the City that remains at the forefront of the provision of arbitration and adjudication.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, I too welcome today’s debate. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford for securing the opportunity to discuss this subject. I thank him too for his excellent, brilliant analysis of the situation; I really enjoyed listening to it. I also want to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on his maiden speech.
The international order is shifting, and today we stand at a crossroads. I, like everybody else, rise to reaffirm that the United Kingdom must remain a force for freedom, prosperity and peace in a very troubled world. As mounting global uncertainty seeks to challenge the post-1945 world order, we have an obligation—indeed, a duty—to reassert our leadership and to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies, particularly in Europe, in defence of the very principles that have long underpinned our standing in the world. Nowhere is this duty more relevant than in our resolve to support and stand by the people of Ukraine.
Casting our minds back to 24 February 2022, the barbaric and illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation was not merely an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation but an assault on the universal values of democracy, freedom and, above all, the rule of law. Today, the people of Ukraine fight not just for soil or boundaries on a map, but for the values that have defined our national psyche for centuries. I therefore welcome the Government’s continued support for Ukraine, as it demonstrates what we stand for as a nation.
We have been at the very forefront of military, economic and humanitarian support, but I remind the House today that even when others dither and dally, we must not falter in our resolve and our efforts, for the very security and peace of Europe hangs finely in the balance. History teaches us that Britain’s strengths have never been in passivity, but in boldness. It is now time for the Government to go even further. I congratulate the Prime Minister on the stance he has taken and what he has done, but we must go further in our support for Ukraine. It is time, therefore, to take rapid action in bringing forward the legislation needed to seize and utilise frozen Russian assets.
I appreciate that this is not an issue on which Britain can act alone, but, as we did in 2022, we must lead in uniting Europe and the G7 in bringing forward the legal mechanisms required to mobilise the more than £237 billion-worth of frozen assets and deploy them to bring about the end of this horrific war. If we show leadership here, it will send a message to the world that the United Kingdom remains a force for good and the standard-bearer of justice and liberty among the nations. I believe that at this time we must continue to show the support we have shown and provide leadership as we develop our defence forces for the future.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on securing this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on his very good maiden speech.
Last night, I attended an event at the Royal Over-Seas League where the Prime Minister of Samoa spoke. She reminded her audience that in difficult times it is always better to stand face to face rather than back to back. I think she is right because at a time when global norms and traditional modes of international engagement are being disrupted to an unprecedented extent, in-person and face-to-face dialogue is ever more important. This requires us to build bridges, often by having difficult conversations with allies and even more difficult conversations with adversaries. For this, we require places and organisations that can convene and facilitate in-person dialogue. Wilton Park is such an organisation. For the record, I declare my interest as chair of Wilton Park, an executive agency of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
We are undoubtedly a global player, but I think our confidence has been waxing and waning in recent years. The “abroad” directly affects the “at home”, but in our public-facing dialogue we have not always made this sufficiently clear. Understanding this direct causal relationship matters in a democracy. Similarly, no business can ignore geostrategic developments. Business as usual in global affairs is no longer an option, and there is a sense of urgency. The UK Government need to place themselves confidently as a key driver in shaping the international order, which, for the moment, cannot rely on all its traditional allies to enforce it. We have many of the skills and the resources needed, but we have to use them in a radically different way.
Last year, Wilton Park set up the Global Impact Group, and we were grateful to the Minister for speaking at the launch at Lancaster House. It is a collaborative effort between the private sector and government to foster co-operative working relationships and aid mutual understanding. At a time when the United States is retreating from international engagement, the UK has an opportunity and a need to step up to support key markets.
We should also show greater confidence in defending democratic structures and articulate why democracy is a better model for organising societies than any other. I expect that the college for British diplomacy will play an important role in increasing our capacity to absorb the fast-changing insights, skills and relationships driving today’s world, learning alongside representatives from business, friendly Governments and other organisations which equally need to understand how to navigate an ever more complex global picture.
At the meeting last night with the Prime Minister of Samoa, I also had the privilege of speaking to the incoming Commonwealth Secretary-General, the honourable Shirley Botchwey. We need to remind ourselves that the modern Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal sovereign states with a combined population of 2.7 billion, of whom 60% are under the age of 29, and that its secretariat is based here in London. All this was a very forceful reminder that we are an incredibly interconnected state in a great global position, but it requires us to use what we have with a sense of urgency with our willing allies and those we can trust.
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)
My Lords, in an episode of “The Simpsons”, Homer Simpson says of the Economist magazine, “I don’t need to spend $4 a week to be told that Indonesia’s at the crossroads”. Today, we in the West really are at the crossroads, as my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne and many others have said. The international chessboard has been thrown up and we still do not know where the pieces will land. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford on securing this debate at such an important time.
It seems to me that we now face three main challenges, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s reflections on them. The first is our relationship with the United States. Until now, the Anglo-American alliance has been the cornerstone of British foreign policy. The question we are all now asking is: how far can we rely on the United States? We know we have to take on more defence, but how reliable is the US as an ally?
The second great challenge is our relationship with Europe and how we recalibrate it. The Prime Minister sees himself, I think, as a bridge between Europe and the United States. I do not quite know how that will work, so the Minister’s reflections on that would also be very helpful.
The third great challenge is defence. Of course, we should have been spending more on defence for many years, so I very much welcome the Government’s decision to increase defence expenditure, going up to a target of 3% of GDP. But I would like to know a bit more about not just the percentage but what exactly the defence expenditure will go on, what it will provide and how it will help meet our objectives. I am sure that this will also come out in the defence review in due course.
I want to make two other points. First, as my noble friend Lord Waldegrave said, the strength of a country lies in not just its hard power but its economic strength. We know that for many years we have been falling behind the United States in particular, which has had much greater economic growth than we have. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to secure—I know that this is the Government’s objective—a more successful and stronger economy, because that gives Britain strength in the world.
The second point, referred to by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford, is soft power. He referred to the report published in 2014 when he chaired the committee that looked into soft power. I urge the Government to go back and take that report off the shelf. It is full of recommendations and really worth pulling out again to see what else the Government can do.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the very thoughtful contribution of the noble Lord. I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for bringing us this debate. It gave us an opportunity to hear the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, made under what I observed to be the studious eye of the occupant of the Woolsack at the time. The noble Lord said that dreams alone are not enough. That is something we on these Benches have reflected on for many years, but he is very welcome and will make an excellent contribution to this House.
The noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked us to set aside some of the orthodoxies and consider the fast pace of change. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, said that there was a kind of reckoning, which I agree with. My noble friend Lord Taylor said in response that there is a very high degree of consensus in this Chamber. For us, on a cross-party and non-party basis, the norms and rules are even more important in a modern technological world, especially if those who control the technology have personal, political and financial ambitions and see nation states as vessels. Just this week, the Polish Foreign Minister called for European satellite and security resilience, and Elon Musk replied on X:
“Be quiet, small man … there is no substitute for Starlink”.
We have benefited, until recently, when navigating these uncertainties and complexities of the 21st century, from being a joint partner both within and then with the European Union, and working closely with the United States. We know, however, that we cannot entirely rely on the Trump Administration. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, said that Administration was unreliable. Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times this week, wrote:
“I would call Trump’s foreign policy philosophy not ‘containment’ or ‘engagement,’ but ‘smash and grab.’ Trump aspires to be a geopolitical shoplifter”.
I think that has a great deal of sense to it.
This new reality is posing us major challenges, and it is fair to say—I think, very fair—that our Prime Minister is conducting himself, on behalf of us all, with professionalism and a seriousness befitting the office and, importantly, the moment, and we thank him for it. This recognition will, of course, not inhibit us from highlighting areas of either difference or concern; we are functioning democracy and a Parliament. My noble friend Lord Bruce eloquently referred, as many others have, to choices on development assistance and also soft power. We remain a significant force in that, and that is to be welcomed. As the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, highlighted, recent complacency is leading us to fall behind China and putting us in a deteriorating position in our relationship with developing economies.
I have often questioned the term “soft power”; what it means is quality, innovation, standards, reliability and predictability. These should all be part of our position in the world and are all elements that are in deep need, given that our key partner is showing very little of those qualities. It is why, when we look at our BBC World Service, cherished around the world, and when there is concern about its future funding, we on these Benches will challenge the Minister—we will seek to add pressure. When it comes to other areas of ODA, linked with national security, I will continue to ask and challenge the Minister, in temperate ways, on choices where we think the Government have taken the wrong direction. Earlier, the Minister suggested I might not have done well in the House of Commons if I think the tone is intemperate here. Her noble friend Lady Curran, behind her, will know I have a saddle-leather thick skin from my time in the Scottish Parliament. We will have this cut and thrust, because we can in our Parliament, and that is to be cherished.
On that aspect, I agree very strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Browne. He highlighted one of the consequences of cutting ODA in areas where countries are on the front line against not only terrorism but the encroachment of Russia. For example, there was a high degree of consensus when we proscribed the Wagner Group, so in areas where its successor, the Africa Corps, is active, it makes little sense for our national security to pull ODA development funding when it comes to resilience against autocracies.
On 26 March 10 years ago, there was consensus when we passed the 0.7% legislation in this House. Part of that consensus was not just about the 0.7% level, that our ability to be a development partner should be on that scale. It was also that defence spending and development investment were complementary, and that one should not be cut to fund the other. I hope we can restore that consensus, because it is of great significance to our standing in the world. It is interesting to me, looking at the fiscal tests, that they were not being met in 2014 or 2015 when we established 0.7%. These are policy choices, not fiscal choices, and that is why, when it comes to policy choices about our position in the world, the faster we can return to 0.7% the better.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said there was some shift in American policy. It perhaps could be argued by some in America—apologists for Trump, not the noble Lord—that the main adversary is Beijing and therefore we have to settle ourselves to the rescheduling of our relationship with Moscow. That does not even make sense for those who support the Trump Administration, because of decisions they have made such as reversing the decision on TikTok, Elon Musk wanting contracts from Beijing and raising concerns about Taiwan.
I want to raise Taiwan and some others, and I hope the House will allow me to be partisan for a second. Taiwan, Ukraine and now Canada all have Governments that are our sister parties. There are Liberals on the front line of the challenges of this new, unsettling world order. Fascinating discussions I have had with my parliamentary colleagues in all three of those governing parties have inspired me, and this is where I want to close.
In listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, some others and my noble friend, there are potential opportunities in this global landscape. I agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Howard, made that there are more people living in a democracy. There are more people living in economic security than ever before in civilisation, however messy, uneven or unequal that is. For my party, often perhaps with bitter experience—or maybe because of the Scottish perspective—when you have exhausted pessimism, there is only optimism left.
So what are the opportunities? We are seeing now Parliaments, whether in Lebanon or Ukraine, resisting the interference of cyberattacks on a daily basis, or interference in democratic elections. There is civil society. Young women in Sudan are still doing remarkable things to keep their communities safe in unbelievably difficult circumstances. There are brave and principled political leaders, and we should be signalling our support for them. There are innovative young people, especially in African nations, who present an enormous economic and social opportunity for the UK. Of course, there are the networks, whether it is the Commonwealth or the European Union.
Nancy Pelosi always used to say that diversity is our strength but unity is our power. We can relay that to our friendship networks around the world. There are also standards, including the sustainable development goals, which, interestingly, have received not one mention in the debate so far. We can work with our allies. Let me close on this. We need to have the 2.5% and growing defence, not funded from cuts in ODA but by, perhaps, as we have suggested, the tech companies contributing not 2% but 10% of their unearned profits. There should be a distinct development department again, not a replacement of the 1997 DfID but a department for global transition, so countries know that, in this uncertain world when they are transitioning to zero poverty and zero emissions, the UK is a reliable, dependable and predictable partner at a time of great flux.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, it is indeed a pleasure today to address this important subject and to have heard so many great speeches from all sides of the House. There seems to have been, if you like, an overall theme of strategic uncertainty—just how much the world has changed in the last few weeks.
I have to say that the debate was so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford in what I thought was an outstanding introductory contribution, and I also really enjoyed listening to an excellent maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley. Like the rest of the House, I am sure, I am looking forward to some excellent contributions from him to your Lordships’ House in the future.
My noble friend Lord Howell made some very thought-provoking points in his introduction and I agreed with so many of his conclusions, particularly about the world being potentially on the edge of an abyss. I, like many other Members of the House, I am sure, wake up in the morning, switch on the radio and wonder with trepidation what statements have emerged from the current occupant of the White House during the night. Indeed, we have had more of them during the course of today’s debate. We debated yesterday during OQs some of the appalling attacks on our Canadian brethren and I commend the Government for the support they have provided. Even if they are a Liberal party, sometimes we have to support them in their democracy.
I was particularly impressed by the contribution of my noble friend Lord Howard, who expressed very well the changing nature of the US under its current leader, who, it seems, as he said, sadly can no longer be regarded as an ally. He seems to revel in his unpredictability, as my noble friend also said. It is an uncomfortable realisation for those of us who have grown up during an era of US leadership to have someone like this occupying the presidency of the US. Throughout my political life, I have always regarded the president as the leader of the free world and somebody I have wanted to support.
My noble friend Lord Vaizey also made some excellent points about UK soft power, one of the greatest examples of which—I do not think this has been mentioned much in the debate—is our education system. A few weeks ago, alongside the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, we were in Malaysia with a CPA delegation. It was striking just how many of our interlocuters in the Parliament and the Government had been educated in UK universities, or currently had children attending them, and used it as an excuse to visit our country. It really is a powerful soft power asset of the UK.
My noble friend Lord Hannan was right to remind us of the importance of our largest continental allies; the opportunity of working with them in a CANZUK-like relationship is one we should take increasingly seriously.
There has been an awful lot of common ground in this debate and that is understandable, but there are some actions of the current Government that I want to take issue with. There is great concern at some of their actions on the world stage. Just last week, it was announced that Britain has fallen behind China on the prestigious soft power index. While we welcome and are enthusiastic backers of the Government’s continued support for Ukraine, as I said, they have taken some decisions to which we are opposed.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Government’s decision to transfer the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This is not just a betrayal of the Chagossian people; it is a profound abdication of Britain’s responsibilities as a sovereign power. The islands have been British territory for over two centuries, and our presence there has been critical to both UK and allied security. This Government, in their eagerness to appease international critics, and populated as they are by human rights lawyers, have shown no regard for our strategic interests or for the right of the Chagossians to defend their own future. Instead of standing firm, Labour has caved in to international pressure, surrendering territory in a manner reminiscent of past colonial retreats, sending a clear signal that Britain no longer has the resolve to defend its commitments. It sets a dangerous precedent. What message does this send to our other overseas territories, be it the Falkland Islands or even Gibraltar? A strong Britain does not surrender territory for short-term diplomatic approval. A strong Britain does not weaken its historical narrative for fear of offending others, and it should not apologise for its past; it should build upon it.
We should reject the culture of retreat. The UK remains a global power, and we should have the will and means to act like one. We should stand by our overseas territories, and we need to defend our legacy. We should refuse to be cowed by those who seek to diminish Britain’s role on the world stage.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
It was all going really well. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for that. When he was on the topic of universities, I thought “This is going to be really good”. I was chancellor of a university until I was told that that would be incompatible with my role in government. I agree with him about the importance of our higher education partnerships, the benefits of leaders coming here to be educated, and the great export of our amazing higher education institutions.
However, to then pivot to Chagos and to suggest that in any way there is a threat, particularly to the Falkland Islands, is really unbecoming of the noble Lord, who actually was doing rather well up until that point. The level of consensus and agreement in this Chamber this afternoon speaks really well of all the speeches we have heard. It is such a shame we had a little bit of a blip with that section of his speech, but never mind—we will move on none the less.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for securing this debate. I pay tribute to his work over many years, and particularly to his recent work on the International Agreements Committee. It has been an outstanding debate. First, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, for his excellent maiden speech. The creativity, adaptability and leadership that he recommended to us all, he demonstrated in his speech. I refer the noble Lord opposite to the first motto that the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, said that he had in his organisation. I am not going to repeat it; the noble Lord can look it up in Hansard.
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked where the trust, respect and manners are. Our Prime Minister is behaving with impeccable decency, integrity and diplomatic skill at this time of real challenge and disruption in the world, and I thank all noble Lords who have made similar points about the work Keir Starmer is doing. We cannot always influence others as much as we might like, but we can control what we do and the way that we go about it, and I am proud of our Prime Minister in that.
We can all see that the world faces an uncertain future. In too many places, it is dangerous, contested and volatile. We are seeing a greater number of active armed conflicts than any time since the Second World War, and progress to address them is fragile: from Russia’s brutal, illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine to the need for a permanent ceasefire and lasting peace in the Middle East. The natural world around us is under enormous pressure, with the ever more visible impact of climate change and environmental degradation on every continent, including here in the UK. We are seeing the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, hybrid threats and cyberattacks, with adversaries active in all these areas.
As the Foreign Secretary underlined at the G20, so many of the greatest challenges and opportunities we face today are truly global, with direct consequences for the national interest. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has been clear: we may not like it, but here we are, in a world where so much has changed.
As Homer Simpson would no doubt agree, we are at a crossroads in history. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, for that reference. We have had everything from Lenin to Nancy Pelosi to “The Simpsons”—I think that speaks well of this debate. As he suggested, it is time to act. A generational challenge requires a generational response. It demands extremely difficult and painful choices. It requires us to call on our strengths, and it puts a premium on our willingness and ability to focus squarely on the world as it is, and not as we want it to be. So, we take realistic steps towards the secure, prosperous, stable future that people everywhere want to see, including here in the UK.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, encouraged us to sing our song to the world, and I would agree. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, encouraged soft shoes on the ground—for example, her emphasis on diplomatic efforts. I can assure her that our Soft Power Council is going well. It is early days, but she is right, and others made this point: soft power goes hand in hand with strong defence. It was also wonderful to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, champion the benefits of dialogue, specifically Wilton Park. I commend her for all she does to bring about the vital conversations that have never been more needed.
Our national security is the bedrock of the UK’s society and economy, and the ultimate guarantor of everything we hold dear. It is the foundation of this Government’s plan for change. Seven months ago, the British people gave this Government this responsibility, and we hold it with a profound sense of duty. Putin’s Russia is a threat not only to Ukraine and its neighbours but to all of Europe, including the UK.
As I have taken on the international development brief in recent weeks—I thank noble Lords for noticing that—something that has been at the forefront of my mind is how deeply the impacts of Russia’s aggression are being felt by the poorest and most vulnerable people right across the globe, so we are speeding up support for Ukraine and increasing economic pressure on Russia. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary have travelled to Washington in recent weeks; convened European leaders, including here in London; and brought friends and allies together from both sides of the Atlantic, just as we have done for decades, to ensure peace and security. Serious leadership is exactly what the times require, and the UK has a unique role to play. We are focused on pursuing a just and lasting peace through strength.
As many noble friends will understand, our closest ally, the United States, has focused on the Indo-Pacific increasingly, over successive Administrations. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, spoke wisely on this point. We are calling for NATO’s European members to shoulder more of the burden for our continent’s security. The noble Lords, Lord Balfe and Lord Kerr, referred to Bevin and I thank them for that. I can assure them that the Foreign Secretary talks regularly of Bevin, who has become a big feature in my life in recent months.
We are stepping up. This is not to please the US but, as the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said we must, to strengthen our own security in a time of instability and threat. These are shared priorities, from our AUKUS partnership—the Foreign Secretary visited Japan and the Philippines last week—to the Prime Minister’s long-standing argument that all European allies must step up and do more for our own defence. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, for his comments on leadership, soft power and diplomacy. His words were grounded in values. Despite our different affiliations—I do not care about football teams, which he talked about, but I know the point he was making—we share many of those values across this House.
At this moment of pressure on public finances and geopolitics changing around us, things are moving quickly. We will never leave our country ill prepared for a more dangerous world or facing even tougher choices in the future. It is right, as the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, said, that the Prime Minister has announced the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, through this Parliament and the next, and we urge others to do the same. The noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, made an excellent case for never assuming that the public will come with us. We must make the case, win the argument, explain and rebuild trust in the ability of politics to deliver. This is no small task, but one that I think every speaker today believes we have a responsibility to undertake.
In order to make this commitment within our fiscal rules, we have had to lower our spending on international development. As the Prime Minister said, that is not a decision the Government take lightly. It is not one that we relish, and I know I have now taken on a great responsibility. I am determined to make the argument for international development afresh and win the public’s trust. I will be coming back to this House soon to update Parliament on some of the early choices that we have made.
I echo the pride that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have expressed in our record on international development, as I did in my earliest meetings with key partners from the World Bank and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, the world made headway in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Throughout recent decades, our work has shown that the UK can address global challenges from health to migration, boost prosperity at home and across the globe, and improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people. I have seen this for myself in all my visits to our partners overseas. We continue to play a hugely important role in everything from reaching tens of millions of people with immunisations, including polio vaccination campaigns in Gaza, to working alongside partners from the global South to secure reforms at the big multilateral development banks that will unlock tens of billions over the next 10 years, at no cost to donors, and get more of it flowing to those in greatest need across everything from education to resilience.
For all those reasons and more, this Government remain committed to spending 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance when the fiscal conditions allow. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, of this, and I welcome his challenge and our—not that robust—exchanges across this Chamber.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, urged us to continue to face the world, especially the Commonwealth, and to reset our relationship with Europe. The Government accept this advice. We continue to provide humanitarian assistance in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, and remain committed to tackling climate change and to multinational efforts on global health. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, is right that we need to work harder than ever to strengthen partnerships in the future, looking carefully and reviewing what will work. In all we do, we want the public to take pride in our work overseas, feel the benefits of it in their lives and have confidence that we are using their money wisely and in ways that match their sense of decency and our moral obligations to the world’s poorest people.
We know that so many countries share our ambitions for growth and opportunity. For most of them, aid is no longer the most important part of that, to say nothing of the paternalism that has all too often gone with it. The introduction to this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on the importance of respect, listening and partnership is timely and very wise. We are focusing on genuine, respectful partnerships, which are more effective in creating security, growth and investment in jobs and opportunities here at home and around the world, and are better suited to fusing local knowledge with our greatest strengths, from the City of London to science, technology, innovation, arts and culture and to our world-class expertise right across the UK.
Much has been said about soft power. Someone said that they wonder about that phrase, as do I—“I am going to do soft power on you” is not really the best introduction to having influence. But it is a phrase that we all use and probably all understand.
We are looking to the future, from auditing our relationship with China to resetting our relationships with the global South. The Foreign Secretary hosted the Indian Foreign Minister this week and announced the reopening of FTA negotiations. The Foreign Secretary’s dialogue with the Nigerian Foreign Minister demonstrated our partnership on regional security and migration. We are making the most of the valuable role that the UK has to play, proving through our actions that we are a responsible permanent member of the UN Security Council, committed to international law, the UN charter and the rules-based trading system.
Keeping our country safe is the first duty of government. We must meet the world as it is, with an indelible belief that things can be better. We recognise that we do not need to balance the compassion of our internationalism with the necessity of our national security—they go hand in glove. We must respond to the urgent challenges before us. That is the job of any Government. Despite the hard choices before us, however much we might wish it were not so, we must make the best of the moment to give even greater impetus to the important work of modernising our approach to international development, which is already under way. That is how we bring security and prosperity to people here at home and around the world in the months and years ahead.
As the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Vaizey, said, everyone needs a country to love. We all love this country and have a duty to share that love with the world as a force for good and, as the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, said, for freedom, prosperity and peace.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I thank all who have spoken in this debate, including the Front Benches. It is, frankly, the kind of debate that one really needs to read rather than just pick up as it goes along, not least because a great deal of it, inevitably with a very tight time limit, is in shorthand. There are all sorts of issues behind the issues that need examining and thinking about much more carefully. I have talked to successive generations of Chief Whips as to why we need to organise things exactly this way, in this sort of minute race. I never fully understand the answers, though I am sure they are terribly sound. We all know that it takes a lot more time to formulate a draft of a four-minute speech than it does to draft a 10-minute, 12-minute or two-hour speech. There we are—it is something we have to live with, but if we could solve it one day, I think it would benefit us all.
I thank everybody for picking up one of the themes that I touched on: Commonwealth friends. In the age of networks that is emerging, the Commonwealth network is very different from the organisation of the past, thanks to hyperconnectivity and international, instant communication on a scale never before known in history.
One or two colleagues touched on something I did not have time to touch on in my speech, which is the Trident programme and whether our deterrent would be affected if the worst came to the worst—as it might—and we had to go it alone without American support. I listened to Sir Lawrence Freedman, a Clausewitz of our day, say cautiously on the radio that we could manage and operate in that way. That is a slight reassurance. I hope it is not necessary; we hope America remains “America the Beautiful”—the country the world loves—but at the moment it does not look like it is striking the right note to continue the attraction it had in the past. I thank all noble Lords and beg to move.
Integration and Community Cohesion
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Verma
That this House takes note of the role of integration in reducing barriers to community cohesion in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, today’s debate is about ensuring that we look at why integration is not working or happening in parts of our country, and how this impacts on the ability of our communities to generate an environment of bringing together respect and belonging for shared purposes that bring benefit to all. I look forward to noble Lords’ contributions, but particularly to the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook.
I wanted to start my contribution by saying a little bit about my family’s experience and contribution to the country I call home, but as I started to write this speech I felt that it was becoming more and more about my family. However, I think it is important that I do this journey just to give a perspective from somebody who has been here all their lives, bar nine months.
My family’s heritage is Indian—a heritage that is a strong and integral part of who I am, as it is for many of the nearly 2 million people of Indian heritage living in our country. My family’s story starts in 1937, when my paternal grandfather, Captain Mall Singh of the British Indian Pioneers regiment, was invited as a guest to the Coronation of His Majesty King George VI. My grandfather’s service, and later my paternal uncle’s service to the Indian army and the Indian police, lay at the heart of the family’s duty to its community and countries.
In 1938, my maternal grandfather arrived in London and after a while made his home first, for a short time, in Coventry. He then established himself and subsequently his extended family in Leicester. As the bombs flattened Coventry and parts of Leicester, he, with fellow Indians, worked to support the rebuilding and do whatever else they could during those years of war. My grandfather was one the community. Of course, he experienced forms of discrimination that we cannot imagine today. For example, when trying to find rooms to rent, he would find signs that said, “No blacks, Irish or dogs”. However, that never deterred him or his colleagues from their commitment to a country they loved and invested in.
After the war, there was a need to rebuild, and the country needed people. He helped house and settle over 40 families. However, as things returned to normality, he recognised that there was also a need to provide a voice for Indian workers. With his friends, he founded the Indian Workers’ Association to be the bridge between the unions and the employers. In 1952, my grandfather became the first Asian to open a hosiery factory in Leicester, providing employment and supporting the local economy.
In 1960, I arrived with my parents from India, just before my first birthday. I grew up in a Great Britain that was challenging for people of colour. The 1960s and 1970s saw a big shift in the expectations from the wider community. During the 1960s there were still relatively few people of colour, and I grew up with Irish and Scottish neighbours—my friends know that I am not a great curry eater; I grew up with broths and stews. The street was my community. My mother, who had arrived not speaking any English, learned, through the support of that street, how to use the transport systems, to get home working, to take me and later my siblings to school, and generally to become part of the wider community.
School life teaches you a lot, but when you are one of two people of colour in a class, it really does teach you a lot more. It teaches you how to survive and how to be strong and resilient. It also taught me how people would stand up for me, just as I stood up for the Ugandan Asians when they arrived in 1971 and 1972, after being expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. Racism rose heavily in Leicester at that time, but this community did not resile backwards; it moved forward and became one of the strongest communities that Leicester has.
I also grew up, like many of my background, with parallel lives between what it was like at home and what it was like outside. We had to balance the culture—my parents’ expectation—with what my friends expected. They never understood why I could not go out to dances and music halls, but they knew that, while I was at school, I was one of them.
All these things shaped what I did not want a community to look like as I grew up. I wanted my children and my friends’ children to be part of everything, so I became very involved in the regeneration of Leicester. In fact, I was then the young person on the advisory group. I was also the adviser to the Leicestershire Police for recruitment, and I became a college governor to ensure that students from all backgrounds could understand each other’s needs.
However, even today, the left-behind communities are the same communities that were there when I was growing up. They are the same communities that were ignored and totally marginalised by the people in power. Those communities were not migrant communities—they were the white workless or working class—and they still remain those communities. I have previously said, and I have spoken to the Minister about it, that I do not want that divide to get bigger, because those are the divisions that create the intolerances and incohesion that we see in many parts of the country today. I want AI learning and digital inclusion for all communities, particularly those that have been so left behind. I will ask the Minister some questions about that later.
Segregation and inward-looking communities create intolerance and tensions. I want children born and brought up here to be able to engage with everyone. I do not want the mothers of those children excluded from wider debate or decision-making. As I have said every time I have spoken on this type of subject, I want all people to know how to speak, read and write English so they are not excluded from decision-making that impacts on their lives.
A couple of years ago in Leicester, we had riots. These caused deliberate disharmony, but they were not by the people of Leicester. People had come in to deliberately distort what was going on in Leicester. It was only the strength of the women of those communities coming together that stopped the sort of violence that I had not seen for a long time in Leicester. The incorrect reporting of it and the misinformation that was going around on social media flamed up the distrust between communities and I am glad that they are now working harder to make sure that never happens again.
What we say and how we say it matters, especially if you are public facing. Although I certainly do not advocate for censorship around an honest debate about the issues and concerns that impact on the lives of all citizens and the need to feel free to challenge what is negatively affecting our lives, it is also critical that we know that every action has a reaction.
Over the past 64 years of my life, I have been a citizen of a country that has seen so many changes, as you can imagine. When people ask me how British I feel, my response is always, “I am British.” I do not need to demonstrate that. My children do not even think they are British; they think they are English. They were born here. My siblings were born here and see themselves as English. I do not want to constantly have to defend the fact that I am a truly loyal citizen of the country that is my home and is the country I love, but we cannot have this debate if we cannot honestly challenge why people think that we are different.
We have a country that is full of brilliant traditions and norms that we are all a part of, but we are also enriched with the cultural norms that I grew up with. I know that my family and friends share and enjoy Diwali or Holi with us whenever we have them. Tomorrow is Holi and it is the festival of colours. If you are in India, trust me, you cannot walk anywhere without having colour thrown at you. It is a reminder of how colours come together to bring joy.
My mum is 85 years old. She instilled in us the need to be active learners. I will be eternally grateful for her wisdom. I suspect that she raised a few eyebrows in her youth when her beehive hairstyle, ankle grazer slacks and winklepickers were the norm, against Asian ladies who were wearing the salwar kameez. I have tried to wear a sari elegantly, but I cannot; I stride. From all the things that I saw growing up, the one thing I know is that I can love both cultures equally as much. I have resorted to my own personal experiences because, as a child who saw racist attacks but also the incredible solidarity of my neighbours and friends, I fear the debates we are having today are negating all the progress we have made, and we have made a lot. It is easy to lose that progress if we descend back into our groups and feel that we do not belong.
I will end with a couple of questions for the Minister. What measures do his Government have in place to ensure that, where there are large communities from economically deprived backgrounds, digital skills and skills generally are part of the focus of the Government’s drive to be inclusive of everyone, regardless of their faith and ethnicity?
Will the Minister ensure that English is available to everyone and that women, particularly from migrant communities, are able to engage? My biggest fear is that they are not always able to access the services that are rightly theirs to access. Will he and the Government look carefully at how we build our economies around people’s strengths, and not their weaknesses? If we do not, we will go back to the “us and them” situation that I grew up with in the 60s. It was not a nice time to be a child in those days when you were being pitted against each other.
I do not see colour. I cannot see my friends’ colour; I just see them as friends. I want children to grow up seeing children as children. I want adults to treat their children and other people’s faiths and children with respect. The most important thing is that we are all stakeholders in our communities. If we cannot do that, sadly, those that have divisive, loud voices win the argument. I beg to move.
Lord Raval (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a privilege to speak after the noble Baroness. Since joining your Lordships’ House, I have met only kindness from your Lordships, officials, staff and police. I am grateful to Black Rod, to the Whips’ team, to the conveners of this debate and to pioneering Peers without whom I would not be here.
I also thank our remarkably patient doorkeepers, who have already witnessed my talent for missteps. On my first day, I charged through the automated gates, triggering a shutdown. It was a swift lesson in tradition and modernity, and surely not my last.
In a sense, your Lordships are doorkeepers too. If I were to distil my purpose in this House, it would be this: that after three decades in leadership development across business, academia and faith, I see myself as a doorkeeper—not barring access but opening doors, perhaps even portcullises.
As a wayward teenager, it was I who needed doors opened. My mind raced ahead in some areas and lagged in others. I could have spent life dodging openings. Mentors changed everything. They helped me find my path into Sheffield University, then to Cambridge and Maryland. In Sheffield, I helped bridge industry, education and reform centres to unlock youth potential. Two decades on, alumni lead companies and communities. I saw deep barriers trapping talent, not least in white working-class areas. If you can inspire a plain-speaking teen in their free time, you can handle anyone, perhaps even your Lordships.
I learned that the political scientist Robert Putnam was right. Unattended diversity can fracture communities, but with intent and leadership, it forges strength. Inclusion is not passive—it takes effort.
My parents, Suresh and Padma, arrived in Britain in the 1970s—not with nothing, but with capital and a commitment to service. They ran a family business—30 years of dawn prayers, long commutes and 10-hour shifts—yet my mum still cooked a fresh Gujarati meal every night. That kind of sacrifice not only sustains families; it builds nations. Their values were inherited from my grandparents. At 15, my grandfather, Manishankar, left India as a cook’s assistant, alone and impoverished. He endured unimaginable hardship yet rose to become general manager of a large export business, with my indomitable grandmother, Kantaben, beside him. Their journey is a testament to resilience and the structures that foster it.
Here, economic opportunity is shaped by global dynamics, as was underscored so eloquently in the previous debate. As chair of Labour Indians, I note that, since Manishankar Raval’s maiden voyage nearly a century ago, India, that is Bharat, is rising as an economic and cultural powerhouse. A strong partnership is key to UK security, education, health, climate goals and growth. I stand for a new Silk Road linking India to the Middle East and extending beyond continental Europe to the UK.
Faith too is key for cohesion. Even the smallest hamlet has a place of worship, and faith remains central to many. My political awakening came when resisting the enforced closure of a major Hindu shrine gifted by Beatle George Harrison: Bhaktivedanta Manor in Hertsmere. This was not just door closure but attempted door erasure, granting me a lifelong affinity with other persecuted minorities. That injustice led me at 16 to join Labour. In 1997, Tony Blair’s Government rescinded the decision, safeguarding a monument of spirituality, inclusion and service. I protested outside Hertsmere Borough Council. How extraordinary now to stand before you as Lord Raval of Hertsmere, the place I call home, with my wife Lucy and our daughters, Lukshmi and Sita, who are no doubt watching at home.
Cohesion does not happen by accident. That is why in 2007 I founded Faith in Leadership. With a stellar faculty, we equip faith leaders to serve their communities while building deep cross-faith relationships, fostering trust while disagreeing well. Our 2,500-plus alumni lead critical work, from responding to Grenfell—where faith coalitions remained long after statutory services withdrew—to co-ordinating action during Covid-19 and other crises. We have shared this British model with international friends committed to neighbourliness and coexistence, most recently in Bahrain, to foster exciting cross-border collaboration. Two years ago, I chaired the Prime Minister, then in opposition, in a meeting with faith leaders. His commitment to religious pluralism is steadfast. I thank him, along with my supporters, the brilliant noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Khan, the Faith Minister, and my noble friend Lord Rook—whose maiden speech I eagerly await—for their dedication to people of all faiths and none.
I leave your Lordships with the words of Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya, whose teachings have shaped millions worldwide, including my family. From his ashram in Haridwar—literally, the “door to the Almighty”—he taught that:
“Our world is one single family”.
That is integration—not just living together, but belonging to each other. Cohesion is the bond that strengthens society. I look forward to working with your Lordships, my fellow doorkeepers, to fortify it.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for introducing this debate and for her excellent, thoughtful and wonderfully personal speech. I also welcome my noble friend Lord Rook and look forward to his maiden speech.
An extraordinary honour befalls me: to congratulate my noble friend Lord Raval on his outstanding maiden speech, which illustrated the important and powerful way in which he will flourish in the work of this House. I had the privilege to be one of my noble friend’s introducers. He is a remarkable individual. He read law at Cambridge and remains attached to the institution today, serving as a member of the faculty of divinity. He had a very distinguished business career as an organisational consultant and chose to use the skills that he had honed in the private sector to give back to the community. He created Faith in Leadership, a UK-based organisation which now operates internationally, to create an inclusive community of private and public leaders working together for the benefit of the community. The philosophy is, to quote my noble friend:
“Faith leadership is the resource for humanizing and reconciling the world we live in”.
It is a theme which we fully appreciate in his words today and for which he was also recognised with the honour of an OBE in 2018.
My noble friend has worked tirelessly with the emerging and existing leadership of the faith communities in our country and is highly regarded and trusted by all. He is also a very proud member of the British Indian community and is steeped in understanding of the powerful and valuable cultures of the diaspora communities. The late, great Rabbi Hugo Gryn used to say that there were harmonisers and polarisers. We are grateful to have one of our country’s great harmonisers now gracing our Benches, and with clearly a great contribution to make.
This is an important debate and I look forward to all the contributions. I will just raise two areas, and put some questions to the Minister. One of the great challenges we have is how we protect and develop our diverse and cohesive democracy: a challenge that is not unique to our country. It is regrettably clear that open and inclusive approaches to society do not automatically lead to these outcomes. Indeed, we must always work at it to protect our democracy and build in resilience. The challenges we face cover many areas: how we build a society of common values, rights and responsibilities, and how we draw in different communities and underpin their economic and social needs.
Secondly, we must also ensure the integration of communities and how they develop, understand and achieve their place in society. Thirdly, we must bear down on extremism, especially on those whose actions tear the fabric of a cohesive society and whose perceptions of the exercise of their rights not just undermines the well-being of another community but stretches the culture of democracy. Where these issues arise, the number of agencies and parts of the country involved provides illustrates that the key to the success of any of this work will be the capacity of the Government to join it all up. I believe this subject is worthy of being one of the missions of this Government. Of course, I am not asking them to add to the existing five they are already focusing on, but I stress that this does need a whole-of-government approach.
I appreciate that the Minister is from one department, and I am not seeking at this time to sketch out a new job description for him. I know—and many in this Chamber will know, from their experience—of his very active and strong engagement with many Members of this House on these issues. But I would be very grateful if the Minister would outline how the department is working with others on this task across government. In particular, I would be grateful to know how the Home Office and his department are working together—especially as there seems to have been a slight change in those arrangements—and whether we are connecting all the different parts that are required for effective work on community cohesion.
Secondly, last March, Dame Sara Khan produced a report for the Government on social cohesion and resilience which covered many important areas. Its recommendations were very broad and dealt with a number of different agencies and parts of government. I would be grateful if the Minister would give the House an update on whether this Government have reviewed the report, whether they are going to make a substantive comment on it and whether they are going to support its recommendations. In particular, I would be very grateful if the Minister would comment on the recommendation for an office for social cohesion and democratic resilience, on the need for a five-year strategy on this and on the creation of a cross-Whitehall cohesion response unit.
I sense that my noble friend Lord Raval is among a good crowd of harmonisers in the Chamber today, and I hope that the Minister will take on board many of the matters and observations we raise in this debate. I hope the Government will strongly reflect on them and know that within this Chamber there is a strong group of people who are keen to work together in a cohesive way to build resilience and cohesion in our society.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this particular debate. I was delighted to listen to the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Raval, and I look forward to the same from the noble Lord, Lord Rook, later on.
I will start with Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister in 1965, who appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey, to head the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants. This was set up to provide for the integration of the minority community into British society. To a great extent, many of the efforts for good race relations have their roots in the work of churches in the early days, and this continues even today—I thank them for what they are doing.
I have mentioned before what it is when we talk about being British:
“Being British is about driving a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry to … watch American shows on a Japanese TV … But most of all being suspicious of anything foreign”.
This arguably sums up the confused debate about identity in this country. For several years, we have had debates in the press and magazines that have been called by my colleague Vince Cable, among others, the politics of identity. The old political certainties of left and right are less clear cut in modern Britain, with politicians competing to be the toughest on crime and the best at promoting concepts such as community cohesion, a concept which to my mind lacks strategic thought and which, like a mighty river, disappears in the desert sands.
There is now a search for the shared values that might be called English or British. Many have argued that it is important to articulate a shared sense of national identity in contemporary conditions of flux and change. If so, how can we reconcile this with diversity, openness and pluralism of belief and practice?
Fixed notions of shared identity, even if they could be agreed upon, are less necessary than promoting individual identity, pluralism and genuine multiculturalism. Add to this mix the wars in Russia and Ukraine and the Middle East, and the growth of terrorism and the death of multiculturalism—which, according to Trevor Phillips, leads to separateness and ghettos of different communities. Jonathan Freedland noted in the Guardian
“a kind of drumbeat of hysteria in which both politicians and media have turned again and again on a … small minority, first prodding them, then pounding them as if they represented the single biggest problem in national life”.
Of course, this is a difficult time in which to have the kind of calm and reasoned discussion about identity which politicians claim to want, but it is for this reason that I value this debate.
There is a confusion not only about identity but about what it is we are trying to talk about when we talk about race, religion, identity and ill-defined multiculturalism all mixed in the pot. For example, some politicians have claimed that the wearing of the veil by some Muslim women constitutes a visible statement of separation or difference. Of course it is right that there is a sensible debate about such issues. We should question what happens when an individual or group identity impinges on other people’s lives or liberties. But do we really believe that wearing of the veil will have a bearing in the process of community cohesion or the advancement of an integrated society?
Britain has been at the forefront of legislative and other machinery to establish equality of opportunity for all citizens, and strong new legislation on race, disability, gender, age, faith and sexual orientation has put new emphasis on protecting and promoting good relations between different groups. However, confusion still remains over whether this has helped to strengthen society towards a common identity.
To unpick the confusion, we need to analyse the current state of multi-ethnic Britain and examine the changing patterns of all our communities. For example, we talk about our ethnic minorities, but when have we ever taken into account that the largest ethnic group in Britain is our mixed-race community? We also need to consider post-war migration and the process of globalisation, which crosses the geographical boundaries of all nations.
In conclusion, true multiculturalism is proactive and means that equality and diversity are at the core of everything we do, from government to individual responsibility. It means taking a much more proactive stance towards combating racism and discrimination; really tackling social, economic and civic participation in all aspects of society; and positively valuing, not merely tolerating, the value and contribution of different cultures and perspectives and treating them with respect. We must accept that a framework of human rights provides a context in which the rights of any one group and the rights of wider society can be balanced.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this important debate and for her thoughtful introduction. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Raval, on his very insightful maiden speech and I look forward to listening to the noble Lord, Lord Rook, later on.
Diverse communities are enriching, and an engine for innovation and progress, but diversity is a double-edged sword. If we do not cohere as diverse communities, society becomes fragile. We have witnessed economic, social and political divisions widening, trust in government and institutions waning, and social fabric fraying. Larger flows of people, misinformation, international conflicts, and the import of issues from the countries of origin of some of the communities have exacerbated the tensions. Consequently, we have witnessed loss of pride of place in communities, anti-social behaviour and rioting. Lack of appropriate policy responses to manage diversity over the past six-plus decades have also contributed to the balkanisation of communities.
In the name of multiculturalism, policies have been advanced which have widened differences and hindered integration. As just one example, community-based funding instead of area-based funding after the uprisings in 1982 contributed to one community being set against another, fuelling resentment and driving the disenchanted and other left-behind groups into the hands of the populists. Given the complex nature of diversity today, multifaceted interactions are needed to build trust, break barriers and bind communities and society together. This requires a sense of inclusion, trust in the state and a broad framework of shared values that hold society together but enable different perspectives to be explored.
Integration is a foundational step towards community and social cohesion, but it is not enough. Many worthy efforts have been made to enhance social connections, build trust, engender understanding and create meaningful dialogue to break down barriers. But, as I said, these are necessary but not enough. What we need are national and local strategies for integration and community cohesion. These must be accompanied by ensuring that economic growth and prosperity benefit all, with opportunities that ensure social mobility. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, mentioned AI and digital exclusion.
As another noble Lord said earlier, such strategies should not sit in one department at the centre. For any policy to be successful it needs to straddle many aspects of public policy. It requires joined-up policies both horizontally and vertically; that is, connecting with local government and civil society organisations. These need to include education and learning opportunities, tackling school exclusions, thoughtful housing planning, and building formal and informal social infrastructure; in other words, the whole plethora of policies that are linked.
If trust is to be built, models of governance need to be rethought with citizens at the heart. Yes, we have turned citizens into consumers; we need to get back to the notion of citizen engagement. That means an engagement that provides a meaningful voice and agency, and that brings people together around issues that are common to all. We need greater use of citizen assemblies to build trust and cohesion on culturally contentious issues. That is a space where concerns and fears can be discussed openly with tolerance and understanding, and where legitimate democratic debate can take place and help to deepen democratic behaviour.
Devolution is a good vehicle for this, with improved accountability among newly empowered leaders. Greater involvement of citizens at local level should be made mandatory. Above all, we need strong and purposeful leadership across government, joined-up responses and a long-term strategy, not just disjointed policies introduced in fits and starts, only in response to crises or when crises occur.
I was interested in the Government’s Statement on 4 March on the plan for neighbourhoods; it was very encouraging. Making it a reality will require cross-government engagement, and it would be helpful to hear the plans for cross-government working. It will require perseverance, imagination and courage to think the unthinkable and challenge some of the conventional wisdom. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister how this work will be measured, the lessons learned, and good practice disseminated.
The Lord Bishop of Lichfield
My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this important debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Raval, on his excellent maiden speech, and I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rook. I thank the noble Lord for all the work he has done over the years with the churches, including the Church of England, in which he is an ordained priest, and with communities of other faiths. I commend his tireless advocacy, as a key adviser to the Government, of the important role that faith plays in the life of our country. I know that his vast experience and expertise, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Raval, will add great value to this House.
We only need look at the events of last summer to see the importance of and need for cohesive communities. The riots showed how easily hostility can escalate when groups of people live alongside one another, and yet are divided by barriers of fear and mistrust. A cohesive community is not one in which every person is the same, but in which they each share a sense of belonging despite their differences. They may have different cultures, beliefs or religions, but each person feels respected and valued. I was deeply moved by the account of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, of her schooling in Leicester, a city which I love and know well, and where my children were brought up. Probably two decades after the experiences described by the noble Baroness, my son Frank was the only white child in his entire school year. Like the noble Baroness, he experienced nothing but friendship, respect and support from his schoolmates, who were almost all of south Asian heritage.
It is relationships that are at the heart of bridging the social and cultural gaps that can divide our communities. While we can and must speak of policy at a national level, integration work is best done by those on a local level, who can listen to and understand the needs of their communities. Local authorities, alongside the voluntary community and faith sector, are critical to integration and to bringing people together to build trust and understanding through creating space for cross-cultural interaction, interfaith dialogue and friendships across difference.
I welcome the community recovery fund that the Government have made available to local communities impacted by last summer’s riots. In our diocese of Lichfield, that fund has enabled Tamworth Borough Council to launch its “We Are Tamworth” programme this month, which empowers local groups to develop projects that strengthen bonds between people of all backgrounds and ages. The same fund has made possible, also in our diocese, the “One Stoke-on-Trent” campaign, which will administer grants to local initiatives while listening to and working with residents to explore what must be done to make the city a place where everyone feels welcome.
Although this funding in response to the riots is necessary and valuable, strategic long-term approaches are crucial to ensure meaningful and lasting impacts. I am glad that the Government have launched the Communities and Recovery Steering Group to oversee a new approach to community cohesion. I recognise that its terms of reference and membership have just been announced this week, but I ask the Minister: when might we know more about the details of the work that the group will oversee?
Education is also a vital part of successful integration and building community cohesion. In particular, religious education in schools plays an important role in enabling understanding of different cultures, religions and world views, equipping pupils from an early age with the knowledge and tools to understand and thrive in a multicultural society. However, RE is too often neglected as a subject, with pupils frequently being taught by teachers with no qualifications in the subject. What steps are the Government taking to increase the number of teachers who are properly trained to deliver RE?
As we have heard throughout the day, we are living in a time of increasing global uncertainty and conflict. We do not want that global situation to be the case locally. Let this be an opportunity to build trust and seek understanding. Let us foster communities that are strong and resilient, where everybody can feel they belong.
Lord Rook (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an honour to address this House today. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for this debate and her inspiring introduction and personal story. In this, my maiden speech, I wish to thank those who have supported me over many years: my family, friends and colleagues. Thanks also go to my supporters: the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, with whom I have enjoyed considerable collaboration on the subject of this debate; and the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I began volunteering for the noble Baroness over 12 years ago. The thought then that we might sit together on these Benches was implausible at best. Her friendship and guidance have been invaluable to me.
Working at the Good Faith Partnership, I have spent much of the last decade addressing issues of community cohesion. These early weeks of induction into your Lordships’ House have served as a timely reminder of five critical lessons on social integration. The first lesson is that integration does not happen by accident; it requires a welcoming community. At the Good Faith Partnership, we work with the ChurchWorks Commission, chaired by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, to host the Warm Welcome campaign. Working with faith and community groups, charities, businesses and local authorities, Warm Welcome provides over 5,000 warm spaces for isolated and disadvantaged individuals throughout the UK.
Although the House of Lords is not yet registered as a Warm Welcome centre—possibly a good thing, given the problems with the heating—Members and staff have provided the warmest of welcomes to me and other new Members in recent weeks. I am particularly grateful to my noble friends Lady Smith of Basildon and Lord Kennedy of Southwark and to noble friends and noble Lords across this House for their warm welcome. I also thank Black Rod, the House of Lords staff, the police and security teams, the hospitality team and, of course, the doorkeepers. When a community works this hard to welcome newcomers, integration becomes so much easier.
I come to our second lesson: integration is always a two-way street. It requires real effort from both newcomers and welcomers. As an Anglican priest, I know what it is to need regular mercy and instruction. I am thankful for grace when I have erred, and for kind and gentle correction where necessary. As a newcomer and “Rookie” Member, if noble Lords will pardon the pun, I will no doubt require both of those for some time to come.
On my second day in your Lordships’ House, one of the doorkeepers asked me, “Lord Rook, what musical instrument do you play?”. At first, I wondered whether this was a question asked of every Member. However, I soon realised that the doorkeeper had read my introduction papers and noticed that my alma mater is the Royal College of Music. It turns out that both the doorkeeper and I play the trombone—a noble instrument indeed—but your Lordships have nothing to fear; I retired many years ago due to letters from music lovers everywhere. The doorkeeper’s initiative, however, serves to illustrate the third lesson. Integration happens when communities take initiative and get to know their newest members.
I have twice been seconded to and served the office of the Labour leader as a faith and civil society adviser, most recently under Sir Keir Starmer and previously, during the 2015 general election campaign, under Ed Miliband. This is where I first had the pleasure to work with my noble friend Lord Raval. I thank him for his kind words earlier, and I am certainly forward to working with him in this House in the future.
Following the election in 2015, Europe faced the devastating fallout of the escalating conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. We were facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Here at Westminster, we were overwhelmed by the public response. Institutions and individuals from every corner of this country crowded in, offering help and demanding action. This leads us to the fourth lesson of integration. Integration requires the investment of many different groups and stakeholders. From 2015, the Good Faith Partnership worked with government and civil society to support the co-creation of the community sponsorship scheme for refugees. I am for ever grateful to my noble friend Lord Dubs and the noble Lord, Lord Harrington, for the vital role they played in securing and establishing this initiative. As a result, local communities invested considerable time and resource, welcoming and integrating hundreds of vulnerable families. A few years later, again amid tragic circumstances, that model enabled UK citizens to welcome over 200,000 Ukrainians through the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
I grew up in Portsmouth, where my family were part of the Southsea Salvation Army. A Salvation Army upbringing brought certain obligations. I have already made mention of the trombone playing. Then there is the marching: parading up and down the seafront, to and from open-air church services. With the marching comes the praying—in particular, in teenage years, praying that your schoolmates do not spot you marching up and down the seafront to open-air church services. Above all, with the Salvation Army comes the relentless commitment to serving the last, the lost and the least. My fifth and final lesson on integration is the lesson I learned first of all. Communities become more cohesive when we include and integrate our most vulnerable neighbours.
I have chosen to be Lord Rook of Wimbledon. In 1993, the now Lady Rook and I moved into the area to volunteer at a Salvation Army youth project working with disadvantaged teenagers in Raynes Park. The youth club grew into a community centre, that community centre became a church and, decades later, among other notable achievements, that church was privileged to welcome one of the first families of Syrian refugees through the community sponsorship scheme. On my way to your Lordships’ House, I pass the home where that family lives to this very day. I thank God for the many who worked to welcome and integrate them and, what is more, for the different ways that this one family has contributed to our community.
Following violent disturbances in many towns and cities last summer, there has been much discussion about the importance of integration and cohesion. So how do we build cohesive communities and a welcoming country? In response, we would do well to heed the welcoming example of this House and relearn the lessons that lead to faster and fuller integration. We must remember that integration does not happen by accident. It is a two-way street. It requires the initiative and investment of many and relies upon our commitment to include those who are too often forgotten and ignored.
I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for raising this discussion and look forward to using my seat, place and voice to contribute to this and other vital conversations in days to come.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, on a wonderful introduction to today’s debate. As a Scot who prefers curry to stew and broth, I am quite happy to swap.
It is a real pleasure to follow the maiden speeches by the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook. The noble Lord, Lord Rook, and I and our families have known each other for nearly two decades now. We have lived much of that time within a mile of each other, as he touched on, in south-west London. Our children went to the same local community primary and secondary schools together. They have now gone off in their own directions, and I am sure that Joe is watching from the States if he is not here and that the rest of the noble Lord’s family are here with him.
It was an excellent maiden speech. Community and integration, as noble Lords have heard, are both the noble Lord’s passion and his life’s work. If I was to pick out a few words to describe the noble Lord, Lord Rook, to those in your Lordships’ House who do not already know him, I would choose theologian, political activist and interfaith campaigner—an interesting mix.
Over the last few years, as we have heard, the noble Lord, Lord Rook, has served as the faith and civil society adviser to both the Labour Party and to this current leader and previous leaders. Following the recent election, he continues to advise both the party and the Labour Government. Alongside this, he has a broad portfolio of a ministry, combining new projects at the Good Faith Partnership with research, teaching and assignments.
Many noble Lords will have known the noble Lord, Lord Rook, and seen him around, providing advice and support for my noble friend Lady Sherlock, but probably a little less known is his work on refugees. He touched on just one of the aspects at the end, with the local Syrian family. He founded Reset: Communities for Refugees. He is an international consultant for global refugees and founded the RAMP Project. He is an excellent addition to your Lordships’ House and will bring a wealth of experience to these Benches in his own right. Russ, welcome.
I turn now to today’s debate. Community cohesion, as we have heard, is not merely a social nicety. It is one of the cornerstones of our society, fostering a sense of belonging, mutual respect and shared values among often diverse communities. Across the globe we see isolationism, protectionism and narrow self-interest leaping up the political agenda. It is through integration that we can bridge many of the gaps between different groups, ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive and contribute to the rich tapestry of British life.
As we navigate the complexities of modern society, it is crucial to recognise that integration is not just a one-way process, as we have already heard. It requires effort and commitment from both established communities and newcomers. The UK’s integrated communities strategy, launched in 2018, emphasised this point by calling for a whole-government approach to integration, as the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, touched on in his comments earlier, working across government with local authorities and civil society to address the specific challenges in different areas.
This strategy acknowledges that successful integration depends on fostering meaningful interactions between people from different backgrounds and promoting shared values such as democracy, free speech and mutual respect. Today, we have heard many excellent examples, from the personal stories of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, to my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn. The importance of community cohesion cannot be overstated. It is a glue that holds our society together, allowing us to celebrate our differences while working towards common goals. As Ted Cantle, a leading expert in community cohesion, once noted:
“Community cohesion is at the heart of all our future policies, plans and programmes”.
This sentiment underscores the critical role that cohesion plays in creating a harmonious and inclusive society.
However, despite these efforts, challenges persist. Socioeconomic deprivation and existing diversity are often cited as predictors of low social cohesion and integration. The 2023-24 Community Life survey found that, while 81% of adults agreed that people from different backgrounds generally got on well in their local areas, this figure was lower among certain ethnic groups and especially across the younger age population. These disparities highlight the need for targeted interventions to address the root causes of division.
As Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, noted:
“Building social cohesion requires a collective effort from all sectors of society, including local authorities, voluntary organisations and community groups”.
This collaborative approach is essential for creating strong, integrated communities, where everyone can thrive. Community cohesion is not just a moral imperative; it is an economic and social necessity.
In conclusion, by investing in integration initiatives we can unlock the full potential of our diverse communities, fostering a society that is more resilient, more prosperous and more just for all. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that every individual, regardless of their background, feels a sense of belonging and has an equal opportunity to succeed. Let us also remember that community cohesion itself is a journey, not the destination. It requires ongoing effort, dialogue and mutual understanding. But the rewards are well worth it: a society where everyone can live, work and thrive together, united by shared values and common purpose.
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)
My Lords, many congratulations to my noble friend for introducing this debate—I think not for the first time, but it matters all the more. How good it is that those of us in this place continue to revisit a subject of such great importance. I also congratulate and give an enormously warm welcome to the maiden speakers: both are magnificent people. I am delighted that they have been trained and brainwashed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, who is always somebody to be followed, whatever your political party or persuasion.
My concern is that we might lose some of the great progress that we have achieved in this country. Life was pretty bad in the 1960s and 1970s. Many noble Lords will know that I chaired the juvenile court in Lambeth. My family and I have always been outreachers who try to welcome people. My in-laws had Hungarian refugees; we had Ugandan Asians, and now we have a Ukrainian and a Latvian. But it is relatively easy for us, because we do not live on the margins of society. I am not pretending that those on the margins of society, where jobs and money are poor, can be so generous spirited.
When we look at the improvement in the number of women on boards, and the number of diverse members from different communities on boards, we see that we have done well in this country. We need to beware the wrecking ball—I am sorry—of President Trump. When the crash took place between the airliner and the helicopter, saying that it was excessive DE&I training that had resulted in the Federal Aviation Authority reducing the quality of the people they admitted was, frankly, deplorable. Trump said:
“The FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities”.
It is funny, but it is appalling. We in this country must not dismiss all the DE&I approaches that we have developed.
Only today, financial regulators are saying that they are going to reduce the amount of diversity reporting. Well, maybe it has gone too far. We can talk about ethnicity, but we are not allowed to talk about religion. I do not agree with that and I hope the Minister might comment on that. We are hardly allowed to talk about age any more, but we are allowed to talk about orientation; it is incredibly politically correct. However, we must not lose what we have gained.
We need to have a reality check. I commend the Policy Exchange report, A Portrait of Modern Britain, with the foreword by Sir Trevor Phillips. It may be that the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, will talk about this. It is extraordinarily gratifying. Three out of four people, 72%, believe that children should be taught to be proud of British history, proud of the wars and the abolition of slavery and much else besides. Most ethnic minorities think that social class is a much greater problem in terms of employment and opportunity than ethnicity. I worry that we will create divisions by reinforcing historical prejudices, which actually we should be proud that we in this country have reduced. This is not to say that they will not come back, but we have made great progress. We can take pride in inclusive patriotism, as Sir Trevor Phillips and others talk about.
I want to move on to universities, though, and young people. I echo the words of the right reverend Prelate about the importance of religious education. Religion can be the elephant in the room: people are uncomfortable talking about it. If you talk to people in universities at the moment, they are really alarmed by what has happened, in terms of it simply becoming a taboo subject, a no-go area. I was delighted to see a message from both our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, at Oxford University, and Larry Kramer, the really splendid director of the London School of Economics, saying they will not tolerate no-go zones, that there must be free speech and open debate, and that the way to solve these issues is not by banning debate.
I warmly commend the work of James Walters, the director of the LSE Faith Centre. Several of us were with him this week at a breakfast when he talked about the efforts he is making to bring people together from different religions: Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Christian, because at universities, people come from all around the world. Some 80% of LSE students are international, and they bring with them their different faith perspectives. LSE has always been extraordinarily secular. I was there as a governor for 20 years. My mother-in-law was there, my grandmother lectured there, and my great-grandfather was an incorporating signatory. It was a secular place, and now they are bringing in the importance of faith.
Let us go younger. I welcome the English Speaking Union, founded in 1918 after the horrors of the First World War. We use the rather ugly word “oracy”. What the English Speaking Union is really working at is encouraging people to be articulate, to debate, to listen carefully but then provide critical analysis. They have got a great new programme of dialogue and debate rather than dispute and disagreement, and I commend their work warmly.
I must get to my favourite subject, which is working from home—a disaster. I want the whole House to from hear Sir Simon Wessely, the regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London. Of course when you are at home you are miserable, lonely, your prejudices are reinforced, you do not meet people, there is no creativity and there is no diversity. It really is an extraordinarily serious situation. We know that children need to go to school, but we adults like going to work. Remember how wretched we all were when the House of Lords was not meeting. So, please realise that working from home is going to reinforce stereotypes, prejudices and unhappiness. I commend my noble friend once more and the many speakers—I have a lot more to say.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow all these wonderful speeches. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for initiating this debate and telling us her history. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook, on their speeches and their entry to the House. I am sure they will make a great difference to it.
This is a very diverse House. To qualify to speak in this debate, I think I ought to stress that my mother came from Poland as a teenager, between the wars. She married my father, who also came from far away—Newcastle—while my maternal grandmother and other family died in the Holocaust. There are many strands of diversity in your Lordships’ House and we have heard many of them today. I was sure that many speakers would focus on their community in relation to cohesion. I will concentrate on how the UK Jewish community fits into this essential task.
We are fortunate in the UK in having numerous communal organisations, including the Community Security Trust, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council. There are many others. Sadly, external events can have a significant effect. Since Hamas killed and took hostages in Israel on 7 October 2023—as long ago as that—there has been a significant division in the UK. These divisions impact on Jewish life, resulting in tensions in the workplace, in educational institutions, on our streets and in communal spaces. There has, sadly, been a rise in anti-Semitism.
Many in the UK Jewish community feel more vulnerable than before and this is surely unacceptable. There are no easy answers. Interfaith initiatives need to be supported. Education needs to be improved on what is seen as anti-Semitism and how hurtful it is in the workplace, on the streets and in education. We have to face up to the fact that news travels faster than before, no more so than if that news is false or distorted. A lie once posted online soon becomes viral. Corrections, if made, are often ignored by those willing to believe those falsehoods.
It is often hard to explain to others that Israel plays an important part in the identity of the UK Jewish community due to religious, cultural, family and economic ties. It is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel—after all, Jews and Israelis do it all the time—but it is an uncomfortable feeling to see the only Jewish state, comprising a population of only nine million, including non-Jews, singled out or held to higher standards than other nations. This can be seen in cases such as when a UK local authority supports the boycott and divestments campaign. We rarely hear of the 8 million Jews who fled Arab lands, mainly to settle in Israel. In the main that was because Israel, as we are trying to suggest today, integrates them into the general populace. There needs to be a stronger enforcement against extremism in the charity sector, which should be stamped on by the Charity Commission.
Of course, these falsehoods do not apply only to the UK Jewish community. In reflecting on the importance of community cohesion between Jewish and Muslim communities, I am heartened by initiatives such as Mitzvah Day, the UK’s largest day of social action. It brings together over 50,000 individuals from incredibly diverse backgrounds to engage in charitable activities that strengthen our social fabric. Notably, in 2024, Mitzvah Day’s theme was “Stronger Together”, emphasising unity in challenging times. Faith leaders from various traditions collaborated on projects supporting vulnerable families, exemplifying the power of collective action in fostering interfaith harmony. As examples, there were people knitting hats for premature babies in hospitals, while my wife was involved in cases for the homeless in Camden.
I acknowledge the contributions of many key figures in promoting interfaith relations. I know that the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, has been an ardent supporter of Mitzvah Day, a cross-religious and cross-cultural initiative, just for helping people. He has participated in its initiatives. The aim is to build bridges between communities. Additionally, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on women in faith has been instrumental in highlighting the vital role of women in fostering interfaith dialogue. We must all support initiatives aiming to deal with anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hate, anti-Hindu hate—hate of all sorts. I await the Minister’s reply. I will not set out specific questions as so many other questions have been raised already, except to ask: what initiatives can we expect from His Majesty’s Government?
Baroness Hazarika (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to my noble friend—my good friend—the Minister, Lord Khan, who is doing a really terrific job. This is not an easy gig, particularly in these days of inflamed social tensions. He does his work with great energy, compassion and good faith. I also congratulate my noble friends Lord Raval and Lord Rook on their wonderful, warm maiden speeches. They are going to make some terrific contributions to this House.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this important debate and for her very warm and personal opening speech. It made me think about my own story as a Muslim girl growing up in Coatbridge to Indian Muslim immigrant parents. I have told this story before but when my dad first got to Coatbridge as a GP, one of his patients asked him, “What are you?” He said, “I’m a Muslim”, and they said, “Aye, but what kind? A Rangers Muslim or a Celtic Muslim?” My mum and dad wanted to preserve their heritage while making sure that I integrated and learned the local culture. So, on a Saturday morning, my mum would drive me to my Koran lessons, which I then followed up with Scottish country dancing lessons. Having done the two, I am not sure which one was more dangerous, to be honest—stripping the willow is not for the faint-hearted.
I think of my father, who came to this country in the late 1960s. He began his working life in Clatterbridge Hospital on the Wirral and was desperately homesick and lonely. The sister on his ward, a formidable woman called Audrey, noticed this lost soul and, in her bossy way, demanded that he came round to her house for Sunday lunch. He did what he was told and off he went. Audrey took him and his pal Aftab under her wing. My dad had never been to a British house; he did not even know how to use cutlery properly. Audrey and her family taught them all about British life. My dad had his very first pint under the tutelage of her husband Arthur. He became a more moderate Muslim at this point, it is safe to say—don’t tell the Imam. In return, my dad cooked them delicious Indian food and they learned about his life. They became the best of friends and Audrey became like a grandmother to us. She sadly passed away a few years ago, but we are still so close to her children and grandchildren. That is the essence of integration. It should be based on human qualities of kindness, curiosity and friendship.
That is the fuzzy, feel-good bit out of the way—now for the other side. I got an email when I first came into this place. I had just done “Newsnight”, during the riots. I paraphrase, but this is the gist of that email: “Don’t kid yourself Hazarika. For the millions of us who can trace our heritage on these islands back many centuries—unlike you—we loathe and detest you and your kind more than life itself, because of how you have completely destroyed our country. You can fill the streets with uninvited and unwanted migrants, ethnics and left-wing Trots, but plenty of us are prepared to die to save our nation and its way of life, but we are not going to die in vain. Don’t ever, ever forget that. Long live Enoch Powell”. It is always nice to get some fan mail, isn’t it?
So it is not all good. There are extremists in different communities, including my own, who spread hate and feast off division. International conflicts, particularly in the Middle East, are affecting these shores, and, as we have heard, we are seeing a shocking rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Let us be honest: our politics have not helped either. We on the left are still deeply ashamed that anti-Semitism bloomed in the Labour Party under the last leadership. I personally apologise for that. On the right, politicians today say ridiculous things such as you cannot possibly be English if you have a different skin colour or were born to immigrants.
I do not share Rishi Sunak’s politics, but I was damn proud to see him become our first Hindu Prime Minister. We should be welcoming people who want to come here, work hard, contribute and be part of our community. Of course, we must allow people to have their religious and cultural differences, but we must also set clear guardrails about what is expected in our society and what we expect our values to be. We should all care about greater community cohesion and integration. It is better for everybody, as we have heard expressed so eloquently. But demanding it through humiliation, hatred and inciting violence is not the solution. To go back to my own dear dad’s story: a wee bit of kindness, humour, curiosity and friendship is the way. We should all be a bit more Audrey.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
That was a rather sobering speech from the noble Baroness, which I listened to carefully. It was a more uplifting speech from my noble friend about her personal journey. There were uplifting speeches from the two maiden speakers, which I also enjoyed hearing very much.
The vital nature of what my noble friend has introduced today can be contained in one statistic: last year in this country, 31% of all children born were born to mothers who were not born in this country. That is the scale of social change that is going on and which the noble Baroness’s speech and the other speeches today have to address. That is not a criticism; it is just noting the rate of change.
About five years ago, I chaired a cross-party Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on citizenship and civic engagement. We had a fairly powerful group, including two previous Labour Secretaries of State for Education—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. Many of our findings, I am afraid, have not found favour. I hope the Minister might dust them down and see whether any have particular application. I offer just three for our debate this afternoon.
First, as a committee, we felt there was a need to distinguish between what you might call integration and assimilation; in other words, if you come to this country, what do you have to give up to be a full member of our society—which you might call your civic identity? What can you keep, and by keeping, enrich our society as a whole—which you might call your sociocultural identity? This country does not exist in a moral vacuum. There are essential values that have to be respected. However uncomfortable it may be, there are red lines that have to be enforced. We have heard some of them from the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, gave evidence to our committee, and she said:
“The laws that protect religious minorities are the same laws that say I am equal to a man. You do not pick which ones you want. It is not a chocolate box of choice; it is something you have to embrace. If you are uncomfortable with that, I now say that is tough”.
Secondly, tackling these very difficult issues will not happen by osmosis. This needs to be taught and taught well. That is why citizenship education is so vital. I am afraid my party did not do well in government in introducing this and maintaining it. But I am also afraid, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Khan, I am not sure that this present Labour Government are doing much better. There is a persistent conflation between PSHE and citizenship education. In reality, they have completely different focuses. PSHE—personal, social, health and economic education—is about “me”. However, citizenship education is about “we”: the society in which we live. It is really important that we maintain that distinction and have a proper understanding and proper teaching of how our society operates and how people live within it.
Thirdly—I will say only two words about this, because both the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, referred to it—there is an absence of any co-ordination at all. To make this thing happen, you need a Secretary of State—someone with power and influence. We found initiatives all over the place that, frankly, just ran into the sand. Some were good and others were bad, but nobody picked up the good ones and developed them; no institutional memory was developed at all. That is our report.
For my last minute and a half, I will talk about scale. In the last year for which records are available, we gave entry rights to 1.259 million people and about half a million left, so our population increased by about three-quarters of a million. I have some doubts as to whether we can integrate that number successfully—not just whether we can integrate them socially but whether we can provide them with an adequate supply of housing and access to health and other social services, not to mention avoiding damaging our environment, ecology and achievement of net zero. Moreover—this is the point made by my noble friend Lady Bottomley—we need to do so without selling short our existing settled population, 20% of whom are now from minority communities; they have rights that need protecting.
The noble Lord, Lord Rook, may think that I will start attacking asylum seekers and refugees—absolutely not. Of the figure I gave, just 100,000—7.5%—were asylum seekers. Obviously, particular issues are raised, but in terms of the numbers, they are virtually irrelevant. The big challenge comes from British industry and commerce, which simply cannot wean itself off recruiting overseas as a “default option”—the phrase of the Migration Advisory Committee. It also comes from British higher education, which has built a business model around recruiting ever-increasing numbers of overseas students, sometimes, as some people say, at the expense of the education of our settled population.
To conclude, of course everything we are discussing today is absolutely critical, but we need to be prepared to think about the central challenge of how many people we can take in every year. With all the different moral, economic and other objectives, how can we take them in? If we do not settle that, all that my noble friend said and all the speeches we have heard today are like trying to empty the bath without first turning down the taps.
Lord Katz (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and to hear such excellent maiden speeches from my noble friends Lord Raval and Lord Rook. I am proud to be their fellow newbie—or perhaps I should say rookie—and both their contributions show how much they have to offer the House.
I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this debate. It is particularly timely as, this evening, observant Jews begin observing the very happy holiday of Purim, which commemorates a perfect story for this debate on community cohesion and integration. It sees a young Jewish woman, Esther, integrating into the Persian court by virtue of becoming queen, and, in doing so, standing up for her own community against the forces of hatred that seek to rip apart an otherwise cohesive community.
I will pick up and expand on themes raised by both the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and my noble friend Lady Hazarika. While this has been a broadly well-intentioned debate, I am afraid that the figures are stark: they suggest that, at least for some, community cohesion is in crisis. Just last month, the Community Security Trust said that 2024 was the second-worst year for anti-Semitism that it had seen, with more than half as many incidents as the next highest year, which was only 2021.
Meanwhile, Tell MAMA, which does equivalent work for the Muslim community, as we heard in Questions earlier today, said that 2024 was the worst year in its history for recorded anti-Muslim hate cases—driven in no small part, no doubt, by the riots we have heard about, following the terrible events in Southport last summer. Those riots were instigated and fuelled by far-right anti-Muslim hatred. We know this is nothing new: the far right will always seek to scapegoat the immigrant and the minority group for being different. However, the far left is also not blameless.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, touched on intolerance on campus, and we have seen the hatred against Jews on regular protests in central London and elsewhere since 7 October 2023. This is undeniable, indefensible and a direct attack on community cohesion. Of course, many who march are there solely, and rightly, to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause. However, they are joined by those who simply cannot or will not do this without invoking naked anti-Jewish racism. The organisers of these demonstrations allow this to continue in seemingly blissful ignorance, with little or no effort made to warn those attending or stewarding those marches that, for instance, placards bearing swastikas intertwined with the Star of David or which equate Zionism with Nazism are simply unacceptable. Protestors may believe, wrongly, that chanting “From the river to the sea” is not anti-Semitic, but it should simply be enough to know that Jews find it at the very least objectionable and hurtful to persuade them to desist. Community cohesion is damaged when one of the country’s smallest minority groups, the Jewish community, is targeted in this way. The right to free speech should surely be balanced by a care for social cohesion. It should not be solely up to the police to deter racist behaviour on demonstrations, but up to those organising them too.
As many noble Lords have already observed, integration and cohesion are really just two sides of the same coin. I was struck by polling by the excellent HOPE not hate in their Fear & HOPE 2024 report, which found that in 2011, only 12% of British people polled had never had any contact with Jews, but that last year this figure had risen to nearly a third. For Muslims the equivalent figure had grown from just 8% in 2011 to 18% in 2024. The same trend is true for Hindus and Sikhs. For all our interfaith efforts to promote understanding between religious minorities, it seems we are working in a vacuum when it comes to the wider population.
I worry that trends in education have exacerbated the problem. This is not an attack on faith schools. My daughters attend an excellent Jewish comprehensive, having attended a very mixed community primary, but the increasing proportion of Jewish kids going to Jewish schools not only risks isolating them; it means that kids from other backgrounds do not get to meet a Jewish person and in so doing perhaps dispel some of the awful myths and tropes they may pick up on the internet. This cannot be healthy for our society; nor is it in any of our religious minority groups’ interest. We should all—communities, schools, government—mitigate against it. I was interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield on the difference between religious education and civic education, and PSHE. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on this matter.
This goes to the nub of the problem. When hate rises, it is only natural for communities to hide away, creating a vicious circle which harms community cohesion. My own community has a proud history of integrating into British life in all its facets, including in this House. At the risk of sounding trite, did we flee ghettos 80 years ago merely to have to recreate them here?
The Local Government Association correctly asserted in evidence to the Commons Women and Equalities Committee that cohesion happens locally or not at all, and councils have a vital role to play in promoting and maintaining it. This requires strong political leadership in town halls—and I say this as much to my party as others. Councillors have responsibility for community cohesion, not foreign policy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said, as political leaders our words matter, whether in town halls or in this House. Just as much as this means councillors not grandstanding to local groups on foreign policy, it means avoiding a rhetorical rush to the gutter on immigration here in Westminster. That approach plays into the worst of hands and only aids those who wish to divide, not unite, society.
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Verma for bringing this very important and timely debate before your Lordships’ House. Her own personal testimony got us off to a very strong start and set the tone for an excellent debate. It has also been my great privilege to hear the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook. I am sure everyone in the Chamber looks forward to the tremendous contribution they will make to your Lordships’ House in the coming days, weeks and years—decades, hopefully.
On Saturday I happened to be in Glasgow, when the first council-organised St Patrick’s Day parade was being held in the city centre. It seemed to be a well-supported and joyful event. Why is that relevant to today’s debate? The noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, has already alluded to this. It is relevant because of what the noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, referred to as Scotland’s shame: the sectarian and divided society in the west of Scotland that has taken almost 150 years to get to a stage where suspicion and division between communities is still being overcome. It serves as a warning as to how difficult it is and long it takes to fix these issues.
The subject is sensitive and thought-provoking and, particularly given that I describe myself as a liberal Conservative, needs to be wrestled with. As a liberal and a Conservative, I celebrate difference, and I also respect faith and tradition. I believe in faith schools and the celebration of cultural diversity. There are many people in this country who do not belong to any community, and nor do they have any sense of national identity. That is a great sadness. I apply that equally to people whose families have been here for many generations and to those who have been here for one generation.
As someone who wants the UK to be a confident, free society, I also believe there are five important principles that would ensure that we aspire to be a fully functioning nation state. First, to succeed in this country, all people, from every community, should be encouraged and supported to speak English, to avoid the very exclusion that the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, mentioned. Secondly, the law of the land should be applied equally, irrespective of race, sex, religion or any other characteristic. Thirdly, rights that protect individuals—whether women’s rights, children’s rights, rights to free speech, or rights to property and to free elections—should apply to every UK citizen. Fourthly, there should be a national narrative that we can all engage with, just as every other successful country has. That is the inclusive patriotism that the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, mentioned. Living in the UK has to be about more than just being domiciled here and being able to make money here. Finally, the state has a responsibility to ensure that its population—from every community—has the opportunity to excel. Importantly, life cannot be isolated within particular communities, especially as young people grow. Suspicion and distrust so often come from a lack of mixing of young children.
I am sad to say that a major obstacle to some of these five principles being implemented has been an excess of cultural cringe among many who would consider themselves strong supporters of integration and cohesion. They believe that it is easier to spend huge amounts on translation rather than English classes, and that it is outdated and cringeworthy to try to celebrate what makes the UK a great and distinct country. In the area of law, that political correctness has crossed the line from ensuring that all are equal to some being more equal than others. I commend the Government on their recent stance on sentencing.
It has also become fashionable to believe that it is wrong for to children mix through national voluntary programmes, because it is somehow coercive or old-fashioned. I am not saying that we want to apply a beige, monochrome, old-fashioned sense of Britishness, and that the diversity that makes us so strong should be ignored. But we live in a country called the United Kingdom for a reason. It is a nation state made up of four nations, and in the 21st century the four nations contain numerous, strong, healthy and diverse communities.
As I have already said, it is actually a greater threat to our country that so many people in the UK have no sense of community, whether that be cultural, religious, familial or national. I was appalled when commentators began to discuss whether prominent politicians from a non-white background could be English, British, Welsh or Scottish. We cannot enter into a reductive argument about individual race or religion. It is far more important that people from every background feel that they are accepted as British, irrespective of the community, or non-community, they come from.
There is no simple route to integration. It is about a delicate balance underlined by principles of equality and the contract between the citizen and the state while recognising and celebrating difference. How will that balance and equilibrium be supported through policy? The west of Scotland is an example of how long that community integration can take.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I am almost speechless at the quality of some of the contributions to this debate. As to the two maiden speakers, what fun we are going to have in the future—fun even in your Lordships’ House. I commend them on the quality of their wisdom and the manner of their delivery, to say nothing of a former stand-up comic sitting beside them. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma—I want to call her my noble friend—for giving us the opportunity to share these experiences and ideas.
The day before yesterday, I was in Paris attending the migration committee of the Council of Europe, where I was charged to be the rapporteur for a study of diasporas across the continent and their agency in shaping coherent societies. I rose to accept that on the grounds that this is an opportunity to build a counternarrative to the toxic debates that we have been having about migration, for those who were migrants not so long ago are now pillars of British society. I am looking forward to that, though it will take some time; I may be in the grave before I finish it.
I wanted the major part of my contribution to be somewhere quite different, in a university in London. Four teacher training colleges, one run by Methodists, another by Anglicans, another by Roman Catholics and another by a humanist organisation, had to face the fact that teacher training institutions were no longer the fashion of the day, so they formed the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education and eventually were given by the Privy Council degree-awarding abilities and research degree facilities.
We saw coming on to one campus four bodies representing traditions that had been at one another’s throats for so much of British history and, where they had a common objective, finding a common will and a readiness to be open and generous with one another. Although they have religious backgrounds, they accept students from all over, now as the University of Roehampton. I was privileged to be part of the engine that brought it into being and have benefited from one of its awards more recently—I do not think it was in direct payment; I have to say that in case it gets into the newspapers. Here we have evidence that integration, coherence and social cohesion can happen when, instead of looking at each other as opposites or different, people collaborate around an agreed goal and work towards it together.
Of course, I am not going to take my six minutes—I always count it when I do not; I keep an account of the minutes that I have in credit for future possible use. What I have tried to explain by way of the creation of the University of Roehampton reached its summit point when it appointed as its new chancellor the person who introduced this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. Methodist plus Anglican plus Roman Catholic plus humanist now have the coherent head of a Hindu who is helping us all to see even more than we saw before.
Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook, on their two very engaging maiden speeches, and wish them every joy in the House. I also commend my noble friend Lady Verma on securing this important debate. Each of us will have our own idea of what integration looks like. Mine took place two years ago: namely, the King’s Coronation. The Coronation was what has been described, in a very different context, as a demonstration of traditional values in a modern setting. I want to examine both of those themes in turn.
First, the modern setting. As other speakers have pointed out, the Britain of the future will be less white, older and less Christian. Other faiths will grow, especially Islam, which by 2050 is likely to be followed by some 15% of the population. Therefore, when we talk of integration, we must not assume that others, who are neither white nor culturally Christian, must somehow integrate into the rest of the country that is, because the country is changing. As the noble Lord, Lord Rook, said in his maiden speech, integration is a two-way street.
However, though Britain is changing, much of it is unchanged—which brings me to the traditional values. Although many of us are neither white nor culturally Christian, more of us still are. Our country has been shaped not by so-called British values—I have always been perplexed as to what these are—but by British institutions that, in turn, were shaped by enlightenment values which, in turn, were shaped—as Tom Holland argues in his brilliant book, Dominion—by Christianity.
What did all this produce? I answer: constitutional monarchy, democratic government, freedom under the law, an independent judiciary, strong civic institutions and a free press. All of these are explicitly western in origin, although now global in application, as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are the foundations of our culture and I have no hesitation in asserting that some cultures are better than others. It is these things we must integrate into if we are to be as great in the future as we have sometimes been in the past.
In the very brief time available to me, I will sketch how these foundations can be strengthened. In a nutshell, we have the balance wrong. There must be some policing of private space in relation to, for example, support for terror, child abuse or incitement to violence. Integration is not enhanced, and nor are the police well served, by the thinking behind or the recording of non-crime hate incidents, as too often happens. Similarly, there must be free expression in public space in relation to, for example, events in the Middle East.
However, liberty is not licence, and there can be no room in the public square for support for terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, or for anti-Semitism or anti-Muslim hatred. On that score, I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said earlier in the debate. In that context, organisations that use criminal action to force change should face a fundraising and communication ban—as recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who I see is in his place—and the criteria under which protests are permitted should be tightened, as recommended by Policy Exchange.
Finally, we need to radically reform the practice of equality, diversity and inclusion which, at their best, are all about fairness. In the words of Dr Raghib Ali, who advised the last Government on ethnicity and Covid,
“the primary factor in health and educational inequalities is deprivation, not race”
and
“there is now no overall ‘White privilege’ in health or education (and especially not for deprived Whites)—or overall ‘BAME disadvantage’—and these categories are now outdated and unhelpful”.
Just as we need to rethink equality, so we need to think very carefully about diversity and inclusion. It is said that diversity is a strength: this is usually true, but it is not always true that inclusion is a strength. For example, no one in this Chamber would think it would be a strength to integrate the grooming and rape gangs into the Britain of the future. Andrew Norfolk, the journalist who led the reporting for the Times, has said the root causes of the abuse have not been properly examined, which is why many of us on this side of the House have argued that a full national inquiry is essential.
Some believe in equality of outcome, some in equality of opportunity, but the equality that all of us can and do sign up to is equality before the law, the primacy of which should once again be established in public policy if the practice of integration is to be realised, and the promise of the Coronation is to be fulfilled.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by expressing my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for securing this important debate in your Lordships’ Chamber. I congratulate my noble friends Lord Raval and Lord Rook on their moving and illuminating maiden speeches, which I enjoyed very much.
The UK is now a truly diverse multicultural and multifaith society, with all minority communities fully protected by various pieces of legislation. However, legislation can do only so much. It cannot always change deeply entrenched views, beliefs, attitudes and values.
When immigrants from the Commonwealth began to arrive in the UK after the Second World War, they faced widespread discrimination in their daily lives, whether in housing, employment or public spaces. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, this discrimination was, more often than not, overt. For example, in 1970, a pub landlord threw my father out of his premises simply because he did not speak English. Although his rights were protected by law, the prejudice of the time persisted.
However, as time passed, values and attitudes evolved. Today, I believe the UK stands as one of the most tolerant and inclusive societies in the world—yet we must not let our guard down. We need only to look at what happened last summer in Southport, when three young girls were tragically murdered. A rumour spread on social media falsely claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was responsible. This must never happen again.
Community cohesion is undermined by inequality, poverty, misinformation and barriers to essential services. It is further threatened by low social mobility, a lack of respect for ethnic differences, negative attitudes towards migrants, low levels of local pride, fear of crime, and a lack of trust between different ethnic groups.
Today I will focus on one area: access to consumer credit. It is clear that some minority communities, particularly black African and Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, face far greater barriers when trying to access consumer credit. These groups often find themselves on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, experiencing more significant financial exclusion than others. They are more likely to be denied loans for purchasing homes or starting businesses due to their lower levels of savings and assets. Despite accounting for only 10% of fraud victims, they are far less likely to have their money returned. They were disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, suffering sharper declines in income and financial stability.
To address these disadvantages, we must first recognise and acknowledge them. Improving community cohesion requires a collective effort from the Government, local authorities, police, fire and rescue services, health and social care providers, and third-sector organisations. They must work towards a common vision that promotes equality and inclusion. This can be achieved only through open dialogue and mutual understanding, social interaction between different cultures and faiths, and stronger engagement between public institutions and diverse communities. Only through genuine integration can we break down barriers and ensure that every individual, regardless of their background, feels a true sense of belonging in our society.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Raval and Lord Rook, on excellent—and very funny at times, which is always lovely in this House—maiden speeches. I welcome them to your Lordships’ House, and I look forward to working with them on these issues in the future. I thank my noble friend Lady Verma for bringing this important debate to us today. I particularly thank her for sharing her story and for her long-standing and passionate service to, and love for, the city of Leicester and its communities.
I am proud of our diverse country. A recent study by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory found that Britain is one of the most successful ethnically diverse countries in the world. Some of our greatest achievements as a nation have been by people who have chosen to come to Britain and contribute fully to our country. I think of Mo Farah and his Olympic excellence, Freddie Mercury, who was born and raised in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents, and Dame Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker prize in architecture, who was born in Iraq. Indeed, many Members of your Lordships’ House were born in other countries and have committed their lives to public service in this country.
It is important that people who come here abide by our laws. We embrace people who integrate, but we know that when immigration is too high, it sometimes presents challenges to effective integration. Nearly 1 million people in England have little or no English proficiency. Specifically, 8.6%—approximately 794,000—of our residents born overseas struggle with the English language, and 1.4%—about 138,000—cannot speak English at all. This language barrier poses significant challenges to migrants’ integration. I echo the question from my noble friend Lady Verma to the Minister and ask him to set out the Government’s plans to improve English language skills for all as a part of work to foster greater cohesion.
We have a rich culture in this country which we should be proud of, but there have been too many examples of UK public bodies apologising for our national traditions. Let me give just a few examples. Stoke-on-Trent City Council referred to its Christmas celebrations without explicitly mentioning Christmas, aiming to be considerate to all community members. Newcastle University advised staff to use terms such as “winter break” instead of “Christmas break” and “spring break” instead of “Easter break”, supposedly fostering inclusivity among a diverse student population. We are, however, culturally a Christian country, and people from all faiths and backgrounds can enjoy the Christmas and Easter breaks even though they may not be Christians themselves. I would be interested to hear from the Minister his thoughts on the role that public institutions have to play in fostering inclusivity without seeking to undermine our traditional cultural values.
As a Minister, I spent a lot of time going around the country visiting many of our fantastic faith communities that were encouraging and supporting integration. I visited Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and London, and there were groups of Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus—mainly women, I have to say, which is interesting —using Christian church halls, in particular, just to chat between themselves, have a cup of tea and share skills and their cultural heritages. That is local integration. I even saw them running wonderful community food banks, helping all their communities. These projects still need some local and, I suggest, national support to keep them going because it is from the bottom up that real community cohesion happens, with support from the top—so government, both local and national, is critical in this.
I want to talk briefly about British laws. I am very proud of our laws and our way of life. One area where we need to see more action on integration is women’s rights. We have a responsibility in your Lordships’ House to protect women in all communities, across all faiths and all cultures. We cannot allow the progress that we have made to be hindered by groups that have refused to accept our support for women’s rights. It is a fundamental principle in English law that we are all equal before the law, and I believe that every woman should have the same equal protection under the law regardless of her faith, culture, background or ethnicity.
It is the same in policing. We must ensure that policing is fair throughout our country. Where there are failures, whether they be heavy-handed policing in certain communities or failure to act in other areas, we must call them out and correct them. The Government are right to look again at the grooming gangs. Although we were disappointed that they did not launch a national inquiry, it is important that that work continues at pace.
In the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill—noble Lords are probably asking why I am talking about that—there is a requirement for strategic planning bodies to create spatial development plans. In that, there is a gold-plated plan on consultation requirements. It claims that there must be consultation of bodies that
“represent the interests of different racial, ethnic or national groups in the strategy area”.
We cannot support this; it is where we perhaps go wrong. We believe that on policies of this kind we need to consult the public, not pull out different ethnicities or religions. I believe that it potentially creates division when we go too far.
Broadly, we need a clearer approach to an integration strategy from the Labour Government. Integration is about uniting communities across class, ethnicity and creed, celebrating shared local and national identities that bring people together rather than atomising them into protected characteristics. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how Labour intend to achieve that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)
My Lords, I extend my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for initiating this important debate and for such a passionate and eloquent speech detailing her personal journey and that of her family. Successful integration and social cohesion are the pillars of a strong and resilient society. I also thank my noble friends Lord Raval and Lord Rook for their valuable and thoughtful maiden speeches in this House. On the evidence of their excellent contributions, the House will be richer and enhanced by their presence. I think today is the first time that a Minister can say that he supported at their introduction all those who have made their maiden speeches. I also thank my noble friends for their work on faith and for advising and supporting me in my work as a Minister with responsibility for faith.
Integration is the foundation on which social cohesion is built. Effective integration ensures equitable access to resources, opportunities and support, while social cohesion fosters trust, shared values and collaboration among different groups. Together, they strengthen social stability, reduce inequalities and promote a sense of belonging, which is essential for a thriving and harmonious society.
Integration is not about assimilation: we do not want individuals to feel that they have to give up their identity and heritage. Instead, it is about ensuring that every individual can succeed and feel represented, accepted and at home in the community they live in, so long as they respect the UK’s fundamental values—which I believe is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, was alluding to.
For generations, people from across the world have come here to start new lives. In the past decade alone, the UK has provided safe and legal routes for over 600,000 people from Hong Kong, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. My noble friend Lord Rook mentioned the Syrian refugee scheme, which he was involved in. In August, I met Rola, who arrived in the UK in 2017 with her husband and two children through the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. Rola and her husband Emad now both speak excellent English and have settled into life in Newark. Rola works as an employment adviser, providing support with interview skills, CV writing, job searches and applications, while Emad has opened his own mobile phone and computer repair shop, which is doing really well.
Like Rola, the majority of people who come here are welcomed into communities and settle well into life in the UK. Over the years, their presence has made the UK an immeasurably richer and more diverse place. Successful integration has led to cohesive communities. Backed by research, we know that the UK is one of the most open and tolerant places to live in the world. For example, in a recent survey, 98% of people stated that they are comfortable living next door to people of a different race.
Yet integration in the UK can also come with challenges. Adjusting to a new language, finding stable employment and navigating public services is not always easy. Cultural differences and social isolation can also take time to overcome. When people do not feel connected to their communities, we see hatred and divisions form. Seeing the disturbances in my hometown, Burnley, the unrest in Leicester and, more recently, the violent disorder across the UK following the events in Southport last summer, I know just how much effort it takes to rebuild communities.
The Government are supporting Leicester as it seeks to address its challenges, build on its strengths and work through the difficult events that took place in 2022. The independent review, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Austin, will establish what happened, the factors that contributed to those events and what could be done differently in future. I have had great conversations with the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, about that. This Government are determined to strengthen the structures that promote integration and, by extension, social cohesion.
I will now address some of the specific issues raised today. I know that I have limited time, and I do not have the luxury of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, who has earned many credits over the years. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked about ensuring that English is available to everyone. The Government remain committed to the manifesto commitment to boost English language teaching. We know that language skills are crucial to help people integrate into life in the UK as well as to break down barriers to work and career progression. That is why we want to support all adults in England, including refugees, to secure the English language skills they need.
The Department for Education also funds ESOL provision for adults aged 19 and over in England through the adult skills fund, supporting 168,000 learners in 2023-24. The Government recognise that the ability to speak English is key to helping people integrate into life in the UK, as well as supporting people to access education, employment and other opportunities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, also asked what we are doing in relation to digital skills. In February, the Government published their digital inclusion action plan, setting out our first steps, including a definition and principles that will guide our work to address it. This includes partnering with the Digital Poverty Alliance and launching a new digital inclusion innovation fund and a digital inclusion action committee—an expert advisory group—to monitor our progress.
The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, mentioned the plan for neighbourhoods and our recent £1.5 billion announcement, which will deliver £20 million of funding and support over the next decade for 75 communities across the UK, laying the foundations to kick-start local growth and drive up living standards. The programme is developed to work across the UK Government as well as devolved Governments and will demonstrate the breadth of interventions possible.
My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, in his excellent speech, talked about Dame Sara Khan’s review. To reassure my noble friend, I have reached out to Dame Sara Khan and hope to meet her soon to discuss in detail the recommendations in her report. I understand there are some valuable lessons to be learned from that piece of work.
Britain is an open, tolerant and compassionate country. We have welcomed people from all over the world to be part of our British society, whether coming to work or study or fleeing conflict and persecution. Schemes such as Homes for Ukraine, the Afghan resettlement scheme, and the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa have provided important routes for those seeking sanctuary. People come to the UK for a variety of reasons, and this requires a tailored approach. The Government are committed to working in partnership with local authorities to understand the integration needs of new arrivals and how we can work together to ensure positive integration outcomes in local communities—which the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and my noble friend Lord McNicol mentioned in their contributions.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, talked about the high levels of immigration. The Government are clear that net migration must come down and are committed to tackling skills shortages and labour market failures here in the UK. They have set out a new approach to end overreliance on international recruitment and boost economic growth by linking the UK’s immigration, labour market and skills systems and training up our domestic workforce. Building on the Prime Minister’s statement on 28 November, the Government will publish a White Paper later this year that will set out their approach to reduce net migration.
My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, talked about social cohesion. We have increasing diversity in the UK—I recognise the stat that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, talked about—with 18% of the population being from an ethnic-minority background. We are proud to be a country that embraces difference and encourages people to celebrate their individual identity, but we are not complacent and must do more to build a stronger and more united country. This Government are committed to taking a longer-term, more strategic approach to social cohesion, and my department is leading cross-government efforts on this—this is important, as my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn said. It is not just for MHCLG; we have to work across government, and in partnership with local communities and stakeholders, to rebuild, renew and address the deep-seated issues.
I extend my gratitude to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield for talking about the recovery fund and some of the local initiatives that it was being used for. That is the start of our progress, and of course we have added 75 areas since the announcement of the plan for neighbourhoods. I hope that we can expand that, subject to the spending review.
The Government support recruitment to teacher training in religious education by offering a bursary of £10,000, but I take the point made by the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords about making sure that PSHE, citizenship classes or religious education classes are not taught by people who do not have the skills and expertise. I am having conversations with the Department for Education, including recently with Minister Morgan, on this issue.
In relation to the Communities and Recovery Steering Group, I sit on that alongside many Secretaries of State. As the right reverend Prelate mentioned, its terms of reference are on the public record. It is a cross-government group led by the Deputy Prime Minister and includes representation from the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Cabinet Office and many others, working together to support all communities and places to thrive, grow and be resilient to face future threats that could divide them.
The Government have set a long-term ambition to achieve an 80% employment rate, aiming to reverse a trend of inactivity, raising productivity and improving living standards while enhancing the quality of work. Backed by £240 million of funding announced in the Budget, the Government’s Get Britain Working White Paper sets out our ambitious reforms, outlined in three interconnected parts, including a new jobs and careers service, a new youth guarantee for all 18 to 21 year-olds and up to £15 million to support the development of local Get Britain Working plans for areas across England.
New arrivals to the UK can access various employment support services, including Jobcentre Plus, local council programmes, refugee employment schemes, ESOL courses and sector-specific initiatives.
Many noble Lords touched on the summer disorder. I set out our cross-governmental approach earlier. We launched a £15 million community recovery fund to support the 20 areas affected. That, as was mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, is being utilised now by local communities, but more needs to be done
The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, mentioned deprivation. There is evidence that deprivation, poor housing, low civil participation and poor community cohesion leave communities more at risk of cohesion issues—a point very eloquently made by the noble Baroness. For instance, seven of the 10 most deprived areas of England witnessed disorder over the summer—Middlesbrough, Blackpool, Liverpool, Hartlepool, Hull, Manchester and Blackburn all experienced violent disorder and are ranked in the top 10 most deprived local authorities in England. My department is undertaking work to understand how social and economic factors may play a role in harming social cohesion and is developing a more strategic approach to supporting communities and developing societal resilience more broadly.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and my noble friend Lord Katz mentioned the high levels of anti-Semitism and religious hate crime. Of course, this is unacceptable and the Government will ensure that this is a priority. We continue to work closely with the noble Lord, Lord Mann, our anti-Semitism adviser, and on anti-Muslim hatred we have just announced a working group chaired by the former Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve. According to the Home Office, 71% of all religious hate crime is aimed at Jews and Muslims. We should ensure that we work across all religions to tackle this scourge in our country and we will continue to focus on this issue.
I thought my noble friend Lady Hazarika was very brave in outing her father as attending pubs. I just hope that the local imam does not read Hansard tonight. She raised a very interesting point about tackling the issue of political language. When you are the Minister for Communities as well and get the opportunity to go round the country, especially after the violent disorder, communities tell you exactly how it is. One issue that came through was the language of politicians and that needs to be dealt with.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, made a very important point about working from home and loneliness. That can affect us all at any time of our lives, with a negative impact on community and individual well-being. The Government’s current work to tackle loneliness includes supporting a range of organisations through the Tackling Loneliness Hub, an online platform for professionals that is working to reduce loneliness. It will work to improve the evidence base around loneliness and provide evidence through the Better Health Every Mind Matters campaign advice pages.
I will spend a few moments on education, which was a theme of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and many other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. We know that socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils are more likely to fall behind and face barriers which hold them back from the opportunities and life chances they deserve. We are focused on driving high and rising standards in every school, delivered through excellent teaching, a high-quality curriculum and a school system which removes the barriers to learning that hold too many children back.
The opportunity mission will break the link between young people’s backgrounds and their success by helping all children achieve and thrive, wherever they are in the country. High and rising standards across education are at the heart of this mission and a key to unlocking stronger outcomes and a better future for children and young people.
I will finish on two points. One is women’s equality, which the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, raised. From making work pay to keeping our streets safe, women are central to all our missions. We are making the changes needed to make sure that women’s equality becomes a reality. It is an ambitious agenda and we are putting women’s voices at the heart of it.
There is evidence that deprivation, poor housing and low participation leave communities at greater risk of cohesion issues. We continue to work on that in particular. We recognise that integration and cohesion do not happen in isolation; they must be embedded in the policies that shape our towns and cities, in our education system and in our public services. We are preparing to launch a competitive process to continue our support for Ukrainians and Hong Kong British nationals overseas, providing intensive English language lessons and employment support for up to 4,000 individuals. Following that competitive process, we anticipate that the programme will begin later this summer.
Furthermore, we have recently renewed a contract with the International Organization for Migration, which is responsible for delivering pre-departure cultural orientation for people coming to the UK under the Afghan resettlement scheme. We have been working with the IOM to deliver enhanced messaging on self-sufficiency, with a view to improving integration and behaviours. A new curriculum started on 10 March, aiming to support on average 500 people per month.
We have also placed a renewed focus on fostering social cohesion, ensuring that we are reinforcing this work through strategic and collaborative initiatives, through the recently established cross-government communities and recovery steering group led by the Deputy Prime Minister. We continue to engage actively with local people and partners up and down the country in order to understand how best to support local integration and cohesion efforts.
I pay tribute to the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, when she was a Minister. On her point about having meetings up and down the country, I have already had over 80 engagements with faith and belief communities in the UK. I have had dozens of other engagements on resettlement and cohesion more broadly since taking up my post as Minister for Faith, Communities and Resettlement. As my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn mentioned, it has been a very busy period. My focus is to reset the relationship with the faith communities, rather than seeing them in a transactional way as a fourth emergency service and going to them whenever there is a crisis.
It is also important to say that we will support our communities holistically. We launched a £1.5 billion plan for neighbourhoods, which will provide funding into the next decade. Cohesion measures will form a key part of our offering, bringing people together so they can feel proud of their area, and restoring a collective sense of belonging. If I can steal a phrase my from noble friend Lord McNicol, the journey is important. It is all about the journey, and the destination may not always be the important point. We need to ensure that we get to the destination and celebrate the journey.
As colleagues have said in their wonderful contributions, we are one of the most amazing multi-ethnic countries in the world, but there is much work to do. Based on my experience of living in Burnley, and having seen what happened in 2001, it takes time; there are no quick fixes. There is a long-term approach, and it will take time to get there. But debates like this are helpful in raising awareness of the key issues and challenges that we face as a country.
I am confident that, in the work we are embarking on, we will be able to bring our country together, fix our systems and public services and ensure that people can take pride in their local communities. I pay tribute again to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for bringing this debate forward today and for all she does in promoting community cohesion across our country.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today, particularly the two maiden speeches. They were incredibly informative but humorous as well. At a time when there is so much misery around, a bit of humour goes a long way. I am pretty certain that we will hear much more from the noble Lords in future debates.
Each contribution today has brought a different lens. I feel it demonstrates that we can have an intelligent debate where we can raise the issues without raising the temperature. The difficulty we have is that we raise the temperature so that the mouth and brain do not always work together. If we were to just stop and think that all our words have outcomes and actions, we might speak more wisely.
We should all collectively call it out when we see something that is not right and is causing problems. We should collectively say that this is unacceptable in our country. Whatever faith you come from, if your faith is doing something wrong, we should collectively come out and call it out. That is the strength of a good, strong democracy. If we undermine it, the vacuums are then filled by people who generate hate.
I hope that we can continue working and learning from today’s debate. I hope the other House takes note of it and introduces the policies that we in this House all want to see, but there are many more discussions to be had on this. Unfortunately, we have often allowed ourselves to sleepwalk into crisis. We do that because we do not want to be called out as being politically incorrect. It is time we started to realise that, for the value of others, we have to speak out. I say to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, that it is a great joy to be at a university which is so multicultural and actually shares all the values of this country.