Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Donations to Political Parties
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Sikka
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the law on donations to political parties.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, this week Transparency International published its global index on corruption. The UK has dropped to its lowest ever score and now is more corrupt than Estonia, Hong Kong, Uruguay, Japan, Ireland and Australia. The main reason is that political parties and too many legislators are available for hire to corporations and the super-rich. Of course, corporations and the super-rich do not donate; they invest and expect a return. The grateful politicians oblige by organising threatening issues off the political agenda, feather-duster regulatory systems, tax perks to the rich, crony contracts, VIP lanes, honours and even peerages. This skulduggery happens behind a wall of organised secrecy.
In the 2023 OECD Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index, the UK was ranked 25th. It is now less open and transparent than Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ireland, Korea, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden—what a state of affairs. In the year before the 2024 general election, companies handed £42 million to political parties and individual legislators. The Conservatives accepted £15 million from Phoenix Partnership, which is wholly owned by Frank Hester, even though he said that MP Diane Abbott made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”. Since 2016, Hester’s company has received £591 million from public contracts. Labour received £4.7 million from Quadrature Capital, a company controlled from the Cayman Islands. Not so long ago, Elon Musk promised £100 million to Reform UK to secure his ideological objectives.
The Electoral Commission does not know the origins of money used as political donations. Any person on the electoral register can pass money, whether from Elon Musk or the Mafia, as political donations. No one knows where foreign-resident UK voters get their money from. Even if the Electoral Commission could investigate, it will not get access to foreign bank accounts and cannot follow the money trail, so there is no way of stopping any foreign money. Companies registered in the UK can hand money to parties, but this does not have to come from their trade or profits in the UK. Even if that requirement were introduced, it could not be effectively implemented. Profits can be manufactured through intragroup transactions and aggressive accounting. In any case, small companies that frequently front these donations on behalf of the rich do not publish meaningful accounts because of the obsession with deregulation.
Greater transparency is considered to be good, but that alone will not end political corruption because political parties remain for sale to the highest bidder. The biggest casualty of political donations and corruption is confidence in the institutions of government. In the 2024 general election, the voter turnout was 59.9%, and people say to me, “It doesn’t matter who we vote for. Corporations and the super-rich always win because they fund parties and legislators”. Policy-makers eagerly meeting donors rarely show the same enthusiasm for meeting the homeless, the hungry, the less fortunate and the poor, who seem to be written out of the system altogether.
Normal people cannot fund political parties or buy suits and glasses for Ministers and they are on the receiving end of some terrible policies. More than 120,000 people die every year from fuel poverty, but Governments do not curb profiteering or upset the interests of corporations and the rich. By design, the poorest 20% pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest 20%. Some 300,000 people die every year while awaiting a hospital appointment, sacrificed to the so-called fiscal rules.
Abraham Lincoln associated democracy with government of the people, by the people and for the people. Such an ideal cannot be achieved as long as big money can buy political parties and legislators and subvert public choices. We need to end the direct funding of political parties by corporations, trade unions and the rich. I have already argued that it is impossible to keep foreign money out of politics. Corporations can be used, and have been used, to circumvent constraints. Some want to put an upper limit on corporate and personal donations; of course, only corporations and the rich will still be able to fund parties and the corruption we suffer from will continue. Normal people cannot compete in this kind of arms race. In a country where 24 million people live below the minimum living standards, handing more of their income to political parties is simply not possible at all.
The press release issued last night on the Representation of the People Bill suggests that the Government will tweak the system, but that tweaking will not end the political corruption. It will not stop the rich and corporations buying the political system. We need a fundamental rethink. My proposal is this: no limits on political donations on any legal or natural person, but no political party may directly receive a penny from them. All the money should go into what I call a fund for democracy, then that money should be shared in accordance with political parties’ share of the vote and membership. Parties producing good policies will get a bigger share. On realising that they cannot buy the political system, corporations and the rich will inevitably stop political donations. At that point, we can discuss the alternatives, including possible state funding of parties.
Finally, we cannot not have government of and for the people without ending direct political donations. Will any party rise to the challenge and rid us of inbuilt political corruption?
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, Members may have noticed that the clock is not working at the moment. I ask noble Lords to stick to their time limit of three minutes—I will wave when their time is up—because we need to make sure that we have time for the Minister’s response.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on obtaining this debate, although I am going to follow a substantially different tack. I should add that my first declaration in the register of interests in the House of Lords was a ticket to the rugby World Cup final in 2015 given to me by the referee.
I want to make two points. One is on—noble Lords will be aware that I have been pursuing this issue for a number of years—the funding of opinion polls, which are, in effect, campaigning. A few years ago, YouGov took on a poll and the Telegraph displayed it in full, but we were unable to establish who had actually funded it and the circumstances around it.
I have given notice to the Electoral Commission again that I intend to pursue it when we get to debate the legislation, which I understand has been tabled in the Commons in the past few minutes, but I could not get a copy of it before the debate started. That is one matter of concern, because effectively opinion polling is used as a substantial manner of campaigning.
The other item that I wish to raise is relevant in light of the events in politics this week. It is not in a general election but at least one potential candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party is supposed to have already a war chest of £1 million. Any campaign that relates to funding for a post in government or as Leader of the Opposition should be subject to the same requirements as election campaigning in general. At the last leadership election in the Tory Party, Robert Jenrick received £75,000 pounds from a tax haven abroad. I made it absolutely clear that I thought that that should be declared and treated in the same way as overseas funding, because it has a direct bearing on British politics. Those are the two items that I wished to raise.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, likewise, I should acknowledge the exceptionally impressive timing of this debate, coming just after the Government have published the Representation of the People Bill. It is fair to say, from all we know of the Bill so far—I have not had time to read it yet by any means in full—there is a welcome direction of travel on many issues in terms of trying to improve the transparency around donations to political parties. I fear, however, that it does not go far enough. Obviously, some of those issues are to do with foreign money and potential foreign government interference. Hopefully, the Rycroft review will, in due course, set out ways in which we can go further on that.
I therefore want to concentrate on a slightly different issue in my brief comments. They draw on the research that I published with Chris Butler last year on donations that are made directly to candidates and rightly declared on the candidates’ election expense forms when they submit them, which is all above board, legal and how the law is intended to operate. However, those donations then, in effect, disappear from view because donations made directly to candidates at the moment do not then appear on the Electoral Commission’s register of donations. So, if you are, for example, an inquisitive journalist or somebody doing the due diligence process and you look at the obvious public records, the donations do not appear there at all.
This is not a trivial amount of money. Chris Butler and I estimated that, for the 2019 general election, £3.4 million of donations came into our political system, potentially influencing people, but did not then appear in the Electoral Commission’s records. Moreover, although those election expense forms are kept locally by the relevant returning officers, they are not published and are destroyed after a period. Although the Electoral Commission gathers such forms in, it does not publish them. Indeed, as Chris and I discovered, the Electoral Commission is not terribly keen on releasing copies of that information. When it did release some information to us, much of it was redacted.
With that redacted information, we did our best to compare, for those elected as MPs, whether the donations then appeared on the MPs’ register of interests. We found that around one in 10 of the donations made did not appear on the register. One should caveat that—there may be innocent explanations—but it adds to the general picture that there is a problem, which I hope the Government will be keen to address, about the volume of money that flows in as direct donations to candidates that is not properly caught by our current transparency regimes.
Baroness Shah (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this debate on donations to political parties. It is right that we examine how our political system is funded and that we do so with seriousness and transparency. I welcome the Government’s announcement today on the Representation of the People Bill and, in particular, measures to protect candidates, campaigners and staff from intimidation or abuse. At its heart, this debate is about strengthening our democracy and rebuilding public trust and about ensuring that participation in our democratic life is meaningful and fair. That is not only about money; it is about participation and franchise. It is in that spirit I slightly change tack from some of the focus around funding and speak in support of extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds.
Young people today are growing up in a context markedly different from that which shaped many of us in this House. They face existential challenges that are not abstract or distant but immediate and personal. Climate change, housing insecurity and economic and global uncertainty threaten not only their prosperity but their sense of future. Yet many feel that they have little agency over the decisions taken here in Parliament that will define those futures. Extending the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds offers elected representatives a powerful incentive to engage seriously with this cohort. It encourages political parties, candidates and institutions to speak with young people, not merely about them. It creates space for dialogue, political education and a politics that listens as well as instructs.
The evidence supports this approach. Research by the Electoral Commission shows that nearly three-quarters of young people believe that politics should be taught more in schools and colleges. While many understandably encounter political content through social media, they are far more likely to trust the information that they learn about politics in an educational setting. Yet many young people still do not feel confident about voting; they want to understand how voting works, why it matters and how to make informed choices.
Crucially, the same research tells us that, when young people understand how politics works and why it is important, they are far more likely to get involved and perhaps tackle the issues that the debate has already raised. That is why I particularly welcome the focus on civic education throughout schooling. Extending the franchise alongside strengthened civic education is not a leap of faith; it is a coherent and evidence-based approach to democratic renewal.
Young people today are asking for the same recognition. They are not disengaged because they do not care; many are disengaged because they care deeply and do not see their concerns reflected in decision-making or accessibility to politics. Granting them the vote is not a cure-all, but it is a meaningful and practical step in affirming that their stake in society is real. As legislators, it is incumbent on us to strengthen, not narrow, the foundations of our democracy. Engaging young people fosters habits of participation, accountability and civic responsibility that endure across a lifetime. It reinforces the principle that democracy is not only something that we inherit but something that we must renew.
Extending the franchise is an act of confidence in our young people and in our democratic system to grow stronger through inclusion. In a debate rightly focused on trust and democratic integrity, I urge the House to see this measure as an opportunity that we should embrace.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for introducing the debate and for being so frank about the proposal. As he said right at the end, the alternative to private donations is state funding, which indeed is the lesson of everywhere where we have seen it happen.
There are two obvious objections to a state-funded system. First, we do not have the money. We already have taxes at a higher level than they have been since the end of the 1940s, when we were still coming back from full mobilisation. We are borrowing £150 billion a year and spending £110 billion of that fending off existing creditors and servicing—not paying off—the interest on existing debt. If only we were paying off some of it. The idea that, at this fiscal moment, we would make a new demand on the wallet of the taxpayers is eccentric—or brave, if I can put it more neutrally.
Secondly, once you put this power into the hands of the state, you necessarily open the door to arbitrary decisions as to which parties qualify or can be disqualified. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, this happened in Belgium. Private donations were more or less banned following the Agusta scandal. This then, in effect, put immense power in the hands of the majority of Belgian parties to defund political parties of which they disapproved—for example, because they were in favour of Flemish separatism. That is an extraordinarily powerful loaded gun to put in the hands of any Government. What is the alternative? If people cannot manage without state funding, maybe the parties should do less. Maybe they should trim their ambitions to their means, rather than having to spend all these gazillions on every election.
I am conscious of the time, so I will finish with two quotations. As the age becomes darker and more illiberal, I will cite two quotations from old Whig heroes, one from the end of the 18th century and another from the end of the 19th. I begin with Thomas Jefferson, who came out with a very powerful objection when he said,
“to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical”.
It is an extraordinary proposal. I am sure there would be people who would deeply resent funding me and I am sure other people would deeply resent funding the noble Lord, Lord Sikka—and others would dislike the idea of funding anyone in between us.
I will close with this, from JS Mill, who wrote that
“if the employees of all these different enterprises were paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name”.
Amen.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate the panache and brio with which the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, delivers his speeches, but I have to say that I disagree with him on state funding. I will develop that in the time available to me. JS Mill and Thomas Jefferson lived some time ago, long before the days of what we would understand to be democracy.
I commend my noble friend Lord Sikka for getting this debate. He went on at some length about countries higher on the scale than the UK in terms of corruption measures. He mentioned various countries, but not Germany. I think Germany is the best example of support for political parties. In Germany’s system there is state funding, with three legs to its stool. The first is democratic legitimacy, because the money follows the votes that political parties gain. The second is transparency, with donations having to be declared fully—anything above €50,000 immediately and anything above €10,000 in the parties’ annual reports. That is important. There is also a prevention of undue influence, which I think we see in this country in terms of political donations.
The Conservative Party is funded by business. The Labour Party is funded to some extent by business but mainly by trade unions: I declare an interest as a member of Unite. That does not give us a level playing field. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Pack, will feel that the Liberal Democrats do not get a fair crack of the whip. If votes lead to the financial donations that the state makes to political parties, as in the German system, following an election, the people understand what they are paying and why they are paying it. The direct connection is important. Generally, I think voters would rather see a fair system and a level playing field, where things are open and transparent, and it is clear that any political party that gains sufficient votes gets support to go into future elections. I do not think that is a bad idea.
Incidentally, in Germany the state also matches donations that political parties get from membership fees and individual small donations, up to a capped limit. That is a good example that we could follow and I hope my noble friend will be able to say something about what the Government’s intentions are in the Bill that has just been published. I commend the German model. France, Italy, Spain and Canada also have a form of state funding. It works for them and it could work for us as well.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on securing this debate. I will highlight what I regard as an unacceptable anomaly in the current laws on donations to political parties seeking election throughout the United Kingdom.
Noble Lords will be aware of the list of permissible funding sources for political parties in Great Britain. However, not all your Lordships may know that there is an additional list of sources for political parties in Northern Ireland, and it is quite extensive. The list includes Irish citizens, most Irish-registered companies, trade unions, building societies, friendly societies and, most importantly, Irish-registered political parties.
The consequence of this means that, while foreign political donations are barred in Great Britain, foreign money can and does enter United Kingdom politics through Northern Ireland. This list of additional sources specifically for parties in Northern Ireland was, of course, compiled to satisfy the insatiable demands of Sinn Féin/IRA.
The republican movement has never been short of cash, regularly funded throughout the Troubles and since by protection rackets and bank robberies, including the Northern Bank raid in central Belfast, which added some £26.5 million to Sinn Féin/IRA coffers more than six and a half years after the signing of the Good Friday agreement. However, much of this funding has come from the United States of America, most notably from an organisation known as Friends of Sinn Féin.
According to a recent article in the Irish Times, in the six months to October last year, Friends of Sinn Féin recorded more than $57,000 in donations, including almost $19,000 from a trust set up by an Arizona woman who died in 2020. Since 2022, Friends of Sinn Féin has received more than $440,000 from this trust. Last year, the Belfast Telegraph reported that another front group, Friends of Sinn Féin (Canada), donated some $14,000. That matters, because I am sure no noble Lord believes that Sinn Féin/IRA records the cash it receives.
The current anomaly in party funding affects politics not only in Northern Ireland but in Westminster. There are currently seven Sinn Féin/IRA MPs entitled to take their seats in the other place, but they refuse to do so. However, their election prospects were undoubtedly boosted by foreign money supporting their campaign. I simply ask the Minister how and why it is acceptable that current UK law relating to funding includes a carve-up designated to assist one political party. There can be no justification for it and that anomaly should be removed.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a senior treasurer of the Conservative Party. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on his very prescient timing, securing this debate just as the Representation of the People Bill is introduced today.
The Government are proposing to introduce “enhanced due diligence” measures in the forthcoming elections Bill. One has to ask why. If the intent of the legislation is to protect against foreign interference, the new regulatory regime should be targeted in that respect, rather than seeking to envelope genuinely domestic and permissible transactions in extra and excessive red tape. Political parties and regulated donees have a legal obligation to ensure that they receive donations only from permissible sources, which in the case of companies must be companies carrying out business in the UK. Foreign donations are already banned. There are criminal offences in relation to fraud declarations and funnelling unlawful donations via the back door.
However, parties could do with more information from government agencies. In the case of Christine Lee, who gave some £700,000 to Labour Party recipients, it would have been helpful if the security services had alerted Labour to the Chinese Communist Party involvement, for its benefit. Likewise, HMRC has recently declined to share information with national political parties because of so-called tax confidentiality. This fails to recognise an important fact: political parties are not banks or tax authorities. Their assessment of risks is otherwise limited to what is in the public domain. If there are particular risks from specific foreign threats, there should be mechanisms to inform parties of those risks.
The greatest risk of foreign influence lies in third parties, rather than highly regulated and very transparent political parties. That is why we see money flowing into Islamist causes and Gaza independence-style campaigns, which is very worrying. Certainly, the Conservative Party undertakes due diligence checks on its donors, in terms of, first, regulatory compliance and, secondly, political screening and reputational impact. Donations from shell companies are not allowed and not taken. In government, the Conservatives tightened the law against foreign interference and foreign spending; it is the Labour Government who are now dragging their feet by failing to implement properly the foreign influence registration scheme and by not adding China to the enhanced tier. Also, I add my name to those advocating banning cryptocurrency donations. I can see no reason to use them other than for nefarious purposes.
The Government need to recognise that donors are generally good citizens who want to help a political party and want it to succeed. Some do so by giving their time, some by giving financial resources. Over the years, Labour, Lib Dems and all parties have had many such folk, albeit that some may have now withdrawn, given the performance of their party. Of course, that has left Labour completely beholden to the unions. Is this healthy? The result has been the morally offensive Employment Rights Act, where Labour has been forced to allow unions to clip members’ fees into their political funds unless members object. This is the wrong direction of travel. Genuine donors need to be thanked and applauded, not demonised.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I rise with a profound sense of responsibility because the issue before us goes to the very heart of our constitutional settlement: the integrity of our democracy. At the moment there is a growing and deeply troubling perception that British democracy is simply on sale to the highest bidder. That perception alone should alarm us all. We are witnessing donations whose true origins are unclear and that are rooted through opaque structures, sometimes linked to foreign interests and are too often beyond the effective scrutiny of the regulator. This is not a theoretical concern; it is a present and pressing danger. The principle is simple: decisions about the future of the United Kingdom should be made by the British people, not shaped by unknown donors, overseas interests or hidden financial powers.
Democracy is about equality of voice, not inequality of wealth. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has recommended a cap of £10,000 on donations to political parties. Such a cap would not stifle political participation; it would protect it. It would ensure that political parties are funded by broad public support rather than a narrow group of wealthy benefactors.
The integrity of our democracy is at stake. The United Kingdom is respected around the world as a beacon of democratic governance, often described, rightly or wrongly, as the mother of all democracies. That reputation has been earned over the centuries through reform, restraint and a shared commitment to fairness and accountability. It must not be squandered now. Democracy cannot be treated as a commodity traded to the highest bidder. It is a trust handed down to us and held on behalf of future generations. Safeguarding requires courage, transparency and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. This House has a duty to act. If we fail to strengthen our law on political donations, we risk allowing money to speak louder than the citizen. We cannot and must not take that risk.
Lord Mott (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for securing this important debate. I will be positive. Legitimacy and transparency must be at the heart of political-party finance. I share the concerns about hostile foreign states trying to exert influence in this way, but these concerns must not lead us down the road of substantially increased public funding of political parties. Having to attract donations, big and small, is part of a competitive electoral landscape and one of the ways in which parties are challenged to remain relevant.
As updates to the law are made, we need to ensure that they are compatible with new technology. I disagree slightly with my noble friend Lord Leigh. We need safeguards around things such as crypto donations, but the system should work to facilitate them in a legitimate manner, not try to prevent them.
We are missing an important question in this debate. We should be asking: how do we make it more attractive for people to become donors to political parties? Legitimate UK voters and businesses donating to a political party is not a shameful act—far from it. In fact, it should be celebrated as a positive way for people to participate in political life, a fundamental enabler of our democratic system and an important way in which we can exercise our democratic rights.
To support this view, we should look to provide tax relief on political donations in a similar way to what we already do for charitable donations. This would not only make it more attractive for people to donate but send a clear signal that legitimately made and transparently declared donations are of benefit to our democracy and that political parties are essential institutions worthy of support, which must be led by people, not the state.
In designing such a system, I recognise that there may be a need for a limit to the amount of tax relief on offer, but I do not think such relief needs to go hand in hand with a cap on donations. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, mentioned, we should look to Germany, where there is no limit on how much someone can donate, but the first €3,300 attracts tax relief. Will the Minister commit to looking seriously at such a proposal as part of any update to the law on political donations?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I particularly welcome the suggestion that the noble Lord, Lord Mott, made. The ideal way to fund political parties is a large number of donations from your voters and your members. That is what my party has largely relied on. We lack large donors, except under exceptional circumstances, and we have to work very hard to get those £20, £200 and £2,000 donations.
We are all watching what happens in the United States at the moment, where money dominates politics and where a small number of ultra-wealthy people—some of whom are explicitly anti-democratic, such as Peter Thiel —are influencing the way things are going. UK sovereignty means that we need to restrict the flow of funds from abroad so far as we can. This means funds not only from foreign states but foreign citizens, foreign companies and UK expatriates who moved abroad to avoid paying UK taxes but nevertheless want to interfere in the political life of the country they have left behind.
We now know a lot about Russian penetration of the Conservative Party and about Russian interference in the Brexit campaign. We do not know whether various Middle Eastern states put money into favoured parties, lobbies and think tanks to promote their own interests. We now have the extraordinary announcement from a US State Department Under Secretary that US federal funds will be channelled into right-wing groups across Europe, including in the UK, including the bodies which in many ways are threats to constitutional democracy and open society.
Restrictions on expatriate donations are a more difficult and delicate issue. One of the largest donations in recent British politics came from a long-term UK expatriate in Thailand. There are 100,000 UK citizens in Dubai, some extremely rich and some possibly willing to act as intermediaries for foreign state actors in putting money into British politics. We agree that corporate donations should be allowed only from companies that have declared substantial profits from operations within the UK. I suggest that it should also be a condition that donations above a modest limit can come only from people who have submitted a UK tax return for the previous year or more.
Current restrictions focus mainly on donations to political parties. However, political movements, such as Tommy Robinson’s, also play a large and active political role, as do think tanks, such as the Henry Jackson Society, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and lobbies, such as the Free Speech Union and Labour Together, which has not declared its funding.
There is some evidence, and many more unconfirmed reports, that foreign money flows into some of these, both from foreign Governments and from wealthy individuals, foundations and corporations. That is also foreign interference. In some cases, it is clearly hostile foreign interference and should be made more transparent and limited. The elections Bill offers us the chance to tighten controls on all these, and I look forward to making it work.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for bringing forward this debate but I cannot, in any way, agree with his solutions, either the ideas for all-party use of a donations pot—I am not sure how big that pot would be—or the endgame of state funding.
The statutory framework governing donations, principally the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and the Representation of the People Act 1983, were designed to prevent foreign money distorting British politics. Those principles remain sound. But the landscape has evolved: new financial vehicles, shell companies, unincorporated associations and cryptocurrencies present risks that were understandably not explicitly legislated for a generation ago. This is a fact that hostile actors increasingly seek to exploit.
We recognise that the Government’s July 2025 elections strategy acknowledged that the current framework is no longer sufficient. It proposed stronger checks on donations, greater transparency for gifts and limits on company donations etc. We also note the announcement the independent review into electoral resilience following troubling allegations of foreign interference, and the Secretary of State’s commitment to examine illicit funding streams, including cryptocurrencies. We support the objective of protecting our democracy from hostile actors.
The previous Conservative Government took steps in this direction, strengthening national security legislation and committing to improved information-sharing between agencies and political parties. This was precisely because of the real and evolving threat of foreign interference at the time.
However, strategies and reviews are not substitutes for legislation. The electoral strategy was published seven months ago, and the Representation of the People Bill is only just being laid before Parliament today. There has been little consultation with political parties as these things are starting to be put forward; I do not believe that that has ever happened before. At a time when state-backed interference, opaque funding routes and emerging financial technologies present genuine risks, delays here will have consequences. How will the Government ensure, in particular through the Bill, that parties are properly supported, including through proportionate and lawful information sharing if they are to undertake enhanced checks on donors? What specific safeguards will be introduced to ensure that foreign money, whether channelled through companies or digital assets, cannot penetrate our political system?
The safety and integrity of our democracy should never be partisan; nor can reform be endlessly deferred. If the Government believe that the existing framework is no longer robust, as they say they have done for nearly two years, it is now time to move from review to action.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to respond to this QSD. As many Lords have said, it is timely indeed, as we are pleased to introduce the Representation of the People Bill today; I look forward to many further discussions as that Bill works its way through our House.
I thank my noble friend Lord Sikka for opening the debate, and other noble Lords for their contributions. My noble friend always brings an interesting approach to this subject. Although I do not quite share his conspiracy theory approach to matters, I would say, as a veteran of many elections, that the power of the vote is still as strong as ever. We all need to inspire confidence that the vote is mightier than the pound; I hope that we will all strive for that.
The speeches we have heard today illustrate a shared desire to protect our democracy from those who seek to disrupt it. We all know that this is a clear and present danger, which our Government are resolutely determined to tackle. The Government committed in their manifesto to strengthening the rules around donations to political parties, including enhanced safeguards against foreign donations. The threat of foreign interference is evolving and is becoming increasingly hostile and sophisticated, while the current rules are no longer sufficient to address these risks.
The Government take a zero-tolerance approach to foreign interference, and we cannot afford to wait. That is why the reforms set out today in the Representation of the People Bill put prevention first, reducing pressure on law enforcement, protecting parties from exploitation and delivering greater transparency and stronger safeguards against malign foreign actors. These reforms implement a number of recommendations made by stakeholders, including the Ethics and Integrity Commission, formerly the Committee on Standards in Public Life; the Electoral Commission; and the National Crime Agency.
I turn to the specific measures set out in the Bill. Current electoral law sets out who may donate and the basic checks that campaigners must make, but these rules no longer reflect modern anti-money laundering standards. So, we are strengthening the system by introducing new “know your donor” checks for donations over £11,180. I know that is a random amount: I did raise that. Recipients will now have to carry out a risk assessment, checking for signs of foreign or unlawful funding, before deciding whether to accept or return a donation.
Key stakeholders have warned that the current eligibility criteria for companies to donate are far too weak and expose political parties and other recipients to the risk of accepting foreign donations and proceeds of crime. This means that shell companies—companies that are registered today, owned by anyone and funded from anywhere, without a single day of trade—could donate to our political parties. That is why we are introducing new stringent eligibility criteria for companies wishing to make political donations. Companies will have to show sufficient revenue to cover their donation, be headquartered in the UK and be majority-owned or controlled by UK electors or citizens in order to be eligible to make a donation.
Stakeholders are also concerned that unincorporated associations could be used to funnel illegitimate foreign funding into our political system. Unincorporated associations can currently give large sums with limited transparency. This leaves clear vulnerability to foreign or illegitimate money, so we are tightening the rules. We are reducing the thresholds for when unincorporated associations must register with the Electoral Commission and for when unincorporated associations must report gifts to the Electoral Commission. We are also requiring unincorporated associations intending to make significant donations to check the permissibility of the political gifts they receive to ensure that they come from permitted UK sources. We are also reinforcing the principle that only permissible donors may fund UK politics.
Where illicit funds enter the system via impermissible donors, such as individuals not on the electoral register, they will be subject to full forfeiture, providing a clear deterrent and supporting compliance by political parties and campaigners. Beyond these measures, we will commence existing provisions in law, which will require anyone making contributions of more than £11,180 to declare any benefits linked to their donation. This will ensure that we can identify the true donor and prevent people acting as fronts for others. Forced declarations will be a criminal offence, supporting enforcement authorities to take action against illegal donations.
Robust regulation and enforcement of political finance rules are crucial for combating the threat of foreign interference. That is why we are addressing enforcement gaps by extending the Electoral Commission’s enforcement role and civil sanctioning powers. This will enable police resources to be directed towards the most serious criminal offences. We will also increase, via secondary legislation, the Electoral Commission’s maximum fine from £20,000 to £500,000 per offence, with safeguards to protect against disproportionate burdens on campaigners with fewer resources. This will create a more meaningful deterrent against serious breaches of the rules.
Finally, to ensure that we are leaving no stone unturned, we have launched an independent review into foreign financial interference in UK politics, which will make recommendations to government by the end of March. The Rycroft review will focus on the effectiveness of the UK’s political finance laws, as well as the safeguards in place to protect our democracy from illicit money from abroad, including crypto assets. The Government will carefully consider all recommendations made in that report.
I want to respond to a few of the points made. If I do not get to them all, I will reply in writing. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, asked about polls. Transparency requirements under electoral law exist for third-party campaign spending, including market research and canvassing. They are all in scope of the spending rules. The imprint rules also apply to those market research issues. On leadership elections, I am afraid they are a matter for political parties.
The noble Lord, Lord Pack, asked about donations and registers of interest. Parliament sets the rules around registers of interest, so that is a matter of parliamentary rule-making. I thank my noble friend Lady Shah for her points about voting for 16 year-olds. She hit on a crucial point. Extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds means that we must make sure that they have trust in the system, and we are increasing civic education to provide that background to their voting.
On the question from my noble friend Lord Watson, I am sure the Rycroft review will be looking at international models to make sure we learn from them.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, Irish citizens remain permissible donors in Northern Ireland, and political parties there can also accept donations from Irish sources, such as Irish companies, that meet the prescribed conditions. That is consistent with the Good Friday agreement.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, the issue about China is a Home Office question. I will revert to colleagues in the Home Office and get back to him on that one.
In reply to my noble friend Lord Sahota, there is no intention from the Government to cap donations at the moment. The new Bill is all about transparency, so I hope I have covered some of those issues.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Mott, political parties and other campaigners will remain able to raise sufficient funds to communicate their views to the electorate, while protecting our democracy against those who seek to covertly undermine it. We do not consider tax relief on political donations to be part of the solution, I am afraid.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I think I covered overseas interference in my speech. Overseas electors are subject to the same counter-fraud measures as domestic electors, including having their identity confirmed as part of the registration process.
I hope that I covered most of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in my speech. I will check Hansard, though, and respond further if I missed anything.
In closing, I thank my noble friend Lord Sikka for raising such an important debate and Members across the Committee for some very key contributions. I am sure we will have more of those as the Bill makes its way through the House.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, the Grand Committee stands adjourned until at least 2 pm, in the hope that we can get the clocks fixed.
Counter-Extremism Strategy
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Goodman of Wycombe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the introduction of a counter-extremism strategy.
Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this short debate on the consideration given to the introduction of a counterextremism strategy. The usual form on these occasions is to describe the issues and ask some questions. However, the issues I want to describe and the questions I want to ask were described and asked recently in the House, as the Minister knows. I will therefore be as brief as I can in order to allow other noble Lords to have their say; I am delighted to see so many colleagues present.
I turn first to the issues. In sum, my view is that non-violent extremism aims to, in the words of the previous Government’s definition,
“negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others … undermine, overturn or replace”
our
“system of liberal … democracy and democratic rights; or … intentionally create a permissive environment for others”.
At best, this non-violent extremism makes cohesion and integration impossible; at worst, it gives rise to harassment, public order offences, acts of terrorism and other breaches of the rule of law. Its three most prominent forms are far-right, far-left and Islamist extremism. The last of those is responsible for some 71% of terrorist incidents in Britain since the London Tube atrocities of 7 July 2005, as well as some 75% of the case load of Contest, the Government’s counterterror strategy. This is not—I repeat, not—to conflate Islam, the ancient religion, with Islamism, the political ideology, any more than it is to conflate the far left and socialism or the far right and patriotism.
Having set out the issues, I turn next to the Government’s response. When asked recently in the House whether the Government uphold the definition of non-violent extremism that I quoted earlier or have one of their own, the Minister said that it,
“is a deeply challenging and complex area”,
and that,
“there is no statutory definition of or consensus on what would include extremism”.
When he was asked whether a counterextremism commissioner will be appointed to replace Robin Simcox, the Minister repeated:
“We are reviewing the roles and remits of various bodies to ensure our resources are best placed to meet current challenges”.
When he was asked whether the Government will publish the rapid analytical sprint review of non-violent extremism, commissioned after the general election, he said that publication,
“could, for example, undermine policy development”.—[Official Report, 27/1/26; cols. 804-06.]
and sent a file of support for terror, antisemitism, denial and conspiracy theory gleaned from mosques. I then asked how many prosecutions have arisen, and the Minister replied that no figures are available.
It is not hard to see what is happening here. There is a repeated cycle. First, there is an incident. It could be the conviction of a left-wing anarchist in 2024 on multiple terror charges. It could be the attack on the Heaton Park synagogue last year, which saw the first murder of Jews simply for being Jews in Britain in modern times. It could be the conviction of a far-right racist for the 2017 attack on Finsbury Park mosque. Then there is a wave of public alarm. Ministers promise action, time passes, media attention moves on and inertia sets in as the Government, the Opposition, the security services, the police, advisers and academics retreat into their siloes and disagree about solutions. Ministers are then reshuffled or a general election takes place, and we go back to square one until the next time.
Only two recent Prime Ministers seriously attempted to break the cycle: Tony Blair and my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. Both understood that in our centralised system, only a cross-government counterextremism strategy driven from Downing Street will produce results. Such a strategy would ensure that the Government themselves do not patronise, give platforms to, fund or engage with extremists; that prisons are run by governors and staff, not by gangs; that extremist mobs do not dictate terms to the police, as happened recently in Birmingham; that hospitals and surgeries are neutral spaces; that posters on walls and lanyards worn by staff do not advertise political causes; that demonstrators and marchers do not incite violence by calling, for example, for the intifada to be globalised; and that funds raised for charities do not end up funding terror.
I pay tribute to two all-party initiatives that have the potential to develop such a policy. The first is the All-Party Parliamentary Group on defending democracy, led by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who I am pleased to see will speak today. The second is the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Counter Extremism, chaired by Damien Egan, which has already produced a useful report, Time to Act.
I described the pattern of events in counterextremism policy as a cycle, but perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a spiral, one which is descending steadily downwards. I have assumed for the whole of my adult life that our multifaith and multiracial democracy will continue to progress for the better, and, on balance, I still believe that it will, but I also believe that we can no longer be sure. The 2022 disturbances in Leicester, the Aston Villa game scandal in Birmingham, the Manchester synagogue attack, the firebomb attack on the Peacehaven mosque, the outbreak of Palestinian and St George’s Cross flag flying, the rise of the Gaza independents and the push for an “Islamophobia” definition, plus the Sikh and Hindu reaction to it, are signs that our towns and cities are in danger of dividing, at least in part, into ethnic and religious enclaves. It is hard to see how such a future could square with the Disraelian “one nation” ideal or, indeed, with a coherent nation at all.
The Government currently seem too battered, disorientated and bewildered by events to rise to the challenge. The opposition parties are only beginning, at this stage of the electoral cycle, to grapple with it, and Parliament as an institution is running to catch up with the pace of events. I would not claim that this debate is the start of further discussion to come, but I hope it can be an important step along the road, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, on introducing this debate. A serious discussion on this is long overdue, and I thank him for all his work and leadership on this and the many colleagues who I am looking forward to hearing who have been very involved in it as well. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Hofenung Foundation and as someone who has been deeply concerned about the growing extremism crisis in our country. We face a rapidly accelerating threat. We see this in the historic levels of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate, the surge of Prevent referrals, the unprecedented normalisation of conspiracy theories and the rising tolerance, particularly among younger groups, of political violence. These are not isolated indicators; they are symptoms of a weakening social fabric and declining democratic resilience.
The most disturbing thing is that we are flying blind. We are confronting a fast-evolving, increasingly organised and sometimes foreign-backed extremism ecosystem without a national counterextremism strategy of any kind. We make a profound mistake when we conflate extremism with terrorism. Terrorism is the violent end point, but extremism is the infrastructure, the ideology, the recruitment ecosystem, the conspiracy culture, the dehumanisation and the democratic erosion that makes violence possible. Contest is an excellent counterterrorism strategy, but it was never designed to address the harms that sit below the terrorism threshold, where extremist groups currently operate with impunity. We have reached a point where extremist organisations—far left, far right, Islamicist—can radicalise children, spread dangerous ideological propaganda and mainstream hate on the streets and online without breaking any law because the law does not yet capture hateful extremism as a category. This is untenable.
What do we need to do? First, we need a clear operational definition of extremism, and I hope the Minister can confirm that the existing one announced by the previous Government still stands. It will be important to have his reflections on whether the Government will accept that it should include reference to hateful extremism. Secondly, the Government must close the legislative gaps. As set out in the report Operating With Impunity, we need hateful extremism proscription orders for extremist groups that sit below the terrorism threshold but whose actions are demonstrably harmful. Other democracies such as Canada and Germany already do this. Following the horrendous Islamicist terrorist attack in Australia, its Government are taking steps to list proscribed groups in regulations, where this can be applied. We cannot allow extremists to operate freely simply because the law has failed to keep pace.
Thirdly, the Government must fund ideological challenge programmes. When asked about what kinds of counterextremism programmes the Home Office funds outside Prevent, Jonathan Emmett mentioned at the Home Affairs Select Committee that the Government had made a significant sum available for protective security at places of worship. I welcome such funding—although not that much, as it is a sign of real failure that we must produce money for security in those places; it would be nice if it went down, rather than kept going up—but it is a mistake to equate protective security with counterextremism programmes. We must challenge extremist narratives, online and offline, support vulnerable individuals and build resilience against conspiracy theories, dehumanisation and hate.
The data shows a country fragmenting with extremism metastasising into the cracks, online in civic spaces, on our streets and in community relations. If we fail to act now, the social, political and security-related costs will only deepen. This debate is about safeguarding the integrity of our democracy and the safety of our communities in the kind of country we aspire to be. I hope that the Minister will agree that we need a muscular and values-driven counterextremism strategy. It is not optional; we must do it, and now.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, extremism is not what it used to be. In October 2024, MI5’s director Ken McCallum said:
“Straightforward labels like ‘Islamist terrorism’ or ‘extreme right wing’ don’t fully reflect the dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies we see”.
My current experience as Independent Prevent Commissioner confirms his analysis. Young people, often disturbed by family trauma or personal grievances, seek comfort in the rigid hatreds of their offline or online tribe, often with added misogyny or antisemitism. Their minds are inflamed by geopolitical events, dehumanising computer games and the malign algorithms of social media into an unpredictable mash-up of resentment, rage and normalised violence.
Conspiracy theories are promoted by hostile states. Fragments of ideology are packaged as video clips. The boy drawing Nazi symbols on his arm may, the next week, be seen shouting sectarian slogans, refusing to interact with female teachers or posing as a suicide bomber. The terrorism statistics record violent offences that were motivated by a single, consistent ideology, most commonly—as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has rightly said—a perverted version of Islam.
Extremism in its broader sense, however, motivates many attacks of equivalent seriousness, including those perpetrated by the multiple killers Danyal Hussein, Jake Davison and, in Southport, Axel Rudakubana. These violent expressions of extremism represent, of course, only a small part of the social problems caused by its non-violent outworkings.
The single point I want to make today is that while the word extremism is a convenient label for drawing attention to a vast bundle of problems, it is not a satisfactory key to solving them. The normal meaning of the word is dauntingly broad. In the libel case Shakeel Begg v BBC, Lord Justice Haddon-Cave said:
“What is ‘extreme’ is, by definition, something which is not ‘moderate’”.
Attempts by successive Governments to narrow it down have been inconsistent and hard to translate into consistent policy. Phrases such as “opposition to British values” and “creating a permissive environment” are too wide to form a reliable basis for rules or coercive action.
Confronted with so large a target, counterextremism strategies have been diffuse and ineffective. The 2015 Counter-Extremism Strategy was diagnosed by Professor Clive Walker, our greatest academic authority on terrorism, as suffering from
“inexact and contested meanings, objectives, and mechanisms which generate dynamics of suspicion as much as persuasion”.
The rapid analytical sprint leaked last January was said by Policy Exchange to have confused extremism with
“any shocking crime, bad belief or nasty social phenomenon about which we are worried”.
Overbreadth is particularly dangerous when accompanied by harsh sanctions. The counterextremism Bill of 2016, which I was privileged to see, would have allowed the penalisation of “extremist activity”, defined to include huge swathes of otherwise perfectly legitimate political and religious speech. It was, at least to me, a relief when, after being announced in two successive Queen’s Speeches, it blew up on the launch pad.
Parliament and the courts have calibrated our laws over the centuries with extraordinary and rather impressive care. It would be a lazy and illiberal error to overlay those laws with vague and contested notions such as extremism or—I agree—Islamophobia. Let us promote integration, critical thinking, social media literacy and awareness of our civic rights and duties. Let us research harmful belief systems and challenge divisive or intolerant narratives wherever we find them. If our laws on online safety, public order, hate crime, counterterrorism, hostile state activity—
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
My Lords, it has been four minutes.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I have one and a half sentences left. If our laws on online safety, public order, hate crime, counterterrorism, hostile state activity or proscription are insufficient, let us revisit, amend and supplement them. But the trick is to excise the tumours without undue harm to the healthy tissue of free speech, which requires a scalpel, not the suffocating blanket labelled “extremism”.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, for this crucial debate. I want to focus on the normalisation of Islamism and virulent antisemitism but first I need to negotiate the obstacle course of counterextremism. I am not the first to note that official definitions of extremism can be unhelpful: too vague, ambiguous and broad, and a distraction from real threats. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, about the problem of extremism as a legal concept. Also, in a democratic, pluralist society of citizens with diverse views, how can you establish a robust legal definition without being partisan or censorious?
I am worried about a blank cheque. Official signs of extremism include everything from spreading misinformation to involvement in the manosphere—think “Adolescence”, a drama, not a documentary, yet the Government vowed to show it in every school to counter online extremism. Such a shallow lack of specificity means that state agencies acquire huge power to police legitimate, if unpleasant or dissenting, views. Recently, a Home Office-funded interactive computer game hit the headlines. “Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism” takes 13 to 18 year-olds on a journey. As game characters, they must make decisions to avoid being reported for extreme right-wing ideology. If they wrongly answer multiple-choice questions on, for example, migration, or if their avatar chooses to attend a protest against the “erosion in British values”, they are branded.
This superficial approach begs questions. In January, the director of counterterrorism at the Homeland Security Group claimed that 68 civil society groups are being funded by Prevent. Can the Minister outline who these groups are, what kind of programmes they are delivering and, crucially, how the Home Office is assessing their effectiveness? I ask because the “Pathways” computer game backfired spectacularly. The developers created a purple-haired goth girl, Amelia, as the far-right baddie, but rather than being viewed as a dangerous extremist, Amelia has been embraced as an ironic heroine and has become a union jack-waving viral meme.
This backlash reveals how tone deaf anti-extremist initiatives can be. For example, framing patriotic sentiment as extremism risks radicalising those moderate youth who resent their scepticism of progressive orthodoxies being criminalised, especially while the elephant in the room, radical Islamism, is allowed free rein. They have a point. Official interventions using vague and non-exhaustive definitions of extremism, applied with little discrimination to an expanding number of targets, often avoid tackling Islamist extremism. One reason is that people are afraid of upsetting radical Islamists but are not afraid of upsetting critics of multiculturalism, real-life Amelias, the Pink Ladies, Reform UK supporters or whoever.
A year ago, the Speaker in the other place overrode centuries of parliamentary procedure to protect Labour MPs scared by threats from extremists over a Gaza vote. This morning, at Questions, we were reminded of the unprecedented harassment and intimidation of candidates, MPs and even voters at and since the general election. The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal exposed police capitulation to fundamentalist threats to Israeli fans. All that is just a taste of a growing Islamist veto over public life. Then there is the fear of being labelled an Islamophobic extremist if you raise such concern. The Government’s push to define anti-Muslim hatred threatens to institutionalise that chilling effect. They say, “See it. Say it. Sorted”, but if we see it and cannot say it, it will not get sorted. We must stop wasting time on fictitious Amelias and target the real-life problem hiding in plain sight.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for initiating this debate. He has been consistent and persistent in his arguments, which he was also able to spell out in his Times article on Tuesday. The thousand comments, almost all in support, were striking, expressing anxiety and concern about the rise of terrorism and antisemitism, as well as fear, however unjustified, that they—we—no longer feel safe in our streets. This is particularly true for women who worry about their safety walking home at night or even, now, in broad daylight. They fear for their daughters and even their sons, as exemplified by this week’s school knife attack. People are afraid of masked men, crowded tubes, buses. I feel it myself. It is in large part because they—we—do not feel that the Government have a grip and that they have no sense of urgency. Of course, none of us underestimates the challenges faced by government and the security services, but there is a strong sense that as a country we are behind the curve rather than fully aware of and dealing with not only the current challenges but those coming down the track.
More and more people, especially younger friends and acquaintances, spontaneously raise these issues with me. They are concerned about radicalisation, cohesion and integration. They have a strong feeling that they cannot, or generally should not, talk publicly about their worries and fear that they will be judged for doing so, which is why I am speaking today.
My noble friend Lord Goodman and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned the director of MI5, who confirmed in his threat updates both last October and in 2024 that Islamist extremism remains the most significant terrorism threat to the UK and accounts for 75% of MI5’s case load. I, for one, am very grateful to the security services for holding the line in the most complex and interconnected threat environment ever seen, but there are concerns about whether they have the resources that they need and are collecting the relevant data. This debate is an opportunity for the Government to clarify what they know, what they monitor and where the gaps remain. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the many questions raised today.
Will the Minister confirm that the Government still assess Islamist extremism as the predominant terrorism threat to the UK? The Government’s 2015 review of the Muslim Brotherhood concluded that aspects of its ideology and activities were
“contrary to our values and … national interests”,
and noted expressions of support for terrorist violence by individuals linked to Muslim Brotherhood-influenced organisations. More than a decade later, the Muslim Brotherhood remains legal in the United Kingdom but, since that review, numerous allied states have banned or designated the Muslim Brotherhood or its branches. Hamas, which identifies itself as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing, has shown intent to operate internationally, including in Europe. Will the Minister update us on the Government’s current thinking about the Muslim Brotherhood and on whether the Home Office or MI5 currently monitors Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisations operating in the UK and, if so, on what basis? There is also a big issue around data. Do the Government feel that they have sufficient data on extremism in the UK? Specifically, do they monitor non-terrorist Islamist activities that may nevertheless contribute to radicalisation and intimidation?
Other noble Lords today speak from personal and community experience about antisemitism, but I watch its growth on social media and elsewhere with dismay. My noble friend Lord Finkelstein’s Times article earlier this week spelled out in detail the horrific abuse he has experienced when taking on Nick Fuentes. The viral hate that poured in and continues today—I looked again online this morning—is beyond horrible. Something in this country has changed, is changing, and not for the better.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for securing this debate. Like him, I want to refer to the APPG’s report, Time to Act: Addressing the UK’s Accelerating Extremism Threat, a copy of which I have handily placed in front of me on the desk. I will come to that in a minute.
I start by pointing out that only two days ago the Community Security Trust, another great organisation that we should probably refer to more often in these debates, recorded that 3,700 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2025. That is the second-highest on record, the highest being in 2023, which was, of course, the year of the appalling attacks in southern Israel. In that year, there were 4,298 incidents.
It is also worth pointing out that, as noted in the APPG report, anti-Muslim hate has doubled over the past decade. Tell Mama recorded that anti-Muslim hate incidents rose from 500 per annum in 2012 to 2,500 per annum in 2021, which is going some. As the APPG has also pointed out, the explosion in the online world—this is stating the obvious—has gone hand in hand with an equally virulent explosion in conspiracy theories and the two have created a toxic mix.
I am pleased that the Government are taking certain steps against the hate marches in the form of the Crime and Policing Bill. It remains to be seen when that Bill reaches the statute book how effective the new measures will be, but I hope that we will leave the door open to going further with those measures, if necessary. I am also pleased that HMG has created criminal sanctions for those who have undeclared links to Tehran, whose proxies operate in the UK and elsewhere.
On that subject, I have two questions for the Minister. The first—he is probably getting tired of listening to me raise this, because I do so probably every couple of weeks—is that we need to look at the question of proscribing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is an issue that came up under the previous Government. It has come up persistently under this Government. I have never heard a convincing explanation as to why we do not proscribe the IRGC. Let us for a minute reflect on what the IRGC is. It is a group of homicidal maniacs who answer to a bunch of clerical fascists in Tehran. The important thing as far as proscription in the UK is concerned is that the IRGC persistently uses proxies. They use front organisations in the UK and elsewhere across the globe in order to carry out their vile activities.
Many of us are worried that we are not perhaps tracking the extremist landscape as effectively as we should be, so my second question for my noble friend is: what assessment have the Government made of who the most prominent domestic extremists are, what is their scale and influence and what is the level of harm that they are causing to British society? I will leave it at that for the time being.
Lord Massey of Hampstead (Con)
This is an excellent time to be debating this vital issue and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe on initiating this debate and on his recent comments on this important and complex subject. The Government have commissioned a rapid analytical sprint review but have not yet accepted its findings. But the review, as we know, has been the subject of a Policy Exchange document and identifies a broad range of extremist threats from the far right, the manosphere, left-wing and climate-change protests and many other areas. However, it does not seem to prioritise what is evidently the single biggest threat to the UK, which is, of course, Islamism, as my noble friend and many others have mentioned.
The leaked report is interesting because it reveals the Civil Service’s approach to this issue. It seeks to focus on behaviour and conducts, not ideologies that pose enormous threats to this country. These threats include not just terrorist activities and persistent violent protests but dangerous, non-violent activities below the radar by organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned, and Iranian cells. It should be a matter of great concern that certain moderate Muslim countries recognise these risks more than we do.
The clue to the approach in the leaked document can be found in the title: “Understand”. This is in contrast to the title of the APPG’s counterterrorism document, Time to Act. I know which approach I prefer. The core of our problem today is that there has been too much understanding and not enough action. A tolerance has built up of despicable actions by certain segments of our society. Jonathan Hall KC recently referred to this as the normalisation of extremism, where hateful and divisive views, once occupying the fringe, are now widely expressed with impunity.
This is happening because a great deal of hateful extremism operates just below the legal threshold. I would be interested in the Government’s assessment of the report by the commission led by Sir Mark Rowley and Dame Sara Khan in 2021, Operating with Impunity, as it seems very relevant to any strategy formulation today. Sir Mark reiterated his findings as recently as December 2025.
Just 7% of those arrested in pro-Palestinian marches have been charged. When so-called protestors break a police officer’s back with a sledgehammer, a jury is unable to convict them. Is it any wonder that they operate with complete impunity? Terrorist incidents do not occur in a vacuum. The fact that incidents of antisemitism actually increased in the aftermath of the Manchester attack, just as they did in the aftermath of the massacre of 7 October, shows that extremism needs to be addressed early and decisively.
Part of the problem, as has been mentioned, is the fear of appearing discriminatory. Dame Sara Khan put the problem well in her recent review on social cohesion and democratic resilience. She says:
“It is vital that police forces do not inadvertently support hate preachers and extremist actors in the misguided belief that such activity supports social cohesion or diversity and inclusion principles”.
These comments could apply to important cases in Rotherham and Batley, and most recently with the West Midlands Police Force. As the Government finalise their review, I ask the Minister to ensure that there will be a well-resourced unit to centre on the Islamist threat to this country, especially on the organised—and organised is a key word—funded and planned aspect of this threat. Yes, we need understanding, but it really is time to act.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for arranging this debate and congratulate him on his excellent speech. I also thank my friends the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Walney, for all the work that they are doing to counter extremism. Indeed, I thank all noble friends—I consider everybody in this Room a noble friend—for all the work that they have been doing. I declare my interest as a member of the APPG on Counter Extremism.
I recognise, as others have done, that this is a very challenging and complex issue. We need to consider the issue of extremism as a system-wide problem. It is pervading, in more or less dangerous forms, early education, local and national politics, universities, prisons and even police services, as has been pointed out in terms of bowing to demands and threats from partisan groups in the case of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football match. What will and can the Government do to protect ordinary members of the public from the rising intolerance of absolutist, extremist and uncompromising positions, masquerading as free speech, that have so crept into the national discourse?
I would also ask the Minister about this. From record high antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate incidents to historically high Prevent referrals, all the metrics of assessing this extremist ideology suggest that we are in the grip of an extremism crisis. Can we hear from my noble friend the Government’s explanation of steps they will take to develop their counterextremism strategy and the timetable for that?
One can cite so many examples—we have heard many this afternoon—of ways in which it seems that extremism pervades our society more and more with impunity. One has to ask: when will the CPS act in cases such as that of Dr Aladwan, who has been arrested several times for inciting racial hatred? She has supported Hamas and broken the terms of her bail. Even more alarmingly, I would argue, she has openly involved herself with the Anti-Zionist Movement, a new group which declares that it is intent on
“Pro Armed Resistance … against Jewish supremacy”.
What can and will the Government and the police do to monitor this type of group?
I understand that it is not easy to draw the line or understand where to draw the line, even in cases such as the polarisation of politics, but I would argue that, if we start from a position of zero tolerance as soon as we see constant protests, we may be able to start getting a grip. I quote Rabbi Sacks:
“There is nothing inevitable about the division, fragmentation, extremism, isolation … or the politics of anger that have been the mood of Britain … in recent years”.
We must have the courage to speak out and act against this.
Lord Walney (CB)
My Lords, I add my gratitude and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, on not only securing this debate but on his continued leadership on this issue. I shall conclude the Back-Bench contributions to this debate with two key questions for the Minister.
The first stems from the confusion, which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, set out so eloquently, over the Government’s position on a definition of counterextremism. Can the Minister confirm that the focus on attacking democratic institutions and democratic values, which was written into the last definition produced by the previous Government, is still in this Government’s remit on tackling counterextremism? Following on from that, do the Government believe that we should be seeking a legal way to bar public funding to any organisation that demonstrates or promotes extremism or seeks to systematically undermine our democratic values and institutions?
Secondly, related to that, will the Government—the Minister can speak for the Labour Party—set a political lead by pledging not to engage with institutions that seek to systematically undermine our representative democracy rather than to engage with it? This second question echoes much of the concern expressed today around whether the Government will adequately acknowledge and lead in countering Islamist extremism as part of a wider extremist strategy.
I draw the attention of the Minister and noble Lords to the document released by the Government in December last year, entitled Antisemitism: Recent Government Actions and Next Steps. In that document, the Government say that we must be bolder in “calling out … hateful ideologies”. That is absolutely the case, but I think noble Lords might be able to guess the number of times Islamist extremism is mentioned in that entire document. It is zero. So many parts of our society, not only the Jewish community but across society, are looking at the Government to make tackling Islamist extremism, the biggest driver of extremism in our country, in my view, publicly central to a cross-government, cross-departmental effort to keep our citizens safe.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for tabling this Question for Short Debate, which, given the current political environment, is incredibly timely. Ever since the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October, which was referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Cryer, we have witnessed weekly marches and protests where those involved have chanted antisemitic slogans. The Jewish community has been not only intimidated but attacked. Even before the horrors of 2023, we saw a worrying rise in extremism across the United Kingdom, Palestine Action and Bash Back being prime examples.
The noble Lord, Lord Massey, was entirely correct when he said that Palestine Action attacked a police officer with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. I ask noble Lords to briefly ponder this: a female police officer, a symbol of law and order, who puts herself on the front line to protect innocent members of the community, was attacked with a sledgehammer. The chair of Avon and Somerset Police Federation was entirely right when he said:
“When an officer is assaulted while simply doing their job, the impact is felt across the policing family”.
While His Majesty’s loyal Opposition know that all noble Lords support constructive challenge—it is incredibly important to have an effective balancing view—in the same vein, the Government surely cannot allow a situation, which was referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, where violence is normalised to further a cause that a group of individuals believes in.
Bash Back has engaged in a campaign of systematic intimidation. It hacked the Free Speech Union and vandalised the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, told us during Oral Questions about the impact its illegal actions had not just on employees at the Equality and Human Rights Commission but on other completely innocent bystanders in the building. The effects are far-reaching, mentally and psychologically. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, mentioned social media and online activity. Bash Back published a manual on its website which advised people how to commit serious criminal offences and avoid prosecution. I simply ask the Minister: how can that be possible?
The noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Walney, flagged that a comprehensive definition of extremism does exist. It was drafted by the previous Conservative Government and, in answer to a Written Question on 18 June last year, the Minister confirmed that the Government were also using that definition. While this is, of course, positive movement, law-abiding citizens are clamouring to ask how the Government intend to operationalise that definition across the country. How exactly will local authorities, regulators, schools, prisons, online platforms and others be trained to utilise the definition?
So we welcome the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, to drive forward a counterextremism strategy. There is a developing tranche of organisations which, while not meeting the threshold for terrorism, pose serious threats to public safety, law-abiding citizens and democracy. It has to be the case that an appropriate and relevant legislative response is put in place at pace by this Government to deal with the ever-increasing threat to society of extremist groups. Delay is simply not an option.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful for the contributions from noble Lords today. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who is persistent in raising this issue—rightly so, dare I say? He framed the debate, if I may say so, in terms of government action on examining non-violent extremism, but in the context of far-right, far-left and Islamist extremism. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who obviously has a great and deep interest in this, added the question of lone wolf independent radicalisation, which again is a common thread. I shall respond to the debate not only by addressing the points that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, raised, but also in relation to high-harm extremism, where we have a very high threshold and take action upon it.
I will start with the point the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, mentioned: the statutory definition of extremism. My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn also touched on this point. I confirm to the Committee that there are no plans to change the definition of extremism that was set out by the previous Government in March 2024. This existing definition is based on behaviours and does not look at specific ideologies, although the points that have been raised today are obviously important. The definition is a useful tool for government departments and others to look at when considering public engagement and when reaching out to stakeholders.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister. He described it as a “statutory definition of extremism”. I am not encouraging him, but is there an intention to put it into statute?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It was a slip of the tongue if I used the word “statutory” in reference to the definition of extremism. If that was the case, I apologise to the Committee. In essence, the 2024 definition of extremism that the noble Earl mentioned is correct.
In the gentlest of ways, I will respond to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who said that there is government inertia on this matter. There is no government inertia on this matter. We have to protect our citizens against high-harm extremism. We have to ensure that the extremism that fuels polarisation, erodes social cohesion and undermines trust between communities is challenged. Those individuals in our communities who raise antisemitism, Islamophobia and far-right or far-left terrorism and extremism have to be challenged.
The Government must be able to protect our citizens from the harm of extremism, violence and hatred. In doing so, we must have a balance between allowing freedom of speech and tackling those who promote violence and hatred in our communities. There are fundamental values in our community, such as freedom of speech, freedom of worship and the freedom of democracy, which define us as a society and which the Government will continue to uphold and promote as values. Where they are challenged by individuals, groups or environments that foster or enable hatred, we will take action against them.
I say to noble Lords and Baronesses that there is a really serious issue here that the Government will try to deal with. We have a government response, which includes, for example, the Online Safety Act, which sets out that platforms, including those that are now likely to be accessed by children, must employ highly effective methods to protect children from content that is harmful or age inappropriate. We can now, through the Ofcom independent regulator, take enforcement action on those duties. Where extremists often deliberately operate below legal thresholds, we want to ensure, rightly, that they can be prosecuted and investigated and that we can take action.
Home Office efforts to counter extremism have certainly focused on high-harm threats. I understand that the noble Lord did not frame his argument around that, but we do have to focus on high-harm threats. We stop foreign individuals of extremist concern, including hate preachers and influencers, travelling to the UK through our visa watchlist programme. We advise and support public authorities and local partners to reduce permissive environments by disrupting extremist hate events, such as speaking tours featuring hate preachers. We have invested in capabilities to stop charities being exploited by extremists. We support communities targeted by extremists to ensure that there is protective security at places of worship—a point that my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn mentioned.
We have also put in place very strong mechanisms through the Prevent programme. At the very start of our term of office, we had the sprint to look at what we needed to do, and there are lessons to be learned from that. We commissioned the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, to look at an independent review of Prevent. He brought forward 34 recommendations, which I note answers the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. Lessons were learned from the Prevent programme—not just from the appalling cases of Southport and the murder of my former colleague Sir David Amess but also positive impacts—to ensure that we deal with some of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, mentioned on how we stop radicalisation in the first place.
On the point the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, mentioned, I can say that the funding of Prevent is stable. We had £34.5 million of funding in 2023-24, and in the current financial year, the Government have committed £38.7 million to the programme. The noble Baroness asked what that does and what that achieves—I paraphrase, but that was broadly the tenor of her input. It is important, because we believe it makes a difference to people who are being radicalised by turning their lives around, pointing them in the right direction and stopping them from being influenced by far-left, far-right or, in particular, Islamist radicalisation. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, whom I thank for his work, brought forward recommendations, and we have implemented 33 of the 34 of them.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I hate to stand up again, but I want to put on the record that I made 10 recommendations. Sir William Shawcross had already made 34, and I felt that that was about as much as the system could stand.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord’s recommendations and the independent review of Prevent have been accepted by the Government. We have implemented the vast majority of the recommendations, and we will continue to learn. If there are lessons from today’s debate, we will continue to look at them.
I listened to, understood and accepted the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington. She will understand that I cannot comment on individual organisations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood that she mentioned. We keep all organisations under review. That same principle applies to my noble friend Lord Cryer—I know he has heard this before—in relation to Iran’s revolutionary guards. We keep proscription under review because we do not announce what we will do ahead of doing it.
We consider whether there is sufficient evidence to proscribe an organisation, such as Palestine Action, which was mentioned by a number of noble Lords in the debate. I cannot comment on the court case in which the sledgehammer was involved, because potential further action will be taken on that. People have been remanded in custody, but I cannot comment on that. However, I assure both the noble Baroness and my noble friend that, if proscription is required against any organisation at any time, we will make that proscription.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said that many of the people she speaks to feel unsafe, particularly women—I understand that. We now have a violence against women and girls strategy in place. Knife crime, which she discussed in particular, has fallen by 8% in the past 18 months. Knife homicides are down by 27% in the past 18 months. We have banned dangerous weapons, such as ninja swords and zombie-style knives, and have taken 60,000 knives off the street. I understand her concerns. We will look at organisations as and when, but, through neighbourhood policing and other things, we are trying—I hope—to make our communities much safer.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Massey of Hampstead, I do not want to see the normalisation of extremism; it should not be tolerated. We have a basic set of values in this society, and we need to uphold those societal values. There is freedom of speech, but we cannot normalise extremism as a whole.
The noble Lord, Lord Walney, made a number of key points. On the extremism definition that he mentioned—which I have spoken to—we keep all matters under review. On the counterterrorism review—which I know is of interest to him; he has done tremendous work in that field—we are looking at that as part of the arm’s-length body review. It does not take away from the principle that we want to ensure that we handle high levels of extremism and also deal with the issues that noble Lords have mentioned today.
I put on record—because this goes to the heart of the question of whether the Government are doing things in this area—that we are upholding the Public Order Act 1986, which imposes conditions on public processions. In the Crime and Policing Bill, currently going through the House, we have put forward a range of measures to ensure that persistent harassment on parades and demonstrations does not happen—that will be law very shortly. We put in place a range of measures through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which we still support; it allows civil injunctions to be put in place.
We have legislation, such as the Immigration Act, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Communications Act 2003 and the Education Act 2002, which was passed by Governments of both my political party and the Conservative Party to ensure that we put in place basic standards so that Governments can take action. We want to ensure that we look at all these matters.
On extremism, we have a number of other potential issues. We set out a clear response to terrorism in the UK’s counterterrorism strategy, Contest—an overarching strategy, of which Prevent is a key part, that directs our work in this area and provides a framework for us to operate in. As part of the Contest strategy, the Prevent programme has helped nearly 6,000 people at risk of being drawn into terrorism to turn their lives around. There are always lessons that we can learn, but it is important that we have that information before us today.
I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for bringing this important subject to the Grand Committee. I am grateful to him and to everybody who has spoken for their contributions; I hope I have referred to them all. Whatever form it takes and whatever form of bad ideology it espouses, extremism is a toxic force that has no place in our society. We have a high-level strategy to deal with high-harm extremism, but I will always look at, and work with colleagues to look at, what we do about the types of extremism that the noble Lord introduced in his opening contribution. That level of extremism remains unacceptable; the Government will not tolerate it. As I have set out, we are taking a range of actions to quell this threat and to prevent young and vulnerable minds being polluted. Counterterrorism remains a complex and multifaceted issue, but I assure noble Lords that we are unwavering in our commitment to tackle this crucial task.
My door will remain open, as will that of my honourable friend Minister Jarvis in the House of Commons. If noble Lords wish to raise issues, I am open to listening, debating and learning. The threat continues to change, as does the online approach, and so we as a society in this country need to make sure that we allow our fundamental values to remain operational, so that people do not feel harassment for their religion or beliefs or for things they cannot change. We support freedom of speech, but we also support the freedom to live life free from extremism.
Flour Milling Sector
Lord Rooker
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the economic impact of the UK flour milling sector.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, it is usual for our one-off debates to highlight a problem or defect that requires attention. That is not the case with this issue. I simply want to celebrate a small, specialist, highly productive sector of the economy, namely the flour milling sector. I have a minor technical interest, which I will come to in a moment.
The UK is self-sufficient in flour. More than 99% of households use food products that contain wheat flour, which is more than use toothpaste, by the way. Flour provides the biggest intake of iron in the diet, more than red meat. Since World War II, flour in this country has been fortified by law on health grounds with iron, calcium, niacin and thiamine. This is checked about once every 10 years to make sure it is still needed on health grounds. I should declare that the current regulations, the Bread and Flour Regulations 1998, have my signature on them as the English Minister at the time—there were four Ministers, as it is a devolved area. Food is devolved, but the industry is UK-wide due to the location of the mills—for example, there are none in Wales—so you cannot ask questions about the UK. I have therefore gone to the UK Flour Millers.
From 2013, when I left the Food Standards Agency, until last year, I campaigned for the addition of folic acid to flour on health grounds. It had been recommended by scientists for many years. The Medical Research Council report of 1991 found that a lack of folic acid was the prime cause of neural tube defects leading to brain and spine defects in newborn babies. The new Government in 2024 adopted the plan announced by the previous Government to change the regulations and in November 2024, they did so to add folic acid to the other four fortifications. So effective from 9 January 2025, the industry has two years to fortify wheat flour with folic acid to the level set in the regulations. The UK will then join more than 80 countries in fortifying flour with folic acid on health grounds, following UK research. As usual, the UK is late to the table. We did the research, published it in 1991 and the world followed it, but we did not.
A report on the flour milling industry by Policy Points in 2024 stated that 9,000 people are directly and indirectly employed in it, the annual turnover is £2 billion and the added value to the economy £700 million. The gross added value per employee is £141,000, which is greater than all other sectors, except finance and insurance. It is greater than real estate, manufacturing or construction, for example. Millers buy more than £800 million-worth of milling wheat from UK farmers. There has been capital investment of more than £250 million in the past decade. Bakers use flour for the obvious things, such as bread, cakes and biscuits. Some 12 million loaves, 10 million cakes and 2 million pizzas are made every day.
Flour milling supports food security. In a normal year for weather—a bit tricky these days, of course—that gives an average harvest, more than 80% of the wheat that millers use, or 3.8 million tonnes, was bought from UK farmers. It is not simple: there are over 40 variations of milling specification wheats to grow. Continuous testing and traceability are the norm in this industry. The sector also has zero waste. For every 100 tonnes of wheat, we get 75 to 78 tonnes of flour and 22 tonnes of by-products for animal feed. Flour millers are a cornerstone of national food security, providing an essential ingredient to UK food manufacturers; the wheat goes into a lot more than just making bread. In short, flour milling is one of the most productive sectors of the economy. It is a fairly small sector, but I am not arguing about its size. That is not the point; I just want to celebrate a small sector of the economy.
Last June, I had an update from UK Flour Millers, the trade body that knows what happens UK-wide. It confirmed to me this week that 85% to 90% of UK flour is now fortified with folic acid. This is a year in advance of the requirement by law; an excellent amount of work has been done. However—this is my bit of a moan, in a way, but I want to put it on the record—the Department of Health needs to accept that key scientists do not believe that the level of fortification is as high as it should be. The neural tube, which forms the spine and the brain, closes at 27 days after conception, before many women know that they are pregnant. For this reason, the advice to women planning a pregnancy is to take folic supplements; in fact that advice continues, even with the new regs.
The fact of the matter, though, is that the advice to take supplements has been a spectacular policy failure—otherwise, we would not have gone for fortification of our flour. Half of our pregnancies are unplanned, so it is no good talking to the half of the population who are not affected. We have a new fortification policy because the previous policy failed. That is a good thing. We have gone modern, which will save some distress.
Over the years—I was a scientist as well as a parliamentarian—my role has been exclusively to try to get the regs changed, after I became convinced that was required when I was at the Food Standards Agency, and previously at MAFF, but I have never got involved in the level of fortification. I do not intend to do so now, but scientists such as Sir Nicholas Wald, who is currently an honorary professor of preventive medicine at UCL and was the leader of the Medical Research Council’s 1991 study, wish that the level were higher. Others, such as Dr Jonathan Sher, who is a former deputy director of the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland, have called for “full fortification”.
We commend UK Flour Millers on its speedy action on fortification. It has done a fantastic job, showing what a well-run and well-managed industry this is. However, it would be useful if the Minister could confirm the monitoring process for the new fortification regs. I have never heard a Minister make a speech on health prevention that includes this area of policy; that applies to both parties, by the way. Nobody speaks about preventive health as a major policy issue and, if it has been touched, this issue has never been raised.
Currently, on average, 200 babies are born per annum with long-term disability due to neural tube defects and 800 pregnancies are terminated at the 20-week scan, so about 1,000 pregnancies are involved. Over the years, Ministers have told me, “Jeff, the numbers are so low that we’re not going to bother to do any work on it”, but think of those 200 babies. Over 10 years, that is 2,000 babies with lifelong disabilities—and because of the American medical system, we know what the cost is. We do not do costing like the Americans, but we know that they have saved $600 million a year since they fortified in 1998. So there are some big figures to save, besides lessening the distress of those families who have gone through terminations and those who have allowed births to continue.
Full fortification could cut these figures by 80%. The current level will not cut it that much, but it has to be monitored. Once we know the fortification is in, I expect the monitoring system to check the policy effects. The regulations talk about the monitoring system, and that is important.
Finally, I have one question I should like to put on the record because it is nothing to do with this. I was contacted by the Nature Friendly Farming Network as a result of the debate. It asked whether anybody is looking at the possibility of a technical change to growing wheat to make it even more productive. I understand that if the protein requirement was reduced even from 13% to 12.5% without affecting the benefits, it would make a tremendous difference to the amount of nitrogen that enters the soil.
I congratulate the industry, which has done a fantastic job and will have saved distress in the health field for many years to come. I wanted to celebrate its success, and that is why I have this debate today.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to take part in today’s debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to whom I offer my profound thanks for putting the UK flour-milling sector on the agenda of the House of Lords. As he well knows, I always try to take part in his debates because we share a birthday, 5 June, and I know this because for years his birthday appeared in the Times and mine did not. The other person with whom I share a birthday is my noble friend Lord Dundee, who I regret cannot be with us today. This is a debate where 50% of the Peers taking part share the same birthday, which is fairly unique. I turn to the subject at hand.
I know a bit about flour mills and what they mean to the communities they serve because for 14 years I was lucky enough to be the Member of Parliament for Wantage, which has a flour mill. It was called Wessex Mill and sat on, amazingly enough, Mill Street, barely 200 metres from the market square. It was owned by the Munsey family who had been milling grain there for more than a century, five generations in all, using local wheat from neighbouring farms. It printed the names of its supplying farmers on the back of every bag of flour, which I always thought was a lovely touch. In 2022, Wessex Mill sadly closed. The flour had not got worse, and demand had not fallen. In fact, it had won Great Taste awards. What happened, of course, was that energy prices increased five-fold almost overnight, wheat costs were soaring, and the capital required to upgrade ageing machinery was simply beyond reach.
Happily, the story has more than one chapter. The Wessex Mill brand was taken on by Michael and Clare Marriage, and relocated to Hungerford in Berkshire, where it now employs around 130 people drawn from local communities of the North Wessex Downs. It still sources its grain from local farmers, many of them long-standing suppliers, and still prints the farmers’ names and the grain variety on every bag. The flour reaches customers across the country, including through local food networks such as Shropshire’s Own, a delivery service connecting rural communities in the Marches with quality British produce.
I am pleased to tell noble Lords that at the old Mill Street site a new enterprise has sprung up, the Oxford Flour Mill. It was incorporated in January 2023, just weeks after the Wessex operation ceased, and is once again milling locally sourced wheat from the same premises. So, the site in the town where King Alfred was born is where grain has been ground for more than 900 years, and it is milling again. The building has outlasted its trouble, even if the original business could not. I mention all this because the Wantage story illustrates something important about the flour milling sector as a whole, that it is resilient, resourceful and woven into the life of the communities it serves, but it illustrates that there is some fragility. One sharp rise in energy costs was enough to close a mill that had survived two world wars.
The figures for the national industry are genuinely impressive. According to UK Flour Millers’ economic impact report published last January, this is a sector that generates £2.2 billion in annual turnover, contributes some £770 million in total value added to the economy, supports more than 9,000 jobs and pays taxes, directly and indirectly, of roughly £270 million a year—all of that from just 51 mills. The productivity numbers are worth dwelling on. At £141,000 of gross value added per employee, flour milling outperforms manufacturing, construction and the economy as a whole.
The milling industry has invested £250 million in the past decade, including in eight brand new mills. These are serious, modern and capital-intensive operations. An important point is that 80% to 85% of the wheat that British millers use is grown domestically, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed out. In a good harvest year, that amounts to some 4 million tonnes, roughly one-third of the entire arable crop. The result, as the noble Lord pointed out, is that we are essentially self-sufficient in flour. Some 12 million loaves of bread reach British consumers every day, and flour goes into roughly one-third of all supermarket products beyond that. More British households buy bread than use the internet, which, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Katz, is a statistic I confess I was not expecting to find.
Flour is the single largest contributor, as again the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed out, to the nation’s iron intake. It beats red meat and provides about one-third of our daily fibre and calcium. It is also highly sustainable. For every tonne of wheat, 78% becomes flour and 22% becomes animal feed. In a world where supply chains from the Black Sea to the Suez Canal can be disrupted overnight, a domestic industry that feeds virtually every household in the country is worth paying attention to.
The Question by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, asks what assessment the Government have made of the economic impact of this sector. Let me suggest to the Minister six areas where the Government could make a difference. The good news for the Minister is that they will not cost him a penny.
First, there is the issue of land use. The single greatest long-term threat to domestic flour production is the loss of productive agricultural land. Millers depend on British wheat farmers. These farmers face competition from alternative uses of their land: solar farms, housing and biodiversity schemes. All are of course perfectly worthy in their own right, but if too much of our best arable land goes under solar panels, we shall find ourselves importing the wheat that we currently grow. This is particularly acute for organic millers. Wessex Mill, which I mentioned a moment ago, is a certified organic processor. It tells me that Britain currently imports a significant proportion of its organic grain, which seems absurd when we have the land and expertise to grow it here. Greater government encouragement for organic arable production would reduce those imports and strengthen the domestic supply chain.
There is a point here, by the way, on transparency. Organic grain must, by law, be free of genetically modified organisms. As precision-bred organisms enter the wheat supply, organic millers will need to be able to identify which grain is which. If the Government do not require clear labelling of all PBO wheat, millers face a considerable burden of additional testing, the cost of which will inevitably be passed on to consumers. Clarity on labelling would be a simple and inexpensive step. More broadly, the Government’s food strategy for England, published last July, sets out high-level outcomes, but does not, as far as I can tell, contain a clear commitment to protecting the most productive arable land for food production. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether the forthcoming implementation plan will address this issue.
Secondly, on trade, Turkey is the world’s largest flour exporter, accounting for roughly one-fifth of global trade. Its milling industry is heavily subsidised, and 76% of the wheat it mills for export is sourced from Russia. I will let noble Lords reflect on the implications of that. Any change to tariff arrangements in a new free-trade agreement with Turkey could potentially have serious consequences for British millers. All the industry asks is that its interests are properly considered at the negotiating table, and that flour is not quietly sacrificed as a concession in pursuit of other objectives.
Thirdly, there is the issue of energy. This is what forced the closure of the Wantage mill, and it worries every miller in the country. Mills operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The industry has reduced its energy consumption by nearly 10% over the past 15 years, and that is commendable, but it is exposed to energy price volatility. The existing support through the energy intensive industries scheme and the climate change levy discount is welcome and must continue. Withdrawing it as the energy transition proceeds would simply make Britain more dependent on imported flour milled in countries with considerably less impressive environmental standards.
Fourthly, on research, the flour milling industry has invested collectively in R&D since the 1920s. I suspect that is longer than most government departments can claim. It works with plant breeders, farmers, and research institutions on everything from new wheat varieties to food safety, but the tax environment for R&D has become, to put it charitably, complex. If the Government are serious about growth, the R&D tax regime needs to be stable, accessible and designed for industries that actually do applied research. I appreciate that many of the points I am making apply to many different industries, but I want to highlight the impact of policy on the flour milling industry.
Fifthly, there is the apprenticeship levy. Flour millers pay into it, but they cannot use those funds to support the specialist training their workforce requires. UK Flour Millers runs an advanced milling diploma and examination system, exactly the sort of high-quality, industry-specific training we should be encouraging, yet the levy system does not recognise it. There are 30 apprentices currently in training across milling businesses. That number should be higher, and it would be higher if the rules could accommodate it. I look forward to the Minister commenting on that.
Sixthly and—I know the Minister will appreciate the following word—finally, I will just raise the issue of inheritance tax. I know it is a vexed issue, but a large proportion of flour mills in this country are family-owned businesses. The recent changes to agricultural property relief will directly affect their capacity to invest for the long term. A family miller contemplating a multi-million pound investment in new plant needs to plan across generations. If the tax treatment of the business makes that planning uncertain, the investment will go elsewhere, or it will simply not happen. I appreciate that this is a broader issue than flour milling alone, but it is keenly felt in a sector where family ownership is often the norm.
I am conscious that a debate about flour milling may not set the pulses racing like one on artificial intelligence or social media, but I gently point out that artificial intelligence cannot as yet make a loaf of bread and social media has never provided 20% of the nation’s daily energy and protein intake. Flour milling does both, every single day. The Government do not need to do anything dramatic: they just need to protect productive farmland, take care of the trade deals, keep maintaining energy support, make the R&D tax credits stable, tweak the apprenticeship levy and think carefully about the impact of inheritance tax changes on family businesses. I hope the Minister takes these recommendations in the spirit in which they are made. They are six practical steps for an industry that has nourished this country for centuries and deserves government support to continue to do so.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for tabling this Question for Short Debate. It is of particular interest to me as one of my acquaintances in Oxfordshire mills heritage and ancient grains, and I understand the huge benefits of a strong and stable UK flour milling sector. As my noble friend Lord Vaizey rightly flagged, almost one-third of the food products on our supermarket shelves contain flour as a primary or secondary ingredient. To help put that into perspective, more families eat flour-based products than have access to the internet. I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for flagging toothpaste as well, which I did not realise. Flour’s ability to go everywhere is truly amazing.
It is clear that the 51 flour mills across the country contribute strongly towards our food security in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment that contributes to fragile global supply chains. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lord Vaizey flagged that with more than £2 billion in annual turnover, flour mills generate £770 million in value added to the economy and are one of the UK’s most productive sectors. We also touched on the fact that flour milling is a near zero-waste process, since the by-product can be used by the animal feed industry. Millers rely heavily on UK farmers of wheat, who keep traceability records and are independently audited. It is clear that the industry is well integrated with our agricultural sectors and critical to our food security.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Leong, with his extensive business experience, will agree that we owe it to the 9,000 employees that the sector employs, directly and indirectly, to back them with a supportive policy environment. The industry faces challenges and it is the responsibility of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and other noble Lords to highlight the obstacles to growth that the Government have inflicted, unintentionally, on farmers and the flour milling sector. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, correctly highlighted that many flour milling businesses are family owned and are therefore especially vulnerable to reductions in business property relief for inheritance tax.
Furthermore, the Government’s trade deal with the US caused significant harm to our bioethanol industry. This, in turn, removed a crucial market for British wheat farmers. Flour millers and farmers have to compete with international producers, suppliers and importers. Of course, we encourage competition, but we must not continually disadvantage British producers by imposing ever more regulation while importing products from abroad that might be produced to lower food safety and quality standards.
During Oral Questions today, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, rightly highlighted that pigs and chickens abroad must experience the same standards as our pigs and chickens in the UK. We must have a fair and level playing field, so will the Minister please clarify whether any further regulatory changes to food standards are planned? We should be proud that in Britain we hold ourselves to such high account, but it is clearly not reasonable or fair on our own UK businesses for the Government to allow double standards to be implemented. Therefore, although many of the Government’s strategies and environmental targets are no doubt well intentioned, new challenges are arising which mean that the Government must prioritise increasing our own domestic production capacity.
I turn to the consequences of the ongoing energy transition. I must be clear that we on these Benches do not wish to carpet the countryside with large-scale solar farms, nor do we want to sacrifice high-quality agricultural land for the benefit of a flawed net-zero policy. However, in some cases, solar energy generation is now seen as more profitable for landowners than wheat production. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, highlighted that challenges for wheat producers then become challenges for flour millers, forcing them to rely on imports and putting further pressure on supply chains. We urge the Government to undertake a risk assessment of this impact. If more people eat flour-based products than have the internet, the Government should surely desire to protect this industry and not harm it.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, mentioned energy costs. As we know, flour milling is energy intensive and businesses are especially sensitive to higher energy costs. We have been clear on this issue: we need to bring energy costs down and we must therefore ensure that the Government’s pursuit of an energy transition does not price out flour millers or displace domestic wheat production. In fact, a more supportive policy environment would encourage lowering the industry’s carbon intensity. As the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, highlighted, the flour milling industry has a long history of research and development investment. In the past decade, over £250 million has been invested by millers. Further enabling research and development will help businesses to innovate and modernise their practices, while at the same time lowering their carbon intensity.
It would be economically disastrous and environmentally irresponsible for the Government to simply outsource this industry to other countries. At a time when young people are struggling to find jobs, the Government could make more of this economic asset by, for example, allowing apprenticeship levy contributions to fund training and develop opportunities in the milling industry. Will the Government consider that as an option, as was so eloquently asked by my noble friend Lord Vaizey? We really must try to do everything in our power to protect this sector, for a multitude of different reasons, and rural communities are looking to the Government to act at pace with a clear vision for the future.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to respond to this debate. I thank my noble friend Lord Rooker for securing it, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for their contributions. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Rooker for all his invaluable work and interest in food safety; he has long been a champion in this area and I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that.
I declare an interest in that my family have constantly used Wessex Mill flour for our baking; we love baking bread using that flour. I am well aware of Wantage town square and the King Alfred’s Head pub which is there. Wessex Mill flour is sold in most of the farm shops in Wantage and Woodstock, so I am very familiar with it. I thank my noble friend for bringing this up today.
I pay tribute to UK flour millers nationwide who work every day to produce high-quality flour and help feed the nation. Flour may not always attract attention, but it is fundamental to our daily lives. Flour is a key component of the UK diet, essential not only for industrial bread production and home baking but for a wide range of supermarket foods, as several noble Lords mentioned.
Together, the farming, milling and baking supply chains are critical to national food security. The scale of that contribution is striking. The Federation of Bakers reports that around 12 million loaves of bread—I think it is 12 million, rather than 10 million—are supplied to consumers every day in the UK. That does not happen by accident; it relies on a dependable, resilient milling sector that can operate day in, day out.
The UK flour milling sector processes around 6 million tonnes of wheat each year, and about 85% of that wheat is grown here at home. This means that the sector is near self-sufficiency and provides a stable, reliable market for British farmers. That matters economically and strategically: it supports farm incomes, strengthens rural economies and reduces our exposure to global market volatility. In economic terms, the flour milling sector contributes several hundred million pounds in gross value added each year and supports thousands of skilled jobs. These jobs in not only in the mills: they span farming, transport, storage, engineering, packaging and food manufacturing. Many are located outside major cities, sustaining local economies where alternative employment opportunities can be limited. The sector is also capital intensive and long term in outlook.
Mills require substantial investment, high technical expertise and decades of operation. In recent years, millers have invested heavily in modernisation, improving energy efficiency, reducing waste and upholding high standards of food safety and quality. That investment boosts productivity and supports the wider food and drink manufacturing sector, the UK’s largest manufacturing industry, which generates £129 billion in turnover and over £22 billion in exports, and supports more than 4 million jobs.
The Government’s assessment of economic impact also accounts for resilience. Recent years have tested global supply chains through conflict, extreme weather and sharp movements in energy costs. Through it all, the UK flour milling sector continued to operate. That resilience has real economic value, even if it does not always show up neatly in headline figures.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, a highly resilient energy network is fundamental to support this. We acknowledge this and are confident that the system operators have the tools they need to effectively balance supply and demand in a wide range of scenarios. Our millers rely on high-quality British wheat, so the future strength of milling is closely tied to the future of farming. That is why this Government have made a cast-iron commitment to the security of our farming and food sectors.
Food security is national security, and it depends on a balance of strong domestic production and reliable global supply chains. It also requires a clear vision for the future of farming. To that end, Defra is developing a land use framework, which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, will welcome and which will be published early this year. It will set out a long-term vision for land use policy and guide how decision-makers make better land use decisions on the ground.
In response to the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, I say that the 25-year farming road map will bring together regulation, innovation, skills and investment to show how we will sustain food production, meet environmental goals and deliver a profitable, resilient farming sector. This matters directly to millers, as productivity, quality and sustainability in wheat production underpin the success of the entire supply chain.
Alongside this, Defra continues to invest in farming and innovation. The farmer collaboration fund will provide up to £30 million over the next three years to support farmer groups with expert advice and partnerships that drive growth and deliver environmental outcomes. A new farming and food partnership board, chaired by the Secretary of State, will work across the supply chain to remove investment barriers and improve operations. Through the farming innovation programme, we are supporting projects in key areas, including pest and disease control and alternative fertiliser use, and are committed to investing at least £200 million by 2030.
Defra also supports the crop genetic improvement network, which is a £15 million research platform focused on improving key arable crops. This work is already delivering results, including wheat varieties with improved resistance to diseases such as take-all and orange blossom midge, and progress towards more drought-tolerant, climate-resilient wheat.
In addition, Defra continues to fund the long-standing survey of crop pests and diseases, which provides vital data to support alternative control strategies and to reduce reliance on chemical inputs. These investments support farmers and strengthen the raw material base on which flour millers depend. The milling supply chain has robust traceability standards. Millers buy wheat only from assured suppliers, with farms adhering to best practices and maintaining audited records. This traceability supports consumer confidence and underpins the UK’s reputation for high food standards.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I say that organic farming offers many benefits to the wider environment, and Defra is committed to supporting producers to grow organic crops. We recognise that transparency is essential to maintaining trust in the organic label. Organic grain must, by law, be free from genetically modified material, and Defra recognises that the development of precision-bred products raises concerns for the sector. Defra will work with the sector on retaining confidence in the organic label.
We are also taking action to ensure that supply chains operate fairly. Last year, Defra launched a public consultation on contractual practices in the combinable crops sector, giving farmers and stakeholders the opportunity to share their experiences and to help the Government build a clear picture of how the system operates.
I also welcome the strong commitment from the milling sector to include folic acid in non-wholemeal flour by the end of 2026. The cost of this fortification is low—adding folic acid to flour costs under 1p per loaf of bread—so it is easily affordable for manufacturers. This is a clear example of industry and government working together to deliver public health benefits.
International trade remains important; the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, touched on this point. Arable commodities are traded globally, and food security depends on domestic production and imports, supported by robust global supply chains. Trade can help businesses grow and open new markets, but we are clear that trade deals must not—I stress “must not”—undermine UK producers. As noble Lords know, negotiations with Turkey are ongoing, but we have always been clear that this Government will protect British farmers, secure our food security, and uphold our high food, animal welfare and environmental standards in trade deals; that is exactly what we have done and will continue to do.
On my noble friend Lord Rooker’s point about monitoring, the UK Government and the devolved Governments are putting plans in place to monitor the impact of such changes. The level of folic acid fortification will be kept under constant review. I hope that my noble friend will continue to engage with the department to ensure that this monitoring happens.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, asked about the skills levy. This Government are transforming the apprenticeship offer into a new growth and skills offer, which will offer greater flexibility to employers and learners and support the industrial strategy. The growth and skills levy provides a more flexible offer; I think the noble Lord mentioned various other short-term courses, so I hope that this will give him some comfort.
As I am sure noble Lords are aware, we recently announced changes to inheritance tax. More family farms are now protected from inheritance tax. The Government have increased the agricultural and business property relief threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million, and couples are now able to pass on up to £5 million tax free, meaning that 85% of farming estates will pay absolutely no inheritance tax. This is where the Government are supporting small family farms.
I will have to write to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on R&D tax credits, because that are is more for the Treasury. I will speak to my colleagues and ensure that I write to him, with a copy of that letter being placed in the Library.
In closing, I again thank my noble friend Lord Rooker for enabling this debate. The Government recognise the essential role that the UK flour milling sector plays in supporting British agriculture, underpinning food manufacturing, sustaining skilled employment and strengthening national resilience. Although it is largely out of sight, this economic value is felt across the food system. We will continue to work closely with the sector to ensure that it remains competitive, resilient and able to play its full part in a secure and prosperous food economy.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Stansgate) (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an interesting, if short, debate. I hope that the Committee will join me in wishing the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Vaizey of Didcot, a happy joint birthday on 5 June; I wish everyone else a good February Recess. In the meantime, the Grand Committee stands adjourned until 4 pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morgan of Drefelin) (Lab)
Noble Lords will be aware that the clock is not working. We are reliant on Back-Bench speakers sticking to their six minutes, and we also expect the Front Benchers to keep to their allotted time. The Whip will, if she needs to, do her best to indicate if people go further than their allotted time.
Environment Agency: Waste Crime
Baroness Sheehan
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the performance of the Environment Agency in addressing waste crime.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, as chair of the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee I am delighted to have an opportunity to debate our inquiry into waste crime. I begin by thanking all noble Lords who will be contributing to this debate, particularly as it is the last business before our February Recess.
The committee’s inquiry painted a profoundly disturbing picture. The scale of waste crime is staggering: some 38 million tonnes every year is dumped illegally, enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times over and estimated to cost the taxpayer £1 billion annually. Worse still, more than one-third of that illegal activity passes through the hands of serious organised crime groups. These are not opportunistic fly-tippers, but organised criminal networks—people who engage in drug trafficking, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery.
Local residents report waste dumping to all the right authorities, such as the local council, the Environment Agency and the police. In every single case we encountered, residents’ repeated reports were ignored. They were passed from pillar to post and left to confront these criminals themselves, frequently with the result that they live in fear of reprisals. Residents chose to write to the committee anonymously rather than appear in front of cameras, either to give oral evidence to the committee or to speak to TV crews. The committee recommended a dedicated waste hotline for the public, so that local teams on the ground can respond immediately. Will the Minister take this suggestion to the Government?
Members of the committee were shocked to learn of the brazenness with which these criminals operate. They know that the chances of being caught are slim and that, even if they are caught, they will get away with it, receiving at the most a paltry penalty charge notice of a few hundred pounds. Given that we heard that the payload on a single lorry is £2,500, that is a good deal. It is profitable for criminals, and it is a scandal that they are getting away with it.
The committee wrote to the Secretary of State for Defra last October, outlining our deep concerns about the demonstrable inadequacy of the current approach to tackling waste crime and identifying multiple failures by the Environment Agency. For example, it has ignored repeated calls by local residents, it has the power to issue stop notices but has too often not done so in time, and it has sanctions of unlimited fines and prison sentences of up to five years available to it, yet its record of using these powers effectively is woeful. Our letter also highlighted the lack of interest shown by the police. Neither the National Crime Agency nor the National Police Chiefs’ Council would give oral evidence to the committee. The NCA in written evidence stated that it did not have anyone with sufficient knowledge of the issues to appear before the committee, and we are talking about serious organised criminal gangs here.
I shall say a few words about the illegal waste super-sites that are being discovered on a regular basis around the country since our inquiry report was published. Recent examples are the 25,000 tonnes dumped along the A34 in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and the Bickershaw site in Wigan. These mixed-waste sites are similar in nature to the egregious Hoads Wood site, which featured in our inquiry. Mixed-waste sites are dangerous because they combine many different hazards in one place, often at a huge scale, making pollution, fires and health risks much harder to control.
I visited both the Kidlington and Bickershaw sites. The Environment Agency is cleaning up the Kidlington site, and rightly so, as it is obviously polluting the River Cherwell and poses a serious fire risk. However, I put it to the Minister that it is unjust to treat the Bickershaw site differently from the Kidlington site. The Bickershaw site is close to houses and the local primary school. My real fear is that if it is still there when the weather warms up, there will be a repeat of last year’s fires, one of which burned for 10 days, forcing the primary school to close because of the noxious fumes. Will the Minister undertake to do all he can to help the people and the schoolchildren who are suffering due to the risks of the Bickershaw site? They should not have to live with this toxic nightmare on their doorstep while waiting for lengthy proceedings about ownership and culpability to be resolved, which could take years. I repeat my request for the Government to share the risk assessment of both sites with my committee. I also understand that the BBC has submitted a freedom of information request about the risks posed by the Kidlington site, which I hope will produce a response from the Government.
The committee was deeply disappointed by the Government’s response to our findings. They cited instead reassurances by Philip Duffy, chief executive of the Environment Agency, who in essence asserted that the problem was under control and rejected our recommendations. However, the committee’s call for an urgent independent root-and-branch review of the Government’s response to waste crime stemmed from compelling evidence of a systemically broken process rather than mere isolated issues.
The Environment Agency said in its response that it was,
“doing everything within our power to ensure that the perpetrators pay the price to clean up the site, rather than taxpayers”.
It would be more reassuring if the Environment Agency had said that it was reviewing its processes and why these sites grow so large from small beginnings, why its considerable powers are not exercised at an early enough stage to nip the problem in the bud, why it is unable to prosecute the criminals and impose penalties that would be seen as a deterrence and why the JUWC, the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, which was set up after the recommendations in the 2018 waste strategy review, has been ineffective.
We heard that Treasury rules force the Environment Agency’s efforts to be focused on the regulated waste sector, whose transgressions, sometimes minor, are pursued with zeal. In addition, we heard that the law forces the Environment Agency to pursue private landowners to clean up waste dumped on their land, even those who are the victims of such crimes. Does the Minister agree that a root-and-branch review of the waste system would allow the Government to assess whether such rules are helpful? Can the Minister update the Grand Committee on when we may expect to see long overdue reforms, such as the waste crime levy, a digital waste tracking system, and carrier, broker and dealer reforms? If urgently and properly enacted, they will help to grip this scourge of waste crime that is blighting local communities and damaging precious environments.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
I have been talking rubbish for many years; more accurately, I have been talking about waste crime and disposal for many years. I first got interested when I was the chair of public health in Newcastle in the 1990s. As the Member of Parliament for North Durham, I took a particular interest in this because of the actions of a company called Niramax in the north-east of England. The people running it would not have passed a “fit and proper person” test. After a lot of lobbying with fellow MPs, such as David Davis MP, there was an investigation into Niramax; it was called Operation Nosedive. Somebody had a bit of a sense of humour when they named it Nosedive because it went nowhere and spent £3.5 million of public money with no prosecutions, even though there was clear evidence of widespread landfill tax fraud and environmental crime.
David Davis and I persuaded the NAO to look into the issue. It produced an excellent report in 2022, which people may not have read; it mirrors many of the issues covered in the report that has just been referred to. It shocked me a bit that the National Crime Agency would not appear before the committee because David Davis MP and I went to see it throughout this process to raise this directly with it. The 2022 report said that there was no data—there is still no data—a problem with exporting waste abroad, permit abuse, which is still going on, and an increase in fly-tipping, which, again, is still going on. Increases in landfill tax had made the issue more lucrative for criminals. It estimated that something like £200 million a year was lost through landfill tax fraud; it plucked that figure out of thin air because it does not actually know what the issue is. More disturbingly, it said in black and white that 41 of the 60 major organised crime groups in this country are involved in waste crime. The most common sanction from the Environment Agency, to which the noble Baroness just referred, is either a warning letter or advice.
The report also said—it was quite clear—that the number of prosecutions had dropped from some 800 a year in 2007 to 60 in 2017-18. The response of the previous Government was to set up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. I asked a Question a few months ago on how many prosecutions it had pursued, and the answer was none at all, which begs the question of what that unit is doing. I also asked whether there had been any prosecutions for landfill tax fraud. Remember that landfill tax goes back to 1996. The answer was that there has not been a single one, so I do not know how we can come up with this figure of £1 billion a year—I think it is a lot worse than that. The industry reckons that 18% of the waste stream is going into illegal waste across the country. The noble Baroness mentioned the issue raised by farmers and others of dumping on their land; if you look at the Times this morning, there is an example from Hertfordshire.
It seems to me that the problem is that there is the number of different agencies: the Environment Agency, the police, HMRC, local councils, and, I would strongly argue, the National Crime Agency. The responsibility is falling between the cracks, even though the evidence is there. The 2022 report states what the problem is. On one occasion, I referred to the Environment Agency as newt lovers and tree huggers. I am sorry, but that is their approach here. It is not about enforcement. What is needed in this area more than anything is not jointed-up working between these agencies but an enforcement culture—a culture that means they are going to go after these people.
I share the noble Baroness’s frustration on behalf of individual constituents. If there is an example of where the state is failing, this is it, and we need to address it. On the point about talking to industry, the industry is aware and is prepared to work with the Government to try to sort this out, but the problem is that the Environment Agency is spending most of its time regulating the industry. The industry is not the problem; these illegal issues are.
I say in closing that we need an enforcement culture. With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, we do not need any more reviews. The evidence is there; we know what the problem is. We need the political will to do something about it. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime might have been a movement forward, but it does not have teeth. It needs to be politically driven to say, “Right, we’re going to take on these individuals and make sure that the law is enforced and that the penalties are there”. The noble Baroness is right: frankly, the penalties against these individuals are just operating costs for them. This is a multi-million-pound business for these individuals, and that money is going directly into other areas of crime. I urge the Minister to take this away and say that we need action, not more reviews or words.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, on securing this debate and thank her both for her excellent leadership as the chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, of which I have the privilege to be a member, and for her comprehensive introduction to this topic. I also acknowledge the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for urging the committee to investigate waste crime.
The headline item on “Channel 4 News” on 26 January was the illegal dumping of an estimated 25,000 tonnes of waste on Bolton House Road, Bickershaw—it is near Wigan in Lancashire—to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has already referred. A local resident described living near the dump as a “living hell”. Residents had asked for it to be cleared up for over a year, but no one had accepted responsibility—not the local authority, the Environment Agency or the landowner, the Duchy of Lancaster.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said, residents on the whole fear to speak out because they are afraid of reprisals. However, one brave resident, Nicha Rowson, talked to “Channel 4 News” about the rats and flies in her house, as well as the foul stench emanating from the dump nearby. One of her children, who has special needs, has had to move out of the house because of the impact of the dump. As we have already heard, last year, the dump caught fire, causing a local primary school to close for over a week. Yet the Environment Agency has said that the site does not pose a sufficient level of risk to require urgent clean-up. Does the Minister agree with the Environment Agency?
On top of the human misery caused by waste crime, there are important impacts on the environment, including water pollution, air pollution and the destruction of habitats. We have already heard that waste crime costs the economy £1 billion per year, but that is an estimate—just an estimate—of the cost of clean-up, enforcement and lost revenue to legitimate businesses and the Exchequer; it does not include the cost to people or to nature. I therefore ask the Minister: does Defra have an estimate of the total cost of waste crime, including the impacts on human well-being and the environment?
I turn to the question of how much waste crime there is. We have heard that there are an estimated 38 million tonnes a year of waste crime, but we were also told that only 27% of waste crime is reported. I suspect that this may be one of Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns: if it is not reported, how do we know how much there is? Nevertheless, the Environment Agency told the BBC that 517 known dumps were still active at the end of last year, including 11 of the so-called super sites, such as the Kidlington site that we have heard about. However, if only around a quarter of sites are reported and known, there could be as many as 2,000 dumps in England, or one for every 25 square miles. Given these uncertainties, can the Minister tell us the Government’s estimate of the total number of sites and the level of uncertainty in that estimate?
If I were a careers adviser for an aspiring and ambitious young criminal, I would recommend waste crime as a career option worth serious consideration. I would point to the attractive features of waste crime. There is plenty of money to be made and there is a very low chance of getting caught. The Environment Agency received 24,000 reports of waste crime in the three years up to March 2025. Criminal investigations were opened for 1.3% of them, and there was a prosecution in 0.65% of cases. Even if you are caught, the penalties are generally light and can simply be priced into your business model. What is more, if you make a success of it, you might be able to graduate to become involved in international criminal gangs, with career openings in areas such as people trafficking, drugs and money laundering.
Sir James Bevan, the then CEO of the Environment Agency, said that one of the best ways to prevent waste crime was
“to change how criminals calculate the odds, by imposing much tougher penalties on them if caught. We would like to see much bigger fines (at present many serious criminals treat these as business expenses) and more use of confiscation of criminals’ assets. But in particular we would like to see more and longer prison sentences, which really concentrate the criminal mind”.
Does the Minister agree with Sir James Bevan’s assertion that this is simply too easy and profitable for criminals? As things stand, the deterrents for waste crime are inadequate and are not being properly enforced.
Lord Redesdale (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sheehan for initiating this debate and for the work she did on the committee.
I will speak first as an amateur archaeologist. That seems a bit random, but I say that because our job as archaeologists is to find things such as middens: waste sites from the past. I can see archaeologists of the future specialising in these sorts of things, although I would hate to be the archaeologist who digs up the sort of stuff that we are seeing in these waste tips. That is a joke in one respect, but it is not in another, because most of these sites will never be cleared up and therefore will be part of the archaeological record of the future.
We have just had a briefing from the City of London Corporation about Epping Forest. It has two fly-tipping incidents a day, which is eating up a percentage of its budget as a charity. When I was on the train to Newcastle the other day, I counted 16 dumping sites just by looking out of the window.
I also speak as a landowner, and obviously many people would say to me, “Well, you’re a landowner, you can afford to deal with this”—but it is a real issue. Luckily, my estate is in the middle of nowhere, but even we had a lorry turn up and dump a load of rubble just in a farm entrance. Luckily, we could deal with it by laying a new roadbed, but the cost of that is frightening. It goes to a very basic rule: if it comes from the highways and over your wall, you have to pay for it; if it stays on the highway, they seem just to leave it there. That is just a personal point.
Something I find really surprising is that, if you want to get involved in this, it is an easy area to get into, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said in his erudite speech. In the time it took him to make his speech—I timed this yesterday—I could apply for a waste licence. It is a hundred quid a year if you do a three-year licence, and I could then have a waste licence to drive an articulated lorry full of waste. I do not see how it is even possible that someone can just go on a website, get that licence and suddenly legally drive around waste, without any real question about what they are doing. I understand how difficult this is, because of the amount of waste that has to be moved around the country, but, if it is that easy to get a licence, it is hardly surprising that so much of it ends up in gateways, down the back of embankments or wherever it is found.
The origins of this go back to recycling centres. You see somebody turn up with a van. Lots of jobbing builders turn up. People have to book in a van, and they can only do two trips a week, but, looking at what comes out of the van, I wonder: how much easier is it just to turn up somewhere and dump it on the side of the road? That is of course the origin of this, and the issue has grown larger and larger as we have moved forward.
I was looking it up and I was at the debate in 1996 on the Finance Bill where this was introduced. The fabulous Earl Ferrers, for those who remember him, was very positive about how it was going to work and how it would raise a great deal of money. Another issue at the time was that we had to meet the European directive and we still had the problem of closing down landfill sites, because most of them were full. We were diverting waste, and this was a way of acting as “polluter pays” and it was going to move things forward.
When I set up and ran the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association, we worked incredibly hard to build up anaerobic digestion to take food waste out of the waste stream. We have been incredibly successful in certain areas. I think councils around the country should take the positive nature of that, but the fault lies with the Government. We have actually changed landfill tax into being just a tax. It has no bearing in the Treasury’s eyes on what happens going forward.
If we take landfill tax, which the TaxPayers’ Alliance says is now raising £600 million a year—I do not usually use the TaxPayers’ Alliance as a source of reference—we could then direct that into enforcement, which would solve the problem. The Government are not taking this seriously enough, but I think they will. The reason is that we just have to go back a few months to when the water companies were constantly lambasted over combined sewer overflows—CSOs. In fact, Liberal Democrats would stand next to any pipe for a photo opportunity, because it is such a good issue. I have a feeling that my friend the noble Earl, Lord Russell, will be doing exactly the same when he starts to track down the vast numbers of large sites which have not been reported on, but which are going to cause a national outrage in the not-too-distant future.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, the chair of the environment committee, on securing this timely debate and raising the issue in Committee this afternoon. I have only recently joined her committee, but I am delighted to join such an excellent scheme under her skilful leadership. On this occasion I will limit my remarks, as I was not privy to the evidence, though I entirely support the conclusions reached: in particular, the need for greater resources and for a review, which I will come to in a while.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, I have followed this issue closely both as a constituency MP for the Vale of York, and subsequently for Thirsk and Malton, but also in my privileged position of chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place, where we also learned of the issues from landfill sites being full to busting.
For the Environment Agency to tackle waste crimes in rural areas successfully will require resources on a huge scale. The agency already uses the tools at its disposal—cameras, drones, radar and light detection—but its resources are limited and severely stretched. I would like to raise two issues this afternoon: first, how the Environment Agency can hope to address widespread rural crime and the particular offence of waste crime, given its limited resources, without support from police forces, HMRC and local authorities; and, secondly, how and why waste crime is treated differently, depending on whether it is perpetrated on public or private land.
In terms of the scale of the crime, the evidence submitted by the Environment Agency to the short inquiry demonstrated that 24,625 crimes were committed between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2025, ranging from the burning of waste, illegal waste sites and fly-tipping through to waste carriers and unauthorised waste management activity. The enforcement actions taken were varied, ranging from 1,037 advice and guidance letters through to 685 warning letters and 156 prosecutions.
Early intervention is probably the most effective response to waste crime, and acting promptly to warnings from residents, councils and others. However, the sheer size of the crime and the area to be policed, especially across open countryside, makes it a nigh-on impossible task. Differentiating between where the crime is perpetrated, especially in relation to fly-tipping and the dumping of highly toxic waste, often building materials left by serial criminal offenders, I can see no logical argument for treating the crime differently depending on whether it is conducted on public or private land. Are the Government prepared to review this and equate the offences of and sanctions for waste crime, regardless of where it takes place, on either public or private land?
I am grateful to the City of London Corporation, which states in its briefing for today’s debate that the strategic implication is clear: without stronger alignment between police activity, local authority enforcement and the Environment Agency, organised waste crime will continue to flourish. In a Times article yesterday, it was reported that an elderly farmer in his 80s “simply cannot afford” the £40,000 bill to remove 200 tonnes of rubbish fly-tipped on his land, close to a busy main road. It is not as though farmers do not have enough to worry about at the moment without this additional expense.
There are many other examples of this; I put it to the Minister that, behind each one, there is very human distress and suffering. I hope that, in summing up the debate, the Minister will address these anomalies. I hope in particular that he will implement the very first recommendation of the report, for a root-and-branch review and more integrated working between the Environment Agency, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, policing and local authorities in order to address this scourge of the offence of waste crime, particularly in rural areas.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee of your Lordships’ House. I have to say that, until we started our inquiry, I had been unaware of the scale or the seriousness of waste crime. Now, thanks largely to the tenacity of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, as well as the growing interest of the press, both national and local, we are all too aware of Hoad’s Wood; Kidlington; Bickershaw, near Wigan; and, this week, Stockton in Norfolk and Knowsley on Merseyside.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg—I suppose I should say “the tip of the tip”. In their letter of 16 December to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, Alan Lovell and Philip Duffy of the Environment Agency said that, in 2024-25, 749 new illegal waste sites had been found, up from 427 the previous year. This is a huge nationwide problem. Not only are these sites illegal, they cost farmers huge sums to clean up, they present a serious fire risk, they pollute streams and rivers and blight the environment and they can, as in Wigan, cause serious health problems to those living nearby and blight their everyday life.
The Environment Agency is front and centre in responding to all this, and there are questions for it to answer. For example, why did it not act sooner at Hoads Wood? Where is the sense of urgency, given the scale of the problem and its environmental and human damage? Why can concrete bollards not be put in place much more quickly than they have been up to now? But this is not the responsibility of one agency; it is a bigger problem than that. Responsibility also lies with the Government, the police, HMRC and local authorities. Some of the action already taken is sensible, such as the establishment of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. It is absolutely right to bring the various actors together and to inject coherence into an otherwise anarchic scene. However—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, on this—the joint unit should surely get more of a grip than we have seen so far.
What else can be done? Our report lists a number of recommendations. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has mentioned some of them. I want to mention just three. First, the Government and local authorities should be doing all they can to encourage the use of legal landfill sites but, if anything, the trend is in the other direction. Fees are going up and appointments often have to be made. This is all an encouragement to criminal gangs. I hope that the Minister can say what more the Government are doing to favour legal tips.
Secondly, there needs to be stronger enforcement, more arrests and tougher penalties. Penalties need to fit the crime and be strong enough to deter the crime. That means larger fines and longer jail sentences. What more can the Government do to tip the balance in favour of the law and not the criminals? I hope that the Minister can tell us that.
Thirdly, we need to move into the 21st century. Mandatory digital waste tracking to replace the present cumbersome paper system must be right and would put more pressure on criminal groups. Why cannot drones be used more regularly to spot criminal waste sites when they are formed, rather than leaving it until much later? I look forward also to hearing the Minister’s views on that.
Much is being done. Much more can and must be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said in a letter to the Secretary of State that
“waste crime is a profitable and low risk business for”
an organised crime group. We have to change that, and we have to change it fast.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for bringing it, and all noble Lords who have spoken. We have had some interesting contributions that have ranged from careers advice to archaeology. I think everybody agrees that waste crime is out of control and that it is low risk and high reward. The Government’s own national waste crime survey suggests that one-fifth of all our waste ends up in the hands of criminals at one point or another. The costs are hard to quantify, as the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, has pointed out, but every year it costs the UK economy somewhere between £1 and £4 billion. The returns are great: up to £2,500 per lorry.
To answer the question of this debate, my personal view is that the systems for preventing and dealing with waste crime are fundamentally broken. It is the broken systems that are creating broken outcomes. I have no wish to criticise individuals, many of whom work extremely hard, but it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the way we currently organise the resources for the Environment Agency is not working and not properly fit for purpose.
The Minister responded to a question on this that I asked the other day by saying that it was a new problem. I beg to disagree. My view is that it is a long-standing problem that has been largely hidden away from the public’s view and public consciousness. The systems themselves have, in effect, operated to avoid the true scale of the problem. It has been a fear of finding out that has predominated; a fear of the cost involved in recognising the true scale of the problem.
I first became involved in this with the Hoad’s Wood campaign. I asked an Oral Question on it—I spoke to the then Minister in private first—which led to a ministerial direction. After that, I foolishly promised that I would try to change the systems. I am very pleased that the Environment and Climate Change Committee, of which I am a member, did its report. That report genuinely sought co-operation and solutions to these problems. We asked the Environment Agency how many illegal waste sites the size of Hoad’s Wood were known to it; the answer that came back was six. That report has been a turning point. We had over a thousand pieces of press generated before Christmas as a result and the more we look, the more we find. The more we understand, the greater the problem appears to be.
More sites have come to light since the publication of the House of Lords report than were known in their totality to the Environment Agency beforehand. That is both alarming and extraordinary in equal measure. The Government have chosen largely to ignore the report that we published, and while we welcome brokers, dealers, carriers and digital waste-tracking reforms, they were in the pipeline before our report. Beyond that, there have been no new measures in the response from the Government. I guess there are two options for us: either we can take a less optimistic view that the Government are on the track that they are on and things will not change; or we can take a more optimistic view. My hope is that the Government are listening. I know that Ministers are concerned about this and that they are formulating policies to take this forward.
For me, the starting point is that the body set up as a regulator is fundamentally not the right body for dealing with organised crime—this is an organised crime problem, and it needs to be dealt with as organised crime. The recent police White Paper offers the ideal vehicle and place for dealing with organised waste crime, should this Government choose to take that course of action. I hope they will do so, because that is where the answer lies.
The Government need to acknowledge the true scale and vast number of illegal sites, most of which are simply not cleared; they are devastating to our communities and the environment. I will refer the Minister to some specific points. First, I am pleased that Hoad’s Wood is being cleared up, but the Hoad’s Wood campaign is concerned that there is no plan—that it can see—to secure that site, once it has been cleared. We do not want to go back to where we started.
Secondly, I want the Treasury to stop charging the Environment Agency landfill tax on the sites it clears. That is just silliness.
Thirdly, the Government should allow the Environment Agency to use more of its income from permitted sites to deal with illegal waste problems. I am pleased that Kidlington is being cleared up too, but I do not want the Environment Agency to bankrupt itself and become unable to do all the other important stuff it needs to do because of the cost of clearing up these sites.
Fifthly, I want Ministers to acknowledge the true scale of the problem. I would like them to use remote monitoring to come up with a plan for clearing these historic sites and hypothecate landfill tax for a period for clearing up these sites that have been mentioned, such as Wigan.
Finally, I would like the Minister to give a clear commitment to us that the Government do indeed take this issue seriously and that they are planning to bring forward, as a matter of urgency, a concrete plan to deal with this as a national priority and to bring forward some real solutions so that we can all move forward.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for tabling this important Question for Short Debate and for her work as chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee.
Waste crime costs our economy approximately £1 billion every year, but, as the noble Lords, Lord Beamish and Lord Krebs, rightly highlighted, the figure is probably a lot more. But the costs are not only financial: it is a scourge of the countryside and is particularly painful for those communities who live in the area. My noble friend Lady McIntosh referred to the Times, which states today that fly-tippers have dumped a £40,000 bill on a farmer. The clean-up is often left unfairly to landowners and local authorities. Saturday morning community pickup sessions are now regrettably a regular feature of country life. Some 57% of landowners and farmers have been impacted, many of whom do not necessarily have the resources or training to address the consequences.
It is totally fair to ask the Minister: what support is available to victims of this relentless crime and what exactly are the Government planning to do to increase awareness? The Government have highlighted that understanding the true extent of criminal activity is inherently difficult. That said, it is estimated that only one in four waste crimes are being reported. Moreover, the reports available indicate that waste crime is on the rise. The Environment Agency found 749 new illegal waste sites in 2024-25, compared with 427 in the previous year—that is a substantial increase. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, rightly asked, how many actually are there? The real number is probably significantly more.
The Environment and Climate Change Committee’s inquiry found serious failings in the agency’s performance. Repeated reports of serious waste crime were not investigated. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, observed in her letter that it was,
“difficult to conclude that incompetence at the Environment Agency has not been a factor”.
The Government have pledged reforms, but we note that the committee felt deeply disappointed by their response. While reforms are evidently needed and welcome, can the Minister specify what reforms they are pursuing and give timelines for the delivery of those reforms? If this is a priority, this must be reflected in the legislative programme.
Enforcement needs reform. As was emphasised by the committee, the lack of effective deterrence means that waste crime remains profitable and low-risk for organised crime gangs. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, summarised it perfectly: this is a business. The fines are just operating costs, and these are criminal enterprises. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was right when he said that it is easy money. Criminal gangs talk about it like this: “Come along, it’s free money”. As the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, mentioned, 41 out of the 60 major organised crime groups are involved. This is simply a no-brainer for criminal gangs, so when will the Government take steps to ensure that the fines match the profits obtained and contribute to the clean-up costs, as per the entirely sensible suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Jay? His Majesty’s loyal Opposition have tabled amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that would put the onus of the clean-up back on the offenders of fly-tipping, which seems entirely proportionate.
The committee also recommended establishing a single point of contact for reporting waste crime. Victims should surely be able to report an incident once without navigating a maze of bodies with unclear responsibilities. Improving the Environment Agency is clearly vital, but we must remember that it is only one of 13 organisations in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime launched under the previous Government. My noble friend Lord Blencathra has previously proposed giving lead responsibility to the National Crime Agency. At the time, the relevant Minister said that all options will be considered, so I hope that today’s Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Katz, will understand that it is totally fair and reasonable to ask what assessment has been made since then. When can we have an answer to the entirely sensible proposal from my noble friend?
Finally, can the Minister clarify what responsibilities the new integrated water regulator will take on from the Environment Agency regarding waste crime? I have had time to touch on only a handful of the committee’s recommendations, but we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for her dedication to this issue and wish her well for the future relentless focus that will clearly be required to fix this issue once and for all.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to address this important question on what assessment His Majesty’s Government have made of the performance of the Environment Agency in addressing waste crime. In doing so, I am pleased to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and all members of her committee for the hard, diligent and challenging—but rightly so—work that they have done on this important issue.
Let us be without doubt, as we have all spoken with one voice this afternoon: waste crime blights our local communities. It damages the environment and, in the worst cases, it directly threatens our health. It also undermines legitimate businesses and deprives the public purse of tax income. Serious and organised crime in the waste sector is on the rise, and the Environment Agency is regularly alerted to new illegal waste sites.
The EA is a place-based organisation, tackling local problems through local area teams that operate in both urban and rural locations. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, expressed concern that rural areas were losing out. The way in which the Environment Agency operates ensures that it is a local and needs-based agency, rather than resource being hoarded in a particular geography at the top of the organisation. I hope that that is helpful regarding the question she asked.
This Government are committed to tackling waste crime and are helping the Environment Agency to build future capability. It has a wide range of powers, which it uses in its enforcement work against organised crime in waste and other environmental areas. Indeed, in the past couple of weeks, several arrests have been made in relation to the waste site near Kidlington, and waste sites have been shut down in Yorkshire and Minster in Kent. In Liverpool, an arrest was made and the Environment Agency seized a vehicle as part of a multi-agency operation.
In her opening contribution, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked a question comparing Kidlington and Bickershaw. First, the scale of the fire risk at the Kidlington site sets the case apart from other illegal waste dumps in England and provides an overriding public imperative. We are clear that it is not the Environment Agency’s normal responsibility to clear illegal waste sites, and it is not funded to do so. It has the power to clear waste only in exceptional circumstances such as these, if there is a significant risk to the environment.
On Bickershaw in Wigan, the illegal dumping there is absolutely disgraceful. I know how strongly the local community rightly feels about it. My colleague in the other place, Josh Simons MP, has been complaining and campaigning long and hard on this, and I pay tribute to his work with the local community on it. The Environment Agency is working with Wigan Council and the UK Health Security Agency to help the local partnership consider the implications of the council’s waste initial sampling results and to advise on potential permitted disposal sites.
The current risk of fire is assessed as low, but the Environment Agency is reassessing any pollution risk posed by the illegal waste in the light of an updated fire risk assessment to determine whether, in principle, the level of risk meets the threshold for the use of its discretionary powers, such as those it has already used in Kidlington. In short, without going into too much detail on this site, important though it is, I want to reassure your Lordships’ Committee that if the Environment Agency considers that a risk of pollution exists, it may use its powers to arrange actions to remove or reduce that risk. Additionally, partner agencies through the local resilience forum will need to consider the risk to surrounding infrastructure.
We want to ensure that the Environment Agency is making the best use of its extensive powers to prevent waste crime. As I said, the Environment Agency has no duty to clear illegally dumped waste, and it is not funded to do so. In response to the other question that was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, this is the case for both public and private land. The landlord is responsible for keeping their land secure and free of waste that should not be there, rather than letting dumped waste persist and grow into larger sites, which could in turn attract further dumping. It might be considered as equivalent to the broken windows paradigm that one sees in community policing.
However, while we must uphold the polluter pays principle and avoid creating perverse incentives for waste criminals, the Environment Agency will decide to clear illegally dumped waste where that waste presents an untenable risk to the public and the environment, as it has done in the case of Kidlington. We also encourage local authorities to investigate all incidents of fly-tipping, including those on private land, and make good use of those enforcement powers.
Furthermore, Defra regularly assesses the Environment Agency’s performance in discussion with the Environment Agency’s chair and chief executive. The aim is to establish a clear line of sight for Ministers through to front-line delivery, transparent performance data and honest conversations about progress and barriers to delivery.
The Environment Agency reports its performance every quarter through its published corporate scorecard. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked some questions on statistics. I contend that waste crime is estimated to cost the UK £1 billion a year, with an estimated 20% of waste, 34 million tonnes per year, handled illegally at some point through the supply chain. There are more than 500 active illegal waste sites known to the Environment Agency, and it is monitoring the 33 highest risk illegal waste sites according to specific risk criteria.
However, waste crime, as alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is deliberately hidden and therefore inherently difficult to measure, including the total costs to the environment, local communities and individuals. We know that the Environment Agency’s current corporate scorecard measure on illegal waste sites does not reflect the true nature or scale of waste crime and likely provides only a narrow view. So, we are working with the Environment Agency to develop better indicators and metrics.
In addition to helping the Environment Agency to improve assessment capabilities, Defra has already taken steps to ensure that it is equipped to carry out its functions effectively. Its total budget for 2025-26 has increased and includes £15.6 million for waste crime enforcement, a more than 50% rise from 2024-25, representing a £5.6 million increase. That demonstrates the Government’s commitment to tackling environmental waste crime.
This has enabled the agency to increase its front-line criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and other environmental crime teams by 43 full-time staff, helping to deliver successful major criminal investigations and to enforce new duties introduced this year, including the new packaging extended producer responsibility requirements. Since 2020, the JUWC has worked with over 130 partner organisations and led or attended over 300 multi-agency days of action, resulting in over 170 associated arrests. So, it is fair to argue that a multi-agency approach is being taken and led by the JUWC and the EA. Indeed, in the last year, 2024-25, the Joint Unit for Waste Crime organised 70 days of action, 13 arrests were made by partners as a result of those days of action and 47 disruptions were delivered. That is some more detail about the activity that the JUWC has been undertaking.
Alongside that work, the agency is looking at technology-based opportunities to track and measure waste crime, such as combining satellite imaging and machine learning to provide early-warning mechanisms. Indeed, to answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, drones are used by the agency when investigating and gathering evidence. This capability will improve the agency’s insights and business intelligence, which will inform its overall strategic approach and how it prioritises its resources. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked why there were so few prosecutions from the JUWC’s work. I should say that prosecutions take time to work through the legal and court system but numbers are in line with other law enforcement agencies when compared to the number of interventions. Prosecutions are, of course, only one part of the picture: prevention and disruption work are at least as important.
We are building on these developments to make further policy and regulatory reforms to close loopholes exploited by criminals: fundamentally reforming the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime; tightening waste permit exemptions; and introducing digital waste tracking, to answer the specific question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. She also asked about a single contact point for reporting waste crime. The GOV.UK site has a page entitled “Reporting fly tipping or illegal waste dumping”, which directs people either to the relevant local authority, via a postcode search, or indeed to Crimestoppers, which has a hotline, depending on the scale of what is being reported.
Waste criminals often work within the legitimate system, and most waste at the largest illegal sites today was originally consigned legally. The new digital waste-tracking system and reforms to waste-permitting exemptions and the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime will mean that criminals will have to work a lot harder to source the waste to dump in the first place. It will make it much harder for criminal businesses to undercut legitimate ones. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, talked about applying online. It is a good way to use some spare time during a debate on a Thursday afternoon, but it will be much harder to undertake a similar activity under this new system.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, referred to the case that was reported of the 80 year-old farmer. That is a very distressing case, where the cost of clearance was beyond the farmer. To help individual landowners blighted by waste crime, the Government will speak with insurers to determine the necessary market conditions for a viable waste crime insurance market to form as quickly as possible, which seems a fair approach to helping landowners.
I am tight on time but I will try to address a couple more questions from noble Lords. We talked already about reform of the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime, but I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. On Hoad’s Wood in Kent, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, but there is certainly work happening there.
To finish, the Government have committed to tackling waste crime, not only to prevent environmental harm but to ensure resources are being properly recycled or recovered and fed back into the economy. We are not resting on our laurels. We are working at pace to develop further reforms and make sure that we tackle this problem. With that, I thank all noble Lords who took part in the debate and the noble Baroness and her committee for its work, and I take the opportunity to wish everyone a very happy February Recess.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Dixon of Jericho
Royal Assent
Animal Welfare Strategy: Rural Communities
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch
To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they intend to give to the interests of rural communities in any forthcoming legislation on cruelty to animals arising from its Animal Welfare Strategy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, the animal welfare strategy sets out a comprehensive package of reforms which will improve the lives of millions of animals across England, at home, on farm, and in the wild. In developing any legislation, we will of course take into consideration the viewpoints of all those with an interest in or who are impacted by the proposals and consider the costs and the benefits to a range of stakeholders, including those in rural communities.
Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch (Lab)
My Lords, Hunter by name, but not by nature. I am from the countryside and remain so. I startled my community by giving up meat decades ago, having read an early, in-depth investigation into food production. Standards have been greatly raised since then, and I applaud the Government in taking these further steps. What plans do the Government have in these considerations to avoid being distracted from their priorities, and not repeating Sir Tony Blair’s admission, despite my best efforts, of being insensitive to countryside interests? What plans do they have to ensure swift consultation with the rural community on the economic impact on their livelihoods and what support can be provided in any transition?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We are obviously very aware of any potential impact of a ban on rural communities, including rural businesses. I can confirm that Defra will be starting a consultation which will look for views on how to deliver a ban—the ban is our manifesto commitment. That will enable people to give their opinion on any impacts, including on rural communities and businesses. We welcome all points of view, and we will consider them very carefully. Stakeholder engagement will, of course, be an important element of the consultation process and will ensure that everyone can give their view and present their evidence.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, has the Minister considered the future of foxhounds if trail hunting is to be banned? This a very real concern of those who live in the countryside.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am aware of the concerns around foxhounds. To reiterate, the consultation will look at all views and concerns. I urge people who have concerns around the future of foxhounds to take part in the consultation, so that point can be properly considered and discussed as we move forward on the manifesto commitment.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, our rural areas are defined by their communities, of which farmers are undoubtedly a very important part, both economically and socially. However, imported meat products, often produced at lower animal welfare standards, are threatening their ability to make a living. Will the Government therefore look at ensuring that imported meat products are clearly labelled so that consumers can make informed choices to support British farmers?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
On the issues the noble Earl raised, I point him to two parts of the animal welfare strategy. First, we reference labelling. It is something that we will be looking at, not just on the issue he talked about but more broadly. There is a section on labelling. Secondly, we have a section on international impacts around animal welfare, which include trade. In the strategy, we recognise that animal welfare is a global issue, and we will continue to work internationally to champion high standards of animal welfare. That includes looking at how we manage our trade, because we have said quite publicly that we will not allow poor animal welfare standards to undermine our own standards here that our farmers meet.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
Can the Minister confirm that the Government have neither plans nor intentions to ban hound trailing?
Lord Deben (Con)
Does the Minister accept that although we respect her position, the present Government are extremely unpopular in the countryside and that she is going to have to work extremely hard to make sure that rural people believe that this consultation is serious? So far, they do not, and she will have to work very hard indeed.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I do not think that the ban on trail hunting is the major concern of most rural communities. Most rural communities, including the one I live in, are more concerned about the fact that they may not have a GP, that may not be able to access a dentist, that their digital connectivity is poor and they cannot get a mobile signal, and that the economy is struggling—we know that rural productivity is less than urban productivity. There are many issues that impact rural communities. To reiterate, anyone who has an interest in or concerns around the ban should take part in the consultation.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, we would all like to see the minimising of pain and distress to animals prior to slaughter, yet currently a substantial number of animals are slaughtered without prior stunning due to a derogation within domestic legislation, even though, as I understand it from speaking to a large halal slaughter house in my diocese, such stunning is acceptable within Islam. Will His Majesty’s Government work actively with our Jewish and Muslim friends to understand their religious needs and support the development of acceptable stunning methods and improve their uptake within those communities?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate raises an important issue. I have previously met representatives from both Jewish and Muslim communities on religious slaughter. There is some acceptance of pre-stun slaughter for halal meat, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out. We are discussing that within the department. I will continue to do so, because animal welfare has to be at the forefront when we look at slaughter.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, the animal welfare strategy seeks to regulate British farming even further and suggests unilateral action on the use of pig crates and hen cages. Can we have a cast-iron guarantee from the Minister that the same welfare standards will be applied to all imported food, including bacon and eggs, so that our farmers are not unfairly disadvantaged? Also, if any hunt members have broken the law on hunting, prosecute them fully, but trail hunting has nothing to do with animal welfare and would penalise all legitimate hound trailing, which has been done in this country for over 200 years, including Cumbrian footpacks such as the Melbreak in the Minister’s old constituency and the famous Blencathra in mine.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I may have to disagree with the noble Lord around some of our opinions on hunting. However, on the issues that he raised about trade, which are really important, the UK’s trade strategy has set out that we will not lower food standards and that we will uphold our high animal welfare standards. All agri-food products have to comply with our existing import requirements in order to be placed on the UK market, which includes ensuring that imported meat products have been slaughtered to animal welfare standards equivalent to our domestic standards. We also recognise concerns around methods of production which are not permitted in the UK, and we will always look at whether overseas produce has an unfair advantage and any impacts that may have.
Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a farmer, president of the Countryside Alliance and long-standing member of the RSPCA. In my rural community and many others, if you have dead stock on your farm or a badly injured animal which needs to be put down, you ring the hunt kennels, which operate the national fallen stock scheme and, 24/7, they send a trained and efficient member of staff to end the animal’s suffering and remove the body. If the Government were to persist with their ill-advised commitment to ban lawful trail hunting, which is not about animal welfare but about dislike of people, what are their proposals to replace the system for relief of animal suffering? It is currently carried out by the hunts, and I think none of those who are pressing for the ban have volunteered to do it.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am very aware that fallen stock is managed in that way. I am so sorry, but I am going to sound really boring today. A consultation will be starting shortly where all these issues can be fed in. I am very serious about this, and I want to do it properly, so I want to hear all concerns from all quarters.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
It is definitely the turn of the Cross Benches. Can they please make their minds up on who is asking the question?
Lord Trees (CB)
Given its mention in the animal welfare strategy, what progress have His Majesty’s Government made towards introducing a close season for the brown hare in England?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
That is a really important question, because this is an incredibly important issue, and I am personally very committed to doing that. We are looking for the best and earliest legislative opportunity to bring in a close season for the brown hare, and I am keen that we get that done as soon as practically possible.
Security of Candidates, MPs and Elections
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to implement the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference on the security of candidates, MPs and elections.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
The Government thank the Speaker’s Conference for its recommendations. A response was provided last year, which we understand will be published after the Recess. I hope it goes without saying that the UK remains a strong and resilient democracy. The Government are determined to keep it that way and are acting with urgency to implement the measures addressing the conference’s recommendations. This includes working with the College of Policing on guidance for front-line officers and introducing legislation to restrict protests outside public officeholders’ homes.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the imminent publication of the representation of the people Bill and I trust that it is radical and will include recommendations, as my noble friend said, from the Speaker’s Conference. The Jo Cox Foundation, which I chair, called for the Bill to embed standards of conduct, make personal addresses private by default, address online harms, disseminate candidate safety resources and promote political, digital and media literacy. Can my noble friend assure me that those elements will be addressed in the Bill? Violence, abuse and intimidation threaten trust in politics and the functioning of our democracy. We are in desperate need of a political culture in which everyone can safely participate in respectful, robust debate in the spirit of Jo Cox’s message that we have more in common than that which divides us.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
My Lords, the murders of our colleagues Jo Cox and David Amess weigh very heavily on the minds of all in this House and in the other place, and even more heavily, if I may say so, in the minds and hearts of their families. I thank my noble friend and her colleagues for their tireless and admirable work at the Jo Cox Foundation. The representation of the people Bill is introduced today—so this is breaking news, as it were—and it includes measures which directly tackle the unacceptable issues of harassment and intimidation, ensuring that people are not put off from campaigning or standing for public office. I am sure that our noble friend Lady Taylor will want to talk extensively with my noble friend about it.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, may I raise a specific point in relation to Tower Hamlets, where the Metropolitan Police has provided cover at every polling station, at every election, since 2014? The returning officer in Tower Hamlets cannot get that guarantee that every polling station will be covered by police for the upcoming elections, because intimidation applies in such a broad range, and in this case, the police force has been provided to protect the people going to the polls.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
The secure delivery of local elections in May 2025, with all the support that the noble Lord refers to, was supported by the Defending Democracy Taskforce, which highlighted many strengths of our democracy. However, I understand and take the point that the noble Lord is making about the situation in Tower Hamlets. The Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit is now taking forward security planning for the elections in May 2026, and I am sure that it will bear in mind some of the comments that he and I have made.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, can we be assured that the police are now fully supportive of preventing intimidation? I do my politics in Bradford where there has been quite active intimidation of candidates. I recall a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in a previous election campaign precisely about the reluctance of the Bradford police to intervene. Have we now had absolute assurance that the police will regard this as one of their important functions during election campaigns?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
There are two important responses to that question. We are taking forward legislation to extend disqualification orders to protect electoral staff and ensure that those who abuse them can be disqualified from standing for or holding elected office, and we are empowering courts to hand out tougher sentences to people who abuse. As I have said, the Government have also introduced legislation to restrict protests outside the homes of public officeholders. So we are strengthening the law in this regard. With regard to the police, the concern that emerged from the Speaker’s Conference, which we will address in our response, is the consistency of responses between different police forces, and that will be a very important priority as this work unfolds.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, total security of candidates and MPs can never be achieved, no matter how many new laws the Government introduce. Most concerning is the recommendation, in the report of the Speaker’s Conference, that the police should investigate non-crime incidents towards MPs and candidates. We have been here before with non-crime hate incidents. We know what a terrible idea they were. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will not move forward with plans for the recording of non-crime incidents, no matter who they are directed towards?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
The important message that I have for your Lordships is that we too have a role in dealing with this problem. An important aspect of our role is to make sure that incidents which might seem trivial or short-lived at the time are properly reported. We should all be aware of our responsibilities. The police cannot form a proper picture of the extent or nature of the problem without that level of intelligence gathering. Therefore, I cannot entirely agree with the noble Lord. We will not exclude certain types of information being reported to the police; on the contrary, it is the duty of all of us to ensure that all incidents are reported to the police in the proper way.
Lord Walney (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that there is further to go to ensure that our democracy can be strong and resilient in the political leadership of the Government and others in showing where the line is between legitimate protest and illegitimate intimidation? The measures on protecting the homes of parliamentarians are welcome, but we have a situation where parliamentarians are sometimes having to wade through highly aggressive and intimidating so-called anti-Zionist protests outside, as are Jewish staff members, to get to work, and council chambers are regularly being hijacked by aggressive protesters. The Government must send a signal that this is completely unacceptable.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The right to peaceful protest is a vital part of our democracy. It is a long-standing tradition in the UK, of which we are justifiably proud, that people should be free to gather and express their views, provided that they do so within the law. Peaceful protest does not extend to unlawful behaviour. This includes actions that are violent or which cause harassment, alarm or distress to others. With regard to the noble Lord’s comments about antisemitism, we on these Benches and noble Lords across the House entirely denounce antisemitism and all its consequences. We believe that there is a leadership responsibility, not just for the Government but for all involved in politics, to conduct our discourse in a respectful and responsible way. Surely that is not beyond our rhetorical abilities.
Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister share my concern about the rising tide of abuse in our politics being detrimental to the broadest range of candidates putting themselves forward? Does he share my concern that women in particular are severely disadvantaged by this and are put off our politics? Will he join with me in calling for a comprehensive approach to the Speaker’s Conference which enables people of all aspects of our public life to stand for public office? Not to do so is an affront to our democracy and damages its accountability and validity.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
Of course I agree with that. The Electoral Commission has noted that some of these problems are experienced to a greater extent by women but also by candidates from Black and minority ethnic communities. We do have to be especially vigilant but also consistent regarding all these types of incidents. We are very committed to this and take it very seriously, but I do not want to give false hope. This is something that we will have to continue to work on. My noble friend is right to draw our attention to that.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the work that she does on this commission. This is also a reminder of those MPs who have been murdered: Airey Neave, who was murdered on the Parliamentary Estate by the IRA, which also murdered Ian Gow; and, more recently, my friends David Amess and Jo Cox. As Jo Cox reminded us all, more unites us than puts us against each other. With that thought in mind, does the Minister agree that it is incumbent on us to disagree agreeably and not to descend into personal attacks and slurs?
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I entirely agree. We have to continue to strive for a respectful discourse. I am all in favour of disagreement—it is one of my favourite pastimes; I think that is what got me here—but we have to conduct our business in a way that does respect not only to this House but to the whole political class. We cannot be responsible for a continued decline in the trust and the respect that the nation holds in us.
Post Office Capture and Horizon Scandals
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Sahota
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they will provide an update on the Post Office Capture and Horizon scandals.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade and HM Treasury (Lord Stockwood) (Lab)
My Lords, as of 31 January 2026, over £1.4 billion has been paid to more than 11,300 victims of the Horizon scandal. The Government are also making strong progress in implementing recommendations from volume 1 of the Horizon inquiry, strengthening the operation of the schemes and accelerating the delivery of redress. As of the same date, DBT had received 153 complete applications under the Capture redress scheme. Of these, 30 have been deemed eligible, with the remaining 123 undergoing eligibility assessment. Five individuals have received their full payment.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his Answer. My friend, Kuldip Gill, ran a post office in 1995 in my neighbourhood. He was accused by the Post Office of stealing £5,000. He protested but had to pay. A few months later, his contract was terminated by the Post Office. Without a job, and with financial pressure and shame in the community, he started to drink and became an alcoholic. Within a year, he died of a brain haemorrhage induced by alcohol. He was only 53.
When, 30 years later, his wife was in a care home, I asked her whether she had put in a claim for compensation. She said that she had been told that she was not entitled to any. I told her that the Capture system was as faulty as the previous one, and she put in a claim and last year received her compensation. How many more postmasters and their families have died or left the country and have not put in their claim, or are simply not aware of their rights? Do the Government have any plan or policy to find them so that they can put in their claims?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his question and am truly sorry to hear about the terrible ordeal faced by Mr Gill and his wife. We remain firmly committed to ensuring that those affected by the Capture and Horizon systems receive the redress they fully deserve. The Government and the Post Office have proactively contacted postmasters to confirm their eligibility and to encourage them to come forward.
On the Horizon convictions redress scheme, for example, DBT has written to 142 people who have had a conviction quashed but may not have yet applied to the scheme, encouraging them to apply. This has led to 29 new HCRS registrations. On Capture, I am happy to hear that redress has now at least reached the family referred to by my noble friend. The scheme has been designed precisely to ensure that others in similar circumstances are not missed.
The long time that has passed since the software was in use means that the full cohort of users is not known. That is why we continue strongly to encourage anyone who believes that they used Capture and experienced a shortfall to come forward. This includes family members applying on behalf of postmasters who have sadly passed away and cannot apply themselves.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, the Capture system was the predecessor of the Horizon system. The Government are paying compensation to all the Capture sub-postmasters—except those who have convictions. Given that the Post Office’s behaviour towards the Capture sub-postmasters was every bit as bad as that towards the Horizon sub-postmasters, and that we cannot expect Capture sub-postmasters to have retained documents for over 25 years to present to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, will the Minister acknowledge that for us to fail to overturn the Capture convictions perpetuates the most ghastly injustice?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot—and the noble Lord, Lord Beamish—for supporting the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board; it is very much appreciated and important work. The noble Lord will know that the legislation followed over 100 successful Horizon conviction appeals through the existing processes. However, as he mentions, no convictions related to Capture have been overturned to date. However, we must therefore allow the independent judiciary to consider safety of convictions through the established process, and we continue to support the work of the CCRC. It would be inappropriate for me to comment further, as that process needs to be independent and run its full course.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for that response, but noble Lords in yesterday’s Committee stage of the Victims and Courts Bill debated the urgent need to change the courts’ presumption that computer system evidence is always reliable. Everyone in that debate, including the Minister, agreed that this must be changed, not least following the Horizon scandal. Despite what the Minister said, will he and the Minister in yesterday’s Committee please work together to ensure that this change happens as soon as possible?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
I can confirm to the noble Baroness that the department will work to try to ensure that that comes to its logical conclusion.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, as the person who first exposed the Capture system, I welcome the fact that victims are now being paid. That was in spite, for example, of the Post Office, which, with all the publicity around Horizon, never publicly pointed out that the Capture system existed. There are 29 cases of individuals who were prosecuted. The Government’s stance has been to refer them to the CCRC, which I do not think is the appropriate way of doing it. Can the Minister tell me why, in the one case that has now been referred to the Court of Appeal, which is Patricia Owen’s case, the Post Office is going to defend against it? Given the fact that, when I first exposed it, I and the campaigners had more information about the system than the Post Office, I would like to understand on what grounds the Post Office is going to resist that case. Also, how much money—public money, we should remember, at the end of the day—will be spent defending the indefensible?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
Again, I thank the noble Lord for his work overall on the Horizon and Capture scandals. While, again, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on a specific case, I can say that the Post Office was the original prosecutor in the criminal case on this specific Capture conviction—not this department, obviously. Therefore, the Post Office has responsibility for responding, and for conducting the case and the appeal. Again, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the ongoing case.
Lord Magan of Castletown (Con)
My Lords, I ask the Minister whether Fujitsu has yet paid a single penny to the sufferers in this terrible saga. If it has not, why not? Secondly, has Fujitsu been awarded further government contracts since that time, and if so, why? This is a national scandal that has lasted far too long. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, and my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot are the two people who have really tried to find justice for these very unfortunate people who have suffered, as we heard in the introductory remarks.
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
I share and acknowledge the noble Lord’s passion for the subject. Accountability for Fujitsu will be rooted in evidence and due process. Wyn Williams’ inquiry is the proper mechanism for establishing what went wrong and who is responsible, and for the financial commitment. Fujitsu has acknowledged a moral responsibility to contribute to the costs of that redress, and Minister McDougall met with the European CEO in December last year and, in the recent Select Committee, the CEO confirmed the commitment to follow that moral responsibility with financial responsibility.
To the secondary question about government contracts, Fujitsu rightly said that it will not be applying for new government contracts unless the Government ask it to, where those services are necessary. In researching this question, I imagined this would come up: the Government have 68 live contracts with Fujitsu in some critical services, which include HMRC’s self-assessment tool and the Home Office’s border control systems. Walking away from these contracts instantly would do serious damage to important public services, so this is not a viable option. However, it has committed to the new software for the Post Office being completed in the middle of next year. If we were to stop that software service today, all postmasters would have to close. That is not pragmatic, unfortunately.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will already be aware that there is considerable concern in this House, on all sides, that there are still victims who have not received financial compensation. Beyond that, what specific non-financial support is being provided to those victims who have suffered significant mental health harm, and how are the Government ensuring that appropriate psychological and restorative support will remain available?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
The noble Lord reminds us all that, behind each of these numbers, there is an individual family that has suffered, as my noble friend so rightly highlighted today. The process that has been set out is careful to ensure that we are not retraumatising people going through the redress system. A new scheme called the family members redress scheme is currently in consultation with the Lost Chances group. We expect announcements shortly to ensure that the noble Lord’s question is fully answered.
Changing Weather Patterns and Floods
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the role of changing weather patterns in the occurrence of recent floods and flood warnings; and what steps they are taking to mitigate the impact of, and adapt to, heavy rainfall, including improved water storage and management.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, the latest national assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk was published in December 2024. This shows that climate-driven sea level rise and extreme rainfall will place a growing number of people at risk of flooding and coastal erosion. That is why the Government are investing at least £10.5 billion in England until 2036 to construct new flood schemes and repair existing defences, to protect communities from the devastating impacts of climate change.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her Answer, which clearly illustrates that the Government see the urgent nature of climate change mitigations. On changing weather patterns, which are characterised by persistent rain during the winter period and drought during the summer period, what will the Government do to encourage farms to store water on their land, perhaps incentivising it through the ELM scheme, which, if done right, could improve soil health and retention and promote food security?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We are committing the largest amount to ELM schemes in our country’s history. That is going to rise to £2 billion by 2028-29. Some of this funding will be used to invest in flood protection and to support farmers in tackling agricultural pollution. We want to focus our efforts on actions that have multiple benefits—for example, improving soil health, as my noble friend mentioned, so that soil can hold more water, which reduces flood risk, prevents pollutants entering watercourses from field run-off and improves crop health during drought. Natural flood management techniques provide multiple co-benefits. For example, near where I live, there has been activity around the River Cocker and Loweswater. There, the West Cumbria Rivers Trust and its partners have been involving local farmers to re-naturalise the river, create wetlands, and implement other measures that provide flood protection alongside improving water quality and enhancing the environment. I have seen with my own eyes, in my own community, how this can help.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, it is not just the question of flooding. The increased rainfall will lead to increased run-offs and will put increased pressure on combined sewage systems, which will lead to excess pollution being poured into our seas and rivers, which is already at an unacceptably high level. This is a problem that is in-built to our infrastructure. What are the Government’s plans to address it in the long term?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
It is important that we invest through the water companies in improved infrastructure. One problem in this area is that so much of our infrastructure is old and has not been updated, which is why we have so many issues with our sewerage system and run-off into our watercourses. The Government are committed to improving investment in that infrastructure in order to tackle some of the issues that the noble and gallant Lord rightly raises.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that there is an issue with storing water on farmland as it breaches the de minimis rule of the Reservoirs Act 1975. When does she plan to revisit that Act? Will she learn from Pickering’s Slowing the Flow and the work in Hull to use sustainable drains to store the water at source and save it for use in times of drought?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises some important issues. I am sure that, in referring to Hull, she is aware that the Minister for Water is a Hull MP and so is very aware of these issues. We are currently looking at our reservoir policy, because we need to consider how best to make use of the water that we have, future water storage needs and so on.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, we have 89 flood warnings and 150 flood alerts in place today, and we extend our sympathies to all those impacted. The five wettest winters have all been since 1990. For every one-degree rise in temperature, the air can hold 7% more moisture. Climate change is a key driver of warmer, wetter winters. Is the key solution to this not an urgent return to the cross-party consensus on climate change and urgent action on adaptation, so that we can adequately address the climate emergency together?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As someone who spent four hours baling to try to stop her house being flooded last November, I am completely in support of much of what the noble Earl is talking about. We have to take climate change seriously. We know, as I mentioned in the Answer to the first Question, that the report has indicated clearly that these issues are only going to increase. We in the department are working with other departments—this is not just a Defra issue—on how we can better tackle climate change so that future generations are safe.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
I have two questions. One is about new-build housing. As I understand it from the Planning Act, we have not enforced that new-build housing—especially that being built on flood plains, which is happening—must have flood defences. Responsibility for this is being handed back to the homeowner, and it is expensive: look it up online and you will see it is between £3,000 and £20,000.
Secondly, I know of many people who are finding insurance either hard to get or increasingly expensive because they are living in homes that are flooded almost annually. Are the Government dealing with this? Are they proposing anything like what happened in California, where the state more or less had to take over the insurance system in areas that regularly get burned?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
First, regarding development on flood plains, MHCLG is consulting on the new National Planning Policy Framework, which will introduce a dedicated chapter on planning for flood risk and coastal change to help ensure that local plans are informed by the latest evidence and that planning decisions support long-term climate adaptation and coastal management goals. That is part of those planning reforms.
Regarding flooding, as I mentioned, I have a house that is on a river. We have to use the Flood Re scheme, as other people do with insurance. That really is the most effective way to ensure that you can get affordable insurance if you live in a house that is designated to be at risk of flooding.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
For the first time ever in this House, I think, I find myself in complete agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. Agricultural land covers 70% of the UK’s land area, meaning that the countryside is where most of our national capacity for holding water rests. With heavier rainfall becoming more frequent, small-scale on-farm reservoirs, attenuation ponds, leaky dams and other natural flood-management measures can slow the flow, reduce downstream flooding and improve resilience. As has been said many times, farmers are willing to do that work, but they need clear incentives and a stable funding framework. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, I too love a good argument, but on this occasion I am certain that the Minister and I will be in complete agreement that the Government will give farmers a key role to support on-farm water storage and flood management infrastructure.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
In my response earlier to my noble friend I talked about ELMS, the environmental land management scheme, and I will provide a bit more detail about that. The Countryside Stewardship higher-tier scheme provides a number of ongoing actions to help create water storage and prevent flooding, including actions on arable land and grassland to mitigate flooding and create flood-plain storage. Capital grants are available to support natural flood management, which can improve soil health, as I mentioned previously. Together, the Countryside Stewardship higher-tier scheme, the sustainable farming incentive and the ELMS capital grant schemes provide support to help plan, plant and manage agroforestry systems, wood pasture and so on, which also helps to hold water.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, given that we should hold the water companies to account for the problems they cause, is it not time that we froze pay and dividends to water companies until they fix the infrastructure that they created, ending up with the problem that we have now?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am sure my noble friend is aware that the Government are keen to stop any inappropriate payments to senior members of water companies where they have been seen to pollute indiscriminately.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, Flood Re is a temporary system that will run out in 2039 and is aimed only at domestic dwellings, which is a great disadvantage to owners of microbusinesses and small businesses in affected areas. It would be hugely helpful if Flood Re could be extended to those things. Could the Minister tell us what the prospects are for that?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Earl is right. Flood Re has been very successful regarding residential properties but there has always been an issue around the fact that it does not extend to businesses or to multiple-occupancy dwellings over a certain number. I have in the past spent some time working with insurance representatives on what can be done to better support businesses. It would be complex to extend Flood Re to businesses, but that does not mean there is not a problem. As someone who lives in Cockermouth, where we regularly have problems like this, I am aware that we need to do more to consider how best to support businesses through flooding. I do not think Flood Re is the answer, but we need to explore what else is out there.
Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority Order 2026
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
That the draft Orders laid before the House on 18 December 2025 be approved.
Relevant document: 47th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 10 February.
Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Foster of Bath
That this House takes note of the Report from the Justice and Home Affairs Committee Better prisons: less crime (1st Report, HL Paper 153).
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, as the chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, it is a pleasure to lead this debate. I look forward to the five maiden speeches from new Members; I welcome them all. I am delighted that they have chosen the committee’s report on prisons, Better Prisons: Less Crime, for their first outings.
I thank all members of the committee for their contributions to the report, and I am pleased to see so many of them here. We were splendidly supported by our specialist adviser, Alex South, a former prison officer and author, and by our office team: clerk David Shiels, policy analysts Rhouda Elalfy and Olek Hola-Peryer, media officer Aneela Mahmood, and operations officer Amanda McGrath.
During our inquiry we visited two prisons, Belmarsh and Isis. I pay tribute to the work of the dedicated prison staff and those in the third sector who work in incredibly difficult circumstances doing difficult, life-changing work. I am delighted that the Government plan to act on our recommendation for a Prison Service medal for exceptional service. I am grateful to all who contributed evidence, especially the many prisoners who sent us handwritten letters sharing their invaluable experiences and insights.
Sadly, most witnesses painted a depressing picture: the prison system is
“operating either in or at the verge of crisis most of the time”,
it is “disheartening and saddening”, and worrying to the extreme—all flavour of what we heard during the inquiry. I know that the Minister is working tirelessly to improve the state of our prisons, and I applaud him for it, but six months on from the publication of our report, the situation facing prisoners and prison staff remains grim. Most worrying is the very high level of reoffending by those who leave prison—40% of ex-prisoners reoffend within a year; for those in prison for less than a year, it is over 65%. Shockingly, in the year to June 2025, a staggering 40,000 former prisoners were recalled to prison—a 32% rise on the previous year.
We concluded that the purpose of prison should be much clearer and recommended that the Minister’s own words should be used—that is, that the purpose of prison should be
“to punish people, to protect the public and to reduce reoffending”.
But at present our prisons are failing to reduce reoffending and so failing to protect the public. We argued, therefore, that the punishment for a prisoner is the loss of liberty and that the main focus of the work in prisons should be to reduce reoffending through what is sometimes called rehabilitation or purposeful activity, of which currently there is far too little.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons uses purposeful activity as one of its four healthy establishment tests, yet it continues to be the worst performing metric. The chief inspector found that almost three-quarters of prisons inspected were poor or not sufficiently good at providing purposeful activity. Some of our other findings gave pointers as to why that is. In addition to overcrowding and lack of clarity about the purpose of prisons, our report found limited autonomy for prison governors, who were stifled by bureaucracy; a wholly inadequate staff recruitment and vetting procedure, and subsequent inadequate prisoner officer assessment and training arrangements; a huge backlog of much-needed repair and renovation; and a sense of complacency within the MoJ and HMPPS, and inadequate accountability arrangements.
No wonder there is little focus on purposeful activity. After all, measures such as education and skills training, or measures to help prisoners with their mental health, or with drug, alcohol or gambling addictions, are hard to provide in overcrowded, understaffed, dilapidated and underresourced prisons where governors have inadequate freedom to govern. Too often, prisoners can spend up to 23 hours a day in cramped cells, with little to help them lead constructive, crime-free lives when they leave. It is these conditions which also lead to boredom, self-harm, frustration and increased violence in our prisons. All this costs the taxpayer £54,000 per year per prisoner, with seemingly little benefit.
We considered each of the barriers and made recommendations to reduce them. On overcrowding, we largely welcome the Gauke review and the measures that flowed into the Sentencing Act from it. However, some measures will place increased strain on an already overstretched Probation Service, and we remain sceptical about whether the planned £700 million over four years for the Probation Service will be sufficient. Last week’s PAC report suggests that it agrees. It said the service was under “significant strain”, seriously impeding its ability to protect the public and reduce reoffending.
Nevertheless, we especially welcome plans to introduce community sentences instead of most prison sentences of under 12 months. We made just this proposal in one of our earlier reports, where we pointed out that well-run, probation-led community sentences have lower levels of reoffending and cost significantly less. Under the structure of HMPPS, the Prison Service and the Probation Service are linked. If, with increased resources and staffing, the Probation Service can successfully keep more people out of prison, the Prison Service can then more easily improve purposeful activity for those still sent to prison.
But the Sentencing Act measures alone are insufficient. It is estimated that, over time, they will reduce the prison population demand by 7,500, and the new prison building programme will deliver 14,000 new places by 2031. But despite all that, it is still estimated that, by 2029, the prison population will have increased by 2,000. That is why some of our other recommendations are so important and why the committee was so disappointed by the Government’s rather complacent response.
The Government accepted or partially accepted 34 of our 35 recommendations. That might seem like a job well done but, alas, that is far from the truth. The Government claim that many of the recommendations are already work in progress. Yet, in the majority of these cases, we fail to see either the work or the progress. For example, the Government accepted our recommendation to implement women’s leadership groups and support for female staff but then bizarrely, implying nothing further was actually needed, went on to say:
“HMPPS have reviewed our policies and are content that they are sufficient to address the needs of women”.
Our recommendations regarding prison governors also illustrate the point. Just as a good head teacher, with the right support, can transform a school, so too can a prison governor, with the right support, transform a prison. But prison governors need the freedom to act, so we called for increased governor autonomy so that those running prisons, who best understand the needs of their staff, prisoners and community, can implement desperately needed changes. In this case, the work in progress was a report on previous efforts that had not gone anywhere near what the committee or many governors were calling for. To ensure that the governor’s vision can be clearly communicated to staff, we argued for measures that would enable greater visibility of governors around the prison. The Government agreed, but offered nothing concrete. Surely the move to build mega-prisons, such as the 1,700 place HMP Welland Oaks, will serve only to exacerbate the problem.
I hope the Minister, when he winds up, will assure us that the committee’s pessimism is misplaced. But our pessimism is not just that of a discontented suitor who has been rejected; others share it. In the other place, the Justice Committee, referencing the Government’s response to our report, noted:
“It is promising to hear that the Government recognises the value of Governor autonomy, but it is unclear what specific action it will be taking to improve it”.
Benjamin Franklin once said:
“Well done is better than well said”.
When he winds up, can the Minister say what actions in relation to governor autonomy we can look out for?
The responses to other recommendations have been equally disappointing. Clearly, having sufficient well-trained, motivated and supportive staff working in our prisons is vital. But with the prison population rising, it is extremely concerning—but, frankly, not surprising—that so many prison officers are leaving, some after less than a year in service, and that there has been a significant fall in the number of people joining. For example, in the past year there has been a loss of 1,000 band 3 to band 5 prison officers—the ones walking the wings and interacting with prisoners every day. In short, there are more prisoners but fewer staff, and the remaining staff are often disillusioned and demoralised, as evidenced by the very high levels of absence through sickness. An average of two and a half weeks is lost in sickness—often mental health issues—per officer each year. That is simply unsustainable.
The MoJ has at least now resurrected an earlier recruitment campaign that promotes a career in the Prison Service. It says:
“An extraordinary job. Done by someone like you”.
The reality, however, is that a career in the Prison Service is not for everyone, and the recruitment process should reflect that. After all, our report was clear that the current role of prison officers is defined by firefighting and crisis management—asking them to do more with less. No wonder, then, that the number of prisoners released in error has sky-rocketed by 128% this year, from 115 to 262. I hope the Minister will tell us what progress is being made to introduce a digital solution to the problem.
More significantly, we call for a drastic overhaul of officer recruitment and vetting. We were horrified to discover that there are no face-to-face interviews. It is all done online. Very few of those being interviewed had ever been inside a prison, and prison leaders have almost no say about who works in their prison. Despite the high drop-out rate, and all the other evidence pointing to its failings, we were nevertheless told by HMPPS that the process is “robust”. Some noble Lords may have seen reports of a 17 year-old child who, despite being underage, got through the recruitment and vetting procedures, and then was given the task of looking after murderers and terrorists in HMP Erlestoke. That is hardly evidence of a robust system. Does the Minister think that it is robust, and can he tell us what is being done to ensure that staff are properly vetted, that they are aware of the unique challenges of life on the wings and are ready to work?
We also made recommendations about training and support for prison officers. It surely cannot be right, for example, that almost all formal assessment of prison officers’ work has been abandoned. Again, the Government response was muted, and that is a polite way of putting it. Can the Minister be more positive and tell us what changes in training and support are being planned?
One final concern is on the response to our several recommendations about activities to reduce reoffending. Given the Minister’s previous work in this area, there was an enthusiastic response in words but, unfortunately, actions contradicted them. No sooner was the ink dry on the Government’s response than we started to hear about cutbacks in the education provision in many prisons; this provision has been shown to significantly help to reduce reoffending.
Writing about the new prison education contracts in October last year, the chief inspector reported that he had been told that—due to inflationary increases, and some of the funds being used for a new IT system—there would be effective average cuts of 25%. In fact, some prison leaders had told him that cuts in their prison had reached 60%. We now know that around 300 prison education staff have been made redundant. It is one thing to ignore a committee’s recommendation, but it seems perverse that the Government are ignoring their own research; this research shows how important education is to reducing reoffending, and yet they are ploughing ahead with cuts to it. This is not the only failing in providing appropriate purposeful activities: support for inmates with mental health or addiction problems is woeful, and skills training is patchy, doing little to prepare inmates for employment outside. It is prisoners and the public who will suffer the consequences. We need more purposeful activity, not less, and I hope that the Minister can give us some good news about the future situation. We have waited far too long for it.
Since its founding in 1982, the inspectorate has been highly critical of the lack of purposeful activity in prison. In the first ever inspector’s report the chief inspector, Sir James Hennessy, wrote:
“We believe there are powerful reasons why the Prison Department must ensure that an inmate does not spend day after day in blank inactivity; he should be kept occupied for a normal working day at work, education, or some other constructive activity”.
It was not happening 43 years ago and, sadly, is still not happening. It shows why inspectors’ reports should be acted upon more often.
The evidence we receive points to a system beset with problems. Piecemeal and gradual change will not suffice to fix them. HMPPS needs to go further and faster, but the Government’s response to our report was disappointing. It illustrated our concern that the MoJ and HMPPS are far too complacent about what is happening in our prison estate. This is in marked contrast to the Minister. I welcome his zeal and practicality in addressing the many issues in our prisons. I just hope that, in time, his department starts to have the same approach and puts its energies into ensuring the wide-scale provision of measures to reduce reoffending. Only then can we truly have better prisons and less crime. I beg to move.
Baroness Bi (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I feel deeply honoured to be making my maiden speech today. I thank noble Lords on all sides of the House, as well as Black Rod and his team, the doorkeepers, police officers and all the other amazing staff for their warm welcome—not least in being so patient with me as I try to find my way around. As a former chair of the Barbican Centre Trust, I have been wondering whether we need yellow lines on the floor to help those of us who lack a sense of direction.
I thank my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon for her support, and my noble friend Lord McNicol and my noble and learned friend Lord Hermer, who introduced me to the House three weeks ago today, and I look forward to hearing the maiden speeches of my fellow new Peers.
I welcome the report of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, and the Government’s acceptance of many of its recommendations. The report reflects a compassionate approach to balancing the needs of the public, prisoners and staff. This is a welcome change to the rhetoric of ever-longer sentences and harsher conditions that has resulted in us having the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe. We seem to have forgotten Portia’s advice in “The Merchant of Venice” to season justice with mercy.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Timpson, the Minister, for meeting with me to discuss his department’s response to this important report. I would also like to thank him for his and his family’s long-standing leadership in providing employment to former prisoners, which is so important to reducing reoffending.
I decided to become a lawyer at the age of 14 because I cared passionately about human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law; I still do. However, when I finished university, I knew I could not support myself as a human rights lawyer without borrowing what seemed to me at the time to be an unimaginably large sum. I discovered that City law firms paid to train their lawyers, and so that is the route I took. I specialised in international debt capital markets and have had a wonderful career, working with clients and colleagues across the world. This has given me a valuable insight into the needs of investors and our position in an increasingly competitive world. I also advise on ethical finance, including green and social bonds, which are a growing segment of the market, and combine my focus on finance with making a difference. I note, in the context of this debate, that the world’s first social bond was issued to reduce reoffending rates at HMP Peterborough.
The last time I felt almost as proud as I do today was in 2018, when I was elected by my partners to be the chair of our law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, as the first woman and ethnic minority person to hold that role since the firm was established in 1794. My election reflected the huge changes that have taken place in the City since I arrived in 1990, when there were very few people who looked like me or who came from my background. It has been a privilege to be a part of the City for over 35 years. I am keen to ensure that it remains competitive and retains its position as the leading international financial centre, providing a home for talented people of all kinds. That requires us to be an outward-looking, confident society that abides by the rule of law.
I grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, and had assumed that we had moved past the racism and bigotry that I experienced then. In recent years I have seen, with increasing concern, the cynical manipulation of legitimate concerns about declining living standards, inadequate infrastructure and poorly funded public services into a targeting of minority groups who are blamed for wider societal failings.
Those of us who believe in equal rights, a globally connected world and the rules-based order have to accept that the argument is not won, and we must fight harder and better for our values. Yet there are so many things for us all to be proud of. I have the privilege of being vice-chair of the Disasters Emergency Committee, and I am humbled by the generosity and compassion of the British public, who in the last four years have donated over £700 million to its appeals—and that in the midst of a cost of living crisis.
Until very recently, I was chair of the Patchwork Foundation, which supports young people interested in civic society. Each year, as a new cohort of patchworkers arrive, I am deeply encouraged by the passion and principles of our young people who are determined to make the world a better place. I hope that by working with noble Lords across the House I can play my part in helping the patchworkers to achieve that better world and, along the way, satisfy the spirit of the 14 year-old who wanted to be a lawyer so that she could help people.
Lord Moraes (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Bi. We are being joined in this House by a gifted lawyer from the private sector with a strong sense of public service—someone who is knowledgeable and passionate about many of the difficult issues we will have to deal with on the Floor of this House, as noble Lords have just heard.
My noble friend mentioned that she is the chair of Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the five “Magic Circle” law firms, I think—anyway, it is definitely a firm I would not have got into—and the first UK woman to chair the global law firm since it was founded in 1794. After Cambridge University, she worked in a range of major law firms. She is internationally qualified and made a stellar career. Last year, the FT listed her as one of the 50 most influential lawyers in the UK. I am not going to embarrass her with any more plaudits, but I think noble Lords get the message.
When you follow a maiden speech, you look for things that you have in common. My noble friend and I have some things in common: we both came to this country as children, we are of a similar generation, and we both have law degrees. But my first thought was that my parents would have wished that I had her career following my law degree, rather than what I actually did with it; that was my abiding thought. Anyway, it worked out in the end.
My noble friend has combined her legal career with a strong public service ethic, including extensive pro bono work, vice-chairing the Disasters Emergency Committee and chairing the Patchwork Foundation, which helps with integration of vulnerable communities. These are just some examples that speak to her values and who she is. We all know that the real strength of this House is when Members who have hugely significant experience in their chosen fields use it here to really good, positive effect. I am sure that my noble friend is firmly in that category. I look forward to her contributions in the months and years ahead, and I am sure the whole House will welcome her to her place.
I turn briefly to two of the critical issues in the Select Committee report. I should mention that, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, I joined the committee only in January, so I was not involved with my colleagues in the interviews and the hard work last year that produced the report that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has so eloquently described. But, as a member of the committee, I felt that this is such an important issue that I should raise a couple of critical issues from the report.
I should mention that last year I whipped, very briefly, for the Minister and for the MoJ. I mention that only because it gave me an insight into the work that he, the department and the team are doing. I learned that this is an acutely difficult issue. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, really spelled that out. It is acute, but it also consists of much deeper systemic problems. The report and my colleagues who put it together have adequately explained that.
I want to pick up on two issues. The first is the issue of the prison population and capacity. The second is the critical issue of the number of prison officers, their level of experience, the persistent recruitment and retention challenges, and the consequent effect on the morale of the service. Some of the deeper issues are consequent on that, which our chair mentioned.
The report talks about how deeply rooted the recruitment, retention and experience problems are and how they peaked as this Government took office. That is where we get the idea of crisis. That crisis is still being dealt with, as I learned last year. On prison officer training, I know the Minister was well placed—it has been said—to take on this challenge. Before he took office he conducted a review of prison officer training. I would be interested to know how he feels that that review is informing the work of the department now. Are we making progress on many of the serious issues that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, raised? Obviously, this speaks to the experience of officers, the challenges identified in the report and what the MoJ is trying to do. I am genuinely interested to know where we are going on that.
On staffing generally, can the Minister update the House on the current status of and any improvements or recovery he has seen in the staffing levels and retention of officers? We are now in 2026, and we have had Royal Assent to the other aspect of dealing with this crisis, sentencing, and creating more capacity. How that is all working is really interesting to me and the committee. It may be a bit too soon to understand how the Sentencing Act and the Gauke review are now affecting the critical issue of capacity and prison places. But it would be interesting to hear what the Minister’s hopes are for that. In my opinion, the report was built around not just criticising what is happening but genuinely looking for solutions to this crisis and to the deeper systemic issues. The Gauke report was an honest way of trying to manage the prison population, but if it is too early to look at the effects of it, I would also be interested to know what other new routes the Minister feels might be taken to address some of the critical acute and systemic problems.
I will leave my remarks at that, knowing that many of my colleagues were involved last year in the hard work of putting the report together.
Lord Redwood (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am very conscious of the enormous privilege to be able to speak from these Benches in this magnificent room, in a Palace which represents the history and traditions of our great nation. I am suitably humbled, and I am very grateful to all the staff who have helped me already to acclimatise to the different mood and traditions of this noble House. I pay special tribute and give thanks to my two noble friends, one present in front of me today, who introduced me kindly as long ago as Tuesday.
I would like to reassure all assembled here that I speak in a debate on prisons not from any personal experience. I managed to survive 37 years in elected politics when allegations of law-breaking became all too common surrounding all too many MPs, but here I am, free of all such charges—but interested in the question of the quality, productivity and efficiency of public services. It was my good fortune to be offered a platform last night at the Centre for Policy Studies and to be given rather more time to expand on research I have been doing into why productivity has failed us so badly in the public services over the last 25 years under many different Governments. Why is quality not all it should be?
I welcome the report we are debating, and I welcome its aims and themes. “Better prisons”—who could possibly disagree with that? “Less crime”—that is exactly what we want. There are good comments in the report and there were good remarks from the noble Lord who introduced the committee’s findings.
We need to get back to the questions of what the Prison Service is for and how Ministers and the executive leaders of that service can do a better job in future. The first vital task is to ensure that those who have committed crimes of violence, and who could go on to damage individuals and societies further, are locked away to protect the rest of us. We, the law-abiding public, are the prime customers of the Prison Service, and we expect that manifestation—protection from those who would harm us—to be top of its priorities. Under the recent Government, and under the current Government, there have been too many cases of the Prison Service even letting out those who could harm us well before time and due date. Hitting the target of not letting out people we should not be letting out must surely be an urgent priority for Ministers to address.
The second important thing is to create safe spaces throughout those prisons, both to make them a bit more of a pleasant working environment for the security of the staff and for all those many prisoners who can be persuaded to return to a legal life, get a job and make a proper contribution to society when they have completed their term in prison. However, we read in prison reports of all too many cases where prisons are schools for scandal and colleges for crime; they are places where there are thriving entrepreneurial businesses, but for all the wrong things, such as supplying drugs. Surely it must be a priority to get all prisoners off drugs and to manage and provide treatment programmes for those who need drugs. They must not be fuelled and fed by illegitimate businesses within the prison framework.
The third thing that we want, which is touched on at rather greater length in the report, is for more people who leave prison to not want to go back there. They should be given support and help so that they are given training and find it easier to get a job; they should be able to get a bank account and re-establish themselves in normal life, because we do not want to see them in the Prison Service again.
On my wider work on public sector quality and productivity, I believe that quality and efficiency are two sides of the same coin. Get it right first time and you do not need a complaints department; get it right first time and you do not waste so much money. In my experiences as an executive councillor in my youth, as a Minister, as a participant in Cabinet and shadow Cabinet debates, and as a Back Bench MP who was very attentive to the public services in my area, I saw all too many examples of poor management, mistakes and error. Time does not permit me to go through my toolkit for mending quality and productivity issues. I look forward to further debates, because it is surely a vital, national, cross-party cause that we should manage better and achieve better results.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Redwood. I welcome him to your Lordships’ House and congratulate him on his excellent and, may I say, pithy maiden speech. My noble friend brings a wealth of in-depth and current political and business experience, coupled with a record of long and lasting commitment to his constituents and his country. He is renowned for his razor-sharp mind and ability to cut to the quick, together with standing up for his beliefs and being resolutely unafraid to speak to truth. His arrival with us is timely, particularly given his economic and business expertise and, as we have already heard, his in-depth knowledge of how we might achieve effective productivity. Because of our need to focus on economic growth, we look forward to his many contributions. I also look forward to listening to all the other maiden speeches today.
As a member of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, I support all that we stated in our report. Therefore, to avoid repeating the speech by our excellent chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, I decided to check our report against a speech I once made in your Lordships’ House on education and health in prisons as shadow Education Minister—and previously a shadow Home Office Minister and a barrister—to see if there had been any progress over 20 years. I will read some extracts from that speech:
“The primary roles of prisons in the criminal justice system are punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation and the protection of the public, but this must incorporate the development of learning and skills. … We must not underestimate the potential role that good prison education can provide to prevent reoffending. … I recently visited Brixton Prison and saw first-hand the excellent work being carried out by the governor and the head of learning and skills. There is real commitment among the staff I spoke to. They want to get results and see the system actually enhance progress, not hinder it”.
In addition, I stated:
“There is a high turnover of staff across the prison system. Governors are moved from prison to prison. This is massively disruptive. … Will the Government seriously consider developing a solid career structure allowing progression within the Prison Service and imposing a fixed minimum term for a prison governor to remain in each post? Heads of learning and skills must be integrated into the system. … They must be given the opportunity to plan for the long term, and not to meet the latest Whitehall target. … We must focus on outcomes rather than outputs if we are to see less reoffending. … The layers of bureaucracy that exist are seriously hindering innovative development in offender education”.
I will read a couple more relevant extracts:
“Even providing an individual with qualifications alone is not enough in the fight to reduce reoffending. This must be coupled with structured learning so that prisoners can develop their ability to communicate and interact. … Like governors, prisoners are moved from prison to prison. … There is a severe knock-on effect from this disruptive approach for the prisoners and the community. … Support and provision must be provided in the community. Forging links with local employers is difficult, but essential. … Offenders need to be equipped with skill trades … in which they can make an honest living with a salary which stands a chance of rivalling an income from drug crime”.
Finally,
“prison education … must start at the beginning. It must deal with the emotional and social problems facing offenders and then move on to qualifications and employable skills”.—[Official Report, 8/12/05; cols. 835-38.]
I made that speech in December 2005, eight years into a Labour Government. The most damning fact was exposed in a reply to a Written Question I had asked Her Majesty’s Government that same week on how many civil servants from the Home Office, broken down by grade, had visited prisons in the last eight years. The answer was none. Since then, the challenges have grown; there is violence and religious extremism in our prisons, with young men—I know some—told to convert to Islam for an easier life behind bars. And how can prison staff be recruited online? This is insanity writ large. In addition, I now have Written Answers confirming that some foreign criminals, who are to be deported at the end of their prison term, are being released from HMP Huntercombe in Oxfordshire because the Home Office paperwork does not keep up with the prisoner release system.
One of the most revealing evidence sessions during our inquiry was with two former Members of the other place: former Home Secretary Charles Clarke and former Justice Secretary Michael Gove, now my noble friend Lord Gove. I was struck—indeed, I think the whole committee was struck—by the degree to which they were in tune with their collective paths and desire to achieve lasting and demonstrably better outcomes for prisoners and prisons to reduce reoffending. As usual, both efforts were cut short by our frankly broken political system shuffling the cards.
Rereading the speech that I made all those years ago, or extracts from it, has been for me quite depressing. I often think of the noble and late Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. He would be making the same speech today, I fear, that he made time and again years and years ago. However, I look to the Minister, who I know will understand more than most that the key solutions are, in principle, quite simple—as he set out to teach shoe-repairing following a visit to HMP Thorn Cross in Warrington in 2002. The Minister must be, as I am, an optimist, as he is determined to find and implement solutions to give a real and practical lifeline to prisoners to reduce reoffending.
We recognise this in our committee, and as some of us have been Ministers, we are very aware of how incredibly difficult it is to get things done within our current Civil Service system. It is uphill in treacle, and the pressures are relentless and immense. What we need now is a Government who have the courage to change that system, root out obfuscation—
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
May I ask the noble Baroness to draw her remarks to a close?
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
They need to root out obfuscation and denial, fear of making decisions and preferment to work from home, and understand just how vital it is to make the Home Office and Ministry of Justice fit for purpose, so that better prisons really will lead to less crime.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for introducing this debate so admirably and highly commend his chairmanship of the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee, of which I was a member until the end of January. The noble Lord steered the Select Committee with deep commitment and skill, and it was a pleasure to work with him and other members of the Select Committee. I also want to thank the clerk of the committee, his team and the special advisers for this support. I congratulate those who have made the two maiden speeches, and I look forward to three more.
As we heard, our prisons are in a state of crisis, and there is urgent need for a strategic and focused reform of the system if we want to reduce re-offending and protect the public. The Government are attempting to address some of the most urgent problems. Some steps have been taken to reduce overcrowding in prisons, bolster the Probation Service and reform the sentencing regime, all of which I welcome. As I have said before, the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, as the Minister responsible for prisons, probation and reducing re-offending was an inspired choice, and it is reassuring to have a Minister who understands what is required—within, if I may say so, the constraints of the current system. I know that he is working tirelessly to make a difference.
Reducing the prison population is essential to ensure a well-functioning and effective service. Systemic change and culture shifts require time, but urgent and meaningful action should be taken now if we are to avert the crisis facing our prisons. These actions are not just about resources and capacity. Our report focused on practical changes that can be adopted now to make a difference, and highlighted the inadequacy of some of the changes, given the scale of the problem.
Regrettably, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Foster, the Government’s response to our report does not appear to grasp the essence of our recommendations. The response, if I may say so, is rather too official, as the noble Lord spelt out. The assurances given in the response sound hollow, given that education provision in prisons will be cut by 50%, and the impact of these cuts has been graphically described by the Prisoners’ Education Trust. Our report focused on leadership, governance, management and staffing of prisons. However, leadership qualities, style of leadership, governance arrangements, management, levels and types of staffing, and training and recruitment would become self-evident if there was clarity about the purpose of prison, and if that purpose was backed by policies and practices and effective communication aligned to that purpose.
The purpose of prisons is not clear. There is confusion within government and the HMPPS about the purpose of prisons, because policy and practice are fundamentally misaligned. Prison sentences, incarceration and loss of liberty are the punishment, and the purpose of prisons is to prepare those in custody for life after prison in order to reduce reoffending and help them integrate back into the community, and, ultimately, to protect the public. The first priority, therefore, in my view, is to have absolute clarity on and understanding of the purpose of prisons. If that is properly understood, it would clarify what qualities, skills and experience are needed for those running prisons, be they prison governors or prison officers. What level of autonomy should be given to prisons, and what should be the balance of responsibility between the centre and local prisons?
What relationship should there be between prison and probation services, and the third sector and employers? The relationship between the prison and probation services needs to be clarified and understood. Very poorly thought-through reforms over several years have demoralised the Probation Service and confused its identity. There is, in my view, a shared purpose between the prison and probation services, which is to reduce reoffending and prepare people for life outside the criminal justice system. This needs to be reinforced, and it is encouraging that the Minister is giving support to the Probation Service, although the investment to bring the service up to speed is not adequate.
Secondly, there is a need for clear and effective communication to explain to the public the purpose of prisons. Government has a duty to ensure that public discourse about crime and punishment is based on an understanding of the role of prisons, and an appreciation that those in custody eventually have to be integrated into the community.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
I know that I am running over time, but it is an advisory time limit and I will finish in two minutes.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
No, I am sorry, that will not be fair to all the other speakers. It is an advisory time limit, but I must invite the noble Baroness—
Baroness Prashar (CB)
I have another couple of minutes—this is advisory.
The Government have a duty to ensure that public discourse about crime and punishment is based on an understanding of the role of prisons and an appreciation that those in custody will eventually have to be integrated into the community. We cannot defend what is not understood.
My third point is about much more focused and tailored opportunities for purposeful activity—that is, educational opportunities for prisoners to learn skills which equip them to lead a purposeful life when released. I will make two points here. First, the Open University provides very good digital learning, which needs to be extended. The other point about education is having some joined-up thinking to make sure that employers actually work with prisons—
Lord Lemos (Lab)
I am sorry to get to my feet again, but I think the House is on my side and the noble Baroness should now conclude her remarks.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester
My Lords, as Anglican Bishop for prisons, I wholeheartedly welcome this debate and this excellent report. It is also a privilege to follow two excellent maiden speeches.
I submitted evidence to the committee, and I will continue to bang the drum for reform. Better prisons will play a vital role, but they are not the end point or the complete answer to reducing reoffending. I agree with the reframing of this from rehabilitation, as rehabilitation implies that people were once at an acceptable place in life to which they can be rehabilitated, whereas for the majority of people in prison, this was never true in the first place.
The Minister has my support for measures being taken in the Sentencing Act, but these are not enough. We need an honest realignment of how to address crime and punishment in a vision for a society in which all people can flourish—victims, ex-offenders, families and communities.
I congratulate the report, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster, in pushing for a definition of the purpose of prison, as others have said. In the recent debate on what was then the Sentencing Bill, I was heartened by the breadth of support for my amendment on the purpose of prisons. This emerged from some work with a number of people across the criminal justice sector, as part of a round table which I have been convening in Westminster. We submitted our work to the Gauke review. I regret the Government’s reluctance to identify this as a crucial step. If we truly want clarity across HMPPS, the wider criminal justice system and, indeed, the public about exactly what it is we are seeking to do and be, we need this legislative definition of the purpose of imprisonment. Would the Minister agree to meet with me to discuss introducing such a definition?
In the past year, I have taken time to listen to young people across Gloucestershire, both through an online survey and at in-person events. It is important to include the voices of young people in policy-making. Most students thought that the most important use for prisons was to keep the public safe. The next most popular answer was that they are to rehabilitate offenders. Fewer students thought that prison’s most important use was to punish. Instead of building prisons or making sentences longer, young people thought that reducing crime required addressing some of the upstream issues that lead to that repeat reoffending, not least tackling drug and alcohol addiction. They also spoke repeatedly about the need for employment opportunities.
On a slightly different note, the committee’s report articulates well the challenges faced by prison governors in recruiting and developing staff. As I noted in my submission to the inquiry, based on my own visits to prisons,
“Whilst good governors are invaluable, culture cannot be created by one person alone and relies on the buy in to a set of values that are understood, shared, and lived by all the prison staff”.
I continue to be astounded that prison governors are unable to appoint their own staff. This is out of sync with most of the public sector. Absurdly, the first time governors meet newly recruited staff is on the day they start work. It is not a surprise then that governors express frustration to me, not least with the protracted HR processes to dismiss staff who do not meet their expectations and who would not have been recruited by them in the first place.
Much more still needs to be done to invest in staff and to value the prison sector, both in training and development, as we have heard. The public are shocked when they discover that training for prison staff takes a matter of weeks. I might also add that, in most of our prisons, chaplaincies are doing an outstanding job. Good chaplaincy teams feed into a good culture. They could be used much more to develop staff, not least in that relationship which is at the heart of a good culture system.
I will make a brief point about the recent policing White Paper which indicated that a crime prevention unit would be established in the Home Office. Shockingly, in 103 pages, the White Paper does not mention prison once. Where is the joined-up thinking? Can the Minister reassure the House that this new crime prevention unit will look at the place of prison?
This leads me finally back to culture. Good leadership within a prison builds culture and hope. If we want safer communities, we must create safer, more humane prisons. The culture inside the prison will translate to the culture outside the prison.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester. I commend the work of the chaplaincy service in prisons. I also welcome this debate, inspired as it is by the report of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Timpson, must have been feeling a little battered about two-thirds of the way through the speech by my noble friend Lord Foster. He probably had a note from his office saying that my noble friend is a Liberal Democrat and is sympathetic to his aims. This is what makes my noble friend such a formidable politician: he does not pull his punches, but he does not mean any harm.
Lord McNally (LD)
That came out wrong. When he referred to the Government’s response to the White Paper, he also reminded me of my old friend, Fred Peart. Fred was Leader of the House a long time ago. He had an absolutely fail-safe way of answering questions, however hostile. When there was a request for action, he would stand up, repeat it and then say, “I have to tell the noble Lord that it will not be next week”. I thought that the Government’s response was, as my noble friend Lord Foster delicately implied, a “not next week” reply. There are so many times when they adopt the suggestion but do not make any practical advance. This is one of the problems.
When the Government were elected some 18 months ago, one of the most welcome appointments was that of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, as Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending. I served at the Ministry of Justice from 2010 to 2013 as Minister of State under the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and from 2014 to 2017 as chair of the Youth Justice Board. My delight at the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, was because, during those seven years as a Minister and then as YJB chair, I had worked closely with the noble Lord, his brother and their late father in the pioneering work that the Timpson family has done in helping and assisting the rehabilitation of offenders.
I was further encouraged by the fact that the noble Lord would be joined in the battle for prison reform by my successor as YJB chair, Charlie Taylor. Since 2020, he has been His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons. My only fear is that the sheer scale and multifaceted nature of the crisis in our prisons would break their spirits because of the magnitude of the task faced.
I will raise a couple of points on which the Minister may want to comment. I am genuinely worried about the retreat on education. I know the budgetary problems that are faced and I commend the work done by David Gauke on the sentencing review. But, as has been said by a number of speakers, the education of prisoners is one of the key ways to rehabilitation. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, raised the problem of drugs. The general public just do not understand why drugs should be so effectively and proficiently available in our prisons. The man in the street wants to know how they got in there and how this is such a factor in our prisons.
I see that I shall get a commending smile from the Whip by sitting down. Good luck.
Lord Babudu (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am grateful to be able to speak in this important debate, which goes to the heart of who we are as a society. As it is my first time addressing your Lordships’ House, let me start by thanking the wonderful staff throughout this place: the doorkeepers, the caterers, the cleaners and the security staff. My mother worked as a cleaner and my dad as a security guard, so there is a special magic for me every time I get to greet anybody in this House doing such work—they are the unsung heroes of our story.
I thank my supporters, my noble friends Lady Lawrence of Clarendon and Lord Boateng, two giants of Black British history who have inspired me from my childhood through to this very day. I also thank Black Rod, Garter, the Clerk of the Parliaments and everybody else who, among all the demands on them, has so dutifully learned to pronounce the surname Babudu. Those efforts make me feel incredibly welcome.
“But where is Babudu from?”, I hear noble Lords ask. From Ghana, where my parents were born and raised, and where they left in search of a better life for their as yet unborn children. They came to Peckham, via Elephant and Castle. I was born here, and for some 40 fine years we lived under the watch of the force of nature that is the noble Baroness, Lady Harman, who was until recently our Member of Parliament. Peckham, my little corner of south London, is a magical place. I grew up there, my wife grew up there, we are raising our five children in the area, and I had the honour of representing Rye Lane in Peckham as a local councillor.
However, as magic as Peckham is, it is not always the easiest on its residents. Growing up in Peckham, I saw how normal it was for children to carry knives. I was 11 the first time somebody pulled a weapon on me. I was 14 when I first lost a friend to knife crime. Were it not for the warm embrace that my parents held over me and my siblings’ lives, I am under no illusion that I could have been the subject of, rather than taking part in, this debate on our prisons.
We are living in history. Democracy is under strain, society is fracturing and technology is racing forward. In such times, I am especially glad to find myself in your Lordships’ House, where working with each other to find common cause is seen as a badge of honour, not a lapse in party discipline.
While I am younger than many of your Lordships—something my children simply do not believe—I bring some understanding, I hope, of issues relevant to this place. I have spent most of the last two decades helping charities and funders better use evidence, and working with young people to help get their voices heard by decision-makers. Time after time, young people show an incredible ability to bring unique and valuable perspectives. One initiative that I am especially proud to have been a part of is Peer Action Collective, which has so far seen nearly 300 young people conduct research and social action involving over 12,000 young people across England and Wales, changing how communities understand the role of violence in young people’s lives and how to tackle it. I hope to continue to use my voice to amplify young people’s views.
I also bring some wider experience: I started off as a corporate solicitor, I have led and grown social enterprises, I have been a local councillor and I have led successful initiatives on issues as diverse as tackling school exclusions and getting finance into start-ups, particularly those led by women and people from minoritised backgrounds. The guiding purpose which has steered me through all those roles and to this place will guide me in it. That purpose is to help bring about a healthier society; one where, whatever your background, your race, your sex or your socioeconomic status, you have a genuine opportunity of living in good health. I am currently executive director of Impact on Urban Health, part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation. Whether there, here, or elsewhere, I will always spend my time championing solutions that impact the true drivers of good health: where you live, where you work, the air you breathe and the food that you eat.
We know a lot about how we can turn back the tides of ill health that are rising all around us. With that purpose in mind, this debate is a perfect opportunity to say that health will be advanced by appropriately investing in people, especially those who are furthest from good health. That does not mean indefinitely large and growing prisons or welfare bills. It means giving people an opportunity, an honest chance to find their feet, when they are trying to overcome challenges that have been part of their lives for a long time.
In preparing for this debate, I spoke to a friend who had two spells in prison before dedicating himself to ensuring that young people do not make the same mistakes he did. He shared his worry that prisons, as they stand, cement people’s identity as a criminal, and do not prepare them for the outside world. I believe that is a big part of why we have a persistent reoffending crisis. We also face a health crisis in our prisons. The Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Chris Whitty, said late last year:
“On average, people in prison and on probation start from poorer physical and mental health than the general population, and the prison environment can exacerbate this”.
Prisons should be places that people leave healthier, more ready for work, less likely to reoffend and more able to contribute to society.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend and to congratulate him on his excellent speech. He certainly has a lot of experience. When he speaks to us in the future, it will be not from the theory of what it is all about but from practical experience of the day-to-day life that he has led. He is so well qualified to speak in this debate and, ideally, to one day become chair of the same committee, and more besides. I am genuinely impressed by the things that he has said. His children are amazed that he is one of the youngest here—I was one of the youngest here, but that was a long time ago. What I will says is: what took him so long to get here? He should have been here long ago. He is going to make a great contribution to this House and our work. He has made a great maiden speech and I wish him well in his future endeavours—we are going to be friends for a long time.
I am delighted to be a member of this committee and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on leading us so ably through many interesting projects, including this one on prisons. I am convinced that my noble friend the Prisons Minister is committed to getting action to sort out the problems of the Prison Service. He inherited a very difficult task when he became Minister, and I wish him well with that.
I remember when I was in the Commons and was interested in penal reform. The prison population then, in the 1980s, reached 44,000, at which point we thought the world was coming to an end—that was an absolute disaster. We are now at double that figure and in an impossible predicament. We just cannot go on like this, so I hope that our recommendations will help the Minister. A lot of this is a work in progress. I do not denigrate that phrase; I think I will give the Minister the benefit of the doubt by saying that “work in progress” means he is going to do it and we are going to get on with it. After all, one of the recommendations from the Select Committee report states:
“We believe that the current Prisons Minister understands the need for change and what needs to be done; he should be strongly backed by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Justice”.
That sums up what our Select Committee report is about.
In preparing for this debate, I thought about how I have visited a large number of prisons. I will not go through them all but, as part of the Select Committee’s work, we visited Belmarsh and Isis, both characterised by excellent first-class women prison governors. We were really impressed by them. We sat around a table with a group of prisoners in Belmarsh and their plea was, “Please could we have the sort of training to help us get jobs when we get out?” It was a heartfelt plea. We were then told there were difficulties around this because they were not always going to be there long enough. There were also difficulties in liaising with local education authorities and so on. That is something that could certainly be overcome. On that list of prisons, I should add that I had Wandsworth prison in my constituency. Interestingly enough, I have visited prisons in Chicago, Bangkok and Tokyo, but this is not meant to be a tour around prisons of the world.
One of our big challenges is public opinion. Public opinion is being whipped up by some in the press to demand longer and longer sentences. One reason why the prison population has gone up is because sentences are much longer. This is not a satisfactory position. We have to tackle this culture in public opinion, because demanding ever-longer sentences simply will not solve the problem and will not make us safer in the end.
Interestingly, we learned in our evidence that prisoners like the idea of prison governors being more visible in walking around the prison. That is something we do recommend. I know there is a lot of pressure on prison governors, but it is important. We felt that governors should oversee the recruitment process of staff, that they should be longer in post before each rotation, that they should have more say in budgets and that there should be training for governors.
Let me talk about an experience I had, not as a member of the committee but before that, in Coldingley prison. The Howard League for Penal Reform had initiated a business in the prison, where prisoners did design work and so on, competing in the marketplace with the outside world. It was very enlightening. One of the prisoners, who was in prison for a long time, told me it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. There was an excitement about it. What happened? It closed down. Why was it closed down? Well, they were earning money. The Home Office said, “If you’re earning money, it can be taxed, and there’s a problem about employment rights, and we can’t have that competing with the authority of the governor”. So it was all stopped. It was a really brilliant initiative, and it just came to an end.
There needs to be more support not just for governors but for prison staff. There needs to be far more help with education and vocational training. It is an indictment of the system that about half of prisoners are functionally illiterate. I hope that the Minister will deal with these problems. He has a lot on his plate, and I hope he gets the full support of other Ministers in the Government so that he can bring about the changes that we all wish to see happen.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and to be part of a debate where we have five maiden speeches, three of which have taken place and were very impressive. I add my welcome to the five new noble Lords. I look forward to the remaining two speeches.
I welcome this report, which focuses on what happens in prison. Its statistic that reoffending accounts for 80% of the costs of offending is shocking, because it strongly suggests that prison is not working to rehabilitate people. Preventing reoffending requires prison to tackle criminogenic needs—the changeable factors in a prisoner’s life that directly influence their risk of reoffending. Lack of healthy, pro-social relationships is female prisoners’ greatest criminogenic need and men’s second-highest, exceeded only by the closely related lifestyle and associates need. We will never see the much-needed step change in rehabilitation unless we harness the power of good relationships throughout the system.
Better Prisons: Less Crime mentions this 10 times and emphasises the difference that good staff-to-staff, as well as staff-to-prisoner, relationships can make. It mentions HMP Woodhill, and I attended the inspection where it was given an urgent notification. One response to this has been staff better supporting staff. The Minister and I and other noble Lords visited HMP Belmarsh recently and talked to the exceptional governor there about her successful buddy system, where more experienced officers come alongside new recruits, which is helping greatly with retention. Better Prisons: Less Crime gives education more than 100 mentions and employment more than 30. Yet my first report to government on the importance of strengthening family and other relational ties to prevent reoffending and intergenerational crimes said:
“Supportive relationships with family members and significant others give meaning and all-important motivation to other strands of rehabilitation and resettlement activity”.
Ensuring that prisoners have good relationships should top the hierarchy of goals. The Government’s own starting point for commissioning my two reviews was that those who receive family visits are 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do not, making this the most successful rehabilitation pathway. I have had much pushback on this, especially criticism that this focus is being soft on crime. My response to this is that if we lower reoffending by helping prisoners cultivate good relationships, with all that this entails—lower court costs, less crime, fewer victims, more children growing up with reformed parents in work—we are actually being hard on crime. Can the Minister advise how prisons are emphasising the need for good relationships?
I still work with HMPPS and the MoJ on this agenda, and this policy area has some very vocational civil servants dedicated to bringing about system and culture change. My review’s implementation treats relationships as the golden thread running through all processes in prison and probation, influencing how staff, from governors to newly recruited officers, treat prisoners, support each other and engage with the wider community. An extrovert prison purposefully builds relationships with the outside world. Some prisons now run community days for the 50% or so of prisoners who do not receive social visits. People come in from local organisations as living reminders of what life is like outside. They help prepare prisoners ahead of release, pointing them away from criminal associates by providing alternatives. Some are prison-experienced themselves and are a powerful encouragement that change is possible.
Focus has now widened to the role that good peer-to-peer support plays in rehabilitation. Prisons lack in many areas, but what they have in abundance is prisoners—and prisoners can be an asset. I sat in a peer support project in HMP Bullingdon alongside the area executive director, who said that one of the mentors had form as the major troublemaker in other local prisons. That mentor testified to how much his role had changed him:
“For years, I would respond to all authority with violence, and where did it get me? I tell mentees, I was just as angry and frustrated as them, but sharing that built good friendships that helped us both change and stay out of trouble”.
This project had support from the very top and a senior and highly skilled supervisor who could identify prisoners likely to be good mentors.
Every wing in every prison needs these programmes. Before HMP Dartmoor shut down, a similar programme, Peaceful Solutions, significantly changed it into a calmer prison, one result being that officer recruitment became much easier despite the remote location. So can the Minister outline how approaches with the potential to change prison culture by harnessing the power of pro -social prisoner-to-prisoner relationships are progressing?
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, having just joined the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, I support this report and particularly commend the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for the way he introduced it. I thought he was direct, unsparing and fair. I am sure that this Minister in particular will take its central message: that it is all about implementation and the clock is ticking, and it has been ticking for many years. That is a very fair comment.
All political parties represented in this Chamber need to understand the context that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, described, which is that not one of them has gone into in a general election promising lower sentences or more remission. This Government have done something about remission, but those two facts have driven the prison population to an unsustainable level, as well as the context in which this report is delivered. We have to acknowledge that.
I wish to talk about two subjects relating to this report; first, about the complex and difficult problem of staff corruption, and then about the tagging of prisoners on release from prison. The vast majority of prison staff serve in a difficult role with integrity. However, there are issues of corruption with some staff, which appear to have increased over the last few years. The report identifies some of the challenges with the present recruitment process, for example. It is difficult to estimate the scale of the problem. However, there are two significant symptoms of it. One is the wide availability of mobile phones in the prison estate. This is really important. We are getting murders arranged from prison, drugs supply continued and firearms discovered. It is vital that this is controlled. The second is the fact that drugs are available in prison, leading to more people leaving with a drug habit than entered with one—on average, this rises from around 40% on entry to 60% on leaving.
Of course, both forms of contraband can be delivered by drones or visitors, but the penetration being achieved in phones and drugs indicates significant elements of collusion. The problem is increasing, because there is an ineffective system for investigating the intelligence being gathered. I blame no one for this problem, because it is caused by a basic flaw in the system. The Prison Service does not have an investigative arm with the necessary powers, including overt and covert surveillance mechanisms, within the community outside prisons. The police do have the powers but require a high degree of certainty before they start a resource-intensive investigation. Therefore, because the Prison Service does not have an investigative arm, it struggles to get the evidence to persuade the police to investigate this serious crime. This problem is aggravated in rural areas, where many prisons are located, which are often covered by small police forces that generally do not have the resources to investigate the most serious crimes. This means there is an increasingly high bar to commence an investigation.
Local prisons in urban areas face a different problem: the prison staff often share schools, licensed premises and so on with the families and associates of prisoners, which adds further pressure on discipline and staff integrity. The overall problem could be eased by providing a national squad of police officers, supported by prison staff, to investigate intelligence in the prison and in the community, combining prison and police intelligence, powers and skills. At the moment, there is no such unit and everybody is deprioritising this vital area. If we want to continue the prison staff professionalism that this report argues for, a foundation of integrity and basic security in the system is vital. At the moment, for the reasons I have described, I fear it is seriously challenged.
I move briefly to tagging, which the Minister and I have discussed before and which we agree is a vital opportunity for the future when prisoners are released. It starts to control some of the factors that cause prisoners to continue to reoffend. We now have geolocation, which can exclude prisoners from certain areas or maintain them within one. There is sobriety tagging, which manages whether someone is taking drugs or, more often, alcohol as a precursor to their offending pattern. The Minister will know that there have been problems in fitting these devices on leaving prison. The commercial company involved has not always been able to do it—that is not always its fault, but it has not always happened. Probably more importantly, the data produced by the tags is not shared live with the local police, who could do something about the breaches, particularly if a crime has just been committed. In any case, it is vital that this is looked at.
These two areas are vital: prison corruption—I blame no one for that, certainly not prison staff—and tagging. Could the Minister update us on both in his reply?
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friends and noble Lords on their excellent maiden speeches. I look forward to those to come and welcome them to the House. I thank the chair and the witnesses and contributors who helped produce this excellent and detailed report. I share the disappointment that has been expressed about the Ministry of Justice’s response. It was complacent, generalised and lacking the urgency that this topic demands, notwithstanding, as has been said, our confidence in the Minister.
Prison imposes the most severe power of the state, the deprivation of liberty, for three reasons: to punish offenders, to protect the public and to reduce reoffending through rehabilitation. However, because prison is failing to reduce reoffending, it is also failing fully to protect the public. The prison system is now in a parlous state after years of neglect. Prisons are overcrowded, understaffed, ineffective and very costly, not only financially but in the damage inflicted on communities. Nearly half of all prisoners on average are reconvicted within a year. The Sentencing Act may help, but it does not obviate the need for radical reform of the prison system.
I will focus on a few key priorities in the report. The first is leadership. The head of an institution is usually the most important factor in determining its culture, effectiveness and efficiency, and they can be held to account if they have the autonomy to do what is required. In the Prison Service, that is not the case. The top-down control by HMPPS stifles innovation and weakens governors’ ability to manage effectively. These findings are mirrored by reports from the other place and the chief inspector. Governors are accountable but not empowered.
The government response claims that governors do have some flexibility, but that does not reflect what many governors told us: that lack of autonomy was one of their main areas of frustration and needs transformational change. In what other spheres of public or private services is it thought that rigid centralised control is the best way to achieve effectiveness and efficiency? It is not true in education, the police, health or even private prisons. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that there needs to be a step change in governor autonomy and how does he propose to increase operational and strategic freedoms for governors?
The second point is workforce, which includes myriad issues. I agree that most prison officers and support staff are doing their best in difficult circumstances, but there is, nevertheless, a daunting list of workforce challenges that must be addressed, including recruitment, performance management, training, appraisal, line management, sickness absence and so on. It is astounding that prison officers are recruited via an online process, as we have heard, and that governors do not meet new recruits before they turn up for work. Would that be regarded as acceptable for a teacher, social worker or police officer? I think not. There is at best a patchy system of training, virtually no system of appraisal and little supervision, with line managers expected to manage 20 to 30 officers.
We hear almost daily about workforce problems, including corruption—as we have just heard—hundreds of prisoners released in error and allegations of staff misconduct, including with children in secure units, yet the committee was given very little detail and perceived no real sense of urgency from the Ministry of Justice. It said this was a work in progress. Can my noble friend the Minister set out how he is approaching this fundamental programme of change and what his priorities are?
The third point is reducing reoffending through purposeful activity. This could be said to be the raison-d’être of the prison system, yet it repeatedly fails to deliver education and remedial programmes. Prison becomes a very expensive waste of money, by failing to reduce the likelihood of reoffending on release. There is limited availability of and access to provision. Attendance is not prioritised against the demands of prison routines or staffing problems, and it falls by the wayside. Could my noble friend the Minister give further details about what work is going on to improve this situation?
Finally, I will mention women in prison, where there are very high levels of need and vulnerability, 71% reoffending, high levels of trauma, substance abuse and so on. This discrete and very vulnerable subset of the prison population is in particularly urgent need of the recommendations in our report. Will my noble friend consider accelerating those recommendations in the women’s estate?
These are just a few issues. Setting all the others aside, they alone are incredibly challenging. I genuinely do not doubt my noble friend’s ability and commitment to the changes necessary, but, with the greatest respect, his task will be even more difficult unless he can build a more capable, flexible and innovative HMPPS.
Baroness Davies of Devonport (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an honour to participate in this debate and to follow the noble Baroness. I thank noble Lords in all parts of the House for their warm welcome and pay tribute to my sponsors, my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lord Young of Acton. I thank the officers of the House and all the Palace of Westminster staff for their kindness and time. I honestly cannot say enough about how wonderful and patient everybody has been as we have got lost around these red and green carpets. I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who has been my mentor. I think he wanted to check my speech to make sure that I did not tell your Lordships stories about what happened way back in 1980, when we were on the same Olympic team. Without his guidance I would have been seriously lost, so I thank him very much.
I will always cherish my introduction day. It was a privilege to be able to share it with family and friends, including my 90 year-old father. My dad was my coach, and is still coaching today, but was ostracised for speaking out against the East German state for cheating during the Iron Curtain era. As the coach of the only individual female medallist in the whole Great Britain team in Moscow, which was me, he was still left off the coaching staff for daring to ask for a level playing field for women. On the day of my introduction, he was wearing purple to remember my mum, who lost her life because of the contaminated blood scandal. Without incredible family support, I would not have made it as an international athlete, a career spanning 13 Olympics so far, as either a swimmer or a poolside reporter.
That passion for sport will, I hope, be put to good use in your Lordships’ House as we consider ways to promote the health, well-being and wider social benefits which come from taking part in physical activity. My international life in sport began at 11 and lasted 20 years. There was five hours a day of training, six days a week, juggling school work with the pool. In those days, there was no lottery funding and my choice after state education was retirement or a sponsored degree in America, which I took. I had been training hard for 10 years—the longest holiday being a week—including training on Christmas Day, which was down to Mr Daley Thompson, and for three months I trained with two broken arms. However, to maintain my scholarship, I had to swim full time, so I came back to the UK, took part in a television programme called “Give Us A Clue”, which many noble Lords are too young to remember, and I was promptly banned for receiving £40 expenses, even though UK Athletics had trust funds and athletes were able to be full time. I had to wait another nine years until trust funds were introduced into swimming before I could make a comeback to finish my sporting career at the Barcelona Olympics, if you do not count “Gladiators”— and if only I had trademarked the word “Amazon”.
Those challenges have taught me to be resilient, to understand that no one can keep you down unless you consent to it. Those same challenges have made me resolve to hold up the principles of equality and fairness. I am passionate about the physical and mental health of our children and how to motivate them to be the very best they can be. I feel privileged that I grew up at a time when stereotypes were being pulled down and, most importantly, we had no smartphones and we had free speech. Never before have our children been bombarded with so much grown-up material as they are today.
Here in the House, I also hope to extend my interest in women’s rights, so in that context, I turn to this debate on the Better Prisons: Less Crime report. However, I wanted to highlight the unique challenges incarcerated women face. Of the 88,000 prisoners in England and Wales, only 8,000 are women. The default setting for management is therefore male. It is imperative that we look at how we treat women in prisons in a way relevant to their biological needs. The average stay is only 42 days—just long enough for you to lose your home, your children, to ruin your life, but not long enough to make any major improvements in your poor mental health, or your drug or alcohol abuse, which is more prevalent in the female estate. Shockingly, 82% of women in prison report mental health illnesses.
There are no female prisons in Wales and if you live in Cornwall, you will be put on remand in Gloucester, a round trip costing over £100 for any family member who wants to visit, which is all too often more than the whole week’s food budget. Women need the connection with their children; many are single parents. An obvious solution is the expansion of the third spaces—community-based care centres that offer much closer-to-home facilities. The vast majority of these women have at some point in their lives been victims themselves of crime or violence. Self-harm figures have rocketed in the last 10 years and are almost nine times higher than in the men’s estate.
After talking with Zoe Short, governor of Eastwood Park Prison, which covers the whole of the south-west and Wales, it was obvious that mentoring programmes help to build the confidence female inmates often lack, and could be hugely advantageous, making these women feel like they matter. There was such a successful programme in recent years, but it was limited to men and football. I hope the Government may consider expanding the mentoring programme, and I hope to discuss further what I might be able to do to encourage other successful sportswomen to take up the opportunity of motivational visits, including looking at encouraging more of the physical activity that I know directly correlates to more personal self-confidence.
In closing, I know there are some truly amazing people here, doing incredible work on this subject in the House, and I thank noble Lords for introducing the debate and bringing their extensive professional experience to bear on policy formulation across all party lines.
Baroness Bertin (Con)
It is a real honour to follow my noble friend Lady Davies of Devonport. I congratulate her on a thoughtful and brilliant first speech, a story of such determination and resilience. She was a total hero of mine growing up—I am trying not to be too starstruck—and a huge inspiration to me and so many young girls, at a time when mentors in the sporting world were in pretty short supply. She was someone we could all relate to, and she came across as incredibly kind and encouraging. She was, and remains, a remarkable sportswoman. Let us just take a moment: she swam for Britain aged 11—I had barely got myself to school on my own at that age. It is a huge testament to the support she had from her family, and I heard her tribute to her mother and father. At 14, she won two European bronze medals and, aged 15, she won two Commonwealth gold medals. Her astonishing form continued, and she went on to win silver in the Moscow Olympics, although we know it should have been gold. She became an even bigger household name when she burst on to our TV screens. As a dedicated TV addict in those days, I basically spent the first 18 years of my life watching her on TV. She was either commentating brilliantly on key sporting events, appearing on “A Question of Sport”, presenting “Big Brother” or absolutely nailing her opponents as a Gladiator. She was a staple in my life. She is a mother, a grandmother, a committed campaigner for so many charities, a skilled equestrian—I could go on, but all noble Lords need to know is that she is superhuman.
However, perhaps most importantly, she is brave and campaigns courageously for women’s rights in sport, at considerable personal cost and risk to herself. She spoke out at a time when few people were brave enough to make the common-sense case that it was unfair on women to have to compete against transgender women in sport. I know that many young women in elite sport, and more generally, are incredibly grateful to her for this. She is brave, determined, hard-working and full of integrity. We need more of this in our politics, so I and many others are delighted that she joins us in this Chamber. I look forward to working with her—and maybe even working out with her, but I am not sure I am brave enough to do that. I know she will make powerful contributions, and she has already shown real leadership.
I also welcome the other four new Peers to this House. We have heard some amazing speeches already, and I look forward to working with them. We are at our best when we are cross-party, so I am sure there are lots of conversations to be had over the years. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for his amazing leadership and the team, particularly Alex South on the committee. I have been on committees that have produced many reports, but this has been a particularly powerful one.
Speaking of bravery, I want to begin by recognising the courage of our prison staff across this country. They rarely get that acknowledgement, and the Prison Service medal is the least we can do. They are on the front line. On the point the noble Lords, Lord Foster and Lord Hogan-Howe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, made so powerfully about recruitment, it is absurd that we are recruiting in this way. It is such an important and difficult job. You cannot possibly be recruited as a prison officer, potentially having never stepped into a prison before. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said it is insanity writ large, and it is. I remember the first time I went into a prison—although admittedly, I was eight months pregnant; do not ask what I was doing, heaving myself around Wormwood Scrubs. You can either do it or you cannot: it is a pretty shocking experience once those doors close and you see the reality of being inside a prison. It is no good for the staff or those in the prison, because when it becomes clear that someone is not right for the job, people start to worry a great deal about their safety, and rightly so. The whole thing potentially starts to fall apart quite quickly. The committee is unequivocal that our prisons are in a state of crisis. They remain overcrowded, under-resourced and unable to provide the conditions necessary for rehabilitation that so many of us have spoken about.
This overcrowding has many problems, about which noble Lords have spoken very eloquently. Low-level offenders are frequently housed in close proximity to more serious criminals. When we went to Belmarsh, which other Peers have spoken about a great deal, I talked to one inmate who said, “I came in because I robbed Tesco, but I’m leaving knowing how to rob a bank”. He was half joking, but that is the reality. The committee noted that overcrowding, poor conditions and a lack of purposeful activity create circumstances in which criminals become far more hardened rather than helped. When the cells are full, the staff are stretched, and gangs operate with impunity.
It struck me, on the several occasions I have been into prisons, that a lot of the classrooms and workshops are completely empty, either because there has been a big security problem or because the logistics of moving these guys around are incredibly challenging, especially if there are gangs being placed in the same prison. It is just an impossibility. There may be provisions for education, but quite often, with the greatest will in the world, you cannot get people out of the cells and into the places to do the learning. That is a massive problem.
On employment, the reason why I was in Wormwood Scrubs when I was eight months pregnant was because I worked for BT at the time, which was trying to recruit. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, obviously knows a great deal about this, and I praise his work on it. It was not and is not straightforward, and far more work needs to be done on the programmes that help prisoners gain real work experience to make sure there is a real, meaningful connection with local employers that helps drive what they want from people leaving prisons, so that they can them give them meaningful employment about which there is a sense that it could potentially lead to something, rather than just being an activity for the sake of it that does not really take them anywhere. That is very important to get right.
Many others have also mentioned the urgent need for clarity of purpose within the prison system. The committee calls on the Ministry of Justice to enshrine reducing reoffending as the statutory aim of prisons. Rehabilitation is not an alternative to justice; it is essential to it. Being in prison is the punishment. What follows must be about equipping individuals to return to society as stable, contributing citizens.
I have one final point, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, on tagging. If electronic monitoring and tagging are to be an answer to early release then there are some big problems to be addressed in the back office and in its organisation if it is going to be rolled out at any great scale effectively. I make one very small, urgent plea: when there is a lack of faith in that system, such as survivors of domestic abuse being absolutely terrified when they know their perpetrators are coming out of jail, it is vital to get the electronic tagging system under proper control, if it is an approach we are going to take.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee deserves congratulations on producing such an excellent and thorough report. Congratulations are also due to those who have delivered their maiden speeches today, all of excellent quality—and I am sure there is one more to come.
The only thing in which our prison system excels is the number of people it crams into it. That is the root of all the problems we are addressing today. There are too many people who cannot be given enough work to do, or the education or experience they need, many of whom should not be there in the first place.
I am sure many noble Lords, like me, were delighted when the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, was appointed to his post, because we knew that he wanted to do the best possible thing for the country, for the prisoners and for those who offend, many of whom are not really bad people but just find themselves in a bad position. I have every sympathy with him in trying to align his principles and aims with the system he finds himself confronting—in particular the media, which the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to, which is out for blood all the time rather than rehabilitation. It is a very difficult equation to balance. It cannot be done overnight, and I wish the noble and learned Lord, Lord Timpson, all the best still, but it is not to underestimate the problems he faces.
Many of us will have dealt with Timpson, the family business, which has done so much to encourage the employment of prisoners. One of the things that is most notable is that the staff in Timpson appear to feel empowered to do what they believe is right for the customer and to use their initiative. They are not bound in by stupid bureaucratic rules. But it is appalling to read how little autonomy the governors in our prisons have. If a member of staff at Timpson appears to have more autonomy than a prison governor, there is something radically wrong in the system. We are seeing the results of that in the way the staffing levels and budgets in prisons are allocated. They are not fit for purpose. As the committee said, Governments need to give more autonomy to governors. I would be very interested to hear more from the noble Lord about how he is going to address that.
Many people have talked about the drugs issue. It is absolutely crazy that we have the House of Commons Justice Committee saying quite blithely that it is now at “endemic levels. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talked about how it manages to flourish. There is a prevailing culture of acceptance of drugs in our prisons. This cannot be right. There were 136 drug-related deaths in the two years to December 2024 in our prisons. If anyone in this Chamber tried to run a drugs racket, our doorkeepers would be on it in seconds.
How is it that such things are allowed to flourish in our prisons? We know: it is the corruption that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, referred to. There are organised criminal gangs running rife in our prisons, and in part that must be because we do not have the right prison officers. The vetting system has to change. There have to be face-to-face interviews and, as in many public services, there has to be lifelong vetting of those in these positions. These are positions of power, and we cannot afford for them to be in the wrong hands.
I would also like to refer to the plight of women prisoners, many of whom—if any—should probably not be there. Female prisoners suffer not only the cost to themselves; the cost to their families is huge. The reoffending rate for women, if they have been on a short sentence, can be up to 58% and beyond, but if they have a job on leaving, that makes all the difference. Training is all-important for women prisoners. The charity Working Chance does great work in putting women prisoners into work when they leave, but we need that for all our prisoners.
We need more education. It is utterly crazy—as Charlie Taylor, HMIP, has already said—that, at £45,000 a year, we cannot educate prisoners to read. We need to learn more from the noble Lord the Minister about what he is going to do about that.
I would also like to bring up the issue of mentees and mentors, which others have raised. They are all-important. They do not need to be sportspeople, and they do not necessarily need to be other prisoners, but they are all-important in building relationships.
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)
I congratulate the noble Lords on their maiden speeches. They were truly excellent contributions, and I look forward to the one that is yet to come in this debate. I am delighted that they have all chosen to speak and make the ground of their maiden speeches the topic of prisons, which is a topic very close to my heart. I am delighted that we have already heard a lot about the particular plight of women in prison.
I have chosen this debate for my first speech after my maiden speech—the difficult second album genre of speeches—having studied and worked in prisons for many years. I will restrict my comments to three particular areas: the purpose of prison, which has been very well covered already, so I will keep that brief; the use of release on temporary licence to enable people to work; and supporting prison staff.
If we want to reduce crime and ensure that there are fewer victims, we have to sort out prisons—I cannot state it more plainly than that. I welcome the report and my noble friend the Minister’s response to it. But there was a surprising omission, and that is the critical role of experts and those with experience in helping policymakers to get this right—that is both people with lived experience in the justice system and those who work in it.
We have already heard that the context is truly grim. I will not repeat all the things we have heard, but I just make your Lordships’ House aware that the current rate of self-harm in our prisons is 859 incidents per 1,000 prisoners.
I now turn to the second recommendation in the report, which states that
“the Ministry of Justice … should set out a clear and consistent … purpose of prison”.
As others have eloquently stated, if we want the public to understand the decisions being made about prisons, they have to understand what prisons are for. What is the primary purpose? It is an urgent, practical question; it is not an esoteric, academic ponderance, because the answer to that question then dictates a load of answers to what actually happens in our prisons, day in, day out.
I raise this particularly because most people in our prisons now will be released back into wider society. About 14,000 people are released every three months. What each prisoner experiences in prison then shapes how they go on to live after release. We must communicate that purpose and ensure the visibility of evidence for what reduces reoffending and restores communities and lives.
That brings me to my second theme: the increased use of release on temporary licence to unlock employment opportunities. I know that my noble friend the Minister is as passionate as I am about the role of employment in preventing reoffending. Indeed, I first encountered him when I worked for Working Chance, which we have already heard about, supporting women with criminal convictions into work while he was becoming a household name through his pioneering employment schemes in prisons and after. We know that work can provide dignity, purpose and a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and it gives you new skills.
The use of release on temporary licence, which is often limited to day release—people going into the community to work or volunteer, then returning to the prison at night—can help build confidence and get people ready for release. The scheme is available only to some prisoners, appropriately vetted near the end of their sentence, but government data shows that, in 2024, 99.8% of those released on temporary licence completed the period successfully and safely, and those prisoners given release on temporary licence have lower rates of reoffending on release.
When I worked at Working Chance, I had a colleague who had been on release on temporary licence who came in every day to work with us, and about a month in she was finally released from prison. Let us call her Katie. On the day she was released from prison, her whole world shifted. She was struggling to navigate new relationships and thinking, “Where am I going live? How will this go?” But in the midst of that, she continued to come to the job that she had done for several months, from nine until five, Monday to Friday, sitting at the same desk and drinking her tea from the same mug with familiar colleagues. She continued in that role for several years and then got a better job in a large public sector body. The reoffending rate at Working Chance, when I worked there, was 3%.
Witnessing Katie’s transition from prison on that day-release programme gave me a front-row experience of what the data already showed us. It showed somebody able to successfully transition into normal life and make a contribution. Most people in prison today are going be released, so let us crack on with that.
I have left myself with no time to talk about the importance of staff. They do a very tough job. I ask that my noble friend the Minister consider meeting with me to discuss how we can help staff exposed those traumatic events. I welcome the recommendations around sickness levels.
We all agree that it would be better for staff to work in less violent, less understaffed and less traumatising environments, so let us get a clear purpose for prisons, increased use of ROTL and greater support for our prison staff, because most people in prison today are going to be released.
Baroness Neate (CB) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I feel acutely the responsibility to use this privilege for good and to represent the vital role of civil society in addressing the troubling challenges our country faces. My father often said—really often—“You’re not special; you’re just lucky”. It sounds harsh, but not when you think of the many people who are very special and not at all lucky. I have met many of them in my career. I know full well that great good fortune has brought me to this place.
I thank my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, the staff of the Convenor of the Cross Benches, Black Rod’s office, and the doorkeepers, who showed such amazing kindness to my family on my introduction. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green and Lady Casey of Blackstock, for supporting me, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the Appointments Commission.
I applied to join this House because, for decades in front-line charities, I saw families beset by crisis after crisis, while policy changes were not helping. Charities working in communities know how housing, domestic abuse, child protection and criminal justice collide in real lives. I believed I could bring that experience into legislative debates that too often treat these issues in silos.
Prison is where many of our most pressing social problems collide. I will explain that in a minute through the story of a young woman who I will never forget.
I began my charity career at Action for Children, supporting families in crisis. I was stunned by the scale of domestic abuse at the heart of that damage, unrecognised or minimised as a volatile relationship rather than systematic control and victimisation.
That led me to become chief executive of Women’s Aid. There I helped achieve the criminalisation of coercive and controlling behaviour, more funding for refuges, and changes in the family courts. At Women’s Aid we heard daily from women who were staying in terror because they feared homelessness and losing their children. I came to see that insecure private renting and the shortage of social homes trapped survivors between life-threatening abuse and unliveable temporary accommodation. That is why I became CEO of Shelter.
To return to prisons, Action for Children ran the mother and baby unit at Styal prison. There I met a 20 year-old woman and her six month-old daughter, born in prison. It still chills me that she said that she herself had been born in Styal two decades before. Her mother had offended in a coercive, controlling relationship. She grew up in and out of care, was later homeless, convicted of shoplifting and pregnant when sentenced. She was likely to be homeless after release. She was parenting with confidence and love, but I knew she might well lose her baby.
You see how policies intersect to create those we label “complex needs” or “hard to reach”. But it is systems that are complex and help that is hard to reach. We blame people for the spiral of trauma and harmful or dangerous behaviour, but with comfort, resilience and support when problems first arise, things would be different.
We often talk about charities changing lives, but people’s own courage and tenacity are what change their lives, given the chance. Charities can help achieve the resilience that many of us have from childhood, which for others has been eroded. What I have learned is that policy silos do not help us find answers. Before changing policy, we must understand how lives are unravelled by the systems we create. Unintended consequences are avoidable, but it takes engagement with front-line expertise and experience.
I am not a politician. I am proud of what I have achieved in respectful partnerships with senior politicians of all parties—who trusted that my priority is people facing the hardest circumstances. I am honoured to serve both you, my Lords, and them.
Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (CB)
My Lords, it is a source of pleasure and pride to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Neate and to welcome her to this House. We have truly just heard a speech of clarity, authority and lived experience, and many of us will feel that her presence strengthens the best tradition of this house, bringing front-line public service insight into national policy and legislation.
Polly—my noble friend Lady Neate—comes here after decades at the sharpest edge of social policy. As chief exec of Shelter, she has made the case that housing is not a side issue but the foundation of stability in people’s lives. Before that, at Women’s Aid, she helped shift our understanding of domestic abuse from private tragedy to systemic coercion, requiring a systemic response.
Earlier still, at Action for Children, she worked with children and families in acute crisis, seeing how poverty, violence, housing insecurity and state systems collide in young lives. I worked with my noble friend when I was vice-chair of Shelter; she combines policy precision with an instinctive focus on what it feels like to live inside our systems. She will be a powerful voice here for those shaped by housing insecurity, abuse and contact with the care and justice system. I very much look forward to her future contributions and to working with her.
I note the wonderful contributions from all five noble Lords who have made their maiden speeches today. The breadth of experience that we have heard just from those five—the different perspectives, different experiences and different ways of seeing—is indicative of the strength of this House and what makes this place truly remarkable. It is of great regret to me that the wider community and population do not understand the richness that this place offers to our country.
Turning to prisons, the committee’s report shows a system under strain, where leadership, staffing and clarity of purpose will determine whether we reduce reoffending or simply manage crises at huge human and financial cost. I want to focus on the people who sit at the heart of that question—prison staff. Prison officers, like social workers, nurses and firefighters, do work that is complex, emotionally demanding and essential. Yet we persistently treat these roles as low status, modestly paid and peripheral to public life. The report highlights the recruitment and retention crisis, low morale and the reality of violence and trauma facing staff. We ask them not only to keep order but to help change lives, then we underinvest in those very people whom we expect to deliver that change. If we genuinely see prison staff as central to public protection and reducing reoffending, should that not be reflected not just in pay and training but in how their role is understood and valued across society?
Can the Minister say more about what the department is doing and what further steps it might take to raise public awareness of the importance of prison staff and the contribution that they make to public life? I am acutely aware that at the same time we face a profound labour market shift. We tell young people that the future—their future—lies in learning how to use AI, yet many white-collar pathways that shaped the aspirations of the next generation of workers are likely to contract. We are already seeing and experiencing that contraction. Large numbers of young people will face a more precarious landscape than we are ready to admit.
Here is the paradox. Sectors such as prisons, care, health and community safety urgently need capable people. This is work that AI will not replace, regardless of what Foucault may have fantasised about, yet we signal that success lies elsewhere. If we are serious about safer communities and reducing reoffending, we should be making careers in the Prison Service and allied public service roles high-status, well-paid, properly supported professions with clear pathways and recognition. This is not fall-back work; it is nation-building work.
This points to a seismic shift that we are facing not just in the prison sector but across the public sector. We need to start revaluing human relational work to align education and workforce policy with social need, and to see affordable housing as part of the infrastructure of prevention. If our public service staff do not live where they work, how can they connect with the communities that they are trying to serve? This is consistent with the report’s central argument: the system must be organised around reducing reoffending and protecting the public, not managing failure at scale.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak with some deference after the wealth of contributions that have been made thus far, but I want to begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath—I want to call him my noble friend; we worked on a committee together not so long ago—on this redoubtable, detailed report, which has fed the debate. The biggest commendation we could make for it would be that we do not now file it away so that it can gather dust but that it could continue to be in a dialectic relationship with government, as it has already been, as we find our best way forward to the next steps that we have to take.
The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, was bold enough to quote from speeches she had made 20 years ago; emboldened by that, I wish to refer to actions of my own that were 30 years ago—I know I do not look old enough to have that age gap, but, take my word for it, it is absolutely true. Why, when I was working 30 years ago as the president of the Methodist Church in Britain, did I choose prisons to be one of my key subjects? Homelessness was the other, but that will wait for another day. There were several reasons.
I had been responsible for a Home Office-endorsed hostel for remand prisoners. This was an alternative to prison where about 30 people who would otherwise be in a prison cell had structured time with a criminologist, I remember, from Cambridge University, and various things like that, to help to take the weight off the prison and perhaps help some of the people inside to be seen in a better perspective. In addition, we had halfway houses for young people who had been in trouble with the law. Again, we saw to it that there was discipline—it was warden-controlled—but, at the same time, giving young people the freedom that young people will have whatever you do.
I had those responsibilities resting on my shoulders, and one or two other factors too. My schoolmate was Home Secretary at the time—the noble Lord, Lord Howard. I was firmly against his slogan, “Prison works”. He knew that; it was not the only thing we disagreed about, but friendship survived. I hope that the fact that I take a different stance from his yet again today will not threaten our ongoing relationship. He is a fine man, and I am proud to know him personally.
In addition to all that, at Wesley’s Chapel, where I was the minister at the time, I interviewed David Ramsbotham, who was also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe—not, alas, in her place. He just swept me off my feet. I read his first report as Chief Inspector of Prisons—I have it here. He told me that he wrote every word of it himself. For the six years that he held that office, this was his pellucid thinking about the experiences he had had and the conclusions he had been driven to. He was a remarkable man. I remember him sitting over there in the corner—the noble and gallant Lord by then—and continuing to regale us with his wisdom, strength of character and goodness of heart.
All that led me to be interested in prisons, and, in the course of my presidential year, I visited Lincoln, Leyhill, Blakenhurst, Walton, Garth, Doncaster, probation officers in Leeds and a detention centre in Rochester, as I tried to understand from alongside those incarcerated how it was affecting them and shaping the direction of their lives. I have never forgotten it. I have been in many prisons since, but that was a concentrated introduction to the whole dimension of British social life.
What can I say, other than that, if that speech of David Ramsbotham had been substituted at the last minute by an act of terrorism for the report that we are looking at, it could have done the trick? It is the same stuff, for staff, governors, conditions within prison, pay and pensions. It is all in there, his first report; here we are, 30 years later, debating the selfsame issues. I hope, if I live another 30 years—my wife dares to shrink from the possibility—that I may be back and just see whether we have made any progress then.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate our five maiden speakers. They are the future of this House, and the future of this House is clearly effective.
I congratulate, too, the committee on this well-researched and hard-hitting report. I absolutely join in the welcome that this House gives to the noble Lord, Lord Timpson—he enjoys support all the way around the House, and I very much hope that he never qualifies for early release—but I was rather disappointed by the lack of urgency, commitment and humanity in the Government’s response to the committee’s report. I rather suspect that the Minister did not write it himself.
My connection with prisons comes from my wife, Antonia Rubinstein, who co-founded and ran the charity Safe Ground for 17 years. We were lucky; prisons were reasonably well funded in those days, and we had a fine succession of Labour Prisons Ministers. I remember with particular admiration Lord Williams of Mostyn, the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and Hilary Benn. They all, as I remember them, exercised their distinctive voices. That allowance for Ministers to speak in their own voice seems to have been suppressed over the last 25 years, and I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, will reverse it.
In the same vein, I hope that, as the report asks, the Minister will swiftly restore discretion and responsibility to prison governors, who should also stay in post for a sensible time. A lot of my working life has been with the Good Schools Guide, and I reckon that seven years is about right for a headmaster; it is long enough to do big things and not too long to get stale. That same period ought to apply to prison governors. Given discretion and longevity, governors would be much more effective in running prisons and instilling a strong ethos into the staff, and they would collectively become a strong, self-improving community of capability, expertise and experience available to the Minister. As the president of the Prison Governors Association said at its 2024 conference, recalling what it was like 20 years ago:
“My team … were mine to deploy into whatever role I chose for them. The SMT could be as large or small as I liked, provided changes were properly consulted upon … I didn’t have to choose from a restrictive list of job descriptions … teams were resilient and … the senior management team was small …. decisive and executive … The staff group was well established, experienced, confident and capable … also occasionally grumpy and intransigent where change was required. The prison was reasonably safe for both staff and prisoners”.
Responsibility and trust have gone and been replaced by a central bureaucracy. We thought in doing that—this was largely under Conservative Governments—that we were buying safety, but look at our prisons now compared to 25 years ago: we have achieved the opposite. All through public life, we can see that this pursuit of imaginary safety has hugely increased expenditure, from £100 million bat tunnels to our own £10 million front door, and our nice but utterly pointless traffic marshals. We need to get back to a culture of trust and responsibility. We would free up a large amount of money that could then be applied in our prisons without troubling the Treasury.
As chapter 4 of the report describes, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, said, staff in prisons need to be much better supported. I will say only that I very much agree with what was said about the Belmarsh buddy system and other advocated forms of mentoring. My wife was talking to a couple of Timpson employees the other day—always an enjoyable thing to do—and asked them what they would do to improve the lives of the staff who had looked after them when they were in prison. They both said mentoring. I hope that is a theme that the Government will take up.
I end with one other suggestion. In 1997, the Prison Service commissioned Safe Ground to produce a programme for prison staff to deliver family relationships education to prisoners. It was called Family Man. It was hugely successful. It helped prisoners build a network of family relationships to support them post-release and made prisons safer places because of the effect on the motivations and attitudes of prisoners. This is a Prison Service course; it owns the copyright of it. It should be revived.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, I should first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and co-president of London Councils, the body that represents all the London boroughs and the City of London. I wondered whether that interest was relevant to this debate, and then I realised, of course, that local government, its many services and the people who work there, and the councillors who are elected there, are hugely relevant to the Prison Service—more relevant than many of them may realise. I will say a little bit about that later.
Something else I need to say to people present, especially in view of the difficulty nearly everyone has had in trying to deal with such a wide-ranging and important subject as this in only five minutes—I sympathise—is that I did not know that I was going to be replying to this debate until I arrived here and got the speakers’ list this morning. The good news for Members present is that, like everyone else, I prepared for a five-minute debate and, when I checked with the Table here, I have 20 minutes. I will leave noble Lords to think about the consequences of that over the next 18 minutes. I will, of course, keep much closer to the original four minutes and 50 seconds that I had planned.
I expected to hear, and now have heard, very much about the difficulties and shortcomings of the Prison Service. The committee made a lot of recommendations. I am pleased that 19 of them were accepted by the government; 15 more were partially accepted. The only one that was not accepted at all was about the rank of the Prisons Minister. We felt they should always be a Minister of State but, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the Prime Minister is not yet ready to agree to that for all times.
The recommendations are good and sound. Reference has been made to them and I think it is fair to say there has been general support, as far as I am aware, for all of them. The Government have accepted nearly all of them. That is the easy bit. What we want to know from the Minister in a few minutes is: what is going to happen now and when will those recommendations be implemented? There has been much praise for the Minister today—so far—and certainly much welcome for his appointment. His interest and that of his family business in this whole issue is well known. I welcome that too.
That brings me to the committee’s first recommendation, which flowed from our consideration of the committee’s purpose. It struck me at the time—this meeting may be exceptional—that generally most people, and certainly most of the public, do not ever think about what the purpose of prison is. They would perhaps be surprised to be asked that. They would say, “Well, it’s to lock people up”, and so on. The committee took the view, as we were urged by a number of former prisoners who gave evidence to us, that that is not the purpose of prison. Locking people up and the deprivation of liberty are the punishment. The purpose of prison—something I think we were unanimous on—is to reduce reoffending. I congratulate the Minister on insisting that that should be added to his job title; both he and we should make more of that.
We should emphasise that the purpose of prison, and of putting people there, is not to punish them—they are punished by their deprivation of liberty—but rather to reduce reoffending. We state in the report, and sadly it is a well-known figure, that 80% of offending is committed by people reoffending. That statistic is shocking, and is becoming better known. I was surprised and, indeed, shocked to learn, through a report made a few years ago by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, that 63% of prisoners’ sons become offenders themselves. That is the continuation.
I was going to say, in my original five minutes, that for most of my life I have lived in the London Borough of Sutton. Around a mile outside of our borough boundary and from where I live is High Down prison, as is Downview prison, one of the relatively few women’s prisons in the country. Both were built in the last 30 years when, as it happens, I was leader of the council. During our committee’s inquiry, I went to visit High Down to refresh my experience and my knowledge of it, and to talk with some of the staff, particularly with the governor. I wanted to talk about one particular experience from that visit—I still want to do this, even though I am supposed to be replying to the debate.
Along with my wife, I was invited to join the dads’ group. This is a group for prisoners and participation is entirely voluntary. Several prisoners told us that they had been reluctant to come to the dads’ group, probably because they feared being lectured, or what their fellow inmates would think about it. They all said, however, that the course had changed the way that they viewed their lives. It had been life-changing to them. There is now a waiting list to come along because they had been recommended to do so, in the best way possible, by their fellow prisoners.
All of those prisoners told us of their individual experiences. I will not repeat them, but one that struck me particularly was a man telling me about his experience with his son, who had autism. He simply did not know how to talk with his son until this course gave him that wherewithal. That was something we heard repeated by several others in various ways. The change that this voluntary course made to those men’s lives was enormous. They were all desperate to get out: not to reoffend, but to start again with their families and their children. I hope that it affects reoffending. It must, surely, bring down that figure of 63% of offenders’ sons who apparently become offenders themselves. The men talked about how much the course had helped them, and how much they could not wait to get out and put it into practice.
They did not entirely have to wait to get out to put that into practice because, as a corollary to that, the visitors’ area in the prison had been completely revamped and restyled to make it much more comfortable for families, so that they could meet as families and talk to each other in a more intimate way. In other words, it was a proper corollary to what the dads’ group had been doing. That was just one example.
If I had had time, I was going to mention that I was shown around High Down Prison by a man with the title “community engagement manager”. I am not familiar as many noble Lords will be with the Prison Service. Is community engagement manager a usual term in a prison? I am not aware that it is, but I think it should be as there is a very important role for engaging with the community—not just the prison community, but the area in which the prison is located.
I referred to the fact that I live within a mile or so of the prison. It is in a greenbelt area, surrounded by trees and bushes. That creates a bit of a problem in respect of drones, but that is the negative side. I suspect that most of the nearly a quarter of a million people who live in the London Borough of Sutton, as I do, have no idea that there are two prisons within a mile or two of them because they are tucked away out of sight. Part of the community engagement manager’s role is to have more engagement with the wider local community. He is able to do that in part because, before he became community engagement manager, he was the manager of a local employment agency. He knows many of the local businesses well and still works with them; he knows what they do and how they do it.
I see the Whip standing up and I am afraid he is about to tell me that I do not really have 20 minutes. I will be brief. It is part of the manager’s role to engage with the local community. That is very much a job that the Prison Service, and the Minister, needs to have in order to demystify prisoners. Most people, thankfully, have no personal experience of prisons. What they know and think of prisons is usually what they see on television or hear in the media. The reality is not always the same, so whatever can be done to connect prisons and the public must be all to the good.
The report states a lot of what could and should be done. We all wish the Minister every success in trying to implement that. I hope that this excellent report is not simply going to gather dust on the shelves, meaning that we come back in 20 years and say, “If only we had done that”.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, this has been an illuminating debate on a most important report. I will come to the report shortly, but first I will address the five compelling and varied maiden speeches.
First, the noble Baroness, Lady Bi, comes with an exceptional career in the law behind her, and no doubt still ahead. I am sure she will, from what I have heard and read, give voice not just to the important interests of the City of London but to the interests of the vulnerable and of the arts.
Secondly, my noble friend Lord Redwood is an eminent parliamentarian of 36 years’ standing. He was astute to identify that failures in productivity in public service are a central issue today, as they have been for many years, not just in the field of prisons but across our society. He was right to stress the importance of quality and efficiency. We will all benefit from his experience and insight.
Thirdly, we had the noble Lord, Lord Babudu. He is the executive director of Impact on Urban Health, which works to develop the potential for cities to be healthier. His experience in that, and more particularly at the sharp end of knife crime, of which he told us a little, will give the House valuable insights, and we should listen to him.
Fourthly, we had the noble Baroness, Lady Davies of Devonport. She was a remarkable athlete and an Olympian of great distinction. She has built on that platform to campaign on and highlight, based on her own experience, the misuse and particular dangers of hormonal drugs, both in sport and for teenage health. Further, she understands the importance of a level playing field in all respects and the need to provide decent facilities for women prisoners. We will surely benefit from her experience and wisdom.
Last but not least, we had the noble Baroness, Lady Neate. She is the newest of our Cross-Bench people’s Peers. She will be a valuable addition, not least because she was the chief executive officer of Shelter, a charity of which I am a long-standing supporter. Her expertise in the important field of delivering legal services for social welfare will be valuable to this House, as will her work with Women’s Aid.
I turn to the report. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Motion and acknowledge the hard work of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee in producing the Better Prisons: Less Crime report. I declare that I was a member of this committee until December 2024, and that I took part in the first stages of its evidence gathering. I congratulate its chair, the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, on not only his truly compelling speech today but his work as chair of that committee when I served on it.
The report—noble Lords will be glad to hear that I shall not attempt to address every facet of it—provides a stark account of a system under acute pressure and engaged too often in firefighting. I am grateful to the committee for laying out their recommendations so clearly. The consequences of doing nothing are real for us all: offenders, staff and the public. Something must be done.
Our prisons are now at a critical point—we all know that; we hear it too often, but they are strained to the point where their core missions of public protection and rehabilitation are compromised. Those conclusions mirror what has been reported by HM Inspectorate of Prisons. At times they go further. Overcrowding and violence are persistent realities and too many prisons are quite unable to provide regimes capable of reducing reoffending. Apart from locking people up to keep them away from us and keep us safe, prevention of reoffending is what prisons should be about. As my noble friend Lady Buscombe, in her elegant speech, showed by reference to what she had said over 20 years ago, in 2005, the political class in this country has failed to address the issues that this report brings to light.
I turn to the newish issue of Islamic extremism in prisons. Last year, the Conservative Party raised concerns about the threat posed by Islamist extremist inmates. We were not the only ones to do so, but it is an important issue. This followed violent attacks on staff by high-profile extremist offenders and evidence of organised radicalisation within the estate. Indeed, I myself asked a Question on this in this House. Islamist gangs inside prisons have held makeshift sharia-style trials and groomed vulnerable inmates. Some prisoners apparently seized power in certain wings.
That problem sits alongside other well-recognised safety problems, and these have to be tackled robustly. The Government and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service must work better together as a united team. They must ensure that effective specialist counter-extremism units exist, and staff must be trained to identify and respond to radicalisation threats before they metastasise into actual violence. The attack in April 2025 at a separation centre, where extremist inmates used hot oil and improvised weapons against officers, was horrifying and underlines the urgency of this issue.
On reoffending and purposeful activity, the committee’s analysis of these issues—and we have heard other speeches from noble Lords on this—cannot be faulted. As for purposeful activity, the report is spot on. It rightly identifies and links lack of work, education and training with higher levels of self-harm, unrest and, most importantly for all of us, reoffending. The Government appear to recognise this. In their manifesto for the last election they pledged to
“work with prisons to improve offenders’ access to purposeful activity, such as learning, and ensure they create pre-release plans for those leaving custody”.
Much has to be done. There is a worrying new dimension. The Chief Inspector of Prisons recently stated that, in Manchester, 35% of prisoners were locked up all day. That is absolutely staggering and terrible.
On education, I was disappointed to read that independent watchdogs and monitoring boards, to which we should listen, have described seismic cuts to prison education provision. Some 300 education staff were recently made redundant—that is not the way forward. Reports indicate reductions in core classroom education of 25% across the country; in some prisons, the drop is as much as 60%. Governors have had to make teaching roles redundant and to slash the number of courses available, yet this Government have acknowledged that education is one of the most effective tools to break the cycle of offending. Something must be done; this must be put right. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, was right to stress this and to draw on his own experience and expertise in this field. We want to stop reoffending—we all do.
The cuts here undermine the principles that we all support. Prisons should not be a revolving door into further criminality, as noble Lords have explained. Reduced education opportunities reinforce boredom and frustration, and they do not put people on the road to improvement. Too many people in prison have low or non-existent literacy and numeracy; that has to be addressed. It should be a core aim in prisons. It also, as we all know, makes violence more likely. People who cannot articulate in words turn to physical means. Cuts have left offenders without the skills to reintegrate into society. If our aim is to reduce reoffending then cutting education is at odds with that aim. The noble Lord, Lord Timpson, himself told the committee that he had walked past too many classrooms and workshops with no one sitting in them.
To turn to the issue of staffing, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee has underlined its alarm at the reductions. It has warned that they could jeopardise rehabilitation efforts and make reoffending levels harder to change. My noble friend Lady Bertin was absolutely right to stress the importance of recruitment and getting it right—recruiting enough of the right people in the right way and then keeping them. On staffing the evidence is unambiguous. Morale is low and experience is thin in key areas. Officers spend their shifts just trying to maintain order, with no time for purposeful engagement with prisoners—which is what we all want. Training reform must be accompanied by career progression improvements which recognise the professionalism of the job. Here I should mention the observations of my noble friend Lord Lucas. In his valuable contribution, he highlighted the importance of having the right governors in the right place for long enough, but not for overlong. From his experience in education, he stressed the value of mentoring. To conclude on the issue of staffing, we welcome the proposals for a Prison Service medal. I urge the Government to give this serious consideration.
Finally, I turn to accountability. The current independent inspection framework lacks effective enforcement powers when standards slip. Too many good recommendations from the Inspectorate of Prisons and independent monitoring boards are acknowledged but not then implemented. They lie in the shadows. The committee’s call for enhanced powers for inspectors and formalised collaboration between inspectorates must be taken seriously.
What matters now is for implementation reforms to work. We must prioritise education and training programmes, not cut them. We must support prison staff and not see them leave for better-resourced jobs. We must bolster the security and rehabilitation framework to deal with extremist threats concretely, consistently and effectively. We want a system that protects the public and gives those who can be reformed a genuine chance to go on to live a crime-free life.
This experienced committee’s report contains many wise recommendations—I can touch on only a few core points. The Government must now act on them. They have accepted the recommendations and we want action. I urge members of the committee to check on delivery. I hope that, in a year’s time, they will be asking questions in the House if this has not happened.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to close this debate on a topic that is very close to my heart. I was thrilled to see that so many new noble Lords chose this occasion to make their maiden speeches. It was heartening to hear references to the late Lord Ramsbotham, who many of us have so many fond memories of.
We clearly have a super-talented bunch of new noble Lords. My noble friend Lady Bi is a champion for the active participation of disadvantaged communities in public life. The noble Baroness, Lady Neate, has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of homelessness, and on behalf of domestic abuse survivors and their children. The noble Baroness, Lady Davies of Devonport, has been a determined campaigner on behalf of disabled sports in England and SportsAid. The noble Baroness is no stranger to navigating choppy waters, so I am sure that she will fit right in here. My noble friend Lord Babudu has brought about lasting change to the lives of countless young people as a former chair of the Blagrave Trust. The noble Lord, Lord Redwood, brings a wealth of experience, after almost 40 years in the other place. It is a privilege to welcome these noble Lords to your Lordships’ House, along with the expertise that they bring.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for his opening remarks and for securing this important debate. I thank the whole Justice and Home Affairs Committee and its officials for the report, as well as everyone who has contributed to the inquiry, including our recognised trade unions.
The strength of feeling in this report is clear and justified. This Government do not shy away from the fact that our prison system is in crisis. Years of underinvestment and mismanagement meant that we inherited a system on the verge of collapse. At one point, we had fewer than 100 places left in the adult male estate—that is one bad weekend or one surge in remand away from a total breakdown of law and order.
The previous Government could have tackled these problems, but they were more concerned with looking tough on crime, blindly slashing budgets and engaging in disastrous and costly ideological reforms. As a result, this Government were forced to take urgent action. Through the Sentencing Act and an historic expansion of the prison estate, we are putting the system on to a sustainable footing, but that is not job done. I did not accept this role just to prevent disaster. I took the role because I want to make our Prison and Probation Service a world-class organisation—and I mean the whole organisation: prisons and probation, working together as two sides of the same coin, because the public deserve better. They deserve a system that punishes offenders and protects the public but also rehabilitates and reduces reoffending—but we are a long way from that.
Reoffending rates are still far too high, creating more victims and costing billions to the British taxpayer. We need serious reform, and we are doing serious reform. We need to tackle the underlying causes of crime and help offenders to find a new path out of crime. We need to make sure that our hard-working prison staff and leaders have the time and resources to make a real difference. That is what they joined the service to do. Most importantly, we need to put victims first, to make sure they are protected and can see justice is done, but also to make sure that others do not suffer as they did. There is a long road ahead. I am therefore grateful for the committee’s report and this opportunity to take stock. I recognise the problems that it identified. I am in the business of finding solutions and championing the green shoots that we are beginning to see.
We accepted, or partially accepted, all but one of the committee’s recommendations and today I will address each of the report’s key themes. The report, as many noble Lords have raised today, rightly stresses the importance of clearly articulating the purpose of prisons and the importance of reducing reoffending. I completely agree. That is why I insisted on adding “reducing reoffending” to my job title. When we release someone, we should be confident that we have done all we can to make sure that they do not end up back inside. That means treating addiction and mental health issues, ensuring they can learn new skills and prepare for work, and making sure that they have somewhere to live upon release. For far too many, however, we are failing to meet these basic needs, leading many back to the revolving doors of crime. That means we are also failing victims.
However, this is not always straightforward to communicate, so we must do more to communicate the purpose of prisons and the work that our amazing staff do. That is why the “extraordinary jobs” campaign highlights the vital work our staff do to change lives. It is why our communications focus on proven approaches to cutting crime and reducing reoffending. It is why our Sentencing Act incentivises rehabilitation and prioritises punishment that works. It is also why we are investing up to £700 million more in probation by the end of this spending review period.
The committee highlighted the need for more collaboration between public and private prisons. I agree that there is a lot more room for improvement, and we have made progress. We are developing a digital platform for sharing information and good practice across the public and private estate. We will also build on events such as the HMPPS Insights Festival, where over 8,000 staff from the public, private and voluntary sectors registered. It will take time and commitment, and I am determined to get it right.
The committee is absolutely correct that all our staff deserve to be supported by strong leadership. It is also vital to say that prison governors have uniquely challenging jobs. Every time I visit a prison—something I do most weeks—I am reminded of the stark reality of the job. It is difficult enough at the best of times, but when you are constantly struggling for spare beds, your buildings are crumbling, and you cannot hire or keep staff, then even the best cannot lead; they can only cope. We are therefore bringing stability and increasing capacity. This space enables governors to drive performance, to set their culture and to lead. I also recognise that we need to trust and empower governors to do what works for them, their prison and their staff. That is how I ran the Timpson business. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for her kind words—if I ever went back to the business and had an advertising department, I would like to consult her on how I should approach things. Let us take Mick, the governor of HMP Hatfield. He is often out and about all day meeting employers, working with local partners and seeing how employment benefits offenders out on licence. Six months after release, 86% of his prisoners are in employment. Mick is doing it his way, and it is clearly working.
We will prioritise autonomy through the HMPPS’s “free, flex, fixed” framework, and we will give leaders more flexibility with their budgets, including introducing a new self-service procurement process for low-value items, allowing governors to source routine goods and services more quickly. The committee also emphasised the importance of governor development and succession planning. Through our Enable programme, an induction programme is now in place for first-time governors and those moving to new posts. And we are producing a development scheme for governors ready to take on the toughest challenges.
We are also tackling what I call the “EuroMillions problem”. If a dozen governors won tomorrow night, that would be a serious loss of leadership. We need more future leaders lining up, ready to lead. That is why the first cohort of our Future Prison Leaders programme has started, and our national talent committee is identifying high-potential individuals as well as prisons where succession risk is most acute.
Prison staff are some of our finest public servants, but they too need the space to succeed. They need opportunities to build real relationships with the prisoners they manage so they can make a real difference, but they too are often just trying to get through the day. So, as my noble friend Lord Moraes and other noble Lords pointed out, we need to boost recruitment, fix vetting and bring down sickness rates. We have secured a temporary exemption to the visa rules for foreign nationals working as prison officers to prevent an urgent staffing crisis, but that is not a long-term solution. We will improve training and make sure staff get the recognition they deserve. Of course, that is easier with consistent leadership, and I hope I am doing my bit. My goal is to be the longest-serving Prisons Minister. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas: I hope that I am not offered an early release.
We are also helping potential officers to understand the realities of prison work. This includes supporting governors to offer familiarisation visits to applicants. Informed by my own independent review, we are improving training through the Enable programme, and we are rewriting initial prison officer training so that it goes well beyond the current 10 weeks. It will instead become part of a year-long induction. This means that officers will get the best possible start.
We also know that, despite brilliant work, prison staff can often go unnoticed. I will continue to champion their work in public life, which is why our proposal for a King’s Prison Service medal to recognise excellence in the Prison Service is going to the honours committee this month. We are seeing continued progress in retention. In the latest published data, the resignation rate for officers in bands 3 to 5 was 7%, the lowest in four years. These green shoots are very welcome.
Let me turn to the power of purposeful activity. Noble Lords will be aware of the importance I place on prisoner skills and employment. I saw at first hand in the workshops I opened and the prisons I recruited from in the Timpson business how employment helps. The data is clear. Access to in-prison education and employment upon release can both reduce reoffending by up to nine percentage points, but, once again, we also need to tackle the broader issues. Prisons cannot run consistent and meaningful programmes if they are at full capacity or if their facilities are falling down, so we must bring stability and sustainability to the system.
But I know that is not the only challenge. The education budget has not kept pace with rising costs. Despite contracts that improve quality, we can buy fewer hours overall, so we are making sure that as many prisoners possible can access the training on offer. We are increasing the potential of digital systems to help more prisoners learn, and we are expanding literacy initiatives—I am delighted that Lee Child is our first ever Prison Reading Laureate. We will continue to support governors to commission vocational courses and link up with employers, charities and local partners. That includes our new regional employment councils which are furthering the work of prison employment advisory boards. It is also important that prisoners maintain positive relationships with their family and the outside world, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, continually champions. That is why I negotiated a 20% reduction in phone call costs for prisoners—because maintaining those links helps to turn lives around.
The committee’s final theme was accountability and oversight. I greatly value the independent scrutiny of our chief inspectors, Charlie Taylor, Martin Jones and Martyn Oliver. I meet them regularly, but I agree that there is room for more collaboration. We are reviewing the role of the independent monitoring boards, alongside other oversight bodies, and I will update your Lordships’ House on our conclusions in due course.
Parliamentary accountability is also vital, and the Deputy Prime Minister and I regularly appear before Select Committees. I hope noble Lords know that I am always keen to discuss any proposals to reduce reoffending and help people turn their lives around. It is important to note that we are seeing an uptick in HMIP scores, but there is still a very long way to go. I do not want to settle for “good enough”. I am really competitive and I want to run world-class prisons. We are starting to see things move, and that deserves recognition.
It is clear that we inherited a system in crisis and we are putting in the hard work to fix it, but we are also being incredibly ambitious, with our target to halve the number of prisoners released with nowhere to live—an agreed cross-government commitment—our once-in-a-generation reforms of our courts and sentencing, and innovations such as intensive supervision courts. Transformation will take several years but, if we get this right, reoffending will fall, the public will be safer and we will have fewer victims.
I thank noble Lords again for the opportunity to respond to this important debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for securing it and the members of the committee for the work that has gone into this report. I confirm that I will provide them with an update in March. I also thank noble Lords who have contributed today. I am very happy to meet the right reverend Prelate in due course. I have tried to respond to as many of the points raised as possible but, due to the fantastically high number of noble Lords taking part and the limitations on time, I regret that I cannot cover everything. I will specifically update the noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hyde, on the points that they raised. Of course, I also give my continued thanks for the dedication of our prison and probation staff who keep the system running day in, day out. I am proud to have them as colleagues.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, not least those who have given us five excellent and thought-provoking maiden speeches. I am sure that all will make valuable contributions to the work of your Lordships’ House. I was somewhat concerned on their behalf by the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hyde of Bemerton, who instead of praising the maiden speeches and leaving it at that, went on to put fear into their hearts by telling them that they now have to go away and come up with their difficult second album. Based on their performances today, I am confident that they are up to the task and we look forward to hearing them.
It is often said that a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. Prisoners, despite having committed acts deserving of opprobrium, often represent some of the most vulnerable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, pointed out. Frankly, at present we are failing them. We are failing the staff working in our prisons and the public, not least because we are failing to help prisoners prepare for life outside prison or to provide adequate measures to reduce reoffending. As I pointed out, it was happening 43 years ago and we have heard that it was happening 20 years ago. Sadly, it is happening today.
Despite the gloomy picture that I and our report paint of the situation, I have genuine optimism about the future. One of the reasons for that optimism is the Minister. He clearly gets it. All noble Lords who spoke clearly get it. The task is to persuade the rest of the Government to get it and ensure that the Minister and his team are provided with the support to take forward all the recommendations in our report, which I hope will not stay on a dusty shelf. I am sure it will not because, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, pointed out, I will be having a dialectical relationship with the Minister to ensure that. I am optimistic. I hope the Minister is around for a very long time. I thank him for what he has done and for his energy and enthusiasm. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this excellent debate.
Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address Motion
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office to an Urgent Question in another place on the Government’s response to the humble Address agreed by the House of Commons on 4 February 2025. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, last week, the House made a humble Address to His Majesty for the Government to disclose material surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States of America. On Monday, my right honourable friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister updated the House on further action that the Government are taking.
My right honourable friend confirmed that the Government will bring forward legislation to ensure that peerages can be removed from disgraced Peers, and that Peter Mandelson will be removed from the list of privy counsellors. He also explained how we have changed the process for relevant direct ministerial appointments, including politically appointed diplomatic roles. He also set out other areas in which we recognise the need to go further, including tightening transparency and lobbying.
In that Statement, my right honourable friend also set out how the Government are responding to the humble Address Motion, and I am pleased to provide a further update to the House today. The Government will comply fully and publish documents as soon as possible. As I said in the House last week, we welcome both the principle and content of that Motion, and we will deliver on it as soon as we can.
As such, departments have been instructed to retain any material that may be relevant, and work is under way to identify documents that fall within the scope of the Motion. We will do so as soon as possible when the House returns from recess.
In line with the Motion passed by this House, where the Government consider that documents may be prejudicial to UK national security or international relations, the Cabinet Office will refer that material to the independent Intelligence and Security Committee. The Prime Minister has written to the ISC, and senior officials have met the committee to discuss what it requires in order to fulfil that role. As I said in the House last week, full resources will be made available to ensure that that process happens, and we will work with the committee to explain the Cabinet Office’s process for providing material relating to national security or international relations. The Government are very grateful to the ISC for its work, and we commit to full engagement with it to ensure timely and effective release.
The House will also be aware of the statement from the Metropolitan Police regarding the ongoing police investigation. That statement made it clear that the
‘process to decide which documents should ultimately be published remains a matter for … parliament’.
That is absolutely right, and we agree, but as the House would expect, the Government rightly do not wish to release anything that may undermine an ongoing police investigation. As such, we are working with the police as they conduct their inquiries to manage this process. I think that is the right way forward, Mr Speaker, and I hope you and the House agree.
In conclusion, the Government continue to take this matter incredibly seriously and, given the nature of the issues at stake and the scope of material in play, we will comply fully and deliver this material as quickly and transparently as possible. The Government will keep the House updated as they do so, and my right honourable friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will publish a Written Ministerial Statement later today”.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Events have moved on somewhat since the humble Address on 4 February. Then, it was Lord Mandelson; now, it is the noble Lord, Lord Doyle. Unless the vetting process has changed recently, this is a question not about process but about the Prime Minister’s judgment. I do not think the House wants to hear a repeat of what we have heard all week, about how the Prime Minister is such a decent man—that is not the point in question. The point in question is the Prime Minister’s judgment.
The Prime Minister now needs to appoint a new Cabinet Secretary. What specifically will be different this time, and has the updated request in the other place, asked for by today, been provided?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness. She knows more than I do, outside of media speculation, about the appointment of a new Cabinet Secretary. I will not comment on any speculation regarding the position of the Cabinet Secretary or anyone who may or may not ever hold that role. However, the question from the noble Baroness was about the integrity and judgment of the Prime Minister. Noble Lords will be aware of why I am in your Lordships’ House: it is because of a horrible chapter in my party. From 2020, when I lost my seat, the Prime Minister asked me to work with him to root out antisemitism from my party. The Prime Minister underpromised and overdelivered. I trust the Prime Minister and I trust his political judgment. He is not just a nice and good man; he is a very good Prime Minister.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the degree of transparency that is happening over the Mandelson appointment. We stress as strongly as we can that the maximum amount of transparency is now needed to restore public confidence and trust. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, mentioned that events have moved on. Events will continue to move on for some time on the broader Epstein issue. We have already heard about flights in and out of Britain; we will no doubt hear more names of people—possibly in British politics, very likely in British financial and company circles—which will continue to come out. All of us share a responsibility in making sure that public confidence is not cut further. I make a plea to those in all parties not to be too partisan about the way we handle this, because trust in democracy as a whole is now at stake.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right. One of the things I find so distressing about the events of recent weeks is that we keep forgetting that the victims have to live and breathe every part of this time and time again, ad infinitum, both because of the way in which this is coming out, with the release of the files, and because of some of the associated events that have occurred. It is right and proper that we remember there is a responsibility on every Member of both your Lordships’ House and the other place to rebuild trust in politics, which, let us be honest, is at an all-time low, as we have discussed in your Lordships’ House in recent days. This helps nobody except those people who seek to undermine our core democracy and our British values. We need to work together to fix what is so clearly now broken, but we also need to make sure the victims are at the heart of everything we do.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, as the Minister knows, Sir Lindsay Hoyle said that the ISC is completely separate and independent, so there should be no barrier to releasing the information. At the same time, the Minister for the Cabinet Office is supposed to have released a Written Statement today giving more details. As of a minute ago there had been no publication, going completely against the protocols of Parliament and the guidance by the Cabinet Office. When will the information start to be released to the ISC and when will that Written Statement be published? Time is ticking.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
Time is indeed ticking, but the noble Baroness will be aware we still have two more debates in front of your Lordships’ House before the House rises. The Written Ministerial Statement will be published today, as I said.
On the independence of the ISC, we are incredibly lucky to have Members of your Lordships’ House on the committee, led by my noble friend Lord Beamish. I would never question either his integrity or his ability to do the job. As we laid out, and its correspondence from yesterday makes clear, engagement has already happened. There were meetings between very senior members of the Cabinet Office and of government with members of the ISC on Tuesday, and the process has started. On the timing, as the Minister for the Cabinet Office made clear in the other place, we expect the process on the documentation to continue at pace—and I do not mean at Civil Service pace, I mean at pace—after the Recess.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, as a member of the ISC, I note that my noble friend the Minister did not say anything about my integrity, which is a bit worrying. I make it absolutely clear that deciding what is in scope to be released is totally for the Cabinet Office. The ISC will have nothing to do with that whatever; it will see only the material that the Cabinet Office says that it cannot release because it includes intelligence or foreign affairs. Those will be the only things we look at.
On independence, we have already said that we will not be working in conjunction with the Cabinet Office. We are completely independent. We can be quite bolshie about things, which is good. We will look at it totally separately and work through at pace, as soon as this comes from the Government, where there are difficulties about the Met Police and things such as that. As soon as it starts coming our way, we will work on it.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank my noble friend—the idea he could be bolshie would be completely beyond my appreciation of him. He should take it as a given that I consider him to be a man of great integrity. After all, he is a senior officer in our senior service. I will always appreciate and accept him in that way.
What my noble friend said about the role of the ISC is absolutely correct and aligns with my understanding. Obviously, the ISC met with the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, the FCDO Permanent Secretary, the Deputy National Security Adviser and the acting director-general of propriety and ethics this week to set out how this will work. That meeting was considered fruitful and constructive, and I hope that, in the coming weeks, the relationship will continue in that vein.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the National Security Adviser, who is not a civil servant and was very deliberately chosen by the Prime Minister to be a special adviser, will have no involvement in the scrutiny of what information is going to be released, and that it will be entirely in the hands of the Cabinet Secretary, subject to the process agreed by the ISC?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I have been very clear on who participated in the meeting on Tuesday. On the role of the National Security Adviser, who is a man of huge experience and great integrity, I am not aware of any specific role for him, but if that situation changes I will update your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, the Minister referred to new legislation to remove peerages from disgraced Peers. When might we expect to see that legislation?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness. She is absolutely right. The reality is that we need to make sure that any process of getting to the point of legislation on something that is so important to Members of your Lordships’ House is done through consultation and engagement with the appropriate bodies, and that conversations are had in the usual channels. We want to work at pace to make sure that future legislation is in front of your Lordships as quickly as possible, but we want to make sure we get it right, as the Lord Privy Seal said on Tuesday. We will definitely see it after the Recess; I just do not know when in terms of the specific dates. I look forward to working with the usual channels to make sure that the consultation is as broad as possible and that noble Lords see the legislation as soon as it is ready.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that legislation to do with bringing the House into disrepute will not cut across differences of opinion, differences of political views, and the absolute principles of freedom of speech and parliamentary privilege?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I absolutely will. The noble Lord and I may not always agree on certain issues; I do not believe we did when we were in the other place either. However, that is what this debating Chamber is for. That is the principle of Parliament. It is so that we can argue with each other to make sure that legislation is better. That is the role of your Lordships’ House. I do not think that anybody would ever suggest that we should limit our own freedom of speech or expression, nor would I expect any such suggestions ever to be in legislation that would pass your Lordships’ House.
Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill
(1 day, 4 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Patel
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Lord Patel, seeks to ensure that UK medical graduates are prioritised above other categories of eligible applicants.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, my name is also attached to Amendments 3, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13 and 14, which are consequential, so I will not speak to them. This may be the briefest of introductions to any amendment.
My amendment tries to prioritise—which is the main theme of the Bill—UK medical graduates for training in UK programmes. The Bill’s Long Title says it is to:
“Make provision about the prioritisation of graduates from medical schools in the United Kingdom and certain other persons for places on medical training programmes”.
In Clause 1, this therefore also includes
“persons in the priority group”.
In Clause 2, it includes person not only in the priority group but also, in subsection (2), persons who are
“a British citizen … a Commonwealth citizen who has the right of abode in the United Kingdom … an Irish citizen who does not require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom … a person with indefinite leave to enter or remain … a person who has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom”
and so on. Similarly, Clauses 3 and 4 describe the priority group as including not only UK medical school graduates but many others, including those from countries with which the UK has made a trade deal.
All those priority groups will be able to apply for the same jobs as UK medical graduates. Add to that—several amendments on this are coming later—that the graduates of UK universities that have overseas campuses will also be included in the priority group. They are not all in the amendments today, but if these amendments are accepted, there are other universities not listed which have overseas campuses, such as the two I know—Dundee, for instance—although I did not table an amendment on that.
My amendment is because of the enormous number of emails that we have had, both from UK graduates and overseas graduates who cannot find jobs. I know there are subsequent amendments coming later about those international graduates who are now stuck in a bottleneck for this year, but that is a separate issue. My amendment does not refer to that; it refers to UK medical graduates.
We heard a story on the BBC about Emma, who was one of the 1,000 graduates who cannot get a two-year foundation slot so she cannot progress at all. She cannot find a locum job because they are all full. We heard of people who cannot enter the specialty training programme at years 1 and 2 because the competition for the specialty training programme is four applications for one job. We have 50,000 international medical graduates applying for a job for 2025, for 10,000 slots. If we cannot get UK graduates to find jobs in training programmes, that is scandalous. We could cut the number of medical students—but on the other hand, we are going to increase the number of medical students, and that will compound the issue for future applications for training.
By the way, I am not saying that others in the priority group in these clauses are not to be considered for a job. All I am saying is that UK medical graduates should be prioritised. The definition says “UK medical graduates”, but there are international students who go to our medical schools and therefore they are UK medical school graduates, so we include them. They are about 7% of the total medical graduates of UK universities. My amendment only seeks to prioritise UK medical graduates, who should be considered first—not that the others will not be considered or get jobs in whatever they come to do. This includes the subsequent amendments about overseas campuses and other universities.
I hope that the Opposition Benches will agree that UK medical graduates ought to be the first priority. I doubt that the noble Baroness the Minister will accept my amendment—the Government want this Bill to go through as an emergency Bill and not to be held up because, otherwise, it will run out of time—but I hope that, at the Dispatch Box, while not accepting the amendment, she will recognise that UK medical graduates must have priority above others for training slots. I beg to move.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 2. The clerks suggested changing the wording to what is now there. It is a probing amendment, and like those of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, it could be applied to other clauses as well. It is about the principle. My strong view is that we have opened up medical schools and made more placements because we want to make sure that we have an ongoing workforce. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, in his place. He will have done work not only for Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently but previously in making sure that we have a strong workforce pipeline.
I am conscious that many medical schools, by way of survival, by way of diversity, have opened up a number of places. Admittedly, this is still quite small compared with the number of UK citizens going to medical school. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, we have a curious definition in this legislation—that a UK medical graduate is simply somebody who went to a UK medical school. I do not think that is what the public would think that this is about. From a lot of the emails, I do not think that it is what a lot of doctors appreciate either—although I appreciate that it is the position of the BMA, which does not want to differentiate in that regard.
We have young people taking on debt by investing in their own education and several billion pounds being put in by the UK Government, by the UK taxpayer, to have this pipeline. Therefore, it is vital to have what my amendment seeks—a set prioritisation in this legislation and not, as the Minister said the other day, a “just one group and then no more” kind of prioritisation. It is vital that UK citizens are given priority.
It is important to look at some of the analysis. It is not the case that all training posts could be filled by UK citizens who have trained to be doctors—far from it. We would not have GPs coming through. According to the 2024 analysis, only about half of the GPs going on the ST1 or CT1 were from UK medical schools. There is a whole series of issues, and we are seeing this in different elements including psychiatry and paediatrics—very few UK medical students, it seems, want to do paediatrics. I could go on with the series, but the point is clear: this is not about excluding people from the rest of the world coming to work in this country or to fill key roles in the NHS; it is about ensuring that our investment is prioritised on UK citizens.
There is a certain peculiarity, which will come up in other groups, about what then happens with the Republic of Ireland and similar. I am not seeking to get into that debate; perhaps we will a bit later.
I want to get a sense of this from the Minister. One thing that is clear in the statistics, and which the Minister and the Department of Health should be seeking to understand more, is that for quite a wide range of the training courses UK students are turning down the opportunity, once they have been offered placements. Why is that? For general practice, I think that only 57% are accepting. I am conscious that people might get posted around the country, but that needs careful scrutiny as well.
I do not wish to suggest in any way that we are not welcoming people from different parts of the world, but it should go back to trying to make sure that we are addressing particular gaps in our NHS workforce, now and in the future, not squeezing people out, and recognising the work that has been done to increase the potential numbers in home-grown talent.
Those of us who spoke at Second Reading have, in the last week, had a lot of emails coming in. I completely understand that there are different stories. For a brief time, when I was Health Secretary, a by-line suggested that I thought everybody should disappear to Australia—far from it. We cannot stop people leaving this country to go to Australia or elsewhere in the world, but we should be making sure that the reason they are choosing to go elsewhere is not because they cannot get a training place here when they have been deemed appointable. Ideally, they would be offered a role. That is something we can fix with this legislation. I hope the Government will rethink their approach to this during the passage of the Bill.
I apologise to the Committee that I will not be here to deal with my amendment later on, but I know that the Front Bench will do so. The time is pressing to get this right. I had not realised quite how soon a variety of decisions need to be made: I believe they need to be made before, or certainly within a few days of, Easter. It is critical that the Government think again. I am sure that, with encouragement from the Committee and from very distinguished medical practitioners, current and past, they will do so. That is why I commend my amendment to the Committee.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to support my noble friend in her excellent amendment. Broadly speaking, this is a very welcome Bill. I congratulate the Government on bringing it forward to address what is becoming an acute issue, but it could be better. My remarks fall into two separate parts: there is the philosophical issue and there are the practical, evidence-based matters, which I will elucidate in the course of my remarks.
First, it has to be said that British taxpayers fund medical education through universities and the NHS, and we should be thinking much more about the value for money that those taxpayers receive. Prioritising British citizens would ensure that the investment benefits the domestic healthcare system and would, I think, reduce the risk of brain drain, where trained doctors emigrate after completing training. Training costs are substantial—estimated at £200,000 to £500,000 per doctor—and British citizens would be more likely to remain and practise in the UK long term. There is a case that they perhaps provide better value for public investment in medical education.
The wider philosophical issue, as alluded to by the Nuffield Trust, is around the fact that, in recruiting international medical graduates, the NHS has a negative impact on the domestic healthcare sector and staffing shortages in many countries abroad, particularly in Africa and Asia and poorer countries generally. That point has been made over many years. There were issues too about cultural familiarity, language proficiency, better understanding of local healthcare practices and patient expectations, and easier integration into multidisciplinary medical teams.
Specialty training, competition ratios and bottlenecks have reached breaking point. Preliminary information for the 2025 specialty training application cycle is concerning. This year, there are over 33,000 applicants for just under 13,000 training posts. This means that up to 20,000 doctors will be left out of specialty training this August. Even if you are not directly affected, that is a public health and public policy issue.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I want to speak briefly to the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned that 7% of undergraduates who take medical degrees in the UK are from overseas. I briefly mentioned last week my conversations with the head of admissions at a Russell group medical school. An important point that I did not have time to raise then, but is appropriate to raise now, is the significant amount of money that that 7% contribute not only to that medical school but in additional payments to the local trust.
I wanted to make your Lordships’ House aware of that, but I also want the Minister to talk about the consequences if we accepted the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and just had British citizens as opposed to the British graduates the noble Lord Patel talked about. What impact would there be? We have held our tuition fees static for a while in this country, while those overseas students have been paying a phenomenal amount. I am just worried that we might throw the baby out with the bath water. The unintended consequence of making some of those courses unviable is a serious concern, and I think it appropriate to raise it at this point.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, I too am a little bit concerned about unintended consequences. It is a real pleasure to see my noble friend Lord Darzi in his place, because I hope he will have comments on this issue.
I trained as a clinical academic. Indeed, we know that clinical academics have had a unique value to the health service. They work part-time in the health service with a reduced salary and do research at the same time. I am very concerned that many of the clinical academics we have had at Imperial College, for example, have been from overseas. They were medically qualified elsewhere but had not yet been in Britain and were still junior doctors, in a sense. I am really concerned that there are many such people who come to Britain, do a postdoctoral degree such as a PhD and, in the meantime, keep their medical skills flowing, as I did myself. I was seven years in this situation with the Wellcome Trust. I remember it very well. I was overseas but at least knew that I could come back to Britain. But I was a British subject—that was easy.
There are so many of these people. To give just one example, Professor Jan Brosens at Warwick University is undoubtedly one of the key people who have contributed massively to female health, particularly on implantation of the ovum and in his magnificent work on endometriosis. He came as a junior doctor from Belgium, from Leuven University, to what was then Hammersmith Hospital, which is now, of course, Imperial College. Now, he is a very distinguished professor at Warwick University with a very large team. His recruitment made a very big difference to the whole field. His is not an isolated example; there are many such people I can think of. I hope the noble Baroness can suggest some way of dealing with this problem of unusually good graduates from elsewhere, who may not be British citizens, perhaps, in the current priorities, but who would really be deserving of serious consideration for certain specialty jobs. Not to do that would be a great loss to the health service.
Lord Darzi of Denham (Non-Afl)
My Lords, many of you will know that I did my medical training in Ireland. In fact, I exercised some of my skills in this Chamber back in 2007. Irish medical education is excellent, and many of its graduates have gone on to distinguished careers in the NHS. I speak today to ensure we strike the right balance in this Bill, specifically by securing fair treatment for doctors who hold degrees approved by the Irish Medical Council.
As drafted, the Bill would exclude graduates of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland at its medical campus in Bahrain, for example—a campus that was established more than 20 years ago. Let me be clear about what that institution delivers: it has the same curriculum, the same examinations and the same quality assurance as Dublin, leading to a single national University of Ireland degree. Its programme and clinical training sites are also accredited under Irish regulatory oversight by the Irish Medical Council. I urge that, on Report, wording be introduced to bring graduates of this institution within the priority group. Such a clarification would sit squarely alongside the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Mendelsohn. These seek to ensure that medical graduates of a UK university holding a GMC-approved degree and following the same curriculum and assessment, but studying outside the British Isles, are included in the priority group. It would also be consistent with the similar amendment tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Forbes and Lord Shipley, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Hollins.
I draw a further anomaly to your Lordships’ attention. The unamended Bill would place graduates of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland’s campus in Penang, Malaysia—a joint programme with University College Dublin—within this priority group. These students study an Irish Medical Council-accredited, GMC-recognised degree, completing half their education in Ireland and half in Malaysia. Yet the well-intentioned clarifying amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, requiring at least 60% of the time to be spent in Ireland, would inadvertently exclude them.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it has been many years since I last spoke in a health debate. There is a sense of déjà vu in seeing the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on the Opposition Front Bench. It is also an absolute pleasure to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, and to hear the arguments he has made, which are very consistent with those we will be making later in the group of amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada.
I rise to speak to the amendments in this group, but particularly to Amendment 2, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. On Amendment 2, while I understand the intent of the noble Baroness to protect the domestic workforce, we on these Benches cannot support the introduction of citizenship as a primary filter for medical training priority. To do so would undermine the central logic of this Bill, which is to protect the taxpayers’ investment in training, not to police the passport of the trainee. If a non-UK citizen comes to this country, trains in our medical school for five years, often paying significant international fees—my noble friend made an extremely good point about the value of that to our universities—they cross-subsidise our universities and then commit to the NHS. They are a UK medical graduate in every sense that matters to workforce planning. Their training is identical; their clinical exposure is identical. We on these Benches believe that to deprioritise them, based purely on nationality, would send a disastrous signal to the global talent pool that our NHS has always relied upon. It would also contradict the argument we will make later regarding the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, on the Queen Mary University of London Malta Campus: that it is the content and quality of the qualification that matters, not the geography or the nationality.
Regarding the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, I sympathise with his desire to ensure that UK graduates are prioritised. That is, after all, the purpose of the Bill, and while we can argue about the definition of a UK graduate, we must be careful not to make the legislation so rigid that it removes any flexibility for the Secretary of State to address shortages in specific specialties, or where international talent is essential. Several noble Lords have mentioned that we have all received correspondence from doctors in hard-to-fill areas who warn that absolute exclusion could leave rotas empty. Prioritisation must not constitute a blockade.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, deserves our thanks for opening our Committee debate in a cogent and powerful way. He is absolutely right: in this country, we train some of the very best doctors in the world—at great expense to them and to the taxpayer—but too many are choosing to leave the training process because in the now expanded competitive scrum they cannot access the training places they require. Each year many remain unemployed. That is a serious policy challenge, and Ministers are right to seek to address it. We need a long-term and fair solution.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, is seeking to ensure that UK medical graduates are prioritised for training places first before those in the priority group are offered places. There would then be a third tier of prioritisation for any other eligible applicants. This would put UK medical graduates, as defined by Clause 4, ahead in the queue for training places. I do not think we can fault the noble Lord for his logic. If we believe there is currently a massive and disproportionate injustice being meted out to UK medical graduates, we owe them the best chance we can give them to enter further training pathways in this country.
However, I have two questions for the Minister. First, the Explanatory Notes confirm that those who have trained in Ireland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway have been included in the priority group because
“existing agreements require us to recognise their qualifications and offer parity in access to the profession”.
Can the Minister please confirm whether the reordering of prioritisation, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, would cut across the existing agreements that the UK Government are bound by?
Secondly, I think many of us agree that emergency legislation should be avoided as far as possible, but where it is necessary, it should be simple and straightforward. On the face of it, the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, would make the Bill a bit more complicated by adding a further tier of prioritisation. If that is so, I am sure he would argue that the extra complexity is well worth it. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us whether such an additional tier of prioritisation would make the process more complex to manage.
Amendment 2 in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey would prioritise UK medical graduates who are British citizens first, then those persons in the priority group and then UK medical graduates who are not British citizens. The category of other eligible applicants is not included. Perhaps it is an inadvertent omission; I do not know. Again, this would create a three-tier prioritisation process, where the Government are currently proposing two tiers, with the added dimension of drawing a distinction between different categories of UK medical graduates. Like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I am uncomfortable with that as a matter of policy. On the face of it, the amendment presents a more complex set of arrangements than those proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, so it would be helpful to hear from the Minister how the Government view my noble friend’s suggestions, including their ready workability.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords for their helpful contributions to this debate. Amendments 1, 3, 6 to 8 and 12 to 14, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, seek to create tiered categories of prioritisation for the UK foundation programme and specialty programmes. Taken together, they would require places to be allocated to UK medical graduates in the first instance, and then to applicants in the other prioritised categories specified in the Bill. As noble Lords have observed, the Bill sets clear priority groups, but it does not make rankings within these groups, and that is what we are looking at.
I welcome my noble friend Lord Darzi, not least because the review that he undertook for the Government in 2024 recommended that we should prioritise medical training, for all the reasons given by the noble Lords who support it. I will return to this whole area when we debate a later group, but on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Darzi—this will perhaps also be helpful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe—alongside UK graduates, we are prioritising in the Bill graduates from Ireland and the EFTA countries. This reflects the special nature of our relationship with Ireland—specifically, our reciprocal rights of movement and employment—and our obligations under international trade agreements with the EFTA countries, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred to, that require consistent treatment of these graduates in access to medical training. The amendments that we are looking at would mean that we could not honour these agreements. That, by its nature and definition, would create huge difficulties.
On specialty training, these amendments would also mean that we could not effectively deliver on our policy intention to prioritise applicants with significant NHS experience who understand how the health service works and how to meet the needs of the UK population. It might be helpful if I summarise this by saying that the Bill sets out what I would regard as a binary system where applicants are either prioritised or not. Clearly, once that prioritisation has happened, the normal processes will apply to establish who the appointable applicants are, to fill the posts, and so on.
Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks to create tiered categories of prioritisation for the UK foundation programme and to prioritise UK medical graduates who are British citizens above all other applicants. The Bill as drafted prioritises all UK medical graduates who meet the criteria, regardless of their citizenship status. It might be helpful to the noble Lords, Lord Mohammed and Lord Clement-Jones, to restate that what matters is where a doctor is trained, not where they are born. UK-trained medical graduates have undertaken curricula, clinical placements and assessment standards aligned to the NHS, and are therefore best prepared to move directly into NHS practice.
The Government are committed to prioritising those doctors who have already spent a significant part of their education within the NHS and understand how the health service works and how to meet the needs of the UK population, not least because—this is an issue that we have discussed many times—these doctors are more likely to remain in the NHS for longer, supporting the sustainable medical workforce for the future that we are all looking at.
As I set out in relation to the previous set of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, this amendment would also mean that we would not be honouring the special nature of our relationship with Ireland and obligations under trade agreements with EFTA countries. I emphasise again in the Chamber today that prioritisation does not mean exclusion. All eligible applicants will still be able to apply and will be offered places if vacancies remain after prioritised applicants have received offers, which we expect to be the case particularly in certain areas.
My noble friend Lord Winston raised a question about the Bill in respect of highly skilled overseas doctors and particularly referenced clinical academics. As I have said, it is not exclusion from applying—it is prioritisation. It may be helpful more broadly for me to emphasise that there are likely to be opportunities in specialties such as general practice, core psychiatry and internal medicine, because historically they attract fewer applicants from the groups that we are prioritising for 2026. I understand the point that my noble friend is making, but we have to focus on the core purpose of the Bill. With that, I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.
Lord Patel (CB)
Obviously, the Minister is not accepting my amendment, but she makes the point that all the priority groups will be treated in the same way—whatever the definition is of people in the priority group, they will all be grouped together as a priority, and that would include UK medical graduates. What assessment have the Government made of the effect that it will have on UK medical school graduates to include all the others in the priority group? What disadvantage will that put UK medical graduates to? Will it be minimal, medium or a lot?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
We do not anticipate that that is going to cause a problem. The noble Lord did not specifically refer to the EFTA countries, but I should like to. Some of them will not produce any suitable people who are likely to be included, so in our modelling we do not anticipate that there will be a problem. What matters is patient care and getting people with the right training who understand what the NHS is about, understand the culture of the NHS and provide as best as they can. That is what the whole Bill is directed at doing and prioritising.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I accept that the Minister is not predisposed to accept the amendment from my noble friend Lady Coffey, and she has made a clear case for that, but is she in a position to reassure the House that the issues raised by my noble friend and others about the relative take-up of specialty training places in less popular disciplines, such as anaesthetics or paediatrics, will be looked at by the department? I did not get the opportunity to make this point, but one point was that prioritising British medical students—not excluding others—would have a positive impact on those particularly hard-to-fill disciplines. Is the department taking that into account generally in its workforce planning?
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
Can I ask about applications from overseas? I know from the paperwork that has been shared online that everybody has been grouped together as the rest of the world. With the applications that we have had this time and last year, it might be helpful to share the data of the breakdown by each country rather than just lumping it all together as the rest of the world. Then we could see how many applications there are from the nations that we have an international agreement with.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today, no matter which amendment they spoke to, and I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for his strong support for my amendment. More importantly, he said that UK medical graduates need to be prioritised and should not have to enter into competition with others whose graduation is not from this country. I know that the Minister was not able to say that UK graduates would be seen to be prioritised; I understand that. Of course, these debates help, because the outside world is interested in what is said here. I hope that particularly those who make decisions about interviewing or selecting for interview for training programmes will get the message, take note of this debate and bear in mind what it was all about. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“(2) Nothing in this section shall be taken to negate or override a confirmed offer of a place on a UK Foundation Programme where the offer was made prior to the date on which this Act was first laid as a Bill before Parliament.(3) In this section “confirmed offer” means an offer in writing made by a person who has a function of deciding offers of places on a UK Foundation Programme.”
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I begin by making it clear that this is very much a probing amendment, for reasons which I shall explain. Across all the many representations I have received on the provisions of this Bill—from UK medical graduates; UK citizens studying medicine abroad; non-UK citizens studying abroad; some in the middle of their degree course; some who have finished their degrees, and some who have commenced but not completed a UK foundation programme—there is one issue that rises to the surface. It is an issue that is most easily encapsulated in the phrase “legitimate expectations”.
Quite justifiably, in my view, individuals who have embarked on the long and costly journey that is required of them in order to gain a GMC-approved medical qualification and who have found themselves suddenly deprioritised by one or other provision within this Bill have questioned the fairness of the dividing lines that the Government have chosen to draw in such summary fashion. Medical graduates—many of them British citizens—who have demonstrated both commitment and excellence and who have adhered in good faith to every step of the process laid down under existing rules are now being told that their trust in the system counts for nothing and that, all of a sudden, their legitimate expectations have been overridden.
Noble Lords will note that my amendment relates specifically to the 2026 UK foundation programme. It suggests that a graduate who has already received a written offer of a place on a foundation programme should be able to rely on the validity of that offer. In reality, I understand that, with very few exceptions if any, applicants to the 2026 UK foundation programme have not yet received formal written offers of employment. However, the formal process began last summer. Eligibility applications were completed last July and foundation programme applications in September. Since then, there have been mandatory UKFP-related deadlines, including the national clinical assessment—NCA—in November and PLAB 1 in December. In other words, the process is active, sequential and consequential, notwithstanding as yet the absence of formal written offers.
To take the case of a medical graduate in February 2026 who finds themselves prospectively deprioritised in the way that I have described, in the Government’s view, at what point on that graduate’s journey does the principle of legitimate expectations kick in? How fair is it to say to a talented and high-achieving graduate that, despite their passing through all the existing procedural hoops, they now need to lower their expectations quite dramatically and accept that they are no longer in that part of the queue for a medical qualification which, in good faith, they previously worked to join?
In summary, my amendment is intended to pose a somewhat broader question than its literal wording would suggest. What do the Government have to say to that cohort of soon-to-be deprioritised graduates who have committed time, effort and money to pursuing their goal? Is there any room for movement? I beg to move.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I speak to the amendments in this group in my name—Amendments 5 and 10—and to Amendments 9, 11, 24 and 25 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, which I have also signed.
I follow up the point that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, talked about in terms of the fairness for those people who went into the application process last summer. They started this process with the expectation of getting a confirmation any time now and being able to prepare. That is why my Amendment 5 proposes to postpone the implementation of this speciality training prioritisation for this year’s intake, so that those people who are applying for 2027 know that we are changing the rules, rather than telling those people who applied last summer that we have changed the rules. Let me be clear from the outset: this amendment does not seek to undermine the principle of the objectives of this Bill on medical training; rather, it seeks to ensure that these objectives are implemented fairly, coherently and without unintended harm to the very trainees upon whom our healthcare system depends.
The central issue for us here has always been timing. As the Bill currently stands, these changes would be introduced during an active application cycle. This raises serious concerns about procedural fairness and legitimate expectations. Applicants have made life-altering decisions—academic, financial and personal—based on a set of rules that existed last summer when they applied. To change these rules mid-cycle, in my opinion, is not merely inconvenient but fundamentally unjust. Like many others, I have been contacted by affected medical students who have articulated their concerns around the criteria. They noted that they had complied fully with all the requirements enforced at the time of application, only to find themselves potentially excluded by the change that has now been imposed. Without transitional protections, the Bill would disadvantage applicants who acted in good faith, followed the guidance provided and had every reasonable expectation that the rules would not be rewritten half way through the process. This is not about isolated grievance; it reflects a systematic risk inherent in rushed implementation.
Medicine is a profession that demands long-term planning, with years of study, examination, placement and significant personal sacrifice. When Parliament alters the conditions of progression without adequate notice or transition, it destabilises that planning and erodes trust in the system. My amendment therefore offers a modest but proportionate and sensible solution: a one-year delay that would allow for clarity in communications and proper preparation. It would give institutions time to adjust their process, regulators time to issue clear guidance and applicants time to make informed decisions so that people who will be applying this summer know what the criteria are. Crucially it would also align with the principles of this House, which has long upheld fairness, legal certainty and an avoidance of disadvantage. We should be especially mindful of these principles when legislating in areas that directly affect access to professional training and career progression.
There is also the practical consideration. Disruption of the current application cycle risks creating gaps, appeals and bottlenecks that could ultimately harm workforce planning in the NHS. At a time when staffing pressures are already acute, we should really be wary of reforms that may have unintended consequences and might deter capable candidates. My amendment would not delay the reforms indefinitely, but simply ensure that reforms are done properly. By supporting this amendment, we would send a clear message that, while we are committed to improving medical training pathways, we are equally committed to treating applicants fairly and honouring the rules under which they apply.
We have heard about the immigration status mentioned earlier and the criteria on which that is based. With my Amendment 10, I would like to raise with the Minister the alternative option, given that the Government are also seeking to change the rules around indefinite leave to remain. My understanding is that there is a better option. The NHS has its own recruitment platform, the Oriel system, which is able to demonstrate professional commitment to the NHS. In doing so, it shifts the focus from legal residence status to actual service, contributions and engagement with our health system.
The NHS does not run, as we heard earlier, on immigration categories. It runs on people who turn up to shifts, who trained within its system, who understand its pressures and who have committed themselves to caring for patients day in, day out. The Oriel registration is not just a symbolic tactic; it is a gateway through which NHS recruitment, training and workforce planning operates. It is a clear, objective indicator that an individual is already participating in or seeking to participate in the NHS.
Similarly, the concept of professional commitment to the NHS allows for a broader and fairer assessment of contributions. It recognises work undertaken in the NHS trust, clinical placements, foundation training, research, teaching and other forms of service that directly benefit patients and institutions. This approach reflects reality far more accurately than a single immigration milestone, which may have little bearing on an individual’s clinical engagement or future commitments or intentions.
There is also a serious risk of equality issues at stake. Many doctors who have trained in the UK, worked in NHS hospitals, paid taxes and served our communities for years do not yet hold indefinite leave to remain, due to the structures and lengths of immigration pathways. To divert these such individuals despite their proven service risks sending a deeply damaging message that contribution is secondary to paperwork. At a time when the NHS remains heavily reliant on international medical students, we should be careful not to erect barriers that discourage retention or undermine morale. These clinicians are not temporary stopgaps; they are integral members of our workforce. Many intend to build long-term careers here and many already have.
From a practical standpoint, this amendment also improves administrative clarity. Assessing our registration and documenting NHS experience is straightforward, verifiable and directly relevant to workforce needs. By contrast, tying prioritisation to immigration status risks complexity, inconsistencies and unintended exclusion. If the aim of the Bill is to strengthen medical training and to support the NHS workforce, our criteria must align with that goal. This amendment ensures that prioritisation is based on what truly matters: demonstrated commitment to the NHS and the work that it exists to do. Therefore, I urge noble Lords to support both my amendments.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, I repeat my declarations of interest from Second Reading as chair of King’s College London and chair of Cancer Research UK, and as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of General Practitioners. I am going to speak to my Amendments 9, 11, 24 and 25. I am most grateful to my co-signatories: the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lords, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley and Lord Patel.
The Government, in my opinion rightly, want to prioritise for specialty training doctors who, among other things, have significant prior experience working in the NHS. They propose in the Bill that that would be an explicit criterion to be taken into account from 2027. So the principle is clear. The practice for 2026, however, is said in the impact assessment to be such that they cannot use that criterion for the current cycle. So, instead, a series of proxies are proposed which, in the words of the impact assessment, would
“capture applicants who we believe are most likely to have NHS experience”.
This set of amendments, which should be an easy pill for the Government to swallow, would simply give them the ability to apply in 2026 the same criterion relative to work experience in the NHS that they propose from 2027 onwards. I recognise that there may still be some discussions, as we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, about the executability of that criterion, using the Oriel system or other mechanisms. These amendments would not require the Government to bring forward their 2027 approach but simply permit them to do so if, in the weeks between now and 5 March, for example, if that is the deadline for when Royal Assent is required, it becomes clear to them that the modest enabling work on the computer software, estimated at £100,000, can be put in place if that were needed.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, to which I have added my name. I am not going to repeat much of what he said, but I support it because when, in 2026, both the UK and overseas graduates are further down the process of applying—and some have even been asked to come for interview—they will now not be able to continue. That seems morally and ethically wrong, so I support the amendments. I also support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe. He made his points very strongly.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I declare my role as a pro-chancellor of Cardiff University, and that I have until recently been an observer on the Medical Schools Council; I am still in touch with it.
This group of amendments seems incredibly important for our international reputation for fairness and consistency in what we commit to, but also in wanting excellence in our NHS. Therefore, there needs to be a sophisticated way of prioritising. One of those important areas is the contribution to the NHS, especially during Covid and major events, when some have gone way above what is normally expected and come back from holiday or maternity leave, or whatever, to deal with a major incident, while others have perhaps not always been quite so flexible.
We certainly have a crisis and must deal with it, so this is not in any way to say that we should not be doing this, but the timing is the worry. I will come on to the other degrees in the next group. Can the Minister explain whether the Oriel system itself is a block to incorporating the flexibility that these amendments ask for? There is a real worry among some that the Oriel system is a rate-limiting step, rather than being flexible enough to be rapidly reprogrammed appropriately to allow the intention of these amendments to be incorporated at great speed, and therefore redress the accusation of unfairness.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I offer our strong support for Amendments 9, 11, 24 and 25 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, and Amendments 5 and 10 in the name of my noble friend Lord Mohammed. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for his Amendment 4, because it, in essence, sets the theme of this group, which is the dashing of legitimate interests for this year, which a number of noble Lords explored.
Before I address the specific mechanics of these amendments, we need to thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and other noble Lords who highlighted at Second Reading the whole question of the protracted failure in long-term workforce planning. For years, we have seen a disconnect between the number of medical school places and the number of specialty training posts. There is a bottleneck of our own making: 12 applications for one post is a disaster. My late wife trained in the 1970s and became a registrar at Barts. I have no recollection of it being anything like on this scale, and we risk dashing the expectations of many of those currently in training.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, noted at Second Reading, the Bill does not widen the bottleneck; it simply reshuffles the queue. Although we on these Benches accept the principle that UK graduates should not face unemployment after taxpayer investment, we must ensure that, in correcting one failure, we do not commit a second failure of fairness against those have served our NHS in good faith.
These amendments address one of the greatest injustices in this Bill: the decision to implement major changes mid-cycle for 2026, using the blunt instrument of indefinite leave to remain as a proxy for experience. The Government claim that assessing actual NHS experience is “not operationally feasible” for the 2026 rounds. Since Second Reading, we have received compelling evidence to the contrary. As my noble friend says, we have heard from doctors currently using the system who confirm that the Oriel recruitment platform already captures data on “months of NHS experience”. The question is there; the data exists. The claim that this cannot be done is a choice, not an administrative necessity.
By refusing to use this data, Clause 2 creates a perverse experience gap. It excludes doctors who have served on our NHS front lines for two or three years but who have not yet reached the five-year threshold for settlement. We have received hundreds of emails detailing the human cost of this decision. We heard from a mother who lived apart from her one year-old child for seven months to study the MSRA exam, only to find the rules changing days after she sat it. We heard from a neurosurgery SHO with two years of NHS service, who notes that this mid-cycle change renders his sunk costs unrecoverable. We have heard from a British citizen whose wife, a doctor on a spousal visa, is deprioritised, despite being a permanent resident.
Amendments 9 and 11 offer the Government a lifeline. They are permissive—my noble friend’s amendments mandate the Government. The bottom line is that the Secretary of State should use the data we know Oriel possesses to prioritise those with significant NHS experience in 2026, just as they intend to do in 2027. To reject this is to choose administrative convenience over natural justice.
I see the amendments at this stage as a probing opportunity. We need the Minister to explain in specific, technical detail why the existing Oriel data fields regarding employment history cannot be used to filter applicants for this cycle. If the Minister cannot provide a satisfactory technical explanation today, and if the Government resist this flexible approach, we will be forced to conclude that this is a choice, not a necessity. In that event, we may well need to return to it on Report.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
This group of amendments relates to the implementation of prioritisation of posts starting in 2026. I thank all noble Lords for their consideration of this. It is a very important area, as noble Lords have said, and I have listened closely, as ever, to the points made.
Beginning with prioritisation for the UK foundation programme, Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, seeks to prevent prioritisation applying to offers for the foundation programme that were confirmed before 13 January. To clarify, the Bill will impact only offers for places made after the Bill is passed and becomes law. The Bill will therefore not have any impact on offers to the foundation programme made before it becomes law. In our view, the amendment is therefore not necessary. In any event, no such offers exist, other than for a very small and specific group.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, asked about those who have already been allocated. The only individuals who have already been allocated foundation programme places for 2026 are those who deferred last year for statutory reasons, such as maternity leave or sickness absence. These individuals have already been assigned to posts, and this year’s allocation process does not affect them in any way.
On a more general point, as I referred to in the earlier group, and as noble Lords will recall, the 10-year plan, which was published in July 2025, confirmed that it was the intention of the Government to come forward with the Bill we are speaking of today. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, asked about the time it has taken since that date in July 2025. I can only say to the noble Lord that this is linked to our careful listening, which he will be aware of, to resident doctors and our understanding of the pressures that they are facing. The Bill is about action now. It is about acting decisively and introducing legislation for 2026, because, as noble Lords have kindly acknowledged, we need to start reshaping the workforce pipeline and show our commitment to easing the bottlenecks in training places.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I would be grateful if the Minister could say what proportion of those who wrote were disappointed with the Bill versus those who wrote supporting it.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I cannot give an exact proportion, as the noble Lord is aware, but I have noticed that the proportion has changed as the Bill has progressed. As we have approached Committee, I have certainly seen more email traffic urging a non-amended Bill rather than an amended Bill. I would imagine that that is reflected in other emails. The noble Lord is indicating that it is not. I can see differing responses, but that has certainly been my impression.
The application of prioritisation to the 2026 intake is necessary and justified. If, as I referred to earlier, we waited until 2027, competition ratios are projected to rise even further, meaning that more UK graduates would be unable to progress their careers on time, with a greater risk to the long-term sustainability of the workforce. For these reasons, another year’s delay is not an option, and we cannot accept the noble Lord’s amendment.
Amendment 10, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, also seeks to change categories of people who would be prioritised for specialty training places, starting in 2026, by virtue of having significant NHS experience or by reference to their immigration status. We cannot accept this amendment on the basis that the effect would be to prioritise every individual who applied for specialty training places in 2026 because all applicants are, by necessity, already registered on Oriel. This amendment would in practice nullify prioritisation for 2026 and render the legislation ineffective. It would not address the severe and growing bottlenecks in specialty training that the Bill aims and is designed to tackle.
The proposal to prioritise those who have demonstrated a professional commitment to the NHS also presents workability problems as there is no clear or objective definition of what such a commitment looks like, nor any reliable way to assess it for tens of thousands of applicants at this stage. Attempting to do so would be unmanageable in a practical sense and would introduce inconsistency, delay and uncertainty for applicants.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
One objective proposition that has been suggested is two years of NHS experience, which, it is said, would be readily trackable on Oriel. Can the Minister confirm whether that would indeed be possible?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
Although I cannot be specific about what is technically possible, I can say that, as the noble Lord is aware, the arrangements for 2026 in the Bill can change for 2027, and that will be the subject of consultation with a wide range of stakeholders to get the best definitions we can. We know that currently, because of the time pressure, we are going to have to use—I think the noble Lord used the word “proxy”, in my view correctly. So that is where we are.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
The Minister criticised Amendment 10 from my noble friend on the basis that, in a sense, it is technically not doing what it attempts to do. But she has not really addressed the key argument at the core of this, which is that the Oriel system is capable of assessing precisely the kinds of two-year experience that so many of these deprioritised doctors will have. Is the Minister saying that it is absolutely not possible to use the Oriel system for that purpose in this context?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My recollection from my discussion with officials about this very point is that, with no criticism of the Oriel system, this is about what we are trying to do now and what we have available to us. It would require—I am looking for the right words—not just using that system but manual attention to thousands of applications. I am very happy to write to the noble Lord with further technical advice on the matter, but that is the situation of which I have been advised. The whole point about the way the Bill is designed is to make it workable. If we change it, we know we cannot deliver in the way the noble Lord might wish.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I thank the Minister for that. I hope that, despite the recess, there will be time to get all the information we need. There is a real problem here with the credibility of the Government’s position. There are many of us who hope that it will be possible to do something different, particularly since, in a way, the boot is on the other foot. The Government have had since last July, as we keep being told, to get the Oriel system fit for purpose in order to supply the information for 2026.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord is ambitious on workability, beyond what I can honestly confirm is possible. Noble Lords would not wish me to stand at the Dispatch Box and suggest that, having looked at all we could do, the situation is anything other than that this Bill is a workable option. I can assure him that, as always, all noble Lords will get the information they are promised in a timely fashion. I also hope that the all-Peers letter and the letters I subsequently sent in respect of various areas of concern were helpful to noble Lords. I will of course ensure that anything further is there.
The issue with Amendment 10 is also that there is not that clear objective and definition of what a commitment looks like; it makes reference to it but does not explain it. By contrast, the Bill uses a set of carefully chosen, specified immigration statuses as a practical and proportionate proxy for identifying applicants who are most likely to have an established professional commitment to the NHS, which I believe is what all noble Lords are looking for. After careful consideration, we have concluded that for the 2026 recruitment round, that is the best approach. The amendment would remove any practical effect of prioritisation, which of course is at the heart of the Bill.
Amendments 9, 11, 24 and 25, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, seek to create a regulation-making power to define additional persons with significant NHS experience to be prioritised for specialty training in 2026. We cannot accept these amendments. As already stated, the Bill sets out the most suitable criteria for prioritising specialty training places in this year. Under the existing Clause 2(2), for specialty training places starting in 2026, immigration status will be used as a practical proxy for NHS experience to allow prioritisation to begin swiftly. This proxy is being used because applications for posts starting in 2026 have already been made. Therefore, we need to prioritise based on the information already captured, and which can be assessed.
To build on what I was referring to in the exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—I know this is also of interest to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay—while NHS experience is captured in the Oriel recruitment system, using it as an assessment criteria for the 2026 allocation round would require a manual review of tens of thousands of applications, “manual review” being the words I was looking for earlier. This is just not operationally feasible. There is no current agreed threshold for what constitutes a meaningful level of NHS experience. Stakeholders offer very different views on this, which is why we have committed to a proper engagement process, subject to the Bill’s passage, to ensure that any future definition is fair, evidence-based and deliverable.
The Bill already gives us flexibility to ensure that we take the best approach to prioritising those with NHS experience for specialty training posts in subsequent years. For posts starting in 2017 onwards, the immigration status category will not apply automatically. Instead, we will be able to make regulations to specify any additional groups who will be prioritised by reference to criteria indicating significant experience as a doctor in the health service, or by reference to immigration status.
For the reasons I have outlined, I ask noble Lords to withdraw or not press their amendments.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, especially those from around the Committee who felt able to support my Amendment 4. I think there will be very many people in the medical community who will read the Minister’s reply to my amendment with acute disappointment. I say that not only because of the arguments I tried to articulate about legitimate expectations but also because of the point, well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, about the damage that the Bill will cause to the UK’s reputation for fairness around the world.
I would also pray in aid the amendment spoken to so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, who argued in favour of delaying the implementation of the medical specialty training prioritisation requirements by one year. In doing so, he has very much echoed my thinking in this whole area. My initial reaction to this amendment is that it would have a positive impact on applicant confidence, as well as trust in the system, to pick up again the point by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, by allowing an extra year to transition to the new prioritisation process.
I also note that my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, in his role as chairman of the Constitution Committee, has written to the Minister, raising the committee’s concerns about the impact of the new prioritisation regime on applicants for the 2026 cohort who would fall outside the prioritised groups. It seems to me that Ministers really should consider this proposal carefully.
Amendment 10 by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, would remove the requirement that those who are prioritised for specialty training programmes must have indefinite leave to remain or leave to enter or remain in the UK, replacing those subsections with the requirement that persons merely need to have been
“registered on the NHS Oriel recruitment platform, or … demonstrated a professional commitment to the National Health Service”.
I thought the noble Lord argued his case very well. Of course, material in this context is the number of applicants who do not currently have leave to enter or remain in the UK who would, under the noble Lord’s amendment, be able to come here. I am, however, quite surprised to hear from the Minister that it would require a manual search of tens of thousands of records to find the answer to that, and that there are not ways of conducting a search automatically or electronically that could reveal the information that is needed. Again, I was disappointed by the Minister’s reply, for the reasons largely cited by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.
Finally, I comment briefly on the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, to which I added my name. These do not seem to me to be onerous on the Government in any way; they merely grant the Secretary of State the power to permit the appropriate authority to make regulations specifying further groups of people who are included. I feel that the Bill is particularly unfair to doctors with significant NHS experience seeking a specialty training post in 2026, and the mechanism proposed in the noble Lord’s amendments could be used to address that unfairness.
It is a pity that the Minister felt compelled to sound a negative note on the proposals by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens. However, having listened to the Minister’s reply and to all the amendments in this group, I think a period of reflection is warranted, hopefully by the Government as well as noble Lords around the Committee. With that, I beg to withdraw Amendment 4.
Baroness Gerada
Baroness Gerada (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 15, 16 and 19. I want to disclose an interest that I did not have at Second Reading: I am now co-chair of the Malta APPG—and I remain of Maltese heritage.
Amendment 19, in my name and that of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Mendelsohn, seeks to add Malta to the list of countries in Clause 4(4). It is precise and proportionate, and it would correct a narrow but serious unintended consequence in the Bill, as I will explain. Of course I acknowledge the need to prioritise UK graduates for training but, as the Minister of Health and Active Ageing of Malta put it in a letter to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the Bill risks
“undermining two centuries of proud tradition and the dissolution of a strong bilateral relationship in healthcare, care, and the training and specialisation of Maltese graduates”.
At Second Reading, I spoke about the unique medical training partnership between the UK and Malta, which dates back two centuries. For example, Maltese surgeons have held licences from our own royal colleges since the 1830s. This is therefore not a recent convenience but a deep historic alignment. It is a relationship that has shaped both systems for generations, creating an instinctive alliance in training, practice, standards and expectations.
The Maltese education system is modelled on the UK system and aligned to British clinical and ethical standards. Training is delivered in English, and the Maltese healthcare system closely mirrors the NHS. That is why my father was able to come to this country in 1963 and devote his working life to serving patients in the east of England, and why others from Malta have done the same, performing well above their weight in serving patients in this country.
Furthermore, postgraduate membership and fellowship remain aligned with the British royal colleges, reflecting a deep and enduring professional loyalty. Indeed, many of these doctors have become trainers, educators and examiners, helping to uphold the quality of UK postgraduate education—some have had daughters who became presidents of royal colleges. Malta and the UK are therefore historically, culturally and educationally linked.
I turn to the comparison of the Malta foundation programme, an affiliated programme to the UK foundation programme, and I shall reflect on the free trade agreements that the UK holds with the countries in Clause 4. Government documentation for the UK’s free trade agreement with these countries requires regulators to
“recognise qualifications or relevant experience of a professional who applies for recognition and possesses comparable professional qualifications”.
The language in that documentation, which recognises reciprocal arrangement, strongly aligns to the UK-Malta affiliate programme and, on that basis, it should be treated no less favourably than these other nations.
Since 2009, our foundation programmes have been formally aligned, sharing the same curriculum and e-portfolio. This alignment was renewed in 2024, confirming that the Malta programme met the same standards and outcomes as the UK foundation programme. To the best of my knowledge, no other country anywhere in the world has that level of mutual recognition.
At the centre of this is Queen Mary University of London’s campus in Malta, a UK public university delivering an identical UK GMC-approved MBBS degree to that which it delivers in its east London campus in Tower Hamlets. The students follow the same curriculum, complete the same statutory mandatory training, take the same UK national qualification exams and graduate with the same UK primary medical qualification. They are registered by the GMC as graduates of Queen Mary University of London.
During Second Reading, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, addressed Malta as a distinct case, and indeed it is. The QMUL training programme is a UK programme delivered overseas under a framework recognised by and supported by the UK Government. More than half the students are UK citizens. The equivalence of training between the UK and Malta is complete, not approximate. It is not close; it is identical. Even the patient profile is the same. Malta’s population, diversity, healthcare system and disease patterns share extraordinary similarities with the UK, particularly compared with any other international training environments. Moreover, most students undertake NHS attachments during their training. These graduates enter the UK workforce fully prepared for UK foundation training, trained at no cost to the UK taxpayer.
The impact of a medical school goes beyond the students. QMUL has made a not insubstantial professional and financial investment in the campus and the Government of Malta have invested in the school’s construction. This aligns with the UK Government’s wider objective of developing international UK university campuses, as outlined in the recent strategy document from the Department for Education. This Bill, if not amended, puts this at risk.
The numbers are small, as the foundation years are capped at between 50 to 70 graduates. This is less than 0.6% of the UK foundation programme places. This is simply no workforce threat, no substitution effect or planning distortion. There is, however, a real risk of unfairness in the Bill as it stands. These students have a legitimate expectation, grounded on 15 years of consistent government practice, and the experience of all preceding QMUL medical graduates, that they should be treated comparably with other holders of UK primary medical qualifications. The Bill as drafted removes that status and places these graduates behind Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland—jurisdictions whose graduates do not hold a UK primary medical qualification, do not sit the medical licensing or prescribing exams and are not trained on an NHS-aligned curriculum. This is difficult to explain, let alone to justify. This amendment simply corrects this anomaly. It protects a uniquely successful partnership, anchored in history, quality and equivalence.
Going beyond foundation years, a few Maltese doctors come to the NHS every year to fill gaps in their own medical training—so-called finishing school. These are in non-numbered posts. Malta provides 70% of their pay and these doctors are contractually required to return to Malta. This is not a pipeline of overseas doctors displacing domestic graduates. It is a small group, maybe 30 or 40, who meet our standards, all of whom have been examined and trained specifically in UK practice.
Finally and briefly, I turn to Amendments 15 and 16 again in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Mendelsohn. These suggests a carefully defined exception in Clause 4 for UK universities operating overseas campuses that deliver an identical UK-approved medical degree as in the British islands. These are exceptionally narrow amendments confined, to the best of my knowledge, to only two programmes in the world—Queen Mary University of London’s campus in Malta and Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia.
At Second Reading, the Minister referred to
“almost 300 applicants from … overseas campuses”,—[Official Report, 4/2/26; col. 1679.]
and noted that the Government need to control this number to “avoid opening the floodgates”. I stress, as I have already said, that the number of QMUL graduates applying for UK jobs is capped by the University of Malta at between 50 and 70, with around 120 from Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia bringing the total to 190. These caps would enable the Government to control the number of overseas applicants.
I also want to make clear my support of the amendment in the name of noble Lord, Lord Forbes, which provides a similar solution. Only institutions operating overseas campuses that meet the criteria set out in the amendments and that are in operation at the time the Act is passed should be included. I beg to move.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 15, 16 and 19, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, which I have signed, and which she spoke to so convincingly. These Benches also support Amendment 17 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, and signed by my noble friend Lord Shipley, and Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe.
As I said at Second Reading, I am the former chair of the council of Queen Mary University of London and now, for my sins, an honorary professor. Amendments 15, 16 and 19 seek to correct a category error in the Bill: namely, the classification of students holding a UK primary medical qualification from a UK public university as “international”, solely because their classroom is in Malta. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, will say the same in respect of Malaysia. The Minister has argued that these students lack “clinical familiarity” with the NHS, but that does not withstand scrutiny. These students follow the exact same curriculum as their peers in London, as the noble Baroness said.
The Bill prioritises EEA nations, because it seems that our trade deal requires us to recognise “comparable” qualifications. It is legally incoherent to accept a “comparable” qualification from Liechtenstein while rejecting an “identical” and “affiliated” qualification from Malta. We are treating a formal UK affiliate worse than a trade partner. These students sit the UK medical licensing assessment and they are taught by UK-trained consultants. As I said at Second Reading, it is a manifest absurdity that, under this Bill, a graduate from Liechtenstein with no UK degree and no UK training is prioritised over a Queen Mary student who holds a UK degree and is specifically prepared for our health service.
I strongly endorse the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, regarding our free trade agreements. We are in an absurd position whereby a treaty obligation forces us to prioritise these “comparable” qualifications. This is not workforce planning; it is a diplomatic and regulatory own goal. As the noble Baroness explained, Amendment 19 offers a simple solution by adding Malta to the priority list. This honours the mutual recognition agreement held between the UK and Malta since 2009—an agreement the Department of Health explicitly renewed in 2024.
Amendments 15, 16 and 17 offer a broader solution based on the qualification. If a student holds a UK degree from a UK-registered institution and passes identical UK assessments, they should be treated as a UK graduate. The Minister fears displacement of domestic talent, yet the majority of these Maltese trainees are contractually obliged to return to Malta after their training. They are what can be described as a circulatory workforce: one that supports the NHS during their training years, without permanently blocking the consultant pipeline. They are the ideal workforce partner. As stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, Maltese surgeons have been licensed by our royal colleges since the 1830s. This is not a new or risky pipeline; it is a two-century year-old bond that the Bill carelessly severs.
Furthermore, we support Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, regarding people who qualify in the British Islands but who have trained abroad. We are all on the same page in advocating for these well-qualified students, who should be eligible to have the same priority in obtaining training jobs as those currently set out in the Bill. We have received heartbreaking correspondence from British nationals studying in eastern Europe, often because of the cap on places here, who intend to return to the NHS. One correspondent highlighted that we allow British dentists to return without these barriers. Why do we treat our future doctors differently?
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour to support the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada. The best surgical training I had was with a Maltese surgeon, who was absolutely fantastic and taught me lessons I have never forgotten. One has to see that that cross-fertilisation happens across the NHS very often.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendments 15, 16 and 19, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It is my first opportunity to speak in the presence of the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, in this Chamber. She is one of the more extraordinary and fantastic additions to this House in recent years. She has made a massive contribution to our country in medical expertise. The case that she made for these amendments was utterly compelling. I hope the Minister has felt the same inspiration as I did from her words. I also commend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who I realise I have now known for 29 years, for another great speech, which again I think added to the strength of these points.
The amendments address an important omission, which has a couple of concerning issues underlying it. The case for why we should continue with this relationship is compelling. We seek to add Malta to the list of jurisdictions whose primary medical qualifications are recognised for prioritisation. As stated, Malta’s medical education system is not merely comparable to that of the United Kingdom; it is formally and historically integrated, through decades of regulatory alignment, shared training structures and sustained institutional partnerships, including the Queen Mary University of London’s Malta campus.
A substantial proportion of the graduates from this campus are United Kingdom nationals and many others hold UK domicile or indefinite leave to remain status. This is a cohort that can be planned for with confidence and absorbed without difficulty within the normal operation of the system, while making a real and practical contribution to the NHS. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, they provide a valuable workforce capability that does not undermine the consultant pipeline, which is something we have to manage very well. Excluding this cohort of medical students disrupts an established pipeline, separates training from deployment and leaves capacity unused within a system that is under constant pressure. That is not disciplined workforce policy; it is a misalignment between regulation and operational need.
Medical education is one of the United Kingdom’s most significant strategic assets and a central pillar of our global impact in healthcare. It is very important that we maintain alignments and partnerships where they exist. Undermining them does nothing to enhance our reputation as a stable partner for any form of business, let alone the important thing of building relationships in medical research. I hope the Government reflect very carefully on this. A category error has led to a position where, even as recently as 2024, we undertook another solemn commitment—as you do in contracting—which we have now backed away from. That is a terrible place to be in.
The historic connections we have with countries—where we align these things over years and people invest with confidence—must not be undermined, especially when we, essentially, use a free trade agreement as a mechanism to undermine it. This is the wrong way around. This is not strategic planning; it is dodging and weaving between different and vacillating policies. We cannot be subject to this.
I hope the Minister will encourage the Government to reflect very carefully on this. I hope that there will be some positive news about how we can make sure that the countries we have aligned with most closely and have a formal UK affiliation can be brought into this arrangement and that some form of these amendments can be accepted.
Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)
My Lords, I must begin my contribution to this debate with two formalities. First, I declare that I am an honorary member of the court of Newcastle University. In fact, I am a recent recipient of an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University—although I must stress that I in no way compare an honorary doctorate in civil law with the range of national and international medical expertise in the Chamber this afternoon.
I also apologise to the Committee for tabling the probing amendment in my name without speaking at Second Reading. I hope that your Lordships will excuse my inexperience in the procedures of the House and be assured that there was no intended discourtesy to the Committee on my part by this inadvertent breach of procedure. Previous contributions to the debate have demonstrated that I may have got off somewhat lightly in terms of email traffic by not speaking at Second Reading; I have no doubt that there will be more email traffic to come on this subject.
I congratulate the Government on bringing this Bill forward and acknowledge the legitimacy of its core purpose. Prioritising doctors trained in the United Kingdom for foundation and specialty training is a necessary, reasonable and understandable aim, particularly given the sustained workforce pressures in certain parts of the NHS.
I was motivated to table this amendment by a number of representations that I received from concerned students who had been studying at the NUMed campus in Malaysia, which I had the great privilege of visiting shortly after it opened about 10 years ago. Many graduates of the NUMed Malaysia campus have gone on to serve with great distinction in the NHS. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, said, the numbers are very small, but their impact on our National Health Service is very great. That sense of pride in the NUMed campus is felt deeply by Newcastle University, which is how I know and have been contacted about this issue. However, in a number of the representations that I have received, there has been a mistaken interpretation that the intent of the legislation is to exclude rather than prioritise. I wish to comment on these points in the debate on this group.
I was very surprised to see figures demonstrating that, in some specialties, competition ratios for specialty training have now exceeded 20 applicants per post, making the urgency of the Bill ever more apparent. I listened very carefully to the debate and have been greatly reassured by my noble friend the Minister’s assurances, particularly on the prioritisation of UK students rather than the exclusion of overseas students, and the intention of the Bill to smooth out bottlenecks in medical training and focus on homegrown talent as a priority. This does not mean denying the NHS appropriate international talent when it is appropriate to deploy it. I am also very reassured by my noble friend the Minister’s reassurances on the concerns about unintended consequences being addressed by subsequent regulation and review.
The Government have expressed a clear intent to continue to engage with relevant UK universities with international campuses to further explain the intention of the Bill and the way that it will operate in practice, and to support them as they adjust to the Bill’s very legitimate and important requirements as it progresses towards enactment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, it was with great pleasure that I added my name to the amendment so nobly introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Forbes of Newcastle. I am most appreciative to my noble friend Lady Gerada for the way that she introduced this whole group, because she flagged up very clearly that Malta and Newcastle are different from other places.
I also reassure the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, that my probing amendment was simply to probe. I was worried that the Bill’s wording could inadvertently leave UK-based universities unable to develop other outreach campuses, but not Irish medical schools and universities, and that those graduates could then be included in the future. I wanted to make sure that we had a level playing field, but I accept that the wording is clumsy and does not work.
I think the key word in the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Forbes of Newcastle, tabled is “extant”, when it says that the
“medical school … is extant on the day on which this Act is passed”.
That would allow those schools currently in place, particularly Malta-Newcastle and, if the Government are so minded, the RCSI in Bahrain, to be able to be included because those degrees are taught to the same curriculum and examined at the same level, and those taking it undertake the medical licensing exam and prescribing exam—which I know is changing, but it will still be important that there is a completely level playing field. It would stop the mushrooming that could occur from other universities.
The word “extant” is really important, and I hope that the Minister will be able to take it on board and that it is completely compatible with the compelling case made by my noble friend Lady Gerada.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, I speak in support of the thrust of the amendments in this group. I start by acknowledging the concern that I think is animating the Government on this point, which is that they do not want to see a thin end of a wedge that opens up substantially with a lot of newly created international programmes that then end up further displacing UK-trained graduates and undermining the ability to effectively plan the medical workforce of the future.
Fortunately, however, none of these amendments actually constitutes the thin end of the wedge—there is no wedge. As we have just heard, these amendments grandfather the current, very modest arrangements at QMUL Malta and Newcastle University, which are so numerically small, with a couple of hundred students relative to 12,800 for the other training programmes. So those are not the programmes that have caused the problem that the Bill is seeking to address, nor should they therefore be collateral damage as the Bill progresses.
As discussed at Second Reading, particularly in respect of Malta we have a long-standing relationship, and we have a series of diplomatic and other ties of bilateral agreement that the British Government and the Maltese within the last 12 months have renewed, which are of continuing and considerable significance to us, including on defence, security and other aspects. So the Government would be well advised not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and to take seriously the concerns that these amendments represent.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
I shall speak to the Amendments 15, 16 and 19 to add my support to the amendments on the issue of Malta from the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, as well as Amendment 17 from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, and Amendment 20 from the noble Earl, Lord Howe.
Given that we have had a substantial discussion on Malta, particularly from the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I shall speak more towards Newcastle, forging the northern alliance that we may have—and more importantly because my mentor, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who cannot be here, made a particular point of visiting my office to say, “You are going to be speaking on Newcastle on Thursday, aren’t you?” So here we go.
The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, would ensure that graduates from overseas campuses, and United Kingdom medical schools in particular, are treated fairly and consistently. I think that the amendment is precise and proportionate. It applies three conditions: first, that the primary medical qualification is awarded by a United Kingdom medical school—in this case Newcastle, but there will be others; and, secondly, that the qualification is obtained through study at an overseas campus that existed at the point of this Act being passed. The noble Baroness talked about potential creep when we discussed this last week in terms of other institutions being able to take advantage and open that back door. With this very timely amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, it is very clear that—
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
Is it the noble Lord’s understanding that there would be the opportunity for creep as is currently set out in the Bill? For example, if Queen Mary University of London wished to establish a medical school in Liechtenstein, which currently lacks one, it would be able to do so with an unlimited number of places. All those new students would then be passported into the NHS.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, has given people ideas. Possibly, this could happen, yes.
Thirdly, both courses and study for the convocation are approved by the GMC as being equivalent to the UK medical qualification. This is not about lowering standards or creating a new route through the back door. On the contrary, this is about recognising the standards that already exist and are regulated by the GMC. The GMC is determined that these courses are equivalent in content assessment and outcome. It is difficult to justify why we should exclude them, given the numbers that we heard about earlier.
Universities such as Newcastle—and there may be others as well—rely heavily on this partnership. These programmes have not just happened overnight. They have existed for some time. They are run by UK institutions, aligned with UK curricula and assessed identically to UK standards and subjects. Graduates receive UK-awarded degrees, not foreign substitutes. Such programmes contribute to the NHS. Only yesterday, we heard from Newcastle University that they have had up to 150 students on their Malaysian campus. As we heard earlier, some of those students have come back to the United Kingdom and, in particular, have served for many years as GPs when we have had an acute shortage. We need to take heed of that contribution and also the long-standing relationships that exist both with Newcastle and Queen Mary.
We are only asking for a very small change. We are not asking for tens of thousands of students to come here. We are asking for a small number through long-established partnerships that have existed and stood the test of time. We are asking the Minister for some flexibility. This is being heard from all sides of your Lordships’ House. We are about to go on a holiday. I hope that the Minister will take this time to reflect on our debate and come back on Report with government amendments that we can all support. I look forward to the debate that we are going to have in less than a fortnight’s time.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 20 and 21 and in support of the other amendments in this group.
My amendments are intended to work together and to return us to one of the salient themes of our debates at Second Reading, a theme which has been persuasively developed today by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, and other speakers. At the heart of their concerns is why the Government have chosen to adopt a definition that threatens to undermine high-quality workforce capacity in the NHS, that jeopardises the sustainability of medical education delivered overseas by UK institutions, and that runs completely counter to the Government’s stated ambitions on promoting British standards of education internationally.
The Bill prioritises graduates based on strict geographic criteria, rather than on the provenance of their qualifications. UK academic institutions such as Queen Mary University of London and Newcastle University have campuses respectively on Malta and in Malaysia which train doctors to GMC-approved standards, using the same curriculum and the same assessments as those employed on their campuses in the UK.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, has eloquently made the case for Maltese-trained students. I can add little to that. The noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Mendelsohn, and Lord Forbes have also spoken very powerfully on the same theme. The amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, speak of the two qualifications—in other words that gained in Malta and that gained in London—as being identical in character. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, uses the word “equivalent”. I would go further by saying that the degree issued by the Queen Mary University of London Malta campus is not merely equivalent to a UK degree: it is a UK degree.
Not only that, but Queen Mary University is able to state that cohorts of its students trained in Malta frequently outperform their contemporaries who have studied and trained on the London campus. The intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has confirmed that that is not an isolated claim. The same claim could be made of many graduates of Newcastle University’s campus in Malaysia. These are excellent doctors, so there is not an issue of quality here.
Nor should there be an issue around numbers. In total, as we have heard, the number of these overseas-trained graduates is modest in comparison to the overall NHS training intake in a given year. The numbers really ought to be treated as de minimis. We have heard from Ministers that, if they were to flex the rules in the way that I and others are proposing, there would be no way for them in the future to control the total numbers of eligible applicants from these sources. My question is: why? It would seem perfectly possible to grant Ministers a power to cap total numbers at a figure corresponding to recent experience. It would then be up to the relevant universities concerned to collaborate year by year to ensure that the cap was not exceeded. That is what my Amendment 21 is intended to do.
Finally, we return to the issue of legitimate expectations. For all the reasons that I have given, students trained on overseas campuses of UK institutions have never dreamed of questioning whether the status of their qualification would differ in the slightest from the status of the qualification gained by their student colleagues in London. They are, in consequence, not to put too fine a point in it, appalled that, through this Bill, they are suddenly to be regarded as less deserving of a medical career in the NHS. I ask the Minister to think again.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for this debate, as I have been grateful for the time that noble Lords have given to discussing their concerns about various aspects of the Bill in advance of today. I can say to both the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, that I always reflect on what they and other noble Lords say. Indeed, I reflect on what every noble Lord says—it is true that I may listen to some more than others, but that would be telling. I am genuinely grateful. In my view, it really does assist the passage of legislation and I take it very seriously. I will of course reflect, as I have before, not just on what is said in the Chamber but on what we have discussed outside.
The noble Earl, Lord Howe, said previously that people will be watching and reading this debate, and I absolutely agree and am glad that they do. So I must emphasise the point that this is not about excluding people from their applications; it is about prioritising. The reason we are in this position is the removal of the resident labour market test in 2020, which changed the whole landscape. In 2019, there were 12,000 applicants; now, there are nearly 40,000 applicants, which means four resident doctors for every specialist training post. I believe that noble Lords understand the scale. Internationally trained doctors make a huge contribution and will continue to do so. We are aiming to bring forward those internationally trained doctors who have significant NHS experience for training posts in the future, which I think is absolutely right.
Let me turn to the amendments in this group: Amendments 15 and 16, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada; Amendment 17, tabled by my noble friend Lord Forbes; and Amendments 20 and 21, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. Each of these amendments seeks to ensure that graduates of overseas campuses of UK medical schools are prioritised for foundation and specialty training. I understand why this is being raised, and it is quite right to probe this whole area, in my view. While I appreciate the intention behind these amendments, and the manner in which they have come through, the Government are unable to accept them.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
I want to come in on the point about whether or not the UK Government would lack the ability to control the expansion of international places in the grandfathered campuses. Is it not the case that, in fact, the UK Government do have such a tool at their disposal, through the Office for Students? The OfS has to agree the number of undergraduate medical places that a university can operate here in the UK and can cap those, and could therefore introduce an off-setting mechanism so that any additional place created outside the UK would see a reduction in the UK authorisation. That would be incentive enough, I suspect, to ensure that universities did not behave in the way that the Minister is concerned about.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord kindly raised this with me before, and I did test it out. I am grateful that he has given thought to this, because it is an important point. However, I am advised that, unfortunately, the solution that he has come up with would not deal with all the concerns we have and would still give us difficulty. The noble Lord talked about the thin end of the wedge, and I fear that we are still in the same place. I am happy to write to the noble Lord, and to make that letter available, to explain further detail. I am grateful that he has given consideration to a solution for what is undoubtedly an issue.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
I understand the comments that the Minister has made to my noble friend Lord Stevens. Would she consider wording in the primary legislation that expands on the fact that the campus must be extant and includes that the number of students studying medicine for the UK degree must be the same as when the Bill passes? That would provide rigid guidelines in primary legislation and would not rely on another body, where a quota could possibly be negotiated.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
Again, I understand that the noble Baroness is coming forward with a solution and I appreciate her thoughts. I always reflect on what is said, but my initial reflection is that that does not deal with the fact that we already have a number of people. I asked this very question about continuing to prioritise them. It is significant even currently and that is part of the problem, although I understand what she is suggesting.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I will take one more intervention, but it might be helpful to hear all that I have to say.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I am sure that it will, but I just wanted to follow up the Minister’s pledge to deliver a letter to us in which she will set out precisely what her concerns are. Will the timing of that letter be early next week so that there is time to table amendments for Report to meet some of those concerns?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
As I always do, I will seek to engage in sufficient time before Report. I will not promise the beginning of next week, but we all know the deadlines that noble Lords are working to and I am very respectful of that.
Amendment 17 could create the loophole I have referred to and risks existing international overseas campuses expanding their intakes further. I am grateful that noble Lords acknowledge the concern and are considering how to deal with it. That would be outside any UK workforce planning.
Amendment 21 would provide a regulation-making power to limit the number of applicants who could be prioritised from these overseas campuses. Going back to my earlier comments, it is not clear how such a requirement would be implemented effectively and fairly in practice but, in any event, it would not provide an appropriate safeguard for UK workforce planning.
The Bill rightly prioritises those whose education and placements the UK taxpayer has supported, who are most likely to work in the NHS in the long term—I emphasise this point—and are better equipped to deliver healthcare tailored to the UK’s population because they understand the UK’s epidemiology. However, I hope my noble friend Lord Forbes and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, will take back to the university that graduates from international overseas campuses are not excluded and will continue to be able to apply to the foundation programme and specialty training.
Amendment 18 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, relates to the prioritisation of medical graduates from institutions in Ireland. The Government cannot accept this amendment, and I thought her own assessment of it was most honest and helpful. Throughout the development of this Bill, we have been clear that graduates from the Republic of Ireland are prioritised on the same basis as UK medical graduates. This reflects the long-standing and unique relationship between our countries, including the arrangements under the common travel area, which supports reciprocal rights of movement and employment. It also ensures coherence in workforce planning across both jurisdictions, where medical education and training pathways have been closely aligned for many years.
Introducing different criteria for graduates from the Republic of Ireland, as this amendment proposes, would risk disrupting those shared arrangements. It could also create an uncertainty in the provision of postgraduate training in Ireland.
Amendment 19, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, seeks to add Malta to the list of prioritised countries set out in Clause 4. This would require that those who hold a primary medical qualification from any institution in Malta, irrespective of their nationality, are prioritised for foundation and specialty training. I address this particularly to my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, to whom I listened closely, as I did to the noble Baroness, but we cannot accept this amendment.
I refer particularly to the European Free Trade Association countries, as they have been mentioned a number of times, including by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others. Those countries listed in Clause 4 are those with which the UK has signed agreements that include offering parity of access to the workforce. I have looked back at when those agreements were made: for the EFTA countries of Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, the agreement was made in July 2021, and Switzerland was in 2019. I make these points because they certainly precede this Government. In practice, as I have said before, not all these countries will have eligible applicants in any case.
The 1975 UK-Malta reciprocal healthcare convention will continue and is not affected by the Bill. I emphasise that that agreement is wholly related to reciprocal access to healthcare, not access to training or employment related to medical training. I hope it is helpful to say that the Bill includes a power to amend the list of countries in Clause 4 to reflect any future international agreements that the UK may enter into. As I have also stated previously, the Government set UK medical school places based on future health system needs. I emphasise that there is no disrespect intended here and we very much value the long-standing partnership with Malta on healthcare, and that will continue to be valued. However, prioritising international graduates would undermine our ability to keep foundation training numbers aligned with the NHS workforce that we are planning for and manage those bottlenecks in specialty training, about which there is concern across the Committee. This is about focusing on patient care and ensuring that those whose education and experience best prepares them to practice safely and effectively in the NHS are the ones who are prioritised.
For specialty training, prioritising these individuals would not support our aim to prioritise doctors with significant NHS experience who understand how the health service works and how to meet the needs of the UK population. I reassure the Committee that this Bill will not affect existing fellowship arrangements with Malta, and the affiliation of the UK foundation programme and Malta foundation programme, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, referred, will still stand. Senior officials in my department have met with the high commissioner of Malta to the United Kingdom to assure him of this and last week I received a positive letter of acknowledgement from the Health Minister in Malta.
To be absolutely clear, individuals with a primary medical qualification from Malta will still be able to apply for foundation and specialty training places, and they will be considered for any places that are left after prioritisation. But it would still be the case that it would be at odds with the aim of the Bill for them to be prioritised for these places. For the reasons I have set out, I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Winston (Lab)
The NHS is a complex organisation which is going to be rapidly changing, with increasing issues regarding its employees and all sorts of new technologies that will develop in a way we have never seen before. In view of that, does the Minister think there might be some reason for the Government to consider looking at this situation in, say, five years’ time to see the effect of the Bill on the health service?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My noble friend is right about the pace of change, and many of the changes we cannot even imagine as we discuss this today. We keep the impact of legislation under review, and the Bill will be no different to any other Bill in that regard.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
I do not want to put the Minister too much on the spot now, so could she clarify in her letter whether Clause 4(3)(b) means that the Bahrain campus is within the allocation for prioritised places, whether any other Irish campuses are, and how the limit would be held on other campuses developed from Ireland, given that the response we have had seems to exclude Malta and Newcastle?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am happy to set it out in a letter, but I can say immediately that graduates of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland’s Bahrain campus are not necessarily prioritised just because part of their programme takes place in Ireland. The Bill is clear that prioritisation applies to graduates of Irish medical schools who complete the majority of their medical education in Ireland, but I am happy to add to that in my letter.
Baroness Gerada (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister for the care with which she has addressed my amendments. I will be very brief. I must say I am disappointed, and I have a few points.
I will address Malta first. These are not international medical graduates; these are UK-trained doctors training in a UK university, albeit overseas. As I said, they are trained for the NHS. The Minister mentioned several times that it is not exclusion, it is prioritisation. I have already had emails from two doctors, one of whom is being excluded from applying for a postgraduate examination until the UK cohort has applied. I will not say their specialty, because it might identify them, but it means that the tiny island of Malta will not have this particular specialty because this doctor cannot finish his training until he does that. They are already being excluded from fellowship posts that have been long standing over decades—that is of last week.
Given the fact that the Bill is being taken through the House at such pace, as well as writing a letter—which I understand we will get in our post next week—would the Minister be willing to meet me and several Peers who have already raised some amendments so that we can explore this in more detail and work constructively towards a solution? I am sure these issues will be considered further on Report but, in the light of the Minister’s reply today, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kamall
“Review: provision of medical training places(1) Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must undertake a review of the impact of this Act on the provision of medical training places as part of the UK Foundation Programme and UK specialty training programmes as defined by section 5 of this Act.(2) The review under subsection (1) must include assessment of the impact of this Act on—(a) the take-up of places on the UK Foundation Programme and UK specialty training programmes in each calendar year from 2010 to 2025, and(b) the total number of valid applications to the UK Foundation Programme and UK specialty training programmes in each calendar year from 2010 to 2025.(3) In undertaking the review under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consider the number of unsuccessful applicants or successful applicants who decide not to take up their training place.(4) Within two months of the completion of the review under subsection 1, the Secretary of State must publish a report including the findings of the review and lay a copy of the report before both Houses of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to undertake a review of the adequacy of provision of medical training places and publish a report detailing the findings of that review.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, in speaking for the first time in Committee, I refer to my interests as a professor of politics and international relations at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, where I teach an MBA module on healthcare policy and strategy, and where I also co-operate with the school of medicine, which will start accepting students later this year. I also work as an honorary fellow at the Vinson Centre for the Public Understanding of Economics and Entrepreneurship at the University of Buckingham, which also has a medical school but with which I have no direct connection.
I tabled Amendment 22 to facilitate a wider debate on the level of provision of medical training places and its impact on the outcomes for doctors and, by extension, patients, as well as the need for regular review. We all agree that the NHS and other health providers need highly qualified staff if they are to deliver the quality care that people expect of them, but that means that policymakers should seek to establish an education system that encourages young people to see the benefits of medicine as a career path, supports those going through medical training every step of the way and removes barriers to those who want to be doctors. As my noble friend Lord Howe said earlier, currently, too many young doctors reach the point at which they need to secure a medical specialty training place but find themselves disappointed, either because they are unable to access a training place or because the training place they are able to secure does not meet their needs.
A 2023 study by Tomas Ferreira on the career intentions of medical students found that many medical students finishing their foundation programme do not intend to take up medical specialty training places. The report says
“we report an increase in intention to not take up specialty posts immediately after the Foundation Programme, with an increase from 6.75% … of first-year students to 35.98% … of final year students. A contributing factor to this scenario could be a significant increase in competition ratios for specialty training posts, partly due to increasing medical student places and no corresponding increase in the number of training posts available”.
The lack of specialty training places to retain those medical students within the NHS is a challenge that the Government and we all face—something, I concede, we realised perhaps too late when we were in government. If the issue is not tackled, we will continue to see talented young doctors who might otherwise prefer to stay in the UK and work within the NHS, and maybe other health providers, leaving the UK to complete their training elsewhere.
The Government have announced their offer to the BMA to expand specialty training posts by 4,000, with 1,000 of them brought forward this year. That expansion in training places is welcome and necessary. I ask the Minister to confirm whether there will be any delay in their delivery and whether they will be delivered this year.
In May last year, I tabled a series of Written Questions on resident doctor medical training places, and the responses showed that very small numbers of training places are available in some regions. For example, in 2024, just one medical oncology specialist training stage 3 post was offered in the whole of the north-east region. The figure for the Wessex region was two places. For the earlier specialist training stage 1 posts in gynaecology, the Wessex region had just 11 places in 2024, while the whole of the south-west region had just 16 of those places. Can the Minister say whether those numbers are meeting the needs of those regions and whether there is a gap? What are the key factors that restrict the number of training places that can be offered in those regions?
The overall number of training places is probably the most important challenge young doctors face, but there are other considerations that affect talent retention. The geographical distribution of training places is also something that we all know needs attention. Last month, the Government announced that they will introduce new training places targeted at trusts with the biggest workforce gaps, prioritising rural and coastal areas, where patients currently struggle the most. We welcome that. That is good news. But, in designing this policy, I ask the Minister what assessment the Government have made of the number of medical students who actually want to train in these rural areas and whether that is a factor in some UK medical graduates choosing to go abroad or is irrelevant.
In response to concerns from the BMA about the challenge of doctors having to cover the upfront cost of their training, the Government have offered cost-related measures in their offer to the BMA, including reimbursement of exam fees. I ask the Minister for a little transparency and to give the Committee more detail on how reimbursement would work if the BMA were to accept that offer.
I hope that the Minister is able to answer these questions, either today or later in writing. I assure her that we look forward to working constructively with the Government as they face up to these workforce challenges. I beg to move.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, to help the Committee to assess the need for this further report that the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, just set out, it would be helpful if we could hear from the Minister when the Government will produce their replacement long-term workforce plan for the 2023 edition, which itself was deemed to be long term but ended up having a half-life of less than two years. How imminent is that and will it deal with the sorts of points that the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, rightly brings to our attention? When will we see the follow-on to the excellent Medical Training Review: Phase 1 Diagnostic Report, authored by the Chief Medical Officer and the previous National Medical Director of NHS England, published in October, which sets out these issues extremely well? The clue is in the title: it is the diagnosis. But when do we get the prescription? When does the treatment begin?
In a sense, the problem that we are dealing with through the Bill—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, just set out for us—owes its antecedents to the disconnect between the provision of NHS services and the ability to make smart, long-term workforce decisions. Unfortunately, for the period 2012 to 2022, those decisions on medical training were outwith the NHS and in effect were being controlled by the Treasury, which was constantly saying no to Health Ministers who were at the time trying to bring forward constructive solutions. Indeed, it was only when a former Secretary of State for Health became Chancellor that the situation was unblocked and we got the medical school expansion. Perhaps that is an inspiring example for the current Health Secretary—I do not know; perhaps he aspires higher. The fact is that we need that whole-government engagement on these kinds of questions to bring coherence and deal with these problems at root. Therefore, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, any light that the Minister can shed on when precisely we will have line of sight to these sorts of questions would be, I think, of great benefit to the Committee.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendment 22, standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kamall. He absolutely made the case but, having heard what the Minister had to say on the previous group, I have a terrible certainty about what her response will be.
I assure the Minister that many of us want to find solutions, in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, mentions. The principles of the Bill are supported across the Committee; it is some of the detail that is in contention. We must be honest that the Bill deals with the symptom—competition ratios—not the cure, which is the bottleneck of insufficient specialty training places. I go back to the phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, used at Second Reading. We are simply reshuffling the queue.
This amendment places a necessary duty on the Secretary of State to review the adequacy of training places. We have received warnings from doctors in shortage specialties such as psychiatry and general practice, who fear that the Bill will drive away the international talent that we rely on. We need to know whether this legislation will succeed in retaining UK graduates or whether it will inadvertently exacerbate shortages by signalling to the global medical community that the NHS is closed for business. We cannot manage what we do not measure.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the debate that we have just had and I appreciate the support for what we are seeking to do, particularly from both Front Benches, as in the other place. I am most grateful for that.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, seeks to require the Secretary of State to review the impact of this Act within six months of Royal Assent and to require that that review is published and laid in Parliament. I understand the intent behind this amendment, but we do not feel that there is a need to accept it because the Government have already set out their impact-monitoring and evaluation plans within the published impact statement on 14 January.
The noble Lord’s amendment also specifies requirements that are not compatible with how recruitment cycles operate. He will understand that I want to report to your Lordships’ House only on the basis of proper information, as he would expect. However, data as specified in the amendment would not be available to allow us to meet those requirements or to allow sufficient time and flexibility for the investigation of impacts. However, I give the assurance that, should the Bill be passed, the Government will ensure that appropriate data is collected and investigated to facilitate the already proposed impact evaluation. I hope that this will be helpful.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke on this amendment. I recognise the answer that the Minister gave about the impact report that the Government have announced. I will reflect carefully on whether what I intended with this amendment aligns with that impact report. If this is just a problem of synchronisation of when data is available with the report then, if the impact report that the Minister mentions does not provide information, perhaps we could find an amendment. We could look at syncing that data to make sure that it is a meaningful report that meets both our needs. Obviously, I will need to do a careful review, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley
“(1) Regulations under this Act are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I know that it is late, but it is important that I move this amendment, which seeks for all regulations that are made under the Bill are subject to affirmative resolution procedures. In simple terms, after the Bill is passed, we would have a vote in both Houses on any changes made to allocation of spaces. This amendment goes to the heart of parliamentary accountability.
The Bill as currently drafted grants Ministers broad regulation-making powers, including the ability to amend key operational aspects of medical training with limited parliamentary oversight. My concerns are not with the intentions of the current Minister or the present Government but with the precedent that this sets. Delegated powers once granted outlive individual Ministers or Governments.
Medical training is an area where stability and predictability are essential. Doctors and medical students plan years in advance—sometimes decades. They make decisions about education, location, finances and family life based on the rules that Parliament sets. If those rules can be altered by secondary legislation without a positive vote in both Houses, we risk creating uncertainty and undermining confidence in the system.
The affirmative resolution procedure would provide a necessary safeguard. It ensures transparency, debate and accountability. It allows Parliament to examine whether proposed changes are proportionate, evidence-based and aligned with the original intent of an Act. Importantly, in this case, it would give affected shareholders—medical students, trainees, regulators and the NHS workforce—the assurance that changes will not be made without democratic consent and accountability.
This House has repeatedly expressed concerns about the expansion of executive powers through delegated legislation, particularly in areas with significant policy impacts. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has, on numerous occasions, warned against the inappropriate use of negative or minimal scrutiny procedures where primary legislation confers wider discretion. My amendment responds directly to those concerns.
There is also a practical benefit. Requiring affirmative approvals encourages better policy-making. Ministers can explain, justify and defend their proposals in open debate. That process often improves the quality of regulations, identifies unintended consequences and builds broader support for necessary reforms.
This amendment would not prevent future Governments adapting the medical training system. It would simply ensure that, when they do so, they do so with Parliament, not without it and not by going around it. It would preserve flexibility while embedding accountability. At a time when trust in politics and political institutions is fragile, Parliament must demonstrate that significant changes to professional regulations are made openly and responsibly. Requiring a positive resolution in both Houses is a modest but important step in that direction. I therefore commend this amendment to your Lordships’ House.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, for his amendment and his very helpful introduction. From these Benches, we have consistently raised our concerns about the downsides of emergency legislation. The Constitution Committee chairman, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, wrote in his letter to the Minister that the Constitution Committee has
“repeatedly raised concerns about the fast-tracking of legislation, highlighting in particular the need to ensure that effective parliamentary scrutiny is maintained”.
We are all of us, I hope, doing our utmost in the short time available to scrutinise the Bill fully, but, with such a short period of time available, we cannot discount the possibility that this legislation will have unintended consequences. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, posited one particular example in his speech during the last debate.
It is true that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has not brought anything in the Bill to the attention of the House. However, in the light of the fact that the Bill has been fast-tracked through Parliament, there is, I believe, a case for making all regulations under this Act subject to the affirmative procedure, allowing for additional future scrutiny. Like the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful not just for this brief debate but for the efforts of noble Lords to expedite this legislation. I acknowledge the short timeframe—it is not as short as in the other place but, nevertheless, noble Lords have been most co-operative, and I value that.
Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, seeks to require that all regulations made under the Act are subject to the affirmative procedure. This is an amendment we are not able to accept. To reiterate our intention, the Bill sets out the groups of people who are to be prioritised for specialty training from 2027 onwards. I reassure the noble Lord that the delegated power is limited to adding to this list by reference to significant experience working as a doctor in the health service or immigration status.
Similarly, we have set out in the Bill specialty training programmes excluded from the prioritisation scheme. The delegated power is limited to amend this list, and it gives necessary operational flexibility to respond to future changes in recruitment, training and workforce needs—something that I know noble Lords are very attuned to the need for.
I am sympathetic to the desire for parliamentary scrutiny and I always try to ensure that it is provided but, because of the limited scope of these powers, we believe that the negative procedure is appropriate. As the noble Earl, Lord Howe, just referred to, the Bill has been assessed by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and no suggestion has been made that the negative procedure was inappropriate for this regulation.
I have spoken in a previous group to why we are dealing with emergency legislation. I hear what is said about the downsides, but we have to balance that with the scale of the problem and the urgency that it demands. That is why we decided to introduce emergency legislation.
The noble Earl spoke about the Constitutional Committee letter. We will be responding formally to the committee to address its concern. With that, I hope the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
I thank the Minister for that timely response. I particularly welcome the support of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for the principle that I was trying to establish. However, on this occasion, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kamall
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment brings the Act into force one month after it is passed.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Coffey, who is not in her place, I hope it is acceptable if I move Amendment 26 and speak to Amendment 27. Both amendments seek to bring forward the commencement of the Bill rather than leaving its provisions to be implemented by regulations.
The Government say they need the Bill to pass as soon as possible but then refuse to commit to a date for commencement. Given that there is no date for implementation, noble Lords will rightly ask: what is the hurry with this Bill? There is a fundamental constitutional point here. Emergency legislation should be avoided as far as possible and, where it is necessary, it should be delivered urgently. In this case, we have been asked to fast-track the Bill without there being any apparent urgency to implement it.
The Minister sought to partly address this concern at Second Reading. Could she please explain exactly why the training allocation system will be unable to cope with the changed prioritisation arrangements introduced by the Bill if the BMA continues with its strike action during the coming months? What factors would frustrate the rollout? Would it be systems? Would it be the availability of officials? Would it be the ability of trusts and institutions to engage with the Department of Health and Social Care in a timely way? Or are there other reasons that noble Lords should be aware of? I hope this gives the Minister the opportunity to explain some of those reasons.
While we agree with the principle of giving UK graduates priority, and many noble Lords across the Committee have said this, we should take the time to have a proper debate on whether any other students should also be prioritised and in what order. We should have a debate to consider and debate questions such as: while qualifications may be similar, whether graduates from overseas branches of UK universities really do have similar experience to those who studied in the UK and worked in the NHS, or whether the country in which they studied has a patient profile similar to the UK, and whether in fact any of these distinctions are actually important. Another possible question that we should be looking at is whether historical prioritisation is still valid for today’s world, and whether it is worth while or too much effort to revisit some international agreements.
Instead of this much more considered debate, the Government tell us that they need to get the Bill on the statute book as soon as possible, but they are not forthcoming—perhaps not transparent—when it comes to implementation. Given this lack of clarity, I must say that there is a suspicion that the timing of the Bill and the Government’s rush to get it on to the statute book may appear to be not entirely unconnected with negotiations with the BMA resident doctors.
Whatever our politics and whichever Bench we sit on, legislation should be about making the lives of British people better. Although this Bill has the potential to help British citizens who are graduates of UK medical schools, the lack of transparency on implementation gives the impression that this legislation is more about giving the Secretary of State a negotiating chip in discussions with the BMA. I gently suggest that this is not a good enough reason for rushing such legislation, which is why my noble friend and I tabled these amendments. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 26 and 27 on commencement, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall. I confess that we are conflicted on these. This brings us back to the tension at the heart of the Bill. We have UK graduates urging immediate implementation to resolve their uncertainty; conversely, we have international medical graduates asking for delay or transition because the rules are changing mid-cycle. If the Government eventually accept the amendments in group 2, providing a fair transitional arrangement for those with NHS experience, then immediate commencement becomes less punitive. However, if they persist with the blunt ILR proxy for 2026 then rushing to commencement simply accelerates an injustice.
I urge the Minister to clarify when precisely the regulations for the 2026 cycle will be laid if this Bill passes and whether they will include the transitional protections we have argued for. I am somewhat pessimistic on that. Certainty is needed, but it must not come at the expense of fairness.
In that context, as we are at the end of Committee, I must ask the Minister to confirm that she is going to meet the cross-party group of those of us who have spoken at Second Reading and in Committee before Report takes place. I have kept my diary free for the Monday before Report and I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, mentioned that earlier. We would all welcome a face-to-face meeting with the Minister. She talked about us being co-operative, and we all realise the Government’s desire for speed, particularly in the context of the industrial dispute, but, quite frankly, it takes two to tango.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s advice in his last comment.
I thank noble Lords for their contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Kamall, spoke about what I am going to call the tension between emergency legislation and the commencement clause. I will start on that point. I hope he is aware that our intent is, of course, to commence the Bill as soon as we possibly can, subject to its passage through Parliament. That is why I am so grateful to noble Lords and to Parliament more broadly—both Houses—that they have agreed to expedite the progress of this Bill.
I will come back on to this later in a bit more detail but, as I have already stated, there is a genuine question about operational feasibility, if strikes are ongoing, due to the strain that they put on the system. I am sure everybody in your Lordships’ Chamber would understand that. I will now refer to the amendments, and I have some other points to answer some of the questions that were raised.
Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, relate to the date upon which the Act comes into force. Both would remove the provision that allows the Secretary of State to appoint the commencement date.
We cannot accept these amendments, as they remove an important element—and I emphasise this point—of operational flexibility, should it be needed. The commencement provision within the Bill is not a mechanism for delay. It is, we believe, a necessary safeguard to ensure that systems planning and operational capacity are in place before the Act is brought into force. Noble Lords will also appreciate that it is a material question, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, about how possible it is to proceed if industrial action continues, given the strain that strikes put on the system.
It is our intention to commence the Bill as soon as we are able, but it is essential that the Secretary of State is able to take all the circumstances, including operational readiness, into account when deciding when the Act should come into force. I think that it is honest to say this. Amendment 26 also seeks to require the Act to come into force one month after it is passed. Specialty training offers must be made from March. Delaying commencement by even one month would leave insufficient time to implement prioritisation for this year’s application round. In short, fixing a commencement date one month after Royal Assent, as Amendment 26 suggests, would create a situation where the Bill comes into force too late to tackle the bottleneck problem that we seek to resolve—the one that it is designed to remedy for the 2026 year—while also removing our ability to commence the Act only when systems are ready to deliver it effectively.
On the comments about industrial action made by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, I reconfirm that the Government have been in intensive and constructive discussions with the BMA resident doctors committee since the start of the new year. The aim is to try to bring an end to the damaging cycle of strikes, and to avoid what is undoubtedly further, unnecessary disruption for patients and NHS staff. We continue to hope that those talks result in an agreement that works for everyone, so that there will be no more strike action by resident doctors in 2026.
With regard to the noble Lord’s request for more detail on operational readiness, I know he understands that introducing reforms to such a large-scale recruitment process is a big undertaking. We do not want the risk of creating errors that could lead to further uncertainty for organisations, for educators and, most importantly, for our trainees. An effective commencement demands clear processes for delivery across the health system. The reality is that industrial action will put this at risk because it is a diversion of resources, as it always is.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, asked about further engagement. I have already had engagement with a number of noble Lords, including both Front Benches. If it is possible to do so before Report, I will write again. Time is extremely short, so while I am always glad to do so, if the noble Lord will allow me to look at that in a practical sense, I will be pleased to. With that, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for that considered response to the discussions. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, not only to this group of amendments, but today. I also thank the staff for being here to look after us while we stay to this hour.
I should perhaps clarify for the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that when I laid the amendment it was with the amendment from my noble friend Lord Howe in mind. If we can address some of the perceived injustices or unfairness in the system, we should implement as soon as possible. I was not seeking to create a tension there.
I am grateful to the Minister for explaining that there are operational issues. I think that it would help the Government, and help this Bill to go forward, if the Minister were able to explain in a letter to noble Lords some of those operational issues, because sometimes it may be that we think that it is quite easy. I know, having been in government, that there are a number of issues. I can see that the Minister is looking forward to spending her Recess formulating that letter with her officials. The noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, talked earlier about a holiday, but I do not think that Ministers ever get a holiday. I am giving the Minister a challenge during the Recess to explain some of the operational challenges that lead to the Government not being able to accept this amendment to implement the Bill as soon as possible.
With that, I thank the Minister for her response. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.