House of Commons
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Ed Miliband)
At the Warsaw security forum earlier this month, I discussed with our allies our work to deter and disrupt threats to our democracy from foreign interference. The Prime Minister announced at the UN General Assembly that, in line with the recommendations of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we will establish a national centre for information defence to detect, deter and disrupt information attacks from hostile states. This is a very serious and important issue for our democracies, and all countries need to do more to tackle it.
Lisa Smart
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for those remarks, but with Russian-linked interference operations continuing to target democratic elections across Europe, does he feel that the current arrangements are sufficient? He will know that the European democracy shield is developing new structures to co-ordinate action against foreign interference and disinformation, so what discussions has he had with our European partners about ensuring that the UK is fully involved in those efforts, including the proposed European centre for democratic resilience, so that we can better identify and respond to Russian attempts to undermine democratic elections across Europe?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Lady raises an important issue, and Governments across the world, and indeed across Europe, need to do more. Since October 2024, this Government have sanctioned 106 entities and individuals responsible for delivering Russia’s information warfare. That includes, in July, sanctioning Rybar, the media company resourced by the Russian state and responsible for spreading false narratives about Ukraine and interfering in European elections, including in Moldova. I hope—indeed, I am confident—that the centre that the Prime Minister announced is something we will work on with our European partners to counter this grave threat to our democratic way of life, frankly, across the world.
Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)
For a decade we have rightly been worried about the impact of misinformation on social media fuelled by hostile foreign states, but now millions of people get their information from AI chatbots. What work is the Secretary of State doing with European allies to protect the information provided by AI systems during elections here and overseas?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend raises an important issue. I recently read the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on these issues, and that was an important document. He is absolutely right about countering all the threats we face from AI, as well as taking advantage of the opportunities. That is something that the new centre the Prime Minister announced will definitely do.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Foreign Secretary accept that it would be a disservice to the democratic process to identify attempts to interfere with it with invalidation of the result? Does he, like the Prime Minister, now accept that whatever Russia tried to do, it did not have any decisive effect on the referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union?
Ed Miliband
I and the Prime Minister have always accepted the result of the Brexit referendum, and it is important to say that. I do think it is important, though, that whatever side we were on in that debate or in other debates across this House, we all recognise that Russia is seeking to interfere all the time and to disrupt and destabilise our democracy. I know the right hon. Gentleman has a proud record on these issues.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
Meur ras ha myttin da, Mr Speaker. Last Wednesday, Georgia’s constitutional court began hearings on a lawsuit brought by the ruling Georgian Dream party seeking to ban the country’s five main opposition parties. At a time when external authoritarian actors seek to undermine democratic institutions across Europe, what steps are the Government taking with our European allies to respond to the deterioration of democracy in Georgia?
Ed Miliband
I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised this. Whether it is in Georgia or elsewhere, it is incredibly important that we speak out in favour of democratic norms and ways of life. We know that we face more of a threat to democracy and the rule of law from hostile actors across the world than at any time since world war two. This Government will bow to nobody in speaking out in favour of democracy and the values shared across this House.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
Moscow ships stalk our cables, Tehran’s agents seek to assassinate on our soil, and last week the Pentagon declared Confucius institutes a threat to our national security. In stark contrast, the powers I secured to allow these weapons of the Chinese Communist party to be closed here in the UK were scrapped by this Government. Does the Foreign Secretary think that Washington has got it wrong, and if not, will the powers be reinstated and deployed? While he is at it, will he expel every Iranian official with links to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and bring our allies together to freeze Russian and Belarusian tourist visas to protect us from their use to attack our country?
Ed Miliband
I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. She talks eloquently about the threats we face from across the world, whether that is Russia, Iran or China. It is incredibly important, and this Government will be absolutely resolute in countering these threats whatever form they take. Frankly—this is why this question is so relevant—the threats to our national life have changed. They are not simply the threats we are used to from the past; hybrid warfare is the modern threat, and we will absolutely counter it.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Foreign money can be used to influence politics through sport. On 17 December last year, the Government gave Roman Abramovich 90 days to hand over the proceeds of the sale of Chelsea football club to benefit Ukrainians— 314 days later, that has still not happened. What is holding the Government back from enforcing their own legal contract with Mr Abramovich through the courts? When might Ukrainians who are fearful about the winter see some of that money? In the light of this and questions over the ownership of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour, what conversations has the Foreign Secretary had with the Prime Minister or the Culture Secretary about ensuring that overseas investors are fit and proper persons to own English clubs?
Ed Miliband
Let me deal directly with the most substantive part of the hon. Member’s question. I think it is a view shared across the House that the ill-gotten gains of Russia and Russian oligarchs must be used for the right purposes, not the wrong purposes. On the question he raised about Chelsea, I will be careful what I say because of legal processes, but we are absolutely determined to take action on that. More broadly, we will be urging in the coming months that our EU partners, along with Britain, move on Russian sovereign assets more generally, because we know that one of the most important things we need to do is give proper support to Ukraine through this winter and beyond, and Russian sovereign assets are an ideal way to do that.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
We have raised the UK’s serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme, and that includes the Foreign Secretary raising it directly with Foreign Minister Araghchi. Iran has accumulated over 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60%—a level that goes beyond any credible civilian justification. Iran’s ongoing lack of International Atomic Energy Agency co-operation led us, together with 22 countries, to vote to report Iran to the UN Security Council for its continued non-compliance and refusal to allow inspectors access. A negotiated solution remains the way to address Iran’s nuclear programme, and we are working with partners on that.
John Cooper
Iran is tiptoeing towards a bomb. It is an existential threat for our friend and ally Israel. I cannot understand how glad-handing the despotic Tehranian regime and making fake TikTok videos in New York helps world peace. Surely we can do more.
Stephen Doughty
With the greatest respect, the Foreign Secretary raised very serious concerns at the highest levels about Iran’s nuclear programme and a series of other issues, just as previous Foreign Secretaries—including many Conservative ones—have raised serious concerns directly with Iran. We are absolutely clear: Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. We are committed to working with others to ensure that it does not.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Uma Kumaran)
The polar regions are areas of growing strategic importance where geopolitics, climate and national security collide. Our national security strategy identified the Arctic and Antarctic as emerging areas of strategic competition. I discussed this with my international counterparts—as well as the hon. Member and the all-party parliamentary group for the polar regions—at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík earlier this month. To protect the UK’s interests, we know we must adapt. That is why I recently launched our updated UK Arctic policy framework.
George Freeman
It is good to be back. Given the accelerating rate of Arctic sea ice melt, we are not many years away from an ice-free summer in the Arctic, with huge implications for sea levels, ocean currents and weather systems, and growing commercial pressures for exploitation in the Arctic. Having been the Minister with responsibility for the British Antarctic Survey, I am delighted again to be chairing the APPG for the polar regions and to have joined the Minister at the Arctic Circle Assembly. Does she agree that in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, we are on the frontline of not only some very important science for global planetary sustainability, but geo-diplomacy and technology, with an increasing wild west, which this country has a major role to play in helping to regulate and convene good players in?
Uma Kumaran
I thank the hon. Member for his important question. I know that he has a long history of speaking up about these issues. He is absolutely correct: shifting geopolitical and climate dynamics in the Arctic and Antarctic are intensifying strategic interests in new economic opportunities in the polar regions. Those bring with them challenges and pose risks to regional governance and to UK interests overseas and at home, including challenges to our security and stability, domestic resilience and supply chains. That is why we have updated our Arctic policy framework, and it is why I urge Members across the House to join the hon. Member’s APPG for the polar regions, so that we have cross-party consensus on this work.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
Yesterday I visited the National Oceanography Centre, with the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), to learn about the UK’s leadership in polar science, and the real highlight was that I got to meet Boaty McBoatface. Will the Minister tell us a bit more about how the FCDO is co-ordinating cross-Government work to deal with emerging climate and security threats, as well as how we can leverage the UK’s leadership in science and technology, climate finance, diplomacy and defence to that end?
Uma Kumaran
I regret that I was unable to join my hon. Friend on the trip yesterday to see all of our capabilities. She is absolutely right that our climate and research work in the polar regions is vital. We are working across Government and we have updated the UK’s Arctic policy framework on a number of these matters. That framework sets out our assessment of the key developments in the region, and recognises the Arctic as an area of strategic importance that is vital for UK national security and domestic resilience. It also ensures that we are playing our part in the climate resilience of the region, making sure that our world-leading scientists are there and have the support they need to ensure we play our part in the world.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
We hear warnings from allies about China’s Arctic ambitions, and the risk of Beijing and Moscow dominating emerging shipping routes. China is an Arctic Council observer, and two Chinese nationals were arrested in Norway in May on suspicion of espionage. What concrete action is the Minister and the Foreign Secretary taking with Norway and our NATO allies to protect Britain’s security, trade and undersea infrastructure from hostile Chinese activity, and to prevent research and investment becoming cover for Beijing’s Arctic mission?
Uma Kumaran
We are clear that there is no UK security without Arctic security. We are working closely with our partners in the region, including Norway. We will contest malign and destabilising behaviours and activities that threaten our interests and the stability of the region. The United Kingdom is stepping up its investment in and capabilities for defence and deterrence in the High North, deepening the defence co-operation with allies through our NATO-first approach and the joint expeditionary force, to respond rapidly to the emerging threats in the region.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Ed Miliband)
On 8 September I announced new measures to tackle settlement expansion, including a sanctions regime to target those who support, facilitate or profit from illegal settlement activity. We are doing everything in our power to stop the prospect of a two-state solution being destroyed by the expansion of illegal settlements.
Rachel Taylor
The Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din has found that between 2005 and 2023 more than 93% of investigations into settler violence in the west bank were closed without indictment, with just 3% resulting in convictions. With the olive harvest underway, Palestinian farmers continue to face threats from settler violence. Will the Minister update the House on what steps the Government are taking to protect Palestinian farmers and ensure that those responsible for violence are held to account?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend asks an important question. The UK has stepped in to support Palestinian farmers who lost their work permits in green line Israel, but her broader point is the most important one. I am very conscious that today is election day in Israel and that these are matters for the Israeli people. Whichever Government—it is their choice—are elected today, I hope that we can work with them to counter the settler terrorism that we see, because it is in nobody’s interests, not least in the interests of the security of Israel.
Nesil Caliskan
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I welcome the Government’s new sanctions to address illegal settlement expansion in the west bank. We have all watched in great horror as Palestinians face injustice and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, a Human Rights Watch report found that Israeli forces had committed war crimes in the west bank. Will the Secretary of State stand by his words to this House, as I am sure that he will, not only to call out injustice and suffering, but to act? With that in mind, will the Government sanction Israeli Defence Minister Katz and Major General Bluth, who are implicated in these crimes?
Ed Miliband
Let me join you, Mr Speaker, in wishing my hon. Friend a happy birthday. May I say how well informed you are? I credit your staff, myself.
In all seriousness, the situation in the west bank is horrifying. We are witnessing unprecedented levels of violence, including settler terrorism and ethnic cleansing in some areas. I am not going to speculate on future designations of specific individuals, but we have laid legislation this month to expand the global human rights sanctions regime to target those responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law, and we will use those powers.
Janet Daby
I thank the Secretary of State for his responses so far. The E1 scheme is a further terrifying situation for Palestinians, who are vulnerable and have no protections. Will he say what sanctions are being put in place at present? What more are the Government doing to ensure that those working on the E1 scheme are sanctioned?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend raises a really important issue that we have discussed in this House before. The E1 development is a direct threat to the prospect of a two-state solution. I want to be completely clear that those individuals and businesses that proceed with bids for E1 construction tenders risk facing the full force of UK sanctions—I said that on the day of the closing of the tenders. That is why what we are doing is about much more than symbolism; it is about substantively stopping the destruction of the prospect of a two-state solution.
Dr Allin-Khan
As we speak right now, Israel is yet again pursuing its brutal policy of collective punishment in the west bank, with Hebron sealed off and more than 1,000 people due to have their homes demolished imminently. I welcome our Government boldly placing sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements. With Israelis going to the polls today, will the Secretary of State commit to maintaining the pressure until illegal settlement expansion ends once and for all and we can truly see the two-state solution that we all dream of?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend speaks with great eloquence on these issues, and I agree with her. It is right to say that the very important finding we have made is that the occupation, not just the settlements, is illegal. Therefore, in furtherance of our policy of a two-state solution to the occupation of the west bank and Gaza, we will take action in relation to the economic relationships that we have. She is exactly right about this issue; this is about bringing peace to Palestinians and Israelis.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
The Foreign Secretary mentions people running the risk of the full force of the sanctions regime, given the new powers that the Government have to sanction companies funding and building illegal settlements. The E1 tenders will open on 19 November. Will he commit to sanctioning those companies bidding before that date, not once the bulldozers arrive?
Ed Miliband
Governments of both parties have had a general approach, which is not to speculate on sanctions and designations before we actually do them, but I am glad that the hon. Lady has raised this issue. Let me say very clearly to her that we are determined to do all we can to prevent the settlement building in E1 from happening. We have brought the sanctions regime—not the sanctions regime that is coming in the next six months, but the extension of the GHR sanctions regime—precisely so that we can take swift action.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
The Foreign Secretary pledged to take action against specific companies that provide services for settlement expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Delek Group, which supports illegal settlements through the provision of refuelling services to Israeli military vehicles and the operation of fuel stations in East Jerusalem and the west bank, has been flagged by the UN for human rights concerns and could receive more than £200 million in revenue through its majority stake in Ithaca Energy if the Rosebank field is approved. Given that the Foreign Secretary has already said that approval of Rosebank would be “climate vandalism”, what does he have to say about profits from Scotland’s oil supporting illegal settlement expansion in the west bank?
Ed Miliband
I am going to stick to my lane, as they say. We do not talk about specific companies in relation to sanctions before we take action, but the hon. Gentleman should be in no doubt about the purpose of our sanctions regime—to prevent the growth of illegal settlements, which is destroying the prospect of a two-state solution.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
Alongside the expansion of illegal settlements, as we have heard, there has been growing concern about violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinian communities in the west bank. Does the Secretary of State believe that the UK’s current response is sufficient, and what further steps is he prepared to take to hold those responsible to account?
Ed Miliband
In all honesty, I do not think that the response of the international community as a whole has been sufficient, which is why I made the statement I did on 8 September. In my Department and across Government, we are continuing to think about how we tackle the injustices we face across the world—not just in relation to the west bank—and we will use all the powers at our disposal, including conversations with whatever Government the people of Israel choose to elect, to say, “This settler terrorism must end.” I think that view is shared right across this House.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
On 14 October, the UN’s international commission of inquiry on the OPT and Israel published its latest report. I quote paragraph 43, which concludes that
“Israeli military operations in the West Bank since 7 October 2023 constitute a course of conduct that forms part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population”
and states that
“sexual and gender-based violence”
and targeted attacks against children form part of that co-ordinated action on the part of the Israeli military. This is not just settler terrorism; it is action by the current Israeli Government. Has the Secretary of State read that report of the independent international commission of inquiry? Does he recognise its conclusions? How can he continue to treat the current Israeli Government as an ally in that context, and what further action will he take to ensure that the UK is not complicit in these abuses?
Ed Miliband
I have seen that report, and I undertake to read it comprehensively. The reason we took the actions we did on 8 September was precisely to say that we will not stand by in silence as the suffering continues in Gaza and the west bank. We called out increasing evidence of war crimes in Gaza, and we called out ethnic cleansing by settler terrorists in the west bank. We are going to act, and we will work with the hon. Lady and others across this House to ensure we take the maximum possible action to achieve what we want to see, which is peace, security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians.
Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)
Just over a year ago, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) were detained and then deported by Israeli authorities as we tried to enter the west bank. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Lara Bird), and the former MP Sam Tarry were similarly detained by Israeli authorities for eight hours while they tried to enter the west bank. Will the Secretary of State join me in condemning these cases and outline what steps the Government will take to ensure that MPs can visit the occupied west bank without obstruction or intimidation?
Ed Miliband
I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised this case, because we are obviously deeply concerned about the denial of entry to the west bank to two Members of Parliament and, I believe, one Member of the Scottish Parliament. Of course, we have raised this issue with the Israeli authorities and been in touch with those MPs to offer assistance. More broadly, it is very important that as Members of this House go about their business—not just in the UK, but internationally—they have free access, so that they can do their duties to this House.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
The Government have declared the occupation unlawful, and their measures on settlements depend on reliable evidence of what is happening on the ground. In April, the Foreign Office unit that tracked potential breaches of international law by Israel was closed because of cuts, with the work said to pass to a “different team”. Which team now does that work, and how many officials does it have?
Ed Miliband
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that work carries on. We have excellent civil servants who work on all these issues, including potential breaches of international humanitarian law, and we take these issues incredibly seriously as a Department and as a Government.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Ed Miliband)
In recent weeks I have been in Warsaw and Ukraine discussing defence and security with key allies. There is no bigger test of our values and our commitment to European security than Ukraine, and we will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian people. We are also committed to building a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO as the ultimate guarantee of peace and security.
Dr Gardner
The attack on the then British Prime Minister’s home last year was linked to Russian-backed proxies attempting to undermine our democracy, and it concerns me deeply that our nation has become so anaesthetised by online disinformation that we collectively shrugged and carried on doomscrolling. I commend the creation of a national centre for information defence to counter cognitive warfare, but given the continued threat of Russian cognitive warfare, may I ask the Foreign Secretary how we can co-operate with European partners to counter disinformation, shut down the networks and hold technology companies to account?
Ed Miliband
We do have a defence and security partnership with the European Union, but my hon. Friend speaks eloquently about these issues. As I said in an earlier answer, we want to do more work with the European Union on questions of information, and we will say more about that in the coming weeks. My hon. Friend also raised wider issues. Hybrid warfare is not just about information and misinformation; as we know from the recent incident in Leipzig, it is about sabotage, espionage, cyber-attacks and a range of other issues, and we need to be extremely vigilant about it.
Sir Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
In the discussions that the Foreign Secretary is holding with European countries, is he also emphasising the vital role that soft power and the international development budget play in promoting security? Does he realise that since this Government’s cuts in spending on international development, we now allocate less for Africa from the development budget than we allocate to UK postcodes from that same budget for first-year asylum seeker costs?
Ed Miliband
The right hon. Gentleman speaks with enormous authority about these issues and has a proud record in that regard, and I could not agree with him more on the substantive part of his question about the role that international development plays. He may know that as part of our G20 presidency next year we have committed ourselves, in fiscally constrained times, to seeking to do more about the combination of the debt burden, climate breakdown, and the need to bring about growth and tackle poverty in developing countries. We must accept the fiscal constraints that we face, but that does not mean we cannot act through, for instance, the multilateral development banks. I look forward to working on these issues with the right hon. Gentleman, and with other Members on both sides of the House.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I learnt a great deal during my trip to Ukraine last month. I learnt that the Ukrainians see themselves as Europeans, that they know who their friends are and that they are incredibly grateful to Britain, but that they are also very disappointed as they hit this very difficult winter. We know that they will need about £90 billion to get through it. There are £200 billion-worth of Russian assets frozen in Europe; what can we in Britain do to ensure that those assets are unlocked and used in Ukraine? Might one answer be to lead by example? Is there something we can do about the £25 billion-worth of Russian assets that we have in the UK and—as we head towards the anniversary of Abramovich’s being told that he had to hand them over—the £2.5 billion-worth of Chelsea assets?
Ed Miliband
My right hon. Friend always speaks a good deal of sense on these questions. In response to the fundamental point, let me repeat what I said in an earlier answer: we are determined to tackle the issue of Russian sovereign assets. As my right hon. Friend may know, there is a renewed push in the EU to take action on it, and I have said to my EU counterparts that we are determined to act with them. That brings me to the broader point that she raised. Russia is seeking to test our resolve on Ukraine, and we must show that we will absolutely stand with the Ukrainian people until they prevail. There are a number of elements in that, but one of them is the financial question, and we are determined to act.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
The Prime Minister told President Zelensky recently that he stood “in complete solidarity” with Ukraine over President Trump’s dirty diesel deal over Russian diesel exports, and I support the Prime Minister on that. Earlier, the Foreign Secretary mentioned hitting Russia in the pocket, so why are his Government still importing jet fuel and diesel, albeit through other countries? They have weakened the sanctions against Russian diesel and fuel, which I would suggest is a complete inconsistency in UK foreign policy.
Ed Miliband
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but he is wrong about that. We have actually introduced a phased ban on maritime services in relation to gas, and that licence expires in January—I reassure him on that point. Beyond that, I am constantly seeking ways in my Department, with colleagues across Government, to ratchet up the economic pressure on Russia. I say to all our allies, including the United States, that that must be our aim, because that is the way we get a successful outcome in this conflict.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
In recent months, our European allies have become increasingly forthright in publicly naming hostile states responsible for attacks on their countries, yet Britain appears reluctant to do the same, even though the Foreign Secretary has spoken very clearly about hybrid war. Over the weekend, it was reported that the crippling cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover was state sponsored. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that failing to publicly attribute such attacks only emboldens our adversaries and, more importantly, will he now name the state believed to be responsible for this unprecedented attack on British industry?
Ed Miliband
I will not get into the details of that attack today, but we are absolutely happy to name those who are engaging in information warfare, and I have talked a lot in this session about Russia and what it is doing. The Prime Minister could not have been more eloquent at the UN General Assembly in talking about the more than £1 billion a year that Russia spends on information warfare. I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place, but I think there is cross-party agreement on this issue. We all want to tackle the information warfare that we face, and I look forward to working with Members from across the House in doing so.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Our defence and our economy are closely tied, and both depend on our relationship with our closest neighbours. The Prime Minister wants to have an “honest conversation” with the public about Brexit, and that begins with an honest assessment of its damage. The Conservatives’ hard Brexit is costing the Treasury up to £90 billion a year in lost tax revenues. The biggest lever we could pull to reverse that damage would be to join the single market and a customs union. That would deliver the revenues we need to cut taxes, grow our defence spending and invest in public services. The Prime Minister wants us to be led by evidence, so are the Government conducting their own impact assessment into the benefits of joining the single market and a customs union? If not, why not, and if so, can the Foreign Secretary confirm when it will be published?
Ed Miliband
I am not going to go all the way with the hon. Gentleman—[Laughter.] Sorry; that was an unfortunate turn of phrase. In all seriousness, we have had 10 years of looking at the status quo and the Brexit deal we have at the moment. That Brexit deal is not serving our country well enough, so Members of this House have to make a decision: do they think that the status quo is right and that we should hang on to it, or can we do better? I think the most important date for us in Government at the moment is 20 November, the day of our EU summit, where we will do better on trade, on defence and security, and on all the other issues. Parties on all sides have to decide what they think about this. Do they think the status quo is right? We think we can do better, and that is what we are going to do.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
We are all deeply alarmed by the systematic discrimination and exclusion of women and girls from public life, education, employment and decision making in Afghanistan. That is why we are providing £105 million a year to support the Afghan people, and our aid reached 5 million Afghans last year, including 3 million women and girls. We continue to press the Taliban directly on women’s rights, and we work through our international partnerships to raise these important issues.
Wendy Chamberlain
During Evidence Week, I met Dr Sara Polo to discuss violence against women and girls in conflict areas, including Afghanistan. Although many aspects of the national action plan on women, peace and security are encouraging, academics such as Dr Polo have pointed out that there are areas for improvement, such as including victims of non-sexual violence in NEP initiatives. What discussions has the Minister had with academics about the NEP, and how can academics engage further?
Stephen Doughty
We engage with a wide range of experts on these issues, and I would certainly welcome a chance to discuss these matters with the academics the hon. Lady references, but I can absolutely assure her that the Department engages with a huge range of civil society and expert organisations. That is very important in informing our work on these issues.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is not just Afghanistan where we see a rollback in the protection of women and girls. Last week, I was in Sierra Leone, working with parliamentarians there to try to prevent sexual-based violence. As part of that trip, we went to the maternal health unit in Freetown, where the UK has been supporting the health industry for the last 20 years. We cut all of our funding to that last year, which means there is now no money for procurement or for any healthcare in that country. What are we going to do for countries where we have cut all our funding to help them transition in a meaningful way, rather than presenting them, basically, with a death sentence?
Stephen Doughty
The Chair of the Select Committee is a long-standing champion on these issues, even before her time chairing the Committee, and she and I have discussed these issues on many occasions. We always welcome a conversation with her about these matters, and I am sure that the Minister for International Development, who has responsibility for Africa, and indeed the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore), who works on preventing sexual violence, would be happy to sit down and discuss these issues with her.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
We take all allegations of arbitrary detention very seriously, considering all available information and any opinions issued by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. Our support is tailored to each individual, and may include raising welfare or concerns about process, where needed. Reflecting our commitment to supporting British nationals detained overseas, we have appointed the right hon. Alistair Burt as our first envoy for complex consular detentions to work on these matters, and I am working with him very closely on this.
Douglas McAllister
My West Dunbartonshire constituent Jagtar Singh Johal was released on bail 26 days ago, but Jagtar is by no means free. While he may have walked out of Tihar jail, having endured 3,254 days of illegal detention, torture and abuse, he still cannot return home to his family in Dumbarton, and still faces eight outstanding cases and the death penalty. Over the last 26 days, has the Minister escalated Jagtar’s case to the highest diplomatic level?
Stephen Doughty
I can confirm that, most recently, the Foreign Secretary raised Mr Johal’s case with his Indian counterpart on 24 September at the UN General Assembly. I will be very clear: we recognise the immense toll that nine years in detention have taken on Mr Johal and his family, and I thank my hon. Friend for his advocacy for his constituent. His release on bail is a welcome development, but we recognise that eight cases remain outstanding, and it is crucial that those processes are resolved as quickly as possible within India’s independent legal system. We consistently raise concerns about his case at every appropriate opportunity.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
British citizens Ryan Cornelius and his partner have now been detained for 18—nearly 19—years, without due process, by the United Arab Emirates. The reality is that the UAE supports a huge amount of terrorism in Sudan, where it is responsible for huge loss of life. To make matters worse, it has nominated Lana Nusseibeh of the UAE to be UN Secretary-General. Apart from demanding the release of Ryan Cornelius and his partner, will the hon. Gentleman condemn the UAE for its brutal involvement in Sudan, and block its nominee for Secretary-General, who should never be allowed to take over the UN?
Stephen Doughty
As the right hon. Member knows, I take the case of Ryan Cornelius and Charles Ridley very seriously, as I do any of the other related cases. I have raised that case with the UAE at a high level, and I will continue to do so. Indeed, I have discussed it with our envoy, Alistair Burt, and I am very happy to discuss it further with him.
On Sudan, as the right hon. Member knows, the international community, including this country, must do more to tackle that crisis. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend announced further sanctions against suspected perpetrators of sexual violence and other atrocities, including in El-Fasher. We continue to raise concerns with all the countries that are in any way involved in that conflict to urge them to de-escalate, stop arms supplies and bring peace to Sudan.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
When President Trump met Xi Jinping last month, the US President raised with the Chairman the case of imprisoned British citizen Jimmy Lai. Has the Minister had a readout from that conversation, and what can he tell us about his own efforts to bring about Jimmy Lai’s release?
Stephen Doughty
The Foreign Secretary and I take this case incredibly seriously, and the Prime Minister also raised it with President Trump. As I have said on a number of occasions, we condemn in the strongest terms the politically motivated prosecution of Jimmy Lai. The national security law was imposed on Hong Kong to silence China’s critics. For someone who is 78, a 20-year sentence is tantamount to a life sentence. We are deeply concerned for his health. This is a priority for the Government, and we raise the case at every possible opportunity, both directly with China and with other partners.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
The Minister for International Development (Kirsty McNeill)
Over three years, we have seen a devastating man-made humanitarian crisis unfold in Gaza. The UK is committed to improving humanitarian conditions in Palestine. We will provide £88 million in humanitarian and early recovery support this financial year to support the delivery of essential healthcare, clean water, sanitation and hygiene services. At the UN General Assembly last month, the UK, Jordan and Qatar co-hosted a meeting focused on driving action on humanitarian access and healthcare. We issued a call to action, urging the Government of Israel to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access throughout Gaza.
Warinder Juss
Palestinian children are the only children in the world who are systematically prosecuted in military courts. Those courts do not meet juvenile justice standards, and Save the Children has found that at every stage of detention, from arrest to interrogation, transfer and incarceration, Israeli soldiers and officials have inflicted physical, mental and emotional abuse and torture on children. What action are this Government taking, with our international partners, to prevent the abuse of well over 300 Palestinian children who are currently being held in Israeli military detention?
Kirsty McNeill
First of all, I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to this incredibly important topic. Reports that hundreds of Palestinian children are being detained—as he says, many of them are being mistreated—in Israeli military detention are horrifying. Children’s rights must be upheld, in accordance with international law. Children must only be detained in line with internationally agreed juvenile justice standards, and we call for an end to military detention where it is incompatible with those principles. We continue to call on Israel to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross immediate unrestricted access to all detention facilities, and we raised this issue with Israeli authorities in September.
David Williams
Given the scale of civilian suffering in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, can the Minister please outline what discussions have taken place and will take place with international partners to ensure that international humanitarian law is upheld, and that humanitarian workers can work safely?
Kirsty McNeill
Gaza remains one of the deadliest places on earth to deliver aid. We have seen countless incidents involving humanitarian personnel over the past three years. The UK is a member of the Australia-led ministerial group that developed the declaration for the protection of humanitarian personnel, and lobbied other states to join. A total of 132 states have now signed the declaration, and just last month the Foreign Secretary met Australia and others at the UN General Assembly to maintain momentum and drive collective action to address this fundamental issue.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
Three hundred and forty children in Gaza have died since the ceasefire of last year—an average of almost one per day—nearly half of them near the yellow line; aid workers call it the kill zone. UNICEF tells me that 100% of children are showing signs of stress because of trauma, hunger and the risk of attack from every side— from drones, which fire at them from above, and from unexploded ordinance below them. They face malnutrition, and have not had a formal education for three years. Whoever is elected today, what will the Foreign Secretary do to ensure that Palestinian children are protected, sustainable humanitarian aid gets in, the terms of the ceasefire are obeyed, education is provided, and Palestinians are given the chance to heal?
Kirsty McNeill
The hon. Lady speaks passionately and powerfully about the exact reasons why we have declared the situation a moral emergency. On average, four people have died every day since the ceasefire, over 300 of them children, as she rightly says. The civilians and children of Palestine will continue to be an enormous priority for our bilateral engagement with the Israeli Government, whoever the Israeli people pick, but the humanitarian situation could not be more severe. She can be assured that we will continue to press upon the Israeli Government, once elected, the need for unfettered access.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) talked about the impact on children, but there is also a significant impact on reproductive facilities, which means that there are more miscarriages and more children dying at birth. Effectively, it is the erasing of the next generation in Gaza. That must surely constitute a war crime. How are the Government working with international partners to ensure the future of Gaza, given the threat of there being no children?
Kirsty McNeill
We held an event at UNGA on precisely this matter. Maternal, newborn and child health will continue to be a priority for the UK Government. As the hon. Lady will be aware, the UK has acted fast to try to get sick children to the UK for treatment; a cross-Government taskforce supported 50 critically ill and injured children and their immediate families in leaving Gaza and receiving specialist support in NHS hospitals. As I am sure she will agree, however, that action is no substitute for ensuring that people can access their healthcare rights in the country where they live and were born, and where we hope to provide them with safety and security through a two-state solution in the end.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
The Minister for International Development (Kirsty McNeill)
I begin by thanking the hon. Gentleman for his advocacy for children; pressure for children’s rights will always be welcome to me. I share UNICEF UK’s commitment to advancing the rights of children globally, and am personally committed to putting children’s rights at the heart of all the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s development work. I am proud that the UK Government are investing in essential services for children, as well as maternal and newborn health and nutrition, childhood vaccinations, foundational learning, ending child marriage, and supporting children’s care reform. I will continue to prioritise children’s needs and rights across our development portfolio, and look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman on that.
Seamus Logan
A significant number of my constituents have written to me expressing support for UNICEF’s “No Choice But Childhood” campaign. When reductions are made to the UK’s aid budget, it is the most vulnerable children around the world who face the consequences of that decision first. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister commit to working with UNICEF to increase funding in the aid budget for children at this critical point? Conflict is increasing around the world, yet so many countries are decreasing their aid for those in conflicts.
Kirsty McNeill
As the hon. Member will appreciate, the money that we allocate for vaccination, and indeed the wider health portfolio, which was protected in our recent round of allocations, benefits children almost exclusively; the money that we spend on education also benefits children almost exclusively. There are other large parts of our portfolio, including humanitarian and climate action—I imagine that he shares our determination to achieve good outcomes in those areas—in which it is not possible or desirable to ringfence spending specifically for children, although children are outsized beneficiaries of that action. My job is to ensure that we get the maximum impact for every single pound of UK overseas development assistance. Some of it is specifically ringfenced for children, but much of it benefits their families and wider communities, too.
Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)
In Afghanistan, children, particularly girls, simply cannot enjoy their childhood. This summer marked a grim anniversary: it is five years since the Taliban began an assault on women and girls, banning girls from education. We have to stand with Afghan women and girls. Will we support calls from Afghan women to recognise gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, and will the Minister, or the relevant Minister, meet me, other MPs and, importantly, Afghan women to discuss what more can be done?
Kirsty McNeill
I would always be delighted to meet my hon. Friend. I commend her, other women and Members from across this House for all that they have done to draw attention to the horrifying, unspeakable situation facing Afghan women and girls. She will appreciate that there are sensitivities around the use of specific language in the international system, and I would want to be mindful of the views of other partner countries on this; however, I would be delighted, substantively, to meet my hon. Friend to see what we can do to advance the cause of Afghan women and girls, which is close to both our hearts.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Ed Miliband)
I want to express my thanks to police and security services for their response to the incident at RAF Fairford, including the action that they have taken today. As the Prime Minister has said, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “almost certainly” directed this outrageous attempted attack. This Government have designated the IRGC, sanctioned individuals within it, and reimposed snap-back sanctions on Iran.
Last Friday in Istanbul, I attended the first ever meeting of the E4 and R4 groups of Foreign Ministers. There was agreement that we must maximise the pressure on Iran to cease its reckless attacks on ships in the strait of Hormuz, and that a diplomatic way forward must be found to end the Iran war, which is having such a direct impact on the cost of living here at home.
Bradley Thomas
Last year, the Intelligence and Security Committee concluded that Iran poses a widespread, persistent and unpredictable threat, and the director of MI5 has reported that the intelligence services have tracked at least 20 serious plots linked to Iran. Can the Secretary of State update the House on the Government’s assessment of the domestic threat posed by Iran? What diplomatic steps are being taken to tackle it?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this; Iran and its proxies are a direct threat to us; we need only look at the attempted attack at RAF Fairford to see that. We take this incredibly seriously. It is why we designated the IRGC and have sanctioned particular individuals. We use every channel to put pressure on Iran, including with our allies, such as last week in Istanbul, to cease its attacks, including attempted attacks—not just here, but elsewhere as well.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Minister for Intergovernmental Relations and European Relations (Mr Hamish Falconer)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the important question. I would like to inform the House that the UK will reassociate with Erasmus+ from 1 January 2027. Applications open this November, and they are not simply for undergraduates and other university students, but for educational institutions of all kinds. I encourage right hon. and hon. Members across the House to work with the British Council and get their institutions engaged. That is one of the concrete ways that we will help young people through closer a relationship with the EU.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
Mr Speaker, I hope you will indulge me as I say a very quick thank you to the Clerk of the House, who is in his place and who was my Clerk on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is probably more to blame for me standing here today than many other people in the House.
May I ask the Foreign Secretary whether he now accepts the Bill in the name of Lord Weir that has passed in the Lords?
Ed Miliband
Let me add my congratulations and thanks to the Clerk of the House. On the Chagos islands, which the right hon. Gentleman is referring to, we have always sought to find a way forward that protects our base at Diego Garcia; that is the most important thing, and I would have thought that aim was shared by Members from across the House. As has become clear, under this US Administration, we will not get consent for the current arrangements, but we continue to work with the US and Mauritius to safeguard our security interests.
Tom Tugendhat
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his comments. The reason I asked about the vote in the Lords is this: there seems to be a real problem with the way that we approach this debate. The will of Parliament, as expressed in the Lords only last week and in treaties signed in the ’60s and ’80s, is being superseded by courts that have no mandate over the issues that are being debated. I ask him again: does he accept the will of this Parliament—the elected will of the British people—or does he instead seek to accept the now politicised will of courts that have Russian and Chinese judges, and are fundamentally mis-shaping and distorting agreements that were signed decades ago? We have seen what China has done, from locking up Jimmy Lai to threatening the Marine reserves that he claims to champion. Whose side is the Foreign Secretary on?
Ed Miliband
I gently remind the right hon. Gentleman that the House of Commons has primacy in our legislative arrangements. That is a long-standing convention, I would say. On his point about the courts, at a time when international law is under threat across the world, we should be defenders of international law, and we absolutely believe that maintaining a base at Diego Garcia is consistent with that.
Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Uma Kumaran)
My hon. Friend raises an important topic. I thank him and all those across the House for their efforts on tackling illicit finance. We take the issue seriously and are working across Government, including with colleagues at the Treasury, the Home Office and the National Crime Agency. We are determined to ensure that next year’s illicit finance summit delivers tangible action. The plague of dirty money must be eradicated. As the Minister for overseas territories, I have been raising the issue and will continue to do so with elected leaders in the overseas territories.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister for International Development (Kirsty McNeill)
As the hon. Member will appreciate, every time we enter into one of these negotiations across the whole of Government, our objective is to uphold the integrity and impact of our migration policies. The FCDO has responsibility for ensuring that our policy position is communicated forcefully bilaterally, and we will continue to do that. I have been in dialogue with the Eritrean ambassador to convey exactly the seriousness with which the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and the wider British Government take this matter. There will be no resiling from the forcefulness with which we promote our policy that Eritrean returns are central to this Government, and we will pursue that until they are secured.
Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend, as always, speaks a great deal of sense, as do her constituents. She is right, and the role of our G20 summit and—the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) made this point earlier—the work we do on debt, development and climate with our partners across the world is not just right for our values but right for our security, because failed states and climate breakdown are a threat to our security as well as to our values.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
Mr Falconer
I am pleased to confirm that talks about our security and defence co-operation with the EU will be an important part of the summit that the Foreign Secretary mentioned in his earlier answer. I think that the hon. Lady is referring to SAFE—Security Action for Europe. It was a shame that the UK was not part of it, but we are continuing our discussions with the EU to ensure that we can play our full role in Europe.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
Kirsty McNeill
We do not currently have plans to expand UK Aid Match beyond the Disasters Emergency Committee funding appeals, which, as my hon. Friend rightly said, are focused on crises that require a large-scale rapid response. She is right, however, that the British public continue to care deeply about equality and the human rights of those overseas. The FCDO formally supports that through our women’s rights organisations programme, our grassroots sexual and reproductive health and rights programme and our LGBT+ rights programme. I would be delighted to talk to her and, indeed, any other hon. Members across the House about what more we can do to give life to the British public’s impulse towards deep solidarity on questions of equality.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Ed Miliband
Our belief in the United Kingdom and in keeping our United Kingdom together is absolute and clear. The First Minister of Scotland can have his visits.
Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)
About 13 million people have been displaced in Sudan, but they are far from safe. Earlier this month, a drone strike near one of the displacement centres in Blue Nile killed 31 people, mostly women and children. This is the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster. Where are the protests on the streets? Where is the round-the-clock media reporting? Where is the online coverage? Will the Minister set out what the Government are doing to raise awareness of that catastrophe and how we can galvanise international action?
Kirsty McNeill
My hon. Friend is right. Just yesterday, I attended an event in Parliament to mark the one-year anniversary of the fall of El Fasher. At that event, I heard testimony that I will never forget as long as I live. We heard about, and I spoke about, bloodshed so overwhelming that the ground was soaked with blood so deeply that it could be seen from space. That should be a matter of ongoing, daily outrage in our country.
Last month, at UNGA, the Foreign Secretary and I met international partners to galvanise further action, including through an event focused on the devastating use of drones to terrorise civilians, alongside our UK-convened coalition for atrocity prevention. I am proud that just yesterday, the UK announced further sanctions against commanders suspected of involvement in the atrocities in Sudan.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Ed Miliband
We do not engage in that way with the Russians and have not for a number of years. As I have said throughout this session, we are absolutely clear about the need to counter the Russian hybrid threat.
Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)
With Israelis heading to the polls today, the world will be watching anxiously. Hard-line figures such as Ben-Gvir and Naftali Bennett are emerging as potential kingmakers in the next Government. Given that both have supported policies relating to settlement expansion and the transfer of Palestinians from Gaza, there is real concern that the next Israeli Administration could move even further away from compliance with international law. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the UK’s commitment to international law is upheld in their relationship with any future Israeli Government?
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
I assure my hon. Friend that the UK’s commitment to international law does not depend on the outcome of elections. We have been clear that settlements are illegal under international law and that Israel must comply with its obligations. We have been clear that the occupation is unlawful.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Firms such as Thales in Templecombe, Needles and Pins Aerospace in Somerton and Leonardo in Yeovil are at the heart of a Somerset aerospace and advanced engineering sector, yet Britain remains outside the SAFE defence fund. Will the Minister commit to securing UK participation in SAFE and any successor fund on fair terms so that our defence firms and the communities that depend on them are not left behind?
Mr Falconer
I represent the great city of Lincoln, which also has an aerospace background. We are making important progress in our relationship with many of our European friends, including, notably, with the Italians, on the Global Combat Air Programme. As I said in my earlier answer, we will discuss security and defence co-operation as part of the summit on 20 November.
Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
As online abuse such as the sharing of intimate images without consent increasingly crosses borders, what are the Government doing with international partners and technology companies to protect women and girls, and ensure that criminals cannot exploit differences in countries’ laws to escape justice?
Uma Kumaran
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important topic. The Government are taking action at home and internationally to tackle appalling online abuse towards women and girls, including AI-generated deepfakes and the sharing of intimate images without consent. The UK has introduced some of the strongest measures against this abuse, including making the creation and sharing of deepfakes a criminal offence. We are co-developing a model national framework to reduce opportunities for offenders to exploit differences between jurisdictions. There is a global partnership for action on gender-based online harassment and abuse. I will continue to raise this issue with international counterparts and at our summit next year.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
I have had a great deal of trouble getting a straight answer from the Government on this for some months now, so I will give it one more go: on what specific date in August 2024 was Jonathan Powell appointed as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the British Indian Ocean Territory?
Ed Miliband
I think we have answered this question before. I do not have anything further to add to previous answers.
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
Have any funds been allocated to Ukraine’s water infrastructure—for instance, within the UN WASH cluster project? Has the UK provided funds for defence barrier systems for water infrastructure and/or for a consistent power supply for water and sewerage systems? My counterparts in Ukraine said to me that this is a top immediate priority to ensure that water and sewage do not overwhelm them.
Uma Kumaran
I thank my hon. Friend for raising a topic that he has been speaking about passionately and eloquently for many years. Earlier this month, the Foreign Secretary visited Kyiv, where he met Ukrainian people still living—almost five years on—under the constant threat of Russian strikes, energy blackouts and death. While in Kyiv, he announced a £54 million combined humanitarian and energy support package, which includes £20 million to protect and maintain the electricity, heating and water supply for Ukrainian families ahead of the winter. Alongside that, our £34 million humanitarian package will help about 700,000 vulnerable people, including by maintaining and restoring heating and water services.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Reform)
The Foreign Secretary and I represent communities 15 miles apart—decent, hard-working people who are finding life very tough at the moment. In that context, how would he justify to working people and pensioners spending £6 billion on foreign aid while freezing the tax-free personal allowance and cutting the state pension? [Interruption.]
Ed Miliband
I think the answer came from Members in the right hon. Gentleman’s former party. The money that we spend on foreign aid is absolutely about preventing the problems from elsewhere in the world coming here—to his constituency and mine. At one and the same time, he complains about small boats, which is an issue partly caused by fragile states, and says that we should not be taking action to prevent it. I am afraid that I do not agree with him.
Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)
There is cross-party concern about an extremely concerning situation in Tanzania—the trial of Mr Tundu Lissu, the chair of the party for democracy and progress, Chadema. Mr Lissu has been charged with treason after calling for electoral reform at a public rally during an election campaign. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death. The UK has long enjoyed close and constructive relations with Tanzania, so can I ask what action Ministers are taking to raise concerns about this serious matter?
Kirsty McNeill
We remain gravely concerned about the continued detention of Tundu Lissu, and we will continue to raise his case through ministerial channels and the British high commission. We note the UN working group opinion that his detention is arbitrary, unlawful and lacking in sufficient legal basis. We await the 6 November verdict and underline its significance for Tanzania’s democratic freedoms and the rule of law. I also take this opportunity to say that the UK remains firmly opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances in every country.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
His trial was unfair, and the 20-year sentence extension was arbitrary and outrageous—will the Secretary of State now unequivocally say that Ryan Cornelius should be released?
Ed Miliband
Yes, I do agree with the right hon. Gentleman. That is something that we are discussing with our UAE counterparts. Alistair Burt’s role will also be important in this. We absolutely want to see his release.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
As winter bites and the humanitarian situation worsens, will the Secretary of State commit to supplying food aid to Gaza, at least to last year’s levels? Will he use his welcome new sanctions regulations, laid earlier this month, to sanction those Israeli figures blocking aid from getting into Gaza?
Ed Miliband
The issue of health and humanitarian access in Gaza is essential, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that the blocking of aid is absolutely outrageous. I do not speculate on the sanctions regime, but it is important that we have it. We want to ensure that we unblock the aid.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
What role will the Secretary of State’s Department play in the new national centre for information defence, and when will the Government update the House about the composition, roll-out and scalability of that new capability?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. The role we will play is to bring home some of the lessons we have learned from taking action with allies, for example in relation to disinformation in Moldova, to ensure that we learn those lessons here in the UK.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Government for their additional round of sanctions one year on from the massacre at El Fasher, but outside actors, including the United Arab Emirates, continue to fuel that war, as the UN’s fact-finding mission has shown. Will the Government confirm that it remains their position, as articulated by our representative to the UN, that we welcome that report and do not contest it?
Kirsty McNeill
We absolutely welcome the fact-finding mission’s report. Indeed, we were the initiator of the fact-finding mission, and we remain a huge champion of its work.
Ben Obese-Jecty
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On the question I have just asked the Foreign Secretary, I have asked several times for a straight answer about the appointment of Jonathan Powell. I put in a freedom of information request on 23 June. That FOI was delayed to 22 July, then to 20 August, then to 18 September, then to 18 October and then again to 13 November. What can I do to get a straight answer from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, given that it has now been delaying a response to an FOI for five months?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member seems to put in a lot of questions and FOIs, so I am sure he will pursue the matter through the Table Office and take good advice, but I cannot continue the debate. I am not responsible for the answers from the Foreign Secretary. If the hon. Member were to sit with the Clerks to come up with another way, I am sure that we might get somebody to hear what he said. I am sure that the Front Benchers will have heard it as well.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
Hang on—you did not ask a question. No, you cannot raise a point of order.
Mr Speaker
Mr Farron, I take points of order only from people who have asked questions. You did not ask a question—it must be one of the few times you have not managed to get a question in. If you are eager to raise a point of order, it will come after the urgent question. I am sure you will want to wait to do so.
Electronic Monitoring of Offenders
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the electronic monitoring of offenders.
The Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending (Catherine McKinnell)
The Government inherited a justice system pushed to breaking point by the previous Government. When Labour came to power, we had fewer than 100 places left in our prisons, with incredibly serious problems with electronic monitoring. We have taken swift action to improve performance, and are now delivering the biggest expansion of tagging in British history, backed by £100 million of investment.
As part of our reforms, there is a presumption—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. At least let the Minister get to the end of what she has to say without interruption.
Catherine McKinnell
Thank you, Mr Speaker. As part of our reforms, there is a presumption that eligible offenders released under the progression model will be tagged, giving the Probation Service an additional tool to monitor offenders and protect the public. We are now tagging a record number of offenders, helping to cut crime and make our streets safer.
Electronic monitoring is not used in isolation. Those released from prison remain subject to licence conditions and probation supervision, which can include curfews and restrictions on their movements. We have also introduced tougher powers for probation officers, including world-first restriction zones for the most serious sexual and violent offenders where appropriate, as well as the ability to prohibit offenders from driving, attending public events or entering pubs, clubs and bars. Where an offender breaches their conditions or can no longer be safely managed in the community, they can immediately be recalled to prison.
We have also ensured that the electronic monitoring service is ready to support the expansion. The service was ready for first-tranche releases on 1 October, with the equipment and staff in place to deliver the presumption to tag offenders on release. Serco has consistently met its contractual requirements since March 2026.
The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes extensive data on probation and tagging. It is published quarterly, and the last set of data was published just last week. It is vital that the Government and the public have confidence that the information published by the Department is accurate. Our quarterly economic monitoring statistics, including figures for the number of prison leavers fitted with tags and the figures covering the October period, will be publicly available in January.
This Government inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse, with just 500 places being built in the last 14 years. It is this Government who are now building the prison places we need and putting in the strictest measures possible to protect the public.
Nick Timothy
You would not believe, Mr Speaker, listening to the Minister that the numbers of prison places and prison officers are actually down. It all sounds like it is going very well according to her version of events.
Labour told us that to keep the public safe from the dangerous criminals it is releasing early, the Justice Secretary would implement the toughest tagging regime in British history, and that there would be a new presumption that offenders will be electronically tagged and monitored when they leave prison. But the Metropolitan police told Sky this weekend that it will not act on all breaches of tag conditions by bailed offenders, blaming the pressure created by Labour’s early release scheme.
Just in London, there have been 100 tag breaches a day by released prisoners since the first early release scheme started, with two to three released prisoners now being rearrested every week. The Met commissioner said that
“95%-plus of the tagging breaches that we arrest are simply being bailed back into the community on the same condition”.
He says, “there is zero sanction”. One sergeant said:
“There are not enough cops”
to handle Labour’s early release of thousands of prisoners.
The Justice Secretary, when he stops hiding in his Department and sending junior Ministers to answer for him, needs to be straight with the House and the public. Four days after his early release scheme started, he told the BBC that he did not know—that it was impossible to know—how many prisoners had been tagged. He wrote to me yesterday admitting that he still does not know, and that is 26 days later. The Times reports that most prisoners will not be tagged as they are released from prison, and we know that more than 5,000 offenders went unmonitored in the first half of this year because they were not fitted with tags.
This is a mess. So chaotic is Labour’s early release scheme that prisoners are being given tents instead of housing upon release. As a matter of policy, these prisoners will be in probable breach of their licence and tagging conditions, which require them to have an approved address, all because the Probation Service is overwhelmed. We know that two thirds of prisoners who are sleeping rough go on to reoffend within the first year.
Ministers keep telling us that the full data on tagging and reoffending cannot be published until the regulation publication dates. I ask again: will Ministers publish full data on how many released prisoners have been tagged? Will they publish comprehensive data on reoffending by prisoners let out through Labour’s early release scheme, and will the Justice Secretary apologise to the House for telling the public that they would be kept safe?
Catherine McKinnell
While the hon. Member raises some important points, I stress again that we are working night and day to fix the broken system that we inherited. We are working across agencies. We are working incredibly hard with the police, the Probation Service and all those who work in the criminal justice system who want to keep the public safe and ensure that victims get the service they need, too.
I caution the hon. Gentleman, because he appears to be conflating a number of issues. He will be aware that it is usual practice, which has been in place under successive Governments, including his own, that prisoners are tagged at their place of accommodation on release, and that was always the plan for 1 October. That said, we know that this creates a gap between leaving prison and having the tag fitted, which is why to address it we have conducted a successful pilot to fit tags at prison receptions. That is currently live in six prisons, and we are working at pace to roll this out to further prisoners who will have a tag upon leaving. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) chunters from a sedentary position to ask about the police. He is talking about local Metropolitan police policy in relation to breaches of court bail where it is the responsible agency. It is important not to conflate the release of prisoners and the tagging policy, which we are working at pace to improve from the situation we inherited, with the other demands on the police, which we are working closely with them to resolve. We inherited a failing tagging system with record backlogs. We are investing £100 million in electronic monitoring, tagging offenders before release and, importantly, strengthening victim protections with a new alert system.
To the MPs who share this Government’s and the Prime Minister’s ambition that no one should be street homeless, I urge them to support us in these endeavours and to ensure that their local authorities are working with us to support prisoners on release, to ensure they are tagged and to ensure that victims and the public are protected. That is our key priority, and we can work together across this House to achieve that.
I visit prisons and meet prison officers and governors every week who are working incredibly hard to keep the public safe and to transform the lives of individuals in our prison system to ensure that when they leave prison, they leave in a better state than when they arrived. We are working to reduce reoffending and to support the Probation Service in reintegrating people into society, and to ensure in the meantime that people are tagged and victims and the public are kept safe. We are working incredibly hard getting on with the job of fixing the mess we inherited and rebuilding our justice system that was left so broken, and I urge hon. Members across the House to support us in their local area in that work.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
Victims should not have to make their lives smaller, looking over their shoulder because offenders are free to roam; it is the offender whose freedoms should be limited. Will the Minister be more ambitious in using restriction zones, which keep an offender within a defined area, rather than simply banning them from particular areas, as with exclusion zones? If victims are to feel safe, tags must be fitted as they walk out of the prison gate, not weeks later. Will that be in place in January, as intended?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I thank her for her assiduous work on all these subjects. As she says, we are rightly rolling out world-leading restriction zones, ensuring that it is offenders who are restricted, where that is appropriate. Indeed, we have the exclusion zones as well, where they are appropriate, and obviously these decisions are made by probation practitioners. She rightly highlights the work we are doing to accelerate the roll-out of tagging at prisons to ensure the safety and security of the system and so that tags are installed at the prison gate as soon as possible.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
Over 5,000 offenders went unmonitored in the first half of this year due to serious delays in the tagging system, and in the year to March, an average of 300 people per week were released from prison with no fixed address, making it incredibly difficult to ensure that offenders are tagged and then managed in the community. That adds to the strain on both the Probation Service and the police, who are using scarce resources to manage an increasingly large caseload and keep victims safe. The Government have repeatedly promised that they will not jeopardise public safety, but many victims following the stories over the weekend, especially after Mark Rowley’s comments, will struggle to believe them. Will the Government listen to the calls of the Victims’ Commissioner to tag individuals at the gate and roll that out to every prison by January?
We also welcomed the Government’s announcement to introduce restriction zones for offenders, which limits the movement for perpetrators rather than victims, but the effectiveness of those zones will require offenders to be properly monitored and any breaches to be addressed without delay. Is the Minister confident that there are enough resources to operate restriction zones effectively, and when will we see a national roll-out of this important measure?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Lady makes a number of thoughtful and helpful contributions. It is very important that housing and homelessness are tackled among the prison leaver population, to ensure that they have the opportunity to build a life and not reoffend, and we will work with local authorities as effectively as possible to ensure that prisoners are not at risk of becoming homeless. It is a priority of this Prime Minister and this Government to tackle homelessness across the board, which was reinforced by the announcement yesterday of £874 million of priority funding to tackle homelessness. We are already extending the period by which collaboration must happen between the prison and probation unit and local authorities, so that they have the maximum period possible to put in place arrangements that ensure victims’ safety and the public’s safety.
The hon. Member rightly raised tagging at source, which we have had a very successful pilot of. This has not been done previously by any Government. We recognise it as an opportunity to really improve the work that is happening, and we are working at pace to ramp up tagging at source. She also raised the restriction zones. I can only reiterate that these are world-leading measures we are putting in place. We are not just fixing the mess that we inherited but working at pace to make this system work in the interests of victims and the public, and creating a society that everyone can contribute to.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her responses. Does she agree that more needs to be done to prevent reoffending while offenders are actually in prison, so that they do not commit further crimes when they are released and on tags? What is she doing to ensure that there is appropriate education and training across the prison estate?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that ensuring that there is purposeful activity in prisons, and that prisoners can gain life skills and work skills while they are in prison, will help to reduce reoffending and help to tackle the prison capacity challenge that we have. She will recognise that the capacity challenge we inherited makes all of this harder—it makes everything we are doing in the prison system harder. That is why we are both building more prison spaces and ensuring that we invest in and support rehabilitation while people are in prison, to reduce the need to recall people when they reoffend. We are tackling this on all fronts, and I appreciate my hon. Friend’s support for our efforts.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
The Minister says that the Government are building new prison places, yet she will be aware that there are fewer prison places today than on the day Labour took office. She will also be aware that this vast flood of prisoners being released early has overwhelmed the ability of the Probation Service to find them accommodation and that some prisoners are now being issued with tents, setting them up to fail. Can the Minister tell us how many prisoners have been issued with tents on their release? Has the rate been higher or lower than she expected?
Catherine McKinnell
It is not Government policy to provide tents to people being released from prison who are at risk of being homeless. We are clear that tents should never be an acceptable housing solution. The hon. Member will know that overall housing responsibility rests with local authorities in England and Wales. I assure him that we are working very closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to tackle the scourge of homelessness across the board, including among the prison leaver cohort that he is concerned about. He can support this work by encouraging his local authority to engage in pre-release panels, so that this work can be done collaboratively right across the UK to ensure that nobody leaves prison homeless.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Between May and August this year, Kevin Brown committed eight burglaries in Hartlepool, targeting businesses and charities like Alice House hospice and Cornerstone homelessness charity. The court handed him a suspended sentence. That is not good enough for me, and it is not good enough for my constituents. Does the Minister agree that we must build more prison places so that individuals like this are locked up?
Catherine McKinnell
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that we must build more prison places, and we are working at pace to do that. Obviously, I will not comment on independent judicial decisions that are made in particular cases, but he should be reassured to know that when it comes to tackling acquisitive crime, tagging is appropriate and individualised to the offender, to ensure that it tackles their particular challenges in terms of reoffending. An acquisitive crime GPS tag pilot found that offenders were 20% less likely to reoffend within 12 months. We are working across the board to tackle all these issues in the round.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
It is bad enough that dangerous criminals are being released early, but my constituents are frankly terrified that these prisoners are being released without tags—the world has gone mad, Minister. Will this Government commit not to release prisoners without tags?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Gentleman will have heard the answers I have given on the business as usual that we inherited: it was always the plan that from 1 October, offenders would normally be tagged at their accommodation. We are presuming that more offenders and individuals released from prison will be eligible for tags than at any point in history, and we are investing significantly in that. We have undertaken a pilot of tagging prisoners at the prison, which has been shown to be successful, and we will work at pace to roll that out further as quickly as possible.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
Serco continues to be awarded lucrative Government contracts despite repeated failures, while probation officers have been pushed to breaking point. Will the Minister commit to bringing back in-house electronic tagging and probation services, as I proposed in my amendment to the Bill that became the Sentencing Act 2026, so that we are not rewarding private profit over public safety?
Catherine McKinnell
The contract with Serco was signed by the Conservative party, and its performance did not originally meet expectations, but we have focused on driving rapid improvement and ensuring that we turn that failing performance around, so that it is meeting contractual expectations and working with us at pace to make the improvements that we want to see in our system. We will continue to keep all these matters under review, as we would with any contract that the Government have entered into.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I welcome the fact that the Government are experimenting with a scheme of tagging prisoners at the point of release, but a question then arises. Those of them who do not have an address to go to and who choose to remove the tag are going to be very difficult to find. Is there a solution to that?
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman asks a typically thoughtful question. Obviously, all these matters are kept under review. We work very closely with the Probation Service, which uses a range of measures to manage offenders once they are released into the community, to both support them to reintegrate and to ensure that the public are safe, and we also work very closely with the police on that. When an offender does find settled accommodation, a tag can then be put on as part of their licence conditions, but where there are concerns, the recall option remains available.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
When Pentonville Prison was built in 1842, I do not imagine anybody expected that today it would have twice the number of prisoners the Victorians thought ought to be kept there. Furthermore, Pentonville Prison is a London remand prison—people used to be there for six to eight months on remand in pretty terrible conditions, but now they are there for years because of the crisis in the criminal justice system. The question is this: when they are released, what should be done with them? I was speaking to the governor of the prison on Friday, and he said that if the Government wished them to, prison officers would be quite happy to be trained to put the tags on people themselves before releasing them.
Catherine McKinnell
I thank my right hon. Friend for her thoughtful question. Like me, she has the greatest regard for our prison governors. They work on the frontline, keeping the public safe and keeping their prisons running, and they do come up with a lot of good ideas, many of which I have heard myself. I meet governors regularly about what we can do to improve matters; I am very much “ear to the ground.” Indeed, many of the proposals that we are taking forward to improve significantly on the situation we inherited come from the very practical reality that prison governors encounter, so I thank her for the suggestion.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
The issue of electronic monitoring does not concern only those on early release. Michele, a victim of domestic abuse, has a restraining order against her ex-partner until 2036 that the police say he is regularly breaching. Ten days after his release, she contacted me for the fourth time to say that he still did not have a tag. As we went into half term, she said:
“I’ve not left my house all week. The children can’t go out in half term. We don’t feel safe.”
The liaison officers know that a breach is going to happen again, and family members are now staying with her, one at a time, to make sure she is not alone. I totally understand the January deadline—there are a lot of people to deal with—but will the Minister make a commitment that serial victims of domestic abuse will be prioritised so that children do not have to look over their shoulder?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Lady raises an important case. I am very sorry to hear about the situation that her constituent is dealing with this half term. Obviously, that needs to be escalated to the appropriate people. A whole variety of measures are used to ensure victim engagement, including the victim contact helpline, and specific orders can be put on domestic abuse offenders. I appreciate the ongoing concerns, and I would be happy to engage with the hon. Lady about this case.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for the groundbreaking work of her Department in tagging prisoners before release, but will she update the House on the work that this Government are doing to start fixing the failure of the Conservatives to build more prison places or invest in our crumbling prison estate?
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend brings us back to the crux of the issue that this Government inherited. We are dealing with the consequences of a failure to invest in our prison capacity over many years—there was a net gain of just 500 prison places when the Conservatives left Government. We are working at pace to deliver 14,000 prison places, and we aim to do so by 2031. We have already delivered 3,300 places, and I look forward to being at the groundbreaking and opening of many more.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Lord Chancellor recently addressed Napo’s conference—I was listening in, as I was speaking afterwards—and he told probation officers, “Without you, our criminal justice system does not work.” However, Napo is presently balloting its members on strike action following failed negotiations with the Government for a pay rise after decades of pay stagnation. Does the Minister agree that technology cannot replace dedicated probation officers and that they need the proper pay, proper conditions and proper workloads to be able to do their jobs properly?
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Justice Transcribe, which she refers to, has supported probation officers to reduce their workload when it comes to the transcribing of notes; obviously, they must keep careful records, and this system is inevitably helping to manage workloads. She is right that probation officers do a vital job, and I thank them for the work that they are doing today and every day to keep the public safe and manage offenders in the community. In April, we secured the biggest probation pay increase in over a decade, and the current offer increases that by a minimum of 5%. We want to increase our recruitment of probation officers, so hon. Members should encourage people to join the service. We also want to retain our brilliant probation officers, and we are continuing in discussions with them to that end.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Can the Minister confirm that criminals will not get tagged if they are classed as homeless? At the weekend, it was revealed that prisoners released early by this Government were given tents because there was no accommodation for them. So yes or no—will prisoners who are released and given a tent be tagged? Or will they be roaming the streets without any way of locating them, free to commit more crime?
Catherine McKinnell
I agree with the right hon. Lady that it is completely unacceptable for a prisoner to be released with a tent. That is not Government policy, and it is not something that we want to see. That is why we are working at pace to improve the current homelessness situation that we inherited from the previous Government, to make sure that nobody, including prison leavers, leaves prison homeless or has to live homeless.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
A Lords Committee criticised the Ministry of Justice under the previous Government for reappointing the contractors after repeated failures. Serco had an issue with finding a tag small enough for the elderly mother of my constituent, which delayed her release over Christmas. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that contractors manage to tag all prisoners before they leave prison?
Catherine McKinnell
I am sorry to hear about that particular case. There are circumstances where there are physical challenges to fitting a tag—for example, because of a medical reason such as limb loss or swelling. It is important that the vast majority of people who should have tags do have tags, and we need to make sure that happens. The business-as-usual position is to tag an individual who is due to be tagged once they are in their accommodation, but we are trialling, have piloted and will be looking to roll out tagging at the prison as quickly as possible.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
I have heard from far too many worried victims and parents of young victims in Yeovil about how much anxiety the potential early release of their offenders, including members of child grooming gangs, has caused. Probation services in rural areas are on their knees, so will the Minister tell victims in Yeovil what work has been done with probation services in the south-west to ensure they have all the personnel, resources and systems in place to safely manage the release of offenders to our communities?
Catherine McKinnell
I am sorry to hear about the experience of those young people in Yeovil. We need to be careful about some of the rhetoric around the subject and to always have victims in mind when we have these conversations. Yes, there must be robust challenge to ensure that we get this right and that we push the measures we are taking to the furthest point possible to make sure we keep people safe, but we must also respect the work of our probation teams who are monitoring offenders in the community and working to keep people safe. There are a range of offences that are excluded from the progression model, so those offenders are not eligible for progression. We have increased the tagging of offenders, even where they are excluded from progression but whose crimes are of a nature that we would want them to be tagged and monitored post-release in any event. I want to provide reassurance to young people: we are working at pace and our very hardest to ensure that we keep the public safe, and we manage offenders as they reintegrate back into the community.
Markus Campbell-Savours (Penrith and Solway) (Lab)
One former Conservative Minister wrote a book that discussed the prison system’s failure to reform. Will the Minister confirm that she has looked at Rory Stewart’s book and his concerns that the Department lacked project management capabilities and support from the Treasury, and required a longer tenure for Prison Ministers? Would she recommend the book to the shadow Minister?
Catherine McKinnell
Indeed, Conservative Members have made a plethora of public commentary on such issues. As well as the book my hon. Friend mentioned, the former Prime Minister herself and her policy chief admitted that not enough prison places were built. I would be interested not only in whether Conservative Members might want to read the aforementioned book, but in whether they will apologise for the failures of the previous Government—this would be a good opportunity to do that.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
The Government have not yet set out the number of domestic abusers who have been released under the early release scheme. Will the Minister set out to the House what that number is, and the total number of domestic abusers who will be released under the scheme?
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that that figure is not available, but we could not take this issue more seriously. That is why we have tagging under the domestic abuse perpetrators on licence approach, and probation services have a wider set of powers, many of which I have mentioned, including restrictions on licence conditions to prohibit offenders from driving or attending public events. It is right that we bring in our world-leading restriction zones to ensure that it is the perpetrators, not the victims of domestic violence, who have to alter their lives. We will continue to prioritise and work on this issue, and he is right to raise it.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I speak regularly to victims of crime and their families in Harlow, and I find some of their stories absolutely heartbreaking. I feel really angry that there are men in our society who think it is okay to treat women in the way they do, and I am sure that people across the House feel the same way. One thing that victims and their families raise with me is their concern about how easy it is for perpetrators—these vile individuals—to take their tags off. What can the Minister say about the punishment that will be handed down to those individuals who tamper with their tags or try to take them off?
Catherine McKinnell
I share my hon. Friend’s anger. Since taking on this role, I have felt very angry not just with some of the perpetrators and the cases that we see come across our desks, but with the 14 years of failure that left us in the situation we are in. We are working at pace to improve the technology and the application of the tagging system. [Interruption.] The Conservatives chunter from the Opposition Benches, but they wasted £100 million on tags that did not work. We are working to ensure that this scheme is effective, and we are working at pace to pick up the pieces that were left behind.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)
Will the Minister please tell the House how many people who should be wearing an electronic tag are wandering around our communities with no electronic device fitted at all? That should be a simple question.
Catherine McKinnell
That question has a simple answer: the hon. Gentleman will be able to see the data when it is published in January. We have just had data published for the previous three months. The data obviously needs to be verified and accurate. We are not in the business of publishing data that is not robust, and we will publish it in due course in the normal way.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for her very comprehensive answers. Electronic monitoring of offenders can be a useful tool to manage prison capacity for individuals who have carried out non-violent crimes, but there are some serious concerns about regional co-ordination. Can she assure the House that robust safeguards are in place to ensure that private monitoring contractors are sharing real-time flawless data with police forces in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? What specific metric is her Department using to confirm that tagging systems are genuinely reducing offending, rather than being a sticking plaster for a broken system?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Gentleman asks a very thoughtful question, and one that probably requires a lengthier answer than I have time to give, but I absolutely acknowledge the point he makes. I am determined that we have the data, the monitoring and the reporting to ensure that this scheme does work and is not a sticking plaster, so that victims can have faith in it, and probation officers and the police can be supported to do what they need to do to keep our communities safe. We are investing significantly in this technology, and we need to ensure that it works. He raises a genuine and good point.
Strengthening Community Resilience
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the steps that the Government are taking to ensure that the UK is the most resilient country that we can be.
Let me begin by sending my condolences to the families of the two men who tragically died in storm conditions this weekend. It is an all-too-grim reminder of the devastating impact that storms can have. I saw that at first hand when I visited Cornwall in the wake of Storm Goretti earlier this year. Weather stations recorded wind speeds of 100 mph; some 50,000 homes, schools and businesses were left without power; and entire communities became trapped as fallen trees blocked country lanes. I heard families’ fear as they talked about how quickly the basic necessities of everyday life were stripped away—power, water and the internet. I thank the first responders for their tireless efforts in clearing roads and reconnecting homes. Those scenes will be familiar to Members right across the House.
On 8 January, in the south-west, it was an extreme storm. Over the summer, across the UK, it was wildfires. This week, it has been Storm Austen and Storm Boelo. Climate change is making extreme weather not just more likely, but more powerful. This winter is set to be difficult, with El Niño increasing the likelihood of storms and heavy rainfall.
Since we came into government in 2024, we have been hardening and sharpening the UK’s approach to resilience. We have re-written the Government’s pandemic strategy, investing more than £1 billion to build the UK’s biological defences. We have launched the home defence programme to ensure that our country is best prepared for the full range of potential threats, no matter how unlikely they might be. Up and down these isles, we are taking co-ordinated action to prepare our infrastructure for difficult weather this winter. We have £1.4 billion invested in flood defences in this financial year alone; £24 billion invested to maintain and improve our roads and rail network over the next four years; and £2.6 billion invested to climate-proof our rail infrastructure, with projects under way or completed in places such as County Durham, Derbyshire and Cumbria. Throughout the coming winter, I will be working across Government to ensure an effective response to storms as they occur.
However, in reflecting on the experience of the people I met in Cornwall, it is clear to me that, in the middle of an emergency, our brilliant first responders cannot be everywhere all at once. It is clear that proper preparedness begins in our communities, streets and homes. Our research shows that just 13% of people in the UK feel that they are prepared for an emergency, such as a severe storm, that could cut them off from the services that they rely on. That figure is far lower than the figure for our European neighbours. The very same research showed that 84% of people in the UK want the Government to share more information about the steps that they can take to increase their preparedness.
To give some credit to the Opposition, they recognised that resilience gap while in government and launched a new website to share preparedness guidance with the public. However, that website stopped short of a proper campaign; not enough people noticed it, and those who did found the guidance hard to follow. This Government are committed to having an honest conversation with the public about the risks that we face and helping them to prepare—household by household, step by step—to improve our national resilience. To that effect, we have published updated preparedness guidance for households and launched a three-year campaign to raise awareness of the simple steps that people can take to be ready for everyday emergencies.
I want to be clear from the outset that we are not launching this campaign because of any specific or imminent threat. Instead, launching this campaign brings the UK into line with almost every single European country and countless others around the world that already run similar campaigns every year. In developing the campaign, the Government have worked with more than 500 different organisations—emergency services, businesses, voluntary groups and local authorities—to develop guidance that meets the needs of communities.
I will touch briefly on the guidance before outlining the campaign. The guidance is designed to help households to be self-sufficient for three days in an emergency. We have published a full checklist of the simple steps that households can take. The two main actions are: ensuring that you have three days-worth of water and non-perishable food, and signing up to the priority services register if you or someone in your household is eligible for extra support in a utility outage. As many people who can follow that common-sense guidance should follow it. By playing their part, people will be helping themselves as well as others in their community, because, in an emergency, every household that has taken the steps set out on the checklist is one less household that the emergency services need to give extra support to.
We are also encouraging people to check in on their neighbours and to be ready to help each other out. We have worked hand in hand with charities to ensure that the campaign is helpful for everyone, including organisations representing disabled people, people struggling with their mental health and people who rely on food banks. Many actions on the checklist—such as signing up to the priority services register—are completely free, and others can be ticked off over time by adding one item per week to the weekly shop. This is about helping as many people as possible to be ready for an emergency, so that help can arrive to those most in need first. To those who think this campaign is an overreaction, I say, “Think of the people I met in Cornwall and those in countless other communities across the UK, including the tens of thousands of people who were without power this very weekend.” Their lived experience proves otherwise.
The campaign will run for at least three years, and is called “Be Ready”. It is being run hand in hand with our emergency services, local councils and resilience forums, and voluntary organisations. I am pleased to report that since launch, the campaign website has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and the campaign checklist has been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and while it is too early to have formal polling data, anecdotal evidence and partner data shows that people up and down the country are heeding our advice. This is just the start, however; over the coming weeks, people will begin to see information about what they can do popping up online, on the radio, and out and about in their local community. That is just the point—this is a community-led campaign. Over the coming weeks, we will also be sharing toolkits that partners can use to get involved. I encourage Members across the House to support the campaign, read the advice and help their constituents to be ready. Together, we can ensure our communities are ready for everyday emergencies, whenever or wherever they occur. I hope that the Be Ready campaign will unite communities across the United Kingdom, and I am working closely with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all of whom back this campaign and the lifesaving advice it will share.
Mr Speaker, before entering Parliament, I was proud to serve in the Parachute Regiment, whose motto, “Ready for anything”, comes to mind today. What you might not know is that, even longer ago—perhaps longer ago than I would care to admit—I was a Boy Scout, hard though that might be to believe.
Dan Jarvis
I am sure that Opposition Members, and indeed hon. Members from across the House, will all know the motto of the scouting movement. It is not “Dyb, dyb, dyb”, as the right hon. Lady says.
Dan Jarvis
It is “Be prepared”—thank you very much. The circumstances are certainly different, but I hope the House agrees that there is wisdom in both of those mottoes. Both remind us that we have a responsibility to be ready for the sorts of everyday emergencies that people faced just this weekend. Together, by taking the simple steps in this campaign, we can help people and communities right across the United Kingdom to be ready.
I commend this statement to the House.
Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and join him in sending my condolences to the families of the two men who lost their lives in the storms over the weekend.
We welcome measures to address the resilience gap—a process that started under the previous Government, as the Minister said. I am a little surprised that the Housing Secretary’s suggestion of stockpiling sauvignon blanc has not been taken on board by the Minister, but it is absolutely right that the Government tell people to be prepared for adversity. However, I have a number of questions that I hope he will be able to address this afternoon. First, the Government’s Be Ready campaign website lists 18 hazards, ranging from terrorism and adverse weather to animal and plant health and fires in the home. Which of those 18 hazards do the Government consider to be the highest risk, and have there been any recent changes to risk assessments that led to the launch of this campaign?
Secondly, how do the Government plan to reach people who are digitally excluded, and will they be distributing printed resources? Not only are such resources vital for those who are digitally excluded, they could become a lifeline for anyone who is unable to access the internet at the time of an incident. In his statement, the Minister rightly pointed out that only 13% of people in the UK feel they are prepared for an emergency. This is in stark contrast to other countries, such as Spain, where I believe the figure is just below 70%. Can the Minister tell the House whether he has a specific take-up figure that he would like to achieve by the end of the Be Ready campaign?
I now come to the issue of costs. We all know that times are tough for people right across the country, so how much do the Government expect this preparedness to cost the average family, and how much do they expect to spend on this campaign over the next three years? It has been reported that since the Government announced the campaign last week, supermarkets have seen water and baked beans sell out, as well as a run on wind-up radios and torches. Did the Government communicate with major supermarkets and other retailers to prepare them before they made this announcement, or was it just dropped on them?
With reference to emergency response coverage, the most important thing across the nation is that we have a joined-up approach, so that nobody is left behind. We cannot have a postcode lottery of an emergency response system, so can the Minister tell the House how he is working with the devolved Administrations across the four nations, and how he is working with local authorities? The Government became familiar with the emergency alert system over the summer after using it to warn people about disposable barbecues. Has the Minister reflected since then and made any assessment of the threshold for future use of the system, and of how many people may have turned off their emergency alert capability following its use in August?
Next, I would like to address vulnerable people, and what consideration the Government have made of them in the Be Ready campaign. How will the Government ensure that our vulnerable, our elderly, people with illness, parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and others are effectively communicated with and supported in a time of emergency? This cannot vary from place to place.
Turning to national security, the former Defence Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), said this week that the cyber-attack that caused £2.1 billion of damage to Jaguar Land Rover last year was a state-sponsored attack. First, Jaguar Land Rover deserves to know whether it was a state-sponsored attack, and I hope the Government have told it. Secondly, can the Government say whether there needs to be more awareness among businesses that they are at risk from these types of attacks, and what more are they doing to support our critical national infrastructure with cyber-resilience and cyber-security?
The Government have claimed that defence spending will reach 2.7% of GDP by the end of 2028. Considering the valuable work of our intelligence services, can the Minister confirm that the entire single intelligence account is included in that figure, and can he explain how this fits with the NATO definition of defence spending? Finally, the Government have refused to confirm whether improving broadband infrastructure is included in the classification of critical infrastructure for the purposes of reporting against the additional 1.5% NATO commitment. Can the Minister clarify today that improving broadband infrastructure does not contribute to the NATO spending commitment?
In conclusion, we welcome the continuation of the previous Conservative Government’s efforts to address the resilience gap. We will support the Government where appropriate, and look forward to scrutinising the Be Ready campaign as it progresses.
Dan Jarvis
I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Member for the reasonable way in which he has presented quite a long list of questions today. I will endeavour to work my way through them in as systematic a way as I can; if I miss anything, though, I am happy to write to him or meet him to discuss this matter, not least because it is my intention that the work we do to make our nation more resilient is a shared endeavour across this House. I do not believe that it should be a matter of political disagreement. I think the measures we have brought forward are reasonable and common-sense ones, and I hope we can work together across this place to ensure our communities—our constituencies—are as resilient as possible, not least because that activity will contribute to our overall national resilience and national security as part of this work.
The hon. Member asked an entirely reasonable set of questions, which I will run through as best I can. At the outset, he asked whether the campaign is in response to a range of different risks. He will know about the Government’s risk register, and will have heard me say earlier that this campaign is not a consequence of any specific piece of intelligence or born out of any specific concern. He and the House will understand that at any one time, the Government are tracking a range of different threats to the United Kingdom, and this campaign will contribute—I think effectively—to our overall resilience. I think he will also understand that there is a lot of merit in making sure we prepare households and communities at a local level for the kinds of everyday emergencies we have spoken about today, and that there is a broader and wider utility in that preparedness when it comes to other risks that have been debated recently, even those that are much less likely.
The hon. Member made an important point about inclusion, particularly of people who are not online, and he is right to raise those concerns. Over the coming weeks and months, he will see a range of different activities under way to ensure we are able to reach every corner of the United Kingdom, including those who are offline. I mentioned the radio, but I am happy to think more about how we can ensure that nobody is unable to access this important messaging.
The hon. Member asked about the take-up figure. I said in my statement that I expected the campaign to run for three years, but I think it likely that messages of the kind that we are discussing today will continue in the longer term. The work that we are now launching in the United Kingdom is, in fact, done routinely in other parts of the world, and particularly with partners in Europe and Scandinavia. Such messaging is routine in most countries, and I anticipate that this sort of activity will take on a certain normality in the future.
The hon. Member asked me about the alert. The decision to launch any alert is taken very carefully, and we weigh up a range of different risks. Whenever an alert is launched there is an extensive process of review. We are working through the detail of the most recent alert, and I shall be happy to discuss that further with the hon. Member and with other Members.
The hon. Member was right to raise the need to ensure that the vulnerable and the elderly are properly accommodated in the context of the campaign. We have worked very hard with a range of stakeholder organisations, including local resilience forums, the voluntary sector and the British Red Cross, to ensure that vulnerable people are properly catered for. The hon. Member will have heard what I said earlier about the importance that we attach to people signing up for the priority services register. There is a job of work that I hope every Member will do, namely looking into their own communities and encouraging their constituents to engage with this messaging and specifically, when they think they might be eligible—the criterion is fairly broad—to sign up for the register.
The hon. Member rightly mentioned cost of living pressures. I hope that he heard what I said about there not being a requirement for households to assemble all these items in one go: this is the kind of thing that people can do progressively, perhaps adding a single item to each weekly shop. Although many households will probably already have many of the items on the checklist, I hope that, through the process of this campaign, they will think about how they can draw those individual items together and be better prepared should an everyday emergency strike. We are acutely conscious of the cost of living pressures on households throughout the country, and we are determined to ensure that the campaign is carried out in a value-for-money way. The actual costs are relatively low, and we think that it is very good value for money, but we will ensure that that is the case.
The hon. Member asked about cyber, an issue that I take extremely seriously, both in my remit as a Cabinet Office Minister and through the Home Office. As the hon. Member will know, earlier this year the Government published a landmark cyber action plan to overhaul public sector digital security. The next stage of that plan is the introduction of the national cyber action plan, which will drive up standards in businesses and the wider society. A great deal of activity is under way across Government, and I hope we can all get behind that collectively.
Finally, the hon. Member mentioned defence spending. I genuinely welcome this debate, because I think it important for our national security. As the Prime Minister has said, the Government’s commitment to the defence of our country is unwavering. We have already delivered the biggest sustained boost to defence spending since the cold war, committing nearly £300 billion over the next four years. We will honour our NATO commitment to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035, and will specify a target date for 3% in the spending review. We are also delivering on our commitment to NATO by spending 1.5% of our GDP on wider security and resilience. That includes protecting our critical national infrastructure, defending our networks, ensuring our civil preparedness and resilience, and unleashing innovation and strengthening our defence industrial base.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I commend my right hon. Friend and the Government for starting this national conversation. Given the extreme heat during the summer, the storms that have ravaged our communities in recent days and the issues involving rogue states attacking our infrastructure, there was clearly a real need for that conversation to start. As my right hon. Friend will know, my Committee’s inquiry on societal resilience is under way. Along with, I am sure, all other Members, I welcomed what my right hon. Friend said about the three-year programme, but will he commit to giving the House regular updates on the roles of local resilience forums, individuals and businesses in ensuring wider societal resilience?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the important work that he does in chairing his Committee. The piece of work that he mentioned is significant, and we look forward keenly to his Committee’s findings. He rightly mentioned the three-year commitment that we have made. I think that is the right duration to aim for initially, but as I said, we now live in a world in which I expect we will need to have constant conversations of this nature with communities throughout the country, in line with our European partners, and with our allies around the world—and yes, I can absolutely give him the commitment that he seeks that we will update his Committee and the House.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. Let me place on record our thanks to the emergency services, volunteers and communities who respond to civil emergencies, be they storms, floods or wildfires.
I welcome the announcement of the Be Ready campaign, and agree that every household that can be ready to look after itself should be ready to do so, for at least three days. During the first covid lockdown, I raised an eyebrow when my other half stockpiled enough bottled water to keep us going for weeks, but today he has been proved right, and I fear that I will never hear the end of it.
The Security Minister rightly mentioned the importance of volunteers. I wonder if he has spoken to our Finnish allies, for example, to learn from their experience of establishing a formal civil volunteer reserve. Its members would receive non-military training, and could be called on in an emergency, just as community first responders can attend medical emergencies.
As the Minister said, not everyone can stock up for three days. People relying on food banks, older people and people with mobility difficulties are often the least able to prepare and the most exposed. The priority services register can work well only if it is accurate, so what more can the Minister do to ensure that it is kept up to date? Can he say specifically what co-ordination is in place with the utility companies, so that information can be shared about their lists of vulnerable customers?
It is not just weather or climate change that we need to be prepared for; the number of nationally significant cyber-threats has doubled in the last year. The Liberal Democrats have called for a digital sovereignty strategy to ensure that critical national functions are powered by technology that the UK can control. Can the Minister update us on any progress being made on digital sovereignty?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Member has made a series of important points. I join her in thanking the emergency services for the extremely important work that they do in communities throughout the country. She was right to mention volunteers. I am aware of the very good work being done in Finland and Scandinavia, which have taken a more forward-leaning approach to campaigns of this sort than the United Kingdom, but I will look more closely at her specific point about how things are working in Finland.
I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of the priority services register. We are working with utility companies to ensure as much awareness as possible, at household level, of the need to sign up for the register. As I said, the criteria are quite broad, and I urge Members to encourage their constituents to check their eligibility.
The hon. Member made an important point about sovereignty. I work closely with colleagues across Government—from the Cabinet Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and elsewhere—to ensure that our digital infrastructure and critical national infrastructure are as resilient and as protected as they can be. As she knows, we face a range of threats on that front, and it is important that the Government are properly geared up to stand against them. We work closely with our international allies to that end.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I thank the Security Minister for his statement on this vital topic, and welcome the much-delayed start to the national conversation. It is widely acknowledged that, in the event of conflict, military effectiveness is reliant on civilian systems being able to function under attack, be it physical or cyber-attack, and that relies on us taking a whole-of-society approach. Why is the forthcoming national exercise, Albiston Shadow, classified, thereby excluding those from outside Government? If we accept that resilience is a whole-of-society endeavour, why are the Government not engaging more widely with industry, councils, civil society and Members of this House, so that we can properly stress-test the planning? What information-sharing mechanisms have been established to ensure that key individuals without the necessary security clearance are included in the event of crisis or conflict?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the Chair of the Defence Committee for his question, and I agree with his broader point about the importance of wider societal resilience—he is absolutely right about that. That work is taking place through the home defence programme, on which we lead through the Cabinet Office, though we work with partners across Government, including the Ministry of Defence. He referred to Albiston Shadow, which is due to be the largest home defence exercise run in the United Kingdom for many years. We are still working through its precise design, so I will reflect on his comments, and we will look at whether we can accommodate some of the points that he has helpfully flagged.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
In the early 1980s, along with other enthusiasts, I set up the National Council for Civil Defence, and worked with Willie Whitelaw. We achieved a major milestone in the form of the Civil Protection in Peacetime Act 1986. The NCCD was taken over by the local government office as a serious organisation. When the cold war ended, the whole civil defence effort atrophied, because there was considered to be no threat. We now live in a very different world, so will the Minister make an attempt to improve our entire civil defence structure? There was a leaflet issued by the then Conservative Government called “Protect and Survive”. I know a war is very unlikely, but it is best to be prepared.
Dan Jarvis
I certainly agree with the Father of the House that it is best to be prepared. It is interesting that he reflects on a time when there was greater awareness of the risk of conflict, but he is right to say that the threats we face today are very significant, and the world is more dangerous than at any point since the period that he describes. I hope that he will understand that the Government take these matters incredibly seriously. I hope that he will see that we are working across Government to ensure that we have the appropriate defences in place, and the appropriate resources to underpin those defences. We need to focus people’s minds on a range of different threats to our national security. The Be Ready campaign will better insulate households and communities, and I hope that he will agree that there will be a broader, wider benefit, in terms of our national security and keeping the country safe.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Will he join me in praising Ben Brook, the chief fire officer in Warwickshire, and his firefighting and administrative teams for their brave efforts this summer? In July, there were 771 incidents, which is the highest number on record—double the rate in July 2021. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will do all they can to provide the fire service in Warwickshire with the resources it needs, and will offer help with reaching out to the public about the parts of his statement to do with their involvement in resilience?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, and I absolutely join him in praising Ben Brook and his team in Warwickshire; they did incredibly important and difficult work over the summer. My hon. Friend may have seen that last week the Prime Minister hosted our inaugural wildfire summit, at which he announced that military planes and helicopters will take to the skies to fight wildfires for the first time, as we prepare for future extreme weather driven by climate change. In his announcement, the Prime Minister paid tribute to those who put on a uniform and serve in our fire and rescue services for the incredibly important work that they do, including, clearly, in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
If rule No. 1, as far as resilience is concerned, is “be prepared”, does the Minister agree that rule No. 2 should be “have a reliable back-up system”? In that connection, does he share my concern that both in the field of telephony and in the field of banking, back-up systems do not seem to exist? In particular, were the Government consulted before British Telecom decided not only to move to an internet-based telephone system, but to dismantle the copper wire system, which could have given us useful resilience in an emergency?
Dan Jarvis
I broadly agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s rule No. 2, and he is right to stress the importance of having back-up systems. Essentially, a guiding principle in this campaign is making sure that households have their own back-up systems, but he is right to say that the Government need to think about the bigger picture, and to ensure resilience across our critical national infrastructure and in the areas of business and commerce to which he refers. I can give him an assurance that the Government work very closely with partners in the private sector, and various forums provide opportunities to engage on these matters. We take them very seriously, but I will look more carefully at the point that he has made.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Tinned food is key to being prepared for an emergency, as it can be eaten when there is no power to cook it. Does the Minister recognise that Tata’s Trostre steelworks, in my constituency of Llanelli, which makes the tin plate used by big-name manufacturers to can their products, is of strategic importance to our national resilience? Will he stress to his ministerial colleagues the absolute necessity of ensuring that conditions, such as energy prices, are competitive, so that we can secure a viable future for tin-plate production in Llanelli?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I will make sure that colleagues in Government have heard it. She is right to emphasise the wider industrial issues at play here. She will know that tin cans were included on the checklist, and she is right to talk about tin production. I give her a reassurance that I will raise that with colleagues in other Government Departments.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Our subsea infrastructure is incredibly important; we know from recent reports that the Russians have been sniffing around it in their GUGI submarines, and that Russian trawlers have been investigating our undersea infrastructure. I am very concerned that we have only one UK-based and UK-flagged repair ship, the CS Sovereign, which is due to go out of service in 2030. Six months ago, I asked the former Department for Science, Innovation and Technology what it was doing to investigate replacing that capability. Could the Minister give us assurance about the Government’s plans to ensure that we have UK-based and UK-flagged repair capability for our subsea infrastructure?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. and gallant Gentleman makes a really important point about subsea infrastructure. It is something in which I have taken a particular interest, working with colleagues across Government, including those in the Ministry of Defence. He is right to mention the threat from Russia, which is well understood. I know he will understand that there is always a balance to be struck, both in recognising the threat that we face and in ensuring that we are properly prepared to defend against it. At the same time—the director general of MI5 made this point—we should not make the Russians out to be better than they are and do the propaganda work on their behalf, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Let me look more carefully at the detail, and I will come back to him with a more precise response.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
Storms can strike anywhere at any time, as I found out last week. In many of our communities, neighbours and volunteers step in at critical times. In North Warwickshire and Bedworth, groups such as the Fillongley Flood Group step in to keep homes safe. What more can the Government do to ensure that community groups can help make sure that all vulnerable people are ready?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. She speaks about the kind of group that all of us will have in our constituency—those local groups that come together to provide support. On a recent visit to Leicestershire, I saw the excellent work done by a local flood action group to protect their community following floods. We have been very careful to ensure that the design of this campaign has been worked through with local authorities, local resilience forums, and a range of voluntary and charitable organisations. I believe very much in the public and community spirit found right across the country. We want to encourage and enable activity of this kind, so that when an everyday emergency does strike, communities can come together and look out for each other.
Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)
In my constituency of Henley and Thame, Greener Henley has already sprung into action and is seeking community champions to organise street by street. What action will the Government take to support community organisations to improve resilience not just on a household basis, but at street level?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Member makes a similarly important point. I reiterate what I said a moment ago: the design of the campaign has been worked on in conjunction with community and voluntary groups, which we all know from our constituencies do an incredibly important job. The launch of the campaign has been warmly welcomed by a range of community and voluntary organisations right around the country. We want to work through local authorities and with local resilience forums—those kind of organisations—so that they feel both empowered and enabled to support their communities, but all of us as Members of this House have a responsibility to work with and support them at the local level.
Mary Creagh (Coventry East) (Lab)
Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I spent many hours in meetings managing the disastrous fallout from South East Water’s outages in Tunbridge Wells and its surroundings. I would like to put on record my thanks to you for your role—and to those around the House for their role—as a trusted message bearer to the people caught up in those outages. One of the lessons I took from that was the need for people at the start of their life or at the end of their life to be properly looked after. What can my right hon. and gallant Friend do to make sure that local authorities, water companies and energy companies are working with local nurseries and, critically, acute NHS services so that they know who has just left hospital, who is at the end of life and who is under five in order to put them proactively on the priority services register?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who speaks with great authority on these matters, not least from her own time in government, and she is right to make the point in the way that she does. I know that she will understand that a lot of work takes place in local authority areas and with local resilience forums on the issues she has raised to ensure that there is visibility of where there are more vulnerable households. That is precisely why we are taking this opportunity to encourage members of the public to check—and to encourage Members of this House to get their constituents to check—their eligibility for the priority services register. That is a really useful document in this regard, but I know that local resilience forums will be working on the issues she has raised, and we in the Government will of course keep a close eye on them.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
We all know that at points of emergency, such as power outages and so many other things, mobile networks are incredibly important. The villages of Huntington and Hatherton have virtually no signal at all. With the withdrawal of the shared rural network, which provides funding for rural communities to get better mobile services, what should such villages do to ensure that they have access to the mobile networks that are so important at critical times?
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that mobile networks are very important. I saw for myself, in the aftermath of Storm Goretti in Cornwall, the impact of losing the mobile and digital signal, even for a relatively short period. A lot of work is taking place in Government, led by the DCMS, to ensure that there is that resilience and that, in the aftermath of any extreme weather event, there is urgent and ongoing work to restore capabilities that have been lost. He makes an important point, and I know that, again, local resilience forums will be looking at the particular challenges in their areas and working with utility providers to ensure that, where coverage is lost, it can be returned as quickly as possible.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s statement. He will know very well that the “Protecting What Matters” strategy, which was announced to the House earlier this year, had some excellent proposals to strengthen community resilience. Will he update the House about progress on that strategy, and say exactly which proposals we have made progress on to date?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I think he raises an important point. I am limited in the time I have to respond, but I can update him that there has been positive progress on that area of work. It sits adjacent to the discussion we are having, but he is right to raise it. At points of everyday emergency, or where particular communities are subject to emergency circumstances, there are those who may seek to use it as an opportunity to sow misinformation and disinformation. The Government are of course extremely mindful of that, which is one of the reasons why the Prime Minister recently announced the creation of the national centre for information defence.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Laying in three days’ supplies in the Northern Isles is what we do if we are confident that we are having a mild winter. Just four years ago, parts of Shetland were without electricity for six days, so resilience looks different in different parts of the country.
To take the Minister back to his answer to the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), the Government recently launched a consultation on critical undersea infrastructure, security and resilience, in which they seemed to see the answer as one of regulation and legislation. As the hon. Gentleman told the Minister, we need the capacity to effect repairs to undersea cables, and to do so without long delays, as currently occur. Will he take away that need and the experience of my constituents in recent years, who have suffered a number of digital outages as a consequence?
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue. He and I have discussed it previously, and he explained with great clarity the impact of the loss of that capability on his constituents. I hope he gets a sense of the seriousness with which we take it, but I will write to him and the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) with more details of the work we are doing.
Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)
I want to raise the issue of water outages, which I know you have also been working on in Sussex, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have previously lobbied the Minister about upgrading how we see the risk of a water outage in the national risk register, and I was pleased to see it upgraded from the lowest form to the highest form of risk in the most recent register. However, I want to flag some issues, particularly with the priority services register, that we have encountered during outages in Hastings.
The first issue relates to blocks of flats with multiple residents but one bill payer, such as a management company, which is particularly common in sheltered accommodation. Southern Water has told me:
“Across the water industry…arrangements are designed around identified account holders and bill-paying customers. In centrally billed or bulk-metered properties, such as some blocks of flats, water companies typically have no direct relationship with individual residents and do not hold information about…personal circumstances. This creates a recognised industry challenge”.
We really need to look at that in relation to resilience. Secondly, I am aware that the risk register is not updated in line with the electoral register, so the register is not updated when people move out and it ends up with so many people on it that delivery becomes unsustainable. Will the Minister look at those issues?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I am just as interested in the response, as it covers my constituency too, but we need to make sure that questions are much shorter and answers are on point.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
The Security Minister and Cabinet Office Minister knows that I have a huge amount of time for him, but I want to slightly break the consensus that has mostly held in the Chamber today. I think the Government’s communications—mass public communications—are confused on this issue. We are being asked by senior Ministers to stock up on corned beef, water and whatever, because of storms. Well—breaking news—there have been many storms over the last 80 years in Shropshire, and indeed across the country, and we have never been given this advice before.
If this is about war preparedness and being on a war footing, as the Defence Secretary has suggested we should all be, I think the Government should just come clean and treat the British public with a little bit more respect. At the beginning of the Ukrainian war, defence intelligence was signed off by the excellent then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, and shared with the British public, so that they came along with the Ministry of Defence and the Government. I think that the Security Minister needs to look at that as a good example.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. In case I was not understood earlier, questions need to be shorter and answers on point.
Dan Jarvis
I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, and he has basically asked a series of good questions that lend themselves more to a longer debate, so I may not be able to do justice to them now. However, let me emphasise that, as I said earlier, this campaign is about taking the simple, straightforward steps to be ready for everyday emergencies such as severe storms or flooding. At the same time, there is significant bandwidth across Government to talk about the other threats we face as a nation, and I think that is what he is referring to. Ultimately, what we have to do, and this is done from the centre, is to make sure that we are preparing communities at the local level for the everyday emergencies we have been talking about today, while at the same time making sure that we are properly prepared for the very severe threats we face from countries such as Russia.
Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)
Just a few weeks ago, I hosted an event in Parliament with ambassadors from Denmark, Norway, Estonia and Finland on this exact topic. There were two common themes in the plans they are implementing. One was building public trust, and hopefully what we are seeing today in the national conversation is part of that. The second was the need to engage with businesses—and, indeed, the benefits of doing so—to inform employees and potentially use them as a resource, and to say that they could be the targets of something like a cyber-attack but also part of the response. Will the Minister confirm that he will speak to those allies specifically about the importance of engaging businesses, and that that point will be considered?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend makes an important point about engaging businesses. We are certainly doing that. We are also working closely with our allies, including the countries to which he referred. Trust is important. The polling we have done shows that 84% of the public expect the Government to provide this information and only 13% of households think that they are properly prepared. It is important that we establish that honest conversation with the public to give them good, common-sense, practical advice that will make them more resilient in their own households. That is what we are doing.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
The area I represent has the biggest river system in the UK and some of the most inclement weather in the UK, so my constituents and I are fully familiar with being prepared and being ready for what could possibly come. What I struggle with a little bit is the other stuff in the statement. I am baffled by the lumping together of storm readiness and other undefined threats that cannot be properly outlined in name. Does the Minister not agree that storms and weather events are critical known stand-alone threats, and that there should be distinct and separate strategies for them? Lumping them together with national security, subsea cables and cyber-threats is confusing and perhaps even unhelpful to people who just want to be prepared.
Dan Jarvis
Let me say to the hon. Gentleman how much importance we attach to doing this right around the United Kingdom. This is a UK-wide campaign and we have worked closely with partners in the devolved Governments to ensure that it can be as simple and as joined up as possible. The relationship with colleagues in Scotland is a really important one, not least because of the challenges he alluded to. I hope he will see that this is the beginning of a campaign. Fundamentally, we want to engage the public about simple measures they can take in their own lives. This is a first step. I hope he will join with us and support it.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement and I welcome the Be Ready announcement. I have friends in Valencia who were impacted by the devastating flash floods in 2024. Spain and many other countries have long provided resilience and emergency preparedness advice to their citizens. Thankfully, my friends Eva and Pablo only lost their cars in the floods, but that culture of resilience meant that they had essentials at hand, and could help neighbours and vulnerable people as part of the community effort alongside the emergency services and regional authorities. With extreme weather threats now a reality here in the UK—as we saw this weekend—does he agree that it is right for us to adopt that approach to resilience, and that it is about everyone playing an active part in preparedness and in their communities?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is about people playing an active part in their own communities to ensure that collective resilience. She is also right to refer to the example of Spain. Spain has been doing this work for a considerable period of time and it has been able to build more of a culture of resilience. That is common practice among our neighbours in Europe and further afield, and that culture of resilience is something we are seeking to build here.
Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)
In rural South Shropshire we face flooding and power cuts every year, so I welcome this campaign. However, I do not believe it has landed as the Government intended, because the strategic defence review set out a whole-of-society approach and a national conversation about the threats we face to our resilience. We have talked about the Finnish model. The Finns clearly know the threats through proximity. I believe that to get the public on side, we have to clearly set out the threats to critical national infrastructure that could close the internet down for several weeks or lead to power outages and so on. Does the Minister agree that taking that approach will help the country to prepare better?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his broad welcome of the campaign. I listened very carefully to what he had to say and I do not think there is much disagreement between us. Let me say to him that the Government are constantly reviewing and updating our response to a wide range of threats and scenarios to ensure that we are prepared for every eventuality. He will know that, through the home defence programme, we have been running a variety of security and resilience exercises. There are more of those to come. That is important work, but the Be Ready campaign sits as a strand of that activity, alongside other work we are doing with other colleagues, including in the Ministry of Defence.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.
Ms Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I welcome the statement and I support the Be Ready campaign. The Committee heard from the fire and rescue service, which is very much in support of the whole society resilience approach. A constant theme was the need for clarity on the role that the Government would like the fire and rescue service to play in this space. Essentially, when looking at the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, I urge the Minister to think about the role that the fire and rescue service could play and to make sure it is part of the process.
Dan Jarvis
The Chair of the Select Committee raises an important point, which I know was discussed at the Prime Minister’s inaugural wildfire summit just last week. It is absolutely on the Prime Minister’s mind and it has been raised with me on a number of occasions at a local level. I know that colleagues in other Departments are looking, along with my own Department, at what more we can do.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
Flooding in Somerset is a huge issue. One of the care homes in my constituency flooded last year within seconds. Yes, the Government have given Somerset a lot more money towards tackling flooding, but that does not go far enough. What else can the Government do to support rural Somerset in being ready for flooding this year?
Dan Jarvis
I understand why the hon. Gentleman will want to raise concerns about his own area; that is absolutely his responsibility. He will, I hope, have heard the comments I made earlier about the amount of money that has been invested in flood defences. These are matters that we take incredibly seriously. I know, as a former metro mayor, the importance of issues relating to flooding and of working across local authority boundaries to make sure that, along with the Environment Agency and water companies, we have a proper response and a proper defensive posture is put in place. I discuss the matter regularly with my colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If the hon. Gentleman has any specific concerns, or anything specific that he would like us to look at, I would be very happy to do that on his behalf.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
As a Cornish MP, I can tell the House that we had 18,000 off-grid again this weekend with Storm Austen. We all worked together closely during Storm Goretti, and I want to mention Cormac, our farmers, the National Grid and our parish councils. National guidance was missing during Storm Goretti. It is really important that we now have it and that we have a locally led response, with parish emergency plans in place. Other countries have been doing this for years and I am really pleased that this Government have finally brought it in and have launched the campaign. One issue we will always have, though, is comms. We do not have copper wire any more. Perhaps internet and mobile phone providers should be category 2 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act. I wonder if the Minister could comment on that.
Dan Jarvis
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, not least because the Cornwall experience and the experience of Storm Goretti has been genuinely important in shaping this campaign. I am grateful to her and her Cornish colleagues for the important role they play. A storm summit will be taking place in Cornwall towards the end of November. I have asked the director of Cobra and his deputy to be there. That will provide a really important forum for discussing the kinds of issues my hon. Friend has raised today.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
In any emergency, communication is key. In answering the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) earlier, the Minister talked about restoring mobile services if they had been damaged in a storm, for example. But that rather misses the point for the villages that my right hon. Friend mentioned and the villages in my constituency, such as Cuddington and Bryants Bottom, that have no mobile signal right now. Through this resilience work, what more can the right hon. Gentleman do, with other Government Departments, to speed up delivery of the shared rural network and get those rural notspots the connectivity they need and deserve?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Member makes an important point. Communication is key. I know he will understand that I was responding to a specific point about where a particularly capability had been lost and how it could be restored as quickly as possible, but I take his point about areas that do not have connectivity in the first place. I am sure that that is a conversation we want to have across Government, to look at what more we can do, working with colleagues in DCMS, but let me take that away and I will come back to him with some further thoughts.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s serious approach to civil preparedness. I want to push back slightly against some Members on the Opposition Benches who implied that there was a difference between being prepared for natural disasters and for some of the hybrid attacks we are seeing across Europe. In recent months we have seen attacks against energy infrastructure, railways and supply chains; the same preparations will help folk in the UK be prepared for both those attacks and natural disasters. I was in the Finnish embassy a few days ago to talk about that issue. As other colleagues have mentioned, in Finland they talk about businesses working together with the voluntary sector and public bodies. Will the Minister say more about how we are learning from countries such as Finland on the whole of society working together?
Dan Jarvis
We are determined to learn lessons from our neighbours, and Finland, which has been mentioned previously, is a good example of that. My hon. Friend will understand that this campaign brings the UK into line with many other countries across Europe and further afield. It builds on the existing guidance that has already been published on gov.uk. My hon. Friend makes another important point, which is that the actions that people take in their own households to be ready for one emergency can also help in the context of other emergencies.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
The United Kingdom is arguably already in a state of hybrid war against our adversaries. Does the Minister anticipate a cognitive component to this strategy designed to strengthen community resilience, not least to make it resilient against the kind of active disinformation that is likely to seek to undermine it? In that spirit, how will the strategy dovetail with the national centre for information defence?
Dan Jarvis
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that there is a reasonably obvious correlation between resilience at a local and community level and national resilience. Our national resilience will only be as strong as it can be if we have underpinned it with work that takes place at a localised level. It is work that we have not done previously as a Government—we need to build that wider societal resilience. We are starting bottom up, by investing in individual households to ensure that there is localised resilience. There will be wider and deeper benefits to our national security as a consequence of that. NCID, which the Prime Minister recently announced, will mean that we are much better placed to deter and defeat the misinformation and disinformation that we have seen for too long.
Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the men and women of Scottish and Southern Electricity, who are out there right now reconnecting the homes in the Western Isles that lost power over the weekend due to the storms. Resilience is in-built on the islands, but as other Members have pointed out, we have major problems with connectivity because of the move from analogue to digital phonelines, which means that when the power goes out, people do not have the phone or the internet—and they often do not have a mobile signal either. BT and Openreach’s response—to give powerpacks to vulnerable customers who ask for them—is simply not adequate, and mobile phone providers do not have the means to maintain their signal during storms. Will the Minister call in those companies and get them to up their digital game and ensure that there is digital resilience—not just in the places that are easy, but on the edge, where people are vulnerable, isolated from their neighbours, and where the ambulance is an hour away?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend is right to raise his concerns in the way he has. Our telecommunications networks are a vital part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and our emergency response in weather-related crises supports the functioning of essential services, keeping people connected when they need it most. My hon. Friend will understand that there is an important role for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; I have listened carefully to his comments, and I will speak to colleagues in that Department.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The Minister will know how much I want the Government’s Be Ready campaign to succeed—I have shared my views with him at length—because the threats are real and increasing. But if the Government are going to ask people to stock up on tinned food and wind-up radios, they must be honest when we are attacked. The shadow Minister raised the case of Jaguar Land Rover, and the fact that the former Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), said at the weekend that the incident was state sponsored. That is incredibly serious, so can the Minister use this opportunity to tell the House which state was responsible?
Dan Jarvis
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member, but I am not going to use the occasion of talking about Be Ready to get into matters relating to cyber attribution, not least because those are complicated processes that need to be done in a certain way, as I know he understands. The House will be well-versed in the challenges that Jaguar Land Rover faced last year. There is a lot of work across Government to ensure that there is resilience among both the public and private sector organisations in the United Kingdom. I will have more to say about that with the launch of the national cyber action plan, which is coming later this year.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s Be Ready campaign, which I will champion in my patch in Plymouth. I thank the Minister for his continued endeavours, over the last several years, to knot together different bits of Government agenda and Departments to grow greater resilience. Can he assure the House that this will encompass AI and emerging technologies as well, and can he give us a sense of what new endeavours are being stood up, given the massive acceleration of the threat to our national resilience in that space?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words and his observation about the importance of drawing the campaign together from across Government. There needs to be a response that is balanced across Government Departments in order to ensure wider societal resilience. My hon. Friend is right to reference AI. I tend to focus on the significant challenges that AI brings, but there are also significant opportunities, including in this area. I work closely with the Minister for Artificial Intelligence in this endeavour, and I would be happy to discuss that with my hon. Friend further.
Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)
The Minister is right to highlight the growing risk of the loss of services and utilities in emergencies. Preparedness needs to be driven at a national level, but much of it needs to be delivered at a local level. Will the Minister tell us how he is ensuring that local resilience forums are adequately funded, and can he assure us that every part of the UK has got a local resilience plan in place?
Dan Jarvis
Fundamentally, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I agree with him. He is right that preparedness needs to be driven at a national level, which is precisely why we have launched a national campaign. But he is also right that it needs to be delivered at a local level, which is why, for some time now, there has been extensive consultation with local authorities through the Local Government Association, and with local resilience forums. The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely reasonable challenge on ensuring that there is coverage in every corner of the United Kingdom. We are working closely with metro mayors in England, and the devolved Governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but it is my job to be satisfied that we have got that response right around the country. It is a responsibility that I take seriously.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
The Cornish peninsula is on the frontline of our Atlantic storms—and we are getting more storms. In January, Cornwall was smashed by Storm Goretti, as the Minister knows. Cornish MPs then met Ministers and civil servants to discuss the Cornish infrastructure issues that were exposed. On Thursday, 18,000 Cornish properties were left without power after the first storm of the season. Can the Minister advise, following those discussions, specifically on what the Government changed in Cornwall’s infrastructure to improve our resilience in the nine months between 6 January and 22 October? The time for talk is over.
Dan Jarvis
I agree with the hon. Member that Cornwall is on the frontline when it comes to our resilience. I am personally determined to ensure that we not only learn but implement lessons post Storm Goretti. There has been extensive consultation between officials in the Cabinet Office and in Cornwall. As I referenced earlier, the storm summit that will be taking place later next month provides an important opportunity to discuss those issues further.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
The Government are right to talk about national resilience and preparedness—about where we keep our torches, among other things. I do not wish to catastrophise, but national resilience starts with something fundamental: producing food. That means supporting our farmers. Does the Minister agree that if food is not being produced, this country will quickly discover how fragile resilience really is?
Markus Campbell-Savours (Penrith and Solway) (Lab)
Echoing concerns raised by Members across the House, I ask the Minister to imagine an elderly constituent living alone in an isolated Lake district valley where copper phonelines have been replaced with fibre; a storm takes out the power to their router in the night, and by the time that they wake, the modest battery back-up has failed, as has the mobile mast. Does the Minister share my concerns that they would have no way to raise an alarm in an emergency, and agree that we need a new technological solution to protect the elderly?
Dan Jarvis
I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s concern, but I would again take this opportunity to emphasise the importance of the priority services register.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
I very much welcome the Be Ready campaign today. This Government have been pushing for devolved responsibilities, particularly at the mayoral level, but in his statement today, the Minister made no mention of the vital role that local authorities can play. Could the Minister expand on the role of local authorities in community resilience and preparedness?
Dan Jarvis
I think that is a little unfair, as I have been at pains to emphasise the important work that local authorities and local resilience forums do in that regard. That is certainly my view. We have been very careful to ensure that local authorities have been involved with the design of this campaign, and we have been in regular contact with the devolved Governments and the metro mayors. The hon. Lady’s fundamental point about the importance of local government is absolutely right. Local resilience forums, which have long championed the need for a campaign like this, do a really important job, and we will continue to work closely with them in its delivery.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
The Minister will know from our many conversations my concerns around the threats we face from foreign states and terrorism. He will also be aware that Bracknell Forest, which is 33% trees, is at particular risk of forest fires; many of my constituents are also seeing power cuts at the moment because of the storms. Will the Minister confirm to the House that the Government’s Be Ready campaign is about raising awareness, not alarm, of the full range of threats that we face to our community resilience, and empowering local people to have the tools at hand to address those concerns?
Dan Jarvis
Absolutely. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his long-standing interest in these matters. He is right that this is about ensuring that the public are alert, but not alarmed, and that they are ready. That is the purpose of this campaign.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
For the final question, I call Claire Young.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
Millions rely on daily medication to stay alive and healthy. We know the concern shortages cause; the NHS does not allow people to stockpile prescription medicines, and some require refrigeration. Will the NHS therefore now allow people to keep a small amount of spare medicine, and how will the Government ensure access to essential medications during widespread disruption to supplies, movement of goods or power?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this particular issue. I know she will have seen that there is specific advice on the checklist with regard to medicine and health. The design of the campaign has been worked up closely with a range of different organisations, with a range of different stakeholder cohorts in mind, including people who are medically vulnerable for a range of different reasons. We are acutely conscious of the risk to those particular people, and the campaign has been carefully designed with them at the forefront of our mind to ensure that they will be best protected in the context of an everyday emergency.
Point of Order
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In Foreign Office questions earlier today, the Minister for International Development, the hon. Member for Midlothian (Kirsty McNeill), answered a question from the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson). I have informed both Members that I would be mentioning them. They spoke about the matter of returning Eritrean asylum seekers to Eritrea, and of conversations between the Foreign Office and the Eritrean Government. At no point during their exchange was it remarked upon that Eritrea is widely regarded as the North Korea of Africa, and that under its murderous dictator, Isaias Afwerki, it has become the fifth most dangerous place on planet Earth to be a Christian or a member of any other minority faith. What can we do to ensure that the Minister and her officials are aware of these facts and come before the House to explain the extent of these conversations with the Eritrean regime, given that it would be an act of extreme wickedness to return any asylum seeker from Eritrea to Eritrea?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I thank the hon. Member for giving notice of his point of order and for ensuring that Members were alerted before they were mentioned in the Chamber. This is not a matter for the Chair, but he has got his point on the record; those on the Government Front Bench will have heard what he has said and will pass his point on.
Developer Contributions (Infrastructure Delivery)
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Developer Contributions (Infrastructure Delivery) Bill 2026-27 View all Developer Contributions (Infrastructure Delivery) Bill 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the use of developer contributions for the delivery of local infrastructure; to make provision about the powers and responsibilities of public authorities and other public bodies in relation to such contributions; and to make further provision in relation to such contributions.
Nine billion pounds, Madam Deputy Speaker—that is how much money in developer contributions is currently sitting unspent in local authority bank accounts across this country. This is money collected from house builders and commercial developers to pay for schools, GP surgeries, leisure centres and roads. It is money that has already been paid by developers, which would ideally be being spent, at no extra cost to the taxpayer, in local economies up and down the country today—but it is not. Instead, it is sat in bank accounts, where, year on year, the figure grows.
At a time when every community in this country is calling for more investment, it is my view that we cannot afford—either morally or economically—to sit on this amount of money, as inflation devalues the contributions originally made. For me, this is a major problem, and one that all Members should be interested in. I am tabling this ten-minute rule Bill, which will hopefully bring attention to the problem while also suggesting some initial solutions.
I asked the internet what I could buy with £9 billion. First, it told me that that was equivalent to roughly £135 for every person in the UK. It then told me that for that money, I could pay for 33,000 homes at £272,000 a piece; nearly four years of school rebuilding funding at £2.4 billion per annum; 18,000 electric buses, assuming £500,000 per bus; or 1.5 million household solar installations at £6,000 per installation. In short, this amount of money is transformational. It is enough money to improve several struggling sectors at the same time. What is more, this money is not theoretical; it exists, it has been paid, and local authorities are currently the custodians of it.
For those who have not been involved with local government finance and planning before, let me briefly describe what is happening. When developers build homes or commercial spaces, they are normally required to pay towards the associated infrastructure as part of their planning permission. When new homes are built, the developer therefore contributes to new schools or school places, to GPs and/or local hospitals, to leisure facilities and/or to other local infrastructure. Crucially, the contribution is exactly that: a partial payment that another developer will also need to pay towards in due course to complete the intended project.
Each year, the Home Builders Federation publishes data on how much money is unspent, and each year, the figure is going up. It has gone from around £8 billion in total in 2024-25, when I first raised this issue in this place, to almost £9 billion in 2025-26. Within that total, the latest data shows that there is £2 billion waiting to be spent on schools and £700 million for affordable housing. It also shows that £3 billion—a third of the money held—has been held for more than five years.
In my constituency of Rushcliffe, the situation is particularly acute. Our local council is holding around £40 million in section 106 money and another £8.5 million in community infrastructure levy money. That is money that my constituents desperately want to see spent, often on infrastructure that they were promised when they bought a house, sometimes many years ago.
The challenge with spending this money is so extreme that in some cases, developer contributions are at risk of being returned. The village of East Leake, in my constituency, which has grown by 40% since 2001, has needed a new health centre for the past 20 years. Due to delivery and value for money challenges, we are currently in a situation where funds have been held on file for so long that almost £500,000 of developer contributions are due to be returned. To a community that has waited for investment for two decades, this is unconscionable. In nearby East Staffordshire, almost £400,000 was returned to a developer in 2023 after the money was not spent in time, and there are many other cases across the country. In many cases, additional public sector support is ultimately required to close developer funding gaps.
This is not the failure of any one council or developer. We all know that costs rise, that land can be lost, that partners do not act quickly, and that councils can at times lack capacity. Yet we still have not put a backstop in place. There is no mechanism by which ringfenced pots of money can be pooled together, no deadline by which councils must make every endeavour to facilitate works, and no power for councils to easily revisit old agreements. In short, there is no obligation on anyone to act. That means that the money does not move. It simply accumulates while residents wait for action and delivery costs increase ahead of bank interest rates.
In the current economic climate, I do not think that this situation is good enough, so I propose this Bill to achieve four things. First, it would introduce a backstop. Where contributions have not been spent within a set period, councils should have more powers to reallocate them to related public infrastructure in their area—subject, of course, to democratic oversight. Time and again, we saw that if things are not built quickly, the funding gap grows. We need to develop a system that recognises that and seeks to mitigate it as best as possible.
Secondly, the Bill would introduce a duty to plan. Where money is held for education, health or transport, I believe that the body responsible should produce a delivery plan within 12 months of the first developer contribution being agreed. Accountable bodies must be clearer about how they plan to get spades in the ground.
Thirdly, the Bill addresses transparency. I believe that all local authorities should produce a standard public infrastructure funding statement showing how much has been collected, what for, and when the money is expected to be spent. There is not currently a standardised way of doing this.
Finally, I believe that we need to look at a sensible bridging loan facility for local authorities to close existing or emerging gaps, to be repaid from future contributions as they come in. This would mean that a school or health centre could open as families are arriving, not years later. As MPs, we all know that, handled badly, new developments become a source of grievance. Handled well, they become something else: a story of investment.
I know that an updated developer contribution system could not guarantee that all promised infrastructure would be built quickly, but I believe that the current situation fails everyone. It fails councils and councillors who want to deliver infrastructure; it fails local supply chains and businesses who want to help build; it fails developers who want to deliver on their promises for multi-purpose sites; and it blatantly fails residents who lack the services they were promised, often for years on end.
Ultimately, given that we have an important fiscal event taking place tomorrow, it should be stated on the record that unspent developer contributions fail our economy and our country’s growth strategy. Nine billion pounds in local authority bank accounts is not growth; it is deferred jobs, deferred infrastructure and deferred community benefit. We should not stand for it any longer. Good growth in every postcode requires councils that can build the infrastructure that their communities need. This Bill would give them that power.
I believe that a more efficient, outcome-centred approach to spending developer contributions is something that everybody in this place wants to see. It is something we must see. I therefore commend this Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That James Naish, Alistair Strathern, Dr Allison Gardner, Andrew Cooper, Chris Bloore, Dave Robertson, Leigh Ingham, Maya Ellis, Rachel Taylor and Richard Quigley present the Bill.
James Naish accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 19 March 2027, and to be printed (Bill 167).
Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill 2026-27 View all Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Angela Rayner)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Nine years ago, 72 people, 18 of them children, died in the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It was a deadly betrayal and a national tragedy that must never happen again. Let me start by remembering those who lost their lives and paying tribute to the bereaved families, the survivors and members of the Grenfell community.
In the time since, the community has campaigned to fix the building safety crisis exposed by the tragedy. That is why we are all here today—so that no one suffers as they have. A decent, safe and secure home is not too much to ask for, but for many it is still out of reach. Despite nine years passing since the Grenfell tragedy, up to 380,000 residents are still living in buildings with unsafe cladding. Every single one of them tells a story of someone unable to move on with their life, stuck in an unsafe home, unable to sell, and often unable to sleep at night. There are even stories of families evacuated without any guarantee of when they can return home. The mental and financial burden can become unbearable.
We have taken action, and we have accepted our responsibilities, but the truth is that others have not. There are still people and companies out there who are not acting quickly enough to make homes safe. Of the 4,724 buildings where unsafe cladding has been identified, work has been completed on only 1,849. Regulators have so far had to take enforcement action on over 900 buildings where those responsible were not taking their responsibilities seriously. As a Government, we will stand up for every leaseholder who is stuck in an unremediated flat, unable to move on with their lives and facing huge costs in the meantime.
When this Government came to power, the pace of remediation was unacceptably slow. That is why in December 2024 I announced the remediation acceleration plan—our blueprint to identify all buildings with unsafe cladding. We are now delivering on that plan, which means that buildings will be fixed faster and residents will be supported better.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I declare that I am a leaseholder whose home did have cladding, though happily that has now been resolved. I represent one of the largest concentrations of new builds with cladding, and there are serious issues, as the Secretary of State has begun to highlight. Back in 2020, the Public Accounts Committee issued a report about the need to improve skills and make more contractors available, so I appreciate the grip that she took of the situation in 2024 as Secretary of State. Will she flesh out a bit more what work she is doing with other Departments to ensure we get the necessary skilled workforce? That is one of the biggest factors that slows down my constituents’ getting the justice that they deserve.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we need to ensure that we have the skilled workforce this situation requires. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, alongside other Departments, has put more investment into ensuring we have the people in post, and we will continue with that piece of work. We also launched a national identification drive to understand the scale of the problem.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Your Party)
I commend the Secretary of State for the Bill, the work she has done and the statement she just made. In my constituency, the local authority has been very good and effective at dealing with dangerous cladding—it did so immediately, which is to its credit, and that is basically the story across the whole country—but the private sector is less like that. In my constituency, a number of places including Drayton Park and Highbury Gardens among others have now had years with unsafe cladding, with people facing massive insurance costs and, as she rightly said, the inability to move on with their lives. Can the Government take over responsibility, ensure the work is done, charge it to the perpetrators of the problem and, above all, ensure there is compensation for residents for the massive insurance costs they have faced over the last few years?
Angela Rayner
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. He is right to highlight the devastating impact on communities. The Bill will I hope go some way towards doing the things he wants to see for his constituents. Anyone who has deliberately failed to mitigate or remediate buildings that are over 11 metres will face tougher consequences as a result of the Bill, including fines of up to £500,000 and, where needed, criminal prosecution.
Since we launched the national identification drive to understand the scale of the problem, over 200,000 building records have been reviewed. That is significantly improving our understanding of the affected building stock and enabling remediation activity to be targeted more effectively. To drive the pace of remediation work, we also gave social housing providers equal access to Government funding schemes for the first time.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the work she has been doing on dangerous cladding remediation. Some constituents of mine have been able to benefit from the remediation work for buildings under 11 metres, but could she say a bit more about when funding will become available? My constituents are still waiting on the release of funding for work that needs to take place.
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for that. Hopefully, as we go through the Bill she will see how we are changing the emphasis in particular to ensure that the buildings most at risk will be remediated first. As I said, we have given social housing providers access to Government funding schemes for the first time, investing over £1 billion to ensure that the most vulnerable residents have safe homes. We have also ended the binary approach to remediation funding based on building height.
Dame Meg Hillier
I thank the Secretary of State for being so generous with her time. Picking up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), a number of my constituents are stuck in blocks that are not high priority. They do not have as much cladding to be removed, but they are down the list because there are not enough skilled people to do the work—it is not always that the developers are dragging their heels; sometimes that is an issue as well. Therefore, for the sake of a small amount of work, their lives are on hold. They are unable to sell their properties and find it challenging to get a mortgage—all the issues that we know people are still facing, many years on. Could she take that away for the Department to revisit some of the priority issues and get some of those blocks that could be done quickly up the list?
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I hope that in the passage of the Bill she will see we are hoping that we can do that piece of work, because we do understand the devastating impact on people’s lives.
All buildings are now considered based on the risk presented to those living in them. As part of that, we have announced targeted funding for buildings under 11 metres with the highest risk so that the cost of fixing cladding on those buildings does not fall on the leaseholders. We will always ensure that developers pay their fair share towards making buildings safe. We have already agreed stretched targets for developers to accelerate work to assess and remediate buildings and we will hold them to account on their progress.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
Over the weekend, in Ebbsfleet in my constituency we saw the damage that a fire in a residential block can cause. I express my concern for those in Bodycomb Street who were harmed in that fire or have been displaced by it. Another block nearby, Heron Court, has recently had a waking watch imposed on it by FirstPort, with the costs accruing to residents. Do not those two instances underline for everyone in the House how important it is that we get the Bill through Parliament so that we can get some recompense and support for residents who are suffering under the current regime?
Angela Rayner
I am really sorry to hear about the situation in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Since the Grenfell tragedy, many hon. Members across the House have had similar experiences of fires, including fatalities. As I outlined in terms of the thousands of buildings that need remediation, that is one thing that weighs heavily on my mind every night as Secretary of State. I would not want my family to be in a property that was unsafe. That is why the Bill is so important. He made an important point about waking watches, which I will come to further into my speech.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
Although only 10% of 394 developer-pledged projects have been completed, I believe that under the Bill resident management companies could face criminal charges while the developers who sign the pledges would not. Can the Secretary of State clarify whether that is the case?
Angela Rayner
We are trying to ensure that those who are responsible will be part of that. We know that manufacturers and so on have been using routes to try to get out of paying their fair share and doing what they need to do. This remediation Bill is about closing some of the gaps we see. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman as the Bill goes through the House.
We have also ensured that social housing providers have ambitious targets for the completion of all remediation work for which they are responsible. The data is clear that the action is working: since we published the remediation acceleration plan, remediation has been reported to be completed on over 470 more buildings. That is about 35,000 more residents who can at least feel safer in their homes.
Janet Daby
May I press the Secretary of State a little further? In my constituency, there is a block of flats under 11 metres that has already been recognised as a priority, but the challenge is the release of that funding. Will she arrange to meet me or agree to look at that further?
Angela Rayner
My officials will have heard that call, and I or the Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith, who is in her place, will be happy to meet my hon. Friend.
Coming back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) about residents paying for costly waking watch patrols, we have provided an additional £62 million for fire alarms in buildings with defects. That will keep residents safe until remediation work is completed and save leaseholders about £280 a month.
We are also taking action on insurance. We will introduce secondary legislation to do two things: strengthen transparency and bring the insurance commissions ban into force. The ban will stop people—including freeholders and property managing agents—from passing those commissions on to leaseholders. That will end the incentive for unscrupulous landlords and agents to seek out unearned profits and simply pass the cost on to innocent leaseholders.
Ms Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for her work on this. Some campaigners have raised concerns about past methods and how the Government have come to the conclusions on which they have legislated. There are concerns that legislation could be gamed by developers, making the situation much worse for residents. I would be grateful for clarification on that.
Angela Rayner
We are establishing a single, consistent approach to assessing external walls so that buildings are judged on the same basis. Central to that is PAS 9980, which will become the required standard for fire risk appraisals of external walls.
Before the end of the year, we will bring forward the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, which will put power back in the hands of residents and tackle unfair costs and charges. We will cap ground rents at £250 a year before reducing them to a peppercorn after 40 years, and also cap administration fees.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State back to the Cabinet. It took months of legal wrangling and court time to secure a £1 million refund for leaseholders and £9 million in remediation works on Empire Square in Southwark. Although I fully support the Government’s action to tackle freeholder delays and neglect, as well as some of the charges, will she set out how some of the penalty amounts in the legislation were set? The sum in clause 6 is capped at £14,000, which seems very low, given the overall sums involved. How is the Department working with leaseholders and other stakeholders to set fees that allow us to go at the pace required to deliver on her ambition, and that of the Government?
Angela Rayner
This is about meeting the challenges that we face, and making sure that those who are not taking responsibility, do. I am happy to continue the conversations with my hon. Friend to make sure that we get that balance right; that is what we want. We want those people to take responsibility and carry out the remediation. The remediation Bill before the House is the next major step in ending the building safety crisis.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I applaud what the Secretary of State is doing. However, would it not be sensible to stop the business of fire engineers, paid for by the building owners, using PAS 9980 to sign off dangerous cladding as acceptable, so that assessments confirm that buildings meet building regulations?
Angela Rayner
We are working on that. PAS 9980 is the established approach used across Government remediation programmes. It provides a robust and proportionate way of identifying the risk of fire spreading through a building’s external walls and the action needed to keep residents safe.
Dame Meg Hillier
This is a rare opportunity to get direct answers from the Secretary of State in the House. That is not a reflection on her, but that is what we are here for. I have a constituent who is an expert on fire safety. We know that the Adam Kiziak forged EWS1 form has been a real issue, and that fire safety is now considered by measures of tolerability, rather than to the set standards. I raised that in a Westminster Hall debate with the Minister for Homelessness, because it is a real concern, and the Bill does not address all of it. Is that in the Secretary of State’s mind? Will she meet interested Members of Parliament—cross-party, because a number of us have this issue—and my very able constituent, Ian Abley, who is an expert on the matter, to discuss how we can future-proof the system? We cannot afford mistakes made as we try to solve the problems of the past.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend’s intervention shows that the remediation Bill is crucial to us meeting our ongoing challenges with the remediation acceleration plan. The relevant Minister will be happy to meet her to go through the specifics relating to fire safety and the regulations on that.
The Bill will help us complete the task of identifying all remaining buildings that require remediation. It will introduce a register of 11 to 18-metre buildings, giving Government a complete record for the first time of all medium-rise buildings in England. It will also mandate how external wall assessments are carried out, to ensure a nationally consistent approach to remediation. Also, for the first time, the Bill makes it indisputable that responsible entities have to remediate building safety defects with urgency through a new legal duty to remediate. They must take action now or risk severe consequences, including criminal charges where appropriate.
It is unacceptable that enforcement is too slow and penalties are too weak to compel those responsible to act. We will give regulators the tools that they need, including the ability to issue escalating financial penalties, and to pursue criminal prosecution in the worst cases. From now on, no building and no resident will be left behind. Our new remediation backstop will allow public bodies to step in and carry out remediation work themselves. That will mean that residents have a route to remediation, even when the responsible entity is determined to ignore its duty to keep residents safe.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
Exactly 12 months ago, I met the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), alongside the mum and brother of Amanda Walker. Amanda sadly took her own life as a result of the cladding scandal, which consumed her completely. Before her death, she gave evidence to the other place, seeking five changes, included closure of the loopholes that leave non-qualifying and enfranchised leaseholders exposed, and an industry-funded remediation scheme. I know the Secretary of State is aware of Amanda’s case. Will she consider Amanda’s asks as the Bill continues through this place?
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting that case and the incredible work that the family have done. Today, I wrote to Amanda’s mother, who has been tremendous in making sure that some of the measures in this Bill were included. It is a devastating case.
Our measures will be backed by tough sanctions, including provisions for cost recovery and the sale of responsible parties’ interests in the building, so that they cannot benefit. We will also bring an end to indefinite decamps, in which residents are evacuated from their home and given no assurances about when they can return. We will empower residents to make sure that their buildings are safe, even when the responsible entity is absent, neglectful or insolvent.
The Bill is not just about getting the work done, but about making sure that the cost of the remediation work is borne by those who are responsible for the building safety crisis. That brings me on to construction product manufacturers who produced unsafe cladding, released it on to the market, and have yet to meaningfully contribute towards the remediation work. As well as being unjust, that puts additional financial pressure on those who are getting on with doing the work. The Bill will fix long-standing gaps in the law: developers, contractors and others who have paid to make buildings safe will be able to properly pursue manufacturers, rather than being blocked by technical legal barriers.
That is not all. I intend to table amendments, as the Bill passes through Parliament, that go further on construction product redress. Through the Bill, for the first time, we will require relevant construction product manufacturers to contribute towards remediation costs that are met by the taxpayer. It is not right that taxpayers should shoulder the burden on their behalf.
At the heart of everything that we do to make buildings safe are the residents and leaseholders who bear absolutely no responsibility for the building safety crisis, but who feel its most acute consequences. The most important thing that we can do for residents is remediate their homes as quickly as possible, to ensure that they are safe. This is not just a safety crisis; for many leaseholders, the presence of unsafe cladding on their home has had a terrible financial toll. Although the Building Safety Act 2022 protects the majority of leaseholders from substantial building safety costs, there are some groups who remain excluded, and who are exposed to remediation bills. Some are forced to pay higher insurance premiums until their buildings are made safe. As a member of this Government, who are committed to lowering the cost of living, I am not prepared to let that continue, so I can announce that the Government will go further than ever to shield leaseholders from the financial burden of this crisis. I am pleased to announce that this Government will commit grant funding towards the remediation of high-risk, high-cost internal fire safety defects in eligible collectively owned and enfranchised buildings. Those buildings do not benefit from existing protections because there is no separate freeholder to carry the cost. The funding will narrow the gap between leaseholders in such buildings and those already protected from remediation costs under the Building Safety Act, giving them greater certainty and support in making their home safe.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for her drive and determination on this very important matter. Will she give the House a little more detail relating to that group of residents and, in particular, those who face issues with dangerous materials inside their property, such as wood, which have led to a potential fire safety problem?
Angela Rayner
Again, I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. Hopefully, what I have said today goes some way to reassuring those who have raised that issue with us. Since my return to Government, my noble Friend Baroness Blake, who is watching the debate, and I have met End Our Cladding Scandal. We have heard the requests of its members and other leaseholders to expand the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act. We have also heard from those who bought their first home, only to find it was a non-qualifying lease. The Government will investigate whether we can extend the protection to any leaseholder who owns a lease on their only or principal home.
We have also heard those who have spoken about the plight of those with small portfolios who were excluded from protection. As the Bill passes through Parliament, I will table amendments to expand the protection from three to six properties. In our manifesto, we committed to reviewing how to better protect leaseholders from costs. These actions show that we are a Government who are committed to keeping our promises.
Hilary Benn (Leeds South) (Lab)
I very much welcome what my right hon. Friend just announced about those who have found themselves the owner of a flat that they did not know was non-qualifying, because of a previous owner. It is clearly unfair that they should be penalised. Will that measure be retrospective? I have a constituent who unknowingly bought a non-qualifying flat and was gobsmacked—traumatised, actually—to discover what had happened to him. He faces potentially huge costs. Will someone who is already in that position benefit from the measure?
Angela Rayner
We are hoping to make sure that nobody is left out, or left feeling those pressures. My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I outlined before that many of the groups we have met recently are making the case that we need to push harder on doing everything that we can. As the Bill goes through Parliament, the Building Safety Minister is happy to meet Members to see how far we can go, so that we can make sure that we are doing everything that we said we would do in our manifesto. We committed to accelerating the pace of remediation, better protecting leaseholders, and ensuring that those responsible for the crisis pay towards putting it right.
Our record since 2024 shows that we are getting on with the job, but there is still work to do, which is why, through the Bill, we will go further than ever before. Every building that we make safe helps to give those living in these flats and those looking to buy a home confidence that they are safe. This is about restoring trust in our housing market, protecting our communities and bringing an end to the building safety crisis, once and for all.
I pay tribute, once again, to the Grenfell community—the survivors and the families who were affected—and to all of us who have contributed to getting to this stage, with the Bill in front of us. I commend it to the House.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for her remarks. All of us, across the House, agree on the fundamental need to resolve this issue. As she movingly said, the appalling fire at Grenfell Tower and the resultant loss of life were horrifying. I join her in paying tribute to the victims, survivors and their friends and family.
We all agree that home is the place where people ought to feel safest. It is deeply concerning that so many people across the country still live in a home that has been rendered unsafe, and we welcome the Government’s desire to put that right. The Opposition have concerns about some of the Bill’s provisions, and about whether the proposed measures will definitely ensure that more people end up living in a safer home. I will set out some of those concerns. We look forward to working with the Government to improve the Bill however we can.
Remediation of unsafe cladding is often slow because there are simply not enough qualified people to do the work. This point has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), but I will spend a moment on it. Every affected building needs a specialist assessment of its external walls, at a time when fire engineers and assessors are in short supply. Training new specialists takes years, yet the Bill does not lay out any particular plans for training those skilled professionals. Contractors face the same shortage of skilled labour and materials. Too often, owners who want to act cannot find anyone to carry out the work.
Remediation is slow because the work is complicated and unpredictable. When old cladding is removed, contractors regularly find further defects, so the scope, cost and delays grow. On top of those practical difficulties, many of the buildings concerned are part-owned by their leaseholders.
Remediation is also slow because when it comes to the practical implementation of the legal regime, the situation is fragmented. Implementation is managed building by building, and the responsibility is split between owners, managing agents, contractors and three overlapping regulators. Unsurprisingly, that drives up costs and drags out timelines, however willing the owners are. The Bill’s answer is to ask the three regulators to write a statement on how they will co-operate, which is not the same as getting the work done.
We already have evidence that a legal obligation, such as the one proposed in the Bill, does not by itself guarantee timely remediation. Developers on the developer remediation contract, which the last Conservative Government implemented so that developers, not taxpayers, would cover the cost of remediation, are already bound by equivalent requirements, which is why the Bill exempts them. The Government’s figures show that developers have finished work on only a third of their buildings, and fewer than one in four of all their buildings with life-critical defects.
Responding to the Public Accounts Committee, the National Fire Chiefs Council warned that limited workforce capacity was the primary bottleneck to remediation. The then NFCC chair, Mark Hardingham, put it best when he said that
“we cannot enforce our way out of the cladding crisis.”
Dame Meg Hillier
I do not want to be party political—I think we all know that this was one of the biggest failures of regulation in many generations, and it has affected many people very badly—but this is a disappointment. I wonder if the hon. Lady can reflect, as she is new to her post and new in this Parliament, on how decisions sometimes need to be made early. James Brokenshire, a previous Secretary of State—sadly, he is no longer with us—made some bold decisions in the early days after Grenfell, but then there were delays in things like getting fire safety surveyors trained up, which takes three years. If those decisions had been made earlier, we would be in a better position now. In the spirit of trying to improve things, will she reflect on why those decisions were not made and why we need to back this Government Bill to make sure that we move as fast as we can?
Katie Lam
I think it is fair to say that there are all sorts of ways in which the response to this appalling event and the wider questions that it raised did not happen as quickly and was not as effective as we might have liked—otherwise, we would not still be discussing it today. What is important now is that we make sure that whatever plan we come up with together, as a Parliament, is as effective as it can be to make sure that people are living in the safest possible homes. That is our responsibility now.
It should not come as a surprise that legislating to make something true does not make it so. Passing a law that says that buildings must be fixed will not create a single new fire engineer. Rather than easing those practical bottlenecks, however, the Bill too often assumes that the main blocker to timely remediation is owners deliberately choosing not to act. Our fear is that, as drafted, the Bill may risk making the problem worse.
Under the Bill, every building must be assessed within a year, and every assessment that recommends work must be audited by Homes England, drawing on the same small pool of specialists. There are owners who obstruct, and they should face the full force of the law, but they are the exception, not the rule.
I say once again that I do not doubt that the intentions behind the Bill are noble, but we must always be careful that legislation, even when drafted with the best of intentions, does not produce unintended consequences. Perhaps the clearest risk of unintended consequences comes with the proposed new legal duty. Owners could face two years in prison or penalties of up to half a million pounds for deliberately failing to remediate as soon as reasonably practicable. Those standards—“deliberately” and “as soon as reasonably practicable”—are broad and subjective, particularly given the severity of the punishments prescribed by the Bill. Given that many of the decisions about whether owners have complied with the standards will fall to the regulator, can the Government be sure that due regard will be given to the real practical hurdles to remediation? What guidance will regulators get on what counts as “reasonably practicable”?
Doubtless the Government intend for these measures to be used only in the most extreme cases of deliberate obstruction or delay, but we must be incredibly careful when designing new legal duties and criminal penalties. Like it or not, these standards will hang over owners who are attempting to act in good faith, but who are constrained by the practical difficulty of remediation.
Likewise, opening up directors to personal prosecution on grounds of neglect risks generating unintended consequences. While directors’ liability for building safety is long established, the Bill goes much further. Have the Government assessed how many capable people will simply refuse to be named as directors on remediation compliance plans? What will it do to the cost of directors’ insurance? What impact will it have on the willingness of well-run management firms to get involved in residential property? How many will conclude that it is simply no longer worth the legal risk? Have the Government assessed whether the Bill will have an impact on access to directors’ insurance more broadly, and whether it could create a disincentive to involvement in residential property by well-run management firms?
Another point of concern derives from the Bill’s approach to group accountability for parent companies and firms that are deemed to exercise control. The Bill builds on powers in the 2022 Act, but extends them from recovering costs to imposing penalties for offences. The Government must do more to explain where this stops. In 2022, Parliament let a court or tribunal look through a company’s structure where it was just and equitable to do so. The Bill will allow a regulator to adopt quasi-judicial powers and enforce large penalties in doing so.
Limited liability is an important principle that, in its modern form, has endured in this country for more than a century and a half. It encourages investment and entrepreneurship. The erosion of limited liability that the Bill represents may set a worrying precedent. Until now, Parliament has qualified the principle only through the courts. The Bill qualifies the principle through regulators rather than judges. If that is acceptable in one sector, why not in others? Even if we confine ourselves to this sector, can the Government be sure that the erosion of limited liability will not create a direct deterrent to investment in large residential properties, including build to rent? Housing in this country is far too expensive for far too many people. People must be able to trust that their homes are safe, but they also need homes to buy or rent in the first place.
Another concerning legal precedent emerges from the Bill’s provisions on retrospective liability for product manufacturers. In 2022, the previous Government gave building owners a route to claim against the manufacturers of defective cladding. The Bill goes much further. It loosens the test itself, so that a product need only have contributed “more than trivially” to a building’s being unsafe. The Government must explain why the 2022 test was not enough. Complying with the regulations in force at the time will no longer be a defence; firms that followed the rules can no longer rely on having done so.
Nobody would deny the existence of bad actors—firms that have broken the rules or falsified evidence about their own compliance. Such firms have put people in danger, and some of the consequences have been unimaginably awful. They must be punished. However, there is no reason to believe that those firms would have complied had the legal standard been tougher. The point is that firms that break the rules are going to break the rules, no matter what they are. As is so often the case, the problem is one of enforcement. However, in an effort to tackle this non-compliant minority, the Bill extends retrospective liability well beyond what Parliament agreed in 2022—something that we must always be very cautious about doing. When firms or individuals cannot be sure that complying with the law today will ensure legal safety tomorrow, their behaviour can change. They may be more reluctant to enter the market in the first place, and will certainly be more reluctant to innovate. Insurers will price in that risk, and every new home will cost more to build.
As with so many aspects of the Bill, the Government, in attempting to achieve a noble aim, risk undermining important principles. The presumption against retrospective legislation, the principle of limited liability and the principle of clear legal tests are foundational to the way in which we have designed the law in this country. Of course, we can deviate from them—in our country, Parliament is sovereign and can make whatever law it chooses—but when we do deviate, we ought to ensure that we do so with a full appreciation of the facts and implications. It ought to happen only when we can see no other way to solve the problem at hand, and only when we are sure that new legislation, rather than better enforcement or efforts to ease practical bottlenecks, is the right course of action.
I reiterate my appreciation for the intention behind the Bill. That anybody should feel unsafe in their own home because of structural or material faults is a profoundly depressing state of affairs. However, we are concerned that, in pursuing this noble aim, the Government may not have given due regard to some of the unintended consequences of the solutions they propose. As the Bill progresses, we will probe all those points and more. We look forward to working, with the same noble aim, to improve the Bill however we can.
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
I wish we did not have to be here debating this Bill today—first and foremost because we are doing so largely due to the Grenfell Tower fire, more than nine years ago. It is right that we again remember the 72 who lost their lives in an entirely avoidable fire, and recognise the suffering that the bereaved, survivors and Grenfell community in my constituency continue to endure.
I place on record my thanks to the Prime Minister for his commitment, at Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, to work with me every day for justice for the victims. I also thank the Secretary of State for her determination to find solutions across Government that will implement the Grenfell inquiry recommendations and make necessary changes to how our state functions, including on building safety. Our hope and expectation is that those responsible will face the full force of the law by May next year, when the Crown Prosecution Service makes its charging decisions on the 20 organisations and 54 individuals passed to it by the Metropolitan police. While we wait, almost 10 years on, for justice through criminal accountability, we must also pursue justice through meaningful change in policies, laws and culture. That is how I approach the Bill.
The second reason I wish we were not here is that I believe many of the provisions in the Bill should have been enacted a long time ago and, at very least, should have been part of the Building Safety Act 2022. How is it that, in a similar timeframe since Grenfell, the state of Victoria in Australia has completed works on 99% of the 1,600 buildings that needed remediation, while we have completed only 39% of 4,724 identified buildings? More have not even been assessed, which is something the Bill tries to address. In 2020, Victoria passed a law setting up a group that assessed all buildings over three storeys, identified those at risk using a common state-prescribed standard and then paid for the work via an up-front fund, in part capitalised by developer contributions.
Jeremy Corbyn
What the hon. Member is saying is excellent. Does he accept that there is a cultural issue here? The dangerous cladding on Grenfell, as in many other places, was dismissed as being unimportant because the people living there were often poor, working-class families, and they were simply not cared about. I hope that the Bill will change that culture, as well as bringing safety to an awful lot of people.
Joe Powell
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Residents who raised concerns were ignored, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea made a decision to cut costs that resulted in the contract that ended up being a major contributory factor in what happened. I have not had the chance to say this on the record, but I am pleased that one of the individuals involved in that is no longer at the Barnet tenant management organisation. That decision was wrong, and it has been corrected. I am glad that that has been done.
In short, in Victoria the government stepped in and put homeowners and residents first. In this country, the previous Government took a market-based approach that has comprehensively failed to deliver remediation in a timely way. Why? It is because, for too long, the British state has been too passive in the face of this problem, relying on private developers to come up with the answers while millions of people suffer the consequences. The British state’s response to the cladding scandal has exposed many of the weaknesses that this Government want to fix: unaccountable power, opaque ownership and a shirking of responsibility; penny-wise cost cutting that stores up massive costs in the future; and a lack of public control over the basics of life, including housing.
I hope that the Bill will contribute to that effort by creating more jeopardy for those delaying remediation and more options to finally fix every building that needs it, but the work to make buildings safe must continue even while we debate the Bill. Existing powers such as remediation orders and remediation contribution orders can be useful tools if Ministers provide a hands-on grip on the crisis by co-ordinating local remediation plans, creating national standards and ensuring that tomorrow’s Budget continues to fund the Department to get the work moving now. We need belatedly to shift to a “fix first and fast” model based on risk, as the Secretary of State said, leveraging all existing avenues to get work started.
Dame Meg Hillier
I concur with my hon. Friend’s tribute to those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tragedy and to their loved ones. I remember the shock in this place when that tragedy happened.
I have a real concern about tolerability and how fire safety is assessed. This is something that built up over generations, and my hon. Friend gave a summary of it. Decisions on building safety were left to the wrong people; there was no outside inspection. Tolerability is a subjective standard, rather than a safe set of fixed standards. Does my hon. Friend have anything to say about that? We need to be clear as we go forward about fixing that problem and ensuring that it is not down to individuals. Some developers cherry-pick who will assess the building safety of a block, knowing that some people will pass it when others would be more rigorous. That is not an acceptable situation.
Joe Powell
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. At the very least, there needs to be independent scrutiny of these assessments so that people can feel reassured that someone is checking whether they pass muster. It should be about the whole of the building being made safe—I think the Secretary of State referred to that. Cladding defects are an extremely important component, but there are internal fire defects that also need to be assessed, which have contributed to rising costs.
I welcome the remediation backstop in the Bill that will give Homes England and local authorities the power to step in, but that should not only be a tool of last resort. It should be something that gets the system moving as quickly as possible, because leaseholders in particular have ended up shouldering the burden in recent years. To give one example—others have already spoken about leaseholders they represent—residents at Shaftesbury Place in Earl’s Court approached me in 2024 after receiving huge increases in their service charge, driven by a disputed fire risk assessment which led to a massive spike in insurance premiums for the building from £15,000 a year to £310,000. The following year it went to £375,000. For one leaseholder, their annual bill for the insurance went from £269 to £4,146.
The landlord, Notting Hill Genesis, which is in a shared ownership scheme, told leaseholders that the insurance rise was linked to a fire risk assessment that it had commissioned, but residents disputed it alongside the classification of the building as high-rise. In fact, it had even miscalculated the number of storeys in the building when it did the assessment, which obviously undermined confidence in that assessment. The Building Safety Regulator later agreed and removed the building from the high-rise register. Until recently, several residents were still receiving legal threats about the non-payment of those charges, causing them huge worry and anxiety—let alone their concerns about the value of their investment in the shared ownership scheme.
Dame Meg Hillier
My hon. Friend is generous in giving way. The insurance issue is a big concern—it is something the Treasury Committee is looking into. Does he not agree that there is a problem with the industry? The premiums have gone up exponentially, and although there is an increased risk, the likelihood of it crystallising has not been proved to be as high as the insurance industry has said. Does my hon. Friend have any further thoughts on that?
Joe Powell
My experience from this case corroborates what my hon. Friend says. I met the Association of British Insurers, and the scheme it introduced subsequently kicked in and has in the last year brought down the buildings insurance, but only by about half—certainly not to anywhere near what it used to be. I hope that Ministers can look at insurance when thinking about protecting leaseholders from higher costs.
The end of the story for the building is that, following pressure from me and my team and from organisers in the building, Notting Hill Genesis has finally agreed to reimburse all the residents. It will repay the difference in the increase for the past several years. I thank Thomas, Hamid, Ian and all the other residents in that building for their work. That is just one example of what is happening in building after building across the country.
I welcome the Bill in the sense that it is an opportunity to fix some of the flaws left by the previous Government and to create a better system, including through the register, a consistent approach to external walls in fire risk assessments, and by listening to campaigners across the country, such as End Our Cladding Scandal, who have helped to give a voice to those most affected. I know that they will have the ear of the Secretary of State and Ministers as the Bill continues its passage.
Clearly, one element at the heart of the Bill is who should pay. I agree that it is high time that the construction product manufacturers who contributed to the cause of this crisis should pay towards resolving it. I really welcome part 5 of the Bill, which strengthens and extends provisions in the Building Safety Act on retrospective liability for cladding products, and the Secretary of State’s announcement today on the Government’s intention to go further. The Grenfell inquiry found that companies including Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex engaged in systematic dishonesty and deliberate manipulation of testing that misled buyers into thinking their products were safe. It is extraordinary that, aside from their payments into a civil settlement, these companies have not paid towards resolving a crisis of their making. In Arconic’s case, its civil settlement was overwhelmingly covered by its insurance and was dwarfed by the payment it made to its own shareholders in compensation.
It is clearly not right that leaseholders, taxpayers and even the developer levy should shoulder the bulk of the costs, while companies such as Arconic do not. That is yet another reason that they should be nowhere near public contracts and supply chains, especially while criminal investigations are ongoing. I know the Secretary of State is committed to working across Government to use every procurement power the Government have to ensure that that is not happening, and I will fully support her in that goal. I also look forward to the new system of construction products regulation being implemented, with consistent safety standards and a single products regulator under the Building Safety Regulator; that will make a big difference.
I am glad that protection from costs for leaseholders has been discussed in the Bill and the debate so far. They are not responsible for this crisis, yet they are the ones picking up the bill in far too many cases. I hope these new powers will give local remediation efforts such as the London Joint Remediation Partnership Board an extra tool to do the building-by-building analysis that cuts through the bureaucracy and delays to find a solution.
I am sure that the communities who have enfranchised their buildings or exercised right to manage will be really pleased to hear the announcement today on ensuring that they are protected. We want more leaseholders to take control of their buildings, appoint their own agents and run their own affairs. We will see more in the leasehold Bill soon, and it is right that the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill should provide some consistency in protecting them, too.
The building safety crisis has become one of the defining symbols of state failure in the past decade. The entirely avoidable tragedy of Grenfell and the loss of 72 lives should have been a catalyst to making buildings safe as quickly as possible and recovering the costs later. Of course, if we had listened to the coroner after the Lakanal House fire in 2009, not only may it have been possible to prevent the Grenfell fire, but we could have put a halt to new build flats across the country being constructed with cladding that was putting lives at risk. Judge Frances Kirkham said then that approved document B of the building regulations concerning external fire spread, fire-resisting properties and cladding panels should be reviewed. That simply did not happen in the way it should have done, as the public inquiry found.
That missed opportunity is devastating for the Grenfell families but it is also devastating for everyone who bought a flat across the country in a building that could have been built or refurbished differently if that recommendation had been implemented. Think of the billions of pounds wasted that could have been invested in building more homes, including social and affordable homes. That is why I will continue to campaign for a national oversight mechanism to ensure that there is independent scrutiny of recommendations of inquests and inquiries, so that change actually happens. I am delighted that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the Minister are supportive of that effort, and I hope we can now make rapid progress towards setting it up.
The Prime Minister said something at the homelessness summit on Monday that really resonated with me: “names not numbers”. He was talking about how to best support people off the streets. We need a similar approach to this crisis. Behind every statistic is a family who are stuck, who cannot sell their home, who are worried about the value of their main asset and who have had to take on another job of chasing for answers about when the work will be finished, all while they suffer the anxiety of living in an unsafe building.
I hope today marks a shift in approach under a Government who I know are absolutely committed to doing all they can to end this scandal once and for all. The new tools in this Bill will certainly help, and the ones announced at the Dispatch Box today will help even further. With the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the ministerial team providing the leadership that this crisis needs, I am sure we can right the wrongs of the previous approach and deliver the solutions that so many people across the country are crying out for.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
As we remember the 72 victims of Grenfell and the many who are still waiting for justice, I know the Secretary of State and Members from across the whole House share the same commitment to do right by them, to ensure such a calamity never happens again, and to do better for all the leaseholders and residents living with unsafe cladding through no fault of their own.
We need a Bill that will, once and for all, make people’s homes not just safer but as safe as their residents have a right to expect them to be. The Liberal Democrats remain committed to getting the removal of unsafe cladding urgently and by a statutory deadline, to getting remediation to the right safety standard—the one that building regulations were uprated to post-Grenfell—and to residents not having to pay a penny towards fixing a crisis not of their own making. We will look at the amendments that have just been outlined, and we look forward studying them when they come forward. Sadly, as the Bill stands it does none of those things and, because of that, it is substandard and needs radical improvement.
On the plus side, let me be clear about the positive aspects of the Bill that we support. We support the legal duty for responsible entities to remediate, including the important extension of the duty in relation to buildings of 11 to 18 metres in height. We support the stronger intervention powers for housing authorities and the regulator against the blockers, such as through remediation management orders. We support making it easier to bring claims against cladding manufacturers, and we support requirements to have fire risk assessments of external walls and associated registers.
For those reasons, we have not gone as far as tabling a fatal amendment, despite the very serious flaws, as we see them. It would be wrong to deny support to any leaseholders or residents who without this Bill would get less help, but I call on the Government to consider seriously the degree to which the Bill is lacking. While I do not doubt the sincerity of the Secretary of State or the Bill, the Government need to think harder and bring forward amendments that are urgently needed to strengthen the Bill. In the stages that follow Second Reading, we will be suggesting and proposing changes, and working with the Government as constructively as we can to get the improvements that we believe are necessary.
Where does the Bill fall short? First and foremost, it enshrines into law the discredited publicly available specification 9980—PAS 9980—approach. As shown in clause 44, that will allow cladding of “tolerable” risk of combustion to remain on homes after they have been remediated. One may expect “tolerable” risk to be no more than the level of risk allowed in new buildings under the building regulations, as tightened up after Grenfell, but as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) has already alluded to, it is not that standard. In this Bill, remediation will be only to a standard that a fire risk assessor decides is “tolerable”. We are talking about fire risk assessors paid by building owners, who are more likely than not to have commercial interests in doing as few works as possible to their building. While I am sure that most assessors are reliable professionals, given that the Grenfell inquiry report chaired by judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick cited “commercial interests” in this area of work as one of the contributory factors to the fire, is retaining commercial interests in the system of fire risk assessment, assessors and building inspectors a risk worth taking?
Dame Meg Hillier
The hon. Gentleman and I have common cause in this respect, and I rely on the expertise of my constituents in this matter. The PAS 9980 approach was not reassuring for insurers. There was a big problem with insurance anyway, but PAS 9980 does not solve it, because it does not give insurers the certainty they need to do the risk assessment. I am not here as an apologist for the insurance industry—in fact, there are many issues that we will be taking up with that industry—but this approach is not the answer. Given his level of deep expertise in this matter before he came to the place, what would the hon. Gentleman propose instead? Is there an amendment to the Bill that he and the Government could coalesce around and reach agreement on?
Gideon Amos
The hon. Member is very kind—I am sure my experience is as great as many other Members of the House. I am coming to what we believe would be a preferable standard. Our approach is that these issues of “commercial interests” should be expunged from the Bill, and that the tolerability approach should be removed. We believe that existing homes and buildings should be remediated to meet the standard of fire safety required in the building regulations that were uprated in 2018, after Grenfell.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Although this Bill is specifically about the remediation of cladding, this issue goes further. Building control is typically undertaken or at least instructed by the local planning authority, and is now instructed and employed by the developers. When my constituents Trisha and Ray moved into their new build in Wimborne, they found that the structural issues in their property had not been independently signed off. They have now found that no one has access to the structural drawings of their building other than the inspector, so when they had problems with their roof, the council had no details, they could not access details and they could not check compliance. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for the protection of residents, an ethical wall needs to be created between developers and inspectors, with proper enforcement and mandatory Housing Ombudsman Service membership for developers?
Gideon Amos
I certainly support my hon. Friend’s plea. I will come to the issue of the independence of building inspectors, which is very important.
Let me return to standards. The building regulations are the standard that the Government have set; they are needed for newly built homes to be safe, so the same standard therefore has to apply to the homes that people already live in. I have visited high-rise apartments in London and elsewhere, and seen them covered in scaffolding and being remediated under the developer scheme, but many of them are being left with so much cladding breaching building regulations and fire safety standards that residents cannot get insurance.
It is the insurance that really gives the game away. If the building really was safe, why would the insurance premiums be so high? We have increases in insurance costs of 56% and higher. For that reason, many owners cannot sell or get a new mortgage, so they sink into negative equity and become mortgage prisoners in their own home.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Member is making a very important point. Does he agree that the high insurance costs are in no way caused by any action taken by the residents who are forced to pay them? In all honesty, they deserve compensation.
Gideon Amos
Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman almost read the next line of my speech—I do not know how he did that from his seat over there.
Leaseholders and residents should not have to pay a penny for defects that were not their fault. Thousands of pounds extra in insurance are being paid by completely innocent homeowners to compensate for a safety standard that, while of course is better than nothing, is quite frankly not the standard that it should be—and that is after remediation to the standard has been carried out through this Bill. Meeting the established building regulations standard would perhaps cost more, but why should residents be condemned to live in buildings remediated to a lesser standard than the one that we consider safe for new homes?
The profit motive needs to be expunged from building inspector services generally, and the Bill fails to do that. We need to remove commercial interests from building inspectors and fire risk assessors by placing them all under a publicly controlled, non-profit making authority. There is still no statutory certification requirement for a competent person to become a fire risk assessor. When will those measures be brought forward, as has been promised in previous legislation?
The second big omission is that this Bill provides no more funding for those in buildings under 11 metres in height now that the funding window has closed. While medium-rise buildings come more firmly into scope, which is welcome, why should any residents be forced to pay to put right bad practice that was not their fault? Leaseholders in Taunton and Wellington and across the country are already paying ground rents that are too high to absentee landlords for nothing in return, as abolishing residential leasehold seems to recede further and further into the future.
The Bill fails to give residents the right to see their building’s fire risk assessment and to give local authorities the resources to deliver the new enforcement duties. It also fails to commit the Government to making manufacturers—those that make unsafe products that cause fire—pay. That leaves the onus on others to pursue them through slow and costly court action. It is our position that, in those ways, the Bill fails to fully implement the Grenfell Tower inquiry recommendations. Finally, there is no deadline in the Bill by which all the defects revealed by Grenfell across the tall buildings estate will be put right.
The fire safety of all homes needs to meet the standard that we require for new homes. Existing residents are no less worthy of that than the residents of future homes, who will benefit from the building regulations standard. The commercial interests that ran rife in building safety inspections in the lead-up to Grenfell need to be rooted out once and for all, and residents and leaseholders must not be expected to pay a penny towards repairing a crisis they are completely innocent of causing. We must make homes fully safe under building regulations revised for that purpose; make oversight and inspection independent, not profit-dependent; hold developers and manufacturers to account by pursuing them for the costs; protect leaseholders, including those in buildings under 11 metres; and put residents at the heart of remediation, so that they can see the assessments of their homes and have a real, statutory deadline. That is the Bill that the House needed to see today, and it is the Bill we will work hard to shape through its remaining stages.
Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for the intent she has shown in the Bill that is before us. It is a privilege to be sat next to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell)—I know that his mission in this place is to fight for justice for so many of his constituents who have been left alone for so long.
Across the country, far too many lives have been ruined by the building safety crisis. In Ipswich, we have hundreds of residents who have endured years of fear, uncertainty and immense financial hardship. These are people who did everything right—worked hard, saved for a deposit and bought somewhere to call home—only to discover that their home was unsafe. Since the day of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, in which 72 people lost their lives—each entirely avoidable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater said—leaseholders across the country have been left in limbo. What should have been a catalyst for change instead became a straitjacket for so many people who do not know whether they are safe, whether they will lose their home, or whether they will be forced to pay tens of thousands of pounds to put right failures they did nothing to cause.
I have spoken to plenty of residents in my constituency of Ipswich about their experiences. Their stories—like, I am sure, so many we will hear this afternoon—are devastating. They cannot sell their home, cannot move, and cannot move on with their lives. Their entire financial future is at stake, but so too is their mental health and peace of mind. Some have considered bankruptcy just to get out; others have thought about handing back the keys and simply walking away. It is heartbreaking that anyone should reach that point through no fault of their own.
I want to highlight a few of the buildings that we in Ipswich have been facing issues with for many years, beginning with St Francis Tower. Remediation work on that building started in 2018, and residents spent years living under shrink wrap as it dragged on. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing visited St Francis Tower in a previous life, when I was a candidate and he was a shadow Minister, and we could not see natural daylight through the shrink wrap. Even when that was replaced, the work dragged on and on, and in July 2023, flooding forced those poor people from their homes after years of misery. Years of disruption were followed by the trauma of evacuation.
My team and I worked with residents and the Government to secure funding for repairs in November 2024. That was an important step forward that replaced the outer cladding, but the internals are still damaged, and three years on, people have not yet been able to return to their homes. Although I am hopeful that there will be good news in the coming weeks, even if remediation work is able to start in the weeks before Christmas, it is unlikely that those people will be able to return to their homes until spring 2028—a decade after work on the building first started. Residents should never have been put in that position. Nobody should have to fight for something as basic as a safe home, but these people cannot even live in their homes.
At Churchmans House, investigations revealed problems extending beyond external cladding—missing fire barriers and inadequate protection around structural steelwork. Leaseholders faced demands for eye-watering payments and the threat that they might have to leave their homes. The original developer was insolvent and people who had done nothing wrong were left facing the consequences, a story that we hear over and over again. The good news is that our Government confirmed funding for the necessary works to make the building safe, but not before months and years of worry. Unfortunately, residents of Cardinal Lofts were not so lucky. I cannot believe that such a building was ever deemed fit for habitation; if a fire broke out there, it would have ripped through the entire building because of a lack of compartmentalisation. People unknowingly slept in their beds every night—some for decades—without knowing how deeply unsafe their building was and how much of a threat to their lives it posed. No one ever never returned to Cardinal Lofts. The building is not fit for use.
These are different buildings with different owners, but the same injustice is shared by so many people, in Ipswich and across the country, and I could name many other buildings in our town that have been subjects of the same stories. People bought those homes in good faith, but were sold something faulty, and they should never have been left with the costs of putting things right. That is why the Bill is so important. For the first time, those responsible will face a clear legal duty to identify and remediate unsafe cladding in residential buildings. Building owners and others with repairing responsibilities must act. That means an end to indefinite delays as residents live with fear and financial uncertainty, trapped in unsafe buildings. Crucially, those who ignore their responsibilities may face substantial financial penalties, criminal prosecution and further enforcement action. Responsibilities can be enforced, and there will be consequences for those who ignore them.
The remediation backstop is particularly important: when building owners fail to act, Homes England and local authorities will be able to step in, arrange repairs, and recover costs from those responsible. That matters enormously to people trapped in the middle of endless arguments over who should do the work. I also welcome measures to secure contributions from manufacturers whose unsafe construction products contributed to this crisis.
We were elected to accelerate remediation and protect leaseholders better, and the Bill is an important step forward in the delivery of that promise. It builds on the remediation acceleration plan, which is already helping thousands of people across the country to live in safer homes. Alongside it are the plans announced by the Government to extend leaseholder protections and support necessary fire safety works in eligible buildings owned collectively by residents.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Ipswich Cladiators, and the many, many residents of our town who have campaigned so tirelessly for change—not just for themselves but for their neighbours, their communities and people across the country. They should never have had to fight so hard, and we cannot give them back the years that they have all lost, but we can maintain a relentless focus on making their homes safe, protecting them from unfair costs, and helping them to move forward. That is what they deserve, and that, with this Bill, is what the Government are doing.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
Before I speak about the Bill and wider issues in the construction industry, let me say that my thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of the 72 people who lost their lives in the Grenfell fire. Earlier today the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee was carrying out a review of fire and rescue services, and, unsurprisingly, building safety and Grenfell were covered., I appreciate that the Bill focuses on building and construction practices—among other issues—and not really on fire services, but I was surprised and disappointed to hear earlier today from the head of His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services that it had not been consulted about it at all. Firefighters put their lives in danger to cope with and tackle the failures in the construction industry, and I hope that the Minister will agree to consult the inspectorate on the Bill to ensure that any amendments are approved by it. That would also give the inspectorate an opportunity to suggest amendments.
My constituency of Woking has been plagued by three big building safety and construction issues. In 2023, 100 residents of the Eastgate building in Woking were evacuated from their homes after structural defects were found. To this day, Eastgate stands empty—a visual reminder of how our building safety system has failed. Southern Housing, which manages Eastgate, says that it is structurally unsafe, and Barratt, which built it, says that it is safe. After the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and I became involved last year, independent testing was carried out, and I am grateful to the Government for supporting me in that effort. The new testing on the building was completed many months ago, but the results have still not been released. There is no way that both sides can be right in that situation. I do not know what they are hiding, but this needs to be resolved immediately. Residents deserve to know what is going on. Either residents need to be allowed back in, or the developer needs to rebuild Eastgate and pay compensation. Will the Minister meet me and force the results of the testing to be released?
Sadly, Woking’s building safety issues and construction failures go beyond our homes. The Victoria Square development, which is a new shopping centre with residential towers and a hotel, was built by Sir Robert McAlpine several years ago. It was due to open in October 2020, but following problems with broken cladding fixtures on the Hilton hotel, it finally opened four years after that. The main A road that goes through Woking town centre had to repeatedly close due to the cladding failures, and this caused significant financial losses to local businesses and residents. Thankfully, the road has now reopened, and the cladding panels have been properly secured. Under the common law on negligence, purely economic losses are not recoverable. The formerly Conservative-run borough council could have ensured that this was covered through contract law, but it did not do so. Why is that not standard practice for building projects? Will the Minister amend the Bill, so that any losses consequent on dangerous cladding failures, such as those experienced by businesses and residents in Woking, are paid for by developers like Sir Robert McAlpine?
There is one final building safety issue in Woking that I wish to speak about, and it involves the estate where I grew up. Lakeview in Goldsworth Park is made up of mainly four-storey maisonettes. Woking borough council recently discovered that the cladding is dangerous, and quickly took steps to make it as safe as possible. The council created a plan for a comprehensive refurbishment and a long-term solution to the cladding problems on the estate. I congratulate and thank the council, especially the portfolio holder for housing, Councillor Ian Johnson, and the strategic director for housing, Louise Strongitharm, for their tireless work on this issue.
Although we are getting the right result in Lakeview, what happened on my old estate shows why we as a country need to take building safety much more seriously, and need to agree to legislative changes. Most properties in Lakeview are council homes, but there are almost 100 privately owned leasehold properties in the area. Leaseholders will be charged for the refurbishment but, quite rightly, not for the cladding works. That construction work and refurbishment is planned to start in early January. If it was a private development, leaseholders would slowly pay into a sinking fund, but local authorities are banned from running such a fund. Will the Minister not only lift the ban on local authorities having a sinking fund, but mandate them to have one, so that what happened to leaseholders in Lakeview does not happen again?
Those three examples from Woking show that this Bill does not go far or fast enough, and it is not fit for purpose. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) said, we will not support it, but we will propose more amendments, to ensure that we genuinely tackle all the building safety issues facing Woking and constituencies across the country.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
Southampton Itchen is one of the places in Hampshire with the most buildings with unsafe cladding. As hon. Members have said so eloquently, that means people live with the worry that the horrendous tragedy that befell Grenfell all those years ago could well befall them. Even where there has been action, it is hardly ideal. Nearly 200 of my constituents are currently out of their home. They were evacuated in the spring and summer of last year, and they will not be able to return until the summer of 2028 at the earliest. This is the stark reality that drives the urgent need for this Bill, and it is why I very much welcome it.
I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for bringing forward the Bill. Like other Members, I pay tribute to residents and campaigners, including those from End Our Cladding Scandal who supported one of the very first public meetings that I conducted as a new MP, and who have not let go of this issue over the years. Since I was elected, I have listened to residents who are affected by unsafe cladding on their buildings, pressed Ministers, and submitted evidence to the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry on remediation. The Bill is the next instalment in resolving these ongoing issues; it will certainly not be the last. I want to acknowledge the real progress that it makes, but also ask for important clarification from the Minister.
Take Oceana Boulevard, a flagship development in the regeneration of brownfield sites in the centre of Southampton. It was built some 20 years ago, and its fire safety problems were first identified nearly 10 years ago. Since then, compartmentation works have been done, but that is all. Today, we have finally got in an application to the Building Safety Regulator, covering cladding, automatic opening vents and balcony remediation works, but—sadly, as we have heard, this is not an isolated story—there is still no agreement between the freeholder and the developer on who will pay for the non-cladding-related remediation, and none of that work is anywhere near starting.
In the meantime, as we all know, residents’ costs have been skyrocketing. Ellie bought her flat in Oceana Boulevard brand new. Her service charge and insurance rose from £1,500 a year to £6,000 a year, and she has not been able to keep up with the payments, so she has handed her home back to the bank. People are losing their homes, even if not to fire, because of these issues, which have taken far too long to resolve. For that reason, alongside this very welcome remediation Bill, we must with all urgency progress the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, and the action that the Prime Minister recently announced on regulating managing agents.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
The hon. Member is right to point out the stress on residents. Those at Northpoint in Bromley are part of a residents’ management company, but RMCs have no assets, so they lean into the service charges in order to pay some of the company’s liabilities. Would he agree with me that people in RMCs need to be protected as well?
Darren Paffey
We are all fighting for our constituents to be protected from the bills that are landing on them through no fault of their own. They certainly did not choose any of this. They want the simple comfort of having their own home, and they work incredibly hard to achieve that, yet look at where so many of them are.
I welcome the mandatory auditing of fire risk assessments to that all-important single standard. A dispute about what is wrong with a building must never again, as in the case of Oceana Boulevard, outlast a decade; there has been constant back and forth about whether the parties accept what they read in the fire engineer’s report. I certainly agree with the comments made by Members on both sides of the Chamber about people picking and choosing who to commission a report from. In some cases, it seems that they decide whether they like what they read in a report before commissioning a different one. That has to come to an end.
I welcome the message that waking watches are temporary. At Sirocco, a development in nearby Ocean Village, the residents paid for one for years. One of the residents, Ro, tells me that she had to use a freedom of information request just to see the fire risk assessments. Under this Bill, remediation plans have to be published, along with timelines and contacts. No resident should need an FOI request to learn the truth about their home.
I welcome the legal duty to remediate. Ben and his family have told me their story, and again, unfortunately, it is not the only time I have heard such a story. They have put their life on hold and have put off having more children—growing their family—because they cannot sell and move on. Since when should anyone’s life aspirations be subject to the stalling of these companies, many of which have literally not bothered to get their own houses in order? Sadly, being unable to sell and move on is a story I have heard many times, and which other hon. Members have repeated. Remediation work at the Blake building close by began only this summer. It certainly will not finish before next summer, four years after enforcement action was first taken. It is clear that delays cost, and it is far too often still the residents who pay those costs.
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Much of what my hon. Friend is saying has echoes in my constituency. Residents in Hanwell Locks have been in a battle with Bellway over remediation works to their building. There has been an acknowledgment that works are needed, but there is no clear programme of works, and no progress at all. Those residents, like those in his constituency, are having trouble re-mortgaging or selling, and they are worried about the continuing fire risk. Does he agree that the remediation compliance plans required in the Bill and the strong financial penalties against builders will make a difference to our constituents?
Darren Paffey
I absolutely agree. As I will come on to say, it is simply unforgivable that too many companies still have no plan whatever for remediation, and people are paying the price, financially, but also with their life ambitions.
Shockat Adam
Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that although the Government already have remediation orders, remediation contribution orders and the responsible actor scheme, the Property Institute says that it has seen absolutely no evidence that they have been used proactively, and that no developer to date has faced any consequences? The Bill must ensure that is addressed.
Darren Paffey
I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s closing point. The Bill must fix that, which is why I welcome its progress, but like Members from across the Chamber, I will follow its progress very closely to ensure it is not just a Bill that gets a headline, but instead fixes things and gets things right.
The Blake building sits outside the developer contract, so this new duty will finally reach it. That is real progress from the Bill, but there are points on which residents still have questions, and campaigners are not yet convinced that all this goes far enough. I hope that the Minister will address some of those questions today.
First, most Ocean Village buildings are subject to the developer contract, but the Bill excludes them from the new duty because “equivalent requirements” are already in place; however, physical works have still not started on Sirocco, Moresby, Hawkins or Oceana Boulevard. We have heard different statistics, but those I am looking at tell me that nationally, there are over 2,500 buildings in that contract, but for 854 of them, work has not started and there is no plan in place—not a single plan between them. What will the measures mean for those living in buildings with no plan? It must mean progress. Should they not have audited assessments, published timetables and a backstop if a developer stalls? I hope that the Minister will confirm that Ocean Village residents will benefit from all three. The Bill rightly focuses on cladding, but residents live in whole buildings, and internal safety matters, too, so I very much welcome the announcement made at the Dispatch Box today. When it comes to filling that gap, I hope that as the Bill progresses, we will hear more detail about what the grant funding will cover.
Secondly, on enforcement, the Bill provides for prosecution, penalties of up to £500,000, and a backstop that allows Homes England or councils to step in, but as we all know, a power is only as good as the capacity to use it, and the route to the backstop will run through notices, representations and tribunals. How long will it take from first notice to a contractor on site? Will Homes England and councils such as Southampton city council be resourced to use that power?
Finally, and most practically for residents like Ben, is the question of when. The duty is to remediate
“as soon as reasonably practicable”,
but the detail is left to regulations. The Government’s 2029 and 2031 deadlines, already put forward in the remediation acceleration plan, do not appear in the Bill. I ask the Minister to add them; my constituents would find that reassuring. If she will not, can she commit to dated milestones, and a hard stop date in those regulations, so that 2029 is the final, legally enforceable deadline that constituents need, not just an aspiration?
Those who have been waiting years and cannot move on have asked if there is any way for the Government to buy back those homes while they are waiting. Now, I suspect that I know the answer, but I will ask—particularly as the Budget is tomorrow. The previous Chancellor amended some of the rules to ensure that council-owned properties are assets, not liabilities. By releasing people from the stalemate that they are in with their homes and families, could we be looking at assets that this Government, who need to build and own more housing, could very much use?
I will proudly support the Bill on Second Reading. For everyone who needs the Bill to be the strongest it can be, I will be glad to engage with Ministers and others as it progresses through the House. We need to fix all our buildings. We need to ensure that the work is paid for by those who were responsible for this sorry episode, which I believe is an absolute stain on our history. In doing so, we might just be able to give people their futures back—people like Ellie, Ro, Ben, the hundreds of others in Southampton Itchen, and the thousands more across the country whose stories have been told by Members across the House. They have all had enough and want an end to the nightmare. The Bill—if we do it right—gives them that hope.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
As we approach 10 years since the Grenfell tragedy, I thank the Grenfell community and families for the tireless campaigning that they should not have had to do. I welcome the Bill as far as it goes. It includes important measures that are needed, but there remain serious concerns that it does not do enough for those still trapped by the terrible cladding scandal. The issue of the remediation of unsafe cladding in buildings of less than 11 metres is a big problem in my constituency, but it is not just a Bristol issue.
There are a number of medium-height blocks of flats in Bristol Central with flammable cladding. I am going to tell the story of just one of those flats. It is a mid-rise block that is part of a development of three blocks. The other two blocks are taller—over 11 metres. They have the same developer and were built at the same time. All the buildings have the same dangerous cladding; the taller two are eligible for the building safety fund, but the one that is under 11 metres is not. A leading specialist building surveyor has identified that the shorter building also has severe cladding deficiencies that are in urgent need of remediation.
Until recently, the flat was the home of a 97-year-old woman, who eventually moved into a residential home. Because she owned a flat, she was not eligible for a council-funded care home place, so her children needed to sell the flat to fund her care—except they could not. The Conservative Government’s position was that there is no systemic fire safety issue in buildings under 11 metres. In 2022, the then Government said that they had examined specific buildings under 11 metres and found that
“in the overwhelming majority of cases it has subsequently been confirmed that they do not require remediation.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2024; Vol. 747, c. 1419.]
The Labour Government under Keir Starmer maintained that position, stating in September 2024 that:
“the risk to life is usually lower in buildings under 11 metres, and they are very unlikely to need the same costly remediation.”—[Official Report, 11 September 2024; Vol. 753, c. 929.]
The result is that buildings under 11 metres are not eligible for funding under the building safety fund.
The catch? Try telling all that to the mortgage market. No lender will give a mortgage to a flat in a building with unsafe cladding, regardless of height. Therefore, the children of my 97-year-old constituent cannot sell the flat on the open market. They cannot persuade the company that holds the freehold to pay for the remediations from its own balance sheet—believe me, they have tried. That company has insisted that it will only fulfil its legal obligations and not spend a penny more, and based on the legislation, the company believes it is not liable. The building’s insurance policy will also not cover the cladding work.
Even if the owners of the five flats in this small block wanted to pay for the work themselves—which would be wholly unjust, because it is not their fault—as leaseholders, according to their lease, they are not permitted to contribute more than £15,000 per flat. It is estimated that the work would cost more than £1 million.
What are people meant to do? They are trapped in an intolerable Catch-22 situation. The two adult children of this 97-year-old woman were forced to buy the flat themselves in order to release the equity to fund her care. It is lucky that they could afford to do that, although “lucky” seems like a wild choice of word to describe their situation. They are now stuck in possession of an unsafe flat that they do not live in and never wanted to own, with no recourse to the developers, the insurance, the warrantees or anything else to rectify the cladding faults.
In July 2026, as we have heard, MHCLG launched a separate funding pot to address cladding fire safety risks in buildings under 11 metres, called the cladding safety scheme. The Government said that this delivered on their commitment in the remediation acceleration plan and supported a risk-based approach to remediation. However, the application window for the scheme was open for just three months. It has now closed. The management company of the building in my constituency has applied, but there has been no response, and there is apparently no guarantee of receiving this targeted funding.
The Bill before us proposes sticking with the Conservative and Starmer Governments’ insistence that “relevant buildings” means only buildings of 11 metres or more. Surely the Minister can see that that is not good enough.
I have a few questions for the Minister. First, is she confident that three months was long enough for 100% of those in charge of affected buildings under 11 metres to hear about the fund and apply to it? That includes both for-profit management companies, which, famously, can be pretty sluggish when it comes to repairs in their buildings, and internal management companies made up of owner-occupiers and leaseholders, who are often juggling flat admin alongside a full-time job and being a parent.
Secondly, is the fund large enough to cover all the affected sub-11 metre buildings? Thirdly, if the Government do not make funding available for all the affected sub-11 metre buildings, what will the Minister’s message be to the leaseholders of flats that do not receive the funding?
Finally, will the Minister take steps to end this funding lottery and ensure that the remediation of buildings below 11 metres is incorporated into the main Bill and is fully funded, and that there is a legal requirement on freeholders to do this work?
Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)
Next June will mark 10 years since the Grenfell fire. As many have said, at the end of August this year, more than 2,000 residential buildings still had unsafe building cladding, with remediation not yet started. Behind that figure are tens of thousands of people who cannot sell their homes, get mortgages or get affordable insurance, and many who cannot sleep at night. Those people did nothing wrong; they bought a home in good faith, and they have been left carrying the consequences of the failures of others. That is why I welcome this Bill and will support it throughout its passage. At its heart, the Bill is about responsibility: who must act, who must pay and who must be protected.
I will start with the question of who it is that must act. For too long, the system has relied on expectations and good will. Building owners have been asked, encouraged and cajoled to get on and fix the problem, but many have chosen simply not to act. When we debated remediation in Westminster Hall in September, I argued that we had to move from targets to duties and ensure that any duties we set are enforceable.
The Bill does just that: it puts a clear legal duty on those who are responsible for a building to fix it; it gives regulators real power, backed by real penalties; and, where an owner will not act, it will let the local authority step in and get the job done. For residents who have spent many years being passed from freeholder to managing agent to developer and back again, that clarity will matter enormously.
The Bill also tackles something that has quietly undermined progress for years. We have heard today about buildings that sit in the middle ground and are not quite high rise. We still do not know where all these buildings are or who really owns them. A register of mid-rise buildings and new powers to find out who sits behind a building’s ownership will mean that owners are no longer be able to hide behind complex structures. A problem cannot be fixed if it cannot be seen, and someone cannot be held to account if they cannot be found.
The Bill will protect leaseholders by making sure that when a building owner is penalised for failing to act, the bill for fixing the issue cannot be passed back to residents through their service charges. The people who are failing must pay, and the people who have been failed must be protected.
That brings me to the part of the Bill that I have shown a particular interest in: part 5 on construction product liability. So far, the cost of fixing this crisis has fallen on taxpayers and developers. More than £5 billion of public money has been committed to remediation, but the manufacturers who sold the products that are now being stripped off buildings across the country have contributed next to nothing. That cannot be right.
The last Government recognised those principles in the Building Safety Act, but we have to be honest and admit that under its provisions many manufacturers were not held to account, many of the legal hurdles were too high and the claims were too few. Too many manufacturers were able to sit back, confident that nobody could prove enough to make them pay.
This Bill changes that. It shifts the test away from narrow technicalities about whether a regulation was breached and towards the questions that matter: was the product unsafe in the way that it was actually used, and was it marketed in a misleading way? It gives the courts the power to look inside these companies so that we can see what they knew and when they knew it. It also makes sure that corporate structures cannot be used to put assets beyond reach.
There is a really simple principle here—that the polluter pays. That approach is guided by the adage, “Fix it first and fast”. Residents should not be waiting for companies to argue over the bill. Buildings must be made safe now; the fight over who pays should happen afterwards—maybe in court, between the companies responsible, but not on the doorsteps of the people living with the consequences.
I ask the Minister to keep one point in mind as the Bill goes into Committee. Liability has to flow properly through the supply chain and the interface with other regulations, such as the legislation on defective products. If we extend liability at the top of the supply chain but it does not carry further down to the façade contractor and their supply chain and suppliers, we risk loading main contractors with liability while those who supplied or made the products are able to escape. Getting liability right all the way through the supply chain is critical to whether the Bill delivers real money for remediation or simply moves the risk around.
The Bill is a big step forward but it is not the end of the job. I want to raise two areas where there is more to do. I really welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement today from the Dispatch Box on enfranchised and non-qualifying leaseholders. These are people who were excluded from protections that many other leaseholders enjoy, often for reasons such as the date on which they bought their flat. I look forward to amendments coming forward to help shape those provisions further.
The second area is the people who made hay from this crisis. There are two groups who have done very well from building safety issues: insurers and lawyers. I have heard many people talk about the challenges of getting insurance for a building, but I have also heard from contractors and developers. I have heard of contractors who were encouraged to take out professional indemnity cover for works, only to find insurers using every single technicality to avoid paying. When I worked at Mace, I sat on the silver team on building safety, and we were faced with the complexity of working out where our liability sat and how we dealt with our insurers. Dealing with the complexities of product liability as a main contractor was something that gave a lot of people many nights of headaches, and it is an area that I do not think we are completely finished with.
We risk seeing contractors collapse if we do not fix this. I mentioned lawyers as well, because I have heard stories where the legal fees for trying to fix cladding have vastly exceeded the actual cost of fixing the cladding itself. That cannot be right. It is a scandal within the scandal. The Bill rightly opens up a stronger route to recover costs for manufacturers. It does not yet start to address those who make money out of this crisis, but it does ensure that the Government deliver a route for redress, not another payday. Every pound should be spent on making homes safer, not on lawyers’ fees and insurers’ delaying tactics.
Let me end where I began. The Bill puts responsibility where it belongs and makes sure that we are protecting those who need protection. It builds on and strengthens the work of the previous Government, but it rebalances power so that we can fix this crisis once and for all. I support the Bill and hope that the whole House will work to ensure that it passes quickly through this place—we need to see it become legislation, not be stuck in Committee—so that we can end the crisis of dangerous buildings in our country once and for all, and end this nightmare for all.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I start by adding my voice to the tributes paid by the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) to the victims and survivors of the Grenfell disaster. I will not forget waking up that morning and seeing that appalling tragedy unfolding on our television screens; many people across London will have felt the same. I welcome the Government’s attempts to ensure that such a tragedy does not happen again, but it is almost unbelievable that nine years later we are debating this particular bit of legislation in our collective effort to ensure that buildings can be made safe.
Like the Fire Safety Act 2021 and the Building Safety Act 2022, the Bill is a step in the right direction, but—again—it does not go far enough. As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who is no longer in her place, has raised repeatedly, the PAS 9980 regime, which allows a fire engineer chosen and paid for by the building owner to declare dangerous cladding tolerable and decide that no work is required, will remain in place. Would hon. Members in this House feel reassured if a fire engineer paid for by a building’s owner declared the cladding in their block of flats to be “tolerable”?
The anger that followed the Grenfell disaster was directed towards those in power who repeated the sentiments that officials had known about the dangers posed by unsafe cladding but did not care enough to act. Much of the feeling was that the people in Grenfell and others who lived in council housing did not matter enough for serious action to be taken to prevent such a disaster. That speaks to a wider issue that we in the House all need to work to address: accessibility to safe and secure housing.
New high-rise homes must be built with materials that do not burn. If combustible cladding is considered too dangerous for new high-rise homes, what reassurances does that provide to people living in “tolerable” levels of danger? That should not be our benchmark. All Londoners should be entitled to housing of a standard that is higher than tolerable.
In March 2026, the Government announced a new package of support for house building in London, which provided temporary relief from developer levies. However, BusinessLDN has highlighted that the costs associated with the community infrastructure levy relief included in the package would be offset in effect by the additional costs from the building safety levy in more than a third of cases. I welcome the Government’s intent to remediate building safety defects via the building safety levy, but the two policies seem to contradict each other. Just this morning, a headline in the Financial Times read, “Labour's housebuilding target effectively dead’. We should not be deciding between building houses and building safe housing.
If the Government’s assessment is that housing developments are being stalled in London due to costs, does more need to be done to incentivise developments following the introduction of the building safety levy? I would be grateful if in winding up the Minister could reflect on what the Bill’s measures on manufacturers and developers of construction products providing some of the costs towards remediating cladding mean for the building safety levy and the particular stress that is placing on house building in London.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)
The Minister and the Secretary of State will both know that Salford has had a large number of buildings affected by the building safety crisis. That has meant years of worry about safety for residents, who have often faced eye-watering bills they cannot afford or been trapped in a home they cannot sell—all for a crisis that they did not cause.
Before I move on with my contribution, I place on record my thanks to two key organisations and individuals. The first is Salford council. In the early days after the horrors of Grenfell, it was one of the first local authorities to act fast and think later in removing dangerous cladding from its council properties. It faced years of legal wranglings trying to recoup the costs from the developers, but it did the right thing and made sure that residents’ safety came first.
Secondly, I place on record my special thanks to two special individuals: Darren Matthews and Mandy Sandhu. They were the first residents to come to me about the building safety crisis and a building called Transport House. They led an amazing campaign when they were faced with eye-watering bills of £97,000 each to pay for building safety remediation in their building. They secured the costs that they needed to carry out the remediations from the developers and the Building Safety Fund, and they acted as an inspiration to many other campaign organisations across Salford—and there were many.
It is welcome to see the Government seeking to fill many of the apparent gaps in the Building Safety Act 2022. However, I will mention a few points that I hope the Minister and the Government will take forward as the Bill progresses through the House. First, on continued delays at the Building Safety Regulator, I know that the Government have introduced a plan to speed up applications, but in many cases it is not yet working. One building in Salford, Quebec Building, has faced significant delays. One resident there told me:
“Our mortgage interest is now 8.9%. Our provider refuses us a new product until remediations are done. We cannot sell as ‘non qualifying leaseholders’ as the status carries on for new owners which might mean liability for payment for some remediations. I am 65 years old and wanting to enjoy retirement and my husband has uncurable cancer and the stress is not helping. We just cannot sustain all this.”
I implore the Minister and the Government to review, as a priority, what the blockages are at the Building Safety Regulator and ensure that it is properly staffed and resourced to tackle the backlog.
Secondly, Salford has had huge issues with non-cladding-related fire safety defects, from non-compliant wooden balconies all the way through to insufficient internal fire doors. Residents have been left wrangling with developers in a David and Goliath-style legal battle, with the cost of temporary fire safety provisions ramping up service charges year on year and huge insurance bills to boot. Many have ultimately been forced to foot the bill for remediation themselves, which is simply unjust. The issue had already been raised in 2025 by the National Fire Chiefs Council, but the Bill still excludes non-cladding fire safety defects, so that must be addressed. I welcome the comments made by the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box, as they suggest that the issue is on her radar. I look forward to seeing the details on that work going forward, and perhaps the Minister will divulge a little more detail in her summing up.
Thirdly, though the Bill places legal requirements on building owners and responsible entities, developers signed up to the developer remediation contract are exempt. I know why: because the Government assume that being part of the DRC is a sufficient carrot. Yet it is worrying, given that we know that the auditing of assessments at DRC buildings is very thin on the ground in practice, and as End Our Cladding Scandal notes, there is a raft of conclusions
“based on assumption rather than test evidence.”
Worse still, we know that enforcement is weak. Property Week has already stated:
“developer-led remediation continues to progress too slowly, with only 10% of projects complete and nearly 60% still awaiting agreed scopes of work.”
Put simply, ruling out developers from the new remediation duty in the Bill but imposing it on resident-controlled entities sadly highlights just how skewed and unfair the system still is. That is a crucial issue that I hope the Government will look at getting right.
It cannot be right to continue to place significant burdens on the shoulders of volunteer leaseholders, especially in buildings owned by leaseholders, which were ruled out of the leaseholder protections. The Bill makes no mention of protecting them at the moment, nor does it close gaps affecting non-qualifying leaseholders, shared owners and buildings below 11 metres. Those people are left fending for themselves. Again, the Secretary of State highlighted that she seeks to address those things, and I look forward to seeing the detail in due course.
I will briefly make a final point on the wider issue of the capacity of fire authorities to respond to high-rise blazes. In 2025, I wrote to the Government to highlight significant understaffing, often due to poor pay, which was having an impact on the recruitment and retention of firefighters. That has resulted in situations where vehicles are sometimes sent out without a full complement of five firefighters riding, where vehicles are deployed elsewhere to compensate for equipment or staffing gaps, or where vehicles simply cannot be deployed at all due to there not being enough staff to crew or repair them.
Salford’s firefighters and appliances are frequently directed to surrounding boroughs to tackle high-rise blazes because there are not enough fire vehicles available at that time. That results in fewer firefighters on the ground in the early stages of an incident in Salford, which greatly increases the risks for everyone involved. At this time of year, with bonfire night approaching, the situation becomes more acute.
I had three asks of Government in 2025, and I repeat them again today. First, they should co-ordinate with the Chancellor—we have the Budget tomorrow, so they will have to get in quick—to reverse the cuts and invest in the future of fire and rescue services with additional central Government funding. Secondly, they should urgently bring forward the plan to reintroduce national standards to remove the postcode lottery of incident responses and hold fire chiefs accountable. Lastly, they should give firefighters a fair say through a new advisory body that includes trade union representation, and powers and resourcing to investigate fires of special interest.
The Bill is very welcome, and it is definitely a good starting place for identifying the gaps, but there is a long way to go. I hope that we will now have a collective and collegiate conversation about how we can get the final version of the Bill spot on.
Hilary Benn (Leeds South) (Lab)
I unreservedly welcome the Bill. The story of the cladding crisis arose out of the appalling tragedy at Grenfell on that night over nine years ago, when all those people died in the place they should have felt most safe—their home. They died because of a series of catastrophic failures.
The first and most obvious failure was that cladding was allowed to be put in combinations on the sides of buildings when no one had actually tested what would happen if those combinations caught fire. It is astonishing, when one looks back at it, that architects were able to specify combinations. We now know that when some of those combinations had been put on rigs and set fire to—boom!—they had gone up very quickly.
The second thing—my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) spoke so well—is that we are here, over nine years after the event, and we still have not sorted it out. I am much struck by the example that he quoted from Australia; he is right. Many of my constituents have been affected by the cladding scandal. For most of them, it is fair to say, their homes have now been dealt with, but there are still far too many people whose homes have not been. The reaction of the Government at the time was, “Well, it’s not really our responsibility.” They had to be forced by stages, over the years, to do more and more.
There was also a failure to build the blocks in line with the building regulations at the time. It is one thing to look at the cladding—people said, “Oh, I didn’t know that was a problem”—but as it was pulled off buildings, one after another, what did we find? We found that the fire-stopping measures, the firebreaks, were missing—even though that was a requirement of the building regulations at the time. This is a story of a load of jerry-built buildings that people lived in for many years, as one Member said, with no idea that they were living in a fire trap. I make that point because, on occasion, I have heard Members in this Chamber lambast Britain as an over-regulated society. I mean, give us a break! This story is a monumental failure of regulation. People died as a result, and many other people’s lives have been put on hold, as we have heard.
I join others in paying tribute to the End Our Cladding Scandal group, Leeds Cladding Scandal, and the many constituents who have raised cases with me and who have worked so hard to try to change the circumstances in which they find themselves. Time and again, people have said to me, as they have to all other hon. Members, “I thought I’d bought the home of my dreams, and I find I’m living in a nightmare that I don’t seem able to get out of.” Many Members have referred to people’s lives being put on hold. That is absolutely true: they cannot get on with things, whether having a family or moving to another part of the country where they have been offered a good job, because they cannot sell their flat. There appears to be no escape. The bills go up, the waking watches are costly, insurance is expensive and service charges go up. I remember the first constituent who told me, “I’ve had to move out of my flat.” I said, “You’ve moved out of your flat?” He said, “Yes, I couldn’t afford the bills, so I moved out of my flat; I’m now renting it, so I can pay the bills that I can’t afford in the flat that I thought was the home of my dreams.”
Each block, particularly the ones that have not yet been remediated, is a very complex story—changing ownership, developers disappearing or going bust, the legal pass the parcel, which was mentioned in a previous speech, and mortgage lenders refusing to lend. The hard truth is that no legislation is going to require a mortgage lender to lend on a property it does not want to lend on. The mortgage lenders therefore have to have confidence.
Gideon Amos
The right hon. Gentleman is making a typically cogent, sensible speech. Is not the logical conclusion of what he is driving at that buildings should be remediated to a standard such that they can be insured at reasonable levels and will get mortgages, and that that is the building regulation standard we require for new buildings?
Hilary Benn
I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but is he arguing that a mortgage lender should be required by law—
Hilary Benn
No, the hon. Gentleman is not; I did not think that he was. That is a fundamental problem. It is about confidence in the system and in the property. Too many of my constituents still worry that they could be landed with bills they simply cannot afford. Someone said to me, “Thirty thousand quid? It might as well be 30 million quid, because I can’t afford thirty thousand.”
I want to raise three specific issues. First, I very much welcome what the Secretary of State said in her opening speech about those who have bought non-qualifying flats. As I was reflecting on the question I put to her about making the measure retrospective, I realised that that probably is not an issue here. The sole owner of a flat that was deemed to be non-qualifying will be relieved of the requirement to meet the costs themselves and will be eligible for the support that other leaseholders have.
The second issue relates to blocks below 11 metres. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer). There is a development in Leeds called the Chandlers; some of the blocks are over 11 metres and some are below 11 metres. Applications have been made to the new fund that was opened—from memory, the closing day was 17 August. There will be lots of applications, and we do not know who will be successful and who will not. I seek clarity from the Minister. As I understand it, under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, a “responsible person” is required to carry out fire risk assessments on all buildings and put in place measures to address fire risks they identify. A House of Commons Library briefing note states:
“Since 2022, this risk assessment duty has included assessing the structure and external walls of the building, including cladding”.
Although the Government generally argue that most buildings under 11 metres do not present a risk, what is the situation in cases where there is a risk in those buildings? For example, a PAS 9980 assessment was done for the Chandlers. The residents were first told that the blocks under 11 metres were a high risk; they were then told that those blocks were a medium risk. But hey—a medium risk is still a risk. Would you want to live in a block that has a medium risk of catching fire, putting your life at risk? I have read the Bill and the explanatory memorandum on this point quite hurriedly, and it appears that these particular powers apply to buildings of over 11 metres. However, since the Government have said, “We are prepared to provide funding for buildings under 11 metres,” can the Minister tell me whether any of the powers in the legislation as it is currently drafted apply to blocks of under 11 metres and the people responsible for them? If not, if such a block has got a PAS 9980 assessment that says, “This is a risk”, then why, logically, would we not extend these powers to ensure the remediation of blocks under 11 metres?
Finally, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) in making a plea about people who really, really, really need to move. Could the Government think creatively about developers buying back flats or, as was said a moment ago, the local authority purchasing them? We want more social housing, and each one would be one more unit. I wonder whether we could see what might be done to help people who really needed to move—for example, if their mother were extremely ill and they needed to move in order to look after her.
Having said that, our constituents who still live in unsafe flats have waited far too long to have them made safe, and I look forward to the Bill making very speedy passage through both Houses.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
Could I pay my own tribute to the whole Grenfell family? I think we all remember quite vividly the moment when we heard on the news about this absolutely and utterly appalling disaster. Our hearts go out to all those who were affected and their families, particularly at this time when so many people must be thinking about the anniversary next year as well. It was quite clear, as other hon. Members have said, that this was a complete and utter failure of regulation, and I am so pleased that the Bill is tackling that.
As other Members have said, cladding is an issue around the whole country, and I will address some matters in my constituency, but first, I thank the Secretary of State and the ministerial team for their drive and ambition on this important matter after some years of what, sadly, can only be described as drift under the last Government. I wholeheartedly welcome the Bill, and in particular some of its key elements and points. It creates greater certainty, which is long overdue. It gives regulators the powers they need. It makes companies that made unsafe products contribute towards remediation—that is such an important point, as other Members have said. Most of all, it ensures that residents have a route to remediation, which is utterly important.
I am conscious of time as some other Member wish to speak, so I would like to turn to Reading. There are serious concerns locally, like those we have heard from Members describing the situations in their own constituencies. Our town has grown and changed dramatically within my lifetime, from being a county town made up of Victorian terraces and many brick buildings to now having a large number of taller buildings, many of which are blocks of flats. Obviously, the recent crisis has a huge implication for our community and for other towns across the county of Berkshire.
At the time of the Grenfell disaster, I remember receiving a briefing from the Royal Berkshire fire and rescue service, and I can only say that it had an utterly chilling effect on those who listened to it—on myself, local councillors and others. The situation they described was one of a service trying to cope with serious concerns and issues across a large English county. For example, as Members have described, they mentioned the problem of cladding on many buildings—a number of them below 11 metres—as well as related issues such as poor compartmentalisation. I remember them talking about blocks in Slough where builders had unwittingly drilled holes through walls that were meant to prevent fire. In Reading, some blocks had very serious problems with compartmentalisation. There were a whole series of issues with dangerous wooden cladding, dangerous wooden fittings in foyers or doors that were not fire-safe at all—and all of this existed in just one county. Fire and rescue service staff and local authority staff were enormously pressed to deal with it.
I remember listening to the accounts of waking watches being set up and thinking how terrifying it must have been to live in one of the blocks that were affected, just after Grenfell, when people were very aware of the disaster and horror that had happened not far away, in London. Those people had to live through a waking watch every single night. They were not able to have a whole range of items, and they could not cook certain types of food because of the fire risks from frying and other common forms of cooking. This was a huge issue for our community, particularly in the town centre and nearby areas. Many building owners were extremely responsible and acted as quickly as they could, despite the supply problems, the lack of skilled tradespeople, problems with putting up scaffolding and the pandemic that followed. I pay tribute to a number of housing associations that acted very quickly.
Luckily, all the council housing in Reading was not affected because it was not built using cladding; the council had taken a very robust approach to that. However, there were a number of problems with private blocks that were either rented or leasehold, and some of those issues have continued right up to the present day; there have been local media reports on ITV and the BBC that have highlighted some of the problems. Like other Members—indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) put it very well—I have constituents who bought flats in blocks with cladding and were then trapped in them. They were struggling to sleep, and they lived in complete stress. Sometimes, I think it is fair to say that they had moments of terror living in these flats where they clearly were at great risk. They could not get the work done, and they were facing huge financial costs, which has been a problem across the whole country. I am so pleased that the current Government have gripped this and want to tackle it and to introduce some reassurance and routes to remediation at a much greater pace.
I would like to press the Minister on the point about flats under 11 metres, and I hope she will be able to respond to this when she winds up the debate. It is great to hear about the fund for flats under 11 metres—there will be a number of these in many medium-sized towns—but there are other non-cladding-based fire safety issues in exactly this type of block. That includes the issues I mentioned, such as dangerous wooden items in the foyer of a large block in Reading, and wooden balconies; in one case, a building had wooden balconies next to an underground car park, which was then discovered to be a huge fire risk. Some of these risks are in blocks under 11 metres, which may not be covered by the fund. Could the Minister elaborate on the nature of the fund, to provide further reassurance to residents?
Could the Minister also look into the wider issue of fire safety in buildings under 11 metres? As will be the case in many constituencies, we have a significant number of older blocks that are under 11 metres and might date back to the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s. They may not have dangerous cladding, but there might be issues with fire safety doors, evacuation procedures and a whole series of things. Because of the large number of these flats, residents will be concerned about the capacity of local authorities or the fire service to investigate. If the Minister could provide more information on that point, it would be very reassuring to residents in Reading and other similar towns.
I am conscious of time, so I will conclude by wholeheartedly welcoming the Bill. It is a huge step forward, and I really welcome the drive and thrust of activity from the Department on this matter. I am sure that the whole House will once again want to offer their thoughts to the families of the Grenfell community. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Six weeks ago, residents in Neutron Tower in my constituency woke up in the middle of the night to a fire. They had to rush from flat to flat to warn their neighbours of what was unfolding. Tragically, one of my constituents lost his life, and I am sure that all of us in this House send our condolences to his family and loved ones. Others were hospitalised, and evacuated residents are being told that it may be months before they can return. This was the first fatal fire at a tower block that has unsafe cladding since Grenfell. It happened in a building that had been identified as having combustible insulation in the cladding, combustible balcony floors and defective balcony doors. While investigations are still ongoing, early indications are that the cladding itself did not play a role in this fire. However, the fact that the fire occurred in a building that has been awaiting remediation for so long has terrified residents of Neutron Tower and the adjacent Proton and Elektron Towers, and of Switch House, as well as those in the hundreds of other high-rise residential units in my constituency that need remediation work.
This serious incident is a stark and grave reminder of the potential peril faced by hundreds of thousands of people in this country, who feel that they are at the mercy of unscrupulous developers and managing agents. Repairs and remediation are being delayed again and again, and residents’ safety concerns are going unheard, all while they are tied to unsellable assets and escalating fees. Astonishingly, traumatised residents who have been evacuated from Neutron Tower are still being made to pay rent and service charges in the meantime. The fact that this Bill is being put before the House is welcome, as are the engagements that I have had with the Building Safety Regulator, the Secretary of State and officials in her Department; I know from them that the Neutron Tower fire is being taken extremely seriously.
Many of my constituents who fall into the category of having non-external cladding risks and internal defects in their homes, or of being non-qualified leaseholders, will be looking closely at the Bill as it progresses through the House. They will be pleased to have heard the Secretary of State’s announcement that these areas will be explored as the Bill progresses. I pay tribute to the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, led by a group who have been campaigning on these fronts for a long time. I have been contacted by unpaid resident directors of local right-to-manage companies, who are worried about the new liabilities that they might face for defects that they did not cause, without any new funding or support for meeting those duties.
Then there is the bigger picture—the behaviours and the dispute practices that have allowed remediation processes to drag on for completely unacceptable lengths of time for so many buildings. I am disappointed that the new powers that will be placed on responsible entities will exclude developers who are part of the developer remediation contract, because developers under the DRC are able to delay remediation, drag their heels and avoid financial responsibilities. I understand that the Government’s position is that there are enough existing mechanisms under the DRC, so the backstop powers in the Bill do not need to be extended any further, but the system is not working in practice. Many residents are alarmed that there is not greater accountability for those ultimately responsible.
Ultimately, this comes down to a question of ambition. There is no denying the complexities at play in this decade-long ordeal. I am glad that some of the glaring gaps in the Bill are already being addressed, so that we can finally, through legislation, fix issues that we have been talking about for so long. The questions for many of my constituents, including the residents of Neutron Tower, are: when will the remaining gaps be addressed and, most importantly, how long before they finally have a safe home? Like many hon. Members, I will follow the Bill very closely as it progresses through the House, and will look for ways in which it can be strengthened even further, because we cannot delay taking action any longer.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I too pay tribute to the families of those who died in the Grenfell fire, which we will never forget. It scarred not only those in that area of London, but all Londoners. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for his excellent speech, for the campaigning he has done and for standing up for his community, and for his work to ensure that the Bill is as good as it is.
I welcome and support the Bill, although I wish it had been introduced by the previous Government, years ago. Unsafe cladding is a big issue across the country. The UK Government track 4,724 high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding. Some 39% of those are now fully remediated, and 15% have works under way, but 46% are still waiting for works to start. There are more than 1,000 such buildings in London, several of which are in my constituency of Putney.
Let me begin by thanking the Minister and her team, as well as former Ministers, for their constructive engagement throughout the development of the Bill. They have taken the time to listen to me. I have shown case studies of what is happening to my constituents to Ministers and asked, “Would the Bill work for them?” I am so glad to see so many ways in which it will. The Bill goes a great way, in many ways, to address problems, and to hold to account the developers who built the buildings and who, in so many cases, seem to have been able to walk away, delay, obfuscate and make things really difficult, when they should have stepped up and said, “There were these issues. These are our buildings, and we will work to rectify them.”
The Bill represents a significant step, and builds on the remediation acceleration plan in putting safety, accountability and those affected first. For too long, many leaseholders have been trapped in homes that they cannot remortgage and, in some cases, do not even feel safe living in. They bought their homes in good faith and followed the rules, but they have found themselves paying the price for failures elsewhere in a system that they trusted. The human impact of the delays cannot be overestimated, as many Members have said. I have spoken to constituents who are not able to start or increase the size of a family, take up jobs or care for relatives across the country because they are stuck in their home and unable to move on with their life. They have experienced prolonged disruption and financial uncertainty, and huge levels of stress.
I welcome these measures. The Bill gives regulators stronger powers to hold to account those who delay or obstruct remediation, and introduces a statutory duty to remediate. It replaces cosy deals and voluntary commitments, as so many Ministers in the former Government promised to. Time and again, I came to the Chamber, with many other Members who are here, to be told, “We will take action. It will be done. I have got the developers round the table, and they are all going to do it—don’t you worry”, but that did not happen at all. No more of that.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a really strong speech about the need for this Bill. Does she agree that this action is long overdue? Residents in Crown Heights in my constituency have waited for years—far too long. They have been in financial uncertainty, and uncertainty about their safety, and they deserve a clear timeline of when their remediation works will be completed. Residents like those in Crown Heights will be served better in the future by action that will be delivered through this Bill.
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend’s constituents, my constituents and the constituents of all Members will be watching this debate, half feeling glad that all this is happening, and half hoping that it actually will happen. In that respect, one part of the Bill I really welcome is that a remediation compliance plan has to be published on a website, openly available and proactively shared with residents. The fact that that even has to be said is testament to how frustrating it has been for residents to try to find information. Instead of them asking, “Who has built this building? Who are the responsible parties? What are they going to do? Where is the plan? Will I be moved out? When is it going to happen? When can I get on with my life?”, a plan has to be published, put on a website and proactively shared. I really welcome that.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
The hon. Lady talks about the need and desire to end the culture of cosy deals. I completely agree, but is not PAS 9980 itself a cosy deal done by the former Secretary of State, Michael Gove, as a compromise with building developers, to let them off from so many of the financial obligations that they would have had if they had to remediate buildings to the standard at which they should have been built? Does this Bill not turn that cosy deal into law?
Fleur Anderson
I have been following this issue closely. As well as EWS1 forms and the question of who fills them in, developers marking their own homework to any degree causes problems in the system. Many Members will be looking at the Bill as it progresses through this House and the other place to see how we can strengthen it even further. Measures may be put into the Bill in all good faith, but in practice, there may not be enough people inspecting buildings, so there may be huge delays in the system. We do not want those people to want to minimise the amount of work done and keep the delays going.
I welcome the fact that building owners who fail to act could face fines of £500,000 and even criminal prosecution. Where owners refuse to do the work, Homes England will have the backstop powers to step in and ensure remediation is finally carried out, with the costs falling on those responsible, rather than the leaseholders. The measures in the Bill will help accelerate the resolution of historical safety defects, require manufacturers of unsafe building products to contribute to putting things right, and ensure that those affected have a clearer route to redress.
For many people, the cladding scandal is not a historical issue, but a daily reality. Throughout this scandal, I have found out all the layers of poor regulation in building works. For many homes and developments in Putney, not only has the cladding been unsafe, but many other parts of the building have been unsafe as well. In looking at the cladding, we have also found missing or inadequate fire stopping, inadequate compartmentation, poorly installed cavity barriers, defective balconies and water ingress. In a couple of the developments I have been in, I have watched water flowing down through electrical cupboards. That shoddy building work and the way that developers seem to have been able to get away with it should also be looked at, although not in this Bill. This Bill needs to be specific, and we need to get on with it, but other questions are being asked as a result of this process.
My residents have had to find out a lot more about whole developments and how they work; about their managing agents and how they should be working for them, but in many ways are not; about waking watches; and about non-communication by those who are meant to communicate about other defects in their buildings. They have had to become experts in inspections and how they work. They have had to work with the fire service themselves, because they are the people who are involved with all of these different things. I have been to meeting after meeting that residents have called, or that I have called, to try to get answers. It really should not have been so hard—it should be far easier for residents and leaseholders to know what is going on in their building. That is why I really look forward to the upcoming leasehold and commonhold Bill, because in my constituency of Putney, Roehampton, Southfields and Wandsworth Town, I am still working with people whose lives continue to be disrupted years after these problems first emerged. Many of them are currently decanted and living in other places, and many are unable to rent, sell or remortgage. They struggle to obtain their EWS1 forms or—as has been mentioned by other Members—affordable insurance, and far too often, their service charges are also going up. They describe uncertainty, stress and frustration.
I want to draw the Minister’s attention to continuing delays by the Building Safety Regulator, which I have talked about before in a Westminster Hall debate. I have had three developments really affected by huge delays by the Building Safety Regulator; two of them have now been fixed, so I thank the Ministers very much for that, but I have one left, so I am going to raise it now. That is the heritage-listed stilt blocks on the Alton estate in Roehampton. They are really iconic—people come from all over the world to look at our stilt blocks. We are very proud of them, but living inside them is not so nice. They have mould, and they have really poor windows that let the water and the weather in. Residents have endured winter after winter waiting for replacement windows.
Although Wandsworth council approved and funded new windows and stairwell fire doors in September 2023, the introduction of the new building safety regime transferred responsibility for approving those works to the Building Safety Regulator, because those listed blocks are classified as high-rise residential buildings. The residents narrowly missed the approval window before the new arrangements came in, leaving them in limbo with the Building Safety Regulator and causing further delays for people who have already waited far too long. They have waited through the winters of 2023, 2024 and 2025, and now they are approaching yet another winter with these very cold windows. Residents say that when they put a radiator on, they might as well just be throwing money out of the window. It is an appalling situation, and I really hope that as a result of me raising it in the Chamber today, the Ministers will address it.
None of us wants to return to the failures of the past. Robust regulation is essential, and the whole purpose of reform is to ensure that safety comes first, but a system that leaves people in prolonged uncertainty is also failing them. As implementation of the Bill proceeds, I urge Ministers to continue examining how regulatory processes can be made more efficient without compromising safety, whether that is ensuring they have the right number of staff or that their systems are right—whatever it takes to make the system work. People should not be left waiting months or years for decisions when works are ready to proceed. Safety and speed are not mutually exclusive; we need to have both.
As I have said, I look forward to the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill, which is part of the package of exciting and strong new regulatory powers that are being introduced by the Government in a number of ways. The last Government could have done the same, but did not.
I support this Bill, and I hope that while making these reforms, we will continue to focus relentlessly on turning regulation into results for the people of Putney and people across the country.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for opening the debate and, like many others, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for his extremely powerful and important speech, and for all the work that he has done to support the Grenfell families who so deserve that support. He is a fantastic champion for them. I also welcome the Bill, and the fact that those responsible for unsafe residential buildings will be held legally accountable. History has shown that these matters cannot be left unmonitored.
As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am forever honoured to stand in this place as the Member of Parliament for Harlow and the villages. To find myself listening to, for example, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn)—of whom I admit to being a bit of a fan—is a “pinch me” moment. I have to say, though, that above all that, the biggest honour I have experienced in this place was when I spoke for the first time in a debate about Grenfell, some two years ago. I mentioned an incredible constituent, Rod Wainwright, who was one of the first responders on the scene at Grenfell. As you may remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, he witnessed at first hand the absolute horror that was caused by the unsafe cladding that had been used. That unavoidable tragedy that took so many lives has had a lasting impact not only on the families whom I have mentioned, but on heroes like Rod. He is an incredible man, both personally and professionally. People like Rod should not be suffering the consequences of others’ failings, and the Bill is just one step towards ensuring that that does not happen again.
I recently spoke to Rod, who, as I have mentioned previously, was medically retired owing to post-traumatic stress disorder. This is not an issue for the Ministers who are present today, but I hope that members of the Department for Work and Pensions team will listen. Every two years, Rod has to prove again that he has PTSD and that he should be medically retired. That has a massive impact on his mental health, and when I spoke to him I observed that impact at first hand. I do not think it right that heroes like Rod should have to go through this. He has to relive that terrible night every two years, again and again. It is very difficult for him, and it can be very difficult for his family.
I welcome the Government’s wider remediation acceleration plan, and the measures to protect leaseholders from unexpected costs and eye-watering bills to fix building safety defects that they themselves did not cause. In Harlow, there have been many cases of leaseholders facing such bills, and for many years this cladding was not seen as a defect. Criminalising those who fail to remediate or mitigate such important elements is a huge step in the right direction. It is clear that that failure costs lives, and I am glad that this Government are recognising the seriousness of it. I am pleased that the Bill provides for financial penalties to ensure that people are legally obliged to provide truthful information—which, as we know, did not happen in the aftermath of Grenfell—and will face penalties if they do not.
I also welcome the statutory duty to remediate multi-occupied residential buildings in England that are over 11 metres high or have at least five storeys. One of my constituents, Claire Miles, has talked about the tragic loss of her mother Daphne in a care home fire in April 2017 when building safety legislation applied only to buildings at least 30 metres high. Some consideration should be given to that during the Bill’s passage. While, as has been recognised, Harlow has great fire safety provision for high-rise buildings, earlier legislation has forgotten buildings such as care homes.
Finally, I thank the Secretary of State, the Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith and the entire MHCLG team for bringing forward this legislation and for their continued championing of building safety—something that I think we can all agree is incredibly important. Everybody deserves a home, as we discussed yesterday, but more than that, everyone deserves a safe home.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
Time and again today, we have remembered all those who tragically died in the Grenfell fire all those years ago. We look back on that not only because they deserve our tribute, but because we all know in our hearts that it did not need to happen. It could have been avoided, and the warnings were there years before. As has been said a few times today, the fire happened nine years ago, and we still have not got things right.
I cannot speak any more eloquently than my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) did. He spoke for only a few minutes, but he has campaigned relentlessly on behalf of his constituents for many hours, days and months—not only to make sure that we get the truth and learn from it, but to keep championing all those people who are still worried. Many feel trapped in homes in which they should be able to live safely and comfortably, but in which they cannot.
I really welcome what the Government are doing today, and I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and her Ministers. In 2024, the Secretary of State began the remediation acceleration plan, because it was taking way too long. Relevant legislation has been passed in this place before, but we see that it is not delivering. There are too many gaps, and I believe that this Bill is a great step forward. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for saying that she will add to it, and I am sure that she has been listening carefully to what has been said today and will continue to listen, not just to us in this place but to the people we represent. I know that she and her Ministers have been meeting people affected by this issue and representatives of End Our Cladding Scandal. One of the big champions in my constituency, Sophie Bichener, has been working in this area for years, and she has acknowledged those meetings.
When we talk about examples in our constituencies, we sometimes think that MPs who represent big cities will have a lot, which might be true. I represent a new town, just like my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), who represents another fine new town that is not far from Stevenage. We do not have as many examples as the House might think, but I want to highlight two. It does not matter that we do not have many, because those residents who have been trapped for so long really feel it. In Stevenage we have Monument Court and Vista Tower, and I want to relay a couple of my residents’ expressions of despair.
One resident of Vista Tower said:
“Since the Grenfell disaster we have been imprisoned in a property that we cannot sell, has no apparent value and has continuing yearly safety improvements. But worst of all, the owners of flats have no visibility as to when this nightmare will finish.”
Another said:
“I am living in a home that I know to be unsafe, with no clear timeline for when the necessary remediation work will be completed. The ongoing uncertainty is causing significant stress and anxiety, particularly as I have two young children whose safety and wellbeing are my priority. I am also facing increased insurance costs and am having to deplete my savings to cover the financial burden. I cannot sell my property because of the unresolved cladding issues, leaving me effectively trapped in a home that may be unsafe and unable to move forward with my life.”
Those residents are just two examples of people trapped in their own homes, not knowing if they are safe after all these years.
Residents in Vista Tower are now going through a second round of remedial works. They have been told that they are to be decanted, but for how long? We do not know. When is that going to happen? We do not know. Vista Tower itself has been the subject of many legal actions going on for years, and there seems no end to it. We have to give those residents the hope of an ending, so that they can get on with their lives, feel safe in their homes and, if they want to do so, move on and live elsewhere.
I am pleased that the Bill takes us forward on some of those matters, but it has been very difficult for many Members to hear about some of the issues that have been raised today. We need to ensure that non-qualifying leaseholders, such as those living in Vista Tower and Monument Court, are not left with unaffordable bills to fix historical defects, such as the fire safety defects, so I am pleased to hear movement from the Secretary of State in that regard.
Dr Pinkerton
The hon. Gentleman’s constituents’ stories resonate deeply, and are similar to those I hear from my constituents. Nine different properties in my constituency had EWS1 forms that were signed by a rogue fire safety engineer called Adam Kiziak, which has introduced further uncertainty and anxiety, alongside everything that the hon. Gentleman has spoken about. That is why I feel so passionately that this Bill could go just a little bit further, and call for the independent regulation of fire safety engineers to bring added certainty to those who do have to commission forms that ultimately speak to the quality, but also the safety, of the building. Will he join me in making that case?
Kevin Bonavia
I thank the hon. Member for making a very sensible point. I am pleased that the Bill takes forward the idea of having independent actors to step in, which I would always welcome—the more of that, the better. We cannot have the developers or freeholders of these buildings essentially marking their own homework.
We must ensure that buildings are reviewed holistically and made safe as a whole. As I have said, Vista Tower is facing a second round of intrusive works and the decanting of residents, so we need to ensure that such things can be avoided. That is why it is so important to have compliance plans and, more importantly, to ensure that residents are informed of and are able to influence and shape these plans. I welcome the moves in that regard.
For Vista Tower, there have now been eight years of fighting, with no timeline for ending it. We must therefore make sure that remediation compliance plans guarantee access to assessments, work specifications, delivery timetables and completion evidence, with real and meaningful engagement for leaseholders, while also providing them with accessible routes to challenge decisions and raise concerns about their homes. In that way we can give leaseholders, but also the flats market as a whole, confidence that when work is required, it will be done properly and collaboratively.
Today is a day of real progress—we are filling the gaps one by one—and I am pleased to hear that Ministers are listening. They should carry on listening to make sure that the Bill becomes an Act that finally gives people who are living in fear of the future and uncertain about what is going to happen to their home the release from all of that that they truly deserve.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last, but hopefully not least.
I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for bringing forward the Bill, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for all his work to honour the victims and families of Grenfell, and to ensure that nobody else suffers the horror of such unavoidable tragedy.
I fully support the Government’s determination to accelerate remediation and better protect leaseholders who have been left carrying the emotional and often financial burden of a crisis they did not create. As we have heard from many hon. Members from across the House today, too many people across the country have been trapped in unsafe homes, facing uncertainty, financial anxiety and delays that have stretched on for years. Everyone deserves to live in a safe home and that is why the Bill is so important. I welcome many of the provisions in the Bill, from the clear legal duty of responsibility for unsafe buildings to the stronger enforcement with clear consequences to ensure that leaseholders are not left paying the price for failures that were not their fault.
I do, however, have to be honest about some of the practical barriers that are impacting my constituents and delaying works on the ground. In my constituency, residents in several high-rise blocks have contacted me repeatedly about remediation delays. In one case, a developer is ready to proceed with the necessary cladding works that would make the building safe, but has been waiting for approval from the Building Safety Regulator since the middle of 2024. The decision on certification has been pushed back six times. I have written to the Minister in the other place, Baroness Blake, regarding the case, but it remains a significant problem and the BSR delayed approval yet again only last month.
Another property in my constituency is similarly impacted. The contractor has bought materials and submitted the relevant applications to the BSR in August 2025, but was rejected several months later. The application was submitted again, but it was rejected in May this year. In the meantime, residents continue to live with significant damp, mould and fire safety issues in the building.
These are not isolated incidents and I could relay others—and I will, because this is significant. One building, a social housing building in my constituency, had some botched internal works, leaving really unacceptable conditions in communal areas and embarrassment for residents. One of them brought me in and showed me a piece of exposed wall with mould all over it where they had affixed a nametag that said, “Jackson Pollock 2024”. That building is on a hill, and when they brought in a contractor to remediate the internal bits of the building, they discovered that the building is smaller at the front than it is at the back. They then had to reclassify the building and submit an application to the Building Safety Regulator. I have very little faith in the fact that those residents, who have already been waiting more than two years for the internal works, will get them done in good time.
This is not about weakening standards or cutting corners; it is about robust scrutiny and effective regulation that is absolutely necessary. The point is that residents, leaseholders and good contractors who are trying to do the right things should not be increasingly frustrated by these delays. My residents need certainty that the plans to make their homes safe can actually take place and be done at pace.
We on the Labour Benches all want stronger regulators, but there appear to be genuine questions about whether the Building Safety Regulator has sufficient capacity and specialist resources to process applications as quickly as everyone would like. Concerns about delays with the regulator have been raised elsewhere, including by the Industry and Regulators Committee in the other place. The provisions in the Bill are necessary and long overdue, but if the ambitions of the Bill are to be realised in practice, the Building Safety Regulator must have the capacity and resources to match those ambitions. I would be grateful if the Minister, in her closing remarks, could address Building Safety Regulator resourcing and capacity. Will she also consider meeting Members from across the House whose constituents are experiencing delays, so that these concerns can be discussed directly? The regulator must have the staff, expertise and support it needs to ensure that vital remediation projects are not delayed unnecessarily.
The people living in these buildings have waited long enough. They deserve safe homes. They deserve certainty and to see progress. I am proud to support the Bill and I hope that the Minister will address my concerns in her closing remarks.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
With the leave of the House, I call the shadow Minister.
Katie Lam
I would like to acknowledge some of the Back-Bench contributions to the debate. The sheer volume and range of locations affected by unsafe cladding is remarkable and speaks to the scale of this terrible problem. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn), and the hon. Members for Ipswich (Jack Abbott), for Woking (Mr Forster), for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey), for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer), for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), for Putney (Fleur Anderson), for Harlow (Chris Vince), for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) and for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale), who have all spoken of the challenges that their constituents have in dealing with that terrible problem.
We of course heard from the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell). It must be a great responsibility to be the Member of Parliament for so many victims and survivors of Grenfell tower in his constituency—an area that we both know well. I am sure that he feels that acutely. Some of his descriptions of rogue and dangerous activity were shocking.
As outlined in my opening remarks, those of us on the Opposition Benches share the fundamental aims of the Bill. We too believe that every building with unsafe cladding should be fixed—and fixed fast. The questions that the Opposition pose are not about the Bill’s aims, but about whether it will work in practice and whether the full implications of its provisions have been considered by the Government.
The evidence suggests that remediation is slow mainly because there are not enough capable professionals to do the work, because the work is hard and unpredictable, and because delivery is fragmented. Elements of that have been acknowledged by Members on both sides of the House. In our view, there is a risk that a Bill that creates new legal duties, deadlines and penalties, but not a single new assessor or contractor, may add more pressure on the system and risk making the problem worse.
As the Bill progresses, I hope that the Government will be able to answer some of the questions raised in this debate. First, on capacity, every building in scope of the Bill must be assessed within a year of commencement, and every assessment that recommends work must be audited by Homes England. What assessment have the Government made of whether there are enough qualified people to meet that deadline and, if there are not, what happens to owners who miss the deadline through no fault of their own?
Secondly, on the new legal duties and associated offences, owners could face up to two years in prison or a penalty of up to £500,000 for deliberately failing to remediate as soon as reasonably practicable. What guidance will the relevant regulators be given on what that means in cases where qualified professionals are simply not available? Can the Minister be sure that an owner who is trying in good faith to commence remediation, but cannot get the work done, will not be prosecuted?
Thirdly, on group accountability, in 2022 Parliament allowed a court or tribunal to look through a company structure when it was just and equitable to do so. The Bill hands a version of that power to regulators through the power to issue penalty notices. Why was the judicial route not enough? Fourthly, on manufacturer’s liability, the 2022 Act gave building owners a route to claim against those who made defective cladding. The Bill loosens that test, but why was the 2022 test not sufficient? Have the Government made any assessment of what that will do to insurance costs and the cost of building new homes?
There is also a great deal that we have not yet seen. Remediation management orders will be set out in guidance that has not yet been published. Councils are being given new duties, including the remediation backstop, with no clear sense yet of how they will be resourced. Parliament should see the detail before it can approve those powers. The Opposition intend to table amendments in Committee to test each of those points, and we look forward to continuing that discussion with our shared ultimate aim in mind.
The Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith (Florence Eshalomi)
I thank Members from across the House for their contributions. As the Secretary of State, the shadow Minister and many hon. and right hon. Members outlined, next June will mark a decade since the Grenfell fire disaster took the lives of 72 people, including 18 children. None of us can imagine the horror that survivors, families and friends suffered that day, and the community will continue to carry that trauma, anguish and suffering throughout their lives.
It is a tragedy that should never have happened, and one that must never happen again, but we must be honest and say that it is unacceptable that far too many people in this country still do not have the safety and security of a safe roof over their heads, nine years after Grenfell. This is not just about building safety; it is about giving everyone the peace of mind that a safe, decent and affordable home brings. We must ask ourselves how we can expect anyone to sleep soundly, and get on in life, if the building they sleep in every night is covered in dangerous and flammable cladding. The building safety crisis must be resolved, homes must be made safe, and residents must be allowed to live their lives.
This Government were elected on a manifesto that made commitments to accelerate remediation, better protect leaseholders and make those responsible for the building safety crisis pay to put it right. Our remediation acceleration plan and this Bill deliver on that pledge. By introducing a register of 11 to 18 metre buildings and a national standard for assessing buildings, the Bill will finally bring certainty on the scale of the problem and the work required to fix it. By creating a new legal duty to remediate, backed up by substantial new penalties for inaction, we will compel those responsible to fix their buildings without delay.
Gideon Amos
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way during a very serious and measured speech. She referred to the standard of remediation. A number of Members, including myself, raised use of the standard of tolerability instead of building regulations. Are the Government willing to review the standard of remediation so that after remediation, buildings are not left, as they are now, with flammable cladding on the outside?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. A number of Members have raised the matter of remediation standards. I know that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), who is sitting next to him, also raised it in a recent Westminster Hall debate that I responded to.
Many right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that the Bill will make independent auditing of fire risk appraisals of external walls mandatory. We are confident that PAS 9980 has a robust and appropriate methodology for assessing the risk of fire spreading throughout the building. The Bill will also look at the independent auditing and the statutory requirement, ensuring that additional checks on those assessments have been carried out properly. To reassure Members, Homes England will also audit all assessments that recommend mitigation and remediation and will have the power to audit other assessments.
By delivering the remediation backstop, we will ensure that no building and no resident is left behind, even if the person responsible for the building is determined to ignore the risks it presents to residents. By creating stronger avenues for redress against construction product manufacturers, we will ensure that those responsible for the cladding safety crisis pay towards the cost of fixing it.
I thank the Secretary of State and the Building Safety Minister, Baroness Blake, for bringing the Bill forward. I also thank all the Ministers who came before me for the work they did to make this Bill a reality, including the Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed) and my hon. Friends the Members for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon) and for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali).
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
On the subject of fire safety, residents of Fletton Quays in my constituency were shocked recently to see nearly all internal fire doors fail an inspection; it turns out that they had not been inspected for many years and had been allowed to fall into disrepair, and residents are now on the hook to replace them at high cost, as well as being subjected to dangerous conditions. Does the Minister agree that that is really not on, and would she ask officials to examine whether that might be happening in other blocks of flats around the country, meaning that it might merit Government intervention?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. This Bill deliberately focuses on unsafe external cladding, because the Grenfell tower inquiry phase 1 report found that cladding on external walls. We will be looking at the area he raises as the Bill progresses, so I give him that assurance.
I now turn to a number of comments made by right hon. and hon. Members today, and apologise that I may not be able to cover all Members’ comments. I start with the shadow Minister and the comments she made on the limited workforce capacity of fire safety technicians. We will continue to review that area. There is additional funding to ensure that those fire assessors are in place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) outlined why this is such an important issue. I thank him for tireless campaigning and continued work with the survivors of Grenfell. He highlighted some of the dangers that still exist and mentioned the increasing costs that many of his constituents are facing—examples of some residents who are having to pay eye-watering bills to fix the issues. One of the matters I worked with him on in my former role as Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee was the national oversight mechanism. It is not right that we are having to go through those recommendations one by one. I hope I can assure him that the Government accepted all the inquiry’s recommendations and we are making progress.
The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) outlined the issue with PAS 9980. I hope that he will be assured that we will continue to look at that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) detailed the real-life nature of this issue and the fact that many leaseholders continue to be left in limbo, and their mental state is being affected. Leaseholders are in limbo, waiting for remediation, sometimes having to spend a decade out of their homes. Residents continue to face this injustice, and I thank him for continuing to work with leaseholders.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) outlined the work that he has been leading around Ocean Village and Oceana Boulevard. That building was built only 20 years ago—yet, 10 years in, fire safety defects were outlined. That shows why we have to continue to work to ensure that all buildings are safe, including some that were deemed to be new builds.
The hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) detailed the tragic case of her 97-year-old constituent, who is having to rely on her children to buy her property to give her some certainty. They are now lumbered with a property that they cannot sell—simply for doing the right thing for their parent. No child should have to go through that process and face those costs. That is why we are making sure that the developers are paying for the work with the developer remediation fund.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mike Reader) outlined points that a number of Members highlighted. We will continue to look at the issues around insurance and non-qualifying leaseholders. I know he has expertise and knowledge on construction product manufacture, and I will continue to engage with him as the Bill progresses.
My hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) outlined the work she has been doing with her constituents for many years and praised the decisive action taken by Salford council to act fast and think later, and then seek those costs back. It shows that our local authorities, where possible, are stepping forward to fill the gaps where developers have failed, but councils should not have to be leading on this. The developers of the buildings should be the ones paying, and we hope that the Bill will identify those owners.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn) outlined the fantastic work that he has been doing with the Leeds cladding campaigners. He also highlighted the issues around the delays in building safety regulations. Under the leadership of Lord Roe and Charlie Pugsley, I hope that Members will see that we are making progress in building regulation standards.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) highlighted the tragic case of the fire at Neutron Tower, which sadly resulted in a resident losing his life. My hon. Friend knows that the investigation is still ongoing, so it would be inappropriate for me to comment, but we are continuing to work with relevant parties to ensure that the safeguarding and wellbeing of displaced residents is addressed as soon as possible. The London Fire Brigade has stated that the fire is believed to be accidental, but as this investigation is ongoing, we will continue to engage with my hon. Friend and her residents.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) highlighted the PTSD faced by his constituent. That shows the real-life consequences that many of our firefighters—the first responders to that tragic fire and the many tragic fires we continue to see—have to live with. I hope that Ministers in the DWP will take into account how my hon. Friend’s constituent has to reapply every two years to that Department.
This is a real issue on which all hon. Members need to continue to engage and discuss. I hope that hon. Members will continue to engage constructively with us as the Bill progresses through the Public Bill Committee.
The passion with which hon. Members have spoken is testament to the desire we all share to bring the building safety crisis to an end and protect the residents and leaseholders who desperately need and want to see action. The Government are delivering on that. We are providing more remediation funding than ever before, remediating more buildings than ever before, prioritising higher-risk buildings and putting the safety of residents at the heart of our work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) spoke about the work of his constituent, whom the Secretary of State and I had the pleasure of meeting two weeks ago, along with cladding scandal group members. No one could have been unmoved when listening to their testimony, given the real-life issues and trauma that the ongoing delay is causing to so many. People’s lives are on hold—they cannot plan for their future, and they are in financial ruins. Tragically, some people have died waiting for the issue to be resolved.
Alongside the package of measures we have delivered to accelerate remediation and support leaseholders, the Bill will ensure that no building and no resident is left behind. I hope that hon. Members see that the Bill will bring certainty, clarity and accountability to drive forward remediation and make every building safe. That is what we owe to residents, and that what we owe to the country.
I am grateful to hon. Members from all parties who have given their support to work with us on the Bill. In that spirit, I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 8 December 2026.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Rachel Hopkins.)
Question agreed to.
Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (Money)
King’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State, and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Rachel Hopkins.)
Question agreed to.
Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (Ways and Means)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the charging of fees and charges under or by virtue of the Act.—(Rachel Hopkins.)
Question agreed to.
Business without Debate
17:53 - The House divided: - Ayes: 321 / Noes: 66 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Petitions
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
Although the recent creation of a banking hub in Wymondham has already improved access to in-person banking services, Wymondham still does not have a full-service post office branch, even though appropriate premises exist. The petition, signed by nearly 1,800 South Norfolk residents, calls for a new full-service post office in Wymondham town centre.
The petition states:
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage the Post Office to establish a full-service Post Office branch in Wymondham town centre.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the constituency of South Norfolk,
Declares that the creation of a new Banking Hub in Wymondham has improved access to in-person banking services; further declares that Wymondham does not currently have a full-service Post Office branch and would similarly benefit from the creation of a new Post Office branch; and further declares that appropriate premises already exist, which should be utilised to create a new full-service Post Office branch.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage the Post Office to establish a full-service Post Office branch in Wymondham town centre.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P003246]
Martin Rhodes (Glasgow North) (Lab)
Nearly 1,000 people have signed this petition online or by pen calling for Yorkhill fire station to be saved from closure by the Scottish Government. The local expertise of firefighters at neighbourhood stations such as Yorkhill ensures that response times are fast and public safety is prioritised. The loss of this vital local service raises concerns that public safety will be further put at risk, with longer response times after almost two decades of cuts to public services.
The petition states:
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to make representations to the Scottish Government regarding the importance of maintaining adequate fire and rescue provision for residents in Yorkhill and surrounding areas, and to raise concerns about the proposed closure of Yorkhill fire station.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the proposed closure of Yorkhill Fire Station by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service risks weakening fire and emergency response capacity in Glasgow, increasing response times, and placing additional strain on neighbouring stations; and further declares that local residents rely on Yorkhill Fire Station as a vital part of community safety infrastructure and strongly oppose its closure.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to make representations to the Scottish Government regarding the importance of maintaining adequate fire and rescue provision for residents in Yorkhill and surrounding areas, and to raise concerns about the proposed closure of Yorkhill Fire Station.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P003253]
Services for Children in Care
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
I would like to take this opportunity, as I have not yet had one, to warmly welcome the Minister to his place. I know that he is covering tonight for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), but I am sure that he will do a fantastic job. I know that in his role on early education, which is also an area of interest for me, he will be a steadfast champion and a fantastic member of this Government, so I welcome him.
I first applied for this debate after a conversation I had at the West Chadsmoor NHS clinic back in June. I had gone there to talk to the team about the fantastic Pride in Place funding coming to our area and to meet some of the brilliant clinicians based there who specialise in areas such as child and adolescent mental health services, paediatric podiatry, occupational health and various forms of family support. As I am sure Members across the House will have experienced, I often leave a visit in my constituency with much more work than I walked in with, but that is of course what I was elected to do, and it is a pleasure to do that work.
One of the conversations I had at West Chadsmoor raised an issue I felt needed to be brought to this House. It was about vulnerable children being placed in Staffordshire by local authorities elsewhere in the country and the problems that arise when the right people are not told that those children are coming. I heard from clinicians that increasingly they are coming across young people who have been placed in our area without Staffordshire county council being notified. Sadly, CAMHS staff sometimes encounter those children for the first time when they are in a serious mental health crisis. The doctors I spoke to described young people who might be self-harming or experiencing suicidal thoughts. These are children who will almost certainly have already experienced deep trauma, family breakdown and considerable instability. Then they are moved miles from home—sometimes hundreds of miles—and the support that they had, we hope, been receiving does not always follow them.
The statutory requirement is for the responsible local authority to notify the host local authority when a child or young person in care is placed within its area. but I am hearing that this does not always happen and does not always include the relevant information regarding identified risks and support needs. Consideration should also be given to the suitability of the placement, such as the availability of local services. When a local authority decides to place a child in another part of the country, that child arrives with their own history, their own vulnerabilities and, often, an established package of support. Yet the authority responsible for receiving them may not even know they are there.
The clinicians who want to do their best to replicate that support are sometimes left on the back foot. They may only discover the child when something has gone wrong and they come to them in a very bad way. That is not a sensible way to organise care for any child, let alone one who is already vulnerable, which is why, of course, the legal duty to inform exists.
In my constituency, we have seen rapid growth in independent children’s homes in recent years, partly because of the relatively low property prices but also, as we know, because of a chronic lack of foster carers. As a former foster carer myself, I very much welcome the recruitment campaign that the Department launched last week.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward the debate. He always brings incredibly important debates to Westminster Hall and the Chamber, including on the Adjournment, and I congratulate him on their standard and the contribution he makes to this House on behalf of his constituents, which is appreciated. He mentioned fostering. The Fostering Network found that only 33% of foster carers report that their allowances fully cover the cost of raising a child. Approximately 66% of people believe that they could be a good foster carer if there were no practical barriers. During this cost of living crisis, does he agree that we must recognise the additional pressures and that more must be done to financially support those who have a heart for fostering children to both take this on and be equipped to do so?
Josh Newbury
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He always has a kind word to say and a valuable contribution to make to any debate on any topic, which is quite impressive. He is absolutely right to highlight the fact that there are so many people in our country who would love to foster and have the attributes and the motivation to do so, but who simply cannot afford to because the costs they would have to meet exceed the payment they would get. We need to raise awareness of the fact that fostering is paid for—many people do not realise that—and we need to bring those stories to the House, as he has rightly done, to highlight the need to do far more to support our foster carers, who do an incredible amount.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I have constituents who are foster parents of children with extremely complex needs. It is a laudable but very challenging vocation. Placements often fail because the foster parents do not get the wraparound support and respite that they need. Such breakdowns can be even more challenging if the children are from out of area and then end up getting moved again. Does my hon. Friend agree that all councils must provide the correct support and respite for our foster parents?
Josh Newbury
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who speaks from deep personal knowledge of this topic. She is right to highlight the experience of foster carers in her constituency, who all too often feel that the buck always stops with them and that there is never any let-up. It can be an incredibly challenging role—we are talking about some of the most vulnerable children in our society, who often have incredibly complex needs that present themselves in many different ways. It is the responsibility of our society as a whole to ensure that those children are well cared for, but we also need to ensure that our foster carers have the support and the wraparound care that is needed to succeed, because they play such an incredible role. When my husband and I were fostering, we were very fortunate to have that support from our county council, and we need to ensure that that support is available to everybody.
Staffordshire is increasingly welcoming children who are placed in our county by local authorities elsewhere in the country, and I am very glad that our county is able to play that role in caring for vulnerable young people. The figures for Cannock Chase give us a sense of how the picture is changing. In 2025-26, five children’s homes opened and two closed, with a net increase of seven places. The county council told one of the councillors in my constituency that there are 19 homes for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and seven for children with learning difficulties. Because of the high level of EBD homes, the county council is even taking the step of asking potential providers not to set up new EBD homes in my constituency for the time being, despite the shortages we are all aware of.
As more homes open, our local services clearly have a growing role in supporting children whose previous care arrangements may have been organised hundreds of miles away. I am proud that Staffordshire can provide care for those children, but I want to ensure that the local authorities placing them here are giving our services the information that they need early enough to plan properly. My point is not that Staffordshire should do less to support these children; it is that, if we are going to provide that care, we must have the communication and co-ordination needed to do it as well as possible. These children deserve more than a placement address; they deserve a joined-up package of care that follows them wherever they move to.
The doctors I spoke to explained that, when Staffordshire county council receives the appropriate notification, CAMHS has a chance to contact the young person’s previous NHS trust, establish what support they have been receiving and work out how that support can be continued locally. That is the difference between planning for a child’s needs and reacting when those needs escalate. Without notification, that opportunity is taken away. The receiving services may not know about the child, may not have their clinical history and may not understand what treatment or support has been interrupted. It also means that GPs may not know that a young person has entered their area; diagnoses, risks and existing care plans may not accompany the placement; responsibility for GP registration, crisis support and ongoing care may remain unclear; services might respond without essential clinical and contextual information; and young people may experience avoidable crisis escalation—emergency department attendance and in-patient stays are all too common.
Fragmented arrangements can undermine safeguarding and continuity of care. Commissioning of provision is carried out by local authorities, but if they are not aware of what has been commissioned from the home area, which can often include a comprehensive health package to sustain the placement, it is not hard to see where things can go wrong. In some cases, local services can end up duplicating already commissioned input, leading to double-funded provision.
That complexity is compounded when multiple providers operate within one geographical area. In Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, there are multiple CAMHS providers, alongside specialist children in care health teams hosted by different organisations. Acute hospitals attended by young people may be managed by separate provider trusts, many of which do not have access to community health records that are held elsewhere. These organisational boundaries can create barriers to timely information sharing and co-ordinated care.
Similarly, when children move between multiple out-of-area placements, information can become fragmented across different systems and accessing records held by external providers may not be possible. The issue is particularly relevant to my constituency and the wider Staffordshire area, where, as I mentioned earlier, we have seen an increase in the number of children’s homes in recent years. As that number grows, we need to be confident that the right safeguards, oversight and support are keeping pace. A children’s home is not simply a property with staff in it—it is a place where some of our most vulnerable children should receive the care, stability and specialist support that they really need.
To give a tragic example of how badly things can go wrong, I will share one story from Cannock Chase. Last summer, a constituent in Hednesford raised concerns with me about the care being provided to a vulnerable young person in an independent children’s home very close to where he lived. That young person had clearly had an incredibly traumatic experience at a young age and had complex needs. The placement was intensive, to the point where the home accepted just one child at a time, supported by several staff, 24/7.
However, the company responsible for that home clearly had no intention of following through on the promised support package, which was not put in place. I heard that CAMHS were not even contacted, despite the company having put in its bid that local CAMHS services in my area were good and dealt with looked-after children very well, and that it had already made preliminary inquiries with CAMHS. The promised two-on-one or three-on-one support was not followed through either, to the point where the young person was at one point left alone and was found by neighbours banging on doors, clearly in extreme distress and mental health crisis.
I cannot independently verify every detail of that story and I do not want to prejudge any investigation that might take place. I have also visited excellent homes in my constituency, run by people who care deeply about providing the highest quality trauma-informed care, and I believe they are the majority. However, these concerns underline why we need effective oversight and clear accountability for the care being provided.
This is not a narrow issue affecting only children in residential care or those in Staffordshire alone. It speaks to a wider challenge in how we co-ordinate support across local authority boundaries. Figures that I have seen show that in 2024, 45% of looked-after children were placed outside their home local authority, up from 40% in 2015. While 69% were placed within 20 miles of home, that proportion has fallen from 76% in 2015.
The same challenges can affect kinship families. The 2024 annual survey by Kinship found that nearly a third of kinship families lived in a different local authority area from the one the child had lived in before coming into their care. Of those families, 57% reported difficulties accessing support as a result. These are different circumstances, but they point to the same question in my mind: when a child’s life crosses a local authority boundary, does the support they need follow them? Whether a child is living in a children’s home or being cared for by a grandparent, aunt, uncle or another family member, we must not allow administrative boundaries to become barriers to accessing the right support.
That leaves me with four questions for the Minister, who as I said is standing in for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington, who I know is doing a lot of work in this area. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure local authorities meet their existing statutory duty to notify receiving authorities when placing children out of area, and to identify where that duty is not being met?
Secondly, how are the Government working with health partners to improve the sharing of information when a child moves, so that their clinical history, existing treatment and crisis support arrangements can follow them and the services can plan ahead? Thirdly, how will the Government ensure that their regulatory and inspection framework provides effective oversight of children’s homes, so that the care and supervision children are promised is the care they actually receive? Finally, as the Government expand placement capacity and roll out regional care co-operatives—a very welcome development to my mind—how will they ensure that these reforms improve not just the availability of placements, but the co-ordination among local authorities, children’s homes and health services?
I began by talking about the clinicians at West Chadsmoor NHS clinic, and I will end by returning to them. They see children who have already faced more disruption to their young lives than most of us can even imagine. They want to give those children the stability, understanding and care that they deserve, and the least we should expect of the system that supports them is that it gives those professionals the information and co-operation they need to do that. A child should not have to experience a crisis before the services around them realise that support has fallen away; a family should not have to become an expert in local government responsibilities before it can access help; and a local authority boundary should never become a barrier to a child’s wellbeing.
I recognise that the Government are taking steps to address the shortage of placements. The £560 million investment in children’s homes and foster care, alongside the roll-out of regional care co-operatives, is intended to help to create more suitable places closer to where children live. That matters, because the best way to manage the challenges of out-of-area placements is, wherever possible, to avoid placing children so far away in the first place. When children do need to move, we must ensure that their care and support move with them.
I welcome the steps that this Government are taking to increase placement capacity, strengthen the system and improve how services work together. The investment in children’s homes and foster care provides an opportunity for us to ensure that more children can be cared for closer to home. My ask is that, as this work progresses, we keep the experience of the child at its centre. That means pushing local authorities to share information, health services being able to plan ahead, and clear accountability for ensuring that the support a child needs is actually there. Every child in care deserves stability, safety and the chance to thrive, wherever they are placed. I look forward to working with the Minister to ensure that the Government’s reforms deliver those outcomes for children in Staffordshire and across the country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Paul Waugh)
I thank Members for attending and contributing to this debate. This is a deeply important subject, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) for bringing it before us today. As has already been noted, he is a doughty champion for his constituents and an excellent constituency MP. I had the privilege of knowing his Labour predecessor in Cannock Chase, Tony Wright, and my hon. Friend is more than living up to his example.
This Government are clear that children in care should grow up safe, supported and able to thrive, regardless of their background. Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and our children’s social care reset, we are delivering the biggest overhaul of children’s social care and child protection in a generation. We are delivering the change that we promised.
We are building a children’s social care system that puts families at the heart of our work. My hon. Friend has already referenced kinship care, which is really important in that. We know that keeping children in their immediate and wider family network is key for improving outcomes, but we want a system that builds rather than breaks relationships, ensuring that every care-experienced young person starts adulthood with loving, enduring relationships.
Let me address directly the questions that my hon. Friend put to me. On what steps the Government are taking to ensure that local authorities meet their existing statutory duties when placing children out of area and what happens when those duties are not met, let me be clear: if a local authority has to place a child outside their area, not notifying the incoming local authority is a breach of the law. It is imperative that that happens so that ongoing support can be arranged in the new area.
We know that far too many children are currently placed out of their local area when they come into care or are moved during their time in care. In 2025, 22% of children in care—that is 18,000 children—lived more than 20 miles from their home community. Sometimes, that distance is for a good reason—children might be moving to live with their wider family network—but too often, children are placed far from home, which disrupts their relationships with family and friends, their education and their access to the services that support them.
Where concerns arise that duties are not being met, as has been indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, they should be escalated through local safeguarding arrangements, with relevant partners working together to identify risks and co-ordinate action. Furthermore, Ofsted takes account of whether local authorities are complying with that duty through its ILACS inspections—the inspecting local authority children’s services framework—including whether the placing authority promptly notifies the receiving authority when a child moves into its area and ensures they can access services that meet their needs. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 strengthens the information sharing between agencies, while multi-agency safeguarding arrangements support safeguarding partners in identifying risks, sharing intelligence and co-ordinating action for children placed outside their home area. Additionally, as part of a wider communication, the Department wrote to local authorities earlier this year, reminding them of their statutory duty to inform host local authorities when placing children out of area.
My hon. Friend asked about working with health partners. Statutory guidance is clear that relevant services, including integrated care boards, should be notified before a child moves between placements, so that arrangements can be made to meet their needs. Where a move is made in an emergency, notification must follow within five working days. The guidance also recognises that identifying the right contact can sometimes be difficult, and it suggests practical steps, such as using generic inboxes to help ensure that information reaches the right organisation. More broadly, though, the new information-sharing duty strengthens the requirement on safeguarding partners, including in health, to share relevant information when a child relocates, so that important information about their safety and welfare is never lost. Importantly, the absence of a formal data-sharing agreement should not prevent information from being shared, where that duty applies. The Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS are working closely together to improve health outcomes for looked-after children and care leavers, and to ensure that information flows effectively between services and that there is no barrier to children receiving the support that they need.
Our reforms to children’s social care strengthen multi-agency working and information sharing, and the Home Again programme will bring social care, health, education and youth justice together around a single plan for children with the most complex needs. Just last week, we announced the new mental health pilot in Greater Manchester, which embeds mental health professionals in children’s social care teams. That pilot, which is called Care Together, replaces fragmented provision with faster access to expert, needs-led mental health support, including family therapy and support for parents and primary care-givers. I am excited to see the impact that this £9.4 million pilot will have on 7,000 children and their families across my constituency of Rochdale, as well as in neighbouring Stockport and Tameside.
Turning to my hon. Friend’s question about how the Government will ensure that their regulatory and inspection framework provides effective oversight of children’s homes, the Minister for children and families, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), keeps the adequacy of the regulatory framework under regular review. In April 2026, Ofsted introduced updates to the social care common inspection framework to promote high-quality inspections for children’s homes and other settings. That focus on the impact of services on the lives and relationships of children and families is crucial. Ofsted has recently consulted on further improvements to its inspection framework for children’s social care, and will set out plans for 2027 in due course.
Josh Newbury
It is good to hear that Ofsted is adapting and growing its inspection regime to reflect the fact that many children’s homes are opening, and the variation in practice seems quite large. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister for children and families to look into whether Ofsted’s capacity to carry out inspections matches the growth in children’s homes in certain parts of the country, such as mine? We are seeing rapid growth in a short space of time. We need to make sure that the situation does not run away from us in those areas, and to avoid poorer practice in areas where there are not as many inspectors as we need.
Paul Waugh
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will certainly pass that on to the Minister for children and families. He is right that we need the capacity to match the requirements that we are imposing.
My hon. Friend’s last point, which was about the impact of regional care co-operatives on improving sufficiency and co-ordination, is really important. We now have seven regional care co-operatives covering more than 100 local authorities, including his own, Staffordshire, through the west midlands partnership. I can confirm that regional care co-operatives are not simply about increasing placement capacity; as we have heard tonight, children in care can be involved with multiple services, across local authorities, health and justice, so co-ordinated regional planning and partnership working is a core requirement for these new regional care co-operatives. By bringing these partners together to forecast need and commission care more strategically, regional care co-operatives will help ensure that provision and wider support are better joined up around children’s needs—a point that my hon. Friend was right to make repeatedly. We should be focusing on the child; all the services around them should be child-centred.
I recognise the concerns about the distribution of children’s homes across England. They are legitimate, and they are shared cross-party. Some areas have a disproportionally high concentration of homes, while others have insufficient provision. That can contribute to children being placed further away from their support networks and can lead to poor outcomes. We know that can be driven by a focus on maximising profits; some providers are attracted by lower property costs. We know for sure that this is happening in the north, and in the west midlands.
We are taking action to reshape the children’s social care market and improve placement sufficiency to combat those problems. Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, we are rebalancing the market, increasing transparency, and helping local authorities to secure the placements that children need. We want the right homes in the right places, so that children, when it is in their best interests, are kept close to their communities. Our aim is to support provision where there is a clear need and the children’s needs can be fully met. We are also providing significant capital funding to deliver 540 new placements in local authority-owned children’s homes by March 2029, in 75 authorities. Two hundred will be specialist placements for children at risk of deprivation of liberty; 237 are already completed, registered and operational.
Several Members have mentioned the work that we are leading on fostering reforms to ensure that as few children as possible need to enter care in the first place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) rightly pointed out, there should be respite support for foster parents, but all too often, it is not there. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in the Chamber, was right to say that we should be removing the practical barriers to fostering. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase has personal experience of the impact of being a foster carer, and I want to put on record our thanks to him and all the foster parents who do such a marvellous job, day in, day out, and week in, week out, with some of the most vulnerable children in society. We owe them a deep debt of gratitude.
In March last year, 67% of all children looked after in England were living with foster families, but 46% of those children were placed out of their local area. That is why the Government have launched the fostering action plan that my hon. Friend mentioned. We are committed to creating 10,000 more foster places during this Parliament. The plan includes an England-wide recruitment campaign—I hope that Members have already read about it—which is challenging the myths that prevent people from considering fostering, and recruiting thousands more foster carers who can give children the loving, stable homes that they need and deserve. The plan is backed by an £88 million investment over two years, which includes funds for the expansion of dedicated regional foster carer recruitment hubs; support to enable foster carers to adapt their homes, so that they can care for more children; an increase in the number of Mockingbird peer-support clusters, which I know are greatly valued across the country; and the launch of a fostering innovation programme to support better outcomes for children.
We know that the best way to keep children safe and give them the best possible start in life is to support families before problems reach crisis point. Our “families first for children” pathfinders have tested that approach in 10 local authorities, bringing together earlier, more intensive family help, expert multi-agency child protection and wider family networks to identify problems sooner and help children to remain safely within their families, whenever that is in their best interests. We are now applying those lessons nationally through the families first partnership programme, backed by £2.4 billion over the next three years, including £853 million in 2026-27. This represents a fundamental shift towards prevention, strengthening families and ensuring that when serious safeguarding concerns arise, children benefit from co-ordinated expertise across agencies.
Let me again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase for bringing this important matter to the House, and reiterate the Government’s aim that every child in care should receive the same joined-up support, stability and opportunity that we would want for our own children. We recognise that local and national Government, health and education authorities, and every partner must work together for each child in our care. I know that my colleague the Minister for children and families—who has done such marvellous work in this regard, both inside and outside Government—will continue to push through the reforms we have discussed this evening, which the system needs so urgently, so that children are safe, supported, close to the people and places that matter to them most, and able to thrive.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Renewables Obligation and Electricity Capacity (Amendment) (British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme Excluded Electricity) Regulations 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (Blair McDougall)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Renewables Obligation and Electricity Capacity (Amendment) (British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme Excluded Electricity) Regulations 2026.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 7 September 2026. I acknowledge the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which provided helpful scrutiny of the regulations and did not draw them to the special attention of the House. I also acknowledge that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reported on the regulations and did not draw them to the special attention of the House.
These regulations deliver the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which is a flagship commitment of the modern industrial strategy. BICS is a central part of our drive to engineer the reindustrialisation of the UK. Reindustrialisation means building on the strengths of every part of our country, creating good jobs and connecting communities to the industries and opportunities of the future.
BICS will address the persistent competitiveness challenges facing British manufacturers by reducing electricity costs for eligible businesses. It will drive investment and economic growth in strategically important sectors across Great Britain. BICS will support frontier manufacturing industries within the IS-8 sectors and the foundational manufacturing industries that provide key inputs to their supply chains. This includes eligible businesses in automotive, aerospace, clean energy, life sciences, chemicals and steel, and many more.
The Government are committed to maintaining a competitive and resilient industrial base, but persistently high energy prices, especially electricity prices, have increasingly undermined investment, productivity and employment, particularly in manufacturing. For too long, British industries have faced some of the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe due to a combination of structural factors and policy costs. There is a need to address the immediate cost pressures that are facing the British manufacturing industry and stifling growth, which is precisely why BICS has been introduced.
BICS will exempt eligible manufacturing businesses from paying the indirect costs of the renewables obligation and feed-in tariffs from April 2027 and capacity market costs from October 2027. These costs are levied on electricity suppliers, which pass them on to domestic and non-domestic consumers through their electricity bills. BICS is expected to cut electricity costs by up to 25%, or £40 per megawatt-hour, and over 10,000 manufacturing businesses will be eligible.
The scheme is designed to support manufacturing businesses in high-growth and strategic sectors to be more internationally competitive, and to drive investment and economic growth across all regions of Great Britain. It will spread the benefits of growth across the country, supporting businesses rooted in communities across our regions, with the vast majority being small and medium-sized businesses.
The regulations are an important part of delivering that objective. They implement the renewables obligation and capacity market exemptions, and they enable the renewables obligation level for the 2027-28 obligation period to be revised in the light of BICS. They also provide for the BICS eligibility criteria and how the level of discount will be calculated. An instrument to exempt eligible businesses from the indirect costs of the feed-in tariff will also be made.
We recognise the tremendous challenges that British manufacturers are facing, and we have heard the call to go further. That is why eligible businesses will also receive an additional payment in 2027 related to the amount they would have received had the scheme gone live this year.
BICS will support British manufacturing businesses to thrive and become more competitive on the international market. It will allow them the freedom to invest further in their business and help drive economic growth across Great Britain. I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. It is also a pleasure to be opposite the Minister. We last met at MIRA in my constituency to talk about some of these issues that affect the automotive industry. He will be pleased to hear that I will not be dividing the Committee, as it is welcome news that the Government are looking at ways to reduce costs on businesses.
That being said, there are some fundamental questions about the regulations that need to be raised. The Government have correctly identified high energy costs as a major obstacle to British manufacturing, but their response seems to be to create a complicated system of exemptions that help selected businesses while leaving the majority facing uncompetitive costs. In essence, we need cheaper electricity for British industry in its entirety, so why are we effectively creating winners and losers, leaving the underlying problem unresolved?
The question is: who ultimately pays? There is legitimate concern that households or businesses that are excluded from the scheme may face higher costs. Also, why are so many businesses excluded? The eligibility rules favour selected manufacturing sectors, leaving other businesses to face higher energy bills. Why is the scheme unnecessarily complicated, with several tiers setting out the percentage a business can claim back? And fundamentally, does it address the real underlying problem?
The Minister has again pointed out that we have high industrial costs, some of the highest in the world. If BICS carves selected manufacturing out of existing electricity policy costs, that is welcome for them, and the Minister spoke repeatedly about those who are eligible. What about those who are not eligible? The Conservatives would get rid of the renewables obligation for every business, which would help every business.
That brings me to a couple of questions I have for the Minister. What we have to think about is the wider economy, so I am glad he is double-hatted and can look at businesses, too. What about pubs, restaurants, corner shops and the manufacturers that are not in the selected 10,000 given special treatment? What guarantee is there that those outside BICS will see no temporary or permanent rise in their energy bills?
The Government have accepted that carbon price support is no longer fit for purpose, and we agree. They accept that abolishing it will reduce electricity costs, and they intend to use the savings to offset the costs created by BICS. If removing carbon price support reduces electricity costs and helps finance industrial relief, why wait until April 2028? Why retain these wider carbon costs and continue to feed them into electricity prices? The question really is: why is CPS being retained through 2027-28 when BICS starts in 2027?
That leads us on to the fundamental final question, and it is interesting with the Budget coming tomorrow: how much additional Exchequer funding is required for 2027-28 specifically because carbon price support will not be abolished until April 2028? These are clearly fundamental differences between the Opposition and the Government. We favour a plan that would reduce costs for all businesses, not the lucky selected few.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats also support this statutory instrument. It is exactly the kind of relief for energy-intensive industries that we have been calling for, as these industries face some of the highest industrial electricity costs in the world. We must support manufacturing businesses to be more internationally competitive and to drive investment and economic growth across the UK.
However, the Liberal Democrats believe this support must not stop with large manufacturers. Hospitality businesses and other SMEs like those in West Dorset face the same high electricity costs but receive no equivalent relief, despite making up 99% of businesses in the UK. The Government must extend meaningful support to those outside the BICS-eligible sectors.
We also need faster action to reduce the link between electricity and gas prices. New solar power is 11% cheaper than the cheapest fossil fuel and onshore wind is 39% cheaper, yet our electricity pricing system still leaves British consumers facing the fourth highest energy prices globally. The Government have promised to look at decoupling electricity prices from gas, but the work needs to move faster so that households and businesses, not just energy-intensive industries, can benefit from cheaper renewable energy. The British industrial competitiveness scheme is a positive step, but we ask the Government to go further.
Sarah Edwards (Tamworth) (Lab)
I also lend my support to these regulations and the British industrial competitiveness scheme. As the Minister knows, I have long campaigned on business energy costs, about which we have talked at length, so I am really pleased to support this initiative. One of the businesses in my constituency, Alcon, is an advanced automotive manufacturer that will be applying to the scheme, which it is pleased to welcome. I am a member of the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, which similarly welcomes this initiative and particularly the payment to include 2026, as the Minister said.
I ask the Minister to speak to his good friend, the Chancellor, about further initiatives to help those businesses that do not currently qualify for the scheme. If we want growth in every postcode, we have to make sure that, as much as possible, we deal with the energy costs that we know are stifling all businesses, not just those in advanced manufacturing and other eligible sectors. I lend my support, but I ask the Minister to join me in petitioning to make sure that we support all businesses across the country, not just in Tamworth.
Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. These regulations put the British industrial competitiveness scheme into effect. Eligible manufacturers will be exempt from the indirect costs of the renewables obligation and the capacity market, with the Government saying that other consumers will not pay more.
In my North Somerset constituency, we sit on the edge of the West of England aerospace and advanced manufacturing cluster. These firms and their supply chains compete globally against rivals with far lower energy costs. Cutting those costs protects skilled jobs here, so I support the regulations.
Blair McDougall
I thank Members for taking part in this debate. I am grateful for the constructive tone, particularly from the Opposition. As the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth said, we sat around the table with some superb advanced manufacturers from the automotive sector in his constituency. They deserve not just our praise but our action, which is exactly what we are attempting to achieve with these regulations.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
It has just occurred to me that the cut-off date is 1 December. If firms miss that, will they have to wait a whole year to reapply, or is there some sort of mechanism to support them?
Blair McDougall
The hon. Gentleman is getting slightly ahead of what I was about to say, which is that we are racing to make sure that as many companies as possible make that deadline. Of course, we will keep things under review as we want the maximum number of companies to be eligible.
The scheme has been described as complex, and certainly its design is complex. Although it is complex for my civil service team, we are hopeful that, through the work we have done with the online eligibility checker, it will not be complex for businesses as they apply. I urge Members across the House to reach out to their local manufacturers to make sure they apply for this support.
There is an understandable consensus urging us to go further, which is completely fair. Energy prices are one of the country’s key competitive disadvantages. When BICS was first announced, we envisaged that around 6,000 businesses would be eligible, and that has now been extended to 10,000 businesses. With its design, we have already tried to go further. Both the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade and the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero have made it clear that they have wider ambitions.
It is perhaps a little late—I do not know whether the Budget has been sent to the printers—but I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth that both my Departments will continue to make that case to the Treasury, but I would say that drawing a greater amount on the Exchequer obviously has an opportunity cost for other industrial support we can give. We have to be careful to strike a balance.
Obviously, this is not the only intervention to assist with energy costs. We have the supercharger for energy-intensive industries, and the ceramics fund is specifically aimed at helping that sector, which is under stress with energy prices, to decarbonise, to electrify and to innovate. Ultimately, the long-term future for competitive energy prices in this country, after the experience of two fossil fuel shocks in five years, is to move towards cleaner, cheaper, more reliable power that we control.
I am grateful to Members for their contributions to this debate and for their support for these regulations. BICS is intended to challenge the long-term competitiveness disadvantages, and it will benefit over 10,000 manufacturing businesses in high-growth and strategic sectors across the country. We will review the scheme in 2030 to assess its continued effectiveness in supporting the competitiveness of manufacturing businesses. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Immigration and Asylum Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026-27 View all Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 October 2026 - (27 Oct 2026)
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Anna Turley)
I beg to move amendment 113, in clause 25, page 24, line 17, after “Crown Court” insert “or Court of Appeal”.
This amendment means that where the Court of Appeal makes a slavery and trafficking risk order under section 29(1)(a) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 any application to vary, renew or discharge the order will be determined by the Crown Court.
Anna Turley
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Dr Murrison. Good morning to all colleagues.
Before we get into the detail of the various clauses, I want to place part 5 of the Bill, and all the provisions concerning modern slavery, in their wider context. Modern slavery is a vicious, cruel and barbaric crime that dehumanises people. This Government are absolutely committed to tackling it in all its forms, and to identifying victims and giving them the support that they need.
However, for the Government to continue to meet that commitment, we must go further. We need a robust end-to-end system supporting earlier identification, ensuring clear decisions and addressing opportunities for improper use, so that the system works effectively for those it is intended to protect. These measures will improve alignment with wider immigration and support systems while enhancing protections for child victims. We need to reduce further the risk of exploitation by increasing expectations on businesses to tackle abuse in their supply chains, and by strengthening the enforcement powers available to our courts and the police to stop offenders in their tracks. The clauses in the Bill will do all that.
Clauses 25 to 34 are focused on strengthening slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. As modern slavery offending continues to evolve, the tools used to manage offending behaviour must keep pace to enable law enforcement and the courts to take more efficient and tougher action. Slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders give law enforcement agencies and the courts powers to apply for and grant orders to prohibit certain behaviour and to prevent harm, but they are not operating as effectively as they could be. The measures will strengthen those powers, making them more efficient and flexible to use, and improving their effectiveness as preventive tools. The changes will help to prevent further exploitation, better protect victims from harm and reduce the risk of exploitation and reoffending.
Clause 25 amends the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and provides the power for the court before which a person is acquitted of a slavery and human trafficking offence to make a slavery and trafficking risk order. The appropriate court is the court where the person was acquitted following a trial, the court allowing an appeal, or the Crown court on remittal following a successful appeal to the Court of Appeal.
Under existing legislation, a slavery and trafficking risk order is available only on application to the magistrates court. In circumstances where a person is acquitted of slavery and trafficking offences by the Crown court, the process places additional pressure on law enforcement and court time. Allowing the court that made the acquittal decision—including on appeal—to make an order, and extending the power to make an order to the higher court, will remove delays caused by the current process. As the trial court has already heard the evidence, it need not be repeated in the magistrates court. That will also mean that the courts can make an order of their own motion. That will improve efficiency and effectiveness by dealing with an individual immediately following the trial, reducing the risk of offending and preventing harm to others without delay.
The clause also enables the court to adjourn proceedings relating to a slavery and trafficking risk order on acquittal. The reasons we need adjournment of proceedings will be discussed in further detail under clause 30.
Government amendment 113 sets out a technical amendment to clause 25 to clarify which court is responsible for dealing with any future application to vary, renew or discharge a slavery and trafficking risk order made by the Court of Appeal on acquittal. The amendment makes it very clear that any subsequent application will be heard by the Crown court, rather than the Court of Appeal. That aligns the provision of the slavery and trafficking risk order made on acquittal with the existing approach under section 29 of the 2015 Act, which covers appeals of the decision to make an order and ensures a consistent process for managing such orders. The amendment will also ensure that the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal is not taken up by further matters in respect of the orders. I commend the amendment to the Committee.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.
Clause 25 allows a court to make a slavery and trafficking risk order when someone is acquitted of a slavery or trafficking offence. The court may do so only when it is satisfied that the person’s conduct shows a risk that they will commit such an offence, and that an order is necessary to protect people from harm. It is worth reminding the Committee that these orders exist because of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, brought forward by Theresa May as Home Secretary. That legislation put this country at the forefront of the fight against modern slavery, and the Opposition welcome measures that build on it.
Modern slavery is a vile crime. It preys on the vulnerable and hides in plain sight in our towns and on our high streets, and the police need every reasonable tool to get ahead of it. Let me be clear: an acquittal must be respected, and nobody should treat a risk order as a second verdict. However, a trial can bring out evidence of risky conduct that falls short of proving the offence charged. Where the statutory test is met, it makes sense for the court that has heard all the evidence to be able to act there and then. The alternative is that the police must start again in another court, with another application, another handover and another chance for the case to fall through the cracks. The person at risk cannot afford that.
This power will not use itself, however. Prosecutors and police need to have considered it before the trial ends, with the evidence ready and a plan for who will manage any restrictions afterwards. Otherwise, we risk passing a good clause that goes unused at the very moment it matters. Government amendment 113 corrects the Government’s own drafting—I suspect that it will not be the last correction we see in Committee. An appeal against such an order will be treated like an appeal against sentence. The Court of Appeal may end up making an order itself. The amendment ensures that any late application to vary, renew or discharge that order goes to the Crown court.
Officers should know which court to go to without a dispute over jurisdiction, so we support the amendment, but we should be honest about where many of the applications will land. The Crown court backlog reached a new record of more than 80,800 cases at the end of June. Every additional application joins that queue, and victims are already waiting far too long. That is not a reason to oppose this power, but it is a reason for the Government to tell the Committee what assessment they have made of the court time needed and how it will be found.
The clause also amends the Scottish and Northern Irish legislation, so that breaching one of the new orders is an offence in those jurisdictions, too. Those who exploit others do not stop at borders, and someone subject to an order must not be able to escape enforcement by moving to another part of the United Kingdom.
We support the clause and the Government amendment, but I would be grateful if the Minister answered three questions. First, who will be responsible for identifying suitable cases before an acquittal brings proceedings to an end, and what guidance will prosecutors be given? Secondly, how many of the orders do the Government expect to be made each year? Thirdly, if someone subject to one of the orders moves to Scotland or Northern Ireland, how will the order be enforced there promptly?
Anna Turley
I thank the shadow Minister for his response to this debate. As discussed, the clause makes important amendments to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and provides the power for the court before which a person is acquitted of a slavery and human trafficking offence to make a slavery and trafficking risk order.
Let me address a couple of the points made by the hon. Gentleman. He asked whether the measures would contribute to an increase in court time. The court will have heard the evidence during the trial or considered it on appeal, and it will be best placed to assess whether an order is necessary. The Government amendment will also mean that the evidence heard in the Crown court does not need to be repeated in the magistrates court, so court time in the magistrates court will be reduced, improving efficiency and effectiveness by handling the case immediately following the trial.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether the measures will increase the use of orders and how many orders we expect to see. As hon. Members know, we have published an impact assessment setting out the analytical case for the proposed measures, and developed a justice impact test with the Ministry of Justice. The estimated impacts are therefore only indicative, as no available evidence or data estimates the magnitude of the increase in the number of orders issued as a result of the changes, but the scenarios assume that the number of prevention or risk orders will increase by between 25% and 75%, which equates to an increase of 20 to 30 orders per year.
Government amendment 113 is technical and will merely clarify which court is responsible for dealing with any future application to vary, renew or discharge a slavery and trafficking risk order made by the Court of Appeal on acquittal. I commend it to the Committee.
Amendment 113 agreed to.
Clause 25, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 26
Power for Chief Constable of the British Transport Police Force to apply for prevention and risk orders etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
The hon. Member for Stockton West was right to raise the concerns of law enforcement partners about the limitations to the effectiveness of slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. We are seeking to deal with that issue through these clauses.
Our ambition is to ensure that law enforcement agencies have exactly the right tools they need to respond as offending evolves. Currently, the British Transport police must rely on a local force to make an application for a slavery and trafficking order on their behalf, even if the British Transport police have undertaken all relevant investigations. That means that there are delays between identifying a risk and an application for a slavery and trafficking order.
Clause 26 extends the list of bodies to allow the chief constable of the British Transport police to apply to a magistrates court to make, vary, discharge and renew slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. Giving an express power to the British Transport police will enhance the force’s capability to disrupt and tackle criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation on the transport network, and to keep pace with how modern slavery offending has evolved. It will also reduce costs and the time spent by local forces on making and processing applications of these orders on behalf of the British Transport police, and will enable swifter protection of victims by minimising the length of time between the offence taking place and the application being made. Extending these powers to the British Transport police will send a message to organised criminal gangs that all areas of law enforcement are equipped to take decisive action against perpetrators who exploit vulnerable individuals.
Clause 27 will remove a further limitation on law enforcement applications for slavery and trafficking orders: the restriction on chief officers of police of being able to make applications for slavery and trafficking orders only in relation to a person who lives in their police force area. The nature of modern slavery offending, and the links to other types of crime, have evolved since the Modern Slavery Act 2015 was introduced. Both criminal and sexual exploitation offending can take place across force areas, in multiple locations across the country, and online.
The legislation also needs to evolve to remain effective and to reduce the risk of offending and harm caused. The current legislation does not account for instances where the perpetrator has never visited or does not intend to visit the location where the offending occurs—that includes circumstances in which the offending takes place online. In such cases, the offending is more likely to be identified by the force in the location where the offending occurs, but the responsibility for applying for an order currently falls on the force in the perpetrator’s area of residence. Removing that restriction will enable law enforcement to improve the way it targets and disrupts modern slavery and human trafficking offending by relieving the burden on forces. It will cut back on application delays by allowing any force to apply for the order. The application will need to be made in the area where the defendant lives, or in the police area where the applicant believes the defendant is or is intending to come to. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Clause 26 brings the chief constable of the British Transport police into the arrangements for applying for slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. Clause 27 widens the ability of territorial police forces to apply for these orders against people who live outside their area. The Opposition welcome both clauses.
The gangs behind modern slavery do not respect police boundaries, and our ability to stop them should not be hemmed in by those boundaries. The gangs move people by road and rail, they recruit in one town and exploit in another, and they rely on the gaps between agencies. Officers on our railways might be the first to see what is going on. If a British Transport police officer keeps seeing the same man shepherding the same frightened young people between stations, and gathers the evidence and identifies the risk, the next step should not be a phone call to ask another force to make the application.
Clause 27 deals with the same problem for territorial forces. Under the current law, a force can apply only in respect of someone who lives in its area or who intends to come into its area, but someone can live in one force area and do their damage in another. The force holding the evidence should be able to act, but wider powers require clear responsibility. If several forces have an interest in the same individual, who leads? Who checks that the person is complying with the order? Who answers the phone when a victim reports contact that might breach the order? Criminals exploit gaps, and we should not create new gaps between police forces.
Let me make a point that applies to the whole of part 5 of the Bill, so that I do not have to repeat it when addressing every group of amendments. Every new power in clauses 25 to 34 comes with work attached. Officers must recognise when an order is appropriate, build an application that will stand up in court, attend hearings and then manage the order for years. The British Transport police already have a demanding job keeping passengers safe, and our courts are already stretched. This is not about point-scoring on resources, but none of those powers will work just because a clause has been passed. Officers need training, guidance and capacity, and Ministers cannot hand forces new duties and leave them to pick up the bill.
We support clauses 26 and 27, but I would be grateful if the Minister could answer the following questions. First, were these changes requested by chief officers, including the chief constable of the British Transport police, and if so, what problems did they identify? Secondly, will there be an agreed protocol in place before these powers come into force, setting out which force leads when more than one force is involved? Thirdly, what assessment have the Government made of the training, guidance and capacity that forces will need to use the new powers set out in this part of the Bill?
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and his questions, and we appreciate his support for these important clauses.
Put simply, clauses 26 and 27 address the important issue of how law enforcement agencies will deal with the issues in their area. Clause 26 extends the provisions to the British Transport police, while clause 27 removes the restriction on chief officers of police of being able to apply for orders only in relation to people living in their local area.
As I set out earlier, currently there are unnecessary limitations on law enforcement’s ability to apply for slavery and trafficking orders. The constraints on how the orders can be applied for restrict their effectiveness. This means that we could be doing more to manage the risks identified, to protect vulnerable people who are at risk of exposure to these horrendous crimes.
To manage that, we have worked closely with enforcement colleagues—including, to respond to the hon. Gentleman, the British Transport police—to design new clauses that will allow forces to apply for the orders and remove the restriction on chief officers of police of being able to apply for orders in relation only to individuals living in their local police area. That will allow forces to better manage individuals who are committing offences across police force boundaries.
The hon. Gentleman asked about how the responsibility for monitoring and enforcing would be managed, and how the process would work. This amendment will improve co-operation between local forces and the British Transport police, who have to work collaboratively at almost every stage of the process, from application to monitoring. The British Transport police will still need to engage with the relevant local forces, give notice of the application to the chief officer of police, and conduct monitoring of the orders.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether a national monitoring system would be introduced. Law enforcement is responsible for monitoring and managing compliance with slavery and trafficking orders. The former modern slavery and organised immigration crime unit issued guidance to law enforcement on obtaining and managing slavery and trafficking prevention risk orders, to help ensure consistency across forces in England and Wales. When the changes are introduced, that statutory guidance will be updated to align with them, ensuring that all those involved have the right training and preparation for the new powers.
Together, clauses 26 and 27 allow the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to remain relevant to the modern world. I commend them to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 28
Notification requirements in slavery and trafficking prevention orders
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
Under section 19 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, courts may require individuals subject to slavery and trafficking prevention orders and slavery and trafficking risk orders to notify the police or another specified agency of personal information, including their name and address. However, monitoring and enforcement are currently inconsistent across police forces, which affects their ability to manage individuals and respond effectively to risk. That can result in police forces collecting information on individuals subject to an order in different ways, leading to delays in identifying breaches and an inconsistent approach to preventing individuals from engaging in criminal behaviour.
Matt Vickers
Clauses 28 and 29 make compulsory the core notification requirements for slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. The clauses also allow for the specification in regulations of further information that a court can require in a particular order.
The principle behind the clauses is simple: if the police are to enforce an order, they need to know who the person is and where to find them. An order is not worth the paper it is written on if the person it covers can simply disappear, so the Opposition welcome making the requirements compulsory, rather than optional. A “requirement” to notify must be exactly that—a requirement, not a polite request. Anyone who gives false details or deliberately keeps the police in the dark should expect consequences. We made the same argument during the passage of the Crime and Policing Bill, to which we tabled amendments that would have put real penalties on registered sex offenders who failed to notify. An obligation with no teeth is no obligation at all.
However, collecting information is only half the job. A notification requirement is only as good as the system behind it. If someone moves but the police are still working from their old address, officers knock on the wrong door and time is lost; when someone is at risk of exploitation, lost time can mean real harm. An address being on a form does not prove that anyone lives there. Someone has to check and record that address, and make sure that the information reaches the officers who need it, including those in other forces.
The clauses leave further requirements to be made under regulations. I welcome the fact that those regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure, but before we give the Minister this regulation-making power, the Committee should understand the gap it is meant to close. What can officers not currently find out through the orders, and how would that information help them to prevent exploitation?
Finally, I want to raise the orders already in force. Under current law, a court making an order can choose whether to include notification requirements, meaning that some existing orders will contain no such requirement at all. Subsections 28(6) and 29(5) make clear that the new requirements will not apply to orders made before the clauses come into force. That means that even after the Bill becomes law, a person already subject to an order may have no duty to tell the police their name or address. The Committee will come on to discuss the powers to vary and renew orders under clause 34 of the Bill, but the Government should not wait for cases to come back to court by chance. They need a plan to find the existing orders that do not have those requirements, and to bring them up to the new standard.
We support clauses 28 and 29, but for these requirements to work in practice the Committee needs answers to three questions. First, on the regulation-making powers in both clauses, what additional information do the Government expect to require, and will the Committee see draft regulations before Report? Secondly, on enforcement, who will check that the details a person gives are true, and how will that information reach other police forces when the person moves? Thirdly, how many existing orders are currently enforced without notification requirements, and what is the Government’s plan for reviewing them?
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. As he has set out, the orders in clauses 28 and 29 are crucial tools to allow our law enforcement to protect victims, and we appreciate the support of His Majesty’s Opposition.
The clauses address a gap in the current framework for managing individuals subject to slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. Currently, notification requirements are discretionary, which has contributed to there being different approaches to monitoring and enforcement across police forces, and that can limit law enforcement’s ability to identify breaches, manage risk and safeguard potential victims. Clauses 28 and 29 strengthen that regime by making the notification requirements mandatory, while also enabling courts to impose additional risk-based notifications where necessary and proportionate. This flexibility will allow the requirements placed on individuals to keep pace as modern slavery evolves.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the additional data that will be collected under clause 29. Currently, each force collects and records said data differently; that is part of the problem we are trying to address according to local needs. It is for the forces to decide how to monitor and manage individuals subject to an order. He also asked about some of the things that could be requested and collated: those could include phone numbers, email addresses, online usernames and vehicle registrations. They will be considered on a case-by-case basis specific to an individual that addresses proportionality and necessity based on the risk of offending, which I think answers his question about additional data. The shadow Minister also mentioned the regulations we refer to. We will publish those as soon as possible.
Together, these measures will support a more consistent and effective approach to monitoring individuals subject to orders. Strengthening orders and increasing notification requirements sends a strong message to both perpetrators and victims that exploitation will be detected. I commend clauses 28 and 29 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 28 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 29 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 30
Slavery and trafficking prevention orders: adjournment of proceedings
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
There is a risk that the current legislation is not clear that a court can adjourn proceedings, although it is common practice for courts to adjourn proceedings in relation to the slavery and trafficking prevention orders. Clause 30 makes it explicit that a court can adjourn proceedings when a person has been found guilty of a slavery and trafficking offence before making a slavery and trafficking prevention order. It ensures that the court has the option to adjourn proceedings for a slavery and human trafficking offence even after sentencing. That will remove any existing or future doubt.
The clause also includes provision for when an individual does not attend proceedings, to ensure that the criminal justice process can continue. It is simply about ensuring that courts have the necessary powers to ensure a smooth and effective court process.
Matt Vickers
Clause 30 allows a court to adjourn proceedings on a slavery and trafficking prevention order at sentencing. If the defendant does not attend the adjourned hearing, the court may adjourn again, issue a warrant for their arrest or, subject to safeguards, proceed in their absence. A court deciding whether to make one of these orders needs the evidence to get it right, and the Opposition support giving it the time to do so. Proposed restrictions may need checking, or information from another force may still be outstanding. Rushing that work could produce an order that misses the very conduct it is meant to stop.
We should be clear about what an adjournment means in practice: another hearing has to be listed, officers may have to return to court, and if the offender is not in custody the risk they pose has to be managed while the case waits. When someone has been convicted of exploiting another human being, the public will rightly expect any continuing risk to be dealt with promptly. Given the Crown court backlog of a record more than 80,000 cases, nobody should be adding avoidable hearings to that list.
It is also worth noting that the clause places no limit on how long proceedings can be adjourned or how many times. That is why so much depends on preparation. The possibility of a prevention order should not suddenly occur to someone at the end of a sentencing hearing. An adjournment may sometimes be necessary, but it must not become the fall-back for an application that nobody got ready.
We welcome the power to proceed when the defendant fails to attend; a convicted offender should not be able to hold up a protective order simply by staying at home. The safeguards in the clause matter. Before issuing a warrant, the court must be satisfied that the defendant had “adequate notice” of the hearing before proceeding in their absence. It must also be satisfied that the defendant was told the hearing could go ahead without them. If that is not done properly, the court cannot take the next step. Getting the paperwork right is what allows the court to act firmly.
We must not forget the victim. If the hearing has been put off, the victim needs to know that restrictions are not in place. Otherwise, they may rely on protection that does not yet exist. We support clause 30, but I would be grateful if the Minister answered the following questions. When proceedings are adjourned and the offender is not in custody, how will any immediate risk be managed until the order is made? Who will be responsible for telling victims that an order has been delayed and what has and has not been put in place? Will the Government monitor how often such proceedings are adjourned and how many times in a single case, so that a sensible power does not become another source of delay?
Anna Turley
I thank the shadow Minister for his thoughtful contributions. Clause 30 is simple: although courts can adjourn proceedings, the current legislation does not explicitly provide for that, which has created the potential for real uncertainty.
During the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 in the House of Lords, a specific provision was requested in related to serious violence reduction orders to make it clear that proceedings could be adjourned even after sentencing took place. The specific provision for adjournment has been included in domestic abuse protection orders. That is intended to enable the court to determine any outstanding prevention orders, even after the criminal proceedings have concluded. Replicating measures such as those for instances of modern slavery will remove any current or future doubt that the court is able to determine a slavery and trafficking prevention order after sentencing.
Adjournment is a procedural tool that the court might take after sentencing or acquittal to consider imposing an order. The court may then consider further evidence related to the future risk of offending when considering whether to make a slavery and trafficking prevention order. Clause 30 is about enabling the court to more effectively address offending while the defendant is still under their power and to ensure that outstanding matters in a case can be dealt with at the same time. Adjourning proceedings in relation to the making of a prevention order is currently common practice, but we are making that explicit and mirroring the similar provisions in other legislation providing for civil orders.
The shadow Minister asked whether the measure would result in an increase in non-attendance in the courts and potentially an increase in warrants. A court can hear the proceedings in a person’s absence if it is satisfied that the defendant
“has had adequate notice of the time and place of the adjourned proceedings, and…has been informed that if the defendant does not appear for those proceedings the court may hear the proceedings in the defendant’s absence.”
As such, a person cannot continually delay proceedings by not attending, but the notice requirements are safeguarded to ensure that defendants are aware of the proceedings. The court cannot issue a warrant unless it is satisfied that the person
“has had adequate notice of the time and place of the adjourned proceedings”.
Clause 30 also makes clear that a court can adjourn proceedings where a person has been found guilty of a slavery and trafficking offence before making a slavery and trafficking prevention order.
I will pick up on the shadow Minister’s point about victim liaisons because that is important; I will undertake to get back to him and the Committee about that. The clause also undertakes a court process, which is currently common practice in relation to these orders and mirrors established legislative precedent from other civil orders. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 30 according ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31
Slavery and trafficking prevention orders: electronic monitoring
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
There is currently no express power in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to impose an electronic monitoring requirement as a condition of slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. Case law suggests that that may be within the court’s existing powers; however, as it is not explicit in the current legislation, it can be unclear to the court that electronic monitoring—tagging, as we know it—is an option as a monitoring tool for slavery and trafficking orders. Introducing an express power will ensure that there is no doubt that electronic monitoring can be used where it is deemed necessary.
Clauses 31 and 32 set out the explicit provision for courts to impose an electronic monitoring requirement as part of a slavery and trafficking prevention order or an interim slavery and trafficking prevention order, or a slavery and trafficking risk order or an interim slavery and trafficking risk order. Such a requirement will be applied only where the court is satisfied that it is necessary for the purpose of protecting persons from physical or psychological harm. We want to ensure that law enforcement has all the tools it needs to manage offenders effectively.
Electronic monitoring enables law enforcement to monitor compliance with the conditions of an order where they include an exclusion zone, a curfew or travel restrictions. The conditions imposed by each order are tailored by the court depending on the nature of the individual’s risk of offending. Electronic monitoring, as a condition of a slavery and trafficking order, would also help to prevent reoffending and prevent offenders from fleeing, leaving the country and escaping criminal punishment.
We know that electronic monitoring of an offender can make victims and survivors feel safer in some instances and improve their engagement with the criminal justice system. Electronic monitoring can also act as a deterrent to perpetrators while the tag is being worn. Electronic monitoring will ensure certainty of detection when protective licence conditions are breached, strengthen offender management, help victims and survivors feel safe following the release of their perpetrators and help to prevent further offending.
Clause 33 sets out a number of consequential amendments to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to support the introduction and enforcement of electronic monitoring requirements for individuals subject to slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders. The clause updates section 30 of the 2015 Act so that the existing offence of breaching an order applies consistently to all the modern slavery and trafficking orders. This ensures a consistent enforcement framework across the full range of orders.
The clause also sets out a requirement for the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice governing the processing of data obtained through electronic monitoring. That will provide clear guidance on the handling of information gathered through electronic monitoring while ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place. The clause also provides the appropriate regulation-making framework for electronic monitoring arrangements and clarifies the parliamentary procedure for regulations specifying who may be responsible for electronic monitoring.
Clauses 31 to 33 will strengthen the operation of slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders, support the use of electronic monitoring and provide a clear framework for enforcement, governance and oversight, and I commend them to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Clauses 31 to 33 provide for electronic monitoring in slavery and trafficking prevention orders and risk orders, including interim orders, and require the issuance of a code of practice on how the monitoring data is handled. A court order must mean something. If somebody is told to stay away from a potential victim or a particular place, the authorities need to know when that order is broken, and they need to act. Electronic monitoring can help with that, and the Opposition support these powers.
However, we should not view tagging through rose-tinted glasses. A tag tells the authority where someone is. It cannot stop the person picking up a phone and getting someone else to do their dirty work, and a tag is only as good as the response when it goes off. Picture someone walking into an area the court has barred them from because a potential victim lives there. The device records it and an alert is raised. Then what? Who receives that alert first, how quickly is it passed to the police, and how quickly do officers arrive? Someone who is at risk at 11 o’clock on a Saturday night cannot wait until Monday morning for someone to check a screen.
That is not a theoretical concern. Only this week, Sky News reported that the Metropolitan police will no longer respond to curfew or tag battery breaches lasting under an hour, unless the wearer is judged to pose a particular risk. The commissioner says his officers are dealing with more than 100 tag breaches a day, driven in part by the Government’s early release scheme. One sergeant put it simply:
“there are not enough cops”.
The Met itself described cases in which officers were told about a breach many hours after it had happened. The problem is therefore at both ends: alerts that are slow to reach the police, and police too stretched to respond when they do. The Minister must tell us how alerts under these new orders will avoid both.
Monitoring can also be imposed only where suitable arrangements are available in the area, so a court may decide that monitoring is necessary but still be unable to order it. Will monitoring be available consistently across the country from the day these powers come into force, or will protection depend on where a victim happens to live?
The person being monitored must allow the equipment to be fitted and maintained, and must not interfere with it. Deliberate tampering cannot be allowed to defeat an order, and it must be treated as the enforcement matter it is. Equally, officers need to be able to tell a flat battery from a deliberate attempt to go off the radar, so that they spend their time on the real risks. Clause 33 requires a code of practice on monitoring data. That code must protect the data properly, but it must also let the right officers get hold of information quickly, and make sure that it is preserved where it may be needed as evidence.
We support clauses 31 to 33, but we have questions for the Minister. When an alert is raised under one of these orders, who receives it? How is it passed to the police, and how quickly will officers respond, including at night and on weekends? Where will monitoring be available when these powers come into force, and when will it be available everywhere? When will the Committee see a draft of the code of practice on monitoring data?
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Gentleman again for his helpful and thoughtful contributions, and for his support for the clauses. As discussed, this group covers the electronic monitoring requirements for slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders, along with consequential amendments.
As I laid out previously, law enforcement does not always have the tools needed to support it in effectively monitoring those subject to these orders or to identify breaches at an earlier stage. The clauses will enable courts, where necessary and proportionate, to impose electronic monitoring requirements. That will strengthen the management and enforcement of orders, help to identify breaches sooner and disrupt further offending, and provide greater protection and reassurance to victims.
The hon. Member for Stockton West raised a few questions, which I am very happy to answer. First, he asked whether the code of practice would be subject to parliamentary procedure. Given the likely content and nature of the code, the fact that it is not going to define or create any new legal responsibilities, and that the processing of data must be in accordance with the requirements of data protection legislation, the Government do not consider it necessary for the code to be subject to any parliamentary procedure.
The hon. Gentleman asked for some more detail on what the code of practice would look like. This clause sets out that the Secretary of State must issue a code of practice relating to the processing of data gathered in the course of the electronic monitoring of individuals where that has been imposed. The code of practice is intended to set out the appropriate tests and safeguards for the processing of such data, in order to ensure compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
The Government consider that a code of practice is the most appropriate vehicle for setting out expectations and responsibilities in relation to the processing of data gathered under electronic monitoring requirements. It is important to have the flexibility to update the code to keep pace with any changes to that legislation and to ensure that it can be aligned with operational guidance.
The hon. Gentleman asked about resourcing. There is currently no intention to increase the number of electronic monitoring cases. Electronic monitoring will be used only in cases where it is justified against the legislative requirements and considered necessary to protect persons from harm. The number of orders issued with electronic monitoring as a condition will depend on the nature of the offending, the assessment of the court hearing the case and the other conditions available that could address the risk. As such, it is not possible to say whether, overall, the use of electronic monitoring will increase or decrease. It is about giving the courts the clarity that they need.
It is important to consider that electronic monitoring can help to reduce the amount of resource used trying to trace offenders who breach the conditions of their orders. Electronic monitoring would enable forces to respond more effectively to the risk posed by offenders, and we could see some early intervention and prevention as a result of that.
Electronic monitoring can be a condition of an order only if the court has been notified by the Secretary of State that electronic monitoring arrangements are available in the relevant area, and the court is satisfied that the necessary provision can be made under the arrangements currently available. I think I have covered the issues raised by the shadow Minister.
Clauses 31 to 33 will also align the slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders with other civil orders, as I mentioned, which have explicit provision for electronic monitoring. This is about clarity for the courts on the face of the law. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 31 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 32 and 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 34
Variation etc of slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
This clause, building on the group we have just discussed, strengthens the operation of slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders by allowing courts to include additional notification requirements and electronic monitoring when orders are renewed or varied. It ensures that such measures may be applied only when the court is satisfied that the requirement is necessary for the purpose of protecting persons from physical or psychological harm, and it introduces safeguards governing the use of electronic monitoring, including limits on the duration of monitoring extensions.
Matt Vickers
The clause brings the new notification and electronic monitoring requirements into the process for varying and renewing slavery and trafficking prevention orders and risk orders. An order has to keep protecting people long after the day it is made. Those subject to the orders could move, change how they operate or find a way around a restriction and the police must be able to respond. The Opposition support the clause. There should be no reward for wriggling around an order. If the evidence shows the restrictions need strengthening, the authorities should be back in front of the court quickly, not waiting for someone to come to further harm.
A power to apply for a variation, however, does not tell an officer when to use it. Take someone whose activities have shifted to a different town. The police know things have changed and that the original conditions no longer fit the risk, but unless someone picks up the file and takes it back to court, the order stays exactly as it was. Someone has to be responsible for spotting that gap and closing it.
The clause also deals with orders made before the Bill. As we discussed under clauses 28 and 29, some such orders contain no notification requirements at all. Under clause 34, when an older order is varied, the court can add those requirements only if it is satisfied that they are necessary, but when an older order is renewed, they must be included. That is welcome, but it means the protection depends on someone bringing the older order back to court.
Electronic monitoring brings deadlines of its own. A court can extend a monitoring requirement by no more than 12 months at a time, so every order with a tag will need to come back to court at least once a year to keep it in place. Expiry dates should never come as a surprise. An ongoing risk must not go unmonitored because a renewal application was left sitting in someone’s in-tray. There is a practical catch, too: a tag can be added on variation only if the defendant is present in court, so the person who stays away from the hearing may be the very person who cannot be tagged. I will be grateful if the Minister could say how that will be handled.
The clause rightly keeps the requirement for the court to assess risk and necessity. Good evidence makes for a stronger order, and a stronger order is one that officers can enforce with confidence. I set out our concerns about police and court capacity when we debated clauses 26 and 27, and they bite the hardest here. Reviewing existing orders and returning to court every year is exactly the kind of work that does not happen unless someone is given the job of doing it. We support clause 34, but I would be grateful if the Minister could answer the following questions. Who will review existing orders, and who will ensure that a renewal reaches the court before the order or the monitoring runs out? How quickly will an urgent variation be heard when fresh evidence shows that the risk has grown, and what happens if the defendant does not attend? How will victims be told when an order is varied, renewed or allowed to lapse, so that they know what protection they actually have?
Anna Turley
As I laid out earlier, we want to ensure that law enforcement and the courts have the tools required to prevent harmful behaviour, including when orders are renewed or varied. Put simply, clause 34 strengthens the operation of slavery and trafficking prevention and risk orders by allowing courts to include additional notification requirements and electronic monitoring when orders are renewed and varied. That will enable orders to respond to changing risks, help law enforcement manage those risks effectively and better protect potential victims.
The hon. Gentleman asked an earlier question about resource, and it is important to re-emphasise that electronic monitoring can often reduce the resource wasted in trying to trace offenders. Instead, it can allow forces to effectively respond to the risk posed by offenders. He also asked who will be involved, but it will follow the existing process already undertaken by those police forces.
I want to further discuss the balance between the powers given under the clause and human rights, as I think it is important to get this on the record. Electronic monitoring would only be applied by a judge to orders where it is appropriate within the confines of the European convention on human rights. There are also restrictions on the specified length of the electronic monitoring period that can be applied, based on the circumstances of the individual cases—for example, it could be up to 12 months. The decision to electronically monitor a subject will only be made following great consideration by the courts, and it will be applied only where there is justification and it is demonstrated to be proportionate in that case.
Providing the courts with this explicit power to require electronic monitoring as a condition of a slavery and trafficking order does not mean that what constitutes an acceptable threshold for electronic monitoring will be lowered. The provision will only allow for it to be quickly put in place where merit is identified. If I have not addressed any of the hon. Gentleman’s questions, I commit to write to him further on those, but I am grateful for his support. The clause introduces important safeguards governing the use of electronic monitoring, and I commend it to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 35
Authority responsible for deciding if a person is a victim etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss schedule 4 and clause 36 stand part.
Anna Turley
I will speak to clauses 35 to 43. Since the modern slavery system was established, the nature and volume of referrals have changed. Compared with 2014, referrals into the national referral mechanism—the system for identifying potential victims of modern slavery—have increased by 900%. In 2025, modern slavery referrals from those who arrived by small boat were the highest since records began in 2018, and more than half of referrals now relate to exploitation that took place overseas. Our system seeks to identify, support and protect individuals at the earliest opportunity, and that is in everyone’s interest.
However, we cannot ignore the fact that, because of the protections offered by the system, there is value for some in seeking to misuse it. In 2025, over a third of chartered flight returns that failed to go ahead involved a modern slavery referral lodged after that return was arranged. That type of action undermines the integrity of the system and creates disproportionate operational pressures.
We need a robust end-to-end system—one that supports earlier identification of victims, delivers clear and timely decisions and addresses opportunities for improper use. Importantly, it must be one that works effectively for those who it is intended to protect. This Government have been particularly clear in our commitment to embed protections for those who are most vulnerable, including exploited and trafficked children, and the clauses will bring balance and order to the system to do just that.
First, clause 35 clarifies a key part of our modern slavery system: who can make decisions about whether an individual is a victim of modern slavery for the purposes of part 5 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. For adults, it will formalise the existing operational model where the Secretary of State acts as the competent authority or decision-making body for all modern slavery decisions. For children, it will enable the Secretary of State to nominate other public authorities to act as the competent authority in relation to reasonable and conclusive grounds decisions on a case-by-case basis. We know this model can be successful; we have been piloting the approach since 2021, enabling local safeguarding partners, who will often be involved in the child’s care, to make decisions about whether the child is a victim of modern slavery.
Stakeholders have told us that embedding decisions with those working directly with a child removes the perceived disconnect between identification and support and delivers a more sustainable model of decision making aligned with existing safeguarding frameworks. However, legislative change is required to implement this approach on a greater scale.
That is what this clause delivers: the legal foundation to devolve modern slavery decision making for children nationally, ensuring decisions are made by those best placed to safeguard them. By embedding these responsibilities within existing local safeguarding structures, the clause will strengthen partnership working, increase awareness of exploitation, support earlier identification of vulnerable children and create greater opportunity to prevent harm before it occurs.
Schedule 4 will play a critical role in implementing the changes made through clause 35 of the Bill, making consequential amendments to reflect the definition of “competent authority” and ensure consistency across the statute book. It will enable the Secretary of State to lay regulations on the making of reasonable or conclusive grounds decisions by all competent authorities and issue guidance on the processes to be followed by nominated public authorities.
Together, the measures will enable consistent, high-quality devolved decision making for children by local safeguarding partners. First, schedule 4 updates definitions to reflect the change in who can make decisions set out in clause 35. Secondly, the regulations ensure persistent decision making across all decision-making bodies, setting a clear framework for the making of modern slavery decisions, what bodies should make them and how they should do so. This will be underpinned by guidance that makes it clear what is expected of public authorities while also providing transparency on how their competence will be addressed. That will help ensure consistent and quality decision making, and that public authorities are trained and supported to deliver to the required standard.
Thirdly, regulations will make it clear that information sharing and joint working across multi-agency safeguarding partners is paramount to strong decision making, enabling the Secretary of State to require public authorities other than the Home Office to engage in decision making. That is crucial not just for information sharing for partners with the Home Office, but to deliver the tried-and-tested approach to decision making for children, which will see responsibility embedded with those best able to make decisions for children and ensure it is done in a consistent and controlled way.
Turning to clause 36, the Government are committed to ensuring that decisions made under the national referral mechanism are robust, preventing opportunities for improper use of the system and providing clarity in legislation. To deliver that, it is essential that the factors that a decision maker must consider to negatively impact a person’s credibility are clear.
Currently, decision makers can consider factors such as the timing of disclosure and consistency in the information a person has provided, which may have an impact on the credibility of a person’s account. This assessment can be used to inform the outcome of a reasonable grounds or conclusive grounds decision. However, there is no legal requirement for this credibility assessment to inform part of the decision making.
The clause will place those credibility considerations on a statutory footing, making it clear that those factors, which can often be an indicator of a lack of veracity, will be considered to be damaging to a person’s credibility unless good reasons are put forward. That will provide a more robust framework supporting consistent decision making and a clear understanding across potential victims and those representing them.
We recognise that there may be factors that explain the presence of credibility indicators. For example, a person may be suffering from coercion, fear or trauma. That is why the legislation also requires decision making to assess whether there are good reasons that could explain the presence of factors that would otherwise impact on an individual’s credibility. Detailed guidance will be set out on what will constitute good reasons, recognising that these are non-exhaustive. It will support decision makers in considering each person’s individual circumstances and experience.
This is a key safeguard that balances the importance of preventing improper claims with the recognition that some factors that point to a lack of credibility are the result of individual circumstances that require consideration. By setting out a statutory duty to consider credibility considerations and the impact of those factors on decisions, the clause will strengthen the legal robustness of decision making and provide greater clarity for decision makers, potential victims and those representing them. I commend clauses 35 and 36 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
There were 23,411 referrals into the national referral mechanism last year, which is the highest number since it began, and 25,373 in the year to June. Behind those numbers are genuine victims who deserve our protection, but there are also people who have worked out that a modern slavery claim can be used to frustrate removal.
The British public want two things from our modern slavery system, and they are not in conflict: they want genuine victims protected, and they want the system to stand firm against those who try to game it to avoid removal. Every bogus claim wastes taxpayers’ money, ties up officials who should be helping real victims, and delays the removal of people with no right to be here, and every bad decision risks leaving someone who has been exploited in the hands of the very people who exploited them. The Opposition believe that these clauses can help on both counts and we support them.
Clause 35 sets out who makes the decisions. For adults, it is the Secretary of State. For children, it can be the Secretary of State or another public authority nominated for that purpose. Schedule 4 makes the consequential changes needed for that to work. A name in legislation has to mean real accountability. A child’s treatment should not depend on whose desk the file happens to land on.
Clause 36 deals with credibility. When deciding whether to believe someone’s account, decision makers must treat certain things as damaging to credibility unless there are good reasons for them. Those things include a delay in making a claim or providing information, material inconsistencies and omissions, inconsistencies with what the person has said in an asylum claim or in court, and striking similarities with other people’s accounts. That is common sense. If someone tells one story in an immigration application and a very different one the moment removal becomes a real prospect, the decision maker should test that difference hard. If an account bears an uncanny resemblance to someone else’s, officials must be free to ask whether they are looking at genuine evidence or a script supplied to frustrate removal.
The principle behind the clause is one that we legislated for in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022: that late disclosure without good reason should count against credibility. Labour opposed the Act at the time, so I welcome the fact that the Government now recognise the value of that principle and are building on it. There is common ground across the Committee on this issue. The clause is carefully drawn. It is about damage to credibility. It does not say that every claim must fail or that every inconsistency proves a lie, and it allows for good reasons. Someone threatened by a gang may be terrified to speak. Someone describing horrific events that they have witnessed may not get it all out at once.
However, the Bill does not define a good reason; it leaves it to guidance. That guidance must help caseworkers tell a genuine explanation from a convenient excuse, and it needs to be ready before the clause comes into force, not cobbled together afterwards. The rules will work only if caseworkers have the information to apply them. The clause asks them to compare an account with what the person said in an asylum claim or in court proceedings, and with accounts given by other people. That is not much use if the caseworker cannot see the earlier account or has no means of spotting that the same story has appeared in a dozen other claims.
We support clauses 35 and 36 and schedule 4, but I would be grateful if the Minister could answer the following questions. First, which authorities does she expect to be nominated to make decisions in children’s cases? Has legislative consent been sought from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and who will check the quality of decisions across the United Kingdom? Secondly, will the guidance on what counts as a good reason be published in draft before Report, and how will it apply at the reasonable grounds stage where the threshold is deliberately low? Thirdly, what systems will caseworkers have to see earlier accounts held elsewhere in the Home Office and to identify striking similarities across different claims?
Clear credibility rules should mean quicker and better decisions. What happens to support once a negative decision has been made is the subject of clause 37 in the next group, and I will come to it there.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. Clause 35 will allow nominated public authorities to make reasonable and conclusive grounds decisions in relation to children. That has been welcomed by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, who notes, as the Minister did, that this has
“been successfully piloted and has demonstrated stronger identification and support where local authority partners such as social care workers can contribute to decision-making.”
My party consequently supports clause 35.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I rise to oppose clause 36. I believe that the roots of the plan lie in the previous Prime Minister’s Administration, and the fact that the clause will affect and harm so many victims and survivors of modern slavery in the face of so few actual cases reflects and results from the awfulness of the rhetoric around migration in recent years, on which the Government have joined in.
The British Medical Association made that point in its written evidence to the Committee. It said:
“We are also concerned by the rise in anti-migrant rhetoric in the UK. Public debate on immigration and asylum has too often relied on misinformation, alarmist language and unfair scapegoating of migrant communities. Sections of the media and some politicians have played a significant role in shaping and amplifying this hostile framing. For example, language used by the then Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, when launching the Immigration White Paper”.
It was referring there to the “island of strangers” speech. The BMA also said:
“the Government and others since, has contributed to racist and xenophobic narratives…This hostile climate has real consequences. International healthcare workers, including doctors and nurses, have reported rising racist abuse and discrimination, both in workplaces and in the wider community. A recent RCN survey showed a 55% increase in racist incidents experienced by nursing staff in the last three years. The real figures are likely to be much higher”.
That is the background to the Bill and I absolutely believe that clause 36 needs to be removed. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner is utterly opposed to the clause being included in the Bill and has brought many victims’ voices into the evidence we have received.
Clause 36 requires those deciding whether an individual should receive modern slavery support to regard the following factors as damaging to a person’s credibility: delays in making a modern slavery claim; delays in providing relevant information; significant inaccuracies, inconsistencies or omissions in the information provided; inconsistencies between a modern slavery claim and other protection, human rights or civil or criminal proceedings; and striking similarities between one person’s claim and another person’s claim or related legal proceedings.
The Home Office has said these factors will not apply where there is a “good reason”, and Ministers lean heavily on that in the human rights memorandum and say that decision makers must “assess all evidence fairly” and exercise “powers reasonably”. However, Ministers have yet to define for us what a “good reason” is. The clause introduces vagueness and an automatic duty to doubt victims into law, while the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 already has clauses that would enable further questions and deadlines to be put to victims where credibility is genuinely in doubt.
Treating all survivors this way—mandating detrimental treatment for any late claim—is a massively traumatic response to a tiny issue by any measure. There is no evidence of widespread misuse. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner told us that in oral evidence. She said:
“Of the flights that did not go ahead in 2025 after 3 pm, that is less than 1% of the number of potential victims of modern slavery whom we identified in the UK last year.” ––[Official Report, Immigration and Asylum Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2026; c. 6.]
We were also told that in 2025, 180 referrals were made after 3 pm on the day before an arranged return. That is all there were; these are really small numbers. We also heard that in the national referral mechanism as a whole, only six potential victims were disqualified on bad faith grounds, and only 224 in total were disqualified on any ground, public order or bad faith combined, which is again under 1% of all referrals.
The director general of the Office for Statistics Regulation has, in contrast, sent a reprimand letter to the Home Office expressing concerns around its claims that people are gaming the modern slavery system. He said the office does not have any evidence to confirm those claims and reprimanded the previous Home Secretary for failing to back up public statements with evidence. There is a lack of further background in relation to how long since their arrival people were removed. It does not offer a breakdown of the other reasons why someone may not have been removed, so even the data that the Minister is quoting at us is not reliable.
The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner also points out the vital issue that people cannot self-refer. In written evidence that we received from Professor Parosha Chandran via Unseen UK, she says that the overall approach of adding all these reasons to doubt to the legislation is legally wrong. She says:
“It creates a statutory adverse inference from precisely the features that frequently arise in trafficking and modern slavery cases: delayed disclosure, partial disclosure, inconsistent accounts, inaccurate accounts, gaps in memory, fear, shame, mistrust of authorities…and inability to recognise oneself as a victim.”
The Bill’s explanatory notes give this away. Professor Chandran says:
“They reveal that Clause 36 is intended to close what the Government characterises as opportunities for immigration misuse”,
based on poor data, as we have just seen. She says:
“That is an immigration-control rationale, not a victim-identification rationale.”
Can the Government really justify mixing up these motivations at such detriment to the wider population of victims beyond the tiny number of examples of abuse that they have talked about?
I think this is a very important objection that we have received from many groups. The clause will apply to all victims of trafficking and exploitation, including children and UK nationals. It will include doubting young women who have been sexually exploited, children involved in county lines, and older people and disabled people who are cuckooed in their homes. Survivors across the board are calling for the clause to be removed.
In the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s briefing to us, she quoted participants in her recent summit, which had representatives from 15 lived experience advisory panels. They said:
“Trauma affects memory, behaviour and disclosure. Trauma shapes communication, memory and presentation of information. It leads to inconsistencies, gaps in memory, delayed disclosure, or confused details. These are typical trauma responses, not signs of dishonesty. Disclosure happens once trust and safety are established, which takes time: ‘becoming safe’ is different from ‘feeling safe.’
Fear of authorities and consequences, fear of deportation, imprisonment, or loss of support can lead to delay and inconsistency when recounting experiences. Mistrust of authorities compounds this, and traffickers exploit legal knowledge as a scare tactic and threaten victims with this information. Threats to survivors or their families and emotional ties to traffickers create powerful barriers to speaking out. It takes time for someone to feel safe enough to disclose their experience.”
A spokesperson for No One Above, which represents survivors linked to Mohammed al-Fayed, said:
“For many survivors of Mohamed Al Fayed, it has taken years or even decades to speak about what happened to them. The fact that somebody did not disclose their exploitation at the time does not make their experience less real. Survivors can face fear, shame, trauma and enormous power imbalances, while the institutions around them may completely fail to recognise what is happening. We are deeply concerned that these changes will make it even harder for survivors to be believed and get the support they need simply because they were not able to come forward sooner.”
Via the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, we also have evidence from Sosa Henkoma, a survivor of child criminal exploitation. He said:
“I was eleven years old when I was first exploited by a gang. I didn’t know I was a victim—I was a child. When I was twelve, I tried to tell social services what was happening, I was called a fantasist.”
The Bill will create the conditions for more children like Sosa to be treated like fantasists. Clause 36 is not trauma informed, and will cause incredible harm.
We should also listen to the people who are actually facing immigration enforcement, as those victims matter too, and the clause harms victims of trafficking and exploitation more widely. The Gatwick detainees self-advocacy group says:
“When people arrive, like with any serious trouble people have, people are exhausted. They can’t go into these things straight away—they don’t trust the home office or the police. It is really hard to talk about these things because you don’t know what it might bring you—it might bring you trouble as well.”
In recent years, the Government have made good progress on violence against women and girls and on modern slavery, but clause 36 is completely contrary to very recent Government promises to believe and support survivors. The VAWG strategy, “Freedom from violence and abuse”, which was published in December 2025, acknowledges that victims are
“more likely to struggle to engage with support due to trauma and negative previous experiences with services.”
It says:
“We also recognise how immigration status can affect victims of VAWG and that many migrant and asylum-seeking victims will not come forward to report abuse out of fear about their future.”
How does the Bill fulfil the pledges in that Government strategy? Importantly, the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association said in its written evidence that clause 36 is
“inverting the trauma-informed approach that Article 13 of the European Convention Against Trafficking in Human Beings”
requires.
Government Members will not have received these briefings, as the organisation working on this campaign, Freedom United, decided that it was only worth asking me and the two Liberal Democrat Members on the Committee. That is really sad. We have received nearly 700 emails from people and member groups who are really worried about this. They ask us to guarantee that survivors of modern slavery are believed and supported, not penalised for their trauma. I urge the Government to listen to the victims’ voices that we have heard, listen to the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and think again about clause 36.
Anna Turley
I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. This is a really important discussion because these are important clauses. Clause 35 clarifies who can make decisions about whether an individual is a victim of modern slavery for the purposes of part 5 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. For adults, as I have said, it will formalise the existing operational model, with the Secretary of State acting as a competent authority for all modern slavery decisions. For children, it will enable the Secretary of State to nominate other public authorities to act as the competent authority. That will allow modern slavery decisions relating to children to be devolved nationally, ensuring that decisions are made by those best placed to safeguard and support them, building on the success of the pilot.
Schedule 4 complements these changes by making important consequential amendments to reflect the definition of competent authority and ensure consistency across the statute book. It will enable the Secretary of State to lay regulations on the making of reasonable or conclusive grounds decisions by all competent authorities and issue guidance on the processes to be followed by nominated public authorities.
Clause 36 places on a statutory footing credibility considerations that are already set out in guidance. That will make it clear that these factors will be considered to be damaging to a person’s credibility unless good reasons are put forward. That will provide a more robust framework—one that supports consistent decision making while recognising factors that could impact credibility indicators, such as a person suffering from coercion, fear or trauma.
I come back to the points raised during the discussion. I am afraid that I take issue with the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion for talking as if the purpose of the Bill is just to drive rhetoric or a political argument. These important measures will give our constituents confidence in the immigration and asylum system, and they will make sure that these important provisions, which are a credit to the Conservatives, are genuinely there to protect those who require and deserve support having faced the horrendous issue of modern slavery. It is really important that we protect them from abuse.
I go back to some of the facts and evidence I have already mentioned. The hon. Lady seems to dismiss the evidence out of hand, but there are some important factors here. I mentioned in my introductory remarks that modern slavery referrals have gone up 900% since 2014. Of arranged returns that failed to go ahead, 34%, or over a third, involved a referral for modern slavery made after the return had been arranged—not prior, but after. That is people who have gone through numerous appeals processes and have had numerous opportunities to highlight issues or concerns, but who had a return arranged because they have no right to be in this country.
Of cases raised through the national referral mechanism’s out-of-hours decision-making service ahead of a charter flight, 76% were raised between the hours of 3 pm on the day prior to the planned removal and 6 am on the day of the planned charter removal. Of the total referrals, 15% were raised after 11 pm.
Anna Turley
I am just addressing the hon. Lady’s point. She said that those are not big statistics, or she dismissed them. They might appear small in scale, but they place a hugely disproportionate pressure on operations. Home Office officials are getting all the paperwork in place and liaising with different countries and airlines. These cases are hugely expensive and damaging for operations. They delay removal action due to disingenuous claims, prevent proper decision making and impact support for those who need it most. That is what the Bill aims to address.
Siân Berry
This is a useful debate, because the Minister’s points are speaking to the operational nature of this. I hope she will go away and reflect on the wider harm that will be caused by adding this to all victims, in response to what is an operational decision. She is very much relying on that, rather than on our obligations under human rights law and the nature of why late referrals may occur in those circumstances.
Anna Turley
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s intervention. I will come on to trauma and the exemptions that we have, because this is really important. We want to make sure that genuine victims are protected, but I want to outline another fact—the facts are really important here—because the UK refers more victims of modern slavery than the whole of Europe put together. In 2023, the UK referred 17,004 cases, yet there were 10,907 referrals in the whole EU. I do not think anyone can accuse us of not living up to our obligations on modern slavery.
The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Wimbledon have both mentioned victims of trauma. As a Government, we have engaged extensively with organisations working to address modern slavery. We have had a call for evidence and lived experience forums. We have had a range of expert insights, including survivor voices, to ensure that we have informed policy development. That has helped to ensure that the reforms reflect how the system operates in practice and take a trauma-informed approach to identifying and supporting victims. We will continue to engage with stakeholders as the Bill progresses, to ensure that the system remains responsive to victims’ needs.
I reiterate that individuals have opportunities throughout their immigration process to raise any modern slavery-related information, or any other information.
Anna Turley
I will give way, and then I will make the point I had intended to make.
Siân Berry
The Minister repeatedly refers to “individuals” making the claim, but people cannot self-refer to the national referral mechanism. A professional is making the judgment that they may be a victim. Will the Minister acknowledge that? These claims of abuse hinge on the belief that individuals are making claims, but they are not.
Anna Turley
The hon. Lady must not misinterpret us; we are absolutely clear that individuals do not make those claims. However, they raise information. If they raise information on the plane’s steps, it is very clear that many individuals are knowingly gaming the sorts of information that will be relevant to a modern slavery claim. Individuals can raise, at any point in the immigration process, not a referral but any information relating to any concerns they may have about their experience of modern slavery. That could be at the moment they arrive at a UK port, when they are encountered by immigration officials, or it could be to the police, a local authority, a community group or a charity. All this information can be flagged.
If modern slavery information is raised, or if it is identified through general immigration screening processes, a trained first responder—in these circumstances, from UK Visas and Immigration, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement or the police—will make a national referral mechanism referral. Adults must consent to such a referral being made. The referral process includes questions designed to surface any modern slavery experience, to aid decision making by the single competent authority and the immigration enforcement competent authority. People are trained specifically to ask questions throughout the process to identify victims of modern slavery.
Returning to the issues of trauma, the Government recognise the horrific experience that many victims of modern slavery have endured. We understand that trauma can have a profound effect on their ability to raise and discuss it, which is why decision makers are trained and must consider whether there are good reasons to explain the factors that might otherwise be viewed as undermining an individual’s credibility.
Detailed guidance will support decision makers in considering each person’s individual circumstances and experience. That will be trauma-informed, and it will ensure that credibility assessments are made fairly and on a case-by-case basis. First responders are also trained to recognise any signs of modern slavery and identify potential victims, to use trauma-informed approaches to help individuals disclose their experiences and, where appropriate, to refer them to the national referral mechanism.
The hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion asks about the provisions applying to children. The Bill’s credibility provisions will apply to individuals of all ages, but specific safeguards will be in place with regard to age. The Government recognise the specific vulnerabilities that children can have, which may affect their ability to disclose relevant modern slavery information. That will be factored into decision makers’ consideration of whether there are good reasons to explain the factors that might otherwise be viewed as undermining an individual’s credibility. This could include, for example, a child’s developmental stage and emotional maturity, which could have an impact on their ability to disclose information. Detailed guidance will support decision makers in considering each person’s individual circumstances and experiences, ensuring that credibility assessments are made fairly and on a case-by-case basis.
The hon. Lady also asks whether the credibility provisions will apply to British nationals. Yes, they will apply to all individuals, including British nationals. We recognise that some individuals, including British nationals who have experienced modern slavery, may have reasons for being unable to disclose information at an early opportunity. For example, victims of historical exploitation may not have previously come into contact or had repeated interactions with authorities, resulting in delayed disclosure. Equally, victims might not recognise themselves as victims of modern slavery or might be reluctant to be identified as such. That is why our first responders are trained to understand and identify signs that may indicate that a person is a victim.
The clause also requires decision makers to consider all relevant circumstances and evidence when assessing the credibility of an individual’s account on a case-by-case basis. As I said, where they identify that there are good reasons for the delayed disclosure, they will not draw a negative credibility finding on that basis alone.
The hon. Lady mentioned the al-Fayed cases. We are absolutely committed to supporting victims to come forward and disclose their experiences, including victims of historical exploitation, victims of grooming gangs and al-Fayed trafficking victims. Those are horrendous cases. Under the modern slavery system, first responders must refer consenting adults and children to the national referral mechanism when modern slavery indicators are present. This is true regardless of how long ago the incidents may have occurred. Decision makers will take this into account when considering cases. Where there is an explanation for the time taken between the exploitation and disclosing it, the delay in disclosure will not result in a negative credibility finding on that basis alone. The credibility provisions on delayed disclosure focus on where individuals have had repeated opportunities to disclose and did not do so. It is not a blanket provision on all lateness.
Hon. Members have asked for more detail on why good reasons are not listed in the Bill. The Bill sets out a pretty exhaustive list of five specific factors that decision makers are required to consider as having a negative impact on credibility when assessing the account of an individual referred to the national referral mechanism, while recognising there might be legitimate reasons for these issues arising. Where the competent authority is satisfied that there are good reasons for the issues with an individual’s account, such as delayed disclosure and inconsistency of account, this will mitigate against any adverse credibility finding. The legislation does not include an exhaustive list of good reasons, primarily because the range of potential mitigating circumstances is so broad that any attempt to provide a closed list would inevitably fail to capture the full range of potential mitigating circumstances.
Decision makers should not be restricted to a set of good reasons. Having these reasons in guidance will retain flexibility for decision makers to consider individual factors that appear to impact on an individual’s credibility. Those decision makers should consider all relevant factors in the round on a case-by-case basis before making a credibility finding. In terms of good reasons, relevant consideration may include the impact of trauma, fear of authorities, cultural or gender-related barriers to disclosure, a lack of self-identification as a victim or, for children, factors such as developmental stage, maturity and the effects of grooming, coercion and control.
The hon. Member for Stockton West asked about consistency across local authorities and local decision-making structures. It is important to say that any individual would receive a consistent decision and outcome. That is important to us, irrespective of which competent authority makes the decision. Regulations will be put in place to establish a clear framework that all competent authorities will be expected to operate within in order to ensure that decisions are taken consistently across all areas. All decisions will be made in line with modern slavery statutory guidance that will be consistent across all competent authorities. For decisions made by local public authorities, there will be separate additional guidance setting out the process and timelines for decision making through this model.
The shadow Minister also asked who might be nominated. Ahead of any public authority being nominated as a competent authority, it will be provided with a comprehensive programme of training to ensure that it understands its responsibilities as a competent authority and is able to make timely and accurate decisions. In addition, the Home Office will put in place clear oversight processes, including clear intervention steps that will be taken should concerns be raised about performance.
The shadow Minister also asked how the measures will apply in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The intention is for this model of decision making to apply to children across all parts of the United Kingdom. We already have successful pilot sites operating in all four nations, as the model allows for local safeguarding partners to have flexibility over how they deliver many elements of the decision-making process. This means that decisions can work alongside any differences in legislative framework across the UK, while ensuring that all decisions are made to a consistent standard. We will continue to work with local safeguarding partners and devolved Governments on this approach and implementation.
Anna Turley
This Government are clear that we must be able to move individuals more efficiently through the system without unnecessary delay, and ensure that those who are deemed not to be victims of modern slavery do not receive protection and support that they do not need and are not entitled to. Clause 37 makes it clear that a negative conclusive grounds decision ends the modern slavery recovery period, so there will be no requirement to wait for the 30-day recovery period to end before confirming that an individual is not a victim.
At present, after referral to the national referral mechanism, if an individual receives a positive reasonable grounds decision, they receive a statutory 30-day recovery period. That protects them from removal and enables access to support. Even where a decision maker has the evidence to issue a negative conclusive grounds decision within 30 days, and so conclude that the individual is not a victim, that would not end the recovery period nor these entitlements.
Clause 37 rectifies this problem. Where there is enough evidence to conclude that an individual is not a victim of modern slavery, a negative conclusive grounds decision can be issued within the recovery period, and the issuing of that negative decision will end the recovery period. This is important to ensure that we remove inefficiencies in our system and do not retain unnecessary barriers to removal. It will also ensure that support resources remain focused on supporting and protecting genuine victims. I commend clause 37 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Clause 37 raises a simple question: once the competent authority has considered a claim and reached a negative conclusive grounds decision, why should the recovery period carry on just because the calendar has not yet reached 30 days? Under clause 37, the recovery period ends when a negative conclusive grounds decision is made, even if that is before the 30 days are up. If no decision has been made by then, the period continues until a decision is made. Corresponding changes are made for further recovery periods. The Opposition support this principle.
The recovery period exists so that a claim can be properly considered. Once it has been considered and found wanting, the protection should not roll on automatically. Our immigration system will not command respect if an unsuccessful claim simply buys another stretch of waiting at taxpayers’ expense. Where the legal process is complete and someone has no right to be here, they should leave.
We should be honest about what the clause does and does not do. Ending a recovery period lifts the legal bar on removal and ends the support that goes with it. However, it does not remove a single person; that depends entirely on what happens next, which is a point that applies just as much to the groups of clauses either side of this one. Too often, a decision is made in one part of the Home Office, while another part carries on as if nothing has happened. Ministers should be lining up the next steps while a case is still being considered, so that a negative decision is followed swiftly by action, not by a trip to the back of another queue.
Speed must not come at the expense of getting it right. A rushed decision that falls apart under scrutiny helps nobody and ends up in court. In the year to June, more than four in five conclusive grounds decisions that were reconsidered came out positive. Whatever the reason for that, it tells us that first decisions do not always hold up. If a negative decision will now end support immediately, the quality of that decision matters more than ever.
The Government announced earlier this month that the backlog of conclusive grounds decisions had been cleared, yet more than 6,000 cases were still waiting at the end of September, and that number has been rising. The Home Office’s own statistics show that the number of cases awaiting a final decision fell in every quarter until April this year, but has since risen by 23% between March and June and by a further 6% in September alone. I would be grateful if the Minister explained what the Government mean by “cleared”, and what they are doing to stop the queue from growing again.
The person, their representative and the organisations supporting them also need to know what has been decided and what happens next. A recovery period that ends overnight must not leave anyone unsure of whether they are still entitled to support.
We support clause 37, but I would be grateful if the Minister answered three questions. First, what checks will take place before a negative conclusive grounds decision is issued, and how will a genuine mistake be put right without that process becoming an endless source of delay? Secondly, once a negative decision is made, who takes ownership of the case, and how will cases that are already in the system when the clause comes into force be treated? Thirdly, will the Government publish regular figures showing how long it takes, after a negative conclusive grounds decision, for the next enforcement step to happen? Counting decisions alone will tell us nothing about whether the system is actually working.
Mr Kohler
Under section 61 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, a person is entitled to a minimum 30-day recovery period from the day on which they receive a positive reasonable grounds decision. Clause 37 amends section 61 so that, in the event that a person receives a negative conclusive grounds decision within the 30-day period, the recovery period and its associated protections come to an end. It also makes similar provision enabling an equivalent outcome with regard to any additional recovery period under section 62.
This cliff edge risks placing vulnerable people in the way of future harm. A report published by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre, led by the University of Oxford, describes the overturn rate of negative NRM decisions as extremely high. Such decisions are not perfect, and removing the recovery period for those with a negative decision means that people who have been trafficked will, in many cases, face being left without protection.
The statistics are stark. Since 2023, the proportion of reconsidered decisions that turn positive has been higher than the proportion of initial positive decisions at the reasonable grounds and conclusive grounds stages. At the reasonable grounds stage, positive outcomes after reconsideration ran between 62% and 82% between 2021 and 2025, while initial positive rates fell as low as 53% in 2024. Between January 2021 and June 2025, of those won a reconsideration of a negative reasonable grounds decision, 646—or 70% of that group—went on to get a positive conclusive grounds decision, too.
I ask the Minister to reflect on those figures and explain why she wants to continue with this cliff edge. I call upon the Government not to pursue clause stand part.
Siân Berry
I also oppose clause 37. Under that clause, survivors who receive a negative decision could be immediately removed from support, which could expose them to destitution, homelessness and an increased risk of further harm and exploitation.
Allowing competent authorities to make and serve conclusive grounds decisions during the recovery and reflection period could have a devastating impact on survivors’ wellbeing and recovery. This approach may reduce the amount and quality of evidence available to inform decision making, because survivors may not have sufficient time to understand the process, build trust with support providers or access legal advice. Given the complexity of many cases and the evidential requirements often associated with conclusive grounds decisions—including the need for medical or mental health assessment reports—many individuals may find it difficult to obtain and submit the necessary evidence within such a short timeframe.
I believe that there will also be wider impacts on survivors and society—particularly an increase in homelessness, which the Prime Minister is committed to reducing. Clause 37 could result in survivors being exited from support on the same day that they receive a negative decision, which would clearly put them at a heightened risk of destitution and homelessness. A negative decision notwithstanding, anyone in the national referral mechanism was referred by a first responder who identified trafficking indicators. Those indicators suggested the need for appropriate support to prevent the individual’s situation from deteriorating, whether or not they met the threshold for identification as trafficked at the point of referral.
Additionally, instructing decision makers to decide at any point in the recovery and reflection period means that survivors may be expected to provide far too much relevant information about their case far too quickly after being rescued or escaping a situation of exploitation. Those decisions may be rushed; there may be political or administrative pressure on decision makers to rush processes so that decisions are made more quickly and support can be withdrawn. The overturning data is very instructive on that point. I agree that the quality of decisions matters more than speed. Clause 37 is very risky in its potential to do harm.
The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association suggested in evidence that if clause 37 is retained, a further short 30-day period of support should be provided, to avoid the cliff edge. No amendment to that effect has been tabled. Does the Minister really intend for people to receive literally nothing after a negative decision, risking homelessness, destitution and re-exploitation? She should bear in mind not the six people disqualified on bad faith grounds, or the small number of people whose cases start while they are under removal plans, but the huge number of potential survivors this will affect right across the country.
Anna Turley
I appreciate the contributions that hon. Members have made. As I have made clear, the Government are committed to ensuring that the modern slavery national referral mechanism operates efficiently and effectively. Clause 37 is an important part of that. It will remove inefficiencies and allow for support to be targeted at those who are recognised as victims, rather than having an arbitrary period to wait when we have conclusively identified that an individual is not a victim. As I am sure hon. Members would agree, support should be removed in a recovery period when there is sufficient evidence to conclude that an individual is not a victim of modern slavery.
Let me respond to some of the points that colleagues have made. I have heard language describing people whose conclusive grounds decisions state that they are not victims of modern slavery described as “survivors”. It is important to note that the conclusive grounds decision is that they are not a victim of modern slavery, and therefore that they are not considered to have recovery needs stemming from modern slavery. It stands to reason that those individuals should not be entitled to the recovery period or to modern slavery-specific support—nor would they need them.
For someone who does not receive a negative conclusive grounds decision in the recovery period, those protections will continue for the duration of the 30 days or until such time as a conclusive grounds decision is made. During the recovery period, when there are still reasonable grounds to suspect that a person is a victim of modern slavery, protection from removal and entitlement to support will be ongoing. The recovery period itself is not being reduced; the new provision merely makes it clear that, where there is sufficient evidence to warrant making a negative conclusive grounds decision during that time, doing so will end the recovery period.
The quality of decision making has been flagged by a number of Opposition Members. We are talking about highly trained staff, and negative conclusive grounds decisions are always checked by a second pair of eyes, so there is quality assurance and effective decision making. In 2025, of the 17,560 negative decisions, only 1,467 were accepted for reconsideration. Changing the outcome, however, does not mean that the original decision was incorrect. In most cases, additional information was provided that was not available originally, so that is not an issue of decision-making quality.
Anna Turley
I beg to move amendment 114, in clause 38, page 40, line 16, leave out—
“except where the person is within subsection (1A)”
and insert—
“in a case where the person is aged 18 or over”.
This amendment limits the duty of the Secretary of State to disqualify potential victims of slavery or trafficking from certain protections when they are a threat to public order so that the duty will apply only in respect of adults.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 115 to 118.
Clause stand part.
Anna Turley
Our modern slavery system is generous in the rights and protections it provides those who require them to recover from that abhorrent crime. The Government remain committed to ensuring that such protections are available to those for whom they are intended. It is right—indeed, it is within our international obligations—that the Government can deny modern slavery protections to those who pose a threat to public order or seek to misuse the system through dishonest claims made in bad faith.
The practical operation of the disqualification mechanisms has long-standing challenges, including in cases involving foreign national offenders. The current disqualification framework does not always provide sufficient clarity on when disqualification should apply and what the consequences of that decision are, or on when a claim should be treated as having been made in bad faith. Such ambiguities have created operational uncertainty and complicated decision making, and ultimately mean that the disqualification framework does not operate as effectively as it should.
Clause 38 addresses those issues by strengthening and clarifying the public order and bad faith disqualification frameworks, while maintaining appropriate safeguards for children and those at risk of re-trafficking. First, it expands the grounds on which a person can be disqualified, based on the national security or public order threat that they pose, to include suspended sentences, reflecting the changes made in the Sentencing Act 2026. Secondly, it clarifies the consequences that follow a decision to disqualify, making clear that no onward modern slavery decision making is required, rectifying an existing lack of clarity. Thirdly, it clarifies that where an individual is at an immediate and significant risk of re-trafficking in the UK, the national security or public order disqualification will not apply. That necessary and targeted safeguard provides clarity for decision makers, potential victims and professionals, and balances the need to protect people at significant risk with the duty to disqualify. That exemption ensures that, where there is a direct risk of someone being exploited or exploited again in the UK, they retain access to NRM support for protection.
Clause 38, combined with amendment 115, also introduces a specific, targeted exemption from disqualification for all children on public order grounds, while maintaining the disqualification where the national security criteria are met, to ensure that the acute vulnerabilities of children are appropriately recognised. Importantly, the clause also separates bad faith from public order, and, for the first time in statute, defines circumstances in which a claim is to be treated as having been made in bad faith. That includes claims based on falsified documents or claims made only after removal action has commenced without compelling justification, thereby disincentivising people from trying to misuse the system.
Those measures will provide a more consistent and robust approach to disqualification decisions, helping to ensure that the modern slavery system safeguards the public interest, commands public confidence and strengthens the Government’s ability to respond where individuals pose a threat to public order or seek to misuse the system. The clause therefore addresses existing uncertainty that underpins the current disqualification framework, strengthens and clarifies the circumstances in which disqualification will apply, embeds more appropriate safeguards, and ultimately supports a more effective modern slavery system.
Amendment 115, which is consequential on amendment 114, ensures that all children are treated equally under the public order disqualification in clause 38. Presently, clause 38 exempts children with leave to remain or right of abode in the UK from disqualification based on public order threat based on criminality. Amendments 114 and 115 recognise the vulnerabilities of all children and make an important change to ensure that all children under the age of 18 are treated consistently. The same exemption from the public order disqualification on criminality grounds will therefore be afforded to all children regardless of their immigration status. The amendments do not affect disqualification on national security grounds, for which all children remain in scope. I hope that Members will agree that the amendments are sensible and proportionate, and ensure that the public order disqualification provision, and our safeguarding duties, can operate as intended.
Amendment 118 is a technical amendment to provide greater clarity win the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 on how the public order disqualification, bad faith disqualification and temporary permission to stay provisions operate together. Amendments 116 and 117, which are consequential on amendment 118, remove references to temporary permission to stay from the public order and bad faith disqualification provisions in section 63 of the 2022 Act.
That will create a clearer distinction between a disqualification decision and a temporary permission to stay decision under section 65 of the same Act, the latter of which can be considered only after a positive conclusive grounds decision has been made. Importantly, section 65 already makes clear the circumstances in which the duty to grant permission to stay does not apply, including where public order, national security or bad faith concerns arise. The amendments therefore improve the clarity and consistency of the legislation, without changing the underlying policy intent.
Matt Vickers
A modern slavery claim must never become a “get out of jail free” card for someone who threatens our national security or is deliberately abusing our immigration system. Clause 38 deals with disqualification from protection on grounds of national security, public order and bad faith, and the Opposition support its purpose. It builds on the public order disqualification that the last Conservative Government introduced in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—a measure that Labour voted against.
When we legislated again in 2023, the then Prime Minister said that our modern slavery measures would drive “a coach and horses” through protections. Labour has kept those measures and is now are adding to them—we welcome that. However, the Committee must understand exactly who is caught, which protections fall where and how such decisions will be taken. The Government have had to table—
Immigration and Asylum Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Government amendments 115 to 118.
Clause stand part.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg.
As we read the amended clause, the national security ground applies regardless of age. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that, where a child has been groomed and exploited into offending, that must be properly weighed. The public also expect serious offending by under-18s to be dealt with, so the Minister should tell us what assessment has been made of the cases affected and how the safeguarding, criminal justice and security systems will handle that.
The bad faith provisions apply to claims made as an adult, including where someone knowingly provides false information or makes a claim when their removal is due. We all know the pattern of the claim that appears at the 11th hour, just as the flight is booked. The Home Office’s own figures show the scale of this: last year, around a third of charter flight returns that failed to go ahead involved a modern slavery referral made after the return had been arranged. On flights with an out-of-hours decision service, three quarters of the referrals were made between 3 pm the day before and 6 am on the day of removal, with one in seven made after 11 pm. Members can draw their own conclusions about what that pattern tells us.
The clause contains exceptions to the timing rule when someone met a claim notice deadline or had compelling reasons for not claiming earlier. Those exceptions have their place, but “compelling reasons” has to mean something. It cannot become a catch-all for explaining away every claim made at the departure gate. I would welcome the Minister giving the Committee examples of what would and would not meet that test, and telling us who will make that judgment. A late claim and a knowingly fabricated one are not the same thing. Decisions needs clear reasons if they are to survive a challenge. Otherwise, an attempt to tackle delay just produces another round of litigation.
Government amendments 116 and 117 take the provisions on leave out of disqualification sections, and amendment 118 deals with leave in section 65 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, covering national security, adult public order cases and bad faith claims made as an adult. We accept that restructuring, but the decisions on protection and leave must join up. The Minister should set out how existing grants of leave will be reviewed and how revocation decisions will be made where the law allows. Disqualification is not removal. The point I made about clause 37 applies here in full. Once a disqualification decision is made, the case must not fall into the gap between two processes. These measures are a step in the right direction, and we support clause 38 and the Government’s amendments. We look to the Minister to show that the amended clause will work in practice.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I wish to speak briefly against clause 38. Public order disqualification, in the way it has been applied so far, has exacerbated ongoing systemic issues arising from failures in identification and safeguards within the criminal justice system. Available evidence shows that this provision has disproportionately affected individuals subjected to criminal exploitation.
As we heard when discussing previous clauses, many survivors of criminal exploitation were forced to commit offences as part of their exploitation. They are often prosecuted for those crimes as a result of gaps in the application of the non-punishment principle in the UK, including defences under section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Those who have criminal convictions are at heightened risk of exploitation, too. The criminalisation of survivors has been used time and again as a tool to control people and keep them in exploitation. The clause is an unnecessary extension of existing harms and should be dropped.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Anna Turley)
It is a pleasure to serve under chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank colleagues for their contributions to the discussion of the clause.
Clause 38 strengthens and clarifies the public order and bad faith disqualification frameworks due to long-standing challenges in their practical operation, especially in cases involving foreign national offenders. It expands the grounds on which an individual can be disqualified if they pose a threat to national security or public order by including suspended sentences to reflect the changes in the Sentencing Act 2020. It provides clarity in statute as to what is meant by bad faith, ensuring that those who seek to misuse the system with false and fabricated claims, or by raising information for the first time only after removal directions have been set, can be disqualified, ensuring that they are not able to take advantage of the generosity of our system.
The clause also makes it clear that no further modern slavery decision making is required should someone become disqualified. Finally, it exempts child victims from disqualification on public order grounds and makes the exemption for all victims where the risk of re-trafficking is clear. The clause provides a more consistent and robust approach to disqualification decisions and strengthens the Government’s ability to respond where individuals pose a threat to public order or seek to misuse the system.
I shall respond to some of the points that hon. Members made. The shadow Minister asked for case studies or examples of where the clause would be implemented. Suppose that individual C is convicted and receives an 11-month custodial sentence for common assault, battery or breach of a restraining order, which are not covered by public order disqualifications; when they raise modern slavery grounds, that is considered by the national referral mechanism. Where they are a victim, the individual will proceed through the decision-making stages, gaining protection from removal and access to support, and on to a conclusive grounds determination. Where they have ongoing needs and no right to remain, they would get a temporary permission to stay consideration.
Under the new system, even if individual C is a modern slavery victim, a foreign national offender who has received any custodial sentence, including a suspended sentence, will fall within scope of public order disqualification. Where the disqualification is applied, they will be disqualified from support and no further decision making on modern slavery will take place unless an “immediate and significant” risk of re-trafficking in the UK is identified. That means they will not receive a conclusive grounds decision and will not therefore be eligible for temporary permission to stay. British nationals are subject to a different threshold; they will be disqualified on the basis of a public order threat where they have committed one of the crimes set out in section 4 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
The shadow Minister also asked why children are still in scope of the national security limit disqualification. It is right that we can withhold modern slavery protections where an individual poses a threat to national security. That principle should apply regardless of age. Retaining the power to disqualify a child on national security grounds exists solely as a backstop for the rare circumstances in which an individual under 18 poses a significantly serious national security threat and disqualification from the national referral mechanism is therefore appropriate. The exception to disqualification where there is a risk of re-trafficking in the UK will still apply and require decision makers to consider the facts of each case.
This approach intends to strike an appropriate balance between safeguarding children and ensuring that national security considerations are prioritised where necessary. In parallel with our modern slavery response, the UK has one of the most robust counter-terrorism frameworks in the world. Prevent is one of the four pillars of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy; it operates in the non-criminal space and is designed to support people away from radicalisation before they commit an offence. The Home Office is testing new approaches to better spot and refer individuals at risk of radicalisation online, and testing how those insights can be translated into timely, proportionate interventions. That is particularly important considering the rise in children being arrested for terrorism-related activity, much of which is carried out online.
The hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion asked about how we will ensure people who are exploited in criminal activity will not be unduly penalised for the exploitation that they have suffered. It is important to flag that the criminal justice system contains safeguards against penalising victims of exploitation, including under section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. That provides a defence in criminal proceedings for people who have been forced or compelled to commit crimes through slavery or exploitation. Clause 38 also expressly sets out that disqualification will not apply where a person is considered to be at “immediate and significant risk” of exploitation in the UK.
I hope I have responded to all of the questions that hon. Members had and provided clarification. I commend amendments 114 to 118 and clause 38 to the Committee.
Amendment 114 agreed to..
Amendment 115 to 118 agreed to.
Clause 38, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 39
Removal of duty to grant leave to remain to assist recovery
Anna Turley
I beg to move amendment 119, in clause 39, page 43, line 13, at end insert—
‘(za) in subsection (1)—
(i) omit “and” at the end of paragraph (a),
(ii) in paragraph (b), after “leave to” insert “enter or”, and
(iii) at the end of paragraph (b) insert
“, and
(c) who does not have a right of abode in the United Kingdom”,’
This amendment will clarify that the duty to grant limited leave to remain to a victim of slavery or human trafficking does not apply if the victim already has leave to enter the United Kingdom or a right of abode in the United Kingdom.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
New clause 29—Changes to leave to remain for victims of slavery or human trafficking—
“(1) Section 65 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (leave to remain for victims of slavery or human trafficking) is amended as follows.
(2) For subsection (2), substitute—
‘(2) The Secretary of State must grant the person—
(a) leave to remain in the United Kingdom for a period lasting no less than 60 months,
(b) recourse to public funds, and
(c) the right to work.’
(3) After subsection (2), insert—
‘(2A) A person granted leave to remain in the United Kingdom under subsection (2) is eligible for settlement in the United Kingdom after residing, with any form of leave, in the United Kingdom for a period of five years.”
(4) Omit subsections (4) and (5).’”
This new clause is a redrafted version of Clause 39 and would, if that clause is omitted, give limited leave to remain to all victims of slavery or human trafficking and prevent such leave being withheld if the Secretary of State believes a victim’s needs can be met elsewhere.
Anna Turley
Through the Bill, the Government are seeking to simplify and clarify protection and leave routes while ensuring fairness and public confidence in the system. The modern slavery system and the associated temporary permission to stay provision are not intended to be a broad route to immigration status for victims of modern slavery. Instead, the UK offers comprehensive protection and leave routes for individuals who would otherwise be at risk upon return or who need to remain in the UK for broader reasons.
The modern slavery-specific provision is intended for very particular purposes, which clause 39 clarifies. The clause will end the provision of a specific form of modern slavery leave to remain in the UK to assist victims in their recovery from physical or psychological harm arising from their exploitation. The Government’s view is that granting temporary permission to stay on recovery grounds goes beyond what is necessary to meet our international obligations, and we simply need to restore the right balance to the system. Temporary permission to stay will remain available for victims who need to remain in the UK to seek compensation or to support police investigations to bring perpetrators to justice.
I want to be extremely clear up front that this Government remain absolutely committed to supporting victims of modern slavery. This change does not alter the support entitlements for victims while they are in the UK. Access to modern slavery support in the UK is not dependent on the grant of temporary permission to stay. This Government provide a comprehensive support package while individuals are in the UK. Confirmed adult victims will continue to access specialist support where they have ongoing needs through the adult victim support contract and wider state services. Confirmed child victims will continue to receive statutory safeguarding support via local authorities, healthcare and the independent child trafficking guardian service.
Both currently and following this change, individuals not granted temporary permission to stay will continue to have access to other routes to remain in the UK, depending on their circumstances. Any applications will be considered on their individual merits in line with published policy. For example, permission to stay may be available to a victim of modern slavery who entered the UK as an overseas domestic worker, a domestic worker in a private household or as a private servant in a diplomatic household. The change to temporary permission to stay will not alter that. An individual’s immigration status and assessment of risk upon return is considered if an individual makes a protection claim. That includes an assessment of serious harm and consideration of risk of re-trafficking and reflects risks of success of specific exploiters, wider vulnerabilities of the individual to re-trafficking and the ability of the return country to protect that individual. Any claim will be considered on its individual merits.
Clause 39 will therefore create a clearer and more coherent temporary permission to stay framework, while maintaining support for victims and preserving the appropriate immigration and protection routes for those who qualify. Amendment 119 is a technical change that clarifies the eligibility criteria for individuals to be considered for temporary permission to stay. It makes clear that individuals who already hold valid leave to enter, leave to remain or a right of abode in the United Kingdom are not eligible for temporary permission to stay.
The change relates only to eligibility for temporary permission to stay. It does not change the grounds for granting temporary permission to stay, or the entitlements available to those granted the leave. As I have already made clear, that change does not impact support entitlements. Victims will still have access to support provided through the national referral mechanism while they remain in the UK. A grant of temporary permission to stay is not needed to access support.
New clause 29 was tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion. I will respond to it in full once the hon. Lady has spoken about it. The clause would require the Secretary of State to grant all eligible confirmed victims of modern slavery at least five years’ leave to remain with a route towards settlement. Although I appreciate the intention behind the new clause, temporary permission to stay was never intended to be a general immigration route or a pathway towards settlement to meet the UK’s international obligations under the refugee convention. The new clause goes far beyond what is proportionate and reasonable in these circumstances, though I look forward to hearing the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion’s arguments for it.
Siân Berry
My new clause 29 is intended as a replacement for clause 39, being a redrafted version of it. It would give limited leave to remain to all victims of slavery or human trafficking, and prevent such leave being withheld if the Secretary of State believes that a victim’s needs can be met elsewhere.
Clause 39 removes the Secretary of State’s duty to grant temporary permission to stay for the purpose of assisting survivors in their recovery from any physical or psychological harm arising from their exploitation. That is currently the most common reason for granting leave to remain of this kind, and 96% of those granted leave to remain as victims of trafficking in 2024 were given it for recovery purposes. Grants of leave continue to be low, however, and are usually for very short periods, leaving survivors at risk. Clearly, removing the duty altogether will reduce grants further and cause harm. Forcibly returning more survivors of trafficking to their countries risks disrupting existing therapy and support, leaving them unable to obtain specialist care and putting them at further risk on return, including of re-trafficking.
We must remember the purpose of survivors securing limited leave and, as I propose, long-term immigration status. It provides victims with the security necessary to engage meaningfully with recovery, protection and support processes and to rebuild their lives free from the influence of traffickers. This is the essence of our obligations under international agreements. Insecure immigration status is a well-recognised vulnerability factor that perpetrators frequently exploit to facilitate and maintain survivors’ exploitation, using the threat of immigration enforcement, detention or removal as a means of control.
As my new clause sets out, granting a 60-month residency permit with a pathway to settlement is an essential safeguard in addressing these vulnerabilities, freeing people from exploitation, bringing perpetrators to justice and providing meaningful protection and support to victims, while supporting their reintegration into society and rebuilding their independence.
It is so important that survivors have this alternative route to leave to remain. The Minister has talked about other options for people within the immigration system, but there are examples of migrant victims of human trafficking or modern slavery with a valid skilled worker visa who have been denied VTS leave on those grounds. That meant that those victims could be tied to their exploiters due to their visas, including those co-operating with the authorities to prosecute their exploiters.
Following legal challenge in August 2026, the Home Office conceded that discretion can be exercised when considering whether or not to grant VTS leave to someone with a valid skilled worker visa. From what the Minister has said today, clause 39 seems to be reversing that. We know now that the concession is applied only on a discretionary basis, and is therefore susceptible to a range of variables. The need for a duty to grant long-term leave to victims remains critical in providing recovery, protection and support for survivors and in preventing trafficking and modern slavery going further.
The Government, as well as providing no rationale for the scrapping of VTS leave, have not provided any data showing how many survivors of trafficking are granted leave by other routes. If the Government press ahead with this measure, they should provide further evidence and detail on how these rights will still be protected under the clause.
Matt Vickers
Supporting a victim of modern slavery and deciding what immigration permission that person should have are related questions, but they are not the same. The law must protect people who have been exploited while maintaining an immigration system that is controlled, and that the public can have confidence in. Clause 39 removes the specific duty to grant limited leave to help someone recover from physical or psychological harm caused by their exploitation. It keeps the duty where leave is needed for a victim to seek compensation or to co-operate with an investigation or criminal proceedings.
Whatever some may claim, this is not the removal of every route by which a confirmed victim can receive leave. The Opposition support keeping this route focused on a specific, evidenced need. A finding that someone has been exploited does not answer every question about where they should live or for how long. The Minister needs to tell us how this will work for a genuine victim who still needs help, and how continuity of recovery support will be ensured.
There is also a bigger point here: the grounds that remain are the ones that matter most for bringing traffickers to justice. However, according to the figures that charities have put before the Committee, in 2024 only a handful of grants were made so that victims could seek compensation or help with criminal proceedings. A prosecution that collapses because the key witness left the country is a win for the trafficker, and nobody on the Committee wants that. Can the Minister tell us how the Home Office will ensure that these remaining grounds are actually used, and that its decisions never undermine a victim’s ability to help put an exploiter behind bars?
Government amendment 119 adds existing leave to enter and the right of abode to the circumstances in which there is no duty to grant leave under this provision. Avoiding duplication makes sense, and we support it. New clause 29 goes in a very different direction: it would require at least five years’ leave for qualifying confirmed victims, with access to public funds and permission to work, as well as eligibility for settlement after five years’ residence with any form of leave. That is a very substantial immigration proposal, and it would send exactly the wrong signal to the gangs who sell places on small boats. We oppose it.
Being recognised as a victim is a serious finding, but it should not automatically settle the separate question of a long period of residence, access to public funds and a route to settlement. Those who back the new clause need to explain why five years is the right minimum in every single qualifying case; how many people it would cover; what it would cost in housing and public services; and why residence under any form of leave should count towards settlement. We support clause 39 and Government amendment 119, and we hope that the Minister will set out the safeguards that will sit alongside them.
Anna Turley
I thank all the hon. Members who have tabled amendments in this group and contributed to the debate. I want to start with new clause 29, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion. As was set out earlier, it would grant eligible confirmed victims of modern slavery at least five years’ leave to remain, with a route towards settlement.
I want to be clear that temporary permission to stay is a targeted and temporary form of leave designed to meet specific needs arising from an individual’s experience of exploitation that meets the UK’s international obligations under the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. Temporary permission to stay will continue to be available where it is necessary for a confirmed victim to remain in the UK to co-operate with law enforcement agencies in the investigation of crimes or to seek compensation in relation to their exploitation.
New clause 29 would require the Government to grant leave in a way that would go beyond what is proportionate or reasonable and would significantly exceed what is required under our international obligations.
Siân Berry
I asked in my speech not about people claiming asylum but about those here under other forms of immigration status. Does the Minister not see the replacement of those with VTS leave being reduced as a result of clause 39? That is one of the problems that I wanted to raise. When people are here under potentially coercive forms of leave, such as sponsored work visas, will VTS leave still be available as a replacement to prevent people being left in the hands of exploiters?
Anna Turley
I will cover that in the more in-depth response to the hon. Lady’s comments at the appropriate time.
As I said, the new clause would require the Government to grant leave in a way that would go beyond what is proportionate or reasonable, and that would significantly exceed what is required under our international obligations. When individuals require protection or are seeking to remain in the UK, other routes remain available, depending on the individual circumstances. Creating an automatic pathway to long-term leave and settlement through modern slavery provisions would conflate the modern slavery identification and support system with an immigration route, and thus risks blurring that distinction. That has the potential to increase opportunities for improper use of the system and would have significant implications for wider immigration objectives, which we have been clear must operate on the principles of fairness.
I hope to cover some of the points that the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion raised—if I fail to pick them up, I ask her to come back to me or I can respond in writing. She asked whether the temporary permission to stay framework meets our international obligations. Decision to grant temporary permission to stay does not automatically lead to removal from the UK. There are various routes to remain in the UK that will remain available to foreign nationals depending on their circumstances. Any applications will be considered on their individual merits in line with published policy.
The hon. Lady asked whether any further statistics could be shared. Temporary permission to stay data is currently drawn from a number of different Home Office systems. Further work is under way to establish the most robust dataset. We are continuing to assess what information can be shared publicly and we will provide further data in due course where appropriate.
The hon. Lady also asked whether we are disadvantaging people by removing recovery from exploitation. The measure does not prevent individuals from accessing support from the point of their positive reasonable grounds decision—or earlier, if emergency support is required to assist with recovery from their exploitation. Access to the national referral mechanism support is based on national referral mechanism status, not immigration status. All adult victims in England and Wales who need to can continue to access specialist needs-based support to assist their recovery, irrespective of their immigration status or a refusal of temporary permission to stay.
The hon. Lady also flagged whether the changes were compliant with international law. The Government’s view is that the change to the temporary permission to stay policy absolutely does not impede our compliance with our international compliance. Temporary permission to stay, in its current forms, goes beyond what is required under article 14 of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. The changes will provide stronger clarity on the UK’s obligations while still complying with article 14.
Article 4 of the European convention on human rights imposes a positive obligation on member states to identify and protect victims of trafficking, which is met in part through the operation of the national referral mechanism. That obligation does not go so far as to require member states to grant leave. In any event, support is not dependent on temporary permission to stay leave being granted, so that even when an individual is not granted temporary permission to stay leave, they can still access modern slavery support while they remain in the UK.
Further, an individual’s immigration status and assessment of risk on return are considered if an individual makes a protection claim. That includes an assessment of whether the individual has a well-founded fear of persecution or is at real risk of serious harm. Any claim will be considered on its individual merits, in line with published policy and country information.
The hon. Lady also asked about skilled workers. As of 8 October 2026, skilled workers who receive a positive conclusive grounds decision, where that decision was made during their most recent permission, may have their visa amended for the remaining period of extant leave. Individuals will not need to be sponsored and can work in any occupation. The change supports skilled workers to leave exploitative employers and move to new, safe employment. In the immigration White Paper, the Government committed to explore introducing further reforms to our sponsorship system by putting more responsibility and accountability on effective and responsible sponsors. That will include exploring whether the Government can make it easier for workers to move between licensed sponsors for the duration of their visa, giving them more control over who they work for and reducing the risk of exploitation.
The hon. Member for Stockton West asked what the changes will mean for compensation and people’s co-operation with the process. Under the changes to temporary permission to stay, victims can continue to engage with law enforcement agencies in supporting criminal investigations and pursue compensation in relation to their exploitation. By focusing temporary permission to stay on those specific purposes, the Government can ensure that it remains available in supporting victims’ engagement with the criminal justice system and accessing compensation. More broadly, the Government are strengthening the tools available to law enforcement and courts to disrupt criminal activity, prevent modern slavery and protect those at risk.
On victim engagement with the criminal justice system, I should say that the modern slavery victim care contract provides adult victims in the national referral mechanism with a dedicated support worker to assist them to access legal aid and legal representation. That support will be further strengthened when the modern slavery victim care contract is replaced by the new support for victims of modern slavery service. The new contract introduces specialist support workers to help victims to engage better with the criminal justice system. That will include, but is not limited to, providing tailored guidance and advocacy to help victims understand complex legal processes, and helping to remove barriers to accessing and receiving the assistance they need at every point in the criminal justice process.
Anna Turley
I turn to our commitments to ensure that all exploited and trafficked children can access the support they need for their recovery. Clause 40 seeks to amend sections 48 and 58 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to rename independent child trafficking advocates as independent child trafficking guardians, following the recommendation of the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act and the subsequent renaming of the role in June 2019. The Government consider that “guardian” better reflects the role and is more easily understood and used by children and the professionals supporting them. The clause makes a change in terminology and does not alter the functions or powers of independent child trafficking advocates.
As I have said, this Government are committed to supporting vulnerable children. Clause 41 makes clear our ongoing commitment to providing specialist modern slavery support for children through independent child trafficking guardians across England and Wales. The clause ensures that all children in England and Wales who are potential victims of this horrendous crime will have a statutory right to access that support. It reflects the lessons learned from the existing pilot and stakeholder engagement, and gives independent child trafficking guardians flexibility to respond to each child’s needs. It clarifies that they can provide representation, support, or both—either directly to the child or indirectly by supporting other professionals who provide services or make decisions about the child.
Although independent child trafficking guardians already engage in practice from the point of referral, references to “reasonable grounds” in section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act risk creating confusion with national referral mechanism decision-making thresholds, which in turn risks an inconsistent approach to supporting vulnerable children. The clause clarifies that support should be provided at the earliest opportunity, and implements recommendations made by the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act. Importantly, it also clarifies the need for collaboration by requiring public bodies to have due regard to independent child trafficking guardians’ expertise, to share relevant information and to involve independent child trafficking guardians in discussions and decisions relating to the child. That will help independent child trafficking guardians work effectively with the authorities responsible for the child’s care, providing specialist expertise to help make sure that children access the support required to recover from this awful abuse.
Further detail will be outlined in the regulations and statutory guidance, which will be published alongside the national roll-out of the service. The clause ensures that there is clear and consistent support for exploited children; I commend it to the Committee.
Clause 42 removes a fulfilled requirement in section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 for the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report setting out proposed steps in relation to the arrangements for independent child trafficking guardians within nine months of the Modern Slavery Act’s being passed.
The then Government fulfilled that obligation in 2015 when they laid before Parliament a report setting out their proposed approach to implementing the service. Since then, the independent child trafficking guardian service has been developed, tested and refined through the pilot service, independent evaluations, feedback from children and young people, and the recommendations from the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
The requirement to report again on the proposed approach is therefore no longer necessary as the service model is now established and its operation is well understood. The clause also removes the specific commencement provisions relating to the independent child trafficking guardian measures in section 61 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The relevant provisions in section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act will instead be subject to the general commencement arrangements in the Act. The clause does not itself alter the functions or powers of independent child trafficking guardians. I commend clauses 40 to 42 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
A child who has been trafficked or enslaved has already been let down by adults in the worst way imaginable; they now need adults who will take responsibility and keep them safe, not a maze of agencies arguing about whose job that is. That is the test that we apply to these clauses and, based on that test, the Opposition support them.
Clause 40 renames independent child trafficking advocates as independent child trafficking guardians. Those advocates were one of the innovations of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and we have no difficulty with a title that better describes their role. However, a new name will not, on its own, protect a single child. What matters is whether the guardian has the expertise, access and authority to make a difference.
Clause 41 is more substantive. It allows guardians to provide representation, support or both, and makes clear that the role covers children who may be victims of slavery as well as trafficking. That recognises that exploitation does not always fit neatly into one box. Many of us have seen in our own communities how county line gangs groom children to run drugs. That is exploitation, plain and simple.
The clause also allows assistance to be given indirectly through the professionals who provide services to or make decisions about the child. Helping those professionals to understand the risks has real value, but indirect support must never become a convenient substitute for someone actually being there for a child who needs them. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us who will decide whether indirect support is enough and how the child’s own voice will be heard in that decision.
The guardians’ involvement in decisions must also be meaningful. There is little point in appointing someone to stand up for a child if the big decisions have been made before they are in the room. Guardians also need a clear and fast route to the police when an exploiter is trying to get back in touch with a child. They are part of the safeguarding response, and the gangs who prey on children must be hunted down and prosecuted.
Clause 42 would remove the requirement to report to Parliament on proposed steps under section 48 of the Modern Slavery Act and change the commencement arrangements. In July, the Government announced £25 million to extend the guardian service to the remaining 179 local authorities in England that do not have it yet. We welcome that, but a child in one of those areas needs a guardian now. Can the Minister tell us when the service will be available in every one of them? Removing a reporting requirement must not mean that Parliament knows less about whether children are actually being kept safe.
Finally, the service will work only if it can meet demand. Can the Minister tell us how many children the expanded service is expected to support and what will happen when demand outstrips capacity? The Government should set out how they will measure whether guardians are actually making children safer, to ensure that this is a real step forward and not simply a change of name. We support clauses 40 to 42.
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions; I will seek to respond to them in my reply. This group of clauses makes clear the Government’s commitment to providing specialist modern slavery support for children through the independent child trafficking guardians across England and Wales. Clause 40 amends the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to rename independent child trafficking advocates as independent child trafficking guardians, as recommended by the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, and their service’s renaming in 2019.
Clause 41 ensures that all children in England and Wales have a statutory right to access support. It reflects lessons learned from existing pilot and stakeholder engagement. It clarifies that support should be provided at the earliest opportunity, and the need for collaboration between independent child trafficking guardians and public bodies.
Clause 42 removes a requirement in the 2015 Act for the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report setting out proposed steps in relation to the arrangements for independent child trafficking guardians within nine months of the Act being passed. The Government at the time fulfilled the obligation and now consider it unnecessary. It removes the commencement provisions relating to independent child trafficking guardian measures in section 61 of the Modern Slavery Act. Instead, they will be subject to general commencement arrangements in the Act.
The hon. Member for Stockton West asked about the UK-wide application of the child trafficking guardianship service. In England and Wales, we recently announced a £25 million investment in the national independent child trafficking guardianship service, which—combined with the provisions in the Bill to place the guardian support on a statutory footing—will end the postcode lottery and ensure that exploited and trafficked children will have access to the support that they need.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the model and how we decided on the more indirect model. The independent child trafficking guardian support model remains largely unchanged from the 2024 operational model. This flexible, needs-based approach was found better to meet the needs of vulnerable children by the independent evaluation of the independent child trafficking guardian service, published in 2024. It is supported by best practice and the Home Office response to the modern slavery review.
Every child is entitled to indirect support where independent child trafficking guardians promote effective, multi-agency working to ensure that the child’s needs are met by the most appropriate professional, and provide specialist modern slavery and exploitation expertise to support professionals who may already have established relationships with children. Direct one-to-one support is generally provided to children with no figure of parental responsibility in the UK. However, the service also has the flexibility to provide direct support in other cases where that is appropriate to meet a child’s needs. As the independent child trafficking guardian service is rolled out nationally, the Government will continue to monitor and evaluate its impact to ensure that it remains effective in supporting child victims of modern slavery.
The hon. Gentleman asked about safeguarding partners. If they already have legal duties, why are independent child trafficking guardians needed, and how will different organisations work together not to duplicate the contact with the child and the help for that child to navigate the system? Independent child trafficking guardians provide specialist modern slavery expertise and independent advocacy, complementing rather than duplicating the statutory safeguarding role of other agencies. The legislation strengthens collaboration by requiring public bodies to have due regard to independent child trafficking guardians’ views and recommendations, to provide access to the relevant information and to involve independent child trafficking guardians in discussions and decisions relating to the child.
That means that public authorities must properly consider and take account of independent child trafficking guardians’ views when exercising their functions, but retain responsibility for making decisions and discharging their statutory duties. Details of how that will be achieved will be outlined in the independent child trafficking guardians statutory guidance, which will be published alongside national roll-out of the guardians service. The legislation does not require public authorities to follow any particular recommendation made by an independent child trafficking guardian. Rather, public authorities must have due regard to the independent child trafficking guardian’s views and recommendations before reaching their own decisions. That requirement will be further supplemented by guidance. For public bodies not paying due regard to independent child trafficking guardians, concerns may be expressed through existing safeguarding and accountability processes. Public bodies remain accountable for ensuring that the decisions are lawful, properly reasoned and consistent with their statutory duties.
The hon. Member for Stockton West asked further about indirect and direct support, and the more appropriate form of it. It will be for Barnardo’s—the service provider—to determine what support a child needs. Clear guidance will be provided by the Home Office. The service also has the flexibility to determine where direct support is appropriate to meet a child’s needs, for instance where there is no figure of parental responsibility for the child in the UK. We believe it is appropriate this decision making sit with the service provider that is best able to make this decision. This flexible, needs-based approach was found to better meet the needs of vulnerable children by the independent evaluation of the independent child trafficking guardian service, published in 2024.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
I beg to move amendment 70, in clause 43, page 45, line 1, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment would remove the provision which enables the Secretary of State to override an assessment that a potential victim of slavery or trafficking requires assistance and support.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 71, in clause 43, page 45, line 4, at end insert—
“(3A) In considering whether assistance and support is necessary, the Secretary of State or an authorised person must have regard to—
(a) the best interests of the person receiving such assistance and support and of any children dependent on that person;
(b) the need to ensure that assistance and support is provided on the basis of the individual needs of the person receiving it; and
(c) the need to act in a way which is compatible with the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
This amendment would require parties considering whether a potential victim of slavery or trafficking requires assistance and support to consider the best interests of the person (and any dependent children) and to comply with the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings and the ECHR.
Amendment 72, in clause 43, page 45, line 6, leave out “do not apply in relation to a child” and insert
“apply in relation to a child, and any necessary assistance and support must be provided in a manner that is age-appropriate, trauma-informed and consistent with the best interests of the child.
(4B) Nothing in this section prevents a local authority or any other public authority from discharging duties owed to a child under any other enactment, and the existence of such duties does not relieve the Secretary of State of the duties imposed by this section.”
This amendment would assert that the requirement to provide assistance and support to potential victims of slavery or trafficking does apply to child victims, regardless of whether the child would be otherwise supported by a local or other public authority.
Government amendments 120 to 123
Amendment 73, in clause 43, page 45, line 18, at end insert—
“(5A) After subsection (6), insert—
‘(6A) The Secretary of State must—
(a) ensure that adequate funding and resources are provided to local authorities for the purpose of ensuring that potential victims who are children receive assistance and support which is—
(i) compliant with the obligations of the United Kingdom under Article 12 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and
(ii) at least equivalent in nature and extent to that which would be provided to a potential victim who is an adult under this section.
(b) within 12 months of the passing of the Immigration and Asylum Act 2026 and annually thereafter, lay before Parliament a report setting out—
(i) the funding provided to local authorities for the purpose of supporting potential victims who are children,
(ii) an assessment of whether such funding is sufficient to enable compliance with Article 12 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and
(iii) the number of potential victims who are children who have not received assistance and support equivalent to that which would have been provided under this section to a potential victim who is an adult.’”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient funding is provided to local authorities to support child victims of slavery and trafficking, and to report annually on the provision and adequacy of such funding.
Clause stand part.
Siân Berry
It is my view and that of a wide range of refugee and modern slavery organisations that clause 43, particularly subsection (3), is incompatible with article 12 of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, which puts a duty on state parties to afford support to survivors of modern slavery in receipt of a reasonable grounds decision. The removal of the duty to provide support will put adults, children and young people at risk of destitution, homelessness and further harm, as we have discussed in relation to previous clauses.
We know that trauma can manifest in a wide range of ways and may significantly affect an individual’s ability to engage consistently with support services or comply with procedural requirements. Penalising people for such difficulties fails to take account of the realities of trauma and recovery and, again, creates detriment from a known feature of abuse. Additionally, while we agree that safeguarding and supporting children should be the responsibility of local authorities, they do need to receive adequate resources in order to discharge those duties appropriately and in the best interests of the child. Local authorities do not currently receive any funding to offer specialist support to children affected by trafficking and exploitation, and my amendments to this clause therefore seek both to reduce the harms being caused by it and to boost the support that can be offered to survivors.
Amendment 70 would remove subsection (3) and take away the Secretary of State’s power to override professional assessments. Support for the survivors of modern slavery is currently delivered through Government-funded contracts such as the modern slavery victim care contract in England and Wales, and equivalent arrangements across the devolved Administrations. Specialist organisations and trained support workers provide this support directly to survivors and are responsible for carrying out detailed assessments of need. The assessments should be informed by the professional expertise of frontline practitioners and crucially by survivors’ own views and experiences. I believe that support workers and survivors are best placed to identify an individual’s needs, because they are in direct and ongoing contact with the person concerned. It would therefore be harmful for the Secretary of State, who is removed from this direct engagement, to override such assessments without having had contact with the individual or a comparable understanding of their circumstances.
Allowing decision makers who are distant from a survivor’s situation to disregard professional assessments risks undermining survivor-centred support and could result in people being discharged from support with outstanding high needs. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group has presented further evidence to us on these points, around subsection (3). It says that it
“reflects the operational reality of how the MSVCC contract already functions in assessing survivors' needs.”
It therefore makes worse what is already bad. At the moment, an MSVCC provider completes a needs assessment and submits it to the Home Office for approval. The Home Office then reviews the assessment and either agrees or disagrees with both the assessment itself and the level of support recommended. It is concerning that this decision maker power, that ultimately rests with the Home Office, will be given directly to the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State will be even further removed from the care, safeguarding and day-to-day insight available to frontline service providers, and could issue blanket rules or directives in situations of strained resources, for example, that would even more arbitrarily remove support from survivors. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group tells us that there is evidence for already ongoing issues with meeting the thresholds required to secure additional support, including for mental health needs. The recovery needs assessment process is highly bureaucratic—individuals are often discharged from support despite having significant unmet needs. If a similar approach is applied to decisions relating to the recovery and reflection period, there is a substantial risk that individuals will be discharged from support while still experiencing high levels of unmet need, exposing them to an increased risk of re-exploitation.
In amendment 72, I have asked for assistance to apply to children. While we agree that safeguarding and supporting children should be the responsibility of local authorities, I think it is very important that the Secretary of State retains an overarching duty to ensure that children receive support in line with article 12 of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. This would help ensure national accountability for the protection and recovery of child victims of trafficking and not leave it to the piecemeal provisions of local authorities. Maintaining this duty would also ensure that the Secretary of State remains responsible for ensuring that local authorities are adequately resourced, as my next amendment would require. It would be, therefore, an important safeguard to ensure that all children receive the support and assistance to which they are entitled, regardless of where they are located.
Amendment 73 would ensure funding for local authorities to support children. We need to make sure that they have adequate resources to discharge their duties in the best interest of children. Currently, local authorities do not receive any specialist support funding for children affected by trafficking and exploitation, but it is essential, as is the mainstream child protection that local authorities provide. The charity, ECPAT, which stands for Every Child Protected Against Trafficking, has told me that not providing dedicated funding to local authorities to meet the ECAT entitlements of children leaves an enormous gap. It says that the Home Office provides local authorities with £143 per child, per night, towards the cost of supporting unaccompanied children, but there is no equivalent funding attached to a child’s identification as a potential victim of trafficking. That responsibility is placed on the existing social care system, which we all know is under substantial financial pressure. I really hope that the Government will listen to that point.
A final point in relation to subsection (3) is that all it says is
“where the Secretary of State disagrees”
—which is incredibly broad. Will the Minister tell us whether the Secretary of State will publish criteria governing when this override power may be used, and will she address the fact that there is currently no defined threshold for displacing an authorised person’s professional assessment by the Home Office? I will not press my amendments to a vote, but I want to see the risks and problems identified by them addressed, either in regulations or in the Bill, before the legislation leaves this House and goes to the other place.
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion for tabling amendments 70 to 73, which propose several changes to clause 43 on support and assistance provided to adult and child potential victims of modern slavery. I will start by reiterating the purpose of clause 43 and then turn to the amendments. Currently, where a potential victim has had suitable statutory support put in place to meet a modern slavery need, and that support is removed due to their conduct, the Secretary of State is required to provide that person with the equivalent support again. That results in the duplication of support provided across Government and the associated excessive costs to the taxpayer.
Clause 43 will ensure that the Secretary of State is not required to provide equivalent support again in those circumstances. For example, if a potential victim has their asylum accommodation withdrawn because they did not follow asylum support conditions, they will no longer be able to access equivalent modern slavery accommodation in its place. That will safeguard the integrity of the modern slavery system, ensuring support is not provided unconditionally and indefinitely. We recognise, however, the specific vulnerabilities and impact that trauma may have on an individual’s conduct. To safeguard vulnerable victims, support will not be withheld if there is a good reason, related to their modern slavery experience, for the conduct that led to that element of support being removed.
I wish to be clear that the Government remain committed to supporting vulnerable people. We have invested £25 million in the national independent child trafficking guardianship service and are in the process of procuring the new adult victim support contract to assist victims to achieve long-term stability and to live independently, and to reduce their risk of re-exploitation. Together, those investments form part of our wider programme of modern slavery reform, designed to safeguard the integrity of the system and ensure that resources are targeted at those who need them.
Clause 43 also makes technical amendments to section 50A of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. They will not change the support provided to adult or child victims; rather, the clause ensures that current support arrangements for adult and child victims are correctly reflected in statute. In line with existing practice, the amendments remove children from the provision to reflect that local authorities safeguard and promote the welfare of all children within their area, and the independent child trafficking guardian service provides further specialist modern slavery support. The amendments also make it clear that an authorised support provider can assess the support needs of adult victims of modern slavery.
Turning to amendments 70 to 73, the Government understand that their intention is to safeguard vulnerable potential victims. The Government share that commitment and are equally committed to ensuring that all victims of modern slavery, including child victims, can access the necessary support and assistance they require. The Government do not, however, consider the amendments necessary. In fact, they directly contradict the intention of clause 43 in two ways.
First, amendment 70 seeks to remove the Secretary of State’s power to override an authorised person’s assessment that support is necessary to assist a potential victim in their recovery. That would mean that the Secretary of State would be unable to intervene where appropriate to ensure that the outcome of a support assessment aligned with the relevant statutory guidance. That is a necessary power, ensuring fairness in the provision of support to adult victims across England and Wales. The power provides an important safeguard to ensure that Government-issued guidance on the assessment of necessary support is appropriately adhered to.
The need to intervene may arise in particularly complex cases and where other state support services have jurisdiction. For example, where an authorised support provider has determined that financial support is necessary but has not accounted for income the victim receives from another statutory service, the Secretary of State must be able to intervene to ensure that financial support is not provided where it is not necessary, in line with guidance.
As an another example, where an authorised support provider has determined that ongoing support should be provided to a victim despite their lack of engagement, but it has not given due attention to the non-engagement policy and the other statutory support available to a victim, the Secretary of State must be able to intervene to withdraw that support in line with statutory guidance on non-engagement to ensure consistency and fairness in the application of the policy across victims in England and Wales. I want to be clear, however, that the Home Office has a robust contract management regime in place to ensure that our supplier will deliver a high-quality service to victims in line with its contractual obligations underpinned by statutory guidance. The supplier has consistently met and exceeded delivery expectations, and the Home Office has a strong relationship with it.
Siân Berry
My concern is that subsection (3) provides the Home Secretary with a broad, unqualified power to disagree with the assessments that the Minister has just mentioned. Amendment 71 seems to provide a perfectly reasonable set of safeguards against breaching those international obligations. Will the Minister look at providing more detail about the criteria that the Home Secretary would use in future regulation to reassure us?
Anna Turley
I appreciate the hon. Lady referencing that. Of course, we will always consider any issues and desires for clarification that are raised in this Committee through the development of the regulations. Her concerns have been noted, but I am reassured that we are compliant with the ECAT and ECHR obligations.
The hon. Lady made a couple of other points about a potential increase in homelessness and destitution. The Home Office remains committed to meeting legal obligations, ensuring that policies do not leave people destitute or at risk of re-trafficking. However, individuals should not be able to use modern slavery to circumvent the conditions for other statutory support services. To ensure a coherent approach across Government to supporting victims, adult modern slavery support will be withheld in particular circumstances in order to align with decisions made by wider statutory services to withdraw support from someone who has failed to follow reasonable conditions.
To safeguard vulnerable victims, support will not be withheld if a victim has a good reason related to their modern slavery experience to explain why they were unable to meet reasonable conditions. As only the particular element of modern slavery support that was removed by another service will be withheld, where necessary, support worker assistance will remain available to advise and signpost to other avenues of accommodation or financial support.
The hon. Lady also asked about the Home Office’s oversight and monitoring of local authorities to ensure that children do not fall through gaps in provision. I think I have covered most of that, but the children’s social care national framework is statutory guidance for local authorities that sets the national direction for practice. It provides clarity on the outcomes that children’s social care should achieve for children, young people and families. “Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026” is the multi-agency statutory guidance. It provides detailed information on the duties and responsibilities of all agencies to safeguard children.
Both pieces of statutory guidance—the national framework and “Working Together”—should be read alongside each other. Ofsted independently inspects local authority children’s services through its inspecting local authority children’s services framework. Those inspections consider the experiences and progress of children and families, the quality of practice and leadership, and whether services are meeting their statutory duties. Local authorities are assessed using performance data, reform, delivery and wider regional intelligence to determine the appropriate level of support and intervention.
As I have outlined, the amendments are unnecessary, as the Government are confident that support provisions for adult and child potential victims are compliant with our international obligations. Adult support needs assessments already consider the individual support needs and circumstances of victims, and local authorities already have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children within their areas. For the reasons outlined, I respectfully request that the amendments not be pressed.
Government amendments 120 to 123 will make minor changes to proposed new subsection 50A(5ZA) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, inserted by clause 43, to clarify how the provision will work in practice. First, amendments 120 to 122 put beyond doubt that proposed new subsection 50A(5ZA) is a targeted provision such that where a particular form of support is to be withheld, such as accommodation, the duty to provide other forms of support, such as financial support, will continue. That will prevent the duplication of support provided across Government and the associated excessive costs to taxpayers by ensuring that specific forms of support are not provided unconditionally and indefinitely. However, we recognise the specific vulnerabilities and impact that trauma may have on an individual’s conduct, which is why the amendments will make the safeguards for vulnerable potential victims clearer.
As a result of amendment 123, when decision makers are deciding whether an element of support should be withheld, they will consider whether the conduct that resulted in other statutory support being removed is attributable rather than “properly” attributable to their modern slavery experience. That is to avoid decision makers having to make unduly complex assessments, which could have an adverse impact on vulnerable potential victims. I commend Government amendments 120 to 123 and clause 43 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Support for potential victims must reach those who genuinely need it, with clear responsibility for decisions and proper accountability for every pound of taxpayers’ money. Clause 43 raises three practical questions. Who assesses that need? Who can overrule that assessment? How does this support fit alongside other services?
The clause allows an authorised person to assess the assistance someone needs while keeping a power for the Secretary of State to override a positive assessment. Amendment 70 would scrap that override. I understand the worry about specialist advice being set aside, but Ministers must remain answerable to this House for the public money in this system, so we cannot support the amendment. What the power does demand is clear reasons. I would welcome the Minister telling us when the override is expected to be used, what evidence would justify it, and how a wrong decision would be put right.
Amendment 71 would add a list of factors to be assessed, including the best interests of the person and their dependent; their individual needs; and compatibility with the relevant conventions. Good decision makers should already be weighing a person’s need, and writing a long list of factors into statute invites challenge on every one of them and risks turning each decision into a legal contest. We do not support the amendment.
Government amendments 120 to 123 are the latest in a string of changes that the Government have made to their Bill in this part alone, but these amendments are an improvement. Where someone loses support elsewhere because of their conduct, the exclusion is narrowed to the particular kind of support they have lost, rather than letting the loss of one service become a reason to withhold everything. That is a fair balance. Conditions attached to public assistance must still mean something, and the taxpayer should not simply be asked to replace support that someone has lost through their own misconduct.
Government amendment 123 removes the word “properly” from the test of whether that conduct is attributable to harm arising from exploitation. We will not oppose it, but the Minister should explain why the word is going, and confirm that it does not lower the bar. The question must still be answered on the evidence. Neither an automatic excuse nor an automatic penalty makes for good decisions.
Amendments 72 and 73 concern children. Clause 43 removes children from these Home Office support duties while separate duties on local authorities and other agencies remain. Amendment 72 would keep the Home Office duty for children, and amendment 73 would require resources for local authority provision and reporting on funding.
Protecting children is essential, but keeping two overlapping duties risks the very thing we all want to avoid: two bodies each assuming that the other has it covered while the child falls through the middle. We do not support these amendments either, but the Government must be clear about where responsibility now lies. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out who is responsible at each stage of a child’s case, how local authority provision will be funded, and what happens immediately if that provision is not there. We support clause 43 and Government amendments 120 to 123.
Anna Turley
I think I have answered most of the hon. Gentleman’s questions, and if not, I will clarify in writing.
Siân Berry
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: 120, in clause 43, page 45, line 9, after “support” insert “of a particular kind”.
This amendment and amendments 121 and 122 clarify that where assistance or support of a particular kind would have been available from elsewhere had it not been for the victim’s conduct it is only assistance or support of that particular kind that the Secretary of State will no longer be under a duty to provide.
Amendment 121, in clause 43, page 45, line 10, leave out first “the”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 120.
Amendment 122, in clause 43, page 45, line 10, after “support” insert “of that kind”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 120.
Amendment 123, in clause 43, page 45, line 15, leave out “properly”.—(Anna Turley.)
This amendment leaves out an unnecessary word from the inserted subsection (5ZA).
Clause 43, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 44
Content of slavery and human trafficking statements
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Schedule 5.
Clause 45 stand part.
Anna Turley
I shall now speak to clauses 44 to 49. While we take seriously the need to investigate modern slavery within the UK and provide support to victims, we must also remain cognisant of the global reach of UK business and supply chains. Globally, it is estimated that 27.6 million people are trapped in forced labour, with around two thirds of those cases linked to global supply chains. Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act established the UK as the first country in the world to require businesses to report on how they are tackling modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. While the transparency in supply chains regime was widely welcomed by businesses and non-governmental organisations when it was first introduced, it has since faced criticism that it is merely a tick-box exercise that lacks any teeth in respect to enforcement.
Compliance with section 54 is difficult to quantify, but analysis from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre in 2021 suggested that around only 60% of companies have met basic reporting requirements. This month, the Rathbones “Votes Against Slavery” report identified 194 instances of non-compliance across 160 FTSE 350 companies over the last six years. Measures in the Bill will address that by raising expectations on businesses and public sector organisations to improve their reporting and act on exploitation in their supply chains, with stronger consequences for non-compliance. We are bringing in a more consistent approach to how organisations report, and by penalising those that do not comply, we can better highlight those that are taking positive action to ensure their supply chains are free from modern slavery. Those that fall short will be clearly exposed, encouraging a race to the top.
Clause 44 strengthens transparency by requiring organisations to cover mandatory content in their annual modern slavery statement, as set out in proposed new schedule 4ZA. It replaces the existing discretionary reporting areas in section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act with mandatory areas in proposed new schedule 4ZA, set out in schedule 5 of the Bill. We expect businesses and the public sector to report meaningfully on the actions they are taking. In making this change, reports will become more standardised, comprehensive and open to greater public scrutiny. Clause 44 also enables the Secretary of State to amend those requirements through regulations following consultation with persons the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
Schedule 5 sets out the information that must be provided in a slavery and human trafficking statement. Statements must include information on the organisation’s structure, operations and supply chains; risks in their operations and supply chains, and steps taken to manage those risks; policies in relation to slavery and human trafficking; relevant due diligence processes; training for staff; and an assessment of the effectiveness of action taken. If an organisation does not have any relevant information to provide under any of these topics, they must provide a reason.
This provides a clear and consistent framework for businesses and public authorities to report on action they have taken to assess and address risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. By standardising reporting in line with the Government’s comprehensive guidance, consumers and investors will have greater access to relevant information to support making informed choices on where to spend their money.
The Modern Slavery Act is ambiguous in its expectations on organisational accountability for the content of modern slavery statements and how group structures may meet their reporting requirements. The Government want to ensure that senior parties are held to account for the contents of their organisations’ statements, and to certify that they are current. Clause 45 mandates that signatories state that the contents of their reports are accurate to the best of their knowledge and belief, and that they sign after the end of the financial year to which it relates.
We also want to continue to allow the private sector to report in groups, where appropriate, as a means of balancing transparency with the burdens on business. Clause 45 sets out that parent companies may produce statements on behalf of their subsidiaries. It therefore clarifies responsibility for modern slavery statements by ensuring that accountability rests with a clearly identifiable senior individual. That will strengthen governance and oversight, promote greater board-level engagement and reinforce the expectation that signatories take responsibility both for the accuracy of the statement and for the organisation’s approach to managing modern slavery risks. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Clauses 44 and 45, together with schedule 5, set out what businesses must tell us about modern slavery and who takes responsibility for that information. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 put responsibility on businesses to explain what they were doing about the slavery in their operations and supply chains. That was an important Conservative reform. We should build on that where there are gaps, and judge the changes by whether they help to expose and stop exploitation.
An honest business that pays its workers properly should not be undercut by someone whose low prices depend on exploitation further down the chain. Nor should a customer have to wonder whether the bargain they have bought came at somebody else’s expense. Clear information can help with both, but a longer statement is not necessarily a better one, and paying someone to produce a polished document is no substitute for checking what is happening on the ground. Clause 44 and schedule 5 make reporting topics compulsory. They cover the organisation and its supply chains; the risks and the steps taken to address them; policies, checks and staff training; and whether action taken has worked.
We support the principle of making statements more useful and easier to compare. A reader should be able to work out what an organisation has actually done without wading through pages of comforting language. Ministers will have a power to change the required content, so I would be grateful for an assurance that any future change will be assessed for its cost to business as well as for its expected benefit.
There is an important qualification, however. Schedule 5 still allows an organisation to say that it has not assessed the risk, put policies in place or taken particular steps, provided that it gives an explanation. The Minister should be clear about what is being promised. This is a duty to report on specified matters; it does not, by itself, require every organisation to take every action described in the schedule. That raises an obvious question: what happens when the same organisation reports year after year that it has done nothing? Who will look at the explanation and what will prompt further scrutiny? There is a difference between being honest about a gap and treating an annual explanation as permission to leave that gap untouched.
The detail must be workable. A company may buy through several suppliers before the chain reaches the people making the product, and information will not always be easy to obtain. Ministers need to explain what reasonable inquiries look like to avoid creating a system in which large companies simply pass endless questionnaires down to smaller firms. Small suppliers should be able to spend their time dealing with real risks, rather than answering the same question in 10 different formats. Businesses will also need proper notice before the new requirements apply; I hope the Minister will tell us how much notice they will get.
Clause 45 deals with approval and signing, including certification by a parent undertaking. That can avoid duplication, but it must not allow the activities of a subsidiary to disappear inside a vague statement about the wider group. The person signing should have asked enough questions to stand behind the declaration of accuracy. Board approval should mean that somebody has actually paid attention. The Minister should explain how group reporting will stay clear about which businesses it covers, and what evidence directors should have in front of them before they sign. We support clearer reporting and proper responsibility at the top, but the Government must show that the changes will help to identify exploitation, and that the information produced will actually be used. Otherwise, we will have added to the paperwork and left the people being exploited exactly where they were.
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions on these important measures, which we are very proud to bring in.
As discussed, clause 44 strengthens the transparency of modern slavery statements by requiring organisations to cover the mandatory topics set out in schedule 4ZA. That will allow statements to be more standardised and comprehensive, and open to greater public scrutiny. Schedule 5 provides a clear and consistent framework for businesses and public authorities to report on the action they have taken to assess and address risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. Clause 45 improves accountability for reporting by holding senior parties to account, while also allowing private sector group structures to balance transparency on those important issues with the burdens of running a business.
The hon. Gentleman asked what the mandatory content requirements would be. As I said, they are set out in schedule 5. Statements will need to contain information on the organisation’s structure, operations and supply chains; the modern slavery risks within them; the steps taken to address those risks; modern slavery policies; due diligence processes; relevant staff training; and the assessment of the organisation’s effectiveness in preventing modern slavery in its operations and supply chains. If a statement does not contain relevant information under any of those topics, the organisation must state that the information has not been included for that topic and give a reason why. The mandatory content requirements align with updated statutory guidance published in March 2025. The guidance was updated with input from stakeholders from Government, business, civil society and academia to ensure that it reflects best practice and international standards.
The hon. Gentleman asked why these topics in particular have been selected. They build on the voluntary topics set out in the original legislation, informed by the updated statutory guidance, which, as I have just outlined, was developed in consultation with stakeholders. The guidance sets out how an organisation may produce a modern slavery statement in line with best practice and international standards, which include the UN guiding principles on business and human rights and the OECD due diligence guidance for responsible business conduct. The mandatory topics also align with legislation in Australia and Canada. Organisations in scope of reporting requirements across the three jurisdictions may use the joint-reporting template published in July 2025 to create one statement that would be compliant in all three countries.
The hon. Gentleman asked about enforcement, about organisations that have said they would take no action or have identified no risk, and about what teeth are behind the measures. The new measures require businesses to provide a reason if they have not taken any steps to assess modern slavery risks. If they have assessed that there are no risks, they must set out their risk assessment approach. The purpose of the regime is not to penalise organisations for identifying risks or for being at an earlier stage in managing them, but to ensure greater transparency about the action they are taking and the basis for their decisions.
By bringing a more consistent approach to how businesses report, we can better shine a light on those that take positive action to ensure that their supply chains are free from modern slavery, and highlight those that fall short, encouraging a race to the top. Stronger transparency enables consumers and investors to make informed choices and hold businesses and private sector organisations to account, encouraging more proactive efforts to manage modern slavery in supply chains. Of course, we will consider some of the other reporting and monitoring measures, and the punishment measures, as part of the coming groups.
On businesses wanting further clarity on reporting requirements, we consulted widely, as I have said, with businesses, non-governmental organisations and civil society during the recent update to the guidance on transparency in supply chains, which was published in March 2025. Businesses themselves asked for greater clarity on how parent companies and their subsidiaries can report as a group. The updated guidance now includes details on the best-practice approach to reporting as a group when, for example, companies share the same procurement or operate in similar markets. To enable that practice to continue, we have included measures in the Bill to make it clear that companies may report as a group and thereby continue to report in the most efficient way for their business.
As I said, schedule 5 improves the accountability for reporting, holding senior parties to account, while allowing private sector group structures to balance transparency on such important issues against the burdens of running a business. I hope hon. Members share our view that making the requirements mandatory will help individuals, consumers and all those of us who are concerned about the impact of modern slavery in supply chains across the globe to hold companies to account further.
Siân Berry
I add my support—for a change in this Committee—to the broad approach taken in this part of the Bill. I realise that the Bill’s scope is narrow, but have the Minister or the Home Secretary had any discussions with colleagues in the Cabinet and other Departments about using these quite creative new reporting requirements—which cover the supply chain and require reasons to be given for not doing things—as a template for use in other areas, such as environmental pollution or other human rights issues? Will the Minister commit the Home Office to taking the learnings from implementing this to other Departments?
Anna Turley
The hon. Lady makes an important point. We are proud of the provisions, and a review is being undertaken by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade to consider how to develop them further. I hope that the Home Office example is setting out best practice for other Departments to ensure that, in a world of global business, we are able to hold corporations to account in our legislative and democratic framework. I appreciate her point.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 44 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 5 agreed to.
Clause 45 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 46
Application to public authorities
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
As just discussed, section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act requires large businesses to report on the steps that they take to prevent modern slavery within their operations and supply chains. However, equivalent requirements do not apply to the public sector. Given that the Government spend approximately £295 billion annually on procurement, there is a clear risk that public sector supply chains may also be exposed to modern slavery. The clause addresses that gap by extending transparency requirements to public authorities and strengthening accountability for modern slavery risks in public procurement.
Public authorities will be required to publish annual modern slavery statements covering the mandatory topics set out in schedule 4ZA, and to upload those statements to the modern slavery statement registry within six months of the end of the relevant financial year. The clause also sets out who may sign a statement, requires signatories to confirm its accuracy to the best of their knowledge and belief, and provides for group reporting where appropriate.
By bringing the public sector into line with the private sector, the clause will improve transparency, strengthen accountability and help ensure that public money is not contributing to modern slavery. It is important to note that this is a groundbreaking and important aspect of the Bill. As I have set out, we spend a huge amount on public procurement contracts, and I am sure that the vast majority of people would hope and expect that taxpayers’ money spent by the Government, local authorities and our broader public sector does not have any damaging effect on modern slavery around the world.
Placing this responsibility on public bodies, as we do for private bodies, is not just a really important statement about levelling up; it is an important statement that every penny of taxpayers’ money should be spent in an ethical way and must not support modern slavery in any of our supply chains. It is an important provision, and we should be proud to have included it in the Bill.
Matt Vickers
Clause 46 brings public authorities within the modern slavery reporting system. It is right that we look closely at how they account for the money they spend. If we expect businesses to explain what they are doing about exploitation in their supply chains, public bodies should be prepared to do the same. Taxpayers are entitled to know that money taken from their wages is being spent responsibly. The fact that a contract is paid for by the state does not make the risks behind it disappear. We support the principle of the clause.
Let us consider a public body that buys uniforms, cleaning services or equipment. The contract may look perfectly respectable, but who has checked the arrangements further down the chain? Who has asked how the workers are recruited, or whether a subcontractor is using labour supplied on terms that should ring alarm bells? Those questions need asking before a problem becomes a scandal, and the Government should lead by example here. Ministers cannot demand standards from the private sector and then accept an annual statement from a public body as evidence that everything must be fine. The statement needs to reflect the decisions made by the people who are actually buying the goods and services. If the procurement team finds a serious risk, it needs a clear route to someone who can act on it.
The threshold also matters. The Bill leaves both the minimum budget and the way in which it is calculated to be decided by regulations. Until we see them, we cannot know which bodies will be covered or what the burden will be. Businesses must report once their turnover reaches £36 million; I would be grateful if the Minister told us whether the public sector threshold will match that. How many authorities are expected to be covered, and what assessment has been made of their capacity to comply? The Government’s notes say that applying those duties to public authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland requires the consent of the devolved legislatures. Has that consent has been sought?
The clause also allows one public authority to certify another’s statement. There may be sensible reasons for that, particularly where services or purchasing arrangements are shared, but responsibility must remain clear. If a statement turns out to be inaccurate, the answer cannot be that one authority relied on another and neither checked. The Minister should tell us what assurance the signing authority will be expected to obtain. The named intelligence agencies are excluded—there are obvious sensitivities around public disclosure of their operations—but the power to add further exemptions should be used sparingly. I would welcome it if the Minister set out the principles that will govern any further exclusions.
We support clause 46, but now we need is a workable timetable, clear responsibility and a proper connection between reporting and purchasing decisions. Public bodies should be able to show that they are tackling the risks that they find, and Ministers should be ready to answer when those bodies are not doing so.
Anna Turley
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. Abhorrent practices such as modern slavery have no place in public supply chains. We have taken action, through the Procurement Act 2023, to strengthen the rules around excluding suppliers because of serious misconduct anywhere in their operations, including certain key subcontractors.
In February 2025, the Government updated procurement policy note 009, “Tackling modern slavery in government supply chains”, advocating a risk-based approach to identifying and managing modern slavery risks, and encouraging Departments to conduct due diligence using a range of tools, such as the modern slavery assessment tool.
The modern slavery assessment tool is a risk identification management tool that has been designed to help public sector organisations to work in partnership with suppliers to improve protections and reduce the risk of exploitation of workers in their supply chains. The Government also made the anti-slavery risk tiering tool available to public sector buyers in October 2025. That tool enables faster risk assessments and clear next steps to mitigate modern slavery risks across the commercial lifecycle.
The hon. Gentleman asked which organisations will be required to start reporting. Based on the evidence in our impact assessment, we estimate that around 1,040 organisations will be required to report, and that, because of the ability to report in groups, which we have explicitly allowed for, that will likely result in approximately 380 statements.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about devolved Government consent. We are having conversations as part of this process. He asked about timings and when public sector organisations will start to publish their statements. Through the Bill, the Government are extending the duty to report on actions being taken to address modern slavery in supply chains, as introduced in section 4 of the Modern Slavery Act. We expect the measures to take effect for an organisation’s financial year beginning on or after commencement. While commencement timelines are still to be finalised, we do not expect the first compliance statements will be required any earlier than the end of 2028.
I think I have answered all the shadow Minister’s questions. I thank Members for their interest in the clause, which is about extending transparency requirements relating to modern slavery to public authorities. Our intention is to align the public sector procurement process with the private sector, and to ensure that no public money is contributing to modern slavery.
Matt Vickers
We talked about the number of organisations that we expect to be impacted. In terms of proportionality and balance, where will the threshold lie? For businesses, it is a turnover of £36 million, but what will be the scale of public sector organisations expected to comply versus the private sector?
Anna Turley
It is difficult to make a direct comparison. Organisations will be expected, to some extent, to lead this themselves. For example, NHS England will make a decision on whether it is accountable as a body as a whole, or whether it provides multiple responses from regional bodies. Those organisations will come forward to us with their recommendations on how they would like to report, which will give us a sense of the scale. I do not think this is directly comparable to the private sector in a like-for-like way. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 46 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 47
Statements: publication and submission
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
Under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, organisations are required to publish modern slavery statements on a prominent place on their website. If they do not have a website, they must make their statement available on request. That makes it difficult to access modern slavery statements, assess levels of compliance and hold organisations to account, as there is no central means of reporting.
Clause 47 seeks to address that gap by creating a clear requirement for organisations to submit their modern slavery statements to a specified electronic platform, such as the modern slavery statement registry that exists for voluntary submissions. The clause requires statements to be submitted within six months of the end of the relevant financial year, ensuring that reporting is timely, accessible and easily monitored. By centralising statements in a single location, the Government will be more able to identify organisations that are complying with their statutory obligations and take action on those that are failing to do so.
That will strengthen oversight, improve transparency and support more effective enforcement of the reporting regime. It will also make information on modern slavery risks and actions more readily available to consumers, investors, civil society and other stakeholders, enabling greater scrutiny of organisational practices and more informed decision making. The clause transforms a reporting requirement into a more effective accountability mechanism. By ensuring that statements are submitted to a central registry within a defined timeframe, it will improve monitoring of compliance, strengthen enforcement and increase transparency across both public and private sector supply chains.
Matt Vickers
Following our consideration of what these statements should contain, clause 47 turns to whether they reach the people who need to read them. There is little value in requiring a statement if nobody can find it, or if the only version available is several years out of date. A customer, supplier or member of the public should be able to see what an organisation says it is doing and when it last accounted for its actions. We support making that information easier to find.
The clause requires publication on an organisation’s website, when it has one, with a prominent link on the home page. It also allows regulations to require electronic submission to the Secretary of State. Organisations must comply as soon as reasonably practicable after the financial year ends and within six months at the latest. That gives them a clear deadline, but the practical question is whether the Home Office will know when it has been missed. A collection of statements tells us who has submitted what; it does not, on its own, tell us who should have submitted one and has stayed silent.
The existing registry can already send reminders to organisations that have signed up, but it cannot chase an organisation that should be reporting and has never registered at all. I would be grateful if the Minister explained how the Department will identify every organisation covered, and how it will follow up missing statements.
Anna Turley
I thank the hon. Gentleman. To reassure him, we will be building on the modern slavery statement registry. More than 34,000 organisations are already registered there. Therefore, familiarisation costs to those organisations are likely to be minimal, as they already use that platform. For organisations that have not used the registry before, we expect the costs of familiarisation, which includes the time taken for personnel for register and learn how to use it, to be very low. The impact assessment estimates the first-year cost to businesses is approximately £0.4 million, and the ongoing costs are estimated to be approximately £0.2 million per year.
The hon. Gentleman asked about timetable and whether there should be a single reporting deadline. It is important that we recognise that businesses may have different financial reporting periods based on how their financial year operates, as most businesses’ reporting will align with their financial year timescales. We want to ensure that businesses can align their modern slavery reporting with their ongoing reporting operations and obligations to minimise the burdens.
I want to clarify the broader impact of the measures. It is important to reiterate that this requirement is not new; businesses in scope should already be producing their modern slavery statements in line with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act. The measures in the Bill will require some changes to the content and process for completing and submitting a statement, but those will be minimal. A full impact assessment and breakdown of costs, as I have said, has already been published. On registry notifications and how to identify the organisations covered, we are working with the Department for Business to build the in-scope list, so I can keep the hon. Gentleman and the Committee updated on that.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the enforcement. Multiple models could be used to deliver that, including conferring functions on an existing regulator or within the Home Office. We are doing the work to ensure that the most appropriate model for enforcement and for administering these financial penalties will be in place. We will consult on the draft regulations during the passage of the Bill.
I thank Members for this important debate. The clause strengthens reporting requirements, improves transparency and makes it easier to identify and take action against modern slavery risks. I commend it to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 47 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 48
Guidance
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
Given the changes to reporting requirements in the Bill, clause 48 seeks to ensure that the provision for the Secretary of State to issue guidance aligns with these updates. The clause sets out that the Secretary of State can issue guidance for both the private and public sectors on how to write a modern slavery statement and provide examples of good practice in tackling modern slavery in supply chains and examples of information that may be included in addition to the mandatory information. That will ensure that there is adequate information to support organisations in producing modern slavery statements that cover all of the mandatory content requirements set out in schedule 5.
In summary, clause 48 will help promote consistency, transparency and good practice in reporting across both the public and private sectors, strengthening the overall effectiveness of the modern slavery transparency regime. I commend clause 48 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
For these new duties to work, the people carrying them out need clear instructions. That is where the guidance under clause 48 comes in. It is a short clause, but the guidance will matter a great deal to the people expected to make the preceding clauses work. They need to know what a useful statement looks like, what information they should seek from suppliers and how to explain a risk they have identified. They should not need a lawyer to translate the Government’s instructions before they can get started.
Timing matters. Organisations need time to understand the requirements and put arrangements in place. Publishing guidance at the last minute would create avoidable mistakes and leave Ministers blaming people for confusion of the Government’s own making. Will the Minister commit to having the guidance available well before the new duties take effect?
Businesses have also only recently been told to review updated Home Office guidance on their statements. They should not have to rewrite everything a second time; the new guidance should build on what organisations have just put into place rather than start again from scratch. There also needs to be a clear distinction between what the law requires and what the Government would like organisations to do voluntarily. The clause allows guidance to cover additional information that statements may include. That should be plainly labelled; businesses should not discover that an optional suggestion has become an unofficial requirement when somebody comes to assess their compliance.
Practical examples would help, particularly for organisations with different kinds of supply chains. Guidance should explain how to report a problem honestly and what to do when there is evidence that somebody is being exploited. Nobody should wait for the next annual statement before raising a serious concern with the appropriate authorities.
We support clause 48, but the Minister should tell us who will be consulted on the guidance and how future changes will be communicated, so that organisations are never caught out. Clear instructions from the outset would save everybody time and keep the focus where it belongs: on the people these measures are intended to protect.
Anna Turley
Simply put, clause 48 gives the Secretary of State the power to provide practical guidance on how modern slavery statements should be prepared in line with the new requirements in the Bill, including, as the shadow Minister suggested, good practice in identifying and tackling modern slavery risks within operations and supply chains.
The shadow Minister asked when the updated guidance will be issued; I am pleased to reassure him that the Secretary of State will issue the new guidance in time for commencement. He also wanted further clarity on the reporting requirements. During the recent update to the transparency and supply chain guidance, published in March 2025, we consulted widely with businesses, NGOs and civil society. This has been well received. It aligns with the international standards that I set out earlier, such as the OECD due diligence guidelines.
The purpose of clause 48 is to support compliance and improve the overall quality of reporting. I commend it to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 48 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 49
Enforcement
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna Turley
Compliance with reporting requirements remains inconsistent and there are limited consequences for organisations that fail to meet their obligations. Clause 49 introduces a civil enforcement framework, including financial penalties, for organisations that fail to comply with their statutory reporting obligations under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
The clause provides the Secretary of State with powers to impose penalties of up to £1 million or 1% of annual turnover—or of the budget, for public authorities—to make sure that there are real consequences for those who do not take the duty seriously. It also provides a power, by regulation, for the Secretary of State to set out procedural safeguards, including warning notices, opportunities to make representations, rights of appeal and provisions relating to determination of the penalty amount, cost recovery, interest on late payment, and enforcement of unpaid penalties. That will ensure that enforcement is fair, proportionate and effective.
The changes are central to strengthening the transparency in supply chains regime, ensuring that there are meaningful consequences for non-compliance and addressing long-standing concerns that the current framework lacks teeth. I commend clause 49 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Clause 49 brings us to the practical question of what happens when an organisation fails to do what the law requires. We have spent preceding groups discussing what organisations must report, and how we must publish it. Those duties need to mean something. A business that takes its responsibility seriously should not find that a competitor can ignore the rules and carry on without consequence. We support effective enforcement against organisations that fail to comply without a reasonable excuse.
The clause allows Ministers to establish financial penalties through regulations. The maximum for an individual penalty will be the higher of £1 million or 1% of the organisation’s total turnover, or of a public authority’s total budget. That is a substantial power. It is a ceiling, not a standard fine, and how penalties are set below it will matter enormously. There must be a sensible distinction between a genuine mistake that is quickly corrected and a deliberate refusal to comply.
An organisation that has ignored repeated requests should not be treated in the same way as one that has made an isolated administrative error. Equally, the “reasonable excuse” provision must not become a stock response for those who simply cannot be bothered. Much of that detail is left to regulation. The clause allows for warning notices, representations and appeals. Organisations should know how a penalty has been calculated and have a fair opportunity to challenge a wrong decision. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed which of those safeguards the regulations will include, and how the seriousness of a failure will be assessed.
There is a particular issue with fining public authorities. A fine on a public body ultimately comes out of public money, but that does not mean that public bodies should escape enforcement. However, moving money out of a service budget while leaving the same failures untouched would achieve very little. The Minister should explain how a penalty will lead to better conduct and how senior officials will be held accountable for putting matters right.
The clause also provides for civil court enforcement; the Minister should explain how that route and the penalty regime will fit together, and who will make the decisions. There is an example here from the existing law. The 2015 Act already allows the Home Secretary to seek an injunction against a business that fails to publish a statement, yet that power has, as far as I am aware, never been used. A strong power on paper is of little use if the enforcement team lacks the information or capacity to use it. The Minister should tell us what resources have been judged necessary and when the new arrangements will be up and running.
Finally, we should be clear about what the penalties address. They concern failures to comply with the reporting duties. The compliance statement is not proof that exploitation is absent and a reporting penalty is no substitute for investigating evidence of slavery. Where such evidence emerges, there needs to be a clear route to the agencies that can protect victims and pursue the perpetrators. We support giving these duties proper teeth and we support clause 49. The test for Ministers is whether persistent non-compliance is tackled, whether decisions are fair and whether identified risks lead to action. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation of how the regulations will deliver that in practice.
Siân Berry
Very briefly, although I think this is a good clause because it allows for fines and payments to be made, I want to echo a question asked of us in written evidence by Dame Sara Thornton, the former Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Although she describes the clause as a “game changer”, she highlights evidence that there is widespread non-compliance with the current reporting requirements: she provides data showing 194 instances across 160 companies over the past six years. She says that the legislation is
“silent on who will enforce these requirements”.
At the moment, the clause simply calls this the “enforcement authority” in lowercase letters—it is not yet an official body. It is incredibly important that the issue is resolved properly and that the enforcement body has the teeth, resources and ability to enforce the rules. If this is done properly it will be self-financing, but have the Government any plans to put more detail behind it before the Bill finally becomes law? This seems to me to be a very crucial part of any new powers.
Anna Turley
I thank hon. Members for their contributions and questions on these important clauses.
The shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion asked who will be determining and enforcing the financial penalties. The Secretary of State may determine who will impose financial penalties on non-compliant organisations, and a number of models can be used to deliver that. That work is ongoing, but it could potentially be done through an existing regulator or within the Home Office itself. I appreciate that that will be an important part of the regulations we are drafting, and they will be shared during the Bill’s passage. We continue to engage with partners to ensure that we develop the most appropriate model for enforcement, so that we can administer financial penalties without placing an additional burden on the taxpayer by creating a new institution.
The shadow Minister asked about the High Court injunction power. Under the current framework, if an organisation fails to publish a statement, the Home Secretary can seek an injunction to require compliance. However, that power has not been used to date, due to the difficulties of monitoring compliance under the current regime, where there are no mandatory requirements or clear deadlines.
Pursuing an injunction can be a burdensome and resource-intensive process, and the court could only require the injuncted organisation to comply; it cannot issue a financial penalty. The measures in the Bill provide clearer expectations on what compliance looks like, allowing for more effective monitoring of compliance. They also introduce powers to impose stronger consequences on those who do not take their duties seriously.
On our expectations for the collection of these civil penalties, the purpose of the penalties is to encourage compliance with the transparency in supply chain requirements. We know from similar reporting regimes, such as gender pay gap reporting, and from Companies House, that organisations typically comply with their obligations once an investigation is opened, and before it gets to a stage where a financial penalty is issued. Therefore, the expectation is that the number of penalties issued will actually be very low. In addition, the penalty amount will vary depending on a number of factors, including organisational turnover. Given the penalty calculations and the expectation of almost full compliance, it is difficult to give an estimate of expected revenue from civil penalties. On where those penalties will go, the Bill provides that any financial penalties received by the enforcement agency must be paid into the Consolidated Fund, as is typical for such penalty regimes.
The shadow Minister asked about public bodies. As I said, they will be in scope of the reporting requirements, and financial penalties will apply to organisations that are legally separate from the Crown, such as local authorities and arm’s length bodies. As a matter of constitutional principle, the Government do not impose financial penalties on themselves.
We expect that the provisions will apply to modern slavery statements covering an organisation’s financial year that begins on or after commencement. While commencement timelines are still to be confirmed, we do not expect that the first compliance statements will be required any earlier than 2028. As I said, clarification on the details of the enforcement body will be provided as the Bill progresses through Parliament.
I thank Members again for their contributions to this discussion. Clause 49 introduces a new civil enforcement framework that will include financial penalties for companies that fail to comply with their reporting obligations under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, as improved by the previous clauses. Doing so will strengthen the regime and give it real teeth when looking to tackle the problem of modern slavery in supply chains.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 49 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 1
Enforcement
“(1) A sum payable in pursuance of a decision of the IIAA is recoverable in England and Wales as if it were payable under an order of the county court.
(2) A sum payable in pursuance of a decision of the IIAA may be enforced in Scotland in the same manner as an extract registered decree arbitral bearing a warrant for execution issued by the sheriff court of any sheriffdom in Scotland.
(3) A sum payable in pursuance of a decision of the IIAA is recoverable in Northern Ireland as if it were payable under an order of the county court.
(4) Where action is taken under this section for the recovery of a sum payable in pursuance of a decision of the IIAA, the decision—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, is to be treated for the purposes of section 98 of the Courts Act 2003 (register of judgments and orders etc) as if it were a judgment entered in the county court;
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, is to be treated for the purposes of Article 116 of the Judgments Enforcement (Northern Ireland) Order 1981 (S.I. 1981/226 (N.I. 6)) (register of judgments) as if it were a judgment in respect of which an application has been accepted under Article 22 or 23(1) of that Order.
(5) IIAA Procedure Rules may provide for any or all of subsections (1) to (4)—
(a) to apply only in relation to sums of a description specified in the Rules, or
(b) not to apply except in relation to sums of a description specified in the Rules.”—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause would insert a new clause, to go after clause 10, which makes provision about the enforcement of the payment of any sums required to be paid by virtue of decisions of the IIAA.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill
New Clause 2
Increasing the availability of IIAA advice and IIAA representation
“(1) The Secretary of State may take such steps as the Secretary of State considers appropriate to increase the general availability of IIAA advice and IIAA representation.
(2) The power under subsection (1) may, in particular, be used to provide financial or other assistance (subject to any conditions the Secretary of State considers appropriate)—
(a) for persons undertaking education or training;
(b) for persons providing education, training or accreditation;
(c) for persons who provide IIAA advice or IIAA representation.
(3) In this section—
‘IIAA advice’ means advice from a qualified person about an appeal or bail application that has been or may be made to the IIAA;
‘IIAA representation’ means representation by a qualified person in proceedings before the IIAA;
‘qualified person’ means a person who is qualified for the purposes of section 84 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.”—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause authorises the Secretary of State to take steps to increase the general availability of advice and representation for persons who make an appeal or bail application to the IIAA. The new clause would be inserted after clause 10.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 3
Late claims process: credibility
“(1) This section applies to proceedings that are subject to the late claims process (see section 12).
(2) In determining whether to believe a statement made by or on behalf of the appellant, an IIAA adjudicator must take account, as damaging the appellant’s credibility, of the fact that they provided late information.
(3) But if the IIAA adjudicator considers that there are good reasons why the appellant provided the information late, the adjudicator may decide that subsection (2)—
(a) applies to a lesser extent than it would if there were no good reasons, or
(b) does not apply at all.
(4) If in the course of the proceedings the appellant provides late evidence, an IIAA adjudicator must take that fact into account, as damaging the appellant’s credibility.
(5) But if the IIAA adjudicator considers that there are good reasons to do so, they may decide that subsection (4)—
(a) applies to a lesser extent than it otherwise would, or
(b) does not apply at all.
(6) The IIAA adjudicator must include, as part of their reasons for a decision that disposes of the proceedings, a statement explaining—
(a) how the adjudicator has applied subsection (2), and in particular—
(i) the extent to which they decided that the appellant’s credibility was damaged by the provision of late information,
(ii) the impact any credibility damage had on the determination of the appeal, and
(iii) if the appellant provided reasons for the provision of late information, what those reasons were and how they affected the application of subsection (2);
(b) whether the adjudicator has applied subsection (4), and in particular—
(i) whether the appellant provided late evidence and if so what that evidence was,
(ii) the extent to which the adjudicator decided that the appellant’s credibility was damaged by the provision of late evidence,
(iii) the impact any credibility damage had on the determination of the appeal, and
(iv) if the adjudicator considered that there were good reasons as mentioned in subsection (5), what those reasons were and how they affected the application of subsection (4).
(7) In this section—
‘late evidence’ means evidence provided to the IIAA after any deadline imposed in relation to the evidence by or under IIAA Procedure Rules;
‘late information’ means immigration information provided by the recipient of a claim notice in response to the notice—
(a) after the claim notice deadline, and
(b) at a time when the recipient was detained or had been given a notice of departure details as mentioned in section 12(1)(a) or (b);
‘immigration information’ has the meaning given in section 12;
‘claim notice’ and ‘claim notice deadline’ have the meanings given in section 11.”—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause would insert a new clause, to go after clause 12, providing that, where proceedings are subject to the late claims process (see clause 12), the appellant’s credibility is damaged. And if such an appellant provides evidence late, their credibility is damaged further. It also requires IIAA adjudicators to make a statement about the application of this section.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 4
Late information etc: proceedings before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission
“In the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997, after section 2 insert—
‘2ZA Provision of late information etc: effect on credibility
(1) This section applies where an appellant in proceedings before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission under section 2—
(a) has been served with a claim notice, and
(b) has provided any immigration information in response to the notice after the claim notice deadline—
(i) at a time when they are detained under a relevant detention provision, or
(ii) at any time after they have been given a notice of departure details.
(2) In determining whether to believe a statement made by or on behalf of the appellant, the Commission must take account, as damaging the appellant’s credibility, of the fact that they provided late information.
(3) But if the Commission considers that there are good reasons why the appellant provided the information late, the Commission may decide that subsection (2)—
(a) applies to a lesser extent than it would if there were no good reasons, or
(b) does not apply at all.
(4) If in the course of the proceedings the appellant provides late evidence, the Commission must take that fact into account, as damaging the appellant’s credibility.
(5) But if the Commission considers that there are good reasons to do so, it may decide that subsection (4)—
(a) applies to a lesser extent than it otherwise would, or
(b) does not apply at all.
(6) The Commission must include, as part of its reasons for a decision that disposes of the proceedings, a statement explaining—
(a) how the Commission has applied subsection (2), and in particular—
(i) the extent to which it decided that the appellant’s credibility was damaged by the provision of late information,
(ii) the impact any credibility damage had on the determination of the appeal, and
(iii) if the appellant provided reasons for the provision of late information, what those reasons were and how they affected the application of subsection (2);
(b) whether the Commission has applied subsection (4), and in particular—
(i) whether the appellant provided late evidence and if so what that evidence was,
(ii) the extent to which the Commission decided that the appellant’s credibility was damaged by the provision of late evidence,
(iii) the impact any credibility damage had on the determination of the appeal, and
(iv) if the Commission considered that there were good reasons as mentioned in subsection (5), what those reasons were and how they affected the application of subsection (4).
(7) In this section—
“claim notice” and “claim notice deadline” have the meanings given in section 11 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 2026;
“immigration information,” “notice of departure details” and “relevant detention provision” have the same meanings as in section 12 of that Act;
“late evidence” means evidence provided to the Commission after any deadline imposed in relation to the evidence by or under rules under section 5;
“late information” means information provided by the recipient of a claim notice in response to the notice—
(a) after the claim notice deadline, and
(b) at a time when the recipient was detained or had been given a notice of departure details as mentioned in subsection (1)(b);’”—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause would add a new clause making similar provision for proceedings before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to that made by the new clause inserted by NC3. It would be inserted into the Bill after the new clause inserted by NC3.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 5
Liability to deportation of certain residents despite section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971
“In section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971 (exemption from deportation for certain existing residents), after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) But the Secretary of State may decide that, despite subsection (1)(b), a person to whom subsection (1)(b) applies is liable to deportation (and may accordingly make a deportation order against them under section 5) if the Secretary of State—
(a) has deprived the person of citizenship status under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 (deprivation where conducive to public good), or
(b) is satisfied that the person has engaged in behaviour that would render them liable to deprivation of citizenship status under section 40(2) of that Act (whether or not they have such status).
(1B) A decision under subsection (1A) must be taken personally by the Secretary of State.
(1C) The Secretary of State may make a decision under subsection (1A) where the person—
(a) was deprived of citizenship status, or
(b) engaged in behaviour that would render them liable to deprivation of citizenship status,
before subsection (1A) came into force.’”—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause, to be inserted after clause 49, would enable the Secretary of State to override the exemption from deportation in s.7(1)(b) of the Immigration Act 1971 for certain Commonwealth and Irish citizens where they have behaved in a way that would render them liable to citizenship deprivation.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Anna Turley
New clause 5 will mean that a person’s exemption from deportation under section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971 can be disapplied where they have engaged in conduct such as terrorism, war crimes or serious organised crime. Section 7 provides protection from deportation for certain Commonwealth and Irish citizens who were ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom before 1 January 1973. It is an important safeguard for many people with long-standing ties to the UK.
The recent high-profile case of Shabir Ahmed highlighted a significant anomaly in the current law. In cases where the person’s conduct is serious enough to justify the removal of their citizenship, section 7 prevents us from deporting them. That cannot be right. Some of the most serious offenders, including individuals involved in terrorism, serious organised crime, sexual grooming or war crimes, should not be able to avoid deportation purely on the basis that they have been in this country since before 1973.
Our new clause will end the disparity in the powers available to protect the public from the most dangerous people. Decisions to disapply the exemption will be taken personally by the Home Secretary. Safeguards put in place by the new clause ensure that the legislation will not affect the vast majority of people protected by section 7. It will be used to ensure that only those individuals whose conduct places them among the most serious threats to the public can be deported.
As we saw with the case I mentioned, changing the law is only half the problem. Arranging the deportation of such individuals can take time, as successive Governments have found previously. Introducing this important new clause will ensure that we have the power to deport this individual, and that will be taken forward in the usual way. Given the danger that this individual poses, Government amendment 47 would amend the commencement clauses in the Bill to ensure that the new clause comes into effect upon Royal Assent.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
New clause 5 closes an anomaly that dates back to 1973, under which Commonwealth and Irish citizens living in the country when the Immigration Act 1971 came into force are protected from deportation by section 7, however serious their conduct. The new clause would let the Home Secretary decide that such a person is liable to deportation where they have been or could have been deprived of citizenship on conduct grounds. We support it and amendment 47, which brings it into force on Royal Assent.
The Conservative plan is to deport all foreign criminals. Not some of them—all of them. Any measure that removes a barrier to deportation is a step in that direction. New clause 5 is indeed a step in the right direction, but it is such a small step that it is challenging to see that it will make a noticeable impact. It is a personal discretion, not a duty, for the Home Secretary. Every person it covers will still be able to resist removal under article 8 and article 3, through the Human Rights Act 1998. Compare that with the much more robust new clause 45, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), which would mean automatic deportation for every foreign national convicted of an offence. That is what our borders plan means by deporting all foreign criminals.
For the purposes of the debate, I have three questions for the Minister. How many people do the Government estimate are protected by section 7 and could be made liable to deportation under new clause 5? What is the Government’s legal assessment of the clause’s reliance on conduct before commencement? How will the power apply to Irish citizens, given the common travel area, and have the Irish Government been consulted on the measure?
We will support Government new clause 5, but if the Government accept the principle that dangerous people should not be protected from deportation by legal technicalities, I hope they will support our new clauses in that regard too.
Siân Berry
I want to raise a few alarm bells in terms of what I feel about this measure, and I hope the Minister can answer me clearly. My misgivings arise partly because the Minister talked about basing the need for the new clause on a single case example; partly because it has been introduced into the Bill at a late stage in our considerations; and partly because it will come into force immediately on Royal Assent. It appears to be a rush, and I am not convinced that it will not have equalities impacts or overlap with the lessons we should have learned from the Windrush scandal. If the Minister can give some more assurance that this has been looked at carefully and not rushed into on the basis of a single case, I would be glad to hear it.
Anna Turley
I can be explicit: this change in the legislation has been inspired by one particular case. I will not apologise for that, because I am sure the hon. Lady would agree that the current situation is not acceptable. Some of the most serious offenders, including individuals involved in terrorism, serious organised crime or war crimes, cannot be deported even after we have stripped them of British citizenship, because of this loophole. It is important that we take steps to address it.
I want to give the hon. Lady some reassurance, however, because people may express concerns about protection given in law to others—for example, the Windrush generation or others who came here previously. I will be absolutely clear and explicit in Committee: they will not be affected. Any broader protection for the Windrush generation is not affected by the new clause. The power will be exercised personally by the Home Secretary. The Government are clear that the wider protections offered by section 7 will remain intact. The new clause will not affect the overwhelming majority of people protected by section 7 or their rights. This measure is intended solely to ensure that specific individuals whose conduct places them among the most serious threats to the public can be deported.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
We support closing this gap. Given that the test is an issue of the Home Secretary’s judgment, rather than of a conviction, and that it applies to past conduct, it would be helpful if the Minister can give reassurances. Given how serious and huge the power will be, some sort of reporting mechanism will help us to understand how often it might be used and how many people fall under it.
Anna Turley
The power is similar to those the Home Secretary has already, including the ability to prevent people from coming here and to ask for people to be removed. We agree that if deprivation on conducive grounds is to be used sparingly, it should be against those who pose a serious threat to the UK or whose conduct has involved very high harm. Other than where a decision is taken on the grounds that the person has conducted themselves in a manner that is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK, the conducive power is limited so that it can be applied only to those who are dual citizens. Parliament chose to enact the power on that basis to avoid the prospect of leaving people stateless, which would be contrary to the UK’s commitments under the 1961 statelessness convention. To respond further, the Home Secretary is of course accountable to this place on a daily basis. On high-profile cases, I am sure she will continue to give her usual response on the Floor of the House.
The hon. Member for Stockton West asked for an estimated projection. We do not have the statistics, but I have been clear and up front that we are responding to a particular case. We expect these to be extreme and unusual cases, where someone has been guilty of a crime of this magnitude, but is of that generation prior to 1973. The hon. Gentleman also asked about the consideration of the legal assessment. We have reviewed the legal position very carefully. We are content that it is lawful, which is why we are taking this measure forward.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Irish citizens. Irish citizens are liable to deportation, but in practice are only pursued in limited circumstances.
I thank hon. Members for their contributions to this important debate. As they will know, the Government have made this change to end the disparity in powers available to protect the public from the most dangerous people. The recent high-profile case of Shabir Ahmed has highlighted a significant anomaly in the current law. In cases where the person’s conduct is serious enough to justify the removal of their citizenship, section 7 currently prevents us from deporting them.
Tom Gordon
I sit on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and we have published a report on accountability for Daesh war crimes. Included in that report was the fact that the UK Government use their powers to strip citizenship more than almost any other country in the world, and in a way that has often been described as not particularly transparent. Could I press the Minister to go further on the reporting mechanisms that we need to see if we have this new clause and also existing Government citizenship stripping?
Anna Turley
This new clause does not influence our decisions to deprive people of citizenship—that remains. This is simply about our ability to remove them. That is the important loophole that we are trying to close, to create consistency on that front.
Safeguards put in place by Government new clause 5 ensure that legislation will not affect the vast majority of people protected by section 7. It will only be used to ensure that those individuals whose conduct places them among the most serious threats to the public can be deported.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 5 read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 32
Exception from automatic deportation of foreign criminals
“In section 33 of the UK Borders Act 2007 (exceptions from automatic deportation of foreign criminals) for subsection (6A) substitute—
‘(6A) Exception 6 is where—
(a) the foreign criminal has limited leave to remain in the United Kingdom under section 65(2) of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (leave to remain for victims of slavery or human trafficking),
(b) the Secretary of State is under a duty to grant the foreign criminal limited leave to remain in the United Kingdom under that section, or
(c) the Secretary of State intends to grant the foreign criminal limited leave to remain in the United Kingdom under that section despite not being required to do so as a result of the application of subsection (7)(a) of that section.’”.—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause, to go after clause 39, replaces an exception from the duty to deport foreign criminals. The existing exception operates by reference to the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. The replacement exception will operate by reference to the domestic legislation that gives effect to that Convention.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Anna Turley
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Section 33 of the UK Borders Act 2007 sets out exceptions to the automatic deportation of foreign criminals. This technical amendment provides greater legal clarity in relation to the exception that may apply where a foreign criminal is also a confirmed victim of modern slavery.
At the time the UK Borders Act was enacted, there was not a detailed domestic legal framework in place for the identification and protection of victims of modern slavery. Since then, the Government have introduced specific domestic modern slavery legislation, including the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The ongoing work on this Bill has highlighted the outdated reference to the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings—ECAT—and this provides an opportune moment to update the legislation so that it refers to the relevant domestic modern slavery framework.
New clause 32 replaces the existing reference to the United Kingdom’s obligations under ECAT with a reference to the relevant domestic modern slavery legislation, namely the temporary permission to stay provision in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.
Since the introduction of the 2007 Act, the UK has introduced specific modern slavery legislation and these provisions will now provide the legal framework for identifying and protecting victims of modern slavery in the UK. The new clause aligns the deportation framework with existing domestic legislation on modern slavery provisions and provides greater legal clarity.
The new clause does not expand or alter the protections. It simply clarifies and clears up any ambiguity in the law. It simply places the exception to automatic deportation on a clearer domestic statutory footing, while ensuring the Secretary of State retains flexibility to grant temporary permission to stay in exceptional circumstances where appropriate.
Blake Stephenson
New clause 32 rewrites the exception to automatic deportation for foreign criminals who are victims of trafficking. At present, section 33(6A) of the UK Borders Act 2007 disapplies automatic deportation where removal would breach our obligations under the Council of Europe trafficking convention. The new clause would replace that with a test based on leave under section 65 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, including where the Home Secretary merely intends to grant such leave, even where she is under no duty to do so.
A criminal conviction should trigger automatic deportation, and those deported as foreign criminals should not be able to make protection claims to stop that deportation. New clause 32 keeps a route by which a foreign criminal can avoid automatic deportation and it widens the discretion to use it.
I am sure nobody in this Committee wants genuine victims of trafficking to be left unsupported, but in clause 38, the Government accept that people who pose a threat to public order should be disqualified from protection. Why, then, keep the exception to automatic deportation for people who have been convicted of crimes here? Why widen the range of cases where there is no duty to grant leave at all?
How many foreign criminals relied on the trafficking exemption in each of the past three years? In what circumstances would the Home Secretary intend to grant leave under section 65 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 where there is no duty to do so? How many foreign criminals do the Government expect to benefit? Unless the Minister can show that this exception will be rare and tightly controlled, it is a back door through which foreign criminals will continue to avoid removal.
Anna Turley
Temporary permission to stay is granted only in limited circumstances for specific purposes and for time-limited periods. Confirmed victims who are considered a risk to public order who have made a modern slavery claim in bad faith will not usually be granted temporary permission to stay in the UK. In rare cases, the Secretary of State may decide that temporary permission to stay is to be granted to an individual who has been convicted of a crime, for example, where their presence is necessary to support a law enforcement investigation or criminal proceedings. The new clause ensures that the Secretary of State retains this discretion as is befitting with clauses we considered earlier. Any grant of temporary permission to stay is subject to the individual continuing to meet the relevant requirements and lasts only for as long as it is necessary to achieve the purpose for which it is granted.
I will undertake to write to the Committee on the specific numbers that the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire asked for. I thank Members for their interest in the new clause. It replaces the existing reference to the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings with a reference to the relevant domestic modern slavery legislation, namely the temporary permission to stay provision in the Nationality and Borders Act. The technical new clause provides greater legal clarity in relation to the exception that may apply where a foreign criminal is also a confirmed victim of modern slavery.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 32 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 33
Enforcement of decisions of the Immigration Services Commissioner
“(1) Part 5 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (immigration advisers and immigration service providers) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 92F (enforcement of penalty notices) (inserted by paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025)—
(a) in subsection (1), after ‘notice’ insert ‘(“a penalty”)’;
(b) for subsections (2) to (4) substitute—
‘(2) In England and Wales, the penalty is recoverable as if it were payable under an order of the county court.
(3) In Scotland, the penalty may be enforced in the same manner as an extract registered decree arbitral bearing a warrant for execution issued by the sheriff court of any sheriffdom in Scotland.
(4) In Northern Ireland, the penalty is recoverable as if it were payable under an order of the county court.
(5) Where action is taken under this section for the recovery of a penalty, the penalty—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, is to be treated for the purposes of section 98 of the Courts Act 2003 (register of judgments and orders etc) as if it were a judgment entered in the county court;
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, is to be treated for the purposes of Article 116 of the Judgments Enforcement (Northern Ireland) Order 1981 (S.I. 1981/226 (N.I. 6)) (register of judgments) as if it were a judgment in respect of which an application has been accepted under Article 22 or 23(1) of that Order.’
(3) In Schedule 5 (the Immigration Services Commissioner), in paragraph 9C (enforcement of orders to refund fees or pay compensation) (inserted by paragraph 14(5) of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025)—
(a) for sub-paragraph (3) substitute—
‘(3) Any amount to be refunded or paid under the order (“the amount owing”)—
(a) in England and Wales, is recoverable by P or the Commissioner (on P’s behalf) as if it were payable under an order of the county court;
(b) in Scotland, may be enforced by P or the Commissioner (on P’s behalf) in the same manner as an extract registered decree arbitral bearing a warrant for execution issued by the sheriff court of any sheriffdom in Scotland;
(c) in Northern Ireland, is recoverable by P or the Commissioner (on P’s behalf) as if it were payable under an order of the county court.’;
(b) in sub-paragraph (4), for ‘make an application under sub-paragraph (3)’ substitute ‘take steps to recover or enforce an amount owing’;
(c) for sub-paragraphs (5) and (6) substitute—
‘(5) Where action is taken under this paragraph for the recovery of an amount to be refunded or paid under an order of the Commissioner, the order—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, is to be treated for the purposes of section 98 of the Courts Act 2003 (register of judgments and orders etc) as if it were a judgment entered in the county court;
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, is to be treated for the purposes of Article 116 of the Judgments Enforcement (Northern Ireland) Order 1981 (S.I. 1981/226 (N.I. 6)) (register of judgments) as if it were a judgment in respect of which an application has been accepted under Article 22 or 23(1) of that Order.
(6) For the purposes of this paragraph, an appeal is pending during the period—
(a) starting when the appeal is brought, and
(b) ending when the appeal is finally determined, abandoned or withdrawn.’”—(Anna Turley.)
This amendment would insert a new clause, to go in after clause 49, amending the provision inserted into the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 about the enforcement of orders made by the Immigration Services Commissioner for penalties, refunds and compensation, so as to make it work effectively in Northern Ireland.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Anna Turley
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Government new clause 33 seeks to amend the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 to ensure that the enforcement of orders made by the Immigration Services Commissioner under that Act for penalties, refunds and compensation work effectively in Northern Ireland. Provisions regarding enforcement of unpaid monetary penalties, refunds of fees or payments of compensation in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were part of the Immigration Services Commissioner measures in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025. Upon making preparations to commence the measures, however, it became apparent that the current provisions are not compatible with the system in place in Northern Ireland. Therefore, the Government are taking steps to rectify the situation so that the enforcement regime can operate as intended.
The Government new clause ensures that any unpaid monetary penalty, refund of fees or payment of compensation imposed by the Immigration Services Commissioner on advisers providing poor or illegal immigration services or advice can be recovered in Northern Ireland as they can in England, Wales and Scotland. It also makes provision for penalties to be entered into the relevant registers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Procedures for recovery of debts differ in Scotland from those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, statutory penalties need not be treated as an existing court judgment. In keeping with other types of statutory penalty in Scotland, the proposed drafting allows for these penalties to be treated as an extract registered decree arbitral, bearing a warrant for execution for purposes of enforcement. That means that no application is needed to the court to enforce a debt or penalty, as it is treated as having been registered with the court and authority given the execution.
Amendments in later groups will make provision for the commencement of the new clause to take place in conjunction with the measures it relates to within the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 as amended by the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025.
Blake Stephenson
New clause 33 makes the Immigration Services Commissioner’s penalties, refund orders and compensation orders enforceable as court orders across the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland. These are technical improvements and we support them.
Rogue immigration advisers do real damage. They take money from vulnerable people, and, too often, they coach claims designed not to establish the truth but to delay removal, including the late claim lodged the night before a flight, and the fresh claim built on a story that has changed. We would end immigration legal aid and limit judicial review to cases where the Home Office has acted outside its powers, which would remove much of the market that these advisers exploit.
In the meantime, the regulator should have teeth. How many penalties has the commissioner imposed in the last three years, how much has actually been recovered and how many prosecutions for giving unregulated immigration advice have there been? As I said, we support this move, but I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Anna Turley
I undertake to write to the shadow Minister with those figures as I do not have them to hand, but I appreciate his interest in the new clause. Government new clause 33 ensures that any unpaid monetary penalty, refund of fees or payment of compensation imposed by the Immigration Services Commissioner on advisers for providing poor or illegal immigration advice or services can be recovered in Northern Ireland, just as they can be in England, Wales or Scotland. It also makes provision for penalties to be entered into the relevant registers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The new clause will ensure that the system relating to the Immigration Services Commissioner operates as intended.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 33 read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 34
Meaning of “the Immigration Acts”
“In section 61(2) of the UK Borders Act 2007 (meaning of ‘the Immigration Acts’)—
(a) omit the ‘and’ at the end of paragraph (n);
(b) at the end insert
‘, and
(p) the Immigration and Asylum Act 2026.’”—(Anna Turley.)
This new clause, which would go in after clause 50, would add the Bill to the list of “Immigration Acts” in the UK Borders Act 2007. “The Immigration Acts” is a general term used across the statute book and is defined in the Interpretation Act 1978.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Anna Turley
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This new clause makes a straightforward technical amendment to the UK Borders Act 2007. It adds the Bill, once enacted, to the statutory list of enactments that comprise “the Immigration Acts” in the 2007 Act. References to “the Immigration Acts” appear throughout the statute book and are used in connection with a wide range of immigration powers, enforcement provisions and other immigration functions. It is therefore important that, once enacted, the Bill is included within that established statutory definition.
The effect of the new clause is to ensure that references elsewhere in the legislation to “the Immigration Acts” will apply consistently to the revisions contained in the Bill in the same way as they apply to other immigration legislation. The new clause is a technical provision that ensures the legislation fits coherently within the wider immigration statute book and that existing references to “the Immigration Acts” operate as intended.
Blake Stephenson
Mr Twigg, you and the Committee members will be pleased to hear that this will be the shortest speech of the day. The new clause adds the Bill, once enacted, to the list of “the Immigration Acts”. It is a technical provision, and we do not oppose it.
Anna Turley
I thank Members for their overwhelming interest in and enthusiasm for this new clause. As discussed, this is a straightforward amendment that adds the Bill to the statutory list of enactments that comprise “the Immigration Acts” in the 2007 Act. It will simply mean that references elsewhere in legislation to “the Immigration Acts” will apply consistently to the provisions contained in the Bill in the same way that they apply to other immigration legislation.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 34 read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Jade Botterill.)
Social Housing Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Social Housing Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Social Housing Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 October 2026 - (27 Oct 2026)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 -
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind Members to switch their electronic devices off or to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during the sittings.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 27 October) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 27 October;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 29 October;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 3 November.
(2) proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 14; Schedule 1; Clause 15; Schedule 2; Clauses 16 and 17; Schedule 3; Clauses 18 and 19; new Clauses; new Schedules; Clauses 20 to 23; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 3 November.—(Matthew Pennycook.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Matthew Pennycook.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room.
Members are responsible for declaring any interests in accordance with the code of conduct at the start of proceedings and when speaking or tabling amendments. Does any Members wish to declare an interest?
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
I draw Members’ attention to my category 8—miscellaneous—interest.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
I wish to draw the Committee’s attention to my registered interest as a social landlord.
The Chair
We will now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and on the parliamentary website; it shows how the clauses, schedules and selected amendments have been grouped for debate. A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first. For debates on clause stand part, the Minister will be called first, and then other Members will be free to indicate, by bobbing, that they wish to speak in the debate. Please bob on each occasion on which you wish to speak during the proceedings.
At the end of the debate on a group of amendments and new clauses, I shall call the Member who moved the lead amendment or new clause again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate if they wish to withdraw the amendment or new clause, or if they seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment—this includes grouped clauses—that will be at my discretion.
Clause 1
Qualifying period for right to buy
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
New clause 55—Strategy relating to Right to Buy: 16 to 25 year olds.
“Within 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a strategy for promoting awareness of the Right to Buy scheme to people aged 16 to 25.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to issue a strategy for promoting the Right to Buy scheme among young people.
New clause 57—Transitional arrangements relating to qualifying period for right to buy.
“(1) Section 119 of the Housing Act 1985 (qualifying period for right to buy) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (A1) insert –
‘(A2) Subsection (A1) does not apply in relation to a secure tenancy entered into before the coming into force of section 1 of the Social Housing Act 2026.
(A3) In relation to a tenancy within subsection (A2), the right to buy does not arise unless the period which, in accordance with Schedule 4, is to be taken into account for the purposes of this section is at least three years.’”
This new clause seeks to extend the transition period for the commencement of provisions in Clause 1 in relation to secure tenancies
Amendment 84, in clause 22, page 16, line 27, leave out paragraph (a).
This amendment would prevent section 1 of this Bill coming into effect on the day on which the Act is passed. Together with amendment 85, section 1 would come into force at the period of three years beginning on the day on which the Act is passed.
Amendment 85, in clause 22, page 17, line 16, at end insert—
“(3A) Section 1 (right to buy: qualifying period) comes into force at the end of the period of three years beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”
This amendment together with amendment 84 would prevent section 1 of this Bill coming into effect on the day on which the Act is passed, instead making the commencement of section 1 to be three years following the day on which the Act is passed.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. Before I speak to clause 1, I would like to put on the record once again my sincere thanks to my ministerial colleague Baroness Taylor of Stevenage for ably shepherding the Bill through its House of Lords stages. I also thank all noble Lords who took part in the debates on the Bill in the other place. It goes without saying that we did not agree with all the arguments made—we cannot accept the incorporation into the Bill of clause 13, for reasons that I will detail in due course—but overall the expert scrutiny and challenge provided by peers have helped to improve the Bill. A number of Government amendments that we have tabled arise directly from the issues raised and the points made during the debates in the Lords.
The Bill has three core objectives. The first is to protect much-needed social housing stock and thereby to incentivise the building of more social rented homes. The second is to create a fairer tenancy system with greater protection for tenants who are victims of domestic abuse. The third is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and give providers greater regulatory certainty so that they can invest in new social and affordable homes with confidence.
At the heart of the Bill are comprehensive reforms to the right-to-buy scheme that are designed to put it on a fair and sustainable footing for the future. They are informed by the feedback that we received in the public consultation, which ran from November 2024 to 2025, and are set out in clauses 1 to 10.
More than 2 million tenants have exercised the right to buy since it was introduced in 1980. However, as we all know, many of the homes sold under the scheme have not been replaced, which has depleted social housing stock. There is now an insufficient supply of good-quality social housing to meet demand. More than 1.3 million households are on the social housing waiting list, and almost 180,000 children are living homeless in temporary accommodation. The right-to-buy scheme has also reduced the motivation and confidence of councils to build, since new homes can be sold before the council can recover its investment.
Although we respect those who believe that right to buy should be abolished outright, the Government’s position remains that social housing tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years should retain the opportunity to purchase them at a reasonable discount. However, as I argued on Second Reading, there is a pressing need to radically reform the right to buy to reduce the significant outflow of stock that has taken place since discounts were drastically increased by the coalition Government in 2012, to incentivise councils to once again build at scale, and to attract broader investment in council housing.
As things stand, to qualify for the right to buy an individual must be a secure tenant and must have spent at least three years as a public sector tenant—in other words, their landlord must be a public body, usually a council or a housing association. The three years do not have to have been continuous, and an individual can add together any time they spent as a public sector tenant. They are also able to count any period when their husband, wife or civil partner was a public sector tenant.
Until 2014, the minimum eligibility requirement was five, not three, years. The main rationale given at the time for reducing the qualifying period by two years was explicitly to drive an increase in the take-up of right to buy. The decision was taken in the full knowledge that a tenant occupying a property for three years is extremely unlikely to have paid rent that equates to the available discount.
The Government believe that a more sustainable balance must be struck to support councils to rebuild their stock of homes. Clause 1 therefore amends section 119 of the Housing Act 1985 to increase the minimum eligibility requirement from three to 10 years. As under the existing law, a combination of present and previous tenancies will continue to count towards the qualifying period.
Increasing the minimum eligibility period in that way has received strong support from stakeholders. In our consultation on reforming the right to buy, 81% of respondents, including 62% of tenants who responded, supported increasing the minimum period of tenancy required to at least 10 years. In fact, the majority of respondents supported someone having to be a public sector tenant for longer than 10 years before becoming eligible for the right to buy.
The Government believe that 10 years strikes the right balance between allowing long-standing tenants the opportunity to own their own home and protecting much-needed social housing stock. Incidentally, 10 years is also the average length of tenancy for someone buying under the scheme currently. This targeted change will maintain access to the right to buy for long-standing tenants, but in a way that provides for a fairer and more sustainable scheme and better supports the long-term supply of social housing.
Gideon Amos
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers.
I rise to support the clause. For Liberal Democrats, this is the most important and significant clause in the Bill, as it constrains the selling off of council houses. It is concerning that the Conservatives have tabled an amendment that would essentially reverse it. With 1.32 million people on the housing waiting list and 177,000 children in temporary accommodation, the last thing that we need is to continue the gradual loss of social housing. There has been a net loss of 2 million social homes since the introduction of right to buy. If that does not show that we cannot fill the bath with the plug taken out, nothing does. We stand squarely in support of the clause, although we would go further and give local authorities the ability and power to suspend right to buy completely if that is right for their area so that they can rebuild their stock of council housing and social rent homes.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
I echo the Minister’s welcome: it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers.
This Bill fails the British people. It effectively destroys right to buy for millions of families. It does nothing to free up stock for British nationals. It fails to introduce efficient stock management regulations. Most egregiously, it fails to build a single social home—a point completely missed by the Government and the Liberal Democrats. In scrutinising the Bill line by line, it is critically important that we defend aspiration and refocus the debate on the delivery of new homes.
I will speak to new clauses 55 and 57 and amendments 84 and 85, in my name. On new clause 55, in the past, Conservative Government-backed schemes such as Help to Buy and stamp duty discounts made a real difference to people buying their first home, and helped about 1 million first-time buyers to get on to the housing ladder. That contributed to 800,000 people buying their first home under the previous Government. However, since 2024 the Government have not shown that they have the aspiration to match that. Instead, they have cut a lot of the products that turbocharged first-time buyers getting on to the housing ladder.
Even when the Government try to support young people into property ownership, it emerges that all that glisters is not gold. I am primarily referring to the Your First Home scheme—a policy limited to new homes and expected to be constrained by income caps. Young people, especially young people in social housing, deserve better than that.
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman mentions Your First Home—the product that the Government announced to get young people on to the housing ladder. Does he agree that the targeted approach of that new idea is in stark contrast to the Conservative Government’s Help to Buy scheme? About half of the people who bought under that scheme were already able to buy a home, and it just allowed them to buy a bigger home, probably in a more affluent area.
Gareth Bacon
It rather depends on the detail, but if the income caps that we hear about in the press are even remotely accurate, we can rule out the whole of Greater London and the south-east of England, because people will not be able to access the financing. That would be yet another example of the Government pretending to do something without actually doing it, but we await the detail on that.
Right to buy is not a shameful practice, nor is it an exercise in capitalistic greed. It is a hand up on to the housing ladder for those in need, and an extension in the fundamental rights of property. New clause 55 would help realise that for young people. After all, it is critical that more is done to help young people to buy their first home. They face the greatest barriers to home ownership of any recent generation, and yet the Government’s answer is to cut one of their only routes to property ownership. We believe that that approach is fundamentally wrong, and I urge colleagues to join me in supporting young people by backing new clause 55.
On new clause 57, clause 1 in its current form not only enables the injustice of preventing future hard-working residents from owning their own homes but prevents current tenants from doing so. The Opposition are completely against that retrospective change. The Government have shown time and again that they have no regard for the property rights of individuals. The Government’s socialistic focus has targeted landlords, freeholders and renters, now they turn their gaze towards residents in social homes.
The vast majority of people in social housing deserve a hand up on to the property ladder and a chance to share in the pride of owning their own home. Many people in social housing know that their best chance at getting that is through right to buy.
Rachel Blake
On new clause 55, can the hon. Member share the evidence base for his proposal, including the number of tenants aged between 16 and 25? I struggle to believe that the proposal would make any difference in terms of home ownership for people aged between 16 and 25. In fact, it is the long-run shortage of genuinely affordable homes, rental properties and home ownership products that is responsible for young people struggling to get on to the housing ladder.
Gareth Bacon
The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but she does not say how the Government will increase home building. There is no increase in home building. The point of the new clause is to raise awareness of right to buy among 16 to 25-year-olds. The point of the new clause is about aspiration—something this Government have absolutely no idea about. Aspiration turned into opportunity by the Conservative party in the 1980s is being arbitrarily and retrospectively axed by a Bill that offers no other route into the housing market, builds no more social housing and effectively excludes 5 million people from the fundamental right to property ownership.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Gareth Bacon
I will not give way. I need to make some progress.
That is the least that can be done to support families aspiring to own their own home, whether they find themselves on the cusp of reaching their three-year qualifying period or on day one of the road towards making their home ownership dream a reality.
On amendments 84 and 85, the Bill opens with a statement claiming that its purpose is to make provision about social housing, but clause 1 makes no effort to increase the supply, build-out rates or funding for social housing. Instead, an ideological aversion to property ownership—a fundamental right—takes the top spot at the very beginning of the Bill. Ever since Margaret Thatcher gave millions of people the chance to own their own home, rather than rent it from the state, local authority or a registered provider, Labour MPs have for generations sought to crush that right and the aspiration that it exists to serve.
Gareth Bacon
No. More than 2 million households have exercised the right to become homeowners and gain a stake in society. Until 1980, that would have been out of reach for far too many British people, but the Government are determined to wind back the clock to the 1970s and cut off the right for hard-working families up and down the country to own their own home.
Amendments 84 and 85 would take out the extended qualifying period from the day the Bill is passed, thus preventing clause 1 from coming into effect for three years following Royal Assent. That would delay the Government’s dogma and continue to support the right of 5 million people to find their place in the community, and to feel the pride and safety that comes with owning one’s own home.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Member for Orpington for tabling new clauses 55 and 57 and amendments 84 and 85, and for speaking to them. I should say at the outset that, in political terms, he and I could not be further apart. However, he is a decent and diligent shadow Minister, as is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington—I do not want to leave him out. I very much look forward to the robust yet civil debates we will have over the coming sessions.
I do not want to dwell too long on the more general points made by the hon. Member for Orpington, but I think it is worth responding to two of them. We are not extinguishing the right to buy through the Bill. We could have abolished the right to buy outright, but that is not what we are doing. We are ensuring that those who benefit from the scheme are long-standing tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years.
In response to the hon. Gentleman’s point about the Bill having no impact on supply, he really ought to get out and speak to local authorities. They tell us that the benefits that they will see from the regulatory certainty and stability that we are providing, as well as the grant funding, will give them the confidence to go out and build new social homes, safe in the knowledge that, thanks to clause 1, they will not be immediately sold off after three years.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
I thank the Minister for giving way; he is always very generous with his time, and I think he is a very competent and diligent Minister in the Department. Can he provide the evidence base for what he has just said? I was the leader of a local authority, and I never once met a housing provider that told me they cannot build any more social housing because of the right to buy.
Matthew Pennycook
That is not my experience from discussing the matter with councils, and it does not reflect the feedback that we received in the consultation. Councils up and down the country tell us that they could build more if they had certainty that their stock would not be lost in the proportion that it is—and certainly not after a minimum qualifying period of three years.
Danny Beales
Having been a cabinet member responsible for council house building in Camden for seven years, and building 1,000 homes, I can say that it is a challenge when council homes can quickly leave our stock through right to buy. Having built them at great public expense, and having borrowed on a 30-year basis to deliver them, the possibility of losing that asset at a discount without recouping the investment is a material consideration. Does the Minister agree that authorities that do not build council homes but rely on housing associations might not see this as a problem, as housing associations are not included in right to buy in the same way?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank my hon. Friend for sharing his very considerable experience. There is a difference in experience between local authorities that have housing revenue accounts and those that do not, and those that build at scale and those that do not. However, it is certainly the case that councils knowing they can lose stock three years after building it without recuperating that investment is a disincentive to build.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Will the Minister give way?
Matthew Pennycook
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman but then, in the interests of getting to the Opposition new clauses, which I am told they want to speak to, I will make some progress.
Patrick Spencer
I appreciate the Minister’s point about recouping councils’ investment, which is why there are elements of the Bill that change that deal for councils. What my residents and I do not understand—and what people across this country do not understand—is why the Government are restricting access to right to buy for a whole group of people, including young people, young parents and people at the beginning of their professional lives, who might want to get on to the housing ladder. It seems they are tackling one problem by focusing on the completely wrong element of the issue.
Matthew Pennycook
I think I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I respectfully disagree. It is a problem that local authorities up and down the country build new social homes but then, after three years, they can be purchased. That is leading to an unsustainable outflow of social housing stock from the system. We are not net positive on social homes—we have not been for many years—but the Bill will ensure that we are. It gives an incentive to councils to build, as they will know that they are building more than they are losing, and therefore the 1.3 million people on waiting lists will not increase but decrease over time.
I must turn to the amendments and new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Orpington. New clause 57 would exempt existing secure tenants from the new 10-year minimum qualifying period introduced by the Bill. As I have said, a core aim of the Bill is to protect social housing stock better and to ensure that more social homes are built than lost. If existing tenancies were excluded from the changes to eligibility rules, the vast majority of tenants would be unaffected by our qualifying period reforms. I have no doubt that that is the hon. Gentleman’s intention, but the result would be homes continuing to be sold as little as three years after a tenancy was secured, and the continued loss of significant amounts of social housing stock. That is not the Government’s aim or the aim of the Bill. For that reason, the Government cannot accept the new clause, and I hope that the shadow Minister will not press it.
The Chair
The Questions on new clauses 55 and 57 and amendments 84 and 85 will be put later in the proceedings when we reach them.
Clause 2
Exercise of the right to buy by residential property owners
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
Clauses 2 and 3 further tighten the eligibility criteria for right to buy, to ensure that the scheme is fair and well targeted. Clause 2 prevents existing residential property owners from exercising the right to buy, which we believe is a reasonable and rational approach. We have set out what we think is an appropriate definition of a residential property owner in the clause. The clause will apply to anyone who owns a residential property, whether owned outright or with a mortgage. Leasehold and freehold properties will be captured, with exceptions for short-term leases of less than 21 years, as will properties in joint ownership or owned outside England, including those held in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and abroad.
Exemptions will be made for victims of domestic abuse who have moved from the accommodation that they were occupying for reasons connected to the abuse. As part of the application process, tenants will be required to declare to the landlord whether they own another property, and landlords will be able to check the information that the tenant provides. If tenants are seeking exceptionally to buy under the right-to-buy scheme where they already own a residential property because they have been the victim of domestic abuse, they will also be required to provide evidence of that to the landlord.
Clause 3 prevents those who have previously exercised the right to buy from doing so again, with exceptions in place for cases of domestic abuse and irretrievable relationship breakdown. I hope hon. Members will agree that repeat purchases would undermine the objectives of the right-to-buy scheme. It would lead to more social housing stock being lost to those who have already benefited from a publicly funded discount to buy their own home.
During our consultation on reforming the right to buy, 91% of respondents stated that they would support preventing someone who has either previously benefited from the right to buy or owns another property from being able to access the scheme. The terms of the referenced exceptions are set out in the clause and will be reinforced by updated guidance when the Act comes into force. It will be for social landlords to be satisfied that the exceptions apply, for which they will be able to ask for evidence from the applicant as part of the application process. Obviously, councils are already well practised at doing this as, under the current rules, those who have previously exercised the right to buy have their discount reduced if they seek to exercise the right to buy again.
We think clauses 2 and 3 are fair and proportionate. They are designed to appropriately restrict access to the right-to-buy scheme.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Timescales
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 4 concerns the statutory periods in which local authorities have to consider applications under the right to buy. The clause amends sections 124 and 125 of the Housing Act 1985 by extending the periods within which landlords must serve notices either admitting or denying a tenant’s eligibility for the right to buy, which relates to section 124, and setting out the purchase price and other required information, which is section 125. The period under section 124 will be extended from four to eight weeks where the tenant has been a tenant of the same landlord for the qualifying period and from eight to 12 weeks in any other case. The period under section 125 will be extended from eight to 12 weeks for freehold properties and from 12 to 16 weeks for leasehold properties.
The revised statutory periods are intended to provide additional flexibility where applications are complex, for example where there are valuation issues or safeguarding concerns. Importantly, they will give landlords more time to verify eligibility based on the new criteria and support them in carrying out preliminary counter-fraud and money laundering checks. Although we are extending the time period that landlords have to respond to right-to-buy applications, I stress that these timescales are an upper limit, not an expectation. We expect landlords to continue to process applications as quickly as they can.
Clause 5 inserts proposed new section 124A into the Housing Act 1985, enabling a landlord to suspend a right-to-buy application where there is reason to suspect that the claim may be fraudulent. A suspension under section 124A does not cancel the application; it temporarily pauses the statutory process while an investigation is carried out and must end no later than six months after the date of the suspension, or sooner if the investigation is concluded.
In response to the consultation on reforming the right to buy, we committed to carry out more effective fraud prevention, including mitigating vulnerable tenants being pressured into buying and cracking down on third-party backed applications. We are clear—I hope the Committee will support us in this principle—that fraudulent applications backed by unscrupulous lenders have no place under right to buy. They undermine the scheme. By ensuring that social landlords have more time to investigate suspected fraud when managing applications, the clause will help to prevent fraudulent applications from slipping through the cracks and maintain the integrity of the scheme.
During the period of suspension, the procedural requirements of the Act, including statutory time limits, will not apply. The tenant will, therefore, not be able to issue delay notices during this period. Guidance will make it clear that timelines for processing applications can be extended only where fraud is suspected and are not to be used by landlords as a way to delay the processing of more routine applications.
We will also strengthen guidance for landlords and tenants on fraud prevention, including third-party companies lending money for purchases. Any such companies will need to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, which will support both the FCA and landlords with enforcement.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Discount
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 29—Report on the impact of changes to right to buy discounts—
“Within the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which section 6 (discount) comes into force, the Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a report assessing the impact of the changes made by that section on—
(a) overall rates of home ownership,
(b) the number of social housing tenants exercising the right to buy,
(c) social housing supply, and
(d) the provision of replacement social housing.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to assess the impact of the Bill’s changes to right to buy discounts on home ownership, right to buy uptake and housing supply.
Matthew Pennycook
As I have already set out, the Bill’s reforms aim to ensure that the right-to-buy scheme is sustainable, including by ensuring that discounts are set at the right level to enable long-standing tenants to buy under the scheme but without depleting levels of social housing stock.
This Government already took action in November 2024 to reduce the maximum cash discounts, returning those to pre-2012 levels. We subsequently committed to revise the discounts available as a percentage of the property value, so that they align better with the revised cash cap amounts. Clause 6 delivers on that commitment by reducing percentage discounts so that they start at 5% of the property value after 10 years of public sector tenancy, and increase for every extra year of a tenancy up to a maximum of 15%. As is the case now, the percentage discounts will be subject to cash caps that set out the maximum cash discount that a tenant can receive in their area. Aligning the discounts available as a percentage of the property value with the cash caps ensures that those who have been in their homes the longest benefit the most, while avoiding disproportionately large discounts in high-value areas.
The revised percentage discount aims to strike a balance between the responses received during the right-to-buy consultation, in which many respondents supported setting the percentage discounts lower than those proposed by the clause. We are also simplifying the rules by applying a single set of discount arrangements to both houses and flats to make the scheme clearer and more consistent for tenants.
Patrick Spencer
Would it be possible for the Government to present some kind of analysis on the impact that this policy will have on the number of sales made available to tenants? That would be important to establishing the long-term economic impact on properties across the country.
Matthew Pennycook
I simply refer the hon. Gentleman to the impact assessment. If he has further, detailed questions about it, I am more than happy to answer, but we have set out our analysis of the impact of the Bill and in particular that of the ambition to go net positive on new social housing as a result of the changes we are making.
The clause also extends the discount repayment period from the current five years to 10 years after the original sale, during which time a repurchaser looking to resell the property will be required to repay all or some of the discount on a sliding scale. That measure was supported by 72% of respondents to our consultation and it will ensure that there is less incentive for early resale, which can undermine the purpose of the scheme. It will encourage people buying to retain the property and discourage profiteering.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
You did not bob. I stated the need to do that at the beginning of the sitting.
The Chair
You did not bob, Gareth. We will move on.
Clause 7
Right of first refusal
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 7 extends the existing right of first refusal for councils to buy back homes that were previously sold under the right to buy when they are resold. The right of first refusal period is currently 10 years after the original sale, and councils have eight weeks to decide whether to buy back the home when informed by the owner that they plan to sell; following that period, the property can be sold on the open market. Under the clause, the period in which councils must be given the right of first refusal will increase, so that it applies in perpetuity, meaning that councils will have the opportunity to buy back a property every time it is resold.
This proposal received strong support from respondents to the Government’s consultation. The change will apply only to applications to exercise the right to buy after the measures come into force. Homes already sold under the right to buy will be subject to the terms of the covenants that were attached to them when they were sold under the scheme.
Giving social landlords greater opportunity to buy back properties sold under the scheme increases their ability to acquire social housing that may otherwise be lost to the open market. That directly supports the Government’s ambition to grow the volume of council housing. Clause 7 is an important safeguard that supports the effective operation of the right-to-buy scheme. It will help to ensure that public subsidy is protected, discourage short-term purchases for financial gain and support the Bill’s wider objective to protect social housing stock. I commend the clause to the Committee.
The Chair
I can see no one bobbing, so I will put the Question.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Exceptions to the Right to Buy
Gareth Bacon
I beg to move amendment 90, in clause 8, page 8, leave out from line 2 to end of line 18.
This amendment removes the restriction on those living in National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and areas designated as being exempt from Right to Buy.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 13.
Amendment 104, in clause 8, page 8, line 10, at end insert—
“(1A) Regulations made under subsection (1)(a) above must use the Rural Urban Classification to determine whether an area is rural or urban.”
Amendment 83, in clause 8, page 8, line 25, leave out “35” and insert “10”.
This amendment seeks to reduce the period during which newly built social housing is exempt from the Right to Buy from 35 years to 10 years.
Amendment 9, in clause 8, page 9, line 10, at end insert—
“Community-led housing
20 Irrespective of the provisions of paragraph 18, the right to buy does not arise in relation to a dwelling where—
(a) the dwelling is owned, managed, controlled or on land owned by—
(i) a Community Land Trust;
(ii) a Community Benefit Society;
(iii) a housing co-operative; or
(iv) another community-led housing body prescribed by regulations; and
(b) the dwelling is subject to arrangements intended to secure affordability in perpetuity.”
This amendment seeks to provide a permanent exemption from Right to Buy for community-led housing, instead of the 35-year exemption otherwise provided by the Bill.
Government amendments 14 and 15.
Amendment 91, in clause 8, page 9, leave out lines 41 and 42 and insert—
“(c) may not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before and approved by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament.”
This amendment would require an affirmative parliamentary approval for regulations defining rural exempt from Right to Buy.
Clause stand part.
Government amendments 16 to 18.
New clause 2—Power of local housing authorities to suspend or abolish right to buy—
“Before section 121(A) of the Housing Act 1985 insert—
‘Power of local housing authorities to suspend or abolish right to buy
(1) A local housing authority in England may make a determination that the right to buy does not arise in relation to dwelling-houses in its area.
(2) A determination under subsection (1) may apply to—
(a) all dwelling-houses within the authority’s area, or
(b) dwelling-houses of a description specified in the determination.
(3) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the procedure to be followed by a local housing authority in making a determination under this section.’”
Gareth Bacon
It is a pleasure, Mr Vickers, to speak to amendment 90, which stands in my name.
Since 2024, when the Government have raised rural issues, they have often found themselves in trouble. The Opposition were therefore surprised to see the elements of clause 7 giving the Secretary of State the power to decide what is classed as rural housing and to restrict the rights of those deemed to live in rural areas.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I rise to speak to my own amendment 104, as well as amendment 9, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I agree with the Opposition that amendment 104 is about seeking clarity from the Government around how a rural area would be designated.
I welcome the Government amendments tabled since the publication of the Bill that hand more power to local authorities to determine the designation. Amendment 104 would provide some certainty regarding what classification could be used in that determination. What decision-making process would the Minister use to arrive at a designation whereby he has the power to make regulations for a rural area?
On amendment 9, as a party we believe that social housing is a crucial element of a settled society and protecting that stock is a must. That is why we support the overall objectives of the Bill, but we seek to go further than what the Government have currently legislated for by ensuring that community-led housing is included in the prohibition on losing stock to the private market. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, who represents west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, has tabled amendment 9.
Gideon Amos
I rise to speak to our Liberal Democrat amendments. New clause 2 would provide local authorities with the power to suspend right to buy in an area completely and bring it to an end. Perhaps for the first and last time, I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Orpington, completely and wholeheartedly; he said that local areas are best placed to decide what is right for them on council housing provision and council housing stock. That is why we would give local authorities the ability to say that they have lost enough council housing. Some 2 million council homes were lost to right to buy and 4 million social homes have been lost altogether. Enough is enough. Local communities should have the right to decide whether they want to continue to see the loss of council homes in their area.
Patrick Spencer
The hon. Gentleman talks about council houses being lost to right to buy; it would be remiss not to say they are being gained by tenants who own a property—part of a property-owning democracy that we hold dear in this country.
Gideon Amos
If we have a system where 4 million homes have been lost and 1.3 million people are on the council waiting list, something has gone radically wrong. We need a different approach.
Gideon Amos
From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman is asking me to give way, but I have not yet answered his initial question. Yes, we need to find ways to help people into home ownership. That is vital and fundamental to a thriving society. We need to build more homes. We need to provide more and better shared ownership arrangements, as the current arrangements are not working. We need to help people on to the housing ladder. That does not mean we need to erode and diminish our social housing stock.
Several hon. Members rose—
Deirdre Costigan
Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the research that shows that up to 40% of homes bought under right to buy have actually ended up in the hands of private landlords? In fact, if we are looking to help people into long-term housing, right to buy is not the solution.
Gideon Amos
The hon. Member is quite right. Not only that, but local authorities end up paying over the odds for placing families in temporary accommodation, sometimes in homes that were built as council houses to provide for those families in the first place. Now they are being sublet, sometimes multiple times, to provide that housing.
Gareth Bacon
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. He has made a point that has been made by Members today and on Second Reading: right to buy diminishes the social housing stock. I would agree on paper that it does, but that has to be read in the context, as shown by the House of Lords Library, that right to buy applies only to people in long-term tenancies who have been social tenants for a long time. Some 78% of people living in social housing are on lifetime tenancies. Those properties are not available. They could not be given to anybody else because they are lifetime tenancies. Right to buy is actually providing the receipts to build more social homes for people to live in.
Gareth Bacon
Stopping people from getting on the housing ladder does not help one bit, because it does not increase the supply, and that point seems to have been missed completely by the Liberal Democrats and by the Government.
Gideon Amos
I am somewhat surprised that the Opposition spokesperson has entered into the realm of social housing supply, given the record of the previous Conservative Government. Of course, we need to increase supply as well as saving the stock that has been built with public funds—taxpayer’s money—for the community, rather than giving over discounts, sometimes to the extent of a £70,000 or £80,000 transfer of cash, from the taxpayer into the hands of individual property owners for no good reason.
We need to increase supply. That is why the Liberal Democrats have a target to build 150,000 social rent homes per year. I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s party’s target for the delivery of social housing—they did not build many when they were in government. We need to give local authorities the power and flexibility to decide for themselves whether it is right to continue with right to buy in their areas. If we believe in local communities and local democracy, we should give them the ability to say that right to buy and the loss of more council housing stock is no longer right for their area. I commend new clause 2 to the Committee and urge all Committee members to vote for it.
Matthew Pennycook
I will speak to clause 8 and amendments 13 to 18, tabled in my name, and then I will turn to various amendments that have been tabled and spoken to.
Clause 8 amends schedule 5 to the Housing Act 1985 to introduce new and updated exceptions to the right to buy. Under the scheme, exceptions already include homes suitable for occupation by the elderly, sheltered housing and homes due to be demolished. Of respondents to our consultation, 76% agree that the existing exceptions should be retained, and we are doing so. The clause does, however, make a small change to amend outdated terminology in the current exemption for dwellings for persons of pensionable age, to update the reference to resident or non-resident wardens to resident or non-resident managers.
The clause introduces three new exceptions. First, it exempts newly built social homes from the scheme for 35 years, giving councils the confidence to invest in new supply. At present, councils are disincentivised from building because homes can be sold before costs are recovered through rent, undermining housing revenue accounts. A 35-year exemption period reflects the typical pay-back period and ensures that councils are not losing new homes prematurely. Despite what the shadow Minister continues to assert, that is a significant supply-side reform that helps to deliver the Government’s commitment to back councils to build at a scale not seen in decades.
Councils have been clear to the Government that the risk of early sale deters investment. Removing that risk provides greater certainty over stock and income and supports new development. We recognise the frustration of seeing newly built homes sold so quickly before they can meet local need. The Government’s manifesto committed to better protecting newly built social housing from the right to buy, and the introducing the exemption was supported by the vast majority of respondents to our consultation on the basis that it will give councils, as I have said, greater confidence to build new homes and provide greater protection than the existing cost floor rules.
Secondly, the clause exempts homes in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and designated rural areas from the right to buy. That recognises the particular pressures on rural housing where land and planning constraints mean that homes are significantly harder to replace once lost from the social sector. In many cases, replacement is not feasible at all, exacerbating already acute shortages in those areas. There was clear recognition of these challenges in the other place, where the difficulty of replacing rural homes and the importance of protecting stock in these areas was highlighted. This measure responds directly to those concerns and will help safeguard rural social housing.
Existing rural designations will continue to have effect for the purpose of this exemption until we implement the new framework for local authorities to self-designate as rural, as set out in Government amendments 13 to 18, which I will come to shortly, as well as clause 8. The covenants attached to homes that have been sold under the right to buy in rural areas, which restricts sale to a local person or a social landlord, will also continue to apply.
Thirdly and finally, council-owned market rent homes will also be excluded, supporting councils to use mixed tenure and cross-subsidy models to deliver more housing. That recognises the important role that market rent homes can play in enabling councils to generate additional income to reinvest in social and affordable homes. These changes are part of the wider package of reforms to ensure that more homes are built than lost.
Government amendments 13 to 18 deliver on commitments made during the Bill’s passage in the other place to put the criteria for rural designation into regulations. That was a call that came from noble peers on the Opposition Benches. The regulations will use the long-established criteria of a population density of no more than two persons per hectare and a population of 3,000 or fewer. That criteria will be applied using census-derived population data, and local authorities will be expected to ensure that the criteria will continue to be met in relevant areas every 10 years, as new census data becomes available.
It was also agreed in the other place that the Government would explore whether the existing process under which local authorities need to apply to the Government for designation could be replaced with a new system under which local authorities will be able to self-designate rural areas where they meet the criteria. I can confirm that we do intend to implement that change, and these amendments will enable that. These changes will provide transparency on the criteria for rural designation. They will also empower local areas and reduce bureaucracy for both local authorities and the Government compared with the current process, which, as I have said, requires local authorities seeking designation to apply to the Secretary of State, and secondary legislation to be made for each individual designation.
Matthew Pennycook
My apologies; it was tabled in the name of the Liberal Democrats. The amendment would require the Government to use the urban-rural classification system when determining whether an area is rural or urban for the purposes of the designated rural area exemption. As I have made clear, our intention is to continue with the long-established criteria for rural designation. Areas will need to have a population of 3,000 people or fewer and a population density of two persons or fewer per hectare, and we intend to set out those criteria in regulations. In our view, that strikes the right balance in defining designated rural areas for exclusion from the right to buy. Including areas with a population of 10,000 or fewer would bring far too many areas into the scope of the exclusion. For those reasons, I will not be able to take—[Interruption.] I can see the hon. Member for Newbury, and I give way.
Matthew Pennycook
I welcome that clarification from the hon. Gentleman.
Amendment 91 would require regulations made under section 37 of the Housing Act 1985, which allows restrictions to be imposed on the disposal of a home in a rural area, to be approved by both Houses before they could come into force. I understand that the intention of the amendment may have been to require the affirmative procedure to designate areas as rural for the purposes of the right to buy. Under self-designation, rural areas will be designated by local authorities instead of by regulations, so no parliamentary procedure will be needed.
The new power to prescribe the criteria will be, as I have said, subject to the negative resolution. In any event, the Government do not accept the premise that the affirmative procedure is required in that instance; there may be a principled point of disagreement on that. The current powers are subject to the negative procedure—that is the existing arrangement—which, in our view, provides an appropriate, proportionate level of parliamentary scrutiny. The powers amended or created by the Bill are also subject to the negative resolution procedure. Requiring the affirmative procedure would add an additional parliamentary step without affecting the substance or effect of the policy. For those reasons, I respectfully ask the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington, not to press amendment 91.
Amendment 83 would reduce the exemption from the right to buy for newly built social homes from 35 to 10 years. The Government cannot support the amendment. Our starting point is that the exemption should reflect the time needed for rental income to repay the costs of building a new social home. That payback period is generally between 30 and 50 years, depending on the viability of the site. We therefore concluded that 35 years strikes the right balance. It protects councils from losing newly built homes before they have recovered their investment while retaining a route to home ownership for tenants over the longer term. Reducing the exemption to 10 years would not provide sufficient protection and would act in direct contradiction to our commitment to back councils to build again at scale. It would allow homes to be sold long before their development costs have been recovered. A 35-year exemption will give councils the certainty and confidence to build, knowing that new homes will remain available as social housing for a meaningful period.
New clause 2 was tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington. I recognise the concerns that motivated this proposed new clause. However, the Government cannot support a proposal that would allow individual local authorities to suspend or abolish the right to buy in their area. We remain committed to a reformed right to buy that continues to provide long-standing council tenants with a route into home ownership while better protecting social housing stock, and we are reforming the scheme nationally to strike that balance. This new clause would create inconsistent access to that statutory right, with a tenant’s position depending on the local authority in which they live. That would, in effect, create a postcode lottery and make it difficult for tenants to understand whether the right to buy is available to them.
We believe that the right approach is a consistent national framework, supported by national reforms that better protect council housing stock. That will ensure a fair and consistent offer for council tenants across the country. We also recognise that housing markets vary significantly across England. However, rather than creating different rights in different areas, the Government’s reforms reflect those differences through the discount regime. As I have already set out, discounts are calculated as a percentage of a property’s value and are subject to regional cash caps, helping to ensure that the scheme responds to local property market conditions while maintaining a fair and consistent national entitlement for eligible tenants.
Amendment 9, which was tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives, has been spoken to by the Liberal Democrat members of the Committee. Again, I recognise the intention behind this amendment. Community-led housing is established to meet local needs and often includes arrangements intended to protect affordability for the long term. This Government have done a huge amount in this area and there is more to come to better support community-led housing. But in our view, the amendment is not necessary in relation to the principal form of community-led housing it identifies. Homes owned by community land trusts and fully mutual housing co-operatives are already outside the right to buy, and for those reasons the amendment would not provide the protection intended, beyond that which already exists. For those reasons, I would respectfully ask that hon. Members withdraw all their amendments, and I commend clause 8 to the Committee.
Gareth Bacon
We do not share the Government’s position on this. We will be pressing for a Division on amendment 90. On amendment 83, I understand the point that the Minister made about recouping the cost. However, we believe that that is a convenience for local authorities, not for local people, and we are more interested in local people.
Gareth Bacon
No, I will not. I am just summing up. We will press for a Division on amendment 83, because we think that 10 years is more appropriate than 35. On amendment 91, we also disagree with the Government. We think that there should be an affirmative rather than negative procedure for this, so we will also be pressing that to a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Matthew Pennycook
This simple and straightforward clause ensures that the reforms to the right to buy are applied fairly and consistently. It protects tenants who have already made a valid application by ensuring that applications received by landlords ahead of the reforms coming into force will continue to be subject to the existing rules. That will avoid retrospective changes that could disadvantage applicants partway through the process.
The clause also makes important provision in relation to rural exemptions, which links directly to the reforms in clause 8 and Government amendments 13 to 18. It provides that existing rural designations will continue to have effect after commencement, as if they were made under the new powers introduced by clause 8. That means that there will be no gap in protection for rural areas while the new framework in which local authorities self-designate as rural is implemented.
Together, these provisions ensure a smooth and legally certain transition, protecting both tenants’ rights and the integrity of rural housing protections. Overall, the clause provides legal clarity, fairness and continuity as the reformed right to buy scheme is introduced.
Clause 9, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Right to Buy: receipts
Gareth Bacon
I beg to move amendment 92, in clause 10, page 10, line 19, leave out “a determination” and insert “regulations”.
This amendment removes the power of the Secretary of State to make a determination, but that changes to the use of capital receipts must be made by regulations instead.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 93, in clause 10, page 10, line 29, leave out “a determination” and insert “regulations”.
This amendment removes the power of the Secretary of State to make a determination, but that changes to the use of capital receipts must be made by regulations instead.
Amendment 94, in clause 10, page 10, line 30, leave out “A determination” and insert “Regulations”.
This amendment removes the power of the Secretary of State to make a determination, but that changes to the use of capital receipts must be made by regulations instead.
Amendment 96, in clause 10, page 10, leave out lines 33 to 40.
This amendment would remove the Secretary of State’s ability to make different provisions in respect of different local authorities and to make retroactive provisions through a determination.
Amendment 97, in clause 10, page 10, line 39, leave out “determination is” and insert “regulations are”.
This amendment removes the power of the Secretary of State to make a determination, but that changes to the use of capital receipts must be made by regulations instead.
Amendment 95, in clause 10, page 10, line 41, leave out from beginning of line to end of line 5 on page 11 and insert—
“(5E) Regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft has been laid before and agreed by both Houses of Parliament.”
Amendment 98, in clause 10, page 11, line 5, at end insert—
“(5F) Before making a determination relating to the use of capital receipts under this section, the Secretary of State must consult local housing authorities.”
This amendment would require consultation before determinations are made on the use of capital receipts.
Clause stand part.
Gareth Bacon
The amendments concern the Bill’s proposals for the governance of capital receipts. Under clause 10, the Secretary of State would gain new powers to make significant determinations, including scope to vary provisions between local authorities and to apply determinations retrospectively.
Much like my concern about deciding the definition and scope of “rural”, this is not about firming up an already over-rigid system, but about ensuring that the Bill does not tear away too much power from Parliament and give it to Whitehall. It is only right that Parliament, not unelected civil servants, should decide the criteria for the allocation of capital receipts. That is why we have tabled these amendments, so that a regulatory framework can be established to provide parliamentary oversight and to give confidence and certainty to local authorities. This is an essential change to the Bill, and we will seek to divide the Committee on it.
As it stands, leaving determinations to the whim of the Secretary of State means leaving local leaders unsure of the direction of future decisions. It undermines precedent and destabilises already fragile funding requirements. The amendments replace the proposed determinations with clear and unequivocal guidance, with amendment 95 specifically ensuring that such decisions come with the approval of both Houses of Parliament. Amendment 98 doubles down on that by also requiring consultation with local authorities.
The Minister may believe that bringing such decisions in-house comes with the bonus of speeding them up, but we believe that making decisions in Marsham Street’s corridors rather than in town halls means local authorities will be left with uncertainty, which will not speed up the building of social homes, but slow it down. Moreover, nothing would be a greater barrier to building social homes than watching receipts being siphoned away.
Under clause 10, the ability to reallocate capital receipts between local authorities will always lead to some councils losing out. It is never going to be popular with councils when they find that, after running the numbers, planning the funding, consulting local people and preparing the foundations, the Secretary of State has robbed them of their funding and given it to another council. It sounds suspiciously similar to the injustice arising from the Government’s disastrously unfair funding review. I therefore urge colleagues to support amendments 92 to 98 and ensure that power stays local.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
I support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington. They involve a perfectly reasonable and proportionate request for this House to have a role in scrutinising what is put forward by the Government and recommended by the Secretary of State.
I spent six years as a Minister. I took countless statutory instruments through Delegated Legislation Committees. By and large, it is not a complex process; it requires a bit of time on the part of officials to get the drafting right, but the process in this House is not complicated. It ensures that a Minister is directly accountable: they have to be on their brief, and they have to be able to clearly articulate the rationale behind what they are doing and, quite rightly, to be challenged by right hon. and hon. Members. That is so important in maintaining or even in creating trust from our communities—the transparency that that democratic accountability brings to what, as my hon. Friend clearly set out, will on occasion undoubtedly be relatively, if not significantly, contentious decisions relating to significant sums of money.
My hon. Friend set out the case for amendment 95 very clearly. The powers in clause 10, when exercised, may well see some local authorities feeling that they are losing out, to the benefit of other local authorities. Without getting into what those decisions may be or where the money may go, in terms of process and democratic accountability, it is not unreasonable that both Houses should have the opportunity to scrutinise the powers in clause 10.
Rachel Blake
I am listening with interest to the right hon. Member’s remarks, and I have some professional experience in this area. Amendments 95 and 98 seem more about delaying a reasonable approach to the Government administering right-to-buy receipts. I am interested to know what the Opposition think would be the alternative to any kind of movement of right-to-buy receipts between local authorities. Would it be entirely acceptable for right-to-buy receipts not to be reinvested in council homes?
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady appears to be making a point that I was not actually making in my remarks. My point is about the process. As I said before she intervened, I am not making a judgment on the decisions the Secretary of State may or may not make about those capital receipts; I am making a point about democratic accountability and transparency.
Going back to the earlier group of amendments praised by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington, the procedure that is used when legislation comes before Delegated Legislation Committees in this House is not complex. It does not engender lengthy delay; it just ensures that our constituents can see that we are considering that legislation, that we are debating it and that the Minister can answer the questions put to him. I have no doubt, in the case of this Minister, that he will be able to answer them; sadly, it has not always been the case that every Minister, on both sides of the House, has been capable of doing that. However, I am sure this Minister would have no challenges in coming before a Delegated Legislation Committee and answering the questions put to him.
Amendment 98, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, would require consultation before determinations were made on capital receipts. Again, consultations do not have to be overly complex or lengthy. If Members go on gov.uk, they will see that there are myriad Government consultations out there at any one time on very significant issues, down to issues such as, for example, the methodology used for reporting land use statistics in the country. The Government routinely consult on a whole range of things, whether that be a significant, detailed and lengthy consultation on something complex or, often, a very short and sharp consultation. They give people the opportunity to have their say, and those who genuinely have something in the way of expert knowledge to contribute.
Mr Dillon
On amendment 98 and the consultation, have the right hon. Member and the Opposition considered whether, if a local authority felt it had not been consulted, that would open up a legal route to delay the allocation of capital financing and therefore slow down the growth of house building?
Edward Argar
Over many years, I have found that consultation done properly leaves very limited legal risk. Where Governments get it wrong—I do not want to overly speculate on what has happened with the Government’s consultations and process around local government reorganisation—the hon. Member is right that there is a potential for JRs, although I would highlight that a judicial review can focus only on process, not on whether the decision should be relitigated.
If consultation is done well—I would have thought that consultation on this issue should be fairly simple—I believe it can enhance the transparency that is important in bringing our constituents with us and in ensuring that the Government are directly accountable to hon. and right hon. Members in this House. When the legislation is introduced, under our amendments as a regulation, that consultation is there to be drawn on. I genuinely believe—I have seen it for myself—that when a Government are willing to listen to a consultation response, they can, if they do things openly, often come up with a slightly better or tweaked outcome.
Danny Beales
The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. My experience is that local councils that are seeking to deliver new council homes have been calling for right-to-buy receipt reform for a long time. The previous Government had an overly restrictive approach to right-to-buy receipts. Councils were only allowed to keep a third of them for three years, and if they could not spend them within that time, they had to return them to the Treasury with interest. As a result, many decided not to take their receipts at all.
It therefore seems quite sensible not to tie up councils that are trying to build new homes, which is quite a complicated and time-consuming process, in consultations and discussions, but to give the Secretary of State the flexibility to work with local authorities, to give them more receipts, to increase the period within which receipts can be used or to reallocate them to schemes and councils that can build within an acceptable period. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point, but he makes the same point, in a sense, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, and it is not what I am speaking about, which is the process. I do not believe that a consultation would tie councils up in knots or delay things inordinately, or indeed that introducing these changes through regulations rather than by diktat of the Secretary of State would cause unnecessary delays.
This process is about transparency and accountability. We have done it before in Government; indeed, this Government have done it with regulations. I have sat on a number of DLs; maybe I have upset the Whips at some point, because I sit on a DL almost every week, when I am not sitting in a Bill Committee—such is the fate of a former Cabinet Minister on the Back Benches. However, the point I am making is that this Government and other Governments have used the delegated legislation system to get things through quickly but none the less with democratic accountability to this House. That is the point being made by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington in these amendments. It is about giving our constituents the confidence to trust that this House has debated what the Secretary of State recommends. Knowing the majority in the House at the moment, I have no doubt that the Minister would easily win any votes in a DL on matters such as this.
Rachel Blake
I will have a go at delving into the process point; I do think that these are simply delaying amendments from the Opposition, but I will nevertheless engage on the principle of the process point. What is it about a determination, which would be open to written or oral questions, that the Opposition do not think is transparent and democratically accountable?
Edward Argar
The very simple fact that there would be no vote on it by Members of this House, regardless of whether that was in a Committee, which is of course a subset of the House where we can debate and raise issues. I have a lot of time for the hon. Lady. I spent almost 10 years sitting on her local council before I was elected to this place, and I still closely follow Westminster politics. Consequently, I know that she is a hard-working and diligent Member who engages with all these issues particularly closely. However, the simple answer to her question is that Members would not have a vote on the Secretary of State’s determination.
With that, I will conclude by again reiterating my support for the intent behind the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington has tabled.
Matthew Pennycook
Let me say to hon. Members that I have never found the process in Delegated Legislation Committees particularly fast in any instance, but I recognise the reasonable concerns that have been put. I think they are unfounded, and for the reasons I will set out, I hope to reassure hon. Members.
Clause 10 simplifies and modernises how the rules on right-to-buy receipts are managed. Its intent is to improve administrative efficiency and to provide flexibility. To understand our purpose behind the clause, it is important to have an accurate view of the current arrangements. As things stand, every stock-holding authority has an agreement with the Secretary of State, allowing it to retain all its net right-to-buy receipts, provided that it spends those receipts on replacement social housing.
In practice, this is hugely administratively burdensome. There are over 160 stock-holding local authorities, all of which must be issued with identical section 11(6) retention agreements whenever the rules change. That requires issuing, tracking and chasing agreements for signature across every one of those authorities, creating unnecessary bureaucracy for both councils and central Government.
Clause 10 replaces that with a simpler approach. It provides the Secretary of State with a power to disapply or modify the requirements on the use of receipts set out in regulations by determination, which will then apply consistently across all local authorities. That removes the need to replicate the same agreement process many times over.
Concerns were raised in the other place that we may be seeking to use the clause to require councils to start repaying a portion of their receipts to the Treasury. Let me reassure the Committee that that is absolutely not the case. We fought hard to ensure that local authorities could retain 100% of their receipts. Hon. Members may recall that the previous Government temporarily made that change, but reversed it before the last election.
Gareth Bacon
The Minister has said that his intent is to improve efficiency and, as always, I respect his sincerity and what he said. It is simply a point of difference between us.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston made a compelling case about the democratic accountability and transparency of the affirmative procedure as opposed to the negative procedure. The point that we have made in the amendments is about the process not the outcome, and our contention is that the process should be as democratically accountable and transparent as possible. We will therefore press all the amendments to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 11 concerns the right-to-acquire scheme for housing association tenants, which is broadly modelled on the right-to-buy scheme, with most of the same rules applying. The right to acquire applies to housing association homes built or acquired with social housing grant after 1997. The Committee has already discussed the effect of and rationale for clauses 1 to 10, which amend the Housing Act 1985 to alter rules regarding the right to buy. Under section 184 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, those changes also apply to the right-to-acquire scheme for housing association tenants. The Committee will understand that it is only right for the same eligibility criteria and exemptions to apply to both schemes, to ensure consistency and fairness for social housing tenants, regardless of whether they live in a council home or a housing association home. My officials have engaged with relevant stakeholders, such as the National Housing Federation, which is supportive of our consistent approach.
Clause 11 also supports the broader policy objective of protecting social housing stock. That is a core objective of this Bill, and the Committee has debated it at length. As the discounts for the right to acquire are set out separately from those for the right to buy, they remain unaffected and will continue to be £9,000 to £16,000, depending on the location. Increasing them to align with the right-to-buy discounts would contradict our objective of better protecting social housing stock.
The clause is consequential on previous clauses, and reflects the changes made to the rural area provisions, which is currently an area of divergence between the two schemes. Under the right to acquire, homes in designated rural areas are already exempt from sale, in recognition of the challenges of replacing stock in such areas. The clause helps to ensure that the new rural exemptions in the Bill apply consistently across both schemes. The clause will provide fairness for social housing tenants, support our objective of protecting social housing stock and ensure that the new rural exemptions operate coherently across both schemes. I commend it to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Restriction on certain sales of social housing by private registered providers
Mr Dillon
I beg to move amendment 102, in clause 12, page 11, line 24, at end insert—
“(1A) In the case of a dwelling—
(a) in a designated rural area, or
(b) with four bedrooms or more,
condition D also applies.”
This amendment, along with Amendment 103, would require written consent from a local authority for the sale of certain social housing properties.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 101, in clause 12, page 11, line 33, at end insert—
“(ba) each community land trust providing social housing in that area at the time the sale notice is given, and”.
Amendment 5, in clause 12, page 11, line 35, at end insert—
“(d) the Regulator of Social Housing.”
This amendment seeks to extend the notification of proposed sale to cover the Regulator of Social Housing.
Amendment 99, in clause 12, page 11, line 35, at end insert—
“(2A) Condition AA is that a copy of any notice given in relation to the relevant sale is published on the registered provider’s website.”
Government amendment 19.
Amendment 6, in clause 12, page 11, line 36, leave out “four weeks” and insert
“eight weeks, or twelve weeks if the property is in an area designated as a rural area under paragraph 17(1)(c) of Schedule 5 to the Housing Act 1985,”.
This amendment seeks to extend the timescale for notice to be given of a sale.
Amendment 1, in clause 12, page 12, line 2, at end insert—
“(4A) A sale notice given under subsection (2) must be given to the Regulator of Social Housing at the same time as it is given to the persons specified in that subsection.”
This amendment requires the Regulator of Social Housing to receive a copy of every sale notice at the same time as local housing authorities and registered providers are notified.
Amendment 103, in clause 12, page 12, line 2, at end insert—
“(4A) Condition D is that, in the case of a dwelling in a designated rural area or a dwelling with four bedrooms or more, the local authority has given written consent for the sale.”
This amendment, along with Amendment 102, would require written consent from a local authority for the sale of certain social housing properties.
Amendment 8, in clause 12, page 12, line 31, at end insert—
“171BA Extension to the notification period
(1) Where condition B under section 171A is met but condition D is also met, the period of four weeks beginning with the relevant day is extended by a further four weeks beginning with the day after the end of the four weeks.
(2) Condition D is that a local housing authority or registered provider has—
(a) notified the disposing provider that steps are being taken to offer to acquire the dwelling; and
(b) provided evidence of substantive steps taken towards making an offer, including but not limited to—
(i) obtaining a valuation of the dwelling,
(ii) securing funding for the offer, or
(iii) seeking necessary approvals for the offer.”
This amendment seeks to extend the four week notification period for the disposal of social housing where a local authority or another registered provider can provide evidence that it is preparing to offer to purchase the property.
Mr Dillon
Before I begin my remarks on amendment 102, I declare an interest: my wife works for a social housing provider. I apologise to the Committee for not declaring that before my earlier contribution.
Amendment 102 is a simple amendment that would protect larger homes within social housing stock. It refers to designated rural areas, which the Committee covered during earlier consideration, but also to homes with four or more bedrooms. The reason for that is simple: of all our social housing stock, larger homes are the most precious commodity.
We know that the social housing market makes up 48% of properties that are considered overcrowded in the UK. If we look at Merton or Westminster council, for example, there is a 90 to 99-year wait for a three or more bed property; if we go north to Rochdale, about 550 families there were registered for a four-bed home, but only 14 became available in a year; if we go to Bath in the west of the country, an officer there said that, in principle, a family could be on the register for a four-bed for over 200 years, and added that four-beds are popular under right to buy but are also expensive to build. When you add those comments to our ambition to ensure that overcrowding impacts as few people as possible, making four-bed or larger homes exempt means that we protect the homes we really need.
Amendment 101 is similar to a previous amendment, which went into more detail. It would make sure that each community land trust that provided social housing was also given notice of a sale. It would expand the remit of who is notified, so that if providers were willing to take up those social homes when they were being disposed of, we would retain them in some sort of community ownership.
Gideon Amos
I will speak to amendments 5, 6, 1 and 8. Amendment 5 would extend the notification of proposed sale to cover the Regulator of Social Housing.
Amendment 6 would extend the timescales of notice from four to eight weeks. I note that, since we tabled the amendment, the Government have come up with their own amendment to extend the timescales; they have obviously been reading everything we table closely. I am glad that we are already having an impact on the Bill and I will be happy to press the amendment to a vote if necessary, to ensure that the Government succeed in getting the change in timescale that they clearly want. Otherwise, depending on the order of voting—I still sometimes have a problem following that—I am sure that one or the other will fulfil the same purpose.
Amendment 1 would require the Regulator of Social Housing to receive a copy of the notice. Amendment 8 is effectively a stop-the-clock amendment, whereby, if negotiations are ongoing for the acquisition of a social home by a local authority, the time period would be extended by a further four weeks. I recognise that the amendment refers to the four-week period in the Bill, which may be extended to eight weeks through other amendments. However, the principle of allowing an extension of time when negotiations are ongoing is significant, and something that the Local Government Association would support. Although I will not push amendment 8 to a vote, it would be helpful if the Minister considered whether an extension could be provided where negotiations are ongoing, so that there is a real chance for the purchase of that property to be completed and for the local authority to succeed in that endeavour.
Matthew Pennycook
I will speak to Government amendment 19 and respond to each of the eight amendments in this rather large group. I have listened to concerns raised by parliamentarians and stakeholders over recent weeks and months that a four-week period between a private provider notifying a council or other provider in their area of the sale of a social home and the disposing of that home is not sufficient for local authorities to consider purchasing the property.
I appreciate that local authorities were concerned that a four-week window would not align with their internal timing constraints, such as monthly cabinet or committee meetings. On that basis, the Government have tabled amendment 19 to extend the window of time that must pass between notification and the sale of a property from four to eight weeks. We think the amendment strikes the right balance between maximising opportunities to retain social homes and not causing undue delays to sales. I will come to the specific point that the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington made about negotiations that are in train.
Amendments 6 and 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, seek to extend the disposal notification period. Amendment 8, as he just argued, would require an extension of the window to eight weeks where a provider could demonstrate they were taking steps towards purchasing the property. The Government’s amendment 19 goes further than that proposal by requiring eight weeks in all cases, so I hope he will support it.
Amendment 6 would require a further extension to 12 weeks in areas designated as rural. We are not persuaded by the case for a longer notification window specifically for rural areas. A statutory minimum of 12 weeks could unnecessarily delay sales and require providers to deal with the additional burden and costs associated with having homes left unoccupied for extended periods. I should also stress that the notification period is just a minimum. I would expect private registered providers to engage and be flexible beyond that period where there is a serious interest from another landlord in the social housing sector.
Mr Dillon
The Government do not accept that there is a compelling case to extend the period to 12 weeks for rural areas, but an organisation may be looking to buy a property in an area of outstanding natural beauty or where there is no hard-wired infrastructure. Does the Minister not accept that more consideration needs to be given when taking on a social home in a rural area than in a well-developed town, and that someone in that situation should be given longer—on top of what the Government have already graciously accepted—to go through the sale and make sure they have all their ducks in a row and can convert the property however they might want to under restrictive planning laws?
Matthew Pennycook
I appreciate the concern. I will make two points in response to the hon. Gentleman. First, it is just a matter of fact that there will be different challenges in different areas. What we have tried to get to with the increase in the notification period from four to eight weeks is a period in which we think it is reasonable for all local authorities to consider these matters. What I have not had is compelling evidence—if he has any, I would like to see it—to suggest that local authorities would not be able to deal with these matters in an eight-week period. I stress again that the notification period is just a minimum. We would expect private registered providers to engage and be flexible beyond this period where there is a serious interest from another landlord in the social housing sector. I hope that reassures him.
Amendments 102 and 103, tabled by the hon. Members for Newbury and for Taunton and Wellington, would require written consent from the local authority for the sale of a social home in a rural area or one with four or more bedrooms. Again, I recognise the strength of feeling on this matter. I and the Government want to ensure that every opportunity is taken to protect much needed social housing stock. I would expect private registered providers to think particularly carefully before selling homes that meet acute housing needs in local areas. However, housing associations remain independent organisations responsible for their own asset management, and the Government cannot support an approach that would prevent landlords from making legitimate business decisions about how to manage their stock without the agreement of the local authority. I am happy to go into the reclassification risks that arise in this area with the hon. Members. I have debated those points at length with a number of Members on both sides of the House.
I should also point out that the previous restrictions that required approval by the Regulator of Social Housing for disposals of homes had to be removed in 2017—the hon. Member for Newbury, with his experience in the sector, will remember this—to reclassify the housing association sector back to private. I fear that introducing a requirement for local authority approval would represent a significant classification risk. It is not the only classification risk—these things are considered by the Office for National Statistics in the round—but nevertheless it is a material risk from our point of view.
Lewis Cocking
I ask genuinely about disposals, in a nice and polite way, so I wonder what the Minister’s comments will be. When housing associations or councils dispose of properties, they generally do so for a reason—for example, not being able to spend the money to get it up to a certain EPC grade that the Government have set for them. What evidence does he have that, where one company cannot do something for a social home, such as spending the money to increase the EPC rating, and therefore is selling it, another social housing provider will be able to do it? I want to understand where we are going with these amendments and this part of the Bill. When properties are disposed of, it is usually done for a reason. What makes him think that where someone cannot do it, someone else in the industry could?
Matthew Pennycook
That is a fair point. The particular reasons that individual providers dispose of stock vary wildly across the country. In the case of disposals that are driven by increases in standards, we are seeing some of that, but it is also the case that there are occasions when local authority or other providers are, for their own reasons, based on their own assessment of the stock, able and willing to take those homes on. I do not think that we can specify a general rule. What we are trying to do here is to give local authorities and other providers the maximum possible opportunity to pick up those stocks and to retain them in the social housing sector, if that is possible. To be very clear and honest with the hon. Member, that may not always be possible, and those homes may be disposed of on the open market, but we want to increase the chances of them being able to be retained in the sector, for all the reasons that we have gone into.
Amendments 1 and 5 would add the Regulator of Social Housing to those bodies that must be notified prior to a disposal. The regulator plays a vital role in ensuring that our social landlords deliver the quality homes and services that their tenants deserve. As part of the regulatory framework, private registered providers must be able to demonstrate a strategic rationale for disposals and understand the implications for their total social housing stock. I am not persuaded that requiring private registered providers to notify the regulator of a future disposal would enable it to better regulate against the standards that it sets. The regulator plays no role in approving such disposals; that decision properly rests with the landlord. The regulator is already notified once a disposal has occurred, so it has an overview of the numbers and types of disposals that are occurring.
Amendment 101 would, similarly, require community land trusts with social housing in the area to be notified. Of course, community land trusts that are registered with the Regulator of Social Housing would already be notified under the requirements of the clause. I am aware that not all community land trusts are registered with the regulator, and that is their choice, but the focus of the clause is to keep homes in the regulated sector where it is possible to do so. The notification process is therefore focused on notifying providers that are registered with the regulator.
Amendment 99 would require a sales notice provided to the local authority and other registered providers in the local area to be published on the website of the private registered provider intending to dispose of the property. One of the main aims of the clause is to increase transparency around disposals. However, there is a balance to be struck between the benefits of transparency and the burdens and costs to private registered providers. We believe that the amendment would introduce an unhelpful level of bureaucracy around the disposal notification process. While some providers may choose to publish notifications of sale on their websites, requiring publication via legislation is disproportionate.
Gideon Amos
If we are after transparency, I have difficulty with the Minister’s basing his argument on the massive cost of putting something on a website. I understand that it is a tradition of this place that the Government resist all amendments that come from all quarters other than their own, but this seems to be taking things to an illogical conclusion.
Matthew Pennycook
I certainly do not make it a point of principle to resist all amendments despite how sensible some will be. The hon. Member will see in the list of Government amendments that we will be debating many points that were raised by noble peers and that we have taken on. I will go away and reflect on how much of a burden this would be, but let me make a general point. This is my third Bill Committee as a Minister, and I sat on probably 13 while in opposition. The natural tendency of Oppositions is to call for further requirements, further regulations, further reviews and further assessments, because often they have nothing more to say on the point of principle of the particular clause. There is a cumulative impact of layering all of that on top. We want to ensure that the balance is struck properly, and that the disposals process is proportionate and is streamlined to an extent, but I will go away and reflect on the particular point and review whether requiring private registered providers to do what he suggests would be as burdensome as we think.
Mr Dillon
I support the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington and appreciate the Minister’s commitment to go away and reflect on them. May I just add a plea? There is concern, when stock is being disposed of in local communities, that the community does not know what is going on. Having disposal notifications published online would not just allow the sector to know what is going on, but allow the local community to know what is going on with its housing stock.
Matthew Pennycook
I take the hon. Member’s point and, as I committed to doing in response to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, I will go away and reflect. I am happy to provide a fuller, written answer to both hon. Members.
Mr Dillon
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 99, in clause 12, page 11, line 35, at end insert—
“(2A) Condition AA is that a copy of any notice given in relation to the relevant sale is published on the registered provider’s website.”—(Mr Dillon.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Gideon Amos
I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“171AA Right of first refusal: local housing authorities
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and
(b) the dwelling—
(i) is let at social rent, or
(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.
(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), the local housing authority for the area in which the dwelling is situated may make an offer to acquire the dwelling.
(3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the local housing authority at existing use value for social housing.
(4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.
(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”
This amendment gives local housing authorities a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 3, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“171AA Right of first refusal: registered providers
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and
(b) the dwelling—
(i) is let at social rent, or
(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.
(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), any registered provider which received a sale notice under section 171A(2) may make an offer to acquire the dwelling.
(3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the registered provider at existing use value for social housing.
(4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.
(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”
This amendment gives registered providers a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.
Amendment 10, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“171AA Right of first refusal: local affordable housing providers
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and
(b) the dwelling—
(i) is let at social rent, or
(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.
(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), where a qualifying local affordable housing provider makes an offer to acquire the dwelling, a private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the qualifying local affordable housing provider at existing use value for social housing.
(3) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing.
(4) In this section, a ‘qualifying local affordable housing provider’ means—
(a) a community land trust;
(b) a housing co-operative;
(c) a community benefit society;
(d) a charity whose purposes include the provision of affordable housing; or
(e) such other locally based not-for-profit housing body as may be prescribed by regulations,
which operates, or intends to operate, affordable housing within the local housing authority area in which the dwelling is situated.
(5) Any dispute as to existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”
This amendment seeks to extend the right of first refusal to not-for-profit community-led housing organisations and other non-registered providers capable of retaining homes as affordable housing within the local area, and provides that the disposal must be at existing use value.
Gideon Amos
I will be brief. Amendment 2 would give local housing authorities right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing. The acquisition of those properties at existing use value for social housing, rather than at market value or existing use value, is significant, because obviously the existing use value for social housing is lower. It is important that local authorities have the ability to acquire homes that are being disposed of, so that the net reduction in social housing is not increased. I commend the amendment to the Committee.
Matthew Pennycook
As the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington set out, amendments 2 and 3 would introduce a right of first refusal for the local authority and other registered providers notified via a sale notice during the notice period. That right would be on the condition that the home would remain as social housing and would require the private registered provider to sell the home at the existing use value for social housing. The corresponding amendment 10, tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives, would extend the right of first refusal to specific types of bodies that provide affordable housing. Some of those bodies would be registered with the Regulator of Social Housing, and therefore would already be included within amendment 3, but amendment 10 would also extend the right of first refusal to unregistered housing providers.
I have heard clearly, both on Second Reading and today, the desire of hon. Members to protect social homes. I very much share that desire, but that must be balanced with the ability of private providers to operate efficiently and manage their housing assets, including by investing in more new homes or their existing stock. Sometimes that can mean selling a social home out of the sector. I can assure the Committee that I have fought long and hard, and challenged officials—they can verify that with nods—to ensure that we look in a lot of detail at what requirements can be put in place, and what levers we can try to pull, to keep as many social homes in the regulated sector as possible.
A key consideration when thinking through possible interventions is the reality that interfering with private registered providers’ freedom to use and sell their assets as they wish would present a significant risk of reclassifying the sector. Not only would that bring £110 billion of debt on to the public books, but it would bring with it risk and uncertainty that could impact on the investment in the sector that is so needed.
As I have said, I hope the disposals measure in the Bill will ensure greater transparency around disposals and support better dialogue between private registered providers and local authorities. I hope it will also focus minds to ensure that we minimise any negative impact resulting from disposals. Of course, there is nothing to prevent a private registered provider from choosing to sell to another provider at a lower price on the understanding that it remains social housing. I hope that the notification requirement introduced by the Bill will support such discussions. I am very open to ideas about what more can be done to support that dialogue, and I have tasked my officials to work with the sector to identify and promote good practice, as well as to explore what more the Government might do to reinforce it.
Given the issues that I have highlighted, I believe we will get the best results by working together with private registered providers and local authorities to explore what more they can do and where we can support them to keep homes in the regulated sector. For the reasons that I have set out, primarily around reclassification risk, we cannot accept the amendments, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment 2.
Gideon Amos
I appreciate the Minister’s response. The amendments are genuinely intended to provide councils with the ability to acquire stock rather than see it lost from the social housing sector. This is a particularly important area and, I believe, an important amendment. I understand the risks of reclassification on to the public sector balance sheet. I wonder whether the Minister would be willing to publish the advice he has received on that, because the sector will want to understand why first refusal cannot be given to local authorities.
Matthew Pennycook
I appreciate the attempt, let us say, to have confidential advice to Ministers published in the round. That is not the usual practice—
Social Housing Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Social Housing Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Social Housing Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 October 2026 - (27 Oct 2026)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I have a few preliminary reminders for the Committee. Please switch any electronic devices to silent. No food or drink should be consumed during the sitting, other than the bottles of water that are available on your desks. Hansard will be grateful if Committee members email their speaking notes or pass written notes to the Hansard colleagues in the room.
Before we resume line-by-line consideration of the Bill, does any Member wish to make a declaration of interests?
Sagal Abdi-Wali (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I am still the council leader in Camden.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
I draw Members’ attention to my category 8 —miscellaneous—interest.
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
My wife works for a social housing provider.
Clause 12
Restriction on certain sales of social housing by private registered providers
Amendment proposed (this day): 2, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“171AA Right of first refusal: local housing authorities
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and
(b) the dwelling—
(i) is let at social rent, or
(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.
(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), the local housing authority for the area in which the dwelling is situated may make an offer to acquire the dwelling.
(3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the local housing authority at existing use value for social housing.
(4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.
(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”—(Gideon Amos.)
This amendment gives local housing authorities a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.
Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment 3, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“171AA Right of first refusal: registered providers
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and
(b) the dwelling—
(i) is let at social rent, or
(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.
(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), any registered provider which received a sale notice under section 171A(2) may make an offer to acquire the dwelling.
(3) Where an offer is made under subsection (2), the private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the registered provider at existing use value for social housing.
(4) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of this Act.
(5) Any dispute as to the existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”
This amendment gives registered providers a right of first refusal to acquire social rent dwellings and dwellings previously transferred from local authorities at existing use value for social housing.
Amendment 10, in clause 12, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“171AA Right of first refusal: local affordable housing providers
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a sale notice has been given under section 171A in relation to a dwelling, and
(b) the dwelling—
(i) is let at social rent, or
(ii) was previously transferred from a local housing authority.
(2) During the period specified in section 171A(3), where a qualifying local affordable housing provider makes an offer to acquire the dwelling, a private registered provider must dispose of the dwelling to the qualifying local affordable housing provider at existing use value for social housing.
(3) A dwelling acquired under this section must be retained as social housing.
(4) In this section, a ‘qualifying local affordable housing provider’ means—
(a) a community land trust;
(b) a housing co-operative;
(c) a community benefit society;
(d) a charity whose purposes include the provision of affordable housing; or
(e) such other locally based not-for-profit housing body as may be prescribed by regulations,
which operates, or intends to operate, affordable housing within the local housing authority area in which the dwelling is situated.
(5) Any dispute as to existing use value for social housing shall be determined by an independent valuer appointed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of this section.”.
This amendment seeks to extend the right of first refusal to not-for-profit community-led housing organisations and other non-registered providers capable of retaining homes as affordable housing within the local area, and provides that the disposal must be at existing use value.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Western. When we finished this morning’s sitting, I was responding to a point from the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, who is not in his place; I know he is a trusty reader of Hansard, so I am sure he will see my remarks.
Essentially, I was saying that it would not be appropriate for me to share any specific advice that I have received on the matter that we are debating. It is not the standard procedure for the Government to put official advice in the public domain. I again draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that the decision taken by the Office for National Statistics back in 2015 clearly identified the approval of disposals by the Regulator of Social Housing as a key control that resulted in the reclassification of the housing association sector to public.
It is the Government’s considered opinion that many of the suggestions for further controls over housing association assets, which go beyond the notification requirement in the Bill, would likely be a significant classification risk. I have committed to writing to the hon. Gentleman if there is any further detail that I can provide, but we are somewhat limited in what we can say about how the ONS makes those decisions.
The Chair
As we have heard, Gideon Amos is not present. Mr Dillon, do you know what his wishes are? Does he want to withdraw the amendment?
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 82, in clause 12, page 12, line 31, at end insert—
“(7) In exercising functions under this section and section 171A, the Secretary of State must have regard to the operational and financial independence of private registered providers.”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the independence of housing associations when exercising powers under new sections 171A and 171B of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 20.
Amendment 7, in clause 12, page 13, line 11, at end insert—
“(h) whether the dwelling is let at social rent,
(i) the dwelling’s energy performance certificate rating,
(j) whether the dwelling meets the Decent Homes Standard,
(k) whether the interest to be disposed of is freehold or leasehold,
(l) details of any accessibility adaptations made to the dwelling,
(m) details of any public grant received in relation to the dwelling, including any disabled facilities grant, and
(n) whether the dwelling was previously transferred from a local housing authority and, if so, the consideration paid on that transfer.”
This amendment requires that sale notices provided by a private registered providers to local housing authorities must provide additional information about the dwellings for sale.
Amendment 100, in clause 12, page 13, line 11, at end insert—
“(1A) The private registered provider’s stated reason for making the relevant sale must be one of the following reasons—
(a) financial viability,
(b) the cost to retrofit energy efficiency measures,
(c) stock rationalization, or
(d) another specified reason as set out in regulations made by statutory instrument.
(1B) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1A)(d) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by, a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
New clause 8—Monitoring and reporting on private registered provider disposals—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act and annually thereafter, publish a report on notifications and disposals of social housing by private registered providers.
(2) A report under subsection (1) must include—
(a) the number of sale notices given under section 171A of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 in the period to which the report relates or otherwise notified to Homes England;
(b) the number and tenure of the dwellings to which those notices related;
(c) the number of those dwellings that were subsequently disposed of;
(d) the number of disposed dwellings that remained within social housing; and
(e) the number of disposed dwellings that ceased to be social housing.”
Gareth Bacon
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I will be relatively brief. I tabled amendment 82 to introduce a vital legal safeguard to protect the structural integrity of the UK housing association sector.
Private registered providers are independent, non-profit businesses. They work hard to run a fair and efficient sector providing social housing and to see much-needed homes built. The amendment would protect registered providers from overreaching state interventions that could have serious, if inadvertent, financial consequences.
Housing associations can rely on private debt to fund development, and any perception that central Government can arbitrarily dictate their financial operations is a threat, both to business independence and to the positive outcomes that they effect. We must ensure that even well-intentioned regulatory oversight does not compromise the financial viability and building capacity of some of the most important businesses in our housing industry. We will seek to divide the Committee on the amendment.
Mr Dillon
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I would like to speak to amendments 100 and 7. Amendment 7, which in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington, really gets to the “what”: what is being offered for disposal, whether it is at social rent and what the energy performance certificate rating is. Amendment 100 is a follow-up to that: the “why”. Why is a property being disposed of? Is it for financial viability? Is it because of the cost of retrofit? If we were to collate that data, the Government would be able to reflect on the success of this policy in later years.
Matthew Pennycook
Government amendment 20 requires sales notices from private providers to include information about whether the rent standard applies to the dwelling and, if it does, the rent category of the dwelling. Engagement with the sector has highlighted the importance of potential purchasers knowing the rent category of a home when taking decisions about purchasing it. That is because the rent category has implications for the future rent that can be charged, and therefore the future income potential of the property.
I remain mindful of the need to ensure the disposal notification is proportionate and limited to the information that is most useful to those considering purchasing the property. We believe information relating to the dwelling rent category is a useful and reasonable addition to the information requirements. I therefore urge the Committee to support the amendment.
Amendment 82 would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the operational and financial independence of private registered providers when making regulations under proposed new sections 171B or 171A of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. A common theme in my responses to the amendments on the disposals measure in this Bill is that I recognise that private registered providers are private bodies that need to be allowed to make their own business decisions. In short, for that reason, I do not think the amendment is required. If making regulations, the Secretary of State would necessarily be aware that housing associations are private bodies. I reassure the shadow Minister that we have no current intentions to use these powers.
I believe that the hon. Member for Newbury spoke only to amendment 100. Am I wrong?
Matthew Pennycook
I will deal with both, in that case. Amendment 7, in the name of the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, would significantly expand the information required to be included in sales notices where a private registered provider intends to dispose of a property outside of the regulated sector, to include, for example, whether a property complies with the decent homes standard, its EPC rating and whether it has been adapted for accessibility.
The Government’s view is that adding requirements for more information to be included in the sale notice would not be proportionate. We do not want to impose additional unnecessary burdens on providers, and we certainly would not wish to see information requirements introduced that would mean additional reports need to be produced, or surveys carried out, though I note the hon. Member’s amendment does seek to avoid this.
Our view is that extending the notification window to eight weeks will allow providers to have the opportunity to request further information that they judge to be necessary to their consideration of a potential purchase. However, I do not think that requiring the inclusion of all this information by law is a proportionate response. Our aim is to capture the basic elements that will always be relevant to providers when considering purchasing a home, and provide more time for inquiries to be made where needed. That point has come up previously. The provisions in the Bill do not prevent those notifications and requests for further information between the parties in question from being made. That is the basis on which I brought forward amendment 19, which requires information on the category of rent, which we think is an important improvement.
Amendment 100, which is in the name of the hon. Member for Newbury, would require providers to categorise their reason for disposing of a property as either financial viability, the cost of energy efficiency retrofits, stock rationalisation or some other reason that might be specified through secondary legislation. My concern is that seeking to prescribe particular categories of reason in the notice might result in a less helpful notification. Let me explain why.
First, it requires providers to identify one particular reason behind the sale. It is possible that the proposed sale will be based on more than one of these categories. It is also possible that there might be a different driver entirely. In response to a very reasonable question from the hon. Member for Broxbourne, I tried to give a sense of the variety of reasons that individual providers might be disposing of particular stock.
Secondly, there is a risk that by setting out the categories in legislation, providers will just use the default descriptions of the reason and fail to provide a fuller and more helpful description for those being notified. Thirdly, although I do not think this was the intention of the hon. Member for Newbury, the amendment would have the effect of preventing sales from going ahead. No sale can proceed without a notice, and the notice must be valid. To be valid with this amendment in place, the notice must include one of a limited list of reasons. The Government cannot support an amendment that would prevent legitimate disposals. For those reasons, I hope that the hon. Member will not press the amendment to a Division.
Gareth Bacon
I have heard the Minister’s response. As always, I do not in any way doubt his sincerity, but unfortunately he will not always be in post. We would prefer to keep the Government honest on this point, so we intend to press amendment 82 to a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Dillon
I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 12, page 13, line 23, at end insert—
“171CA Requirement to consult with a relevant local authority before a planned disposal in a designated rural area
(1) A private registered provider must provide the relevant local authority in a designated rural area with a report on social housing stock condition information on an annual basis.
(2) A private registered provider must consult with the relevant local authority on options to regenerate social housing in the designated rural area before any decision to dispose of a property in the area has taken place.
(3) For the purposes of this section, a designated rural area is defined as any area with a population density of no more than two persons per hectare and a population of 3,000 or fewer.”
This amendment seeks to ensure that the private registered provider and relevant local authority discuss appropriate solutions to the possible disposal of affordable housing in sensitive rural communities well before a disposal has taken place.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 11, in clause 12, page 13, line 23, at end insert—
“171CA Impact on rural communities
(1) Before making a relevant sale in relation to a dwelling located in a rural area, a private registered provider must undertake an assessment of the likely impact of the proposed disposal on the local community.
(2) An assessment under this section must consider—
(a) the availability of affordable housing within the settlement;
(b) local housing needs;
(c) the total loss of social housing within the parish, town or settlement over the preceding ten years, if any;
(d) the contribution of the dwelling to maintaining a balanced and sustainable community; and
(e) the availability of replacement social housing within the same settlement.
(3) A copy of the assessment must be provided to—
(a) the local housing authority;
(b) the parish or town council, where one exists; and
(c) the Regulator of Social Housing.
171CB Regulator of Social Housing and rural communities
(1) In exercising its functions under this Part, the Regulator of Social Housing must have regard to—
(a) the impact of social housing disposals on the sustainability of rural communities; and
(b) the maintenance, availability of, and need for affordable housing provision within rural settlements.”
This amendment requires registered providers and the Regulator of Social Housing to consider the impact of disposals on rural communities.
Clause stand part.
New clause 17—Rural exception sites—
“(1) A social housing dwelling developed on a rural exception site may not be disposed of on the open market.
(2) Any disposal of a social housing dwelling developed on a rural exception site must preserve affordability restrictions in perpetuity.
(3) No social housing dwelling developed on a rural exception site shall be eligible for—
(a) Right to Buy;
(b) Right to Acquire; or
(c) any successor scheme.
(4) A planning obligation securing social or affordable housing on a rural exception site may not be modified or discharged if the effect would be to reduce the number of social or affordable dwellings or weaken any affordability restrictions.
(5) In determining any—
(a) application,
(b) appeal,
(c) permission in principle,
(d) technical details consent application,
(e) local development order, or
(f) development consent,
relating to social or housing affordable housing on land which is, or has previously been, a rural exception site, the absence of a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites does not constitute a reason for granting permission for a development that would reduce the number of social or affordable dwellings secured on that site.
(6) The presumption in favour of sustainable development does not apply where its application would result in—
(a) the loss of social or affordable dwellings secured on a rural exception site;
(b) the reduction of affordability restrictions applying to such dwellings; or
(c) the substitution of market housing for social or affordable housing secured for local housing need.”
This new clause seeks to preserve social housing and affordable homes provided under rural exception site policies for future generations of local residents.
New clause 64—Replacement of disposed rural social housing stock—
“(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, make provision to require disposed social housing providers to guarantee rural social housing is replaced like for like.
(2) Under subsection (1) ‘like for like’ means housing that is—
(a) in the same local area, and
(b) with the same number of bedrooms.
(3) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
This new clause would require a local replacement guarantee where rural social housing is disposed of.
New clause 65—Rural social housing targets—
“(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must set rural social housing targets, and every year thereafter, publish a report on progress towards those targets.
(2) The ‘rural social housing targets’ under subsection (1) should include individual targets for the amount of social housing that is available for—
(a) social rent,
(b) affordable rent, and
(c) shared ownership.”
This new clause would require the Government to create and publish progress towards targets for rural social housing, broken down by tenure type.
Mr Dillon
Amendment 4 seeks to ensure that registered providers and local authorities discuss solutions to possible disposal in sensitive rural communities well before that disposal has taken place. I will not rehearse the arguments that we had this morning about rural communities and the exceptions that they face, but I think the Minister will understand our concern that they should have as much protection as possible.
Matthew Pennycook
As I have set out, the Government are committed to protecting our much-needed social housing stock. As it stands, there is no requirement for advance notification of disposals of social homes, meaning that opportunities to retain them within the social housing sector can be missed. Although private registered providers may choose to dispose of homes for valid reasons, including to support investment in new supply and the effective management of their stock, we understand that that can have a particularly acute impact in areas where the supply of social housing is already constrained.
It is therefore important that opportunities to retain homes within the social housing sector are not missed, particularly in areas with significant demand or where replacement is particularly difficult. Clause 12 will achieve that by requiring providers to notify the relevant local authority and other registered providers in the area before a sale can be completed. It creates a short window during which completion of a disposal cannot take place, while still allowing providers to market the property and continue with their disposal plans as usual. The window was set at four weeks upon introduction of the Bill, and the Government are seeking to extend that window to eight weeks, in response to concerns raised by both Houses and by stakeholders that it was too short.
The new window of time allows local authorities and other providers to consider whether they wish to acquire the property, helping to retain homes within the social housing sector. To help them in that initial assessment, the notice is required to provide certain basic information such as the address, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and its estimated value. Earlier, I spoke to an amendment to include the category of rent in the sale notice, which we think is a reasonable and fair addition.
The clause is targeted and proportionate. It includes sensible exceptions such as sales to another registered provider, sales to the tenant and certain low-cost home ownership transactions. It is important to be clear that this is not a consent regime. The clause does not prevent disposals, does not restrict who a property may be sold to, and does not interfere with providers’ ability to make legitimate stock management decisions. It is a light touch and proportionate measure to improve transparency, embed consistent good practice across the sector—I have detailed some of the non-legislative means where we intend to work with the sector to go further— and support the Bill’s broader objective of safeguarding and sustaining social housing stock.
Amendment 4, in the name of the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, would introduce additional requirements for disposals in designated rural areas. I support the intention behind it: to ensure that a private registered provider and the relevant local authority discuss appropriate solutions to possible disposals of social housing in rural communities well before a disposal has taken place. I am not convinced, however, that the best way to achieve that outcome is by requiring annual reports on stock condition and a statutory consultation on options for the regeneration of social housing prior to disposal.
The provisions in the Bill will ensure that a local authority is aware of a potential disposal. I hope that that gives local authorities, particularly in rural areas, an opportunity to ensure that there is an effective dialogue before the disposal takes place. Requiring statutory consultations on the regeneration of social housing would likely place significant time and administrative costs on both local authorities and private registered providers, and materially impact the ability of private registered providers to make the necessary commercial decisions required to manage their assets effectively and safely.
More broadly, through information published by the Regulator of Social Housing, local authorities can already access information about PRP-owned social housing stock within their local authority area, including information relating to whether stock meets the decent homes standard. An annual report on stock condition would be duplicative of the existing rigorous requirements. I am sympathetic to what lies behind the amendment, but I am not convinced that we need to legislate in this way to achieve our shared aim.
Mr Dillon
I thank the Minister for that reply. I hope that local authorities and housing providers are listening to this debate, and understand that the Government expect them to work in a collaborative manner for the best outcome for social tenants. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Review of shared ownership and staircasing
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 41—Shared ownership strategy—
“(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a strategy for increasing opportunities for access to the shared ownership scheme.
(2) The strategy under this section must include proposals relating to—
(a) first-time buyers,
(b) key workers,
(c) housing association provision, and
(d) staircasing arrangements.
(3) For the purposes of this section, ‘staircasing’ means the practice of buying additional shares in a Shared Ownership home in order to increase overall equity.”
This new clause would require publication of a strategy for expanding shared ownership.
New clause 45—Model shared ownership agreement—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, publish a model shared ownership agreement.
(2) The model shared ownership agreement must include standard provisions relating to—
(a) rent reviews,
(b) staircasing,
(c) service charges,
(d) administrative fees,
(e) sales and resales, and
(f) capital improvements undertaken by shared owners.
(3) Registered providers must have regard to the model agreement when granting shared ownership leases.”
This probing new clause would require the publication of a standardised model shared ownership agreement.
Matthew Pennycook
Shared ownership is an important route into home ownership and has enabled hundreds of thousands of people to get on to the property ladder who otherwise would not have been able to do so. However, the Government are fully aware that shared owners continue to face serious difficulties relating to affordability, transparency, management, staircasing and resale challenges. Although some of these challenges affect leaseholders more widely—high and rising service charges are a good example—they can have a disproportionate impact on shared owners, given that the product is aimed at households on lower-to-middle incomes.
Yesterday, I tabled a written ministerial statement setting out the Government’s position on shared ownership and the action we are taking to improve the experience of shared owners. We are determined to ensure that shared ownership is fair, transparent and affordable across its life cycle. That is why we are taking forward a phased programme of targeted improvements. The first phase, which has been under way for some time, has focused on improving the customer experience and giving providers greater certainty, stability and confidence to deliver new shared ownership homes.
We have set clearer expectations for registered providers receiving funding through the social and affordable homes programme, including giving greater consideration to long-term customer affordability, increasing transparency and fairness around costs, and allowing customers to opt out of fees for optional services. We have also made it clear that fees charged to shared owners should not be used as a source of profit or to cross-subsidise other activity.
Work is now under way on the second phase of our improvement programme. This will include reducing barriers and costs associated with staircasing; exploring options to support resales; improving information and guidance for existing shared owners; and reviewing buy-backs as an exit route for those who either cannot afford to remain in or cannot sell their home. Alongside that, we will improve shared ownership data quality and collection, helping us to better understand the experience of shared owners over time and pressures such as long-term affordability.
Clause 13 would require a statutory review of shared ownership. I recognise the concerns that motivated the amendment in the other place—Lord Young has been a consistent and forceful champion for shared owners and I commend his work in doing so—but these are precisely the issues the Government are already focused on and will continue to progress through the improvement programme that is already under way.
As is set out in the written ministerial statement I made on Monday, we have done lots to date. There is more to come on those issues I identified. For that reason, we feel that a statutory review would duplicate that rather than deliver the practical improvements that shared owners need beyond the work that the Government are already undertaking. I urge the Committee to oppose the question that clause 13 stand part of the Bill.
Gareth Bacon
I rise to speak to new clauses 41 and 45, which are in my name. I was obviously aware that it is the Government’s intention to strike down clause 13 and remove it in its entirety from the Bill. I heard what the Minister just said about what the Government are doing at the moment. The Opposition are not convinced that the clause would require unnecessary duplication. What it would do is make sure that a review is actually done and published, so we disagree with the Government.
My noble Friends in the other place worked hard and successfully on a cross-party basis to bring shared ownership into the debate and into this Bill. Shared ownership issues have gone on for far too long and for far too many people it has been a logistical, legal and financial nightmare when it should have been their first and proudest step on to the housing ladder. This is an important national issue, and the commitments that my noble Friends made must not be stripped from the Bill. Indeed, we must build on them. That is why I tabled new clause 41, which would require publication of a strategy for expanding shared ownership. I call on the Minister to repair shared ownership, back first-time buyers and support this new clause.
New clause 45 asks the Secretary of State to publish a model of shared ownership agreement within six months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. The Opposition believe this is a crucial development for the future of shared ownership. What should be a pathway towards owning a first home is for so many people, as I have just said, a logistical and legal labyrinth of rent reviews, service charges, admin fees and staircasing costs, which makes the dream of home ownership a nightmare. A model shared ownership agreement would provide a consistent framework with clear protections for buyers, and it would also require registered providers to have regard to it. Not only do I hope the Minister agrees with that, but I hope he will give assurances as we debate the new clauses, even if the Government choose not to support them.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
As always, Mr Western, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I rise to support clause 13 remaining part of the Bill. With his typical eloquence, the Minister set out both the opportunities and challenges presented to those with shared ownership, including the regulatory challenges sitting around it. He also described the very real impact that it can have on those individuals—who are often starting off on the path to home ownership—when it does not work well.
I therefore think that clause 13 is important. I do not in any way want to gainsay the important work that the Minister is doing. As I said this morning, I have a lot of respect for the Minister; he is extremely able and I know that he will be pursuing this work with vigour. However, I believe that a statutory review offers the opportunity for a much broader look at this issue in the round, and actions such as those that the Minister has outlined can sit under such a review perfectly reasonably.
The two things are not in contradiction. A statutory review would not stop the Minister from continuing to pursue some of the immediate actions that he has already set out. It just provides an opportunity to take a step back and look at this important sector of home ownership to assess whether it is working well. Where there are things that the Government or the Minister may have missed—as diligent as I know him to be— it gives that extra opportunity.
I know that the Minister has been very clear in his determination to continue pursuing shared ownership, as he set out in his written statement and in his announcement. However, I have to say that this Minister, in whom I have a lot of confidence, may not always be in this post. When he inevitably ascends to higher office, his successor may not be as focused on this issue as him. Therefore, I think that a statutory review as set out in clause 13 offers the opportunity to publish something that has been considered carefully, which Members of this House and future Ministers can then refer back to when considering the way forward. I do not think that it trammels the Minister’s freedom in deciding what to announce or his discretion in any way; it would just be a very important addition.
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Minister has shown that he is willing to take action on the shared ownership eligibility cap, which I think has been frozen since 2019, and on which the previous Conservative Government took no action? He has already announced that he is raising the cap from £80,000 and £90,000 to £90,000 and £110,000 in London and outside London respectively. That shows the vigour with which he is progressing reforms to the shared ownership system.
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady amplifies what I have already said about the Minister. Before I do his political career too much harm by being too nice about him in front of his Whip, I have been very clear in my respect for the Minister and the work he is doing. However, as we have seen in previous Governments—not only Conservative but Labour Governments since 2024—Ministers come and go with an alarming rapidity.
When something is as important as this is to so many people, there must be something underpinning it. Whether Ministers move—in this Minister’s case, I hope he ascends—or whether they leave Government, it is important that whoever succeeds that office and its responsibilities has something on which they can hang their hat and plan their strategy. That is why I think that a review would not be a hindrance to any Minister or Government. Actually, it could be of great help, not least in potentially giving the opportunity to objectively consider some of the issues that the hon. Lady has just raised further.
Mr Dillon
Clause 13 relates to the review of shared ownership and staircasing, which the Liberal Democrats support. However, new clause 41 refers to
“a strategy for increasing opportunities for access to the shared ownership scheme”.
It seems to me that it would be logical to carry out the review of shared ownership first, before committing to increasing shared ownership opportunities.
Edward Argar
It is always a pleasure to give way to the hon. Gentleman. I am seeking to make the point that this review has the potential to underpin a much longer-term approach to this important sector. That is why the clause is important. I do not see the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington as in contradiction to that, but rather as complementary to it. There may be a question about phasing and how it works, but I do not believe that that is a reason not to retain the clause for what it seeks to do. The Minister is always a reflective man, so I hope that he will reflect on that carefully.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
I will speak briefly to the challenges of shared ownership, building on what the Minister has outlined in the Government response and the written ministerial statement. This issue was raised in the main Chamber when the Bill was discussed recently. Many of us passed on our constituents’ stories of shared ownership, the hopes of a first step on the ladder quickly turning into a nightmare—trapped, unable to staircase and facing all the responsibilities of ownerships, but none of the rights to decide about major works. They have to shoulder all the costs of major works, with mortgage increases and rent increases. They feel lost and unable to have a voice.
With much of the Government’s agenda on reforming leasehold or improving the rights of tenants, many shared owners feel that they fall between the gaps with their specific and unique form of tenure. That is why when the Bill was first discussed, many colleagues were interested in the potential for review as a means to address some of those concerns and issues. I have been heartened by the Minister’s response and the written ministerial statement, which I think specifically commits to review those areas of concern.
I have heard from my constituents about the challenges of buy-backs or when major repairs are needed. In particular on the Union Park development in my constituency, many shared owners are trapped at the moment with Home Group as their landlord, unable to get buy-backs unless they are in extreme financial distress and unable to sell, because the market value is now not there, with millions of pounds of repairs to cladding and heating systems due. Their lives change, as all our lives change, but when the need to move happens, they are unable to do so.
I welcome the commitment to a comprehensive review of buy-backs and consideration of the challenges of staircasing. We would all envisage that shared ownership is initially a stake that we hope grows in future, but many find that that is not the lived reality of shared ownership. It becomes difficult to staircase and difficult to sell out of it. The written ministerial statement commits to hearing the voice of shared owners in the phase 2 review; will the Minister in his summing up elaborate a bit on how exactly he envisages shared owners will be involved in sharing their experience to shape its work? If he could outline the timeline for phase 2 a bit more, that would be very welcome.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I have lived in a shared ownership home, so I thought it only right to support this part of the Bill. Usually on Bill Committees, I speak against and ask the Government to take something out of a Bill, rather than keep it in.
This is important. The Minister, on opening, summed up the issues that lots of constituents with shared ownership face right across the country. If the Government are already doing part of the review anyway, and if they are committed to that review, I do not see why it cannot stay part of the Bill. The cynic in me thinks that the only reason why the Government want to remove it from the Bill is so that they can change their mind and not actually do that review of shared ownership, which has been a long-standing feature of the housing market for a number of years. It is high time that we do a review.
The hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip spoke eloquently about the issues that his constituents face in some of the developments in his constituency. That is not too dissimilar from developments in my constituency. Staircasing has major issues, particularly if ownership is shared with a large social housing provider, such as one of those that operate all across the south-east and London. Residents who buy those shared-ownership homes feel that the social housing provider is unaccountable. They lack transparency on their fees, and I have heard some horrific stories about people buying into shared ownership and wanting to use that as a stepping stone to buy a house on the open market, but having to buy selling packs off the social housing provider at extortionate costs, or the provider not getting back to them and the sale of their property falling through.
New clauses 41 and 45 are trying to solve a number of issues in the Bill. If the Government are doing some of the work already and think that this review is needed, I urge them to keep it in the Bill. As I said, the cynic in me thinks that the Government want to leave it out so that a few months down the line they can say, “We’ve changed our mind. We’re not doing a review.” Do the Government really want a review of shared ownership and to listen to shared owners? The Minister outlined quite eloquently some of the issues that affect shared owners, such as leasehold and commonhold—we look forward to that Bill coming forward—but shared ownership does tend to fall through the cracks.
We have not spent enough time speaking about the issues that shared ownership tenants face, so I really urge the Government to change their mind. I was left with the impression on Second Reading that clause 13 would remain part of the Bill and that the Government would accept the amendments tabled in the other place. I hope that the Government can reflect and keep this clause as part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I said this in my opening remarks, but let me reinforce it: we absolutely appreciate that shared owners across the country face issues, but I do think that there is a regional element to this. From the feedback I receive, it seems to me that the experience of shared owners in London and other parts of the south are far more problematic than shared ownership in parts of the north, where it is quite a successful product and does not have the issues that are often confronted. Serious affordability, transparency, management, staircasing, and resale challenges are being experienced. I know that from my own postbag; I have lots of shared owners in my constituency.
I speak as someone who grew up with a single parent myself, but lots of shared owners are often single women who got a mortgage on the basis of an affordability calculation and have seen, within two or three years, service charges and other costs increase to the point that their home is no longer affordable and would not be counted as such on that affordability check. They are under real pressure. We recognise those pressures and I understand that any shared owners watching will see this clause as a sort of lifeline.
Notwithstanding the points made by the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston about the frequency with which Ministers in previous Conservative Administrations were cycled through, I think I am right in saying that if I make it to Thursday I will be the longest serving Housing Minister since 2010.
Matthew Pennycook
We have better form on permanence of our policy and our ministerial certainty and stability. Notwithstanding the right hon. Member’s attempts to beguile and flatter me, I cannot accept the new clauses, for two reasons. I will take them in turn, but essentially I do not think that either is proportionate or necessary.
New clause 45 would require the Secretary of State to publish a model shared ownership agreement, but model shared ownership leases are already available, and they contain the fundamental clauses governing how shared ownership operates—including many of the matters raised by the right hon. Gentleman. Providers delivering grant-funded shared ownership are required to use leases containing these clauses and comply with wider grant funding requirements.
To give Members a sense that we are thinking about these things, part of the reason that I made the written ministerial statement on Monday was because we have done a huge amount of work in this area, but we have never brought it together into one place in the context of a wider improvement programme. The fault for that is on me and I throw my hands up, but a lot of work has already been done, and a lot of work is to come.
Tackling specific issues, we know that shared owners who want to staircase can face barriers such as transaction costs, a lack of information, rising property values and wider affordability pressures. HomeOwners Alliance estimates typical transaction costs of around £2,000—that was two years ago, in 2024. In the WMS, we have committed to considering measures to reduce existing barriers to staircasing, such as those up-front and ongoing transaction costs.
The issue of buy-backs arose in the context of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, again from Lord Young pressing the case for shared owners. I am absolutely and acutely aware that buy-backs can be a lifeline for shared owners who, through no fault of their own, find themselves unable either to afford to remain in their home or to sell it, whether due to building safety defects, high service charges or lease-related restrictions. Again, we have committed and made clear in the WMS that we are intent on undertaking a comprehensive review of the functioning of buy-backs, to better understand practical barriers and solutions, and to look at specific issues such as the current use of recycled capital funding grants. That work is under way.
It is also worth saying that lots of the problems that affect shared owners go beyond them to affect other leaseholders. The actions we are taking in several areas will benefit shared owners along with other long residential leaseholders.
A good case is the standardisation and transparency measures that we are introducing in respect of service charges using powers in the previous Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. We will lay those statutory instruments in the very near future, so hon. Members can look forward to that. Shared owners who are experiencing those high and rising service charges will benefit from those provisions.
The right hon. Member for Melton and Syston got to the point of the substantive matter at hand, which he framed as an “extra opportunity”. If he can put his ministerial hat on from when he stood here for many years, I gently ask him whether it is reasonable and proportionate to require, through a Social Housing Bill, a statutory review of shared ownership, given all that the Government are doing. Is it really proportionate to require a statutory review just to give that extra opportunity?
We already consult the Shared Owners’ Network and other representative groups. If hon. Members are telling me that we can do more, I am happy to work with them to get shared owners and their experiences into the Government’s thinking so that they are better reflected. If there is more that we can do to improve the improvement programme that is already under way, I am more than happy to hear about that, but it is a little stretching to say that it is absolutely essential just for, to quote the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston, that “little extra opportunity” to cover those issues. We are looking at issues in the round. We are considering the comprehensive set of challenges that shared owners face.
Edward Argar
On that basis, is the Minister prepared to commit—whether explicitly in the Bill or not—to the Government’s launching a formal review of this?
Matthew Pennycook
In some ways, it is pure semantics. We have a comprehensive improvement programme under way. If the right hon. Member looks at my written ministerial statement from yesterday, he will see the work that we have already undertaken: material changes, including to the social and affordable homes programme, where we are setting firmer expectations for providers that receive grant funding. A lot of work is already under way. Whether the right hon. Member calls it a review or an improvement programme, shared owners across the country will rightly focus not on what we term the work that is under way, but on the benefits they see coming out of that work. They can already see some of those in the expectations that we have set, but there will be more to follow.
Lewis Cocking
To draw out the point a little further, will the Minister commit to making an oral statement on the Floor of the House in the near future so that Members from across the House can ask questions and he can update us on what he is doing about shared ownership and improvements to shared ownership?
Matthew Pennycook
My Whip whispers in my ear that that is a matter for Mr Speaker. The hon. Member and any other Member of the Opposition can secure a Westminster Hall debate or an Adjournment debate on this subject. I am more than willing to debate shared ownership or any other housing matter.
Matthew Pennycook
I have made a written ministerial statement that sets out the Government’s work in this area.
Taken together, the existing framework of model leases and guidance, alongside the substantive programme of improvements that is already under way, address the issues at the heart of both new clauses. We continue to have constructive engagement with Lord Young and others in the other place who have concerns about this issue, but we do not believe that a further statutory model agreement or a separate statutory strategy is necessary. I therefore ask the shadow Minister not to press new clauses 41 and 45.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 22 to 25, 46, 47, 26, 29, 27, 28, 30, 31, 48 to 57, 32, 58, 33, 59, 34, 60, 35, 61, 36 to 42, 62 to 65, 43, 44, 66 to 72, 45 and 73.
Amendment 12, in schedule 1, page 34, line 27, at end insert—
“3A In section 160ZA of the Housing Act 1996 (allocation only to eligible and qualifying persons: England), after subsection (11) insert—
‘(12) In deciding what classes of persons are not qualifying persons under subsection (7), a local housing authority must disregard housing-related debt or any other priority debt that was accrued, either by an applicant for housing accommodation or by a member of their household, where that debt was accrued in connection with domestic abuse.
(13) For the purposes of subsection (12), “domestic abuse” has the meaning given by section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.’
3B In section 166A of the Housing Act 1996 (allocation in accordance with allocation scheme: England), after subsection (14) insert—
‘(15) A local housing authority in England must, in preparing or modifying their allocation scheme, disregard housing-related debt or any other priority debt that was accrued, either by an applicant for housing accommodation, or by a member of their household, where that debt was accrued in connection with domestic abuse.
(16) For the purposes of subsection (15), “domestic abuse” has the meaning given by section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.’”
This amendment is intended to ensure that people in England who have incurred housing-related or other priority debt, for example rent arrears, as the result of domestic financial abuse are not prevented from bidding for social housing.
Schedule 1.
New clause 30—Domestic abuse protections: implementation review—
“(1) Within the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which section 14 and Schedule 1 (Protection for victims of domestic abuse) come into force, the Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a review of the effectiveness of those provisions at protecting victims of domestic abuse who hold social housing tenancies.
(2) The review under this section must include an assessment of—
(a) the effectiveness of the courts and relevant agencies at identifying when incidents of domestic abuse have occurred within social housing dwellings; and
(b) the ability of local authorities and other relevant agencies to identify previous victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse when allocating social housing tenancies.”
This new clause would require the Government to assess the effectiveness of the provisions on protecting domestic abuse victims.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 14 and its associated schedule 1 will address a clear legal gap in respect of social housing tenancies, namely that existing legislation provides scant protection for social housing tenants who are victims of domestic abuse and who wish to remain in their current home without their abuser. Landlords can evict perpetrators but only in cases where the victim has already left. That means that, all too often, victims are forced to choose between staying in danger and losing their home. As I argued on Second Reading, that is an utterly unacceptable state of affairs; taken together, the clause and schedule will end it.
Schedule 1 will introduce stronger powers for landlords to enable them to take possession of a property where domestic abuse has taken place without the requirement for the victim to leave. It also strengthens protections to help victims remain safely in their homes where possible or move to suitable alternative accommodation where necessary. These measures form part of the Government’s wider commitment to tackle violence against women and girls, ensuring that the housing system supports, rather than frustrates, a victim’s route to safety and recovery. The new mandatory grounds in the schedule seek to provide a clear framework by which courts must grant possession if the threshold has been met. Crucially, under the discretionary grounds in the schedule, the court must take into account the opinion of the victim before making the decision, helping to ensure that victims remain at the centre of the process.
A key focus of the measures is providing certainty in cases of joint tenancies. The schedule ensures that, if conditions are met for joint tenancies, the court will transfer the perpetrator’s interest in the joint tenancy so that the victim becomes the sole tenant. Where it is not appropriate for a victim to remain in their current home, the Bill allows a court to order suitable alternative social housing where the landlord has such accommodation available. The court must, as far as possible, take into account the victim’s views when considering the suitability of alternative accommodation. If a landlord cannot satisfy the court that a suitable home will be available, the victim will not be forced to move under these provisions.
Clause 14 and schedule 1 provide that the new measures will apply where the victim and perpetrator are personally connected and the victim currently lives in the property or has left due to domestic abuse. The measures critically remove the requirement for the victim to have fled the property before possession action can be taken. They also protect victims of modern slavery where the victim and perpetrator are personally connected and the other conditions in the Bill are met.
We will continue to work with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, the Home Office and the wider sector to ensure effective implementation. It would be remiss of me not to say that our work with the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office has been, in my view, an exemplar of cross-departmental working to resolve a pressing issue. In aligning with the definition of domestic abuse under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the measures also cover a broader range of conduct. They protect those most at risk who currently live, or previously lived, in a property with a perpetrator, while remaining clear and workable in practice.
Government amendments 22 to 73 address concerns raised in the other place about the evidence needed to use the discretionary grounds in domestic abuse cases. We have listened carefully to those concerns and we have acted. The amendments strengthen the discretionary domestic abuse grounds by ensuring that the existence of a relevant protective order is sufficient to satisfy the first stage of the ground ahead of the court’s determining whether it is reasonable to grant possession.
Where either a non-molestation order or a domestic abuse protection order is in force against a perpetrator, landlords may rely on it as evidence for the courts to then progress to consider whether it is reasonable to grant possession. That removes the need to separately establish whether domestic abuse has taken place where an order is in place, making it easier for social landlords to take possession action where a court has already made an order protecting the victim. An order will be disregarded if an appeal remains unresolved or results in the order being overturned.
The amendments do not make possession automatic. The courts will still need to consider whether it is reasonable to make a possession order, retaining judicial oversight through the existing reasonableness test. The amendments will simplify the process and give greater confidence to landlords and victims when seeking possession.
The amendments also make technical and consequential changes to the domestic abuse provisions in schedule 1. They align the terminology used in the Bill with the definition of domestic abuse in section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, make consequential changes and align wording across equivalent provisions in the Bill and, finally, clarify how the tenancy transfer and possession provisions operate.
The amendments will ensure that, where the conditions for making a possession order on the basis of suitable alternative accommodation apply, the transfer of tenancy provision will also operate. The effect is that the perpetrator tenant’s interest is severed in all cases where the ground for possession is met and the court is satisfied that an order should be made. That will help deliver more consistent outcomes for victims in joint tenancy cases.
Taken together, the amendments improve the clarity and consistency of schedule 1 and ensure that the domestic abuse provisions operate as intended. I commend clause 14, schedule 1 and the Government amendments to the Committee.
Mr Dillon
I will speak to amendment 12, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington. The amendment looks at the impact of rent arrears on a victim of domestic abuse and quite simply asks that that not be a consideration when bidding for a future social home.
While on my feet, I will also talk about clause 14 in its totality. We Liberal Democrats welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled on domestic abuse, but will the Minister outline why the Government use only discretionary powers rather than mandatory powers, such as ground 7A, which is mandatory for antisocial behaviour?
Gareth Bacon
I will speak to new clause 30, which stands in my name. This is a probing amendment. There is much in this Bill that is fundamentally political or ideological, but I am sure that I speak for all Members when I say that supporting victims of domestic abuse is an issue that we all agree needs critical, cross-party work. We will not oppose any of the 52 amendments that the Government have tabled to this part of the Bill, because it is vital that anyone stuck in an abusive household receives the urgent care, support and access to legal pathways that they need.
That is why I have tabled new clause 30, which would require the Government to assess the effectiveness of the provisions in protecting domestic abuse victims. If the Bill is to make real change in this area, I believe it is only right that the Government give victims a guarantee that they will closely analyse and monitor the effectiveness of these measures. I look for an assurance from the Minister on that when he sums up.
Edward Argar
I will speak briefly to this grouping, simply to reiterate what the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington, has just said. In a Bill of this sort, there is inevitably much that we will to-and-fro across this Committee about and disagree on. However, throughout my time as Victims Minister, and under the new Government now, there has been significant consensus about a shared desire, on both sides of the House, to make progress in supporting victims of domestic violence and domestic abuse. I therefore just reiterate my hon. Friend’s and my party’s support for what the Minister seeks to do here. There is genuinely a high degree of consensus on this group; we want to move forward and make that difference.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Member for Newbury, the shadow Minister and the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston—I never know whether I am pronouncing that entirely correctly—
Matthew Pennycook
I welcome the cross-party support for the intent behind these provisions and their effect. In some ways, I would go so far as to say that they are groundbreaking in what we have tried to achieve. As I said, there has also been very effective cross-departmental working.
On the specific point that the hon. Member for Newbury raised, there are mandatory grounds for possession in the Bill, but they apply only when a breach of a relevant order has taken place. The changes we have made to the discretionary possession grounds are to allow for the existence of an order to be relevant grounds for the court, rather than a breach having to take place. However, there are mandatory grounds in place. I am happy to set that out in more detail for the hon. Member, in writing, if he is interested. I know that he takes a keen interest in these matters.
I will turn to the two non-Government amendments that have been tabled, starting with amendment 12. This issue, and a version of the amendment, was raised in the other place by Baroness Neate. I would like to give the Committee the same reassurances that we gave the noble Baroness, and that she accepted, in debates in the other place.
First, the Government agree, as I think we all would, with the principle that survivors of domestic abuse should not face unfair barriers to social housing because of debt arising from that abuse. That is why, in the national plan to end homelessness, we committed to addressing the barriers faced by survivors of domestic abuse with debt when applying for social housing through our update to the statutory guidance on social housing allocations.
We continue to believe that primary legislation is not the right approach in this area. There are sensitive and inherently complex cases at play here, and the amendment would introduce a rigid rule that would not allow local authorities to take proper account of individual circumstances. Updated statutory guidance will allow us to set clear national expectations while preserving the flexibility needed to reach fair and sustainable decisions in individual cases. Work is already under way to review the guidance, and we will consult on the updated guidance early next year.
We continue to believe that guidance is the best route to resolving this issue, as I made clear on Second Reading—I think my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) pressed me on that. I am happy to reiterate that if guidance proves insufficient, we have the option of making regulations to amend the relevant legislation. The Government’s position has not changed. We support the objective of removing unfair barriers for survivors, but believe that updated statutory guidance, backed by existing regulation-making powers, if necessary, is the more proportionate and effective route.
Danny Beales
I thank the Minister for referencing our previous debate on this topic. I welcome the Government’s action in developing guidance. I have seen worrying cases in my constituency of rent arrears being a barrier to victims of domestic violence getting a tenancy. There is concern that, even though rules have already been changed about local connection tests, they may not always be applied effectively, and local connection tests may still be used as a route to block victims of domestic violence. I welcome the development of guidance, but will the Minister commit to collecting evidence about the effectiveness of the guidance and whether further measures might be needed?
Matthew Pennycook
We will absolutely keep the effectiveness of that guidance under review. I reiterate the commitment I have made, which I have tried to put as plainly as possible: if that guidance is not effective, we will introduce regulations to ensure that we resolve the issue. However, we believe that there is a high chance that the guidance will be successful in achieving the outcomes we want. That is our preferred route in the near term, but I am determined to ensure that the issue is addressed. The Baroness accepted the commitments we made in the other place, and those regulations are available if we require them.
Turning to new clause 30, the Department already collects data through CORE— continuous recording of lettings and sales in social housing—on how many new tenancies were given to victims who left their previous tenancy because of domestic abuse, which provides an important baseline for monitoring outcomes as the reforms are implemented. The Ministry of Justice also publishes quarterly statistics on landlord possession proceedings in the county courts of England and Wales. Those cover claims, possession orders, warrants and repossessions, including for social landlords. We will work with the Ministry of Justice, social landlords and the domestic abuse sector on implementation—the hon. Member for Orpington would expect nothing less. That includes developing clear guidance so that landlords know how and when to use the measures and how to support victims.
The new clause would also require an assessment of how courts and other organisations identify domestic abuse. On 5 October, the Government launched the judicial finding of domestic abuse, a significant step forward in improving the identification and management of domestic abuse offenders across the criminal justice system. As part of sentencing, judges will be required to make a judicial finding of domestic abuse in open court where the evidence supports such a finding as defined by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. That will provide a formal record where an offence involves domestic abuse. Those findings will be recorded in court records and shared with police and probation. The judicial finding will enable police, courts, prisons and probation services to recognise domestic abuse offenders and respond to the risks they pose more effectively.
Subsection (2)(b) of the new clause extends beyond the purpose of these measures. The Bill does not alter the way local authorities identify previous victims or perpetrators when allocating new social housing tenancies. That is a matter for local authorities to determine when assessing need and priority for an allocation of social housing.
The measures that the Government have put forward in this part of the Bill will help ensure that our reforms can operate effectively. The Government amendments provide the necessary technical changes to support the operation of the provisions and ensure that the legislation works as intended. I welcome the cross-party support for the measures and ask the Committee to support Government amendments 22 to 73.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1
Protection for victims of domestic abuse
The Chair
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 74.
Schedule 2.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 15 introduces schedule 2, which gives the Secretary of State the power to create one new general consent and removes the need to obtain the Secretary of State’s consent for certain transactions altogether. There are a range of circumstances in which local authorities must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent to undertake certain actions relating to their social homes, including how they account for them and when and how they can dispose of them. Some of the consents also apply to private individuals who own property that was once owned as social housing by a council or a new town corporation.
The first measure gives the Secretary of State the power to issue a general consent to non-housing assets—for example, shops or recreation grounds—that are being accounted for in the housing revenue account in accordance with part II of the Housing Act 1985. That will enable the Secretary of State to permit all such accounting practices when they meet certain criteria. That will remove one obstacle from the process of planning new council developments. It will also make it easier for councils to include these additional premises in their developments, supporting the creation of thriving, liveable communities.
The second measure streamlines the process by which local authorities can serve demolition notices, when homes are due to be demolished, that suspend or end tenants’ right to buy. Under schedules 5 and 5A to the 1985 Act, initial demolition notices can be issued for up to seven years, and final demolition notices, which can be issued once the local authority has acquired all the relevant properties for demolition or entered into binding agreements to acquire them, for up to two years. The provision removes the requirement for the Secretary of State’s consent when local authorities need to serve further interim or final demolition notices if demolition cannot be completed during the time of the original notice, and it sets out requirements that local authorities must follow when serving further interim or final demolition notices. Those changes will help local authorities to manage redevelopment schemes more efficiently while still requiring them to follow clear statutory conditions.
Finally, the measure amends or repeals provisions in a number of Acts that require the Secretary of State’s consent for the onward sale of homes that have previously been owned by a local housing authority or new town corporation, even if those homes are already in the private market. The changes do not have effect in Wales, where the previous regime will continue. The changes will take away a completely unnecessary brake on these housing transactions in the private market. There is no longer any rationale for these now private homes to be subject to the Secretary of State’s consent, and consent is never in practice denied. All the changes are part of a suite of measures planned by the Government to simplify and streamline the council housing consent system in England and to empower local authorities who know their communities best.
Government amendment 74 makes minor and consequential amendments to schedule 2. Paragraph 1(3) of the schedule omits section 171D(2) of the Housing Act 1985. That subsection currently requires the Secretary of State’s consent for certain onward disposal of homes already sold under the right to buy. As a consequence of that omission, references elsewhere in the Housing Act 1985 to consent under section 171D(2) are no longer required. Amendment 74 removes those redundant references, ensuring that the legislation will operate coherently once the requirement for consent is removed. The amendment does not make any further substantive change to policy; it simply makes necessary consequential amendments to give full effect to paragraph 1(3) of schedule 2.
I commend clause 15 and schedule 2 to the Committee, and ask the Committee to support Government amendment 74.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2
Social housing: consent requirements
Amendment made: 74, in schedule 2, page 37, line 22, at end insert—
“1A ‘(1) Schedule 9A (land registration and related matters where right to buy preserved) is amended as follows.
(2) In paragraph 4 (entries on register protecting preserved right to buy), in sub-paragraph (2), omit paragraph (b) and the ‘and’ preceding it.
(3) In paragraph 5 (change of qualifying dwelling-house), in sub-paragraph (2), omit paragraph (b) and the ‘and’ preceding it.”—(Matthew Pennycook.)
Section 171D(2) of the Housing Act 1985 is omitted by paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 2 to the Bill. This contains amendments that are consequential on that omission.
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 16
Vacant higher value local authority housing
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
It is essential that local housing authorities have the flexibility to manage their stock in the way that best enables them to meet the needs of their local communities. Clause 16 therefore removes provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 that would have forced councils to sell their highest-value council homes whenever they became vacant. I say, “would have forced” because these provisions were never implemented by previous Governments. Even so, the presence of the provision on the statute book has a negative effect on local authorities’ spending plans, since they could not be certain of the income streams from these properties, which typically earn higher than average rents and are cheaper to maintain.
The policy was intended—I recall this because, as a relatively new Member, I sat on the Committee that considered the Bill that became the 2016 Act—to raise capital to supply new social homes, but it would ultimately have led to a net loss of social homes. Furthermore, when the 2016 Act was passed, a major aim of the policy was to help to fund the extension of the right to buy to housing associations. This Government have made it clear that they do not intend to take that extension forward. The last Conservative Government chose never to implement the measures due to the negative impact that they would have had on local authorities, and we are now going one step further by repealing the provisions altogether. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Secure tenancies, introductory tenancies and demoted tenancies
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Government amendments 75 to 77.
Schedule 3.
New clause 40—Fixed-term tenancies for social housing—
“Nothing in this Act prevents a local housing authority or registered provider from granting a fixed-term tenancy for social housing in accordance with existing enactments.”
This new clause would preserve local authority discretion to use fixed-term tenancies for social housing.
New clause 58—Review of lifetime secure tenancies—
“(1) A local housing authority must review each lifetime secure tenancy at intervals of no more than five years.
(2) A review under subsection (1) must consider—
(a) whether the tenant continues to require the accommodation having regard to their housing needs,
(b) whether the accommodation remains suitable having regard to the size and composition of the tenant’s household,
(c) whether the tenant has developed a local connection with another local housing authority area,
(d) whether the tenant requires support to move to more suitable accommodation, and
(e) such other matters as may be prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(3) Following a review under this section, the local housing authority may—
(a) confirm the continuation of the tenancy,
(b) offer alternative suitable accommodation, or
(c) take such other action as may be provided for by regulations.
(4) The Secretary of State must issue guidance to local housing authorities on the conduct of reviews under this section.
(5) Local housing authorities must have regard to guidance issued under subsection
(6) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
This new clause requires local housing authorities to review lifetime secure tenancies every five years to ensure that social housing continues to meet tenants’ needs and that existing stock is being used effectively.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 17 introduces schedule 3, which will repeal uncommenced provisions of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 that would have phased out lifetime secure tenancies and required new social housing tenants to be given fixed-term secure tenancies instead. As with the provisions that we have just debated, the rules were never brought into force and would have reduced security for tenants. Indeed, the inclusion of the fixed-term provisions in the 2016 Act received strong objections throughout the Bill’s passage.
The Government support the use of lifetime tenancies because they provide stability and security for households, and help people to put down roots in their communities. Security of tenure matters, particularly for families, older residents, disabled people and others for whom a settled home is the foundation of wider wellbeing and opportunity. That was the rationale for the changes we recently implemented through the Renters’ Rights Act 2025.
Although we promote the use of lifetime tenancies, the Government expect landlords to make the best and most effective use of their homes to meet housing need. Landlords can support tenants to downsize, transfer or mutually exchange their homes if their circumstances change. That helps people to move to properties that are better suited to them and ensures that social housing is used in the fairest way possible.
Retaining the option for landlords to grant fixed-term tenancies is an important tool that allows councils to respond to specific circumstances, such as supporting time-limited resettlement schemes. The schedule also retains the existing approach to succession by reinserting the relevant provisions from the 2016 Act, ensuring that there are no substantial changes to how succession works in practice.
The repeal of the uncommenced provisions will provide greater certainty to tenants and landlords, and ensure that the law continues to work properly after they are removed. The previous Government confirmed in their 2018 social housing Green Paper, after listening to residents’ concerns, that they had no intention of implementing those provisions. Once again, this Government are going a step further and repealing them from the statute book.
Government amendments 75 to 77 make minor and technical changes to the succession provisions in schedule 3. Amendment 77 corrects the provision dealing with demoted tenancies so that it refers only to changes that apply to those tenancies. References to provisions that apply only to introductory tenancies are removed, as those cases are already covered separately. Amendments 75 and 76 make it clear that the sections 143H and 143J to which the provisions refer are sections of the Housing Act 1996. The amendments do not change policy or tenants’ rights; they simply clarify the Bill’s wording and make sure that references are correct and in order. I commend clause 17 and Government amendments 75 to 77 to the Committee.
Gareth Bacon
I rise to speak to new clauses 40 and 58, which I tabled.
Social housing is not a one-size-fits-all, and new clause 40 would protect the invaluable and expert knowledge of local authorities by giving them a greater say over the type of tenancy that they can offer to local people. That would preserve local authorities’ discretion to use fixed-term tenancies for social housing. Used appropriately, fixed-term tenancies allow a landlord to review a household’s circumstances at the end of a term and make sure that the home can be put to best use for those who need it most. They allow for the flexibility necessary to ensure that when a tenant’s situation has improved, a home can be made available for local people with the greatest need. The new clause is about empowering local authorities and delivering an efficient social housing system—two things that the Bill fails to do in many ways. Importantly, it imposes nothing and takes nothing away. It protects local knowledge, expertise and discretion.
Social housing exists for the express purpose of providing those who are most in need with not just shelter, but a place to call home. In a system under severe financial strain and lacking in adequate supply, it is essential that social homes are allocated to those in genuine need who are at the most severe risk, not just those who once needed them but no longer do. That is why we have tabled new clause 58, which would require local housing authorities to review lifetime secure tenancies every five years to ensure that social housing continues to meet tenants’ needs. It would also ensure that existing stock is used as effectively as possible. With 1.34 million people on the waiting list, a record number of people sleeping rough and a staggering 178,000 children in temporary accommodation, not a single social home can afford to be filled by somebody who could reasonably afford market rent or buy their own property.
Danny Beales
I completely agree that there is a desperate need for social homes in this country after decades of under-delivery, which this Government are starting to turn the tide on. It is interesting that earlier in Committee, Opposition Members were proposing amendments to support the further loss of council homes through allowing extensive right-to-buy provisions. The arguments do not seem to be compatible. Does the shadow Minister have any reflections on that? Does he not think that the threat of a review and potentially losing a council home if a person earns a bit more money might dampen their aspiration of trying to progress in life and get a better job?
Gareth Bacon
As I said earlier, the Bill will not add a single social home to this country’s current tally. If social housing was in abundant supply, I would agree with the hon. Gentleman, but it is not. It is a scarce resource and the important thing that we are trying to make clear is about how we use that scarce resource.
Right to buy generates receipts that can be reinvested in building more social housing. Given that the overwhelming majority of people living in social housing are in lifetime tenancies, regardless of their circumstance, that housing is not available to people on the waiting list. It is already occupied and nobody is saying that that should change. So, it is not the case that right to buy causes a depletion of available social housing stock— it simply does not.
New clause 58 is not an eviction notice. It would not grant new powers to remove people from their homes. It is a common-sense move to assess how best to ensure that scarce resources are used for those who need a home most.
Matthew Pennycook
Let me start with new clause 40, which seeks to clarify that social landlords can continue to grant fixed-term tenancies.
Fixed-term tenancies will no longer be available within the assured tenancy framework once the relevant Renters’ Rights Act 2025 reforms take effect. I therefore understand that the proposal is aimed principally at ensuring that local housing authorities and other secure tenancy landlords can continue to grant fixed-term tenancies when appropriate.
I want to be clear that the new clause is not needed. Nothing in the Bill prevents secure-tenancy landlords from granting fixed-term tenancies. As I have said, the Bill repeals uncommenced provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which would have required most new secure tenancies to be fixed-term tenancies. As we have just debated, those provisions were never brought into force and we are now removing them in order to provide clarity. Secure-tenancy landlords will still be able to offer fixed-term tenancies where they consider it appropriate to do so; as I have said, the Bill does not change that. The proposed measures risk repeating what is already the case in law for secure-tenancy landlords and would create confusion by suggesting that the Bill removes flexibility in this area when it does not. For those reasons, I ask the shadow Minister not to press new clause 40.
New clause 58 would require local housing authorities to review lifetime secure tenancies every five years. I made it clear when speaking to clause 17 that the Government support the use of lifetime tenancies because they provide stability and security for households and help people to put down roots in their communities. That is precisely why we are repealing uncommenced provisions in the 2016 Act that would have phased out lifetime secure tenancies in favour of mandatory fixed-term tenancies.
We expect local authorities and other social landlords to make the best and most effective use of their stock to meet housing need. However, we do not believe that a statutory requirement for local authorities to review every secure tenancy once every five years would be an appropriate way to support them in doing so, given the administrative burden that that would entail. We also believe that it would have detrimental impacts on tenants and communities. Those are some of the reasons why the previous Government did not commence the provisions they had legislated for in the 2016 Act.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I am losing track of the narrative in this debate. The Government do not want to sell the unit to the tenant, but that means they will forgo all the long-term health, economic, social and community benefits of home ownership. At the same time, you want to lock them into lifelong tenancies, which would take their house out of action and reduce its availability to other households that are more in need. Perhaps I have misunderstood the Bill, but that is the narrative that I understand the Government are setting out. Can the Minister confirm that for me?
The Chair
Order. I remind Members that I am not involved in any way with this legislation. Members should not refer to the Minister as “you”.
Matthew Pennycook
I fear that the hon. Gentleman does misunderstand the Bill in a number of respects. First, we are not abolishing or phasing out the right to buy. As I have persistently made clear, we want to ensure that the right to buy is available for long-standing tenants who have lived in—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can intervene once I have answered his first question. I refer to those tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years.
I have already made it clear in a previous debate that landlords can already consider the changing needs of tenants through a variety of methods, ranging from tenant surveys to direct engagement. They can already support tenants to downsize, to transfer or to mutually exchange their home if their circumstances change. The new clause would mandate, through primary legislation, a review of every secure tenancy once every five years. I simply put it to the hon. Gentleman—this picks up on the precise reason why the previous Conservative Government did not bring into force the provisions in their own 2016 Act—that that would entail huge administrative burdens for local authorities. We think, because we believe in the principle of secure tenancies in social housing—in terms of the benefits for tenants and for communities more widely—that we should not impose such a statutory review every five years. I am struggling to see how that is incompatible with trying to place the right-to-buy scheme on a fairer and more sustainable footing.
The Government are reviewing how effectively social housing providers are using their stock. That work is considering issues such as under-occupation, overcrowding and how landlords are supporting tenant movement. We will set out findings from that review and the next steps in due course. We think social landlords can, in some instances, make better and more effective use of their stock. That does not necessarily require, as a means to support them to do so, a statutory requirement to review every secure tenancy every five years.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
Regarding social landlords reassessing the use of their stock, does the Minister agree that there needs to be more focus on the needs of disabled members of our community? My constituent Keeley Callan came to see me on Friday. She is disabled, and I would argue she is actually disabled by the social housing system because she has been waiting for at least five years to move into her own accommodation. That is totally unacceptable, given her equal rights to housing in law. Will the Minister briefly reflect on that as he sums up?
Matthew Pennycook
I am sorry to hear about that case; if my hon. Friend wants to write to me with further details, I am more than happy to look into it. I would make two points: local authorities are best placed to decide the types of social homes their communities need and to plan for them appropriately. Local authorities also have a statutory duty to promote adaptations for disabled people in all housing tenures, subject to a needs assessment, and the Government provide the disabled facilities grant to support them. I am happy to write to my hon. Friend with more details about the support that should be in place and the expectations that the Government have in respect of local authorities. If he wants to write to me, I am more than happy to come back to him on the particular points that might arise from the case he has mentioned.
We cannot accept new clause 58 and I have already spoken to new clause 40, tabled by the shadow Minister. I ask the Committee to support Government amendments 75 to 77 and I commend clause 17 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 3
Secure, introductory and demoted tenancies: uncommenced legislation etc
Amendments made: 75, in schedule 3, page 41, line 1, after “143H” insert
“of the Housing Act 1996”.
This would clarify that this sub-paragraph amends the Housing Act 1996.
Amendment 76, in schedule 3, page 42, line 5, after “143J” insert
“of the Housing Act 1996”.
This would clarify that this sub-paragraph amends the Housing Act 1996.
Amendment 77, in schedule 3, page 42, line 23, leave out “to (10)” and insert
“, (9) and (10)(c) and (d)”.—(Matthew Pennycook.)
This would clarify that only sub-paragraph 10(c) and (d) are relevant to sub-paragraph (13). Sub-paragraph 10(a) and (b) concern introductory, rather than demoted, tenancies.
Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 18
Rents for high income social tenants
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 42—Review of income eligibility for social housing—
“(1) Within two years of the passing of this Act and every five years thereafter, the Secretary of State must review income eligibility thresholds for social housing.
(2) A review under subsection (1) must include consideration of the following trends over the previous five years—
(a) household earnings,
(b) regional housing costs,
(c) housing affordability, and
(d) levels of demand for social housing.
(3) The Secretary of State must publish the findings of each review and lay them before Parliament.”
This new clause would require regular reviews of income eligibility thresholds for social housing.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 18 will repeal unimplemented provisions that would have required councils to charge higher rents to higher-income social tenants. We are now removing them to provide certainty and clean up the statute book. The provisions, as with others we have debated this afternoon, were never implemented. Once again, I note that the original provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 received strong objections during the passage of that legislation.
A mandatory pay-to-stay scheme would be difficult and costly to administer. Indeed, the previous Government, despite legislating for this policy, chose not to commence it on the explicit basis that the costs outweighed the benefits. Income alone is also not the only determinant of who is allocated social housing. Some households may have additional needs or circumstances which mean that social housing remains the only viable or appropriate option for them. That can be the case even where their income may be somewhat higher than others on the waiting list.
Social housing is targeted at those who need it most, but some tenants’ incomes may rise over time. Our focus is on keeping rents affordable and supporting all social tenants, not penalising tenants for improving their circumstances. As we debated in the previous group, landlords can encourage tenants to move if their circumstances change. Where tenants want to move or downsize, we expect landlords to support them to do so through transfers or mutual exchanges, which helps people move to properties that are better suited to them, and helps to ensure that social housing is used in the fairest way possible. Where councils and private registered providers choose, they can run voluntary pay-to-stay schemes, which allows landlords to decide whether a scheme is suitable for their area.
Councils can also consider an applicant’s income and financial circumstances when deciding whether they qualify for social housing and what priority they should receive. Households with higher incomes may be given less priority, or may not qualify at all. However, councils will also consider whether the household has other needs, as I have referenced, which can mean that social housing is still the right option for them.
Repealing these measures provides a fairer and more workable approach. This change will help keep rents affordable for social tenants, especially those on lower and middle incomes, avoid disincentives to work and mean that tenants are not incentivised to reduce their working hours to avoid higher rent. I commend clause 18 to the Committee.
Gareth Bacon
I rise to speak to new clause 42. If the Bill fails to build any new social housing, which we know it will, it could at the very least ensure that stock is allocated to those most in need. We believe that one of the fairest and most suitable ways to do so is to review the income eligibility thresholds for social housing. At present, up-to-date figures from the English housing survey suggest that around 186,000 social housing households have incomes above £50,000. That is both an injustice and an inefficiency in need of fixing, yet the Bill will not do so.
We must ensure that any changes to the structure of the social housing system are made to enable a fairer and more effective programme for the most vulnerable to find shelter. Social housing is a safety net, not a guarantee. People’s circumstances change over time. Those who have the means to pay market rent should do so, and that is why new clause 42 would require regular reviews of income eligibility thresholds. Without the new clause, the Bill would provide no avenue through which we can manage stock to free up more homes, no route towards building more social housing, and no light at the end of the tunnel for the 1.34 million people on the waiting list.
Matthew Pennycook
Before I respond to new clause 42, I must address something that the shadow Minister keeps saying, which is that the Bill does not build any new social housing. I have made this incredibly clear, and I encourage him to go and talk to his local authority, although I am not sure its record on social housing is a particularly good one. Local authorities are very clear and have said to us in plain terms that the measures in the Bill will incentivise them to build more social homes. Of course, it is not the case that this piece of legislation is the only means by which we are building new social and affordable housing. We have a £39 billion social and affordable homes programme, which dwarfs anything that the previous Conservative Government allocated in this area, and there is additional funding to come on top of that.
New clause 42 would require the Secretary of State to review income eligibility thresholds for social housing within two years of the Bill’s passage, and every five years thereafter, and to publish the findings and lay them before Parliament. Each review would consider trends over the previous five years in household earnings, regional housing costs, housing affordability and demand for social housing.
I recognise the importance of considering income to ensure that social housing is targeted at those most in need. Indeed, it is a sad truth that the residualisation of social housing over many years—not least because of the engineered decline of it under previous Conservative Governments, with increased right-to-buy discounts explicitly targeted to ensure that more is sold—has meant that, in most cases, it has become targeted to those on very low incomes, but we do not believe that the new clause is necessary.
Eligibility for social housing is considered through the allocations process, and there is no general national income eligibility threshold for social rented housing. As I have made clear, local authorities can take financial resources into account in determining qualification and relative priority under their allocation schemes, subject to statutory requirements, and private registered providers also operate their own lettings polices. This allows local and individual circumstances to be taken into account.
Rachel Blake
The Minister has been incredibly generous. I wonder whether he will reflect in his closing remarks on the clause—which repeals what were, in my view, ideological attacks on something that is a very practical solution to a range of market needs and the affordability options open to people—that the previous Government did not enact these measures because they were found to be impractical, and because their implementation would actually cost the taxpayer money due to the risks of an additional administrative burden on local authorities and increasing homelessness; or will he remain as gracious and generous as he has been in our discussions so far?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank my hon. Friend for the invitation to become ungracious in respect of Opposition Members. I remember the debates in that 2016 Bill Committee. Those were deeply ideological measures, but I think it says everything that Conservative Ministers decided they were impractical, unworkable, could not be implemented, and made it clear—[Interruption.] They did. I encourage Opposition Members to go and read the 2018 social housing Green Paper, in which Conservative Ministers made it very clear that huge administrative burdens would come from some of these measures, in addition to their detrimental impact on tenants and communities. What we are doing is going a step further, as I have said, and removing these measures, and the uncertainty they create, from the statute book.
On the new clause, it is important to be clear that only a very small minority of social housing lettings are to high-income households. This is based on household income, not individual income, and in many cases could reflect two people each earning a modest salary, rather than a single person on what anyone would reasonably describe as a high income. Some households may have additional needs or circumstances that mean that social housing remains, as I have said, the only viable or appropriate option for them. That can be the case even when their income may be somewhat higher than that of others on the waiting list.
Income should be considered alongside a household’s wider housing needs and circumstances, but we do not believe that this duty is necessary, or that it would be an appropriate use of resources for the Government to review every one of these independently set thresholds. In repealing the pay-to-stay provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, councils and registered providers will still be able to operate voluntary pay-to-stay schemes for households earning over £60,000 if they wish to do so. That discretion is important and it remains, but there will be no mandatory national requirement. That approach will, as I have said, avoid disincentives for people to work or increase their earnings, and will support a more sensible system overall. I therefore ask that the new clause not be pressed, and I commend clause 18 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Health and safety lead: Parliamentary procedure
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 19 will make a minor technical amendment to the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, section 320 of which sets out the parliamentary procedure that applies to regulations made under its provisions. Regulations made under sections 70, 72 and 126A are subject to the affirmative procedure, which means that a draft of the regulations must be laid before and approved by both Houses of Parliament before they can be made.
However, the provision governing the negative procedure currently excludes only regulations made under sections 70 and 72; it does not also refer to section 126A. Clause 19 corrects that inconsistency and ensures that all regulations that section 320 specifies as being subject to the affirmative procedure are properly excluded from the negative procedure. The clause does not confer any new powers or reduce the level of parliamentary scrutiny; it simply ensures that the existing statutory provisions operate clearly and consistently. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 21
Management of local authority housing by TMOs
“Schedule (Management of local authority housing by TMOs) makes provision about the management of local authority housing accommodation by tenant management organisations.”—(Matthew Pennycook.)
This would introduce NS1 which provides for a revised and expanded legislative regime about the management of council housing by tenant management organisations.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new schedule 1—Management of local authority housing by TMOs.
Government amendment 79.
Matthew Pennycook
The right to manage can be a powerful tool through which social housing residents can take greater control of the housing services that they receive, but it must operate within a clear, robust framework that protects residents and clarifies respective responsibilities. Taken together, these changes will update and strengthen the right to manage, making it easier for social housing tenants to exercise that right with confidence, while ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place.
These reforms have been informed by the findings of the review of the right to manage that was undertaken by the Government. Through the review, we heard clearly from stakeholders that the current right to manage framework has not kept pace with wider regulatory change. They highlighted the need for governance that is more proportionate and for greater clarity on roles, responsibilities and information sharing.
We also heard from landlords and residents that the current routes for intervention if things go wrong can be slow and cumbersome. Within schedule 1, proposed new sections 27AD to 27AF of the Housing Act 1985 will enable a more proportionate approach to governance requirements. They will put in place lighter-touch requirements where residents take on more limited services, and stronger requirements where tenant management organisations assume more complex functions, including building safety responsibilities.
Those provisions will also provide broader powers to strengthen the framework governing right to manage arrangements, helping to ensure that it keeps pace with wider regulatory requirements, including on the safety and decency of social homes and quality of services to tenants. These are enabling powers that will allow us to update the right to manage regulations and guidance to govern management agreements, ballots of residents, regular reviews and information sharing. The powers will come into effect on Royal Assent, but we will consult on the detail before introducing the new regulations and guidance.
Proposed new sections 27AG to 27AL will also require regular reviews of the management agreements, strengthen the requirements for residents to be balloted on continuation of TMO arrangements, and require better information sharing between TMOs and their landlords. They will also strengthen requirements on landlords to consult TMOs on policy changes affecting functions exercised under management agreements.
Proposed new sections 27AM to 27AQ will create a targeted court-backed route for intervention in exceptional cases, including removal of board members where there is serious mismanagement of a TMO or a risk to residents’ safety. That route will be subject to judicial oversight, with the court required to be satisfied that urgent intervention is appropriate. That will help to address the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) about the ability of councils to act swiftly where serious failings are putting residents at risk.
We know that many TMOs work hard to deliver good-quality housing services that respond to local priorities and are supported by tenants who give up their own time to serve on committees. These reforms will make the right to manage easier to exercise, clearer to operate and safer for residents. They will support resident empowerment while ensuring that landlords have the tools they need to meet their regulatory requirements and safeguard residents.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 21 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 22
Duty of private registered provider to offer accommodation after local authority request
“(1) After section 193C of the Housing Act 1996 insert—
‘193D Duty of private registered provider to offer accommodation after local authority request
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a local housing authority in England has a duty under section 193 to secure accommodation for an applicant, and
(b) the authority has made a written request to a private registered provider of social housing to provide low cost rental accommodation in the authority’s district for the applicant.
(2) The provider must make an offer of low cost rental accommodation in the authority’s district to the applicant within a reasonable period, unless the provider has a good reason not to.
(3) If the provider considers that there is a good reason not to make an offer of low cost rental accommodation in the authority’s district, the provider must, as soon as reasonably practicable, give written notice of the reason to the local housing authority.
(4) In deciding whether to make a request under subsection (1)(b), the local housing authority must have regard to—
(a) the type and amount of low cost rental accommodation that the provider in question owns or manages in the authority’s district, and
(b) the extent to which the provider is already providing accommodation in the authority’s district to persons who are homeless.
(5) The local housing authority may by written notice require the provider to provide the information described in subsection (4)(a) or (b), unless it is not reasonably practicable to do so.
(6) A notice under subsection (5) may require the information to be provided—
(a) within a specified period;
(b) in a specified manner or form.
(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the purposes of subsection (2) as to what constitutes—
(a) a reasonable period;
(b) a good reason.
save-line2(8) “Low cost rental accommodation” has the same meaning as in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 (see section 69)
(9) An offer made under this section is not an offer of accommodation under Part 6 (allocation of housing).’”—(Matthew Pennycook.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Matthew Pennycook
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Many councils and housing associations already work closely together to secure settled homes for people facing homelessness. We are committed to building on the many examples of good practice and collaboration that exist, but informal agreements between councils and other providers do not always work. Private registered providers are less likely than councils to offer accommodation to homeless households. New clause 22 will give local housing authorities an additional tool to help them to discharge the main homelessness duty.
Where a council owes a household the main homelessness duty, it will be able to ask a private registered provider with social housing in its area to offer social housing to that household. The provider must respond and offer suitable accommodation within a reasonable period unless it has good reason not to do so. We will consult councils, housing providers and other relevant providers before setting out in regulations what constitutes a reasonable period and a good reason, but, to give an example, a private registered provider would not be expected to offer accommodation if they do not have anything suitable available in a reasonable timeframe.
The power includes important safeguards. Before making a referral, the council must take account of the type and amount of accommodation that the provider has locally, and the extent to which it is already housing homeless households. That will ensure that referrals are fair and proportionate and that they reflect local circumstances. The approach builds on established practice in Scotland and delivers a commitment in our national plan to end homelessness. I commend the new clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 22 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 23
Referral of homelessness cases to other local housing authorities
“(1) Section 198 of the Housing Act 1996 (referral of case) is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).
(2) After subsection (4) insert—
‘(4ZA) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify circumstances in which—
(a) the conditions for referral mentioned in subsection (2),
(b) the conditions for referral mentioned in subsection (2ZA), or
(c) the conditions for referral mentioned in subsection (4),
are not met for the purposes of referral of a case by a local housing authority in England.’
(3) In subsection (7) after ‘order’, in the first two places it occurs, insert ‘or regulations’.”—(Matthew Pennycook.)
This would allow the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying circumstances where a local housing authority in England cannot refer a person who is homeless to another local housing authority.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government new clause 24—Duties of specified bodies to collaborate and act on homelessness.
Matthew Pennycook
New clauses 23 and 24 will strengthen homelessness prevention and ensure that support reaches those who need it most, as quickly as possible.
We owe a debt of gratitude to those who have served in our armed forces. They have given so much of their life in service to their country, and it is right that we support them to have a safe home on leaving active service. The number of former armed service personnel seeking homelessness support is thankfully relatively small, but the Government recognise that those who do so can face challenges, particularly if they seek to establish themselves in an area where they may have no existing local connections. The existing legislation permits a local housing authority to refer someone who is seeking housing support, but does not have any connections to their local area, to the area of another local housing authority where they do.
New clause 23 provides a power for the Secretary of State to define in regulations where that should not apply. We propose to use that power to exempt our armed forces veterans from local connection referrals. That means that there will be no barriers or delays to veterans receiving homelessness assistance. They will be able to seek support from anywhere in the country, and the local authority will be required to provide assistance. This builds on the action that we took last year to exempt veterans from any local connection test that councils might apply to determine who qualifies for an allocation of social housing.
Rachel Blake
I strongly welcome the move to remove the local connection test for armed forces veterans. It indicates this Government’s recognition that the local connection sometimes creates barriers for people to making their way off the streets, particularly when they are vulnerable. I welcome the Bill’s acknowledgment of the issue. I hope that there can be an ongoing conversation about the role of local connection tests, particularly regarding rough sleeping and how we support people to stop sleeping rough.
Matthew Pennycook
I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s support for this measure. I am more than happy to have an ongoing dialogue about the issue with her, as I do with so many others. It is absolutely right that we look to do everything possible to support our veterans.
I turn to new clause 24. We know that homelessness rarely occurs without warning. Yet too often, people come to the attention of local housing authorities only when they have already reached crisis point. Many of them will have been in contact with different public services long before, but opportunities to identify risk, co-ordinate support and intervene early are often missed. People often face homelessness despite engaging with services that are well placed to help prevent it. The new clause addresses this challenge by introducing new duties on specified bodies to identify and act on a person’s homelessness or risk of homelessness. This supports the Government’s commitment to prevent and relieve homelessness at the earliest possible stage.
The specified bodies will also be required to take meaningful action as part of the existing functions to address or relieve homelessness. The duty will replace and extend the existing duty to refer. It will mandate earlier engagement with local housing authorities, alongside notifying them if someone requires support. It also mandates continued engagement with the local authority to enable it to support an individual as effectively as possible, and will require specified bodies to consider other sources of support for the individual.
Preventing homelessness should not be the responsibility of a single organisation. People at risk of homelessness often have multiple and overlapping needs, including poor health, unemployment, financial hardship or involvement with the justice system. No single service can address these issues effectively alone.
Danny Beales
On the point about specific bodies, can the Minister clarify whether this provision would extend to hospital trusts and prisons within the criminal justice system? I am sure he knows that one of the most significant routes on to the street is from both of those public sector institutions. Unfortunately, hospitals rarely if ever count those who are likely to sleep rough on discharge or are currently doing so. Positively, the Government’s rough sleeping strategy is committed to ending discharge to street from hospitals, but getting that engagement from the NHS and trusts as well as the asylum system and prisons will be crucial to making that happen. Will this new clause be a step forward in that regard?
Matthew Pennycook
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s points. We will set out the specified bodies in due course. I hear what he says about hospital trusts in particular. I think engagement is to take place on the precise scope of the specified bodies that we want to be caught by the new duty. On the point of principle—these are broad enabling powers—effective prevention depends on earlier identification, co-ordinated action and shared responsibility across services.
Importantly, this is not about creating an entirely new system. Many services already undertake these activities to support homelessness prevention, whether by identifying vulnerabilities, signposting support, making referrals or working with partners to resolve housing issues. These new duties build on existing good practice and should drive a consistent national framework to support those who are most vulnerable.
The Government intend to define in secondary legislation the bodies within scope and the actions required to comply with the duty, but my officials and I have heard the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip makes.
Mr Dillon
The new clause refers to identifying the local housing authority to which the notification could be made. In additional legislation, is it possible that H could notify more than one local housing authority— if they had a local connection, say, in Liverpool and in Berkshire—to get them off the streets as soon as possible?
Matthew Pennycook
If the hon. Member will allow me, I will write to him on that specific point; I do not have an answer to hand. I am more than happy to set out how these provisions might work where multiple local authorities are involved. I take his point on that. ‘relevant steps section 213AC(3)’; ‘specified body section 213AB(2)’.”
As I say, we intend to define in secondary legislation the bodies within scope and the actions required to comply with the duty. This will allow us to work closely with stakeholders to ensure that implementation is proportionate and effective and that it reflects the differing functions of individual services. Ultimately, the new clause is about ensuring that services work together to identify risks earlier and intervene before people reach crisis point. By creating a more joined-up approach to homelessness prevention, we can help more people to remain in their homes, shift the system away from crisis response and deliver our ambition on homelessness and rough sleeping, as the Prime Minister has rightly outlined. I commend the new clauses to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 23 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 24
Duties of specified bodies to collaborate and act on homelessness
“(1) This section amends the Housing Act 1996.
(2) After section 213AA insert—
‘213AB Specified bodies must identify actual or possible homelessness
(1) A specified body must take reasonable steps to identify persons in England in relation to whom it exercises functions who it considers are or may be—
(a) homeless,
(b) threatened with homelessness, or
(c) otherwise at risk of becoming homeless.
(2) When a specified body becomes subject to that duty in relation to a particular person (taking into account any effect of regulations made under section 213AG(1)), the body must comply with the duty promptly.
213AC Specified bodies must act on actual or possible homelessness
(1) A specified body must comply with the duty to notify the local housing authority (see section 213AD) in relation to a person (H) if the body identifies H as a person who the body considers is or may be—
(a) homeless, or
(b) threatened with homelessness.
(2) But the specified body does not need to comply with the duty to notify if it is satisfied that—
(a) H has already made an application for assistance, and
(b) the application has not been disposed of.
(3) A specified body must comply with the general duty to act (see section 213AE) in relation to a person (H) if the body identifies H as a person who the body considers is or may be—
(a) homeless,
(b) threatened with homelessness, or
(c) otherwise at risk of becoming homeless.
(4) A “relevant step”, in relation to H, means a step to—
(a) prevent H becoming homeless,
(b) reduce the risk of H becoming homeless,
(c) relieve H’s homelessness, or
(d) alleviate the effects of H’s homelessness.
213AD The duty to notify the local housing authority
(1) The “duty to notify the local housing authority” in relation to H consists of the duties set out in this section.
(2) The specified body must ask H—
(a) whether H has made an application for assistance under this Part, and
(b) if so, to which local housing authority the application was made.
(3) If H has not made an application for assistance, the specified body must ask whether H agrees to the body notifying a local housing authority in England—
(a) that the body considers that H is or may be homeless or threatened with homelessness, and
(b) how H may be contacted by the local housing authority.
(4) If H agrees to the specified body making the notification, the body must ask H—
(a) whether H consents to the body sharing with the authority such information as is necessary to make the notification (including information provided by H and information already held by the body), and
(b) to identify a local housing authority in England to which H would like the notification to be made.
(5) If H agrees to the specified body making the notification and consents to the body sharing the information that is necessary to make the notification, the body must notify the local housing authority in England to which H would like the notification to be made.
213AE The general duty to act
(1) The “general duty to act” in relation to H consists of the duties set out in this section.
(2) The specified body must—
(a) consider the question of what relevant steps could be taken by it or other persons, and
(b) raise that question with such persons as the body considers appropriate, who must include any other persons that could take relevant steps.
(3) After complying with subsection (2) the specified body—
(a) must take any relevant steps which it concludes it can take, and
(b) must provide to the persons with which it has raised that question reasonable assistance to assist or enable them to take relevant steps.
(4) This section does not affect any right of the specified body, whether by virtue of a contract, enactment or other law, to seek to obtain vacant possession of any accommodation.
(5) If a specified body must also comply with the duty to notify in relation to H, making the notification under section 213AD(5) does not satisfy the general duty to act in relation to H.
(6) A reference in this section to a relevant step—
(a) includes a relevant step that can be taken with the assistance of another person;
(b) in relation to a specified body, only includes a relevant step that the body can reasonably take in the exercise of its functions;
(c) in relation to a person who is not a specified body, only includes a relevant step that the person can reasonably take in the exercise of their functions or in carrying out their activities.
213AF Duty to engage with local housing authorities
(1) This section applies where a local housing authority in England considers—
(a) that a person is or may be homeless, threatened with homelessness or otherwise at risk of becoming homeless, and
(b) that a specified body exercises functions in relation to that person.
(2) The local housing authority may ask the specified body to engage with them for the purpose of assisting the authority with the discharge of their functions under this Part in relation to that person.
(3) The specified body must engage with the local housing authority in such manner and to such extent as the body considers reasonable in the circumstances.
213AG Regulations and guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about how specified bodies can or must comply with—
(a) the duty to identify homelessness,
(b) the duty to notify the local housing authority,
(c) the general duty to act, or
(d) the duty to engage.
(2) Regulations made under subsection (1) may, in particular, make provision about the following matters—
(a) factors to be considered by a specified body when identifying whether a person is homeless, threatened by homelessness or otherwise at risk of becoming homeless;
(b) what information is necessary to make a notification to a local housing authority in England;
(c) what relevant steps by a specified body in the exercise of its functions are reasonable;
(d) the process to be followed by a specified body when identifying which persons it is appropriate to raise the question in section 213AE(2)(b) with.
(3) Regulations under subsection (1) may not be made unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing them (whether alone or with other provisions) has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(4) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to specified bodies in relation to any of the following duties—
(a) the duty to identify homelessness;
(b) the duty to notify the local housing authority;
(c) the general duty to act;
(d) the duty to engage.
(5) Specified bodies must have regard to guidance issued to them under subsection (4).
213AH “Specified bodies” and other interpretation
(1) In sections 213AB to 213AG and this section—
“duty to engage” means the duty imposed by section 213AF for specified bodies to engage with local housing authorities;
“duty to identify homelessness” means the duty imposed by section 213AB;
“duty to notify the local housing authority” has the meaning given in section 213AD;
“general duty to act” has the meaning given in section 213AE;
“H” has the meaning given in section 213AC;
“relevant step” has the meaning given in section 213AC;
“specified body” means a body or other person that is—
(a) specified in regulations, or
(b) of a description specified in regulations.
(2) Regulations made under this section may provide that a person is a specified body only in relation to a particular function exercised by that person.
(3) If a provision under subsection (2) specifies a particular function of a specified body, any reference in sections 213AB to 213AG to the functions of a specified body has effect in relation that body only as a reference to that particular function.
(4) In this section, “regulations’ means regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(5) Regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing them (whether alone or with other provisions) has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.’
(3) Omit section 213B (duty of public authority to refer cases in England to local housing authority).
(4) In section 218 (index of defined expression Part 7) insert in the table at the appropriate places—
—(Matthew Pennycook.)
This would amend the Housing Act 1996 to introduce a duty for specified bodies to identify and act on homelessness.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Laurence Turner.)
Westminster Hall
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Cask Ale: Intangible Cultural Heritage
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
Hon. Members should rise in their places repeatedly if they wish to catch my eye.
Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the potential merits of recognising the production and serving of cask ale as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for originally securing this debate. He has now reached the dizzy heights of Parliamentary Private Secretary, so is unable to open the debate. I believe it started as an idea in the Brunswick Inn in Derby, an excellent pub combining my interests of railways and beer, and one that I have frequented. I also thank hon. Members who supported the application, and Brad Evans and Jonny Garrett for their tireless work through the Keep Cask Alive campaign.
It is worth reminding ourselves what cask or real ale is. It is ale that, once brewed, is put straight into the barrel. That distinguishes it from most other beers, which tend to be filtered, pasteurised or carbonated before being put in the barrel. The shape of the cask barrel is different from that of the kegs that other beers are put into, to allow a natural, secondary fermentation process to occur within the barrel, allowing more flavour to develop after the barrel has left the brewery. Cask ale is a living product, a live beer, drawn out of the barrel using a hand pump—which is always a popular photo op for politicians.
Cask ale is uniquely British—indeed, uniquely English. The cask method started here and, until the arrival of lager in the 20th century, cask ale was the main choice of drink for people across Britain. Cask is part of who we are, our heritage and British culture.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
My constituency was the proud of home of Banks’s Brewery for more than 150 years, until its closure last year saw production of its signature cask ales either moved elsewhere or discontinued. Those beers were part of our local cultural and historic identity, reflecting generations of skill and pride in our brewing heritage. Does my hon. Friend agree that that heritage deserves protection, and will he join me in supporting the work of organisations such as the Campaign for Real Ale to preserve that heritage for future generations?
Jacob Collier
I of course join my hon. Friend in supporting those organisations. We have had conversations following Carlsberg’s decision to close Burton’s Marston’s Brewery, where my hon. Friend’s ales are brewed. We will work closely to protect a heritage that is so important to his constituents and the rest of the country.
I now have the immense privilege of serving as Member of Parliament for the residents of my home town of Burton upon Trent. We would not be who we are without cask ale. Our waters are rich in minerals, perfect for the brewing of cask ale. From our town a brewing empire was born, exporting beer across the world. Names such as Bass, Allsopp’s, Marston’s, Salt & Co and Ind Coope enjoyed spectacular success from the 19th century onwards. At one time, over half the population of Burton upon Trent was employed by the breweries. My predecessors in this House include Bass, Ratcliff, Gretton and Evershed, before some were elevated to the other place. I can assure colleagues that, if I fail to be elected at the next general election, I am not in line for a “beerage”.
Burton’s waters were so good that others copied them through a process called Burtonisation, but, of course, the original is always the best.
Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)
It is great to hear my hon. Friend mention the titans of the brewing industry; I have enjoyed a few pints from his constituency in my lifetime. In my constituency, traditional brewing skills are being kept alive by small, independent businesses, often driven as much by a love of the product as commercial considerations. Brewers such as the Allanwater Brewhouse in Bridge of Allan, Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing Brewery in Dunblane and Brewing at the Fintry Inn all bring their own character and creativity to a local brewing tradition. I must also mention what went on in Alloa, my neighbouring constituency, over many years. Does my hon. Friend agree that preserving that cultural heritage is about protecting not just traditional skills, but the diversity, innovation and passion that smaller producers bring to the industry?
Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
Order. Can interventions be a little shorter?
Jacob Collier
My hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) is absolutely right. The independent brewery sector has a real pride in and love for what it does. I think we are moving to a place where perhaps larger brewers are falling out of love with cask ale. It is smaller, independent brewers, which he spoke about, that have that real love for the craft and pride in what they do.
If you look around Burton today, Sir Desmond, you will find our brewing past and present everywhere. Our football team are nicknamed the Brewers, the smell of hops permeates the air, and our pubs tell the stories of days gone by. As a Burtonian, it fills me with immense pride to see the words “Burton Ales” on the side of a pub or the No. 1 trademark of the Bass red triangle in a place where you are not looking for it. Many of my constituents worked for the breweries, or their ancestors did, and so feel a strong connection to this, which is why the news from Carlsberg about the closure of Marston’s brewery was such a hammer blow for our town. Burton’s brewing heritage might not matter to some, but it matters to us, and it really matters to me.
Heritage is our link to the past. It gives us pride in place and a sense of identity. If places like Burton lose their distinct heritage, they lose a sense of identity and everywhere starts to feel the same. In an increasingly globalised world, place matters now more than ever.
Burton is just one example of the heritage value of cask ale. More broadly, we must recognise how British agriculture and farming have been shaped by cask ale. The pub itself is there historically because of cask ale; they are cask ale’s umbilical cord. From farmer to brewer, to publican, to pint in the pub, that process is a piece of living British history. Cask ale is an essential fabric within the tapestry of British heritage and identity.
This debate is about the specific status of intangible cultural heritage, in relation to which there has been a campaign to get cask ale recognised by UNESCO. That status was created by UNESCO’s convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage in 2003, and in 2024 the UK signed up to that convention. Since 2024, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and UNESCO in the UK have begun to collect an inventory of living heritage in the UK. Cask ale should be included in that inventory.
David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)
I am a lover of craft ale and real ale, and that includes Mad Squirrel in my constituency and Tring Brewery in a neighbouring constituency. I declare an interest, in that I am a member of Tring Brewery, which is currently experimenting with some Japanese hops from my garden. I pay tribute to Jared, the chairman of Mid-Chilterns CAMRA—the Campaign for Real Ale—who has worked at Tring Brewery for many years as a beer sommelier and who, together with Rev. John Williams, organises a fantastic festival in our old town to promote real ale. Does my hon. Friend agree that recognition from UNESCO would have real tourism benefits, just as it has in Belgium, where Belgian beer has the status?
Jacob Collier
I am sure that my hon. Friend, as the UK’s trade envoy to Japan, would be able to use UNESCO heritage status to strengthen the links we have with our Japanese friends, and I certainly agree with what he has said.
Intangible cultural heritage status was created for the purpose of preserving traditions and social practices, just as previous efforts at protecting heritage had done for artefacts and buildings, neglecting the fact that we can learn so much about who we are and how we got here through established traditions. Cask ale is one of those traditions in this country. The brewing and barrelling of cask ale is an art form requiring specialist knowledge and skills honed over decades and even centuries. It is science and engineering, and it is innovation. Once the ale is brewed and barrelled, further specialist knowledge is required by the publican to serve it. We all know what an off pint tastes like; there is real skill in handling these products.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group, I was really pleased that my hon. Friend, in his role as chair of the pub group, came to visit my constituency of Gower. He realises that there are great challenges for the industry, especially in relation to the UNESCO heritage status that he is speaking about, which I think would be really valuable. Does he agree that there are wider problems in the industry and that we need to big up our communities and pubs and get people back into the pub and enjoying their community beer?
Jacob Collier
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has been a real champion on these issues as chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group. I am a co-signatory to the letter to the Chancellor—we will await what he says tomorrow—and I did very much enjoy the Gower Gold that I sampled alongside my hon. Friend last month.
There is no doubt that cask ale is a tradition of the kind that could be included in the inventory of living heritage. The reason it should be is because of the particular risk facing cask ale at the moment. Jonny Garrett of the Craft Beer Channel suggests that craft ale accounts for around 5% of beer sales annually, compared with around 50% in the mid-1990s. There are many reasons for that. Big brand lager provides significant competition at the bar, and the pub tie makes it difficult for smaller brewers to get their beers on sale in pubs across the country. I know that the Government have launched a review of the access to market rules, and I would welcome an update on that.
Cask ale suffers when our pubs struggle, and declining footfall and rising bills force many pubs to concentrate resources on higher margin products, of which cask ale is not one. When footfall declines in pubs, so does the sale of cask ale—although we must remember that we have seen a recent growth in certain cask ale brands, largely where brewers have recognised the heritage value of their product and used that as a unique selling point.
There are a growing number of successful brands, including Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, St Austell’s Tribute, Theakston’s, Boddingtons and Burton’s very own Bass, which is brewed at the Marston’s site. Samuel Allsopp’s brand has also been revived by Jamie Allsopp, most recently relaunching the famous Allsopp’s IPA. In my constituency, there are several successful independent breweries such as Burton Bridge, Tower, Outwoods, Roebuck, G3, Gates and the Uttoxeter Brewing Company. Some say that we may have reached the end of the road for large-scale cask ale brewing. However, the brands that I have listed show that there is a route to continued success for cask ale brewers, based on smaller-scale brewing dedicated to individual brands.
The other path is decline and cask ale ceasing to exist. If we are to ensure that the right path is taken, certain steps need to be taken, which include, but are not limited to, formally recognising the production and serving of cask ale as living heritage. Doing so would not be unprecedented: this is the 10th anniversary of UNSECO adding beer culture in Belgium to its list of intangible cultural heritage. Including cask ale in the inventory would give it protection and recognition. Cask ale can be marketed as world-renowned heritage and become a staple treat for tourists visiting Britain—as we know, many sample the delights of cask ale anyway. Including cask ale would create incentives for private sector investment and efforts by local and central Government and those such as CAMRA and SIBA—the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates—which are preserving cask ale heritage.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) said, heritage status is just one step that needs to be taken. Further steps are required so that cask ale can continue to thrive commercially. These include the reforms to access to market, to make it easier for cask ale to appear in pubs. There is also beer duty. Hopefully, the Chancellor will increase draught relief tomorrow—I am sure we would all raise a glass to him. As the APPG on beer has highlighted, we should also consider whether to include brewing or hospitality as a whole in the industrial strategy and in industrial energy schemes.
However, the status of intangible cultural heritage would be an important step. The serving and production of cask ale is uniquely British and is still alive today, centuries later. It is living history that deserves our protection; I look forward to the debate today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
Order. May I suggest five minutes for speeches?
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
I congratulate my Staffordshire colleague, the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier), on introducing this important debate so effectively.
Five years ago, when I was chairman of the all-party parliamentary beer group, I chaired an inquiry examining the importance of cask ale to British pub culture and how to revive real ale. We took evidence from more than 30 witnesses for our May 2021 report, “Caskenomics”. Five years on, rather than celebrating a renaissance, cask ale is facing an arguably even worse situation than in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Nothing illustrates that more starkly than the recent announcements that Molson Coors will close Sharp’s brewery in Cornwall and Carlsberg will close the historic Marston’s brewery in Burton upon Trent, having already closed the famous Banks’s brewery right on my doorstep in Wolverhampton last year. Losing Banks’s, Marston’s and Sharp’s should set alarm bells ringing across Whitehall.
Cask beer is a uniquely British product, and the handpump at the bar defines the British pub. Cask ale has a proud history, and having a proper pint in a British pub is consistently one of the top three things that overseas tourists say they want to do while they are in the United Kingdom. Pre-pandemic, cask ale was worth £577 million, directly supported 72,500 jobs and accounted for one in nine on-trade pints while providing up to 70% of output for small and regional brewers. Delivered live for the publican to condition in the cellar, its freshness makes it uniquely vulnerable when footfall falters. Once tapped, a cask must sell within two to three days, averaging 23 pints daily, or it spoils. Without thriving pubs, cask has no route to market as it cannot be properly reproduced at home. Conversely, without real ale, pub footfall suffers. That can be either a virtuous or a vicious cycle, depending on the decisions we take.
During the pandemic, cask volumes understandably plummeted, with 87 million pints, worth over £300 million, having to be poured away, and more than 2,000 pubs closed for good. As “Caskenomics” warned five years ago, uncertain trade forces publicans to rationalise handpumps in favour of longer-life kegged lagers, as the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter said. That reduces the variety that draws drinkers into our pubs. Five years later, mounting cost pressures, some of which are the direct result of decisions taken by this Government, have turned the pandemic shock into a structural crisis for cask ale.
Why does it matter so profoundly? First, as the hon. Gentleman said, there is an “umbilical cord” that links cask ale to community pubs. Three quarters of British Institute of Innkeeping members view cask as vital to their pub, and cask drinkers spend twice as much on average as other adult drinkers, while typically choosing a venue for mixed groups. It is a genuine heritage product and should be recognised as such.
Secondly, cask underpins the social service that pubs informally provide in tackling loneliness and bolstering wellbeing. Professor Robin Dunbar’s Oxford University study for CAMRA, “Friends on Tap”, proved that regulars at a local pub have more close friends, higher life satisfaction and greater community trust. They socialise in conversation-sized groups of three to four, unlike in large city venues where bigger groups fragment conversation and encourage heavier drinking. Thirdly, at typically between 3.5% and 4.8%, cask ale served in pubs is tailor-made for responsible consumption. Fourthly, brewed with domestic Maris Otter barley and British hops in casks that are reused thousands of times, it is a near zero-waste, low-food-mile product that sustains a British hop industry dating back to the 14th century.
To protect this important heritage asset, the Government must act on three core lessons that we found in “Caskenomics”. First, they must reform taxes and widen draught duty relief. The Treasury takes about a third of every pub pint, and pubs massively overpay business rates compared with other businesses with similar profit profiles. Brewers such as Black Sheep see about 60% of their turnover taken in taxes. Lowering business rates and building on a reduced duty for draught beer are vital for shifting sales from supermarkets back to cask ale in our local pubs, so widening the draught beer duty differential introduced by the previous Government should be a no-brainer tomorrow.
Secondly, we need to back British agriculture. Following New Zealand’s $8 million hop sector investment, we need targeted support for British hop growers and maltsters, who are so important to British cask ale. Thirdly, we need fair market access to champion and celebrate British cask ale as a heritage product. With multinationals closing, independent cask brewers need fair access to pub cellars. Alongside that, cask ale deserves official heritage designation to celebrate it as uniquely British, just as champagne is French, chianti is Italian and port is Portuguese. Cask ale is the lifeblood of our brewing heritage. It is important to the local identity of so many of our communities, and it is the anchor of our community pubs.
Tonia Antoniazzi
Will the hon. Gentleman join me in congratulating John Longden from Pub is the Hub, because pubs are where community lies? Does he also recognise the investment this Labour Government have given to that scheme?
Mike Wood
The investment that successive Governments have given to Pub is the Hub could not be better spent, so I certainly welcome additional investment. As the hon. Lady says, John Longden has done a formidable job with Pub is the Hub. I remember going around Cornwall with him to see pubs that were not only the last pub standing in a village but the job club, the post office and the village store. In one case it was even the hairdresser, and I think there is a photo of John pretending to cut my hair in the saloon lounge.
Cask ale needs these protections, and there is action that the Government can take starting tomorrow. I urge the Minister, and more importantly the Chancellor, to give our brewers and publicans the fighting chance they deserve.
Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) for stepping up and leading this debate. Derby knows a thing or two about a proper pint. In fact, we have been described as the best place in the world to drink real ale, and I am sure that everyone in this room agrees with me. [Interruption.] Maybe not. Visiting our heritage beer festival, brilliantly organised by Derby CAMRA and festival chair Russ Gilbert earlier this month, it is not hard to see why. Hot off the press after winning pub of the year, I am chuffed to welcome Alan from The Brunswick to Parliament today. We have so many other publicans to be proud of, whether it is Jim and Steph at the Falstaff in Normanton, Mel and Sue at The Needles in Alvaston, freedom of the city recipient Steve at The Neptune or the fantastic team behind Ay Up at Dancing Duck brewery. Our city’s reputation is built on our brilliant pubs, publicans and breweries, and of course our amazing punters.
In Derby, we know that a pub is far more than just a place to enjoy a pint. Kat Higgins, our local CAMRA pubs officer, who could not join us today, knows that better than most. What is more, we know that a pint of cask ale is about more than just what is in the glass: it is about the brewer who understands the craft and the publican who takes pride in serving it properly, completing the brewing process at the pub. That is proper living heritage. These traditions do not survive by accident; they depend on the people who keep them going and the pubs that give them a home.
But the threats to cask ale are alive and well. In 1995, cask ale represented 50% of beer sales; today, it is less than 8%. We are seeing practices creep in where fresh ales are masquerading as cask ales, misleading punters while companies close breweries and reduce their cask lines, and we have heard examples of that this morning. CAMRA has been leading the charge to tackle this with its “Handpump Hijack” campaign, and I thank it for its work. Recognising cask ale as intangible cultural heritage really matters. It will not solve every problem that the sector faces, but it will help to recognise the people, the skills and the communities behind this great British tradition. Let us protect the best of British brewing and make sure that there is a great pint waiting for generations to come by giving cask ale the recognition it deserves.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
I remember the first day I tasted a true cask ale—I think it was my 18th birthday, when I first supped a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. It is a truly beautiful pint and something that I hope many 18-year-olds and people of advancing years continue to enjoy, but it is under threat. I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) on securing the debate because it is important. In the historical boundaries of Staffordshire, we have been under assault, with the shutting of some of our greatest, best and longest-standing breweries. First, Carlsberg decided to close the Park brewery in Wolverhampton and then the Marston’s brewery. Frankly, a company that thinks Special Brew is a good alcoholic beverage does not have much care or consideration for true, quality cask ales.
We see a real challenge in our brewing industry. The Swan in Brewood has a bar serving some of the finest cask ales from across the country, with 12 always on tap. That was once seen regularly across the country, but it is increasingly rare today. Although the number of small brewers has grown over the last 30 years, with some 1,500 breweries across the country, some major breweries—as we have seen with Carlsberg—have been pulling out of cask ale. The point has already been raised that major breweries are misleading customers by making them think that they are getting a true cask ale, because it is served from a traditional handpump, when in reality these are not cask ales. As companies such as Carlsberg shut historic brewery sites such as the Park brewery in Wolverhampton and Marston’s in Burton, skills and traditions are being lost.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), I note that the Chancellor is not a passive observer. Tomorrow, he can do something important for the brewing industry and all our communities by making changes to the duty relief for cask ale. He can also support our pubs, because if we do not have vibrant pubs in our communities, we do not have a cask ale industry. If the breweries do not have anyone to sell to, they will simply wither and die.
Yes, it is about duties, but it is also about rates. So many pubs across my constituency still feel the squeeze from a double impact imposed by this Government not just on rates but on the cost of employing young people. There is an opportunity for the Chancellor to stand up, with a traditional alcoholic beverage by his side—I would suggest a nice pint from the Lymestone brewery in Stone—to celebrate and toast our brewers by not only helping them with the duties charged on cask ale but by helping out every single pub in our constituencies by getting rid of the national insurance increases imposed by the previous Chancellor.
I very much support the arguments advanced for special heritage status for our cask ale industry. Everything that we can do to promote the industry, and to make sure that people understand how special it is and how much work goes into every single cask, is for the best. I would also be interested to hear from the Minister about whether the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has dragged the chief executive of Carlsberg into the Department to demand to know why he is wrecking and doing so much damage to our brewing industry. She should demand answers and a commitment to investment in these incredibly important historic breweries, which are at the heart of so many of our communities.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
Order. I am imposing a formal five-minute limit.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing today’s important debate and giving us all the opportunity to speak in support of recognising cask ale as intangible cultural heritage.
When I think of cultural heritage, I think of notable historic buildings like Carlisle castle or Carlisle cathedral, or structures like the Bewcastle cross and Hadrian’s wall, but heritage is also about the skills and traditions we pass on between generations. Few capture that better than cask ale. A great pint depends on the craftmanship of the brewer who makes the beer, the cellarperson who conditions it and the publican who serves it. These skills require knowledge, experience and care; they are worth celebrating and preserving.
Carlisle has a distinct place in brewing history. In 1916, during the first world war, the Government brought the city’s pubs and breweries under state control with the Carlisle state management scheme. Members might be interested to know that that remained in place between 1916 and 1973, and the last pub that the state built and opened was in 1973. I am not advocating for the nationalisation of our brewing sector; however, that remarkable experiment shaped pub design and licensing policy and left a lasting mark on my city’s identity.
That brewing tradition continues today. Carlisle is fortunate to have four independent breweries: the Carlisle Brewing Company, West Walls Brewing Co., the Great Corby Brewhouse and the Old Vicarage Brewery. Those small breweries support jobs, attract visitors and help to sustain our local culture. I am very much looking forward to sampling a little of their product at the Carlisle beer and cider festival later this week. West Walls Brewing is a success story, having opened its taproom just two years ago. It is a particularly good example of how independent brewing can attract new customers and create a vibrant hub of community life in our city centre.
Carlisle’s cask ale has even found its way into popular fiction. Readers of M. W. Craven’s “Washington Poe” novels will know of the detective’s fondness for the Carlisle Brewing Company’s Spun Gold ale and his appreciation of a properly kept beer, usually poured from The Kings Head in Carlisle city centre. Behind that fictional example is a serious point: getting cask ale right is a craft, and it depends on skills we cannot take for granted.
However, getting pints of independently brewed craft ale into the hands of consumers is a challenge due to the practices of the large brewing companies. I therefore invite the Minister to set out in her remarks where the Government’s thinking is on the introduction of a guest beer agreement in England. What discussions have been had with SIBA about improving market access for smaller breweries?
As I am sure a number of Members know, SIBA has looked at the impact of the Scottish guest beer agreement and what it has done for tied pubs, and 86% of the tenants who have an agreement in place have said it improved their trade. I feel it acutely because I represent a borders constituency, and I can literally walk a matter of metres to a pub that can enjoy a guest beer agreement. I urge the Government to get on with introducing a guest beer agreement in England.
Recognising cask ale as intangible cultural heritage would celebrate much more than a drink; it would recognise the people, craftmanship and community traditions behind it. At a time when pubs face many pressures and independent breweries are working hard to remain competitive, that recognition would send an important message: traditions matter and good beer matters. From Carlisle’s unique brewing history to the businesses keeping it alive today, our great border city—my great border city—shows why cask ale deserves to be celebrated and passed on to future generations.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I commend the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) for introducing the discussion incredibly well. This issue cuts directly to the beating heart of our local communities, our economy and our shared cultural identity. It is always a pleasure to see the Minister in her place—Members always look forward to her responses, and she will not be found wanting today.
I want to speak about the economic boosts, tourism potential and craft in relation to what the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter said. The potential merits of recognising the production and serving of cask ale as intangible cultural heritage under the UNESCO framework are vast. Cask ale is not just a commercial liquid in a glass; it is a living, breathing testament to an artisanal craft passed down through generations. It requires a meticulous partnership between the maltster, the farmer, the brewer and, most uniquely, the publican, who has specialised expertise.
Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
For the record, I do quite like an after-work pint. Constituents I represent run the fantastic independent Courier Brewing Co., and they make cask ale because they love it, but rising business costs and big international breweries dominate markets and make it harder for them to carry on. A pint of cask ale is a huge part of our heritage—as British as fish and chips. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that protecting it requires urgent action, such as giving pub tenants the right to request an independent beer on tap, like in Scotland? That will not solve everything, but it is a start.
Jim Shannon
I certainly do, and I am sure the Minister has taken note of the hon. Lady’s comments. In an age of mass-produced, globalised conformity, cask ale remains stubbornly and beautifully local.
I want to bring a Northern Ireland angle to this vital debate, ever mindful of the hospitality industry, our independent producers and the social fabric of our communities. Elevating local crafts to the status of intangible cultural heritage would send an unequivocal message to policymakers at every level that our traditional liquid heritage must be actively nurtured, protected and legally accommodated, rather than stifled. The hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter highlighted the importance of that when setting the scene. He also mentioned British wealth and prosperity, and we are part of this Great Britain. I am proud to be British, probably more so than some people where I live. The safeguarding of intangible heritage can transform a region: look at the spectacular revival of the drinks and spirits sector across Northern Ireland. The liquid arts are part of our DNA in Strangford and across Northern Ireland.
It does not brew cask ale, but the Echlinville distillery was Northern Ireland’s very first farm distillery. It crafts spirits from field to glass, by growing, harvesting and floor malting its own barley on site. That underlines the craft that goes into brewing ale and takes place in distilleries. Hinch distillery is another example; it brews triple-distilled whiskeys that are winning global acclaim. Rademon Estate, through the passion of Fiona Boyd-Armstrong and her husband David, also promotes craft distilling and successfully marries historic estate heritage with a thoroughly modern, sustainable vision, powered by its own on-site hydro and wind energy.
When we look at cask ale and the craft industry across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, those distilleries exemplify the preservation of the craft, the celebration of local raw materials and an unwavering commitment to quality that cannot be replicated by a mass production line. What do those world-class distilleries have to do with the perseveration of cask ale? It is simply this: they prove that liquid heritage is an economic and cultural engine. When we protect and celebrate traditional production methods, we do not just create jobs in the mash house or the bottling hall; we create a tourism boost and boom. We give people a reason to visit Strangford, stay in the guest houses, eat in the restaurants and sit in our historic pubs.
It is worth reminding the House that even a giant like Guinness was once a traditional cask product, naturally conditioned in wooden barrels; however, the commercial shifts of the mid-20th century saw the multinational brewers abandon the cask system entirely in favour of highly processed, pasteurised kegs to maximise global shelf life. That is precisely why this debate is important and why we must act now. It is important for our independent craft brewers, farm distilleries and local publicans to step up and keep these historic skills alive.
By granting cask ale intangible cultural heritage status, we would protect the fragile living traditions that global corporate models have left behind. By seeking UNESCO intangible status for the production and serving of cask ale, we are not dwelling on the past but securing the future. We are protecting the fields of our farmers, the livelihoods of our independent publicans and the heritage of our people. I urge the Minister to work closely with the devolved Administrations to support our independent producers and back this campaign, ensuring that our unique hospitality and manufacturing heritage continues to thrive for generations to come.
John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this debate on what is undoubtedly a crucial part of our national heritage, especially in the midlands. Cask ale has been part of British life for generations. The skills involved in brewing, conditioning, storing and serving it have been passed down over centuries. Recognising these traditions as intangible cultural heritage would be a fitting acknowledgment of their importance.
It is about more than just the beer itself. Pubs are places central to community life. They are places where friendships are made and people come together, and are therefore significant in the fight to reduce loneliness in today’s world. In many rural communities, the village pub is one of the last remaining places where people of all ages and backgrounds can meet. Nowhere is that more apparent than in our local authority area of Derbyshire Dales, where we have around 132 pubs, equivalent to 18.5 pubs per 10,000 residents. Excluding some unusually small local authority areas, that gives us the highest number per capita in the country. Those pubs are enormously important to our visitor economy, supporting jobs not just behind the bar, but in brewing, farming, food production, distribution and hospitality. They encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more money in our local businesses.
One excellent example is Thornbridge Brewery in Bakewell. Thornbridge produces some outstanding cask ales, which are enjoyed locally, across the country and internationally. Its riverside brewery and taproom employs more than 100 people, and the taproom is also an important events and live music space. As a former musician myself, I particularly welcome that. Pubs and breweries provide opportunities for emerging artists to perform, develop their skills and find an audience. Their contribution to our cultural life goes well beyond what is in the glass.
I welcome the vital steps taken by the Government to support pubs and breweries, including reduced duty on qualifying draft beer and improving small producer relief, but there is more to do. At the autumn Budget in 2024, the Government announced that they would consult on improving access to pubs for smaller breweries, including through greater provision for guest beers. I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on the conclusions of that work, when it might be published and what measures are being considered to improve market access.
As has been said, there is a useful example in Scotland, where the Scottish pubs code provides pub tenants with a route to request a guest beer agreement, allowing them to sell at least one beer of their choosing outside the usual supply arrangements. I encourage the Government to consider introducing a similar provision in England. It could give independent breweries greater access to the market, offer publicans more choice and allow customers to enjoy a wider range of locally produced ales.
Recognising cask ale as intangible cultural heritage would be a positive step, but recognition should be accompanied by practical measures to safeguard the breweries, pubs and skilled workers who keep that heritage alive. Our pubs are not simply businesses; they are part of the fabric of our communities, our economy and our national identity. They are worth celebrating and protecting.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friends and constituency neighbours, the Members for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), for securing this important debate.
Full disclosure: back in the early noughties, in my early twenties, I went to work for a company selling wine and spirits. I did a Wine and Spirit Education Trust advanced qualification, but not long after, we merged with the Beer Cellar at Chesterfield, and I had the great pleasure of learning all about cask ales. My patch covered Nottingham city, Derby city, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and I would frequently work with incredible landlords running fantastic pubs on pulling together their beer festivals. It was always a highlight of the year. Whether it was the beer festivals or going to pitch guest ales each month, it was always a joy to see what new beer mat might be on the tables that month. So this plays deep to my core, and I am really grateful for this debate being secured, because it means a heck of a lot to the people of South Derbyshire as well.
When I knew the debate was going to happen, I put a shout out to Facebook—because that is where the real communication happens in South Derbyshire—asking people their favourite ale and the best place to buy and drink it. They were not backwards in coming forwards. I will refer to some of the recommendations they made in a moment, but I want to give a particular shout out to Tollgate brewery, the current owners of which have celebrated having it for 10 years. They have The Milking Parlour, a lovely venue that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) and I visited together in the summer. They have two ales that are well beloved in South Derbyshire: Ashby pale ale and Hackney blonde, which my hon. Friend and I are hoping to get into Strangers Bar.
Having put that Facebook post out, I was invited to the Melbourne rugby club’s beer festival over the weekend, by a brilliant local parish councillor, Andy Dawson, who is co-chair of the club. There, I got to meet the master brewer of Leatherbritches, a very small brewery based at the Tap House in Smisby, whose formal name is Edward Allingham but who is known colloquially as “Mad Ed”. He was telling me all about the history of Leatherbritches and where the name comes from. I would encourage everybody to google “ale connors” to learn a trick or two about how we used to tax ales back in the day.
Talking about Melbourne, it would be remiss of me not to give a huge shout out to The Spirit Vaults, which came up time and again, as a pub that brews some of its own beer on premise. The Reverend bitter came out loud and proud as a big favourite. Another small brewer that came out loud and proud was the 3Ps brewery at Woodville—3Ps standing for pits, pots and pipes, which speaks to our heritage in South Derbyshire.
While national brands were mentioned and places to drink them, like Pedigree at The Freehold Tavern in Newhall, and having a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord—one of my favourites, actually—at The Robin Hood in Overseal, or a pint of Theakston at The Wheel Inn in Ticknall, there was one ale in particular that came out time and time again as a favourite. I do not know whether it is because of our close proximity to Burton that it is so very special to the people of South Derbyshire, but that is Bass. On the best places to get a great pint of Bass, people were not quiet in coming forward. Whether it is The Miners Arms in Church Gresley, the Swadlincote Constitutional Club, the Thorn Tree or The Crown Inn in Newhall, the Chequers Inn in Ticknall, The Bull’s Head in Rosliston, The Malt in Aston, The Harrington Arms in Thulston, The Coopers Arms in Weston, the Green Man in Willington, The Admiral Rodney in Hartshorne, The Brookfield in Barrow, The Hawk & Buckle or The Spread Eagle in Etwall, or The Colvile Arms in Lullington, Bass came out overwhelmingly as the people’s choice in South Derbyshire.
It was also very obvious to me that mainly men like to drink cask ale; they must work some magic because the average bladder can contain 400 ml, but the average pint of course is 568 ml, so I am not quite sure where they hide it. That is the one thing that prevents me drinking pint after pint of cask ale, I have to say.
The important thing about cask ales and the pubs that serve them is the sense of community they help bring. The excitement of guest ales is a joy but the consistency of a good pint of Bass is one thing that seems to bring real joy to the people of South Derbyshire.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Sir Desmond, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) on getting this debate. It is brilliant that we are sitting here this morning and recognising the production and serving of cask ale as intangible cultural heritage.
Intangible cultural heritage is about the traditions and skills that are passed down through the generations that have shaped our communities. The UK’s cultural heritage is a national treasure. Our creative and tourism industries contribute billions of pounds to the economy. The latest research from Historic England is very clear: the heritage sector contributed £15 billion to the economy in 2022. Pubs are at the heart of our communities. They provide much, much more than somewhere to have a pint—and in my case, a good old-fashioned Somerset ploughman’s with a decent chunk of Cheddar cheese. I am not a drinker, but I do appreciate hugely the people who work in the industry in my part of Somerset.
It would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to mention some of the cask ale producers in my part of Somerset. They include Butcombe brewery, which is located a little outside my constituency, but has three pubs within it. There is Badgworth Brewhouse and the Cross brewery, which is based at the White Hart Inn in Cross near Axbridge, which I had the pleasure of opening a short number of months ago. Cheddar Ales is probably known across the nation because it is stocked so frequently in many of our supermarkets, as well as our best pubs, and we have the Bason Bridge Brewing Company and the Beer Shed. Several of those locations are places where I have run my surgeries in the past, and I thank the publicans for the support that they have offered. Pubs bring people together and help tackle isolation, which is particularly key in a very rural area like mine. They carry a lot of history and help our culture.
Brewers and pubs are struggling. When a pub closes, community cohesion is weakened significantly, so we need to make sure we support the tradition. I ask the Government to make sure that they listen to people and communities, uphold the traditions and ensure they are supported so that they can continue and be shared for generations to come.
At a time when cask ale faces challenges, the Government should consider how its cultural significance and the skills associated with its production can be supported and recognised. The craft sector alone contributes thousands of jobs every year and over £400 million annually. Cask ale represents one of Britain’s most distinctive brewing traditions. Unlike filtered or pasteurised beers, it is a living product that continues to mature and develop flavour after it has left the brewery. The beer undergoes secondary fermentation in the vessel from which it is served, and each brewery’s unique yeast, creating natural carbonisation and complexity, cannot be replicated through industrial processes. It is unique. It involves a high level of skill both in brewing and in the cellar.
I am aware that the Government were asked to recognise the production and serving of cask ale as an intangible cultural heritage under e-petition 716686, which closed on 1 October 2025 and had a marvellous 41,026 signatures. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said it would welcome a submission from the cask ale community to the UK inventory. Cask ale would be included if the submission met the criteria.
The United Kingdom ratified the 2003 UNESCO convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage on 7 March 2024. We became the 183rd state to join UNESCO’s convention, which came into force on 7 June 2024. UNESCO’s convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage recognises traditional craftsmanship, oral traditions and expressions, social practices, festive events, knowledge and practices related to nature and the universe. To this end, the UK Government launched their public consultation in January 2024 on the creation of a new register, on to which communities across the country could nominate their most cherished local traditions. In 2016, UNESCO inscribed beer culture in Belgium on the representative list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. We Lib Dems would like some of that, please, Minister.
As passionate supporters of craft beer and brewers and the publicans who pull the pints, I would be delighted if the Minister could recognise the passion, love, commitment and contribution to the community of good brewing and good beer—enjoyed so often, as I said, with a ploughman’s—and back the campaign.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) on picking up the mantle and securing this debate. It gives us an important opportunity to debate the merits of recognising the importance of the production and serving of cask ale, as an example of our living cultural heritage. This debate has been all one way so far and I will not be changing that.
Cask ale is more than a drink; it reflects the combination of craftmanship, knowledge, tradition and community. Cask is produced by hundreds of small breweries, often using British hops and malt. My own county of Norfolk has a fine real ale brewing tradition, with our first-class malted barley. I should mention Duration Brewing in West Acre and its Grasshopper beer, which I was enjoying last weekend. As we have just celebrated Trafalgar Day, I also mention Woodforde’s Nelson’s Revenge.
As CAMRA, which does so much to champion it, says, cask ale is synonymous with our great British pub. Its significance lies not only in what is brewed, but in the craftmanship involved, in how it is made and served, and in how it brings people together. Because the final conditioning happens at the pub, both the brewer and the publican must have specialist knowledge. Much of that knowledge is practical and acquired through experience, and skills are often passed through generations. It is precisely that kind of living knowledge that intangible cultural heritage seeks to recognise and protect. Our brewing traditions reflect our local areas and local beer styles. By taking this step of recognition, we could safeguard a living tradition that has helped shape the cultural and social life of Britain for generations.
The opportunity to recognise cask ale under the UNESCO convention follows its ratification by the last Conservation Government in 2024. I was talking to my noble Friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who personally secured the ratification to support awareness of heritage and potentially increase demand across our country. For cask ale, such awareness could help support inward tourism—we have heard about the importance that people attach to the experience of a pint in a pub across the country.
This debate comes at a time when the sector is facing challenges, as we have heard. SIBA has reported a 20% reduction in cask consumption year on year—part of a longer-term decline. Despite that, it is worth noting that smaller independent brewers are finding success in the sector—compared to some of the larger breweries that are withdrawing from the market. We heard a passionate speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) railing against Carlsberg’s recent decision. Breweries benefitting from small brewer relief now account for 58% of the cask market—up from 40% a decade ago. Small brewer success is centred on local pubs, community spaces and taprooms offering experiences that people want to go and enjoy.
It is also important to recognise the role that beer festivals play in supporting cask ale, by introducing new people to the delights and the taste of cask ale. The Norwich beer festival is this week, and I heartily recommend it to everyone. I am planning to be there because I will be part of the judging panel for the champion bottled beer of Britain. It is hard work, but someone has to do it.
Tomorrow, we have the Budget. UK beer duty is the second highest in Europe—nearly 12 times more than most of our European counterparts. The Prime Minister has talked about giving everyone breathing space, as well as pork scratchings. The practical way to do that would be to increase draught relief, as a number of hon. Members have referred to, which was introduced by the last Government. Along with many members of the all-party parliamentary beer group, I have signed a letter to the Chancellor calling on him to freeze beer duty and to increase draught relief to 30%, which would take 10p off a pint. We also need to see action on business rates, employment costs and energy prices.
Cask ale culture has been submitted as an expression of interest, strongly backed by the 40,000 people who signed the petition and by hon. Members across the House. The Government have said that the panel is reviewing that submission. Can the Minister tell us when she expects a final decision to be taken? Will she also confirm how the Government intend to meet the requirements under articles 13 to 15, regarding measures to safeguard living heritage? Such recognition for cask ale would show that cultural heritage is not simply about buildings and monuments; it is about traditions, customs and our communities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Stephanie Peacock)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) on securing this debate. He is a strong champion for his constituents, local employers and our brewing traditions. For decades, our heritage policies have focused on physical buildings and monuments, and we are expanding that by recognising living heritage: the crafts, skills and community traditions passed down through generations. This debate is a brilliant way to illustrate that. My hon. Friend made a strong case for the heritage, and explained the traditions associated with cask ale brewing with colour and detail. The support for this debate is reflected by the attendance and contributions from hon. and right hon. Members from across the House today. I recognise that my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) originally applied for and championed this debate.
Following the ratification of the 2003 UNESCO convention, we launched the nationwide search to document our living history, and the upcoming launch of the domestic inventories will be an important milestone. We have heard a strong argument for the inclusion of cask ale, led by the Campaign For Real Ale, the Craft Beer Channel and grassroots supporters and amplified today by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter and by hon. and right hon. Members from across the House. Cask Ale Culture has been formally submitted and is currently being assessed by an independent panel.
Alongside living traditions, DCMS continues to protect physical pub heritage. More than 12,000 listed buildings in England are current or former pubs. Through our arts everywhere fund and our £200 million investment in heritage to 2030, we are helping communities to restore and safeguard historical venues. We have heard from right hon. and hon. Members—I will not attempt to list them all—speaking about their local brewers, including Allanwater Brewhouse in Stirling and the Dancing Duck in Derby, and the sheer number of pubs—I believe it was 132—that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) quoted.
To answer one of the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter, next year, DCMS will launch a public consultation on safeguarding living heritage to identify the practical steps needed to keep these traditions alive. I encourage the brewing industry and the pub sector to take part. Cask ale protects skilled jobs, strengthens communities and preserves practical crafts. It is a vital living tradition.
My hon. Friend rightly mentioned the proposed closure of Marston’s brewery in Burton upon Trent, which I know he raised directly with the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions. Carlsberg Britvic’s proposal is a blow to the workforce, the local community and the identity of Burton upon Trent and the surrounding area. Brewing is part of the fabric the area, and with more than 300 potential job losses and workers facing uncertainty, the Government stand ready to support them through Jobcentre Plus and the rapid response service. We will ensure that tailored support is available to help people to find new opportunities and to protect their livelihoods. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will remain in close contact with Carlsberg Britvic throughout the consultation process.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I welcome the work that the Government are doing, but has the Secretary of State dragged in the chief executive of Carlsberg? This seems to be a pattern of behaviour, happening not just in Burton, but in Wolverhampton as well. It seems intent on closing down all its cask ale breweries.
Stephanie Peacock
I was about to answer the right hon. Member’s question. Of course, that would be for the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and I will speak to Ministers directly following this debate. While this debate is not on that particular issue, I absolutely recognise that it is integral to the right hon. Member’s area and the surrounding area. I will speak to DEFRA Ministers directly.
The right hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) rightly highlighted the closure of Banks’s brewery. Of course, that announcement comes alongside Molson Coors proposing the closure of Sharp’s brewery in Rock. Both companies have pointed to the decline in cask ale demand. I totally hear the points that the right hon. Member made. UK cask ale volumes have halved in less than 10 years. I think we heard a statistic from my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter about cask ale sales accounting for 5% of the market today compared with 50% in the 1990s. We are seeing a decline, but there are some positive signs. Industry data reveals a 50% increase in young adults aged 18 to 25 regularly drinking cask ales in pubs. We want that renewed interest to grow, and we heard a number of examples of how we might do that, including the Hemel Old Town Beer festival mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor), or the local festival that the shadow Minister mentioned—I wish him luck in judging the competition.
Pubs and hospitality venues are essential social infrastructure. They combat loneliness, bring generations together and provide places to bring people together in our communities.
Phil Brickell
On the occasion of the then Mayor of Greater Manchester, now the Prime Minister, visiting my constituency, I was proud to host him in Blackedge’s Brewery Tap on Market Street in Westhoughton. Recognising that he understands the value of cask ale and local independent businesses and breweries, would the Minister perhaps persuade his good offices to see what they can do to support the cask ale business and breweries to continue this fine tradition?
Stephanie Peacock
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that important point. As he illustrates, and from the visit that the Prime Minister made when he was the Mayor of Manchester, I am sure that he will be very supportive. I do not want to speak for him, but I will reflect it to his Parliamentary Private Secretary.
I see the importance of pubs in my area and my constituency of Barnsley South. I take this opportunity to thank and pay tribute to Dan at the Cross Keys pub in Darfield, who has made the pub a brilliant community hub. As he moves on, I wish him and the team the very best. It is just one of the brilliant pubs that Barnsley has to offer.
I attended the British Beer and Pub Association dinner and awards evening earlier this month and had the privilege of meeting John Longden, the chief executive officer of Pub is The Hub. I join Members from across the House in paying tribute to him and the work that he has done. As many Members will know, Pub is The Hub is a not-for-profit that helps rural and remote pubs to diversify their businesses and to provide essential local community services. The evening saw brewers, pub operators, suppliers and patrons celebrate the industry, with awards presented to extraordinary community champions.
To support pubs and venues directly, the Government have launched a £10 million hospitality grant. Over £3 million of that funding has been awarded to Pub is The Hub to support its work. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced a £210 million funding package for our high streets, including £125 million for derelict buildings and £65 million for community ownership. The Government have previously supported pubs through alcohol duty reforms, including introducing and expanding draught relief for products below 8.5% alcohol by volume and cutting duty on qualifying draught drinks in February 2025.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for a very comprehensive and helpful response to our questions. What is important is not just the craft, but the tourism potential. Do the Government recognise that there is tourism potential for the economy to grow and create jobs and prosperity?
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As the Tourism Minister, I absolutely echo and agree with the point that he is making. I was about to say that pubs were included in the recent announcement on additional business rate support, which is 15% in 2026-27 and will be 20% from April. That will save the average pub £1,100 a year. Members would not expect me to anticipate the Budget tomorrow, and we look forward to hearing the Chancellor in the Chamber tomorrow afternoon.
The sector relies on skilled people. We see industry taking the lead with the launch of the British Beer and Pub Association Academy, opening its doors to degree apprentices to build the next generation of pub leaders and brewing managers. The Government want to back them, and this Government are transforming the apprenticeship levy into a new growth and skills levy in England. We are fully funding apprenticeships for eligible young people under 25 and offering a £2,000 hiring payment to non-levy-paying small businesses that recruit young apprentices. Backed by £1 billion, that investment will support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships by March 2029, helping to train the next generation of brewers, coopers and cellar staff.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) for highlighting the rich brewing history of Carlisle, from the historic state management scheme to its independent brewers. She and a number of other Members asked whether the Government have considered extending a guest beer arrangement model to England, akin to the guest beer provision in the Scottish pub code. Ministers are giving it their consideration and DEFRA colleagues regularly discuss market access and competition with industry representatives. We will continue to listen to brewers and publicans on how best to sustain consumer choice, but given the interest in those policy areas, I will make sure I speak to the relevant Ministers following this debate.
I end by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter and all Members from across the House for bringing this debate to the House. I look forward to working with colleagues across the House to safeguard the brewing future.
Jacob Collier
I thank the Minister for her response. I also thank hon. and right hon. Members for their support. Not many issues get cross-party support in this House, and we have definitely had that today. I thank everybody for their contributions, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), who wins the award for the most pubs mentioned in this debate. It is no surprise to me that Bass is the most popular drink in her constituency. It is my drink of choice at The Devonshire Arms in Burton.
As we have heard today, cask ale is at risk because of changing attitudes and market conditions, but also because of some of the barriers that have been put in place. I welcome the Government looking into this and we all welcome what the Chancellor has to say tomorrow to hopefully support this sector, cask ale and giving it the UNESCO recognition that it deserves.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the potential merits of recognising the production and serving of cask ale as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
SEND Provision: Rural Communities
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members not to rise to catch my eye unless they have the permission of both Mr Jermy and the Minister to speak.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered SEND provision in rural communities.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Desmond, and I am delighted to have secured this debate. Discussing this subject in detail will be hard in a 30-minute debate, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for her positive engagement with it. Given the time constraints, I will be able to accept only a few brief interventions, largely from those hon. Members who indicated in advance that they will intervene.
I will begin by thanking the parents, carers and families of children with special educational needs and disabilities who have contacted my office and shared their experience of the realities of SEND provision in rural communities. Many of the conversations I have had with those constituents in South West Norfolk have been incredibly difficult. The same themes arise time and again: frustration, exhaustion and a profound fear for their child’s future.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. Travelling long distances to attend schools creates anxiety, distress and sensory overload, potentially affecting children’s ability to engage in learning when in school. Does he agree that we must invest in developing SEND provision in mainstream schools to ensure that children can access appropriate support closer to home, with less travelling, less anxiety and fewer problems?
Terry Jermy
I entirely agree, and I am sure the Minister will speak about that.
Prior to serving as a Member of Parliament, I spent many years as a county councillor in Norfolk, so I was aware of the SEND system and its difficulties from my councillor casework, but nothing could have prepared me for the avalanche of SEND-related cries for help that have arrived from right across my constituency. Since I was elected in 2024, more than 250 families have contacted my office to express serious concerns about the way their children’s needs are being assessed and met by schools and local authorities.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
Access to assistive technology is another huge issue. Only 18% of young people surveyed by the British Dyslexia Association had access to assistive technology. Does the hon. Member agree that, just like diagnosis support, assistive technology should be available not just for those lucky enough to be in well-off urban areas or for those who can afford to pay private providers huge sums?
Terry Jermy
The hon. Member is right that investment in technology can make a significant difference to children and young people. Many of the conversations I have had with children and their families describe lengthy consultation processes to find a suitable school, daily battles to secure even the most basic provision, and periods of extreme distress as they struggle to navigate a system that often feels stacked against them.
I was keen to secure a debate on this motion because it is clear that children and young people with SEND in rural areas face a distinct set of structural challenges that affect access, equity and outcomes. Those challenges arise not necessarily from higher levels of need but from the complexity and cost of delivering education, health and care services across geographically dispersed communities.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
The hon. Member is making a most informed speech. In North Norfolk I have heard from several families whose children cannot get, or have struggled to get, access to specialist settings. Children must travel further from home in rural areas, which is tougher for them and increases the transport bill. Does the hon. Member agree we need to do much more to ensure that children and families in rural communities can access specialist support when they need it?
Terry Jermy
I thank the hon. Member, my county colleague from Norfolk, for raising that point, and I entirely agree.
I want to explain and give information to the Minister about the experiences I have documented in my rural constituency. I have produced a SEND report, “Rural Realities”, and I have shared a draft with her. Through in-person group sessions, questionnaires and our detailed casework, we have gathered data about what is happening on the ground. At the first SEND roundtable in the market town of Downham Market, it was clear that many of the parents and carers from the local villages did not know one another. They arrived individually but soon discovered that their experiences were remarkably similar. They spoke of not receiving much support in their child’s early years. Health visitors came less frequently, and in many cases an in-person visit did not happen at all. Warning signs and opportunities for support were ignored at primary school, and when their child entered high school, often some distance away in a rural setting, the impact of having little to no support was further compounded. From our own assessments, it is clear that rural areas typically have a limited range of local SEND provision.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
I thank my fellow co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on farming for giving way. The bottom line is that SEND provision in rural areas is only as good as a child’s ability to reach it. Would the hon. Member agree?
Terry Jermy
Absolutely. A key theme of my contribution is the impact of distance and geography, so I entirely agree with. Lower population density restricts the viability of specialist settings and enhanced mainstream provision, resulting in reduced parental choice and greater reliance on out-of-area placements.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
That is a particular problem in Cornwall, because we are on a peninsula. Numerous children had no specialist place at all by September, because the options simply were not there. Going out of county is just too far for many people.
Terry Jermy
Absolutely. I can relate to many of those points, as I know of children and young people travelling significant distances to access suitable provision, affecting their wellbeing, attendance and readiness to learn. It is not uncommon for children my team and I have worked with to travel for an hour and a half in each direction every single day. At a system level, home-to-school transport costs are substantially higher, placing sustained pressure on higher needs budgets and limiting the resources available for early intervention and in-school support.
Workforce capacity presents a further challenge. Rural areas experience ongoing difficulties recruiting and retaining specialist staff, including special educational needs co-ordinators, educational psychologists and therapists. That contributes to delays in assessment, inconsistent access to specialist advice and slower delivery of support. When I visit schools across South West Norfolk, the variety in approach is stark. The Government are right to put additional SEND training and capital funding at the forefront of their decision making. Schools can do more to accommodate pupils with additional needs. I have seen that opportunity myself. More must be done to ensure that schools and local authorities embrace that responsibility and are held to account.
Specialist support, however, will always be needed. Areas like mine, with historical specialist gaps, should not be overlooked. The trends are clear: a lack of early intervention, rising travel costs and an increase in the number of children requiring specialist support. For too many families, the SEND system no longer provides what it should, instead becoming a source of additional stress and anxiety.
When I became an MP, I was determined to help families navigate that system, which is why I became one of only two MPs in the country to employ a dedicated SEND specialist caseworker. I am incredibly proud of the work my casework team have done to help families secure education, health and care plans, progress tribunal cases and, most importantly, obtain the support that children need and deserve. Those experiences have shown me that, despite the challenges facing SEND provision, positive change is possible, but only when local need is recognised and acted on.
Earlier this year, I campaigned strongly for a new specialist SEND school in Downham Market, and I was delighted when the Government approved the project and committed £20 million towards the new school at Ryston End. Once completed, it will transform opportunities for children and young people across a large part of Norfolk, bringing specialist provision closer to home.
Although I welcome that success, one school alone will not resolve the wider challenges facing SEND provision in rural communities. There are 32,000 children and young people identified as having SEND in Norfolk, including more than 13,000 with an education, health and care plan. Since 2016, the number of EHCPs has risen by 217%. That is placing increased pressure on schools, families and local authorities alike.
For rural communities, those pressures are often intensified by distance. Evidence shows that pupils attending special schools in rural areas travel an average of 10 miles each way, compared with approximately 4 miles in urban areas. In the most rural parts of England, one in 10 pupils travels more than 23 miles each way to their appropriate school. Families told me repeatedly that they feel like they have less choice, fewer local services and more barriers to accessing support than families in urban areas.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
What I found talking to people in places like Pyecombe and Warninglid is that this issue has a wider implication for parents’ capacity to get into work and stay in work. There are certainly parents in my constituency who have had to step back from the workforce. Did the hon. Gentleman also hear that when talking to families in his constituency?
Terry Jermy
Absolutely. The hon. Member makes a really important point about the impact on the wider family. For SEND parents with more than one child, it is incredibly difficult to navigate the logistics of getting to different schools in different locations. We have certainly experienced that in South West Norfolk.
Rurality also creates additional layers of bureaucracy because parents are often required to navigate multiple agencies spread across large geographical areas and to repeatedly explain their child’s needs to different professionals. They have to travel long distances to appointments and spend months, and sometimes years, pursuing assessments, reviews and support.
The pressures are being felt not only by families but by schools. Three quarters of schools that responded to my survey said they did not feel able to provide adequate support for pupils with SEND using their current resources. Many reported receiving insufficient support from the local authority with SEND and EHCP casework. Worst of all, 46% of parents who responded reported that their child had spent significant time out of school because their needs were not being met. Some families describe children being out of education for months, and sometimes years, and the story is always one of years of disruption with no suitable placement available.
Education is not a privilege in this country; it is a right, yet too many children with SEND are being denied that right, not because their potential is lacking but because the system around them is struggling to provide the support they need. For children in rural communities, the challenges are often even greater. That is why I hope the Government will fully consider the added impact of rurality, which I have highlighted through my South West Norfolk SEND report. They must consider the added pressures as part of their wider reforms to the SEND system, so that families across constituencies like mine and those of other hon. Members who have spoken can finally feel heard, supported and confident that their children will receive the education they deserve.
The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) for his speech and for all his work on this issue. I have his report with me; it is a deep and thoughtful reflection on the challenges in his area and also reflects some of the challenges that, as we heard from other Members, are common to rural communities.
I understand that my hon. Friend spoke to more than 300 parents. The themes that came through—the need to battle for support, children being out of education, and the huge stress this issue puts on families—are sadly ones I have heard from many parts of the country. It is incredibly important that he has brought those voices to us, and I want to assure him that the voices of the parents and teachers in his constituency are being taken seriously as we work through the consultation on the SEND reform plans.
My hon. Friend also took the time to sit down with me to discuss some of these issues in detail, which I really appreciate. He raised critical issues and common pressures, but some of those common pressures are exacerbated in rural communities by difficulties with recruitment, the long distances needing to be travelled and the availability of provision.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
The Minister recognises the difficulties in rural areas. I must stress that in Cornwall we have seen a 300% increase in the cost of home-to-school transport in the last seven years. In addition, two thirds of Cornish families waiting for an EHCP have to wait for more than 20 weeks. Does she agree that SEND provision is particularly difficult and costly in remote peninsula communities such as Cornwall, and that budgets and support need to recognise those geographical factors?
Georgia Gould
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for raising these issues. I absolutely recognise the additional pressures that exist in rural and more remote communities. I will go on to discuss some of the things that we are doing to address those pressures, and I will come on to home-to-school transport when I go through that list.
One of the first things that I want to highlight is the new Experts at Hand service, through which £1.8 billion is going in nationally, not only to deliver more occupational therapists, educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, but to provide support from special schools and alternative provision into mainstream schools. We have just started rolling that service out and we are working with local authorities around the country. Every local authority has been asked to deliver a SEND reform plan and we are getting quarterly feedback on the data on how that is going, including the Experts at Hand service, so we will have a much clearer view of the gaps that sit around the country. As we build out the service, there will be the ability to work with those areas that are struggling to recruit and that see real gaps, in order to try and improve their provision in those areas. We will also be working with MPs to share some of the data that is coming through that national picture, which we have not previously had access to.
The second thing that I wanted to flag is access to teacher training. We are investing £200 million into teacher training. The first set of resources has gone out into the system and those resources can be used by schools on their inset days. A host of different resources are coming out across the year, making it easier for schools in more remote locations to implement training. We will also develop a set of courses, starting from next year, which will be a mix of online teaching and live teaching for teaching assistants, school leaders and teachers. Where it is not possible for teachers to attend courses in person, it will be possible for them to take those courses online, if that is what they want. I also want to flag the investment that is going directly into schools through the inclusive mainstream fund, alongside the existing funding in the system.
As we move forward on SEND reform and respond to the consultation, one of the big parts of that process is asking schools to come together in clusters. Some of the extra funding that will go into schools will go through clusters; some of it will go directly to schools and some of it will go through clusters. One of the things that we are really considering is how we can ensure that those clusters work in rural communities. We want to do a test and learn process in a mix of different contexts. I am really keen to talk to Norfolk MPs about this, to see whether it is something we can work on.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
The Isle of Axholme in my constituency is a big rural area. Many children have to travel long distances for EHCP assessments, but also to receive specialist support for special educational needs. At the Axholme school in Crowle, we have historically had a higher number of children with SEND than the national average. Of course, that is a concern, because I want to ensure that there is no postcode lottery when the SEND reforms are being made. Will the Minister absolutely and categorically reassure me that if someone lives in a rural community, they will get support equitable to that given anywhere else in the country?
Georgia Gould
As we move into this new system, we will be looking at all the funding going into it, whether that is through the local funding formula or the high needs funding.
The thinking behind the cluster approach is that in the new system we want every school to be inclusive, and to take and support students with a range of needs but who do not need to be in specialist provision. Within that, some schools might have higher need and the cluster approach is to ensure that we can move money to where the need is highest. However, we must ensure that that works in different contexts, which is why we are committed to testing and learning within rural contexts.
I also want to flag capital investment. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk mentioned the new special school, and said that that alone is not enough, which I agree with. We are investing £3.7 billion into capital investment to deliver a range of changes. Some are to mainstream schools to make them more accessible, but the funding can be used for new special schools. We are clear that it should drive an expansion of inclusion bases, which are really important because they bring SEND provision to more remote communities and closer to families. I have seen many examples where children were out of school and really struggling to get an education, and having that inclusion base on their doorstep has been completely transformative in opening up that access and reducing the need to travel. The high-needs capital funding that is going into Norfolk is £13 million in 2025-26 and £15.8 million in 2026-27, so there is significant investment going in to help that capital challenge and deliver inclusion bases.
Adam Dance
The Government are currently piloting assistive technology lending libraries. Will the Minister update us on that trial and whether it can expanded to more rural areas such as Somerset that do not have mayors so that kids do not have to miss out and schools are not ripped off on assistive technology by private companies?
Georgia Gould
We absolutely recognise the importance of assistive technology in the system. The hon. Member has raised and championed that, and I will follow up and give him a proper update on how it is going and our plans.
My next point is about the importance of partnership. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk talked about how parents have to navigate myriad different services and are bouncing between them. One key thing we want to deliver in the immediate term is asking local areas to strengthen their partnership arrangements across health, education and local authorities but critically also with parents and young people. In the long term we aim to have much stronger partnership arrangements in place so that whichever stage a child is at, whether they need early intervention or more specialist support, that comes in a timely manner and without a fight.
Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)
In my rural community of South East Cornwall, I had the honour of visiting the Learning Paddocks, which is a specialist provision that worked very hard to get set up but faced many barriers to being a specialist provider of care. In areas such as mine with huge transport problems and when mainstream education is not the right choice, how are the Government going to work with providers to support specialist provision such as the Learning Paddocks?
Georgia Gould
We have an expert panel that is developing a set of specialist provision packages, which will set out what we expect from settings to meet a whole range of needs that will be consulted on. The expectation is that local authorities will need to commission against all of those specialist provision packages so the full range of need should be met within a local area. That will make it much easier for providers and local authorities to understand what is expected of them and to provide those packages. Critically, when a child requires that support, they will not have to wait for it because it is commissioned and available in that area. At the moment, there is a huge postcode lottery with some support available in some areas while in others it is completely absent—that is why we see some of the long distances that we have heard about.
Steff Aquarone
To go back to the Minister’s point about partnership working, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) talked about health visitors, rurality, schools, transport and the impact on work—those are five Departments. In a previous life, she and I met and discussed the need to shake things up in Westminster and rewire Government so that it works for people and not within silos. Does she agree that this is a classic example of how the Government need to change the way they work so that they can serve humans and not processes?
Georgia Gould
I agree. In a previous life I led a council, and I used to sit in frustration, asking, “Does anyone in Government talk to each other?” because we often saw very siloed decisions. People’s lives are not split into different Government Departments: they live in communities, travel, need healthcare, and work, and all those things come together. It is critical that we work together, and SEND is an area where there was a promise of greater integration in the 2014 reforms, but the experience, as we have heard, is that that promise has not been delivered. Working closely across Government, particularly with colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, we are determined to drive integration, so that families get a seamless experience. That is a really important point.
I also want to respond to the points made about distance travelled. There are two important things to say. First, one way to reduce that is to ensure the right provision is available in local areas. Whether that is the greater roll-out of inclusion bases, or the development of specialist provision packages, which make clear what should be available locally, we expect to see a much greater range of local provision. We also recognise that the nature of rural communities means that travel distances are greater. That is why, in the changes to home-to-school transport, there is now a separate formula that includes distance travelled, and that is a key part of the system.
I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate; I know how important these issues are. Our aim is to ensure everyone gets early intervention, without a postcode lottery. People will get the support they need, wherever they live. That requires a focus on rural communities to understand the specific challenges.
We are committed to testing and learning, looking at those challenges, understanding the data and disparities, and working alongside local authorities to ensure that the national vision is felt by families and communities everywhere. I encourage hon. Members to stay involved in that conversation, to keep working with us by sharing feedback on the challenges in their areas, as Experts at Hand, the inclusion mainstream fund and teacher training roll out, so that we can respond.
Alison Bennett
Has the Minister considered the role of parent-carers and the assessment of their needs? Access to mental health services is worse in rural areas. Siobhan O’Dwyer said that 41% of parent-carers have had suicidal thoughts, which will be more acute in a rural area. Is that a consideration for the Government’s work?
Georgia Gould
Absolutely. That is why we have said that every Best Start hub needs a lead SEND practitioner. We are investing £200 million in the roll-out of SEND support through Best Start hubs, working closely with parent-carer forums on support for parents.
We have talked about integration. Another big programme we are rolling out is the Family First Partnership, to rebuild early help and support for parents. We want to ensure those partnerships are working with Experts at Hand and schools, so that parents and families get the support they need at the same time as young people. That is an important part of bringing it all together, looking at all the investments to ensure they work on the ground. I thank everyone for the debate and you, Sir Desmond, for your chairship.
Question put and agreed to.
Council Housing
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the delivery of council housing.
It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I must declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on council and social housing, for which Shelter expertly provides the secretariat. The APPG is currently undertaking an inquiry into barriers to council house building and the solutions required. Although I do not want to overly pre-empt our findings today, I do want to take the opportunity to invite the Minister to attend the launch of the report from that inquiry, and I invite hon. Members across the Chamber today to attend the evidence sessions we are currently holding, including that taking place shortly after this debate.
Given the imminent Budget, I will not ask the Minister for lots of spending commitments today. Instead, I would be grateful if he could answer just one specific question: will he put a number on what is meant by
“the biggest council house building programme”
since the end of the post-war period? I think we would all be interested to know what precise target the Government are setting.
I am keen to be optimistic and positive in my contribution today, so I will get the polemical bits out of the way first. There is, I am afraid, a nasty strain of ideology infecting political circles these days that seems to think of our fellow citizens as a lumpen mass of incorrigible misanthropes motivated only by mercenary selfishness and having no care for the good of their wider community when it comes to housing and development. That is certainly not my experience. It says more about the miserabilism of the so-called YIMBY—yes, in my backyard—movement than it does about those they accuse. There is no public support barrier to building high-quality homes in the towns and villages in my constituency. Indeed, people are crying out for it. When the public tell us they do not want this particular rubbish, the problem is the rubbish, not the public.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this vital debate; he is right. People in Leeds and across the country know there is a council house crisis and they support, I believe, Shelter’s campaign for the Government to make national council house building a mission, because building council houses not only provides homes; it is a bit like rent controls. An intervention in the private market can bring rents down because the private sector cannot solve the council house crisis and the housing crisis. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Chris Hinchliff
I completely agree. We have seen for many years that the market cannot solve this problem. In fact, it speaks to a rotten lack of ambition that the political response to children living in cramped, damp and overcrowded conditions has so often been to demand that we lower our expectations for the future, promising that the only way to get families out of temporary accommodation is to reduce insulation standards, concrete over the countryside and ignore risks such as flooding and the lack of infrastructure. Then, it might be more profitable for developers to cast their crumbs down to our communities. What a tragic irony that we are told that the only way to rescue families from low-quality emergency housing is by lowering the standards of the permanent homes we build instead. The problem was never that our standards were too high. It was the surrender to neoliberal capitalism and the lack of political will that accompanied its hollowing out of our state’s capacity to function that stopped the building of decent, affordable homes at scale.
Secondly, it is worth paraphrasing Keynes early on in this debate by reiterating that claiming it does not pay to house the people of this country in affordable, high-quality housing is one of the most dismal notions ever advanced by modern economics. We have the technology and the capacity to house everyone safely, comfortably and in beautiful surroundings. If private capital says it is not profitable enough to do so, the problem is with the economic model, not with the hope for our nation’s future.
Having dispensed with those points, before we get to the question of how, I want to dwell briefly on the possibilities of a future in which the Labour Government achieve their council housing goals. When we debate this subject, we often focus—and rightly so—on the immediate crisis and urgent need that council housing can alleviate, but the power of council housing to transform the future of our society does not end there.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this timely and important debate and for the excellent speech that he is making. Although he briefly touched on the urgent need before moving on to the longer-term situation, does he agree that in places like Bradford, where we currently have 25,000 people on a waiting list—many are families with young children living in poverty and the same squalid, damp conditions that he mentions—there is an immediate, urgent need? Therefore, as well as asking the Minister how many—
Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he can see the level of interest in the debate. We must have short interventions, please. Two or three more words and then we will let the hon. Gentleman respond.
Imran Hussain
Does my hon. Friend agree that the urgent need requires immediate housebuilding?
Chris Hinchliff
I agree; my hon. Friend is absolutely right about the immediate need, which I will come to later.
This is a slightly incongruous point, but I am sure that, like me, every hon. Member in the Chamber visits schools in their constituency often. When I see the potential in pupils such as those at Little Hadham primary school, where I was last, I cannot help but contemplate what future we are building for them. If it is one in which hundreds of thousands of council homes have been built in every community—and I do mean in our most rural villages as well as our greatest cities—for people of every background, including doctors, academics, farm workers, bus drivers, bin men and bar staff, then what our country will be able to offer them will be far greater than the prospects that adulthood currently holds.
Chris Hinchliff
Not at this point; I had better make progress.
Housing is by far and away the most oppressive, anxiety-inducing and life-stunting part of the cost of living crisis in this country. The price of rent or a mortgage leaves millions struggling to make the bills add up at the end of the month, and millions more only just staying afloat, with little left over to experience life’s other possibilities. If we build enough council housing—to end the years wasted on waiting lists, to ensure that every child has somewhere safe to learn and play and make that a normal part of life again, and to provide an anchor on housing costs for our whole society—then our economy, society and culture will be much healthier than they are.
Let us briefly imagine a boy or girl in a primary school classroom. If, when they reach adulthood, they are able to begin an independent life without shelling out upwards of a third or even half of their salary for a roof over their head, imagine what that would mean for our high streets, coffee shops, pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants. In a future with plentiful council housing, when genuinely affordable housing is recognised as a right of our citizens and not a rare collector’s item, no one, no matter how wealthy, will be able to buy up property and charge others extortionate rents for somewhere to live. With that model of economic vampirism finally laid to rest, billions of pounds currently sucked out of our local economies will begin to flow through our independent shops again.
Suppose that that young man or woman has artistic talents and wants to make their contribution to our society. With our current lack of council housing, how many of us really have the opportunity to explore talents and abilities that do not immediately help to enable us to pay rent? With plentiful, genuinely affordable homes, such that covering the cost of life’s essentials is no longer such an uphill battle, who knows how many McCartneys, Joan Armatradings or Michaela Coels we might have? Delivering council housing is about more than just bricks and mortar; it is about unleashing lost creativity across Great Britain and re-establishing our place as the world’s pre-eminent cultural superpower.
Chris Hinchliff
I had better make progress; I am sorry.
Perhaps most importantly of all, if we succeed in delivering council housing in every community, we will take one of the most important steps in fighting the atomisation of our society, which brings so many social ills. If today’s children are able to put down roots wherever they are growing up, should they want to, with no need to move away in search of prospects and a home of their own, then friendships forged at school will no longer need looked back on with regret, as connections that once meant the world but could not survive the splintering imposed by a lack of homes for the young. Similarly, if the next generation is able to grow into adulthood alongside their parents, supporting them through older life will be a natural part of everything we do, not something we struggle to find time for, with the constant sense that we are left snatching for precious moments all too quickly passing by.
If our imaginary hero should fall in love and think about children of their own—and if we deliver council houses now—we can hope for a future in which the choice is simply whether a couple wishes to start a family, not whether they can afford one. Parents will be able to take time out of employment to raise their child and share in all their first memories, rather than living on borrowed time as burdens mount up.
In short, delivering the council homes our country needs to transform our housing market will make possible a society in which all the parts of life that really matter can finally come ahead of the relentless and disproportionate financial costs of housing that we see today.
How, then, do we realise these hopes? First, building a new generation of council housing is being held back by a pile of largely fictitious debt created by central Government. We cannot ask local councils to deliver the homes of tomorrow while burdened by a model that failed yesterday. Armed with even the best intentions, councils remain suffocated by housing revenue account debt; cancelling that HRA debt could deliver more than 280,000 additional social rent homes in the next decade.
To reverse decades of retreat from public house building and restore the public sector as the driving force in our housing market, new funding must come with new powers for local democracy. If we recognise that social housing delivers a public good, its provision cannot be put on a level playing field with speculative land promoters looking to make a quick buck, or be beholden to the supposed right of wealthy landowners to inflate the value of their land to extract more from the public purse. Councils need to be able to assemble all the land we need for developments, large and small, including where it is already optioned, and to acquire land at existing-use prices, so that council house building is viable in every part of the country.
Above all, we must invest in our councils’ institutional capacity to deliver the housing we need. Even with the fairest possible wind, and even if all the economically destabilising military conflicts around the world came to a close, the truth is that, if the Chancellor showered every local authority with all the funding they could want, the expertise and institutional knowledge to use it would no longer be there.
To deliver the council housing that I suspect every MP in this room wants to see, we need to attract the best and brightest in the country to work in our local authorities, whether as an elected member or as an officer. We need to restore the standing of our underfunded, undervalued and overworked councils, so that the whole country can see that a career in local government is the most tangible route to shaping the future of our nation. From town planning to architecture, design, ecology and construction standards, only the very best is good enough for our constituents, so local councils must be where people go to excel.
In our determination to remove the institutional barriers holding back council house building, we cannot undervalue solutions to get families out of temporary accommodation and off waiting lists now. The Prime Minister was right in his recent conference address to set out plans to take control of empty properties. We should back councils to acquire neglected and empty properties at scale. We have seen throughout our modern history that, in times of crisis, our citizens are conscripted for the common good. Where housing lies dormant during an emergency, we must be willing to take the same approach to property.
The truth is that, from the standing start that we have inherited, in which local authorities such as mine have not built a single council house in decades, new house building will take years to ramp up. However, the housing crisis is one that requires urgent resolution. We must therefore make the acquisition of existing properties to rebuild our council housing stock as important a part of the Government’s mission as new builds. With the housing market in the doldrums, we have a much-needed opportunity for councils to purchase and re-let at affordable rates hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, to bring down waiting lists now.
There are, of course, up-front costs, legislative hurdles and, I expect, a mouthful of teething problems, but it is the bitter medicine we must take today to stop the bleeding of public money to those profiting from the broken system. We must never forget that the Government’s £39 billion investment in affordable and social housing is dwarfed by the £70 billion that the Government are set to spend over the next five years on housing support to subsidise the gap between the rents that private landlords charge and what tenants can afford.
The need for the housing is there, and we are already paying for it. The only question before us is whether we turn that spending into a lasting public asset or keep paying over and over again for failure.
Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I remind all Back-Bench colleagues that you should continue to stand up, so that we know you still want to be called. You can see that there is a great deal of interest in this debate. I suggest that you all keep to about two and a half minutes; that way, we will get everybody in.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy, and I say a big thank you to the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate on an extremely pressing issue. The fact that so many hon. Members are present is an indication of that.
In England alone, over 1.3 million households are on the waiting list for social housing and it has been estimated that if the speed of delivering new social homes continues at the current rate, it will take more than a century to clear the waiting list. For every social home delivered this year, about 110 households were still waiting for one. Despite those shocking figures, in 20% of council areas across England not a single social home has been built in the last two years, and in 30% of council areas fewer than 10 social homes have been built. This is a massive issue.
We see the effects of a lack of social housing on private rental properties. In 2025, rents reached the highest level on record, amounting to a staggering 36.1% of average earnings. Rental accommodation is out of the pockets of many and buying a house is just a dream. That perpetuates a devastating cycle, as wages fail to keep pace with rising living costs, including energy bills and food prices, pushing more people into poverty and increasing demand for our already limited social housing.
I will quickly add a Northern Ireland perspective to the debate. In Northern Ireland, social housing is supplied by the Housing Executive, which face issues similar to councils in England. As of June this year, 50,000 households in Northern Ireland with no existing Housing Executive tenancy were on the social housing waiting list. For those who are already in Housing Executive properties, the wait for a transfer can be long and needs can evolve. In August 2026, it was estimated that almost 800 households had spent over a decade on the waiting list for transfer. It would be great to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but unfortunately we do not.
In rural constituencies, such as my constituency of Strangford, allocations of social homes have not kept pace with rising demand. The situation is particularly acute because rural areas have hidden housing need, older homes and increased exposure to fuel poverty. Investment in social housing is urgently needed to end the distress so many people are in, and we must recognise that such investment will indeed deliver long-term benefits. It is needed to end the distress and the uncertainty faced by families who have been left in limbo as they wait for a home.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, Sir Jeremy, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate.
If we track the history of council housing in Amber Valley, we see a story that I fear will sound all too familiar to other Members from across the House. It is a story of decline, neglect and short-sighted political choices, the consequences of which are still being felt today. In 1985, there were more than 5,000 council houses in Amber Valley. By 2003, just one remained. Why was that? During the period between 1985 and 2003, a Conservative-led borough council sold off virtually the entire stock. Make no mistake—it was not because the need for affordable housing had disappeared nor did it represent some great act of financial prudence. To add insult to injury, it is estimated that those houses were sold off to private ownership for only a ninth of their market value. Assets that had been built up over generations, which were paid for by local people and intended to provide secure and affordable homes, were effectively given away.
When Labour took control of the borough council in 2023, it inherited not only a shortage of council homes but the legacy of decades in which the council’s capacity to deliver new homes had been hollowed out. It was not just the housing stock that was gone. As a result, the first task facing the new Labour-led borough council was to rebuild the council’s ability to build homes. It had to restore confidence, capacity and the mechanisms to deliver, before bricks could be laid and properties acquired. Council officers have reskilled themselves admirably, and since 2023, 32 council houses have been acquired, with plans to deliver a further 33 in the pipeline. Those numbers sound modest, but they represent the hard work of rebuilding a housing programme from almost nothing.
More importantly, the council is now in a position to look beyond individual acquisitions towards larger-scale regeneration and house building. After years of stagnation, Amber Valley has adopted a local plan for the first time in two decades. It includes proposals that could deliver up to 180 new council homes on land around Aldreds Lane, and the council is also working closely with the East Midlands Mayor, Claire Ward, to unlock brownfield sites for future development. There is real momentum now. A Labour-led council has begun rebuilding the stock it had lost.
With that in mind, will the Minister outline what support the Government will provide to councils such as Amber Valley that have demonstrated the ambition and the capacity to deliver new council housing, and will he outline how the Government will help authorities to scale up those ambitions so that more families can access the homes that they need?
Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
Britain’s housing crisis did not happen by accident. It is the direct result of political choices that placed profit over people. For decades, Governments have chosen to allow the stock of genuine council housing to decline while expecting the private market to pick up the pieces, and it clearly has not.
Across our region of Manchester and Tameside, 3,180 households are in temporary accommodation, including more than 5,000 children. Kids should be thinking about whether they are having their favourite meal for tea, not how they will crowd into accommodation unfit for purpose or facing the prospect of sleeping rough. To pay for temporary accommodation, councils have spent almost £3 billion in the past year, which is a staggering increase of 88% in just five years. That money is going straight into the pockets of private landlords, often to banks and big corporations that call property investments assets rather than homes.
I see what that means for people in Gorton, Denton, Abbey Hey, Burnage, Longsight and Levenshulme every single day. I see domestic abuse survivors paying eye-watering private rents while sat on waiting lists, despite being assessed as a priority, hard-working young people giving up on the dream of ever owning a home of their own, and elderly people who know that they will simply not be able to afford their rent once they retire.
The Green party is clear: we need a new generation of council housing that matches the scale of the challenge before us. That starts with putting an end to the loss of housing stock. Right to buy has removed hundreds of thousands of homes from the social sector, which are often now being rented out by private landlords. To be clear, I do not blame anyone who has bought their council home. The problem is with the policy that allowed affordable homes to be sold off without replacing them. Protecting existing stock is only part of the answer. Councils have to be given the tools and resources to build their own homes and to purchase privately owned ones. It means making better use of public land and helping councils to acquire the hundreds of thousands of long-term empty homes that should be brought back into public use.
The Government can continue to kick the can down the road by spending billions to manage the ever-worsening consequences of the housing crisis, or they can invest in solving it. My message to the Minister is simple: stop the loss of social housing, allow councils to buy homes back into public ownership, build council homes at scale and bring empty homes back into use, introduce rent controls and give councils the powers they need to lead the way. Every family deserves more than a roof over their head. They deserve a place to belong, and council housing remains one of the most effective ways the Government have of making that a reality.
Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
The good news is that I can be a little more generous and allow you all a whole extra 30 seconds each. With three minutes, I call Josh Newbury.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
I will start by singing the praises of what we have done in my constituency, because Labour’s record at Cannock Chase district council shows what can be achieved when a council is ambitious about providing the homes its residents need.
After more than 30 years without building new council homes, the last Labour administration, which I was proud to be part of as deputy leader, got building again. It started with the most unglamorous of sites: old garage blocks that were becoming increasingly difficult to rent out, many of which had turned into magnets for antisocial behaviour and drug dealing. We turned them into new homes, filling some of the biggest gaps in our housing stock. We also partnered with Lovell Homes to redevelop the former Aelfgar school site in Rugeley, where 58 new homes have been delivered, including 29 council houses. The ribbon may have been cut under Reform, but the groundwork was done under Labour.
That brings me to the Government’s plans to help councils do more, because in Cannock Chase a lack of ambition was never the problem, finding affordable finance was. That is why I welcome the extension of preferential public works loan board rates, which will help make the numbers stack up for councils looking to invest in new homes.
I also welcome the council house building support fund because councils need the right people and expertise to develop schemes, build pipelines of projects and put together strong bids for funding. That is something that my council found that we often missed out on when councils of other similar sizes were getting funding awarded. I hope that my district council will make full use of that opportunity.
I will also touch on empty homes, something that two constituents raised with me just last week. One is concerned about the number of green belt sites having to be released. The other, who is trying to get on to the housing ladder, very much welcomed the upcoming Your First Home scheme announced by the Prime Minister but felt that bringing empty homes back into use should also be part of the answer.
I therefore welcome the Government’s boost to the powers that councils can use to tackle the issue of long-term empty properties. Again, I encourage Cannock Chase district council to make full use of them, including for two semi-detached houses on Poplar Street in Norton Canes that have stood empty for many years. I am also interested to hear from the Minister about whether there is scope to take the number of long-term empty homes into greater account when housing targets are calculated.
Finally, I welcome the Government’s plans to tighten right to buy because we need to ensure that the council houses that we build remain available to people who need them well into the future. As we make it easier for councils to build again, I hope that we can gradually work towards ending right to buy altogether and protect that housing stock for the long term. That is ultimately what the debate is all about: making sure that people have access to a decent, secure and genuinely affordable home, whether that means building on a neglected garage site, regenerating a former school or bringing empty property back into use. Cannock Chase Labour has shown that councils can deliver, and I hope the Government’s measures will give more councils the means and confidence to do so in future.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
Meur ras, Sir Jeremy, and it is an honour to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.
The single greatest barrier to economic regeneration in Cornwall is housing insecurity and affordability. Employers cannot recruit and retain, young people cannot remain in their home communities and families cannot put down roots unless we have access to a secure, affordable home. That is before we mention the key workers required to run civic society.
Social housing accounts for less than 13% of Cornwall’s entire housing stock, compared with 17% nationally. In peak season, we have 24,000 short-term lets across the duchy, while 25,000 Cornish households sit on waiting lists on the housing register. In fairness, Cornwall council has delivered 850 homes in the last six years through its housing revenue account and general fund, but its capacity to go further is deeply constrained.
How do we revitalise social house building in Cornwall? First, Ministers must review Cornwall council’s £90 million HRA debt arising from 2012’s self-financing settlement. The assumptions underpinning the settlement no longer reflect today’s pressures and servicing that inherited debt diverts money from maintaining existing stock and rebuilding new homes.
Secondly, councils should receive the same access to low-cost development finance as registered providers. Refinancing £52 million of planned development borrowing at 0.1% could save Cornwall council £19 million over 14 years, creating up to £1.8 million in annual revenue headroom and supporting up to £41 million of additional borrowing for new homes.
Thirdly, Cornwall must not be excluded from housing and investment powers because of our national minority status. A strategic place partnership with Homes England could provide both the framework and funding needed to deliver social housing at scale. We will never be part of a mayoral combined authority because of our national minority status, and we cannot be discriminated against and locked out of that funding.
I therefore ask Ministers to review the HRA debt, extend low-cost financing to councils and ensure Cornwall’s immediate access to a strategic place partnership with Homes England.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate.
In Poole, we have one of the widest gaps between average wages and private rents in the country, and we suffer from a distinct lack of truly affordable housing for local people, with house prices that are 16% higher than the national figure sitting alongside rents far higher than rents in other parts of the south-west. In 2024-25, my local council built just 89 affordable homes, out of a total of 988 new properties. What we do have is a proliferation of luxury seafront apartments that local people cannot afford. It is no wonder that housing is the biggest issue raised by my constituents. Just 1% of properties in Poole are affordable to rent at the local rate of housing benefit. The freeze on local housing allowance is making rents unaffordable; it needs to be uprated urgently. Also, we need a system of rent controls, as a step towards easing the housing crisis while the building gets started .
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is giving an impassioned speech about Poole that is really resonating with me as the MP for Chichester, because I see in my constituency large-scale developments delivering four and five-bedroom luxury houses that are not affordable for most people. Does he agree that middle-income earners are particularly affected? A lot of our frontline service workers cannot afford private rents, but earn too much to be eligible for social housing. That is why we need to see a number of social homes across the whole country that the Government will deliver, so that developers cannot renege on their commitments to deliver the homes that we are asking for.
Neil Duncan-Jordan
Yes. Obviously, there is an issue about viability and the way developers use that to renege on their earlier commitments to local authorities. There is also the key point that if we want the public sector and public services of the future, the workers who provide those services need to be able to afford to live in the area, so it is a circular argument that we need to keep making with the Government.
Building a new generation of council houses is essential to ending the housing crisis. The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme is welcome, but does not go far enough. The Government need to be more creative when it comes to longer term financing of the sector. Currently, £88 billion-worth of UK pension funds is invested in fossil fuel companies. What better use of that money could there be than redirecting it into council housing?
Let us be more ambitious in our growth agenda. Let us see a council house building programme as a key part of that ambition. Let us remove the historical debt from councils’ housing revenue accounts, which other Members have mentioned. Let us unlock low-cost financing for council house building, enable councils to buy land at the right price to build social rent homes, and bring empty properties back to life. Let us give future generations the hope that was there after 1945, with a real housing revolution that offers everyone a place they can call home.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
It is an honour to serve with you in the chair, Sir Jeremy.
South Devon is a beautiful part of the world, with its stunning coastline and idyllic rural villages, but scratch the surface and you will find a severe housing crisis, which is eating away at the viability of our rural and coastal communities, threatening the very fabric of village life and turning parts of it into a theme park for the rich. Wages have fallen so far out of step with housing costs that local people are just being priced out of the communities they grew up in. I welcome aspects of the Bill, but it simply does not address the mechanics driving this crisis.
Housing associations exist to provide homes for people who cannot afford to buy or rent on the open market, yet a growing number of those homes are leaving the sector altogether. Since 2018-19, English housing associations have sold more than 25,000 social and affordable homes to private buyers, and the pace is quickening. Last year’s sales were the highest on record, having risen 89% in just two years.
Towns such as Salcombe and Dartmouth in South Devon are among the most expensive places to live in the country. Yes, they are full of second homes and short-term lets, but they are not just holiday destinations. Real people live there. These are people who grew up there, people who work there and people who keep essential local services running, but they are being priced out. One local housing association has sold 49 social homes since 2022, with the biggest losses in those high-cost areas. In Kingswear, another beautiful village by the sea, more than a third of the social housing stock has vanished in just three years; the primary school has closed down and with so few affordable homes left, there is nothing to draw young families back to the area. When challenged, the housing association points to replacement homes that it has bought in Sherford, a new town on the edge of Plymouth that is 30 miles away. That is no comfort to a family forced out of Kingswear.
Let us set that against demand. Across the South Hams and Torbay, 3,600 homes have been built in five years, but more than 2,500 households remain in formal housing need. That is because most of the new homes are sold at full market price, far beyond the reach of those who need them. When a social rented home does come up, the competition is extreme: there were 119 bids for one home in Malborough, 113 for one in Salcombe and 190 for one in Brixham.
The council has no say when a housing association decides to sell. The Social Housing Bill introduces a new disposal notification requirement intended to give local authorities a better chance of acquiring homes that would otherwise leave the sector. That is a step in the right direction and I welcome it, but it is not going to work, because being told that a home is about to be sold is not the same as being able to do anything about it. The Bill gives the council no first refusal, no priority and no right to step in ahead of a private buyer.
I would like to give a shout-out to Clay Park in Dartington, where a community land trust is delivering 39 energy-efficient homes, all for social rent, for people with local connections. We need to see this in all our villages: a few social homes in every village to keep it viable, keep young families there and allow older people to downsize. Community land trusts need to be able to build more easily. What provisions have been made in the Bill to support the work of these much-valued bodies?
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this vital debate. I know from years in Cornwall how big an issue the lack of affordable and council housing has become in my constituency of Truro and Falmouth.
In Cornwall, the picture is stark: we have far lower levels of council housing than other parts of the country: only 11% of our stock is social housing, and the country-wide average is 18%. Cornwall’s HomeChoice register has over 26,000 households waiting for a home, against an estimated stock of 33,000 social and affordable homes right across Cornwall. We also have 800 households in temporary and emergency accommodation. The housing revenue account has a legacy debt of £92 million from the 2012 self-financing settlement, and that severely constrains Cornwall council’s ability to build, maintain and deliver social housing. Cornwall housing also has very low rental income, the result of decisions made by previous Lib Dem and independent council administrations. Bringing rents closer to national levels through rent conversions will take time, and the lack of income from low rents has resulted in a backlog of repairs that it is really struggling to get on top of.
The Government’s extra £1 billion for the social and affordable homes programme and the preferential rates for council house borrowing are very welcome, as are the safeguards in the Bill, for example, on rights to buy new builds. In Cornwall, we have housing associations that are strategic providers, working hard to build and provide homes in Cornwall, but our HRA struggles with its debt and repairs and has no headroom to borrow. HRA reform will be crucial if we are to build council homes in Cornwall, as will making it easier for HRAs to borrow.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.
In my constituency of Horsham, the council stock was sold off long ago to Saxon Weald, a housing association, which does a pretty good job. For years, under a series of Tory administrations, there was little council interest in building any more, so I applaud the current Lib Dem-led council for its recent announcement of 22 new homes for social rent—that is a start, at least. However, having the will is not enough; you also need the means. In this context, the Government’s main housing strategy—the standard method for allocating local targets—is having a destructive effect. It did not work for the Tory Government, and it is not working for Labour, either.
A new Horsham district local plan is passing through the system right now, but it is simply not possible for an authority in an area such as mine to require the provision of large amounts of social housing—or, indeed, any. The subsidy system, based on section 106 taxes, does not generate nearly enough, and that means that councillors cannot set a guaranteed percentage of homes for social rent in the plan, even if they want to. Such a plan would be ruled unsound by the inspector because it is financially undeliverable. That is exactly what happened to me when I was cabinet member for planning a few years ago.
Because Horsham ranks as a relatively affluent area, it is not in line for Government subsidies. Ironically, the locations that face the highest housing costs are precisely those least likely to get any Government investment support. We have a system designed to deliver cheap housing in areas that, on average, have more cheap housing. The Government obsession with counting permissions instead of actual real-life houses has directly undermined Horsham’s ability to deliver low-cost housing. Unfeasibly high targets force the council to accept developer proposals that are optimised for quantity not affordability. In reality, private developers are principally in control of choosing the sites; councils merely edit them.
In an area like Horsham, where most of the district is farmland, the market drives developers to buy up green spaces on the edge of existing settlements. The result is a strong incentive for suburban house building, which by its nature tends to poorer affordability and wasteful land use. At the same time, we have a construction industry trapped in a boom-and-bust cycle.
The absence of consistent local authority house building makes it much harder to bring in low-cost models, such as modern modular construction, because that depends on a continued reliable delivery pipeline. That is one reason why Legal & General, which bravely invested in this market, was forced to close its modular arm a few years ago. Whatever the Government decide to do, some further change of policy is necessary. I hope the Minister will be honest and realise that the current trajectory is not going to solve anyone’s problem in any reasonable length of time.
Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.
Norwich was at the birth of social housing, building its first council house on Angel Road 100 years ago. Shortly after, came the Mile Cross estate, one of the first of its kind. By the 1970s, our city had a higher proportion of council housing than any other in the country. Labour in Norwich continued that delivery. We delivered Goldsmith Street—105 council homes built to Passivhaus standards and the first council housing project to win the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling prize. At the old Mile Cross depot in my constituency, a Labour council planned and funded 67 new council homes for rent, with more on the full site. Anglia Square stood undeveloped for years, then a Labour Government gave a Labour city council the funding to unlock the site and get building, delivering 1,100 homes, with a commitment that at least 50% will be affordable, many at social rent.
I pay tribute to the former Labour council leaders, including Mike Stonard, Alan Waters, Brenda Horner and Steve Morphew, for their work driving that vision forward, and Carli Harper, who has put housing at the centre of her campaign to be Mayor of Norfolk and Suffolk.
That is what delivery looks like, but it is not finished. We have to do much more to ensure that the council homes my constituents need are delivered. Since May, the Green party has run Norwich city council. I want them to succeed and not squander Labour’s legacy on housing. My message is simple: see those schemes through; do not let them slip and do not dilute them. The need is real, with almost 4,000 households in Norwich waiting for a home. Those are not statistics; they are people who have done everything right and are still waiting.
What needs to happen? First, we need investment, so I welcome the Government’s £39 billion programme for social and affordable homes. I declare an interest as the chair of the East of England housing delivery group. The region is expected to deliver 227,000 homes to support the Government’s targets over the course of this Parliament. If we are to do that, we must get our fair share of investment. Houses do not build themselves, so we need to ensure we have the skills in the pipeline to accelerate construction and deliver them. Our need for homes must be recognised as urgent.
Secondly, with others, I welcome the decision to let councils keep their right-to-buy receipts, which will make a huge difference. Thirdly, it is not enough to build homes; they have to be of good quality. People in council housing deserve high-quality homes, such as the ones Norwich Labour built on Goldsmith Street. Too many constituents still contact me with concerns about the quality of housing. Fourthly, homes must be eco-friendly. Goldsmith Street proves that warm, low-energy homes with bills tenants can afford are not a luxury; they are what council housing should be. Every new council home we build, should be built to the same ambition.
Fifthly, community is important. Mile Cross worked a century ago because it was never just about housing; it was also a community. Its centenary in 2023 was beautifully celebrated by The Common Lot. A home is only as good as what surrounds it: the bus that turns up, the GP we can book, the school within walking distance, the park, and the shop on the corner. When we build homes, we must build that community, too. The Norwich Labour party still believes that, and I know Labour in government believes that, so we must keep building to deliver the council homes that so many people still desperately need.
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate and for presenting a very persuasive argument.
One of the biggest casework inquiries that I get in my constituency concerns the shortage of housing. Birmingham, which has the largest council in Europe, has an enormous housing issue—just look at the stats. In the west midlands region, we have 7,500 homeless families living in temporary accommodation, including 15,000 children. That has an impact on families and the children, who often live many miles from their school, with parents struggling to maintain their jobs because they have to escort their children to school. It will have a dramatic effect on our future generations. Birmingham has the youngest community, and I fear the impact that a lack of affordable homes will have on our next generation.
There are 65,000 families on the social housing waiting list. I am sure the Minister will say that the West Midlands combined authority has received somewhere in the region of £400 million to develop and build 3,000 additional homes, which of course is welcome, but when we contrast the numbers with the requirements, it really is a drop in the ocean. There will also be private developers, but one of the biggest issues that I see and that my constituents feel is that it is not just about building homes anywhere just to meet the quota, but about building communities and ensuring we have the right infrastructure: GP surgeries, medical care facilities and local shopping centres. A whole infrastructure needs to be thought of.
Planning is another big issue. The Labour Government often say they champion devolution and localisation and want local people involved in decision making. However, Birmingham is being asked to be anti-devolution, because planning powers could be given to the regional mayor. If that happens, it will take away that community on the ground who want homes where they fulfil all the criteria.
May I quickly ask the Minister a question? I know we have limited time. The Perry Barr Village was developed at a cost to taxpayers of £700 million. It was sold to Legal and General at a loss to the taxpayer of £350 million. Will the Minister inquire into what happened with that loss of £350 million to Birmingham taxpayers?
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.
I want to speak up for Portsmouth today, a city that at its peak had 27,000 council homes and now has fewer than 16,000. Our city is in the grip of a housing crisis, with too many people struggling to find a secure and affordable home. We have a waiting list of almost 3,000 households, with almost 50% of those being exceptional or urgent priority. Yet in 2024-25 Portsmouth built just 40 new homes—not 40 social homes, but 40 new homes in total. In the same period, only 15 units for social rent were added to the council stock, with just six more being started. Behind those figures are families waiting for a home, young people struggling to find somewhere they can afford, and residents facing the insecurity of unaffordable rent or moving from temporary accommodation to temporary accommodation.
I know personally what a council home means. I grew up in one and many of my aunties and uncles, and my own parents were born and lived in council housing. For my family it meant stability, security and the opportunity to build a future. Council housing is more than bricks and mortar. It gives people a foundation in life, a community and a place to call home, and every family deserves one. That is why I am proud that this Labour Government have committed to the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. We are invigorating council house building and taking action to protect existing social housing, but that national ambition must translate into homes on the ground in Portsmouth. More families need the security I experienced growing up in a safe, affordable home, and the chance to build a better future.
Cannock Chase and historical Norwich city council have shown what can be achieved when a council creates opportunity, and I commend their vision. Portsmouth should look at what works elsewhere and how we can translate that to my city. Will the Minister meet me to discuss what practical support the Government can provide to help Portsmouth city council overcome barriers to planning, building, developing derelict sites, regenerating empty homes and unlocking investment to deliver the council houses and social rented homes my residents desperately need?
Portsmouth city council must act; my residents cannot afford to wait any longer to have a secure place to call home.
Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)
I want to offer a Scottish perspective on the subject. In May 2024, the Scottish Parliament declared a national housing emergency. That was a significant admission, but declaring an emergency is not the same as resolving one. More than two years later, the figures make uncomfortable reading.
Across Scotland, more than 10,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. That is the highest number on record. There are almost 35,000 open homelessness cases, which is also a record high. Last year, there were more than 21,000 recorded instances in which local authorities failed to offer temporary accommodation to households entitled to it, an increase of almost a third.
Those figures come from the Scottish Government’s own statistics, a couple more of which came out just this morning. The “Housing Statistics for Scotland” report found that house building has fallen by 8% in the last year and we have more than 10,000 council houses sitting vacant, often as a result of lack of funds or people to bring them back into use.
Housing is a constant feature of my constituency casework. We hear from families in overcrowded homes and people living in unsuitable accommodation. Most express a lack of confidence that they will ever find somewhere appropriate to live. As a former council leader, I know that providing good council housing takes more than ambition; it takes resources and power, something that this Labour Government are looking to devolve to local communities in England. However, in Scotland, the SNP is centralising rather than devolving powers.
I have seen what can be achieved when these things come together because Stirling has been ranked first in the UK for roof-top solar installations relative to households. Our long-running programme of installing solar panels on council houses contributed significantly to that achievement. Successive council administrations invested in improving housing stock, helping tenants with energy costs and delivering environmental benefits.
I also want to highlight the importance of housing to rural economies. Stirling council has recently allocated UK Government funding to new houses in Tyndrum at the northern end of my constituency. Local tourism businesses tell me they struggle to recruit staff because prospective employees cannot find affordable accommodation. If a hotel or restaurant cannot recruit because workers have nowhere to live, housing becomes an economic as well as a social issue. In small rural communities, even a handful of new, affordable homes can make an enormous difference, but much more needs to be done.
I welcome the UK Government’s commitment to increasing council and social house building in England. We must share lessons from across the United Kingdom because devolution should never mean that we stop learning from one another. Ultimately, the test of housing policy is not how many targets we announce, strategies we publish or emergencies we declare, but how many families finally receive the keys to a safe, secure and affordable home. For far too many of my constituents, that day still feels too distant.
To conclude with a bit of history, it pains me to admit that Scotland’s first pioneering council housing development was in Dundee, rather than in my constituency of Stirling and Strathallan, but I was fascinated to discover that, even before the Stirling houses were occupied in May 1920, the Commons was debating their affordability. In April 1920, Labour MP Alexander Wilkie questioned the Secretary of State for Scotland about rents that threatened to price out the very working people the homes were intended to help. More than a century later, we are still grappling with that same fundamental challenge of providing good homes that people can afford.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. Council housing saved my family’s life. Council housing gave me a life. Council housing meant that a once homeless lad got to be here to fight for everybody, to ensure that there is no homelessness in this country ever again.
When we talk about council housing delivery, most people think about building from scratch, but there are other options. Buying and refurbing existing long-term empty houses and buildings means we can increase the housing stock at a lower cost and, crucially, we can do it faster.
When we talk about housing, it is easy to think primarily about the housing market, the economic impacts, the cost of mortgages or rents, or the cost of living, but we are also talking about whether people have a permanent home or not.
When we talk about homelessness, we often think first about rough sleeping. Yet homelessness takes many forms, and family homelessness cannot be overlooked. That is often not on the streets; it is whole families with children living on one mattress at a friend or relative’s house, as I did at 15 years old, or moving between a series of bed and breakfasts and other emergency—supposedly temporary—accommodation, which can last for years. Because it is not visible, and because we do not see the impact, we often do not treat it with the urgency it deserves.
At the end of March this year, there were 177,530 children living in temporary accommodation in England. In Doncaster in 2025, we had more than 200 children living without a permanent roof over their heads. Perhaps even more concerning is that more than 22,000 families with children have been living in temporary accommodation for between two and five years. For some children, that could be the majority of their lives.
There are 7,800 active households on the register in Doncaster right now. That insecurity of not having a place that is permanent can be devastating. It affects children’s education, their physical and mental health, their relationships and their opportunities later in life. A permanent home is about so much more than having somewhere to sleep; it is about having somewhere you belong. I can absolutely vouch for that, having had lived experience of it.
There are more than 300,000 long-term empty homes across England. Acquiring long-term empty houses for social housing could deliver more than 8,000 additional social rented homes by June 2029, requiring 38% less Government grant per property than new build alternatives. That means more homes for the same level of investment, and families in them much more quickly. When we have families spending years in temporary accommodation, we cannot afford to overlook opportunities to deliver permanent homes much more quickly. It also makes sense financially: councils are spending billions each year on temporary accommodation, but investing in permanent housing can reduce our reliance on those arrangements.
Ultimately, the success of our housing programmes must be measured not just by the number of homes delivered, but by the number of families who are able to leave homelessness behind and build secure, stable lives in the future. We need to deliver those homes, and we need to deliver them as fast as we possibly can.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
Sir Jeremy, it is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship.
Across the span of one of England’s largest constituencies, housing, or the lack of it, is one of the main drivers of people coming to my constituency surgeries. It is one of the main drivers of people in desperate need of a place to call home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) has just movingly set out. It is an issue that needs to be taken far more seriously, not just in this place but across the country. The particular lack of access to affordable and social housing in some of our most rural communities is something that has escaped much of the national debate in recent years.
Unfortunately, I must say that the Morpeth Conservatives, who run Northumberland county council, are currently engaged in what I can only describe as an ongoing misinformation exercise about the impact of trying to provide more housing. It is very clear to me that what is needed across Northumberland is appropriate development of the homes that are needed to allow people to build lives and communities, and to keep those communities together and functioning, but also to provide long-term stability to young people growing up in those communities, so that they know they will be able to have a life where they have grown up, should they wish to, rather than growing up with their noses pressed against the windows of communities that they will never be able to be part of because they cannot get a home there.
I will not keep colleagues’ attention for too long, but the crucial thing, from where I stand, is delivering those homes in areas where people can have access to them, where they can be rented at a reasonable rate, and, crucially, ensuring that they are not removed from circulation but are accessible to local people, so that those people can work in the pubs, shops and businesses that keep the lifeblood of our communities moving.
Without that, we will continue to see younger people forced out of rural communities, forced to leave their families and unable to care for their elderly relatives. That is something that comes up far too often—time and again—in my regular constituency surgeries.
Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
I thank the Back-Bench speakers for their co-operation and discipline. We now come to the Front-Bench speeches, beginning with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
Thank you, Sir Jeremy. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) not only on securing the debate but on the powerful and thoughtful way in which he commenced it, as usual. I also congratulate the other 15 hon. Members who contributed. I cannot disagree with any of the points made powerfully by them, and I hope that the Minister is listening.
I declare an interest as a member of the Cornwall Rural Housing Association and as a past chief executive, now volunteer board member, of the Cornwall Community Land Trust, which is a registered provider of affordable homes across Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly. I noticed that we were not only debating the issue of council housing but straying into questions about the integrity of the planning and development system. That system is of course critical to delivering the big house building programme that the Government have promised. It is clear that in many parts of the country house building, particularly of social and affordable homes, has stalled.
Jess Brown-Fuller
An issue we have seen in my constituency is developers citing viability assessments to try to renege on the commitments that they originally outlined to deliver social and affordable homes. They would rather pay something called a commuted sum—in effect a fine—that does not actually help to deliver social homes at scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should look at the way the commuted sum is assessed so that we do not lose the opportunity for social homes to be delivered?
Andrew George
Indeed. There are many ways in which Ministers need to look at our whole housing planning system. It operates almost as if local needs were an inconvenient afterthought. Despite tinkering at the edges of the planning system, successive Governments have left it so that it still rewards land value speculators more than council or charitable housing providers; puts developer profit—which can be set at a level of 20% when valuation of developments is undertaken—before affordable homes; and turns a blind eye to the transfer of thousands of homes intended for permanent occupancy into property investment portfolios as second homes for recreational and holiday use. I want to reflect on the speeches of my two constituency neighbours, the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). I put on record my strong support for the case they made for investment in Cornwall’s desperately needed social and affordable housing stock.
This week’s announcement of further investment in social and affordable homes—I am sure the Minister will repeat it—is of course welcome. It is on top of the £39 billion in the social and affordable homes programme that was announced last year. However, those investments are dwarfed by the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money gifted through various tax reliefs and loopholes, and by private capital that, in my part of the world, drives investment into holiday lets created when local tenants are evicted to make way for that investment. It is bad enough that such tax subsidies are granted at all, but not all those subsidies—which local authorities are obliged to grant—are compensated for by the Treasury. That contributes to a growing black hole in local government finances and leads to cuts in essential local services.
I am bound to take this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that I was fortunate in the private Member’s Bill ballot. My Homes and Planning Bill will come before Parliament again on Friday 13 November. I hope that all those who spoke in this debate and their colleagues will come along to support the Bill, as it stands a good chance of being enacted. It provides the tools with which the Government and local communities can deliver the kind of affordable homes that we have been talking about, which are desperately needed. Our housing system is a shameful display of just how wide the growing inequality is in this country.
We need to understand better why the planning and housing policies of successive Governments have failed. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire articulately put it, planning policies are based on house building targets, but they have not delivered. Policy designers seem to have overlooked the fact that house building targets are merely a means to an end—the end being, of course, to meet housing need.
My own area of Cornwall is a classic example of an area where planning policy has failed. It is one of the fastest growing places in the United Kingdom; indeed, in the last 60 years, it has almost trebled its housing stock. And yet over that same period the housing problems of local people have got worse, as we have already heard from my constituency neighbours, the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth, and for Camborne and Redruth. So we know that simply having house building—particularly if it is building the wrong type of housing, which is simply for wealthy people or for investment purposes—does not actually help to meet housing needs.
The housing policy of this Government—like, to be fair, the housing policies of successive Governments—is based on a delusion that private developers are prepared to collude with Government to drive down the price of their finished product. Local authorities should be given the option to set targets to meet local need, rather than simply being told to go out and build homes, and to allow those homes to be built.
Indeed, what the Government have done has made matters worse, although I am sure that it was done with the best intentions. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire implied, perhaps Ministers became so sidetracked or distracted by, or even obsessed with, facing down anti-development nimbys—rightly; of course they should do that—that they did not consider that imposing unachievable house building targets overnight on local authorities might become counterproductive, because 18 months ago local authorities suddenly found themselves unable to demonstrate that they had carefully identified and consulted on a sufficient five-year land supply. As a result of that, development opportunities on the edges of our communities, instead of being delivered under a rural exceptions policy for affordable homes, are now being granted by planning inspectors, because there is not a five-year land supply for unaffordable homes. So, we have lost that opportunity and the policy has been totally counterproductive.
The purpose of my private Member’s Bill is to give communities the right to buy, so that a community asset becomes land or buildings that could help a community to deliver affordable homes. This is community-led housing of the type that my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), for example, has talked about.
Also, there should be new planning limits on second homes and holiday homes, so that someone would have to apply for planning permission to convert a property from a permanent home to a holiday home or second home. I hope that Government Members will come along on 13 November to support my private Member’s Bill, because the Minister for Housing and Planning, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook)—he is obviously not here in Westminster Hall today because he is engaged with the Social Housing Bill, which is very relevant to our debate today—has indicated that he is unable to support my Bill. Consequently, we have a debate on our hands.
The Liberal Democrats would increase the building of new and affordable and social homes, and we would make sure, on a number of fronts, to make homes warmer and cheaper and easier to heat, with a 10-year emergency upgrade programme to ensure that all new homes are zero carbon, as well as giving control of right to buy to local authorities, which will be enabled to vary discounts based on local need, or—as a last resort—to suspend the right to buy all together.
In view of the short time I have left, I will not list all the policies that would deliver the utopia that a Liberal Democrat Government would undoubtedly deliver as far as housing is concerned. However, I will urge the Minister, particularly as we have the vehicle of the Social Housing Bill in Committee at the moment, to take heed of what his colleagues have said to him this afternoon and to accept amendments to improve that Bill.
Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
In the interests of order, I should probably make it clear that other private Members’ Bills are available.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy, and to take part in this debate about the delivery of council housing. It is a debate on a very important topic and I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing it.
Building more homes is a critical mission for anyone governing England and Wales today, in order to make the dream of home ownership a reality for even more hard-working families. With a record number of people homeless, and with 177,530 children and 49,120 adult households in temporary accommodation, clearly the priority must be to build more council homes. That is what the Opposition want to happen, but that is what the Government are currently failing to do.
Let us take a look at the Government’s own data. Just 208,600 net additional dwellings were added in England in Labour’s first year of power. That was a 6% drop from 2023-24, which was the last Conservative Government’s final year in office. Of these, 190,600 were new homes, a fall of 8,000, around 4%, on 2023-24. Taken together, the Government are on track to build around 400,000 fewer homes than they promised at the election, meaning yet another broken promise made to the British people. The Government know that—the Minister’s boss, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), admitted this on national media.
That poor showing on homes directly impacts the pressing issue we are debating today, which is the delivery of council housing. We heard the Prime Minister proudly making his summer promise of the comeback of the council house, but what little details we do know on that policy show that the money he has earmarked would equal just 15,494 homes a year, barely 5% of the Government’s annual housing target. That is in exchange for another £79 billion added to the housing subsidy bill, despite the fact that the UK already spends the most on housing allowances as a percentage of GDP of any OECD country.
One might have been forgiven for thinking that the aptly-titled Social Housing Bill introduced earlier this year might have been the answer to get local authorities, the Government, industry, and the nation building again. However, as is becoming a theme in this Government, we are left severely disappointed by the reality. The Government have presented a Bill to the House that fails to build a single new council house. Instead of making social and affordable housing sites viable and pushing developments through the pipeline at pace—the Government love to use that phrase—to get people off the street and help children into permanent homes, they have chosen to use up parliamentary, Government and civil service time on an ideological assault on right-to-buy. It is a shameful course of action, and far from what the 1.34 million people on the social housing wait list need.
Even worse is that the Government know this Social Housing Bill will not deliver new homes. According tousb data from the Minister’s own impact assessment, in 2026-27 the pre-November 2024 baseline was 8,050 right-to-buy sales, leading to 5,450 replacement homes. The document goes on to show that if this Bill were to pass and the legacy impacts were to wind down in the period of 2031-35, annual right-to-buy sales would fall to around 1,100 a year, with around 1,450 replacement homes. That means that by their own analysis and admission, the Government will be overseeing a housing system in which there would be 4,000 fewer new social homes funded every year. Moreover, research conducted by the House of Lords Library shows that only a net 3% of social homes become available each year to new tenancies. That means that around 90 additional homes will be available for a new tenant each year instead of 5,000.
The Bill would not only mean no new homes built, but would actively prevent them from being delivered. The Government really must refocus their efforts on building more council housing, and that requires serious reforms to the viability of sites for social and affordable homes. We are halfway through a Parliament in which we have spent much time debating the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, various updates to the national planning policy framework and the aforementioned Bill, yet after all of that we are still left without a clear route to building more homes. Projections from the Government show they will have managed to build just 26% of their target in 50% of the time.
Alice Macdonald
Obviously we are in government now, but will the hon. Lady reflect on her party’s policies in terms of not letting councils keep right-to-buy receipts or the fact that nearly 200,000 homes were lost in one decade under the Conservatives?
Sarah Bool
Of course, it is always important to reflect on any of the legacies but we have to talk about the here and now. It has rightly been said that this Government are in control; the Social Housing Bill is supposed to unlock the system and yet it will not do that. Our questions should be directly to the Minister about how the Government will unlock the potential that everyone in this room wants to see. That is why the Conservative party proposes taking £50,000 off the cost of building a new home in England and Wales by cutting back on regulations and taxes; backing a genuinely brownfield-first approach to see new homes built on the existing 1.41 million sites viable for development; building, not blocking; a genuine council house comeback; and supporting aspiration.
Sarah Bool
I am just concluding. I call on the Minister to commit to changing the Social Housing Bill, to back the delivery of council housing and to help bring the shocking number of people in temporary accommodation down. That is the only way to see more council houses built, to see more people into safe and affordable accommodation and to get Britain building.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jim McMahon)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate on the delivery of council housing. I appreciate his passion for the subject following the debate that he brought forward last September on the provision of council housing. I also thank all Members for their rich contributions. They really reflect the challenges that exist across the country.
Nearly 180,000 children are in temporary accommodation in this country, and over 1.3 million households are on local authority housing registers. Members across the House will agree that we cannot allow that to continue, because behind every one of those statistics is a person, a family and a child. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Housing Minister and the whole Government are clear on our resolve and intention to tackle the issue. We are also clear that councils have a leading role to play.
Under the leadership of the Prime Minister, the Government are committed to delivering the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period. That level of ambition is necessary because of the scale of the challenge that we are facing. This Government are removing barriers and backing councils to use all the levers at their disposal to deliver safe and decent homes at a scale not seen for decades.
We have taken decisive steps to improve councils’ financial resources, capacity and capability to invest in new and existing homes, and the social and affordable homes programme funding is putting councils at the heart of that delivery. It is the biggest long-term investment in social and affordable homes in recent memory. Initial allocations under the programme were announced in August and, for the first time, three councils outside of London—Newcastle, Eastleigh and Cambridge—were awarded strategic partnership status. The Greater London Authority has also offered allocations of at least £6 billion to providers of social and affordable housing, with 60% going to local councils.
Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)
Leeds is one of the biggest local authorities in England. We have 27,000 households on the waiting list for council housing, 5,000 of which are in priority need. So many constituents come to me saying that they just cannot afford private rented homes. The main issue is that there is just not enough council housing. I welcome the Government saying that they are building more houses, but there needs to be specific help for Leeds, including both more funding for land remediation and the purchasing of city centre developments that are unoccupied or under-occupied. What additional support can the Government provide for that type of housing?
Jim McMahon
Leeds city council is ambitious for its city and is a key member of the West Yorkshire combined authority. It is doing a lot of work, not just on housing but on bringing forward brownfield sites through growth and infrastructure funding to make sure that, as many Members have said, housing goes alongside that wider community infrastructure.
In addition to the funding that I have just mentioned, over £21 billion is still to allocate, which will be prioritised for social homes, particularly council homes. That reflects our commitment to increasing council house delivery. To further improve financial capacity, deliver new supply and invest in existing homes, we have committed to a 10-year social housing rent policy with a convergence mechanism. That gives councils much needed certainty on their income to enable them to increase and manage their housing portfolios efficiently and effectively.
Jim Shannon
We also need to remember that the Government are committed to building a million-plus social homes over the next period of time. Over the last 12 months, house prices in Northern Ireland have consistently risen by a greater rate than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Housing rents are also going up. Will the Minister share the Government’s strategy to address the social housing need with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland to ensure that we can learn something from the process that the Government are putting forward?
Jim McMahon
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about the different approaches across the UK and how we can all learn from each other on what works, as well as learn from the areas where it perhaps did not go quite as planned. I will make sure that I pass his comments on to the Housing Minister to have conversations across Governments.
We have also provided greater certainty on future costs associated with the decent homes standard and the minimum energy efficiency standards. We have allocated more than £1 billion through the warm homes social housing fund to improve the energy efficiency of social homes. Quality matters, as rightly outlined by my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury).
In addition to revenue, we know how important borrowing and the capacity to borrow are for councils’ delivery plans. Since 2023, a preferential borrowing rate has been available from the Public Works Loan Board for council house building. This rate will be extended and we will be announcing more details in due course.
We continue to work closely with councils and the wider sector to understand the remaining barriers to council house building and investment, including the impact of the housing revenue account debt and borrowing rates. We have also increased the threshold at which councils must open a housing revenue account from 200 homes to 1,000 homes. That is enabling small councils to deliver more homes without incurring additional operating costs.
We have also heard from councils that workforce shortages, skills gaps and capacity pressures will constrain their abilities to build. That is why we are investing a further £46 million over the next three years through capacity to build funding, on top of the £17 million already invested since 2025. That will help councils develop an ambitious pipeline, strengthen specialist housing capacity and make the most of the Government’s wider investment in council house building. These gaps have been identified by Members in the debate today, including the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Joe Morris), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham).
Finally, we are taking decisive action to reform the right-to-buy scheme, which has acted as a break on council confidence to invest in new social housing for too long. We are reforming the scheme to ensure that more homes are built than lost, while maintaining an important route for social housing tenants to own their own homes, which was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth).
My right hon. Friend the Housing Minister is at this very moment in the Bill Committee, debating the detail of our reforms. The Social Housing Bill builds on the reforms to cash discounts that we implemented in 2024 to ensure that more social homes are protected, while removing powerful disincentives to build. Notably, we are tightening the eligibility requirements and exempting newly built social housing from the scheme for 35 years to ensure that homes are not sold before councils have recovered their investment.
Ayoub Khan
The Minister will have heard me talk about the £400 million being invested through the regional authority for 3,000 homes. I contrast that with the more than £700 million invested of taxpayer money in the Perry Barr athletes’ village, which was then sold at a loss to the taxpayer of £350 million. Can the Minister assure me that that matter will be investigated?
Jim McMahon
Today is not about getting into the rights and wrongs of individual programmes at local authority level. The hon. Member and I have had many conversations about Birmingham city council in the past and I am sure that will continue. The matter here today is how central Government ensure that we have the framework, the incentives and the funding to get councils building council homes and social homes in their area.
In addition, we have enabled councils to retain 100% of receipts from right-to-buy sales and provided greater flexibility on how those receipts can be used. That includes permitting councils to combine receipts with grant funding to unlock capacity for house building.
These measures are already bearing fruit. Councils delivered around 10,600 homes in 2024-25, which is the highest level since current records began in 1991-92. Our package of right-to-buy reforms is estimated to deliver a net gain of around 18,000 social homes over the next 10 years, compared with a pre-reform baseline of a loss of 26,000 homes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) mentioned empty homes. We are strengthening powers to bring empty homes back into use by reforming empty dwelling management orders. We are reducing the period for which a property must be empty before it becomes eligible from two years to six months under that programme.
We know that we must go further and faster to deliver the good-quality, affordable homes that people need. We also know that councils share that ambition. The Government are committed to backing councils to build at a scale not seen for decades, and to build the right homes in the right places. We will continue to work with all levels of local and regional government to turn that ambition into homes and better outcomes for local people, so that everyone across the country has access to a home that is decent, secure and affordable.
Chris Hinchliff
I thank all hon. Members for contributing to a wide-ranging and passionate debate.
I note that the Minister did not quite answer the one question I left him with, which was about the number of council houses that the Government are projecting to achieve. A quick search on my phone during the debate suggested that 47,000 council houses were built in 1979, which I suspect is when most of us would suggest the post-war period came to an end. I am genuinely interested to know whether the Government are aiming for something like that figure per year.
More generally, I would like the Minister to take away two key points from the debate. First, we must move away from a failed housing delivery model in this country. It seems we have accepted for a long time that we can afford to build only unaffordable homes. It is a ludicrous failure and we must put an end to it. Secondly, we heard so many times about the 1.3 million people in this country on waiting lists and the nearly 180,000 children in temporary accommodation. It must be one of the most important yardsticks by which the Government measure themselves that, by the time we come to the next general election, those figures are no longer rising but have substantially fallen.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the delivery of council housing.
Domestic Farming and Food Supply
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)
Carla Lockhart will move the motion, and the Minister will respond. I remind all other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention in shorter debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered domestic farming and food supply.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. Tomorrow the Chancellor of the Exchequer will stand at the Dispatch Box and tell us what this Government intend to do for the economy. Before those decisions are finalised, I want to make the case for the people who put food on our tables, because whatever Ministers say about supporting working people, farming families have every reason to feel that they have been singled out.
I know personally how hard farmers work. I know the hours, the worry and the sacrifices needed to keep a farm functioning. There is precious little spare money on many farms and certainly no shortage of bills, yet this Government seem to look at a farm valuation and see a pot of money waiting to be taxed. They show very little understanding of how farming actually works. Agriculture is devolved. I get that; I recognise it, and I have plenty to say about the decisions being taken at Stormont. But inheritance tax, trade policy and Treasury decisions are matters for this Government and their consequences are felt on farms throughout our United Kingdom.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend my hon. Friend for bringing this debate forward. The Ulster Farmers’ Union is represented here, and I declare an interest as one of those. Our national food security relies inherently on the economic viability of our local family farms. For the agrifood capital that is Strangford—my constituency—domestic farming is not just an industry. Does my hon. Friend agree with me and share my concerns that the family farm inheritance tax could well be the death knell for family farms in Northern Ireland?
Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)
I regularly meet South Shropshire farmers, who work night and day to put food on the table, and hear about the challenges that they face. Does the hon. Member agree that everything should be done to unlock all the red tape that the farmers have to deal with to produce food? Food production should be considered part of national security and resilience, because we need to ensure that we are self-sufficient.
Carla Lockhart
I agree fully. Labour often says that that is part of national security, but actions speak louder than words in many ways.
Northern Ireland punches well above its weight. We have less than 3% of the UK’s population, but produce more than 10% of its food output by value. We supply about one fifth of UK egg production and approximately one sixth of its dairy, beef and poultry output. Those figures should leave Ministers in no doubt about Northern Ireland’s importance to feeding this nation. In Upper Bann, farming keeps a whole network of businesses going. The feed merchant, the machinery dealer, the haulier, the veterinary practices and the processors all depend on a viable industry. When money stops being spent on farms, those businesses feel it too.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member on bringing this debate to the House. Will she also acknowledge that the Ulster Farmers’ Union pre-Budget membership survey showed that 84% of its membership have postponed, cancelled or reduced investment in at least one of the seven areas on which they were surveyed, and that has a knock-on effect on supply chains across the country?
Carla Lockhart
Absolutely. That was my next point: 84% of respondents to this survey have reduced, postponed or cancelled investment. That is really stark. More than half identified inheritance tax policy as a barrier to investment. Farmers are holding back on replacing machinery, improving livestock housing and carrying out drainage work. Ministers keep telling farmers to become more productive. How are they supposed to do that if the money needed to invest is being held back to prepare for a future tax bill? I welcome the increase in the combined agricultural and business property relief allowance from the original proposal of £1 million to £2.5 million per person, but I have never accepted that that resolves the problem.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving leadership on this issue, and so many others. Does she agree that in Northern Ireland and across the UK, domestic farming must be viable, and that, to achieve that, the Government must provide support to help farmers manage rising costs and ensure that producers receive a fair return?
Carla Lockhart
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member’s assessment. I cannot be clearer: the family farm tax should be scrapped, and if Labour does not scrap it tomorrow, the party—and particularly its rural MPs—will not be forgiven at the ballot box. The land, sheds and machinery are needed to earn a living, and their value cannot simply be withdrawn from a bank account. If land has to be sold, the farm loses some of its ability to produce food and generate an income. For a business already operating on tight margins, that can make all the difference. It is not unreasonable for a farmer who has worked all their life to want their children to carry on that work. These are families who have gone without, borrowed, reinvested and spent years building something they hoped would outlast them.
More than a third of respondents to the UFU survey anticipated an inheritance tax bill of at least £100,000, and more than seven in 10 are less confident about passing on a financially viable business. Almost nine in 10 reported increased family stress or worry because of the changes. I ask the Minister to think about the conversations behind those figures—a father wondering what will happen when he is gone; a mother worried about the burden being left to her children; a young person who wants to farm but cannot see how the figures will stack up. There is enough worry in farming without the Government adding to it. Tomorrow, the Chancellor can lift some of that uncertainty, and I urge the Minister to make the case for restoring the historical reliefs and allowing working family farms to be passed on.
There are also decisions closer to home that are holding the industry back. In Northern Ireland, farmers are told to improve their buildings, reduce emissions and invest in better slurry management but when they try to do those things, they can find themselves caught in planning delays and environmental assessments with no clear way forward. In some cases, they cannot even get betterment through the planning system. A farmer may want to replace an old shed with a modern building, improve animal welfare and reduce emissions yet still struggle to secure approval. How does leaving the old building in place help anyone? I accept that applications must be properly assessed, but there must be a workable route for proposals that demonstrably improve the existing position.
Farmers are spending money on advice, reports and revised applications while the costs of proposed work continue to rise. Ministers at Stormont need to get to grips with this. Farmers cannot be expected to modernise if the system prevents them from doing so. The situation is exactly the same here in GB, and farmers are fed up with being made the fall guy in the pursuit of net zero. They are expected to produce affordable food, look after the countryside and pay for the changes demanded of them, often without any realistic explanation of how their business is supposed to bear the cost. Some of those making the demands would do well to spend a week on a working farm.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and raises many points that go far beyond Northern Ireland. She is talking about the need to improve farms and combat climate change, but how are farmers supposed to engage seriously in this process? My farmers in West Dorset are unable to apply for the sustainable farming incentive because the window is closing so quickly and it is not properly funded. That is leaving them drastically under-budget for the financial year ahead and wondering why they are continuing to meet all the demands being made by the Government when they are not getting a fair settlement.
Carla Lockhart
The hon. Member’s farmers will have heard his point very clearly. He is a real advocate for the farming community in his constituency, and he is absolutely right. Driving production overseas will not remove the need for food. It will leave us buying more of it from elsewhere, with less control over how it is produced and with further distances to transport it.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The hon. Lady is being incredibly generous with her time, as ever. She will recall that the Defence Secretary told families last weekend to be ready for potential shocks that might come our way. Does she agree that, given what she was just saying, the UK as a whole needs to be far more ready to become food secure? Only 60% of the food that we eat here is produced across our four nations. Is it not the job of all four Governments in this country—the three devolved ones and the UK Government—to ensure that we have farm payment schemes that encourage the production of food, so that we can become food secure?
Carla Lockhart
Absolutely. Farm payments are critical to ensuring just that. I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member, who is another real advocate for our farming and rural communities.
Our farmers will make improvements where there are practical, affordable ways to do so, but they should not have their livelihoods put at risk by targets pursued with little regard for the consequences. The same applies to imports. Earlier this year, I raised concerns about imported eggs and egg products, including reports that imports had increased by 60% since 2021. Our producers have spent considerable sums meeting the standards required of them. They are rightly angry at the prospect of being undercut by egg producers under systems that would not be permitted here. Government cannot impose those costs on our farmers and then shrug their shoulders when cheaper products arrive from elsewhere.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
On imports, the hon. Lady might be touching on one of the really important topics for the farming community, which is the huge power of the supermarket chains in setting prices. Farm-gate prices are clearly making it very difficult for farmers to earn the decent living that they so deserve. Does she agree that the Government should absolutely take on board some of the comments by Baroness Batters on that, and do everything they can to ensure that farmers get a fair price and that competition works not just in the interests of the supermarkets, but in those of our farmers?
Carla Lockhart
Again, I agree; it is a point well made. Another area in which the Government can help our farmers is public procurement, and they should be doing far more. I have challenged the sourcing of food for Northern Ireland schools. Information provided to me showed that approximately 80% of the Education Authority’s beef came from the Republic of Ireland, with around 20% from Northern Ireland. Given the quality of beef produced on our doorstep, I believe that is wrong.
I have also raised the use of halal-certified chicken. The Education Authority has said that it could not meet demand if halal chicken were excluded from its supply. Again, when we look at Northern Ireland and the number of chicken producers there, that should not be the case. We should be able to supply our own markets. Parents are entitled to know what their children are being served and to have clear information about the choices, and they want home-grown food. I want the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland, and indeed the Treasury here, to use public money wisely and to support our local markets.
I also want to return to an issue that I have raised repeatedly with this Government: illegal meat imports. Our farmers can do everything asked of them on biosecurity and still have their livelihoods put at risk by failures at the border. In January last year, around 600 kg of non-compliant meat was stopped at Larne after travelling through Great Britain. I commend the officials who intercepted it, but it should concern every Minister responsible that it had travelled so far without being detected.
At Dover, almost 99 tonnes were seized during 2024, in 868 separate seizures. In December that year, more than six tonnes were intercepted within just 14 hours, including pork reported to have come from areas of Romania affected by African swine fever. In the first three months of 2025 alone, 58 tonnes were seized. I have raised this issue in writing and directly with Ministers. Last year, the Government outlined joint working between agencies, funding offered to Dover Port Health Authority and plans to tackle vehicles used by smugglers. I want the Minister to tell us today what has changed as a result: how much additional inspection capacity is now operating, what prosecutions have followed, whether our enforcement agencies are getting the resources they need, and whether the Government have properly addressed the weaknesses raised about the border target operating model.
Farmers remember foot and mouth. They remember the destruction, the restrictions and the heartbreak. We cannot allow those lessons to be forgotten. The cost of effective enforcement must be weighed against the devastation that a serious disease outbreak could cause. Those involved in this trade need to face consequences that make them think twice. Seize the products, disrupt the operation and pursue prosecutions wherever the evidence allows.
Northern Ireland’s farmers also face additional friction within the UK market created by the Windsor framework. A great deal has been made about how the EU reset will benefit them. We are apparently supposed to welcome the rest of the United Kingdom being brought under SPS rules that it does not make and cannot change.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
There is a certain irony in the title of this debate: domestic farming. In one part of the United Kingdom, we are governed not by domestic laws but by foreign EU laws. Does the hon. Member agree about the folly of a reset that would subject the whole United Kingdom to that same disenfranchisement of being governed by laws we do not make and cannot change? Does she note that the Government are yet to tell us how much the reset on farming would cost in the EU’s demands for contributions to its budget?
Carla Lockhart
I absolutely agree. Maybe the Minister can elaborate on that. I have never been convinced that the answer to the disenfranchisement of Northern Ireland is the disenfranchisement of Great Britain. How can laws made elsewhere, without the United Kingdom having a vote on them, be the right basis for governing our farming industry?
Some changes applying to Northern Ireland barely attract scrutiny. The Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant Health) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 changed requirements in Great Britain to match those already applying in Northern Ireland. Parliament was considering legislation for GB, while the corresponding requirements in Northern Ireland were already a fact of life. That is no way to treat part of our own country.
We should also remember the freedoms denied to Northern Ireland farmers. England has legislation to allow precision breeding. Work is progressing on cattle TB vaccinations in Great Britain, while Northern Ireland remains subject to the EU prohibition. Since 1 January, retailers in Great Britain have been unable to supply veterinary medicines directly to Northern Ireland. Other supply arrangements remain, but farmers have lost an established route for obtaining medicines from the rest of their own country.
There are also differences in the rules governing mycotoxins in cereals and additional requirements on organic production. Those are practical matters affecting what farmers can use and produce and the cost. I want Ministers to look again at properly enforced trusted traders schemes for goods crossing the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, protecting the EU market through targeted controls on goods entering it and allowing trade within the United Kingdom without these barriers.
Extending rule taking to Great Britain does not restore Northern Ireland’s voice. We should be protecting the freedoms secured through Brexit and ensuring that Northern Ireland’s farmers can benefit from them, too. At the end of the day, this debate is about domestic farming and food supply, yet in Northern Ireland so many of the laws governing our agrifood industry are made by the European Union, with no vote for those we elect and no ability to change the laws.
How can Ministers talk about securing our domestic food supply while accepting that part of our country must take its agriculture rules from elsewhere? Northern Ireland’s farmers help to feed the United Kingdom and deserve the same democratic voice in the decisions affecting their livelihoods as farmers elsewhere. All these pressures fall on the same businesses: rising costs, disease, planning difficulties, barriers to trade and uncertainty over whether the next generation will face a tax bill it cannot afford. Ministers may deal with those issues separately; the farmer has to deal with them all at once.
That is why tomorrow’s Budget matters so much. The Chancellor has an opportunity to restore confidence, release investment and give farming families some certainty about the future. I will continue to speak up for the farmers of Upper Bann, Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. They have worked hard and kept producing through some exceptionally difficult years. They have been patient and made their case and they deserve to be heard.
Once a family farm is broken up, it is not easily put back together. Once a young person walks away from farming, we may never get them back. We cannot keep weakening the industry, assuming there will always be someone else to carry it on. Scrap the family farm tax, let farmers invest, give the next generation a reason to stay: no farmers, no food, no future.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Stephen Morgan)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I want to start by thanking the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) for securing this debate. She knows agriculture is a devolved issue. We are committed to working closely with the devolved Governments as we work to support UK farmers and boost the nation’s food security. I welcome her focus on UK matters today, alongside the various insights she has brought from Northern Ireland.
Before I respond to the debate, Chair, allow me to begin by stating that farmers are the backbone of our food system, rural economy and national resilience. Yet I recognise that many are working under extraordinary pressure, with volatile markets, extreme weather, animal disease, and rising input and energy costs.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The Minister has outlined accurately that although matters are devolved, there are issues that fall to the Treasury and to his own responsibility. He has heard the concerns, which I am sure he has heard many times before. Can he outline the representations that I am sure he has made to the Treasury on behalf of the farming community ahead of tomorrow’s Budget?
Stephen Morgan
Matters of taxation are for the Chancellor. More will be known in the Budget tomorrow, but I can certainly share that I work closely with my colleagues in Northern Ireland. Under my previous ministerial responsibility, I was delighted to visit Northern Ireland, and hope to do so in future on the important issues being discussed today.
The importance of the pressures that I have mentioned cannot be overstated. Agriculture alone contributes £14.5 billion to the economy, and the wider food and drink sector contributed £153 billion in 2023. The agrifood sector employed 4.1 million people in 2025. Food security is about national security.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)
After months of drought, 175 wildfires and 369 cases of bluetongue this summer alone, Cornish farmers have had an exceptionally hard year. Rising fertiliser costs, driven by disruption from a completely avoidable conflict with Iran, have placed a particular burden on British farmers. Can the Minister comment further on media reports that the Government are going to support the cost of fertiliser in tomorrow’s Budget? If that is the case, that will be very good news indeed.
Stephen Morgan
The hon. Member is a real champion on farming issues, as was very evident from my time in Cornwall over the summer with the Prime Minister. I know that he is a real champion on those issues. I obviously cannot comment on speculation. There is an indication that there might be announcements tomorrow that will be supportive of our farming community, but I ask him for a little more patience ahead of the Chancellor’s statement tomorrow.
I thank the hon. Member for Upper Bann for identifying specific issues. Trade is a very important matter that of course affects Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. To address the pressures that were raised by farmers in Northern Ireland and across the country, markets must work fairly. UK farmers should not be undercut by imports produced to lower standards. We will maintain our food and animal welfare standards. We will use quotas, exclusions and safeguards where necessary, and open new export opportunities for high-quality UK produce.
The last four deals we concluded, with Switzerland, India, the Gulf Co-operation Council and South Korea, created new opportunities for Northern Irish exports, while protecting sensitive sectors such as pork, poultry and eggs. Tariffs on Northern Irish beef, lamb and dairy exports will be removed in the Gulf and reduced further in Switzerland. Tariffs on whisky exports to India have been halved and will continue to go down over the next 10 years.
We also have a global network of 16 agrifood and drink attachés who create new opportunities for export and help businesses to access markets around the globe. So far this year they have removed 26 barriers, worth nearly £90 million annually. The proposed SPS agreement with the European Union is intended to remove the routine border checks and costly paperwork, reducing friction for exporters and supporting the UK’s food supply and security. The agreement will remove almost all SPS checks and certificates between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That will reduce costs for a whole range of businesses and increase choice for consumers. I know Northern Irish farmers welcome the deal. They see the benefit in removing checks on used agricultural machinery such as tractors, which are often bought from Great Britain. As another example, seed potatoes will be easier to bring in, and Northern Irish farmers will be operating under the same rules, for example on pesticides, as the rest of the UK.
We are also supporting farmers across the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland, through our programme of fair dealing reforms. On 2 October, the first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza of this season was confirmed in Scotland, and we have now had our first case in England. Stringent biosecurity remains the best defence for protecting the health and welfare of birds, and reducing the risk of avian influenza entering kept bird populations. On bovine tuberculosis, it is worth stating that the Government are developing a cattle vaccine and a DIVA—detect infected among vaccinated animals—skin test, widening sensitive testing, expanding badger vaccination and working towards TB-free status for England by 2038.
The reason I stress those points is that the hon. Member for Upper Bann made a number of points about enforcement at our borders and illegal meat. I can confirm that the Government continue to work across Departments to develop a new framework, in partnership with the Home Office, Border Force, the Food Standards Authority and others. More details will be published in due course.
With regard to tax matters that have been raised in the debate, I recognise that when the Government initially announced reform to the agricultural property relief and business property relief in 2024, there was significant concern in the industry about the impact. The Government listened to those concerns and acted, going further to protect more farms and businesses. Up to £5 million can still be passed on free of inheritance tax, depending on people’s individual circumstances. Farming families will be able to pass the family farm down to their children, just as previous generations have done.
Let me turn to the points raised about the certainty to invest and planning issues. The farming roadmap was published earlier this year. We recognise that those in the sector need confidence to invest to grow their businesses, plan for the future and secure farms for the next generation. These are important for profitable food production and resilience to global shocks. In England, through our farming roadmap, we have set a new long-term direction for the sector—one that is more profitable, productive, sustainable and resilient, and that will be better able to withstand climate, market and geopolitical shocks. Through the roadmap, we have committed to maintaining domestic food production at least at current levels, and our commitment to farmers is backed by a record £11.8 billion for sustainable farming and food production over this Parliament. This year, £788 million in new funding has been committed to boost productivity, develop new technologies and maintain a healthy natural environment. Support includes £225 million for capital grants, £173 million for productivity and innovation, and £15 million for on-farm reservoirs to strengthen drought resilience.
On red tape and bureaucracy, I recognise farmers’ frustration with ever-increasing bureaucracy. Regulation is necessary to address risks, but compliance requirements can be a burden and slow growth. We are delivering actions through the Government’s regulation action plan to reduce these burdens on farmers and will take further action.
The pressures facing UK farming are real, and no responsible Government should dismiss them. I thank the hon. Member for Upper Bann for her insight into the issues raised in today’s debate. Our task is to stand alongside farmers, strengthen profitability and resilience, and to ensure that UK farming can continue to produce the food on which we all depend.
Question put and agreed to.
Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report: Government Response
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Government response to the Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report.
It is refreshing to see the Public Health Minister in this debate. If anybody will be empathetic on this topic it must be the right hon. Lady, as she has campaigned fearlessly on behalf of another group of victims: the victims of contaminated blood scandals. Although I do not want to overdo the comparison between the victims of contaminated blood and victims of vaccine damage, the responses of successive Governments to those tragedies have had a similar pattern: total denial of responsibility to start with, then recognition that people have suffered but not because of anything for which the Government were responsible, and then eventually conceding the cause and effect of the damage but still stalling on providing any effective redress.
It is that stalling on which I wish to concentrate. The Hallett inquiry made clear recommendations in April this year. Recommendation 5 stated:
“The UK government must reform the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme as soon as possible. The reform should include as a minimum: increasing the £120,000 payment, at least in line with inflation to date; subsequently applying annual increases in line with inflation; introducing multiple levels of payment, commensurate with the degree of injury suffered; and any transitional arrangements necessary to provide for fairness between applicants to the existing scheme and applicants to the revised scheme.”
The Government’s response, published earlier this month, is inadequate. That may be because the Minister has been in post for only three months; it may be because Government officials have not done the review work that for the last several years they have assured me and others that they were doing. We will hear from the Minister in due course. I hope she will be able to say that the Government agree to increase the £120,000 payment, that they will apply annual increases in line with inflation, that they will introduce multiple levels of payment, commensurate with the degree of injury, and so on.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Member for being stalwart in his campaign on this issue; it has been very well done. For too long a small minority of families who suffered severe adverse outcomes have been left stranded by administrative failures and the lack of fair support. Does the hon. Member agree that the promised reforms must be designed in direct collaboration with the vaccine-injured and their families, to ensure that they are treated with the dignity, speed and fairness that they deserve?
Sir Christopher Chope
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. It is fair to remind everybody that he participated in the first debate I had on this subject, on Friday 10 September 2021. That was the occasion on which I moved the Second Reading of a private Member’s Bill and, in so doing, drew attention to what were then 1,632 yellow card reports of deaths having taken place shortly after vaccination.
I also drew attention then to the public petition that had been put to Parliament, and the Government’s response. The petition called for improved support for those injured or bereaved through covid-19 vaccines. The Government response stated:
“Once more is known about the possible links between the vaccine and potential side effects, it will be considered whether a wider review of the VDPS is needed.”
Well, that was more than five years ago. We have now had that review, had the public inquiry and had the outcome, yet we have not had the Government’s acceptance of the clear recommendations to which I have already referred.
Back in September 2021, I requested that the then Secretary of State establish an independent review of disablement caused by covid-19 vaccines and the adequacy of the compensation awarded. I was not requesting a mammoth public inquiry, but only a short, judge-led inquiry into how we should most fairly compensate those who suffered adverse consequences. I also contrasted the Government’s pessimistic view with the World Health Organisation’s COVAX scheme, which, as the Minister will know, indemnifies claims for vaccine damage in third-world countries. We, the British taxpayers, pay for that, but we do not have an equivalent scheme in our own jurisdiction.
On 2 March 2022, I raised the specific subject of the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 in an Adjournment debate. In that debate, I referred to Kate Scott, whose husband, a fit 44-year-old software engineer, spent 124 days in hospital following a severe brain injury caused by the vaccine. Boris Johnson, the then Prime Minister, had written to Kate Scott and her family back in August 2021, stating:
“You’re not a statistic, and must not be ignored.”
He said that the Government would—I use the word again—consider Kate’s suggestions for reform of the scheme.
In concluding my speech on that occasion, I referred to what David Ennals, Labour’s Secretary of State for Social Services, had said back on 5 February 1979, when introducing the legislation. He said:
“For most people, vaccination is a beneficial procedure, and it is right for the community to give financial aid and support to those who suffer as the result of vaccinations given as part of the public policy programme.”—[Official Report, 5 February 1979; Vol. 962, c. 32.]
That was the rationale for the vaccine damage payment scheme, a scheme introduced by the then Labour Government in their dying days. I will not criticise them for having made that a priority at the end of their term of office.
In responding to my Adjournment debate in March 2022, the then Minister, Maria Caulfield, refused even to accept any causality. She said that there had been 920 claims by then, but:
“The work currently going on is establishing whether there is a causal link between the vaccine and the adverse events that people have been suffering.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2022; Vol. 709, c. 1151.]
Fast forward to today, and we see that we have the findings, to which I have already referred, and then the Government response:
“The government…accepts that there is a need for reform of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, and is committed to reviewing the scheme to ensure it is fit for purpose and delivered effectively.”
That implied that it was a review that would start after the inquiry had reported; however, when I and other people campaigning on behalf of the victims met the then Public Health Minister, the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), probably about a year ago, she told us that the Government were already reviewing the scheme. We asked her in what respect they were reviewing the scheme, but she said she could not say, although she conceded that they were reviewing it. It now seems as though the Government are starting afresh, saying they are
“committed to reviewing the scheme…we will work closely with the vaccine injured and their families as we consider how the scheme could be strengthened in the future.”
That is a long way from the specific, clear and strong recommendations made by Baroness Hallett. Let us think about what the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said to Kate Scott in in August 2021: he said he would review it. Has the review not already taken place? I assume it must have.
There is another issue here. We now know that, as of 30 June, 264 claims had been successful and 582 claims under the scheme had been rejected where causation had been established but the claimant did not meet the 60% disability threshold. On my calculation, that means that about £32 million has been paid out in compensation, yet in answer to a question I asked, which was answered on 3 September, I found out that over four years the costs of the staffing, the non-staffing, the medical assessment and payments to health care bodies is no less than £82 million. All that public money was spent on bureaucracy to try to block people who have suffered damage—in some cases, bereavement—as a result of doing the right thing and taking the vaccines. That is just unacceptable.
I hope that the Minister will include within her response an explanation of what the Government are going to do to simplify the scheme, stop blocking legitimate claims through technical measures, and ensure that instead of spending another £82 million over the next four years on bureaucracy, we actually use some of that money to compensate the people who have suffered as a result of the vaccine programme.
I can help the Minister because I anticipated this debate, in a sense, when we had the private Members’ Bill ballot. I put in a number of presentation Bills, one of which is the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (UK Covid-19 Inquiry) Bill. That is set for Second Reading on 15 January 2027, so it is ideally timed to be able to incorporate any recommendations that the Minister comes forward with in this debate. The long title of the Bill is:
“A Bill to require the Secretary of State to publish proposals for the implementation of Recommendation 5 of Module 4 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, relating to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme; and for connected purposes.”
The Bill represents a legislative opportunity for the Government, and I hope that they will take advantage of it.
In the meantime, during this Session, the Government have been blocking my Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill. It has already been published, and the explanatory notes to the Bill set out a number of suggested reforms, including looking at the benefits of having a system that does not cost the Government anything but would ensure that people got recompense. That would be done by introducing a scheme similar to that which covers motor insurance, for example—the Motor Insurers’ Bureau scheme or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme—where the industry pays for the costs of the compensation arising from problems with the way in which those schemes have operated. What could be more equitable than that?
Instead of doing that, both the previous Government and the current Government are indemnifying big pharma against any costs associated with vaccines that do not work properly, which is intolerable. My Bill has a number of recommendations and suggestions. I hope that the Minister will be able to engage with me on them, if not in this debate then privately afterwards.
Several hon. Members rose—
Graham Stuart (in the Chair)
Order. I will begin calling the Front Benchers at 5.08 pm, so if everybody is reasonably disciplined, each Back-Bench speaker can have four minutes.
Dr Beccy Cooper (Worthing West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for securing this important debate. He focused on one particular aspect of module 4 on vaccines and therapeutics: the recompense scheme. I would like to broaden the conversation slightly.
Alongside the learnings, the module contains a lot of positive narrative. As a public health consultant who worked during the pandemic, both here and with public health partners in other countries, I want to recognise the huge public value of the UK’s sustained investment in our NHS, public health and scientific research. Thanks to that investment, capabilities were in place prior to the pandemic that meant the UK was in a position to authorise and begin delivering effective covid-19 vaccines within a year of the first identified UK case. By September 2022, more than 150 million doses of the three principal vaccines had been administered in the UK, including the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed here in the UK thanks to years of scientific research. That research capacity is part of a wider global partnership that allows us to ensure that vaccine development can be undertaken swiftly and accurately, both during a pandemic and for other essential vaccinations, such as our flu response.
I want to mention the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa. It is a key partner, which identified the omicron variant during the pandemic, and it is now critical in identifying influenza strains for the development of our influenza vaccination programme every year. It would be good to hear from the Minister a little more about how we are continuing to build the international scientific partnership for vaccine development and pandemic preparedness, particularly in respect of the 100-day mission, where we aim to work with global partners to make safe, effective and affordable diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines available within just 100 days of identifying a future pandemic threat.
As well as the importance of ensuring that we have the capacity to develop vaccines swiftly and efficiently as part of a global response, the module highlighted the issue of equitable access to vaccines, and the role that existing health inequalities played in UK vaccination coverage. The inquiry identified familiar themes regarding the reasons for lower uptake of the vaccine in some communities and groups of people. As the inquiry rightly highlighted, vaccine inequality is not simply an issue of individual behaviour; it is also a reflection of how services are designed, how communities experience public institutions and whether the health system can meet people where they are in their daily lives. There is also the issue of public trust in the system that is administering the vaccines. It should be noted that that cannot simply be manufactured through a national communication campaign at the moment of crisis; it must be earned over time through reliable services, honest information and meaningful relationships with communities.
There is a useful distinction to be made between legitimate questions about vaccine safety and deliberate misinformation. We need to engage with this area proactively and positively, allow people to have their voices heard and ensure that all available facts and evidence are clearly communicated. Will the Minister please update us on how lessons learned from vaccine hesitancy and the health inequality patterns that were observed during the pandemic are now being used to inform our UK vaccination strategy, particularly in the light of worrying recent patterns in childhood vaccination for diseases such as measles and the dropping of the explicit World Health Organisation target of 95% coverage that was put in place to ensure population herd immunity?
Finally, I want to acknowledge my public health, clinical and care colleagues who contributed so much to the pandemic response, some of whom tragically gave their lives in order to care for other people. Directors of public health, local authorities, primary care and community organisations should remain a central part of the solution to ensuring vaccine equity. We must ensure that the lessons learned from the inquiry allow us to support their essential work, so that we can respond swiftly to the next pandemic.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stuart, not least because, in generously taking over from me, you allowed me to participate in the debate.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), not just for his skill in securing the debate but for his long campaigning on behalf of those who have been injured by covid vaccinations. Between he and I, we must have met and discussed the issue with almost every holder of the Minister’s job and the Secretary of State’s job over the past few years.
On reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme, the argument that I want to concentrate on is not about the wisdom or otherwise of mass vaccination. Quite remarkably in my judgment, many of those who were injured or lost loved ones in the mass vaccination process during the covid pandemic support the idea of mass vaccination, but they take the view, which we should all support, that it is only right that those who were doing what their Government asked them to do are properly compensated for any loss or damage that they have incurred.
People such as my constituent Kate Scott, whom my hon. Friend mentioned and the Minister has met, have maintained throughout that what is wrong with the vaccine damage payment scheme essentially comes down to two things: first, the amount of money available and the fact that it is an all-or-nothing amount; and secondly, the requirement for someone to have 60% disablement in order to take advantage of the scheme. It is fair to point out that when the scheme was developed, nobody ever claimed that it was designed to be the only compensation available, but, as I know the Minister appreciates, the reality is that it is extremely difficult to obtain compensation by any other route, including through the courts.
It therefore seems that vaccine damage payment scheme reform is about two things: fairness to the individuals affected and the effectiveness of Government policy. I know this will concern the Minister, as I hope it does the rest of the Government. It would be brave of any of us to claim that this sort of widespread pandemic event will never happen again. If it does, we will once again rely on the confidence of the British public to literally roll up their sleeves and assist in the process of combating whatever disease we face next. Their confidence in a mass vaccination programme will depend on whether they think people who have been injured in that process have been fairly treated. Thus far, they have not been, so if the Government want to be confident of the effectiveness of a future pandemic response, they need to deal effectively with the fall-out of the previous pandemic response.
Finally, let me simply make the point that my hon. Friend made: there is urgency to this. People who have been injured or bereaved do not just expect a fair response from the Government; they expect it soon. There is a mismatch between the urgency described in the report of Baroness Hallett and the approach that the Government have taken in their response. For example, with regard to the 60% threshold, Baroness Hallett said:
“This part of the scheme should be reformed as a matter of urgency”.
Let us compare and contrast that with the wording of the Government’s response. They accept that there is a “need for reform” of the scheme, which I welcome, and say that they are
“committed to reviewing the scheme to ensure it is fit for purpose”.
However, they then say that they
“will provide further details in due course”.
Those of us who have served in government know that that does not mean an urgent response. I know the Minister will recognise that this situation deserves just that.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on securing this debate.
One of the surprising things, given how many people died during the covid epidemic, as well as the cost of approximately £400 billion and the cost of the inquiry heading northwards to £1 billion, is how little debate there has been in Westminster Hall and on the Floor of the House. I want to use the opportunity of this debate on the fourth part of the inquiry not just to point out the lack of debate so far, but to use recommendation 1 to highlight a number of things.
Recommendation 1 and the Government’s response both draw attention to how the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies behaved during covid. The response says uncritically that it gave
“co-ordinated scientific and technical advice”.
Well, yes—to a point. But on 11 February 2020, SAGE had before it a report from Imperial College, based on Chinese statistics, showing a very strong relationship between age and mortality among people who caught covid. Basically, children were not at risk and people over 70 were at serious risk. SAGE did not discuss that at that meeting, even though the paper was there. Had it done so, it might well have come forward with different policies to keep children in school and to protect the most vulnerable people, rather than having a blanket policy that said, “Protect the NHS.” It is not our job to protect the NHS; it is the NHS’s job to protect us. Actually, I always read protecting the NHS as protecting the Government, because they were frightened of having people on trolleys in corridors. I think that was a mistake. The information was there and could have been used.
The heroine of this episode, mentioned in the report, is Kate Bingham, who ran the vaccine taskforce. Because of her expertise in both science and funding, she was primarily responsible for getting the vaccine out more quickly than anywhere else. Given that she was so successful in doing that, we should have listened to what she said when she spoke to the Science and Technology Committee, the Health Committee and the inquiry. She was excoriating about the Government’s response. She talked about institutional blockages and “warfare” between the Business Department and the Health Department. She did not recommend what the report proposes—a pharmaceutical expert advisory panel, which does not seem to have very many powers. She wanted to protect and develop our vaccine manufacturing ability and our science ability. What did we get? The sale of the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, and nothing else.
Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Restore Britain)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart.
The covid lockdowns were the darkest period in recent British history, bar none. Our freedoms were stripped away in ways most of us never imagined possible. Alongside all that came extraordinary pressure on millions of people to take the covid vaccine. There was pressure from politicians, employers, media institutions—everything, everywhere. For some, refusing meant losing their livelihood. They did it anyway.
We were told to trust the science, but science is not a commandment; it is a process of questioning, testing and challenging evidence. When a Government ask millions of healthy people to undergo an unproven medical intervention with unwanted consequences, scrutiny should increase.
Covid posed very different risks to different people. A vulnerable elderly person faced a very different calculation from a healthy 25-year-old. In fact, they could not have been more different. The 25-year-old was at no risk whatever—they were more likely to drown to death than have serious issues with covid—yet so much of the messaging treated vaccination as though it were the same decision for everyone. Why? Why were people asking questions treated with such hostility, and why were people who refused a medical intervention made to feel like social pariahs?
I am particularly concerned about children. For the overwhelming majority, the risk of severe covid illness was non-existent. It was a cold; there was no threat at all. Let us remember that the roll-out to teenagers was forced through against the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which originally declined to recommend a mass roll-out for younger teens.
The facts are quite clear. We do know that cases of myocarditis and pericarditis occurred following covid vaccinations, particularly among adolescent and young adult males. Millions of healthy young men and women should never have been forced to take that vaccination, and those responsible for that decision must be held accountable. Informed consent is the only way.
Then there was Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative Government’s Vaccines Minister at the time, who now speaks for Reform UK. He stated that children aged 12 to 15 could receive the covid vaccine even where their parents objected. A 12-year-old could take the vaccination against their parents’ wishes. Think about that—12 years old.
Then came vaccine passports, also forced through by Reform UK’s Zahawi. I found the entire concept morally repugnant. The state making access to ordinary parts of life dependent on someone disclosing their medical status was criminal. That is not how a free country should operate. I did not take the covid vaccine. I did not want it, need it or take it. That decision cost me money and affected my travel, and I lost some friends. It made my life considerably more difficult, but I do not regret it for one moment.
This debate cannot end with another speech about how badly things were handled. We all know that. There must be accountability. By law, the inquiry cannot decide whether anyone is liable for what went wrong. That responsibility now rests with Government, regulators and, where necessary, the courts. The inquiry itself recognised the heavy cost of lockdowns, even if it criticised how decisions were made. That is exactly why there must be a full, honest reckoning of their true costs and benefits, as well as of the treatment of care home residents.
Questions about pandemic censorship and conflicts of interest demand answers too. Who decided which questions the public were allowed to ask and who profited from the answers? Those are questions that any healthy democracy should ask. The Government have accepted that the reform is needed, but they have offered no timetable and no detail. Those who have been injured by those vaccines cannot be left waiting any longer. The scheme needs an overhaul. Nobody can be above the law.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. Some here will be aware of the tragic case in Bromsgrove of NHS pharmacist John Cross, who developed paralysing complications after receiving a covid injection. The effects began two weeks after the vaccine and John was then hospitalised for seven months. He worked hard on his recovery through private physio and, under medical advice, applied to the vaccine damage payment scheme, where he was deemed to be 55% disabled, therefore falling short of the 60% requirement for qualification. A few months later, John tragically took his own life.
Ater a gruelling five-year legal challenge by his family during a time when they should have been grieving the loss of their husband, father and grandfather, the decision was finally overturned. The Cross family is clear: the current vaccine compensation scheme is failing victims. The Government have repeatedly stated that they are evaluating options to reform the VDPS, yet no official timescale has been set for making a decision on any alterations or recommendations for a change. That is unacceptable. It leaves victims and their families trapped in a state of anxiety and uncertainty.
Will the Government publish a timescale for conducting their review of the vaccine damage payment scheme, and the changes that they intend to implement to ensure certainty for victims? Having received fewer than 800 applications in the decade before covid-19, it is clear that the VDPS needs to adapt to respond to the significant increase in applications from those affected by covid-19 vaccines. Since the covid-19 pandemic began, the number of claims made has risen significantly, with more than 24,000 claims relating to covid-19 alone, yet despite that stark rise, just over 1% have received the tax-free payment. John Cross was part of the forgotten 99% until his family fought for justice.
Do the Government believe that the 60% threshold is still appropriate, and is the binary yes or no process that awards a flat-rate payment for successful claims still fit for purpose? Has any consideration been given to the introduction of a tiered compensation framework that implements varying thresholds for payment amounts based on case-specific circumstances, such as the severity of the damage and long-term care requirements?
The Cross family is one tragic story among many. I stress that I am pro-vaccine, as are the Cross family, but there must be clear accountability for severe side effects that people have suffered. Those impacted must receive the help that they are owed, particularly after they followed Government advice. The Cross family have always been unequivocal that their fight has never been about money. No amount will bring John back. To them, it has always been about accountability, the ability to give others in similar situations hope, and the need to change a system that effectively told a man that he was not disabled enough. I am proud to support the Cross family, and I will continue to do that until they receive the justice that they deserve.
Graham Stuart (in the Chair)
Last but not least, Esther McVey, who I will have to limit to three minutes.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. In a democratic society, we should be able to rely on an inquiry to establish accurately what happened, what should happen, and how things should happen better in the future. I am incredibly concerned that this inquiry is failing to do that with sweeping assumptions that from the start the vaccines were to be used—the phrase used was “safe and effective”. The module 4 report states that
“It is neither proportionate nor practicable for the Inquiry to reach a view on the safety of particular vaccines”
but then goes on to declare, with the utmost assurance, that
“the steps taken by the UK government and regulatory bodies did not compromise the UK’s rigorous safety standards.”
How can they be sure when they have not reached a view on the safety of the vaccines?
Time is limited, so I would like to go to an issue that happened to a woman, a mother, in my constituency, who was given the Moderna covid-19 booster vaccine in a care home. Her family recently succeeded in their claim to the vaccine damages payment scheme. Their case described mass, serious adverse events among the other residents of their mother’s care home, and the death of a second resident also attributed to the side effects. The family have spent years painstakingly collating evidence and research that shows that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency not only failed in its statutory duties by not properly investigating the clear safety signal of multiple care home residents suffering a series of fatal reactions, but failed to be honest about the wholesale lack of safety evidence for using Moderna in the frail, elderly, care home cohort, either as a main dose or as a booster.
Some 70% of the elderly in our care homes have dementia and over half of residents are frail, yet,
“Frail subjects with unstable health conditions and co-morbidities…including chronic neurological disease”
were identified as “missing information” in Moderna’s own risk management plan. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery, I have written to the MHRA twice, but have not yet heard from the agency. Will the Minister take the time to meet me and the family to discuss why we have not had a response?
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart, and I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for securing this debate.
Today we must remember all the loved ones who were taken from us by covid, and all those who suffered so terribly during the pandemic and the lockdowns. It is for that reason that during the pandemic I proposed a covid memorial wood in my Wokingham constituency, where people could go to remember their loved ones. I am delighted that a wood of nearly 8,000 trees has been planted.
Those who suffered deserve not only our sympathy but our determination to learn every lesson from this tragic chapter in our country’s history. Time and again, the inquiry has confirmed the failure of the last Conservative Government. The Conservatives left our country vulnerable and unprepared. The British public will never forgive them for partying while communities were engulfed by grief, fear and isolation. Never can such a tragedy be repeated. We must learn the lessons from the inquiry and ensure we never return to a politics that ignores expertise and evidence. We cannot afford political leaders like those in Reform who would cut back vaccines, trash medical science and spread disinformation. Every party leader should commit to implementing the inquiry’s recommendations and to supporting the vaccines that helped to end lockdowns and save lives.
While today’s debate concerns module 4 on vaccines and therapeutics, I want to briefly touch on module 6, which examined the pandemic’s impact on adult social care. That report confirmed what bereaved families have long known: the last Conservative Government failed to prepare the county, and its failures on social care and years of neglect left the sector exposed, creating the conditions that allowed this horror to unfold. That is why the Liberal Democrats supported the bereaved families’ call for the former Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be stripped of his place on the Privy Council.
Graham Stuart (in the Chair)
Order. Could we concentrate on the covid-19 inquiry module 4 report?
Clive Jones
Returning to module 4, the inquiry highlighted one of the genuine successes of the pandemic response: the vaccine roll-out. The roll-out was, in the inquiry’s words, “an extraordinary feat”. The success belongs to our scientists, NHS staff, community pharmacists and volunteers who delivered around 132 million jabs in 2021 alone and created the largest vaccine programme in British history. The vaccine saved almost 475,000 lives in England and Scotland. We should never forget that and we must never allow anyone to rewrite history.
Yet the inquiry was equally clear that trust in vaccines must be rebuilt. Childhood vaccination rates have been falling for years, leaving more people vulnerable to preventable disease and increasing pressure on our health service. We must listen to our scientists, not to conspiracy theorists. Nigel Farage and Reform are amplifying the dangerous anti-vaccine rhetoric associated with Donald Trump.
Graham Stuart (in the Chair)
Order. Could you please refer to Members of Parliament by their seat? You have been here quite some time, so you should probably know that.
Clive Jones
Apologies, Mr Stuart. We cannot allow Trump’s America to become Farage’s Britain. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a strategy to combat anti-vaccine and medical disinformation, alongside a new drive to deliver record vaccination rates. Vaccines should be brought closer to communities through trusted local venues, including church halls and community centres.
The best way to honour the people we lost is to learn the lessons from the inquiry, defend science, rebuild trust in vaccinations and ensure that when the next crisis comes, Britain is not so unprepared.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on securing this debate. He has pressed this issue for many years under Conservative and Labour Governments and he deserves credit for his persistence.
I want to begin where the inquiry did: with success. Baroness Hallett described the UK’s vaccine development as one of the success stories of the pandemic, and I am proud of the leading role that the Conservative Government played in that. They backed vaccines early and, at risk, set up the vaccine taskforce under Kate Bingham. On 2 December 2020, the UK became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer vaccine. In 2021, some 132 million doses were given—the largest vaccination programme in our history. The credit belongs to the scientists, the NHS workers, the pharmacists, the 360,000 volunteers who signed up for trials and the public.
The inquiry’s report is not only a story of success, though. Its five recommendations set out what must be done better, and the Government’s response, published on 16 October, needs scrutiny. The Government agreed with recommendation 4, which is about having faster access to health data so that the MHRA can monitor vaccine safety, but say they will need “significant investment over time”. There is no timeline or funding promise.
Reports to the yellow card scheme rose by 75% between 2020 and 2022, which shows that people are willing to report. The system must be able to act on what they tell it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, recommendation 5 is where the response is weakest. The inquiry said the Government
“must reform the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme as soon as possible.”
It set out a minimum of four reforms: raise the £120,000 payment, at least in line with inflation, and uprate it annually; introduce multiple levels of payment, according to the degree of injury; and provide fair transitional arrangements.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) said, the Government’s response gives no date, no figure and no commitment to any of those recommendations. Meanwhile the cost of administering the scheme rose from £8.9 million in 2022-23 to £29.2 million in 2025-26. It cost around £83 million across four years. By my reckoning, awards over the same period came to about £31 million. A scheme that spends more than twice as much on administration as on compensation is not working for taxpayers or the claimants.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) ordered a review of the scheme before the last election, and I wish it had concluded sooner. But this Government have now had more than two years. I concede that on this occasion, the Government kept their word and responded within six months, but a response delivered on time is not the same as a response that commits to anything and, as I say, there is still no timetable. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) so eloquently put it, vaccine confidence matters. The best way to protect it is to show that when something goes wrong, the state stands behind the person. The vaccine programme was a success. Let us make sure that the system built around it is worthy of that success.
I have a number of questions to ask the Minister. First, will the Government set out a timetable for their review of the vaccine damage payment scheme and the reforms they intend to make? Secondly, which of the inquiry’s four minimum reforms will the Government commit to? Thirdly, will they look again at the 60% threshold, set performance targets for processing claims and bring administration costs under control? Fourthly, will they strengthen the yellow card scheme with funding commitments and a date for the health data framework? Fifthly, will the Minister meet with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), who has been seeking a meeting for a long time? Finally, will the Minister bring forward proposals before Second Reading of the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, which, as he mentioned, is scheduled on 15 January? My hon. Friend and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
The Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety (Dame Diana Johnson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Stuart, as you are my constituency neighbour in East Yorkshire. I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for securing this debate, and I pay tribute to him for his work on the APPG on pandemic response and recovery and all his campaigning work over so many years. It was interesting that he referenced his first speech on this topic in 2021—persistence is certainly one of his qualities. I am always willing to meet hon. and right hon. Members.
This has been a very good debate on an important topic. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), who speaks with great authority as a public health consultant, set out some of the good work that happened during the pandemic as well as the international perspective that we need to be mindful of. The right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) is a doughty campaigner on behalf of his constituent Kate Scott. He made an eloquent speech—as he always does—and I agree with him about the issue of timeliness.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) took us back to some of the key decisions that were made during the pandemic. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), who delivered a speech that I sadly felt was anti-vaccination, did not recognise the public health benefits of vaccinations. The hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) spoke very movingly about John Cross and his family, as well as the fight that they had and the need for reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme. I will meet the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) as soon as possible, as well as the family she spoke of.
During the pandemic, Members on my side of the House did our best to offer constructive opposition to the previous Government, and this Government are committed to learning every lesson from the covid inquiry. We are extremely grateful to the noble Baroness Hallett and her team for the thoughtful and thorough advice they have offered us so far. At the end of next week, we will mark 80 years since the National Health Service Act 1946, which paved the way for the introduction of the NHS two years later, became law. That will be a chance for us to remember and pay tribute to all those who served the public with such courage and professionalism during the pandemic, not least our social care workers, whose contribution has been overlooked for too long.
Turning to module 4, we are also grateful to the small army of researchers, clinicians and regulators who worked around the clock to ensure that vaccines were deployed at speed, having gone through the rigorous safeguards of a clinical trial. But while it recognised the success of the vaccine programme, the module 4 report also sets out a series of recommendations and areas for improvement. For example, future vaccination and therapeutics programmes must—of course—have people’s trust, be guided by the best available evidence and remain available to all who need them. The inquiry also notes that safety monitoring must continue to evolve, with improvements to health data infrastructure. The Government published our response to those recommendations earlier this month.
We are taking action across the board to improve vaccination uptake, pandemic preparedness and the strength of UK life sciences, especially through our pandemic preparedness strategy. If the last pandemic taught us anything, it was that UK life sciences not only are vital for UK growth but play a central and strategic role in how we respond to health threats. We propose to establish an advisory group with our partners in industry, building resilience across our supply chains.
Vaccination uptake is not where it needs to be, especially for children. That is why we need stronger engagement with communities, particularly those communities where uptake is lower than average. As the Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety, I am especially concerned by the re-emergence of measles and other diseases that we thought had been banished when I was a girl. I want to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West on targets. We still have the World Health Organisation target of 95% coverage.
I am determined to ensure that the protection that vaccines afford remains available to the many, not the few. I have also been clear that there must be strong collaboration across our United Kingdom, because diseases do not stop at Offa’s Dyke or Hadrian’s Wall. We are strengthening the way we monitor outbreaks, while improving access to linked healthcare data across all four nations.
I now turn specifically to recommendation 5 of module 4 and the vaccine damage payment scheme. This is an important financial support for anyone who has become severely disabled following a vaccination. Fifty-three million people followed the example of Her late Majesty the Queen and took the jab to protect themselves, their loved ones and their communities. This country has a global reputation for an uncompromising approach to safety, and vaccines are authorised only once they have met robust standards of effectiveness, safety and quality. However, in rare and devastating circumstances, some people have gone through the nightmare of losing a loved one or suffered severe adverse outcomes following vaccination. Those people did as they were asked, in good faith, and through no fault of their own they have become disabled or worse. We can never turn a blind eye to the tragic instances in which things go wrong, and we must continue to be honest with the wider public that no vaccine is completely free of risk.
This afternoon, I have listened very carefully to the concerns raised about the current scheme, the support available to those affected, the experiences of those who have made claims and the time that it has taken to respond to these concerns. People who experience severe outcomes deserve appropriate support. This is not just about the welfare of those families, important though that is. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, it is about public trust in our wider vaccine programme, because people must be confident, when stepping into the clinic, that the state will be there for them if things go wrong.
The hon. Member for Christchurch asked me when we started to review the VDPS. I want to be very clear on this, because I know that previous Ministers have stood up and given answers on it. The Department has been considering options for reform and will now initiate a period of open engagement with those affected. We are going beyond the case for reform and turning now to the detail that must underpin any reforms.
The hon. Member for Bromsgrove and a number of other Members have asked me whether the Government accept that the 60% disability threshold is too high and whether we will consider changing it. The Government understand the concerns raised about the 60% disability threshold by the inquiry. The inquiry’s recommendations will be central to our ongoing work as the Government consider a range of options for potential reform, including introducing multiple levels of payment. Last week, I met injured people and bereaved families. I understand their frustrations about how long this is taking when successive Governments have kicked the can down the road.
Sir Jeremy Wright
On the Minister’s point about whether graded payments might be available under the scheme, will she be clear that she is considering linking that to the disablement requirement? Of course, an outcome we would not want is a simple reduction of the £120,000 for those who are 60% disabled or more. We are interested in perhaps giving some money to those who are below the 60% threshold; will she confirm that is what she is thinking about?
Dame Diana Johnson
Yes, I am happy to say that that is what I am thinking about because of the unfairness of that 60% barrier. I am certainly looking at that. It will be considered. I am not saying exactly what will be decided, but that is certainly an option that I have asked officials to look at.
I note that the scheme has not been reformed since I was a member of the Labour Government in 2007. Of course the scheme must be made fit for the future; I think we can all agree on that. That is why Ministers will again meet with families of the injured and bereaved families before the end of the year. In the coming weeks, before Christmas, my officials will meet with advisers put forward by the families of the injured and bereaved families to listen to their views on possible options for reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme. From now until spring, officials will meet and engage with our key partners, including those injured and bereaved, to discuss the reforms. I look forward to updating colleagues in the spring.
Esther McVey
My specific concern is about the MHRA, which is meant to highlight and give out warnings on what is going on. The MHRA has failed throughout this situation; when we meet, can we also discuss its failings?
Dame Diana Johnson
Yes, I am happy to meet with the right hon. Lady and to discuss all the points that she wishes to raise.
Nearly everyone in our country remembers when they walked into their local clinic or pharmacy, or even into their church hall, school sports hall or village hall, to get their jab. We remember with pride how a country rallied together as part of a national effort to save lives. For most of us the vaccine was a welcome relief, offering additional freedoms and safety, but for some families it brought devastating loss and hardship. As the new Minister responsible for this policy I am committed to working closely with those families, who I met just last week, and I want progress made quickly. We will report any interim progress through the UK covid-19 inquiry implementation updates.
The public have a right to know that we are learning from past mistakes and as the Minister for Public Health I will never take the public’s trust for granted. The Government’s response to module 4 will not be some exercise in box-ticking or window-dressing because we know that, when it comes to preparing for future public health emergencies, readiness is all and we need the trust of our communities.
Sir Christopher Chope
I am grateful to the Minister for that response and grateful to everybody who has participated in the debate. Nobody can doubt the sincerity of what the Minister said. I hope that she will talk not just to the families but to parliamentarians because this issue affects lots of our constituents. A headline in The Daily Telegraph states: “Paralysed vaccine victim ‘not ill enough for payout’”. That is an example of the issues. That particular victim worked for the NHS as a nurse.
We need action. The tone of what the Minister said seems more like a placebo. Placebos have their place in healthcare but we need to go further. She talks about the spring; we are still in the autumn. Why can we not get some action now? All the time the Government knew what was going on at the inquiry. The victims gave evidence to the inquiry. The inquiry made its recommendations. Why can the Government not accept the four parts of recommendation 5? I do not understand that, and I am not satisfied in that respect. I shall continue to campaign on this issue—I hope not for another five years.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Government response to the Covid-19 Inquiry Module 4 Report.
Written Statements
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Cost of Living
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (John Healey)
Millions of families and working people across the country will benefit from five everyday fixes, which will support people who rely on their cars for work, extend help to new parents and fix an unfair cliff edge that can penalise unpaid carers for earning more. These changes will help with the cost of food, fuel and family life, providing breathing space for households. The Government are announcing changes to:
Go further to support employees and self-employed people who use their own vehicle for work by increasing tax free mileage rates. Approved mileage allowance payments allow employers to reimburse employees tax-free for business mileage in their own private vehicles, and the same rates are used by self-employed drivers to claim tax relief through simplified motoring expenses and payments made within the approved rates can be disregarded for class 1 national insurance purposes. In May the Government increased the tax-free mileage rate for the first 10,000 business miles for the first time in 15 years, from 45p to 55p per mile for 2026-27. The Government are today announcing that we will make that increase permanent and, to support those who drive the furthest for work, we are also increasing the rate above 10,000 miles from 25p to 35p per mile. Around 3 million people are expected to benefit, with someone driving 6,000 business miles receiving up to £120 a year in additional tax savings, and someone driving 15,000 business miles receiving up to £300 in additional tax savings.
Extend parental pay to eligible self-employed fathers, partners and adopters in Great Britain from April 2029. Those who are recently employed or unemployed, or with a broken or irregular pattern of employment will also benefit, provided that they have sufficient work and earnings history. This new parental allowance is expected to benefit over 150,000 parents each year. Detailed eligibility criteria will be confirmed in due course.
End the cliff edge within carer’s allowance, which sees carers lose £86.45 per week for a 1p increase in earnings above the weekly limit. Instead, earnings above the weekly earnings limit will be subject to a 100% taper, where support is reduced by only £1 for each £1 increase in earnings. This means carers are no longer left financially worse off for working additional hours or receiving a pay rise. The taper will begin within 2030-31 once the Department for Work and Pensions has developed a new IT system to implement the taper.
Suspend import tariffs on over 100 food products, fertilisers and kerosene heating oil to help reduce costs for households and businesses. Lower tariffs on food products are expected to deliver consumer savings worth around £120 million to £185 million per year. The Government are also extending existing business suspensions that are due to expire in 2026 and 2027, enabling domestic businesses across many sectors to continue to benefit from lower import costs. A new application window will be open from 11 November to 3 February, giving businesses the opportunity to submit views on further extensions and apply for new tariff suspensions.
Roll out hundreds more post office drop boxes, bringing the total to 1,000, making it easier and more convenient for people to send and return parcels without having to queue at a post office counter, helping to take some of the hassle out of everyday errands in the run-up to Christmas. This comes alongside upgrades to 600 post office branches by the end of the financial year, improving services for customers across the country.
[HCWS421]
Energy Infrastructure Planning: Keadby Next Generation Power Station Project
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)
This statement concerns an application for development consent made under the Planning Act 2008 by Keadby Next Generation Ltd for the construction, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning of a high-efficiency electricity generating station with a net capacity of up to 910 MW. The proposed power station would be capable of being sourced by both hydrogen and natural gas. The proposed development lies within England and is within the administrative boundary of North Lincolnshire council.
Under section 107(1) of the Planning Act 2008, the Secretary of State must make a decision on an application within three months of the receipt of the examining authority’s report unless exercising the power under section 107(3) of the Act to set a new deadline. Where a new deadline is set, the Secretary of State must make a statement to Parliament to announce it.
The statutory deadline for the decision on the Keadby Next Generation power station project was 6 November 2026.
I have decided to allow an extension and to set a new deadline of 16 December 2026. This is to allow time to assess new information that was not provided for consideration during the examination period and to give all interested parties the opportunity to review and comment on such information. While it is not my preference to extend, I am clear that applications for consent for energy projects submitted under the Planning Act 2008 must meet the necessary standards.
The decision to set the new deadline for this application is without prejudice to the decision on whether to grant or refuse development consent.
[HCWS423]
Antisemitism and Other Forms of Racism in the NHS: Review
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
When Lord Mann’s review of antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS was published in June this year, the Department of Health and Social Care committed to provide an initial update to Parliament in October on the progress made against his recommendations, followed by a detailed report within 12 months of publication. Today’s update to the House discharges the first of those commitments.
As we said in June, there is no place for antisemitism or any other form of racism in the NHS. The NHS was built on the premise of universal access to healthcare regardless of background, and it is therefore wholly unacceptable that anyone using that service, or any member of the dedicated workforce that provides it, should face discrimination, intimidation or abuse based on their race, religion, or ethnicity. The Government therefore welcomed Lord Mann’s important review, we accepted every one of his recommendations for DHSC and NHS England, and today we reiterate our commitment to implement each of those recommendations, and report on the progress already made in key areas.
In respect of Lord Mann’s recommendations in the area of openness, accountability and the restoration of confidence, a suite of NHS staff standards was published in July, including a standard setting out minimum expectations for employers to take sustained and meaningful action to prevent and root out racism in the NHS. The NHS leadership and management framework was also published in July 2026, setting consistent expectations on behaviours across all levels of NHS management.
In respect of Lord Mann’s recommendations on definitions, reporting and investigation of racist incidents, NHS England is delivering training for HR colleagues leading investigations into allegations of racism, and working to open up access to training to regulated health and care staff working outside of NHS settings. In addition, a large number of NHS trusts have now adopted both the IHRA definition of antisemitism and the Government definition of anti-Muslim hostility, but we recognise that significant progress is still required to see those definitions comprehensively adopted across the NHS as a whole.
In respect of Lord Mann’s recommendations on wider governance, regulation and oversight, the Professional Standards Authority is progressing work to develop new guidance for regulators on good practice in equality, diversity, and inclusion. The PSA will convene fitness to practise leaders from across the regulators on 24 November to examine current approaches, identify any opportunities for greater consistency and inform further guidance and/or shared action. The PSA is also co-ordinating updates from regulators and will formally report progress to the Health and Social Care Committee in December. NHS Employers has worked closely with regulators and NHS organisations to understand how existing materials and support relating to regulatory referrals are used, and where visibility of existing guidance can be improved. They will take forward further work to deliver on these findings by March 2027. The Secretary of State will also be holding a roundtable with the UK health systems and professional regulators in the coming weeks to discuss their ongoing work to tackle racism.
In respect of Lord Mann’s recommendations on protection and support for staff, NHS England will publish national safe working practices guidance and a violence prevention and reduction reporting framework in early 2027, supported by a national campaign to raise awareness of violence against NHS staff, promoting a culture of prevention and support across the NHS. On Lord Mann’s specific concern about the maintenance of a Jewish staff network within the DHSC and NHS England following the creation of the new Department, existing groups are being brought together bi-monthly as part of engagement activity on the transformation programme, and we are clear that those networking arrangements will continue after the merger.
In respect of Lord Mann’s recommendations on education, training and development, a new NHS training module on equality, diversity and human rights is being finalised for delivery across the NHS over the coming months. The training includes content on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility, alongside guidance on challenging prejudice and discrimination. NHS senior leaders will be invited to take part in further anti-racism training by the end of March 2027, developed by the NHS race and health observatory. In addition to the £1 million of Government funding provided for antisemitism training for university and student union staff, the Medical Schools Council has undertaken specific antisemitism awareness training and is drafting anti-racism guidance for the medical schools. Lord Mann will be meeting with the heads of the medical schools in December to discuss their progress in this area.
In respect of Lord Mann’s specific recommendations concerning the Care Quality Commission, the CQC has now strengthened its assessment of equality, diversity and inclusion through alignment with NHS workforce standards, the continued use of specialist EDI advisors, and enhanced learning for regulatory staff on anti-racism, antisemitism and the handling of racist incidents. It is also working with fellow health and care regulators to improve information sharing, support implementation of the joint regulators’ principles on advancing workforce race equity, and to promote consistent approaches to addressing discrimination and racist incidents across the sector.
There are other recommendations from Lord Mann’s report that we said in June would require further work prior to implementation, and that work remains in progress.
In particular, a supplier has now been appointed to lead the public consultation and engagement on the unified information standard on protected characteristics, and a public consultation is due to commence in early 2027 seeking views on equality monitoring, including on Lord Mann’s recommendation to include Jewish and Sikh as ethnicities in NHS data collection. Work is also ongoing to consider how to provide clearer guidance regarding the issues raised by Lord Mann on staff uniforms. New national guidance will be published in due course, and all trusts will be asked to review their current policies. In the interim, we have clarified guidance on the use of the NHS identity in “personal” social media accounts. Finally, a public consultation will be launched in the coming months, seeking stakeholder views on potential reforms to the General Medical Council’s regulatory framework, arising from Lord Mann’s recommendations regarding their decision-making and appeals processes.
In these and other areas, there is still a need for extensive further work to implement all of Lord Mann’s recommendations in full, and to produce the transformation in attitudes and action in respect of antisemitism and other forms of racism that his review was designed to achieve. That work remains a high priority both for the Government and for the NHS, and a comprehensive report on our progress against those objectives and recommendations will be provided to the House in June 2027.
[HCWS424]
Henry Nowak Independent Review
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Shabana Mahmood)
On 3 December 2025, Henry Nowak’s life was cut short in a horrific and senseless act of violence. My thoughts remain with his family and friends, and all those whom this dreadful incident has affected.
In response to the wide-ranging issues arising from this case, I have appointed the right hon. Alex Chalk KC to undertake an independent review of the circumstances surrounding Henry’s murder and the Nowak family’s subsequent experience of the criminal justice system.
The Henry Nowak independent review terms of reference are attached and have been published on gov.uk, which can be found here:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2026-10-27/HCWS422/
[HCWS422]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent
That the Grand Committee do consider the Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2026.
Relevant document: 13th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, first, I apologise that you have the B team, as I think we are referring to ourselves today. My noble friend Lady Twycross has unfortunately been taken ill and I am sure that, on behalf of the Committee, we will be sending her our best wishes.
Telecommunications networks and services underpin the modern economy and society of the UK, enabling businesses in every sector of the economy to function and grow, and ensuring that individuals everywhere are connected and digitally included. These networks support critical national infrastructure and services that people and public bodies rely on every day, including calls to emergency services, ambulance and hospital communications, and medical alarms. The Government have committed to ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality, secure and resilient digital connectivity. A sudden disruption to connectivity services would have a serious impact on individuals and businesses across the country that depend on reliable telecommunications networks.
On Monday 5 October, BT Group plc announced that it had acquired TalkTalk Telecom Group out of administration. As has been widely reported, it had been seeking a buyer for its consumer and wholesale businesses for some time, but no deal was reached. Given the possibility that the disconnection of TalkTalk’s customers could put lives at risk and disrupt the continuity of the supply of telecommunications, on 5 October the Secretary of State issued a public interest intervention notice under the Enterprise Act 2002. Under that Act, the Secretary of State may issue a public interest intervention notice where they believe that one or more of the public interest considerations specified in Section 58 of the Act may be relevant. It also allows for the Secretary of State to specify a public interest consideration that is not specified, but in their opinion ought to be. Where a new public interest consideration is specified, the Secretary of State is required to seek to have that consideration specified in Section 58 of the Act as soon as practicable.
The considerations that the Secretary of State specified in the public interest intervention notice of 5 October were: the need to maintain in the UK the capability to combat and mitigate the effect of public health emergencies; and the need to maintain in the UK the continuity of the supply of telecommunications services for the purposes of preventing disruption to the economy and society of the United Kingdom, including in particular disruption to public services, critical national infrastructure and the supply to customers who are or may be vulnerable.
The first of these, relating to public health emergencies, is already specified in Section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002, while the second, relating to the need to maintain the continuity of the supply of telecommunications services, is a new consideration which the Secretary of State believes ought to be specified in the Act. Introducing this new consideration will allow the Secretary of State to have regard to a broader range of considerations and impacts that may arise within the specific context of a qualifying merger, where there are concerns about widespread and/or significant disruptions to telecommunications services. This would include considerations around maintaining critical national infrastructure connections and the impacts on society and the economy of widespread or significant prolonged connectivity disruption. Such disruption could affect businesses, employment and government services. Critically, this enables the Secretary of State to consider the impact on vulnerable people such as those who rely on telecare services, people with disabilities and health conditions, older people and people dependent on communications services to access emergency assistance.
This kind of intervention is not unprecedented. New public interest considerations have been specified in this manner before to address urgent matters—for example, the public interest consideration in maintaining the stability of the UK financial system was introduced for the Lloyds TSB Group plc/HBOS plc merger in 2008.
We believe it is important that the legislative framework is now updated to reflect the importance of telecommunications in our society and to guard against the serious consequences that widespread disruption of connectivity could have. The Secretary of State’s intervention in the BT/TalkTalk merger is driven by serious concerns that there could be sudden disruption to vital broadband and phone services affecting millions of people. The Government have a responsibility to protect the public where essential services could be put at risk. That is why the Secretary of State is intervening to ensure that wider risks to the public are properly considered alongside competition concerns.
The Competition and Markets Authority has reported to the Secretary of State with an assessment of competition considerations and a summary of representations received on public interest considerations; this was provided on 19 October. The Secretary of State will consider the Competition and Markets Authority’s report alongside wider evidence of the public interest considerations. Only then will the Secretary of State decide whether to refer the case for a more detailed investigation on competition or public interest grounds or both, or to clear the transaction without any further investigation. The Government are committed to promoting competition in the broadband market and our statement of strategic priorities highlights the importance of this. The UK has a strong pro-competition regulatory framework environment that has supported significant commercial investment in fibre broadband across the UK.
The order does not determine the outcome of the merger process. It will, however, serve to allow the Secretary of State to consider the potential impact of significant disruptions to telecommunications services on public services and wider society, alongside the public health emergencies consideration, also mentioned in the intervention notice, and any competition issues. I hope that noble Lords will agree with the rationale I have presented on the need for the legislative framework to be updated so that these important considerations can be accounted for going forward. I beg to move.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, not least for stepping in and giving us the opportunity to hear such a clear exposition of the purpose of the order that we are debating this afternoon. Of course, the order adds continuity of telecommunications services to the public interest considerations specified under the Enterprise Act 2002. If these things are a minority sport, I am sorry to say that I have been playing it a long time, as I was on the Standing Committee on the Enterprise Bill in 2002 and was also around when, under the Communications Act, we put the news media and others into the specified considerations. I also probably participated in debates in 2020 putting public health into the specified considerations.
This is a short debate with a limited number of participants, but it is quite an important debate. In the past, adding specified considerations has always been regarded as a significant step that we should consider very carefully. This order, which puts this issue into the specified considerations for when the public interest intervention notice can be issued, is a recognition of the importance of the objective. Things such emergency calls, hospital communications, medical alarms and the activities of businesses dependent on reliable connectivity are all important and we must protect those services. Indeed, the particular point of this is to protect vulnerable customers.
However, the order also extends ministerial discretion within merger control. We should therefore examine how that discretion will be exercised, how competition will be preserved or promoted, and whether another framework for company failure could reduce the need to rely on it. The immediate context is BT’s acquisition of TalkTalk’s consumer and wholesale businesses. Ofcom has explained that failure could affect vulnerable customers served indirectly through resellers as well as people whose telephone numbers have been transferred from TalkTalk to other providers but whose services still depend on its network. Those are serious risks. Nevertheless, customers also have a lasting interest in effective competition, choice, fair prices, innovation and investment. The acquisition of a competitor by a dominant operator requires proper examination, even where the circumstances demand urgency.
I am not asking the Minister to prejudge the Competition and Markets Authority’s conclusions. Indeed, we do not know what its conclusions are. The letter was delivered in the afternoon of 19 October and the conclusions have not yet been published. I am however asking for assurance that the public interest consideration will supplement rigorous competition scrutiny and will not become a reason to dispense with it.
Under this framework, the Secretary of State determines the overall public interest outcome. Following a detailed investigation, she must accept the CMA’s finding on whether there is an anti-competitive outcome, but she may weigh that against the specified public interest considerations. The choice of remedies, therefore, involves ministerial judgment.
That distinction matters. A conclusion that an acquisition is necessary to preserve services does not establish that every competition remedy would threaten continuity. A remedy protecting wholesale access or competing providers may be entirely compatible with uninterrupted service. Any decision to reject, weaken or defer a recommended pro-competition remedy should, therefore, be specifically justified.
That brings me to the alternative approach to which I referred. On 17 March this year, during Ofcom’s analyst and investor call, Natalie Black, who is Ofcom’s group director for infrastructure and connectivity, stated:
“We don’t have a special administration regime in the UK”.
She described arrangements for protecting consumers in co-operation with the department, but she identified no statutory telecoms special administration regime.
Water legislation provides an instructive comparison. It expressly provides for continuity following a licensed supplier’s exit and allows Ofwat to direct eligible replacement suppliers to take responsibility. The eligibility requirements qualify that power, but the mechanism exists. The telecommunications industry has arrangements that it describes as the “supplier of last resort”. The published process relies on best efforts by upstream providers, envisages eventual disconnection and would be superseded by an administration. It does not, therefore, provide statutory customer allocation, as in the water industry case.
So, should we consider a framework that allows Ofcom to seek a court-appointed special administrator to maintain essential networks while a business is restructured or transferred, alongside arrangements for replacement suppliers to take responsibility for customers? Such a framework would not necessarily remove every need for this public interest consideration, but it could reduce the need to invoke continuity as a justification for accepting what might potentially be lasting competition harm. A statutory special administration regime could, therefore, address both problems by maintaining essential services during failure and ensuring that customers could be transferred in an orderly manner if the business could not be saved.
Such a regime would require legislation, appropriate funding arrangements and design. However, in the first instance, the Government could establish which elements Ofcom could introduce under its existing powers and which additional powers would then be required from Parliament. The choice should not be presented as one between continuity and competition; a properly designed failure regime could protect both. It could keep essential services operating, give regulators time to identify alternative purchases, enable orderly customer transfers and ensure that competition remedies were properly tested before any acquisition was approved.
I ask the Minister to respond on four points. First, can she confirm that the Government will treat effective Competition and Markets Authority competition remedies as a priority objective, and depart from them only where the Secretary of State publishes a clear explanation of both the continuity risk and why a pro-competitive option would not suffice?
Secondly, will she ensure that the CMA’s report on the BT and TalkTalk transaction is made available to Parliament promptly, subject to the necessary confidentiality protections? I would have liked to have seen it and read it, together with the Government’s response and the reasons for any decision affecting competition, before this debate, but, clearly, that has not happened.
Thirdly, can the Minister commit to requiring that any undertakings accepted in the public interest contain precise obligations, independent monitoring and meaningful consequences for breaches—including protections for wholesale customers, resellers and competing providers, where necessary?
Fourthly, I ask the Minister to review with Ofcom the case for a telecommunications special administration regime, including statutory customer allocation arrangements, and to publish the conclusions from such a review with a timetable for deciding whether legislation is required.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to speak in the same debate as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who has been his normal comprehensive self. I will touch on many similar themes, with one or two additional ones. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, for introducing this order, and I think we all hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, quickly recovers and is back in her place.
From these Benches—or chairs—we accept that the Government faced a real emergency at the start of this month and that they had to act quickly. The facts are stark. TalkTalk had about 2.5 million customers after a long and unsuccessful sale process, and it was on the brink of liquidation. Around 250,000 of those customers are vulnerable, and many rely on telecare alarms and monitoring devices that need a working connection. TalkTalk’s network also carries traffic for schools, hospitals, emergency care and businesses across our critical national infrastructure. A sudden and disorderly collapse was not an option for any responsible Government to contemplate—I will come back to that issue shortly.
Therefore, of course we do not oppose this order. In our view, adding the continuity of supply of telecommunications services to the public interest considerations in Section 58 follows a sensible line. Financial stability was added, as we have heard, during the 2008 crisis, and public health emergencies during the pandemic. Telecoms are now as essential to our economy and our society as either of these—and, indeed, one might ask why it took a crisis to get this on to the list.
However, supporting the principle does not mean that waving the order through without scrutiny is a good idea. I will raise four sets of concerns, some of which touch on what we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, but the first does not, and that is process. This order was made at 4.07 pm on 12 October, laid an hour later and came into force the next day. The public interest intervention notice was issued on 5 October, a week before the order existed, and already relied on this proposed new ground. In other words, the Government issued a notice on a public interest consideration that was not yet law and then made the law to match the notice. That was highlighted by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and should be noted by this Committee.
I understand why the Government acted at speed, but Parliament is now being asked to approve, after the event, a power that was already shaping a live merger case. Can the Minister confirm what legal advice the Government took on issuing a notice that cited a ground not yet on the statute book? Will the Minister accept that this way of legislating should be the rare exception—perhaps a unique exception, I suggest—and must not become a template?
The second point is competition—the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has touched on that already. Let us be clear about what the public interest mechanism does. It allows the Secretary of State to weigh broader considerations against the competition assessment and, if she chooses, to override it. This is a very significant power, and here it is being exercised in favour of the incumbent, or it would be.
After this acquisition, BT’s share of the retail broadband market will rise significantly. Openreach, which, as we know, is BT’s own wholesale arm, is TalkTalk’s largest supplier. TalkTalk’s wholesale business, PlatformX, serves other providers which now find their supplier owned by their biggest competitor. Rival operators have publicly called this a stitch-up presented as a rescue. I do not say that that charge is right, but the Government must be able to show that it is wrong.
The CMA delivered its report to the Secretary of State on 19 October and its contents have not yet been published, so I ask the Minister: will that report be published so that Parliament and the market can see the competition analysis that the Secretary of State is weighing? Will the Government commit that any clearance will come with robust, enforceable undertakings? Those should cover wholesale access on fair terms for PlatformX customers, protections for retail prices and choice, and a firm ring-fence between Openreach and BT’s retail arm in how TalkTalk customers are treated. What is the Government’s assessment of the effect on the altnets, whose investment has done so much to bring competition into full fibre?
The third issue is the gap that this order exposes—again, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised the same issue. BT’s own briefing makes the point frankly: energy and water have special administration regimes and gas and electricity retail have a supplier of last resort regime. Telecom has neither. When a major provider fails, our only real lever is to find a buyer and in practice, that buyer is likely to be the largest player in the market. That is not a resilience strategy; it is just hope.
This order treats a symptom. It gives the Secretary of State a merger tool but it does nothing for the next failure where no buyer appears, or where the other buyer is one whose acquisition would do lasting damage to the competition. Will the Government commit to consult in this Session on a special administration regime for systematically important telecoms providers? Will they ask Ofcom to advise on a supplier of last resort mechanism, especially for vulnerable customers and telecare users? These are the people who matter most as the digital voice switchover continues. Those protections should not depend on whether a willing buyer happens to exist.
The fourth issue is on security and definitions. BT told Ofcom that TalkTalk still runs Huawei equipment in parts of its network and said that legacy network will be kept entirely separate. Can the Minister tell us how that separation will be monitored, by whom, and on what timetable the Telecommunications (Security) Act removal requirements will be met? The noble Baronesses on the ministerial side were not in Parliament when we debated this in full, and Parliament’s will was very clear that this technology should be removed from our telecoms supply chain. On drafting, new subsection (2EA) refers to telecommunications services without defining the term, so can the Minister confirm what the definition is intended to be? Does it extend beyond fixed and mobile access to the data centres, cloud and interconnection services on which our digital economy now depends? As we debate the cyber security and resilience Bill, we need a consistent view as to what counts as critical digital infrastructure, rather than one definition in each statute.
The Government acted to prevent real harm to real people and for that they deserve credit, but an emergency fix carries obligations. It must be transparent, so publish the CMA report. It must be competitive, so impose strong undertakings, and it must be followed by a proper, durable framework for telecoms failure, so that next time Ministers are not legislating against the clock to approve a deal that has already happened. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, for bringing forward this order for scrutiny and for so gamely stepping in at the last minute. We wish the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, well for a speedy recovery.
This secondary legislation would enable the Secretary of State to take into account a wider range of public interest considerations when deciding whether to intervene in takeovers in the telecommunications sector. The department has argued that this merely closes a gap in the existing framework. However, it follows the commercial decision by BT to take over TalkTalk, which was then investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority, which reported to the Secretary of State on 19 October. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Fox, that it is a shame that this report was not available before today’s debate. Can the Minister elaborate on its findings and the next steps?
I echo the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has drawn this order to the special attention of the Committee. Will the Minister confirm that this legislation is not retrospective? What will be the implication for existing mergers and how do the Government intend to maintain investor confidence? I confirm that I am happy for any of my questions, of which there are many, to be answered by the Minister in writing at a later stage.
The department claims that there is a precedent for the use of these powers to amend the public interest grounds. Can the Minister specify these precedents? We must be cautious of potential government overreach and we should allow the independent regulator to do its job properly. An overzealous Secretary of State could use these powers in such a way that fundamentally undermines the UK’s competitiveness. What safeguards will there be to prevent overuse of these powers leading to investor flight?
The order adds the need to maintain
“the continuity of the supply of telecommunications services for the purposes of preventing disruption to the economy and society of the United Kingdom, including, in particular, disruption to—(a) public services; (b) critical national infrastructure; (c) supply to customers who are or may be vulnerable”.
Such changes must be tightly defined. Can the Minister say how such disruption will be measured? Can we apply the same criteria for judging the Government’s own policies? This addition will give the Secretary of State the power
“to guard against the serious consequences that widespread disruption of connectivity could have for public safety, critical infrastructure, essential services and the orderly functioning of society”.
How do the Government define and how will they assess the “orderly functioning of society”? Can the Minister indicate whether this additional consideration will be used imminently?
There are legitimate concerns over the timing and potential use of this order. I hope that the Minister will be able to give the Committee assurances on these points, even if that is in writing.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their best wishes for my noble friend and for their indulgence of me at the Dispatch Box on this matter. I will reflect on Hansard and write regarding any points that I miss, but I hope to be able to give some substantive answers to noble Lords who have participated.
The debate shows a recognition of the importance of telecommunications services to the functioning of the UK’s modern economy and society. It is important that everyone in the UK has access to high-quality, secure and resilient digital connectivity. The new public interest consideration inserted by the order will enable the Secretary of State to have regard to a broader range of considerations and impacts that may arise within the specific context of a qualifying merger where there are concerns about widespread and/or significant disruption to telecommunications services.
I will now respond to the specific points raised, starting with the issues around competition concerns and BT increasing its market share, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. This is why the Secretary of State asked the CMA to assess the competition impacts independently. As part of the process, the wider telecoms market and other interested third parties were able to make representations to the CMA. The UK telecoms market is highly competitive. The statement of strategic priorities, designated on 27 April this year, highlights that competition in the fixed telecoms market supports investment, innovation and consumer choice. As a result, the UK benefits from relatively low consumer pricing and prices have declined in recent years when adjusted for inflation. Ofcom, as the independent regulator, plays a key role in supporting competition, including by imposing proportionate remedies on Openreach where necessary.
The UK’s pro-competition approach has driven fibre rollout, as referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, with over 100 alternative networks entering the market in recent years. According to Ofcom, as of January 2026, 77% of residential premises have access to more than one network and 61% have access to more than one gigabyte-capable network.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for those several responses to the questions raised. We all mentioned the fact that we have not seen what the CMA has said.
Lord Lansley (Con)
If the noble Baroness can give us a prospective timetable for when the Secretary of State is going to make decisions, that would be helpful.
Lord Fox (LD)
And give a commitment that the CMA report, in full, will be published.
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, you were two magic pieces of paper early. I will go straight to the issue of the CMA’s report. In line with the requirements of the Enterprise Act 2002, the Secretary of State will publish a non-confidential version of the CMA’s report once it has made a decision. All the noble Lords who participated raised that point.
I have answered the majority of the substantive points. I will reflect on Hansard and, if I have not answered something, I will write to noble Lords. I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate today, and the officials who have worked on this.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 259) in light of the 10th Report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (HL Paper 42), published on 23 July.
Relevant document: 10th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, before proceeding with this take-note Motion, I thank Freedom from Torture for its help. Together with the Helen Bamber Foundation, it has drawn attention to the issues raised by this statement of changes in Immigration Rules. They have since been joined by a number of other expert stakeholder organisations. I also note the assistance I receive from RAMP, as listed in the register. I welcome my noble friend the Minister to the asylum brief, which I suspect will keep him pretty busy in the coming months. I thank noble Lords who are attending. I know my noble friend Lord Dubs has to leave at some point, so he may just be here for moral support, but moral support from him is always very welcome.
I am drawing the statement of changes to the Committee’s attention following the SLSC’s 10th report, which recorded a number of weaknesses in the explanatory material provided by the Home Office—not for the first time. The statement involves the introduction of what is now being called a “single protection interview”. It was originally called “merged registration”, but while I am glad that the Home Office appears to have taken SLSC’s advice to change the name, calling it a single protection interview, given the concerns raised, does seem rather Orwellian.
The new approach will, in the words of the Explanatory Memorandum:
“Involve one interview, covering the registration of the asylum claim, screening of the individual, and the establishment and assessment of the basis of claim. The interviewing officer will ask relevant and appropriate questions to establish whether an individual has protection needs and, if not, whether they can be removed from the UK without the need for a further asylum interview”.
Although the Home Office suggests that only a minority of cases will be treated in this way, and that it constitutes only a minor change, the SLSC notes that the submission from Freedom from Torture and Helen Bamber warns that it represents “a substantial shift” in the asylum procedure. While the SLSC accepted the Home Office’s argument that only a small proportion of asylum seekers is likely to be affected and that the change did not alter the substantive criteria in the rules, it did not consider that this constituted an adequate justification for the Home Office’s failure, once again, to consult on the matter.
The report states:
“it is precisely in the operational implementation where consultation can often be the most productive; we have previously highlighted numerous examples of instruments where consultation could have improved operational policy design, including in relation to changes to immigration rules”.
Then, in bold, it states:
“The Home Office has therefore not provided a valid reason for the lack of consultation in this case, which we regard as unacceptable”.
Strong words indeed. I would welcome my noble friend’s response to them and ask whether he accepts the criticism, which clearly has implications for future changes to the rules. Will he give a commitment now that any further changes to the policy will be subject to consultation with expert stakeholders and those with lived experience of the asylum process?
The SLSC was also critical of the fact that the guidance which puts the flesh on the new rules was not published alongside the statement to illuminate how the change will operate in practice. Again in bold, it notes:
“As we have stated before, and including in relation to earlier changes in immigration rules, where guidance is important to understanding the effect of a change in the law, it should be published (in draft, if necessary) alongside the instrument to enable scrutiny. We are firmly of the opinion that the Home Office should adopt this as the default approach for future Statements of Changes”.
Once more, I would welcome my noble friend’s response to that.
It should also be noted that, although the guidance has now been published, there was no consultation on it, despite a written request to the Home Office from four organisations in the field. Will my noble friend the Minister at least agree to the Home Office sharing the SPI interview script with expert stakeholders for consultation, so that they can assess and advise on how effectively it will serve to identify vulnerability and safeguarding concerns?
It is to these substantive concerns that I now turn. Although I am sure we all applaud the general attempts to speed up the asylum process, they should not come at the expense of the quality of decision-making. I was rather concerned about the Home Office’s response to one of the SLSC’s questions, which said that the primary purpose is not to improve the identification of trauma but to ensure that clearly unfounded claims can be considered more efficiently where appropriate.
At the heart of the sector’s concern is the fear that trauma will not be identified but overlooked, because the eligibility criteria and case selection process do not clearly exclude cases that raise safeguarding concerns and vulnerability indicators. These may not be identified during an SPI’s accelerated process. They point to evidence of the current failure at screening to identify and respond to indicators of vulnerability, trafficking and safeguarding concerns. Although the guidance allows for rerouting back into the standard asylum process, it would seem that the onus is on the asylum seeker to make any vulnerability clear during the SPI. However, the guidance does not make it clear what criteria will be applied and how such rerouting would be decided, nor how a claimant will know and understand that possibility. If my noble friend could clarify this, that would be very helpful.
This raises the other main related concern. Research and the Home Office’s own earlier guidance identify the many barriers to early disclosure of vulnerability, trauma or sexuality. Torture survivors could find it very difficult to talk about their experience. Similarly, LGBTQI+ people often delay claiming asylum on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression or sex characteristics due to, among other things, their feeling unsafe, a history of trauma and a lack of understanding that oppression due to sexual orientation constitutes an accepted ground for asylum.
That said, where someone has already disclosed trauma of some kind or is making an LGBTQI+-related claim, can my noble friend give a commitment that they will not be subjected to the SPI process? This is more likely in the case of an in-country claim, but it is not clear from the guidance whether the SPI process will apply to both in-country and at-border claims, although I understand that officials have indicated it would apply to only in-country claimants. Can my noble friend please clarify this point and, if that is the case, ensure that the guidance is amended to make this clear?
The Home Office countered fears about disclosure with reference to the training of decision-makers, but a UNHCR study found that most staff had no or very limited training on how to spot vulnerability when it was not freely disclosed. Although training may have improved since that study, the most recent report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration on asylum casework was pretty damning on the quality of both training and decision-making. What, if any, further training is envisaged?
The concern raised by the SLSC is on whether claimants will have the opportunity to provide additional evidence, such as medical or legal reports, following the SPI. In fact, that has since been clarified in the guidance, but it is still not clear why it was deleted from the actual rules. Moreover, Freedom from Torture believes that the five days’ additional time specified is likely to be sufficient only in the most straightforward cases; much will depend on whether the claimant has been able to get legal representation. Again, I would be grateful for my noble friend’s thoughts on that.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I begin by acknowledging the support that I have received from RAMP as one of its principals. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for creating this important opportunity to take note of and discuss the Government’s new single protection interview process, introduced through the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules. I acknowledge that procedural changes will often need to be facilitated through secondary legislation, but the nature of the changes before us raises substantial questions, which I am pleased can now be explored with Ministers in this House.
Organisations such as the Helen Bamber Foundation and Freedom from Torture have argued that the changes represent a “substantial shift” in procedure, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted. It therefore seems appropriate that time is allocated for proper parliamentary scrutiny. This is particularly pertinent if the Government wish at a future date to expand the use of a single protection interview. Can the Minister provide reassurance that, if that were to happen, there will be a further opportunity to discuss the merits of such an approach and consider the necessary safeguards that might be required?
The Government’s objective to improve the effectiveness and timeliness of our asylum system is entirely legitimate and welcome, but we must distinguish carefully between administrative efficiency and justice. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has said, speed must not come at the expense of fairness. Are the Government confident that the new process will be able reliably to distinguish an unfounded claim from a genuine one that has not yet been fully understood and where additional information might be required?
The purpose of an asylum system is of course not simply to process claims but to identify people who genuinely need protection. The scrutiny committee’s key concern is pertinent here. If I am right in my understanding that the Government have confirmed that applicants will retain the right to submit further information, why then remove the Immigration Rules’ explicit guarantee of that right?
The SPI relies on the Home Office identifying appropriate cases before vulnerability, trafficking indicators, trauma, sexual orientation or safeguarding concerns have been fully explored. But as the Government know, evidence consistently shows that many survivors of torture, trafficking and other forms of serious harm do not disclose these experiences at the earliest stage of the asylum process. Even if these characteristics are identified, there will presumably need to be an assessment of whether the safeguarding or vulnerability indicator meets a threshold to qualify for rerouting out of the single process and back into the standard asylum process. Can the Minister provide further information on how suitability decisions will be made and how applicants can challenge inclusion in the process?
The Home Office recognises that survivors of torture, trafficking and those from the LGBTQI+ community often disclose relevant experiences only after trust has been built up. Trauma, shame, fear, exhaustion, unfamiliarity with the asylum process and language barriers can make it difficult to disclose experiences coherently at the first interview, and the most vulnerable may need specialist support to fully disclose evidence. An incomplete first account should not automatically be mistaken for a dishonest or unfounded claim. Can the Government offer reassurance that the new process will not lead to decision-makers reaching premature conclusions before the relevant evidence has been assembled? Does the Minister envisage that identified survivors of torture, trafficking and other serious trauma will be excluded from the SPI process?
The Home Office acknowledges that interviews are often the most important evidence-gathering opportunity. Curtailing that process for this vulnerable cohort risks unfair outcomes. It is also important to remember that, even if a country is generally safe, an individual may face persecution because of their particular circumstances. The assessment must therefore remain individual, not presumptive.
I expect that not every asylum case will require two interviews, but it is important to remember that an unjust refusal, made potentially more likely through the loss of a substantive interview, is not merely an administrative error—it might expose someone to persecution or serious harm. It could also lead to costly litigation and further delays, undermining the very efficiency that the policy is seeking. The risk of refoulement is a serious potential consequence. I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that every SPI decision may be unlawful, but I urge the Government to commit to further parliamentary scrutiny and to consultation with expert stakeholders and publication of evaluation data ahead of removing the procedural safeguard of an additional interview from other groups and for other purposes.
The Government are right to want to resolve clearly unfounded claims quickly to reduce delays and to avoid keeping people in prolonged uncertainty. The policy guidance allows for further investigation and interviews where necessary, which is of course welcome. The issue is whether, in practice, those safeguards will work consistently. I therefore ask the Minister: will interviewers be trained to recognise trauma, vulnerabilities and inconsistencies that may have legitimate explanations? Also, will there be a clearly applied process for transferring a case to the usual process? I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to answer all the questions that I have asked today, but I would be grateful if he could commit to write.
The measure of an asylum system is not simply how quickly it can refuse a claim but how reliably it can recognise a person who genuinely needs protection. A fair system must be capable of refusing unfounded claims but also capable of recognising when a person’s right to asylum is evidence-based, even when they struggle to explain it at first or to provide corroborating information. The questions I have asked are in an effort to understand whether the new process has sufficient safeguards to distinguish effectively between the two. Where the consequences of error may be persecution, torture or even the loss of life, the burden of getting that distinction right is profound. I therefore hope that the Government will take seriously the concerns raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, explain the removal of the express safeguard for further evidence, and commit to transparent monitoring of the new process.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow two such powerful and caring speeches focused on the justice of our asylum system—which, after all, in many cases addresses issues of life and death. I agree with virtually everything that both noble Baronesses said, so, rather than repeat what has been said, I will seek to add a couple of points to it.
We are focusing on the fact that we are talking about people whose lives have all too often been marked by torture, trauma, abuse and other suffering. The reality is that it is difficult for them to just sit down and talk about that. Although I almost always agree with her, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, described a lot of the language and process here as rather Orwellian. I will take away that “rather” because our own Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reflected, in paragraph 4 of its report, on the term “merged registration”. That is where one interview covers the registration, the screening of the individual and the establishment and assessment of the basis of the claim. The scrutiny committee says of that term that
“‘merged registration’ does not accurately describe what the process will encompass”.
We should think about those people, very often with English as a second language, being in a really confusing situation. I have a direct question to the Minister: could we not at least call it something that would be immediately understandable if it was to be translated? I note that the committee also said:
“The Home Office may wish to consider using a more helpful, descriptive and easier to understand name”.
Are the Government taking that on board?
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to a really important report in the context of what we are debating: the June 2026 report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. It is worth revisiting its conclusion, which said that the quality of decision-making in the asylum system
“had declined … and was at an unacceptable level”.
It focused particularly on the problems of hiring staff—the appropriateness of the way in which staff are hired and who is hired—and the retention challenges. Four in 10 decision-makers left between April 2024 and May 2025, and those decision-makers had typically been in position for only 11 months. Again, I ask the Minister directly: will this simply be a cab rank system? Will the people using this process just be whoever is next in the queue or, if this system is to be used, will it be applied by more experienced and, I hope, more skilled and knowledgeable staff, who will have had the chance to experience seeing claims previously?
I also express concern about the Government’s intention to focus on a small number of countries. I will anonymise this quite heavily because I do not know the situation now of the individual concerned but, some years ago, I met a woman in Bristol who told me—I have no doubt that the fear that she was expressing was absolutely genuine—that she was the divorced wife of someone from a very powerful family on the Indian subcontinent and that she feared for her life if she was forced to go back to her home country. That is not a country issue but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, individuals may indeed be in a position of genuine fear of persecution in those kinds of circumstances. To know and understand that and be able to read a person’s explanation is a complex thing.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I first declare my interest that, like others, I am helped and supported by the RAMP organisation. I thank those who have already spoken. A huge number of remarks and questions have been addressed to the new Minister; in that context, I welcome him. He may not be as happy as he would like in this particular role because this topic of course causes great controversy within our House. An enormous number of issues need to be raised and dealt with, and we expect to find answers from the Home Office which are sometimes lacking.
Having previously spent three years as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I am able to recognise an excoriating report when I see one, and this is clearly such a report. It is not often that the committee goes to such lengths to make such important points when it does not get answers from the department concerned. The challenge is that the committee itself will address its concerns back to the Home Office and will get answers from it. If it does not get the answers, that will be mentioned in the report and when it does not find that the answers are sufficient it will mention that, too. This report does that and Members on all sides have said clearly that there are questions to be raised and questions that need to be answered as a result.
I am glad about the changed name. When you merge things, you are perhaps supposed to do the merging in turn, but it was clearly an unsuitable title and I am glad that it has been changed, even though it now presents perhaps the same critique and problems that the original title suggested anyway. One of the challenges we face in addressing this issue in this changed piece of guidance and legislation is whether it is a minor change or a major change. I draw on my musical experience here. Things that are minor are usually sad and things that are major are things that we can judge in a more content manner. Clearly, this is not something which can be treated as being of a minor nature.
Paragraph 10 of the report notes that these words were deleted:
“Where the personal interview is omitted, the applicant and dependents shall be given a reasonable opportunity to submit further information”.
The deletion of that sentence suggests that applicants may not be able to suspend the decision-making process to seek expert advice. The major change here is an operational one, bringing together two systems to try to shorten the process for a small number of cases, so we are assured.
What we do in this country and the way we address people’s individual needs for protection are judged against that background. People are not part of cohorts and not to be treated as part of some system that systemically makes things easier; every case deserves to be looked at on its merits. The individuality of assessments is not just present in this country but across the whole of Europe, though sometimes we have to pull those changes up and look at them in a critical way as well.
When you put together two systems, remove such a sentence and make this operational change, which is of some significance because you are reducing the opportunity of individual assessment, it is right that people around this Room ask: where is the legal aid provision? Where is the advice? Where is the training for those who will support people who are genuinely suffering from trauma and other mental health problems that come with the journeys that they have been on?
People faced with life-or-death decisions leave in a traumatic state. That state does not improve just because they have arrived here. They are nervous and their understanding of what will happen to them needs to be addressed. That is why a personalised assessment is so important. The problem with what we have before us is that there was no consultation, not even with the Government’s own consultative body. That was brought in just with the intent of speeding up the process. There was no impact assessment, because the Government maintain that it a minor change rather than a major one. I maintain that the operational aspects are entirely different from what they were before. For people going through this system, the nature of the operation is now entirely different—before there would be a process by which people’s cases would be individually understood.
Finally, as the report says, and as we have asked for, when the Government make changes to the rules of this sort, they should produce the draft guidance alongside the changes. Then we can judge whether the rules are being adjusted for a purpose that is actually accurate, rather than one of simplicity, which is what I think the original intention was. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that, in future, when changes are made to the Immigration Rules, which are of a major nature or can be interpreted as being such, the Home Office will do all three things: a consultation exercise, an impact assessment and guidance, which may be in draft but certainly would help us to make decisions about these matters.
I would like to talk about the trouble with shortcuts. If you take a shortcut and get a back lane instead of going down the main road, sometimes that can lead to barbed wire where the roads are closed at the end or where it is a bit dangerous to proceed. Shortcuts should be taken only if you know where the end is and whether the route is clear or not. That is particularly relevant here. This is a shortcut which has not yet determined whether the right end product is there and available.
The problem with changes that allegedly relate to a particular group of people is that, without a definition, we are left blank as to whether these people will be worse off than they were before and whether the cohort decision will blanket their approval or disapproval because of situations that are not of their making. A lot of strong messages have been sent to the Home Office, both in this debate and in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. I hope that the Minister has listened to and heard them, and that he will act on all those matters.
I want to raise one final matter on the changes to the Immigration Rules. It concerns a case with which I, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, dealt. I have now succeeded in getting the approval of the two people concerned, in order to take this matter forward, but I raise a related question around the Immigration Rules on people with religious occupations.
The case I referred to is that of two nuns from Lesotho who were seeking to come to stay with an order in Humberside. They were being looked after by the same order to which they belonged, of course, and they were going to come and spend time with it. I do not reckon that that was a religious occupation; I reckon that they were building religious certainty and confidence, and were being helped. However, they failed at the border not because they did not have the appropriate visas but because of money: they could not determine how much money they would need to look after themselves in the United Kingdom. The answer, of course, is that holy orders and religious communities, including this particular religious community, have communal funds—that is, worldwide funds, not funds that are communal in the area they are in. So being “treated”—in inverted commas—to a break and a stay with another community of nuns in Merseyside was denied to them because they did not have the money in their pocket.
These two nuns come from Lesotho, which is, as anyone who has been there will know, one of the poorest countries in Africa. I declare my interest as the honorary consul for the Kingdom of Lesotho in Wales. So it is a matter of some importance to me that, when we deal with issues that are related to the Immigration Rules, we see people for what they are: individual people. They need to have their cases looked after properly, and we need to ensure that we do that.
In conclusion, we need—I suspect that everybody in this Room wants this—a fair system in a world where people’s decisions to come to this country for protection are matters of life and death for them. We need to ensure that they are protected properly. I hope that the Minister will take all of these points on board and make sure that the Home Office behaves, as this document says, in the appropriate manner for what I regard as a major change.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, this is the first proper opportunity I have had to welcome the Minister to his new role. I very much look forward to working with him in future. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for this opportunity to debate the changes to the Immigration Rules, and I am equally grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its careful consideration.
As always, although I respect the concerns that have been expressed, I believe that it is important that we keep sight of the central issue. These changes do not alter the substantive legal tests for refugee status, humanitarian protection or human rights protection—rather, they are a procedural reform designed to make the asylum system operate more efficiently in a small and tightly defined category of cases.
The key change relates to what the Home Office describes as the “merged registration process”. Instead of requiring both a screening interview and a later, more substantive interview, certain claims considered suitable for accelerated handling will be dealt with through a single interview process. The objective is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and allow scarce case-working resources to be focused on more complex claims.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has highlighted the concerns raised by external organisations that this represents a significant change to asylum procedures and may reduce fairness for applicants. Yet the Home Office has been equally clear that claimants will continue to have the opportunity to explain the basis of their claim, provide evidence, seek legal advice and submit further representations before decisions are taken. It said that where indicators of vulnerability, trafficking, safeguarding concerns or indeed complexity emerge
“the case will be removed from the Merged Registration process and routed into the standard asylum process”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for initiating this debate and, of course, grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its careful consideration of the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC259). I am also grateful to everyone who has contributed to the debate this afternoon.
The Government have considered carefully the committee’s observations and concerns raised by external stakeholders. Just to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I am extremely happy to have this responsibility today. I have a number of hats but I am particularly concerned that people do not see my responsibility as undermining the fairness of the system. I am absolutely committed to that.
In response to the concerns raised during that scrutiny by the committee and external stakeholders, we have taken steps to provide greater clarity about the operation of the process, including adopting the name “single protection interview” in place of “merged registration”, to better reflect the nature of the interview and the role it plays in the asylum process. We remain committed to maintaining an asylum system that is both fair and efficient, ensuring that those who need protection receive it promptly while enabling clearly unfounded claims to be resolved more quickly.
The right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord German, mentioned the importance of fairness. As the Home Secretary said in her conference speech this year:
“Fairness is what unites us in this country. And a fair society unlocks the very best of us. Because when people think this country is fair, they are more open and generous to others. When we are secure in ourselves, we are more tolerant too, because the existence of one group does not threaten another … When fairness isn’t present, the opposite is true. When this country feels unfair, people turn inwards”.
Our purpose therefore is
“to create that fairness in our immigration system … and …to hold this country together at a time when others seek to divide us”.
Concerns have been raised by the external stakeholders and the committee about the introduction of the single protection interview. The purpose of this change is straightforward: rather than requiring both a screening interview and a substantive interview in every case, claims identified as suitable will be considered through a single, expanded interview that combines both processes. Importantly, this remains a personal interview. As the published guidance makes clear, claimants are interviewed by a trained caseworker and are given an opportunity to explain the reasons for their claim, provide relevant information and answer questions about their circumstances.
This reform is intended to reduce unnecessary time processing cases where there is no realistic prospect that a further interview would materially change the outcome. It will allow decision-makers to establish the basis of a protection claim while ensuring that claimants have an opportunity to explain their circumstances in full. Importantly, this is not a reduction in the standard of decision-making. Each claim will continue to be considered individually, and decisions will continue to be based on the specific facts of the case before the decision-maker.
I turn to the specific questions that noble Lords, and in particular my noble friend, asked in relation to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s criticism about lack of consultation and whether further changes will be subject to consultation. In her Restoring Order and Control policy statement, the Home Secretary set out that:
“We will change our Immigration Rules so that the most egregious protection claims can be considered and refused following a single interview—conducted when the claim is first made. This will target citizens of manifestly safe countries who make unmeritorious protection claims to frustrate their removal”.
Ahead of publication of the guidance, the Home Office engaged stakeholders through its regular stakeholder engagement group on the proposed single protection interview process, providing an opportunity to explain the approach and hear stakeholder views. The guidance itself was not shared widely with stakeholders prior to publication. Since the committee’s report, detailed operational guidance on the single protection interview has been published, as my noble friend acknowledged.
The single protection interview is an operational process designed to improve how suitable asylum claims are considered; it does not change the legal framework governing asylum or protection decisions. The Government believe that the underlying policy objective remains sound. The need to improve efficiency in the asylum system, reduce unnecessary process steps and focus resources where they are most needed justifies proceeding with these targeted changes. The Home Office regularly engages with external stakeholders, and will continue to do so as part of the review for the single protection interview process.
My noble friend asked, in response to what the committee said, that the Home Office should publish draft guidance alongside statements of changes as a default approach. It may not always be possible to publish guidance alongside the statement of changes, but guidance is published prior to, or at the time of, the change being implemented. She also asked about sharing the SPI interview script with expert stakeholders for consultation. The single protection interview is an operational process and does not alter the legal tests for asylum, humanitarian protection or certification. Detailed operational guidance has been published and is publicly available on GOV.UK. The Home Office will consider sharing the SPI interview script with expert stakeholders as part of the review process and remains committed to ensuring continuous improvement.
My noble friend in particular, as well as the right reverend Prelate, raised this clarification of how rerouting back into the standard asylum process would be activated. All claims continue to be considered on their individual merits and in accordance with the relevant asylum guidance. Following a single protection interview, a decision on an asylum claim may be made when sufficient information has been obtained and no further interviewing or inquiries are required. To come to the point that the right revered Prelate made, when additional information, evidence-gathering or interviewing is required, the claim must proceed through the standard asylum process. Any additional steps, including further interviews where necessary, should be arranged in accordance with the standard procedures. The single protection interview delivers the Government’s commitment to consider and refuse clearly unfounded protection claims at the earliest possible stage of the asylum process.
The right reverend Prelate and my noble friend raised the question about when someone has already disclosed trauma of some kind or is making an LGBT+-related claim, asking for a commitment that this would not be subject to an SPI process. I emphasise that the process applies only, as noble Lords have acknowledged, to a narrowly defined cohort of claims from countries assessed as among the safest in the world. The Home Office recognises that individuals may disclose information relevant to their protection claim at different stages of the asylum process. As noble Lords have pointed out, this can occur for a range of reasons across a range of protection grounds. Specifically, we also recognise that some individuals may find it difficult to disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity at the earliest opportunity. Published guidance and training for asylum decision-makers recognises that factors including fear, stigma, trauma, cultural or religious pressures, previous concealment, concerns about confidentiality and personal safety may affect disclosure. Decision-makers are trained to consider such factors when assessing evidence and credibility.
The single protection interview does not remove the opportunity for individuals to disclose information that is relevant to their claim. As with an asylum interview, individuals are given the opportunity to explain the basis of their claim, provide supporting evidence and raise any additional matters that they may consider relevant. The published SPI guidance makes it clear that, before concluding the interview, claimants must be given
“a reasonable opportunity to raise any additional matters they consider relevant to their protection claim”.
Where information that requires further exploration, additional evidence-gathering, safeguarding activity or further interviewing emerges, the case can proceed through the standard asylum process. The process therefore includes safeguards to ensure that relevant information disclosed during the consideration of a claim can be fully considered before a decision is reached.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend the Minister, but I do not think that I was clear enough in putting the question. Regarding what is meant by “in-country”, I am not suggesting that we are talking about people who try to claim asylum from somewhere else, because I am aware that that is not possible. The question is: when someone arrives on, say, a small boat, could they be shunted immediately into this process? Or are we talking about people who are already in the country, having been here a few days or whatever? That is the distinction I was trying to make—not the one that I think my noble friend understood me to be making.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The answer is that it is about the reasons that people give for their asylum claim and where they are from in relation to that. We are talking, as I think noble Lords have acknowledged, about a small cohort of people. We are not changing the basis for people claiming asylum; we are making it clear that there is a process for a very small cohort to have a much more speedy and efficient way of dealing with their claims.
My noble friend and others asked whether further training is envisaged. As the published guidance makes clear, claimants are interviewed by a trained decision-maker, and, as I said, claimants will be given the opportunity to explain the reasons for their claim, to provide relevant information and to answer questions about their circumstances. Decision-makers receive specialist training on identifying and assessing vulnerability in the asylum system, as well as on assessing all claims using detailed country policy and evidential guidance, ensuring that protection is provided where it is needed and that unfounded claims are identified and refused.
My noble friend asked about how claimants will have the opportunity to provide additional evidence; a number of noble Lords referred to the fact that this information was deleted from the rules. The published SPI guidance states:
“Claimants must be given at least 5 full working days following their Single Protection interview to submit any further representations before a decision is made”.
Under this process, individuals remain responsible for providing evidence in support of their protection claim. Moreover, the single protection interview does not alter the legal framework for considering asylum claims or the evidence that may be submitted in support of them. Decision-makers will consider all relevant information and available evidence when assessing a claim. Where further information is required or it becomes clear that a case requires more detailed consideration, it may be routed out of the single protection interview process and considered through an alternative route.
My noble friend and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford asked about access to legal advice and representation at the point of referral into the SPI process. To be clear, the changes do not alter a claimant’s entitlement to legal advice or legal aid. The published SPI guidance says that claimants having their claim considered under this process must be given
“the opportunity to be accompanied by a legal representative”.
The legal framework governing asylum decision-making remains unchanged. Claimants remain able to provide additional information and evidence in support of their claim. The policy concerns the structure of the interview process rather than access to legal representation. The SPI is an asylum interview. It does not remove or reduce procedural safeguards that apply to the consideration of protection claims, including access to legal representation and claimants being able to submit information that is relevant to their claim. The reported concerns around access to legal aid are not unique to this change and should not be conflated with it.
Noble Lords have raised what the Home Office said to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—that the initial cohort of cases will come from a limited number of countries. My noble friend suggested that the implication is that the process could be extended to other countries and involve further selection criteria. The single protection interview is suitable for only a limited cohort of cases. The process applies only to a narrowly defined cohort of claims from countries that have been assessed as among the safest in the world: EU and EEA states, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States.
Additionally, the guidance states:
“A case may be considered for the Single Protection Interview where … The available information indicates that the claim appears to be clearly unfounded … There are no indicators suggesting that a fuller examination of the claim is likely to be required … It is likely to be unnecessary to test the credibility of any claims made as they can be considered at their highest … The claimant is fit to be interviewed … There are no safeguarding concerns or vulnerabilities that would make the process inappropriate”.
I also want to be clear—this was raised by the noble Lord, Lord German—that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and age-disputed children do not fall into the cohort and so do not qualify for the single protection interview.
My noble friend’s final question related to how the process can be monitored and how we can give an assurance that there is no extension of SPI until there is clear evidence about how it is working. The Home Office will carefully monitor the conduct of this process, including interviews and decisions. There are no plans to extend SPI without carefully considering the evidence of how it works in practice, and I am sure that the input from external stakeholders will be part of that consideration.
I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that this is not about cost—it is about efficiency and fairness. It represents a measured and targeted reform. These changes do not alter the United Kingdom’s protection obligations, do not remove the requirement to consider claims individually and do not apply to vulnerable or complex cases. Instead, they are designed, as I said, to deliver a more efficient asylum system by enabling clearly unfounded claims from a limited cohort of claimants to be considered more quickly, while ensuring resources remain more focused.
I thank noble Lords for their time. I am sorry I have gone over time a little bit.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate, and I thank my noble friend for very patiently dealing with all our questions. I shall have to read the Hansard afterwards, but I suspect that we may have subsequent questions to raise. I very much welcome his emphasis on the general principle of fairness, and his saying that this applies to people whatever their means of coming here. They may be coming here by irregular means, but they are not illegal; they have a right to have their asylum claim treated fairly. I am glad that that is, in effect, what my noble friend was saying.
I shall not go into any detail now, as I am conscious that time is moving on. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who contributed.
House of Lords
Introduction: The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells
Fracture Liaison Services: National Coverage
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Baroness Murphy
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in developing a delivery plan to achieve national coverage of fracture liaison services in England by 2030.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, the 10-year health plan committed to rolling out fracture liaison services by 2030, and it outlines our vision for a more devolved health service. The 10-year health plan and, more recently, the renewed women’s health strategy highlight community-based models of fracture prevention services. Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning these services and are best placed to determine how they should be delivered to meet local need, while supporting overall development of fracture prevention outcomes.
Baroness Murphy (CB)
My Lords, I am very aware that the Minister has had this Question in almost identical wording, and I think there is another one soon to come from somebody else. So I will move away, if I may, and ask: does the Minister agree that the importance of these fracture liaison services is not simply to pick up fractures of the long bones, which are associated with osteoporosis, and to treat them—the fundamental purpose of the liaison service—but to establish connections between orthopaedic surgeons and geriatric medicine, so that, with other problems such as, for example, older people not getting their operations quick enough after a fracture, which Dr Mark Porter mentioned in the Times today, it will speed up the total relationship between the two departments and get better access to care for frail older people? Does the Minister agree that that is the most vital thing about these liaison services?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness that that is one of the most important functions, because of course prevention and recovery are also key. As I have mentioned, ICBs are focused on providing services closer to home. Also, we are working with NHS England so that we can improve frailty services in acute settings as a priority, including through same-day emergency care and through comprehensive geriatric assessments.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, what assessment have the Government made of the workforce and funding required to deliver national coverage? Will those requirements be reflected in the delivery plan?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I refer the noble Baroness to the forthcoming 10-year workforce plan, which will make sure that the NHS has the staff that it needs, including in frailty services. Fracture liaison services deploy multidisciplinary teams to ensure prompt diagnosis and appropriate treatment. We have made available, through the Department for Education, loans for living costs to support students from the lowest income families to make sure that they can train and be part of the workforce. That is one area where we are developing recruitment and training.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
Can the Minister confirm my understanding that, despite the Government’s commitment to a national rollout of FLS by 2030, the patient assessment rate, which is the key treatment measure, has shockingly increased by only 3% since 2024? At this rate of expansion, it will take 38 years—until 2064, my 100th birthday, incidentally—to fulfil their pledge, with tens of thousands of people dying unnecessarily.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I hope we will all get to celebrate the noble Lord’s 100th birthday with him. As he will recall from just last week, we are taking a whole-pathway approach to fracture prevention, including improving access to diagnosis, adopting effective treatments and encouraging local systems to develop services that focus on those at greatest risk. I am always open to the points the noble Lord makes—he is right to make them—but it is important to acknowledge the actions and improvements taking place and the way we are supporting the development of services, particularly for those who need them most.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, fracture liaison services is one area in which the three devolved institutions are, in effect, ahead of England; it is provided universally in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and has been of great benefit in those jurisdictions. Can the Minister say what liaison is taking place with the three devolved institutions to learn lessons so that, when rollout happens in England, those lessons can be adapted to make sure we get the best service in England?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I suggest some caution about the situation under the devolved Governments. Without any wish to disregard any improvements that have been made, the situation is not quite as the noble Lord describes, and I would be very pleased to write to him to confirm why. We certainly liaise closely and regularly with the devolved Governments to ensure that we can see progress across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, the Minister has just told the House that decisions on fracture liaison services will be made by local ICBs, yet at the national level the Government have made a welcome commitment to universal coverage in England by 2030. Does she accept that leaving delivery to the discretion of individual ICBs risks creating inconsistencies? Would such disparities be an example of where the Secretary of State could use their power of direction, as proposed in the Health Bill?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am sure we will discuss that at great length in Committee. While I absolutely accept there is a difference in the service level across the country—that is not acceptable, as I am sure we would all agree—it is not the hands-off approach that is often suggested. We have made, through the medium-term planning framework, the neighbourhood health framework and the 10-year health plan an identification that those at risk of frailty are a priority cohort. Our best practice guide was recently updated to give the NHS and local government joint ownership of delivery. In all these ways and a number of others, we support local decision-making and provision.
Baroness Nargund (Lab)
My Lords, osteoporosis disproportionately affects more women at menopause. Tens of thousands of women under the age of 40 who undergo menopause tend to receive a delayed diagnosis, and some end up with fractures before their menopause diagnosis is made. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that the fracture liaison services need to be integrated into women’s health hubs, so that younger women with menopause receive not only an early diagnosis and treatment but advice on fracture prevention?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My noble friend is right to identify that there is a higher incidence of osteoporosis in women than men; it is more common. Some 80% of osteoporotic vertebral fractures are not identified and not managed appropriately, which again is unacceptable. That is why NIHR research has investigated the use of a new questionnaire to improve the diagnosis of these fractures in women. If it is successful—I hope it will be—it will reduce fracture risk and change clinical practice, particularly for older women with back pain.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, in response to the question asked about the devolved Administrations, the Minister suggested we should interpret the data with caution. The caution is this: Scotland established one of the world’s first fracture liaison services, which is recognised globally as the most effective. Claims of a 50% reduction in repeat fractures might be exaggerated, but not by much. So what is the caution?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The caution—I am very happy to write to noble Lords with more details on this —is that it has been suggested that it has 100% coverage, but I am advised that that is not exactly the case.
International Criminal Court
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Lord Teverson
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the future of the International Criminal Court.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Wood of Anfield) (Lab)
My Lords, support for international criminal justice and accountability is a fundamental element of the UK’s foreign policy. The International Criminal Court is the primary international institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes of international concern, holding perpetrators to account and achieving justice for victims. The ICC, as everyone knows, is going through a particularly challenging period, and the UK stands alongside our fellow ICC states parties in supporting and vending the independence, impartiality and integrity of the court.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, first, I welcome very much the prompt statement by the UK, together with seven other nations, in support of the ICC, following the assault by sanctions on not just the ICC itself but its staff. What are we doing practically to make sure that the court survives in the long term, despite those sanctions led by the United States? In particular, how can we help defend those individual members of staff who are so much in the firing line of President Trump himself?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
The noble Lord is right to point out the early statement. Within hours of the American announcement, we published a joint statement expressing our strong disagreement with the sanctions imposed upon the court, co-signed by the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands. The noble Lord is also right to point to the need for practical support of the ICC in this period. We are offering that practical support through various things, including witness protection, sentence enforcement and commitment to internal reform processes. On UK staff, something like 50 or so staff are employed at the ICC. We are in close contact with the court and with British nationals impacted by events and these sanctions.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, if we want to speak about practical steps, I just mention to the House that, across Europe, efforts have been made to create a blocking statute. In fact, we already have our own blocking regulation: a domestic blocking regime which is capable of extension without requiring new legislation. I urge the Government to look closely at EU Council regulation 2271/96, which was modified and preserved after Brexit. It authorises the Secretary of State to amend its annex by statutory instrument to add foreign laws that have an extraterritorial application causing adverse effects. Has the Minister looked at that regulation and the way it can be used to absolutely counter what these sanctions are doing to many people who work with the court on trying to ensure accountability for those who commit international crimes?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
I pay tribute to my noble friend’s activity, commitment, passion and involvement over many years in this area. We are monitoring the impact of the sanctions and how they will be implemented and enforced. We remain in very close contact with partners, particularly European Union partners, where there are differences of view. Recently, the Vice-president of the European Commission said that we should use the next few weeks to open dialogue on how to respond to the US sanctions. Our approach is to sustain that dialogue and continue conversations with non-states parties and European allies.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, given that Russia withdrew its signature from the Rome statute in 2016, meaning that it is not a party to the International Criminal Court, what methods could be used to bring future prosecutions of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russians in Ukraine?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
The noble Lord raises important issues on the lack of overlap between jurisdiction and the future necessity there will be to take action against individuals and organisations that commit crimes. As the noble Lord knows, we are already taking action to set up embryonic forms—which will take less embryonic forms in the future—of commissions that will do investigations. We are doing that in partnership with other countries. There will probably need to be special procedures in place for that, but we are in the lead in trying to think about the different structures that will be required.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in the context of the emasculation of the International Criminal Court, will the Minister look at the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ unanimous reports, on two occasions, calling for the extension of universal jurisdiction to fill some of the gaps that might be left? Will he work with the International Criminal Court to bring to justice Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted by the court for genocide against the people of Darfur?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
The noble Lord raises a very important point and I will definitely look at the reports that he raised. We have a robust conversation on Sudan on a very regular basis. We support the active investigation into the situation in Darfur, and we raise that with the United States and other allies consistently.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, last Thursday, less than a fortnight after the US announced its vindictive sanctions, when Marco Rubio called the ICC a “rogue court” and threatened to cripple its ability to function, the European Parliament awarded the ICC the prestigious Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, named after Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet physicist and dissident. The prize is a major recognition of the court’s role in upholding international law, justice and human rights. Will the Government again publicly demonstrate the UK’s support for not just the ICC but the European Parliament’s position, alongside our displeasure at US sanctions?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
The noble Lord has captured the position of the Government quite well. We are a strong supporter of an effective International Criminal Court. I hope and expect that the House will recognise that from the statement we put out in conjunction with partners. We remain committed to the Rome statute and to promoting accountability internationally for the most serious international crimes, and we are insistent that the ICC must be permitted to continue its critical work, holding perpetrators of the most horrific crimes to account.
Baroness Prentis of Banbury (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Ukrainians are to be very much commended on the work they are doing in the war crime space during an active conflict? Will he assure me that the British Government will do all they can to continue to support them? Some 317 people have been convicted already.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
I am glad that the noble Baroness brought this subject up. It is an issue that is very close to my heart. I have seen at first hand the bravery of Ukrainian officials, citizens, NGOs and others, who are collecting evidence of not just crimes but all sorts of things to do with traces of weapons use and other things for a future date, as yet unknown, when there will be some possibility of accessing justice. As she says, they are already collecting files and initiating cases at this stage. We absolutely support that work and will do our utmost to support it in the future.
Lord Hain (Lab)
Will my noble friend the Minister remind critics of the ICC that it brought to justice those in the Balkans who committed terrible crimes of genocide and that that should be commended? Does he agree that the remit of the ICC does not allow for the prosecution, charging and pursuance of kleptocrats responsible for terrible corruption across the world and that that is why there is a need for an international anti-corruption court?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
My noble friend raises not just one but two very important points. This is the time, as he says, to stand up for, rather than think about restricting, the jurisdiction of the ICC. At a time when the court is being challenged significantly, we should not just celebrate its past achievements but recognise that they would not have been accomplished without its presence, and redouble efforts of practical support, ensuring security for the future of the court. On the issue of anti-corruption, we absolutely want greater accountability for kleptocratic crimes and illicit finance—that is a huge priority. There are different ways that this can be addressed. I know that there is a draft treaty in circulation among legal experts; I do not believe there has yet been formal consultation with officials on it. The objective of holding to account kleptocrats, as my noble friend puts it, and pathways of illicit finance, is absolutely essential.
Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)
My Lords, the ICC prosecutor could have sought warrants for the Hamas leaders who were behind the 7 October massacre straight away, but he waited seven months and then announced them together with warrants for Israeli elected leaders, as if the two were equivalent. This timing served to draw attention away from the misconduct which ultimately cost him his job. Does the Minister agree that this delay served the prosecutor and did not serve justice?
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
I am not sure I agree with the noble Lord’s framing of that question. Being a supporter of the ICC means supporting the procedures that are used and which are in conformity with the ICC statute. That applies to this case and to all other cases, as it does to the investigation and process to remove the lead prosecutor. We stand in full support of the ICC pursuing its functions with due process.
Public Service Delivery: Devolved Governments
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Lord Macintosh of Eastwood
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve joint working between the UK Government and the devolved governments in the delivery of public services.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
While the majority of public services are devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the UK Government are committed to a collaborative relationship with the devolved Governments on how we deliver effective public services. As part of this, the Prime Minister will chair a meeting of the National Economic Council in Scotland for further talks on empowering the regions across the UK through deeper devolution.
Lord Macintosh of Eastwood (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that positive reply. Does she agree that one of the biggest opportunities offered by devolution is for our respective Administrations to offer varied approaches to the common challenges that face us, and to learn from the successes, or sometimes the failures, of those respective approaches? To that end, what arrangements are the Government putting in place so that we can collaborate across Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and here in Whitehall to learn from successful innovation and good practice and improve the lives of the people we serve?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The vast majority of Scots, and indeed Welsh and Northern Irish people, want their devolved Governments and the UK Government to work together to increase living standards and improve public services. The Prime Minister set out his vision for deeper devolution in Scotland and has underlined the importance of engaging collaboratively with the Scottish Government to make that happen. We are looking forward to seeing the outcome of the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Heads of the devolved Governments at the National Economic Council this Friday.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, the NHS app in England and the NHS app in Wales do not communicate. This leads to lots of missed appointments, lost test results, duplication of medical histories and a real cost to the NHS on both sides of the border in respect of Welsh patients being treated in England. I have tabled Amendment 244 to the Health Bill to address this issue. Can I urge the Minister to initiate a discussion about the interoperability of health apps across the four nations in her discussions with the devolved Governments?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I know that my noble friend Lady Merron looks forward to debating the issue that the noble Baroness raises, and I shall feed it back to those taking part in the discussions later this week. We want things to be interoperable across borders. There are some really good examples of where the UK Government have worked effectively with devolved counterparts, but this can always be improved on. At the heart of how we approach this must be the end user or, in this case, patients who require that cross-border co-operation.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
Among the useful tools that we used to have for assessing how intergovernmental relations were going were the annual and quarterly reports that were published. The last annual report, for the year 2023, was published in April 2024. The last quarterly report, for the fourth quarter of 2025, was published shortly after that. Will those reports be restarted? They are extremely useful for us to be able to see what intergovernmental relationships are going on and in which departments.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I will write to the noble Earl on his question and on what sound like very interesting reports.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the 2024 Labour Party manifesto promised to make the Council of the Nations and Regions a major element in improving relations between the devolved Assemblies and Governments and central government. Can the Minister tell us how active this council is, how often it meets and how much it contributes to closer co-operation in the delivery of public services and in negotiations on financial transfers within the United Kingdom?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The Council of the Nations and Regions has met twice. The UK Government work in partnership with the devolved Governments and mayors through a range of fora, including the mayoral council and the National Economic Council, to deliver on shared priorities. At the council’s first meeting, in October 2024, the priorities were inward investment and economic growth. In May 2025, the council discussed principally the opportunities of trade agreements that the UK Government had concluded, as well as the challenges of artificial intelligence. One aspect of that second meeting was bringing together for the first time the chief data officers of the devolved Governments and the mayoral strategic authorities. We will look at a number of ways of taking this type of work forward.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will have seen that the Russian Foreign Minister welcomed the recent meeting between the Sinn Féin First Minister, the SNP First Minister and the Plaid Cymru Minister in Cardiff. Can she arrange for the appropriate Ministers to have a look at the implications of this both for the devolution settlement and in relation to foreign affairs?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Nationalism is never the answer. The UK Government are committed to delivering change across all four nations of the UK and believe strongly in the benefits of the union, as the Prime Minister has made clear.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, the Northern Ireland Executive have failed to set a budget for the first seven months of this financial year. This is hitting public services particularly hard, and health service workers are balloting for industrial action. As Northern Ireland departments will begin to run out of money at the end of January, can the Minister confirm that the Secretary of State will set a budget here if there is no resolution by that date?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The UK Budget is being held tomorrow. In relation to the Northern Ireland budget, the Government have in difficult financial circumstances offered a generous package of over £1.5 billion to help manage pressures there and provide stability to public services. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has been personally involved in the negotiations and has made it clear that if the Executive continue to fail to agree a budget, he will consider all options to ensure that public services get the clarity and certainty that they need.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, Robert Jones from Cardiff University has published this morning a report on the state of the Prison Service in Wales. It cites, in terms of the justice system, the complications of social policy and public services being devolved but the Prison and Probation Service being reserved. What is the Government’s response to this report?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I have not had the opportunity to read the report that the noble Baroness references. When it comes to devolution, the UK Government are committed to delivering change, and if there is a strong case for looking at doing things differently, we will of course give it careful consideration.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, one of the Labour Government’s flagship policies to support the economy in Scotland was the establishment of GB Energy, to be headquartered in Aberdeen. What does the Minister make of the reports in today’s Times newspaper that only half of GB Energy’s executives have moved to Scotland?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am not aware of the report—apologies to the noble Baroness. GB Energy is intended to and will deliver for British people, including the area in which the headquarters are located.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, a number of bodies have been set up to improve the relationship between Whitehall and the devolved Administrations, such as the Joint Ministerial Committee and the Council of the Nations and Regions. Following the question from the noble Lord, Lord Macintosh, can I suggest to the Minister that they should be the place for the sharing of best practice? At the moment, some people perceive those bodies as talking shops, but much more use could be made of them.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right. We want to share best practice, and that can go both ways, obviously. We are particularly keen to collaborate around the delivery of public services, and the Test, Learn and Grow work that has been centred in the Cabinet Office is at the heart of the UK Government’s initiatives to do that. We are committed to sharing findings and fostering dialogue with the devolved Governments to ensure that all parts of the UK can learn from different experiences of transforming the state and enhancing public services. I am also very clear that this includes the UK Government learning from other parts of the UK.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, on 24 October, it was reported that a 93 year-old woman from Abercynon who had suffered a fall had to wait 10 and a half hours for an ambulance to arrive. This is just the latest in a series of horror stories about Welsh ambulance waiting times, which hit record lows under Labour. Although healthcare is devolved, what work are the Government are doing to support the Welsh Government in tackling unacceptable ambulance waiting times?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The primary way that the Government will support the devolved nations is through the financial settlements that we make. It is important to note that through the spending review and through the Spring Statement earlier this year, the UK Government confirmed additional funding for the devolved countries. We are clear that these matters are devolved. We are also clear that we can work across borders and through different levels of government to make sure that people see the improvements they are looking for at every level of government.
Meta: AI Development
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of Meta’s updated Commercial Terms, which from 30 October authorise it to crawl the websites of UK business users for the purposes of AI development.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath) (Lab)
The Government recognise the concerns raised by businesses and rights holders about Meta’s updated commercial terms. Meta has delayed their introduction until 20 November, and the Competition and Markets Authority is engaging directly with Meta. We are committed to ensuring that creators can control the use of their work. In our March Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, we committed to publishing a review of mechanisms for creators to control their works online, including technical standards and best practice on input transparency. This will inform whether there is an appropriate role for government.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said but, while Meta has delayed these terms, it has not changed a word of them in doing so. It does not use the word “train” any more, but it can still crawl publishers’ websites to “develop and improve” its products. It says publishers can block its crawlers, yet the terms seem to let it get around paywalls and technical blocks. The only way out is for publishers to close the Meta business accounts that their advertising depends on. If Meta means what it says, will the Government press it to put its assurances into the terms and urge the CMA to use its powers under the Digital Markets Act before 20 November?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
The CMA recognises the urgency of this matter, particularly for businesses that rely on Meta services to reach their customers. A delay does not resolve the questions raised by the effect of the new terms. We understand that the CMA is engaging directly with Meta to establish the facts. Following its evidence to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee on 20 October, I understand it is working to an expedited timeline to provide the committee with a written response setting out its position. We expect that response very shortly.
Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)
My Lords, I urge the Minister to be robust on this matter and the Government to use all the powers at their disposal to stop what is essentially an abuse of market power by Meta and a threat to trusted journalism.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
I assure my noble friend that the Government recognise the concerns raised about Meta’s updated commercial terms and are committed to ensuring that creators can control the use of their work. UK copyright continues to apply to the use of protected works in AI development and training. Where an activity requires permission under copyright law, that permission must be obtained unless an exception applies.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, as the Minister is aware, the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act is superior to the EU’s digital Act because it encourages the big tech firms to come forward with proposals to address the unfair competition issues that it creates, as we saw recently in the case of Microsoft and AWS in CloudSearch. The CMA is then able to convert those proposals into binding commitments without issuing strategic market status on those firms. Does the Minister agree that the same so-called participative approach would be relevant now in asking Meta to come forward with public commitments that the CMA could then create into something binding, so that we could all be clear that Meta will not continue to scrape publishers’ websites? Would the Minister back the CMA if that is what it does?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
As far as the EU is concerned, noble Lords may wish to know that on 22 October the European Commission received a formal competition complaint about Meta’s revised commercial terms. It confirmed that it would assess the complaint under its established procedures, and welcomed Meta’s subsequent decision to delay implementation until 20 November. No formal decision or enforcement action has been announced. In respect of the CMA’s powers more generally, it already has powers under existing competition law to intervene where and when appropriate and is engaging urgently with Meta to consider its next steps. I remind noble Lords that the CMA is independent of government.
Lord Nagaraju (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests set out in the register. Meta says that website owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences. Will the Government seek a binding commitment in Meta’s commercial terms, before 20 November, that instructions refusing crawling will be honoured, with an effective remedy for breaches?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
Meta has publicly stated that website owners can use robots.txt to indicate their preferences about its crawlers, and has reiterated this in our engagement on creator control and transparency. However, we recognise the concerns raised by publishers about whether these assurances provide meaningful and enforceable control over their content. On publishing before 20 November, we recognise that the removal of the word “train” has not resolved the concerns raised about the revised terms, particularly on whether the remaining provisions could still permit content to be used for AI training. Meta disputes that interpretation, and we expect the response shortly.
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
My Lords, when Meta withdrew news from its platforms in Canada in response to legislation requiring it to pay for it, the gap was filled with disinformation. If UK publishers are forced to choose between surrendering their journalism and leaving Meta’s platform, what assessment have the Government made of the consequences for our public discourse and our society?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
We recognise the importance of ensuring that publishers and smaller creators can control and benefit from the use of their content, and we further understand that news publishers rely on traffic, advertising and subscription to support their work. Concerns of the sort that the noble Baroness mentions have been raised about the effects of AI systems accessing and using their content, which is why in March we committed to establish a working group to consider how the Government could support independent and smaller creative organisations in licensing their work, including in journalism. This sits alongside our review of creator control and input transparency.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
My Lords, perhaps we cannot really blame Meta for exploring the limits of the policy vacuum created by the Government’s continued inaction on AI and copyright. With that in mind, could the Minister tell us what progress has been made on the Government’s review of creator control and transparency, in particular the technical standards that could enable rights holders, particularly journalists, to protect their own work?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
The noble Viscount will not be surprised to hear that I disagree with his description of the Government’s strategy, work and progress on this issue. It is very clear that DCMS is in charge of AI and copyright and works across government, including with BIST on growth and the economy, and very closely with the Cabinet Office, which has the lead on the AI strategy. We are progressing our review of creator control and input transparency at pace, and are engaging extensively with stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of existing mechanisms and whether there is an appropriate role for the Government. We hope to publish our findings in the first part of next year.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, are the Government still of the same mind as the committee that reported in March that licensing, not opt-out, must be the way forward? Opt-out would be giving our intellectual property away and make it very hard to protect it. We need licensing for individual properties.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
The Government want rights holders to have the information and means to control how their work is used, to secure licences and to enforce their rights. Knowing who accesses content and who may help rights holders to exercise these rights is very important. Our work is to examine what information makes a practical difference to control, including licensing and enforcement.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
Does the Canadian example of dealing with Meta not suggest that the British Government would do better in dealing with these monoliths from the high-tech sector by working very closely with other countries when responding—even the European Union?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
Noble Lords will understand that we are in contact with the EU Commission. I have no doubt that the Government are always keen to work on this and to learn how other Governments are progressing these matters.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, would not one way of building confidence in the creative industries be for people who have already stolen material to pay some compensation for the things that they have done over the years?
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
I am so sorry; I did not hear the end of my noble friend’s question.
Lord Watts (Lab)
I am asking why people who have stolen material should not pay compensation to those from whom they have stolen it.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
I might have to write to my noble friend with the answer to that.
Jackdaw Gas Field
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of Amey, Acteon and Buckthorn. I start by warmly congratulating the Government on approving production from the Jackdaw field, which will strengthen our energy independence and security, and add substantial tax revenues to the Treasury. Will the Minister now confirm that the Government are looking to approve the tie-backs from the Tornado field to the Greater Laggan infrastructure, the Abbey and Baker field tie-back in the southern basin, the Kyla development tie-back to the Bittern infrastructure, and the Montrose infill, a subsea tie-back?
Does the Minister agree with Offshore Energies UK, which says that the industry has identified 111 projects within existing licences that could unlock £50 billion-worth of private investment, create thousands of jobs, generate substantial tax income to the Government and, importantly, reduce the higher carbon emissions from either imported gas from Norway or, indeed, LNG from the US? With OEUK estimating that there could be more than double the Government’s projections, does she recognise that the Government may have underestimated the recoverable gas reserves within the UKCS? Given that the Government are in the spirit of supporting the production of domestic oil and gas expansion, perhaps she could commit to reviewing those current projections as well?
We warmly welcome Ed Miliband’s damascene conversion to supporting oil production, and on a major scale, as evidenced by his approval this month of the production licence for the giant Sea Lion oilfield, with gross full-field 2C resources estimated at up to 917 million barrels of oil located 220 kilometres north of East Falkland, with the production sold into international oil markets via offtake tankers. We are glad that the Foreign Secretary believes in the policy of exporting our oil, not least given the fact that the Government have recently overseen the closure of two of our six refineries. Will the Minister confirm for the record that the Foreign Secretary had every right to turn down the production licence under the Offshore Minerals Ordinance 1994 but chose not to? For the record, I should inform the House that I know that ordinance well, having been party to the previous 1992 ordinance when I was Minister for Energy.
Rosebank is half the size of Sea Lion. So, given this recent history of government decisions, can the Minister provide the House with any intellectually sound arguments that the Government can muster to reject Rosebank while approving oil from the Sea Lion field to be sold on international markets and, indeed, gas from Jackdaw? Can the Minister tell the House whether she agrees with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that the economic case for approving Rosebank is inarguable, or with the Energy Secretary, who has recently been deserted from her post by the Foreign Secretary on this subject, that the field should remain undrilled?
Unlike Jackdaw, which is already near complete construction, Rosebank could add nearly 500 full-time equivalent jobs on average over its lifetime, including decommissioning. In addition, this project would generate billions in tax revenue. Does the Minister see the approval of Rosebank as an opportunity to regenerate the northern Scottish economy and one that the Government must take?
In 2024, at the end of the Conservative Government’s time in office, UK fossil fuel dependency was 75.1%—a record low. It is, of course, the final burning of hydrocarbons, not their extraction and production from the North Sea, that creates the CO emissions. Yet under this Government, fossil fuel dependency this winter is predicted to rise to 76.6%, which covers all our energy needs, including transport, heating and electricity generation. For as long as this lasts, does the Minister agree that we should maximise UKCS production to minimise our exposure to imported LNG and oil and gas products, including imported aviation fuel refined from Russian crude in India, which is part of the aviation fuel used on every flight taking off today and every day from Heathrow and Gatwick?
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, we recognise the logic of this decision, but approving a new gas field in a climate crisis is proof that Britain has not moved nearly fast enough to cut demand for gas in our homes and transport. Jackdaw was licensed decades ago. The decision is late because the Conservative Government failed to do the necessary preparations, and North Sea workers in the industry have paid the cost ever since. We accept that gas will be needed for decades during the transition, but burning fossil fuels causes climate change, and this summer’s wildfires and heat waves show us the true cost.
Although we could have properly invested in our transition towards cleaner, cheaper and more efficient energy, successive Governments—some more than others —have instead left the UK in a state of energy insecurity. By scrapping insulation schemes, the Conservatives built around 1.6 million homes to lower efficiency standards, costing families in those homes an extra £5 billion in bills between 2017 and 2025. The Conservatives also blocked onshore wind and cancelled zero-carbon homes, leaving us far more exposed to ever-rising global gas prices.
The Conservatives and Reform still talk about the North Sea as though it were a magic lamp. The fact is that it is a basin in terminal decline. The Conservatives’ latest so-called evidence is the Onward report, which Carbon Brief’s fact check found assumes that gas prices will fall back to pre-war levels and stay there for 20 years. One Imperial College professor said that the modelling
“has more holes than a Swiss cheese”.
Even on its own terms, it would mean an extra 524 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and slower electrification. The Climate Change Committee estimates that a single fossil fuel gas spike on the scale of 2022 could cost as much as the net additional cost of reaching net zero across every year to 2050.
Jackdaw will not bring energy bills down. It can only add to the margins of our energy security. Jackdaw can play a short-term role only if it displaces the most polluting LNG and if it leads to more technological green investment. What guarantees are there that this will happen? Will the Government publish the evidence and report on it each year?
Rosebank, on the other hand, is different. The vast majority of it is oil and is sold on the international market, so it will not lower our bills, and the evidence shows that it fails the climate test. We await that decision and we will hold the Government to account.
The Government have also said that tax revenues will go into the new energy wealth fund to invest in green technology, which we welcome. However, the OBR forecasts North Sea tax receipts falling from £4.1 billion in 2025-26 to just £100 million by 2030-31—a 98% drop that Jackdaw cannot reverse. How will Parliament know how this money is spent?
The real answer to energy security is having homegrown renewable power the price of which we control and electrifying everything at speed. This Government are slipping ever further behind. Labour cannot argue that we need more gas because we failed to transition at speed while slowing their own electrification ambitions. The vehicle mandate requires 80% of new cars to be electric by 2030. Reports suggest that Ministers are leaning towards cutting that target to 60%. Does the Minister accept that this would be a disaster, sending the wrong signal to manufacturers, charge point investors and drivers? I ask the Minister to rule out any weakening of the 2030 target and to say when the review will report.
The target for heat pumps has been cut from 600,000 a year by 2028 to 450,000 by 2030. We are among the slowest in Europe because electricity costs are so much higher than gas. On insulation, the warm homes local grant has upgraded just 5,470 homes as of July—0.1% of the 5 million target by 2030. The Government must commit to a national electrification strategy and to a 10-year emergency home upgrade programme, starting with free insulation for the lowest-income households.
I welcome the commitment in the Statement to take levies off electricity bills, but Ministers have committed to remove only two-thirds of the renewable obligation and for just three years. We must remove it fully and decouple the price of electricity from that of gas.
I am concerned that new North Sea production, airport expansion and new data centres are adding emissions, while developing the grid, electric vehicles and heat pumps are falling behind. When will the Government receive the Climate Change Committee’s advice and will they commission a fundamental new assessment of our carbon budgets? The just transition is not delivering for North Sea workers and their communities. Labour should establish the just transition commission that we have called for.
Jackdaw must be the very last. This may be a pragmatic decision, but it must not become a precedent. The only lasting route to security and human survival is to enable the end of our addiction to oil and gas.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Baroness Curran) (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for those substantial contributions, and I will do my best to address them as much as I can. I am sure we will have countless opportunities to address them again.
The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, began by mentioning a number of other North Sea oil and gas projects. As noble Lords will know, I cannot comment on other projects as they are undergoing relevant quasi-judicial processes. However, I lodge the general point that he made, and I am sure it is one that we will continue to discuss.
On Sea Lion, as the Government have said in this Chamber before, the Government maintain a consistent position on the right of the Falkland Islands to develop its natural resources. This is integral to its right of self-determination, which is grounded in international law. UK oil and gas licensing policy does not apply in the Falkland Islands.
I turn to some of the noble Lord’s general points, and I want to be absolutely clear. He began on quite a positive note. I did get some congratulations, so I register my appreciation of that, even if it did not last very long. The North Sea remains a vital asset. It supports jobs, communities and our energy security. Even on the path to net zero, the UK will still require oil and gas for decades to come as we make the clean energy transition.
I think the fundamental disagreement between our positions today is that—I return to the challenge that the noble Lord has given me—he failed to mention the challenge of climate change. After the summer that we have had and all the signs that surround us, I think that is a dereliction of duty. We cannot look at just the production of gas and how we consume gas. We have to look at our carbon emissions, and we have to have a plan to deal with that. That is why this plan, this decision, is vital.
Jackdaw will start supplying gas to British homes and businesses in the coming weeks. At its peak, it is expected to increase UK domestic gas production by around 6%. It is a meaningful production, but it is still in line with our climate change commitments. Those climate change commitments are central to the policy of this Government, which is why our approach to the North Sea goes hand in hand with our ambitions for a managed, orderly and prosperous energy transition. As confirmed by the Prime Minister, who I agree with—and noble Lords should wait until the Prime Minister or any Minister makes formal decisions—this Government will hold to the target of reaching net zero by 2050 to meet the climate challenge and transition from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear.
Let us be clear that the Jackdaw project will not prevent the UK being able to meet its legally binding limits on carbon emissions or achieving net zero by 2050, but, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, indicated, Britain is a price taker, not a price maker. The price we pay for gas is determined ultimately by international markets, so while domestic production supports our energy security, producing more gas cannot, by itself, protect British consumers from volatile international prices. That is the charge I return to the noble Lord. He talked about the challenge of relying on renewables, but he does not take responsibility for the impact that volatile gas prices and their knock-on effects have had on British consumers.
We talk about developing the North Sea and continuing to do so. I remind the noble Lord that under the previous Tory Government 70,000 jobs in the North Sea were lost, which indicates that there are challenges there. Just increasing production there cannot be seen as a solution.
I turn to some of the points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I appreciated his introduction to his questions, which was quite interesting. We have heard very little from the Conservatives about the Onward report, and very little about their cheap energy plan. These have been questioned quite significantly in relation to the thinking and the figures behind them, but I am happy to return to that discussion if the noble Earl wishes to do so. He indicated some very useful stats in relation to that.
The noble Earl mentioned the energy wealth fund, which was announced alongside the Jackdaw decision. Its purpose is to use Britain’s energy wealth today to invest in the clean energy industries of the future. It will invest in renewable and low-carbon energy infrastructure across the UK, helping to unlock growth and supporting the low-carbon economy.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, also talked about the zero-emissions vehicles mandate. On 14 August, the Government launched the mandate review consultation, which sought views from the public and stakeholders to consider the ZEV mandate and ensure that it is fit for purpose. The consultation forms an important part of the long-committed mandate review and has just closed. As your Lordships know, the Government have a long-standing commitment to publish that review to ensure that we are taking a pragmatic and balanced approach to the transition for transport. The Government launched the consultation so that views from stakeholders and the public could properly inform the review. No policy decisions have yet been made, but I assure noble Lords that the Government remain committed to the zero-emissions vehicle mandate.
The noble Earl also mentioned the warm homes plan. The warm homes plan represents the biggest ever programme of home upgrades in history and is already helping households to cut their energy bills, through solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and insulation. On heat pumps, to which he referred specifically, under the boiler upgrade scheme, the Government have supported over 90,000 heat pump installations and issued over £600 million in grant funding to homes in England and Wales.
I take the general point the noble Earl made about the renewables obligation, the work that we have done on that and the de-linking that we need to undertake in this country. Britain has already moved from gas setting the price of electricity for about 90% of the time in the early 2020s to around 60% today. So we are on that journey, and it is a journey that we want to continue to be on. Through the Government’s clean energy mission, it is estimated that gas will set the wholesale price for around half the time in 2030.
I return to the general point about the decision itself. The Jackdaw decision is fundamental to the decisions that we are making as a Government. It does not affect prices, but it will help with production and give a small but meaningful contribution to energy security. I re-emphasise that Britain has a secure gas system that has consistently met demand, including during periods of global market disruption, and will continue to do so this winter. We have also emphasised the economic benefits to Britain. The developer estimates that Jackdaw will support nearly 300 jobs and contribute around £2.9 billion to the UK economy. I am very pleased that most noble Lords have welcomed the decision today, for which I thank them.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, the Statement includes a proposal that there should be a North Sea energy wealth fund, which will put £2 billion into further development of some kind. I am proud of the way in which, under both parties, we developed the North Sea in an amazing way and at an amazing speed in the last century. I give full credit to Tony Benn, who got it going, although his methods were slightly different from those of some of us on the other side.
We now have the North Sea wealth fund, Great British Energy, the North Sea Transition Authority and the GB nuclear authority. That is before we come to any of the decommissioning authorities or other authorities developing the energy transition. Is this not overegging the pudding? It seems to me that we are creating more carbon emissions with all this bureaucracy than will be saved by anything else. Could the Minister assure us that someone has an eye on keeping this bureaucracy under control? We should let the basic forces of good regulation and innovation lead to more jobs for this country and even more jobs for the supply chains all over the world. Can she reassure us this is being kept under watch and not running out of control?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that very interesting question, and I pay tribute to him and recognise his great experience in this field over—being respectful—many decades. He raises a very interesting point about the carbon emissions of bureaucracy; that is quite an interesting question I could ask in the department. Challenging bureaucracy, looking at costs, driving down duplication and always making sure that you are driven by outcomes are very good principles of government. I take the point that he raises very seriously, and it is something that I and the department will keep in the forefront of our minds. When we are creating the necessary infrastructure to implement our decision-making, it is vital that we do not bureaucratise or duplicate. We should have a carbon emissions assessment of that too. In the spirit of the partnership that he began with, I think we can say that the commitment to the North Sea remains because it will play a great part in our energy mix for decades to come.
Baroness Gill (Lab)
My Lords, could my noble friend the Minister inform the House about the Government’s plans for the energy wealth fund. How will it impact household bills and jobs?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that question. The energy wealth fund is an important part of the announcement that was made on the same day that the decision was made on Jackdaw. For once, we must acknowledge that we should make use of the receipts that we receive, and we want to feed that back into the clean energy transition. It will be beneficial because it will be clear where that money is being spent. It will help fund a clean transition, as I said; it can help with many parts of the infrastructure that we need to facilitate clean infrastructure. While there will not be a direct read across to bills, it will certainly help in the long term as we establish our energy security and get off the fossil-fuel rollercoaster, because that will help protect affordability in the long run. That kind of investment, focused in that way, will help us develop the clean energy industries of the future. As we know, there is growing investment in that field; I think there is £110 billion of private investment in the clean energy sector. That, of course, will have a read over to jobs. Many of them are skilled, high-paying jobs, which is vital to my nation of Scotland but also vital, as we now know, throughout the United Kingdom.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, at COP 30 in Belém, the UK led an international statement on fossil fuels calling for robust monitoring of methane emissions and the elimination of routine venting and flaring. We have heard again today the demonstrably wrong statement about the comparative level of emissions intensity of imports versus our own gas. The overwhelming majority of UK gas imports—69% last year—come from Norway, where the gas production is almost four times less polluting. One of the key reasons for this is that Norway long ago banned emergency flaring of gas and has far less leakage. Given the Jackdaw decision, are the Government treating the reduction in methane emissions and gas flaring from all UK gas production as a matter of urgency? What practical steps are they taking to ensure these are not just voluntary rules for the industry but genuine, enforced rules?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
Does it not make a change to hear the Greens actually talk about environmental issues? Being Scottish, I would emphasise that point. The noble Baroness mentioned methane. The North Sea oil and gas sector has one of the lowest methane emission intensities globally. The industry is already taking action to cut its methane emissions by stopping leaks and reducing the use of venting and flaring to deliberately release gas. This saw the industry reach its 2025 methane intensity target of 0.2% five years early in 2020, meaning that, for every 1,000 units of gas sold, no more than two units should be released as methane.
I will take the opportunity to address the noble Baroness on this issue, because I have not had the opportunity before. She properly and understandably presses this Government on their climate commitments and the need to build new renewables infrastructure. I plead with her to talk to some of the Green Party’s Members of Parliament and ask them to please stop objecting to renewables development in their own constituencies, because that might help us move forward on this agenda.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, the National Energy System Operator—NESO—has four future energy scenarios. Two things are true about these four scenarios: first, the different scenarios will require different amounts of fossil fuel in 2050; and, secondly, the decision about which of these paths the Government wish to follow has to be made now, because each of the scenarios will have long-term implications for investment in infrastructure. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government have decided to follow one of NESO’s future energy scenarios? If they have not decided, when will they decide which one they want to choose?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I was warned about questions from the Cross-Benchers: that they are always very thorough and demanding, and so it has come to pass. I know of NESO and some of that work, but I cannot list the four scenarios. I can say that we are looking at the combination and at the demands we will need to have met by 2050 to make sure that we have a robust and absolute energy supply. I know that NESO, despite the current investigations that are under way, has emphatically said that we are on that course. I guarantee the noble Lord that this Government will never take a decision that undermines a robust energy supply, but we are also very cognisant of climate change, because that has a knock-on effect on our energy supply. We believe that strikes the right balance and takes us on the journey we need to be on. Having said that, I do not want to be dismissive of the substance of the noble Lord’s question; it is something we should always be alert to. I will look at the different models and perhaps have a further discussion with the noble Lord.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, these questions give me the unusual pleasure of congratulating the Minister on her announcement. Will she now make my day by announcing the Government’s permission for the Rosebank field to go ahead? There can be no remaining objections, given that, within the Government, the most extreme and fanatical opponent of developing oil fields, the Foreign Secretary—and former Energy Secretary—has given approval for the Sea Lion field in the Falklands. Can the Minister explain why it could possibly be right there and wrong here, and why there should be a day’s delay in giving Rosebank approval?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that question, which was not terribly surprising. I do not quite comprehend the Opposition Benches’ obsession with Ed Miliband, but I suppose it is something I will have to learn to live with. The noble Lord knows full well that the Rosebank decision is a quasi-judicial decision. While I acknowledge the interest in it, I cannot be tempted into making any direct comment on it. The decision on Jackdaw does not prejudge Rosebank or any other application. Each decision is made on its merits, and all the evidence will be looked at and thoroughly investigated. It will be a robust decision, based on the evidence.
Lord Spellar (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the comments from the Minister on challenging the bureaucracy. It is a shame that her predecessors in the Conservative Government and the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition did not challenge it to ensure a much greater British content in renewable energy, and that we have become so dependent on foreign manufacturers. I urge her to challenge the presumption that there is nothing we can do about gas prices and security, either through storage or—as Australia is doing—by mandating that a percentage of gas be produced for the domestic market. We are not passive in this, and we should become an active Government. That message needs to get back into Whitehall.
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. I believe in proactive government, and I am very happy to take a message back to Whitehall to say that we need to be much more assertive and proactive in defending not just our energy interests but the general interests of the country. I am happy to take that energy back—if I can. The Australian model is interesting and is something I want to look at.
Storage has been raised here a number of times. I have gone back to the department constantly to ask questions about storage and have had reassurance about that, but it is something I will continue to look at. The noble Lord is right: we need to look after the interests of British workers and industries, making sure we can extract every possible opportunity from that. Every penny the Government spend should be considered within that frame, and I will go back and pursue that. I do not know whether my team will always agree with me, but I am happy to challenge bureaucracy at all times.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, right now the economy of Aberdeen, in the north-east of Scotland, is hurting badly. The decision on Jackdaw has been welcomed and will be extremely helpful to the situation. By the way, I was an early supporter of targets for net zero, which I support 100%, and I am very concerned that the Conservatives have now abandoned that, because they are creating confusion in the markets for both retail and investment. We need to ensure that we deliver net zero, which is not incompatible with developing oil and gas reserves. My plea for Rosebank is: yes, it will have emissions, but those emissions will happen whether the oil is produced here or elsewhere. The logic is to produce it here at lower carbon and get the benefit of investment, jobs and taxes. I know the Minister cannot answer the question, but it is important that this is put on record as a legitimate reason for considering it positively.
Baroness Curran (Lab)
Yes, and of course the noble Lord will take the opportunity to put such matters on the record, because he knows that Jackdaw did not prejudge any other application and it will be looked at on its merits. I agree with his fundamental assertion and the generality that it is possible to still extract gas from the North Sea but also maintain our climate commitments, and we should not lose our energy on tackling the climate crisis. We have a responsibility here to tell the British public about what is happening and the potential difficulties and challenges that we face after this summer—we should all be alert to that. I share the noble Lord’s challenge to the Conservatives, who I think we are just about to hear from.
Lord Redwood (Con)
It was a great decision on Jackdaw. I see in the Statement that the Government want to decommission existing facilities at speed. Would it not be better to keep them and work with the industry to get more of our oil and gas out? That would be much lower CO2, particularly than importing LNG.
Baroness Curran (Lab)
Decommissioning is an important issue to raise. The noble Lord will know that we have asked Shell to submit its decommissioning programme for the Energy Secretary to consider. The next stage of the Brent decommissioning process has been under review since 2017. A final decision will be made only once all relevant evidence, representations and legal requirements have been considered, so we are taking pragmatic steps to unblock long-standing decision processes such as this—but the noble Lord makes an important point about the importance of decommissioning.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, the Minister has made clear that this decision, understandable as it is within the context of the current circumstances, in no way detracts from the overall priorities and mission of the Government regarding net zero. She also made clear that it does not in any way affect the prices of gas for consumers in this country. It is said that the new North Sea energy wealth fund will support plans to delink gas and electricity over the course of this Parliament. Again and again we have raised the issue of how gas prices actually make things much more expensive for electricity consumers. On what timetable are the Government going to make some progress on this important issue?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. I am not sure I can give her a precise timetable, in all sincerity, because there is a series of decisions linked to it and it does not lend itself to a given timetable. We have made progress from 90% to 60% over the course of this decade. We want to keep the pace going on that and we will continue. Of course, it is contingent on a variety of issues, but I am happy to keep that issue on the agenda and at the forefront of our minds.
The noble Baroness mentioned climate change, and I emphasise how important this is. We have COP coming up. We regard ourselves as international leaders on climate change and we want to keep that position. The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister will be attending COP, which is an indication of the significance we give to it. This will be an ongoing conversation that I am happy to discuss in Parliament and with the noble Baroness.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, as a former accountant of a major international oil company, I am highly sceptical of the tax numbers floated in this debate and generally. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that profits from Jackdaw are not shifted from the UK to a low or no-tax jurisdiction through transfer pricing strategies, which are already failing the tax authorities? Shell, which is a part-owner of Jackdaw, is an absolute master of shifting profits from the UK to elsewhere and thereby dodging UK taxes. What assurances can the Minister offer the House that this would be curbed?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
You do not get challenging questions only from the Cross-Benchers. As an accounting professor, the noble Lord knows quite a lot about this. Of course, we would not want to see excessive profit, manipulation or improper activity within this field. We will be trying to ensure that investment is properly managed.
The noble Lord just put on the record the behaviour of certain companies and the consequences of that. I am not personally versed in that, but it is something I will look at. Obviously, there are limits to what we can do with private companies. When I was at the Dispatch Box last week, the Tories and the noble Lord were in unison and in one voice; I suspect that on this question they are not. I will come back to the noble Lord.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Does the Minister not accept that heat pumps are very inefficient? To heat water and the house, you also need solar panels and battery storage units. Can the Minister take that into consideration on heat pumps?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
Of course, we would want to understand any practical difficulties and challenges. My understanding is that heat pumps have become very useful to people, who value them and find that they make a useful contribution. I would always wish to be guided by the evidence, but we are seeing that they are regarded as an important part of the infrastructure for a renewable future. That is the evidence that I have seen.
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree with me that a case can be made for the Jackdaw field because it displaces higher-carbon LPG coming into the country with UK natural gas, which has lower emissions? That case cannot be made for oil permissions—where the oil has been explored but not yet produced—because oil is 30% higher in emissions than even LPG. Does my noble friend agree with me that the best way we can proceed is to go along with the International Energy Agency’s view that we already have enough explored but not yet produced oil across the world to bust our climate change targets three times over and that the best thing to do is to leave it in the ground?
Baroness Curran (Lab)
I suspect that my noble friend knows what I will say in response to that: I cannot prejudge any decision. The decision on Rosebank will be quasi-judicial and I cannot comment on it. Like my response to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, I say to my noble friend that he has got his point on the record.
Armed Forces Bill
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 View all Armed Forces Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL 58-I Marshalled list for Third Reading - (26 Oct 2026)
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I have it in command from His Majesty the King to acquaint the House that His Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Armed Forces Bill, has consented to place his interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Antrobus) (Lab)
My Lords, I will make a short statement on the position regarding legislative consent on the Bill. I am pleased to inform the House that legislative consent has been secured from both the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd, and I thank Ministers and officials in both Governments for their constructive engagement throughout the Bill’s passage.
Despite engagement with Northern Ireland Ministers and officials, it has not been possible to secure an agreed position from the Northern Ireland Executive. I therefore regret to inform the House that legislative consent has not been secured from the Northern Ireland Assembly.
However, having carefully considered the position, the Government have concluded that there are compelling reasons to proceed with the Bill without consent. First, the proposed extension of the covenant duty in Clause 2 seeks to ensure that the public bodies within its scope give due regard to the needs of serving personnel, veterans and their families, including the bereaved, when exercising relevant functions. Excluding Northern Ireland would leave a gap in the coverage of the extended duty, resulting in different statutory requirements depending on where members of the Armed Forces community live.
Secondly, excluding Northern Ireland from the relevant service justice provisions would create a gap in the protection available for victims. For these reasons, while we regret that consent has not been secured, we consider it necessary to proceed, so that the benefits and protections of these provisions extend across the whole of the United Kingdom. I beg to move that this Bill now be read a third time.
Baroness Antrobus
“Removal of immigration fees(1) The Secretary of State must make regulations under section 68 of the Immigration Act 2014 (power to impose fees in connection with immigration or nationality functions) to secure that qualifying service persons, and qualifying family members, are exempted from any requirement that would otherwise apply to pay immigration fees. (2) Before the end of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report setting out—(a) the estimated cost to public funds of implementing the regulations mentioned in subsection (1), and(b) a timetable for the implementation of those regulations.(3) In this section—“immigration fees” means any fees payable in connection with an application of a kind specified in—(a) row 1.3D.1 of Table 1 in Schedule 1 to the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018/330) (fees for an application for entry clearance and indefinite leave to enter under Appendix HM Armed Forces to the immigration rules),(b) row 1.4.4A of that Table (fees for an application for entry clearance under Appendix Gurkha and Hong Kong military unit veteran discharged before 1 July 1997 to the immigration rules),(c) row 3.1.1 of that Table (fees for an application for entry clearance and indefinite leave to enter the United Kingdom as the dependant of an HM Armed Forces service leaver or a member of HM Armed Forces), or(d) row 8.1.1 of Table 8 in Schedule 2 to those Regulations (fees for an application for indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom);“qualifying family member” means a person who meets the requirements for making an application for settlement under Armed Forces immigration rules as the partner or child of—(a) a qualifying service person, or(b) a current member of HM Armed Forces;“qualifying service person” means a person who meets the requirements for making an application for settlement under Armed Forces immigration rules as—(a) a service leaver from HM Armed Forces,(b) a former member of the Brigade of Gurkhas, or(c) a former member of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps or Hong Kong Squadron of the Royal Navy.(4) In subsection (3)—(a) references to “Armed Forces immigration rules” are to—(i) Appendix HM Armed Forces to the immigration rules, or(ii) Appendix Gurkha and Hong Kong military unit veteran discharged before 1 July 1997 to the immigration rules,and “immigration rules” means rules made under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 (as amended from time to time);(b) the terms “partner”, “child”, “service leaver” and “HM Armed Forces” have the same meanings as in the rules mentioned in paragraph (a).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause would provide for a requirement for certain fees for making immigration-related applications to be waived in the case of certain members of the Armed Forces together with their partners and children and would also require a report to be made to Parliament about the implementation of that requirement within six months of Royal Assent.
Baroness Antrobus (Lab)
My Lords, this amendment fulfils the undertaking I gave on Report to bring forward a government amendment on settlement fees for non-UK Armed Forces personnel and their families, in support of our manifesto commitment.
I am particularly grateful to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, for his persistence in pursuing this issue and for his constructive engagement. He has championed the interests of those who serve and their families with great commitment, and I am pleased that we have been able to respond to the concerns he raised in previous debates.
This amendment places a duty on the Secretary of State to amend the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations, so that eligible applicants under the relevant Armed Forces settlement routes are exempt from the applicable settlement fees. It also requires the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament within six months of Royal Assent, setting out the estimated cost to public funds of implementing the fee waiver and a timetable for implementation. This will give Parliament a clear account of how and when the waiver will be delivered. It puts a duty to deliver the fee waiver into law and provides for parliamentary scrutiny of its implementation.
Turning to Amendment 2, I recognise that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, is seeking a timetable for the delivery of the fee exemption and for this to be implemented within the first half of the next financial year. I confirm that the Government will implement the exemption before the end of September 2027. This will apply to service personnel with four years’ reckonable service. I hope that this assurance provides the certainty that the noble and gallant Lord seeks, so he will feel that he can withdraw his amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment 2 (to Amendment 1)
Lord Craig of Radley
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, I was expecting to speak to, and encourage others to support, Amendment 2 and to thank the Government for bringing forward my Amendment 54 from Report. However, the House has just heard from the Minister—and I thank her for the courtesy of informing me of her intention—that the Government will implement the elimination of fees by the end of September 2027. Indeed, that is in some ways even better than what my amendment called for, and it is of course excellent news. It comes from the Dispatch Box and so is binding in honour. It more than meets my amendment and I will be happy to withdraw it.
I do not wish to detain the House long, other than to explain why I had initially not asked to fix a date. This being a manifesto commitment, I had assumed that, two and a half years after the election, and the other place having been assured by MoD and Home Office Ministers over 18 months ago that they were working actively together on the issue, there would by now be an oven-ready announcement for Ministers to use. It has nevertheless taken recent discussions with Ministers and debates on the Floor of this House to get to the point of fixing a not-later-than implementation date.
I very much thank Ministers in government for their understanding on this point. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I am speaking on behalf of my noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham, who seems to have gone down with the lurgy that affected the Front Bench on this Bill last week. She sends her apologies that she cannot be in her place.
On Report, my noble friend Lady Smith indicated that she supported the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, in his intentions with his amendment. She is also delighted with the concession that the Government have given today. We are really pleased that it has happened—it is a simple but important amendment that brings commencement at the earliest opportunity, within the first half of the next financial year.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the House for not being present last week for Report. I thank everyone who so thoughtfully sent good wishes. I also hope that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is making a return to full health. We certainly look forward to seeing him in his place. I am so sorry to learn that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, is unwell. I send her the best wishes of these Benches and hope that she is soon on the mend.
Happily, my noble friend Lord Minto is indestructible and fit as a butcher’s dog: here last week, here today. I thank him for his doughty efforts in my absence. I was watching avidly on my iPad from the dining room table and I think we all agree that his adversary, the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus, plunged in at the deep end and acquitted herself admirably.
As my noble friend said last week, these Benches support the amendment tabled by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. Had he divided the House, we would have supported him. I welcome that the Government have addressed this issue with their amendment, and I am delighted to hear that the noble and gallant Lord is now content with the position.
I know it is no longer accepted practice to thank a cast of thousands at Third Reading, but, if noble Lords might indulge me for a moment, I would like to pay tribute to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. Not only did he serve our nation with distinction for 40 years; he has continued that distinguished service through his highly effective work in your Lordships’ House for a further three decades. At the age of 97— I do not know what he is on, but I want some of it—the noble and gallant Lord is still serving the nation. If ever there were a reason to abandon the plan to remove the over-80s from your Lordships’ House, I think the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, encapsulates it.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus, for their constructive engagement as Ministers during the Bill’s progress, as well as the Bill team and everyone else who has assisted in its smooth passage.
Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Non-Afl)
I want to contribute quickly to Third Reading. I declare my interest as the assistant chief of defence staff of the reserve forces and cadets. I am therefore in a slightly odd role, in that I am responsible for the policy team of one specific element of the Bill.
It is traditional that at Third Reading we thank many of the civil servants who have been involved in the preparation of the Bill. Because I am so personally involved, I want to take that opportunity. My staff were very involved in addressing the amendments to Clause 22 that your Lordships’ House brought, and they worked incredibly hard over many days to try to address those issues. They were probably slightly surprised when your Lordships’ House decided to reject them, but I take this opportunity—because I have no view, and I look forward to working closely with the RFCAs in the future—to acknowledge the many hours of work that they put in in trying to come to a compromise. The members of staff are: Ceri Baker, Nicholas Allan, Brigadier Christopher Palmer, Richard Hartell, Lieutenant-Colonel Martin Stanning and Safa Shahid. I am sure that your Lordships’ House would wish to thank them for their sterling efforts over the course of the Bill.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted that the Bill has reached this stage and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus, for stepping in magnificently at the last minute. Personally, I am disappointed that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is not within the Armed Forces covenant, but I thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and officials for engaging. I thank the noble Lord for his letter to me of 1 October and request that a copy of it be put in the Library, because it commits to a review of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s status within the Civil Service and Sponsored Reserves arrangements, which will be implemented in 2027.
Baroness Antrobus (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for their extremely kind comments. To address the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, I will ensure that the letter regarding the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is put in the Library. I will pass on the kind words for my noble friend the Minister, but he should be back very soon so noble Lords across the House will be able to engage with him. As I have said before, I am very happy to see the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, back. Obviously, I am concerned that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, is not here, and I fear that I will be next.
Let us press on with passing the Bill. I am very grateful for the co-operation of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. It was rather last minute, but he has been exceptionally collaborative and helpful, up to and including this morning, and the Government have committed to implementation by the end of September 2027.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, I conclude by expressing my warmest thanks to all those Members of the House who either supported or voted for my earlier amendments. I also thank the Ministers closely involved in dealing with this issue for their willingness to meet and discuss how to progress it. It made all the difference to harmoniously reaching this satisfactory conclusion. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for being more than kind in her remarks about me. We should not forget that the beneficiaries of this government approach will be those who, up to now, have faced fees amounting to five-figure sums for a family of four, on top of air fares and relocation costs. Waiving these fees by a set date in the future gives certainty and is a fair military covenant way to treat veterans who, along with their families, have given service often of many years to this country. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I apologise for not combining everything earlier—I was trying to follow the rules on speaking. I thank both Ministers, the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and their officials for the meetings between Committee and Report and earlier during the passage of the Bill on some complicated issues. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie: I do not think that we were divided by politics on this Bill, and it has been really important that we were able to progress things. If my noble friend Lady Smith were here, she would say that she was particularly pleased that she was successful in your Lordships’ House on the single occupancy housing arrangements, which have strengthened the Armed Forces covenant. She hopes that that might be continued, with the support of the Government, at the other end. With that, I conclude the comments from these Benches.
Courts and Tribunals Bill
Tuesday 27th October 2026
(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Courts and Tribunals Bill 2024-26 View all Courts and Tribunals Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 13 October 2026 - (13 Oct 2026)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have met me to discuss the Bill over the last few weeks. I am especially grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, for his independent review of the criminal courts, which provides the foundations for this Bill. I have now met him several times, and I hope that he will continue to work closely with me and the Government as the Bill progresses. I am always conscious of the extraordinary depth of legal expertise in your Lordships’ House and in this debate. I know that the Government will greatly benefit from that wisdom as this Bill progresses.
With some notable exceptions, such as fraud and online crime, crime rates are on a long-term downward trend. Nevertheless, we prosecute and sentence more people every year, and the length of sentences has doubled over the last 30 years. Despite that, a majority of the public continue to believe that crime is going up and sentences are too short. The prisons are full, and the courts have a substantial backlog. In other words, there is an entrenched breakdown of public confidence in the criminal justice system. That is at the heart of this Bill’s purpose and all the Government’s criminal justice reforms. These are not reforms of expediency or efficiency, but principled reforms to a criminal justice system which is steeped in the best of traditions but has also never stood still.
The nature of crime in contemporary society has changed. Criminal networks are ever more sophisticated, cases are more complicated, evidence can run to literally millions of digital pages—as noted in the Fisher review—and the pressures on judges, advocates, prosecutors and court staff are acute. Today, almost 81,000 cases are outstanding in the Crown Court—more than double the number in 2019. Nearly 24,000 have been waiting for more than a year and more than half of those involve violent or sexual offences.
Imagine being the victim of a serious sexual assault, finding the courage to come forward, going through the investigation, steeling yourself to stand in court and recount what happened and then, at the last moment, being told that your trial cannot go ahead. For some victims, the wait becomes intolerable and they understandably give up on the prospect of prosecution. Cases collapse and victims are denied justice. Defendants are denied the opportunity to clear their names and the guilty do not face the consequences of their crimes; they simply walk free. Other victims face the extraordinary prospect of waiting longer for justice than the convicted offender may ultimately spend in prison.
Justice delayed is justice denied. That phrase has been used a great deal in this debate and I am sure that it will be used again today, but it is the heart of our concern. Last year alone, the number of cases requiring a trial was nearly a quarter higher than in 2019. The conclusion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, was clear: we need investment, modernisation and, crucially, structural reform. This Government are acting on all three. Let me set them out in turn.
We have put record investment into the courts, including £287 million in court repairs and digital upgrades. We have recruited more judges and magistrates and have put record funding into criminal legal aid. The Government have removed the cap on Crown Court sitting days so that all available judicial capacity can be used to hear cases. We have also committed more than £550 million to support services over the remainder of this Parliament to help victims through the delays.
I turn to modernising. Working with the judiciary, we are improving how cases are listed. We are rolling out case co-ordinators for every Crown Court centre and investing in better video technology so that more hearings can take place remotely. However, we also need practical, proportionate, structural reform to deliver faster, fairer justice for the 21st century. The measures in this Bill are designed to ensure that court time is used proportionately to maintain the balance between victims and defendants, and to make it clear that the court is the decision-maker, not the defendant.
Central to that approach is a significant strengthening of our magistrates’ courts. Magistrates’ courts already deal with the overwhelming majority of criminal cases fairly and efficiently. Yet too many cases that could be resolved by magistrates are pushed into the Crown Court, adding to pressures on a Crown Court system that must also deal with murder, rape and the other most serious offences.
The Bill addresses this in three ways. First, it provides the power to extend magistrates’ court sentencing power to 18 or 24 months for offences that are triable either way. The Government’s intention, depending on when we get Royal Assent for the Bill, is to increase sentencing powers to 18 months later next year. This does not increase the maximum sentence for any offence. It simply allows appropriate cases to be concluded in the magistrates’ courts, which deal with these cases around four times faster than the Crown Court.
Secondly, the Bill changes who decides where some cases are heard. For “either way” offences, defendants will no longer have an automatic right to elect for Crown Court trial. Instead, magistrates and district judges sitting in the magistrates’ court will determine the appropriate venue, having regard to the seriousness and complexity of the case. Decisions about where cases are heard should rest with the courts, not with defendants, who may have an incentive to prolong proceedings in the hope that the case might eventually collapse. This will help ensure that valuable Crown Court time is reserved for cases that genuinely require it, but it will also ensure that all cases that can be heard by magistrates are heard in the magistrates’ court far sooner and more quickly than if they had joined the queue for the Crown Court.
Thirdly, the Bill reforms appeals from magistrates’ courts. At present, an appeal to the Crown Court requires a complete rehearing, even where the grounds for the challenge are weak. This places further demands on court time and can require victims and witnesses to relive their experiences unnecessarily. The Bill therefore introduces a permission stage to filter out appeals without sufficient merit while preserving the right to bring a proper challenge. We will also enable audio recording in all magistrates’ courts, providing a reliable record of proceedings.
These are ambitious reforms, but it is essential that we have the capacity to deliver them by investing in courts, certainly, but also in the magistracy itself. I am sure we will discuss capacity in the magistrates’ courts today and in later stages on the Bill, so I want to set out straightaway that we are on track to reach our target of having 21,000 magistrates in place by 2028-29, having recruited almost 1,500 new magistrates in the past six months alone. Alongside them, we are strengthening judicial capacity, boosting the ranks of our district judges, who have the expertise to hear more serious and complex cases in the magistrates’ courts. Last year, we recruited 50 new deputy district judges and have identified a reserve list of over 80 additional candidates whose appointments are now under way. Alongside this, recruitment is under way for 30 district judges, strengthening judicial capacity and giving us flexibility to tackle growing demand.
Finally, the Bill retains jury trials for almost all defendants facing trial in the Crown Court, while bringing forward a narrowly defined provision for “judge alone” trials in the longest and most complex fraud and financial cases. These exceptional trials can last for months, placing considerable burdens on jurors through prolonged absence from work, lost income and disruption to family life. The primary purpose of this measure is not to save court time but to protect ordinary citizens from the disproportionate demands of serving on juries on such lengthy and complex trials. It is also about ensuring that our justice system keeps pace with the changing nature of crime that I have described. As financial offending becomes increasingly complex, we must ensure that our courts are able to deal with these cases swiftly and effectively, now and in the future.
Some of the current problems are simply unfair. The burden of court delays is not shared equally. People from Black and mixed ethnicity backgrounds are more likely to be victims of crime, while defendants from minority ethnic backgrounds are also more likely to be remanded in custody before trial—a fact highlighted in the Lammy review of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Therefore, the Bill also includes a provision for an independent review of the impact of these reforms on defendants from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. The reviewer will be appointed within six months of the first reforms taking effect, with an initial report within 12 months and a full report within five years. Those findings will be published and laid before Parliament.
I emphasise again that the Bill is about far more than court capacity. It is about rebuilding a system that works better for everyone, perhaps especially by improving the experience of victims. For too long, victims of rape and sexual violence have faced not only delays, as I have described, but harmful assumptions and insinuations about how they should have behaved, how they should have responded, or what a victim is supposed to look like. The Bill therefore introduces important reforms to improve the way evidence is given and to make special measures easier to access, as recommended by the Law Commission. Alongside this, the Government have announced £23 million to improve the experience of victims of rape and serious sexual offences in court, including specialist courtrooms, better facilities and additional support. Each year, the witness intermediary scheme enables over 10,000 children and disabled witnesses to give evidence to the police and courts.
We are also committed to strengthening protections for children in family proceedings. The Bill will repeal the presumption of parental involvement from the Children Act 1989, ensuring that children’s safety and welfare continue to be the foremost concern of the courts. This month marks 12 years since the tragic death of Claire Throssell’s two sons, Jack and Paul. Indeed, today marks the anniversary of Jack’s death. I am sure noble Lords will join me in remembering them and in paying tribute to Claire Throssell, who has campaigned with extraordinary courage to ensure other children do not suffer as her sons did and are better protected from abusive parents.
Finally, I turn to the remaining measures in the Bill. First, our intention is to bring the leadership of tribunals in England and Wales, which until now has been separate, into the judicial structure headed by the Lady Chief Justice. The new structure will support more flexible working and deployment, as well as wider judicial career options, recruitment and morale. Secondly, changes to magistrates’ expenses rules will ensure that expenses reflect modern working life, compensating magistrates appropriately for the important work they do. Finally, a technical change will primarily preserve the unique status of the Old Bailey as the Central Criminal Court, to avoid confusion with the new Salisbury Square development set to open in the City of London next year.
I began my remarks by speaking about public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system: trust that when someone reports a crime the system will respond swiftly; trust that when a victim finds the courage to give evidence, the courts will be ready to hear them; and trust that when a defendant faces an allegation, they will receive a fair trial within a reasonable time. We are protecting the principles that have made our justice system respected across the world, while having the courage to change the practices that are preventing it working as it should in the 21st century. Our task is to deliver justice that is fast, fair and worthy of the public’s trust and of our reputation in the world—not simply to clear the backlog today but to rebuild a system capable of meeting the demands of tomorrow. That is the purpose of this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister for his introduction to the Bill. I look forward to the contributions of the great legal minds we have across this Chamber. I am not a lawyer myself, but I hope that I can offer the common-sense perspective. I also look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stace. I am sure his expertise will be valuable to the House.
Before I address the content of the Bill, I want to acknowledge the backlog facing our court system and note that we appreciate the desire to provide victims, witnesses and defendants with justice in a timely manner. The statistics show 81,000 cases awaiting resolution in the Crown Court, of which nearly 24,000 have been waiting over a year. We absolutely agree with the Government that victims should not have to wait years for their cases to be heard, nor should defendants spend years awaiting the resolution of proceedings that determine their freedom. However, that does not mean that we agree on the reforms to the criminal justice system that have been set out in the Bill. There is a need to balance the efficiency of the court system with the fairness of the justice system. I do not believe that the Bill strikes that balance.
As currently drafted, the Bill is not the right way to reduce the court backlog. It is worth noting that the Bill we are presented with now represents a significant departure from the one that entered the other place eight months ago. The original Bill proposed a significant attack on jury trials; the ancient English right to be tried by a jury composed of your peers was not protected. I thank my right honourable friends for their tireless work in opposing these measures. I am grateful for their voices, alongside those of numerous experts, who were able to convince the Government to drop this clause. However, despite the removal of the most egregious clause, there remain serious problems throughout the Bill.
I turn to my concerns regarding the measures in the Bill that we have received here, as introduced by the Minister. We are particularly concerned by the removal of a defendant’s right to elect for a trial by jury for “either way” offences, the increased power proposed for magistrates’ courts, the removal of juries from complex and lengthy trials, the expansion of the definition of complex and lengthy cases through secondary legislation, and the removal of the presumption of parental involvement.
I first turn to the removal of the defendant’s right to elect for trial by jury in “either way” cases. The right to a jury trial is an ancient English right that dates back as far as the Magna Carta. If the Government have accepted that this right is valuable, they should remove this clause, as well as the previous Clause 3. Trial by a jury of your peers is an important safeguard in our criminal justice system, and one that people have immense trust in. By eroding this right, the Government are attacking a functional aspect of the system. Does the Minister have evidence that shows that this change to the system will not reduce public confidence?
I understand the Government’s desire to reduce the backlog of cases, but there is insufficient evidence to suggest that diverting cases away from the Crown Court will have such an effect. In fact, placing all these cases on the magistrates’ court is likely to have the effect of simply shifting the caseload from one place to another. Rather than causing a meaningful reduction in the backlog, this will increase the pressure on the already strained magistrates’ courts. Indeed, analysis from the Institute for Government notes that these proposals will increase the speed at which cases are heard in the Crown Court by only 1% or 2%, and the Government’s own assessment indicates that these measures will not take effect until 2028-29 at the earliest. These numbers highlight how little impact this would have on the victims and defendants facing these backlogs. It certainly does not seem a sensible trade-off to infringe upon the right to a trial by jury for this negligible reduction.
I turn next to my concerns regarding the extension of magistrates’ sentencing powers and changes to the arrangements for appealing their decisions. The Bill would increase the maximum custodial sentence available to magistrates’ courts for relevant “either way” cases, as well as replace the existing automatic right to appeal to the Crown Court with a permission-based process. Together, these changes represent a significant departure from the existing system.
Magistrates’ courts are undoubtedly important and we recognise their indispensable role in the administration of justice. Increasing their sentencing powers will allow them to deal with more serious cases, while requiring permission to appeal will add a further procedural hurdle for defendants. These proposals seem to rest on the misguided assumption that the magistrates’ courts have sufficient capacity to work through a proportion of the Crown Court backlog. What consultation have the Government undertaken on whether magistrates’ courts are prepared for this additional workload, and, if they are not prepared, what support will they be given? How will they monitor the changes to the appeals system on the number of appeals and the time taken to resolve them?
I turn to the provisions allowing certain complex and lengthy cases to be tried by a judge alone. Although certain cases can be demanding, this inconvenience cannot be the reason for the removal of juries. Indeed, in Jonathan Fisher’s fraud review, he sets out that the measures in the Bill send the “wrong message” about the seriousness of fraud cases and that juries are able to handle these cases perfectly well when they are “properly managed and presented”. What evidence do the Government have to suggest that this is the appropriate way to reduce the backlog?
As well as this, the Government are leaving the list of “complex or lengthy” cases open to amendment through secondary legislation, with the only exceptions being homicide offences and sexual offences. Schedule 1, which lists all the offences to which a judge-only trial applies, can be amended through secondary legislation. Although the Explanatory Notes suggest that this would be through the affirmative procedure, this is not evident in the Bill. That is highly concerning and leaves the potential for serious changes to be made through statutory instruments with far less parliamentary scrutiny. Fundamental changes to legislation should not be possible through secondary legislation. Delegated powers ought to be used for the implementation of technical provisions. But, as drafted, expanding the definition of what constitutes a “complex or lengthy” case seems significant.
The provisions that repeal the presumption of parental involvement under the Children Act 1989 are also of concern. Let me clarify that we wholeheartedly believe that the safety and welfare of the child must always be paramount. Courts should absolutely have the ability to respond and prevent contact where there is evidence of abuse or risk of harm. However, it is equally important to recognise the value of a safe and meaningful parental relationship.
The existing presumption allows a court to consider the individual circumstances of a child, but it starts from the position of recognition that parental involvement generally will benefit the child unless the opposite is shown. The Bill repeals this without providing any sort of replacement. The objective should be to strengthen the protection of children rather than simply removing the importance of safe parental involvement.
There are further provisions in the Bill that deserve careful scrutiny. Although we do not have time to list them all, we will, where necessary, seek to provide constructive amendments. Where there are measures that demonstrably improve the delivery of justice, we will support them. This legislation must be tested on its ability not only to decrease the backlog but to deliver justice in a fair manner. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches we welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, to your Lordships’ House and look forward to his maiden speech. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, to the Conservative Front Bench. I too am not a lawyer. It is good to have another non-lawyer in these very legal debates.
The Courts and Tribunals Bill has been a long time coming to your Lordships’ House. My noble friend Lord Marks will focus on the changes in the courts system, and I will focus on the experience of victims in the Bill as we see it.
The Bill, as originally introduced in the Commons, created measures in line with the recommendations made in Part 1 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. They included the establishment of a Crown Court Bench division to hear lower-level cases without a jury. The Bill we are considering today has removed a large part of the proposed changes to cases without a jury. But the reasons for those proposals—how to clear a very large waiting list—remain.
I thank the Minister for sending us the factsheet on current problems in the system. That was extremely helpful. Statistics in September this year show that the Crown Court backlog stands at nearly 81,000, more than double what it was in 2019, even if it has reduced a bit. The figure from the magistrates’ courts is significantly worse. In June this year, there were 380,230 open cases. Can the Minister tell us how on earth the magistrates will be able to add cases that will now come from the Crown Court to this already massive list? I do not understand why we do not refer to the magistrates’ courts’ open cases lists as a backlog, because clearly it is.
The noble Lord, Lord Lemos, was right to say that justice delayed was justice denied. In the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrat justice spokeswoman, Jess Brown-Fuller MP, proposed that better use be made of court buildings to allow each courtroom to be used for two trial hearings a day: a morning hearing from 9 am till 1 pm and the second from 2 pm till 6 pm. Her proposal is based on pilots that were undertaken during the Covid era, when courts cleared an average of 3.5 trials per week, compared with fewer than one per week in the current courtroom system. Will the Minister consider her proposal?
Other key reforms need to be considered, including renegotiating transport contracts to ensure that defendants are delivered to court—and the dock—on time and cancelling real-terms cuts to the Ministry of Justice capital budget. The poor state of the courts is also a key factor in delays. We hear regularly about literal buckets being put into courts to catch leaks coming in from above. Another factor is the unavailability of advocates and interpreters, as the Rights of Women group has pointed out to your Lordships.
Above all, however, Liberal Democrats want to see victim-led intensive case management. There are some good proposals in Clauses 7 to 16 in relation to victims, picking up on the commissioner’s recommendations, but they are not universal. We like the restrictions on evidence or questions about complainants’ sexual history, and evidence about previous false complaints relating to sexual offence. What is needed is a fundamental change in approach to support anyone suffering this type of crime. In Committee, we will probe exactly how these proposals will work.
It is still frustrating that, no matter what Parliament says, the judiciary can continue to choose not to have full training for judges in both the criminal and family courts to ensure that victims get the support they need as they access the criminal justice system. I note that the new courts for rape and serious sexual offences, known as RASSO cases, will have training for the judiciary in trauma-informed and victim-led support throughout the process. I ask the Minister, therefore, why the same would not be true for other serious cases. That is needed because victims’ experience of the court system is just not consistent. Not everyone within the system is trained. Security staff on the door can push defendants and victims through security at the same time. Court staff can put a victim in a seat that happens to be next to the dock, so that they are sitting beside their alleged attacker. This is re-victimisation.
The Victims’ Commissioner brought six victims to meet a number of Peers a fortnight ago, and they told us of their own experiences in the court system. In that discussion, what happened to them was second to their experience once the whole system started to work. We heard from Emma—not her real name. She was stalked, and after her stalker broke through two doors of her home, he was arrested. Emma disclosed that he had been physically abusing her too, and she felt unsafe, even in her own home; but she had no idea how bad things were going to get, all in the court system.
The magistrates’ court proceedings lasted two and a half years. There were 34 adjournments. She said:
“A court date is not simply a date in a diary for a victim. You prepare yourself emotionally … You rearrange your life around it. You try to get yourself into the right frame of mind to attend and participate”.
That court decided that sentencing should go up to the Crown Court. Paperwork was delayed and special-measure arrangements were promised. Three years later, an appeal was heard and the case was overturned. During that appeal, material was put to her while she was giving evidence. She felt exposed, overwhelmed, underprepared and understandably let down when the appeal was granted.
Emma said the impact was profound. It had caused her to have dissociative seizures, which now affect her ability to work. Her general health has deteriorated, and each court process forced her to revisit what had happened to her originally. Emma and the other brave victims we heard from were not speaking just on their own account. They were speaking for all victims.
Women’s Aid and other victims’ organisations welcome the repeal of the legal presumption of parental involvement in family courts, as we do from these Benches. We disagree with the Conservatives on this because some perpetrators of domestic abuse manipulate the family justice system to further their abuse. It sits alongside invisible abuse. It has taken years to get coercive control taken seriously; I thank the previous Government for recognising it. But the abuse of the family courts by a limited number of parents is truly shocking. Since Women’s Aid began reporting on this issue, the legal presumption of involvement has cost the lives of 67 children, including Claire Throssell’s beloved sons Jack and Paul. She has headed a 12-year campaign to have the presumption repealed. I know that the Conservatives opposed this repeal in the Commons and spoke about parental entitlement to access, but this should not be about the parent. It should—no, must—always be about the safety of the children.
Finally, these Benches are concerned about Clauses 21 to 23, which are on powers to make “consequential amendments” and “transitional or saving provision”, and the power
“to state effect of provisions commencing Sentencing Code amendments”.
There is wide scope, in these three clauses, for Henry VIII powers that could substantially undo the changes that the Government have announced since the passage of the Bill and its arrival here in the Lords. We will lay probing amendments to make sure that that will not happen to quite the extent that we fear it may.
There are good elements of the Bill that we support, including the desire to repair the damage to our court system, but there are other parts that we believe do not go far enough. Through the passage of the Bill, we will lay probing amendments and discuss the issues with the Minister in the most positive way that we can.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Bill for two principal reasons. The first is Clause 17, which brings the courts and tribunals under the leadership of the Lady Chief Justice. We cannot underestimate the importance of firm, single leadership and the long-held need by the judiciary for the reversal of the mistakes that were made in 2003, 2005 and 2006, when the leadership was split. I therefore welcome this change. We can already see the effect of this decision by what is happening in the tribunals. For example, there is a great increase in the number of disposals being made in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.
Secondly and more importantly, I welcome the commitment to the structural reform to the criminal justice system that is being proposed. I have no doubt that structural reform is needed. Greater focus on good leadership, greater efficiency and, above all, greater resources will make a big difference, but they cannot on their own cure the problems so clearly identified by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, in his independent reports and in the update since then. In short, we would delude ourselves if we thought that structural change was not necessary. Change has been regularly carried out over the centuries of the history of our criminal justice system. We are at a time when structural change is again necessary. Our task in this House is therefore to subject these proposals to careful scrutiny so that we can be satisfied either that the Government have made the right choice on structural reform in this legislation or that we feel modifications need to be made.
There are three areas that I believe should be examined; I will take them in turn. First, there is the choice of the type of court to try the less serious cases that presently go to the Crown Court. This is not an easy question. The difficulty is shown by an examination of the options that have been considered. I am glad that trial by judge alone in the Crown Court was, rightly, abandoned by the Government.
Trial by judge and two magistrates was an intermediate type of court proposed by Lord Justice Auld as long ago as 2001, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, in his reports, and favoured with all the evidence clearly set out by the Times Crime and Justice Commission. I considered that the right solution in 2001, and everything that has happened since has strengthened my view that that was right. I very much hope that this is something that we can examine during the passage of the Bill through this House.
The other option is trial in the magistrates’ courts, either by three magistrates or—I emphasise this—by judge alone. With greater sentencing powers being given to the magistrates’ courts, what we have, in effect, is an increase in the compulsory jurisdiction of the magistrates’ courts.
Looking at those options, we also have to take into account the issues that have arisen about who is to make the choice of where the case is to be tried. More importantly, we have to look at the choice of the criteria to be used in making the decision as to where the case is to be heard, and the role of Parliament in setting the criteria and the way the choice is to be made. Should we, for example, reclassify offences such as those that are trialled in the magistrates’ courts, which is not what the Bill proposes? Should we retain the present system of “either way” offences, making the decision principally on the basis of the likely length of sentence, with other criteria taken into account? Are the criteria that should be taken into account clearly set out? And is account to be taken as to whether the trial is to be for three magistrates or judge alone?
I believe that our task is to look at this in some detail, but principally at how the allocation between the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court under the governance proposals is to be made. To fulfil our role, I believe that we need to know much more about the impact of the decisions on the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court, and much more about the criteria that are to govern the decision as to whether the case is to stay in the magistrates’ court or be transferred to the Crown Court. If it is to be retained in the magistrates’ court, we need to know whether there is to be any change in the position as to which cases are to be heard by a district judge—as that will be trial by judge alone—or by three magistrates. These are difficult issues that need our careful scrutiny.
Secondly, I turn to the question of appeals. I have no doubt that a system for appeals where there is no restriction on the right to appeal has rightly been abandoned across the entirety of our system elsewhere and in many other countries in the world. It is now the time to reform that in the interests of efficiency and of victims. The Bill is plainly right in principle in requiring a permission stage. However, we need to scrutinise this reform, about which there is so little detail as to how it is to work.
For example, as the grant of permission will depend on the decision of the judge reviewing the papers on the strength of the argument as to the safety of the conviction or the length of the sentence, what is to be done about improving the way that magistrates and district judges record their decisions? When will the provision of a transcript be properly made? We will also require the provision of an office system for this work. The Court of Appeal Criminal Division could not function without an office and I do not see how this reform can function without such an office. We have no details at all. Also, what is to be done by way of legal aid? Are defendants who are convicted to get the same right to legal aid for advice as they have in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division? All this will take time, and we need to know the timescale. This is a vital change on which too little attention has been focused.
I turn to the third aspect, which is trial of fraud and other complex cases. The way in which transactions are effective is almost invariably recorded in written or digital format. The issue in such cases is one of honesty. In complex transactions, it is my experience that the issue of honesty is best determined in the context of a full understanding of a business background. That is why there is so much to be said for the recommendation made by Lord Roskill as long ago as 1985 for a trial by judge and two lay members with business and financial expertise. That would be the ideal solution. In the absence of that, I think justice is better served by trial before a judge, who will have a better and fuller understanding of the business background.
The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
My Lords, as a Christian, I believe that justice should be grounded in the recognition that all people, victim and perpetrator alike, possess an unyielding human dignity given to them by God. Today I will focus on how this Bill might serve to uphold that dignity for some of the most vulnerable who encounter our justice system. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester is unable to be here, but I know that she will follow this Bill closely and will take up these points in Committee.
I express my strong support for the measures in the Bill which would increase the threshold for admission of sexual behaviour evidence in criminal trials. This reform is long overdue. For survivors of sexual offences, the process of reporting and testifying can be deeply harrowing and retraumatising. In too many cases, when sexual offences are reported to the police, previous disclosures of rape and sexual violence are used as evidence of the survivor’s so-called bad character. There are many accounts of the ways in which, during trial, questions about survivors’ sexual history have been used to cast doubt on their credibility. I pay tribute to those who have had to endure such an ordeal.
Around 85% of rape survivors do not report the offence to the police. When those who did not report were asked why, the most common reasons were that they did not think the police could help, that they were embarrassed or that they thought that reporting would be humiliating. These statistics are alarming, but can we really be surprised by them when our justice system is permeated by myths of consent and fabrication?
We know that many survivors will never report to the police, but those who do must be given the confidence that they will be treated with dignity, compassion and fairness. The measures in this Bill, especially those which seek to dispel such myths, will go a long way towards achieving that aim. It is my hope that they will also help foster a culture in which all survivors feel able to come forward, confident that they will be taken seriously and their perpetrators will be held to account.
I am also pleased to see the Government’s focus on tackling the backlog of Crown Court cases, which sees survivors of rape waiting disproportionately lengthy times for their cases to be heard. However, this crisis must not be addressed at the expense of other minoritised communities. While the Government propose that more cases be heard by magistrates’ courts, the eligibility threshold for publicly funded representation there is significantly lower. Unrepresented defendants can suffer serious disadvantages in court, including a limited understanding of the charges they face. This is particularly concerning given the proposal to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers. If these plans are to go forward, they must be implemented with changes to these thresholds from the outset. Without clarity on this in the Bill, we risk embedding economic inequality into our justice system and limiting access to justice for those with the least means.
I am also concerned by the proposal to remove the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court. As youth justice cases are ordinarily presided over by magistrates, this would have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable young people. The God that I and other Christians worship is one of justice and of mercy. We can express that mercy by offering young people every opportunity at rehabilitation and the chance to turn their lives around. Restricting this right of appeal for children, alongside increased sentencing powers, may be a threat to one of the key safeguards against judicial error. It may serve not only to increase youth imprisonment unnecessarily but to further entrench the disadvantages that often draw children into crime.
Court backlogs are severe, but they have been exacerbated by decades of underinvestment. Addressing this issue by simply restricting the right to jury trials may serve only to erode trust in the system without addressing the underlying issues that have brought us to this breaking point. Women, older and racially minoritised defendants are more likely to opt for jury trial in a Crown Court. Taking away this right therefore affects some groups more than others—groups who are already more likely to experience disadvantage and whose confidence in the system’s fairness may already be fragile. We know that, in their journey through the justice system, defendants face countless deprivations of liberty before any verdict is reached. We should be cautious to take this fundamental choice away before the resolutions that can be attained through sustained funding have been properly explored.
To maintain trust, we should strive for a justice system where vulnerable people who disclose sexual violence can trust that they will be treated with compassion and believed, and people of lower economic means can trust that their income will not define their guilt. If young people are to be given the opportunity to grow into the kinds of citizens who can contribute meaningfully to their communities, they must trust that their communities are committed not only to accountability but to restoration, transformation, and the possibility of a better future. This kind of reform cannot be achieved by a Bill alone; it requires significant and sustained investment and a real commitment to upholding the dignity of all people.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
My Lords, I spent 35 years at the criminal Bar as both a defender and a prosecutor, and then I spent three years as a Crown Court judge dealing with jury trials. From that, it is clear to me that our criminal courts are under pressure that is unlike anything I have seen in my professional career. From inside the system, every day it can be seen that delay is not just a question of statistics but a daily reality that shapes the experience of victims and defendants, and, increasingly, takes a toll on the judges, advocates and court staff who work tirelessly to keep the system functioning. This is not spoken about as much.
There is insufficient time in this debate to explore the recruitment and retention crisis at the criminal Bar, or its looming equivalent in the judiciary, but, in summary, it is contributed to by the working conditions created by the backlog, which puts pressure on the system to speed up throughput, sometimes at the expense of careful consideration of an individual case. That is not justice; it is administrative crisis management, and it is not good enough. We can therefore all probably agree that the Bill matters, but it may be less easy to agree on what to do about it.
What I say next is said with great affection for my own profession: lawyers have a tendency to regard procedural reform as the first sign of constitutional collapse; experience suggests otherwise. The history of criminal justice is a history of adaptation. The question is not whether change should occur, because change has always occurred; the question is whether it leaves the system fairer, more effective and better able to deliver justice. Some of the debate generated by the Bill has proceeded as though jury trial were the only fair means by which guilt or innocence can be determined. With respect, that has never been the position in England and Wales. The vast majority of criminal cases—usually some 90%—are and have always been dealt with by magistrates. I am a supporter of jury trial; it is one of the strengths of our system, but we have to be honest and realistic: it is expensive and time-consuming. That is precisely why, throughout our history, we have reserved it for cases Parliament regarded as sufficiently serious to justify that expenditure of time and resources.
However, what is meant by the most serious cases changes over time, and every Government redraw the line as to which cases require it. That is why we no longer use juries to try breathalyser cases, as we did in the 1970s. The system was adjusted so that drink-driving cases were dealt with by magistrates, and rightly so.
Whenever somebody suggests that only a jury can be trusted to determine guilt or innocence in a fair way, I find myself wondering what precisely it is that they are saying about magistrates. Lay magistrates—a majority—are members of the public, just like juries. They give their time voluntarily; they bring experience, judgment and common sense; and throughout my career, I saw them dealing conscientiously and fairly with difficult cases. Magistrates deserve recognition as a cornerstone of our system, not dismissal as a second-class form of justice.
There is an uncomfortable truth which we owe it to the public to acknowledge: at present, there are too many cases going to the Crown Court. We also have to recognise that delay does not only affect victims and innocent defendants; it also changes behaviour within the system. The question before us is not whether defendants deserve protection—of course they do—but protecting the innocent cannot be at the expense of allowing the guilty to play the system. Every Crown Court judge has encountered cases where one cannot help wondering whether a guilty plea owes as much to the attractions of delay as it does to the merits of the defence. A defendant may calculate that, by contesting the case, they can secure not merely this Christmas at home but perhaps the next one as well, and possibly even the one after that—and perhaps, if they are lucky, in the end the victim will just give up.
A justice system that rewards delay should not be surprised when delay becomes part of the strategy. There were certainly occasions during my time on the Bench when I looked at a case in the Crown Court and found myself asking, “What exactly is that case doing here?” We should trust our magistrates to decide where the justice of the case means that it should be tried—and we can trust them. Even in the system as it operates at the moment, the statistics show that magistrates often err on the side of caution by sending cases to the Crown Court where the eventual sentence was actually lower than the one the magistrates could have passed.
The Bill is not simply an exercise in reducing a backlog; it is an opportunity to address aspects of the criminal justice system that have required attention for years. Take appeals from the magistrates’ court. I have never really understood a process that effectively says, “You’ve had a trial before a properly constituted court. You didn’t like the outcome. So, now you can have another go in front of another court”. That may have made sense in the days when there was no accurate record of what had happened in the magistrates’ court. But in the 21st century, the recording and transcription of magistrates’ court proceedings can—and is—going to happen. So, only those cases where there is an arguable appeal should go ahead, and that is of course exactly what happens in every other court, including appeal from the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal.
My concern about the current system of magistrates’ court appeals is not in fact principally that it is grossly inefficient—even though it is—but that it is also unfair. Behind many of those appeals is a victim: someone who thought that the process had finally ended with the conviction but who will now be required to relive the entire experience again, in all likelihood months, if not years, later. A proper appeals system is not about giving defendants a second bite at the cherry; it is about the convicting the guilty while acquitting the innocent.
This Government have rightly assessed that to improve the criminal justice system requires investment and efficiency, but the modelling makes it absolutely clear that alone these are not enough; there must also be sensible modernisation of our procedures. The question before us is not whether reform is risk-free—it never is. The real danger is not that we change too much, but that we change too little, too late. After a lifetime practising in the criminal courts, I have concluded that the public care far less about preserving our procedures than they do about actually receiving justice in a timely way. So, our duty is to preserve what is best in the system, reform what is not, and leave behind a criminal justice system that works better than the one we inherited.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a non-practising barrister. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, even though I feel unable to follow her conclusions.
In 2020, Mr David Lammy, who was the ministerial author of the proposals in this Bill, said:
“Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea”.
He has also said that jury trials are
“one of the big contributions that flow out of Magna Carta”.
He was right on the first two points and almost right on the third—and here I have to disagree with my noble friend Lord Ashcombe. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, who cannot be here today, has shown in his magisterial recent Selden lecture on the history of jury trial, trial by jury actually began just a little while after Magna Carta when Pope Innocent III banned trial by ordeal in November 1215, after which, following a writ of King Henry III in 1219, travelling judges began to use a local jury to determine guilt or innocence. Whether it began in 1215 or 1219, jury trial has long been part of our national history.
The traditions which make a country what it is are like a tapestry—one that has many threads. If you start to remove those threads, the tapestry begins to unravel and becomes threadbare. The traditions start to dissolve and the essential soul of the nation, bit by bit, begins to get lost. Jury trials are a part of that tapestry. The principle that we are entitled, if accused of a serious offence, to be tried by our fellow citizens, has become deeply embedded in our national psyche.
While I welcome the removal of the original Clause 3 of the Bill, I view with great concern the proposals to curtail the right to trial by jury, some of which go beyond the recommendations of the Leveson review. I am particularly concerned by the provisions of Clause 1, which would remove the current right of an adult defendant charged with an “either way” offence to elect for a Crown Court trial. What are these “either way” offences? They include theft and shoplifting, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, fraud and drug offences. Quite apart from the obvious consequences of a conviction for these offences, the reputational damage could be even more severe. That is not something which a court would be entitled, under the provisions of the Bill, to take into account when deciding the appropriate venue for trial. I also have concerns, among other provisions, about Clause 3, which removes the right to jury trial in long and complex cases, and Clause 6, which removes the automatic right to appeal to the Crown Court against conviction or sentence in the magistrates’ courts.
As we have heard from the noble Baroness and previous speakers, I recognise that not all your Lordships share in these concerns, but there is one provision in this Bill which I hope all Members of this House would unite in opposing. That is the provision in Part 2 of new Schedule 3ZA which would enable the Secretary of State to add by order—by order, my Lords—to the number of offences which come within the scope of the new schedule, meaning the offences in respect of which jury trial would no longer be available.
As the Government’s own Explanatory Notes put it, this would enable the Secretary of State to
“add offences which are not related to fraud or financial crime to the Schedule”.
He could add any offence, by order, to the schedule—this is monstrous. Your Lordships have long been accustomed to what have been termed, not always accurately, Henry VIII clauses—but this is not a Henry VIII clause; this is a Joseph Stalin clause. It is an absolute outrage, and it should not be allowed to remain in the Bill, whatever the fate of some of the other provisions to which I have referred. There is much scope for your Lordships to improve the Bill, and I hope we make the most of this opportunity.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, when the Minister started this debate, he said that our court and judicial system has never stood still. For many of us in this Chamber, we feel not only that it has not stood still but that it has been going backwards in recent years. That is very much the backdrop to today’s debate. We have had several years of what, to a non-lawyer, appears to be managed decline—some of it benign, some of it unthinking and some of it, if you are uncharitable, marginally malign. As ever, it has had unforeseen consequences.
I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, for her speech, because it is a cardinal example of the rule of “physician, heal thyself”. She knows what she is talking about.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I will focus on the people at the bottom of this problem: the victims. While all areas are under strain, as the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, said, the strain on the participants in the system—the people responsible for administering it—must occasionally be almost unbearable. But the experience of victims is profound and traumatic. For many of them, what they feel they are experiencing is not a million miles away from what the noble Lord, Lord Howard, referred to as trial by ordeal, because that is precisely what it feels like.
There are three asks for the Bill that those of us concerned for victims would hope to see answered. The first is to tackle the backlog, and the second is to improve the victim’s experience of the court process. Those of us present at the briefing that the Victims’ Commissioner gave us a few weeks ago were horrified—particularly those of us who are not lawyers—by what we heard. I was particularly horrified to learn of a process that is known as the pooling of rape cases, which is when a group of cases involving rape are put together in a category where it is deemed more than likely that the person who has been raped will withdraw from the process because of the trauma of going through it. The fact that this syndrome is present and known about is an indictment of our system.
The third ask is to strengthen accountability and oversight. I would like the Government to think seriously about finding a way to use victims’ experiences as a core measurement of court performance and effectiveness as we go forward. There must be a way of doing it that is meaningful and live.
There are clearly some potential red flags in the Bill. Jury trials are highly trusted by many minority groups, whose members, as they look around at the court and judicial system, may not see a great many people in it who look, sound and feel like them. For that reason, when they look at many juries, they see more people who they feel understand them and come from their communities—they know some of the trials and tribulations they have been through. That is often particularly the case for women.
I feel that magistrates are in danger of being overwhelmed if we are not very careful in how we decide to place new burdens on them. We are recruiting a large number of new magistrates, which is good news, but I feel that many of them are in danger of being thrown in at the deep end.
I will briefly return to the individual whom the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was talking about earlier: the young lady called Emma, who spoke very movingly to us in the Victims’ Commissioner’s presentation. I will briefly add some of what she told us. This is not her real name, and she was clearly being extraordinarily brave, and was finding it very difficult to talk to us. She read from it—obviously, it was very carefully constructed—and it is extraordinarily moving. She said:
“There are consequences I continue to live with long after a hearing has ended. The court process has required me to revisit what happened, prepare to give evidence, wait through delays and face further uncertainty. Throughout that time, I have also been trying to manage my health and rebuild some sense of normality. There have been times when simply functioning day to day has been difficult. I have kept going because I wanted what happened to me to be taken seriously. I wanted to engage with the justice system and see the process through. But I have had to do that while my health has deteriorated and while I have struggled with the physical consequences of trauma. I do not think that it should take a person reaching this level of physical distress before the impact of a criminal case is properly understood … I am not a case number. I am a person whose health has been profoundly affected, whose body has been through repeated physical crises and who is still trying to recover from what has happened. I wanted justice. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to be able to move forward with my life. I am still trying to do these things”.
To summarise: the success of the Bill should be judged ultimately by whether victims can access justice within a reasonable timeframe, through a process that supports their participation and confidence, without fundamental trauma or delay. Now, since nothing sits not between me and the cocktail hour, but between me and the noble Lord, Lord Stace, I will sit down.
Lord Stace (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a profound honour to address your Lordships for the first time. I am incredibly grateful to noble Lords across the House for their warm and generous welcome. I thank all the staff of the House for making my arrival so enjoyable: the doorkeepers, the clerks, the catering staff, Black Rod and Garter Principal King of Arms. Their help and humour have carried me through to this moment. To my supporters for my introduction, the Leader of the House and my noble friend Lord Timpson, as well as the Chief Whip, my noble friend Lord Kennedy, I echo publicly what I have said privately: thank you for your kindness, your friendship and your encouragement, and for reminding me that my imposter syndrome, including at this particular moment in time, is perfectly normal—perhaps even desirable, if that means we are humbled by the importance of this place.
I am keen to address certain aspects of the Bill, but first I want to share the journey that led me here, which I hope will give your Lordships some clarity on how I will spend my time here in this House. I strongly believe that where we come from matters, because it shapes what we believe is possible. I grew up in Brighton, or, as the Housing and Communities Secretary called it recently, “Manchester Southeast”—seagulls, summer crowds, crashing waves on pebble shores, and, most autumns, party conferences; a local comprehensive, a tough school and a loving family.
I was the first of my family to go to university. At Hull University, I learned a lot from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, about the importance of politics, and that it can and should be an honourable profession. Apparently, he also knew a thing or two about the constitution, and I now wish that I had paid slightly closer attention to those lectures. After I graduated, it was wonderful to see my mum Irene go through the Open University, and today my wife Emma works for the Open University.
I pause to commend Michael Young, the late Lord Young of Dartington, and Jennie Lee, the late Baroness Lee of Asheridge, and all the other pioneers of the fantastic, life-changing Open University. Michael Young also founded Which?, where I was deputy chief executive, before running the Australian equivalent, called CHOICE. No matter where in the world, no matter which sector, I have tried to improve the lives of those who are most vulnerable: something which I know stemmed from my upbringing.
From an early age, I knew that my mum, Irene, and my dad, Tim, were a political odd couple: Irene, at times, only a cigarette paper’s width from being a communist; Tim, a devout Thatcherite.
Lord Stace (Lab)
Tim may well be listening and may well be embarrassed or perhaps emboldened by that cheer from the Benches opposite.
For me, over breakfast, there was a choice to be made: should I read the Daily Mail or the Morning Star? Of course, I read both. Both parents in their own way were passionate about improving the lives of others, and I learned that you can argue about means while agreeing about ends, without falling out too much. It is why I have always enjoyed good relations with people with different ideas, perspectives and politics, and I hope to continue that here.
Our personal histories shape us in ways we welcome, and in ways we do not. I have spent my career working with people whose circumstances narrowed their options and squandered their talents: young people without work, people in prison, people whose livelihoods are being destroyed by war or climate change. The people I encounter, whether in Kyiv or Coventry, are not weak people; often they have huge inner strength. But they lack the conditions to allow them to flourish. Many feel that our system is something done to them, not something they belong to. Changing those conditions, building those platforms so that everyone can thrive, is how I want to spend my time here.
I have worked for much of my career supporting young people. I was the chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, now the King’s Trust—His Majesty’s charities are truly life-changing—and I have set up three charities to help young people. Today, I lead on global impact for Howden Insurance Group. In 18 months, we have helped to create a public/private philanthropic solution called Humanity Insured, which is already supporting 2.6 million people, including smallholders across Africa and Asia. That is just in the last 18 months. As an insurance business, we are also helping to make the circumstances possible for the reconstruction of Ukraine: giving confidence to investors to pump billions into schools, hospitals and homes; rebuilding lives and livelihoods.
From the breakfast table to world affairs, I have come to realise that solutions to the greatest challenges our world faces seldom lie with one sector or one immutable ideology over another. From the rehabilitation of prisoners to tackling youth unemployment to rebuilding Ukraine, I have learned that the answers lie in partnership and pragmatism, innovation and inspiration.
I will now turn to the Bill before us. I thank my noble friend the Minister and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, for arranging a prior briefing on the Bill. It is so important that we tackle the inhumanity of a system that allows victims to wait for many years for a court listing and a resolution. As my noble friend the Minister said, justice delayed is justice denied, and the Bill is a welcome step in bringing about greater efficiencies. But I know my noble friend the Minister will agree with me that we must also develop a more ambitious, systems-wide approach to reform; otherwise, we risk shifting the problem, not solving it. Given my background, it may not surprise your Lordships to hear that I am an advocate for doing everything we can to prevent people offending or reoffending in the first place, which, in itself, will relieve pressure on the court system.
At the King’s Trust, it was our mission to help young people find their purpose, to provide hope and to seek to divert them from what, for some, can be an inevitable pathway to prison. As chair of the Prison Reform Trust, I see our brilliant work in helping to create the environment where prisoners can leave prison as productive and successful members of society.
As our Prime Minister said recently:
“You don’t make Britain safer by leaving a younger generation without hope, stuck at home, looking at screens. You do it by giving young people hope again”.
Alan Milburn’s review is a generational moment to make our society happier and healthier, with hope for the next generation. If we do that, our criminal justice system will be more efficient and fair.
At this stage of my speech, I am reminded of advice to speech-makers attributed to Franklin D Roosevelt:
“Be brief, be sincere, be seated”.
The House mandates that I be brief. I have been, and will always be, sincere. And now, I shall be seated.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on a very thoughtful and personal maiden speech. He is a friend who I have known for over a quarter of a century. Both of our families lived and grew up in south London and in south London Labour politics.
As we have heard, my noble friend Lord Stace brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to your Lordships’ House. He did not do justice to the work that he did when he was CEO of the Prince’s Trust, now the King’s Trust. In its 40-year history, the then Prince’s Trust helped and supported over 1 million people. As the new CEO, my noble friend Lord Stace—or Nick, as he was then—set an ambitious target of helping 1 million more over the next decade. He also did not touch on his time as the CEO of Saga travel—known to some of us in your Lordships’ House. When Nick became CEO, he was under the age of 50 and had to get special dispensation to attend and travel on some of the Saga cruises, which I am sure he thoroughly enjoyed. Finally, what an apt Bill for him to make a maiden speech on. As chair of the Prison Reform Trust, my noble friend brings an understanding and compassion that will be greatly appreciated and respected across your Lordships’ House. I welcome Nick, my noble friend Lord Stace.
I turn to the Second Reading. I welcome the Government’s determination to confront the crisis in our courts. Behind every delayed hearing are people whose lives cannot move forward. I want to approach the Bill through the lens of social justice. The question is not simply how many cases can move through the system; it is whether someone without money, influence or knowledge of the law can obtain justice, and whether victims can secure a hearing before delay exhausts their confidence. Those are not competing objectives: a fair justice system must and can deliver both.
The scale of the challenge is stark. Ministry of Justice figures show that, at the end of June, there were over 80,000 open Crown Court cases and over 380,000 open cases in magistrates’ courts. For a victim, delay can mean repeated preparation for a hearing that does not happen. For an innocent defendant, it can mean a livelihood, a reputation and family life suspended. Delay is therefore not merely an administrative failure; it is a social justice issue. That is why doing nothing cannot be the answer and why I welcome the Government’s willingness to listen, and their decision not to proceed with the proposed Crown Court Bench division changes.
I welcome the provisions concerning evidence in sexual offence proceedings and support for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. These recognise that access to justice means more than just entering a courtroom; it means being able to give evidence safely and effectively, while preserving a fair trial.
The remaining structural reforms require careful examination. Removing the adult defendant’s right to elect a Crown Court trial, increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers and introducing permissions required for appeal must be considered together. Their combined effect matters more than any provision viewed in isolation. My concern is practical. If more serious decisions are taken in magistrates’ courts, with greater consequences for liberty, what safeguards will ensure that those least equipped to navigate the system are not disadvantaged?
First, we need credible capacity before additional responsibilities are transferred. The magistrates’ courts are not empty reservoirs into which Crown Court work can simply be poured. Their open caseload is already at record levels. The Justice Committee’s chair put it plainly:
“A clear plan to ensure there is capacity to meet increased demand is vital”.
Will my noble friend the Minister published a plan covering magistrates, district judges, legal advisers, administrative staff and court facilities before these changes take effect? As someone whose working life has included representing working people, I add that reform must be designed with the workforce, not simply delivered to it. The people preparing files, supporting witnesses and keeping hearings running know where time is lost. Their experience, and that of their trade unions, should help inform implementation.
Secondly, access to an appeal must remain meaningful. A permission requirement may look like a modest procedural change, but, for someone with limited literacy or a learning disability or no effective legal assistance, explaining why a decision may be wrong can in itself be a formidable barrier. Will the Minister explain what practical support will be available, particularly for the most vulnerable?
Efficiency should mean resolving cases correctly, not making errors harder to challenge. I welcome the independent review, examining the differences in treatment or outcomes by race and socioeconomic status. That is not special treatment; it is a test of whether equal treatment exists in practice. However, a review must be capable of prompting action. Will there be a clear baseline, published findings and a commitment to explain how any adverse effects will be addressed? Parliament should not discover years later that a reform intending to improve justice has deepened inequality.
Legislation cannot substitute for making the existing system work. The latest statistics show that one-quarter of Crown Court trials listed to start do not start—they did not proceed as scheduled and require another listing. Better case preparation, reliable prison transport, functioning technology and properly maintained buildings are not glamorous reforms, but they matter enormously to the people waiting outside the courtroom.
I support the ambition to deliver swifter justice. My test is whether these reforms improve the experiences of those with the least power: victims waiting to be heard, defendants entitled to fairness and families living with uncertainty. Let us reduce delay without reducing confidence, strengthen capacity before transferring responsibilities, and make equality before the law a practical reality. That should be the social justice purpose of the Bill.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for two reasons. The first is that I agree with everything he said about his noble friend Lord Stace, who has just made what the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, described as a thoughtful maiden speech. I am not in the least bit surprised, knowing what I know about the noble Lord. I expect the House to benefit from his contributions on many future occasions and I welcome him to his place. I also agree with the practical approach that the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, applied to this Bill and the measures that it seeks to introduce to deal with some of the plain and obvious problems that the criminal justice system faces.
Before I come to the substance of the Bill, perhaps I may be forgiven for making what I suspect might in other places be called a pleading point. The amendment to be advanced later this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has so far been ignored by the Government. This is a Bill of huge constitutional, financial and practical importance for all of us as citizens and for the institutions of justice. If I may say so, it has been treated by the Government in the other place with considerable disdain. A lot of the Bill before us has not been considered at all, or not adequately, in the other place, so it ought to go back there to be reconsidered before it comes to our House. If that is not going to happen, and I suspect it will not, the Minister ought to have the ability to respond—I was going to say to condescend to us to respond—to the points that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, makes in his amendment.
Far too much of this Bill is ill considered and unconsidered, and it does us no service when we have to do the work that the Commons should have done. I hope that, when we come to deal with Committee, Report and Third Reading, we will not shrink from applying serious thought, skill and expertise to the detail of this Bill, because it has been woefully considered in the other place. I do not mind which view Members of this House take on the merits and various aspects of the Bill one way or the other, but I do care that, if we are to produce legislation, it should be produced properly and well thought through.
That said, given the controversial nature of some of the provisions of the Bill, there is not really time other than to point at one or two questions which need to be thought about very carefully in Committee. I will pick up one point—I do so with some diffidence, since he is sitting right in front of me—that my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne made. He chided our noble friend on the Front Bench for placing too much stress on Magna Carta as the origin of the jury system. He was entirely right to do so, but he then relied on Pope Innocent III as being the founder of the modern jury system.
Lord Garnier (Con)
Well, we may now be getting to a point of agreement; we should be looking at the six statutes of Edward III, because that is where a proper interpretation of Clause 39 of Magna Carta comes. That said—gosh, can I get to the church by way of the moon?—what is more important in the development of our jury system is not what happened in the Middle Ages but what happened in the post-Civil War period with the Mead and Penn case, the development of the Bill of Rights and universal education, the increase in the economic power of our country, the removal of power from the Crown and the Barons to the wider population and the involvement of that wider population in our justice system through the jury. It is important that we recognise the democratic input that the jury system provides in our criminal justice system.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Howard that it is also important to remind ourselves what the previous Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy, did in introducing this whole subject in the first place. I have some sympathy for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, who has twice now been asked to carry out inquiries and write reports for two different Governments, and has not found that they have met universal approval by the politicians. I am afraid that that is the fate of report writers. I have had that problem myself, but I have borne it with such fortitude as I have been able to muster.
The serious point, however, is this. Mr Lammy asked himself the wrong question and then came up with the wrong answer to the wrong question. The question he ought to have asked himself is: what, in practical terms —I look across to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol—can best be done to reduce the backlog of cases in our criminal justice system? Bear in mind that only 10% of all criminal cases get before the Crown Court. As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, said, the magistrates carry out the bulk of our criminal justice work. They are to be praised and supported, their work is to be reinforced with adequate resources and decent premises, and so on and so forth. However, I suspect you are not going to reduce the backlog, which now, we are told, stands at 81,000 cases, by reducing the ability of the citizen to get a trial in front of a jury. Certainly the non-violent cases will be pushed back well beyond 2029 or 2030 at the current rate.
Let us think of one or two practical points beyond those that the noble Lord mentioned a moment ago. I confess that I used to sit as a Crown Court recorder. As a civil law practitioner, it may well be wondered by people such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, what on earth I was doing in a criminal court.
I see that the great god of time has already enabled me to curtail my remarks, when I know that the whole House is absolutely itching to hear what I have to say. The time will come in Committee when we will have to dismantle this Bill and reconstruct it in such a way that we can reduce the backlog but without reducing access to justice. Unless we pay attention to the state of the buildings and the ability of the delivery service to get people from remand to the Crown Court in time without having enough judges, part-time or full-time, or enough court staff, all the things that the Government think that this reform will do will be lost, because the same mechanical problems will still exist.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)
It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, which I seem to do quite often. It is also a great pleasure to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, and to congratulate him on his maiden speech. I note that he sat down almost exactly on eight minutes, which is a very good augur for the future. Because it is my first opportunity to do so, I should also like to welcome the Minister to the House, and particularly to the Government Front Bench. He may recall that some 20 years ago or so, when I was head of the CPS, he was one of our non-executive directors and, I may say, one of our very best. He will also recall that in those days we both had somewhat darker hair, although, rather annoyingly, he seems to have retained more of his.
This is my first opportunity to welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson of Liverpool, whom I am delighted to see in his place. I am sure that his contributions to the House will be erudite and penetrating, although that does not guarantee that we will always agree.
It is important to acknowledge that we are dealing with the consequences of a funding crisis. That is too often forgotten. Governments in recent years have made the choice not to invest in criminal justice. The direct result has been the backlogs that we now see. The Justice Minister in the other place claimed recently in the media that even if there was not a funding crisis and the backlogs that we are confronting, the Government would proceed with these reforms anyway as a matter of principle. I found her unpersuasive on that point. We are dealing with the results of a funding crisis.
My own service, the CPS, in the not-so-distant past lost some 30% of its budget and some 30% of its front-line prosecutors. Imagine if the National Health Service lost 30% of its front-line doctors. Courts went dark and barristers, because of the collapse in legal aid, left the criminal Bar in droves. That is the situation that we are now confronting. Covid did not help, but successive Governments have used it as a shield for problems which pre-existed it.
Others noble Lords have dealt with matters of principle. I accept that people can have fair trials in front of judges without juries. That is obvious. All over the world, people have fair trials in front of judges. In our commercial courts, people have fair trials in front of judges. However, I want to address the Minister on a more practical issue: will the magistrates’ courts be able to cope with the massive influx of work which this Bill will direct towards them?
With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, there were some things about his report that I disagreed with. We debated these disagreements publicly on a podcast. I took the view of the Institute for Government that the reforms that he was proposing would save so little time in the Crown Court that they were not worth the number of jury trials that would be lost as a result. However, his report had one singular merit—it had many merits—that I want to refer to now: that most of the cases removed from juries under his proposals would be presided over instead by a Crown Court judge and two magistrates. The Government’s new proposals, resiling from his report, were trailed in the press as the Government saving jury trial. The new Prime Minister, during his by-election campaign, expressed his great attraction for jury trial and rather implied that the Leveson report would be dead as a result of his affection for it, but that has not happened. The Bill before the House does not succeed in creating any diminution in the right to jury trial. That may be necessary for all the reasons which noble Lords have expressed.
However, I seriously question whether the magistrates’ court, in its current condition, is in a fit state, even with the additions of magistrates which have been described, even with the additions of new district judges that have been described, could deal with this influx of work. At the moment, trials that are conducted in magistrates’ courts are of very minor matters, rarely lasting longer than a day. That will change. Magistrates will keep within their jurisdiction cases which will last for two, three, four or perhaps five days. It is very easy for a lay magistrate to get a day a month off work to do their duty in the magistrates’ court or perhaps even two days a month, but persuading an employer that they should have three or four days—which might stretch into five or six days because the trial takes longer than expected—is a very different kettle of fish.
Journalism is not always terribly accurate, but I found this piece of journalism quite persuasive. A couple of months ago, maybe a little longer, the Times sent a couple of journalists down to a magistrates’ court in the south-east of England. They found a situation of absolute chaos. There were not enough magistrates, barristers not turning up, prisoners not being delivered and witnesses not turning up. If the magistrates are now to deal with two, three, four or five day-long cases, with more serious cases, with more powers of sentencing, we will need many more magistrates, many more district judges, probably more buildings and certainly a more efficient means of delivering prisoners to the courts.
I am not in principle opposed to courts making allocation decisions. In most of the fair trial world, it is not the defendant who decides where he or she should be tried. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will correct me if I am wrong that in Scotland it is largely the prosecutor who makes that decision. I am not against that. However, I am opposed to a situation which gives courts the right to decide allocation but pays no account to the resources of the courts in question. I urge the Minister to tell the House what modelling has been done to convince the Government that the magistrates’ courts can take on this level of work and how much money will be necessary to enable them to do so. How many more lay magistrates will we need and how many more district judges?
I have never understood why we do not allow defendants to elect trial before judge alone if that is what they wish. I understand that the Government feel that such a proposal would be inconsistent with their new idea that allocation should be a matter for the judges, but if defendants want to be tried by judges, they should be allowed to make that decision. I urge the Government to reconsider their position on that.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, and a pleasure to see my noble and learned friend Lord Leveson in his richly deserved place. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on a humble, humane and incredibly promising maiden speech. I declare interests as a council member of the cross-party law reform charity Justice and as a member of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, where the spirit of the late and learned Lord Judge is always in the room.
I thank Justice for expressing so well, and the new Prime Minister for listening to, profound and widespread concerns about the earlier version of this Bill. The most obvious reason for the current crisis in our criminal justice system is years of savage cuts—bipartisan cuts by politicians who were quick to compete in law and order rhetoric, legislation being cheap and talk even cheaper, but they rendered tough words hollow by chronic underinvestment. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, made the point about “what if 30% of the doctors were off”. Attempting to speed up justice by a dilution of due process is oxymoronic indeed.
I join the Bar Council in welcoming, among other innovations, the Government’s pledge to establish specialist rape and sexual offences courts as a means of achieving swifter and better justice without dispensing with jury trials.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about parental responsibility. I note the expert testimony from the group Rights of Women on the confidence that women caught up in the system place in juries. Its short briefing gives lie to any zero-sum game between victims and defendants, and I hope we might bear that in mind.
I will explain why I think jury trials are so important in serious cases. First, the democratic effect, referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, of trial by one’s peers—I do not mean addressing your Lordships’ House; sometimes that is a trial, but not always—is a crucial participatory and legitimising factor of our system and society. Can we say it goes back about 100 years? Will that work, or will I be called out by the scholars of Middle Ages history on the Conservative Benches? Let us say about 100 years. Without jury trials in difficult and polarised times, it will feel to many that one class sits in permanent judgment over others—that does not mean that I am with my new noble friend’s mother in reading the Morning Star. By contrast, how wonderful that lay people may not only participate in democracy but play such a crucial part in delivering the rule of law on which that democracy is built. The statistics on women and people of colour having more confidence in juries add another crucial dimension to this.
Secondly, juries protect our judiciary from the opprobrium, sadly often stoked in both old and new media, that would surely come with high-profile acquittals in particular. The “enemies of the people”-type jibe and consequential threats to our precious referees would be only compounded in the context of findings related to criminal guilt or the lack thereof.
Thirdly, for me at least, perhaps just as importantly, juries provide a priceless final safety valve against oppressive laws and prosecutions. Some might find such safeguards irritating, but I for one think it important that there is the possibility of acquittal in a whistleblowing case involving official secrets or a protest case involving disproportionate policing contrary to the conscience of ordinary citizens. This is not about the Government, authorities and statute book just of today but over the years, and crucially, about how things might be if our politics were to take an authoritarian turn. Judges and magistrates would find it difficult or impossible to acquit in the face of tightly drawn statutes, regardless of their consciences.
I maintain residual concerns about the dilutions to the right to jury trial that continue in the Bill: the removal of the right to elect in “either way” offences; the increased or likely increased sentencing powers for magistrates; the removal of the right to appeal from magistrates; the restriction of jury trial in complex and lengthy cases, which may be extremely serious for the accused, and the building of the slippery slope towards every case involving computer, DNA or other technical or forensic evidence, especially via secondary legislation. I do not need to invoke dictators of this century or previous centuries —I hope noble Lords will understand the point.
Parliament is meant to be the least imperfect means of representing the people in the context of legislation and administration; how bizarre if it were complicit in removing their vital role in the adjudication of serious criminal liability. Being an internationalist and European in the context of human rights should not come with a callous disregard for an ancient homegrown right cherished by our people and admired across the world.
I look forward to our further deliberations and remind my noble friends in government that to listen is a dynamic and a continuous verb.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow those eloquent remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I will focus mine on the proposed removal of the statutory presumption of parental involvement as set out in the Bill. As your Lordships know, unsafe child contact has led to a number of terrible tragedies. I want to associate myself with the remarks made by the Minister at the beginning about the tireless and courageous work of Claire Throssell, who lost both her sons in the most tragic of circumstances.
I hope that we can all agree across the House that when thinking about child contact, we are broadly trying to achieve two things: first, that the contact arrangements for children decided by the family courts protect those children and the resident parent from harm; and secondly, that children should retain contact with both parents where it is safe to do so. My concern is that this Bill alone will not achieve either the former or the latter goal. It is not clear how the Government will protect children from harm without losing sight of the problem that the statutory presumption of parental involvement sought to address in the first place—that too many children lose contact with a parent after separation. We need to have confidence that the Government’s approach will deliver both safe contact and long-term involvement where appropriate.
The intention of Parliament, expressed by the Children’s Minister in the other place in 2013, was that
“having both parents involved in the child’s life is the right course where it is safe and in the child’s best interests”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/2/13; col. 56.]
The question now is whether the presumption contributed to unsafe decisions, whether it led to longer-term safe contact with the non-resident parent and what will best protect children in its place. Sadly, we do not have data that allows us to come to a firm view on any of these points. The Ministry of Justice’s 2025 review raises serious concerns, rightly, about unsafe contact and the pressure towards parental involvement, but it is not conclusive about the contribution of the statutory presumption. It states:
“The apparent high incidence of orders where there were indicators of risk suggested that the courts were ordering direct contact between children and parents who have caused or pose a risk of harm … Evidence around judicial decision-making suggested that the presumption was not routinely referenced by judges and magistrates when they made decisions about contested child arrangements orders. When it was referenced, the presumption was highlighted as only one of a number of factors the court must consider when making child arrangements orders”.
The report notes that the dataset used was at best patchy and the judgment sample was heavily concentrated in just one court.
The review also stated:
“The lack of a clear evidence base about the long-term outcomes of different forms of involvement ordered by the court was concerning”.
That same data desert on outcomes for children following their involvement in family court proceedings remains.
Today, I urge the Government that we must not legislate for unproven changes for children without a plan to test and evaluate those changes. These limitations do not diminish in any way the seriousness of the evidence that children have been exposed to unsafe contact, but the review itself acknowledges that the presumption is not the driving force behind the courts’ “no stone unturned” culture. What gives the Minister confidence that the repeal will change the unsafe decisions identified, and what further changes in practice are needed alongside it? If I may, I will suggest some options that I hope he can comment on when he closes, or perhaps he will write to me.
First, surely it is critical that such a determination must be based on the social work assessment, where one is required. Secondly, the consistent and proper use of practice direction 12J must be widely encouraged. Thirdly, there should be a proportionate use of fact-finding hearings. The removal of the presumption must be accompanied by leadership and culture change within the family justice system that prioritises these things and does not assume that the removal of a legislative provision will result in safety for children, because we all know that it will not. We also know that it is far harder to achieve that culture change than it is to amend a piece of legislation.
I am optimistic about what the new child-focused courts can achieve, but their success will depend on the quality of implementation. As an example, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and I were privileged to visit the specialist domestic abuse court in Westminster and witness the work of the Standing Together partnership, which really highlighted the importance of high-quality implementation. Although the family court and the criminal court models are, of course, different, the importance of specialist expertise is common to both. Will the Minister therefore set out the plan for training, funding and supporting the specialist domestic abuse services on which the child-focused court model depends? How will that competence be assessed, and who will be accountable where that specialist support is not available? How will that provision enable or otherwise the promised 40-day timescale for the filing of welfare assessments in the child-focused courts?
Finally, I urge the Government to establish a baseline before repeal takes effect, and commit to an independent evaluation reporting to Parliament on children’s safety, their experience of proceedings, and whether safe and beneficial relationships can be sustained. We need to know more than just what orders the court makes; we need to know what happens to the children who are affected by them.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the characteristically clear and persuasive speech by the noble Baroness. I also want to say how much I enjoyed the eloquent, moving and wise speech by the noble Lord, Lord Stace. We have much to look forward to in the future from his contributions to this House. While I am at it, may I say that I am looking forward to the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Leveson? He and I go back a long way: 55 years ago we started appearing against one another in quite a lot of pretty knockabout cases, many of them tried by juries up in the north-west. We enjoyed every minute of it, I think, and I am sure we will enjoy being together in your Lordships’ House.
I have had the good fortune of appearing before juries in hundreds of cases over the decades. I have loved every minute of it—well, almost every minute of it. I respect the attention and integrity of juries, and their sense of justice. In the eyes of a jury, every case is a story, and they judge life’s stories—sometimes, unfortunately, life’s horror stories. However, the system is not perfect. The Criminal Cases Review Commission, for example, was set up largely to deal with cases where there had been injustices before juries. The jury system is vital; it works, but it is not set in stone.
One of the things that has not changed in the English and Welsh jury system is the number of jurors we have—the apostolic number, as it is sometimes called. But let us look at some of our sister jurisdictions with the same common law background, or at least a hybrid, similar background—that is a reference to Scotland. In the Isle of Man, for example, I have addressed a jury of seven in a long fraud case. Scotland has juries of 15. If we look at the system we have, which again, has sisters in Australia and Canada, and look up the changes there have been in the jury systems in those countries, we see that, although they are very much trying cases as we do, many of the cases that were heard before Australian and Canadian courts have been removed from juries, for exactly the kinds of reasons we are talking about on this Bill.
Of course, juries were required in some civil cases when I started at the Bar. The removal of juries was regarded as the end of the world as we knew it in relation to some of those actions—libel actions, for example—but that has proved not to be the case. We have not suffered a crisis of injustice where juries have been removed. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, for whom I have an enormous admiration, that if the tapestry has some tears in it, we can repair it by some fairly small darning around the edges.
In a previous debate, a Labour Member of this House, who I will not name, referred to the rather undistinguished fact that my first jury trial was not defending a TV star on a shoplifting case but was actually a breathalyser case for an incident that occurred outside Birkenhead public library. Breathalyser cases were tried by jury from 1967 until 1988. If we were to say to barristers and solicitors now, “Let’s put breathalysers in front of a jury”, they would say we were mad.
Indeed, from looking at the history of various crimes we see that low-value criminal damage cases—now up to £5,000 damage—generally do not go before juries; nor do common assault and battery, and a large number of quite important administrative cases. In my view, we are simply adjusting the system. We in this place make new crimes—triable by jury, quite a lot of them—and we have to make space in the jury system for those crimes. It is perfectly reasonable to place them before magistrates.
However, I have some words about the extending of magistrates’ jurisdictions, which I hope the Minister, who has been very helpful in meeting us in relation to the Bill, will attend to. First, although he spoke of successful recruitment of magistrates recently, there is an awful long way to go to find enough magistrates of the right quality, with the right sort of experience and the right kind of judgment to do all the new cases they will be trying. Secondly, we need to ensure that they are given effective, high-quality training. Thirdly, we need to ensure that there is commitment from a large proportion of them. It will not be satisfactory if a group of magistrates are seen to be trying all the former “either way” cases in their court because they happen to be available, do not work, have more time, or have a particularly sympathetic employer. I suggest to the Minister—I think this is intended to be covered in Clause 18—that payment should be made to magistrates who are replacing jurors, for example if there is a case of more than two days. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said earlier, some of those cases could go on for up to five days or more.
Next, I am afraid I am going to refer to a case. It is very important that, in accordance with the case of R v Civil Service Appeal Board, ex parte Cunningham, 1992, provision of sound and concise reasons should be available in every case. The Crown Court will not be able to decide whether permission should be given for an appeal—I support adding a permission requirement—if it does not see cogent reasons from the magistrates. That will take some time and some training. It will also require that every magistrates’ court should have a really competent clerk or magistrates’ legal adviser in front of it to help if it has any legal problems with its cases.
Further, juries are not always the best choice. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Macdonald’s suggestion that we should consider allowing people to elect trial by judge alone. I can think of a large number of cases that I have done—I single out some historic sexual abuse cases—where I would have advised my client that he, and it is usually he, would have a better chance of a fair trial in front of a judge alone, with a lot of the emotion removed from the case.
I can give as an analogy, and it is a very loose analogy, non-jury trials in Northern Ireland, where the most recent available figures show an acquittal rate before a judge alone of 28.7% compared with an acquittal rate before a jury of 21.8%. We need to take such facts into account in determining whether what is advised in the Bill is wise. I believe it is, in general, but we will no doubt be able to desiccate the Bill to ensure that that wisdom is of the highest order.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I always love following the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and hearing about his exploits. The story about judges’ acquittal rates is perhaps because they are deeply misogynistic—but I do not know. At the start, the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, talked about there being a lot of great legal minds in the Chamber. I am sure there are, but clearly I am not one of them. However, I have quite a strong sense of fairness and justice, and therefore some concerns about the Bill. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stace, for not hearing his maiden speech, but I promise to read it in Hansard and give him feedback tomorrow. I am sure he would love to hear it.
I move to the Bill. Nobody disputes that 14 years of Conservative underfunding have left our Crown Courts with an appalling backlog and that victims are paying the price. The Government say that they want to get justice moving; of course I support that, but I would like to see a fix for the problems that stop courts hearing cases. The Bill is moving around who gets to hear them and taking away some of the safeguards that protect defendants. I feel that is the wrong approach. The Government have rightly dropped their proposal to remove jury trials for less serious cases in the Crown Court, but keeping thousands of cases in magistrates’ courts, without a choice, is still a restriction on jury trials, and the Government have still not shown that they will solve the backlog.
We need to ask a simple question: why are cases not getting to court on time and what would make a difference? The Government expect their proposals to move about 25,000 cases a year away from the Crown Court, but where are those cases going? The court system already has a huge backlog, fewer magistrates than it had a decade ago and shortages of legal advisers. The organisation Justice has warned that there is insufficient evidence that magistrates’ courts can cope with this extra work, so why are the Government pressing ahead? Moving cases between courts does not make the problems disappear, and removing some of the right to jury trials does not magically make a case straightforward or ensure that a hearing can go ahead.
The Government’s proposals also risk leaving more defendants without legal aid. People who might have had a lawyer in the Crown Court could end up representing themselves in the magistrates’ courts, even when they face the possibility of prison. That is massively unfair. It can also mean longer, more complicated hearings, and the accused cross-examining victims on cases such as assault. The Government are chasing efficiency savings in the wrong places while risking changes that could undermine them and our justice system.
On the right of appeal, Justice has highlighted how often appeals against magistrates’ decisions succeed. These appeals are a safeguard against wrongful convictions and wrong sentences. Making people seek permission to appeal, often without a lawyer to help them, risks shutting people out of justice.
If there is a risk that these changes will make an already difficult experience of the justice system even worse for people who are vulnerable or marginalised, we should examine that properly before going ahead. You cannot always put things right after someone has been denied a fair hearing.
What about the age and background of magistrates and who is able to volunteer during the week? The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, explained this very clearly. If the Government are serious about clearing the backlog, they need to deal with what is actually going wrong. Trials are delayed because witnesses are unavailable, defendants are not brought to court, and court buildings and technology need investment. There are shortages across the criminal legal workforce, and legal aid must be sufficient to ensure that people can get proper representation. These problems are not solved by taking away a jury or making an appeal harder; they are solved by making sure that hearings go ahead, that courts have the staff and facilities they need, and that cases are properly prepared. Not much of that is in the Bill.
I support the new measures for witnesses, but I cannot support provisions that remove the right to elect a jury trial, restrict the right of appeal and expand magistrates’ sentencing powers. I also cannot support the measure in the Bill to allow the Secretary of State to add further offences to the list for judge-only trials through secondary legislation. That means that a future Government could extend the restriction on jury trials even more, without having to bring forward primary legislation for Parliament to debate.
I will press the Government to explain how they intend to address the real causes of delay and to provide a properly funded plan for courts expected to take on more work. They were right to rethink that part of the Bill, but they should now look again at the rest.
I am also worried about the bigger picture here. I did not expect to spend my time having to fight to defend basic civil liberties against this Government, but here we are, arguing about jury trials while the Government expand curbs to protesting, facial recognition surveillance and restrictions on people seeking asylum. Taken together, they give the state more power over people and take away some of the safeguards that are supposed to protect us from the misuse of power. It is often minorities, protesters and people who challenge those in authority who are most exposed to those consequences. We have only just repealed the Vagrancy Act 1824, which grouped the poor and the homeless together with criminals. That is how we saw them then. I dread the justice system getting harder for people to access and harder on the people who need to access it.
Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stace, on a textbook, excellent maiden speech. I hope we will hear much more from him.
I have two interests to declare. I practised at the criminal Bar for 40 years, but I am now long retired; and, despite my warnings about the way in which the criminal justice system was deteriorating through chronic underfunding, my elder daughter defiantly ploughed on to be a practising criminal barrister on the Western Circuit.
It is surely an irony that the two major achievements of the 1945 Labour Government were the health service and giving people without funds access to justice through legal aid. The first consumes more and more revenue; the second has been starved of it to the point of near collapse. Of course, the Government have realised what has gone wrong: 380,000 cases are waiting in the magistrates’ courts and, as we have heard, 81,000 in the Crown Court. There are victims of many sorts—not just the complainants waiting for trials but the wrongly accused. Public confidence is being eroded and our system of criminal justice is seriously damaged.
Just how bad has it become? One circuit leader—it is fair to say that this was three years ago—was asked to suggest one thing that would make things better. He said, “Yes, a bucket to put under the leak in my courtroom ceiling”. I have not made that up. Courts in valuable locations have been sold off and very little money has been spent on the court estate. The result has been breakdowns and closures. Courtrooms have been closed through a lack of judges or recorders and revenue restrictions on the number of permitted days. Over some years, legal aid has been so severely restricted and reduced that no young barrister who wants to make a half-decent living chooses a criminal practice. So few have done so that, on occasions, my daughter—either prosecuting or defending—goes to court to find yet another adjournment, because there is simply no one available to take the opposing brief.
It is not just the barristers who are in short supply. There are so few court clerks that many court centres, on occasion far apart, have had to share one or find one remotely. There is a shortage of interpreters because the rates paid do not compete with more lucrative fields. On a court sitting day, whatever that means—you might think it is a full day, but very often it is not, because the judge trying a case with a jury has to fit something in at 10 am and maybe even something at 2 pm, which can run on because there is no other judge to hear it—the jury involved in the trial are sitting in a waiting room for all that time until it has finished. Prison vans, because of the inadequate contracts, routinely delay trials because they do not bring prisoners to court in time. With these delays, postponements and adjournments, the waiting lists have grown longer and longer.
There are measures in the Bill that deserve support, especially those drawn from part 2 of the report by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, and from the Law Commission. There are also, as the Minister said at the beginning, things that the Government have already started to do that are having an effect and—let us hope—look as though they are beginning to stabilise the Crown Court waiting lists: more sitting days, reopening courts and legal aid to encourage more people to enter the criminal Bar and to train more magistrates. The magistrates’ court lists are, as we have heard, already hopelessly overloaded as it is.
I am glad and relieved that the Government have stepped back from their earlier, shocking, wider position on the removal of jury trials, but the Bill as it stands needs some more radical pruning. In making changes to cut the waiting lists, the one thing that we surely do not want to do is further damage public confidence in the criminal justice system. Two particular aspects of the Bill would do that.
First, both research and experience show, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, that women and girls, especially, and Black and minority communities place confidence in the present right to be tried by a jury—particularly in serious cases—or, in other words, to be tried by a group of people with a range of experiences, some of whom may understand their condition better than a single, usually male and white, judge. Your case may seem minor to others, but for you a conviction may destroy your job, marriage, family, home and life. That right should be automatic and retained.
Secondly, if you are tried today in a magistrates’ court and are wrongly convicted—which happens, especially as many of the accused are not legally represented—you want to know that you have the right to have a rehearing in the Crown Court. The Post Office workers who were wrongly convicted in the magistrates’ court were almost all sentenced to less than two years. Under this Bill, they would have had no automatic right to a Crown Court hearing. Yet, and this is perhaps the most significant point, the figures from June this year show that 56% of such appeals succeed. Magistrates’ courts should surely be for swift justice for low-level crimes, not a tipping ground for Crown Court overflow cases.
That is where we are. What is the answer? First, look at those Crown Courts that have eliminated their backlog—we can find out their names; Liverpool is certainly one, and there are others—and do what they are doing, which is essentially much better and more efficient case management, countrywide. Secondly, we need more courtrooms, more sitting days, more judges, proper resources and full court days, not requiring one judge to do the work of two because it is cheaper. Finally, we need incentives to plead guilty at the very earliest stages, more use of the so-called Goodyear directions—where judges are able to give realistic indications of the sentence in the event of a guilty plea—reviews of cases in the waiting list and the removal of those no longer in the public interest, and, of course, as has been said, the increased use of technology to reduce case management hearings using up court time.
Forty years in practice have taught me that, although the result is not always right, jury trial is the best and fairest system by which to determine guilt or innocence. It is surely about trusting the people—which, if you believe in democracy and freedom, is what good government does.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and to say at once that I largely agree with everything she said. Clearly, something must be done about the unacceptable backlog in the Crown Courts, but what? As she just said, what is the answer? Does this Bill get the balance right?
I will address only one point: the removal of the right to elect jury trial in “either way” offences. That is the removal of a right that currently exists. It leaves the mode of trial to the discretion of the magistrates without, as far as one can see, any appeal as to how that discretion is to be exercised in a particular case. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, we need to know a lot more about how this is supposed to work and what the impact will be. I understand, and the Minister will put me right if I have it wrong, that this proposal goes together with the increase of sentencing powers of magistrates to 18 months. The general idea is that the magistrates will follow the allocation guidelines of the Sentencing Council. In other words, they will decide allocation according to the expected length of the possible sentence; if it is under 18 months, the case will stay in the magistrates’ court.
There is, as I have just said, no appeal from the magistrates’ decision as far as one can see. Many will have reservations about this increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers. But among the questions are whether the right to a jury should be determined on a case-by-case basis rather than set by Parliament on the basis of a very clear classification of particular offences or criteria set out in statute. Should the length of sentence be the only consideration? Should a discretion based on guidelines set by a third party, however respected—here, the Sentencing Council—be a substitute for rules clearly defined by Parliament?
The impact statement says that this measure and changes in the sentencing powers would remove about 25,000 cases a year from the Crown Court—that is about 30% of annual receipts—and save 5,500 jury trials. But that is about the number of jury trials that take place each year, so a very substantial reduction in jury trials is envisaged. Can the Minister explain the basis of these figures in the impact statement and, following observations by other noble Lords, what work has been done to establish that the magistrates’ courts can deal with this substantial increase in their caseload? I shall come back to that point in a moment.
More generally, and in common with other noble Lords who have spoken, some of us greatly value public participation in the justice system—the idea that it is citizens themselves who are administering justice and that justice is not something that comes down from higher beings to the lower echelons. Any diminution of that is to be regretted and requires justification, for the reasons given by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.
As has been particularly mentioned, there is the situation of the ethnic minorities, and the view—very correctly expressed by David Lammy himself in his famous Lammy Review—that the jury system is the only part of the criminal justice system that is fully trusted by the ethnic minorities. I welcome, of course, the Minister’s suggestion of some sort of review of this aspect, but if one is going to risk a diminution of ethnic minorities’ confidence in our justice system, one is very much playing with fire.
More generally—and these are points that have already been made—I have not heard it suggested that the jury system itself has been a significant contributor to delays in the Crown Court. Rather, as the reports of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, emphasise, the Crown Court is and has been, for reasons that have been explained—including underinvestment, however regrettable that may have been—highly inefficient. Even today, we are given to understand that 25% of all criminal trials are ineffective: the prison van does not turn up; the papers have been served too late; the counsel is unavailable; the interpreter missed the train; the witness is missing; and so forth. One is left with the impression that trial by jury is being emasculated because of efficiency failures elsewhere in the system, and that is a cause of great concern.
By contrast, as has already been said by several noble Lords, the backlog in the magistrates’ court is rising; the shortage of legal advisers is acute; legal aid is less available in the magistrates’ court and the legal aid rates are much lower, risking more unrepresented defendants. The magistrates, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, emphasised, have great difficulty in trying any cases that are of a more complex kind, particularly cases that go over beyond the day or will last for a few hours longer than the average. That is going to place the magistrates’ courts in great difficulty. I pay tribute to our lay magistracy, but I share the fears of other noble Lords that we are in danger of overwhelming them by this approach that we are adopting.
So what is to be done? I suggest a twin track: let us implement as rapidly as possible the extensive reforms proposed in detail by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, including the national listing framework, the unlimited sitting days, which are already having an impact, and the various other suggestions made by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so as to make the whole system much more efficient and joined-up, including the police and the CPS.
At the same time, perhaps we should consider a proposal to move a block of lesser offences, to be defined by Parliament, into the magistrates’ court, as also originally proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. In my view, constitutionally it falls to Parliament to decide who does or does not qualify for jury trial. In principle, on an issue as fundamental as jury trial, that decision should be taken by Parliament and not left to the discretion of the magistrates, however conscientious and hard-working they may be.
Lord Leveson of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the criminal justice system is in crisis. The police, the CPS, the defence community, the courts, prisons and probation all have different priorities and different financial pressures. The appointment of a new Second Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice is a welcome attempt to try to ensure that all those involved have a common direction and work together. On top, I recognise that the judiciary has the unenviable task of trying to maintain the balance between the prosecution and the defence, and ensure fairness for all. Prison vans may be late, but that may be a consequence of remand prisoners not being housed because of pressures on prison cells in a prison near to their court.
Although I will come to deal with the crisis, the rationalisation of criminal justice is indeed a principled objective, unconnected to the backlog of cases. Reference is frequently made to the unalienable rights of trial by jury to decide the facts, but the impressive lecture—to which the noble Lord, Lord Howard, referred—given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, last week to the Selden Society, utterly demolishes this argument. He noted that, in 1751, the average trial over four days took about 30 minutes. There was no choice of type of trial until 1847. Property ownership was a requirement of jury service until after 1965, and that meant that 89% of jurors until then were men.
When I started at the Bar in 1970, two trials a day was not unusual—occasionally against the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—but what is the position now? The gravity of trials for sexual offending, for violence and for organised crime is much greater. Complexity, along with protective measures for victims and defendants, has dramatically increased their length. Communications data, body-worn video, CCTV, data generally, scientific evidence including DNA have all changed prosecutions, as have the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, disclosure of unused material, special measures, intermediaries and interpreters—the list goes on.
What can be done? I could not seek to summarise my independent review before your Lordships. It is based, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, mentioned, on over 55 years’ involvement in criminal justice, of which for 18 years I was involved in the judicial management of criminal cases. Seldom has my homework been marked by so many in such a public forum. At its core, however, is what I consider to be an undeniable truth: that to be effective and to cope with the challenges of crime, its prosecution and justice in the 21st century, the component parts of the system need increased funding, structural reform and increased efficiency. In my view, with great respect to noble Lords, it is a fantasy to believe that more money and improved efficiency will solve the problem. We have been trying to make it more efficient for years and years. Trial processes must evolve to fit modern circumstances.
On top of that, we must consider the position in relation to the backlog or number of outstanding cases. My reviews were published in July 2025 and February of this year. Given the opposition to change, of which I have heard a great deal this afternoon, you would imagine that every part of the system would be straining to improve efficiency and to demonstrate that structural change was not necessary. From April, the start of the period covering the most recent statistics, there has been no cap on sitting days, so you might have expected a great improvement. In fact, the system has gone backwards. I do not for one moment seek to rely simply on one set of figures, but they illuminate the problem.
At the end of June 2026, as your Lordships have heard, there were 80,829 open cases—double that in 2019 —and 392 cases more than at the end of March. It is argued that 392 is a small increase, but in that three-month period receipts fell by 7%; that is to say, there were 7% fewer cases sent to the Crown Court for trial. Disposals were down 4%; that means 4% fewer cases left the system. Receipts have been decreasing since the middle of 2024, but the backlog grows. All the indicators are going the wrong way.
Worse still, median waiting times have increased. Almost 24,000 cases have been waiting for a year or more for trial, and more than half are for violent or sexual offences. The number is 22% higher than the previous year. Some cities are better, but, in London, cases are being listed for 2030. This is grossly unfair to victims, who need to be able to move on with their lives but are caught in a time warp from which they cannot escape except by withdrawing, which a number do. Witnesses are required to recall the events of years past. What an indictment of the state we have reached.
I was required to consider longer-term options for Crown Court reform to reduce demand and retain more cases in the lower courts. I suggested a raft of structural proposals. In relation to some, the Government have gone further than I recommended, such as on magistrates’ sentencing powers and on removing the right to elect, as opposed to the reclassification to summary offences of some triable either way. In relation to others, they have not been taken forward. This is for the Government and Parliament to consider and determine. I have been clear that, although the package of money and structural reform is not a pick and mix, I was not suggesting a slavish commitment to what I recommended. As a result, however, I am not in a position to speak of the impact of the proposals in the legislation because they are not my proposals. Given that it does not address the large volume of cases awaiting trial, I am apprehensive about whether it is enough. Further, the reduction in cases entering the system is unlikely to be reproduced, as the Government rightly wish to focus on public safety and, in particular, violence against women and girls.
Victims and witnesses, and indeed defendants who wish to move on with their lives, are human beings who require consideration. In that regard, I pay great tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Stace, whose humanity shone out in his maiden speech. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, whose interest in offenders is particularly well known.
It is worth noting that, in 2014, 8% of cases triable either way elected trial by jury. In 2022, it was 17%, because those who wish to play the system rather like the idea of having their trial deferred to 2030.
I end with two simple questions. Putting to one side the demands of the outstanding cases, in our modern times, with the plethora of evidence lengthening every trial, if not this, then what? If not now, then when?
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is rather intimidating following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, who gave such a compelling and insightful description of the crisis at the heart of criminal justice, but, put quite simply, no matter how bad that crisis is, rolling back jury trials cannot be the solution. In fact, many of us were relieved that the Government listened to the huge outcry against the earlier widespread removal of the jury trial, but if the Prime Minister has given an inch, for which I am a little grateful, forgive me for not gushing in gratitude.
I say this because so many of my Labour friends have told me that the attack on juries has been halted by Andy Burnham. That is just not true. This Bill continues an assault on juries, by removing a defendant’s right to choose a Crown Court trial for “either way” offences. That is not nothing. It means that sexual offences, violence and dishonesty can be treated as summary justice, like parking offences, with no right to appeal. Magistrates’ roles have been completely rewritten, now with expanded sentencing powers to lock up their fellow citizens for up to two years. I see this only as a recipe for miscarriages of justice. The Bar Council calls it a dangerous experiment.
Surely our elected colleagues in the other place would never have nodded through such a dangerous experiment without a comprehensive parliamentary kerfuffle about what is in this Bill. Sadly not. In the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I make the complaint that the Report stage in the other place was allotted only 2.5 hours to consider dozens of new government amendments, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, referred to. Given that the Hansard Society considers those changes as fundamentally recasting the Bill’s purpose, that puts real moral pressure on this House to carefully consider whether the Bill is fit for purpose.
The Law Society urges us to judge the Bill by asking whether it will help break the cycle of crisis management or simply shift the problems from one overstretched part of the system to another. It seems to me to mirror how early release to tackle prison overcrowding has created havoc in the Probation Service and put the public at risk. Now we threaten a perfect storm in the magistrates’ courts, which have their own backlog. People have described how their workload has increased by 65% in the past three years and so on, but the Bill is offering them a poisoned chalice, is it not? It is telling people who might be considering being a magistrate or who are a magistrate that they can now lock up more people for longer, assess all the evidence and mitigating factors, write legal explanations and so on, and replace the jury. Does the Minister have any evidence that magistrates who donate their public service want or are attracted to these new burdens? Is it not changing the service completely?
One could have some sympathy with Ministers for harbouring a mistaken belief that removing increasing numbers of jury trials could save time, but it is telling that juries were, and still are, one of the key targets of action, rather than greater urgency in tackling the numerous avoidable inefficiencies and mismanagement that we have heard so eloquently explained.
I worry that the Government seem at ease with sacrificing fundamental rights to patch-up their own administrative failures. Perhaps the Minister can explain why the Government rejected any time-limited sunset clause that would at least ensure that this curtailing of jury trial rights would end once, or if, the court backlog was cleared, as was proposed in the other place. Instead, the Minister, Sarah Sackman KC, justified the erosion of jury rights as part of a “lasting improvement” in the operation of a modernised, fairer justice system. Can the Minister clarify whether the official position is that less use of juries will be fairer? It is hard not to agree with Judge Rivlin, whose recent paper on this Bill states:
“I believe the enormous, scandalous backlog of cases has become an ‘opportunity’–some might say, an ‘excuse’–to recycle a long-held antipathy to jury trial”.
It is that implicit antipathy that worries me, particularly about Clause 3. It contains a prejudice that juries are just not up to the job of dealing with complex fraud cases. In case the public find that insulting, the Minister today justified relieving juries of that onerous burden by saying that having to sit on juries for too long is bad for their welfare and their family life. That was insulting in itself, but this bout of kindness towards the public’s well-being might be more convincing if it was not attached to a part of the Bill in which the Secretary of State, outrageously, has conferred on themselves the power to add to the list of complex offences without parliamentary veto. That was passionately opposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, and I agree. It is completely anti-democratic to do that.
What is more, the inference that some issues are much better dealt with by judge-only trials, full of clever experts and specialists, not only indicates a disdain for the public’s capacity or intelligence but gives up on the principle of open justice by abandoning the obligation to present cases in an understandable, intelligible way for the judge, jury, defendants and victims, as well as for the media and the public, as is part of the democratic agreement. As Jonathan Fisher KC explains,
“Trying fraud without a jury risks the perception of opacity or special treatment”.
He worries that it could,
“feed the narrative that powerful defendants are judged behind closed professional doors”.
It seems unfathomable that, at this of all times, when there is existential distrust in the establishment and a widespread belief that there is unfair two-tier justice, some members of the establishment are trying to dismantle the one trusted norm of criminal justice, the right to be judged by your peers, and the one civic obligation that millions embrace despite the discomfort or the inconvenience, jury service. Those 12 randomly selected ordinary people with 12 different lifetimes of experience and knowledge create 12 chances for a lone voice to speak up and say, “Wait! Something is not right here”. That crucial voice has historically prevented miscarriages of justice, seen through the lies and denials of perpetrators, however respectable, and checked state overreach. There are no nodding heads or voting fodder there. Juries embody fresh eyes, disinterested questioning and the virtues of persuasion, deliberation and common sense pursuing truth. To be honest, we could do with a lot more of it, not least in Westminster.
Finally, I am very torn on Clause 16 and the plans to remove the law of presumption in relation to parental contact. It has been extremely well explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. We are told that removing this presumption sends a clear signal, but to who? I am not keen on using legislation for PR messaging purposes.
I was also brought up short by a quote I read from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who said:
“Being a parent is a privilege, not a right. The only right that matters is a child’s right to safety”.
Surely a privilege is something that the state grants and can take away. Is the state saying that it owns parents’ rights? Actually, parents do have rights. I fear this is state overreach that risks making family courts ever more antagonistic. It is an attack on family rights. I hope the review that has been planned in the Bill will extend itself to Clause 16, because a lot of answers are needed there.
Lord Jabbar (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on his wonderful maiden speech. Having given my own maiden speech only two weeks ago, I remember the relief that he must be feeling now having done it.
I welcome the Bill and, in particular, the Government’s determination to tackle the very serious problem of delay in our criminal courts. I approach this issue from the perspective of someone who has spent his professional life assisting people caught within the criminal justice systems, particularly across the Commonwealth, in jurisdictions in the Caribbean, east Africa and south-east Asia.
I declare my interest as a director of the Death Penalty Project, an international legal organisation that represents individuals in criminal and constitutional matters within the Commonwealth. In that work, I have seen what delay means for the people who depend on those systems—defendants whose lives and futures have remained uncertain while criminal proceedings have continued around them. That experience has taught me that delay is not simply a question of the efficient administration of the courts; it is fundamentally a question of access to justice and, ultimately, the right to a fair trial.
Of course, defendants are not alone in bearing the consequences of delay. We all recognise that victims and their families wait for justice, and that witnesses wait to give evidence. Families on all sides can find their lives placed on hold, and delay can undermine wider public confidence in the administration of justice. My experience is principally that of assisting defendants, and this is the perspective from which I wish to make my contribution to this debate.
The scale of the problem in the UK is stark. As many have said today, Ministry of Justice statistics at the end of June 2026 show the Crown Court case load reaching a record high of over 80,000—more than double the pre-Covid level. The magistrates’ courts’ case load was just above 380,000, with more than 20,000 cases open for a year or longer. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referenced, this is what we describe, in reality, as the backlog.
Current estimates indicate that, in some cases, trials may not take place until 2030—an unimaginable timeframe but a reality—and this does not even take into account appeals and further reviews. These are troubling numbers, but they are not simply numbers. Behind them are people whose lives are being placed on hold while the system struggles to deliver justice. It is unacceptable.
I will draw on three reflections from my experience across the Commonwealth. The first is delay as a human cost. The years spent waiting for criminal proceedings to conclude are years of people’s lives. Time is not neutral; it impacts on everybody. For a defendant, the passage of time can have consequences that go directly to the fairness of those proceedings. Witnesses become harder to locate, memories fade and circumstances change. Evidence may be difficult to obtain or test. All this can affect not just the experience of justice but the ability of a court to determine a case fairly.
My work involved assisting people who have faced the death penalty, some of whom spent many years on remand waiting for trial. I do not equate those cases with the problems confronting us here and the courts in the UK, but they have taught me one important lesson: the passage of time can itself become a profound part of a person’s experience of the justice system and, ultimately, the final outcome, so doing nothing is not an option. The Government are right to confront this problem.
My second reflection is this: access to court is not necessarily the same as access to justice. We can make a justice system faster, but faster does not necessarily mean fairer. For a defendant, real access to justice requires proper legal advice and representation, and the practical ability to understand the proceedings, participate effectively and enforce one’s rights. For example, the Justice Committee’s work in its report, Access to Justice: Legal Aid, gives us an important warning. It found that the number of active criminal duty solicitors had fallen by a quarter since 2017, and that only 7% were under the age of 35, meaning an ever-ageing cohort.
These are just some of the issues that threaten the operation of the justice system in England and Wales. Such concerns have also been made with representations by the Criminal Bar Association, the Bar Council and the Law Society. Even the most efficient court process cannot work properly if there are too few lawyers able to advise and represent the people passing through it. For defendants, effective legal representation is central to ensuring due process, protecting their rights and securing the possibility of a fair trial. If we make it faster to reach court but harder for someone to participate effectively once they get there, have we really improved access to justice?
I also agree with my noble friend Lord McNicol and welcome the Bill’s provision for an independent review of whether these reforms create or exacerbate differences in treatment or outcomes between defendants of different racial groups and different socioeconomic statuses. We know from robust empirical studies carried out the world over that impact is never equal. As we seek to make the system more efficient, we must ask whether the consequences of reform are being treated equally.
My third reflection is that delay is a systemic problem and requires a system-wide response. If we increase judicial capacity, do we have enough court staff, prosecutors and defence lawyers to support it? Resources are plainly necessary, but my experience across the Commonwealth suggests that resources alone will not be enough. That has been expressly recognised in the review by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson.
Many Caribbean states, for example, operate under much greater resource constraints than in England and Wales. Recognising this, these jurisdictions sought to confront these problems by setting clearer time limits, improving case management, using technology more effectively and reforming procedure. We see related approaches in other Commonwealth states that are streamlining procedure and setting time limits.
I am not suggesting that England and Wales should simply import these solutions from elsewhere. The lesson is much more fundamental. There is no single solution to delay. We should set expectations, measure performance and manage cases effectively. We should ensure that defendants receive the due process for which they are entitled. In turn, victims will receive their own due process.
In its introduction, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s 2024 guide to case management sought to align efficiency with what it called
“enduring constitutional values underlying the administration of justice”.
What does that mean in practice? It means that efficiency cannot be considered in isolation from the fundamental principles on which our justice system is underpinned: respect for the rule of law, due process, effective access to justice, equality and the right to a fair trial.
These principles are not obstacles to an efficient justice system. They are one reason we have a justice system in the first place. As we seek, rightly, to reduce delay, the question cannot be simply: how quickly are cases moving through the courts? We must also ask: are we delivering justice fairly? Efficiency is not an alternative to justice. Properly understood, it is a means by which justice is delivered, and it must always serve the ultimate purpose of the system: fair, independent and timely administration of justice. I support the Government’s determination to address delay. From the perspective of a defendant, it means ensuring the pursuit of greater efficiency. If we do not do this, it will lead only to wrongful convictions and error, which, in turn, undermine confidence in the justice system. I look forward to working with the Government to ensure that these reforms deliver both.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stace, on his excellent speech. I particularly welcome the chairman of the Prison Reform Trust to this House. We need more experts on rehabilitation here.
Formerly I have questioned the Clause 16 abolition of the presumption that children benefit from safe contact with both parents. I said that we would need to mitigate personal and societal harms that were highly likely to come as a result, particularly as parents not using the courts will no longer have this as a starting point. I proposed other changes to the Children Act 1989 that should accompany the rather blunt instrument of abolition, particularly improving the welfare checklist.
My sense is that the Government are determined to press ahead with abolition, but I am heartened that colleagues in the other place do not seem willing to discard the presumption without a fight. It was brought in under the coalition through the Children and Families Act 2014 by the Minister, Edward Timpson KC. It is an understatement to say that he is a specialist: a family law barrister with a focus, before and after his political career, on cases of vulnerable children. The presumption does not create an automatic right to contact and certainly does not elevate parental rights above children’s welfare. The paramountcy of the latter was in no way compromised. It was vital then, and still is now, to reinforce the principle that, wherever safe and appropriate, children generally benefit from having both parents involved then and throughout their lives; hence the presumption is rebuttable and expressly qualified by risk of harm.
Crucially, the intent was that the legislation should have an influence beyond the courts in what is called the shadow of the law. We urgently need to encourage a wider societal expectation that both parents should continue to play a positive role in their children’s lives following separation—obviously, if it is safe for the children. I urge the Government not to ignore this history, because one of our besetting sins in this place is to ignore institutional memory.
I agree that we must consider recent evidence and listen to current concerns about a pro-contact culture and children and parents affected by domestic abuse. However, there are methodological issues with the research which is in large part being used to justify, if not require, this change. The authors of the Ministry of Justice October 2025 review said that they had used small, unrepresentative samples and did not access complete court files. The evidence pre-dated major reforms, such as the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and the updated practice direction 12J. Crucially, they did not properly examine the effect on children of losing a relationship with a safe parent. As to whether there is a pro-contact culture, Sir Andrew McFarlane, previous President of the Family Division of the High Court, cautioned against using such a term.
Finally, exercising the rebuttable presumption, given its qualifications, requires that all involved are aware of domestic abuse. Evidence of poor practice is not the same thing as evidence that the statutory presumption itself has caused or materially contributed to that poor practice. The tragedy that the campaigner Claire Throssell MBE endured when her ex-husband killed their boys while they were in his care, for example, pre-dated the presumption. Such tragedies must not be ignored, and they absolutely require us to examine the system and improve safeguarding. But we seem to have forgotten the maxim that hard cases make bad law. It is not at all clear that removing this presumption will make children safer.
I was saddened to read the rather coercive emotionalism on Report in the Commons when the honourable Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge harangued those opposing the repeal and accused them of audacity. Previous reviews—including, to be fair, those commissioned by a previous Conservative Government—made certain recommendations. However, it is Ministers’ responsibility to weigh the evidence presented, decide whether it is strong enough to make a major change, and not outsource a decision to researchers. It is not audacity to come to a different conclusion.
I am concerned that the case for repeal has not been sufficiently established and that we are reaching for it as a badly targeted remedy. A large body of research says that children’s welfare is furthered by safe contact and better relations with both their parents. The ability to co-parent is a vital consideration and depends on parents’ relationships with each other; hence my interest in improving the welfare checklist to take account of these, a proposal first made during the passage of the Children and Families Act by Labour MPs and Peers.
Legislation and social policy did not give attention to relationships in the late 1980s, but that situation has changed utterly, so it would be highly appropriate to include them now. However, changes to the welfare checklist would not send the same signal as the existing presumption. Sir Andrew McFarlane’s estimate is that 38% of separating families use the courts and the remaining 62% do not; hence, while the welfare checklist is central to judicial decision-making, it is not systematically applied to the 62% who are separating in the shadow of the law. To reiterate, the presumption was intended to establish a broader societal starting point about the importance of safe parental involvement.
In summary, it is not proven that removing the presumption would improve outcomes for children as much as stronger risk assessment, better judicial training to ensure that the law is properly understood and applied, and more effective safeguards. The objective in 2014 was what genuinely served children’s best interests. The most effective response to that end should be the one that we reach for.
Women’s Aid has written movingly about 67 children who have died since 1994, many before the introduction of the presumption, following unsafe contact with an abusive parent. It blames the presumption, despite it coming into force in 2014. As that causation is unproven, why should abolishing the presumption prevent deaths? Removing it will, however, have lifelong negative effects for children when safe parents are excluded from their lives. It will reverberate throughout whole extended families and wider society, which is already struggling with the damage of severed relationships. I fear that Clause 16’s removal of the presumption will inflict damage far beyond any good it might do.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, and thank him for his fascinating speech, which was about his family, varied career and public service. I know he will bring a great deal of that to good effect in this House.
I expressed wholehearted delight that the Government’s original plan to severely limit jury trials had been abandoned—little did I know. It would have been a grievous mistake and not the solution to the problems facing the criminal justice system. I am all too aware of just how terrible the situation now is. I have a great fondness for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. I count him as an inspiration and a friend. While his analysis of the problems facing the system was more or less right, his central recommendation was utterly wrong.
The justice system of this nation is greatly enriched by the role played by juries. The central argument for them is the participation of ordinary folk—the people—in these processes. It is so rare that the people, who do not feel listened to, get the opportunity to participate in something so serious. It feels like déjà vu standing here talking about this because, in my early years in this House—now 30 years ago—I had great battles with the then Labour Government, who wanted to damage the jury system. Fortunately, they did not succeed, but I made myself rather difficult to my party by resisting the changes it sought. Now here we are doing it again. This is one place where people have an opportunity to legitimise a vital part of our system. This proposal is a great mistake. This is about democracy and something that is almost intangible.
We all tell stories about taxi drivers. A taxi driver, when taking me home from here one night, said to me: “Do you know that I have sat on a jury three times? It has been the most important thing in my life. I just drive cabs, but here I am making a decision that affects the lives of other people. I’ve acquitted and I’ve convicted, but to be in that position makes me feel that I have played an important part in something real and vital in our world”. I do not think we should underestimate that.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, mentioned, judges do not understand just how much a jury is a guardrail for the judiciary. In the end, there is a division between the jury, which decides on the facts, and the judge, who guides and makes decisions on the law. That severance, whereby the ultimate decision is in the hands of the peers of the person in the dock, protects judges from ignominy, attack, reprisals and, nowadays, doxing—judges’ addresses can be found, which makes them more at risk than they ever were in the past. It is important that we think about the position of judges.
I do not support removing juries from complex trials and fraud trials. The idea of a Secretary of State being able to decide whether to open the expansion up is shocking. Judge Rivlin, who sits at Southwark Crown Court and has probably tried more fraud cases than any other living judge, made a very strong argument that juries are perfectly competent to judge such cases. You do not have to have a maths degree to judge when people are being dishonest, and that is what fraud trials are all about.
The Government should think again about removing the defendant’s right to elect trial by jury in “both way” cases, and about this idea that you can appeal from the magistrates’ courts. I would add to the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, about the chaos in magistrates’ courts because of the shortage of magistrates. I hope we have had conversations with magistrates to find out whether they welcome the surge of new cases that will come their way. This has not been thought through well enough.
I remind everybody that the huge backlog of cases did not come from nowhere; it is the result of cavalier and reckless cuts—closing courts, decreasing court sitting days and the ruthless savaging of legal aid. Young professionals, who have spent years training, now cannot afford to practise at the criminal Bar and are having to find other, more lucrative ways of making a living, so days are lost because of the shortage of barristers to conduct cases. Noble Lords have heard all about the disarray of courts, the dereliction of the buildings and the failure to get people to court in time because of the other areas of crisis in our system. The prison system is underfunded, so transport is not available. This is not, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, described, just because of the remand system somehow, but is due to the whole chaos of underfunding in the Prison and Probation Service—you cannot think of alternatives to prison, so recidivism rises.
There are serious issues here. I endorse the recommendations set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu. I urge the Government to reclassify assaults on emergency workers as summary. A huge amount of the cases bunging up the courts apparently concern low-level assaults and unpleasant behaviour towards emergency workers. Cases can be removed from the backlog. A good sifting could involve removing some of the cases that would not need to proceed at all. I have made the suggestion, and I make it again, of introducing suspended prosecutions, where you do not prosecute at all in some cases but give a warning that, if you offend in the next two years, that prosecution will go ahead along with any others. We could do that. We could make use of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu. She has retired from practice, but she knows how to meet thresholds and would be of great value. There must be many people like her. We should be offering a 40% reduction in sentencing for guilty pleas; that would induce many people to plead guilty at an early stage. We could divert cases into community responses if we have a better Probation Service and recruit and train people well.
As someone who has spent their life arguing for better justice for women, I welcome the fact that there should be specialist courts. It is wrong for victims to have to wait years for a case to start, but we can deal with that by creating specialist courts for sexual offences, as we seek to do for domestic violence. There are many other things that can be done. The Bar Council has come up with suggestions and so has Justice—I am president of its council. There are many things that can be done, but getting rid of juries and interfering with the jury system is not the way to go.
Baroness Sater (Con)
My Lords, as a former youth magistrate, I welcome the opportunity to contribute. I declare an interest as a life member of the Magistrates’ Association. As a former magistrate, there are obviously many issues that I could talk about, but I will focus on Clause 5, which extends magistrates’ sentencing powers, and Clause 18, which concerns magistrates’ allowances.
I turn first to Clause 5. I recognise the argument for enabling magistrates’ courts to deal with a wider range of cases, as supported by the Magistrates’ Association, thereby freeing up capacity in the Crown Court. However, as we have heard, I fear that some of the changes in the Bill risk placing the magistracy under unsustainable pressure. Greater powers mean greater responsibilities. This is not simply a question of giving magistrates greater authority; it means them making more demanding sentencing decisions, with potentially more significant consequences for defendants. Whether the system is ready to support magistrates in exercising those powers effectively is a different question. Magistrates’ courts already deal with over 90% of criminal cases in England and Wales. It is worth noting that, in 2025, they disposed of approximately 1.46 million cases, which illustrates the substantial caseload already handled by the magistrates’ courts. Clause 5 will add even more cases. The Government must demonstrate that this additional work can be absorbed without simply moving the backlog from one court to another.
The Government have set a target of 21,000 magistrates by 2028-29, compared with just over 15,000 in post across England and Wales in April 2026. In the year to March 2026, 1,663 magistrates were appointed, although it is worth mentioning that 988 left—up 20% on the previous year. The latest figures show that 890 magistrates were appointed between July and September 2026, more than double the number appointed in the same quarter a year earlier. That is encouraging progress, but there remains a long way to go. Recruitment must be matched by the capacity to train, mentor and support new magistrates. I fear this could increase the workload of existing magistrates and make retention more challenging.
As noble Lords have already mentioned, at the end of June 2026 there were just over 380,000 open cases in magistrates’ courts, alongside just under 81,000 in the Crown Court. These are not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. Chief Inspector of Probation Martin Jones has highlighted the unfairness faced by
“defendants who are waiting for an excessive time, sometimes on remand, to establish their guilt or innocence”.
The Independent Review of the Criminal Courts estimated that these reforms will require 8,500 additional sitting days in magistrates’ courts. The Justice Committee has already questioned whether the Government’s plans to expand magistrates’ court capacity are deliverable, so I would be grateful to learn from the Minister how the Government will be able to provide the additional sitting days, legal advisers, court staff, IT systems and suitable facilities needed to deliver these reforms.
We already know we have an issue around the retention of legal advisers. Legal advisers are critical. If we do not have enough of them when these reforms are implemented, cases will not be able to be heard, even if magistrates are available to sit. There is also an issue around pay. Pay parity for legal advisers with comparable CPS roles must be fully implemented if we are to retain and attract sufficient numbers. I recognise that work is under way on this, but it must be a central part of delivering these reforms.
When magistrates’ sentencing powers were previously extended, additional training was provided by the Judicial College. Giving evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee in June this year, the Lady Chief Justice highlighted the pressure on the college. Referring to the Sentencing Act, she described
“a huge amount of additional training need”.
She also confirmed that there would be an increased demand for training as new magistrates came on board. The Bill will extend magistrates’ sentencing powers further. I therefore hope that the Government will provide the Judicial College with the further funding necessary to ensure that both new and serving magistrates receive the training they need to exercise these powers effectively before they come into force.
We must not put the cart before the horse. Operational readiness must determine the timetable, not an arbitrary deadline. The Magistrates’ Association has highlighted the need for efficiency measures to address avoidable delays and administrative pressures. I agree that this must be part of the solution, but efficiency measures alone cannot compensate for insufficient staffing or lack of available court time. This will ensure that victims, defendants and witnesses receive the justice they deserve.
I turn briefly to Clause 18. Magistrates undertake serious judicial responsibilities as volunteers, and they should not be left out of pocket. The Magistrates’ Association surveyed 1,362 magistrates in 2022. Its findings showed that many respondents had to make up the difference between the expenses they could claim and the costs they actually incurred. The association has long argued for greater flexibility in the expenses system so that reimbursement can reflect the modern working patterns and changing circumstances of magistrates, and I welcome the intention behind this provision—but the detail matters. The revised framework must ensure that legitimate expenses are reimbursed fairly and promptly. If the Government want to grow the magistracy and make it more representative, people in employment, people with caring responsibilities and people unable to absorb additional costs must be able to serve without financial disadvantage. A diverse magistracy is essential if the Bench is to reflect the communities it serves.
These two clauses are connected. Whether we are talking about sentencing powers or allowances, the principle is the same: the magistracy cannot be expected to do more without the necessary support. The contribution of magistrates should never be taken for granted. If we ask them to shoulder greater responsibility, we must ensure that they are properly supported.
Baroness Neate (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to be part of this debate in which so much legal expertise and experience are evident. I too warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, with his important expertise and experience. I will speak in support of Clause 16 and also mention some ways in which I believe the Bill could be further strengthened.
In the Children Act 1989, the Conservative Government took what was then a huge step for children by establishing the principle that children have rights, whereas parents have responsibilities. At that time, however, domestic abuse and the dynamics of power and control that sustain it, often well after separation, were not as well understood as they are now. In 2015, when the noble Baroness, Lady May, was Home Secretary, the country took a major step forward in creating the criminal offence of coercive control, which was further consolidated in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. I mention this because we are learning as a country. What the present Government are doing, therefore, is bringing together our present knowledge of domestic abuse with the founding principle of the Children Act that the best interests of the child must always be paramount.
This change took a decade of ardent campaigning to bring about. The Minister and others have mentioned the incredibly courageous Claire Throssell. She and I launched the campaign when I was chief executive of Women’s Aid. As noble Lords have heard, Claire’s two sons, Jack and Paul, had been killed by their father during court-ordered unsupervised contact—contact that, importantly, Claire and her children warned the court might be lethal. These children were by no means the only ones to meet this preventable fate. Claire’s children and others might be alive today if abuse survivors and their children were heard and believed—they still frequently are not—and if the courts always treated the child’s best interests as paramount. The presumption of contact where there has been domestic abuse can facilitate post-separation abuse, which in turn impacts the non-abusing parent’s ability to parent and can lead to the child entering care.
Even now, the myth that the family courts are biased against fathers has huge traction over both people who appear in the courts and those who work in them. The highly organised activists who perpetuate that myth now are from the same mould as those who egged my house multiple times and slashed my tyres when we launched the campaign. That is nothing compared with what their heirs on social media threaten to women who expose the way our institutions inadvertently facilitate coercive control and abuse. I urge noble Lords in this House to retain a laser focus on children, whose best interests should indeed prevail in all cases.
However, this change alone will not be sufficient to enable the family courts to deal fairly with cases where there is domestic abuse. I urge the Minister to consider amending the Bill in some crucial ways. First, the need for effective regulation of experts providing evidence in the family courts has been acknowledged across specialist organisations and by judges. In particular, the highly contested concept of parental alienation is used in ways that wrongly discredit both survivors and their children. When I was at Women’s Aid, I met many survivors who had been ignored and belittled in court in the name of parental alienation—and little has changed. Just in the last few weeks, survivors have told the committee of this House scrutinising the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 that they suffered more in the family court than during the abuse itself.
Furthermore, in the Re C (‘Parental Alienation’; Instruction of Expert) judgment, the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, stated that it was “unhelpful and potentially confusing” that the
“generic label ‘psychologist’ is not protected and may be used by any individual, whether registered or not”.
I urge the Minister to consider prohibiting the appointment of unregulated psychologists and psychotherapists to conduct a psychological assessment of any party or family member involved in child contact proceedings, and to ensure that all psychologists appointed as experts in the family court are appropriately qualified.
Secondly, despite domestic abuse appearing in 83% of private law children case files in the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report, research and survivor testimony show that there is a significant lack of understanding of domestic abuse by family court professionals. Judgments are less likely to serve the interests of children without sufficient understanding of how coercion and control—the heart of all domestic abuse—show themselves in the family court setting. The Government’s strategy for addressing violence against women and girls guaranteed training for all staff in criminal courts, but not family courts. I urge the Minister to mandate high-quality, trauma-informed training on domestic abuse for all family court professionals, including the judiciary.
I urge noble Lords to use this opportunity, when it comes, to reinforce the paramountcy of the best interests of children, and to reject misogyny and coercive control in the family courts by supporting Clause 16 and the other changes I have mentioned.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, I start by declaring an interest in that I am a practising barrister. I sometimes practise in judicial review cases arising out of the criminal justice system. As a very junior practitioner, I practised in the criminal, magistrates’ and youth courts as well as in the Crown Court.
I oppose many of the measures in the Bill but, in my allotted eight minutes, I wish to focus on one particularly egregious and counterproductive measure. The changes to the appeal mechanisms from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court will not help to reduce the backlog but will undermine faith in our criminal justice system. I strongly disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, that the changes to the appeal system are justifiable procedural modernisation.
My reasons are these. The current system is one that works well. If a person is convicted or sentenced in the magistrates’ or youth courts, they may appeal as a right to the Crown Court. If it is an appeal against conviction, there is a full rehearing of the charge before a Crown Court judge, sitting usually with two lay magistrates. Vexatious appeals are avoided by the fact that if you choose to spin the wheel and have an appeal to the Crown Court, the sentence may be increased. This is a sensible measure that is, oddly, abolished in the Bill before the House.
I have some vital statistics for the House to hold close and dear. These are drawn from criminal court statistics published on a quarterly basis by the Ministry of Justice. The latest set is to the end of quarter 2 2026 —that is June. I am about to give noble Lords the Government’s own figures. There are three. Appeals against conviction represent just 0.4% of the Crown Court case load. The annual total to June 2026 was 2,418 appeals. This next statistic is one which I hope noble Lords will all make sure to remember for a long time: of those 2,418 appeals, 976 were successful. That is an overall success rate of 40%. However, that figure of 2,418 includes abandoned appeals. It is more relevant to look at the 1,746 contested appeals—of which 56% were successful. That is the statistic that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, alluded to, and it is one which should jolt us all into a recognition that this provision in the Bill is not one which can possibly maintain the assertion that there is any problem with the way that appeals presently work.
Clause 6 and Schedule 2 will remove the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court. They will change the mode of appeal from a rehearing on the merits to a review of the safety of the conviction. The key decisions will now be taken by a Crown Court judge, sitting alone, who will determine permission on the papers. The lay justice’s role in the Crown Court is axed—a very regrettable development.
Seven points arise. First, the current system is swift and cheap. Compare the multi-stage process in the Bill with the current one-stop system. At present the appellant fills in a form; reasons for the appeal can be given but they are not necessary as it is a rehearing. The system works. Further, the new system will mean that the Crown Court judges are spending more time reviewing written applications for permission and responding in writing—presumably, also those decisions that are deemed capable of further review. Will this really save any time?
Secondly, the current system is fair and effective. The majority of contested appeals are allowed—I have told the House the statistics. The Justice Select Committee in the other place, reviewing the Bill, concluded that this
“plays an important role in correcting wrongful outcomes”.
The statistics show that the right of appeal is not being systematically abused by meritless appellants.
Thirdly, these measures are premature. The Law Commission is about to report on the issue of criminal appeals. It has been working on this since 2022. It published a consultation paper in 2025. The consultation has closed and we are awaiting the Law Commission’s final recommendations.
Fourthly, the Bill’s proposals are directly contrary to the Law Commission’s provisional recommendations, which include the retention of the current system of automatic rights of appeal. It is paragraph 5.86 of the provisional recommendations, in case anyone wishes to look at it.
Fifthly, this proposal is directly contrary to the Justice Select Committee’s recommendations. The Justice Select Committee in the other place recommended that the proposal is postponed, pending the Law Commission’s report. The Select Committee said in chapter 3 of its report that appeals from the magistrates’ court represent
“a small and declining proportion of overall Crown Court receipts, with only 0.4% of magistrates’ court decisions appealed in 2025”.
The Ministry of Justice’s own data does not support the premise that appeals make a material contribution to the Crown Court backlog. We are not persuaded that this proves a sufficient justification for the scale of reform proposed.
Sixthly, the Bill would place a greater burden on magistrates. The premise of the new system is that Crown Court judges will review the grounds of appeal alongside the transcripts of proceedings before the magistrates’ court, including reasons given by the magistrates for their guilty verdict. This means that magistrates will now have to give appeal-proof decisions for their reasons. That places a greater burden on magistrates to craft comprehensive reasons and to show that they have correctly applied the law and the facts. I very much share the doubts about the readiness of the magistrates’ court system to cope with this, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and others.
My seventh point is that the new system of appeals impacts on access to justice. An issue raised in the discussion of the Bill is generally that legal aid is less easily available in the magistrates’ court than in the Crown Court. The income cut-off is about £22,000. Roughly half of defendants before the magistrates’ court defend themselves, whereas it is unheard of, more or less, in the Crown Court. Introducing a highly legalistic system of appeals will impact on access to justice for many middle-income defendants. Can they really be expected to analyse the reasons themselves and identify grounds of appeal?
In conclusion, the current system is consistent with the centuries-old tradition of trial by lay justices. It is the other side of the coin of summary justice. There is no need for these changes. It is all too rare that there is an issue which unites me with the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Lady Fox of Buckley and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. This is surely a red flag to the Government. These measures are unsound, unjust and unnecessary and should be withdrawn.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all those who have been in touch with me and have come to see me, including all the organisations that have briefed me, from Amnesty to the Bar Council and Liberty. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stace, on his maiden speech today and the work he has done before coming to this House, including with the King’s Trust.
I welcome the aim of today’s Bill to produce swifter justice for victims, witnesses and defendants. The pressure is astronomical, with the Crown Court’s open caseload reaching a record of 80,829 in June this year. Almost one-third of them had been open for over a year, and over half were for sexual offences or violence against a person. The resource burden, as well as the distress felt by the parties involved, cannot be overstated. One can never understand what it must be like to live in this situation.
I will talk about the importance of jury trials. A jury brings together 12 different citizens, each with entirely different lives and experiences. It is a rare form of public participation in justice. This helps to build confidence in outcomes and is a fair part of the right to be judged by one’s peers. At the same time, it is absolutely vital that legal aid is available in all criminal trials, including those concerning domestic violence. We have to ensure that legal aid is available; there must be no going back on legal aid.
Clause 1 would go further than the recommendations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, which apply to offences carrying a maximum sentence of two years or less. I hope the Government will recognise the importance of jury trials and work to protect this fundamental right. I also hope that the Government will consider the impact on women, as well as race and socioeconomic status, especially considering institutional bias and the implications on access to justice and public confidence.
The criminal justice system is not working for victims of crime, witnesses of crime or criminal defendants. Indeed, it can scarcely be described as a system. All are prejudiced and stressed by the increasing delays, which are among the most significant features of the way the criminal courts operate in practice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, has warned that a radical extended package of measures is needed to prevent total collapse—this is absolutely true; the figures show this to us. Something has to be done, urgently and effectively. The status quo is not an option, but there are important limitations on what can be done. Equally, jury trials must be preserved, as I said earlier, and legal aid must be available.
The problem in the Crown Court is that many cases are heard by a judge alone, rather than by a judge and a jury. I think this should be possible only for lengthy and technically complex fraud and financial crime cases. Enhanced jurisdiction must be considered for magistrates’ courts, which have increased sentencing powers and controls over appeals. However, it is difficult for magistrates to sit for more days than possible, because of issues around having time off work and having extra training—that makes it quite difficult at present.
The National Audit Office has attributed at least part of the backlog to fewer criminal barristers and solicitors, and the legal profession points to fewer sitting days. Funding is needed for extra sitting days. The magistrates’ courts already hold a record 380,230 open cases, and the chair of the Justice Committee noted that the magistrates’ courts’ workload has risen by 65% in the past three years. We do not want to risk adding more pressure there. I hope priority will be given to having more advocates, more sitting days and more courtrooms, so that the backlog is cleared without narrowing choice. Courtrooms have to be made suitable—at present, half of them are not suitable for cases to be held in; they are in a terrible state.
Finally, I would like to touch on the issue of defendants. We have a human rights obligation to prisoners awaiting trial and on remand. It is important that the prison system, under whose care they are placed, ensures that they appear for their case at the right time and in the right court. Prisoners are not being produced on time. When a defendant is not brought to court on time, a hearing day is lost, and a person waits longer for a decision on their liberty. We have to look again—I know that this is likely to happen—at the contracts between the Prison Service and those who bring prisoners to court. What has been happening over the past few years is disgraceful.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, this has been a powerful debate, memorably marked by the excellent maiden speech of noble Lord, Lord Stace, which certainly did not support a diagnosis of imposter syndrome. It was a pleasure to hear his measured endorsement of the open discussion of difficult issues with people of differing views—that is exactly what we hope to achieve in this House. It was also a pleasure to hear the powerful speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, whose report has so influenced the Government and this Bill, including his unanswerable assertion that we need a combination of increased funding, structural reform and increased efficiency.
My noble friend Lady Brinton spoke to the issues facing victims in the criminal justice system. I will speak to the Bill’s more controversial proposals for that system, and on an issue that I believe should be, but is not, covered by the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and others are clearly right that we are trying to respond to the years of underfunding that have led to the appalling backlog of 80,000 cases awaiting Crown Court trials. However, it is not proven that restricting jury trials would markedly reduce the backlog. Take into account, for example, that judges would be spending time writing judgments and that appeals would proliferate. Effective measures to reduce delays should include increased sitting days, reliable prisoner transport, maintaining the courts, and smarter use of new technology for listing and case management. As the Minister said, the Government have successfully set out on this process. Trying two cases in longer court hours over two sessions a day, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Brinton, would significantly cut delays.
The Crown Court backlog has now stabilised, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, pointed out. From January to June, it rose by just 367 cases—0.46%. Although the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, has some arguments with the interpretation of the present figures, there are still ways of cutting the backlog that do not involve the entire suite of proposals in the Bill. Yes, we must reduce it further, but why have the Government not revised their projections, given the recent improvement of which the Minister spoke and which the figures suggest? The noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Garnier, pointed out that we need more reliable and fuller information before we pass the Bill.
The serious problem is now in the magistrates’ courts, with a backlog in June, even excluding single justice procedure cases, of about 169,000 cases—up 16% in a year. Yet the proposals in the Bill, removing the right to elect jury trials and increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers, would transfer to them many more cases, and they would be the bigger and more time-consuming ones.
In addition, the threat to jury trials has not disappeared. First, there is the removal of the right to elect. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, I accept that there is some evidence of hardened criminals gaming the system and electing for jury trial for bad reasons: to delay the trial, to weaken prosecution evidence, or to build up credit for time on remand or under bail conditions Some pretty trivial cases do come to the Crown Court, but the gaming of the system could be addressed, partly at least, by increasing the discount for an early guilty plea, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, suggested.
We believe that the right to elect a trial by jury is a cornerstone of our liberty. Juries democratise criminal justice, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and others have said. The public trust juries. They think the system fair. They believe that 12 heads are better than one. They know different judges will reach different conclusions on the same evidence. They see judges as liable to be influenced by their own prejudices, social backgrounds and beliefs, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell said. The Bill proposes an allocation by magistrates alone, with no right of appeal. However, the best people to decide on allocation are Crown Court judges, who hear jury trials all the time, not magistrates who lack that experience. Denying appeals on allocation is unfair.
Along with the noble Lord, Lord Howard, I believe there should be a clear distinction between persons of hitherto good character, who would suffer irreparable harm to their reputation, careers and relationships from any conviction, and seasoned offenders, for whom the consequences of conviction are limited to the sentence imposed.
There are further practical pitfalls to removing the right of election, going beyond the pressure on magistrates’ courts from increased case numbers, as was well explored by the noble Lords, Lord Macdonald and Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Legal aid is far more restricted in magistrates’ courts than in the Crown Court. If magistrates are to handle more and heavier cases, we must improve the availability of legal aid, just as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich argued. Lack of representation in the magistrates’ courts is a recipe for inefficient and over-lengthy hearings, and for unfairness and unsafe convictions. Unsafe or unjust convictions will lead to more appeals, overburdening the Crown Court.
I turn to trial by judge alone in so-called complex or lengthy cases. The expectation was that this be just for long and complex cases of financial crime, as per the initial list in the Bill. Certainly, some fraud trials are extremely complex, but not all of them. Good, clear presentation by a competent prosecution team, using new presentational technology, and limiting the indictment to reflect the defendant’s criminality, can usually reduce both complexity and trial length. More importantly, the issues in even these cases are so often typical jury issues. What did she know? Did he sign that document, or was his signature a forgery? Was her behaviour dishonest or not? These are typical, human jury issues. As for trial length, we cope with lengthy trials now, and a modest increase in jury expenses, after a certain time had elapsed, would ease the burden.
While I accept that there are complex financial cases that could be tried by judge alone, they are not many. But the Bill has a nasty sting in the tail regarding “judge alone” trials. The initial list of offences in Schedule 1 is a list of financial crimes. Homicide offences and sexual offences would be expressly excluded, but that should be obvious. However, the express exclusion of those cases suggests a threat that the Government could go far further than fraud and complex financial cases. That is the point of the insidious and dangerous power in Part 1 of the schedule: to add any non-excluded offence to the list of “judge alone” offences—the “Joseph Stalin clause”, as the noble Lord, Lord Howard described it. The hard-won victory of campaigners against the restriction of jury trials originally proposed is to be at the mercy of an order from the Secretary of State. That is unacceptable.
Next, there is the proposed increase in the sentencing powers of magistrates. Again, that would lead to a massive transfer of cases to the magistrates’ courts, increasing the pressure on the magistrates and increasing the risk that defendants will be unrepresented and wrongly convicted or excessively harshly sentenced.
I turn now to an issue that should have been addressed in this Bill but is not. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, made a number of important recommendations in his report that have not found their way into this Bill. He devoted his first 10 recommendations to diversions. He recognised that criminal courts may not be the best forum for handling low-level offences, and so recommended the greater use of out-of-court resolutions. He spoke of cautions, conditional cautions and other mechanisms for disposal, of rehabilitation programmes for drug and alcohol abuse, and of other health interventions. We should be keeping far more low-level offenders, both children and adults, out of the criminal justice system when it is plain that their problems should be handled constructively and with sympathy, rather than through blunt and often profoundly unhelpful recourse to the criminal courts. The Minister, and the former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, have been very supportive of alternative disposals or out-of-court resolutions—both unattractive names for a far more constructive approach than we have at present.
I believe that this thinking should reflect our approach not only at the charging stage. Courts should be bound to consider, early in the criminal process, out-of-court resolutions in place of fully fledged criminal proceedings, much as civil courts consider mediation. There is potential either to hard bake criminality into the lives of low-level offenders, as we do at present, or to have a more humane and sensitive system.
This thinking can be extended to many areas. Take, as one example, unauthorised absence, by which parents who fail to ensure their children’s attendance at school are prosecuted under the Education Act 1996, are liable to be fined and, in extreme cases, can be sentenced to imprisonment. Yet so many of these cases concern children who simply will not go to school, for medical or psychological reasons, however hard their parents try to get them there. They need a therapeutic approach, not a penal one. A film on this topic of unauthorised absence is to be given a parliamentary screening in December. We have to change our approach not just to this but to other low-level offences that put people at risk of inappropriate prosecution. It is not just too many offences that clog up our courts; it is the mindset of a system that has long been too unadventurous to limit criminal proceedings to the cases where they are necessary and appropriate.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Stace, to his place in this House and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I look forward to him bringing his extensive experience and knowledge not only to the consideration of this Bill in Committee but to the wider proceedings of this House. I hope I do not misrepresent his views if I infer from his speech that he does not believe that the crisis in criminal prosecution begins at the door of the court but could more properly be addressed by considering the economic and social issues that allow a younger generation to drift into criminality in the first place—in other words, that we should consider root causes rather than just effects.
In an early speech, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, posited a series of alternative court mechanisms for addressing the backlog—what might be termed “Leveson 3”, albeit not a welcome prospect to the noble and learned Lord in his seat. That is perhaps beyond the ambit of the present Bill.
I seek to address the recognition, noted by my noble friend Lord Ashcombe, that there are significant backlogs in our criminal court system. Of course, we agree that they must be addressed—not only from the perspective of the victims of crime but from the perspective of those accused of crime. They should not have to wait year after year to determine their future, whether they are on remand or otherwise. They, too, are entitled to a reasonably swift resolution of accusations of crime made against them.
But timely justice cannot come at the cost of the right to trial by jury, which, in turn, if interfered with, is liable to undermine public trust and confidence in the justice system. We are concerned that the power proposed by the Bill would seriously undermine public confidence in the justice system. These proposals will weaken that confidence.
The Government began to recognise that serious problem in the other place, when they proceeded to remove Clause 3 of the original Bill, but they have not gone far enough. I express my concern and agreement with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, that, given the changes made to the Bill, there was simply insufficient consideration or scrutiny of the Bill in the other place. That seems to be a serious concern, albeit we are capable of operating effectively as a House that can review legislation from the other place. We have serious concerns that the criminal justice system should be the subject of detailed consideration by both Houses of Parliament.
Particular concern has been expressed across the House with regard to the right to elect a jury trial in “either way” cases and the impact of this and other measures on the magistrates’ court. I wish just to touch upon the views expressed right across the House on that issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, began by referring to the situation in the magistrates’ courts as “significantly worse” than it is in the Crown Courts. We heard from my noble friend Lady Sater about there being something of the order of 380,000 open cases.
The noble Lord, Lord Russell, referred to the dangers of the magistrates’ courts being overwhelmed. The noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, questioned the capacity of the magistrates’ court to take on the additional court cases. Indeed, he pointed out the need for a plan, a point made repeatedly by noble Lords during the debate. My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier commended the practical approach that the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, took to the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, asked what modelling had been done to determine the impact of these changes on the magistrates’ court. As far as we can see, there has been little or none.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about there being “insufficient evidence” to support these proposed changes. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked whether there is any evidence that we are not simply shifting the problem to the magistrates’ courts. The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, talked about the damage to public confidence if the shift was made without adequate resourcing within the magistrates’ court system—not just buildings, magistrates or legal advisers but the provision of suitable legal assistance, which requires, in turn, that the issue of legal aid within the magistrates’ courts be addressed. None of this has happened.
My noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy simply posed the question: how are the magistrates’ courts going to cope with the increased caseload? Again, there has been no assessment of how that is going to be dealt with. There was a reference to the fact that we are recruiting 2,000 more magistrates, but when are they going to be trained and available? How are they going to cope in the meantime?
The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, asked whether there had been conversations with the magistrates in any detail about how the impact would be dealt with. There are no answers. I invite the Minister to provide answers, and if he cannot do it this evening, to do it in writing and in detail, because, clearly, this issue has touched Members of the House on each side.
We then had the issue of whether there should be the removal of juries for complex and lengthy trials. I was rather taken by the observation from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who said that, generally speaking, in complex financial cases and cases of fraud, the issue is honesty. What better than a jury to determine issues of honesty? Indeed, that was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, in her address to your Lordships’ Chamber. That is the central issue in these cases, I agree, but it is one pre-eminently suitable for a jury of one’s peers.
Then there is the question of the possible expansion of the definition of “complex or lengthy cases” through secondary legislation, not even with an express provision that it would be dealt with by the affirmative procedure. My noble friend Lord Howard referred to it as “monstrous”. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, expressed concern about the removal of the “safety valve” by this provision and what happens when we have a Government of a potentially authoritarian bent who could then utilise such a power. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, referred to it as outrageous. Even the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, deemed it unacceptable. Therefore, I invite the Government to think again on that issue. If they do not do so then, again, I suspect we shall revisit this at a later stage.
I turn to the removal of the presumption of parental involvement. There, I adopt the expert views expressed by my noble friend Lady Barran. It seems to me that the Government are aiming at the wrong target; this was a point brought out by my noble friend Lord Farmer and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. There is no intent to elevate parental rights above the welfare of a child, but the idea that the presumption is somehow causative of some of the terrible events that have been spoken of not only is unproven but appears, on the face of it, improbable. This is a very badly targeted remedy, if it be a remedy at all. Therefore, again, I urge the Minister to reconsider.
The Government’s original plans were clearly unacceptable. Indeed, my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition was explicit when, in the debate on the King’s Speech earlier this year, he pointed out that the whole issue of blocking jury trial had never been mentioned in any manifesto, and that, accordingly, we would exercise the full freedoms of this House to defend that right. The Bill contains provisions on the right of election to trial by jury and the removal of jury trial in complex cases. Again, these were never the subjects of any manifesto commitment.
Of course, we are a scrutinising Chamber, and progress is best achieved through close engagement between Ministers and Members of your Lordships’ House. We on this side of the House are certainly committed to working as constructively as possible with the Minister to deliver a Bill that can improve the issue of the backlog in the court system—one not just limited to the Crown Court but extending to the magistrates’ court. I am reminded of a remark made very early on in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, when he said that the origins of this are a funding crisis. Perhaps we need to address that, as well as these provisions.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for what has been, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, a powerful, thoughtful and thought-provoking debate. There is much for us to continue to discuss. Before I respond in detail to some of the points that have been made, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Stace on his excellent maiden speech and will comment on his rich and varied career. I do not think I ever imagined I would meet someone who was both chair of the Prison Reform Trust and the former CEO of Saga. I wonder which of those jobs is the more entertaining. Anyway, I congratulate him and I very much welcome him to our Benches. I am sure he is going to make a powerful contribution. I endorse my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti’s comment that his speech was humble and humane and, in that sense and in many others, entirely admirable.
At the heart of this Bill are principled reforms designed not simply to address the pressures that face our courts today but to ensure that our justice system is fit for the future. A number of noble Lords have spoken to me about some of the provisions in the Bill already, and I am grateful to them for their measured and constructive approach. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, that I promise to engage very fully not just with the Official Opposition but with all Members of your Lordships’ House, as I have already done on this Bill. I will continue to work constructively with all noble Lords who are interested in this. I do not underestimate what is at stake here, and nor do the Government.
I will address some of the points that were raised most frequently—as it were, the biggest concerns. If I do not get the chance to address every issue that has been raised, I promise to write in detail and will continue to engage. I will try to mention noble Lords who have raised these points, but I fear I will not be able to remember everyone and apologise in advance for that.
The constitutional importance of jury trial and the right to elect for a jury trial has been raised several times by noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lords, Lord Howard and Lord Ashcombe, and, from rather different perspectives, my noble friend Lady Levitt and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The Government agree that the right to a fair trial is a fundamental constitutional principle. However, a defendant’s ability to choose the mode of trial is not a constitutional safeguard. Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees a fair hearing within a reasonable time, and allocating cases to the most appropriate venue supports that objective. The right to elect is not a universal feature of the common law system, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile said; indeed, Scotland does not operate a general right of defendant election, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, pointed out.
That said, when determining venue, magistrates will continue to apply the Sentencing Council’s allocation guidelines, considering the seriousness and complexity of the case alongside representations from both the prosecution and the defence. The constitutional principle we are protecting is the right to a fair trial before an independent court, and that principle remains fully intact.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised the question of good character and the right to elect. In the Government’s view, allocation should be determined by the seriousness of the alleged offending and not by the personal characteristics of the defendant. Magistrates’ courts already deliver fair and impartial justice in the overwhelming majority of criminal cases. A Crown Court trial is not inherently fairer. There is no statutory or straightforward definition of “good character” for these purposes, and introducing such a test would add greater complexity and subjectivity to allocation decisions.
The question of legal aid was raised by a number of your Lordships, including my noble friend Lady Mallalieu, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. We acknowledge, as noble Lords have noted, that the Bill will result in more cases being heard in the magistrates’ court, where the legal aid means test is less generous than in the Crown Court. However, having looked into this, we are confident that the majority of defendants currently charged with “either way” offences will be eligible for legal aid in the magistrates’ court under the existing financial eligibility rules.
For individuals who do not qualify, however, support is available through the hardship review mechanism, as well as the free duty solicitor scheme, which may provide legal representation at the first hearing. We have listened carefully—this is an important point—to concerns about legal aid eligibility in the magistrates’ court in the context of the Bill’s reform to the right to elect. In light of this, the Government have accepted in principle recommendation 155 from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, to increase the legal aid income threshold at the magistrates’ court. Final decisions on income threshold levels will be taken once the reforms have been implemented, subject to future funding decisions and operational considerations. I hope noble Lords take some reassurance from that.
There was a theme that ran through the entire debate today about the question of whether we were putting too much strain on the magistrates’ court system. It was mentioned by my noble friend Lord McNicol, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Mallalieu, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and, notably, the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald. The Government’s view is that the magistrates keep the system turning; they already handle more than 90% of all criminal cases, completing around 1.5 million cases each year, more than 11 times the number in the Crown Court, and deal with cases triable either way four times faster than the Crown Court. We of course recognise that additional demand will have an impact, and that is why we are increasing funded sitting days from 114,000 last year to 125,800 next year, rising to a target of 131,000 sitting days by 2028-29.
We have launched a multi-million pound recruitment campaign, and through this we are increasing the size of the magistracy by around 50%, as I said in my opening remarks. We are also increasing overall capacity through the recruitment of legal advisers and district judges, with recruitment programmes expected to provide sufficient judicial and legal adviser capability to support the increase in funded sitting days by 2028-29.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked about magistrates and whether we have asked them if they support these measures. The Magistrates’ Association is on the record as saying it supports these measures, and it is in our own Library briefing that it is supportive of them. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, and I very much look forward to working with her, as we are working on other issues too. She clearly has extensive experience. I particularly note the points that she and a number of noble Lords made about training, which is obviously critical. It is a statement of the obvious that recruitment is one thing, but getting people trained and functioning effectively is something else.
The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, asked me about models and assessments; the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Keen of Elie, also asked me about this. We are confident that the remaining package of reforms, combined with record financial investment and our work on efficiencies, frees up enough Crown Court time to turn the tide on the backlog and to start delivering swifter justice for victims by the end of this Parliament. My honourable friend Minister Sackman has made that commitment many times. In fact, without the operational challenges of creating the Crown Court Bench division that would introduce juryless trials for less serious offences in the Crown Court, we shall be able to act quicker to implement other reforms and begin reducing the backlog sooner. We have published modelling that I have circulated to noble Lords who have attended various engagement meetings I have had.
That modelling shows that our remaining package of reforms, when combined with investment and our work on efficiency, sees the backlog peak in 2028 before starting to fall rapidly over 2029. With the accelerated implementation of the measures removing the right to elect, and of the magistrates’ court sentencing powers, we can go faster and turn that tide sooner. Our model suggests that, in fact, the backlog will peak in 2027 before starting to fall. That means that we should be able to get the backlog down sooner in this Parliament.
I want to be completely clear with your Lordships about this. The data has been published and we will keep it under review. I shall be happy, as we go through Committee, to discuss this with noble Lords and to be clear about it. We want to be transparent. Obviously, we want the magistrates to have the capacity to deal with the extra burden. We have published our models, as I said, and I will continue to discuss those with noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, asked me about the Institute for Government’s observations. I understand that it has endorsed our model and said that it agrees with the analysis that we have set out of when the backlog will come down.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Mallalieu for their contributions on the court estate. Obviously, we know that this is an important question; a number of references have been made to buckets and so on. We need to address the inefficiencies in the system. We must pull every lever, not just for structural reform but for investment and efficiency, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, encouraged us to do—in parallel, rather than choosing between them.
We have started to modernise our courts through greater use of technology and AI, and we are developing specialist case progression staff in every Crown Court centre, expanding appropriate remote hearings and investing over £17 million in virtual remand hearings. Pilots to help reduce delays and improve court productivity are under way. Again, efficiency in the court system is something we will have to think about as we go through these debates, and, indeed, beyond. We will continue to think about ways in which we can make the physical, as well as the technological, infrastructure of the court system more robust.
I turn to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, among others, about diversity in the judiciary and the magistracy. For all the reasons noble Lords have given, diversity in the judiciary and the magistracy is vital to maintaining public confidence, widening the pool of talent, and ensuring that the justice system benefits from the full range of skills and experience across society. Significant progress has been made for new entrants. This last year, women accounted for 55%, and 16% of new entrants to the judiciary were from ethnic minority backgrounds.
That is a positive, but there is clearly much more work that we can do, and need to do. That is why the Lord Chancellor and the Lady Chief Justice are co-chairing the Judicial and Legal Diversity Board, which looks across the whole system to improve diversity while maintaining appointment on merit. We think that is very important. I have also mentioned that we are engaged in a major magistrate recruitment campaign, targeted outreach and streamlining recruitment processes so that we can attract a broader and younger range of candidates to the magistracy, and ensure that it better reflects the communities it serves.
The question of appeals was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Murray and Lord Carlile, and my noble friend Lord McNicol. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, identified that an automatic right to a full rehearing impacts adversely on victims and witnesses, who may not be prepared to return to court a second time. We know that some appeals succeed not due to an identified error in the original trial but because victims and witnesses feel unable to relive the trauma with a second trial at appeal. We would all agree that this is not how we want things to operate.
Magistrates already give their reasons for their decisions, and these will be recorded and available to the judge to decide on the merits and scope of possible appeals. I note the comments that have been made about training and access to legal advisers. I also note the comments about the Law Commission. The Law Commission’s report was commissioned in 2023, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, has reported since.
I now turn to “judge alone” trials, which are an important aspect of the Bill for complex and lengthy cases. This was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Marks and Lord Howard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. We have heard concerns that Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the Bill could be used, over time, to expand the scope of Clause 4 beyond fraud and financial offending. Amendments to the schedule can be made only through the affirmative procedure—I confirm that for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, who asked me about it—which means a successful vote in both Houses. Offences cannot be added to the schedule without Parliament’s consent. This provision has been included to allow the system to respond flexibly, as criminal offending evolves over time. Any added offences would also have to comply with the statutory safeguards for the policy: a preparatory hearing; a public interest test; exclusions for homicide and indictable-only sex offences; and judicial decision-making.
On the same subject, I was asked by noble Lords about dishonesty. This change is not about who understands dishonesty better; it is about reducing the burden on ordinary people’s lives from sitting on long trials. Disclosure and case management of fraud cases must improve, and the Government have agreed in principle to many of the recommendations of the Fisher report and those made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. This measure follows a long line of similar recommendations made by distinguished judges and independent reviewers, including those by Lord Justice Auld in 2001 and by Lord Roskill in the 1980s, as mentioned by noble Lords.
I am running out of time, but there are two important issues I want to deal with now; I will deal with the others in writing. I will address the question about victims, which was raised by a number of noble Lords. The case mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, of Emma—I realise that that is not her real name—was heart-rending, and I am very grateful to them for bringing it to our attention. We all agree that we do not want the delays facing victims today to continue. We believe that the changes in the Bill, not just to speed up these trials but in tackling harmful myths and the admissibility of evidence, matter. The special measures that are also addressed in the Bill make enlightened and principled reforms that will be of great benefit to victims.
On the specific question that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked, my understanding is that the judiciary’s national listing framework will put an end to the practice of “floating” lists. Along with these reforms, we are investing record levels in victim support services and consulting on a new victims’ code, as we have discussed before in your Lordships’ House.
I will say just a few sentences about rape and serial sexual offences in the courts. I note the comments made by a number of noble Lords about this very important initiative, particularly those of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We can do this without legislation, so we are rolling it out. I am very happy to discuss that with her further.
Finally, on repealing the presumption of parental involvement, we heard powerful contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I absolutely undertake to discuss in detail those matters with them and others. This is a subject very close to my heart. I take it very seriously and I very much look forward to working with them on it. We have received divergent advice from your Lordships on this subject, so we need to work our way through it, but I think everyone agrees that we want to do what is best for the child.
I really have run out of time now—in fact, I have gone well over. I just want to say one other thing, which is to note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about out-of-court disposals and the comment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, about getting to the root causes, endorsing the comments by my noble friend Lord Stace. I too think those are things that we should discuss further.
With thanks to your Lordships for a powerful debate and apologies for exceeding my time, I look forward to discussing these matters with your Lordships in Committee and, indeed, in engagement between now and then.
Lord Lemos
That the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, and that it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House that they consider the bill in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 3, Schedule 1, Clauses 4 to 6, Schedule 2, Clauses 7 to 17, Schedule 3, Clauses 18 to 27, Title.
Lord Rooker
After “Whole House,” insert “but that Committee stage will not commence until the Minister has made a statement setting out which clauses and schedules of the bill, including amendments made to the bill, the House of Commons did not have time to consider on the floor of the House;”.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, this will not take long—as I have said in the past. The purpose of this amendment is to strengthen the role of the elected Members of the Commons. There is no way anything I say or have said before is critical of Commons Members. My criticism is purely of the Government.
We are in a cycle where Commons Second Readings are, in effect, all guillotined. It is called a programme Motion, but it covers all Bills. The effect is that the Government always want to boast about the number of Bills, which is done at the expense of the scrutiny of Bills. We have Bills arriving in your Lordships’ House. As a result of inadequate scrutiny, we end up sending back more amendments than would otherwise be the case.
The Government in the Commons then blame the extra work for elected Members on the upper House abusing its position and therefore call for reform of this House. Even when we return amendments, the elected Members, under the guillotine, are limited in the time that they can use due to the original programme Motion.
The elected Members clearly need more time for scrutiny. The Government have to return some of the powers to Parliament that they have taken away with programme Motions designed to fit in more Bills rather than better Bills. Simply asking the Government for a list of what has not been allowed to be scrutinised in the Commons puts the buck back where it belongs. I see it as being to the supreme advantage of this House that it gets a Bill and knows, as the revising House, what has not been scrutinised in the first place.
As for this Bill, on Tuesday 13 October, the Commons dealt with the Bill on Report. The Government tabled two Statements that day, which took an hour and 30 minutes. As with other Bills, no “injury time” is ever allowed on the programme Motion, which would be a normal and reasonable thing to do, but it does not happen. The time allowed was from 3.29 pm to 6 pm, when the guillotine came down—two and a half hours. In those two and a half hours, the Commons dealt with 27 new clauses and 30 amendments from the Government and Opposition for debate. As is the new norm, elected Members had one general debate. That is a Second Reading debate; it is not a debate on Report about what has come from Committee. When you do it like that, it is equivalent to a Second Reading debate. When the guillotine came down, another 20 government amendments were added to the Bill on the nod, spread over four new clauses and two schedules.
When that happens, the numbers of the clauses and amendments change when they are put into the Bill by the Bill team and parliamentary counsel. It is not possible to go back to Commons Hansard and work out exactly where these changes are in the Bill unless you are aware of the way they have been put in there. That is difficult. This is the fourth Bill during this Session on which I have raised this issue, and I can tell the Government that there will be more.
My main concern continues to be the material that the elected House has never considered but put into a Bill on the nod. There is a pattern emerging, which is that Report in the Commons, as I said, is effectively now just a Second Reading debate on a very large group of new material, at the end of which all the government material is added and the non-government material is not considered before the guillotine. No scrutiny or attempt to raise specific issues takes place. After the guillotine, all the material added to the Bill is, of course, the government material only. All the rest falls, so it is done on the nod. It is clear, therefore, that elected Members have lost some powers of scrutiny.
As it is, I have been contacted by a long-retired parliamentary official who has also spotted the same pattern. They are not the only ones, of course; I caught the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, while I was out of the Chamber. They suggested, in the absence of the Government being open to Parliament, that the Libraries of both Houses could serve Parliament in this respect. However, why should the library staff have to search in the Bill and Hansard for material that is then unnumbered, because the numbers change when it goes in the Bill, when the Government control the Bill team and parliamentary counsel—which is government counsel really? They are the ones who know exactly which bits of the Bill have not been scrutinised in the Commons. They could provide the list. They could italicise the content, for example, or provide us with a list. It is to the abiding purpose of this House, in making revisions, that we have a better idea of what the elected House has not had time to properly scrutinise. I beg to move.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)
My Lords, I wish to place on record, as I have before, my strong support for the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I am not going to repeat what he said; he said virtually everything that can be said and I agree with everything he said. It is within your Lordships’ power to give effect to the proposals contained in this amendment and I hope that one day we will.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, last Thursday in this Chamber, we debated a written constitution. During that debate, I took the opportunity to praise my noble friend Lord Rooker for making the points that he had made at previous Second Readings and makes again tonight. He speaks with great authority and experience.
I will say only two things. First, it should not be impossible for this House to be advised in some appropriate way of the elements of Bills—whether clauses or amendments—that did not, in fact, get debated in another place. Secondly, even if that did happen, it would not solve the underlying problem that my noble friend notes, which is that our legislative processes need to be improved.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on and thank him for his amendment. It describes precisely what is wrong with the legislative process. This is not a new problem. It is one that my own Government assisted with, as did the Labour Government of which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was a member under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The power of the Executive over the legislature has grown and is growing yet further. The purpose of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. Of course, under our constitution, the Executive sit in Parliament but they should not sit on Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is entirely right to point this out.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—words I thought I would never say. I will definitely vote for his amendment if he decides to put it to a vote at any time. I have been with Government Ministers recently who sniped about your Lordships’ House being a cause of delay for legislation, which is totally unfair because if they did their job at the other end, we would not have to do quite as much here. I say well done to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.
Lord Lemos (Lab)
My Lords, the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rooker seeks information on amendments debated in the Commons. I therefore thought it would be useful, in keeping with responses to similar amendments to other Bills, if I set out the scrutiny the Bill has had in the House of Commons.
The Bill had its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 10 March 2026, as my noble friend noted. The House of Commons then ordered that the Bill should be committed to a Public Bill Committee for its Committee stage. The Public Bill Committee itself decided its sitting pattern. The Committee completed its scrutiny in 12 sittings over six days. As usual, all clauses and schedules were considered, as were all proposed amendments and new clauses that were selected by the chair. The Bill was carried over, and on 13 October the other place took a full day on Report. All proposed amendments and new clauses selected by the chair were considered.
I have no doubt that noble Lords will add to the work of the other place with their usual high-quality scrutiny as we go through the rest of the stages on the Bill. There will, of course, be time to debate all the issues the noble Lord raises on the Bill in detail as the Bill progresses through this House. With that, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
I would say to my noble friend the Minister that it is not his fault that he got the short straw, but he answered the first of these Motions that I tabled four Bills ago. I am not interested in what the Commons said at Second Reading or in Public Bill Committee. What I am interested in is what they put in the Bill at the last minute without any debate or scrutiny. That is all I am interested in—not how they conducted their affairs in a Public Bill Committee. To say they had a full day on Report when it was two and a half hours, for 52 new clauses, is a joke. That cannot be accurate in relation to what we normally think of as a full day.
I say to my noble friend again that it is not his fault he got the short straw. It is an unsatisfactory response and I will be back. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.