UK-EU Relations

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I will write to the noble Lord on that point, but we are not planning to give a blow-by-blow ongoing position on where we are with negotiations. We are clear that we are resetting the relationship with our European friends, and this Government will continue to report back to Parliament, as per the Statement, so that there is the opportunity to debate this. But I note the noble Lord’s point, and I will write to him on that aspect.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, during the general election, Steve Reed, who is now the Government’s Environment Secretary, said that the Labour Party would, in government,

“ban the commercial import of foie gras, where ducks and geese are aggressively force-fed”.

Interestingly, this was also the Conservative Government’s policy pre Liz Truss, although it was never delivered. Yet, just this week, a Defra spokesperson, when asked about plans for a potential veterinary agreement with the EU, essentially responded, “No comment”. Can the Minister assure me that the Labour promise during the general election will be delivered in banning the commercial import of foie gras?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I have to say that I do not have that in my pack. I will write to the noble Baroness on that. I personally do not eat foie gras, and I know many noble Lords feel the same.

Stock Market: First-time Investors

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, I have to go briefly to a report from the Intergenerational Foundation, which notes that the current UK tax regime strongly favours unearned income over earned income.

I thank the other noble Lord, Lord Lee—with a different spelling—for securing this already interesting debate. I invite noble Lords to imagine seeing billboards on their trip home this evening, whether on the Tube or along the side of the road. They will find advertisements directed towards retail investors for investments in the stock market or elsewhere. They might see a widely smiling young woman from a minoritised community, holding the latest iPhone and looking like she has just won the Esports championship, even though the advert is for an investment app. They might see signs on these adverts saying, “Earn up to £100 as a welcome bonus”, “No minimum balance”, “Robo-advice” and “Coaching services for all”, or perhaps they will feature the old traditional piles of spilling gold coins. There is no hint here of the skills and patience to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred as a necessary part of retail investing; you will not find that in those adverts.

If noble Lords have a quick look at the work of the Advertising Standards Authority, they will find plenty of rulings against companies that are not even following our limited law. They are not putting—in a small and hard-to-read font in the most obscure corner—a warning about the initial investment being at risk, or an acknowledgement that the product is not covered by protective legislation. It is the Wild West out there, and I have not even got to TikTok and Instagram, where our regulators are at least starting to catch up. Last year, there was a crackdown on so-called finfluencers, a handful of whom, with a collective Instagram following of 4.5 million, were finally caught up with. I do not have time to go into the issue of greenwashing, on which, again, our regulators are just starting to catch up.

As we were reminded just this morning, we live in an age of shocks—geopolitical, political, climate and health—which can have massive impacts on even the most apparently solid investments. What is solid today? As our always clear and succinct Library briefing says:

“Retail investors are often advised not to buy shares unless they can afford not to access that money for more than five years, to give stock prices time to recover if they should fall”.


But that assumes, in this age of rapid technological, social and political change, that they will recover. I start in this debate from a position of concern about the existing vulnerability, under current arrangements, of so many retail investors in today’s world. I do not think that we are in a position to boost, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, suggested; rather, we should be thinking about better protections.

There is one thing that the noble Lord, Lord Lee—to my left—and I can certainly agree on: that financial education in UK schools is abysmal. I have noted already that the Financial Times regard it as so bad that it made it the subject of last year’s Christmas’s appeal. But I suspect the noble Lord might find that financial education would not have the effect that he desires. Understanding of the financial system might well produce more concern about it—a rejection of it, as much as engagement.

I certainly hope that is the case with cryptocurrencies, on which more education is urgently needed. This was demonstrated by the newsworthy fact today that, as calculated by three blockchain analysis firms, entities behind President Donald Trump’s crypto coin have accumulated close to $100 million in trading fees in less than two weeks. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of small traders have lost, if not quite their shirts, two-thirds of their “investments”.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th January 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

11A: Clause 1, page 1, line 1, at end insert—
“(A1) In section 9(1A) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, after paragraph (aa) insert—“(ab) if the employer is a specified employer under subsection (1B), the specified employer secondary percentage until 6 April 2026 (after which the relevant percentage is as determined by the rest of this subsection);”. (A2) After section 9(1A) of that Act insert—“(1B) A “specified employer” means a charity.(1C) For the purposes of this Act, the specified employer secondary percentage is 13.8%.””

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I tabled my Amendment 11A after our extensive discussion, on the previous day of Committee, about the impact of the national insurance rise on charities. As I prefaced in my presentation last time, it started with a CEO of a significant charity, who came to me and said, “If we could have one year to sort things out first, we would just about be able to cope with this, but the speed with which this increase in costs is happening is more than we can cope with”.

I apologise that there is no Member’s explanatory statement on this amendment—that is entirely my fault—but I lay out for clarity that it is intended to delay, for charities, the increase in the employers’ national insurance contribution by one year.

It is interesting that, earlier today, I was hosting an event launching a report on debanking in Muslim charities and its impact on charitable activities. There was much discussion at this event about the many difficulties that charities currently face, but the top one that was listed—after the issue under discussion—was the national insurance rise and the speed with which it is hitting charities.

I note some of the figures around this. The sector has said that the cost to charities will be about £1.4 billion. Research from 400 charities by the Charity Finance Group shows that 87% are concerned about being able to afford this increase. Some 27% of organisations running charity shops say that this increase is likely to result in closures of charity shops; those are the Charity Retail Association’s figures. We are often concerned about what is happening on our high streets, and there is perhaps concern about the dominance of charity shops, but if they close, we will just have even more empty shops on our high streets—as well as the loss to charities in terms of the services they provide and the funds raised.

Let me give one example of this, which was reported by ITV. The CEO of the Little Miracles charity, which helps 50,000 families that have children with life-limiting disabilities, said that this measure will cost that charity a minimum of £24,000. It is a small local charity with about 670 volunteers, so finding that sum of money is a really big challenge for that organisation.

It is worth noting that one of the reports from the West Lothian Voluntary Sector Gateway told the local council:

“This wholly unexpected cost will inevitably place additional financial pressures on already stretched Third Sector and social enterprises locally”.


That unexpected, sudden arrival is really the issue there. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations wrote to the Chancellor. In response to its suggestion that charities should be exempted, Rachel Reeves said:

“The government has committed to provide support for … public sector employers”,


given the rising costs, but for no one other than the public sector. It is worth considering that the combination of austerity and ideology has meant that, for many services, the slack in much of the provision that used to be picked up by public services has now been picked up by the charitable sector. It is then being hit again with this cost.

This amendment is quite moderate and small-scale. I do not have the capacity but perhaps the Minister could tell us what the one-year cost would be. I note what the cost will be if charities have to deal with this sudden increase in costs when they are facing so many other pressures. I beg to move.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 32. I refer your Lordships to my registered interests, in particular my roles with charities. The purpose of my amendment is to deal with the huge concerns we are hearing from across the sector and elsewhere, as the noble Baroness just mentioned, as well as the impact of the increase in employers’ national insurance on both the charity and voluntary sectors and the services that they deliver.

The sector is telling us that these increases will force many to reduce staff, cut salaries, scale back their services and, in some cases, consider closure. The increases will adversely affect the support that they give to people and their communities, which is why my amendment asks for the much-needed impact assessment. Had the Government already prepared the impact assessment—and I do not accept that the impact note to which the Minister has referred provides the evidence needed—they might already have accepted the need to make exceptions to the charitable sector.

Many noble Lords have spoken with passion about the negative effect of the increases in national insurance on the charitable sector. I am very aware that the Government have not been able to move on any of the requests at the moment. At the risk of repetition, up and down the country the voluntary sector is feeling the strain. Its representatives, such as the National Council of Voluntary Organisations, the NCVO, have already voiced concerns in their open letter to the Chancellor, highlighting that this increase will add an additional £1.4 billion in unwelcome and unsustainable costs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said.

--- Later in debate ---

Given the points that I have set out, I respectfully ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this rich and frequently passionate debate, and I thank the Minister for his answer. I think that I will cross-reference something that the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, said, which is that charities are helping vulnerable people in dreadful circumstances. We have been talking about charities as organisations and institutions, but, ultimately, at the end of the line are those vulnerable people. The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, made the point that those vulnerable people will still be there with their needs; if the charity closes down or cuts back its services, the Government will have to pick up the slack at that point. The Minister said that, if any of the measures proposed in this group of amendments were introduced, the Government would have to lower spending. But that would mean that they would have to raise spending on things they are not spending on now because the charities would not be providing it. We are in a circular situation, with all the disruption that happens as people lose jobs, organisations close down and things have to be recreated. That is the situation that we are in.

There were many contributions, so I will not go through them in length, but there are a couple of points that I want to raise. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, spoke about his brave, regular running commitments. To build on what he said, we know that what encourages people to give to charities is the sense that their money will be directly used to help the relevant people. Of course, when we are talking about something like WaterAid—speaking as someone who is passionate about antimicrobial resistance and maternal health—it is absolutely crucial. People want to see it providing the services and, if they do not see that, and they hear all the talk about this, maybe they will not donate, because they will feel like they are just giving money to the Government. That is a further damaging factor for charities and their fundraising.

The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, also spoke about sacking fundraisers. If one of the things that we are talking about—what my amendment aims to get to—is to delay so that charities have a chance to prepare. If there is not that delay, however, and there is an emergency that has to be dealt with now, you of course do not want to cut the direct service providers who care for those vulnerable people. Fundraisers, therefore, are the obvious people to sack, but the long-term consequences are obvious.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness agree with me that one of the other cumulative problems is the national living wage? We all agree that it should be increased to help low-paid people, but accommodating that for small charities—with an increase in national insurance charges plus the encumbrance of paying the national living wage—will be very difficult, particularly for homelessness charities, for instance. The Government’s strategic aim is to reduce homelessness, but this will put huge pressure on charities such as Crisis and Shelter.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

In responding to the noble Lord, I can only applaud the increase in the national minimum wage—indeed, I would encourage it to be significantly higher. None the less, the noble Lord’s point about the situation for charities is entirely accurate.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said something earlier—and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, backed this up—about how many ideas the Government end up delivering actually start with small, campaigning charities. They save the Government having to do the work because, when there is a problem and something really needs to be done about it, they do all the work on what needs to be done about it.

Obviously, I will withdraw my amendment at this stage, but it is clear that we will come back to this issue on Report. I am still quite dedicated to the idea of at least delaying the measure, which would not interfere with the Government’s long-term economic plans but would give charities time to adjust. On the £1.4 billion, the Government could save that much in the extra spending that they will have to make if they insist on collecting that money, so it all balances out.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

I totally agree, but there will be charities going bust in the next six months. I know that we want to delay it, but there is an urgency in saying, “This is going to be really detrimental, and that knock-on effect is going to be huge”. That is why I cannot quite understand why we have not had a detailed assessment statement—and why I am asking for it—because surely this would come through in that detailed statement.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I agree with the noble Baroness and support her amendment. I have already reflected on the lack of a proper impact statement in many different areas; I would entirely back the noble Baroness’s approach. We need to understand what is happening, but we have two things here: giving charities time to deal with it, and understanding what we are doing. We may well end up coming back to both of those things on Report, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 11A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 67, which stands in my name. It is supported by the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, whose names were not entered in time for the Marshalled List.

I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest, said in support of Amendments 14 and 27, in her name, and others concerning the provision of transport for children with special educational needs and disabilities—many years ago, my identical twin brother was one of them. My amendment has the same intention, albeit a slightly different effect.

When I raised my concern at Second Reading, the Minister, in response, referred to both the increased settlement overall for local government in the coming financial year and to the extra £515 million to cushion local authorities against the impact of national insurance changes. I wrote to the Minister on 10 January about my concern that such funding did not cover contracted-out services, and I have yet to receive a reply—hence my amendment, which is now before the Grand Committee.

The Local Government Association on 28 November stated that the measures that the Government seeks

“will lead to a £637 million increase in councils’ wage bills for directly employed staff, and up to £1.13 billion through indirect costs via external providers including up to £628 million for commissioned adult social care services”.

It is therefore clear that the concerns that I laid before your Lordships’ House on 6 January are well founded and remain current.

The transport provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities is, of necessity, a very labour-intensive one. It also requires dedicated recruitment, since not any driver will do, and in some cases a passenger assistant is also required. As we have heard, the children involved place enormous value on continuity and trust. Hence, it is key that they trust the staff who serve them in this way and, once that trust is established, that these are the people with whom they routinely deal. It is hard to describe the anguish that will result if contracts become unviable, or the additional pressures this will place on parents. There will be inevitable breaks in education, which can easily affect the rest of an individual’s life.

Noble Lords resident in North Yorkshire, the West Riding, north Lincolnshire or South Yorkshire may have seen the regional news bulletin, “ITV Calendar (North)”, on 22 January, just a few days ago. Its first and main news item was this very issue, setting out, with some of the people affected, what the impact would be. It is hard not to sympathise with, for example, the bewilderment of the mother of a mute child at the very real likelihood of the loss of her son’s provision.

I accept that Governments take tough decisions and that there is a burden to public service borne by those who serve us in this way. However, in this instance, the chief burden and distress—the overwhelming hardship—will be borne by SEND children and their parents. As this is a situation brought into being by the Government, it is appropriate to look to His Majesty’s Government for a solution, and I would be happy not to press the amendment if they were to proffer a remedy such as ring-fenced funding.

Unlike Amendments 14 and 27, my amendment, which requires the Government to review and estimate the impact on the SEND transport sector in each of three tax years, and to state what remedy might be applied, includes the ameliorating provisions of Clause 3. However, as your Lordships will have established and the Minister knows, that clause will not be the remedy here. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I rise briefly to offer the Green group’s support for all these amendments. Perhaps the right reverend Prelate’s amendment gives the Government a way forward that does not interfere with the general progress of the Bill but any of these would do.

I am going to make two quick points. First, I note the briefing I received from the chair of the Licensed Private Hire Car Association’s SEND group, setting out the points that have been made on how it is desperately concerned and the chaos that this national insurance rise has the potential to cause it.

Secondly, I point out that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is in the other place. There, the Government are trying to deal with, help and support children with special educational needs and disabilities, and their parents, through that Bill. Then we have this Bill, which is undoing, and creating further risks and damage. It is useful to set those two against each other. In your Lordships’ House, we often hear expert testimony about how difficult life is for children with special educational needs and disabilities and, of course, their families and parents. This is—I am going to use an informal term—such a no-brainer to sort out.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly. If I had spotted the amendment of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark in time, I would have signed it because it makes absolute sense. There is a pressure created, when one knows that a review is coming afterwards, to think through actions now. All in this Committee recognise that this Bill deals with the weakest of the weak. As there are two Bills, this one and one in the other place, either of which could be used to manage a remedy, I should have thought the Government might have been able to see a way through this.

I wanted to mention a procedural thing, just as a comment on the statement made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I hope that he realises that if he does not withdraw his amendment at this stage, he will not be able to bring it back on Report. Some people are not clear on that element of the procedure, so I mention it simply in case it guides what he might wish to do.

Covid-19 Inquiry

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Clearly, we want to keep the best researchers in the country here. With the best will in the world, and with the great forbearance of the team that has been preparing my brief, I have gone back on an almost minute-by-minute basis over the last two days to get points added to it. I committed to my noble friend that I would write to him about the specific points he raised in his question. I will be honest: I do not have the answer to that specific question here today.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I return to the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about the situation today of clinically vulnerable and otherwise vulnerable groups of people. I note that the Statement says that

“the inquiry found that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups and continues to affect many people in those communities”.

Given that, as the WHO says, the Covid pandemic is continuing and we have the threat of multiple other respiratory viruses—I note that H5N1 is an area of great concern—how would the Minister assess the Government’s current approach to clinically vulnerable and more broadly vulnerable groups? I am thinking particularly of their access to commercial and community spaces, and to schools that have clean air through either ventilation or filtration. Dame Kate Bingham from the Vaccine Taskforce told the inquiry this week that there is concern about the availability of prophylactic antibodies for people who cannot benefit in the same way as others from vaccines. Where are we now in making sure that treatment is available for those people?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

One of the things that the pandemic threw up as an issue that all responders had to deal with was the redefinition of who was vulnerable. It is something that LRF responders were very aware of at the time. The Government are committed to engaging widely with vulnerable communities and civil society to ensure that the factors that affect vulnerability, including health inequalities and socioeconomic inequalities, are much better understood as we review our approach to resilience. We are going to come back on the response that was in the review later in the spring. We recognise that vulnerability should be a key focus, and it is a key focus of the Cabinet Office-led review of our approach to resilience. In order to get the response on this right, we are engaging with charitable, faith and other representative organisations to understand how the reduction and prevention of disproportionate impact on at-risk groups and persons can be better considered in our planning and policy.

Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Frost, I stress how important the Green Party and many other people regard protecting those receiving healthcare from harassment and abuse. That is something that the law has increasingly stepped up to do, and it is terribly important.

I oppose this Bill. I begin by commending the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who gave us an important sense of context here. This is about a very long-term, global, but US-based, exceptionally well-funded campaign against human rights. Back in 2014, I wrote a chapter in a book entitled Women Against Fundamentalism: Stories of Dissent and Solidarity, which told the story of what happened in the 10 years leading up to where we are today.

I will focus a little on context. It is important to note that, last year, YouGov looked at attitudes towards abortion and found that 87% of Britons said that abortion should be allowed, while only 6% said that it should not. It is interesting to note that one in 10 Britons think that the law makes it too difficult to get an abortion in the UK. When you look at those for whom this is most relevant—women under the age of 40—you find that that figure rises to 19%. Those are the people who are most likely to encounter the detail of the law and to have discovered, as many are surprised to, that abortion is covered by criminal law still in the UK. It is important to highlight that.

As we talk about abortion, one issue is the rise we have seen in the investigation and prosecution of what is suggested might be illegal abortions. In the 18 months to February, there was a risk of convicting as many women as have been convicted for that offence in the previous 55 years. Six women were prosecuted over suspected abortion cases, although three of those cases were subsequently dropped—the women having been through very considerable turmoil in the meantime. The president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has noted how outdated abortion law really is creating problems. That is the context.

We have already covered quite a bit of ground here. It is obvious that creating a law about one set of medical statistics is exceptionalising it, as BPAS says. In 2023, three years of work went into a report then that said that the statistics were inadequate and needed to be improved. The work is being done; we do not need to pass a special law on one set of statistics. We are making progress on this, and more progress is certainly needed.

Climate Agenda

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, for securing this debate, even if perhaps it has turned out somewhat differently from what he expected. It has been a rich and encouraging debate, but I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, has been watching the same debate as the rest of us. We have seen not a crumbling but rather a strengthening of the wall of understanding and common sense, particularly among the majority opposition party on this side of the House.

I join others in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, to your Lordships’ House, and to publicly offer thanks for her notably restrained resignation list, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, noted, offering the Green Party the seat that came to bring me into your Lordships’ House. I hope that she might encourage further moves in that direction from her new position in your Lordships’ House.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, in introducing this, said that he wanted an honest and informed debate. I start by picking up a couple of the terms that he used, including “cheap energy”. Fossil fuel energy, as a number of noble Lords have outlined and as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, identified, has very considerable externalised costs. In fact, burning fossil fuels is costing us the earth. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, highlighted, looking at the risk of the ending of AMOC—the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, often referred to as part of the Gulf Stream—giving Britain the climate of Scandinavia would be a considerable cost and could not be called a result of cheap energy.

I pick up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, on the drop in territorial emissions in the UK. As the Climate Change Committee has highlighted, we should be counting our consumption emissions. When we look at those figures, those emissions are only 19% lower in 2021 than in 2001. They are the goods and services that we are using, and we are responsible for the emissions associated with them.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, I think that the criteria that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, has used to judge climate change action are interesting: jobs, growth and prosperity. I shall focus briefly on each of those. On growth, I am going to differ from most of the speakers thus far. We cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. We are, whether we like it or not, in a post-growth world, and it is not just me saying that—I point to the fact that the IMF has just been saying in the past week that we cannot have expectations of growth in future like the ones that we have had in the past. The pie of our economy cannot get bigger. What we have to do is to stop forcing some people to rely on crumbs and slice that pie up fairly. Who is benefiting from growth in an economy where, in the UK now, we have 4.3 million children growing up in poverty?

The second point is jobs. Everyone is saying that we need to create jobs. I remind the House that in one debate this week we were looking at the new funded childcare places. We need 36,000 more workers to provide those childcare places. We are short of 50,000 nurses and 100,000 care workers—and look at the immigration shortage list, which has chemical and biological scientists, bricklayers, stonemasons, tilers and retrofitters. These are the activities of the economy that we desperately need. What we need to do is to stop having jobs that trash our climate and environment and ensure that, in a just transition, those skills, and the energy, time and talents of those workers, go towards doing what we actually need to be done. That is a just transition.

Finally, I focus on prosperity. One dictionary definition gives it as

“the condition of being successful or thriving”.

We are a society in poor and declining health, and what the noble Lord identified as “cheap energy” is a significant contributor to that ill health. There is air pollution, for example. We can look at recent mapping from the EXPANSE project at the University of Utrecht. There are only a few areas in the north of Scotland that have pollution levels at or below World Health Organization-recommended levels. Those levels of air pollution are contributing to heart and lung disease, COPD, lung cancer, dementia, lower birthrate babies and asthma. We are not a prosperous society, we are an ill society, and the burning of fossil fuels is a significant contributor to that. Climate action is also action to improve health in our society.

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, questioned the insulating of homes. Having a warm, comfortable and affordable-to-heat home—a healthy home—is surely a foundation of life that our economy should provide to every single person. Let us not forget that the cleanest, greenest and cheapest energy that you can possibly have is the energy that you do not need to use.

I briefly mention childhood obesity, poor diet and our broken food system, based on fossil fuels. Our five year-olds now are shorter than they were a few years ago. The economy is not working for our people and it is not working in its own terms, so we cannot afford not to have a climate agenda—one that needs to be far bolder and more effective than what we have now. We should be looking for zero carbon by the early 2030s, because of the climate emergency, the nature crisis and the planetary boundaries that we are exceeding—but also for health and well-being and the prosperity of our nation. We need to ensure that we have well-paid and secure jobs in every role that actually needs doing. We need a climate agenda and a just transition for a society living within the physical limits of this planet.

There has been, and will be, a lot of talk about technological innovation. Of course we need that, but we also need social innovation—such as a four-day working week as standard, with no loss of pay; universal basic income; and free education. These are the social innovations that we need for climate action and for a prosperous society.

Public Sector Productivity

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Patten, I have to reflect on the experience of commuting, whether that is stuck behind the wheel of a car in a traffic jam or having your face stuck in someone else’s armpit on an overcrowded, delayed train. I really could not think of anything less productive than those experiences, which of course not allowing working from home forces people into every day.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for securing this debate and both your Lordships’ Chambers for timing perfectly the finish of the previous two debates, which has allowed me to run between the Moses Room and the defence review and this debate—an extremely efficient use of my time this evening.

I want to begin with a very quick overview of the state of public services in the UK. They have had 14 years of austerity and I am going to draw on an Institute for Government report from October 2022, ‘Austerity’ in Public Services: Lessons from the 2010s. It points out that our public services are fragile because of austerity. Austerity meant that the pay of workers was pushed down and the number of staff slashed so that people had to work harder. That was not a viable position, this report and I conclude. Very many people are now simply worn out. They are overtired. Many people have left. Huge amounts of experience, knowledge and skills have been lost. There were very few easy and genuinely effective efficiency savings to be found, and what there were have been found.

We saw situations, as happened with policing in prisons, where there were slashing efficiency cuts, but then money had to be put back in because the institutions had fallen apart. That meant that experienced staff left, and new, little-trained, inexperienced people came in, and that was really bad for productivity. Austerity is wildly inefficient. Of course, that is not the fault of the public sector but of politics. If we are talking about the productivity of the public sector, maybe we have to look very close to home for reasons why there might be issues.

A second issue that has been driven by ideology and politics is privatisation, financialisaton and marketisation. I recall marching in 2014 with the 999 Call for the NHS campaign on part of its Jarrow march against the privatisation of the NHS. Many of the people on that march were NHS staff, and they could tell the story of the past couple of years where they had had three or four different job titles, three or four different bosses, and had worked for three or four different organisations, and yet they had been seeing the same kind of patients in the same office every day. All of those things take vast amounts of time, energy and stress and lead to people getting frustrated, giving up and leaving, and all of it was driven by political decisions and political ideology. Why do we have a productivity problem? Let us look closer to home. We need a better quality of governance and politics.

Finally, on health, we have a terrible quality of public health. In the working-age population, we have a huge number of people suffering from long Covid and all sorts of chronic conditions who struggle into work every day and do their best. We need to find ways to get a healthier society, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, just mentioned; this is about taking a systemic approach to our society.

I want to devote my final minute to one simple idea. No one idea is a panacea, but here is one way forward: a four-day working week as standard with no loss of pay. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who secured this debate, might like to know of an article published by the World Economic Forum which states—with invisible but clear exclamation marks—that a four-day working week as standard, with no loss of pay or extension of hours each day, “actually increases productivity”. The article also notes:

“Work smarter not harder has been the mantra of management consultants”.


I do not want to suggest a Stakhanovite, Amazon-warehouse type arrangement where everyone comes into the office, puts their heads down and is forced to act like a robot. Ultimately, however, we need to think about not just the productivity of our public services but the productivity of our society. A healthy society that cares for people and has time for family and community, which a four-day week would provide, would be a highly productive society.

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to start with history. I used to live on Leather Lane in central London between the City and Westminster, where, despite Victorian urban expansion, a dairy farm continued to operate in the middle of the city. That was no historical accident. With the adulteration of milk rampant, with filthy water and much worse, the only way consumers could be sure that milk would not kill them or their children was if they actually saw it come out of the cow.

A few years ago I was privileged to visit the Rochdale Pioneers Museum in the home of the first successful consumer co-operative in the UK: the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, founded in 1844. Its aim was to ensure not just affordable products but safe and genuine products, without sawdust in the flour or arsenic in the sugar. But not everyone had a co-operative nearby. It was eventually conceded back in the 19th century that it was the responsibility of the state to protect consumers.

Amid a huge ideological debate about the freedom of traders to sell whatever they liked, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 was passed. However, it took time to take effect. In 1877 a quarter of all the milk examined by the local government board was seriously adulterated. However, the law worked. By 1894 adulterated milk accounted for less than 10% of all samples. Campaigning worked to get the law and the law worked for the good of the people. Lives were saved. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton of Doncaster, noting in her wonderful maiden speech that such protections are particularly important for the most vulnerable in society.

Today, in 2024, however, we are seriously failing to provide protections. The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others referred to the fact that it has been clear for some time that there is a huge problem with lithium-ion batteries and chargers. We have seen this problem, yet there has been no action. I would like to ask the Minister specifically about what timeframe the Government see for taking action on this. Do we have to wait for the Bill to go through the many months it will undoubtedly take? I do not know if that is necessary. Could something not be done sooner? As the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, said in bringing his particular expertise to this debate, in the current age we need a kind of agility in reacting to changing products, circumstances and methods of sale, but we are utterly failing.

Last weekend, I was listening to the London Review of Books podcast. James Butler, who closely followed and reported on the evidence to the Grenfell Tower inquiry, was speaking angrily, and rightly, about the decades of regulatory failure that led to the deaths of 72 people. When you read in Hansard the debates about the 1875 Act, we had people then making the same kind of arguments that are made today: about the need to protect business from extra costs; about the need to allow business to make profits; about the need to allow freedom of trade, even of substandard products. But what could be more central to the role of government than keeping people safe?

It is demonstrably clear that exercising the rhetoric of cutting so-called red tape has killed and continues to kill. Anyone using that language really should take a good hard look at themselves. Taking the US approach of waiting until a product kills and injures, then setting the injured consumer or their relatives against the enormous weight of multinational companies—or in pursuit of some fly-by-night trader who cannot possibly be located—in the hope of financial recompense through the slow lottery of the courts, years or decades later, when of course that will not restore their life or their health, is indefensible and ineffective. It is fit only for a society that does not care for its people.

Product regulation is not just a matter of life and death. It is also about keeping a basic quality of life and well-being, not just for the purchasers of products but for general society and our disastrously battered environment on this planet, where the boundaries for novel entities have already been exceeded, in addition to the now acutely obvious climate emergency and nature crisis. Product regulation is crucial in the quality of our everyday lives and health, in both obvious and more subtle ways. How much energy your TV or computer uses, how much noise your neighbour’s strimmer makes or how much pollution you breathe in as you walk down the pavement affect all of us, every minute of every day. With public health in the UK in such a terrible state, this is even more crucial.

Since Brexit, Europe has demonstrably continued to advance in health, well-being and the safety of its products—even if, as the European green parties regularly point out, still far too slowly—while the UK has been sliding further and further behind. I want to particularly note three briefings that I received before this debate from the Green Alliance, Friends of the Earth and the Institute for European Environmental Policy. Those organisations are, as those names suggest, particularly focused on environmental health. What we need to adopt, of course, is a one-health approach acknowledging that environmental health, animal health and human health are all intimately interrelated. In that context I have to note, as I acknowledge the Minister did in his introduction, that this is an environmental Bill. It therefore contains significant devolved elements which cover areas under the control of the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has been listening closely to our debate and I expect that in later stages of the Bill we may well be working on these issues together.

However, it is probably already clear from my comments that the Bill is welcome from the Green Party perspective, if severely insufficient in its current form and approach. I foresee many a debate about “may” or “must” being in its clauses. Surely, the Labour Party will not be reversing the kinds of positions it took in debating such matters when they were on the Opposition Benches. I hope we are not going to see the kind of 180 degree U-turn that we saw from the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, much as I am glad to see that the Conservative Party is now concerned about Henry VIII clauses.

I want to focus briefly on a couple of areas. Chemical regulation is a huge area of concern, with the science fast exposing how disastrously we have poisoned this planet. I am looking forward to a commitment from the Minister, either today or down the track, to either a new chemicals strategy or a new chemicals agency. I note that the Royal Society of Chemistry has been calling for this.

I also want to take a brief look at the advances being made in Europe, particularly the EU’s eco-design for sustainable products regulation, which entered into force on 18 July this year. This is part of a wider circular economy plan, an approach I hope to see the Government taking forward. It is focused not on a particular problem or product; it is a framework law that aims to drive forward improvements across a whole range of products and product categories by encouraging products that use less energy—so saving consumers money—last longer, can be easily repaired or recycled, contain more recycled content and have parts that can easily be disassembled and put to further use. It ensures that each product should have a digital product passport, so that producers have to collect and record the sustainability of their products. This means we can look at how to best use these products in the future. Do the Government plan to take a similar approach?

I am perhaps surprised that this debate has not focused more on another issue. Chemical substances in toys are an obvious area of grave concern to the health of our current and future generations. We need particularly to protect children from exposure to harmful endocrine-disrupting chemicals. I note that public awareness of PFAS and “forever chemicals” is growing fast; the Government are going to find themselves coming under considerable pressure in these areas very soon. At the moment, the Bill’s powers appear primarily to cover products that come under the Department for Business and Trade and the Office for Product Safety and Standards. Are the Government prepared to consider—I would be delighted to discuss this with the Minister—whether the Bill can be extended to cover the EU REACH restrictions and bans on other consumer products not falling into those categories? An obvious example here is formaldehyde in furniture, an area of growing health concern.

I have two final points to make. One is about Clause 11, which lists the regulations to be considered under the affirmative procedure but misses an opportunity to deal with something that, again, the now Government frequently lamented from these Benches: the impossibility in your Lordships’ House of dealing with statutory instruments with regulations that are patently inadequate but which we have no effective opportunity to stop. There is a chance to create further oversight in Clause 11, including perhaps a potential option for the House of Lords to disapprove draft instruments, sending them back for extra homework where significant concerns are raised. This, of course, is crucial, given that in the Bill’s current form there are essentially no real commitments.

Finally, I want to pick up one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The noble Lord rightly highlighted how our trading standards enforcement has been absolutely sliced away by austerity. Your Lordships’ House can do wonders with this Bill, but without enforcement—if the Bill is not enforced—that is pointless. I hope that the Government will address the issue of austerity’s impact on local government, particularly trading standards, as a matter of urgency.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Oates, and others want to remove reference to Israel. The question has been raised as to why one country should be singled out. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, drew attention to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. He did not mention the noble Lord’s other remarks—that part of his deal to recognise Palestine as a state would be that Hamas was expelled and, of course, the release of all hostages, which is an integral part of the jigsaw.

Others have commented that the Bill, which I support, does nothing about anti-Semitism. That is a minority view within the Jewish community. Jews for Justice for Palestinians, which was referenced, has an extremely small minority view. The vast majority of the Jewish population in the UK is represented by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, on which I serve as vice-president. They are both in favour of such a Bill. They would not be in favour of this Bill if they had any worries that it would lead to an increase in anti-Semitism.

Likewise, with reference to the impact on the West Bank, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, was asked whether she goes to the West Bank much. I have been to the West Bank. I chair a charity called the Jerusalem Foundation. One of the projects we are doing is building a very large sports centre in east Jerusalem. It includes a swimming pool, and it will be run by the locals for the benefit of the local community. It would be a great shame if this sports centre could not be built by a British contractor in whole or part because of fear of sanctions and thus its inability to win local council contracts.

It is obvious why Israel has to be protected by this Bill: precisely because it is the one country singled out for unparalleled abuse, criticism, misinformation and, sadly, hate. Which other country has people on the streets of the UK calling for its complete destruction? A country controlled by autocrats, or denying the rights of women, gays, minorities or religious groups? No. In fact, it is only one country—the one that achieves the reverse of all that.

This pattern has happened since Israel’s creation, facilitated in 1948 by a body—the United Nations—that has subsequently done all it can to demonise it. So why should special protection be given to Israel as Clause 3(7) suggests? I can answer that if noble Lords can explain to me why, since 2003, the UN has issued 232 resolutions in respect of Israel. Some 40% of all resolutions issued by the UN in that period have been on Israel, six times that of the second-placed country, Sudan. In 2023 alone, the UN General Assembly brought 15 resolutions against Israel and only seven on the multitude of conflicts around the world. Furthermore, the UN Human Rights Council has a dedicated, permanent line item—item 7—on Israel, specifically and alone. It has not done this with any other member state.

I argue that special prejudice and discrimination deserve special protection. The UN has had nine meetings of the Security Council to discuss the situation in Gaza, but not one about the hostages. If such a once-distinguished—now, sadly, widely regarded as discredited—organisation can show such bias against Israel, and only Israel, we need to take steps to ensure that this cancer of thought does not spread to UK institutions. Many agitators have run out of causes to address with their ire and prejudice, so their polemics are focused on a country they believe they can, by means fair or foul, destroy by a series of lies and hate- filled allegations.

I take the noble Lord, Lord Collins, at his word and believe him to be keen to find a way to avoid BDS. He is an honourable person and he says what he means. So I am disappointed that those on the Labour Front Bench support this amendment. I thought that they, and indeed all noble Lords, would understand that stopping BDS is right, fair and just, as are steps to protect the State of Israel from abuse by organisations themselves funded by the fair-minded British taxpayer.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer Green support for Amendment 20 while stressing our continued opposition to the entire Bill. The argument for Amendment 20—that Clause 3(7) not be in the Bill—has already been powerfully made, but I will make three brief points. The first is about international law. This point has been powerfully made by many noble Lords already, and you do not have to listen to me; you can listen to Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, who pointed out that, as the Bill is written, it constitutes a departure from British foreign policy that

“puts the UK in breach of our commitments under UN Security Council resolution 2334”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/7/23; col. 604.]

My second point picks up a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Oates. We have seen changes, over the months, in the British Government’s rhetoric at least, if not in their policy, when it comes to arms sales to the Israeli state, which will become only more legally, diplomatically and politically pressing. But we are not here talking about policy. We are talking about law: something on the statute book that remains until the law is changed. The convention, of course, is that no Parliament binds its successors, but we know how time-consuming and energy-consuming it is to change past errors as circumstances change.

The third point I want to make is one that no one else has made, but I am afraid that I have to, which is to refer to what is happening as we speak. Hundreds of thousands of people are in desperate fear with nowhere left to run, nowhere to seek safety. The Israeli state has seized the Rafah border crossing. A couple of figures haunt me. One of them is, of course, the death toll, which is approaching 35,000 in Gaza, but another figure I saw last week is that 5% of people in Gaza have been killed or injured. That is a deeply shocking figure.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for speaking so soon after my previous contribution, but I will speak to my Amendment 20A. I associate myself with the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, which I have signed.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for adding their names to my Amendment 20A. This iniquitous Bill challenges the very foundations of devolution in the United Kingdom—namely, that decisions should be taken at the local level, and that local leaders should be answerable for them, rather than decisions being taken at the centre by remote politicians and officials. I say that as a former Secretary of State for Wales who helped bring in the Government of Wales Act 2006, which strengthened the devolution possibilities for the now Welsh Parliament —the then Welsh Assembly. My amendments and those of my noble friends address one aspect of that: they seek to remove from the Bill matters for which the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should properly be responsible.

I will speak about Wales in particular. The Explanatory Notes acknowledge that the Bill affects the decision-making of the devolved Administrations. The memorandum of 8 September 2023 from Rebecca Evans MS, the responsible Welsh Minister, set out in detail the way in which the Bill intruded into devolved competences in Wales and why it was right to withhold the legislative consent of the Senedd—which has occurred.

Deciding whether a particular purchase or contract should be made by the Welsh Government, or any other public authority in Wales, is patently a function exercisable in relation to Wales under the terms of Section 3 of the Wales Act 2017. The conduct of foreign affairs is reserved to the UK Government under that Act, but the making of moral or political judgments about the conduct of foreign states is not conducting foreign policy. That is a crucial distinction denied by this authoritarian Bill, which abrogates powers to Ministers so that they can act by executive diktat—in this case, by overriding the devolution settlement in respect of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Moral and political judgments are made by every individual—and so they should be; they should not be dictated by the centre. That means that the decision-maker should be at the lowest accountable level. In the case of Wales, decisions should be taken by a county or county borough council, the Welsh Government or the Senedd. Those authorities would be answerable for the moral and political judgments they make at the local or all-Welsh level. Are the Government seriously saying that they have a monopoly on moral and political judgment? That is what the Bill saying, which is both arrogant and absurd. Council tax payers in Neath, Gower, Wrexham or the Vale of Glamorgan are best placed to decide whether their councils are making the right decisions, and electors in Wales can make the same decision about the Welsh Government’s and the Senedd’s choices.

I cannot agree more with the Welsh Government’s view that the Bill is disproportionate and unnecessary, and I support the Welsh Parliament’s decision to refuse to give it legislative consent.

There are also major constitutional issues. If the Bill is enacted, it will fly in the face of the fundamental constitutional principle articulated in Section 2 of the Wales Act 2017, with parallel provisions, of course, for Scotland and Northern Ireland, that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of—in this case—the Senedd in Wales, the Parliament of Scotland or the Assembly of Northern Ireland.

The Bill would also fly in the face of the principle of subsidiarity to which the Government ostensibly subscribe: namely, that decisions are made at the level closest to the citizen, consistent with effective delivery.

So far as our amendments are concerned, because there is a single jurisdiction of England and Wales—something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, has reported on compellingly—the amendment of Clause 17 to remove the word “Wales” would not work technically. For that reason, it is necessary to achieve the removal of Welsh devolved bodies from the Bill in a different way from the way that can be achieved for Scotland and Northern Ireland, because England and Wales have a common legal framework and that is not the case for Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is done by my amendment to the schedule. This would add the Welsh Government and public authorities that are responsible to that Government to those bodies excepted from the provisions of Clause 1. Effectively, it would mean that the Bill would not apply in devolved Welsh areas.

Our amendments are an opportunity for these issues of devolution to be canvassed, for the devolution settlement to be preserved and for the rights of the other Governments in United Kingdom and their legislatures to be asserted. I hope that the House, in some way, will manage to protect the devolution settlement, because otherwise the future of the United Kingdom is threatened.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and to essentially agree with everything they said. I rise to offer Green support; I am not going to engage in the technical details, which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, set out so clearly, but I will simply say that this Bill should not apply to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

I listened to the debate on an earlier group, when the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, talked about a small nursery, run by a charity, deciding to ban oranges from South Africa. That obviously is not right—it is the sort of thing that the Bill appears to be addressing—but how much more so when we are talking about an entire devolved Administration? If we think about the kinds of examples that might apply here, let us say that one of the nations’ devolved Administrations might choose to block a supplier of staff uniforms because the clothing is made under abusive conditions in an abusive regime. How can it not be right that the people of Wales can decide for themselves that they do not want to see people wearing uniforms from that kind of source?

In the earlier group, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb pointed out how the environmental derogations are utterly inadequate. How can it be that the Scottish Parliament could not decide to ban food sourced from deforested areas of the Amazon from being served in the Parliament? Those are the kinds of things that the Bill is currently providing.

It is worth looking over the history of this a little bit. I think it was two Prime Ministers back—it is rather hard to keep track, but I am referring to Boris Johnson. Under Boris Johnson, it seemed that there was a real desire to pick fights with the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd in particular. Since then, we have seen some improvement; we have seen the Review of Intergovernmental Regulations, which said that

“decisions will continue to work on the basis of agreement by consensus”.

I think that is an important phrase to look at, although I note we have seen some backsliding recently, and perhaps this Bill is a symbol of that.