Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 6th July 2022 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—who is contributing remotely to the debates this afternoon—was expecting to speak on this group, but unfortunately, that message did not reach the clerks or the chair. I believe that the noble Baroness is ready to speak now, so with the permission of the Committee, I invite her to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the LGA and as a disabled person. I am speaking to Amendment 141, which would ensure that contracting authorities must follow accessibility principles as defined under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or UNCRPD.

The Public Contract Regulations 2015 set out the rules for technical specifications in Regulation 42, saying that it must include “accessibility for disabled persons” as core to characteristics including quality, environmental and climate change performance levels, whole-life design, performance and safety—indeed, many of the things that this Bill is covering.

So, in theory, Amendment 141 should not be necessary. However, Regulation 42(9), on the technical specifications, says that:

“Where mandatory accessibility requirements are adopted by a legal act of the EU, technical specifications shall, as far as accessibility criteria for disabled persons or design for all users are concerned, be defined by reference thereto.”


There are three other sets of regulations—the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016, the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016 and the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011—which all also confirm the conformity with the EU procurement directive. I spoke at Second Reading about that directive.

The very helpful briefing from the RNIB sets out the technical concerns about how we need to ensure that accessibility rules are embedded in legislation following Brexit. This amendment is needed because we must have clear rules for accessibility criteria for people with disabilities and the principles of universal design, as defined under the UN CRPD.

This Government repeatedly say that they were proud to get Brexit done. They also say, proudly on their website, that they want

“disabled people to fulfil their potential and play a full role in society.”

In 2017, however, the UN published its Concluding Observations on the Initial Report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which was less than complimentary about the UK Government’s progress in abiding by the CRPD. In paragraphs 6(a), 6(d) and 6(e), the UN refers to:

“The insufficient incorporation and uneven implementation of the Convention across all policy areas and levels within all regions, devolved governments and territories under its jurisdiction and/or control … The existing laws, regulations and practices that discriminate against persons with disabilities … The lack of information on policies, programmes and measures that will be put in place by the State party to protect persons with disabilities from being negatively affected when article 50 of the Treaty on European Union is triggered.”


It goes on to say in paragraph 7(c) that the UK should

“Adopt legally binding instruments to implement the concept of disability, in line with article 1 of the Convention, and ensure that new and existing legislation incorporates the human rights model of disability across all policy areas and all levels and regions of all devolved governments and jurisdictions and/or territories under its control”.


There are 78 paragraphs in this UN report setting out what we must still do to comply with the UN CRPD; the Government are due to report back by 8 July 2023. In other parliamentary debates, Questions, Statements and legislation, Parliament is being told time and again by this Government that they want to meet those requirements because complying with the UN CRPD is an absolute priority.

I give two extremely brief illustrations of the failings, which are obvious to me as a disabled person but may not be to others. They would be resolved with a clear and legally binding requirement for accessibility criteria. The first is a bus driver on a publicly funded route, contracted by a council, who refuses to accept a wheelchair user because that driver still has the power to ignore the law and does not want to ask people to move out of the wheelchair space. The second is that a large number of DWP offices and those of their subcontractors —which are used for the assessment of individuals for their access to benefits, whether specifically disability benefits, universal credit or any other benefit—often have steps or stairs and no lift. There continue to be regular reports in the press of disabled people being marked as “no shows” at interviews when they could not access the building, which then results in them being penalised and not receiving the benefits. That is shameful. It also presumes that there would be no staff with disabilities who need to access the buildings, which is just unacceptable.

That is why we need Amendment 141. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation of how this Bill will meet the UN CRPD in relation to all matters on public procurement.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 82, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. As at Second Reading, my contributions in Committee will mainly reflect the interests of small businesses, including in the construction sector, and other smaller providers such as charities and social enterprises; of course, one of the Bill’s aims is to increase access to public contracts for such smaller organisations. I am grateful for the briefings that I have received from the engineering services alliance Actuate UK, from the NCVO and from the Lloyds Bank Foundation.

I will try not to repeat the arguments so strongly made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, but small businesses and charities often struggle to compete effectively in competitive tendering processes. They do not have teams with specific bid-writing expertise, so it is often chief executives or managers within the businesses who have to prepare proposals on top of their existing full-time and front-line roles. The process of completing pre-qualification questionnaires and invitations to tender is often onerous and complex, requiring considerable time and resources. Tenders are often launched with little or no warning and with tight timescales. Greater lead-in times and awareness of when tenders will be published would better help small businesses and charities to prepare and subsequently compete for relevant contracts.

The existing wording in Clause 14(1) allows for better practice, confirming that contracting authorities are able to publish a planned procurement notice. But your Lordships will know that being able to do something within legislation does not mean that it actually happens. Amendment 82 seeks to beef up the wording by replacing “may publish” with “must consider publishing” to place a greater onus on contracting authorities to publish a planned procurement notice. I feel that even this requirement is rather a low bar, as well as being extremely difficult to monitor or enforce. My preference might be simply to replace “may publish” with “must publish”.

The amendment also states that a planned procurement notice must be considered whenever “no significant barriers exist” and

“no detriment to service recipients would occur”.

Again, I might have preferred a more positive criterion spelling out that such a notice specifically should be published when this would enable a diversity of suppliers, including of course small businesses and charities, to participate in the contract. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us how the Government plan to ensure that small businesses and charities will receive proper notice of tenders that might be suitable for them, preferably through a requirement for planned procurement notices to be published in most circumstances.

This is just one aspect of ensuring that smaller contractors are involved early enough in the process, not just to be aware of and prepared for tenders for which they might be able and suitable to bid, but also when appropriate to bring their own skills and innovation abilities to influence the shape of the overall bid. Early contractor involvement is something I may come back to later. I welcome the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, which also seem to point in this direction. Meanwhile, I am happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his Amendment 82.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, especially his comments about social values.

Included in Section 70 of the Health and Care Act was a description of changes to the public procurement rules for health services, but most of which will be in regulation and the details of which are woefully short on the sort of information that we have in this Bill. In its 15th report, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said on the relevant clauses of the Health and Care Bill that “full analysis” of the proposals,

“has not been completed and there has not been time to produce a more developed proposal.”

We asked on Report why on earth the Government would wish to bring into force legislation that they themselves admit they have not had time to analyse, let alone to produce a more developed proposal, when everyone knew that a Cabinet Office cross-departmental Bill was not just planned but heavily trailed.

Paragraphs 17 and 18 of the DPRRC report said about the Health and Care Bill:

“We do not accept that the inclusion of regulation-making powers should be a cover for inadequately developed policy”


and:

“Ministers would not ordinarily propose clauses in one Bill possibly requiring imminent amendment in a subsequent Bill without expecting to face questions. The House may wish to seek further and better particulars from the Minister concerning the possible effect of any Cabinet Office procurement Bill on the Health and Care Bill, and … to press the Minister on why it was necessary to include provision, based on inadequately developed policy, in the Health and Care Bill when the Government intend to introduce a procurement Bill.”


I have to say that it was no clearer after the passage of the Health and Care Act, and I am even more bemused by the reference in a procurement Bill to only certain health services being excluded, a detail not outlined in the Health and Care Act at all.

May I ask the Minister to write to Peers to explain which elements of NHS contracts are excluded from the Bill and how we can be confident that the protections and transparency that he outlined in his opening speech will also be applied to NHS services excluded from this Bill but covered by the very brief detail in the Health and Care Act? I suspect he might have a problem in doing that, for exactly the reasons that the DPRRC made clear: there is no detail available at all on those health contracts.

Returning to this Bill, paragraphs 19 and 20 of Schedule 2 set out the preferential arrangements for procurement rules of an international organisation or set out in an international agreement. Paragraph 20 says that a contract may be awarded under international obligations even where the award rules would be different from those otherwise set out in the Act. I heard the Minister’s comments in his opening speech, but I would be grateful for confirmation that the arrangements in paragraphs 19 and 20 of Schedule 2 are as strong as those we had under the EU public procurement directive, which made it clear that, unlike non-public services, a public body based in an EU member state can accept a contract that is not the cheapest provided it fulfils the quality, continuity, accessibility and comprehensiveness of services and innovation. In the EU directive there was also no need to publish procurement advertisements cross-border. This goes to the heart of my noble friend Lord Fox’s question to the Minister about the provision of source of supply when an international treaty is in place.

Although I noticed that the Minister was somewhat scathing in his speech about the previous EU directive, it was this directive that provided a guarantee that US companies could not come in and cherry pick our NHS under the terms of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. On 18 November 2014, the noble Lord, Lord Livingston of Parkhead, answered my question in your Lordship’s House by quoting an EU Commissioner. He said that

“Commissioner de Gucht has been very clear:

‘Public services are always exempted ... The argument is abused in your country for political reasons’.


That is pretty clear. The US has also made it entirely clear. Its chief negotiator”—


on TTIP—

“said that it was not seeking for public services to be incorporated. No one on either side is seeking to have the NHS treated in a different way ... trade agreements to date have always protected public services.”—[Official Report, 18/11/14; col. 374.]

I also raised these issues in a later debate with the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, who responded:

“The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked about procurement. I can tell them that we have implemented our obligations under the EU directive. The Government are absolutely committed that the NHS is, and always will be, a public service … whether overseas or here. That will be in our gift and we will not put that on the table for trade partners, whatever they say they want.”—[Official Report, 29/3/18; col. 947.]


Can the Minister confirm that it is still the intention, expressed by the noble Lords, Lord O’Shaughnessy and Lord Livingston, in their ministerial roles, that those same protections will exist in the Procurement Bill, not just for the NHS but for other public services, as under the EU directive?

The equality impact assessment for the Bill says at paragraph 6:

“This is a largely technical bill regulating how public procurements are undertaken. The nature of the bill means it has limited equality impacts, whether direct or indirect.”


I echo the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that the Royal National Institute of Blind People is very concerned that, in replacing existing regulations, the Bill overwrites requirements of particular significance to the 14 million disabled people in the UK that ensure that publicly procured goods and services are accessible to everyone. It is unclear how the Bill in its present form will replace the regulatory framework for accessibility within public procurement legislation. I ask the Minister: how will the new regime ensure that specifications take into account accessibility criteria and design for all users, including those with disabilities?

I echo the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on procurement of goods in countries where modern slavery or genocide is believed to happen. I look forward to returning to this during later stages of the Bill. I agree that more needs to be done. I also agree with his key points about surveillance equipment sourced from China.

A number of noble Lords referred to emergency contracts issued during the pandemic. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, I am struggling to see how the arrangements in this Bill would work in practice. The noble Lord made critical but gentle points about the need for an emergency power, but I can be blunter than he was prepared to be. Will the arrangements for special exemptions in emergencies be strong enough to prevent the scandal of the “VIP lane” and some of the other contracts made in relation to the pandemic? Will all emergency contracts be transparent, even if publication has to be delayed for a few contracts because of the nature of whatever the emergency is, whether pandemic or war? It appears that Ministers seemed to believe that many of the pandemic contracts across a number of departments, not just health, would never see the light of day. Emergency should not mean secret, not rule-bound and not checked.

The UK Anti-Corruption Coalition says that, despite the warm words in the Green Paper, the Bill does not create a clear, unambiguous imperative in primary legislation for a single rulebook with full transparency. It also makes the point, which I and others have made, that too much is left for secondary legislation—again. The Minister is now hearing that argument across your Lordships’ House: there is real concern about far too much not being in primary legislation.

Electoral System (Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 Committee Report)

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which gives grants to bodies seeking to improve democracy, including improving electoral registration and engagement. In past years, JRRT has supported Operation Traveller Vote and Votey McVoteface, which I shall refer to later. I am also a patron of the Traveller Movement.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Suttie and the committee on an excellent report and want to remember the extraordinary work of Lord Shutt, who joined the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in 1975 and was chair in the run-up to 2010. He kept the trust focused for decades on the purity of elections, including voter registration and party funding reform—causes that remain central to the work of JRRT today. This report is testimony to Lord Shutt, who is much missed as a campaigner, a reformer and a friend.

In my brief contribution, I will focus on combating registration fraud and how that balances with the accessibility of the registration process for two of those communities who are traditionally least likely to register to vote.

Chapter 4 of the report focuses on electoral fraud and the evidence of the level of fraud, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has outlined. It then considers the Government’s intention to deliver what they describe as anti-fraud measures. Paragraph 271 states:

“The Electoral Commission told us that there was no evidence from police data in recent elections of widespread attempts to commit fraud … Natalie Bodek from the Cabinet Office reported that ‘in 2017, there was a conviction for electoral fraud, and eight suspects accepted police cautions.’”


Witness after witness to the committee said that the real issue was fear of fraud rather than widespread fraud.

The report also talks about the importance of ensuring that registration reaches those who are least likely to think about it. As I have mentioned, in the past, JRRT has provided grants to the campaigning group Votey McVoteface, which represents canal and narrowboat residents—“boaters”—who often do not register because they live on the move. As with the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, the barriers because they have no fixed address mean that registration for elections has been very difficult.

The Votey McVoteface campaign over a number of elections reaches out to the boater community and explains to them how they can register in a community and how to respond if they face electoral registration staff unfamiliar with those who have no fixed address but who are not homeless. It is a small community, but the work of these campaigners has been important in empowering those whose homes are on our canals and rivers to have the right to vote. For those who say that it is too easy for it to be abused, the Votey McVoteface website is very clear, stating:

“Please make sure that you do have a genuine local connection with the constituency that you vote in. Voting in a place where you've never had a connection could be constituted as electoral fraud which has serious legal repercussions.”


It then links users to the section of the Crisis website that provides support for homeless people in registering.

The Traveller Movement also runs registration campaigns and offers advice and guidance for its community. There was a moving account by Cassie Marie McDonagh on her first experience of voting, encouraged by Operation Traveller Vote. She said:

“Some Travellers don’t vote. But ask yourself this, would you vote when the only time you hear politicians speaking about your community it’s in a way that is disrespectful at best and racist at worst?”


She is right, but what is even worse is when marginalised members of our society—our UK community—are discouraged from using their right to vote. There must be cultural change, and those campaigns are helping with that, but also legislation changes to ensure that everyone who is entitled to can register to vote.

Both Operation Traveller Vote and Votey McVoteface say that most EROs but not all front-line staff are helpful. Staff need to be fully trained to understand the rights of these communities. More burdens on registration will impact these communities and, while registration needs to be robust and fraud proof, it must also be accessible to all our communities, especially those who have been discouraged in the past.

Campaigns such as those that I have described are vital. I agree with the report that our current registration system needs updating, and I commend it for its clear recommendations that overall legislation is now due.

Integrity of Electoral Processes

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and, in so doing, note that it has provided grants over the last 70 years to ensure both that the integrity of our electoral processes remain robust and that Governments and parliaments ensure that our voting systems enhance our democracy and do not bring it into disrepute.

I echo the many tributes that have already been paid to my noble friend Lord Tyler for his role in your Lordships’ House and so much more. As my noble friend Lord Rennard already said, he was first elected a councillor in 1964. When I joined the Liberals in 1974, he was already a well-known character. He was one of my predecessors as chairman of the Liberal Party in 1983, was elected as the MP for North Cornwall in 1992 and, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, joined this House in 2005. For the entirety of that time, he has had a passion and commitment unrivalled by any parliamentarian to ensure that the integrity of electoral processes is good. He is admired by all of any party passionate about elections, even if they disagree with some of the things he wants.

My noble friend and I have attended the Make Votes Matter campaign meetings for years, which brought together all those interested in proportional representation, initially, but it also discusses issues such as whether your Lordships’ House should become an elected chamber. Klina Jordan, the chief executive of the Make Votes Matter coalition, has written to me to say:

“Paul is a remarkable and dedicated champion of democracy. His passion for making sure all voices are heard and all people are properly represented has been a driving force in the movement to Make Votes Matter. As a leading figure in our cross-party Alliance for Proportional Representation, his immense wisdom, generosity of time and strategic insight have been invaluable. We warmly wish him a very happy, healthy and well-deserved retirement.”


I echo that to your Lordships’ House from the many hundreds of thousands of people across the country who continue to fight for proportional representation.

My noble friend Lord Tyler has spoken about the risks to the integrity of our electoral processes and that they have never been more at risk than now. Over the past few hundred years, our society and democracy have developed and changed beyond recognition but, unfortunately, our voting system has failed to keep pace. Our party believes that first past the post has no place in a modern democracy and should be replaced by a system of proportional representation. That is not just to get more Liberal Democrats and other smaller-party people represented; the key reason is to make sure that a vote counts for every voter.

The idea of a minority ruling over the majority goes against the UK population’s most basic ideas about democracy, but we have learned that with first past the post it is just the norm. For nearly 90% of the time since 1935—almost 90 years—we have had single-party majority Governments, but not one of them had the support of a majority of voters. The current Conservative Government have a majority of seats but only 43% of the votes. They gained an extra 48 seats despite an increase of only 1.2% in the vote share. Almost since the first general election, politicians who, frankly, most of us did not vote for and do not agree with have had the power to govern the UK however they like. The Liberal Democrats are particularly disadvantaged by first past the post, losing a seat despite increasing our overall vote share by 4%.

The other problem with this system, almost alone in Europe, is that it seems to operate on a two-party political basis whereby diversity is suppressed. As my noble friend Lord Tyler said, our system now enables seats to be either so safe that they never change hands or to be bought by the party that can invest the most in them, mixing national and local funding mechanisms under the law to their advantage. Our system is broken.

When so many voters are denied a voice, Parliament fails to reflect the people it is supposed to represent. It is vital that this be remedied. It is not just bad for democracy; it is bad for politics and our entire society. In saying farewell to my noble friend Lord Tyler, I shall end on this. There are many others in Parliament who will pick up and run with the work he has been steadfastly doing over the past 40 years. We will continue and at some point, we will succeed.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading & Order of Commitment discharged & 3rd reading
Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adult Social Care. I also declare that I am disabled as a result of a long-term condition, and that my husband is my unpaid carer.

From these Benches, our focus is to see how this levy Bill will benefit those using social care and those working in it who are trying to provide an essential but frankly invisible service against impossible odds. There is no doubt that they have hoped that this Government will introduce real reforms for the care sector, especially after Ministers’ abject failure to protect people in care homes during the pandemic: from the lack of tests and PPE, to lies about a “protective ring” around care homes while people died in horrifying numbers. The way hospital patients were moved into care homes to free up space without being tested for Covid was equally horrifying for patients, their families and the staff in care homes, too.

The current underlying problems in our care sector were there long before the pandemic. We have an iniquitous funding system, with the general public not understanding that they are more than likely to have to pay for their care, and that the so-called “hotel costs” of living in a care home—accommodation and food—will now be separated out.

Ten years ago, the three major parties all came together to support the proposals of Andrew Dilnot’s review—but, just before we were going to achieve success, the Conservative Party walked away. Over the succeeding decade, the crisis in the sector has worsened considerably, not least because of the draconian cuts to local councils and other local services, especially to those that are there to help keep people out of homes, to keep their independence and their lives going. The current pricing of beds and the cuts to day services mean that independent living, which really would help keep people out of homes, just is not there. Staff in the care sector, unlike in hospitals, are paid at the minimum wage because, shamefully, as a society we regard social care as unskilled, when those of us who know the sector well see the exact opposite.

Worse, the funding rates for residents are based on most staff being on the minimum wage, making it impossible now for employers to compete with retail, hospitality and agriculture, where employers are charging customers more and are then able to pay their staff more. Worse, these dedicated staff, under this proposal, will be paying an increase in national insurance, which will further reduce their income at the exact time that they are facing cuts to universal credit and increases in the cost of energy, food and many other items. The limits on publicly funded costs and the iniquitous position of privately funded beds now cross-funding those in beds funded by the state must stop—and now. But this means that the real rates need to be paid to reflect that cost.

The paper Build Back Better: Our Plan for Health and Social Care, published last month with a foreword by the Prime Minister, is not a plan for health and social care. It is a funding plan for how people pay for their care and for the NHS, and for what element is paid for by the state. The Minister has set out the structure for paying the costs of those who will need support beyond the proposed cap, but not, as many think, for extra front-line funding for our care homes. Even worse, the public do not understand that this cap excludes all of the so-called “hotel costs”, regardless of the resident’s length of stay. That means that those who believe this Conservative Government’s words that they will no longer have to sell their home might find themselves, if they are asset-rich and pension-poor, likely to have to sell their home anyway for a large portion of their weekly care costs. This sleight of hand is breath-taking.

The extra funding referred to by the Minister in the paper for the next three years is first and foremost for the NHS, which is likely to have to absorb the 3% pay rise that the Government have graciously given it, as well as deal with the backlog from the pandemic. Once again, the Government are blunt: social care will get whatever sits behind and is left from that NHS spend. Already, many in the care sector are concerned that there will be nothing left for social care, so I really hope that the Minister will be able to say what funding from the £12 billion announced in the paper is guaranteed for the social care sector. Will any extra be provided if the NHS needs it all?

I echo concerns about what was said in newspapers over the weekend. There were leaks from the Government that local authorities might well be required to fund support for social care increases via council tax increases of 5% per annum for three years. That is another deeply regressive tax that puts a very specific burden on the lowest paid in our society. I echo concerns about the rumours outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, about integrated health and care services in the future. Is this not all totally upside-down and back-to-front? Surely the principles of reform should be announced first, before a funding mechanism is agreed by Parliament. Despite the fact that the Commons is already looking at the Health and Care Bill for integrated care structures, the Prime Minister’s proposals for reform of the social care sector remain stubbornly in his mind and behind the closed doors of No. 10. There needs to be honesty about the direction; reforms must be long-term and total. They are missing at the moment, and this is a key element.

How will the delivery of social care itself be reformed and do we know that the funds sought through the levy will be adequate for it? From these Benches, we were clear in our 2019 manifesto that we would raise additional revenue that would be ring-fenced to be spent only on NHS and social care services through income tax. This would be generated from a 1p rise in the basic, higher and additional rates of income tax. We would use this cash to relieve the crisis in social care and urgent workforce issues and to invest in the mental health and prevention services that I outlined earlier. This frankly represents an efficient and effective way of spending these extra resources and ensuring that they will have the greatest impact on the quality of care that people receive.

We from these Benches have been calling on the Government not to delay any longer and to engage urgently in cross-party talks on the wider future of social care. If the Prime Minister has not yet announced his reforms to social care but keeps saying that he is prepared to talk to other parties, why are we not talking now? Perhaps the Minister could remind him.

Two years ago, Boris Johnson pledged from the steps of No. 10 that he would fix the crisis in social care once and for all, as a top priority. But with social care services in crisis, it is time that he sets out how he plans to do it. Instead, people are selling their homes to pay for care and more than 1.5 million people are missing out on the care they need. More and more people are stranded in hospital, unable to leave because the follow-up care just does not exist, and the staffing crisis in the sector worsens daily. This is putting an increased strain on the NHS, which does not have the cash to cope.

The cost of inaction and delay is falling on the shoulders of the over 11 million unpaid carers in the UK, whose contribution to the current social care system is almost completely ignored. The cost of reform to the Government might seem large, but it is a fraction of the true cost to families across the country. Carers UK estimates that unpaid carers already save the Treasury £193 billion a year. Any discussions of funding for social care services need to include discussions on fair pay and support for hard-working carers employed in the sector. This pandemic has reminded everyone that caring for people’s health does not stop at the hospital exit or the GP’s surgery door. We can improve the NHS only if we properly support carers, whether unpaid family carers or dedicated staff working in homes and in patients’ homes.

This Bill does not build back better; it is a building block to start the funding mechanism, but one that uses national insurance, disproportionately affecting those on low incomes, including, critically, those working in the sector. Perhaps that is this Government’s secret plan. After all, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care told the Conservative conference last week that we did not need the care sector, as families should just look after their own. Of all the comments from Ministers over recent weeks, that was the most chilling. I hope the Minister can reassure us that the Government believe in, and support, our hard-pressed social care sector and recognise the real need for reform beyond the financial levy. From these Benches, we remain prepared to help.

Covid-19 (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Coronavirus and the All-Party Group on Adult Social Care. I start by thanking on behalf of these Benches the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and her committee, as well as those who gave evidence, for their time and for this excellent report. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that it is outstanding and should act as a blueprint for any future Government to use for public service reform—which, frankly, should happen straightaway, but, having read the Government’s response, I am not convinced it will happen soon.

Like many others, I find it quite extraordinary that no Minister found it appropriate to give evidence. Even today, in an earlier Statement, the Health Minister said that the best time for reflecting was after the pandemic. We have learned since the publication of this report last November that lessons could have been learned; mistakes were repeated because they were not.

My noble friend Lady Tyler talked of the dedication of all public sector workers. These Benches agree. There is often high performance and a strong sense of duty and they go beyond what is called for. Most of the problems outlined here are cultural and structural, and no reflection on the individuals who work in beleaguered public services, often trying to cope with cuts with no reduction in their responsibilities.

The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, rightly said that action is needed urgently and that the Government should not delay. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, made the vital point that, since the report’s publication, lessons should have been learned and that the Government were therefore doomed to repeat mistakes.

The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, rightly focused on the need for substantial reform, setting out eight areas. His noted expertise in local government means that, along with other members of the committee, he understands the real practical stumbling blocks of public services in our society and the ways of managing them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is right that challenge is vital in every single way we do things. From my experience of local government over the years, giving professionals and the people they are working for the chance to find value-for-money solutions can frequently result in better public services in their area.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, helped us with lessons from other countries. I will briefly mention Taiwan, which, in addition to the points the noble Lord raised, from day one, early in January, closed its borders to make sure that the virus was not brought in. It was also completely frank with the public, explained why it was doing things and put in place strong support for those who had to self-isolate, bringing them food and helplines. That, plus daily television programmes on which scientists were quizzed about what was happening, remains one of the absolute strengths in its community.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, also made the point about local authorities in Germany having equal powers, which is very helpful. Our mixed democratic structures and different local authority economies are just not fit for purpose in the 21st century. However, the answer is not more metro mayors. Things need to be clear, simplified and accountable to the people in ways they can understand.

As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, our public emphasis must move to prevention, but it must be funded. It has not been over the last few years. Levelling up was not evident in March’s Budget, but it is critical in dealing with early intervention and prevention, as other noble Lords have said. I echo the request of my noble friend Lady Tyler and others that Ministers say clearly when their public health strategy—and the funding for it—will be published. Public health cuts over the years are one of the reasons why levelling up will not happen any time soon under this Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, spoke of the importance of the need for positive action on food reform; the Dimbleby review, key parts of which were immediately dismissed by the Prime Minister on its publication, has many lessons for us. Yet the sugar tax on soft drinks, and other pressures, mean that our large supermarkets have started to move to reformulate. While the results are encouraging, the 2024 target must be met and pressure must be maintained. Educating children and their parents about good food choices is vital, too, but the cost of healthy food, especially fruit and vegetables, often means that the most nutritious foods are out of reach for the poorest families, thus building in poor health and other problems in yet another generation.

Sir Michael Marmot’s evidence, as well as an enormous amount of data, has shown that inequality and disadvantage put people not just at much higher risk but, in the pandemic, at risk of death. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, reminded us of the high percentage of severe death and disease in our ethnic-minority communities. Frankly, as a country, we should hang our heads in shame. Where health inequalities are baked into our public services, it is too easy to turn a blind eye, but this appalling death rate is a wake-up call to us all. He is also right to say that poor health costs the economy. That is why we need the innovative thinking about how investment in public health and education will act as a driver for the economy and for productivity.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, rightly reminded us that early years support, through schemes such as Sure Start, are vital in deprived communities. America learned this through the Tennessee STAR project over three decades ago. We have still not learned that lesson fully.

The example given by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, of the user voice and coproduction in pandemic provision for the homeless was important, breaking down barriers with those people who are hardest to reach and getting to the root of the problem and solving it. We must not lose that experience.

One problem very evident in the pandemic was the way that officials—whether health, education or local authorities—failed to listen to parents of disabled children when they explained that they were struggling without their essential regular respite care. The result was that they were often criticised by social services; some were even threatened with having their children taken away from them. That must not happen again. Contrast that with my noble friend Lady Pinnock’s example of the Leicestershire cell for social care. It is vital that we mark and learn where things have worked and find mechanisms to make sure that this good practice is not just debated in your Lordships’ House but is in every community in our country.

The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, outlined one of the key crises in our adult social care sector over the last 30 years, which is increasingly moving from public sector provision to commercial companies. That is not bad in itself, but it now includes hedge funds and others who should not be in the business of care and certainly not using a business model that exploits the cheapest labour and expects low retention of staff when caring for other human beings. Now a combination of Brexit and the pandemic has shown that the social care workforce deserves to have a proper plan, to be paid in parity with their health opposite numbers and to have proper career pathways like those in the NHS. There are currently over 120,000 vacancies in social care. Government proposals must tackle the root and branch, not just the funding of beds, and ensure that we have a reliable and functioning social care sector as the baby boomers move into their old age.

The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, is right that the Government have focused in their procurement White Paper on commercial contracts, when this report demonstrates that, by empowering local services and communities and using the voluntary sector, many key services can be joined up.

My noble friend Lord Shipley’s point that you cannot run England from Westminster is vital, too. I hope that the Minister and the Government really understand that. The hub and spoke models of central bureaucracy never trust local areas. Often in the pandemic, that is where things went wrong. There were national attempts at recruiting volunteers when local councils had already done so; local councils got people to help people who had been asked to shield and then suddenly an NHS scheme was announced and nobody knew who was running the volunteer scheme. That is so easily avoidable, but the NHS, in its towers, just felt that it would start a new scheme at short notice without referring back to local government.

My noble friend Lady Pinnock commented that local staff, whether in local authorities or working in the community, wanted to rise to the challenging circumstances and to work differently, embracing innovation and feeling empowered. Again, we must capture that for the future. It is not just a pandemic issue but about our life in our communities. She also referred to codesign and coproduction as a powerful way of real innovation, value for money and value to individuals involved in receiving this public service.

The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said that the committee found countless ways in which data sharing worsened the lives of people. Those points were extraordinarily well made and we must resolve that. However, this is not just about giving everyone the data. It must be safe and secure, and for public service.

Finally, it is vital that fundamental reform comes soon. It means, as with social care 10 years ago, cross-party working and the Government working with other parties to make it happen. I hope that the one message that the Minister will take away from this debate is that they need to be spurred into action now to deliver the recommendations in the report and take our communities and the agencies that work with them into a 21st century that will be safe and secure for them.

Emergency Covid Contracts

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, I believe the noble Baroness is referring to meetings that took place within the Department of Health and Social Care. I am advised that those meetings were not declared or reported simply because of an administrative error, which has been corrected. Therefore, the implication that this was something intended to hide meetings which were obviously involved in seeking to respond to the Covid crisis and to encourage people, as I understand it, to be involved with assisting the national effort is wrong. Those meetings were regular meetings that took place within the department; they simply were not reported, through an administrative error. As to the specific details of the meetings, although I acknowledge the responsibility to answer on behalf of the Government, I would have to refer to the Department of Health and Social Care for details of their content.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to make one error with a Covid contract is unfortunate; two looks like carelessness but four is suspicious. Can the Minister explain why the meeting of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, with David Meller, a £60,000 donor to the Conservative Party, was not published on time in his ministerial meetings schedule? Why was that meeting incorrectly marked as being about testing materials, when in fact it was about the supply of PPE? Why was Meller Designs, which has no background in PPE supply, awarded an £86 million contract without any competition? And why was that contract not published on time? This is far from an isolated example. Surely these repeated breaches of ministerial and procurement rules need urgent and independent investigation now.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I said in my previous answer that I am not equipped, at this notice, to answer specific questions on specific meetings in another department about which allegations are being made. What I will say to the noble Baroness, and to everyone, is that an extraordinary effort was made, and was required of government by the country—and by opposition parties, as a matter of fact—to procure material that was needed to address the Covid crisis. While criticism is made of the alleged fast-track process of urgent procurement procedures, the absolute priority was to save lives, and those procedures were in line with procurement policy. There was extreme urgency, and indeed the Government’s case that emergency procurement regulations could be used because of the extreme urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic was upheld by a judge in the High Court in a recent case.

Covid-19: Status Certification

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Baroness Brinton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce COVID-19 status certification for (1) international, and (2) domestic, use.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise the significant public and parliamentary interest in this important topic. That is why we are conducting a wide-ranging review, seeking input from clinicians, parliamentarians and businesses, and from specialists in areas such as ethics, equalities and privacy. The review is ongoing and no final decisions about the use of Covid status certification have been made. The Government will outline the findings of the review ahead of step 4 of the reopening road map.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

For months, the Prime Minister and other Ministers said publicly that the Government do not support domestic Covid passports using test results and vaccine status. On 12 December, in a letter in the BMJ, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said that widespread asymptomatic testing could undermine the value of testing as there is a risk of giving misleading results. The MHRA, senior advisers at the Department of Health and other experts agreed. On Wednesday, and again yesterday, Ministers revealed to the press that the lateral flow tests that the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, referred to are to be used as part of the Covid certificates. Why are the Government proposing to use unreliable, voluntary surveillance tests as the mainstay of their passport scheme when Ministers and experts have said that this is wrong?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I said in my Answer that work on the review continues and therefore there should not be an assumption. Before the Private Notice Question was agreed—which of course I have no objection to—my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster laid a Written Ministerial Statement, and I laid a Written Ministerial Statement, on the current position. It is before your Lordships and shows the current position, and I cannot add further to what is in that Statement.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this afternoon, we have heard once again from many noble Lords who are concerned about erasing women through the use of gender-neutral language. However, as liberals, we remain of the view that wording that excludes or removes the rights of any one group in favour of another is a problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about the rights of one group conflicting with another, but the compromise that his Government and successive Governments have reached shows that gender-neutral language does not do this. That is why it was used: to avoid excluding certain groups. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, made some important points about our own use of language in this House, and I am grateful for his final comments, in which he expressed concerns for trans people and the poor census officials.

I am deeply sorry for anyone receiving abuse on social media. We on this side of the argument, including myself, have been on the receiving end of some over the last few days, but nothing like as much or as horrible as that which I know that my noble friend Lady Barker and others receive on a regular basis. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman; there is an important issue there about our society and its use of social media. The Prime Minister spoke about finding some protection for MPs, especially women and BAME MPs, from this hate-filled abuse. I hope that he will extend that more widely when the online harms Bill starts its legislative journey.

The reality of this change in language in this Bill is that some people, perhaps very few in number, will be affected. I was very moved by the speech of my noble friend Lady Barker; she is right that the law is there to protect all members of our society. Over the years, equal rights have been granted to the nine protected characteristics because they need protecting, not least against those parts of society that not only do not understand them but may even want to do them harm. I note that our trans community is at extremely high risk of being victims of domestic abuse and violence.

As a woman who campaigned for women’s rights over many years and joined the “Reclaim the Night” marches in my student days, I could certainly not support language that I felt totally excluded women, but I just do not believe this to be the case. For all the reasons that my noble friend Lady Barker has outlined, we now risk impacting the rights of trans men and non-binary and intersex people through the revised language.

I am, and will always be, happy—even proud—to be referred to as a mother. However, if I were Freddy McConnell’s mother, I would want to respect his wishes and refer to him as a father to my grandchild because, legally, he is recognised as a man. It is factually incorrect, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, has asserted today, to suggest that only women can become pregnant. It has been legally recognised that men and non-binary and intersex people can also get pregnant, so it is vital that the Bill is fit for this purpose and can function in a real-world context. The only way to achieve this would have been for the Bill to retain its original drafting and to refer to “person”.

On Monday, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred to Mr McConnell’s case, where a trans man who had gained legal recognition as a man became pregnant and then gave birth to a child. Mr McConnell specifically objected to being recorded as the mother on the child’s birth certificate. It is worth looking at this case to understand the potential consequences of changing the wording from gender-neutral language, given that many noble Lords have referred to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

The case was heard first by the High Court, then the Court of Appeal. It is worthy of note that both courts found that the rights of the child are paramount—so they should be—and that Mr McConnell was legally male, and socially and psychologically the father of the child. The case revolved on how the parent who gives birth to the child should be registered. Society and science continue to develop, so terminology used when laws were drafted and enacted may be superseded by scientific or social progress.

Their court ruling applied to the case before them, but Parliament could legitimately take an informed view and change the policy on registering births. The language that the Government currently use for registering births requires Mr McConnell to be identified as the mother of the child for that purpose. The mechanism was for a legitimate aim and the process was a proportionate means of accomplishing it.

The Bill before this House relates to benefits accruing to those who give birth, not to registering births, and extending those benefits to government Ministers and some opposition spokespeople who currently do not have them. Let me say that again: it does not deal with the registration of births. The process for the registration of births is not proposed to change under the Bill; I am concerned that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, drew the conclusion that an issue relating to the law on birth registration certificates can have a direct read-across beyond that narrow matter.

The judges in the original case and the appeal recognised that this was complex and, importantly for this House and another place, that Parliament had not dealt well with all the issues it should have done in the past. Us trying to do so in what amounts to two working days in your Lordships’ Chamber in one week—and at very short notice—means that there are risks and problems.

The law should deal practically with how our society currently works. We know that people who are legally male can give birth, due to advances in medical science as well as the law. While some may find this baffling or even immoral, the reality is that it is legal and it happens. The scope of the Bill does not extend to either legal gender recognition or restrictions on fertilisation and embryology.

Changing the language on birth certificates would resolve a number of these issues, which is where discussions were beginning to go when things were calm and the language warriors had not got started. That was actually prompted by the changes to marriage certificates during the enactment of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, but this would require changes to statute law and is clearly not feasible now.

However, as the courts made clear in this case, this remains a political issue. If Parliament wants to persist in using gender-neutral language because trans men, non-binary and intersex people can give birth while living as men, there is absolutely no reason why Parliament should not ensure that the legislation does so. Doing so does not erase women giving birth and being called mothers.

I want to end by asking those who have proposed and succeeded with their amendments today whether, in their congratulations to one another on their success, they will undertake to help to protect the rights of our LGBT community, many of whom have felt a very chill wind in our United Kingdom today. As my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire commented, given the threat that LGBT people face in Poland, Hungary and some of the Baltic states at the moment, we need to protect their human rights. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, for her comments in support of the trans community.

From these Benches, we are proud to stand up for the LGBT community, but we are also proud to support the Bill because it starts to give Ministers and opposition spokespeople some, though not all, of the maternity and parental rights that they deserve.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I too support this Bill, even though it does not go far enough in giving Ministers who are parents the same rights that other workers have now come to expect. As others have already said, these include adoption leave, sick leave and shared parental leave. The last is particularly important and affects any Minister who becomes a parent and who is still missing out on the rights to share in the care of their new baby with their partner. I hope the Minister will remedy this urgently.

There is one other parental benefit that has not yet been mentioned—statutory parental bereavement pay and leave. I worked with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for a number of years to win this right for parents, but it is omitted from this legislation for Ministers. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is added to the other forms of parental allowance and leave for future discussion. One hopes that it is never needed but it is vital to have it in place to cover such awful circumstances.

My former colleagues, Jo Swinson and Jenny Willott, both had their first babies while they were Ministers. No arrangements were made for them. They had to cover for each other without maternity pay at exactly the time when they were working in government for better rights for women and parents in the workplace.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece about the lack of equality impact assessments. We need to remedy this and to reflect on why, as a society, we have moved over the years to gender-neutral language. The gender-neutral language in this Bill is inclusive. Changing it, as many speakers have asked, would make it exclusive—perhaps not to many, but to some people for whom it matters a great deal. No one is trying to erase women but rather to accept that, over recent years, there have been advances in medicine. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for referring to trans men in Brighton. We also have to remember that non-binary and intersex people who were born women would be excluded. Both equality law and clinical care have kept pace with them and their circumstances. Medical care, in particular, has adapted in order to provide the best possible care for them in rare and difficult circumstances. That is why I would gently correct the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in her reporting of the Brighton hospital trust introducing “chestfeeding” and “pregnant people” and removing “breastfeeding” and “women” from its documentation. It is not. Snopes, that excellent debunker of myths, explains this carefully:

“A maternity department at a U.K. hospital announced in February 2021 that it was expanding terms it used in maternity care to include, for example, ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘pregnant people’, in order to be more inclusive of trans and nonbinary patients … To be clear, the NHS said that such language—like referencing ‘pregnant women’ and ‘breastfeed’—will not change for those who identify as such … Adding terms like ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘birthing parent’ was not intended to take away from women-oriented language already in use. Rather, the move was meant to be additional support that offers more inclusion for trans and nonbinary individuals.”


I was also moved by the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Like her, I am disabled and have been on the receiving end of some pretty despicable hate crimes and trolling. Just like her, I am concerned that the trolls will descend on me this evening, but they will be those from the other side of her argument. However, that is nothing as to the daily abuse that trans and non-binary people suffer.

Over the years, your Lordships’ House has learned how to disagree well. In this sensitive debate, I hope that people who are not here with us in the Chamber will choose to watch and listen to those on both sides of the argument. I have heard from trans men that, even though there are currently no trans Members in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, they think it is important that language used in legislation remains inclusive. Using the word “woman” excludes trans men and therefore removes their rights.

Finally, we must focus on the specific nature and the urgency of this Bill. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House not only that the Bill will proceed but that all Ministers who are new parents will benefit from the same parental rights as workers across the country.