Scottish Government: Devolved Competences

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I can only agree with my noble friend, but I think it is a matter for Scottish taxpayers. I look forward with interest to the coming months and years. We need to try to work well together and be clear about the rules, but they were perhaps not perfect at the start.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, of course the Minister is right that it will be the people of Scotland who have the final say on the performance of the Scottish Government and their choice of priorities, and they will have the final say on the Government here in Westminster, too. But does the Minister understand that there has been—how can I put this?—something of a failure to respect devolved Administrations at various times by this Government? Does she also accept that the current system of joint ministerial committees has struggled to be as effective as it should be because of that, and that is one of the reasons that we have got to where we have with this issue?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I actually think that the joint committees are important and give a sort of discipline to business. Where I am with the noble Baroness is that it is actually important, on specific bits of policy, to work together with the devolved Administrations. Certainly, in the areas that I deal with, I really try to do that—with things like borders, for example; the country is borderless, so it is very important. We can always do better, but there are differences of view, and sometimes that complexity makes it hard, such as with statistics, which I was giving evidence on yesterday.

Covid-19: Lockdown Costs and Benefits

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his wise observations. I would observe that the health of the economy and the health of the population tend to go in tandem, and that was one of the things that we noted during the pandemic. However, I come back to my point that the inquiry needs to look at these things for us. We need to learn the lessons and look at evidence objectively.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, throughout the pandemic, the great British public stepped up, stuck to the rules and did everything asked of them, from staying indoors to volunteering at vaccine centres. There is plenty to be learned about what worked and what did not, not least when it comes to government procurement. While the Minister is in this reflective mood, can she tell us what is to stop the same wasteful approach to emergency contracting rules that we saw during the pandemic, with friends and donors of the Tory party given fast-track VIP access while decent, skilled, local businesses were denied the same opportunity?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I cannot accept that conclusion. Due diligence was carried out on all companies that were referred to the Department of Health and Social Care, and companies were subject to the same checks. However, module 5 of the inquiry will look at procurement. The noble Baroness and I worked on changes to the Procurement Act, not least to bring in a higher degree of transparency and to make sure that we have more competition in procurement, which I am sure will be helpful in a future pandemic.

Ministers: Legal Costs

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Secretary of State has explained her actions fully. I refer noble Lords to her statement. The important thing is that legal advice was taken, and subsequently there was a full and final settlement of the dispute. The Secretary of State made it clear that she should have sent the letter in confidence to UKRI and apologised for that. The basic principle is that it is very important that Ministers can seek advice on work that they carry out as part of their official duties, otherwise there would be a chilling effect on public life. This has been important to all Administrations.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, if the chilling effect were to extend to preventing Ministers posting things on social media at midnight, we might all be able to live with that. The Minister said that the indemnity covered the activities of her fellow Minister while fulfilling her duties, so can she advise the House which of her ministerial responsibilities the Secretary of State’s comments attacking two academics were fulfilling? Will she also explain why the taxpayer should foot the bill for a blatant abuse of position and power by the Secretary of State that further undermines the standing of the very UK research institution that her department is supposed to be promoting?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Secretary of State is responsible for the non-departmental public body UK Research and Innovation. She was operating in that context. Her intentions were always to do the right thing. It is very important that Ministers can do this. Of course, insurance is available to MPs, which is provided by the House at the taxpayers’ expense, in cases where professional indemnity insurance covers defamation. The House of Lords Commission is due this week to discuss the provision of professional indemnity insurance to Peers. Of course, there is indemnity insurance in the private sector because directors have to act in good faith and in the wider interest.

UK Population Growth

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The figure for June 2023 was actually down to 672,000 people, but my noble friend is right to point to the problem of underemployment. The focus of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in changing the benefits system and helping people into work is to improve skills so that everybody in this country who can possibly do a job has one, because that is very much related to contentment and happiness—certainly in my own experience. It is a very important area of work that this Government have truly underlined.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have heard, the UK population is increasing, but it is also ageing, with a declining proportion of the population now of working age. There were just over 600,000 live births in England and Wales in 2022, which was a 3.1% decrease from the previous year and the lowest number for 20 years. That means that the current UK fertility rate is about 1.5 children per woman, the lowest since records began in 1939. Does the Minister agree with Professor Jonathan Portes from King’s College, who said that

“the impact of the housing crisis on young couples, sharp cuts to financial support for low income families, and access to childcare are all likely factors”?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The interesting thing about the fertility figure, which the noble Baroness rightly mentioned, is that it is partly about people delaying when they have children and partly linked to the factors that she mentioned, including housing. So a priority for us is attacking housing by making more housing available for young people, which is very difficult. The fertility rates are themselves a problem, but not one that is confined to the UK; I used to work a lot in Korea, where fertility rates are horrifically low.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I think the best way to approach a Bill such as this is for me to be completely straightforward with the House. We on these Benches oppose this Bill. We do not support boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns towards Israel—they wrongly single out one nation and are counterproductive to peace—but the Bill is deeply flawed. It contains draconian powers and fails in its central purpose, which surely ought to be to prevent anti-Semitism.

The Bill prohibits public bodies from making procurement and investment decisions based on their “political or moral disapproval” of a foreign state’s conduct. The Government say that this is an attempt to ensure that all UK public bodies speak, as the Minister said, “with one voice” on international issues. However, the Government seem to think that there are councils, universities, NHS trusts and nursery schools with their own foreign policies, and that this is somehow confusing to our international allies. In fact, the impact assessment points to just three local government pension funds in Scotland that have disinvested from an Israeli bank since 2018. None of them say that this was a political decision or should be taken to represent any kind of political or moral disapproval, so can the Minister explain how the Bill would have impacted on those decisions? Would trustees be interviewed by enforcement authorities, for example?

The naivety of the Bill is to believe that trustees of pension schemes have, until now, been making investment decisions—which have a profound impact on their funds—in response to local boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns. There is just no evidence for this. The risk is that the Bill will serve only to heighten tensions. I am afraid it plays into the hands of those who spout incomprehensible conspiracy theories and will have unintended consequences. I repeat that Labour has consistently opposed boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. We know, and accept, that some campaigners have used the cover of BDS to whip up hate towards Jewish people, to hold Israel to different standards, to question its right to exist and to equate the actions of the Israeli Government with the Jewish people. We know that this happens and it is utterly wrong, but do we really think that the Bill will eradicate anti-Semitism? My fear is that it will make things worse, and it could not be happening at a more sensitive time.

The Bill treats the Occupied Palestinian Territories as though they are, in effect, the same as the State of Israel. This runs counter to decades of British diplomacy under Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments. In 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334, requiring every UN member to distinguish between the territory of the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The resolution says that illegal settlements have “no legal validity”, constitute

“a flagrant violation under international law”,

and are

“a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution”.

Not only was the UK involved in drafting this resolution, but the Government’s advice to UK businesses investing in the region makes this distinction clear. Can the Minister tell us what the Foreign Secretary had to say about this Bill? Can she tell us who drafted it? It is so strange that a Bill is being presented that so blatantly contradicts an internationally agreed and long-standing position of this Government.

Then there is the issue of freedom of speech. Not so long ago, we spent days in this House on a Bill to protect the right of individuals to express their views. This Bill does not do anything to legislate against the expression of anti-Semitism, but it does curtail the right to freedom of expression. Clause 4 is clear: decision-makers cannot express political or moral views that might be seen to relate in any way to procurement decisions. This is unenforceable. Councillors are elected officials. They have every right to express their views on moral and political issues—some might say that is their job. They do not, of course, have a right to whip up anti-Semitism and where that happens it must be dealt with, but the Bill will criminalise community representatives expressing views in a free and open way that has been a fundamental underpinning of our democracy for hundreds of years.

I listened to what the Minister said to try to persuade us that this is not the case. I am afraid she is being completely unrealistic and naive. Why does she say, on the one hand, that a council leader can express a view calling for a boycott on their social media or about another council, yet they would fall foul of this legislation should they express that opinion in a different context? What will the likely advice be from a borough’s solicitor to a council leader or a cabinet member who seeks to express such views? I will tell you: it will be to keep their mouth shut. Is that what the Government really want?

The Minister says that the Bill applies only when a councillor acts on behalf of a council. What does that mean? It is naive in the extreme. I do not know whether she has served as a councillor; I have, and I do not see how the Bill’s provisions, as currently written, are going to work. Suppose a council leader attends a local government conference and expresses a view on human rights, modern slavery, tobacco production, the arms industry, animal welfare or the environment in relation to another country. They will be advised not to express that view or to tone it down. That is not the kind of democracy that I think we want to create.

As for universities being within the Bill’s scope, they are not even classified as public bodies by the ONS, and nor should they be. Why are they included? Which university has actually acted—not made a statement but acted—as a result of a BDS campaign? Perhaps the Minister can tell us. We have just legislated to place a duty on universities to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom. When does an academic speak in an individual capacity and when do they speak as a representative of their institution? This matters. I just do not think that Ministers can properly answer that question—not when they have an enforcement body with an annual budget of £120,000 to £200,000. I suggest that the Minister might need to look at increasing that, because there are likely to be considerably more complaints and vexatious referrals to that body than the one or two incidents referred to in the impact assessment.

This really does matter, and the issue must be properly answered. If not, there will be the most profound, chilling effect. What would happen if a professor expressed at an event a view relating to China, for example—and was paid for by the university as its representative—at the same time as a procurement or investment decision was being made by that institution? It is not clear from the Bill how that would be investigated.

I accept that there have been some BDS campaigns on some campuses where the atmosphere experienced by Jewish students has been damaged by those campaigns. I completely accept that, and it is right that we do what needs to be done to protect those students. However, the Union of Jewish Students is against this Bill. We need to find a better way to tackle this issue. Universities are not public bodies but are included in the scope of the Bill; however, where is the comprehensive list of public bodies we need in order to consider whether any other institutions might be inappropriately included? I have seen a list, but it is nowhere near comprehensive. It is a very odd list, containing some very surprising institutions such as small children’s charities and the like. This makes you wonder whether the Bill is as well thought through as it ought to be.

One final point is the lack of support from the devolved Governments. The Minister says that the Government have no intention of seeking any kind of legislative consent. That is of course the Government’s right—but is it good politics? Is it good for our democracy for the Government to proceed in this way? What conversations has the Minister even had with her counterparts in the devolved Administrations? Can she confirm that the devolved Governments will be subject to the constraints of this Bill? That being the case, can she understand why this would be a problem for them as democratically elected, accountable bodies in their own right? What have they said to her about what they think of the Bill?

Noble Lords will perhaps remember that we on these Benches supported an alternative approach, during the passage of the Procurement Bill. The approach the Government are taking in this Bill is not, therefore, the only option. Public bodies should be able to take ethical decisions, but these should be based on consistent principles applied equally to all countries. However, the Government rejected that amendment, which would have been a far better way to go about dealing with BDS than this Bill is. Why are the Government hell-bent on taking this approach? I think it is because they want to make political capital out of a very serious issue. This is a sad state for a Government to find themselves in—desperate, in fact. The Front Bench in the other place offered four times during the earlier stages of the Bill to sit down with the Government and formulate a more effective approach. That offer remains open. I only hope that the Minister and the Government are listening.

Succession to Peerages and Baronetcies Bill [HL]

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I have no interest to declare in considering this Bill.

When I first saw the Bill’s Title, I thought we were going to get one thing; on reading the Bill, it turned out that that was not to be. As we have heard, the Bill does not mean that daughters will be treated the same way as sons. As an eldest daughter with a younger brother, I imagine what would have happened had my dad not been the son of a soldier from Middlesbrough with little to pass on but some medals and a casserole dish. Would I take a different view on this? In reading the Bill, I genuinely think that Clause 1(4) really stands out as something that it is very surprising to read in a Bill in 2024. I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, said to explain it; he spoke about the management of estates and great houses. We all appreciate and enjoy the great estates of our country—of course we do—but it sounds a bit thin as justification for keeping such a rule in place. I wonder whether there are not some more ingenious ways around it that would allow for the eldest child, not just the eldest son, to be preferred.

The Government have said previously that it is too complex to make this change for women to inherit titles on an equal basis with men. That has not been sufficiently explained by Ministers; I wonder whether the Minister here today could help us out. Many contributors have acknowledged—I applaud the lack of self-interest, as well as the self-awareness, of many of the hereditary Peers who have spoken—that it is time for us to revisit this issue; that is to be commended and welcomed.

This is a strange little Bill. With the best will in the world, it does not really do an awful lot for the reputation of this House and the relevance of Parliament, nor for the situation of women across the country. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, did not bring it here hoping to be heralded as some sort of feminist icon, but we can do better. There is a gradual approach—I accept that—but there is gradual and then there is a glacial pace. We could move a bit quicker.

I must commend what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said. She is completely right: the right way forward is for the eldest child, rather than the eldest son. As she said, if titles occasionally die out, that is something the nation can withstand.

Devolved Authorities: Expenditure outwith Competences

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that we need to consider the presence of Scottish Government offices in UK Government posts, but there is a case for having individual officials knowledgeable about Scotland engaged on issues such as fishing, where there is an important Scottish interest. I have seen that working well, so there is a balance here—but I agree with the general direction of the noble Lord’s comment.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the question asked by my noble friend Lady Ritchie, we very much welcome the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland. But in the letter to the Prime Minister ahead of their meeting today, Northern Ireland Ministers wrote that they want

“immediate and durable changes to our funding arrangements”.

How do the Government interpret that, and what is their response?

Civil Servants: Working from Home

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend and that is part of our approach. I noticed in the press recently that the president of Adecco, an international recruitment company, said that working from home can hit creativity and empathy and was part of the problem we have with soft skills. I am very keen that we should have balance, but people should come into the office and get the sort of mentorship my noble friend has mentioned.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, it is certainly true that the Government ought to think much harder about their approach to the Civil Service. The overuse of external consultants, for example, is expensive and gradually undermining in-house expertise. The Government awarded £2.8 billion of consulting contracts in 2022 alone. Does the Minister agree that the Government should work hard to retain expertise within the service? Will she commit the Government to cutting back on their habitual overreliance on consultants?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not see an overreliance on consultants. While I have been a Minister—only just over one year—we have moved to replace consultants with full-time civil servants in areas such as digital, because they represent better value for money. We probably have a certain amount of alignment on that. Clearly, we need to use outside consultants for some things, not least bringing in skills on things such as AI where we do not have the Civil Service skills we need. There has to be a balance; consultants can be valuable. Where I am with the noble Baroness is that there needs to be proper value for money and proper competition and we should not overdo it.

Extreme Weather: Resilience

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo the words of the Minister in saying how sorry we all were to hear of the loss of four lives as a result of Storms Isha and Jocelyn in the UK and Ireland. Our thoughts are with their families and friends. Our thanks go to the emergency and utility service workers who worked tirelessly to protect homes and lives, often in the most challenging of circumstances. The Environment Agency estimates that the number of homes at risk from flooding could double by 2050 due to the impact of climate change. The UK needs to be better prepared. Will the Minister accept that a COBRA-style flood resilience task force, as proposed on these Benches, is needed to tackle the problem?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much echo what the noble Baroness said about the emergency services and all who are involved in this. Indeed, without the changes we have made and the effort they put in, these recent storms would have caused much more damage and perhaps more loss of life, so that is very good news.

The COBRA system, which the noble Baroness mentions, is of course already baked into standing cross-government flooding response mechanisms, as the last tier of escalation for the most severe flood events. These mechanisms are stood up to support the operational response at local level, which is obviously necessitated by the increasingly sophisticated weather warnings that we see coming through from the Met Office. We managed well across the country on this occasion and the COBRA unit in the Cabinet Office—the ministerial unit—was not needed. That does not mean to say that officials did not get together. They worked well across the country with local people and the devolved Administrations. In some sense, it is a success that it was unnecessary to have the full COBRA ministerial meeting on this occasion. I have referenced the future resilience work that we are doing. We have brought these much better co-ordination systems into the Cabinet Office and work very closely with Defra, which is responsible for building up long-term flood protection. We have also invested a lot of capital in recent years. There is £5.2 billion available for flood defence projects, which I think is a doubling on the previous period.

Freedom of Information

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend; records are important, both for the record and for the next steps agreed at meetings, which one wants to make sure are carried forward in the interests of efficiency. Obviously, the Scottish Government are a separate Government with their own rules. The Cabinet Manual, as we have discussed before in this House, is in the process of being revised, but that applies to the Civil Service across the piece. We have also introduced new guidance; it is called—a rather difficult mouthful—Using Non-corporate Communication Channels (e.g. WhatsApp, Private Email, SMS) for Government Business, for UK Government, Civil Service and Ministers. That is on GOV.UK and is absolutely designed to make sure that WhatsApps of substance in policymaking or government business are recorded for posterity.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, the Information Commissioner has found that some government departments have a consistently poor level of performance for FoI request handling. Departments find ways to avoid responding—for example by denying that information is held—and seem to have worked out that there is no meaningful penalty imposed as a consequence. Given that these departments repeatedly fail to comply with the law, do the Government intend to review the sanctions imposed for this failure?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

At the moment, as I was saying, we do not have plans to change the Freedom of Information Act. However, we have worked hard to clear the backlog that was created on freedom of information as a result of the pandemic. Some departments have done better than others. We have worked very closely with the Information Commissioner on just that. As I have explained, the casework continues over time. The Cabinet Office gives advice centrally; we try to delegate these things to the appropriate responsible department, but we do encourage good practice and compliance with the complexities of the Freedom of Information Act and its different sections.