Budget Statement
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness D’Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, I begin by offering all maiden speakers my warm congratulations. Government spending in the last few months, and in last week’s Budget, has delivered unprecedented resources to many underprivileged sectors of society. My particular concern is the health and welfare of children in this Covid recovery period. Some £700 million has been allocated for catch-up education and for young people in England. Overall, the education sector allocation is £124 billion in the coming financial year, which is the third-largest departmental budget after social care and health. An additional £2 billion has been allocated to providing free school meals. In addition, many local authorities will have had additional funds to provide for children’s health and welfare. However, this government allocation of money in this financial year is widely dispersed among different departments and hundreds of local authorities and NGO programmes across the country. Surely, there is now an urgent need to appoint a permanent senior Minister, preferably at Cabinet level, to co-ordinate these generous budgets and schemes to ensure that the resources available are targeted cost-effectively at those most in need. I ask that the Government give this immediate and serious thought.
House of Lords: Size
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord True (Con)
I am certain that my right honourable friend respects the role and place of your Lordships’ House, as, I believe, for all the difficulties that there have been at times, previous Prime Ministers of all parties have. It is reasonable that the House of Lords has been refreshed. As long as it is a nominated House, that should remain the case. On the question of 600 Members, which is often mentioned, I remind your Lordships that there have only been two Divisions in your Lordships’ House since 2015 in which more than 600 people voted.
Baroness D’Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, it is long accepted that the House of Lords is a self-regulating Chamber. Does the Minister therefore agree that the House can itself implement its collective wish that the number of participating Peers be limited?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, this was brought up in a previous exchange, I believe by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme. The problem with the proposition posited by the noble Baroness is that an unelected House should determine who should become its Members and how many there should be. I am afraid that this is a House of Parliament, not a gentlemen’s club and the membership of the House must, at the end of the day, have political accountability. The line of political accountability goes to the Queen’s principal adviser, who is the incumbent Prime Minister.
Constitution, Democracy and Human Rights Commission
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord True (Con)
I think that on reflection the noble Lord will think that he does a disservice to those serving on the Independent Review of Administrative Law, those reviewing under Sir Peter Gross the operation of the Human Rights Act and indeed Members of both Houses on the Joint Committee when he characterises them in that way.
Baroness D’Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, the broad and radical mandate of the proposed commission would indeed be better managed in bite sizes, as the Minister has suggested. Do Her Majesty’s Government have plans to expand the deliberative democracy initiatives that they have so far sponsored in Dudley, Cambridge and the Test Valley?
Lord True (Con)
I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s support for the approach that I have outlined. On her specific question, I cannot give a commitment on that at the Dispatch Box now, but I will repeat what I have said to the House: other workstreams on constitutional review will be announced in due course.
EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness D'Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, I make no apology for returning to the Erasmus scheme. The Minister’s Answer earlier this week to a Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, was less than satisfactory. He advanced two main arguments justifying the UK’s departure from the scheme. The first was that continued full membership would cost more than the expected income from the programme. There have been almost twice as many European participants to the UK in 2019. This should be a cause for soft power celebration. The additional cost to the Treasury was estimated at £2 million. In the grand scheme of things, this is not an exorbitant sum for creating opportunities for young people at the beginning of their careers to exchange ideas across international borders and to forge long-term friendships; 53% of all those UK students abroad were funded by the Erasmus scheme. The dividends from this kind of co-operation outweigh the yearly cost of our membership. It has been estimated that the true profit from Erasmus is in the region of £243 million per annum.
The second argument put forward by the Government is that, unlike the proposed Turing scheme, Erasmus is not truly international. Well, the 2019 Erasmus programme reports almost 1 million participant students working with 111 organisations on 25,000 projects throughout Europe and with non-EU partners from around the world. The proposed Turning programme, apart from its name, is a poor substitute, and is what others have termed “a small-minded move”. It is another national mobility scheme and no equal to the multilateral, multifaceted, reciprocal Erasmus scheme, our departure from which will adversely affect universities and the taxpayer. It is to be hoped that the Government might reconsider its decision when the UK’s membership of the Erasmus programme comes to an end later this year.
House of Lords Appointments Commission
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I do not agree with my noble friend. The question of the resourcing of political parties is a vexed one, as noble Lords know, and has affected all political parties. I cannot comment on contact between the Prime Minister and HOLAC but I can say that the chairman of HOLAC has written to the Public Accounts Committee on the matter—that is on the record—and the Prime Minister, with full transparency, has placed his own letter on the public record.
Baroness D'Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, having long supported a statutory Appointments Commission, I accept that it may be difficult to define criteria such as propriety in precise legal terms. Certain financial transactions, for example, while reprehensible, may be entirely legal. So would the Minister agree that extending the remit of the independent commission to include a thorough assessment of the competence and/or appropriateness of a political nominee would be helpful to regain public confidence?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, again, I do not accept the charge of a lack of public confidence in this relation. The role of the House of Lords Appointments Commission is unchanged; it makes observations and gives advice. The commission’s role is advisory, and the Prime Minister has said that he places great weight on its careful and considered advice and will continue to do so.
Summit of Democratic Governments
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness D'Souza
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for convening a summit of the governments of the 10 leading democracies in spring 2021.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, our G7 presidency will convene a number of democratic nations next year, building on the G7’s shared values as democratic and open societies. This is part of a year of UK international leadership. The Government do not currently plan to convene an additional summit of 10 democracies in spring 2021.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
I thank the noble Lord for his Answer. It is likely that global Britain will be in want of an international role following the end of the transition period. The UK still has considerable convening power, as shown by the recent joint letter signed by the UK, Canada and Australia on events in Hong Kong. Surely a transatlantic and transpacific democratic alliance could have a synergistic effect in tackling major problems such as climate change, building 5G, security, corruption and human rights. This would aim to be not an “anti” group, but rather a co-operating bloc to deal with specific issues and become something positioned between liberal naivety and the Cold War. Will the Government consider establishing an informal but influential network of democracies such as the G7, together with India, South Korea and Australia, to present a common front in upholding the rule of law?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, of course I agree with the sentiment of the noble Baroness. As she says, the UK works as part of a vast range of different multinational organisations, from the G7 and G20 to the Commonwealth, NATO and dozens of others. The membership of each group individually is limited, but taken collectively they mean that the UK partners with a great number of countries in one format or another. That will continue to be the philosophy guiding us forward
EU: Future Relationship
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness D’Souza (CB) [V]
My Lords, despite ministerial denials, we appear to be marching inexorably towards a no-deal Brexit and a consequent reliance on WTO trading rules. There are two issues I wish to put to the Minister. One concerns the potential impact of a reversion to WTO terms of trade, and the other is about reaching a decision on continued participation in the EU Erasmus+ programme.
From the start of the legal process at the end of last year, there was a disconnect between the EU’s mandate to uphold common high standards in areas of state aid, social and employment standards, environmental standards, climate change, relevant tax matters and other regulatory measures and practices, set against the UK’s statement that its
“primary objective … is to ensure we restore our economic and political independence”.
No wonder the negotiations have run into trouble. Apart from the major issues taken up by your Lordships so far—the Irish border, fisheries and state aid—I would like to revisit some of the other consequences of a no-deal departure, which would kick in on 1 January 2021.
The expressed hope that the UK might achieve a Canada-type relationship would not go even half way to resolving the current negotiation sticking points. For a start, the CETA is not, as yet, fully implemented, despite being agreed in 2014 and provisionally in force from 2017. Tariffs on certain food items would remain, requiring lengthy examinations at ports. Furthermore, 53% of all UK imports are from the EU, and 45% of all UK exports go to the EU. Those figures do not compare well with the equivalent Canadian figures of 10.5% and 7.9% respectively.
The Australia-style deal—another “solution” championed by the Government—is essentially a WTO agreement, and would allow the EU to impose punishing tariffs on some goods, such as dairy produce, which in turn would impact badly on British farmers. There is no FTA between the EU and Australia, so it is difficult to understand why the UK Government ever thought this might be a useful model.
The recent removal of some existing EU tariffs by about 20% was, and is, welcome, until it emerges that these concessions refer to items such as pistachios in shells, sewing thread and vacuum flasks—not necessarily key trade items. Nor will WTO rules allow most favoured nation status: any UK trade concessions would have to apply to the rest of the world as well. The 20 or so additional agreements via the EU with countries around the world have not yet been rolled over, further restricting UK trade transactions. Most importantly, in the absence of a trade deal the non-tariff barriers will require all produce standards and safety regulations to be checked at borders.
An exit based on WTO rules would present a huge challenge for the service industries, in that there would be a loss of guaranteed access for bankers, lawyers, musicians and chefs, among other trades. The financial services sector is a huge contributor to national income, estimated at approximately 10% of all tax receipts. Preserving the integrity and reputation of the sector should be an absolute priority, yet there is still no agreement on the legal status of contractual relationships, which in turn affects a whole tranche of SMEs and the job security of up to 2.3 million people who work in the financial services industry. The City of London Corporation has said that even a deal with limited coverage of financial and professional services would be preferable to no deal.
Above all, the current acrimonious nature of negotiations will do nothing to generate a positive future relationship with the EU, which is surely in the interests of each and every household and business in the UK. It is difficult to understand why the Government have remained tranquil about a possible no deal, and are apparently satisfied to engage on WTO terms. The cost of achieving, by 31 December, political and economic freedom from the EU could be very high.
In the political declaration of October 2019, both sides agreed to establish general principles, terms and conditions for the UK’s future participation in EU programmes, including youth, culture and education, and further agreed that this would be subject to the conditions set out in the EU’s own legal instruments establishing such programmes. In February, the UK set out its overall approach, saying it was ready to consider third-country participation in certain EU programmes, and on Erasmus+—the most successful EU exchange programme—that it would consider options on elements of the programme on a time-limited basis. None of the papers or draft legal texts published so far refers to UK participation in Erasmus. As we have heard, the EU published a draft new partnership agreement on Erasmus with the UK in March. However, no detailed information on negotiations is available.
The Government are now apparently considering the option for a domestic alternative to Erasmus. This is despite widespread praise, both within and without the Government, for the programme and its investment in forging international friendships and co-operation. Universities UK calculates that leaving Erasmus could cost the UK up to £243 million a year.
In an Oral Question in June, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, questioned the Government’s plan for continued participation. The Minister repeated that while the matter was being discussed no further details would be given. Nor was any leeway allowed to the devolved nations to negotiate their own participation deals. In answer to the question about what possible advantage the UK would gain by leaving Erasmus, the Minister, rather lamely, stated that the Government wished to encourage mobility beyond the 27 EU member states. Continued participation in Erasmus would in no way impede this.
Overall, the lack of transparency and willingness to consult with the many sectors affected is a severe failure. The Government’s overriding priority of escaping any EU controls on any aspect of political, economic and cultural life is not based on sound economic impact assessment. Thus it does not serve the British public now, and it certainly will not serve them in future.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)
Since the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey of Didcot, will not be contributing to our proceedings this afternoon, I now call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Judd.
Beyond Brexit (European Union Committee Report)
Baroness D'Souza Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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Baroness D’Souza (CB)
My Lords, in the last few weeks, Ministers in both Houses have repeatedly been asked a series of straightforward questions about the ongoing EU-UK negotiations. They most often include: transparency, specifically of draft legal texts; the establishment of proper inter-parliamentary channels between the UK and the European Parliament; the role of Covid-19 in hampering the progress of negotiations, and the wisdom of delaying the end date of 31 December in the interests of reaching a mutually satisfactory free trade agreement; and adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights and the rulings of the European Court. Apart from the last issue, the three other questions have been met with obfuscation, half-answers and non-answers. The Government’s aim, constantly reiterated, is to finalise departure by the end of this year by any means and at any cost.
The distance between the time available to reach a satisfactory FTA and the need to abide by the legal requirement to allow Parliament to scrutinise draft agreements is absurdly short, so much so that it appears that, despite the UK Government’s statement to the contrary, a no-deal agreement on World Trade Organization terms is anticipated. That would be a disaster. The Government’s own model and that of independent experts predict that leaving without a trade deal would cost between 6% and 9% of GDP—approximately £2,500 per UK citizen. The cost to the Treasury would be in the region of £60 billion, which is one and half times our spending on defence.
May I ask the Minister three simple and direct questions? Will Parliament be allowed full access to the details of current negotiations, including draft legal texts, and when? If there is no agreement in sight by the end of July 2020, will the Government be content to reach December without an FTA? Finally, have the Government, following Operation Yellowhammer, updated arrangements in the event of a no-deal final exit from the EU?