Horizon 2020

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

It is difficult to comment on specific collaborations but I stress that British scientists and academics and our university system are all excellent. Collaboration is therefore of mutual benefit to both sides of this issue.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, to the best of my understanding, British scientists and institutions frequently lead on these collaborations. There has been a significant concern that, although those institutions might be allowed to participate in the future, their opportunities to lead will be greatly diminished. That means that leading scientists who always want to be part of the lead group will seek other opportunities.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I always believe that those best equipped to lead should lead, whether that be within the EU or across the wider globe. There has been a decline in our participation, and that is a measure of what we have been going through of late, but the excellence remains and the leadership should remain with the excellent.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting
Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally agree with my noble friend Lord Ridley. His point about ID card creep is also part of this point. It is exactly what happened to the Windrush generation. The Government are adamant that we must avoid a situation in which, years down the line, EU citizens who have built their lives here find themselves struggling to prove their rights and entitlements in the UK.

The approach suggested in the amendment is also unnecessary. Managing the end of free movement in the UK and providing certainty for resident EU citizens during that transition has been an absolute priority. We firmly believe that the current, constitutive approach under the EU settlement scheme is the right one. According to the latest internal figures, more than 2.8 million applications have been received and 2.5 million grants of status have already been made. The Home Office, as I said the other day, is processing up to 20,000 applications a day.

We are working with communities up and down the country to raise awareness of the scheme and keep up this momentum. It already allows EU citizens who would be protected by the agreements and other people the Government have chosen to protect, such as many non-working spouses and primary carers not covered by the agreements, to obtain a UK immigration status, enabling them to remain here permanently after the end of the implementation period. This status will mean that their rights and entitlements under the agreements are guaranteed. However, the new clause would interrupt the flow of a system that is well under way, already working well and achieving precisely what it was designed and implemented to do: providing certainty to those who have made their lives here.

EU citizens resident in the UK before the end of the implementation period will have different, enhanced rights compared with those who arrive afterwards. It is therefore essential that these citizens have the evidence they need to demonstrate their rights in the UK. This is also why we are seeing many other EU member states planning to take exactly the same approach and establish a constitutive system for UK nationals living there.

The EU settlement scheme means that those who have built their lives here will not find themselves struggling to evidence their rights in the UK, or have to carry around multiple bits of paper to evidence their previous UK residence. We are legally required to issue all successful applicants under the EU settlement scheme with a written notification of their UK immigration status, and all successful applicants are given a letter confirming their status. The status can be viewed online and shared securely with others, but as noble Lords have said it is not proof but confirmation.

Access to the online status service is via secure two-factor authentication using the document, such as a passport or national ID card, which the individual used to prove their identity and their date of birth. The user is then required to input a one-time use code, sent to their mobile number or email address. This ensures that no one else can access the individual’s information without their permission. Once in the service, users can view their information and update their details, and can choose to share their status information with third parties. This might be with employers, to prove their right to work, or with other service providers, to prove their right to access public services, benefits or the NHS.

When an individual chooses to share their information, they share only the content that is specific and relevant to the checks in question, as I went through the other day. This will include their name, their image and any information that is relevant to that particular purpose. This supports data minimisation, ensuring that only the information required is made available, which is not possible with a single physical document.

All our digital services are designed and developed to be robust and reliable, with extensive internal and user testing before launch to ensure that they perform as expected. We will monitor services to ensure that any issues are identified and acted upon. Mechanisms are already in place for users to report any technical issues with the service. We continue to refine and improve these processes, and all data will be treated in compliance with data protection law.

We do not want to go back to issuing physical documents, which, as we know, can be lost, stolen or tampered with. Our vision for the future is a digital status and service for all migrants. The continuation of a declaratory system would force employers, banks and other service providers to wade through various documents to establish for themselves whether the person is indeed protected by the agreements. Such an approach would be burdensome, for the citizens and others, and for the very systems we have committed to protect.

I will pick up a number of questions which noble Lords asked. Several noble Lords talked about airports. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, gave the example of a friend who was questioned at the airport, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, talked about the border, too. What happens at the border is proof of identity to cross the border, as opposed to proof of status to be in the UK.

The noble Lord, Lord McNicol, talked about hiring a car abroad. In doing so, he inadvertently proved the point that, with the dispensing of the paper part of the licence, all one needs when abroad is a code to prove that you can hire a car. You do not need the physical document, you need only the code—as I learned to my peril when I did not realise that that was what you had to do.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

I must correct the Minister. Having had great faith and gone abroad with my code, on attempting to rent a car in the United States and Spain, I found on both occasions that the process failed miserably. Only the fact that I had a piece of paper with me enabled me to rent the car. I hope the Minister will reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, who asked what the back-up is when it goes wrong or there is a cyberattack.

Spending Round 2019

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am the first of the winding speakers, and I think I recognise a House that is, frankly, exhausted so I will try to limit my comments on this occasion. However, I cannot resist welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Duncan of Springbank, to his position. He knows how well-respected he is in this House and we are delighted to see him picking up this not-easy portfolio. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, may be relishing his freedom but, my goodness, the rest of us relish it as well. He made a speech of which I could not disagree with a single word.

What has struck me today, in such contrast to the Statement that we have heard from the Prime Minister, is the common voice across the House from different Benches. It strikes me that in pulling together we can find so much to do in order to take forward the prosperity and success of the nation. It makes you begin to think that perhaps we should be pulling party politics out of a lot of the activities that we are engaged with. I say that, of course, as I am about to become somewhat more political.

I have had many disagreements with Philip Hammond over the years but I always respected the fact that in looking forward to Brexit, whether with a deal or not, he recognised the significance of leaving fiscal headroom for a contingency. I say that because I have often talked from these Benches about the mistakes made by Gordon Brown, thinking that boom and bust were over and spending without leaving any kind of contingency so that when the financial crisis hit there was essentially no cushion to use to try to get over that immediate hurdle. Now I see the Benches that always applaud me when I make that statement proposing a spending review that destroys the contingency that had been identified by Philip Hammond. Between taking the student loan portfolio on to the books—that strikes me as appropriate and it should probably always have been there—and the £13.8 billion in this spending round, the contingency now disappears entirely.

Most of us in this House know that Brexit is going to do damage. We might disagree on the amount of damage but the OBR has looked at even a mild form of no-deal Brexit and said that it is basically a blow of £30 billion a year for at least four years. We know that the Treasury in looking forward, even when it thought in terms of a deal, saw the economy running essentially at a much lower benchmark than it has done historically. While many people talk about the economy doing relatively well, because globally all economies are struggling at this time, we have also seen drops in investment and we know of the plans by many businesses to gradually move a great deal of activity overseas. Productivity is a problem that has not been tackled but underpins our economy; the rate of productivity growth is appalling. When you look at all those issues, it is nearly impossible to understand why that contingency has been dissipated. I assume as a consequence that this is simply the opening saga of a series of election pledges that, as far as I can tell, are going to be unfunded.

Others in this House—the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, hinted at it; the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was more explicit; and we heard some of this from the noble Lord, Lord Young, and others—have talked about the importance of more public spending, because we need more of it on a wide range of priorities, but making sure that it is paid for. Borrowing is not the answer to paying for it. Now, I always disagreed with Philip Hammond over the funding of infrastructure; there I think you can argue for borrowing and we should have done much more of it to support infrastructure, particularly with interest rates being low. I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle: as we look forward to a very different kind of economy, there may be other kinds of what is typically considered as soft spending—education could be one example—that could also go into that category of long-term investment. There are some issues there to explore and look at.

However, after all the years that we have spent bringing the deficit into line and all the pain that has been experienced in doing so, to look at a situation now where we have spent the entire contingency, when we know that we are about to receive a whole series of economic blows, strikes me as, frankly, quite extraordinary. Let us be clear: even if it is Brexit with a deal—and things will be far worse if it is a no-deal Brexit—we will be into at least seven more years of negotiation, uncertainty, stress and change. This is not a situation, as I think the Prime Minister sometimes would have us believe, where you carry through Brexit and then the world returns to normal immediately, or perhaps within three to six months. This is going to be a long struggle involving suffering and pain, and we have to be financially prepared for that.

I am not afraid to say on behalf of my party that we want to spend more, but we know that it has to be paid for by raising some taxes. We have argued for a hypothecated tax for health, for restoring capital gains taxes and for raising corporation tax. We will never present to the country a manifesto that is unfunded in the way that I fear, as I listen to the Spring Statement, this Government are intending to do.

As I said, I do not want to keep talking. There have been many outstanding speeches today. It has been stressed that the spending review covers some issues but ignores others. The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, talked about the importance of levelling up. The noble Lord, Lord Young, talked about the importance of housing, which is really not provided for in the review. Critical statements were made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and others demonstrating the failure to pick up universal credit and deal with the impossible situation faced by so many of the poorest, including the working poor. Not to have addressed that situation within a spending review is extraordinary. Then again, I think the items have been chosen because they are thought to have political appeal to a particular sector of the electorate, which tells us everything.

I have one last question to ask the Minister before I sit down. This is a genuine question because it is something that I do not know the answer to. Having realised that HMRC has revised corporation tax credit data and discovered that it is £4 billion worse off in cash terms than it expected, I do not understand how that translates into government accounting. Do we have even less headroom than we anticipated because of this correction to the accounts?