Security of Government Devices

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as a long-standing deputy chair of the all-party China group, I welcomed the proportionate approach taken in the Government’s statements in the integrated review refresh about relations with China. In the face of the current human rights position in Xinjiang and the situation in Hong Kong, however, this should not change any time soon.

On these Benches, we are in strong agreement with those who consider that the Government could and should have been a great deal more strategic about relationships with sensitive Chinese suppliers—whether internet or data based, hardware or software related—in the run-up to this Statement. This is a one-off Statement about TikTok, a social media company. It would be good to see the assessment and the evidence of potential cybersecurity issues which the Government have not yet—as far as I know—produced.

However, when it comes to makers of surveillance cameras, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, the Government appear far more reluctant to act. The Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Professor Fraser Sampson, has been very clear in his warnings, in particular about Hikvision and Dahua cameras, which, as far as we know, are used extensively in Xinjiang for surveillance purposes and pose security risks here, even when live facial recognition is not enabled.

Just last week, we saw Tesco lead the way in the private sector and order the removal of these cameras from its stores. The Government have simply ceased to install them. Why are they not directing their removal, particularly in police forces? Have they mapped exactly where on the government estate and in other spaces these cameras remain?

Regarding TikTok, why act so late when the EU and US, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned, acted earlier? Presumably they have the same security information. When did the evidence emerge that has led to this ban? Will the Government publish the review by cybersecurity experts which assesses the risks posed by these third-party apps on government devices?

As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, also mentioned, why are private devices used by government Ministers not covered? I note that Oliver Dowden repeated that position last week. After all, we know there has been extensive use of private devices by Ministers, particularly —dare I say—among former Health Ministers. What assessment of this aspect has been made? Which government departments and public bodies are actually covered? What is the process for drawing up the promised approved list of apps? What criteria will be used?

As many said in the Commons, this looks like whack-a-mole; the Statement is no substitute for a coherent cross-government strategy. Why do the Government not now move, for instance, to include the capture of biometric data in the definition of “critical national infrastructure”? Questions have been raised recently about Chinese cellular internet of things modules—CIMs—which are imbedded in many devices. What is the Government’s approach to this? Are they even aware of what CIMs are?

Finally, if the Government are concerned about information being harvested by social media and other apps, why is the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, now before the Commons, widening the circumstances in which research data can be used for commercial purposes? Is this not a typical example of this Government’s incoherence and lack of co-ordination on issues such as this?

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the welcome for the Statement made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster last week. By way of background, I should explain that the Government commissioned a review by our cybersecurity experts of the risks posed by third-party applications, including TikTok. As a result, the review concluded that we needed further security measures to protect the data.

There is obviously a limit to what I can say due to the sensitive nature of the Government’s work, but we are taking what we believe is proportionate, considered action to strengthen the security of government devices, and we are doing that in two ways. First, as is already the case in many departments—and that includes my own, the Cabinet Office—all government departments will now move to a system where only the third-party mobile apps available on their devices are those which have been pre-approved for inclusion on a departmental “allow list”.

Secondly, as a precautionary measure, all government departments are now required to take action to prohibit TikTok on their devices with immediate effect. It is a prudent, proportionate step, and more broadly, we are absolutely committed to bolstering national security, of which this is an example. As I explained to the House about 10 days ago, new guidance on the use of non-corporate communications will be issued very shortly and will bear on some of the questions that have been raised.

I was asked about TikTok on Ministers’ personal devices. The Secretary for State for Energy Security and Net Zero, who has been quoted, supports our policy and has been very clear that he has never used TikTok on his government devices. On personal devices, it is more of a personal choice. As I have explained before, all Ministers are carefully trained in security when they are appointed, and they have a briefing from time to time to keep that up to date.

To answer the question about exemptions, the business justification for having TikTok on government phones is to my mind very limited, but there are a small number of cases where it is necessary. Examples would include security and law enforcement. I know that some of my colleagues who are involved in security may need to use TikTok to make observations. Marketing would be another area—I think that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, comes into that category. We need to have common sense and proportionality. Departments will be able to make exemptions on a case-by-case basis through a departmental approval process, but with ministerial clearance as appropriate and risk mitigation in place.

Regarding Chinese security cameras, we have acted— we have discussed this in this House many times. We are also strengthening the powers in our Procurement Bill, and suppliers will be considered for addition to the debarment list on the basis of a rigorous and fair policy. This policy is under development, so it is too early to say, but regarding the action we have taken, we are now working with departments to make sure that Hikvision cameras are phased out.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, talked on a more strategic level about China, about which we need to be sober and realistic. Obviously, we do not dispute the importance of China, but it has become more authoritarian at home and more assertive overseas, which is of concern to the UK—our policies need to reflect that. In the integrated review refresh, which was published last week and is well worth a read—the noble Lord referenced it—the Prime Minister set out clearly the overall direction across government for a consistent, coherent and robust approach to China, rooted in the UK’s national interest and aligned with our allies. A proper, and properly resourced, approach to security is an important part of that.

I repeat that the Prime Minister set up a new department, and the Budget included a substantial pledge—£3.5 billion by 2030—to support the Government’s ambitions to make the UK a scientific and technology superpower. This is one of the Prime Minister’s five priorities. So we should take the steps we need to take for security, but we also need to be careful to encourage the positives of new technology, whether that is AI, quantum technologies or engineering biology. We seek an important balance here.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, given the Minister’s previous professional connections with Tesco, she will have noticed that, last weekend, it announced that it will remove Hikvision cameras from its supermarkets—many of us applaud that decision. The Minister will also recall that, when the Procurement Bill left this place, it included an all-party amendment on Hikvision and surveillance cameras. Why did the Government then remove that amendment in Committee in another place? Will they support Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, in his attempts, and those of others from across the political divide in the House of Commons, to reinstate that amendment on Report? If not, does that not make everything that has been said to us in the House today contradictory?

I also ask the Minister to look at the evidence of Professor Fraser Sampson, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which he gave to the Joint Committee on Human Rights at the beginning of this month. In answer to a question I asked, he said directly that, because of the facial recognition techniques that can be used, not just by these cameras but by many other pieces of technology, this poses a risk to personal privacy and is therefore liable to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Will the Minister please look at what was said to the Joint Committee?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, as a former executive of Tesco, obviously I was extremely interested to see this at the top of my in-tray, where other things it does often appear. On Chinese cameras, I have not seen the evidence to which the noble Lord refers, but I would be very interested to see it. But I assure him that discussions on the Procurement Bill continue in the other place, and my noble friend the Paymaster-General has been in discussions with Sir Iain Duncan Smith on this and other issues. Of course, the Procurement Bill will come back to this House in due course, and I look forward to engaging further with the noble Lord.

[Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand the Minister’s argument for proportionality with regard to this Statement. Does she have any advice for her non-ministerial colleagues in Parliament—those who sit on defence and intelligence committees—on how they should use their personal devices with TikTok?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I need to tread carefully here because, of course, security in Parliament is independent of government. So this is a matter for the parliamentary authorities. I understand the drift of the noble Lord’s question, and he can see what steps the Government have taken in relation to government devices. I am not sure I am allowed to put apps on my parliamentary device without the permission of the IT department. We stand ready to assist the parliamentary authorities if they would like us to share information on this important matter.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

Further to that question, does the Minister accept that it is difficult for parliamentarians, and that it is a potentially unsatisfactory situation, if the message is essentially that it is our personal choice, but we are not—probably for very good reasons—privy to the sensitive security advice on which the Government have made their assessment? So will they encourage Parliament and the parliamentary authorities to allow a collective position to be reached on this?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I can certainly pass the concerns that have been expressed back to the security authorities in Parliament. I add that we have a Defending Democracy Taskforce, headed up by Tom Tugendhat, and the parliamentary authorities are involved in that because of the importance of sharing information, including sensitive security information, which it may not be possible to make public.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I want to go back to the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, who through freedom of information requests has found out that 18 police forces across the country use external cameras that have equipment that have serious security and ethical concerns. He says that the use of such equipment by police forces needs to be seriously questioned. What action will the Government now take on a systemic approach across government to deal with those ethical and security issues, rather than just a pick-and-mix approach?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We have security and resilience frameworks which try to do just that, but obviously the police are independent, so the noble Lord’s question about the police goes beyond the areas in which I am expert today.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been listening carefully to the Minister’s responses to the questions, and I am still not sure that I understand the logic for not including Ministers’ private phones in the ban, particularly as some of the security information will be common; for example, the location of the Minister concerned, and so on. If the argument is that the bit we are really worried about is that, if the security breach were on an official phone, it would include access to ministerial emails on government business, then the Minister really should have answered my noble friend’s question about whether the use of private phones for government business will be addressed in the review of the Ministerial Code. Can she do so now?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not have anything to say specifically on the review of the Ministerial Code; it is of course kept under review, and we now have a new ethics adviser. These sorts of matters are certainly being considered in the context of the new guidance on the use of non-corporate forms of communication, and I look forward to making a public statement on that in the not too distant future.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, the Minister said in reply to a question from my noble friend on the Front Bench that Ministers are given security advice. But that is useful only if they take notice of the advice they are given. How can we believe that they do that, when Boris Johnson, when he was Foreign Secretary, went to parties in Italy as a guest of Alexander Lebedev, and then later on promoted Alexander Lebedev’s son, Evgeny—the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev—to the House of Lords, against the advice of the security services? Surely that gives some evidence that he may well have been compromised.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I always resist commenting on individual cases. Of course, that comment does not necessarily take account of the steps we have made on briefing Ministers, including new Ministers, on security matters. The evolution of social media has been beneficial in many ways; I am sure that noble Lords use it for non-security matters, and we believe that that is perfectly all right on people’s private phones as a complement to the use of government phones for government business. We are very clear that, where people use private phones for government business because they cannot do anything else, it is important that substantive government exchanges are passed on to the private office or elsewhere, so that they are added to the public record. You have to have a balance in this system; we have to have rules which make sense and respect security but are also workable.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the Statement; I was caught up with the Intelligence and Security Committee, where, of course, we have to hand our mobile phones in because we all know how dangerous mobiles are. I know from my past experience in this arena that, despite many lessons to people, people up to the level of Prime Minister make major errors in using private phones for material that they should not. Does the Minister not agree that we have to look at private phones as well as government phones to ensure that we have the right security that we ought to have? Whenever you speak on a mobile phone, you can guarantee that someone is trying to listen to it.

WhatsApp: Ministerial Communications

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent of the use of WhatsApp for ministerial communications.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)]

Ministers use a variety of channels of communication. This may include non-corporate communication channels as well as conversations in person and telephone calls, as has long been the case. Arrangements and guidance are in place for the management of such communications to ensure that official records are kept where it is considered necessary for good governance, but it remains the case that official decisions are made and recorded through proper processes, including ministerial boxes and Cabinet committees.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am really grateful to the Minister for her very helpful reply. However, is there any evidence that Ministers are using WhatsApp for government business on their personal phones rather than their work phones? Also, are they using the so-called “disappearing messages” that are removed after a set period, and, if so, is that consistent with government rules about record keeping? If the Minister is not able to deal with all those points today, could she write to me?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Of course. As I have said, if communications are substantive in nature, they need to be captured on government systems. But there is no requirement to retain every single communication, and that would include social media. As to disappearing WhatsApps, we will be producing new guidance shortly on the use of WhatsApp and other forms of communication, and that will include advice on the use of the facility for disappearing. As I have said, formal decisions must be recorded, but existing policy requires ephemeral and trivial information to be deleted.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, could the use of these disappearing WhatsApps be an explanation for the complete absence of policies on the part of the Opposition?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I note what my noble friend says and I refer to my previous answer about disappearing WhatsApps. Of course, parliamentarians and indeed Ministers get advice on security and on the use of social media, which I am sure the noble Lords opposite concur with.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I note what the Minister says about guidance, but there is a difference between guidance and rules. The Hancock WhatsApp saga has highlighted that no standardised and formal rules exist across government on the handing over of government business app messages on a private phone when individuals leave their post. When and how will the Government close this serious loophole?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As I have explained, we do have guidance and we are in the process of developing revised guidance on the use of non-corporate communication channels, which we will be publishing in due course. There is a general understanding of the nature and extent of the use of WhatsApp for ministerial correspondence. As regards Mr Hancock, we have of course established a Covid inquiry to look into these things and it would be wrong of me to be making piecemeal comments on his use of WhatsApp.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, many of us recall the TV series and the films “Mission: Impossible”, where a confidential message from the Government would self-destruct in about 30 seconds. I think some Ministers probably did not realise that was fiction and not what happens in real life. We understand the difference between personal messages between Ministers and civil servants and those that relate to government decision-making, which, in normal circumstances, would be minuted. From the Answer she gave to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I think she has confirmed that there is currently no official guidance on the use of the disappearing message facility for WhatsApp. Can she confirm whether it is true that, at present, there is no guidance or advice on this? If that is the case—she said that they were going to be working on this—when guidance has been set up and published, could she confirm that it will be in the public domain so that it can be easily understood by all?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We have obviously been looking at the guidance to bring it up to date with modern methods, to which the noble Baroness refers, and are in the process of finalising that. To the extent that matters relate to security, we have to be careful about what we publish, but I will bear in mind the request from the noble Baroness as to what we should say about disappearing WhatsApps and their use. However, I refer back to the advantages of using disappearing WhatsApps as well as the disadvantages.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, would we not have been spared a great deal of tedium had WhatsApping and twittering and tweeting been made automatic breaches of the Ministerial Code?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I feel that that is completely impractical. We live in a modern world, where people use WhatsApp, private mail and SMS. What we need to do is have sensible rules and training for Ministers and parliamentarians to teach them what they can do and what is risky. I personally had an excellent briefing on my first day as a Minister at the Cabinet Office. I was given my own devices and was told about the risks of social media in a way that I found encouraged me to conform very closely.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, is it appropriate for a Minister to hand a cache of WhatsApp messages—government messages—to a journalist for personal gain?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I will not be drawn on the individual case, but I will point to what the Government are doing and also refer the noble Lord, who is a friend, to the Covid inquiry. My understanding is that Mr Hancock has said that he will ensure that all appropriate material is given to the inquiry, and I understand that the Department of Health and Social Care is ensuring just that.

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

I understand that staff in departments such as the DWP and HMRC already have guidance that tells them very clearly that they should not use their personal phones for business purposes. This creates a very clear separation between personal and public correspondence. Can the Minister confirm whether the advice she was given included clear strictures on using personal devices for public purposes and, if not, why not?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The answer is that it did.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, in April last year, when the Government saw off at first instance a judicial review about the use of WhatsApp in government, a Cabinet Office spokesperson said publicly:

“We have been clear from the outset that there are appropriate arrangements and guidance in place for the management of electronic communications within Government”.


Those are the exact words the Minister has used at the Dispatch Box. The Cabinet Office position clearly was that these applied to WhatsApp messages. So, in a generality, do these procedures and arrangements allow former Ministers to take these records home? Do they allow them to alienate them to a third party, such as a journalist or ghost writer? If they do not, why do they not? Will the Government to publish the guidance?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not entirely understand the question, but what I can say is that the High Court dismissed challenges to the Government’s policy and practice with regard to non-corporate communication channels, which allows us to move ahead with the new guidance that I mentioned, and there are clear rules, of which we have already had evidence, on what we are supposed to be doing in the meantime.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, is it not worth remembering that the journalist in question signed an NDA but then betrayed a confidence and handed the documents over—or perhaps sold them—to the Telegraph? Is there a data-protection aspect to this?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My noble friend refers to a private arrangement between two parties, which I certainly would not want to comment on. Clearly, we in this country have some of the best data-protection law in the world, and data protection and the work of the Information Commissioner—I remember originally being responsible for this—is an important part of this whole policy area, although it is perhaps not directly relevant to the particular Question asked today.

[Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)]

Ministers expect civil servants to give impartial and candid advice, and, in return, there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy. This has clearly not happened in the Hancock case. What emergency measures is the Minister taking to protect the integrity of the Civil Service? Civil servants do not have a choice when a Minister asks them a question in a WhatsApp message, and they need protection.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As I explained, we have rules about how this is managed. Civil servants and Ministers have government devices that they can use to ask questions on. The Civil Service Code underpins the way the Civil Service operates, and impartiality is of course one of its fundamental principles; it is often quoted by civil servants in their day-to-day work and they feel very proud of it.

Civil Service Impartiality

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

We have had a lot of heckling—I think we are getting a bit bad-tempered in the Chamber these days. I am happy to repeat what I said, in case anyone missed it.

It is not without precedent that a senior civil servant is offered a political role on leaving the Civil Service, but Sue Gray is certainly the first to be attacked in this way. She has had such a distinguished career, and I am appalled that some now impugn her integrity for the time that she served successive Governments. Surely we should welcome that the leader of His Majesty’s Official Opposition, in preparing for government, wants to employ someone with such impeccable credentials and integrity—or perhaps those kicking up a fuss just fear the appointment.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)]

I will set out the facts from a slightly different perspective. Sue Gray, formerly Second Permanent Secretary at DLUHC and at the Cabinet Office, resigned from the Civil Service on Thursday. This resignation was accepted with immediate effect. Because it was unique—and I would say unprecedented—for a serving Permanent Secretary to resign to seek to take up a very senior position, that of Chief of Staff working for the leader of the Opposition, we are looking into the circumstances leading up to her resignation. However, it is incumbent on the office of the leader of the Opposition to be much more forthcoming about the details of what discussions were involved and the timing of those discussions so that we are able to complete our fact-finding exercise.

Ministers must be able to speak to their officials from a position of absolute trust. It is the responsibility of everyone in this House to preserve and support the impartiality of the Civil Service, and this step does the opposite.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister sometimes refers to the fact that at one time she used to work for me when she was a professional civil servant in the Cabinet Office. Does she agree that the appointment of Sue Gray to give professional assistance to the Opposition in preparing for the possibility of government throws no more doubt on the impartiality of the Civil Service than the noble Baroness’s very welcome presence on the Conservative Front Bench?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not like to comment on individual cases.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

But, in my own case, I left to go to Tesco, where I served for 15 years. I then took a different path. I served as a civil servant with due impartiality and indeed confidentiality of everything that I did and learned there, and that will be a requirement for Ms Gray.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the husband of a former civil servant and the father of a civil servant. To repeat what William Wragg, the chairman of PACAC, said in the debate yesterday in the Commons:

“It is important to ask”


the Minister

“whether he shares my concern that it is wrong to impugn an entire civil service for political bias, and that it is important that he asserts that from the Dispatch Box”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/23; col. 26]

Is that not the most important thing for a Minister to do? As for the current concern, this was a leak by Sky News. I would have thought that we were all interested in ensuring that, if there is a change of Government after the next election, it is competently prepared and served. After the relative chaos we have had over the past five years, of too many Ministers moving too quickly, with some members of the Government deeply suspicious of the Civil Service all the way through, should we not welcome this achievement?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is for the Civil Service of the day to prepare for Governments, as I remember doing in 1997, with three lots of policies. It is very important that ACOBA looks at this appointment. The business appointment rules govern the process by which civil servants take up new employment—it is part of their contract. As my right honourable friend the Paymaster-General said in the other place, there are various sets of rules and guidance designed to make sure that impartiality is observed in the Civil Service, particularly with the movement of senior Ministers or civil servants into other jobs.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it important to see impartiality in our Civil Service, which is judged throughout the world as the finest—arguably until Thursday—but precedents are just as important. The noble Baroness opposite said that one precedent was my noble friend Lord Frost. He was a special adviser—a political post—for five years and was also in the House of Lords before he took up a post as a Minister, so that is not a precedent. Last Thursday, a Second Permanent Secretary who was at the heart of this Government and of policy, and who advised government officials, turned over and took a political post without any break in contract. For me, that is completely different. Does my noble friend, who has Civil Service experience, agree that this move is simply without precedent?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that it is both unusual and without precedent, and I agree that Ministers must be able to speak to their officials from a position of trust. As the Cabinet Office Minister, I have worked closely with Ms Gray two or three times a week. My noble friend is right and asks a legitimate question.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that people like me worked with Sue Gray in government, and that she knew a lot about our Government, but that did not stop her acting impartially when the election brought in a different Government? The Minister cannot continue to imply that, because people are prepared to work for the leader of the Opposition, they suddenly lose their integrity and are unable to act impartially. Will she now admit to the number of people who have left the Civil Service because their impartiality has been impugned, and particularly how a past Prime Minister behaved towards them and the House of Commons in particular?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

That is a completely different scenario. Ms Gray will work for the leader of the Opposition, which is a political post that she is moving straight into from the very top of Whitehall. That is why we have rules and guidance. I am surprised by the response from the party opposite: I would have thought that it would want to get on and explain what she talked about with the leader of the Opposition and what else she was doing at the same time. This seems to me to be quite different from some of the other cases that have been mentioned.

[Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Butler, I remember a number of examples of people moving from the Civil Service to political positions, in particular my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon. He was a very successful director-general at the Treasury, who moved to become Gordon Brown’s ambassador to the City; he then resigned and turned up the next day as an adviser to George Osborne. Surely the issue is about the ACOBA rules, which are all too often not observed by members of the Government. Does the Minister agree that, so long as Ms Gray follows the recommendations for an adequate cooling-off period, which I would assume would be somewhere between three and six months, she is pursuing the right and honourable course?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Ms Gray does indeed need to apply to ACOBA, which she has not yet done. Her post is a very senior post of a political kind, and I am sure that ACOBA will look extremely carefully at the move and lay down appropriate rules and guidance for her departure from the Civil Service.

Civil Service: Digital Skills

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take in response to the Global Government Forum report UK civil service digital skills, published on 29 November 2022.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are already taking action to build digital skills at scale and have a clear road map, set out in the Transforming for a Digital Future strategy, which we published in June 2022. The road map has set a target to upskill at least 90% of senior civil servants in digital and data by 2025 and to strengthen the attraction and retention of digital talent by bolstering the Government’s recruitment brand and pay offer for specialist skills.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Government claim that their 2022-25 digital and data road map will usher in a

“new era of digital transformation”

for public service improvement, yet Civil Service skills are clearly inadequate to deliver it. As the NAO has pointed out, there has been

“a consistent pattern of underperformance”

in public services for many years. What will be different this time? Is not the road map another example of this Government’s wishful thinking?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is important to have an ambition and a road map if you are going to move things forward. We have a Prime Minister who regards the digital and data area as very important. We have set out our digital future strategy, which includes, on the point that the noble Lord is concerned about, that 90% of senior civil servants will be upskilled in digital and data through that programme. Digital professionals will also have top-up training every year. We are moving to recruit a lot more civil servants in the digital and data area; we have 4,000 vacancies, which is too many, but we are doing everything that we can to attract more people. This includes a capability-based pay scheme and much more focus on the regions, where we believe that we can get more digital talent out of the universities, often working away from London in centres such as Cardiff and Darlington.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, to pick up that last point, the Government’s own digital tsar—the head of digital services—does not underestimate the difficulty of attracting those professional staff because of the salary issue. Does the Minister think that this road map will properly address that? Is it not about time we spent less on consultants, who we are paying millions for, and more on the wages of our digital experts in the Civil Service?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I believe that is actually the direction of travel. We are bringing in more of a capability-based pay scheme, which will allow us to track and keep these people who are in hot demand in a competitive market—as I know only too well. The Civil Service jobs are very interesting; if we could sort out a route for people to come in and work on digital data, and perhaps even go out again, and so improve our skills and work on these important projects, that would make a huge difference. The establishment of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology—DSIT—is going to make a difference as well, in setting the tone and encouraging people to come and work on the very real data and skills challenges that we now have in the Civil Service.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the Question about skills but values are just as important as skills in the digital space. Could the Minister tell your Lordships’ House what the Government intend by way of promoting fundamental rights and freedoms in that space—whether it is the right not to be degraded, the right to personal digital privacy, the right not to be discriminated against or, crucially, the right to decisions on things that matter being made by a human being and not an algorithm?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises important points, and these are going to be debated a lot in the Online Safety Bill. In the Civil Service, we have a clear set of values—public service values. The Central Digital and Data Office is set up to look at how best to transform public services, but in a way that is appropriately balanced between using things such as AI and making sure that people’s rights and responsibilities are protected. We have the Data Protection Act and the Information Commissioner’s Office to help us in that process.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, having been at one stage a civil servant colleague of the current Minister, and declaring my interest as someone who went on to become a Minister and who has a daughter who has taken the same path from one to the other, I ask if we could have a gentle assurance that the Minister will use her best endeavours to ensure that these healthy disciplines are extended to Members of His Majesty’s Government as well. If they understand what civil servants are talking about, they can challenge it and produce a better overall conclusion.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see the noble Lord in his place; I congratulate him on his return and on his daughter’s eminence. The answer is that of course Ministers need to be educated in digital and data matters as well. We are doing our own small part in the Cabinet Office by ensuring that the induction that Ministers are given on security, for example, has a suitable data element. There is the broader point of what data can bring to growth and science. I earlier referenced the new department, DSIT, which is symptomatic of the change that we are trying to make in government to think more of AI, the cloud and data. To go back to the noble Baroness’s point, we are also trying to make sure that we are thinking about people and values at the same time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the British Government are lagging behind several of their European counterparts in digital transformation. Can the Minister say what she regards as the other obstacles, apart from lack of skills? Are there still legal obstacles, in that the way data is handled by different departments is different under existing Acts, or are there other obstacles that we need to tackle in order to catch up with the Baltic states and others that have gone a great deal further in moving towards efficient digital government?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I used to sit on the Competitiveness Council in Brussels, in the days when we were in the EU, and learned a lot from the Estonians—but of course they have a much smaller country and they were able to start everything digitally. I think people have admired us for the step we took, now 10 years ago, with GOV.UK, hosting all government paperwork and data. That now has 99% recognition across the UK, which I find very surprising. To answer the question, there are of course difficulties. Digital skills, which is the subject of this Question, is probably the biggest difficulty, but data sharing is also very important. We are finding this with all the various data initiatives we are doing—for example, I am working on borders—where being able to share data between companies, or to share individuals’ data between departments, is extremely important. We are gradually making sure that we are getting the right powers to do that in different areas as Bills come before your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, what targets have been set to upskill Peers of the realm?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think that is a matter for the House authorities, but I will happily pursue it for the noble Lord.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister is absolutely right to say that countries such as Estonia and Latvia were able to leap-frog—they did not have the encumbrance of legacy technologies. Can she tell us the thinking around how legacy technology—not only the technology itself but the processes around that technology—can often hold back progress?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I can tell my noble friend a lot about what we did at Tesco on this matter. We had a spaghetti junction of old technology and what we did—I am sure noble Lords will be interested in this—was bring in systems that were compatible with one another. We gradually got rid of the spaghetti junction of technology and moved to new technology across the board. It is about those sorts of principles. Alex Burghart, the very energetic Minister concerned, heads at ministerial level the Central Digital and Data Office. It is these sorts of issues that we are looking at, so as to make sure that the transformation to digital that we need is efficient, smooth and speedy, and does not cause lots of legacy problems. I think we all know of experiences in different government departments where these already exist.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, just to balance the argument on efficient digital government, we need to be quite careful, do we not, that we do not all end up, in communicating with officialdom, talking to artificial intelligence systems or to robots?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I share my noble friend’s concern. I will say that artificial intelligence and robotics are actually improving efficiency in some of the services that one uses, such as banking, so that we move through the telephone options and find a person, but they are absolutely no substitute, to my mind, for having proper customer care where that is needed. There is sometimes a risk that we can get exclusion and other problems if we go too far over the top. That is why I emphasised the importance of this new department and the ability it will have to devote more attention to these sorts of incredibly important issues. AI can be a plus but it can also be a risk. We really need to look internationally and do everything that we can.

Emergency Planning

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what recent assessment they have made of the robustness of their system of emergency planning across the country.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

The Civil Contingencies Act sets out the framework for emergency planning in the UK, which the Government have a legal obligation to review every five years. The most recent review was published in March 2022, which concluded that the Act continues to achieve its stated objectives, but it also set out recommendations to strengthen the system and its planning. The resilience framework published in December sets out the Government’s wider approach to strengthening our resilience to all risks.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

Considering the crisis in local government finance and the ongoing spectre of ambulances queuing at hospitals, how many emergency planning bodies have raised major concerns about our resilience in the event of a major disaster?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As the noble Lord suggests, we have a well-developed system of local resilience through the 38 local resilience forums. I have received no reports myself of particular concerns they have raised on this matter. It is more a matter for DLUHC than for the Cabinet Office, but I will look into it and get back to the noble Lord.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, what lessons have the Government learned from the failure to anticipate a major pandemic of the sort we have now faced with Covid? Have the Government initiated any new proposals for contingency planning ahead of major predictable crises of that sort?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Government had the advantage—or disadvantage—of the lessons from Covid, when they were conducting the review I mentioned. Since then, they have published the UK Government Resilience Framework, which shows a lot of frameworks. A completely independent review is also going on, the Covid inquiry, which I am sure will teach us more lessons on what to do in serious emergencies in the future.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. Can the Minister tell us the Government’s assessment of the efficacy of the Serco contract delivering the Emergency Planning College? Can she comment on the future of the Emergency Planning College, given the suggestions that the site is likely to be sold?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

This is not a contract that I have had anything to do with. The noble Lord always asks very good questions on contingency planning. I will look into it and get back to him.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, the response to any serious emergency hinges a very great deal upon the emergency services. What impact does the Minister think the incorporation of Chinese technology and components into police force equipment is likely to have on our own resilience?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord will be aware that we made a Statement before Christmas about the use of Chinese technology in cameras and so on. Obviously, we are putting a lot more resources into security. This is one of the issues that is under careful consideration, and it has of course been discussed during the passage of the Procurement Bill in recent times. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the steps that we have already taken and the way we keep a careful eye on these matters.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that what is needed is not “careful consideration” but real action?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I have already described some of the real action that we have taken. I also draw my noble friend’s attention to some of the provisions in Schedules 6 and 7 to the Procurement Bill that is now going through the other House, the debates that we have had here, the debates we will no doubt have again and the careful steps that we are taking in relation to these important issues.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the ongoing emergency of sewage despoliation and the death of our rivers and coastlines is something the Government do not seem to be acting on at all. Last year, on 8 September, the then Secretary of State for the Environment—I cannot even remember which one it was—told water companies to produce a plan within 14 days. It is 165 days later and there is no plan. I gather water companies have been told again. When are the Government going to deal with this ongoing emergency?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I share the noble Baroness’s concern about our rivers and, of course, we worked together to amend the Environment Bill on this issue. Now, she is rightly asking about the follow-up. This is not a matter for me but for Defra. However, I can assure her that our national security risk assessment looks at these issues and makes sure that, going forward, plans are right and proper.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as London’s Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience and chair of the London Resilience Forum. The focus on skills in the recently published resilience framework on training and exercising is welcome, but it is vital that this provides the skills needed and it is properly resourced. Can the Minister provide further detail on how her plans for the proposed UK resilience academy are progressing and how this will contribute to both prevention and preparedness? Also, have the Government ear-marked funding for a major exercise along the lines of Exercise Unified Response that took place seven years ago? This would provide responders from across all sectors represented on local resilience forums the opportunity to gain valuable skills in advance of needing them.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree on the importance of the local resilience and the testing and trialling that the noble Baroness talks about. On actual funding, I will come back to her, but the new approach that has been taken in the resilience reform and in the UK Resilience Forum meeting, that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster presided over himself recently, is on the importance of emergency preparedness. The focus on skills is also a focus in cabinet committee work on these issues. So I hope I have given her some assurance that this is work we are pushing ahead with

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, recently in your Lordships’ House we have had cause to talk about the strategic risk, in various departments, of certain building materials—particularly of certain concrete in schools but which also potentially affects our hospitals. Is that something that is caught by this resilience framework: a risk such as that, which could materialise, that covers more than one government department? If it is not within the framework, is the Minister’s department co-ordinating what the response would have to be across government if that failure of building material unfortunately materialises?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We certainly have a co-ordination role, especially where risks affect more than one department. The work that we have done on the national security risk assessment outlines, each time that it is done, the biggest risks that we see. Having dealt a lot with buildings, I can understand exactly what my noble friend’s concern might be, particularly in relation to schools. We are looking at the risk assessment at the moment, and we will be publishing a new national risk register this year. I will take away the point about schools that she has so helpfully raised today.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that we should be more proactive in terms of the advice given to households for when there is a major crisis or emergency? We used to very clearly tell households about having batteries, torches, water purifiers and a wind-up radio and the frequencies to listen in on when these emergencies happened. We now have a website, but people are not told. Does the Minister believe that we should actually tell people what it would be useful to have? They do not have to have it but, my goodness me, if anything goes wrong, it is very useful to have those things.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

DLUHC is working with the local resilience forums to work out what we should be doing in the light of the latest developments. I agree that the focus on the website is not always great, particularly when websites go down during emergencies, which has been my own experience. I have dealt locally with people who deal with emergencies, notably on Covid. The voluntary effort that comes forth when emergencies take place and all the good things that are done are really impressive. We have to learn from that and put that into the system, as it were, for the future. I take the point about making sure that people know, by leaflets and so on as well as by websites, what they need to do in the case of an emergency.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord opposite talked about the website for resilience. For the benefit of noble Lords who are not yet aware of this website, can my noble friend the Minister share the URL for that website so that we can evangelise about it on her behalf?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I will certainly take forward my noble friend’s idea. I have also been impressed by the system that the mobile phone operators have that you can ring if your electricity goes down. These things exist, but the point—as expressed so powerfully on the other Benches—is that we need to make sure that people know what to do when flooding comes or there are other local difficulties. That is why we have put in a new head of resilience within the Cabinet Office and have published the risk framework. We are open to new ideas, both on substance and on communication, as I hope that I have shown.

Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Amendment of List of Responders) Order 2023

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

That the draft Order laid before the House on 6 December 2022 be approved.

Relevant document: 24th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 23 January.

Motion agreed.

Ministerial Appointments: Vetting and Managing Conflicts of Interest

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, it is vital that we get the terms of reference right on this investigation. Will it include Mr Zahawi’s use of legal threats to supress media reporting? Will the independent adviser examine why, according to the Information Commissioner’s investigation, Mr Zahawi deleted texts from his phone relating to Lex Greensill’s Covid loans application? Greensill Bank went on to lend seven times the loan limit to companies headed by Mr Sanjeev Gupta. A business associate of Mr Gupta also thanked the then BEIS Minister, Mr Zahawi, for his role in securing these loans. Does the Minister know if Mr Zahawi advised Greensill to put in multiple applications, and will this matter also be investigated?

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, there are established procedures for the appointment of Ministers, and by Ministers, and these are followed. This was the purport of the question we are replying to, and we need to allow the process to run its course. As the noble Baroness suggests, the Prime Minister has appointed Sir Laurie Magnus, who is the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests. As I said when I answered questions last year, the Prime Minister was then moving quickly to appoint the independent adviser. The terms of reference will give the independent adviser the opportunity to look into what he thinks needs to be looked into—having a look at the issues that have been raised and speculated on—and we have made clear that anyone in the Government should help the independent adviser with that process. On the point about the texts, the Information Commissioner has looked at that. He concluded his investigation on 18 January this year—so, last week—and he did not require any steps to be taken. He considered that BEIS had conducted sufficient searches for the relevant information.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, may I suggest to my noble friend that any public concern about ministerial interests will be greatly alleviated if the independent adviser could, of his own initiative, institute investigations?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The independent adviser, as my noble friend suggests, is appointed by the Prime Minister and it his constitutional position to be the ultimate arbiter of the Ministerial Code, and to decide whether a breach of the code has occurred upon the advice of the independent adviser. So it makes sense for the Prime Minister to be the ultimate decision-maker, but, of course, we have appointed Sir Laurie Magnus to take on this role and to look extremely carefully at the issues that have arisen and been reported on this week.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the last Prime Minister but three made great play of the distinction between “people from somewhere” and “people from anywhere”. I thought, at the time, that the real people from anywhere were those who try to avoid paying their taxes and arrange their financial affairs somewhere else—in offshore financial centres and elsewhere. Could the Minister assure us that part of the questioning of the suitability of people for ministerial appointments should significantly include questions about offshore financial arrangements and tax avoidance?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

There is an established procedure that anyone who is fortunate enough to be appointed a Minister goes through, and that includes a number of questions. Indeed, when candidates are put forward to HOLAC for the House of Lords, that is also the case. Tax is one of the areas of questioning but, in relation to today’s debate, clearly the independent adviser will be looking into these matters. It is clear that the Prime Minister became aware of media reports, but when the Minister without Portfolio was appointed, he was told that there were no outstanding issues. Obviously, the details of an individual’s tax affairs are confidential, but this is an important area of inquiry.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, we should never lose sight of the fact that we are talking about a truly remarkable person, whose life story is exceptional and who is an incredible example to all ethnic minorities in this country. Bearing this in mind, should we not await Sir Laurie’s report and not prejudge the issue?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I have to say that my noble friend is completely right. We must find out what the facts are; the independent adviser is looking into this. We need due process. That is why the Prime Minister is ensuring that we look at the actions that were taken. It is also why we have the independent adviser who has now been appointed, which I think has been welcomed right across the House.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, is it not the case that while officials may bring to the Prime Minister’s attention matters within their knowledge bearing on ministerial appointments, they must have regard to the laws governing personal privacy, including privacy on tax matters?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Lord is right. The other point worth making is that, as a Minister, it is your personal responsibility to make it known to your Permanent Secretary and, if appropriate, to the independent adviser, what conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest you might have. This is a process that is gone through scrupulously, in my experience, when Ministers are appointed.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, transparency is the biggest antidote to sleaze, which revolves around money. The best way of dealing with this is to ensure that all Ministers publish their tax returns. That policy can be made without waiting for any report from the independent ethics adviser. What objections can the Minister have to that suggestion?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

There is an issue of balance between privacy and the need to know—the transparency. I have often engaged with the noble Lord on these tax issues and the Prime Minister himself has said that he will publish his tax return, but moving to a different system raises quite a lot of issues of balance. I come back to my point about personal responsibility and explaining where there are these issues or might be conflicts of interest when you are a Minister, or if circumstances change.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

Is it not the case that it is very important that any Prime Minister of the day has an independent ethics adviser and an independent Commissioner for Public Appointments? What is the point of having these officials doing those jobs unless they are allowed to get on with them—do the jobs they are paid and appointed to do—and avoid the speculation, which is completely unfounded until the facts are known?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. Sir Laurie Magnus is doing just that. He was appointed in December and now has an important case to look into. We need to give him time to look at the issues that have been raised and come to the Prime Minister with a summary of his findings, so that we can move forward. But we need to establish the facts because, unfortunately, everything you read in the newspapers is not always spot on.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has laid great emphasis on due process, which we understand, and there is an inquiry going on, which we understand. Will she agree voluntarily to bring to the House a Statement once the outcome of this investigation is known?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Statements to the House are a matter for the usual channels. However, given the interest in this matter it is quite possible for noble Lords to raise Questions, and Statements are often made on important matters of the day. I cannot make a specific promise, of course, but I understand where the noble Viscount is coming from, and that the House wishes to know and to be kept informed.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister said, in reply to an earlier question, that it was a constitutional principle that the ultimate authority for the Ministerial Code lay with the Prime Minister, but in what way would it be unconstitutional for the Prime Minister to give the independent adviser the right to initiate his own investigations?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think that that would change the set of balances that exists at the moment. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has been very clear on the importance of accountability, integrity and professionalism, and he reissued the code with his own words to encourage that. He has also asked the independent adviser to explore the issues surrounding this particular case and to report the findings to him. I do not think that we need to move as far as the noble Baroness is suggesting, but we need to come to the right answers on these issues. It really matters that people trust our system of parliamentary democracy.

Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Amendment of List of Responders) Order 2023

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Amendment of List of Responders) Order 2023.

Relevant document: 24th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, this order was laid before the House on 6 December. I think we are all agreed on the importance of improving UK resilience, and the recently published resilience framework illustrates the need for clear responsibilities in order to drive planning activity across the risk life cycle.

This instrument will do exactly that by creating the legal basis for improved co-operation, information sharing and integration between the Meteorological Office and the Coal Authority and the wider list of categorised organisations operating at the local level across the UK. It will deliver these important changes by making both organisations category 2 responders as defined under the Civil Contingencies Act, in turn bolstering the planning activities conducted by local resilience forums in England—a further commitment of the new resilience framework.

This will ensure that these bodies are well integrated within wider emergency planning frameworks and able to collaborate in the development of localised risk assessments and to contribute information and expertise to support local resilience forums in planning for and responding to emergencies. Both organisations hold information and experience that is integral to the process of civil protection. The Meteorological Office is able to support effective management of severe weather risks, and the Coal Authority is positioned to ensure that due consideration is given to the unique risks presented by our industrial heritage.

I was amazed by this: approximately 25% of property across the UK is located on the coalfield, and the Coal Authority responds to a wide range of incidents, including, but not limited to, subsidence, sudden ground collapses, emissions of water or gas and coal tip slips, as well as metal mine pollution incidents, for which it also has responsibility. As we all know, extreme weather and flooding, which we have increasingly experienced, often heighten the likelihood of risks materialising in these areas.

The Civil Contingencies Act, also known as the CCA, was introduced in 2004 following a review of emergency planning arrangements as a result of the fuel crisis and severe flooding in 2000, as well as the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The Act establishes a framework for civil protection in the UK. It imposes a clear set of roles and responsibilities on organisations with a role to play in preparing for and responding to emergencies.

Category 1 responders are organisations that collectively form the core of local emergency preparedness and response. These include emergency services, local authorities, health bodies, HM Coastguard and government agencies. Category 1 responders are subject to the full set of statutory civil protection duties, including assessing risks to inform contingency planning, warning and informing the public, and putting in place business continuity arrangements.

Category 2 organisations, which include the Health and Safety Executive and utilities and transport operators, are co-operating bodies and, although less likely to be involved in the heart of planning work, are heavily involved in incidents that affect their own sector. Category 2 responders have a statutory duty to co-operate and share relevant information with other category 1 and 2 responders. The Act and regulations made under the CCA create the basis for these organisations to collaborate through local resilience forums where all responders can come together to ensure effective multiagency emergency preparation and response.

Regulations made under the CCA also place a duty on responders to help co-ordinate risk assessment at their local level through the production of the community risk register, which ensures that local resilience forum members hold a consistent understanding of the hazards and threats across their area.

The CCA is reviewed every five years. The most recent post-implementation review was laid before the House in March 2022 and proposed the categorisation of the Met Office and the Coal Authority as one of its key recommendations. The Met Office and Coal Authority perform important functions in preparing for, and responding to, risks associated with extreme weather events and the coal-mining legacy. Recent examples include several heatwaves in 2022, a number of floods in recent weeks and, in the past few days, a sinkhole that has, sadly, opened up in Caerphilly. The two organisations have significant expertise and technical knowledge in their respective fields and provide critical support, such as severe weather warnings, hazard assessments, training and response planning.

While these organisations already work closely with local partners, our consultation and engagement indicated that, without their integration within the legal framework, this was taking place in an inconsistent or ad hoc way. Categorising these organisations will ensure that they are able to share information and co-operate with local resilience forums across the UK in a more regulated and structured way. This will ultimately improve the preparedness of local partnerships to respond to incidents related to coal mines or severe weather and strengthen their ability to protect the public and save lives.

This instrument is being made using powers set out in Section 13(1) of the Civil Contingencies Act, which allows a Minister of the Crown to amend the list of categorised responders. It will add the Meteorological Office and the Coal Authority to the list of responders under the Act. Importantly, these amendments do not add significant financial burdens to the Meteorological Office or the Coal Authority as these organisations are already equipped to perform these additional duties under their current budgets, with a de minimis impact assessment having been completed in December 2022.

These provisions will be implemented across the UK, and we have consulted officials from the devolved Administrations throughout the process. We also formally notified each Administration via ministerial letters of our intention to lay this instrument. Noble Lords will be glad to hear that all devolved Administrations were supportive of the inclusion of these agencies as categorised responders for the whole United Kingdom. I therefore thank each Administration for their engagement and collaboration. I hope that colleagues today will join me in supporting the draft regulations. I commend them to the Committee and beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her helpful introduction to this statutory instrument. It is an excellent proposal to include the coal providers and the meteorological service as category 2 responders. The actual legislation is barely half a page. The rest of the documentation, both the Explanatory Memorandum and the evidence base, are extremely helpful in explaining how the emergency provision is supposed to operate in practice and the difference between the responsibilities of a category 1 and category 2 responder.

I want to raise an issue about how well that is working in practice—and I declare an interest that my grand-daughters were born very prematurely and very small and, this time five years ago, the smallest of them had been allowed home from hospital only after the first eight months of her life, with a ventilator to operate when she was asleep at night and during the day. Nobody was allowed to look after her who had not been trained by the hospital because, if the ventilator failed, there would obviously be very serious consequences. They also provided a heart monitor. At the time, my son and daughter-in-law were told to let their utility supplier know that they required emergency support in the event of a power cut. There was one such power cut—and, when you have a sick baby home from hospital for the first time, you are watching the minutes ticking by and knowing that the battery on your child’s ventilator and heart alarm is going to run down fairly swiftly.

My son rang the utility emergency number, which confirmed that they were on the register, that it was only their estate in south London that had gone out and that, in due course, a generator would be brought to them. An hour and a half later, the story was still the same. My son had to take the decision to remove my granddaughter and all her kit—which filled the car—and bring her to us, where we did have power and were able to ensure that she was safe. I therefore have a particular interest in the emergency supply of electricity, not just for vulnerable people but for those whose lives depend on it.

When there was concern in the autumn about possible blackouts this year, no matter how unlikely, to make sure that the arrangements under the CCA would work for this small group of people, children and adults who have to rely on literally life-saving equipment to keep them alive I asked Energy Ministers and Health Ministers about the registers, which are still held by the utility providers, which are category 2 providers. Disabled groups have also been asking about them. Grant Shapps gave evidence at a BEIS Select Committee meeting that arrangements are there but these individuals need to make emergency arrangements for themselves, which has not been the case in the past and which I found quite extraordinary. For clarity, the register is called the priority services register. That is the one for all vulnerable customers, but it does not distinguish the level of emergency need—and therein lies the problem. In the event of mass power cuts, it is clearly impractical for any energy supplier to provide electricity generators to lots of people at short notice, but asking residents who fall into that category to make that provision for themselves is a further problem.

What has become more worrying, and the reason why I raise this now, is that utility suppliers are telling these individuals that they need to talk to their doctors, who have absolutely no role in this at all. It is clear to many people that the utility suppliers do not understand their role in managing the register. I have also talked to two directors of public health, who are key players on any health issues in local resilience forums and have a particular role in a civil contingency situation, such as a major power cut. They say that they cannot get the right information from the energy suppliers about who it is who needs that extra care. All the focus is on the vulnerable elderly who might get cold. The particular group of people that I refer to seems to fall through the net.

Can the Minister investigate for me how this is meant to work and confirm whether the Secretary of State for BEIS was correct in his assertion in the autumn that the responsibility now lies with the individuals concerned—which seems extraordinary? Can she also confirm whether it is clear to local resilience forums what they should be doing and where they should get their information from regarding this particular group of people?

To end on a happier note: my granddaughter no longer uses a ventilator at night—it took three years—and I must say that all the support that she has had from everyone has been brilliant. But we are a family who really understand the consequences of a major power cut and how life-threatening that can be for a small but very vulnerable group of people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister’s introduction to the SI. Certainly, it is one of the least controversial ones that I have ever dealt with, so I will not labour the point too much.

I would like the Minister to comment on how well the CCA five-yearly review works. Bearing in mind that, on Radio 4, the Environment Agency’s comments on the risk of river flooding were so closely aligned to the Meteorological Office’s warnings, I wonder what difference this statutory obligation will make. Will it have added value? The two things here that have come out of the review are so logical that one wonders why this was not done before. Will the department add other elements of the review? Are there elements that will still require action?

Certainly, there can be no reason for not adding these two bodies as category 2 responders; I am sure that both are currently working to provide information and support. The Minister said that they will not perform additional duties; they are already performing the duties, so there will be no additional cost, but I would like to know how this statutory responsibility will add to the benefit of their work.

With those few comments, I support the order and wish it well.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for this short and very positive debate. It is nice to be able to celebrate delegated legislation that is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, particularly given that, in another world, when I was a poacher rather than a gamekeeper, we used to ask questions about these things together. I thank him very much; it has made my day.

I will respond briefly to some of the helpful points made. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised the very important question of how the legislation works in practice for vulnerable people such as her granddaughter, whom I am delighted to hear is now off the ventilator. A bit of good news is that there are additional recommendations in the CCA review of the legislation—the PIR—which the noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to, which look to strengthen the requirement on the local resilience forums to consider vulnerable people, and a dedicated BEIS-led programme on power supply is part of that.

I will write to the noble Baroness with more information about that, but she is right that we should be improving things for vulnerable people across the board. I will liaise with my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, and between us we will see what we can do about the point that the noble Baroness raised about electricity and, indeed, the more general question about vulnerable people. We have a new resilience framework, and we are very keen for it to think more about the user and to have more of a whole-society approach. The noble Baroness’s point is an excellent example, if we can crack it, of what we should be doing.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, asked what other agencies we thought of adding to category 2. Obviously, it is important to ensure that structures are efficient and effective, and balance is critical in making sure that those important to local planning and preparation are included but do not overwhelm the system. Noble Lords will remember that I used to work in the supermarket industry. We always thought that our role was very important but, in fact, we were not category 2 responders, although we were involved in assisting in the event of terror attacks, flooding, and so on. The honest answer is that other organisations and agencies did not make the cut in terms of benefit versus burden, but if I have any more information, I will pass it on.

The point about phone use and the move to the internet is something I have experienced where I live when I am in London. Exactly the same thing has happened with Virgin Media: we have moved from having a home phone to it now being linked to the wi-fi. I think the noble Lord raises a good point; I do not know what is being done about it, but I will make some inquiries.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about outstanding commitments from the review. As he probably remembers from previous debates, I am very keen on post-implementation evaluation. There are two other potential legislative changes. The first places a reporting obligation on categorised responders to set out publicly how they comply with their statutory duties under the Act. However, we think that may require primary legislation, so it will not be done overnight. The second removes the legacy role of regional nominated co-ordinators in Part 2 of the Act; the regional government offices in England were closed in 2010. That also requires primary legislation, although it is probably less urgent, given its nature.

There were also some non-statutory recommendations. We have committed to placing the national resilience standards, which set out expectations of good and leading practice for local resilience forums, on a statutory footing. We have committed to updating the statutory and non-statutory UK guidance that accompanies the Act. The requirement to produce a community risk register is to be strengthened, with a requirement for responders to consider community demographics, particularly for vulnerable groups, in preparing their community risk register. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be delighted to hear this and it might be relevant to her point. The multiagency preparedness activities conducted by local resilience arrangements require enhanced accountability, which is being given further consideration as part of DLUHC’s reform programme of the local resilience forums. Noble Lords may remember from the debate on extreme risks the other day that I explained that those forums had got more support and are regarded as very important.

In addition, assurance of the preparedness activities conducted as part of local resilience arrangements needs to go further than the current voluntary assessments and peer review. There are various obligations on central government departments to improve information sharing and planning between national and local, such as through a statutory duty to co-operate and information sharing paralleling what we have with category 1 and 2; there are various options that could be looked at. That needs further consideration, but I hope noble Lords can see that that work is in hand.

The recent crisis, including the increasingly eccentric weather—it was -7C in my part of Wiltshire this weekend, which is extraordinary—means that we need to do more in these areas. I hope we have made it clear that that is exactly our plan. It is one of the reasons that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster put out a major document within the last month.

Finally, what difference will the SI make? I make it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that the intention of this intervention is to improve the civil protection framework and ultimately to increase the level of preparedness of relevant organisations to respond collectively to emergencies. The “collective” is as important as anything. As I said in my opening remarks, the new categorisations will increase responder understanding of severe weather, climate change and mining-related risks, and better inform our work to prevent, prepare, respond and recover, thereby improving resilience and reducing adverse impacts.

I believe that the Civil Contingencies Act delivers a strong framework for civil protection in the UK. These two additional responders will strengthen it. I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting the regulations, which I commend to the Committee.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I thank the Minister very much for her generous response. When she writes to me—perhaps we might even be able to meet on this—could she draw a distinction between the general category of vulnerable people and those who are highly impacted by whatever the emergency is? In the case I gave it was utilities.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Indeed. The noble Baroness made it very clear in her contribution that that was exactly the problem: vulnerability comes in different clothing and different categories. We should look at that as part of our resilience work; otherwise, there will be repeated disappointments of the kind she helpfully brought to the attention of the Committee.

Motion agreed.

Preparing for Extreme Risks (RARPC Report)

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

Let me start by thanking my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom for proposing this debate, and I give my thanks to all noble Lords for their excellent contributions. I have, as ever, appreciated the quality of debate today on a matter of great significance, which will impact our children and grandchildren.

The report of the committee, Preparing for Extreme Risks, fathered—or perhaps grandfathered—by the noble Lord, Lord Rees, is of the highest quality, as we have come to expect of the House of Lords. It has the sure touch and elegant thinking of my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot, and, as he said, of the high-quality contributions he received from Members, staff and those Lords and others who gave evidence. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, said, the report was eye-opening. It was eye-opening to me as a new Minister, and incredibly useful, timely, and influential—three very big things.

The risks are many and varied. We have had mention of unpredictable solar flares, malicious deployment of technology, the supply of silicon chips, risk to biological security, the collapse of the central infrastructure. It is a long list, and we are not even starting. My own list includes international risks: Russia and Ukraine, but also China, Taiwan and Iran. I worry about the failures at home, as others do—for example, the electricity system and, which is highly unlikely but worrying and I think not mentioned, the failure of the Gulf Stream, which makes our British nation and climate what it is. If that was to fail, that would be exceptionally serious.

Because of the panoply of extreme risks and their serious nature, we are all agreed on the importance of improving UK resilience. This has to address our plans and assessments looking forward and ensure an effective and flexible response to disasters as they occur. Of course, it is not possible to plan for everything.

I had a lot of questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington. We are working on these issues. Those include the training, about which she and I would both be very enthusiastic. We have appointed a head of resilience, and we published a review of the Civil Contingencies Act on 1 April 2022, which was taken into account in the resilience framework.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Did the Minister say that they have appointed a head of resilience?

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

Has that been announced?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I always like to be the bearer of good news from the Dispatch Box.

We are going to be updating the risk register, as everybody has talked about. I cannot give an exact date, but I can say that we are working on these issues with energy. I am delighted to be working now in this area, and obviously very keen to make progress. I do not think that I can say anything today about the very important issue of powers, because I was on the Back Benches during all the Covid measures, so I very much understand the points that have been made. We have got a Covid inquiry that is taking place, and there has to be some sort of interaction between the Covid inquiry and what we do for the future.

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot for his positive comments on the resilience framework. I am pleased that he recognises elements of his committee’s recommendations within it—in fact, nearly all the recommendations were accepted in whole or in part. My noble friend rightly raised transparency and challenge. We set our commitment to both in the framework and are already working to embed the principles across my departments, and across others. As an example, the national risk register, when it is published in the coming months, will include more detailed risk information and guidance than previous iterations, and it follows the new classified version of the national security risk assessment.

Noble Lords will be pleased to know that the development of the latter involved a great deal of external challenge this time, and the NSRA is more robust as a result. My colleague the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will be chairing the next UK resilience forum in February—just one way in which we are incorporating more independent challenge and expertise from outside government. I hope that further work on resilience this year will demonstrate more progress, and we will update Parliament through our inaugural annual statement on resilience.

The noble Lord also raised the committee’s recommendation, as others did, for an office for preparedness and resilience, and the accountability issue was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, who sadly had to slip away. It is a key factor of the framework and, while have not chosen to establish a new body, we are taking steps to address the spirit of the committee’s recommendations. We agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the need for culture change—a point that she rightly often makes—and that is already happening.

The strength and function at the centre of government build on the approach that we have got under way on things like procurement and infrastructure, and I am sure that it will lead to much better coherence and accountability in the resilience system. We are also strengthening the lead government department model of risk ownership and are establishing a sub-committee of the National Security Council to enable Ministers to focus on national resilience, because ministerial involvement is important in getting things effectively progressed. I need hardly say that the Government also agree with the report’s emphasis on training, conducting exercises and performing dummy runs as a fundamental part of our collective resilience.

We are not just going to carry on as before, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, rather mischievously said, and I look forward to giving evidence to his Built Environment Committee on infrastructure next week and to discussing the improved way we now monitor the progress of hundreds of infrastructure projects.

I am sorry that it has been over a year since the committee’s report was published, but the Government, as I have already outlined, have taken a number of steps to address the points that were raised. It is worth reiterating three key themes. On finalising a new classified national security risk assessment, the changes were informed by recommendations from the committee, but also by an external review from the Royal Academy of Engineering in September 2021. The intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Mair, showed the importance of bringing in the engineers.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the Minister but one of the key points is about the methodology adopted for the NSRA, and one of the key issues that appears to be emerging is that the Government do not seem to be committing to go beyond a five-year horizon. What assurance can the Minister give about the methodology that is going to be used, and whether we are going to be looking further into the future?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think the noble Lord is right that the main focus is on the next five years, but I will perhaps come back to him to discuss that point further. It is clear from what I have been saying that we are looking at extreme risks, and they are not necessarily going to arrive tomorrow, so I understand and sympathise with the point he has made.

The second step is strengthening the crisis and resilience structures in the Cabinet Office with the creation, as I have said, of the resilience directorate and the COBRA unit. We are responsible for resilience planning and national crisis response, working closely with departments which have sectoral responsibilities. This includes identifying, planning and preparing for risks, and building capacity to respond effectively. The changes to how it is organised will help to ensure that the Government have the capacity and capability to respond to emergencies, which is obviously particularly important in the wake of Covid-19.

Thirdly, we are working to improve our resilience to chronic risks and vulnerabilities, such as climate change—which was emphasised by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso—and artificial intelligence. We have recognised that this type of risk poses continuous challenges over time to communities, the economy and security, and requires a different type of response to more acute risks, such as flooding or terrorism.

The scale of the risks we face has required a new strategic approach to resilience. That is why we published the UK Government Resilience Framework in December, which previously had the working title of “national resilience strategy”, to respond to a point made by several noble Lords. It is a new strategy which is already being implemented across government. It reflects our ongoing commitment to resilience which we made in last year’s integrated review, and the new strategic approach will be reflected in further publications this year, with the refreshed national risk register, the updated biological security strategy, and the update to the integrated review itself, which has also been promised.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has given us some good information about progress being made but, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said in his introduction, this is all a question of when it is going to happen and having some independent monitoring of progress. Does she not think that it would be a good idea to have something independent, rather like the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, as I mentioned? I can quiz her further when she comes to meet our Select Committee next week, but I would really rather hear it now.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, and I will reflect further on the best way of satisfying him.

I emphasise that the framework is important and strategic. It strengthens the systems, structures and capabilities which underpin the UK’s resilience to all risks and those that might emerge. It is based on three key principles. The first is a shared understanding of the risks we face. The second is a focus on prevention rather than cure, wherever this is possible, as several people have mentioned. Some risks can be predicted or prevented, but it is more difficult to do so for others. The third principle is of resilience as a whole-of-society endeavour. Everyone seems to agree on the importance of that. We are more transparent, and we want to empower all parts of society to make a contribution, so I was glad to hear from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester about the possible role of faith groups and volunteers of all kinds. He is right about the contribution they make in crises, as I know from the work of the churches in my own local area of the Nadder Valley. Faith groups are also part of the local resilience forums. In London, for example, we have a voluntary, community and faith sector sub-group—but the key message is about resilience as a whole-of-society endeavour. Covid taught us the value of that.

Nobody has mentioned this, but central to delivery on those three principles is improving the communication of risks and impacts. We want people to better understand what they may actually experience, and what they can do to protect themselves, their families and their communities. We must drive early action on risks; that is at the core of the framework.

Some noble Lords will have looked at the framework, which sets out our ambition to 2030. It includes improved risk communication by growing the Government’s advisory groups to bring in experts, academics and industrial partners. We are strengthening local resilience forums, which has included extra DLUHC funding to improve multi-agency planning. I should say that my husband is chair of a parish council, so I know that resilience systems already assist in great detail towns and villages, and how important that was in marshalling voluntary effort during Covid. We need to build on those sorts of strengths. The measures include delivering a new UK resilience academy built up from the Emergency Planning College, thereby making world-class professional training available to all who need it. I have a lot of material on that, if noble Lords are interested. We are also establishing a new Cabinet sub-committee of the National Security Council. I suspect that we will have many more debates, because we are introducing an annual statement to Parliament on civil contingencies risk and the UK Government’s performance, which I hope will help noble Lords to hold us to account.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

Excuse me, but the noble Baroness used the phrase “the civil contingencies risk”. That is contained throughout the new framework. Can she explain what exactly that excludes, and why?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I must make progress. If I can answer, I will do so—otherwise, I shall speak with or write to the noble Lord.

It is important to remember that data cuts through everything that we do—supporting innovation by helping us be more dynamic and spot risks early. At a local level, data enables us to support mutual aid between different areas to provide additional capacity where it is most needed. Data is also informing our approach to how we can use artificial intelligence to flag up areas of vulnerability or concern. We have strengthened our effort with the joint data and analysis centre in the Cabinet Office, as well as with the impressive National Situation Centre, which is providing real-time insights about what is happening across a plethora of urgent and high-priority topics and bringing data to crisis management.

We have to be realistic. There is much in life and politics for which we can neither plan nor prepare. While prevention is a key principle, it cannot replace careful and effective management of emergencies as they occur. For that reason, the framework also proposes actions to improve response, including in areas such as cyber and preparation for risks, and to ensure that partners throughout the system are able fully to play their part. There is a shift away from simply dealing with the effects of emergencies. It is fair to say—the framework shows this—that there has been a step change in ambition. We have the structures and focus we need to do much better.

I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for kindly bringing his expertise to this debate and I very much agree with much of what he said about the cold realities and challenges. The Government’s risk-assessment approach must draw on best practice from the private sector and we have made progress on this, as I have said. The framework commits the Government to creating a process for future iterations of the NSRA that invites challenge from industry, as well as from academia, the international risk community and others. Partners from the financial services are important. In the light of what my noble friend said, we will review opportunities to better engage the insurance industry, recognising the critical and practical role that it obviously places in forecasting extreme risk and dealing with national insurance.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, raised the model of the Climate Change Committee, as did the noble Lord, Lord Thurso. It is the Government’s view that the existing committee system is the most effective means by which departments can be held to account for this responsibility. We will provide an opportunity for an overarching conversation on resilience through our new annual statement. The noble Lord also mentioned the report by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy on critical infrastructure and climate adaptation. The framework sets out how we will continue to strengthen resilience across both public and private sectors.

The noble Lord, Lord Mair, drew attention to some very interesting examples. I do not think we can commit to setting up a register of critical infrastructure as he suggested, but I will keep that suggestion under review. We are very much focused on investment in ageing infrastructure and all departments are expected to monitor this, so I would like to bring his expertise to the piece in some way.

The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, questioned whether the Government are providing enough money and resources. The lead government department model for individual risks means we have clear accountability for individual risks, with risk owners responsible for ensuring investment in their areas and the Cabinet Office supporting. However, the framework will ensure that resilience is considered as an integral aspect of almost all policy-making. There is devoted funding for some specific areas, such as local resilience forums, and we have achieved systematic change by ensuring that investment in resilience is embedded into decision-making across government. It is always a difficult area, but the commitment, the framework and the new Cabinet committee will make a considerable difference to prioritisation.

The noble Lord, Lord Rees, talked about biological security. Our refreshed strategy will strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. It will stimulate R&D in the life sciences sector and underpin the UK’s international leadership and advantage across the life sciences and applied data science.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised many questions in a wide-ranging speech, mainly about health. I will look at what she said and see if I can add anything to what I have already said about the progress we are making.

The Government have already taken on board many of the recommendations of this report with individual actions, and the resilience framework goes even further. Building resilience is truly a whole-of-society and national endeavour. We are determined to work together to be better prepared for the challenges we face. I thank the committee warmly for its important contribution to this task. I look forward to further discussion in this House on these important issues and to bringing the immense expertise to bear in making our country more resilient and better able to deal with the crises that, sadly, from time to time emerge.

Public Service Ombudsman for England

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans at this time to create a new single public service ombudsman for England. The Government are supportive of the ombudsman institutions and the general principles of the Venice Commission, and will consider specific proposals on ombudsman reform. We do not currently view large-scale ombudsman reform as a priority for this Parliament.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, that is a very disappointing response. We have 20 ombudsmen. It is often very confusing for members of the public taking a complaint to find which one applies to them, particularly where complaints straddle boundaries between, say, health and local government—on a delayed discharge from the NHS into social care, for instance. Putting them all together, alongside the local government and housing ombudsmen, would ensure a much more co-ordinated response and provide much better value for money. Will the Government reconsider this?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The trouble is that combining the existing public services ombudsmen—there are several, as the noble Lord explained—would be a complex and substantial undertaking. It could lead to a reduction in the quality of service for people relying on that service during the transition period, and staff would worry about their futures. I am not sure quite what just putting them together would achieve. The key thing is to have expertise and effective ombudsman decisions, which we have increasingly seen in recent years.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I had not realised until I went into the background of this Question that we have 20 different ombudsmen in the United Kingdom. Nor had I realised that one ombudsman deals with the health service and another one deals with social care, which seems to be not very well organised. Nor had I realised, furthermore, that you have to go through your MP if you want to go to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Does the Minister not think that there are a number of problems within the existing set-up that the Government ought at least to look at again?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As I said in my opening remarks, some changes we are able to look at, and we have made improvements. On the MP filter, which the noble Lord refers to, it is designed to help complainants. MPs are able to make confidential inquiries with officials or Ministers and resolve issues quickly. In addition to referring individual cases to be investigated by the ombudsman, they can raise issues publicly in the House of Commons. The ombudsman has a democratic element. It is a parliamentary creature and I think it helps to hold the Executive to account. Of course, the PACAC takes a great deal of interest and is responsible for the appointment of the ombudsman, who is a parliamentary officer.

[Lord Etherton (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the view of the peer review of the PHSO by the International Ombudsman Institute, completed in November last year, that the compulsory MP filter for complaints to the PHSO in his capacity as parliamentary ombudsman is a breach of the requirement of the Venice principles that people raising complaints should have a right to free and unhindered access to the ombudsman. The evidence is that some 88% of people who mistakenly come direct to the PHSO in his capacity as parliamentary ombudsman do not return with their complaint when they realise that they need to go to their MP first. Should not the MP filter be made optional as soon as possible?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think I have already commented on the MP filter. We do think that the international principles are important, but we also need to make sure that the existing system, which focuses very well on individuals, is not undermined. I was looking at the website today and I was struck by how this does not look only at big and well-known cases but at individual ones; for example, a man died days before his wedding to his partner of 40 years due to a hospital failing, and remedies were put forward by the ombudsman. The MP filter, a democratic element, really is important in the complaints process.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

But, my Lords, MPs are not able to do that sort of inquiry when they get something from a patient; all they can do is say, “Yes, I agree with it”, and forward it on. What we know, as the noble and learned Lord said, is that nine out of 10 people who first go to the ombudsman and are then told they cannot do it without an MP supporting them go no further. How does the Minister explain to those nine out of 10 that they have no access to redress for anything that has gone wrong?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

On the health area, there was an extensive debate during the passage of the Health and Care Act last year, and I will reflect further on the point the noble Baroness has made and come back to her. However, in some areas such as the DWP there is of course an independent case examiner, which also helps with the flow. We are talking about big numbers here already. I was looking at the figures: there were 5,330 PHSO cases in 2020-21, so it is important that we find a way of resolving complaints, not necessarily through the ombudsman. You need a combination of the two systems.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, surely moving to one overarching body would save substantial money in terms of sharing HR and administrative costs and other overheads. No one is suggesting that there should be an immediate transition, but surely a gradual transition would make a lot of sense.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

One always hears these arguments in relation to agencies; for example, we put some together to form the Environment Agency. Although there were many pluses, there was also a transition. I remember being in the Business Department when the Department for International Trade was split off. There is a transition cost, which was the point I was making at the beginning. We are talking about a Government with a lot of priorities. As my noble friend says, if we are going to have reform, this is not an immediate priority, but that does not mean that we are not looking at possibilities to improve these things all the time. That is very much what the Parliamentary Ombudsman himself is always trying to do.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I think I heard the Minister say that the Government have made improvements to the overall system. Can she tell us what those improvements are and how we might recognise them?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Partly as a result of work by PACAC, the ombudsman has improved transparency. There are now summaries of decisions on the website in a user-friendly form. The website shows how people who have problems can apply to the ombudsman or go to other sources if they are not eligible to do so. It also allows us to keep up to date with complaints. As I said, the reporting style is more user-friendly, and that is important with complaints.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, this is about public confidence in our public services. If the system was working as well as the Minister seems to want to suggest, public confidence in our public services would be improving. Can she name a single public service, such as health, education or policing, where public confidence has improved over the past 13 years?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am tempted to say that I will write to the noble Baroness. Obviously, there are surveys and things that I do not have to hand today because I came to talk about the ombudsman, not public services in the round, but there have been considerable improvements in many public services for business and for citizens. Clearly, the Covid epidemic has caused enormous problems, which have led to difficulties with public services.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

What about the war in Ukraine?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As the noble Lord says, the war in Ukraine has caused problems as well. We also face a challenging demography in this country. All these things have an effect, but this Government are determined to improve public services. That is a very important objective and I am trying to help with it from the Cabinet Office; I am trying not to make difficulties worse by, for example, inspiring changes that will potentially cause substantial difficulties for the flow of casework, which is so important. I come from a business background. Dealing with complaints well is very important.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, is it also possible to look at the fact that, if you have a financial complaint, you can wait over a year to get it sorted? I know a number of people who are finding that the financial problem they brought is very pressing, and waiting over a year is not an answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Lord always talks good sense. I agree with his point in relation to the public sector ombudsman, but he is talking about financial services, which are the subject of private financial services ombudsmen; they are different and operate through the regulatory system. So there is a mixture of public service ombudsmen and, in some sectors, private sector ombudsmen; they deal with things in a different way, such as through membership, fees and so on.