Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill [HL]

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support this short but very important Bill; we should get it on to the statute book as rapidly as possible. I could stop there, because my noble friend the Minister has introduced the Bill with her customary diligence, but I hope that the House will indulge me if I spend a few minutes on the plight of motor neurone disease sufferers. I pay tribute to the tireless campaign waged by the Motor Neurone Disease Association to achieve the changes in the Bill, and indeed the similar changes already made to universal credit and other benefits.

Motor neurone disease is a terrible disease. It involves the degeneration of motor neurones so that muscles weaken, and moving, swallowing, speaking and breathing all become more and more difficult. There is no cure available. Because it does not generally affect the senses, sufferers are only too aware of the way in which their bodies are failing, which is a particularly cruel aspect of the disease.

There is no single test available for motor neurone disease, and its low prevalence means that it can take some time for a diagnosis to be made once the onset of symptoms is noticed. Once diagnosed, one-third of sufferers die within a year, and half die within two years. There are around only 5,000 people living in the UK at any one time suffering from motor neurone disease, which is probably why they have not been seen as a national priority. I am very glad that the DWP has now started to tackle their plight in the benefits system.

The rate of progression of the disease varies considerably, and this has caused huge problems in the past for motor neurone disease sufferers in getting access to benefits on a fast-track basis, because it was hard to pinpoint when the previous six-month horizon for a reasonable expectation of death came into play. The extension to 12 months and to an end-of-life approach is not a perfect solution but it should make it much easier for people to be fast-tracked on to benefits, which will do something to make life easier for them and their families as their lives are inevitably taken by the disease.

I thank the Government for making these changes and the ones already made in secondary legislation. I have just one request for my noble friend the Minister: I hope that she will commit to the DWP monitoring the impact of these changes and standing ready to make further changes if the data show that they do not deliver the benefits expected for MND sufferers and, indeed, any sufferers debilitated by life-ending disease.

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I do not like breaking manifesto commitments, so my support for the Bill is tinged with regret, but I do wholeheartedly support it. I am clear that Covid has created significant complications for the triple lock two years running. Last year, as we have heard, earnings growth was negative, which under the law should have resulted in a zero increase in pensions. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions brought legislation to ignore that and awarded a 2.5% increase. This year she has faced artificially high earnings growth and has wisely chosen to ignore that too, so she will make the determination based on the higher of 2.5% and CPI inflation. We should not look at this year in isolation.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Stowell, that the Bill is fair. In particular, it is fair to pensioners, whose income will be protected in real terms. Last year, their income increased above the rate of CPI inflation. This year it will be no worse than CPI inflation. Next year we should be able to return to the normal formula, so that if earnings growth continues, pensioners too will benefit. Noble Lords will know that this Government are committed to a high-wage economy, not a low-wage one. This is good news not only for those in work but also, through the triple lock, for pensioners as well.

While I support what the Government are doing in the Bill, I have never been keen on the triple lock, mainly because I believe that writing formulae into legislation is just a recipe for trouble. The last two years, in relation to pensions, are proof of that. We need to stop virtue signalling in legislation because good intentions often collide with reality and corrective legislation then serves to magnify the problem. So, I would take it out of legislation.

Some have tried to make a case that pensioners are particularly badly treated and that pensioner poverty is increasing, but those who do that tend to use selective measures of relative poverty and are highly selective about segments of the total pensioner population. If we look at absolute measures of poverty, there are 200,000 fewer pensioners living in absolute poverty than there were 10 years ago. We will probably never eliminate relative poverty, but we can and should focus on absolute poverty.

In addition, we should not look only to the basic state pension to ensure that pensioners receive an adequate income. In the long run, access to further pension income, by virtue of automatic enrolment, should be a significant element of pensioner income. In the short term, as other noble Lords have referred to, pension credit is important. As the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, pointed out, it is important not only for the increased income that it gives to some of the poorest old people, but also because it acts as a gateway to further significant benefits. It is therefore a real shame that the latest estimates from DWP show that nearly £2 billion each year is unclaimed and 1 million households are losing out.

I took part in the pension credit legislation when it was introduced in your Lordships’ House almost exactly 20 years ago. Two highly expert and redoubtable Baronesses—both no longer with us, sadly—were on the Labour Benches. On the Front Bench was Baroness Hollis of Heigham and behind her was Baroness Castle of Blackburn. Baroness Castle disliked means-tested benefits and knew that pensioners in particular worried about the stigma attached to claiming benefits. She worried—and she was very worried—that 20% would go unclaimed, a figure in line with other similar benefits at the time. Baroness Hollis refused to give the Government’s estimate for pension credit take-up. Baroness Castle must be turning in her grave at the fact that nearly 40% do not claim.

On our Benches, we pressed Baroness Hollis to say how the Government would ensure that pensioners got what they were entitled to without the Government incurring massive administrative costs. It is fair to say that we got no sensible answer to that question at the time and I believe that it still needs to be answered. The Government have said all the right things but I am not sure that their record on this is one to be proud of. Can my noble friend the Minister say what the Government’s strategy is for pension credit uptake and when we will see real improvements in the rate?

Covid-19—or rather the Government’s response to it—has had a massive negative impact on our economy that cannot be ignored. Support to individuals and businesses has cost over £400 billion and debt has risen to around 100% of GDP. While the economy is now recovering well, there is a lot of work to do to restore economic and fiscal health. In the meantime, the Government are going to have to make some hard decisions. In relation to this Bill, I believe that the Government have got it right with the state pension. It is a fair increase and a fair outcome for taxpayers.

Before concluding, I must say something about the universal credit uplift because several noble Lords have tried to drag the issue of its removal into this Bill. I believe that is a category error. It is quite unrelated to the level of the state pension and I sincerely hope that noble Lords will respect the narrow purpose of this Bill and not try to impede its passage towards Royal Assent.

Environment Bill

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness in this grouping. I am not sure why we have been grouped together but I think it will work well and I am sure that her advice on some of the things I am going to say will be welcome, if not during the debate, maybe later on.

This is a probing amendment. I first need to tell the House that I am not opposing the clause but this is the only way I could find, with the help of the excellent clerks, of coming up with something that enabled me to start a debate on something that I think is quite important in a Bill that is as wide as this and, of course, includes issues, as the noble Baroness said, about the Prince of Wales’s support for small farmers. I certainly welcome that. He is right.

When it comes to the Crown, however, it gets a bit more complicated. I think noble Lords will know that the Crown normally comprises four elements: the Crown itself and its public element; the Duchy of Lancaster; the Government, or various government departments; and the Duchy of Cornwall. It is clear to me that the Duchy of Cornwall is different, as it claims to be in the private sector, which means that one ought to look at the role of the Duchy of Cornwall and the benefits that it gets rather separately from the other three parts of the Crown. As the noble Baroness said, of course, one issue is the Crown exemption clauses, which sometimes avoid the Crown needing to comply with legislation. I shall come back to that. I therefore have a number of questions for the Minister, which I suspect he will not be able to answer today, but I would be very pleased if he could write to me on them.

As I said, there are three categories of Act in relation to the Crown. I am very grateful to a good friend of mine, Dr John Kirkhope, who is a real expert on this. He has helped me with what I am about to say, because it is quite complicated. First, there are Acts in which the Crown enjoys Crown immunity, which includes leasehold reform Acts, income tax Acts, et cetera. Secondly, there are Acts which bind the Crown, but if an Act does not say that it binds the Crown, it does not. Then there is a third category: those Acts that bind the Crown but where there is no criminal sanction if the Crown is in breach; these have what are called Crown exemption clauses. Of course, this brings me back to the Duchy.

Therefore, I have a number of questions on parts of the Bill and the effect it may have on the different parts of the Crown—be they the Duchy of Cornwall or the other parts—which I want to pose to the Minister. I start with Clause 30(3), which relates to the OEP and defines “public authority”. It appears that the definition does not include the Crown, as defined in Schedule 18. Does that mean that the power of the OEP does not extend to the Crown? In particular, does it extend to the Duchy of Cornwall? Next, does Clause 49, in Part 3, apply to the Crown? In other words, if any Crown body is found to have dumped waste, would it be subject to the various sanctions outlined? Again, which Crown bodies are we referring to?

I note many references to the Environmental Protection Act 1990, but if noble Lords refer to Section 76 of that Act, in relation to the Isles of Scilly, or, more particularly, Section 159, it includes Crown exemption clauses. This means that there is no criminal sanction if the Crown—which includes the Duchy of Cornwall, where I live—is in breach.

I can go on. Another example is Schedule 21 to the Environment Act 1995, which includes a similar provision, to which reference is made in Clause 63 of this Bill. I also refer to Section 77 of the Water Industries Act 1991, Section 221 of which provides Crown exemption. I will not go through any more of these references in the Bill, but I am sure noble Lords have got the picture. Therefore, my question is: to what extent do all these references to other pieces of past legislation bind the Crown? Do they bind all parts of the Crown, or do they bind only the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster and government departments, and not the Duchy of Cornwall?

Before putting down this question of whether the clause should stand part, I did think of trying to draft some amendments on this, but it is incredibly complicated. I would really welcome the opportunity to sit down with the Minister and his officials to see whether there could be some response which would clarify the Crown exemption clauses and where the Crown is and is not included. One suggestion would be to table an amendment which says that the Act binds the Duchy of Cornwall; that is another option. It is very complicated, but it is very important that the Crown and the Duchy of Cornwall are recognised for what they are and whether they should be included or not, and whether there need to be even some changes to previous legislation to clarify this, otherwise there is a danger that the Bill—which has some really good parts; we have discussed much of it over the last eight sessions—could get even more complicated. I trust that is helpful to the Minister and look forward to his response in due course.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who always raises such interesting points. I agree with him that it is rather odd that his clause stand part debate has been grouped with my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s amendment. I will concentrate my remarks on my noble friend’s amendment, to which I have added my name. I have not hitherto taken part on this Bill, though I have sat in a few times and read quite a bit of the record of proceedings in Hansard, but my noble friend’s Amendment 297A has tempted me in from the sidelines.

Bills such as this one, which are full of good intent and focused on issues that some are passionate about, often get very little scrutiny of their costs and the consequences of actions taken under them. At Second Reading there was very little focus on that. There were just two shining exceptions. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, emphasised the need for government policies to be prioritised and to ensure that actions taken under the Bill did not, for example, harm economic growth policies. The noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, drew attention to the fact that actions taken in the interests of the environment involve trade-offs and that there was a lacuna in the Bill in respect of considering economic impacts when setting targets under it. I know that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has several times raised the issue of the costs and benefits of the Bill in Committee, and I am glad that she has tabled Amendment 297A to ensure that regulations made under the Bill’s powers are rigorously assessed.

My noble friend’s amendment gives the Government the benefit of the doubt for the first regulations laid under what will be an Act, and I know that my noble friend the Minister has said several times during Committee that full impact statements will be prepared for each of those regulations. The trouble is that impact statements are narrowly defined by the Cabinet Office and suffer from many defects. They commonly understate costs or do not cast the net wide enough to capture all of them. The analysis is typically based on identified persons or bodies, or groups of them, and hence fails to capture whole-system impacts, such as macroeconomic impacts. Impact statements often overstate the benefits or take a macro-level calculation of benefit and use that to frank all the micro-level actions, as the impact statement for this Bill does in respect of a global assessment of potential biodiversity gain. They are also generally optimistic about things such as new opportunities for businesses to innovate. The huge impact statement issued for this Bill suffers from most of these defects and is not decision-useful for assessing its impact.

I very much doubt that the final impact statements for individual regulations will be much better because of these structural deficiencies. The virtue of my noble friend’s amendment is that she allows a five-year period—capable of extension—to gain evidence of the impact of measures. In addition, the amendment calls for a broad evaluation, not a narrow Cabinet Office-style impact assessment, before any regulations are allowed to continue, and it includes the economic impact—on economic growth—and social impact. Concentrating on these would go a long way to remedy the usual deficiencies of impact statements.

My noble friend’s amendment is a modest and proportionate attempt to get some rigour into the parliamentary scrutiny of environmental policy-making, and I hope it will find favour with my noble friend the Minister.

Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices (EUC Report)

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to be back physically in your Lordships’ House, despite the hostile environment that the risk-averse House authorities have created for us. It is also a pleasure to take part in this debate on a trio of interesting reports from committees of your Lordships’ House.

I particularly welcome the Constitution Committee’s acknowledgement that treaty-making is a function of government exercised through the royal prerogative. I also welcome the fact that the committee did not recommend that our Parliament copied the European Parliament’s procedures.

There is undoubtedly at present a greater appetite in Parliament for detailed involvement in treaties. The Government responded positively to that with the new procedures for FTAs set out in their February 2019 Command Paper, and I understand that that broadly remains government policy. But the three reports being debated show that there is an insatiable beast lurking in the committees of your Lordships’ House. This beast wants more information and more involvement on more aspects of treaty activity.

The beast also has the CRaG Act in its sights. That is clear from all the reports we are considering, although the treaty sub-committee’s report pragmatically accepts that there will be no immediate change to the CRaG Act and has wisely concentrated on its working procedures. The Ponsonby rule, which underpins the CRaG Act, was quite good enough for Parliament in the days before we joined the EU. It should be quite good enough for Parliament now that we are a free-standing nation again. I can see no need to change the Act.

In particular, given that new FTAs will be discussed with Parliament at various stages of their evolution, the 21 sitting days, which is practically five elapsed weeks, seem to provide an adequate window for final scrutiny prior to ratification. It may well be that your Lordships’ House needs to work in more agile ways to accommodate that timeframe, but the starting point need not be that more time is required.

I believe that the root cause of this desire to spend more time scrutinising treaties is a belief in your Lordships’ House that Brexit is a bad thing and that everything the Government do as a consequence of it is potentially bad. Even when our new pro-Brexit Peers arrive, that will likely remain the dominant view of your Lordships’ House. I hope that the House will continue its journey through the various stages of grief over Brexit and arrive at the final stage of acceptance. I predict that at that stage the appetite for spending significant time on treaties will diminish. We will of course still need a treaties committee in your Lordships’ House, unless a Joint Committee is set up. But, like my noble friend Lord Lansley, I hope that it will be a fully fledged Select Committee, not a mere sub-committee of the EU Committee, which will itself of course recede in importance as we start to live in a post-Brexit world.

EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Noakes]

That this House takes note of the Prime Minister’s speech on Europe on 23 January.

[Baroness Noakes]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to invite your Lordships’ House to take note of the Prime Minister’s speech on Europe. This was a bold speech about the future of our relationship with the EU, and was well worth waiting for. It may be too much to expect, but I hope that all noble Lords will today join me in welcoming the prospect of a new settlement in Europe, and in particular, the opportunity for the people of this country to have their say on it.

My right honourable friend the Prime Minister set the context for his speech by saying that he spoke as a:

“British Prime Minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part”.

It is well known that my party includes people across the whole spectrum of views on Britain in Europe. However, I believe that the Prime Minister’s plan to negotiate a sustainable basis for the UK to remain in active membership of the EU hits the sweet spot for our party and, I hope, for the whole country.

It is a fact that the financial crisis has exposed the fault lines in the euro, and there have to be changes to allow the eurozone to function. The lesson from history was that monetary union would not survive without deeper union on other fronts, and that is one of the many reasons why the UK will never want to join the euro. The first steps towards banking union have been taken with a single supervisory arrangement, which your Lordships’ House debated last week, but that is just the start of what will be needed to shore up the eurozone.

At the same time, countries outside the eurozone have to protect their own national interests against the development of a large voting bloc, particularly in relation to the single market. We have achieved protections in the context of banking union, at least for now, but the task will get tougher as the eurozone integrates further.

I am sure that those who are designing changes to the eurozone will move heaven and earth to avoid treaty changes; not because they are afraid of the UK, but because they will not want to risk testing popular opinion within the eurozone countries. Therefore, we may not have the opportunity of a treaty through which to negotiate a new way forward. Even if that opportunity does not exist, I believe the Prime Minister is right to pursue the reshaping of how the EU works, not just for us, but for all members.

The Prime Minister put forward five principles as the basis for a new start: the EU should be more competitive; there should be a flexible structure of membership, particularly for those who do not sign up to ever closer union; powers must start to flow back to member states; we need a bigger role for national parliaments; and any new arrangements must be fair for all members, particularly those outside the eurozone. I believe that all but the most ardent of federalists should support these principles. Yesterday, in the other place, the Labour Front Bench supported them and I hope that it will do so again today.

I am sure that some noble Lords today will try to dismiss the Prime Minister's determination to reach a new settlement in Europe as naive or foolish or both. I am sure that some whose careers and livelihoods depend on the EU’s institutions and powers hope that they can swat the UK away like an irritating fly, and carry on as before.

The UK’s concerns are not necessarily those of the majority but they are not held in isolation. Other countries will remain outside the eurozone and will need protection against eurozone bloc voting. Some countries within the eurozone, such as the Netherlands, also question the balance of powers between Brussels and their own democratic institutions. I am sure that many more have concerns about the decline in competitiveness in the EU, even if they do not yet share our view that the answer is less—not more—Europe. Importantly, there are countries, particularly those in the north, that positively want the UK to remain at the table as much as we want to remain there.

Of course, renegotiation will be tough. We cannot take it for granted that we can negotiate our way to a satisfactory relationship with Europe. I am absolutely convinced, however, that the British people must have the final word on whether or not we can remain in the EU, on whatever terms can be achieved. I know that some of your Lordships do not like referenda and believe that it is the role of politicians to make all decisions, but I do not share that view. I believe that the British people have to be consulted on major issues, and the EU and our relationship with it certainly is one of the major issues of our time. I believe that we can trust the British public to reach the correct answer. In recent history the British public have shown their innate common sense when given a referendum.

I hope that those on the Liberal Democrat Benches will not declare against a referendum simply because they might not like the answer. I gently remind them that before the previous election their leader fronted a campaign for what he called a “real referendum on Europe”; namely, an in-out vote.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am listening very carefully to my noble friend’s impressive speech but, on a point of information, we should be clear that in 2008 at the time of Lisbon, the Liberal Democrats said, and repeated at the general election, that if there was a substantial shift of powers to Europe there should be a referendum. That was the position we took at the election. That is the position that has now been legislated for—just as a point of accuracy.

[Baroness Noakes]

That is very interesting and we look forward to hearing further from the noble Lord later, but I have seen the videos of Mr Clegg on this subject.

Last week Mr Miliband was quick to say that he was against a referendum but almost immediately his colleagues briefed that he did not want a referendum now—or yet. We can agree on that. The Prime Minister is not promising one now, but in 2017. I will be listening intently to the Benches opposite today in the hope that we will get some clarity on their position. This is not just a debating point. I am not foolish enough to think that a Conservative victory in the next general election is a done deal and hence that my party’s policy will definitely be implemented. The electorate must be left in no doubt about whether and when any Labour Government would give them a say as well.

The scaremongers have been saying that the Prime Minister’s speech has cast a damaging shadow of uncertainty over the UK economy for the next five years. These prophets of doom also predicted, with spectacular inaccuracy, that Britain’s failure to join the euro would be our undoing. In any event, uncertainty was created as soon as the eurozone states faced up to having to work together in a deeper way. We have to protect our national interests so our relationship with the EU inevitably has to change. The Prime Minister is right to be on the front foot on this and to seek a comprehensive way forward.

If the Prime Minister can negotiate a good outcome for the UK, which meets the five principles that he set out, I am sure that the British people will vote to remain in but it is a big “if”. Some of my honourable friends in the other place are engaged in the Fresh Start project and have recently produced the excellent Manifesto for Change. This includes major changes to social and employment rules, in particular being free from the costly working time directive and agency staff rules. It also targets policing and criminal justice laws, agricultural and fisheries policies, the bloated EU budget and further financial services legislation. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will outline what the Government will target. I know that revealing one’s hand is not good strategy in poker but for the sake of the public debate the Government need to be open about what they want to achieve in the national interest.

If the Government achieved most of the Fresh Start agenda, that could create an EU worth staying in but if they achieve significantly less than that, an out vote will seem to many of us like a better choice. Leaving the EU is not my preferred outcome but I am not afraid of the prospect if the deal on offer is substandard. An exit from the EU would not be the end of the world. Three million jobs might well be connected with the 40% or so of the UK’s exports that go to Europe but they are at risk only if, as pointed out by the man who calculated that figure, Professor Iain Begg, we stop trading with the EU. There is no sign that we will, not least because we have a persistent trade deficit with the EU. It is therefore rational for the EU to want to carry on trading with us. It is also not clear that we have to accept the kind of solutions to which Norway and Switzerland have signed up. There are many other countries in the world that trade with the EU without conditions attached.

Some assert that we would lose out on foreign direct investment but there is no evidence for this. International studies show that there is a host of unquantifiable social, political and institutional factors at play when decisions on investment are made. There is a lot more going for the UK than its EU membership and I remind noble Lords that we did not suffer, as was predicted, when we chose to stay out of the euro.

As we have debated several times over the years in your Lordships’ House, there is no definitive study of the economic impact of leaving the EU and successive Governments have refused to commission such a study. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who is in his place, has often sought to press Governments to do just that. Professor Begg’s verdict on the impact of exit is that we,

“would probably find that the economic plus or minus is very small”.

That is good enough for me. Exit would not be easy but the consequences need not terrify us into staying locked in a loveless marriage in the EU.

Let me conclude by wishing the Prime Minister the very best of luck in negotiating a new settlement in Europe but at the end of that road the Government must be honest about the quality of the deal available and the extent to which it meets our national interests. There must be no attempt to portray a sow’s ear as a silk purse. A referendum in 2017 is an exciting prospect, but its result will need to stand the test of time and we must be absolutely clear, which we were not in 1975, about exactly what we will get for our vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Noakes]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this good debate. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that three minutes did not diminish the quality of the contributions. That is the only thing on which I think that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

A regular criticism made of the Prime Minister was that this was simply a party political move. As my noble friend the Minister has pointed out, however, there is widespread disillusionment in the country with the EU, and in polls there is regularly a majority of the country which does not wish to stay in the EU and wishes to have major renegotiation. That is what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is responding to, and it is unworthy of other people here to suggest that is solely for party political reasons.

My noble friend Lord Howell made the point that the Prime Minister wants to negotiate changes that benefit all of Europe and not just the UK. Of course it is the national interest that will determine how we vote when we get a referendum. While we want to benefit the rest of Europe we will judge the result against our interests and that is important. As my noble friend the Minister has pointed out, we are still unclear about the Labour Party’s position on a referendum, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and others that the Labour Party will probably have to come to the table and offer a referendum to the people. Given the popular view of the voters, that will be irresistible and is just a matter of time. To him and all other doubters on this subject I say, “Bring it on”.

Motion agreed.