COP26
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I passionately agree: I know that UK farming is getting cleaner and greener all the time. I pay tribute to the UK farming industry, which leads the world in setting standards.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Commitments are one thing; actions are another. For the UK to deliver on its promises and commitments in the COP26 agreement, a transition to renewable energy must occur, and must be supported by the Government. Will the Prime Minister commit himself to at least matching the Scottish Government’s £500 million just transition fund to drive the move to renewable energy and meet the UK’s emissions reduction obligations, while also ensuring that workers are not left behind?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is right to say that a just transition is vital, but that is why we are investing £12.6 billion around the world and £26 billion in this country, to help the transition to a clean, green economy, while creating 440,000 new, high-quality jobs.
G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for an exceedingly thoughtful question. He is absolutely right in the logic of what he says. We must help the developing world to leapfrog. All sorts of technologies are very attractive, including the one that he suggests. The opportunity there is to generate fantastic British jobs as well.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Open Democracy recently reported the Prime Minister’s former colleague in the EU Vote Leave campaign, Nigel Farage, as saying that a referendum on green taxes
“could well be my latest campaign”.
We are hearing increasingly loud objections from the so-called net zero scrutiny group from among his ranks of MPs. The Institute of Economic Affairs said recently that it would
“continue to challenge the ropey economics”
of net zero. What will the Prime Minister do to challenge those siren voices from among his supporters?
The Prime Minister
I study the people’s feelings about this. What so changed in this COP from Paris, which I attended, or from Copenhagen, which I was also at, is that this time, it is from the public. I have great respect for colleagues around the House who say that this is all going too far, too fast and that people cannot afford it. Actually, I do not think that we can afford not to do it. I also think that it is economically a massive opportunity for this country and that that is where people increasingly are. Calls for a referendum on this will fall on stony ground.
Oral Answers to Questions
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Alok Sharma
The hon. Lady raises an incredibly important point. I have a regular dialogue with representatives of the small island developing states. I have been clear that one thing we want to do through this presidency is champion them and the developing countries that are at the frontline of climate change.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is good to hear that the COP President is interested in the challenges of those developing countries. Climate change’s most severe impacts fall heaviest on those developing countries that had least to do with causing it, and many consequences of climate change are already locked in, regardless of mitigation efforts. Given that, it is vital that COP26 includes an agreement on loss and damage compensation. Are the Government aiming for an equitable loss and damage agreement that compensates developing nations and recognises the disproportionate role of developed nations in causing that loss and damage?
Alok Sharma
Loss and damage is an issue that Ministers have debated at both the London ministerial meeting that I hosted and the pre-COP in Milan. Clearly, what comes forward at COP will be a consensus agreement, but I can tell the hon. Lady that we are determined to make sure that the Santiago Network is operationalised, and of course we will see that further discussions take place on this issue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is a powerful champion for patients and his constituents. We have now received applications to be one of the next eight hospitals in our new hospitals programme and I understand that an expression of interest has been submitted proposing developments across Warrington and Halton hospitals. Notwithstanding the smart way in which he has gone about his intervention, he will understand that I cannot comment on particular applications, but there will be a decision by spring 2022.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Deputy Prime Minister
Net zero is at the heart of everything that we do and we have raised the national living wage, which will save a full-time worker £400 every year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
There is a concerted effort across the whole of Government to ensure that we press other countries to come forward with ambition. We are, of course, seen around the world as a leader on climate action, in terms of both the actions we have taken and the commitments we have made. The Prime Minister has regular dialogue with world leaders, as do the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary with their counterparts.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]
Current carbon budgets will see the world miss the 1.5°C target, with all the disastrous consequences that will have. The UK’s portion of that carbon budget is up to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 higher than is proportional to its population. France put in the effort for global improvement in the Paris agreement, but we have seen nothing comparable from the UK Government. When will we see that change? What conversations is the right hon. Gentleman having with his Cabinet colleagues about the immediate actions their Departments should be taking to reduce the UK’s carbon contribution?
Election Campaign Finances: Regulation
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I commend the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing a debate on such an important topic. He has long been a campaigner for transparent electoral campaigning and finances, particularly through his time as Chair of the DCMS Committee. It was good to hear his reflections on non-party campaigning groups, which I will return to; campaigning and spending outwith principal election periods; and the sizeable impact of social media campaigns on citizens, even with relatively little spend. I found his warnings on the need to future-proof our responses to hitherto undreamt-of technological and digital advances particularly important.
I also want to mention the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Anum Qaisar-Javed) on her personal experience of campaigning in a recent by-election. Of course, social media can be used as a force for good and to enable our electorate to hear more about their candidates and the parties they would be voting for, but she also referenced recent examples of illegality in the 2019 general election and other actions taken by the Government in what certainly appear to many of us to be blatant attempts to circumvent democracy.
The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) called for a strengthening of our democratic system to fight what he describes as blatant corruption. He says, and I agree with him, that we have taken democracy for granted for too long and we have been complacent while shadowy groups have undermined that precious thing. He also ably outlined a few of the recommendations that our all-party parliamentary group on electoral campaigning transparency made in our report. I am sure the Minister, who I welcome to her place, is aware of those recommendations. It will be interesting to hear her reflections. This debate is vital. We need to restore confidence in the electoral process, and I hope today’s debate goes some way towards raising issues that need to be examined properly by the Government and by all of us..
I welcome the report from the Committee on Standards. It is good to see an official body still committed to supporting higher standards in public life. Heaven knows this Government certainly do not. The view once held of a Westminster system with checks and balances sufficient to outweigh the lack of a written constitution has gone, stripped away by a group of self-interested and unreconstructed politicians. Scotland has bitter memories of Thatcher and the destruction that she and her party wrought on the communities of our country, but I think even she would blanch at this Government’s approach to governance: ineptitude and slavering greed, shot through with a staggering sense of entitlement and a callous disregard for the difficulties of ordinary folk, and now further attacks on the democracy that underpins public life throughout these islands. Who cares for lost voting rights?
I am very proud to be a member of the all-party group on electoral campaigning transparency and of the report that we produced in January 2020 after a lengthy inquiry, with its 20 recommendations for improving the electoral system. I commend the many expert witnesses to the inquiry, as well as colleagues, and particularly Fair Vote UK, for all their efforts.
We cannot have a debate on campaign finance regulation without discussing the ways in which that regulation is so regularly circumvented, particularly through the use of social media and digital platforms in political campaigning. Electoral legislation more than 20 years old does not encompass the massive shift that there has been to digital campaigning, so it certainly needs updating and strengthening—a point that journalists such as Carole Cadwalladr have been making, and something that we on the APPG have been arguing for.
The Elections Bill, hastily released to provide governmental cover before the Committee’s report was launched, contained little more than a few scraps thrown to the campaigners, which is perhaps why the Government have decided to remove the word “integrity” from the Bill’s title. Even Ministers cannot swallow it. Now that that report has been published, I look forward to the Minister indicating how the Government will incorporate the more than 40 recommendations that it makes for the Elections Bill. I would particularly like to see the Government address the long-standing dark money issues that hover around so-called non-party campaigners.
The infamous Brexit donation that came via a former Scottish Conservative chair and Tory candidate, routed through the Democratic Unionist party to take advantage of the less strict reporting regime in Northern Ireland, springs to mind. It came from a secretive body based in Scotland called the Constitutional Research Council. We still do not know who supplied the DUP with that record £435,000 donation, which it used to pay for a wraparound advert in a newspaper that does not even appear in Northern Ireland days before the EU referendum.
That is not the only example. Unincorporated associations are regularly used to funnel money into UK politics without revealing the sources of the money. The Scottish Unionist Association Trust provided 54% of the income for the Scottish Conservatives from December 2019 to December last year. Another 25% came from the Stalbury Trustees. What those organisations have in common is that no one knows where they get their funds from. We could also mention the Midlands Industrial Council, the United and Cecil Club, the political committee of the Carlton Club, the Leamington Fund, the Scottish Conservative Prize Draw Society, the spring lunch and so on.
Money with no proper sources declared is funnelled into party politics. It stinks. It reeks of corruption. The letter of the law was not broken, we are told, but the spirit of the law is bent beyond recognition. How can the recipients of the cash be sure that it satisfies the requirements of the legislation when they cannot know where it originated? We need a robust body, independent of Government, to monitor and have the powers to enforce when they find error, deliberate or otherwise.
I am delighted that the Committee on Standards gives the commission such strong support in its report. The commission’s current powers are insufficient. I agree with the Committee that the commission’s powers should be strengthened, not weakened or removed, and that non-party campaigners should disclose more information, such as, for example, the basics of a website address, and should register at each election in which they intend to campaign. Various campaign groups sprang up just before the last Scottish election, using Facebook adverts in particular to push political messages. It was impossible to establish who paid for the ads and the groups’ political links. That is currently legal, but it cannot be right that non-party campaigning groups do not have to outline to the public who funds them. It cannot be right that we do not know what links they might have to political parties or to political lobby groups, which are themselves funded secretively and might even present themselves as, say, educational charities.
I note that those calling the loudest for the weakening or even removal of the Electoral Commission’s powers have clearly benefited in the past from the largesse of undeclared donors—people who do not want the slosh of cash in public life to be monitored. It is worth noting, as was made clear in the evidence of witnesses before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee recently, that the quality and clarity of Electoral Commission advice depends largely on the quality of the legislation. These are not Electoral Commission rules; these are rules set by Parliament. If problems come about during elections and appear in Electoral Commission ambiguities reports, it is up to Parliament to address that. One could therefore argue that the Government and their supporters are taking issue with Electoral Commission methods while ignoring the part successive Governments have played in creating those methods before now.
Another important point is about oversight of the commission, which is in part conducted through the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. I believe now is the first time ever that one party has a majority on that Committee, and it is the party of Government. That cannot be healthy. I urge the Government and the Speaker to look at how that undemocratic and unfortunate situation might be reversed. Will the Government also look at incorporating anti-money laundering regulations, including such features as risk assessments, enhanced due diligence and setting out specific procedures for record keeping, monitoring and the management of compliance with the policies? “Know your donor” needs to be integral to our campaigning culture.
What people are looking for in the regulation of election or referendum campaign finances is transparency; a level playing field; confidence and trust in the electoral processes, and for those to be simple and clear; strong accountability and enforcement action; and for the regulator to be independent of political or other influences. Our legislation needs to reflect that.
Government Contracts: Covid-19
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue. I thank the petitioners for signing this very important petition, which has led to this extremely important debate.
I will begin by mentioning a few of the Members who have spoken so far, particularly the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi). I commend her for a truly shocking start—shocking, in that she laid out for us a litany of what was, at very best, an overly relaxed approach from the UK Government to normal procurement processes. On behalf of the public, she asked where the money has gone, which is really key to the debate. She also asked whether the anti-corruption champion of the UK Government will take up this issue, but perhaps not. Perhaps it will be the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but perhaps not. Perhaps it will be the Health Secretary or the Prime Minister. Trust in these politicians, I am afraid, is severely lacking. I loved the line that the hon. Member for Gower finished with: “Urgency is not an excuse for cronyism,” which is a statement I heartily endorse.
I note the contribution from the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway). I gently say to him that national emergency does not disqualify the Government from proper examination of what look to the public like questionable decisions over very large amounts of public money.
The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) asked some excellent questions, in particular about the accountability of some of the private businesses that the Government have so hastily entered into contracts with. She mentioned the inappropriate connections between key players, as did the hon. Member for Gower, and called for an integrity and accountability executive, in particular in light of the UK Government’s apparent intention to have prosecution powers removed from the Electoral Commission.
Everyone recognises that governing in a pandemic is not the same as governing in calmer times. In such times, decisions need to be made that are well out of the ordinary. No one would argue that a normal procurement process would be appropriate or timely enough. Perhaps a case could be made that stocks of disposable items should have been higher or contracts should have been in place to secure additional stocks at short notice and at standard cost—those are likely to be issues that the inquiries after the pandemic will look at and make recommendations on—but we can still look at what happened, how the emergency aspects were handled and where the money went, because it is important. We should also be certain that the awarding of contracts was fair.
The terms of this petition are important, the action that the petitioners ask of us is equally important, and the responsibility of any elected politician to answer properly to the electorate is paramount. My own queries of the Government have been less than enlightening. Back in early September last year, I asked the Leader of the House for a debate in Government time on contracts awarded without tendering. I received no such commitment —perhaps you are not surprised to learn that, Ms McDonagh—but I did receive an assurance that did not reassure me: that it was through our “free press” and an “outspoken House of Commons” that we had
“such an honest and un-corrupt country”.—[Official Report, 3 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 317.]
In March this year, I asked how much was paid out under the contracts in advance of delivery, how much had been clawed back for services or products not delivered and how much the Government were still to pursue in repayments. The Minister replying said that the Government were
“undertaking a stocktake and an audit.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 670.]
I will be pleased if the Minister updates us on the progress of that stocktake and audit.
Back in April, however, a written question of mine asked how many contracts were issued without tendering, what the total value of those contracts was, how many of those contracts required advance payments and how many times the supplier failed to fulfil the contract. I was told that 1,151 contracts, worth an estimated £19 billion, were published by 1 April, the majority of which were let using a direct award. I was told that a number—an unspecified number, but a number—of PPE contracts had advance payments, but that, since different teams within one Department handled different contracts, the information about performance and reclaiming money already laid out was not available and could be gathered only at disproportionate cost. It is interesting to see how costs become disproportionate sometimes, isn’t it? I also got a “disproportionate cost” answer when I asked for the diary of the executive chair of Test and Trace. Perhaps that diary uses a very complicated system.
We have all seen the documentary reportage, in which suppliers of PPE and other equipment spoke about being unable to get through to the Government to offer what they already had, while contracts were being handed out to all and sundry, including chocolate makers and companies that never existed before securing a contract. We heard of the VIP line for people recommended by Ministers. We read the stories of WhatsApp messages with pub landlords. We heard about equipment arriving that was not fit for use, and we heard plenty about shortages causing problems.
We do not need ministerial excuses. We do not need lame explanations or finger-pointing. We just need to know what went on and whether it was all above board, and we need an independent and unbiased review of it. That is why the Government should agree to this very specific inquiry, so that we can see what went on. Furthermore, the Government should be opening up the filing cabinets. Let us see the Cabinet minutes on covid and how decisions were made about securing adequate supplies of PPE, sanitiser, ventilators, drugs, beds for the pop-up hospitals and so on. Let us see the memos and the notes of phone calls made, the emails sent and the directions given to civil servants. Let us see all of that and compare it with what Ministers were told was needed and with what needed to be done to keep people safe and alive.
A disgruntled former employee has recently been dribbling out selected bits of conversations with the Prime Minister and other little snippets. I am sure that reporters have enjoyed covering that, but it is no way to do things. The bitter revenge of a man who proved inadequate does no one any good, so the Government should just do us all a favour: a commitment now to an inquiry into the covid contracts would be good. It should be a full inquiry by an outside source. The Government can make that a judge or an ex-judge, if they want—Lady Hale may well be available. Give her a wide remit and a support team of experts. Ask her to report as early as she can. Give her full access to all documentation and all the resources that she needs to do the job.
When this pandemic passes, it will be important that people can have confidence in their Government again. Scotland will be independent soon and it will not matter so much to us, but for the people of England it will matter a great deal. For once, this Government can do the right thing.
Julia Lopez
It is interesting to know that. The hon. Member for Gower mentioned the company Arco, and I appreciate her for raising that. It was raised by the MP for Arco’s constituency, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), in a Westminster Hall debate to which I referred earlier. If the hon. Member for Gower and I swapped seats, I wonder whether I would be suggesting that it was improper to put that forward. People were in very difficult circumstances; if she had been told that there was a company that could support the national effort, would she not have put it forward for review? We have to ask ourselves that question.
The focus on those early procurement challenges secured some tremendous successes under pressure. We have established one of the largest and most diversified vaccine portfolios in the world. We have ordered 32 billion items of PPE and provided more than 15,000 ventilators to the NHS. It is important that we do not obscure those achievements with some of the understandable concerns that have been raised about transparency. None of us wants to sit here answering questions about cronyism. The challenges I cited about the recording-keeping across Departments are real ones that we are trying very hard to address. I understand why people ask questions; I have asked many of them myself, and I have been reassured by the answers that I have received from officials.
Deidre Brock
The Minister at the time did not answer my questions about record-keeping between Departments and trying to establish costs that were being clawed back from contracts that had not worked out. Is the Minister suggesting that that is being worked on and that we will be able to ask those questions in future and get some understanding of where the Government have pursued costs that have been inappropriately awarded to companies that have not come up with the goods?
Julia Lopez
I believe there are cases where that is happening. I would have to go away and double-check, but I am happy to write to the hon. Lady.
We have always made it clear that there would be opportunities to look back and analyse, and to address some of the shortcomings that I have listed on all aspects of the pandemic. As hon. Members will know, the Prime Minister has confirmed that an inquiry will be established on a statutory basis, with full formal powers. That will begin work in spring 2021. As I said earlier, however, procurement during the pandemic has already been extensively reviewed, and Members will be familiar with the NAO report published in November, which I spoke about previously.
Oral Answers to Questions
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
I have always been clear, and I reiterated in a speech I gave in Glasgow with six months to go to COP, that we want this to be a physical event. That is the basis on which we are planning, and we are ensuring that we are exploring all measures to ensure this is covid- secure—safe for the people of Glasgow and, of course, safe for participants as well.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]
The recent G7 agreement on an international minimum corporation tax shows the significant progress that can be made at such forums. What can the President-designate tell us about the environmental Marshall plan the Prime Minister reportedly intends pursuing at the G7, and how will that impact on the discussions he is currently having with other countries in his capacity as COP President?
Alok Sharma
Matters related to what G7 leaders are discussing will of course come forward in the communiqué at the end of that process, and that is up to the Prime Minister and his fellow leaders. What I can tell the hon. Member is that we had a successful Climate and Environment Ministers meeting of the G7, which I co-chaired together with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In that meeting, we made commitments on overwhelmingly decarbonising power systems in the 2030s in the G7 countries, but also commitments on phasing out fossil fuel support overseas.
Oral Answers to Questions
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Michael Gove
That is a very thoughtful point with which I completely agree.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]
Michael Gove
The broad public inquiry that we have set up—with, of course, consultation with the First Minister of Scotland—will, I hope, look at every aspect of our pandemic response. Although I did not hear all the evidence history, I understand that I was mentioned and the point was made that I got some things wrong. I have got lots of things wrong, but of course we will all reflect on those in due course.
Oral Answers to Questions
Deidre Brock Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
I will ensure that the hon. Lady’s specific point is taken up with my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary. She will know that, last month, the Transport Secretary launched a multimillion-pound scheme to enable local authorities to roll out zero-emission buses. This funding will deliver 500 zero-emission buses, supporting the Government’s wider commitment to introduce 4,000 such vehicles.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]
There is no joined-up thinking on any issue with this Government, but we would all have hoped for some cross-Department thinking on this issue at least. We are, as usual, disappointed, with even the green homes grant gone after just a few months—so much for building back better.
There is increasing concern voiced internationally, too, about the UK Government’s lack of progress domestically on environmental commitments. Will the right hon. Gentleman show some real leadership and commit today to start seriously lobbying his Government colleagues to join up the dots and start delivering, so that we can look forward to environmentally sound investment, renewed support for a comprehensive charging framework for electric vehicles, real investment in hydrogen technology and marine energy, support for housing improvements and so on? Will he do that, or is he happy to leave us all embarrassed to be hosting COP26 while the UK seems to be striding off in the opposite direction?
Alok Sharma
I say to the hon. Lady that the role of the COP presidency is to ensure that we are working with all 197 parties to ensure that we are making progress on keeping the 1.5° C limit within reach. The UK, like any other country, needs to see what more we can do. I hope that she will acknowledge that we are seen as a leader in the world and that, since 2010, we have decarbonised our economy faster than any other G20 nation.