Review of the Gambling Act 2005

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right to draw attention to the threat posed by the black market, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) did in his intervention. That is certainly something we need to bear in mind. It is very important that we create a safe space where people are given protection if they are gambling online, but we do not want to drive them away from the regulated sector and into the black market. That is certainly something that we will bear in mind during our consideration of these things.

We are looking at whether further controls for play online would be effective in preventing gambling harm, including whether greater controls are needed at account or product level. We are also working closely with the Gambling Commission on its parallel work to improve how operators interact with customers, and we will ensure that any new checks that it introduces to increase protections for those who are financially vulnerable, binge gambling or losing significant amounts over time harmonise with the aims of our own review.

While it is the case that more people are now gambling online, the land-based sector is still very important in our gambling landscape, and of course it accounts for more than four fifths of the jobs in gambling. I absolutely recognise the important social role that some gambling clubs play in communities. We know in particular that bingo clubs attract a wide demographic of players who rely on those places as spaces to socialise and see friends. I am looking forward to my visit to Buzz Bingo in Clacton-on-Sea on Monday.

We recognise the importance both of a well regulated sector that keeps people safe wherever they choose to gamble and of a strong gambling industry that supports jobs. I will not repeat what I said last week about the casino sector, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South knows, there is a need to look at the existing restrictions within that sector. In some cases, they have become steadily more anomalous, and they clearly need to be updated.

Another matter that we are considering is consumer redress, which has featured in a lot of the submissions to our call for evidence and in the public discourse. It is a condition of their licence that gambling operators must provide customers with free access to alternative dispute resolution services to handle complaints. That applies where customers are unhappy with an operator’s service or its response to a complaint, for example about paying out on a bet.

I recognise, however, that the current arrangements deal only with contractual disputes and do not allow for individual resolution if a complaint is about whether the operator has breached its social responsibility obligations, for example by failing to step in when someone shows signs that their gambling is getting out of control. That means that consumers may end up having to pursue action through the courts. Understandably, concerns have been raised that the current system makes it difficult for individuals to seek compensation or support. We are looking carefully at the evidence in that area.

My hon. Friend talked about the Gambling Commission. The commission has broad powers under the Gambling Act that enable it to tackle new and emerging risk through licence conditions without the Government having to take legislation through Parliament. In the past 18 months, for example, the commission has banned gambling on credit cards, tightened rules on VIP schemes and introduced new rules to limit the intensity of online slots, as well as permanently banning reverse withdrawals. We are consulting on and have now approved proposals for a fees uplift for the commission, which will take effect from 1 October for remote operators and from April next year for the land-based sector. This will allow the commission to continue to cover its costs. As my hon. Friend will know, a new chief executive, Mr Andrew Rhodes, has just been appointed to the commission and we are in the process of selecting a new chair. The commission is undergoing a reboot and we are looking at its powers and performance as part of the review.

My hon. Friend mentioned advertising. It is too early, I think, to say where we will end up on the issues around it, but we are looking at the evidence very closely indeed. It is worth emphasising that there are already many rules that govern gambling advertising in this country. The UK advertising codes make it clear that all gambling advertising must be socially responsible, that it must not be targeted at under-18s and that its content must not encourage irresponsible gambling behaviour. Gambling adverts are not permitted to be shown in or around children’s programmes. Compliance with the codes is a licence condition, so breaches can and do result in enforcement action by the Gambling Commission. Licence conditions also set out additional controls on gambling advertising, and the gambling industry code for socially responsible advertising includes rules such as the 9 pm watershed on most television advertising and the whistle-to-whistle advertising ban around live sports.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing us an opportunity to debate the issues. As I say, work is ongoing, particularly on scrutinising the 16,000 submissions that we have received as part of the review. I look forward to coming back to the House later this year with a White Paper that sets out our conclusions and recommendations.

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I end by wishing you, my hon. Friends, all hon. Members and all those who work for us so well in this House a very happy recess?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I echo what has been said many times today: we are all extremely grateful for the amazing service given by everybody who works in this amazing building during these very difficult times in order to keep our precious democracy working, and working well. Let us hope that when we return it will be back to normal and working even better. I wish everybody a happy recess.

Question put and agreed to.

Preserving Heritage and Statues in Cities

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is not the first time.

[Dr Huq]

No, it is the latest of many for the hon. Gentleman. This shows that I do not come up in the draw very often. He makes a good point, and I would say that we should not remove such statues, but contextualise them. Busts and statues are maybe not what people would use to memorialise today. They do seem a bit so last century, or even the century before. I know that Mrs Thatcher, God rest her soul, did not like the statue out there, so they are not for everyone, but we should keep them because they are part of history and they need to be put in proper context.

Statues are perhaps less common now because, with the passage of time, we see what reputational damage can occur to individuals. Take Winnie Mandela or Cyril Smith or Prince Andrew or Jimmy Savile—we might have made statues of any of those individuals only for them to turn out to be not what they seemed.

I understand that the Bristolians resorted to direct action because all the official channels failed, even though they had been trying for years. The Minister will recognise that all local authorities have much more complex and overflowing “in-trays from hell” in their inboxes nowadays, so statue reappraisal is probably not top of the list of things for councils to do. For example, pandemic management is an unforeseeable that has occurred in the past 15 months, although many councils are now reassessing. The London Borough of Ealing is doing that. I say fine, so long as it is not a distraction from real reform. To be fair, demolishing racism is going to be a lot harder than deracinating statues.

It is kind of simplistic to divide the world into heroes and villains because all complex characters, such as Churchill, had good and bad sides. History needs to be taught warts and all. We should not be blinded by hagiography, so we should teach, “We will fight them on the beaches,” and “their finest hour”, but also the Bengal famine and Tonypandy, rather than abridge or airbrush out one side.

I tend to feel that, recently, an atmosphere of hysteria prevails instead. An MP from the other side of the House held a similar debate to this in March, and it started with the alarmist claim, “Britain is under attack.” That was all because the London Mayor launched a statues commission to reassess past and present, as well as future, effigies. It does sometimes feel—I hope the Minister will allay my fears and put my mind at rest—that a confected culture war is being waged. Other elements include BBC bashing, obsessing about the Union Jack and how big it is in a Zoom call, laying into Meghan Markle and laying into taking the knee. Sometimes some of these straw men or bogeymen or targets are imaginary, including the banning of “Rule Britannia” at the last night of the Proms, which apparently was never a consideration by the corporation.

The edict that the Union flag should fly from all official buildings feels a little bit un-British to me, because it is the kind of thing that we witness in less self-assured recent states, rather than in a mature democracy such as our own. There was an old claim that this country has lost an empire and was searching for a role, and I feel that if we are having to whip out the Union Jack at every moment, maybe that claim is coming true. There have been news stories of Tory MPs insisting that citizens must love the flag and the Queen or move to another country, and even besmirching the internationally revered “Auntie Beeb” because there are not enough flags in its annual report. This seems to be going down the road of totalitarian edicts. After all, Churchill did defeat European fascism.

The prominence that statues have assumed in this war on the woke is seen in the way that they got additional protections in January this year in the rushed legislation to necessitate planning consent for anyone who wants to mess with them. The parallel was drawn that the minimum sentence for rape in the UK is five years—it is double that in India—but someone can get 10 years for pulling down a statue. That implies that dead white men, mostly, in bronze and stone are valued more than living, breathing women. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes the word “women” zero times in its 295 pages, yet it contains more mentions of statues, memorials and monuments than you can shake a stick at. Shall we say that the optics of that are bad? It is no wonder that one female wag, following the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, tweeted that she would just dress as a statue, because that way someone might take her safety seriously.

It is not just the lives immortalised by statues that are contested in this struggle. The crusaders who feel under threat, and who play to some imagined gallery of statue lovers who wrap themselves up in the Union Jack, are also promising a purge on progressives on boards. We know that the BBC has an ex-Tory candidate at the helm, but it seems a bit sinister that he is saying that he wants to silence contributors from having opinions on social media. We also know that the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport held a seminar in February for 25 organisations to set out the Government-approved version of Britain’s past. It was trailed in The Daily Telegraph, quoting the Secretary of State’s words that they must

“defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”.

Again, this sounds alarmist. Who does he mean? Chelsea fans? The meeting had a slight air of secrecy around it. The attendees, the agenda and the discussions were not published, and I know that certain people, including members of the Council for British Archaeology, the rank and file archaeologists, did not get an invite, so if it is repeated, it would be good to broaden the audience list.

It is a slightly unedifying spectacle when 50 MPs known as the Common Sense Group go on the offensive, maybe as Government outriders, attacking the National Trust and Leicester University’s Professor Corinne Fowler for their joint research uncovering the fact that nearly 100 National Trust properties had slave wealth behind them. That feels like an attack on academic freedom. It feels like the opposite of common sense.

Crucially, wider heritage assets also need protection, not from lynch mobs but from the developer’s bulldozer. Public buildings and land are increasingly being flogged off to the highest bidder by cash-strapped councils, meaning that we have vanishing community centres, libraries and playgrounds. Council houses that were sold off under the right to buy are now in the hands of private landlords who pocket housing benefit bills footed by local authorities, and the cycle of slum landlords that council houses were meant to end continues. It seems sad that what was founded for the public good is being turned into private profit.

When my office diaried in the Acton town hall opening for me, I had to explain to them that it is not a civic structure. We have this grand 1910-founded building where the Clash played, and it is being reborn as apartments behind the original facade. There were some add-on ones that did not quite work and some dodgy conversions, and I now get emails all the time about quite basic things like the waterworks not functioning. These are too big to be snagging. I marvelled at the refurb because it looked shiny, but at the same time I felt a twinge of sadness, really. So, if you are watching, OneHousing, sort it out!

Next on the hit list of lost municipal heritage in Ealing is a car park and an ’80s council office building set to be flattened and replaced by 477 mostly private sale flats in seven towers, the highest of which will be a most un-Ealing 26 storeys. We have an 1800s Gothic town hall, which is often used in shoots that pretend it is the House of Commons because it has got the same archy bits—the architecture is quite similar. Anyway, that will be overshadowed by this hideous thing.

There was a Times article at the weekend called “Our cities gained riches but lost their soul” on similar developments. It observed that there is always a statutory, separate affordable bit to such schemes, but it is “always begrudged” and

“bartered down by greedy developers”.

In this case, they are stretching the definition of “affordable”, because someone would have to be on £58,000 to get the three-bedroom, family-sized version, but those on £60,000 are ineligible. I hope that the Minister’s colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will exercise their call-in powers before our skyline is ruined forever.

There are many examples of where local authorities have been forced to do this. That same Gothic town hall will be leased to a hotel chain, because it will foot the repair bill. I feel that is, to quote Macmillan,

“selling off the family silver”

to the highest bidder. The end product is often marketed to overseas buyers, while Ealing has a five-figure council waiting list of local families.

Notwithstanding post-Grenfell fears of tall buildings, perhaps surprisingly, of more than 500 high-rise buildings in London that were granted planning permission or that began construction last year, a whopping 215—nearly half—are in outer boroughs. The current planning system, which incentivises high densification development in proximity to rail hubs, needs rethinking in the light of people choosing accommodation over location, with white-collar homeworking the new norm—at least for part of the week—as a lasting post-covid effect. In the meantime—I keep quoting Tory Prime Ministers—John Major talked approvingly about “invincible green suburbs” alongside warm beer and dog walkers as epitomising Englishness, and I feel that is in danger of being lost, particularly in somewhere like Ealing, which has been long known as queen of the suburbs.

Moreover, the Government have decided that London is not on the Tory target list, so levelling up does not apply. It is exempt from the towns fund, overlooking the fact that the capital is where inequalities are starkest, deprivation is deepest and poverty is at its worst in the UK. Between London’s constituent bits, there is enormous diversity within.

A decade of decline in local infrastructure has left scarring effects such as youth stabbings, with closed youth clubs. Sadly, at times, it feels like the Government are hellbent on an anti-woke crusade of knee-jerk, populist bandwagoneering. It looks like pandering, with the square root being what they think will deflect from any mistakes and win them votes. We have seen it again today with the aid cuts. I know there is a Standing Order No. 24 debate tomorrow—there is no vote—yet the 0.7% commitment, which, after all, Conservatives created and not only pledged in their manifesto but said was safe as recently as September with the Department for International Development and Foreign and Commonwealth Office merger, is gone.

The Culture Secretary vowed in his most recent interviews to have more statues erected to unspecified British heroes, blocking what he sees as a kind of Britain-hating, statue-toppling metropolitan bubble that controls cultural institutions. He wants to replace it with red wall voters in the latest “war on the woke”—or front, battle, cultural cleansing or whatever we call it. Again, it looks like Government interference in a traditionally independent sector motivated by electoral calculation. I think people are saying the same about today’s cricket controversy.

I have some asks for the Minister—it is a kind of top 10 —and she will be relieved to know that I will end after giving them. First, the expression “not set in stone” should apply in that we should not be afraid to revisit, reinterpret and re-evaluate what has been handed down by previous generations. Reputations have not proved foolproof, so it pays to future-proof. I feel that the London Mayor’s commission is a positive thing, because future monuments will be in sympathy with architectural surroundings and will not always be just creepy human forms. I understand that the holocaust memorial will be a geometric design. Sometimes the enormity of a situation outweighs one individual. On the other side of the river we have the covid memorial wall, and I know my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) and for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) are campaigning to make that permanent, which is a good plan—I make a plea to the Minister there.

The second point is that putting things in context, for example in museums with explanatory notes, is preferable to unthinking idolatry and the glorification of individuals. Thirdly, the public sector equality duty should be given due regard in planning decisions.

Fourthly, goodies versus baddies, London versus the red wall, and saints versus sinners is divisive and makes everything too binary. Richard III still has numerous statues everywhere, despite being a complete rotter with the princes in the tower. When his remains were found under a car park in Leicester, he received a lavish reburial, with the great and the good turning out, including Benedict Cumberbatch and people like that. That renewed Richard III’s memorialisation, and I would never protest against any of that. Heritage and history are crucially contested; there is not one version of the past. We need more emphasis on critical thinking in humanities and history, which of late seem to have been a bit disfavoured in the curriculum, in favour of numeracy and literacy.

Fifthly—I am halfway through—we need more flexibility, including a recognition that we do not have always to think of removal versus retention. There is also the option of relocation. Prague and Oslo have statue parks, so that people who like to look at such things can look at a whole load of them at once. Closer to home we have the fourth plinth, and such things are more adaptable than either “pull them down” or “stick them up”. Relocation and flexibility are other options.

My sixth point is to have fewer short-term reactive policies that are driven by the jingoistic stirring up of popular sentiment, and more cool-headed, longitudinal assessment. We need a recognition that London boroughs also need investment, and are not just places that are electorally useful for the current Government.

Point number seven is to reverse the wilful neglect of local government by Whitehall. Councils should not be forced into desperate measures. As I said, ministerial intervention on the planning issue that I flagged up would save Ealing’s municipal heart and legacy from being overrun by development. Forcing local authorities to be self-financing is unrealistic, given the range of services now at their door. The biggest of those is the social care bill, which is still missing the Prime Minister’s plan. We were promised that plan a long time ago, so if the Minister has any clues we would be grateful.

My penultimate point is that central Government leadership is needed on tall buildings to prohibit the over-densification of suburban locations, just as the green belt limited the overspill of cities into the countryside. Ealing, Brent, Croydon and Barnet have been the worst offenders of that “the sky’s the limit” attitude to tower building in recent years. Local communities should be genuinely involved in decision making. The Colston scenes were exciting to witness, and the episode was a catalyst, but better frameworks for public inquiry should exist to achieve that end result, including listing or delisting buildings.

Finally, we should never look at statues as being a substitute for tackling the real issues of inequality. That really would be levelling up, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

BBC: Dyson Report

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Is the hon. Gentleman coming to a question?

[Kevin Brennan]

I am, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Pretty quickly, please.

[Kevin Brennan]

With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I apologise.

“It’s important for us to also reiterate that the BBC is not its management, past or present. The BBC and the values and principles of public service broadcasting it personifies is in fact our members, and all its staff, who do the work that makes the corporation an entity that is valued at home and throughout the world.”

Does the Minister agree with that statement?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Whittingdale]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that a lot of the incidents he mentioned took place before the new governance arrangements were in place, but we obviously need to consider whether there are lessons to be learned from those incidents for our mid-term review. If that journalist’s tweets regarding Israel and Palestine are shown to be genuine, it is my view that anybody who can express such opinions should not be employed by the BBC.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

In order that arrangements can be made for the next business, I will now briefly suspend the House for three minutes.

Dame Vera Lynn: National Memorial

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Amess]

I have no doubt at all that my right hon. Friend’s late dear father is looking down from heaven now, full of pride in his son and the tribute that he has just paid to Dame Vera Lynn. I really thank my right hon. Friend for his support.

Vera is one of the most iconic and best loved personalities of the last century. I do not understand celebrities any more, but to me she was a true star in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. She was never one to court the limelight offstage, preferring to maintain her family’s privacy wherever possible. However, she gave so much of herself to the people of this country that I believe it is only fitting that the country should give something back to commemorate such a wonderful lady.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm is infectious. He has, even at this late hour, six supporters on our Benches at present, and I am quite sure that that number will grow exponentially, tomorrow when the world is free.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman]

Whether Dame Vera was aiding former servicemen and women or working with children and schools, it is clear that she was a true public servant who helped people of all ages and backgrounds throughout her life. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), whom my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West mentioned, has written to me personally to say that Dame Vera is much missed in her home village of Ditchling in Sussex, where she was a key figure in the local community. It is clear that Dame Vera touched many people, across this country and this House, through her music and her philanthropy; I can only echo the warm praise of the general public and of my colleagues here today for her lasting legacy.

As I said in the previous Adjournment debate, this country has a long and well-established tradition of commemorating its national and local individuals through statues and memorials. I reiterate the Government’s support for public monuments and statues, which serve as a long-lasting reminder of individuals and their efforts for this country, bridging the gap between the past and the present.

I look forward to the day when the memorial to the great Dame Vera Lynn that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West mentioned gazes down from the white cliffs of Dover. As he mentioned, he has a successful track record of managing to have public statues erected, and we should look forward to future success, whether it follows on from Eric Cole’s or from Raoul Wallenberg’s in adding to the 12,000 outdoor statues and memorials in England alone. We all know that Dame Vera Lynn will be a huge addition to that roster, and that my hon. Friend is the man to do it.

The debate gives me an opportunity to detail the Government’s position more broadly on erecting new memorials and statues. As my hon. Friend said, it is not normal practice for central Government to fund new memorials, but we all know that in this case many organisations, public and private, have been hugely successful in proposing funding—I can think of few more fitting recipients of that funding than the projects he mentions—and delivering memorials, marking a variety of incidents and historical figures that they are best placed to deem appropriate and sensitive to their local area. There is no more appropriate area than the white cliffs, I am sure.

Many successful memorials are created by a wide range of authorities and organisations, allowing each memorial to respond sensitively to the particular circumstances that it seeks to commemorate. I will not dwell on the excellent example of the jolly fisherman in Skegness—another example of funding by public subscription—or on the excellent Gracie Fields statue in Rochdale. Those memorials and statues were conceived, fundraised and erected through local efforts and ownership. Many people will have seen the recent proposals for a new memorial inside St Paul’s cathedral to those who have died as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

Statues matter. They provide a memorial and a memory for people who wish to remember vital parts of our nation’s history. There are a great many people and organisations interested in establishing memorials. As a general rule, it is for those groups to work with the relevant local planning authority and other organisations to identify a suitable site and obtain the necessary planning permissions. The good news is that, following the passing of the Deregulation Act 2015, consent is not even required from the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to erect statues in London; the process is determined through the planning system only—although I do not think in this case I am going too far by saying that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is as much of a fan of the great Dame Vera as is my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West. I hope that provides him with some of the reassurance he has sought on the process around new monuments and statues.

I wish my hon. Friend, and all those involved, the deepest best wishes in their efforts to raise funds for this commemoration of Dame Vera. It sounds like an ambitious and transformative proposal for the south coast, truly befitting Dame Vera. I look forward to that moment when her statue looks down from the white cliffs.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) for her intervention this evening. I share her commitment to the important role of arts and culture in truly levelling up and reinvigorating towns and cities across the country. I know that she recently met the Minister for Digital and Culture, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), to discuss her plans and had a productive conversation with Arts Council England. We at DCMS look forward to seeing the outcomes of her work across Dover and Deal.

I would take this opportunity to burst into song, such is my enthusiasm for this project, but I think that could possibly send it in the wrong direction, rather than the one we would all like to see. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for all his work in promoting the cause of this statue. I wish him and all those involved—foremost the family of Dame Vera Lynn—the best of luck in this hugely deserving endeavour, and I look forward to seeing it in real life.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It looks like we will meet again at the white cliffs of Dover. It is very good when we have an Adjournment debate that achieves something on which everyone agrees, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this Adjournment debate to the House on this most appropriate day.

Question put and agreed to.

British Library Board (Power to Borrow) Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Friday 12th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 1, page 1, line 3, clause 1, leave out from “powers” to end of the section and insert

‘at the end, insert “in excess of £1 million in any calendar year”.’

This amendment would limit the British Library Board’s power to borrow money to £1 million per year.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

New clause 1 provides that the Act expires at the end of a period of five years beginning from the day on which it is passed, otherwise known as a sunset clause. I have tabled this new clause because I think it is particularly apposite in relation to this subject.

When the Government, or the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, first contemplated the idea that the British Library might be given the power to borrow, which it does not have at the moment, the report said that there would be an opportunity to have a full debate about the pros and cons of so doing, and I am not sure that that debate has ever really taken place. I am also not sure that the British Library board is that keen to exercise these powers. The reason for that may well be associated with the fact that borrowing incurs future costs, and those costs then have to be budgeted for from a grant in aid. It is well established that many of what are described as “arm’s length authorities”, which are the subject of grant in aid from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, believe that it is better to rely on grant in aid, where they know where they stand, than to go down the route of borrowing.

My concern is that the Bill could be used as a means whereby the Government cut their grant in aid to the British Library board and, if the board whinges, tell it to borrow the money instead. Given that our national debts are at record levels, it seems to me that such an attitude would be completely out of place. If the Bill becomes law, however, there is no guarantee that that will not happen—that it will not be used as an excuse to ramp up costs for future generations: “Spend now, pay later”. The grant in aid process is designed to ensure that the British Library board can receive funding sufficient to enable it to do its work during the course of the year.

My background interest in this comes from the fact that I was the Minister responsible for the Property Services Agency. One of the biggest projects on its books was the construction of the new British Library. That whole process and the way in which it was funded should be the subject of a treatise.

The grant in aid process was used to fund the construction project each year; there would be an agreement between the Government, the Department and the British Library about how much money could be spent on it in any given year. But no limit was put on the overall costs. It was only when the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher got to hear about that that she decided that we could not carry on just funding the capital project of the British Library on a year-by-year, hand-to-mouth basis. We needed to say that that could not go on indefinitely and that there should be a finite sum of money for the project—and that would be that.

I do not know whether you have been round the British Library, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is almost in two halves: part of it is adorned with fantastic panelling and money-no-object interiors, but I can only describe the second part as rather more utilitarian. That is a direct consequence of the then Prime Minister’s having said that there had been an abuse of the grant in aid process. I still have the trowel used in the British Library topping-out ceremony—as we would expect for such an extravagant project, it is made of finest silver and came from Garrard, I think. But that is by the by.

Just as the grant in aid was abused before Margaret Thatcher got a grip on it, I fear that the power to borrow could also be abused if we do not keep a tight rein on it. A five-year sunset clause would enable that assessment to be made, so that at the end of five years, if it had been a great success, it could be renewed, and if not, there would not be any need to renew it. Effectively, it would give this House the opportunity of policing what had actually happened under the powers being granted in this primary legislation. I go back to the point that we are not even sure that the British Library really wants these powers, and certainly it does not want these powers if the consequence is a reduction in its grant in aid.

Amendment 1 is designed to limit the amount of borrowing in any calendar year to £1 million. That is an off-the-cuff, arbitrary sum of money, but it seemed to be a reasonable sum for starters, in the absence of any other evidence as to what the British Library needs to borrow and for what purpose it needs to carry out those borrowings. I have tabled this more as a probing amendment, rather than one that I expect to be accepted just like that by the Government. This is quite a short point—and, indeed, it is a short Bill—but in the context of the national situation of public borrowing, it takes on a totemic significance greater than it might have had when the Bill was introduced last year.

I hope that those introductory remarks in support of my new clause will engender not only a debate but an opportunity for the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), who I am pleased to see in his place, to respond and to share with the House his vision for the British Library and how much he thinks that vision is dependent upon the British Library Board having the borrowing powers set out in the Bill.

I would be interested to know whether the Minister has any idea of how much the British Library Board is thinking of borrowing. The explanatory notes make it clear that the board would not just be able to borrow willy-nilly; it would have to get approval for so doing from the Department. My understanding is that, at the moment, there is a sum of £60 million available for borrowing for all the arm’s length bodies that the Department sponsors. Would the British Library Board’s borrowings be subject to that limit, or would they be in addition to it? In the spirit of the need to ensure that we scrutinise these proposed pieces of legislation, I would be grateful if we could get some response on those issues.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight [V]]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. We have seen, writ large, the vital role that DCMS sectors play in all our constituencies the length and breadth of the country. I thank the Minister for his warm words, and for his ongoing commitment and that of his fellow Ministers and their advisers. I wish, however, that there was Treasury representation right now on the Treasury Bench, because, as we all know, and as has been highlighted by my Committee, DCMS is the most beholden of all Departments to the Treasury.

Obviously, the cultural recovery fund is very welcome, but the time for backslapping has now stopped—we need to refocus. Insurance will allow our live events to trade, not aid. The Minister made reference to the film and TV recovery plan and the insurance there, which, for me, is an example of why this is needed. We need pilots up and running for live events in double-quick time, and we need a root-and-branch review of tourism, as outlined, but with proper investment to follow. We need to get on and negotiate with our partners across the EU on EU visa arrangements and access for our creative industries. There is really no time to lose.

Above all else today, we need to understand a very simple thing: the DCMS sectors, and those who work within them, are not mendicants, forever holding out their hands; they are entrepreneurial and they are actually what we do best.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I will briefly suspend the House for three minutes in order that arrangements can be made for the next debate.

Covid-19: Cultural and Entertainment Sectors

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I thank the other Madam Deputy Speaker and the Minister for their kind words? I also thank the very many Members and staff across the House who wished me well during my hospitalisation and recovery, and the wonderful NHS staff in Wales.

Let me turn to the business of the debate. It is the eve of the Budget, and it is right that we debate the severe problems facing one of the UK’s most important economic sectors. Our cultural and entertainment sector is globally renowned and economically critical. It showcases innovation and creativity; develops specialist knowledge, skills and jobs; drives opportunity, significant inbound tourism and economic regeneration; and, as we know, improves our health and wellbeing. The Opposition believe that our cultural sector is integral to our national recovery from this crisis, and that it also has a key role to play in shaping the kind of society that we want to see in the future. But to do that, the jobs, skills and talent need to survive and be supported.

In the most recent Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport annual report, the Secretary of State talks about preserving our cultural heritage, but our culture is not something to be preserved in aspic. Instead, it is a sector that is built on people and their dynamic connections with one another. It is this misunderstanding that lies behind the lack of appropriate provision to support the brilliant professionals in the sector, hundreds of thousands of whom have fallen through the gaps because of the Chancellor’s rigid criteria for support and his complete refusal, despite numerous requests, to provide financial help to those he has excluded and who have become known as “the excluded”. There are more than 3 million such people, and many of them are in the cultural sector.

During this fast-moving pandemic, there has been a great deal of sympathy for the Government having to react quickly to events, but we are almost a year on from the first lockdown and the refusal to help people in the cultural sector can only be seen as a choice—a choice to ignore them for an entire year. We know from the decisions taken in Wales that it did not have to be that way. The Welsh Labour Government’s freelancer fund has already supported thousands of freelancers in three phases of support.

The Opposition believe in fairness and equitable access to support during the pandemic and that no one should be excluded because they are engaged to work outside of permanent employment contracts. The rich patchwork of creative talent in this country is built on freelancers—people who work across different projects or genres, and it is that cross-pollination of ideas that makes it so rich. But because they do not fit the Chancellor’s model, this Government have excluded them from support, even speaking about those in the cultural and creative sectors as if they were people exercising their hobbies rather than world-class skills.

Tomorrow, nearly a year after the start of the first lockdown, the Chancellor has another opportunity to right that wrong and level the playing field. We have heard today about the topping up of the pot for theatres, but people who work in theatres still do not know how long they can be furloughed for. Self-employed people have no idea what level their next grant will be. Freelancers have still been left out of support altogether, as I have described. The industry faces a VAT cliff edge at the end of the month, and none of that needed to wait until tomorrow’s Budget: it should have been clarified by the Government weeks ago.

At least 55,000 culture jobs have already gone—nearly a third of the arts element of the workforce—and two thirds of people who have lost their jobs in this sector have already decided that they cannot risk returning to it, meaning that those skills and talents are lost to our economy. The Government should be going out of their way to save those jobs, but we have heard virtually nothing about those jobs from either DCMS or the Government as a whole. Is that indifference or incompetence? I know what the cultural sector’s verdict is.

Last July, we welcomed the announcement of the culture recovery fund but, as I said at the time, it came too late for some people and organisations. The distribution of the fund was delayed, characterised by slowness when the need was immediate, and it has still not reached some of the places where it is required. The criteria are rigid, and its hallmark is to protect institutions rather than jobs. It could have been designed in a much better way, to provide protection for people’s livelihoods, had there been a proper understanding by Government of the ecology of how employment works in this sector. The top-up announced in the press release last night still does not address those problems and it does not say when the money will be distributed.

I also hope that the Chancellor will tomorrow heed Labour’s call to continue the VAT rate of 5% on tickets. That scheme could not be used by many in the cultural sector because the restrictions meant closure and, in the short periods outside lockdown, there simply was not enough time while open to be able to sell any tickets. We need to see an extension of the reduced rate, so that venues and festivals can start to benefit from the scheme and the public can be incentivised to buy tickets.

The VAT issue is another example of the Government’s lack of understanding of the day-to-day realities of the pandemic for our cultural venues. That was never more apparent than in the run-up to last Christmas, when the Secretary of State was busy encouraging theatres to put on pantomimes, while at the same time knowing that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice and data suggested that cases were rising to such an extent that theatres would inevitably have to close. Even the retired Conservative peer Lord Lloyd Webber spoke of his frustration with the incompetent handling of reopening dates.

The sector has been hugely sympathetic to the difficulties facing the Government, but that sympathy is now wearing thin. We see Ministers spending their time feigning concern for statues, rather than figuring out how this resilient and dynamic sector can be best supported through this crisis. The thinly veiled threats to museums and galleries and the attempts to bully independent cultural organisations packed with national expertise that rely on Government funding show where the Government’s priorities for our cultural sector really lie. No matter that the sector was the fastest growing ahead of the pandemic, no matter that the role of arts and culture in social prescribing and education delivers huge returns on investment and no matter the potential for brand GB from our biggest exports—this Government’s priority is stoking a culture war, rather than championing our world-class cultural sector. There are other problems of the Government’s own making that the pandemic has masked. The broken promise on post-Brexit touring by performers has already been laid bare for its failures.

Labour strongly believes in the artistic and creative life of this country not only as a powerful driver of economic growth but as a part of who we are as a nation. There is a reason why so many people still talk about the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony as a great national moment. Not only did it display some of our finest talent; it allowed us to celebrate our history in all its complexities and contradictions, and to do so with a good dose of self-deprecation and some laughs at our own expense. But this Government do not get that. They do not get what it is to be British in the 21st century. They see the world in black and white and we know that this is not how many of us live. The fact is that our arts and culture allow us to examine that—to ask questions, to respectfully disagree, to challenge each other and to find common ground.

There is no doubt that the last year has been one of the hardest in living memory. The work of nurses, doctors, carers, scientists and many more people is rightly at the forefront of our minds when we think about recovery, but to me national recovery—our national recovery—is something greater and wider. This national trauma has caused a huge rupture in the fabric of everybody’s lives. We have lost family, friends, colleagues. We have lost opportunities and missed out on key milestones of our lives. We have had to Zoom watch funerals, unable to properly say goodbye. We have had to send cards for weddings we would rather have travelled across the world to be at. We have all put things on hold. When we are safe and when we still need to grieve collectively, we will do that and move on together.

The cultural sector is not one that typically asks for Government support. Instead, a series of Conservative Governments have reduced public funding and made many theatres and arts organisations radically change so that they rely solely on ticket sales and outside sponsorship. Therefore, when the pandemic hit, this left them utterly vulnerable. Tomorrow, the Chancellor needs to give our world-leading creatives the support they need to get on and create. Can I say this to him? That does not simply mean employing them to make his own promotional videos. It means addressing all those problems with the culture recovery fund and, specifically, a whole year on from when it should have been done, providing support for those whom the Government have deliberately excluded. Our cultural sector is not just a huge and vital part of our economy. For many people, it is what makes life worth living.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is very good to see the hon. Lady back at the Dispatch Box and fully back to health, and we all wish her well.

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[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]]

I also welcome the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) back to her place. It is very good to see her.

One year ago, the pandemic changed our world. Lockdown came and, as we found ourselves forced inside and away from our friends and families, many found comfort in the arts and culture. In the past year, every hon. and right hon. Member of this House will have, I am sure, searched for escape in a book, lifted their spirits with music, or distracted themselves with film. A world without literature, music or cinema would be intolerable and a lockdown without the arts would have been even grimmer than it has been.

As we continue to weather the crisis, culture still plays a significant role in getting us through the day. The artist has in many ways been an essential worker and one too often overlooked by the UK Government. One of the groups struggling with the impact of covid-19 is the freelance sector. A survey of Equity members found that 40% have not received help from the self-employed income support scheme. Various loopholes have left many out in the cold, unable, due to technicalities, to qualify for UK Government schemes.

That injustice has meant that many creative professionals have had to apply for universal credit, with many more considering leaving the culture sector altogether. In pre-covid times, the cultural and entertainment sector not only brought huge benefits to the economy, but gave the countries of the UK international acclaim. It is vital that we ensure that every one of those workers comes back into the industry, so that whenever the pandemic is over the sector thrives again. In the Budget tomorrow, the Chancellor must protect these essential workers and ensure that they no longer fall through the cracks. He must go further by guaranteeing them the backdated support they deserve.

Let us look at musicians as one key group. They are facing long-term worries about the viability of their industry. They are fighting on three fronts. In the last five years, the market for recorded music has shifted towards streaming. Opaque deals cut by the big record labels and the streaming model mean that most no longer have a viable stream of income from recording. The result is that they are almost completely reliant on live performance. Live performances in the Brexit age, a world of limitless opportunity—well, hardly, because the UK Government rejected the EU’s proposed artists’ deal. Musicians have now been landed with the very hardest of Brexits.

The Minister, appearing before the Select Committee, recently looked surprised to discover that a single one-night visa for a UK performer in Spain now costs €600. It is €500 in Italy. When covid lockdown ends, none but the wealthiest musicians will be able to perform across much of Europe. That means the end of orchestral tours. The Minister confirmed to us that no talks are ongoing to resolve this looming Brexit reality. Once again, jobs are being wilfully sacrificed for anti-free movement zealotry. The chaos visited on musicians impacts not just them but their support crews, technicians and haulage companies, all of whom will lose out on work to cheaper European alternatives. Put yourself in the shoes of one of these musicians, with no money coming in from record sales or European tours, the only saving grace being the upcoming domestic festival season—a season once again cancelled. The UK Government had the opportunity to underwrite insurance for festivals but decided not to. Glastonbury was one of the first to cancel. Musicians and their support staff did not get into this business for money but for a love of their craft. They have never asked for much from their Government, but they surely have the right to expect that their Government do not actively work against them.

Musicians, rightly, have received much publicity, but another sector that has been forgotten by the Government is advertising-funded media and entertainment. Local commercial radio stations have provided trustworthy news and a friendly voice for those living alone, but they have seen their revenues plummet. The drop in advertising revenue has also been a major problem for local papers. Some have had to shut their doors after decades of dedicated service to their community. That is why we on the SNP Benches backed a tax credit for the advertising-funded media sector, and I call again on the UK Government and the Chancellor, in particular, to listen and act.

In the time available, I cannot name-check every cultural and entertainment sector damaged by this pandemic and threatened by Brexit, crying out for help, but all are asking that this House hears one overriding message that is vital for their long-term recovery. Just because an industry limps on, it does not mean that the wounds dealt by the pandemic have healed. The Government must offer and maintain their support in the years to come.

The arts and culture communities the length and breadth of these islands eagerly await the Chancellor’s Budget tomorrow. Artists deserve more from the UK Government and I hope that he has been listening and will deliver, but I am not holding my breath. Westminster seems very distant, remote and unresponsive to the sector’s concerns.

The Canongate wall of the Scottish Parliament is covered with quotations from writers from across Scotland and from the length of its history. I will close with one of those quotes by Sir Walter Scott:

“When we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament-men o’ our ain, we could aye peeble them wi’ stanes when they werena gude bairns—But naebody’s nails can reach the length o’ Lunnon.”

Let us hope I am wrong.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Although this is clearly on the Annunciator and the screens that people have in front of them, I reiterate that there will be a limit of three minutes on Back-Bench speeches.

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[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab) [V]]

I am proud to declare an interest—not a financial one, but a passionate one. I chair Theatre Royal Stratford East, the erstwhile home of Joan Littlewood renowned for “Oh, What a Lovely War!”, “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” and “A Taste of Honey”. I am immensely proud of our success in regaining our historic reputation for excellence and radicalism under the leadership of Nadia Fall, a hugely talented artistic director of Asian heritage, and her team of mainly women theatre makers.

We were on a roll, culminating in receiving an Olivier award for staging Britain’s “Noye’s Fludde”, which involved east end children performing alongside ENO singers. Our mission to create excellent shows and reflect the diversity of our community in everything that we do makes our contribution unique. Then covid erupted and the curtain fell.

Theatres have proved resilient and innovative. We produced an outdoor show called “846”, our response to George Floyd’s death. National Theatre Live has been enjoyed by vast audiences at home. The Kiln’s food programme provides fresh hot meals for hundreds. Battersea Arts Centre delivered digital activity and encouraged young people to keep writing.

Government support has focused too much on buildings, not on people. Life for freelancers, the lifeblood of our theatre, has been grim. We used to employ nearly 200 freelancers annually. This year, it is 75, and mostly on very small projects. With no Government support, freelance actors, directors and designers are walking away, retraining to ensure a secure living. We are haemorrhaging creative talent, most of whom started in the subsidised theatre. Public investment in people led to creative wealth for the nation. Think of Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards: Daniel Kaluuya, who first performed at the Royal Court; John Boyega, who began at Theatre Peckham. Think of Phoebe Waller-Bridge who started at the Soho; James Graham, playwright at Finborough Theatre; Michaela Coel who went from The Yard to critical acclaim on Channel Four. All are big commercial successes today. All are contributing to our vital creative economy, the vibrancy of our city centres and lifting our spirits. They are part of a massively successful ecosystem. Public investment in them drives both commercial success and the quest for diversity and equality. Yet young black and Asian creatives, women and those with disabilities are leaving theatre in droves. Nobody wants theatre to return to being a club for the elite and the well-connected. Investment in people, in the talent of tomorrow, must be our key ask today and only then will the arts bounce back strongly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I well remember the right hon. Lady’s theatre and its excellent director who happened to be my namesake.

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[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con) [V]]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. Dover and Deal is an area steeped in culture and brimming with entertainment; whether for a day, week or month, or throughout the course of a year, there is so much to see and enjoy in our white cliffs country. Our role as guardian of the nation means that we have been involved in some of the world’s defining events, from the rise of the Roman empire to Nelson’s Deal, key battles in world war two and, more recently, being on the frontline of the exit from the European Union.

As such, our two most iconic pieces of history are Dover castle and the world-famous white cliffs. Dover castle is rightly one of the top attractions in the country, and a few miles on we have Deal castle, Walmer castle, with its eight acres of award-winning gardens, as well as Crabble corn mill, the most complete working example of a Georgian water mill in Europe. The mill is one of the many local ventures to have received financial support from the Government’s cultural recovery fund, a fund that has paid out more than £300,000 in my constituency and has been a lifeline for some of our most loved cultural organisations and heritage sites.

However, Dover and Deal is so much more than its cultural heritage, enviable though that unquestionably is. We are ambitious to make our cultural heritage the foundation stone from which we build our culture and entertainment future, for Dover and Deal are also home to leading galleries, artists, potters and live music venues. It is an area rich in the performing arts, with the Astor theatre, the Dover film festival, the Deal music and arts festival, the showcase annual Deal Marines remembrance concert, the Lighthouse music and arts pub and so much more besides. We are planning for the future, through Dover’s bid for the future high streets fund. This further investment would allow us to bring together varied cultural and creative offerings in Dover with a brand new arts and creative centre.

That brings me to my call for a permanent recognition for Dame Vera Lynn. There may be no bluebirds in Dover, but there will always be Vera Lynn in Dover’s heart and its musical soul. She truly encapsulates the enduring importance of entertainment and the cultural arts. It is only right that her contribution to the arts and the nation is given the recognition it deserves, and I am supporting the important campaign for this lasting legacy to her in the white cliffs country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

What a good idea.

UK Musicians: EU Visa Arrangements

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

With regard to the haulage—the cabotage—that has not been imposed just on us because we have left the EU. They are rules that apply to both UK and EU haulage firms. I want to speak more about this with colleagues in the Department for Transport and with European colleagues to see what more can be done to address it. It impacts not just us but companies that are moving musical equipment across Europe, no matter which European member state they come from. As for my hon. Friend’s other question, if performers are visiting in a business capacity, that is to negotiate a future tour, for any other scoping arrangements or for various other things, that would fall under the business visa waiver. It is always really important to check the individual rules of that EU nation—that member state—to ensure that they do not have anything that would need to be abided by.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Steve Brine.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Is it not the case that the longer the situation persists, the worse it gets—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is my fault, but I missed out Mary Kelly Foy. I beg the House’s pardon and that of the hon. Gentleman. Mary Kelly Foy.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think we can all agree that no competent Government would accept such a significant loss of revenue for an already struggling sector without a plan B to mitigate the economic impact. Can the Minister tell me what plan is in place to make up for the financial shortfall for the creative industries resulting from the Government’s failure to negotiate visa exemptions with the European Union?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

The assurance I would give my hon. Friend’s constituent is that we will be having conversations with colleagues across all the nation states of the EU to see what measures we can put in place to facilitate the arrangements. Some of them have very straightforward arrangements right now—some of them do not impose extra work permits, and some are very flexible when it comes to their visas, and others less so. We need to speak to them to ensure that these arrangements can be as smooth, fast and easy to understand as possible, and that is the key to us being able to move forward.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

There being almost nobody present in the Chamber, I am not going to suspend before we go on to the next item of business, so we will move straight to the ten-minute rule motion.

National Trust: 125th Anniversary

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been here longer than anybody else. He knows that the Minister has to finish responding to the first intervention before he can take a second.

[Nigel Huddleston]

It is nice to see even the Father of the House making procedural errors; it gives us all a bit of confidence.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) knows, we had a debate about this issue in Westminster Hall not so long ago. I think it would be unfair to characterise the National Trust as being preoccupied by some of the matters that he mentioned. The trust knows that some of the issues that it has talked about are a matter of public debate, and it is very important that it listens to its members, to Members of Parliament and to our constituents’ concerns. When the National Trust focuses on its core role, it does an excellent job, but it is sensitive and aware that it has —unintentionally, perhaps—caused offence to Members of this House and our constituents with some of the comments that it has made recently.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I have to point out to the hon. Gentleman that I have allowed a lot of interventions. The Father of the House arrived one minute late for the debate, so I have given him the benefit of the doubt. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) was here at the beginning of the debate. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) arrived a minute and a half late. The hon. Gentleman came in 10 minutes after the beginning of the debate, so I do not really think he should be intervening, unless it is really serious for his constituency. I think he should do the decent thing and not intervene, when he came in 10 minutes after the beginning.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I would be happy to engage with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) after this debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives set out his concerns about how the National Trust is run, so it might be helpful if I speak to its governance arrangements before coming on to some of the specific concerns he raised. The National Trust’s vision is to protect and care for places so that people and nature can thrive. To deliver this ambition, it is governed by a board of independent trustees chaired since 2014 by Tim Parker. The chair is supported by a team of trustees who bring expertise to the running of the trust and who are collectively responsible for everything that happens and for ensuring that the trust meets its statutory purpose. The trust is also a registered charity, regulated therefore by the Charity Commission, so the board has to ensure that its activities do not contravene its charitable purpose. The role of the Charity Commission is to ensure that charities further their charitable purposes for the public benefit, comply with their legal responsibilities and duties, and ensure that there is no misconduct or mismanagement.

Charities are independent entities, and provided that they act within the law and the terms of their governing documents, charity trustees have broad discretion to further the charity’s purpose in a way that they consider most appropriate. If they do so, the Charity Commission has no reason to intervene. Where charities are making decisions that impact on local communities, they must, as a matter of good practice, engage with those communities and listen to their concerns and the strength of local feeling to ensure that they are properly informed before making their decision. That area is, as we have heard, potentially an area of weakness for the trust, and it must consider the comments made today.

I set out these governance arrangements to emphasise the point that the National Trust is an independent body. It is independent of the Government. It does not receive any ongoing public funding for its work, and its activities are overseen by the board and the Charity Commission as regulator. This means that while I can debate with my hon. Friend where the trust can do better, I cannot direct or order such change. He suggests that an ombudsman might be better placed to oversee the trust. Ultimately, that is not for me to decide, but I can say that the issues he raises have been brought to the attention of the Charity Commission, which is considering them carefully. It will need to determine whether the trustees have acted in line with their legal duties and responsibilities. He will know that the Charity Commission itself is answerable to Parliament and can be called on to give evidence on its work before, for example, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

With regard to some of the specific issues raised by my hon. Friend, he expressed concerns about mismanagement, poor decision making and a lack of responsiveness by the National Trust in Cornwall, including its oversight of the world heritage site known as the Tin Coast, which includes the historic Levant mine. He says that some of his constituents have waited for as long as two and a half years for a decision on an issue. This is very troubling given the custodian role of the National Trust—the role it plays in many of our communities up and down the country. The National Trust owns significant amounts of land and properties in and around his constituency, and trying to find an appropriate balance of the needs of local residents, businesses, the economy and the maintenance of the historic environment can be fraught with difficulty. However, I agree that a good balance must be struck between those competing pressures, and that this balance must be established in conjunction with the local community.

My hon. Friend spoke about covenants, or conservation covenants as they are often known, and asked whether there could be an independent regulator to mediate disputes over these. Covenants have a long-standing history over hundreds of years of English common law, and it will be no surprise to him if I suggest that wholesale reform, if it is indeed needed, is perhaps a debate for another day. But in general terms, when a landowner wants to make changes on their land—for example, to construct a new building or to change the purpose of their land—they may need to ask for consent from the covenant holder. Obtaining this consent is separate from any planning, listed building or scheduled ancient monument consent that may also be required. The National Trust holds an astounding 1,760 covenants across 36,000 hectares of land, and many of these arose as a result of approaches by landowners offering covenants so that should their family dispose of the property at any time in the future, they would have the comfort of knowing that the trust would be able to protect certain aspects that they held dear about the land or property in question. They therefore play an important role in aiding the trust in its duties to conserve.

However, as my hon. Friend set out, covenants also give the trust a high degree of control over changes on covenanted land, and it is sometimes the case that the wishes of the occupants conflict with how the trust views its responsibility of conservation, as covenant holder. With this control and authority over land come different responsibilities, additional to conservation, such as listening to different views, understanding local concerns and explaining the decisions the trust makes, especially when these are complex and difficult.

It would not be appropriate for me to adjudicate or judge the merits of the case that my hon. Friend has described. The Charity Commission is the most appropriate and expert body in this regard and I do not want to pre-empt any decision it has yet to arrive at. However, allegations that the National Trust is not explaining its decisions or taking into account a wide spread of views are, unfortunately, familiar things that will resonate with many Members of this House—we have heard that this evening—as will the concern that correspondence is sent but replies are not always forthcoming, or, at least, not in a timely manner.

This way of working does not build the confidence of Members, who are rightly trying to represent their constituents, as is my hon. Friend. The trust must understand that, given the power it holds, it has a significant responsibility to work with local communities while conserving the land it is entrusted with. I assure him that I will raise that responsibility directly with the director general of the National Trust. But in the interest of balance, I should also point out, as have other Members, that I also hear of circumstances and occasions where the National Trust has very positive experiences with Members.

I know that the National Trust executive team will be alarmed and concerned to hear that they are not seen to be as responsive as they could be to some MPs and their constituents. But it is important to remember, on its 125th anniversary, that, overall, the National Trust is a conservation and heritage success story that we can all be proud of. In 125 years, it has grown from being a project pioneered by three visionaries who owned one building in Suffolk to being the largest member-based heritage organisation in Europe. We should celebrate that success, without ignoring where the trust needs to do better. It has the responsibility to listen and to explain its decisions to its tenants and neighbours. My hon. Friend has made his arguments powerfully and I am sure the trust will be paying close attention. I, too, look forward to hearing its response to his concerns.

Question put and agreed to.

Digital Infrastructure, Connectivity and Accessibility

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We will begin with a time limit on speeches from the Back Benches of six minutes, but that will very soon reduce.

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[Julie Elliott]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

It is estimated that those in work need to update their skills every five months. That needs a strategic and co-ordinated approach. People often need to retrain to get new jobs, but people already in employment also need to ensure that they constantly update their skills as the world of work constantly evolves. That has not been helped in recent weeks by the Government’s decision to scrap Unionlearn, which did amazing work in this arena.

There is a plan to combat this in Sunderland, the city I represent along with two other colleagues. The Sunderland Smart City plan is designed to leave no one behind. One year ago, Sunderland City Council delivered on its promise to install and begin the city-wide rollout of free superfast public wi-fi, using 5G digital technology. It is already delivering wi-fi to Hudson Road Primary School, two community rooms in local tower blocks in the city centre, and along a coastal stretch between Roker and Seaburn, with more to come later this year and in 2021. It supports individuals and businesses, and has had over 7.5 new instances of wi-fi use and a total of 18,500 connections to wi-fi from January to October 2020. We are one of the first cities in the UK to do this and the take-up is proof that it is working well.

The investment in skills must be combined with proper investment in infrastructure, as outlined by the right hon. Member for Tatton. This must be a combined approach. Investment in gigabit broadband infrastructure on its own only makes faster internet for those who can access it, furthering digital inequalities. It does not benefit those who have not had sufficient access to begin with. It makes inequalities worse.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital skills, I have heard from national and local organisations from around the country about what has worked and what has not. We wrote to the Chancellor before the spending review proposing a great digital catch-up, championed by Helen Milner and the Good Things Foundation, with Government investment in skills, co-ordinated nationally through existing national networks of trusted local organisations. The Secretary of State for Education has announced boot camps for digital skills, but that is not the answer to the problems we face.

In our report, we recommended investment in existing programmes for device distribution, such as DevicesDotNow, and in existing community groups that work in harder-to-reach communities, teaching digital literacy. More must be done to educate people about online fraud and equip them with the skills to identify fraud and report it. We need to invest in lifelong learning hubs in partnership with local authorities and businesses, and we need more cross-departmental collaboration. Those recommendations would benefit not just the individual, the learner, the worker, the jobseeker, the older generation or the young—all good things—but the economy, as clearly highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). As we move out of the restrictions that the covid crisis has brought to all our lives, we must ensure that all our citizens have the data, devices and digital skills we need for the future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am now reducing the time limit to five minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) for bringing this debate to the House today, because this issue is extremely important to me. Indeed, in my maiden speech, I gave due notice that I would be raising the issue of poor connectivity in my constituency. It is perhaps a sad fact that I have had to do so continuously ever since, because in the vast land mass of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, there are still some very bad spots indeed.

I want to touch on a couple of issues. First, I am sure that all of us who have been telephoning our constituents during the pandemic have come across the crippling issue of loneliness, particularly for single elderly people. One route out of loneliness—one aid to make it better—has been the ability to go online, and to FaceTime or whatever with loved ones and friends. When people do not have that connectivity, it doubles the difficulty of it all; in fact, I might say the horror of it all, because it is pretty desperate. I have had some really heart-rending appeals from people to help them in their loneliness. The Campaign to End Loneliness has pointed out that half people over 75 live by themselves. In Scotland, we have a new organisation called Scotland Cares, which aims to tackle loneliness, but it is not blind to the fact that the problem will be much exacerbated over Christmas, which is a sad fact of its own.

On a more positive note, where we do have connectivity, it has been—inversely—a godsend during the pandemic, because people have been in touch with their family and friends, and have made full use of it. As we come out of the pandemic and try to restore our economy, connectivity will be crucial. It will empower small businesses and enterprises in my constituency—where they have the connectivity—to punch at an equal weight and to compete on a level playing field, and that is crucial. For myself and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), tourism is a vital industry. The ability to have equality of connectivity is crucial if the tourist product is to be sold in the most efficient way.

Let me turn to my next point. Maybe I am being a little bit ignorant—I do not know—but I have talked about bad connectivity in my constituency for over three years, and I hear conflicting answers. Some say it is the Scottish Government. Some say it is the UK Government. I do not know the middle way between all that. I ask the Minister whether Her Majesty’s Government would consider some sort of commission or inquiry into why connectivity has not been rolled out in the past in the way in which places such as my constituency would so much desire. I am sure that this would also be true of the west country and parts of Wales. At the end of the day, I am getting tired of going back to constituents and saying, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why this is. I have been making representations on your behalf, but here am I, three years on, still not an awful lot further forward.” There has been some improvement, but there are still some very poor patches. I do not mind who is responsible; I would just like us to get to the bottom of the problem and to put it right.

My final point is simply this: as we have all gone about our business as Members of Parliament, having Zoom meetings with Ministers, with civil servants in attendance and so on, we realise—this happened to me only a couple of days ago—that as often as not the Minister is in his or her home, and the civil servants are in their homes, wherever they are in the UK. There has been great talk over the years about decentralising civil service functions out of London and the home counties, and into the north of England, or, indeed, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It strikes me that the use of connectivity has demonstrated that this can work fantastically well. It is a bit of a tall order, but could I ask the Minister to look at the benefit that could arise from this terrible pandemic? We could actually do clever things with the civil service, and create jobs in areas where rentals and costs are cheaper, which would save money for the Exchequer. I make that suggestion from the bottom of my heart.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am reducing the time limit to four minutes.