Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Reed

2nd reading
Friday 15th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I am very disappointed indeed that the hon. Member has attempted to politicise an important point. We are talking about the welfare of animals.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am afraid that there was a lot of noise, so I did not hear exactly what the hon. Lady said, but, for the sake of clarity, we are discussing this Bill and only this Bill.

[Steve Reed]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Labour Members consider animal welfare to be important, and it is important that the Opposition can make these points on the record so that we can influence the Bill and, if possible, strengthen it. We think that the Government have been slow to the point of negligence in bringing forward these proposals that will ensure the welfare of animals. I welcome these provisions, but few such measures have been introduced in recent years.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has not been here all morning, so perhaps he has not picked up that the Bill is narrow, and it does not include the subject that he has just raised. In this winding-up speech, it is necessary that we stick completely to the Bill. I know that he will understand.

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I think that he has made his point.

Looking at animal welfare, what about the Government’s promise to protect our hard-working farmers from low-welfare imports produced using methods that would be illegal if they were used here in the United Kingdom? The Government cannot claim to be interested in animal welfare if they sign trade deals that permit lower welfare standards for animals outside this country. It is not fair on the livestock involved, and it is certainly not fair on UK producers and British farmers. Simply put, the Government are wrong to ignore the interests of farmers, consumers’ expectations of higher animal welfare standards and the wellbeing of the affected animals in the decisions that they have taken.

Similarly, many campaigners are asking what has happened to the proposed consultation on banning cages for farmed animals. That was promised by the Government nearly three years ago in their action plan for animal welfare back in May 2021, but there has been no consultation and no ban. Members want to know why not. We were promised action on imports of fur and foie gras. The action plan for animals stated that the Government are committed to building a—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. When the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) intervened on the shadow Minister, I explained that we must stick to the narrow confines of this Bill. My ruling applied to the hon. Gentleman, so it obviously applies to the shadow Minister as well.

[Steve Reed]

I am very grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was merely countering the claim made by Members on the Government Benches that the Government have been promoting animal welfare, when in fact they have been doing the opposite. I was merely putting forward the Opposition’s case in response to the points that they have been able to make. The measures in this private Member’s Bill were originally included in the manifesto on which the Conservative party was elected, and it does the reputation of politicians across this House no good at all if a Government, once elected, simply ignore their manifesto.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood) pointed out how proud he is that, when Labour was last in government, we implemented landmark animal welfare legislation, including banning cosmetic testing on animals, stopping fur farming and ending hunting with dogs. That is a proud track record on animal welfare, but the work has to continue, because there is still so much more to do. The measures in the private Member’s Bill before us are part of that. If our party earns the trust of the British people at the next general election, we will bring forward further and comprehensive legislation to strengthen animal welfare and animal rights.

In the meantime, we are proud to stand alongside the hon. Member for North Devon and the proposals that she has put before us today in her private Member’s Bill. They are sensible, humane and practical, and they deserve the full support of every Member right across this House.

Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Reed

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I start by echoing the Secretary of State’s praise for frontline council workers and others involved in delivering frontline public services, including volunteers. They really have done a tremendous, heroic job in supporting communities through the unprecedented circumstances of the past year.

Last November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told councils that he would

“increase their core spending power by 4.5%.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 829.]

The Communities Secretary followed suit, telling us that English councils would see a

“4.5% real-terms cash increase in core spending power”—[Official Report, 17 December 2020; Vol. 686, c. 431.]

What they did not make quite so clear was that those funding increases were based on the assumption that council tax would go up by 5%. To be clear, in the Treasury spreadsheets, that is an assumption, not an option.

It is hard to believe, but this Conservative Government have chosen to clobber hard-working families with a council tax hike after the Government’s incompetence left the country facing the worst crisis of any major economy. Household budgets are under pressure like never before. Millions of people are fearful for their job security. Millions have seen their incomes plunge. Millions more families are using food banks or going into debt just to survive, and now, thanks to the Government, families are being forced to pay the price for Conservative failure with a council tax hike made in Downing Street.

We know that Government Members have been coached to say that councils have a choice in this, but with social care by far the biggest factor driving up councils’ costs, there is no real choice at all. Councils that refused to implement the Tory council tax hike would have to cut social care for older people in the middle of an unprecedented health crisis that is primarily affecting the same older people.

Let us not forget that because a council tax increase raises less money in poorer areas, the Government are deepening the postcode lottery for social care, instead of ensuring that every older and disabled person gets the care they need, wherever they live. The Government are not levelling the country up, in the way the Secretary of State just described. Instead, they are pulling it apart.

We know the Government recognise that there is a social care crisis, because the Prime Minister admitted it on the day he entered No. 10 Downing Street. He boasted that he had a plan to fix it, but no one has seen a dot or a comma of it ever since. All we have seen are sticking plasters while the crisis rages on and more and more older people are denied the care they need and deserve. The Government’s failure is simply increasing the pressure on our NHS when we should be doing all we can to protect it.

Last March, the Chancellor told councils that he would fund them to do “whatever it takes” to get communities through the pandemic. On the back of that promise, councils set to work correcting the Government’s failures on personal protective equipment distribution, contact tracing, shielding and much more, but the Government did not repay those costs. Instead, they left councils facing a £2.5 billion funding black hole. That is not my figure; it comes from the Conservative-led Local Government Association. If the Government had not broken their promises, there would be no need to plug the gap now with a council tax increase.

Perhaps the Government could not find £2 billion to prevent a council tax rise because they had already stuffed the money into their friends’ pockets. Despite stark warnings from the National Audit Office last November, the Government have handed out £2 billion in crony contracts to companies with close personal links to senior Conservative party politicians. More than 500 companies were fast-tracked for covid-related contracts simply because they had relationships with Conservative MPs. That made them 10 times more likely to secure contracts than other businesses that could well have done the job better.

The chairman of Clipper Logistics donated £725,000 to the Conservative party. He was rewarded with a £1.3 million contract to set up an Amazon-style PPE distribution network. Instead of the next-day delivery service that care workers were promised, they had to wait so long to receive any PPE at all that town halls had to pay to go out and find their own. Then there is Randox, which pays the Conservative right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) handsomely to act as an adviser. The Government gave Randox a contract worth half a billion pounds last year to provide covid tests, but they were so defective that 750,000 had to be recalled.

Serco, of course, is responsible for the Prime Minister’s “world-beating” test and trace system, which is so world-beating that the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies described it last year as having only a “marginal impact” on reducing the spread of the virus. It never worked properly, but it cost £22 billion. Serco’s chief executive is the brother of a former Conservative MP and his wife has donated thousands of pounds to the Conservative party. The company counts among its former senior executives the current Minister for Health. The Government handed Serco a £108 million contract for a failing system that could have been run better by directors of public health for a fraction of the cost, and then Ministers rewarded that catastrophic failure with another £57 million contract for “management services support” at testing sites. This is not the behaviour we would expect in an advanced democracy such as our great country; it is the wilful incompetence and endemic cronyism that we would expect in a tinpot dictatorship.

The Government are simply wrong to force councils to hike up council tax after their own mistakes led this country into the deepest recession of any major economy. Not only is it unfair on the families forced to pay the price of Tory failure, but it is economically illiterate, because hitting people with tax rises in the middle of a pandemic makes them tighten their belts and stop spending, when we should be rebuilding confidence to promote economic recovery.

The Conservatives’ priorities are wrong, which is why Labour will not vote for their Tory tax hikes today. They should be helping families manage hard-pressed household budgets, not stuffing billions of pounds into the pockets of Tory party donors. They should be fixing the social care crisis, not forcing hard-working people to pay more but get less as social care is cut back even harder. They should be promoting economic recovery on our high streets, not choking off spending with tax hikes at a time when families are struggling simply to make ends meet. But it is still not too late. I urge the Government to think again, scrap Rishi Sunak’s council tax bombshell—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must refer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the Chancellor of the Exchequer or as the right hon. Gentleman, and not refer to him by using his name.

[Steve Reed]

I absolutely agree. I urge the Government to think again, scrap the Chancellor’s council tax bomb- shell, stop stuffing billions of pounds into Conservative party donors’ pockets and stand by their commitment to support councils and communities to get through this crisis.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry to have stopped the hon. Gentleman in his peroration, but it is really important in these times, when things are not normal in this Chamber, that we stick to the highest standards, and I thank him for immediately putting right his phraseology. It was not a great mistake, and I am grateful for his support.

Westferry Printworks Development

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Reed

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s experience in those matters, and of course there may well have been a need to move at speed. It is not so much the speed I am concerned about as what happened during that timeframe.

Westferry is not the only example of that kind of behaviour by the Secretary of State. Similar allegations were reported yesterday in The Times about a case in Surrey. There are fresh allegations just today that when Westminster City Council’s planning officers twice recommended refusal of the Secretary of State’s plans to refurbish his London home, Conservative councillors called it in and overruled their own officials for him, but, to my knowledge, nothing about that relationship was disclosed in any register of interests.

Westferry is not a one-off. It is part of a pattern of behaviour, and the questions do not stop with the Secretary of State. They reach right into No. 10 Downing Street to the Prime Minister. In his final days as Mayor of London, the Prime Minister pushed through an earlier version of the same development. He was photographed at numerous convivial meetings with Mr Desmond, but No. 10 has refused to answer perfectly legitimate questions about whether and how often the Prime Minister has met Mr Desmond since he took office and whether they discussed the scheme. We need to know.

Will the Secretary of State tell us whether any other Ministers or their officials contacted him about the scheme before he took his unlawful decision? Did he disclose those contacts to his officials as he is required to do? Honesty is the best disinfectant for the very bad smell that hangs around this decision. Today, the credibility of the planning system and of this Secretary of State hangs in the balance. We cannot allow the planning system to be auctioned off at Conservative party fundraising dinners. There cannot be one rule for the Conservatives and their billionaire donors, and another rule for everyone else. So I say to the Secretary of State: it is time to come clean. Publish the documents. Let us see what he was really up to and let us see if we are staring into a new era of Tory sleaze.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before we continue this debate any further, let me say that hon. Members should be very careful about accusations made in this House. I am not suggesting that anything has been said that should not have been said—I would have stopped anyone saying anything that is not suitable for saying. I am just issuing a warning.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Reed

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady has said enough.

[Mr Reed]

It is sad that the councillor has felt forced to say that, but he is absolutely right of course.

There is little evidence of devolution over how local services are funded as a result of the Budget. Yesterday, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has now confirmed, the Chancellor tightened his fingers around the neck of local government funding. He has handed over limited powers to city regions and others but refused to link those powers to resources. I want to see the Government go much further on devolution—more local control over schools, housing, health and the Work programme—but we need real fiscal devolution as well. If the Government hand over services but then cut the funding centrally, all they are really doing is devolving the blame for cuts made in Downing Street.

Yesterday’s Budget graphically underscored that point. The Chancellor made much of his plans to allow 100% retention of business rates, which of course sounds good, but he will not be clear about which services they will have to pay for. At the same time, he is entirely scrapping the central Government grant, leaving councils far worse off and less able to fund the services that local people rely on. He will not explain, either, what mechanism, if any, will be in place to ensure that business rates retention does not just benefit areas that are already wealthy and penalise those that are not. There needs to be a fair funding mechanism in place that helps areas to expand their capacity for economic growth, otherwise they will be locked into a downward spiral, with no way out.

Of course, we should not be surprised that the Budget did not include anything about fair funding. Under this Government, the 10 poorest councils have suffered cuts 23 times bigger than the 10 richest. Last month, the Government voted to cut Croydon’s funding by another £44 million, but handed a £23 million windfall to far wealthier Surrey next door. Unfairness is the defining feature of this Government.

What these further cuts mean for the vast majority of communities in this country is the closure of libraries, museums, youth services and children’s centres. They will leave streets unswept and street lights turned off at night. They will mean home care taken away from frail older people, and disabled people left to struggle alone. They will mean a cut to early intervention in troubled families, and social workers will not be there to protect children from the impact of domestic violence. Services will not be there any more to protect children at risk of abuse. We are simply storing up problems for the future, while watching young lives get ripped apart.

This Chancellor has got so much wrong. He has had to downgrade growth forecasts that he made only four months ago. He missed his own deadline for paying down the deficit caused by the banking crash. He delayed the recovery by cutting big infrastructure projects early on in his tenure, and he is now struggling to make up for lost time. He has failed to tackle the economy’s desperately low levels of productivity. Now, the IFS has questioned his ability to meet yesterday’s forecasts without more cuts or tax rises to fill a £55 billion financial black hole. The IFS further says that the Budget will reduce wages, lower living standards and lead to further austerity.

Quite simply, this is a Chancellor who cannot be trusted, and who is himself unable to trust. He gets the big decisions wrong, and he is afraid to devolve decisions to others. Instead of reforming public services, this Government are laying them to waste. Instead of sharing the proceeds of growth more fairly, this Government are presiding over growing inequality. Instead of handing decision-making to local communities, this Government are centralising power in their own hands. Instead of shaping a fairer Britain, this Chancellor has thrown a financial bung to his wealthy mates and thrown the rest of the country to the dogs.

Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Reed

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) has to answer, and then he can give way to the Secretary of State.

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend makes my point for me. The distribution of the money is desperately unfair.

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[Mr Reed]

I have given way to the Secretary of State twice, and now I am going to continue.

I turn now to council tax. On Monday, the Secretary of State denied he had written to councils, telling them to put up council tax. Indeed, it was not the Secretary of State who wrote that; it was the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The House is making far too much noise. Both the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State have important things to say. Let them fight it out. Do not make so much noise.

[Mr Reed]

Barracking will not stop me saying what needs to be said.

I have a copy of the letter the Minister sent to councils with the provisional settlement. The spreadsheets it links to, which were sent to every town hall, include figures setting out the Government’s expectation that councils will put up council tax by 1.75% every year for four years and, on top of that, impose a further 2% rise to help plug the gap arising from the Government’s failure to fund social care properly. That is 3.75% a year more every year for four years. By 2020, it adds up to a council tax hike of well over 20%. That will cost the average band E council tax payer about £300 more a year. It is very hard indeed to square that massive Tory tax hike with the Tory manifesto pledge to keep council tax as low as possible. The Tories are breaking their promises—they are hiking council tax up.