Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to add my name to Amendment 67, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.
For me, this is very much a question of children’s rights. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child makes it clear that children must be free from violence and that Governments must do all they can to protect them from violence, using all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures. This amendment would ensure that the whole of the UK, not just Scotland and Wales, complies with the UN convention. Moreover, if we are taking children’s well-being seriously, we cannot continue to allow them to be subjected to physical assault. They are the only group, as the noble Baroness said, who are not legally protected from it.
Ministers say they are open-minded but want to see the review of evidence from Wales and from a range of voices. But, as already noted, we have ample evidence, from numerous countries, both of the negative impact of physical punishment on children’s well-being and the positive impact of its prohibition in terms of it having the desired effect of reducing the use of physical punishment. If she has not seen it, I would refer my noble friend the Minister to a recent article in Children and Youth Services Review which brings together much of that evidence.
As has already been noted, the evidence is sufficient for all the Children’s Commissioners, including from Wales, to be calling for reform. Indeed, they call the current law “outdated and morally repugnant” and reject the argument that it would lead to the criminalisation of parents. Polling shows consistent support among the general public for reform and new polling shows a majority of safeguarding professionals in support of change. Over half of social workers and teachers said the current law makes their work of safeguarding children more difficult.
I fear that the “waiting for Wales” argument is becoming a legislative form of “Waiting for Godot”. How long will we have to wait for another Bill that would provide such a perfect opportunity for reform? The Children’s Commissioners and a range of health and social care organisations are calling for urgent action now. Surely, we should be listening to them and stop prevaricating.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I rise to oppose this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and its consequent Amendment 505. I believe it is an egregious interference in family life by the state and an intrusion. It is an attack on family rights and it will encourage a childish disrespect for authority. It is disproportionate and heavy-handed and it risks criminalising good and caring parents, as well as overloading children’s services departments.
The law as it stands is sensible. It outlaws violence, abuse and unreasonable chastisement. Crown Prosecution Service guidelines are clear that, if the actions of a parent cause anything that is more than transient or trifling, it is unlawful. This has been the law since 2004, when Parliament narrowed the scope of the reasonable-chastisement defence. The reasonable-chastisement defence simply permits parents to use very mild physical discipline, like a tap on the hand or a smack on the bottom, without being charged with assault. By definition, the defence allows only reasonable behaviour. Therefore, if the defence is removed, it is only reasonable behaviour that will become unlawful.
“Reasonable chastisement” is common and harmless. The Welsh Government admitted in 2021 that there was
“no definitive evidence that reasonable physical punishment causes negative outcomes for children”.
Research recycled by activist academics campaigning for a ban fails to distinguish between reasonable chastisement and beatings. The recent press statement calling for a ban by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which appears to have become an annual event, included the claim that
“now is the time for this Victorian-era punishment to go”.
This kind of highly loaded language must bring into question whether the college was engaging in scientific debate or merely exaggerated polemic. Victorian-era punishment conjures up images of beatings that were outlawed long ago. Either the college is uninformed about the law or it is deliberately exaggerating.
Those who defend loving parents who use mild physical punishment within the context of a warm, nurturing relationship are opposed to child cruelty. The reasonable-chastisement defence will never prevent a court bringing in a conviction in a case of abuse. There is not a single reported case where this has occurred. As stated, the legal defence cannot be used where a parent causes anything that is more than transient and trifling. An example of the law in action took place in Torbay in 2018, where a stepdad was successfully prosecuted for smacking his four year-old daughter too hard. He had left a handprint on her bottom and the judge ruled, quite rightly, that he had acted unlawfully.
A core objective of the Bill is to address the concern that children at risk of abuse are falling through the cracks of our safeguarding system. However, a smacking ban would exacerbate this wrong by increasing the likelihood that genuinely at-risk children are overlooked. It would be a tragedy if major cases of abuse were missed because vital staff members were needlessly occupied with innocent parents. Those in genuine need will suffer while resources are wasted on cases where there are no real problems. Social workers will be even busier than they are already and, as a result, some vulnerable children will not get the help they obviously need.
Everyone wants the state to intervene to protect children who are in danger of abuse, but, if that is to be done effectively, the limited resources available need to be focused on identifying and helping those at risk, not investigating innocent, loving parents because the law of assault has become politicised by activists who do not agree with reasonable chastisement.
Making trivial smacks a criminal offence will cause misery for parents and children. Parents will be required to be treated as suspected child abusers by police and social services when they know they do not deserve to be treated in that way. We do not help victims of real abuse by creating injustice in families where there is no abuse. Some children will be removed from their parents; some will have to give evidence in court against their mother or father. This entirely unnecessary and unjust process would be devastating for the child and their parents, and it runs counter to the Bill’s stated aim to keep children and families together wherever it is safe to do so, as set out by the Minister at Second Reading.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I warmly welcome the Minister’s remarks, because at the heart of this debate there seems to be a mischaracterisation and misunderstanding of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 and a conflation of mild admonition with assault by beating, which obviously should be subject to the full force of the law. For the avoidance of doubt, and just to sum up, would she agree with the words of her colleague the Minister of State, Catherine McKinnell:
“As the law stands, quite frankly, any suggestion that reasonable punishment could be used as a defence to serious harm to a child, or indeed death, as has been asserted, is completely wrong and frankly absurd”?—[Official Report, Commons, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 6/2/25; col. 464.]
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I hope I did make that clear earlier, but I am very happy to reiterate. It would be wholly wrong. It would not be in line with the law for the types of cases that we have heard about in this debate to be subject to the defence of reasonable punishment. The Crown Prosecution Service has been clear, as professionals are clear, that that would get nowhere near to this defence. I know that noble Lords will be disappointed, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, with the response of the Government, but I think it is a reasonable recognition of the very strong action taken when children are subject to violence and the need to learn from those who have recently changed the law. That is a sensible and appropriate way to go forward in this case.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, these are probably the sorts of things that we should be doing in Committee. The noble Baroness introduced these amendments very well but I did, I am afraid—having known him for a long time—see the hand of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in them. It is definitely his style, as all those who have known him for a long time would say. These are definitely the sorts of questions that we need answered, about the practicality of what is going to happen. All systems will have their flaws, but this is about having the structure to cope with those flaws. Getting that through would be very valuable.
To give fair warning, I will not move my amendment on the NHS number identifier later on.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I support Amendment 50, as well as the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who gives his apologies to your Lordships’ Committee, as he is unable to be here to speak to his own amendments. I do so in the spirit of my noble friend Lady Cash, because these are probing amendments by and large, from a position of broad support for the objectives that the Government have laid down in this part of the Bill. Nevertheless, they are amendments that seek clarity in respect of the proposals that the Government are putting forward.
We need more information about the Government’s intention in adding new Section 16LB to the Children Act 2004. Such scrutiny is essential given that it would enable the Government to set in train a process that will be achieved through regulations—secondary legislation —but nevertheless is very far reaching and potentially re-establishes a regime that, as we have heard previously, was abolished in 2010 by the coalition Government for reasons that I will come on to.
It is hard to disagree with the logic that a single unique identifier would prevent children getting lost in systems that are meant to keep them safe, for example, if they are known by different names or their names are not spelled correctly, as happened in the tragic case of Victoria Climbié. I absolutely concur with my noble friend: the name Maria Colwell and other tragic cases hang over someone like me, who served on a social services committee, and many social workers and other professionals over many years. Ensuring that children do not slip through the net or disappear without services knowing where they have gone is paramount, as so many appalling national scandals involving dead or desperately abused children have shown.
It is appropriate that we look at the history and genesis of ContactPoint. It is important to be mindful of the need for qualitative data, not just quantitative data collection; there is a difference. Hence in 2003, in his report about the death of Victoria Climbié, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, recommended the establishment of a new national children’s database for all children under the age of 16. While scrutinising this report six months later, the Health Select Committee in the other place expressed reservations, saying:
“We believe that establishing a national database for children along the lines envisaged by the Laming Report would represent a major practical and technical challenge that should not be underestimated”.
The committee was instinctively open to the concept, likely for the same reasons that many are advocating for it today: if good data can save children’s lives, it of course needs further exploration. The committee went on to say that the implementation difficulties should not be a deterrent and endorsed the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for a feasibility study to explore the value and practicality of setting up a national database for children.
In 2004, as we heard, trailblazer pilots were conducted to assess the feasibility of implementing a children’s information index. Nine local authorities piloted a range of IT applications and a government study of the indexes concluded that implementation was operationally and technically feasible. By 2009, the Children’s Information Sharing Index had been renamed ContactPoint, with the aim of all local authority ContactPoint management teams having access to the database by autumn 2009. In old money, the estimated development and set-up cost of ContactPoint was £224 million and the estimated maintenance cost in 2009-10 was just under £44 million; most of this latter sum was for local staff to operate, maintain and ensure the security of ContactPoint.
Some giving evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee in the Commons—and arguing strenuously for the SUI—were among those running ContactPoint back then and benefiting from those sizeable contracts. In their defence, they saw this as part of a bigger package and emphasised the need for early intervention in communities and strong relationships with families. The Children’s Charities Coalition said that,
“to really shift the dial we need further investment in early intervention and early help across our communities, and much greater focus on embedding that consistently and universally”.
It also called for further clarification on how the single unique identifier will be effectively applied.
Returning to the ContactPoint database, which was, as I said, abolished by the incoming Government in 2010, it was designed to contain names, ages, addresses and information of all children aged under 18, as well as information about their parents, schools and medical records. Respected organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust quantified the scale and financial cost of data collection, the methods used to maintain and secure the data, and the treatment of critical issues such as consent, as part of a wider study. Its researchers found that children are among “the most at risk” from what they called Britain’s “database state”, with three of the largest databases set up to support and protect children failing to achieve their aims.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I very much hope that the NHS number works, so that we can get on with data sharing. When I spoke in an earlier group, I explained the importance of feedback loops in a successful organisation. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is about using the single unique data system to inform research and commissioning. I think he has a point. The precedent of government-supported HDR UK, which I spoke about in the earlier group, is highly relevant as we found a way to anonymise such data on a consistent basis for research purposes. Indeed, the Minister might find HDR UK a useful collaborator in speeding up her excellent work and avoiding Big Brother fears.
We have heard that the single unique identifier will not be used to create a giant database. I am therefore interested in how the Government can gather aggregated data, for example by NHS trust, social service area, education authority, type of family or medical condition. Examination of such group data can reduce future mistakes and costs, target resources and improve efficiency—all the things that I tend to talk about—and make social services and the police more effective. So I would appreciate an answer about how this can be done if we are ruling out a database—by letter if need be, because it obviously goes slightly beyond the scope of the amendment. I am grateful for all the information that has been given today. It has been very reassuring.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the very good amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. If we are spending significant amounts of money on collecting this data and building a database and we have some of the best research facilities in the world, it seems to be sensible when looking at longitudinal studies to utilise that data properly.
My second and more prosaic point is that maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that subsection (5) and subsection (14) are at variance with each other. They are quite loosely drafted in new Section 16LB. Will the Minister comment on that, because the great thing about the noble Lord’s amendment is that it has pointed out that there seems to be a discrepancy between the two subsections?
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I shall briefly speak in support of these amendments and of research. We do not need to have a national database established in order to do research because, first, research has to go through research ethics committees, so that is carefully scrutinised. You could take a representative sample of areas and use properly anonymised data. We can do that now. We can anonymise properly rather than using the old-fashioned pseudo-anonymisation, which was not helpful.
But in all these areas, I am afraid, we lack the evidence that we need to make sure that all our services are best targeted. When we are looking at very vulnerable children, we need to know which flags that are currently yellow flags should become red flags and which items do not show a correlation—although there has been an urban myth that they do correlate—so that the index of suspicion is appropriately targeted. To pick up on the point made by my noble friend earlier about having criteria, it is only through good research that we will get good criteria to determine the point at which we trigger an alert that a child is at risk and get that to happen earlier. It may well be that we are missing some important pointers just because they are not in people’s current consciousness, and there is a real danger in reacting to what I would call urban myths.
Pupil Absenteeism
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Jackson of Peterborough
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support teachers and schools to reduce pupil absenteeism.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, improving school attendance is a top priority for the Government. We are providing schools and teachers with world-leading data tools, empowering them to identify quickly children who are at risk of non-attendance and to put the right support in place. Our 31 attendance hubs have helped 2,000 schools to adopt best practice. Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence advisers will also work closely with schools to reduce absence.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
The Minister will know that the cohort of children who are severely absent—those who miss more than 50% of their classes—which amounts to about 120,000 pupils, are the most at risk of ending up in gang activity and other serious criminality. The previous Government did a good job on tackling this problem, but what assistance are the Government giving to individual schools to collate and use data on absence to develop a plan of action to tackle the most acute attendance problems?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that being absent from school, particularly persistently, not only impacts on your education but puts you in danger and makes you vulnerable to criminal activity in the way he outlined. That is why it is really important that we nip in the bud the attendance problems of those who start being absent before they are persistently absent. Through the Working Together guidance, we now expect that local authority teams will meet schools regularly to agree individual plans for severely absent children to get them back into school and to keep them out of trouble.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, this portmanteau Bill has its strengths, which I concede and welcome, particularly on child protection and safeguarding, pupil absence and kinship care—an area close to my heart that I campaigned on in the other place. It is also deeply flawed, particularly in Part 2, which is ideological and divisive, written at the behest of the teaching unions and careless of fundamental priorities around standards, parental choice, teacher recruitment and retention, local autonomy, innovation and independence. As more sensible Labour figures have rightly noted, it is a betrayal of the laudable record of not just the 2010 coalition Government but the first two Blair Administrations from 1997 onwards. It may well result in poor outcomes, social immobility and worse life chances, particularly for children from modest backgrounds.
My focus today is squarely on some troubling aspects of Part 2, which is predicated on the misguided belief that micromanagement by officials, whether in Whitehall or the town hall, will somehow enhance child safety or education standards. This may be the natural direction of travel of a bureaucracy, but it is one that this House must firmly resist. To echo the remarks of my noble friend Lord Frost earlier, the trend is starkly evident in the mandatory registration scheme for children not attending school. Consider the sheer intrusiveness of the data demanded. It compels parents to report the number of hours each of them spends educating, but parents educate their children constantly—when cooking a meal together, opening a bank account, or simply talking and living life together. Home education is often an extension of this integrated approach. It is not institutional provision for classes of 30, following rigid timetables. How are parents expected to delineate their specific hours with each child?
The requirements extend to the names, addresses and hours of everyone else contributing to each child’s education: grandparents, Sunday school teachers, music tutors, scout leaders or someone who gives a talk at an art gallery that the child visits with a grandparent. Parents must update the local authority within 15 days of any change for each child. It is, frankly, an absurd and impossible requirement. This constitutes state-mandated surveillance of family life on an unprecedented scale for law-abiding citizens choosing a perfectly legal form of education. As highlighted in the learned Aidan O’Neill KC’s legal opinion, there are significant questions over the scheme’s compatibility with the convention as well as with UK GDPR principles. The justification for such intrusive measures is that these children are “invisible”; they are not invisible to their parents, families or communities.
The tragic and appalling case of Sara Sharif was repeatedly raised in the other place. She was already on a list of children about whom social services had been concerned. The local authority had been notified that she was educated at home—already a legal requirement of schools. How would placing her on yet another list have made a difference? It is a question that demands an answer. We must do all we can to prevent such terrible tragedies occurring again, but we need to ensure that the actions taken will be effective. Even if another list was helpful, what possible justification is there for all the detail demanded in this Bill? I challenge the Minister to address that in her remarks at the conclusion of this debate. The limited research available shows that, although home-educated children are disproportionately referred for safeguarding concerns, they are significantly underrepresented on child protection plans. Let us make sure our approach is founded on empirical evidence and not prejudice, so that we genuinely protect children who need it without imposing ineffective bureaucratic restrictions on everyone else.
Counter-Daesh Update
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Priti Patel
I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks and for the support she and other Members have given to all the people delivering aid in difficult, challenging locations. A political process is obviously under way, on which the Foreign Office is leading. As I mentioned in the statement, the Foreign Secretary has been engaging with Prime Minister al-Abadi and the Iraqi Government on the political side. Linked to that is the wider work on stabilisation, which has to be integrated at every level, including all aspects of state building, nation building and the building of democracy and civil society, as well as some of the most basic things for the functioning of a society, such as infrastructure and the delivery of public goods and services. A great deal of work has taken place across Government, involving the MOD, the FCO and DFID, through the stabilisation team and the combined teams. We are advocating a combined and integrated approach, and we have to work with the Iraqi Government, because ultimately they are responsible for delivery.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
The Secretary of State is quite right in what she has said, and I welcome her timely statement. I pay tribute not only to the compassion and humanitarian efforts of British citizens, but to the courage of our armed forces. On winning the peace, will my right hon. Friend undertake to work with the Home Office to ensure that British jihadists who return from Syria are properly de-radicalised, using a proper strategy, and that there will be the most draconian efforts to deal with those who are not de-radicalised, so that we can protect our constituents and our country?
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. Everyone who returns, having been involved in the conflict, must be subject to the right kind of sanctions and be reviewed by the police to determine whether they have committed offences. He also raises an important point about our collective work across Government. Everything that DFID, the FCO, the MOD and the Home Office do to fight the forces of terrorism is done in our national interest. That is why our focus is on protecting not only those in Iraq and Syria who are subject to Daesh’s atrocities, but our citizens in this country, too.
Humanitarian Crisis: Greece
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Justine Greening
As ever, it is all about today’s announcement, which we understand to be about €700 million for the next three years, and about making sure that that money is invested sensibly. It is important that Greece itself is willing and able to work with NGOs on the ground and with the UNHCR so that the best work can be done. One of the biggest changes affecting Jordan and Lebanon that has enabled us to help to create more jobs was the important decision of those countries to allow refugees to have work permits. That enabled us to do more to help them get the jobs so that they were able to support themselves. It is important that we are able to work effectively with the Greek authorities to make the most of the additional resourcing and investment so that we can help people as much as we possibly can.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I fear that Members on both sides of the House are failing to acknowledge two pertinent facts. Not only has the European Union visited penury and misery on the people of Greece because of its cruel monetary policy, but that has been compounded by the fact that its largest member has completely disregarded, in a high-handed and arrogant way, the Dublin protocols that my right hon. Friend mentioned earlier.
May I ask what efforts the Government are making to distinguish between economic migrants and refugees, and—returning to an undertaking that the Prime Minister gave me before Christmas—what special efforts are being made to target our resources at the persecuted minorities in the middle east, particularly Christians?
Justine Greening
My hon. Friend has, in fact, raised three issues. First, we are working with the International Organisation for Migration to secure better data and evidence relating to the flows of migrants and refugees. Secondly, we are not in the Schengen area, which means that we can more readily make decisions on how to deal with the various people who seek to come to Britain, depending on whether they are claiming asylum, seeking refugee status or, indeed, just wanting to come here to work as migrants.
Thirdly, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the issue of certain minorities. I had a chance to go to Irbil, where I met, among others, Christian minorities who had been persecuted and caught up in the Iraqi crisis and the territorial gains that Daesh was making in Iraq at the time. I can reassure my hon. Friend that we are very conscious of the need not to lose sight of the groups who have been most affected by the crisis. We often talk of its impact on children, but, as he rightly points out, whole communities have been targeted in some areas.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend has a wealth of experience in this field, and, as always, he speaks with great common sense and logic. Local authorities should be using the powers that they have. By far the majority of landlords provide a good service, but authorities should be using those powers to crack down on the rogue landlords whom all of us, including good landlords, want to see driven out of the system.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
May I commend the Government for taking the toughest action on rogue landlords in a generation in the Housing and Planning Bill? On the provision of private sector rented housing, will the Minister give me an undertaking that he will continue to work, on a cross-party basis if necessary, to develop residential estate investment trusts, on which there has been a commitment from both parties over the years, and work with the Treasury to bring forward proposals for private sector housing, particularly in areas with affordability issues?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we are working right across government on the institutional investments. I can tell the House that the estates regeneration panel that the Prime Minister has set up will be meeting for the first time tomorrow and will be looking at all these issues in that context as well.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Philip Davies
I will not give way. We have heard so much drivel from people with a different opinion from me. I am trying to get some balance into the debate.
When Labour Members argue that we should be judged only on how much money we spend, it does not come as a great surprise, because that is what Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians have always argued for. I remember in the last Parliament asking why truancy under the then Labour Government was so terrible, and the Minister’s answer was: “We’ve spent £1 billion extra tackling truancy”, as if that was fine. Truancy had got worse, but that did not matter because they had spent £1 billion extra on tackling it. It struck me then as even more criminal than ever. They had spent £1 billion and truancy had still got worse. If they had said, “We’ve saved a bit of money and it’s got a bit worse”, that might have been some justification, but for it to get worse and to proudly boast, “That’s all right because we spent £1 billion extra”, is complete nonsense. So of course Labour and the Liberal Democrats believe in the Bill.
What I cannot understand in my heart is how any self-respecting person who wants to call themselves a Conservative can possibly subscribe to the view that we should be judged simply on a piece of legislation that sets out only how much we are to spend, and that it is irrelevant what we do with the money or whether we can afford it. Those should be the things a Conservative thinks about, but many of my colleagues seem to want to abandon their Conservative principles. I should perhaps be reassured that had the Government taken my view, most of my hon. Friends would be arguing the opposite of what they have been arguing today. They might be supporting this policy not through sincere belief but because of their desire for advancement. I do not know whether they believe in the Bill. In many respects, I hope they support it because they think it will help their advancement, because if they genuinely believe in it, I do not see how they can call themselves Conservatives in any shape or form.
There seems to be a view—a politically correct attack to close down debate—that runs simply: either a person is for international aid and therefore in favour of the Bill, or they are against international aid and therefore oppose the Bill. It is an all-or-nothing argument. If someone criticises Britain’s huge, often mismanaged aid budget, they are accused of not wanting to help the neediest in the world. It is designed to cover up mistakes in the overseas aid budget and ignore shortfalls. This politically correct campaign has allowed international aid to linger as such an inefficient part of Government spending, without sufficient checks or proper rigour.
I believe that humanitarian aid is very important. It provides relief for people who suffer from acute distress following conflict, famine, natural disasters and other emergencies. That work is vital. This country has always stepped up to its responsibilities, and I have no doubt it will always do so, when it sees images around the world of tragedies taking place. However, I am sceptical about the aid that dominates more than nine tenths of official aid spending—development aid. It is the predominance of this aid spending that we are mainly focusing on here. This aid offers continuous support to recipient countries in the areas of education, health, water and sanitation, government and civil society, economic infrastructure, economic production, debt relief and other things across many different Departments.
We have to consider the country’s financial position. Thanks to considerable overspends over many years by the Labour party, we have a huge debt mountain, and scandalously our debt payments are still as big as the budget of one of the biggest Departments. I hope that the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill will allow me to say that, because of the disastrous way in which the former Chancellor and previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, ran this country, it seems that he was determined to make us a recipient of international aid rather than a contributor to it.
At a time of national austerity, it seems to me sensible that we would want to reduce the aid spending given to other countries. It would not have been a bad thing even to have frozen aid spending to other countries, but to increase it massively, as we have done, at the same time as we are making the case that we have no money and have to cut spending everywhere and cut our cloth accordingly, is completely and utterly ridiculous.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Would our constituents be right in asking this pertinent question: why is it appropriate for the Government to seek to hypothecate into the future for future Parliaments on this area of expenditure when in every other domestic area, including important areas such as literacy, social care and cancer, they set their face against such hypothecation? Is that not a reasonable question?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I personally think that if my constituents were asked for what area it was more important to guarantee a certain level of expenditure—the NHS or overseas aid; the defence budget or overseas aid; the police budget or overseas aid; the education budget or overseas aid?—the overseas aid budget would come off second best in any head-to-head contest. Lord only knows why on earth people in this place think that the public believe uniquely that this particular Government Department should have its funding increased massively and then protected at that level. To be perfectly honest, I think they all need to get out more.