Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak also to the other amendments in my name.

We discussed this issue extensively at Second Reading. Almost everybody who spoke from all around the House was clear that the use of the phrase “pregnant person” in the Bill was unacceptable. Amendment 1 and the consequential amendments substitute the word “mother”. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, laid out at Second Reading, last year’s judgment in the Court of Appeal in the McConnell case makes it clear that anyone who gives birth is a mother under English law. That is a word that signifies a role—a word that honours the millions of women who undertake it, and honours equally those mothers who do not own to the label “woman”. It is a word well understood in statute and in law generally, and one that should cause no upset to the Government’s legal team. If I was writing the Bill, I suspect I would have chosen “women”, but I can understand and see that “mother” may be an easier word for the Government to choose, and I am delighted that there are indications that they may be looking in that direction.

Words matter, especially on the long road to equality. The use of the word “person” in the Bill as it is now erases the reality that, overwhelmingly, maternity is undertaken by women and not by men. To leave “person” in place would be a step backwards in women’s equality, uncompensated by gains elsewhere and inconsistent with government policy. I am among a large group of Peers of diverse politics but a shared determination to see continued progress towards equality for women and to oppose attempts to roll that back. There is a great deal to do, and this amendment is just a grain of sand in the balance—but it is a grain on the right side of the scales. I beg to move.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I thought it might be helpful if I made a brief statement at this early stage. The Government have listened carefully throughout Second Reading and in the various discussions I have had with noble Lords of differing opinions outside the Chamber. The Government recognise the strength of feeling on this issue and the desire of your Lordships’ House to give effect to this strength of feeling. The Government recognise the concerns that have been expressed, articulated today by my noble friend in his remarks when moving Amendment 1 and by many others in the debate on Monday, that in meeting the legal requirements of legislative drafting there may be more than one acceptable approach.

The amendments tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seek to change the drafting of the Bill to substitute the words “mother or expectant mother” in lieu of the word “person” in various places in Clauses 1 to 3. The Government accept that such an approach to the drafting of the Bill would be legally acceptable and that the intention and meaning of the Bill would be unaffected by such a change. As a result, the Government will accept the amendments tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

--- Later in debate ---

Therefore, as I stated previously, if it be the will of the House, my noble friend Lord Lucas having moved his amendments, the Government are content, following the debates and the consultations which we have had—for which I have been profoundly grateful—to send the Bill back with Clauses 1 to 3 amended to replace “person” with “mother or expectant mother” where appropriate, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Lucas. I am therefore grateful to noble Lords who have tabled other amendments for indicating their intention not to move their amendments to ensure that we can collectively achieve that aim.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord True, to all his colleagues in Government and to the officials in his team for their decision to support my amendments. It has been a most particular pleasure to be part of the diverse group of Peers that brought these amendments forward. This is, as many noble Lords have said, the beginning of a process—the next step forward in the equality of women.

Along with my noble friend Lady Altmann, I can look back at the City in the 1970s and discussions as to whether we would be taken seriously as advisers if we fielded a woman in the team. One memorable morning, we boys tipped up in our red braces, full of confidence. Our principal opponent was a woman, and she wiped the floor with us. That answered the question for us. One of the pleasures of this House is that the woman concerned is now my noble friend Lady O’Cathain.

We are currently faced with a full-on attack on women’s sex-based rights—a misogynistic and bullying campaign which seeks to diminish women’s rights in the name of the rights of trans people. Trans people are an entirely natural and expected part of the human family. The explanations of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, of the complications of our biology makes that quite clear. It is also clear that we have a great deal to do as politicians in making space in the way the world is run for the needs of trans people and in removing discrimination and hateful behaviour towards them. Many who have spoken today have played their part in that. However, the same strictures apply to women, and there are rather more of them. To my mind, the way forward in advancing both trans people and women lies in conversation and in men doing a large part of the giving way.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for her willingness to engage with her usual courage and clarity. We need openness, listening and honest exploration. It may start out as a rough process—as she notes, it is a bruising world out there on Twitter, on both sides—and there are some fundamental confusions of language in the area of sex and gender that need sorting out. I believe, however, that a committed conversation, such as, I hope, the promised review will enable, will get us to a set of arrangements that is congenial to almost all. I beg to move Amendment 1.

Amendment 1 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

5: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

7: Clause 1, page 1, line 8, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

10: Clause 1, page 1, line 14, leave out “person is pregnant and it is no more than” and insert “expectant mother is within”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

14: Clause 1, page 2, line 3, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

16: Clause 2, page 2, line 8, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

18: Clause 2, page 2, line 13, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

20: Clause 2, page 2, line 16, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

22: Clause 3, page 2, line 34, leave out “person” and insert “mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

24: Clause 3, page 2, line 35, leave out “person” and insert “mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

26: Clause 3, page 2, line 41, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

28: Clause 3, page 3, line 2, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lucas [V]]

30: Clause 3, page 3, line 3, leave out “person” and insert “mother or expectant mother”

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. Indeed, it is a great pleasure to be part of something that happens occasionally but is always wonderful when it does, which is people around the House, with their various experiences, intelligences and insights, joining together to urge on the Government a really sensible change in legislation.

To the suggestion that this cannot be done in time, I am sure there are others around the House who, as I have, have spent time in the City or in similarly pressured situations and have turned wording around overnight and got it right. Indeed, I know there are people like that in government or we would not have managed Brexit. This is merely an application of the skills that the Government have to this particular instance, and I urge my noble friend to get his friends to sort this out rather than thinking that this is something that can be shuffled through as an oversight.

In the matter of women’s equality, little things matter. Yes, there are big things and big occasions and, yes, there have been through history and are now women who have given their lives for this, particularly now in Iran, but generally progress has been made in little things. Getting the MCC to admit women did not count for nothing. It is a grain of sand but one that has landed on one side of the scales and will not come back. It is going to be a while—we have had about 150 years of progress and maybe it will be another 150 before we get where we want to go—but that does not mean we should flag, give up or let things like this Bill pass.

Motherhood is, I hope, something on which the next decade or so will see real progress. It is not an estate that we honour in this country in the way that we should. Yes, all of us are individually grateful for our birth and I think we all recognise that the estate of motherhood is good for society, but those who undertake it are treated miserably when they wish to come back into the world to take their place, having undertaken that duty for all of us. Are they accorded equality? Are they given the same chance and space as if they had stayed working? No. That will take a lot of change. It will not be easy and it will be argumentative, but it is an issue on which we must push.

The status of motherhood in the Bill, its denigration by the choice of the Bill’s wording, is not something that we should tolerate. As other speakers have said, the attempt to erase the word “women”, to remove all its meaning except to be human, is something that we should not tolerate. We have to stand firm against this. I am hoping that the Minister will hear the call of Millicent Fawcett,

“Courage calls to courage everywhere”,


gather his forces and get this Government to remedy the wrong that has been done. Indeed, I hope they will go further than that and get themselves into a position where they are happy to make it clear that women, women’s rights and single-sex rights have a place in society, and that that shall not be erased by the pressure group that must not be named.

National Risk Register

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

The noble Lord may understand that Covid was a novel virus that emerged. He under- estimates the importance of the pandemic planning work. The NSRA was a vital starting point for the Covid-19 response. We have discussed that in a number of ways, but there is no doubt that the fast preparation of the Coronavirus Act was the result of effective planning for a pandemic.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, one of the great successes of the vaccine programme has been bringing our level of manufacturing capability back onshore. Do the Government have similar plans for generic medicines, microelectronics and power generation equipment? All these sectors are vulnerable should, say, China choose to go to war with Taiwan.

[Lord True (Con)]

My noble friend raises an important point. Again, I am not going to write an industrial strategy from this Dispatch Box any more than I am a diplomatic policy. We have seen the value of the co-ordinated response to Covid. The creation of a national capacity has been greatly to our benefit. I am sure that his comments will be widely noted.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 28th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill. As the chair of the cross-industry Enforcement Law Review Group, I will concentrate very much on Clause 34, which I and many others welcome. I anticipate that there will be a number of amendments trying to get to the bottom of exactly how the Government see it operating, and I should be enormously grateful if the Minister could circulate to me the current draft of the regulations, so that we shall be talking to each other off the same hymn sheet, as it were, in Committee.

I very much encourage the Government to bring forward these regulations swiftly, and I encourage the Opposition to support the Government. There will be an obvious need for them as we come out of Covid, and I do not believe that, given the state of the debt advice industry, there is any quick perfectibility on offer. It would be far better to get something up and running, to review it pretty swiftly—perhaps after six months—and to produce a better version then and a better version a year or two after that. This is something that the industry will learn to work with, and we should aim at the start not for perfection but for something practical and effective.

Covid-19 Lockdown: Economic Support

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

As the noble Baroness will know, we have no certainty about when a vaccine will be available in quantity. She mentioned June next year, which is a possibility; it might be sooner or later. That is why we are not able to make long-term commitments. I tried to answer the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked about support for the self-employed and mentioned various mechanisms. She will know that, if they are businesses that have their own premises, we are providing support at £3,000 a month to go towards fixed costs like rates and running costs.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will know that I have written to him about a local business that I am sure is not alone in that, since the beginning of lockdown, its business, which is in exhibitions, has shrunk by 90%. It does not see any business coming back until autumn next year. It has taken out loans, made redundancies and done everything sensible, but the business rates keep having to be paid month on month on month, and that is getting extremely hard for it. What can the Government do to help businesses in that sort of circumstance?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I share my noble friend’s concern about small businesses: it is absolutely ghastly for all these people. I want to explain to him that all eligible businesses in retail, hospitality and leisure will pay no business rates in England for 12 months from 1 April 2020 until March next year. This support is worth almost £10 billion to business, and an estimated 735,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties will be included in this over that period. There is no rateable value threshold on the support; businesses large and small can benefit. In addition to the business rates holiday, the Government have announced further measures in response to the second lockdown: as I mentioned to the noble Baroness a moment ago, cash grants of up to £3,000 a month, and the extension of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme until 2 December.

EU Trade Agreement

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I can only repeat what the Prime Minister said yesterday. We continue to seek a deal but, ideally, it will have to be in place with the European Council on 15 October.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, was it ever envisaged that all goods passing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland should be subject to tariffs? Would that not undermine political agreement in Northern Ireland?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, it was certainly never envisaged. That might be an effect of the default position. This is something which your Lordships will have the opportunity to examine. It cannot be the case that every good passing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland is at risk of being carried on into the European Union.

Income Equality and Sustainability

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, this pandemic has hit the less well-off the hardest, both in terms of the mortality rates and in the suffering of those affected by the lockdown. In the depth of this crisis, we have an opportunity to sweep away vested interest and entrenched ways that have got in the way of fairness and simplicity and to come out of it with a system that is much better for the less well-off and much fairer for us as a society. As my noble friend Lord Balfe said, it is simply ridiculous that we should continue to allow people who earn vast sums of money to get away with not making a proper contribution to the national income, whether they be individuals, corporations such as Google or Chinese traders who avoid paying VAT.

The inefficiencies of the system, as outlined by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, also need attention. There is a great opportunity here to make things better by taking advantage of the situation which we have, unfortunately, been presented with. I do not know whether the most reverend Primate’s suggestion of upping the living wage or of a universal basic income would work best, but something must be done to make sure that we no longer have a society in which a substantial number of people live below poverty levels. It simply will not do.

Cyber Threats

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, we face a huge challenge and, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said, collaboration and innovation are key. This is not something that can be tackled by the security services alone, although they are doing a very great deal. We need to find a way of involving all the resources that the private sector is putting into combating the cyber challenge and binding them into a national effort. That might perhaps be done by working with the insurance industry so that there is a real advantage to companies working with the Government.

This has been a theme of EURIM—the Digital Policy Alliance—for the past 15 years. It would be very nice if the Government were to choose to wake up to it now. I do not think that we have made the progress we should have made on the law as it is applies to joint teams or on the governance of mixed private and government teams to enable such teams to have a real effect in the discussions that take place internationally. This is not going to go away. This is going to be very widespread. We really need to look at ways in which we can collaborate effectively on this.

We also need to look at improving citizens’ rights so that they can have some effective bite-back on what is happening to them. The DCMS Select Committee produced a report on this which I thoroughly support. It included such suggestions as improving the redress under civil law for citizens who suffer as a result of cybersecurity breaches. We may even need to look at bringing back Sir Francis Drake—running down to Plymouth and hitting Drake’s drum—because there is now scope for his privateering activities. Indeed, there are some people out there doing it: stealing goods back from the people who have stolen them in cyberspace. It is a source of great enjoyment and profit to a limited number of people. This activity ought to be regulated in the way that it was under the previous Queen Elizabeth, with prize courts and other things so that rather than the money going only to the privateers, some of it gets back to the people from whom it was stolen.

In this area we have gone back to lawless days. The NSPCC refers to the “Wild West Web”. I think of it more as Dickensian London stuffed with pickpockets and other dangers. We do not venture on to the web on any day without several attempts being made to relieve us of money by gulling us in one way or another. That is not the way that things are in life outside the web. We dealt with that, starting with Robert Peel, some long while ago. We really need to recognise that the Government have a role in making this new cyberworld that we live in a civilised place. At the moment they fail on even the most basic things, such as recording crime. I have made two attempts to report attempted fraud on the internet. The Government refuse to record it. It is only if you are an actual victim—if you have actually lost money—that you are allowed to record a criminal attempt. This is not good enough. The Government need to get a grip on what is going on and on our responsibilities to shield our citizens from this.

Most of my involvement in cybersecurity has been on the training side of things. I am glad to see that the Government are taking effective action in this area; the Cyber Skills Immediate Impact Fund is something that I welcome. There is a lot going on too in terms of private initiatives such as Cyber Girls First, and a real interest by industry in retraining. After all, the talent is out there in older people. The opportunity was never there for 30 and 40 year-olds to work in cybersecurity, but the talent must be out there, lost in hairdressers and baristas. Industry is making a real attempt to go out there and find it, and I am very encouraged by what is going on.

I have a few suggestions in that area to make to the Government. Where training is involved, they really need to place emphasis on pastoral care. A lot of the people who have talent in cybersecurity have a lack of talent when it comes to navigating the world. They tend therefore to immerse themselves in the digital world, and in terms of being part of the world at large need help and comfort—care leavers particularly. There are also problems when children come at this from totally out-of-work families; as soon as you get an apprenticeship, your family loses benefits and therefore you are pulled off the apprenticeship. We have to solve those sorts of problems and look after the children whom we are bringing into cybersecurity work. I have been involved with a project in Plymouth run by BluescreenIT but really involving the whole of the city of Plymouth in response to this problem. It has been immensely effective and I very much hope it is something that the Government will find an opportunity to pick up and spread more widely.

We need to take a grip on the way in which we look at qualifications. Cybersecurity is an international problem. The qualifications for people working in it tend to be international—the US and ICE set, for instance—so it is no good Ofqual wandering off and saying, “Well, we’d like something a bit different for ourselves”. That results merely in delay and training not being done, and we have to recognise that. In this, as in other areas of IT, there is an international set of qualifications and we should work with them.

We need to recognise too in our training that cybersecurity professionals need a great breadth of skill. It is not just about that particular bit of the internet; they have to understand the surrounding bits of IT such as the internet of things and 5G. They even need to understand people. I was told a story the other day of a successful penetration testing exercise that had located the source of the problem in the smart kettle in the boardroom, because the way it was being used meant that it could be turned on to record what was going on and transmit it to people outside. You need to understand the way that people use IT, not just the internals of the IT.

At the moment we are drawing up our training structures in a way that makes that breadth of training very difficult. The levy and the IFA apprenticeship structures are not proving adaptable. This and other problems result from the way in which we approached apprenticeships. We were going to sweep away all pre-existing structures and build anew. Well, building anew is hard and one finds that it creates a lot of problems. I think we need to go back a bit and say, “Actually, there are some things that work and we should be relying on them because we have an immediate need”, rather than hoping that we can build something new that may be perfect in five years’ time. In this area we are meant to be working with industry; we are meant to be industry-led. The more that we can go in that direction and make that effective, the better.

Legislation: Gendered Pronouns

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lucas]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will adopt the use of “they” as the singular pronoun in all future legislation in preference to gendered pronouns.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords—if I may so use a gendered noun in defiance of my noble friend’s Question—the Government are committed to gender-neutral drafting in legislation. There are a number of ways to avoid gender-specific pronouns, and the use of “they” in the singular is certainly one of them. Other ways to avoid gender-specific pronouns are discussed in the drafting guidance produced by parliamentary counsel.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that Answer, but does my noble friend agree that the drafting guidance, which followed a debate in this Chamber some while ago, is very much a half-way house? We still permit repeated use of the “Secretary of State” and the phrase “he or she”, which is a binary rather than a unitary gender expression. In view of the forthcoming review of the Gender Recognition Act, and the expectation that that will further ease the ability of people to change gender, should we not be reviewing the whole aspect of gender in legislation and in public practice?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend highlights the tension between etymological orthodoxy on the one hand and political correctness on the other. I was brought up to believe that “they” was a nominative plural pronoun and “he” or “she” was the singular. But that was a long time ago; popular usage has moved on, and so have the grammar guides. Indeed, the singular “they” is now used in legislation. It was used in the Terrorism Act. But, to go as far as my noble friend has suggested and use “they” in all circumstances would, I think, be a step too far. In many cases, the use of “a person” would do just as well.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment, as I did in Committee. I add my regrets that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, is not here and wish him well. My support comes for all the important reasons set out so persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—and it was evidence-based persuasion, which is always the very best sort.

Our higher education sector has derived immense benefit from collaboration with European research establishments—not just financial, but benefit in research, scholarship and international understanding and good relations. In this new, uncertain world, those relationships are ever more important.

We have discussed international students at length; they are valued and valuable and should in no way be deterred by any undue immigration categorisations or controls. In the light of the overwhelming view not just of this House but of people around the country in all the messages we have heard, I hope the Minister can assure us that the amendment will be accepted.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

The purpose of my Amendment 151 is, by collecting data and publishing it, to drive improvement and collaboration. That has been urged on me by several universities. They feel that there is another way—that we do not need to proceed by confrontation if the universities and the Home Office will agree to work together. That is something that we should insist on. Particularly given what we are going to spend the rest of today doing, this is not a time for argument, however hallowed by time that argument is; it is a time for pulling together for the good of the United Kingdom. This is not a one-sided thing; it means that the great universities really have to join in the great campaign that the Government run to support the whole of British education abroad. At the moment, it is really supported only by those who do not have sufficient of a reputation to justify marketing on their own. For this to succeed and for the good of the nation, we need the great universities to join in. There are a few which have and a few more on the periphery, but it has been a shameful show, by and large.

We need universities to recognise that, in their alumni, they have an enormous ability to help us to trade internationally. This is not something that they should seek to keep to themselves for their own commercial interests, although, obviously, that is important. This is a time when they should actively look for ways in which to make this available to the nation. However, as was seen in Committee, this is not the case, and universities really need to recognise that they have a role to play in helping the nation over the next few years.

Universities also have a role to play in supporting the immigration system. It is not there, like some tax-avoiding man in the pub, to be gamed to see how much money you can make out of it by taking the money from overseas students and not shouldering the burdens. I know that universities are better at this than they used to be, but they are by no means perfect. They are at the focus of a lot of people coming into this country. As a House, we are offering Amendment 150, which I shall support wholeheartedly—but there needs to be reciprocation from universities; they need to recognise that cheating on immigration is the same as cheating in examinations. They need, for the good of the country and of themselves, to get wholeheartedly behind supporting that concept.

The Home Office, as we all know, is not set on collaboration. I asked the Home Secretary a question a month ago in a meeting as to whether the Home Office would collaborate with universities, and she said that it would. I wrote her a follow-up letter to which she has not replied. I think that that is pretty typical of the attitude at the moment. It seems to think that it is in a little box and that all it has is its responsibility to keep people out of this country, but it is not true. At this moment, everything is all our responsibility; we must all help the Home Office to do what it has to do, and it must help us to do what we have to do to make a success of leaving the European Union.

The Home Office is, to a substantial extent, at the front sales desk for universities. It talks directly to the customers who universities wish to attract, but it runs an antagonistic website; it has impenetrable documentation and treacle-filled systems in which it can take six months for an appeal to be heard. It refuses visas on the basis of unanswerable questions such as, “What modules do you expect to take?”. Nobody knows that until they have had a bit of experience of the university and the modules may not even be set. There are even some cases where students have been told that they are being refused a visa because the equivalent courses are cheaper in their home country and they ought to be following them. This is not collaboration in any sense of the word.

I hope that we will achieve a notable victory on Amendment 150, but when it comes back to this House we should be looking not for victory at the end but for reconciliation. We need the Home Office and universities to be working together for the good of us and for each other.