Deportation: Jamaica

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I have to say that it was under a Labour Government that the UK Borders Act 2007 was brought in. A deportation order must be made in respect of a foreign criminal sentenced to a period of more than 12 months, and we will not resile from that—I am sure the noble Lord would not expect us to do so. This was what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary was referring to when he made his comment yesterday about not wanting to break the law.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, the implication of what the Minister said, a bit like what the Home Secretary said yesterday, is, “Oh, this is a law that Labour brought in. We are being forced to do it, because Labour did it”. If you do not agree with that law, why have you not got rid of it? Why use petty party points on a serious issue like this?

Venture Capital Funds (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

We submit these things. First, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s work in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It is doing an incredible amount to scrutinise this volume of work. In chairing those two committees, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling, are doing incredible work. They considered these regulations, as did the other place, as did the Committee, and they did not feel there was a reason to object to this SI, which is needed by the industry to prepare in the unlikely event that we leave the European Union on 29 March without a deal. That is why we arrive at this point.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I am just about to go up to Sub-Committee B of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Sub-Committee A met yesterday. In the papers we have upstairs, the grand total of proposed negatives that both committees and the other place have looked at is something like 165 out of 600. After the sifting committee has dealt with a proposed SI, it goes to another committee and then it may come to the Floor of the House. Next week is the end of January. In a month’s time the sifting committees will not be able to do anything because if they do any work there will not be enough time for the other processes to take place before 29 March. If there are 600 statutory instruments, how come we have dealt with only about 165 of them?

[Lord Bates]

I am surrounded by expertise and am trying to listen attentively with both ears to the guidance offered. Effectively, this position was set out in advance. It was very clear from the EU withdrawal Act. Section 8 said what must happen in preparing secondary legislation. The House then met several times to establish a procedure which would give that level of scrutiny. It involved a sifting committee, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and my noble friend’s committee, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and we agreed that they would each have different roles. One would test whether an instrument should be affirmative or negative. Then they had to be laid. This SI was laid on 29 November. It was considered by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on 10 December, which raised no concerns. It was then considered by the House of Commons and then by the House of Lords. That is the position. I think the system is working well, given the incredible strain which the noble Lord referred to in terms of the offices of this House. We are ensuring that an industry that is crucial to this country is protected in the unlikely event that there is no deal.

Immigration

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

On the target of fewer than 100,000, I think the latest position is that we want to get immigration down to a sustainable level. In saying that, we want an immigration system that allows for the skills that we need in this country as opposed to looking at numbers. We have got almost full employment in this country now and going forward we need to have skills in certain areas. It is important that those needs are met or it will affect the economy.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, in 2001-02 I was the Home Office Minister for Asylum and Immigration. I do not recognise the culture that I inherited then. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, who was Cabinet Secretary, coming to visit the Home Office during my time. The Home Secretary is a big man, and I think he should be big enough to ask someone like the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, who has the past experience, not to micromanage but just to run a rule over the culture and have a look at the message on the tin to see what is missing from what was there 20 years ago.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

This House always benefits from the past experience of noble Lords such as the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Wilson. I will take that back and make sure that it is brought to the attention of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary.

Russia: Threats to Individuals in the UK

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, my noble friend is slightly straying into Foreign Office territory in relation to the diplomatic response. He is also jumping several stages ahead, because this is an ongoing investigation to which conclusions have not yet been reached. My noble friend is absolutely right to raise the issue of the torrent of dirty money: he was very vocal on this during the Criminal Finances Bill, and that Bill—now an Act—was meant precisely to ensure that criminal assets could not be hidden in, for example, dwellings or property in this country.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I will stick to something for which the Home Office is responsible, so that the Minister cannot shift it elsewhere. Have the Home Office, the Home Secretary and the Ministers yet replied to the letter that they received from the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place, relating to the BuzzFeed reports about the 14 suspicious—or not so suspicious—deaths, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

In relation to BuzzFeed’s stories—that is precisely what they are, media stories—I cannot answer the noble Lord; I do not know the answer to that question, but I will find out and let him know. If people have concerns around the BuzzFeed story, they should put those concerns to the police, because they are dealing with this.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted]

My Lords, I have only a little bit to add on this—you may be relieved to know—because I was present during, and participated in, the debates on the Criminal Finances Bill. I saw that this amendment had been tabled and I was available at the time, and I thought that because there had been so much support for it during the passage of that Bill I had better get my name on this amendment quick, before the list got full up. That is why I am second on the list of names attached to the amendment. I did not table an amendment myself because I did not think that it was right to steal somebody else’s good work when I expected that something like this would arrive.

Almost everything has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. This is something that needs to be done, and this is an opportunity to do it. It would need very persuasive reasons for me to concede that it should not be done now. As I did at Second Reading, again I remind noble Lords of the context which stretches across everything to do with money laundering and transparency, and that is that the eyes of the EU are upon us. These issues, such as people purchasing property in London with dubious money, are ones on which I often heard accusations when I was chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. I was often trying to do something useful for the UK, and one weapon to try to take out my contribution was to attack the UK for not being such a good place because we allowed money laundering and the proceeds of money laundering to reside here in the UK and elsewhere. It is in that context that I suggest to the Minister that he looks kindly on this amendment and sees too that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, says, now is the time to do it.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, I apologise for not having been involved in previous aspects of the Bill, but I participated in the Criminal Finances Bill, and particularly on this area. As we have a new Minister, I shall use that excuse to develop a bit of what we have from history to assist his briefing. But it is a matter of regret that people still consider the UK, and London in particular, a bolthole for dirty money. London is not nicknamed “Londongrad” for no reason.

There is the legacy of the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, to whom I pay a massive tribute on this issue. He took a bigger stand than any previous Prime Minister, and I shall quote him on the record, because it is important. He made that speech in Singapore in July 2015, and he could not have been clearer. I shall quote three or four paragraphs, because it is important to what I want to say and the examples I want to give.

He said that,

“this is a challenge for everyone – including ASEAN, including Britain. We too must get our house in order – and we are. And that is why the UK government has legislated to ensure that from next year, Britain will become the first major country to establish a publicly accessible central registry showing who really owns and controls all British companies.

This will open up a new era of corporate transparency in Britain. But, of course, it will only apply in Britain and for British companies. So the aim should surely be for others to follow. To really tackle corruption effectively, we need to be able to trace data from one country to another. We don’t want criminals to be able to go unnoticed, just because they move money across borders or have assets in different countries. The torchlight should be able to follow them. If we are to win, we must make sure that there is nowhere to hide.


So I’ll continue to make the case for transparency with international partners – including the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. And I am willing to go further, and take concrete steps to force the pace. And that includes looking at whether we can get foreign companies investing in the UK to step up to the same level of transparency.


Now with £122 billion of property in England and Wales owned by offshore companies we know that some high-value properties – particularly in London – are being bought by people overseas through anonymous shell companies, some of them with plundered or laundered cash. Just last week, there were allegations of links between a former Kazakh secret police chief and a London property portfolio worth nearly £150 million.


I’m determined that the UK must not become a safe haven for corrupt money from around the world. We need to stop corrupt officials or organised criminals using anonymous shell companies to invest their ill-gotten gains in London property, without being tracked down”.


It was a seminal speech and an incredible read from a British Prime Minister. In some ways, I much regret that we do not get the same thing from the present Prime Minister, because it looks as though things have gone a bit flaky.

As part of the briefing for the Bill, Global Witness and Transparency International produced some of their previous examples. I will not go through them all but there are a couple that I want to raise. The research from Transparency International identified £4 billion-worth of property bought in London with suspicious wealth. Where information is available, Transparency International has found that 98% of the companies involved in the purchases are based in secrecy jurisdictions and that 90% are incorporated in the British Virgin Islands alone. Among this information—Global Witness was a partner—it was revealed that a £147 million property on London’s Baker Street could be linked back to Rakhat Aliyev, the former head of the Kazakh secret police, as referenced by the Prime Minister.

This made me go back to my monopoly chart, which was provided on the first kleptocracy tour of London in February 2016, when Members were invited to go with journalists to various places in London to hear the story of various properties, who bought them and where the money may have come from. The properties in Baker Street of Rakhat Aliyev, the former KGB chief, and their location in the building were pointed out—we had the address and the postcode. He could never have purchased those properties from his salary; it would have been absolutely impossible. We have to be careful about tracking him down because, in 2015, he was found dead in his prison cell in Austria—he had been up to other things and had been arrested.

There were other properties listed on the chart, but I am not going to go through any more of them because the examples are always there. When we have examples like this, we cannot just ignore them. But nothing seems to happen. Journalists, investigators and people who want a democratic, open, transparent and modern rule-of-law Russia come to London to look at the situation and to talk to people. However, there are issues relating to what we have done so far.

I shall come to the Land Registry in a minute, but the brief from Transparency International went on to say that its analysis of the recent Land Registry data, and that of Who Owns England? and Global Witness, revealed that in the two years since the property register was promised, nothing had changed. Financial investigators, civil society and the wider public are still in the dark about the real people behind the 86,397 properties in England and Wales owned by companies registered offshore in the secrecy jurisdictions. The analysis found that, just in 2015, 87% of all the properties owned by overseas companies had an owner in a secrecy jurisdiction, and 57,318 were owned by companies registered in the British Overseas Territories, jurisdictions which do not publish.

Over the last two years the UK Government have made some progress in tackling corruption and money laundering and set the global standard on beneficial ownership transfers by launching a public register of companies—and in the last Parliament, of course, they introduced the unexplained wealth orders. But we need to know who is behind the companies, and where their money has come from. That is absolutely crucial. Otherwise the proceeds of crime will continue to pour into the UK, particularly into London. Evidence has been given to the consultation that closed in March 2017, but as of today there are no results.

Before I make my final point, I advise the Minister, as I did his predecessor, to see the film “From Russia with Cash”—and I think there is also one called “From Ukraine with Cash”. They are easily available, and watching them would benefit the wider debate about what is actually happening here, in this country. I want to refer to the text of the amendment, regarding bids for UK contracts, because the same issue was raised by David Cameron in his Singapore speech. This should not just be about property, but also about overseas companies bidding for contracts in the UK. We should know who owns them.

Let us see how far we have got in the UK. David Cameron said in his Singapore speech that as a first step, he had asked,

“the Land Registry this autumn”,

that is, autumn 2015,

“to publish data on which foreign companies own which land and property titles in England and Wales. This will apply to around 100,000 titles held on the Land Register”.

One evening last week I put that to the test, and applied to the Land Registry for the overseas ownership data. I went through all the seven steps on the website: status, names, date of birth—which I thought was a bit irrelevant, but I filled it in—address and telephone number; I went through the process to prove I was not a robot, and then I agreed the terms. Fortunately, I was able, as I went through it all, to print each page, so I know exactly what information I gave. However, when I came to step 7—downloading the data sets—it said, “Please note these download links will only remain valid for 4 minutes 47 seconds”. After five minutes my little computer said that there were four minutes still to go—at which time, of course, the thing closed down. So I tried it again, and got exactly the same results.

No wonder people cannot find out information, on the basis of things that we have already done, and which we boast about. We are asking the Government to go further than they have already gone with regard to overseas companies, but it is being made difficult to access what is supposed to be there already for public access. There was no cost, and every step was completed, but I ended up with less than five minutes to download. Perhaps that is down to the barmy broadband speeds we have failed to provide. I was in central London when I tried to do this, by the way; I was not at home in Shropshire. This is crazy, and the Minister needs to look at it—although I may have done something completely wrong, in which case I will take advice.

I just want to strengthen what the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said, and what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said during the earlier attempts to do this. I realise that this discussion will definitely upset a lot of people, as the previous Prime Minister said. However, the fact of the matter is that so much money is piling into London—leaving aside the rest of the country—that there will come a time when it will put our economy at risk. We are talking about huge amounts. The National Crime Agency is concerned about it and people in that agency are on record as having said various things. It looks as though the instruction has been given, “Turn a blind eye to this money coming in because it is good that it comes in”. The fact that it is completely distorting London property prices and making London another country within the UK is beside the point.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hodgson began his remarks by welcoming me as a fresh face to this topic. That will probably turn out to be classic understatement, but I am delighted to be here on a very important topic.

I first pay tribute to all noble Lords—in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for standing in for the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and for the energy and commitment they have both shown on this topic over some time. I guess noble Lords will want to hear about the current position so let me get straight to it.

This amendment would set down in legislation a commitment made at the 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit, which the UK convened, to establish a public register of company beneficial ownership information for foreign companies which already own or buy property in the UK, or which bid on UK central government contracts. This was a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

The Government remain committed to this policy and our intention is to act in this space; that intention has not faltered since the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, gave a commitment earlier this year. My noble friend Lord Hodgson is right to table this amendment—just as my noble friend Lord Faulks and other noble Lords are right to support it—to remind the Government of this commitment. I welcome him doing so.

The UK is a world leader in promoting corporate transparency. We legislated in 2015 to establish a public register of company beneficial ownership—that was how we described it, and it was actually done. We remain the only country in the G20 to have established such a register. The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, said that the eyes of the EU are on us. I hope they are because we are leading on this; we are not following. We have recently expanded the register to include other forms of legal entity established in the UK, and we remain committed to this agenda.

Earlier this year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy published a call for evidence on the design and implementation of the register of overseas companies that own UK property. As that call for evidence noted, this register will be the first of its type in the world, reflecting the Government’s continued commitment to being a world leader in this area.

The innovative nature of the register does, however, bring with it issues of legal complexity. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has identified that it will require complex amendments to the existing company law framework in the UK, with new functions being delegated to the Registrar of Companies, as well as the three land registries in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I will ensure that the comments about downloads are relayed to the Land Registry. Consideration will also need to be given to the acquisition, use and processing of information.

In addition, a robust enforcement mechanism will be essential, and the Government propose to implement this via the land registration system. Careful consideration will be needed as to how this will be applied to new and existing landowners, while ensuring appropriate protection for third parties. It will also require consideration of the appropriate penalty regime to be applied to persons who fail to comply with the obligation to include the necessary details on the register. These and other issues relating to the operation of the register were raised by respondents to the Government’s call for evidence earlier this year. We have been considering these so as to inform the design of the register.

I make it clear that the Government remain committed to establishing this register and to fulfilling our commitment at the 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit. My noble friend Lady Williams reiterated this commitment yesterday, speaking at the inaugural Global Forum on Asset Recovery in Washington DC. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy expects to respond formally to the call for evidence early in the new year. That response will focus, as did the call for evidence, on how the register will be established and not on whether it will be established.

So as to fully take account of the extensive work that the Government, private sector and civil society have already conducted, and continue to conduct, on the design of this register, it is right that we allow the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to conclude the process that is already well advanced and to publish its response to the call for evidence early in the new year. This will ensure that the register is well designed, takes full account of the representations received and provides a legally robust mechanism for registering the beneficial owners of overseas companies that own UK property. So as to further inform the response from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I will ensure that it is fully aware of the points made by noble Lords today in support of establishing the register.

I should add that earlier my noble friend Lord Ahmad gave a commitment to meet my noble friends Lord Hodgson and Lord Freeman and other noble Lords who are interested in this area to update them on matters and to get further information on what they would like to see.

I hope that I have given the Committee some reassurance on our intention to act and on the next steps that we have planned, and that noble Lords can have confidence that no provision is required in this Bill to secure the progress that my noble friends Lord Faulks and Lord Hodgson seek. Therefore, I ask my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

I am grateful to the Minister and would like to add one point. All these properties have been purchased in this country, so there has been conveyancing and the involvement of estate agents. Looking at the list, it is strange that all the lawyers and solicitors involved are the blue-chip City gang who are purchasing these properties. I know that Global Witness and Transparency International and others have to be acutely careful when they say anything publicly because the next day they get a letter from one of these companies advising them that it has been noted. It is not in these people’s interests that we have a register, but I say to the Minister that we will be watching this. He has given a very firm commitment, which I certainly appreciate, but a lot of people with vested interests—our own citizens and companies here in the City and in the legal structures—will not be happy with this, because all these properties have been purchased. Someone has done the conveyancing of this crooked money that has come into London and we have to be aware of that.

Budget Statement

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, that speech was a remarkable example of the benefits of maths, which I do not propose to follow. This is the first time that I have ever been the last Back-Bench speaker and I thought, “What do I do? Shall I chuck my notes away, listen to the speeches and pick up some good points? Should I keep up to date with the fiasco in Brussels?”. I thought about all that, but I am sticking to the notes that I did at the weekend, so there may be a bit of repetition.

I am certainly not expert in economics, but I can recognise unfairness and failure from across the Chamber. I too have listened to Budgets for more than 40 years, like the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham—the first Budget for both of us was in 1974. I have learned to listen to the bits you are not supposed to hear. When I heard the Budget in 1977, I thought something was not fair about it, so, along with the late Audrey Wise, I did something about it.

In the first 10 minutes of his long speech, I heard the most important point that the current Chancellor had to make. It was about the decision of the OBR to lower the growth forecast. After seven years of failed austerity, this is a catastrophic forecast. I am not surprised that he got it out of the way early and hardly came back to it. It should have been a key factor in the Opposition’s response.

The OBR forecast has not been challenged. The Financial Times leader afterwards said:

“It is hard to overstate the significance of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s bleak forecasts”,


and that growth now is forecast to be,

“a third lower than it estimated two years ago”—

a third lower than just two years ago. I also read that the new projection will lop £50 billion off the size of the economy by election year, 2022.

Adding to concern about this key factor in the Budget is the fact that the OBR has said that, after believing the productivity slow-down was a temporary hangover after the financial crisis, and that it had factored it in, it no longer assumes that recovery is on the way when it looks to the future. The financial crisis started in the United States of America, not the UK. I need to point out that, in 2010, the Conservative Chancellor inherited an economy from new Labour which had had three-quarters of economic growth after the crash. The Conservative Chancellor inherited from new Labour an economy which had three-quarters of economic growth after the crash—I have to repeat that because we do not hear it very often from the Official Opposition. We need not have gone backwards.

The income tax changes in the Budget mean that most goes to those with the most. The low-earning worker will see the paltry change in income tax wiped out by the spiteful freeze on in-work benefits. Working families will be hit. In fact, higher inflation, the effect of the squeeze on in-work benefits and weaker pay growth will see low earners £300 a year worse off from 2022, and in some cases, according to the Resolution Foundation, £4,000 a year worse off, taking into account changes from the 2015 Budget.

It is now estimated that earnings in 2022-23 will be lower than when John Major left No. 10 Downing Street in 1997. The forecast is two decades of lost wage growth and falling living standards. Even in the dark days of Margaret Thatcher’s cuts it was not this bad, and at least she promised to take the country to a better place. There is no promise like that today.

There is simply no precedent for what is going on. The Chancellor thinks there are no unemployed; the Prime Minister thinks nurses use food banks for complex reasons; the only money tree is for the DUP; the just about managing are not—they are struggling; in-work benefits are frozen; in the small print, the Government plan an attack on public sector increments in the health service; children in poverty are on the increase; and there is no real plan to reverse it.

The Budget was so shallow that it did not deal with social care, the defence of the realm, public sector pay or the prospects for the largest manufacturing sector in this country, which is food related. There was nothing radical on university fees, the mention of the NHS was derisory and, indeed, far short of what experts say is required, and there was nothing on planning law and land supply, which is the only route to more homes and sustainable communities. There was nothing whatever. Infrastructure was talked about, but that is all that happens—talk. There are even little examples.

There was nothing on asking well-off pensioners to pay tax on the winter fuel allowance or those still working after the age of 65 to pay national insurance. There was no effort to spread any of the misery around. In fact, there appears to be a degree of spite towards those who need help. Why else freeze in-work benefits? Why continue to freeze public sector pay? We have come a long way from strong and stable; by any measure, it was a shallow Budget with spiteful side-effects on the working poor.

I want to finish with a brief point about immigration, which has been used by the Brexiteers in respect of the economy since 2013. On top of all the misery that is out there, we now have a new climate of fear spreading in this country due to the promised hostile environment for immigrants. It started before Brexit—I will grant you that—when the Prime Minister was at the Home Office. We remember the lorries she ordered up, travelling the streets with signs telling people to go home. The signal has been sent from the top—cut corners and use fear—and it is not only towards illegals, as claimed. There is evidence of elderly people who have been resident in the UK since the 1960s, when they were children, being picked up and bundled off to detention centres with a view to deportation to countries they have not been in since the age of 10. We have reached the knock-on-the-door stage in pursuit of delivering on the Prime Minister’s hostile-environment targets.

I shall give two brief examples. Eleanor Rogers, aged 71, arrived in the UK from Sierra Leone in 1966. She now has no documents and is facing removal to a country she has not lived in for 51 years. Paulette Wilson, aged 61, arrived in the UK in 1968. She worked and brought up a family. Indeed, at one time she worked in the House of Commons Refreshment Department. She was picked up and spent a week in Yarl’s Wood detention centre with a view to being deported to Jamaica, a country she has never visited since she left. This is a direct result of the Prime Minister’s hostile-environment policy, set up some years ago. It is completely and totally unacceptable.

We do not have a strong and stable Government; we have a shallow and spiteful Government. The sooner we have a new broom and direction, the better.

Brexit: Financial Settlement

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That fits very much with what the Prime Minister said in her Florence speech on 22 September, when she said that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. We see this very much as a single negotiation. We want all of the elements to it agreed—and an important part of that will be the financial settlement.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

How can you negotiate on a legal obligation?

[Lord Bates]

Forgive me?

[Lord Rooker]

The Minister said it was a question of negotiation. Surely the question of the finance is a legal obligation. How can you negotiate on a legal obligation?

[Lord Bates]

There are parts of that which are related to it. We have said that we want to be fair in the exit and some elements cover, for example, pensions and liabilities for ongoing programmes. Indeed, as the Prime Minister set out in her Florence speech, no country should have pay in more during the current budget cycle and no country should receive less. That is a generous way of recognising that we have obligations, but as part of a wider negotiation.

Public Bodies (Abolition of Food from Britain) Order 2014

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, I remember Food from Britain very well. It appeared just before the introduction of milk quotas and has not quite been able to outlast quotas over the last 25 years. I declare my farming interest in a dairy farm.

I thank the Minister for her introduction and explanation of the order before the Committee. I am very happy to support the order to abolish the organisation Food from Britain. However, it is interesting to put it alongside the quota regime in its timing and duration. Agriculture has an almost universally recognised leadership as an industry for its productivity and efficiency improvements since the Second World War. Farmers are very good at producing, especially when working with science. However, they are somewhat less good at marketing their produce. Food from Britain represents one of the many and continuing ventures into marketing assistance.

As ever thus, as a non-departmental public body Food from Britain was brought to a close by the withdrawal of funding. Can the Minister say whether these organisations ought to have sunset clauses included in their set-up legislation to complete the administrative processes. However, it seems rather extravagant that the Ministry should agree with its order to pay £3,000 a year for a nil return from a defunct organisation.

The Explanatory Memorandum is excellent in explaining the tidying-up operation regarding pensions and the transfer of functions to other bodies. The legacy of Food from Britain is a good one. UK Trade and Investment, together with the Food and Drink Exporters Association, have collaborated to produce the UK Food and Drink—International Action Plan—although the Food and Drink Federation contends in its consultation submission that it was only the desire to tidy up administratively that led to this progress. Once again, sunset clauses would be a catalyst for improvement. The local and regional food marketing organisations also do an excellent job in these times of localism and evolution to local people and local funding.

Regarding the explanations in the memorandum concerning the protected food name scheme, I will ask the Minister one or two questions. Can she clarify Defra’s role under the scheme? Is it devolved? If it has a presence within Defra, is that as a proactive support to companies, regions or organisations in their plans for recognition, or as a certifying body to organisations in their applications for recognition at EU level—or, indeed, something else? Finally, the Explanatory Memorandum underlines that the legal ownership right to the name “Food from Britain” and the domain name, foodfrombritain.com, remain with Defra. That this is retained may signify that Defra recognises that it still has some value. Ministers may well have used the name Food from Britain in championing British food at international trade shows. Does Defra have any plans for the name, Food from Britain? Has it considered licensing the name for a fee or for a length of time, or even considered selling it? Does it intend to add value to UK food by the use of this name in any way?

While agriculture still needs marketing improvements, I am content that Defra has made the case for the abolition of Food from Britain. In conjunction with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I am happy that the abolition of Food from Britain will make a small contribution to improving the exercise of public functions.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I had hoped that I had seen the last of this Room when I left the Government. I find it the most depressing place to work in the whole Palace of Westminster, but I wanted to come today to say a few words and, it turns out, to set the record right.

I am a great believer in Ministers being accountable to Parliament for the decisions that they take. There was never an opportunity to be accountable for this decision, which I personally took early in 2008. Defra was in real trouble. So bad was it that we had to revisit the budget for the year that we were in. The rationale had absolutely nothing to do with food policy. The fact is that I had to find in the area that I was responsible for some £4 million or £5 million of cuts.

I always said that I did not agree with top-slicing to cut budgets, because you end up cutting good things to protect the bad. I was always in favour of saying, “Let’s stop doing something”. I think that I was presented with three or four options—I have not been back to check because this is from memory. There were a couple of serious animal health issues that I had to keep in the budget. This body was a prime candidate for being cut—I did not want to do it, but I could not conjure up £5 million.

We looked at the effectiveness of the body. We have seen from the way in which the Minister has presented the overall issue of food—the phenomenal, record-breaking level of exports—that this is the biggest manufacturing industry that we have. It is very important, although I do not want to go down that road. But if this body appears on a list of quangos cut by the coalition on the basis that “We’re having a bonfire”, that is a lie that would be challenged and I do not want to start a row. As the Minister knows and as the memorandum says, the body ceased activity in 2009. All the staff were made redundant. It had nothing to do with the coalition Government. The fact is that the mechanism for winding it up was not there. I am just amazed that it took five years to get us to this point. In fact, I suspect that the memorandum before us has cost £5,000 to put together, let alone the money that has been spent on accounts for no reason.

This discussion also gives me an opportunity to say that, although I had representations from some of the regional groups, I owed an enormous debt to the chair of Food from Britain, who I recall was the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for the positive way in which she operated in this area. We had discussions about it. She went back to discuss it with the council and got the decision. I put it on record that she made my job a lot easier, because there was no great row about it ceasing activity.

The Explanatory Memorandum mentions that no one wanted to take over the work of Food from Britain because of TUPE. I do not want to make a big thing of it—I rang the office of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, yesterday to give notice of this—but I recall that there was a peculiar arrangement with certain members of staff about their salaries. However, the fact that we were going to abolish the body meant that we did not have to go down that route. The pension payments were substantial—they were a few million pounds—so it probably took a couple of years before the savings started to accrue to Defra.

While this has taken a long time to do, it is good that it is now wrapped up. I do not know what has happened with the rest of the Public Bodies Act and all the big organisations, but it is amazing that this should have happened with such a tiny body. By the way, I freely admit that I do not recall consulting any of my devolved colleagues on this. This was a straightforward matter about Defra running out of money and needing to cut something on the basis that we were not going to top-slice. We got the agreement of the council to wrap itself up.

Women: Contribution to Economic Life

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in this debate, particularly following the noble Baroness and my noble friend. I strongly endorse their comments and the approach of trying to balance the huge opportunities in the developed world for women—transformational experiences, compared to our mothers and grandmothers—with the serious concern about the marginalised and underprivileged, not only in the West and the developed world but all around the world. It is that tension that we will have to address.

Last night in another place, a reception was held by Coca-Cola. I did not myself attend, but I will share with noble Lords the comments made by the global chairman of Coca-Cola, Muhtar Kent. When asked about the future, he said:

“The real drivers of the post American world, I believe, won’t be China, won’t be India, won’t be Brazil, won’t be any nation. The real drivers are going to be women: women entrepreneurs, women business, political, academic and cultural leaders, and women innovators. The truth is that women already are the most dynamic and fastest-growing economic force in the world today”.

I share that sense of energy and optimism. Time and again, we have seen new conquests. We have had the first woman Prime Minister; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, complained about having only five women in the cabinet but, to me, geriatric as I am, that seems a mass. I think that I was the eighth woman in the Cabinet, and it was extraordinary to have two women together in the Cabinet. We have had the first Appeal Court judge. Many women firsts are in this House, such as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. We have had the first woman chief constable and prison governor, and our second female Lord Speaker. The dramatic change is extraordinary; the question is how that can then be broadened and deepened.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

May I intervene on what the noble Baroness has said, because she is a rarity herself? Female Members of this House who were previously Tory Members of the other House stand at half the percentage of the Lib Dems or Labour. There have only been eight since the late Baroness Thatcher, and the noble Baroness is one of them; there have been six Lib Dems and 16 Labour Baronesses. What is the problem among the Tories with sending female former Members of the Commons to this place?

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone]

I do not want to be unduly provocative. I know the answer to this question. It was the case that people came to the House of Lords as a sign of achievement, so, generally, only people who had been in the Cabinet would come to the Lords. If the noble Lord looks at the situation, a disproportionate number of Labour Peers kindly made way from their safe Commons seats for an individual of No. 10’s choosing. The noble Lord may think that this is harsh, but that has always been the nature of the journey from the other place to the House of Lords for Commons Members. However, I am pretty confident that we will see more. I do not want to go too far with this partisan view, because I feel quite strongly about it. As the noble Lord is an endangered man, I do not want him to become too emotional and irrational as I proceed with my comments.

We now have slightly more females in the Lords than the Commons but, again, 22.5% in the Commons compared with the 23 out of 600 when I started seems a long way. So much so—as I have been diverted—because for four years, when I was first in the other place, I only ever wore a grey, black or blue suit, with a little bow at my neck and four buttons on the wrist, on the basis that if nobody mentioned that I was not a man, I would not mention it either. As time has gone on, maybe because of our own children, I have now come out as a fully fledged battleaxe, and I plan to continue with my thoughts.

Of course, there have been very interesting developments in the church. The first female priest was ordained in 1994, which was extraordinary for the Church of England, and now something like 22.5% of the clergy in the Church of England is female. We are all on tenterhooks to hear from the right reverend Prelate, but we very much hope that by the time we have this debate next year there will be a female bishop; whether that will be a female bishop who is entitled to sit in this place I know not. I very much hope that before I get carried away I will see progress in what must be one of the greatest Christian faiths of the world, the Roman Catholic Church, which to me simply has no leg to stand on. In case any noble Lords think that I am presumptuous to speak of another faith, there is an internal battle within my family on this subject, and I know the strength of feeling that exists on it. There should be change, because neither parliaments, God nor business should define us by our gender; what matters is our humanity and contribution.

I will start on the economy and business. Many in this House know that I am slightly impatient with the simplistic figure of the number of women on boards, as it does not reflect what is happening to women in the workplace. Be that as it may, we have to give credit to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and I give credit to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who was one of the great champions of Opportunity 2000, and to many other women. However, I regret to confess that a man leading that cause with his energy has been even more successful. We seem to have reached a tipping point. As my noble friend said, in 2010 12.5% of FTSE directors were women and the figure is now 20.4%. Of course, if you look only at the non-executive directors, the figure is right up at 25%. Executive progression is the issue, and it is too easy to overlook that.

I applaud the Lord Mayor of London, Fiona Woolf, who has undertaken a great deal of work on diversity during her year as mayor, developing a toolkit for what the key issues are for women as they go through the workplace: flexible time, mentors, work-life balance—arrangements that technology can make much easier. I have been very interested by the mentoring. Men often ring me and say that they have been mentoring a woman and tell me how impressive she is, to which I say, “I am so pleased that you have met her and understand her. I’ve known her for several years”. Therefore, I do not know what the mentoring is doing for the women, but it is very good indeed for the men and has taught them a thing or two. There are four chief executives of FTSE 100 companies, and there will soon be two chairmen, but of course, much more needs to be done. We are learning more about how that can be achieved.

I will move to another area. Too much time is given to women on boards, and quotas, which are ludicrous. I will look at education. My noble friend is herself an academic by background. When I became a Member of Parliament there were no female secondary school heads at all in my constituency. Now 71% of primary schools have a woman head, and 37% of secondary schools have a woman head, but still only 17.5% are vice-chancellors. What is the problem? Many people would think that academia was quite a female-friendly environment. Of course—and these are factors that you see in business and elsewhere—you continually have to publish, promote yourself, assert yourself and be a peacock. As we understand, the real difference between men and women in the workplace is that women are far less likely to push themselves forward and to be assertive and confident. But to have only 17.5% of university vice-chancellors as women puts the issue about women on boards in perspective. Nobody is talking about having 30% female vice-chancellors, but I think that that is rather more important, particularly as we all agree that it is in education that people learn about gender, expectations and stereotypes. The first female vice-chancellor was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, Professor Lillian Penson, and it has been steadily going up. In Sweden, 53% of the vice-chancellors are women, while in the US it is 26% and in Australia 23%. As we now know, more than half of graduates are women. So I ask people to look at the issue of women on boards in the context of other professions and activities, and we could cover many other areas.

If we are to have quotas, there is only one quota that I care about. The last figures that I had—I hope that the Minister will be able to explore this further—was that there were 4,370 schools in the UK in 2011 that had no male teacher. I feel much more strongly about having one male teacher in every school than I do about quotas and percentages. Many noble Lords will know that in many schools in disadvantaged areas children have little experience of a supportive man, and this seems critically important.

However, the world situation is optimistic. Quite soon, there will be four more female millionaires, and in the UK female millionaires will outnumber male millionaires by 2020. By 2025, women will control 60% of the UK’s wealth; globally, women control £13 trillion, while 70% of all US and UK personal wealth is held by over-65s, and the majority are women. In China, one in three of the millionaires is female. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and overall I am optimistic.

But I need to go to the other end of the spectrum, because this is the contradiction in women’s matters. Many in this House speak about the problems of women in prison. Some 38% of women in prison are simply there for theft, or stolen goods; overwhelmingly, 81% are there for non-violent offences. Women in prison have huge and complex needs; there is suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse and violence. It is appalling, quite apart from the estimated 17,000 to 18,000 children who experience their mothers being in prison, which is quite unlike the situation for men. Concern is frequently expressed in this place about that, and I am looking forward tomorrow to going to HMP Bronzefield, the largest female prison in Europe, with category A and young offenders, to see Pimlico Opera perform “Sister Act”. The degree to which people outside prisons are becoming involved—not only in education but in the arts, including the Watts Gallery, which does a great deal at HMP Send, a female prison—is exciting and special. But this is a highly needy and disadvantaged group.

Similarly, I commend to the House the comments of Dr Suzanne Clisby of the International Council for Human Rights, when she spoke at the UN about the appalling situation of female violence in conflict zones. My noble friend referred to DfID, and I am very pleased about her comments on that, because the work that it has undertaken on the theory of changing tackling violence against women and girls, which I urge interested noble Lords to consider, is highly regarded. Dr Clisby, like others, works at the gender institute of the University of Hull, at which I am so proud to be chancellor. This is an internationally regarded institution for gender studies, addressing in much greater depth than any of us can the topics that we have been discussing today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned her visits to two Indian villages. In India, the literacy rate for women is 65%. As she said, it is 26% in Pakistan, and I am very proud to have a niece working for DfID in Pakistan. I share the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, on the work done by Sir Michael Barber, but who in this House knows that there are eight female chief executives of banks in India, including those of Merrill Lynch, the Bank of India, Credit Suisse, HSBC, ICICI, JP Morgan Chase and the State Bank of India? Again, it is a case of looking at the paradoxes and trying to chart a way through.

I hope that this debate, as with previous debates on this subject, will help us celebrate the successes, while taking nothing for granted, and re-energise our determination to ensure that women the world over and throughout our own country can maximise their potential and make the rich contribution that they so much want to make to not only the economy but society at large.

Animal Welfare: Methods of Slaughter

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest. I am a meat-eater, and I am personally offended if expected to eat meat from non-stunned food production animals. As such, I have no problem whatever with religious slaughter, but I do not wish to eat non-stunned meat, and therefore it should be labelled. It should be labelled where born, raised, slaughtered and the method of slaughter. That is perfectly acceptable information to be put on a label for consumers.

One of the problems with this issue is that there is no central authority for halal meat. The rules vary around the world, so it cannot be policed. All New Zealand lamb entering the UK is classified as halal. It is all pre-stunned before slaughter. There is not a problem. Over my years as a Minister in MAFF and Defra, and as the FSA chair, I visited dozens of abattoirs. The FSA is only responsible for the enforcement of animal welfare regulations as a contractor to Defra, as the Minister will make clear. It is not a food safety issue.

I want to elaborate a bit on the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, with a one-week survey from September 2011 which was in an open board paper of May 2012. Some 43,000 cattle were slaughtered, 1,700 halal, 84% of which were pre-stunned; 307,000 sheep and goats were slaughtered, 154,000 halal, 81% pre-stunned; and 16 million chickens were slaughtered, 4.7 million halal, 88% pre-stunned. I have not got time to give the Jewish figures. So the non-stunned totals for halal and Jewish that one week were 3% of the cattle, 10% of the sheep and 4% of the poultry. They are very small numbers of non-stunned animals. The trouble is that too much of the extra goes into the general food chain and customers are not aware. The simple answer to this is labelling. Consumers have the right to know the method of slaughter, and that should be a given, in my view.