Dormant Assets Bill [Lords]

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I support the Government’s proposal for a public consultation on distributions to a new community wealth fund. We talk often and rightly in this House about levelling up, particularly on the Government side of the House. It is right that this a priority for the Government, but too often we talk as if the work of levelling up were a job for Government alone. I firmly believe that the best decisions for communities are rarely made for them rather than by them. That is why we should treat communities across the country as the legitimate decision makers that they are. We all know that strong community leaders can transform a local community We will all have seen that on our patches. I could name many from East Surrey, including Janine Battersby in Woldingham, and Kay Hammond and the Calvers in Smallfield. With their dedication, charisma and get-up-and-go, they forge friendships, support those who need extra help, and put the local needs of their communities in front of those who might be able to meet them.

Let me give the House a brief example of this in action. I recently visited the residents group Ambition Lawrence Weston. On the edge of Bristol, Lawrence Weston had for too long had been used as a dumping ground for social housing tenants with complex needs. They were trapped in a negative cycle. Low housing costs made it attractive for the council to use it to temporarily house people, often with complex needs. That created disruption and fracturing within the community, which in turn drove low housing costs—and so the cycle went on.

However, with the support of the Local Trust’s Big Local community fund programme, the residents decided that they had had enough of things being done to them instead of for them. With some initial capital support from the community fund, they have transformed the area by building a new community centre, bringing in a new supermarket, introducing a local lettings policy, and bidding directly for Government funds themselves. They have a solar farm and even a wind turbine to tackle fuel poverty. I am in awe of that team. I have seen similar developments on my own patch: we have a community fund, Your Fund Surrey, and I am working with some brilliant people in Whiteley, Dino, Sarah and Marcus, who are pushing to set up their own community centre and are doing it brilliantly.

It was a relatively small amount of funding that made these developments possible, but that funding unleashed the really important thing: the leadership, ambition and energy of a group of remarkable, community-minded individuals, which has made such a difference. Without these funds, that would have been wasted. I believe that the community wealth fund can unlock that level of ambition and energy from individuals up and down the country, and I am pleased to support amendment 2.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I welcome amendment 2 to clause 29. Those who have followed the passage of this Bill from its introduction in the other place to its Report stage today will know that along with other members of the all-party parliamentary group for “left behind” neighbourhoods, including my excellent co-chair, the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), I have long been advocating the establishment of a community wealth fund as part of the extended dormant assets scheme. The Government’s amendment proposes that a national consultation on the distribution of dormant assets should include consultation on the distribution of these moneys to a community wealth fund through including them on the existing list of beneficiaries set out in the original legislation on dormant assets. Such a fund would be aimed at developing social infrastructure in the most left-behind neighbourhoods of the country—neighbourhoods such as Bransholme and Orchard Park in my constituency of Hull North. They are communities that not only suffer from extreme levels of disadvantage and deprivation, but experience significant deficits in their local community fabric. As research from the all-party group has found, residents of these communities experience well-below average outcomes across a whole range of indicators. For example, our recent report on health inequalities found that people living in left-behind neighbourhoods have among the worst health outcomes in England, with growing disparities between them and the rest of the country, including the most shocking statistic that a person from one of those neighbourhoods was 46% more likely to die during the covid pandemic.

Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) on bringing forward this important Bill. My constituents care passionately about our arts sector, as do I, and I am enormously proud to represent Caterham, which is home to the world-famous East Surrey Museum.

The pandemic has been extremely hard on our cultural sector, but it has made me and my constituents realise how lucky we are that this country is home to some of the finest museums, galleries and exhibitions in the world. Thanks to the Prime Minister’s world-leading booster programme, our country was spared another lockdown and our cultural organisations were spared having to close their doors once more.

Some challenges remain, however, which is why I am delighted to support this iconic sector in any way I can, including through this Bill. Many objects have benefited from existing legislative protections, such as the baby mummified mammoth Lyuba, which was borrowed by the Natural History Museum from Russia in 2014; the terracotta warriors loaned from China to the National Museums Liverpool in 2018; and the Tutankhamun treasures loaned to the Saatchi Gallery in 2019.

Without protection from seizure, the loan of such objects would never have been granted; world-famous exhibitions and galleries may never have come to fruition; and the opportunity of blockbuster success for our museums and cultural sector would have been squandered. Although the risk of seizure in Britain is, of course, very low, legislative protection none the less ensures that our museums and galleries can reassure their lenders and retain their status as some of the most enviable across the globe.

We have heard about some of the exhibitions this year, such as at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, which will host several self-portraits of Van Gogh, three of which will be loaned from the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Art Institute of Chicago; the Tate Modern, which will host pieces from Vancouver, Berlin and New York; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which will host a piece from Princeton University library. That gives a sense of how difficult it can be to weave together the wonderful exhibitions that we can all enjoy so much.

The prudent three-month extension that we are discussing will further boost Britain’s exhibition sector by increasing the confidence of international owners to lend to British institutions and will make the exhibition planning of our museums and galleries easier. Although the 12-month period of protection has generally provided a sufficient length of time for museum exhibitions to take place and for objects on loan to be returned in line with agreed schedules, on occasion, we can see how that would leave us vulnerable. We have heard a bit about international travel; we all remember the 2010 volcano eruption in Iceland; and we have debated in the House some of the real difficulties that we see in Tonga this year as well.

Supporting our cultural sector is about not just the arts but our economic strength. Over the years, I have witnessed many attempts by other countries to lure our brightest and best—our top talent—to other areas. It is our rich cultural fabric that acts as a magnet to this country. The museum sector alone also generates £2.64 billion of income and £1.4 billion of economic output to the national economy, which inputs to our £75 billion tourist economy. We know that several countries would almost certainly be unlikely to loan us objects if the protection was not in place.

As I have said, the risk of seizure in Britain is low, but I wholeheartedly support the Bill to ensure that all our opportunities in museums, galleries and exhibitions remain open. It will reassure those who lend to British institutions, secure our ability to host some of the finest cultural objects across the globe, and retain Britain’s status as a cultural superpower.

Online Anonymity and Anonymous Abuse

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on securing this debate. It is always a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield).

My constituent Frankie was subject to online stalking, which started on social media but escalated to severe harassment in the workplace, including incredibly offensive emails sent to both her and her colleagues. That caused serious distress for Frankie. While the police were able to track down her online stalker, because the stalker was based in a different jurisdiction—they were based in Scotland, a very long way from East Surrey, and had happened upon her almost by accident—nothing could be done, leaving that person free to go on and abuse again.

Although I welcome the online harms work that we are doing and the work of the Law Commission to improve the duty of care and to look at how we can boost our offences regime for online communications, I refer Members to the Law Commission’s language about the practical barriers to enforcement. It talks about the sheer scale of abusive and offensive online communications. That means that we must seek to prevent some of these communications; we cannot just use an offence regime to police them.

I want to touch briefly on free speech. We know that women are more abused online, we know that that inhibits them from expressing their views, and we know that that puts them off standing for office. I just wonder whether we are ensuring that we look at whose free speech we are protecting.

We also know that online anonymity can be very beneficial to people, whether they are whistleblowers, domestic abuse victims or people who just enjoy the uninhibited conversations that they can find online, but we know that, as more and more people go online, we will have more and more of these cross-jurisdiction problems. From 2 billion in 2015, we expect 7 billion people to be online in 2030. We cannot just act unilaterally on this issue; we need to look at what we can do to work with our partners across the world, because more and more of these trolls may not be based in the UK.

From stalking to harassment, grooming, scamming, extremism, fake news and political interference, we know that the anonymity of online interaction is doing harm, and there is therefore much merit in the proposals put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud. We should be considering those and all other policies that we can to try to inhibit some of the anonymous abuse that we have seen.