Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

The fact that those three Church schools are rated “good”, including New Holland primary, which my hon. Friend has visited, shows that they provide not just excellent teaching, which is really appreciated by parents—such schools are generally oversubscribed—but a caring and nurturing environment, as he rightly says. That is well encapsulated by the values of New Holland primary school, which he read out just now. I am grateful to him for highlighting their excellent record, and I think that we all pass on our thanks to those schools.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

6. What steps the Church of England is taking to provide funding to parish churches.

[Andrew Selous]

Parish ministry is at the heart of all that the Church of England does. Between 2023 and 2025, the Church Commissioners are distributing £1.2 billion to support our mission and ministry. That is a 30% increase on the previous three-year period, and the lion’s share of that funding goes to dioceses to strengthen and grow local ministry in parishes and worshipping communities. In addition, the commissioners wish to maintain that level of funding over the next six years, which would mean £3.6 billion being distributed between 2023 and 2031.

[Danny Kruger]

I am grateful for that very encouraging information, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he has done during this Parliament on behalf of the Church Commissioners. He has been unfailingly assiduous and courteous—almost holy—in the conduct of his work on behalf of the Church.

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the forced amalgamation of parishes that many dioceses across the country are undertaking? Vibrant and viable local churches in dioceses such as Liverpool are being offered the invidious choice of either surrendering their autonomy to become part of new mega-parishes or giving up access to resources from the centre—resources that they themselves contribute to the centre. As my hon. Friend has said and implied, surely the whole value of the Church of England is in the local parish system, not in its regional bureaucracies. Can he tell the House how the Church of England will continue to ensure the integrity of our parish system?

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is right to highlight to the House that there are pressures in some areas, and he is also right to point out that the parish network across the whole of England—across every one of our constituencies in England—is extremely precious. We must do everything we can to preserve it, and I make that point at every opportunity. I know that many Members of Parliament, including my hon. Friend, also make that point regularly, and that message has been heard at the top of the Church, which is why we are putting the vast majority of our funding back down into parishes. Of course, we are also encouraging parishes to do what they can to raise money at the local level, but my hon. Friend’s point is absolutely right.

Zoological Society of London (Leases) Bill

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 19th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on the progress made on the Bill, which has all our support. Of course we should extend the lease. To echo the point that has been made about London zoo, it is 200 years old—the oldest zoo in the world. It had humble beginnings, I am sure, as a sort of entertainment for the public, and it has become an incredibly important conservation charity of great global importance. While my hon. Friend was speaking, I thought of how, as barbarism took over the world, learning and culture retreated into the medieval monasteries. It is almost as if the endangered species of the world have been saved by some of these zoological institutions, and are then able to return. It was interested to hear about the species that have been saved or preserved—kingfishers, tigers, the quagga. Well, I am sorry to hear that the zoo did not in fact help to save the quagga, but at least it has some photographs of it, which is encouraging. I did not know about the mountain chicken, and I had no idea of the story of Winnie the Pooh. I am only sorry that Winnie did not stay on Salisbury plain, which is part of my constituency, where we would have given him or her a happy life. It is a very good thing that Winnie ended up in London zoo, and we can all be very proud of that.

I commend the Bill. The zoo is an historic institution, which is one of the reasons we should be so proud of it, and it has a very bright future. I was encouraged to hear from my hon. Friend about the plans for the zoo. I was not aware that Matthew Gould had taken over as chief executive. I knew him slightly when I was a civil servant at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and he was in charge of the nation’s digital policy. It is amazing how people move around in our elite. Why should he not be running the zoo? He is obviously doing a great job, and I commend the plans for it that I hear about, and the skills that he brings from his background. I am interested and inspired by what I hear about the modernisation of the zoo; it is looking forward, and using digital skills and immersive technology to give visitors an enhanced experience that gets them closer to the reality of the natural habitat that these animals come from, and to which we hope that they or their descendants will be able to return.

What I hear is encouraging. I totally agree with my hon. Friend’s argument that to raise the capital that is needed for long-term investment on the site, the investors who finance that work will need certainty that the zoo will be around long enough. This change is the right thing to do, and I echo the point that it would be nice if the zoo was there in perpetuity with a freehold. I commend the Bill. I am pleased that Members across the House support it, and I will be happy to do so myself.

Dormant Assets Bill [Lords]

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Part of the reason we tabled new clause 1 is for openness and transparency, so that the public and this House can scrutinise exactly where this funding is being placed. Scrutiny is at the very heart of our jobs here in this place, and an annual report brought forward to Parliament, as new clause 1 stipulates, would be a crucial step forward.

Lastly, on Government amendment 1, I am pleased to see the clarification around collective scheme investments. It is vital that such investments remain eligible for incorporation into the reclaim fund. I hope to see further assets incorporated in the future, as I stipulated earlier.

Ultimately, Labour supports the Bill as our priority remains expanding the dormant assets scheme in line with our commitments first made in 2008. The programme so far has been extremely successful, and predictions suggest that expanding the scheme in such a way would identify about £3.7 billion of unclaimed assets, of which about £1.7 billion would be eligible for transfer to the reclaim fund. From that, £880 million would be repurposed for good causes across the UK. Labour supports that extremely welcome step, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Minister to tackle the challenges around extending the scheme to other assets. I hope that he will take on board our concerns about future governance of the fund, too.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on bringing forward the Bill. I recognise that, as the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) said, the release of dormant assets started with Labour and has been a cross-party achievement. My thanks, congratulations and appreciation also go to the financial institutions that have made the money available.

I am pleased with the Government’s proposals, including the consultation on the potential introduction of a community wealth fund. My congratulations and appreciation to the Minister for including that as a possibility, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) and the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) for their work in bringing that idea forward.

There are other great ideas—we could abolish personal debt by capitalising credit unions with this money or distribute it direct to community foundations in our constituencies—but I think that the community wealth fund is the best idea. I hope that we will see the money going into civil society and social infrastructure and into supporting the great levelling-up agenda to which the Government are committed. This is a tremendous Bill, and I very much support what the Government are doing.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to speak in these debates. I thank the Government and the Minister for all they have done to make this Bill happen. Clauses 12 and 29, to which the Minister’s amendments refer, indicate things that the Democratic Unionist party wish to see, and I let him know that our party will support the Government tonight. However, I now wish to speak to new clause 1.

I agree that there must be further provision for dormant assets. Why not make good use of funds that would ultimately lie dormant unless further action was taken? The Bill aims to expand the current criteria, which will come with some great benefits, so it is great to speak on an important issue such as this. I welcome the Bill and look forward to the debate’s conclusion.

The Bill’s core purpose is to extend the dormant assets scheme to other financial assets, which could generate an additional £880 million of contributions. The figures are gigantic when we think on them, and they indicate where the Bill is going and what it can achieve. The Bill has three main functions: to track dormant account owners and reunite them with their account; to allow account owners to reclaim any amount they would have been eligible for; and to allow firms to partake as a voluntary process. The Bill will expand the assets involved further, creating a more sustainable economic success rate, make it a requirement for firms to get involved, and remove further financial restrictions. It is a win-win for the Government and for the Minister in particular.

The dormant assets scheme currently supports and boosts, by some £800 million, innovative, long-term programmes that aim to address some of the most pressing social and environmental issues. As I said, its expansion through the Bill will unlock an additional £880 million. It is stated that the Bill’s benefits will be felt across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I for one would like reassurances from the Minister that it will extend to Northern Ireland and that we will benefit as well. The potential for benefit in the UK mainland is great, but we also want to see it, if we can, in Northern Ireland.

Thus far, the scheme has benefited many foundations. The Youth Futures Foundation, which has undertaken significant work to tackle youth unemployment, got some £90 million, and Big Society Capital got over £400 million to tackle homelessness. These are great projects. The Bill makes money available to address social issues; how could anyone not say that that is great?

Also at the heart of this scheme is securing protections for those who own any of the financial assets involved. Dormant assets remain the property of their owners, who can reclaim any money owed to them in full at any time. In Northern Ireland, the Dormant Accounts Fund NI works to support the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, and we can see the benefits immediately. In Northern Ireland more than 44,000 staff are employed in the sector, which accounts for 6% of the total Northern Ireland workforce. I would encourage all organisations to contact the National Lottery Community Fund to take advantage of the wonderful scheme that Northern Ireland has to offer.

I thank Members who have already contributed, and those who will contribute later, to a debate that has made clear the potential for a great economic impact following this expansion. I want to ensure that the devolved institutions can take advantage of this scheme as well, and that the funds generated in England are greater than those generated in Scotland and Northern Ireland. There must also be further engagement with local communities and smaller organisations to ensure that they are not left behind.

I acknowledge the benefits that the Bill has introduced so far, and I shall welcome further discussion and expansion to ensure that financial assets are not wasted and the money is put to good use. We have seen what the scheme can do; it can do more.

Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I congratulate, in particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). In a sense the Bill is very technical, simply extending a law that is already in force, but it is seems significant at a time when our country is going through a period of great change.

Earlier, Mr Speaker objected to a reference to global Britain, suggesting that that was some sort of party political point. I do not think it is. Surely, even Opposition Members believe in the UK playing a successful role in the world, and I think it matters enormously that we are doing this; it is an important signal of our commitment to global exchange.

I hope that it is not just because he is the Chair of the Treasury Committee that my right hon. Friend is promoting the Bill. There have been lots of references to the boost to GDP from our role as a place of cultural exchange; my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) also made the pounds, shillings and pence argument, rather depressingly. It is a fair point—£75 billion is not to be sneezed at—but surely, the real value of what we are proposing and, I hope, voting through today is the value of cultural exchange. It is a great thing. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), who is also on the Treasury Committee, made the point that at a time of tension with Russia and China, increasing the opportunities for exchange of cultural objects with those countries matters enormously.

While I enthuse about the role of the UK, and particularly of the London museums, as a meeting place for the world’s artefacts, surely the real value of the United Kingdom in the cultural sphere lies in our local museums. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) about the importance of regional museums. My hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson) and for East Surrey made the same point about their local museums. Those were good efforts, but surely the Wiltshire Museum is the one to mention. We have in Devizes the museum that houses the oldest artefacts in the United Kingdom. We talk about the terracotta soldiers and Tutankhamun’s tomb and the Elgin marbles, but those are flashily new objects—box fresh—by comparison with the Neolithic artefacts that were dug out of the long barrow at East Kennett and, of course, our great stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury, which are 5,000 years old.

I welcome the renewed focus on the United Kingdom as a place of cultural exchange, and I hope to welcome the terracotta army to Devizes at some point.

Legacy of Jo Cox

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I will be brief. I did not know Jo Cox, but I intrude on this debate because it is about her legacy. I did not know her, but we did have some friends in common outside politics, and I had the pleasure of having some contact with the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) before the election, and with Brendan. It strikes me that we are really debating this concept of having friends in common, and we are talking about friends in the Commons.

I am struck by everything that has been said about Jo, much of which was new to me. My impression of her, having done some work with the foundation after her death, is of someone who worked very deliberately to cross divides, build bridges and live up to her statement that we have “more in common”. I want to reflect briefly on that phrase and wonder what it actually means. What is it that we have in common? What is it that binds us together? Without presuming to speak for her, but from listening to the debate so far and from knowing what I do about her, I think it is—and it is what I think as well—that we have in common the things that we care about. What we care about fundamentally, and what we are all here to work on in this place, is our families, our communities, our country and our common humanity. We have all sorts of different expressions of those affections and attachments, but those are really what life is about.

I just wanted to make the point—I hope it is not too politically partisan—that while we might agree that those are the things that matter, we do not necessarily agree on how to fulfil those obligations and how to serve those affections. In a sense, that is what this argument is about, but the fundamentals are the same. These are the things that matter. We serve a common set of ideals and obligations. I look forward, in a friendly way, to debating with the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) about how on earth we can strengthen our families, communities and country across this House.

Supporting the UK’s Social Fabric

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con) [V]]

I am pleased to be able contribute to this important debate and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for securing it. I am a great admirer of him, his work and his world view, which I find I largely share. I think of him as a great conservative, despite what he just said, and am pleased to be working with him on the Onward panel. I join him in endorsing the report that is to be published tomorrow and congratulate the team who have put it together.

This is a topical and important debate, and not just because what we call social fabric is a “nice to have” that everybody agrees with—we all like village halls, Girl Guides and so on. This agenda is profoundly important to the future of our country, partly for the obvious reason that what people want above all else is strong communities—we derive huge value personally from the strength of our neighbourhoods—but, more profoundly, this debate matters because what we call social fabric is in fact the foundation of our prosperity.

The House has just spent the afternoon debating global Britain; I am not sure that this topic was discussed, but the source of our prosperity as a country and, indeed, our offer to the world is in our local communities. We became the world’s first industrial power because we had a culture that enables co-operation, shared values and the moral sentiments that underpin free markets. These are possible only because people trust each other. The country is made up of the communities within it, and our responsibility as politicians is to strengthen our communities and strengthen the foundations of our national prosperity.

The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham spoke about his constituency in east London, which is obviously a place quite different from Devizes—he said that it began in 1921; we trace our origins to 4,000 BC, when the first prehistoric Neolithic structures were erected in my bit of Wiltshire—but actually there are many similarities. We, too, have entrenched social challenges: rural poverty and social isolation are particularly vicious because they are often hidden. Also like Dagenham, however, we have tremendous organisations and there is a very strong community that is responding to the challenges. I pay particular tribute to Community First and the Wiltshire Community Foundation, which I am privileged to work with.

Devizes is a place where people take responsibility for themselves and for their neighbours, as we are seeing now in the rush to get people vaccinated. On Friday, I spoke to three long-established family businesses in the constituency: T. H. White agricultural engineers, Gaiger Brothers builders and the brewers Wadworth. All three are suffering—naturally, as businesses are during this crisis—but all volunteered to help to put out the word among their workers, and in some cases paid their employees to help drive people to vaccination centres in the weeks and months ahead.

We need to trust in the spontaneous energies of communities, as I have described, but we also need to recognise that activity of that sort does not just happen. If we want more of it, especially in more disadvantaged places, we need to take action and the Government have a responsibility. Let us recognise what has happened over recent decades. As the Onward research demonstrates, our social fabric has grown threadbare over recent decades. Since 2000, a quarter of all pubs throughout the country have closed, and a quarter of all post offices and a fifth of all libraries have shut their doors. Partly that is because of how we all now work, shop and socialise—the changes in our economy and our society—and partly it is because of funding cuts, especially since 2010. I want to acknowledge that: I recognise that austerity fell most harshly on local government, which then cut non-statutory services the most. Youth services, which I worked in during those years, fell away particularly sharply—some estimates suggest that 70% of funding for youth services was cut in the 2010s. So what do we do? Well, we do need more public funding. I particularly welcome the investments that the Government have made. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been committed to youth services. During the pandemic, in the first lockdown last year, there was £750 million of emergency funding for civil society and for charities.

I pay tribute to the work that the Minister for Civil Society, Baroness Barran, and the Ministers in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport are doing to support the charity sector. I would, of course, welcome more funding. I have called very specifically for a new endowment funded from dormant assets, which are potentially worth many billions of pounds, to finance social infrastructure and community projects. I also hope that the new levelling-up fund, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the spending review in November, will live up to its billing and help support the infrastructure of everyday life, which means, in my view, not just trains and broadband, vital as those things are, but also the libraries, the youth clubs and the social enterprises that bind places together. In fact, broadband is a big part of the social fabric. I hope that we can do a deal with tech firms to get our communities properly connected. I see a major role for libraries in particular as the hubs of digitally connected local communities.

Finally, on money, I welcome the kickstart scheme that the Government have announced. Along with Onward and other colleagues, I hope that we can adapt that scheme, perhaps combining it with the National Citizen Service, to create a more ambitious project that funds young people, especially those who have suffered with all the disruption to education during this crisis, and those who will suffer from the downturn in the labour market in the months ahead. We need to fund those young people to work on social and environmental projects in their communities.

To finish, whatever we do with public money, there is something more important that we need to get right: the question of power—who is making the decisions about how money is spent and how services are organised locally. We are one of the most centralised countries in the developed world. To my mind, taking back control was not just about Brussels. If all we do now is bring power back to Westminster, as we have done, we will have failed the people of this country. That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is why I think the social fabric agenda is so significant: we need to put the power to determine what happens locally in the hands of local people. The Onward report makes a number of recommendations along those lines and I made some in my report last year. We are in the midst of a great constitutional change: the restoration of power to the UK. We need to restore power to the communities, too.

I welcome this debate. I thank my friend, the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham for what he called this cross-party conversation. I hope that we can go beyond that. The battle for politics should be over this agenda. We should be fighting in this place about who owns the community agenda, and I think that my party has a very good claim to that.

Digital Infrastructure, Connectivity and Accessibility

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I thank and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) on bringing this important debate to the House. I start by recognising what the Government have done in this space, where we have some very positive developments. I particularly honour them for the “outside-in” approach to extending broadband coverage, so that everywhere gets connected together, including the hardest-to-reach 20%. That is an important principle.

The Government are seeking not just the sugar rush of investment in the productivity sweet spots of our country, but long-term investment in the future of all our communities. I particularly congratulate the Government on issuing 40,000 vouchers under the rural gigabit broadband voucher scheme. Some 500,000 premises have been connected to gigabit broadband in the past year. That is a very positive development, but as we have heard, more is needed for rural areas.

The internet is the saviour of the countryside. If we want our towns and villages to prosper, which means more remote working, more start-ups and more young people staying in the countryside, nothing matters more than this, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said. We know that 30% of rural firms experience unreliable broadband, which is twice the rate of firms in urban areas. Levelling up means equalising the quality of broadband in rural and urban areas. It is not only the deserts of Dorset we need to worry about but the wastelands of Wiltshire, which are just as bad, and I urge the Minister to help us.

This is not just about geographies; it is about the people within our geographies as coverage expands. Investment in digital infrastructure on its own is not enough. The fact is that, on its own, that investment would widen inequalities and reduce social mobility. It would just further advantage the people with the capabilities to use that technology. The question for us is, how to address the digital divide as we build up our digital infrastructure? The answer is more social infrastructure, and I am pleased that this concept is becoming more and more recognised.

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor talked in his spending review statement last week about the infrastructure of everyday life. These are the institutions and the services that bring people together and spread opportunity. He particularly mentioned libraries when he talked about the levelling up fund. I pay tribute to the Good Things Foundation, which has a vision for the role of libraries as the digital hubs of our communities, with a central focus on digital skills. We need a great digital catch-up and a great national mission to get as many of those 9 million people who want and need it online, working through trusted local organisations. The Good Things Foundation estimates that for £135 million, we could halve the digital divide and get 4.5 million people online over four years at a cost of around £30 per person, or the cost of a GP appointment—just think of the gains to wellbeing and prosperity that that £30 per person will produce.

There is an even bigger prize, which is to get big tech on the side of our local communities. I know that this is a stretch. Culturally, after all, big tech is the incarnation of the idea that we do not belong anywhere. I regret to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) celebrating the “anywheres”; that was very off-message. Big tech incarnates the idea of the Californian-themed cyber-universe, but it does not have to be that way. I know that many of the big tech firms are thinking differently now, seeing how they can support local economic growth and focus less on the abstract global community of their users and more on the real-life local communities that their users live in.

I hope we can open a conversation with some of the big tech firms to see what they can do to create what we might call digital social infrastructure and improve the wiring of the social economy. Crucially, we must not empower tech giants with access to community data for them to exploit commercially. Any new systems that are built must be non-proprietary, and value created from community data must be owned and used by communities themselves. There is a good conversation to be had here, and I hope the Government will do that.