Evidence-based Early Years Intervention

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to speak as a member of the Science and Technology Committee. I pay tribute to our Chairman, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), for providing the leadership and allowing us to undertake this work on the Select Committee, and to draw conclusions from a wide-ranging gathering of evidence.

I am sure this is not a party political issue. Everyone will agree that it is right to intervene when there are adverse childhood experiences. The evidence, as we have heard today and as we stated in our Select Committee report, is very strong on that point. We know that many of the problems that lead to adverse childhood experiences, whether increasing domestic violence, drug or alcohol misuse, mental health problems or financial stress and money worries, are part of the cycle of harm that can lead to a multi-generational impact of these heartbreaking situations.

In my view—as a member of the Labour party, this is inherent to my political decisions—that is linked to poverty and inequality. That is why, whether on adverse childhood experiences, Sure Start and children’s centres, or any form of investment in the early years, I keep finding myself back in this place talking about those issues, because they are the nub of the cause for many young people, who, through no fault of their own, suffer in their life as a consequence of the poverty in our country.

I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on making it clear that evidence, the use of data and investment in prevention are the way to go. I am sure the Science Minister will agree with that, given that he is the Science Minister, but I rather hope that he might share that conclusion with colleagues in his new cross-departmental group.

This is not only an issue of concern to me at a national level; I have a strong constituency interest in the matter, too. Bristol City Council, for example, is leading in innovation in this area of work. On 17 January 2019, my colleagues in City Hall held a conference on adverse childhood experiences in Bristol and how the council’s new vision statement could bring partners together to help tackle the causes. The event was held by the council in partnership with Avon and Somerset police and our clinical commissioning group.

[Norman Lamb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on this subject on the Committee. He mentioned the police; I do not know whether he is aware of it, but there is some really good, innovative work going on, linking police to schools. When the police identify a situation of domestic violence overnight, they will alert the school first thing, so that a child arriving at school who has perhaps experienced the most horrific trauma overnight is given proper support and protection the following day, rather than perhaps being told off for being a naughty child, which can easily happen in ignorance of what has happened to them.

[Darren Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Partnership working is a phrase that we often hear in local government, and sometimes it is a bit amorphous, but that is a classic example of why it is so important. I have had cases where constituents have told me stories of when they would go to school, albeit a long time ago now, and end up being treated as if they were ill and having to sleep in the nurse’s room at the school as opposed to taking part in classes, because of the experiences they were dealing with at home. As a consequence they missed out on their education, when instead the support should have been put in place at that time to help them in the best possible way.

The involvement of Avon and Somerset police is important because we know, and the evidence shows, that for children who suffer adverse childhood experiences, especially those who suffer multiple ACEs, the outcomes associated with that cycle of harm include mental health problems and drug or alcohol misuse—criminal activity is therefore connected with that. The police have a role not only in tackling criminal activity but, as I said at the outset of my speech, in helping to deal with the causes.

[Martin Whitfield]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not a question of simply identifying children who have suffered or are vulnerable to suffering such experiences, but that the real importance and the real financial saving is in the interventions that follow; and that the good practice that has been shown in many areas, if it were shared across the country, would prevent this from becoming a tick-box exercise by professionals that does not address the problem?

[Darren Jones]

I agree with my hon. Friend; that was why the conference we held in Bristol was so popular—so popular, in fact, with over 400 delegates wanting to come, that they had to run the conference twice, because they could not fit everyone into the setting to do it together. More than 50 partner organisations across education, policing, probation, the voluntary sector, health, social care, public health and the Mayor’s office have signed up to our vision in Bristol.

This is also a question of political leadership, because Bristol knows that multiple ACEs lead to other factors that make for a negative environment in the communities in which we live. We know they will have an impact on problems such as knife crime and gang activity, and that they cause problems with mental health for people and therefore a lack of positive environment in the community, but also problems for economic productivity. That is why, in our “One City Plan” in Bristol, we have a clear and specific target of ensuring that children,

“grow up free of adverse childhood experiences having had the best start in life and support through their life.”

That particular strategic target for the council is linked to other targets, such as reducing knife crime and gang activity, dealing with period poverty and ensuring affordable childcare.

However, the access point is really important—returning to the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield). We cannot just rely on police or a school; we need a way to ensure that intervention, support or just someone being there when you need them are available. I reiterate the comments that the Chair of the Select Committee made about the lack of delivery on the health visitor programme where, as has been said, many people have no intervention or access point for much of their early years.

That is why, in Bristol, we have been able to protect all our children’s centres. The financing has clearly been cut because of austerity funding from central Government, and the services that can be made available have gone down to the bare minimum, but we have kept them all open for that reason. I pay tribute, as I have on previous occasions, to my friends the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, and the cabinet member for children and young people’s services, Councillor Helen Godwin, for ensuring that sustainability in Bristol.

In a previous debate in this place on the funding of maintained nursery schools, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) made a powerful point about a constituent of hers who said that she was in a domestic violence situation and the only way that she could get access to support was by taking her child to the children’s centre, because it was not seen to be going to the police or going to get intervention for the abuse she was suffering from her partner. She was taking the kids to nursery, but because the services were co-located in that environment, she was able to get support.

[Dr Drew]

It is good to hear that children’s centres still exist in some parts of the country. In my constituency we only have two left. Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is that it is locking the NHS in? That may be only a Gloucestershire problem, or it may happen further afield as well. We seem to have failed with the idea that it should be education, police and children’s services in general; it always seems that the NHS is the weak link. Is that true in his part of the world, or is it just a Gloucestershire phenomenon?

[Darren Jones]

All I know in my part of the world is that the health service and our schools are having to pick up more and more of the work that others used to do in the past. Certainly, if I talk to headteachers in some of the more challenging parts of my constituency, they tell me that they are having to invest more and more in family support staff, who work with families and young pupils in a way that schools were never placed to do in the past. We all know that school budgets are extremely tight, so that particular school is using some of its pupil premium funding to help children in those scenarios. I am pretty sure that the original intention of pupil premium funding was not to offset cuts to children’s centres or local councils; it was to give an extra hand to pupils from poorer backgrounds to get on and do well in life. In fact, it is just covering cuts made from the centre, and is therefore ultimately not having a positive impact on the bottom line, either for individuals or for the country.

However, this is not only about council leadership, because we also often rely on the charitable sector for the delivery of services. In my constituency is the Southmead Project, led by a chap called Dr Mike Pierce, who received an MBE for his work in this space. Mike was born and bred in Southmead and was himself the victim of adverse childhood experiences, and he speaks powerfully on the issue. I have done so before, but I again pay tribute to him. His leadership over the 24 years that the project has supported young people in that area has been quite remarkable.

However, Mike is not optimistic about the future. He relies on generous charitable fundraising, philanthropic donations and sponsorship from local businesses in order to keep his project afloat, in the face of cuts not only to the council but to organisations such as clinical commissioning groups and the police, which previously supported his charitable organisation. At the same time, demand is increasing. The project has a waiting list of young people in households where domestic violence or drug or alcohol misuse—or worse—are present, and it cannot get around to giving those young people the support that they need because it does not have the capacity to do so.

As a consequence—this is often the case when there are cuts to public services—residents end up coming to see their MP because there is nowhere else to go. It really is heartbreaking when constituents are in front of me in tears, with no access to support. Quite frankly, there is very little I can do, as the Member of Parliament, other than raising issues such as this in the House. We must understand that the decisions we make on public policy, funding and national strategies flow through directly to the lives of these young people, whose potential is being lost.

[Norman Lamb]

We should add child sexual abuse to the hon. Gentleman’s examples of adversity. The Government commissioned an inquiry into child sexual abuse, which is under way. Its prevalence across the country is deeply disturbing, yet we do not really have any confidence that children who suffer from it get the support that they need in order to live a good life. In adulthood, they are often diagnosed with personality disorders or psychosis—horrors that completely change their lives. Supporting them at an early stage might make all the difference.

[Darren Jones]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which is timely because the founding purpose of the Southmead Project was to support victims of child sexual exploitation. Its “Wall of Silence” exhibition portrays the impact that ACEs had on many people when they were young, and now. That impact lasts for the whole lifetime, but evidence shows that effective, immediate intervention at the right time—when victims are suffering from sexual exploitation or are in other distressing environments—has an enormous positive impact on life chances. The research is very clear on that.

Whether it is on the basis of stories that we have heard in our constituency surgeries, evidence received by our Select Committee or the statistics that we are offered at local authority level, we all agree that neither young people nor their families should be victims of these distressing and heartbreaking environments. Families who end up in these situations often do so not through their own fault, but as a result of living in poverty. We ought to do much more, not only by providing support to people who need it, but by investing—using evidence and data—in prevention. That is not only the right thing to do; it is right for those individuals and for our country.

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the response that our Select Committee received from the Government. I look forward to the Minister’s confirming that we will be able to work with this new cross-departmental group, hopefully to elicit a more positive response.

Solar Industry

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect on the solar industry of the replacement of the feed-in tariff.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am pleased to have secured this important debate. The Minister knows that I have been focused on this issue for a number of months now. The solar industry is reeling from the announcement that the feed-in tariff scheme is to close. The scheme was a huge success, with solar panels installed on nearly 1 million homes since it was launched in 2010. However, the loss of such a successful programme has led to a substantial loss of confidence in the sector. Between 30% and 40% of firms are contemplating closure, and international figures are considering pulling out of the UK market.

The news about the scheme came on top of a business rates rise and caused a huge degree of apprehension in the sector. If that apprehension turns into something more substantial, the loss of firms on the scale suggested would be hugely damaging to the sector, the wider economy and our efforts to tackle climate change.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. Does she recognise that this sector is not just about profit-making firms; it is also about charitable and community organisations? In my constituency, for example, they make money from solar farms to help fund youth centre services and other community outreach activities. This is also an issue for their funding sustainability.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I absolutely agree, and I hope the Minister will say something about community schemes in her response, because there are many different ways of installing and making the best of solar power, as the hon. Gentleman has just indicated, and its flexibility has been one of the reasons why it has been taken up so quickly.

I was talking about the damage to the solar industry. One firm in my constituency, near the village of Malpas, closed once the restrictions on the existing feed-in tariff schemes were imposed. I hope that was a one-off and not a sign of things to come.

Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all parts of the economy: that was the call to action from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Without acting on it, we will miss our climate change targets and global warming will cause fundamental damage to our planet and the way we live our lives. So why is this the first time in two years that we are debating climate change on the Floor of the House of Commons? Why is this debate not being led by the Prime Minister herself? Why is not climate change at the heart of every major statement from this Government?

The IPCC has given us 12 years. The independent Committee on Climate Change has said that we are falling behind and not acting with enough urgency. The climate strike protestors, whom I visited in Bristol, are rightly demanding more radical and urgent action now. What has been the response? The response to the IPCC report was to write a letter to the independent Committee on Climate Change, asking for advice. We should have been amending the Climate Change Act 2008 by now to upgrade our climate change targets in line with the Paris accord. We should be setting out how on earth we are going to finance the huge investment needed in upgraded infrastructure, energy and food security and in the technologies needed to meet our negative carbon emissions in future.

[Richard Benyon]

rose—

[Darren Jones]

I cannot give way because we are so short of time. That is the problem: it has taken two years for this issue to get to the Floor of the House, and we have four minutes—four minutes!—to deal with an issue of this enormity. There is no time at all to talk about how we will not be able to meet our electric vehicle targets without investment in the infrastructure system; no time at all to talk about the efficiency of energy use in our homes; and no time at all to talk about food security, agricultural reform or the need for investment in the energy network. That is completely unacceptable.

I do not think that climate strike protestors from my constituency will be particularly pleased with the idea that their Member of Parliament—and many other hon. Members here today—has only four minutes to deal with this issue. When will it come back to the Floor of the House? Will the Minister tell us in her summing up when we will have days’ worth of debates to get into the issue of climate change?

There is a total lack of vision about the long-term risks. A world that is 3° warmer than pre-industrial levels is unimaginable yet is within the lifetime of my daughter. The United States and China—gone; Africa, southern Europe, the middle east, India, South America will be uninhabitable, based on models from universities. Refuge for the world will be focused on Canada, the United Kingdom, northern Europe, Scandinavia and Russia. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced as climate refugees. The world will be dominated by Canada and Russia. Agricultural and food supply chains will be completely lost. This happens within the lifetime of people born in the past year or two, yet we have four minutes to talk about it.

How we live, what we eat, how we collaborate in a global community: how on earth will we meet the cries from the independent advisers, from the community, from young people, from the scientists—from everybody in the world who says we are not doing enough to tackle this problem? We have four minutes to deal with those issues.

We are talking about the future of our planet, the world that we want to live in and the role that this country must play, and it is all up for grabs. I stand in solidarity with those young people, the next generation, who took their time away from school to strike on this very issue and say that not enough was being done, and I say that this debate is not enough, although I congratulate the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it. I look forward to the Minister’s confirmation later of when more time—Government time—will be allocated to this important issue.

UN Climate Change Conference: Government Response

Darren Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Anna McMorrin]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is the biggest issue the world is facing right now. We have been given only a one-hour debate in Westminster Hall—we had to push for that; I am very disappointed that the Government did not make an oral statement in the Chamber.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Given the advice from the Energy and Climate Change Committee to the Minister on how to reach net-zero emissions, does my hon. Friend agree that we should have Government time on the Floor of the House to debate this issue more fully?

Climate Change: Extreme Weather Events

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered extreme weather events related to climate change.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Dorries. Several hon. Members send their apologies, because of a clash with an Environmental Audit Committee visit about sustainable fashion. Many of the normal suspects were sad not to be present. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate. It is a particular treat to be given the opportunity to lead it, not least because it is my birthday.

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its recent report on 6 October, I assumed that we would have time to debate it on the Floor of the House. Any IPCC report should warrant that level of political attention, but that special report tells us that all the warning lights are on red and that we have 12 years to limit global temperature growth to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels or face extreme changes to the way we live our lives.

I welcome the Government’s clean growth strategy and the passing remarks of the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth about the IPCC report in her statement on Green GB Week, but, with respect, heralding a letter from the Government to the Committee on Climate Change asking for advice on what to do next is not good enough. The House of Commons is supposed to be at the heart of the national and international debate. What we do here adds volume to the news that people across the UK see and hear. Shamefully, the IPCC report was covered prominently in the newspapers, on the radio and on the TV, but not in the House of Commons.

The Government’s response to that significant report was not proportionate to the report’s conclusion, which was that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels

“would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”

through

“transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.”

Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide need to fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero around 2050.

That was a lot of information, but the degree and scope of change required to limit and stop temperature growth is enormous. I fail to understand why this debate was not led prominently on the Floor of the House of Commons by the Prime Minister, rather than in Westminster Hall for 90 minutes at the third attempt by an Opposition Back Bencher to force the Government to the table. The report is not just a warning about the future or an academic hypothesis; it is about what is happening around the world today. The co-chair of the IPCC working group said:

“One of the key messages that comes out very strongly from this report is that we are already seeing the consequences of 1 °C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes.”

I will read through some of the headline extreme weather events of this year. In January, a mud slide following rainstorms in California resulted in 18 deaths. Since March, floods in east Africa have accounted for almost 500 deaths. In May, a dust storm caused by high temperatures in India killed 127 people. In June, a monsoon followed by a landslide in Bangladesh caused 12 deaths. A summer of heatwaves across the northern hemisphere, experienced in Britain too, resulted in 65 deaths in Pakistan, 80 deaths in Japan, more than 90 deaths in Canada, 42 deaths in South Korea and 20 deaths in Greece, and, on the best available data, up to 259 deaths were attributed to high temperatures in the UK.

In June and July, floods in Japan led to 225 more deaths, and more than 8 million people were advised to evacuate. In July, wildfires in Greece resulted in 99 deaths. Throughout August, we saw the news of floods in Kerala in India, which caused 483 deaths as of 30 August and forced more than 1 million people into relief camps. Throughout the summer, wildfires in California, which are being dealt with again as we speak, resulted in tens of thousands of evacuations. In September, a typhoon in Japan caused 1.19 million evacuations and seven deaths. A typhoon in the Philippines, China and Taiwan led to nearly 2.7 million evacuations and 134 deaths.

A hurricane in the USA led to up to 1.7 million evacuations and 51 deaths. In October, in another hurricane in the USA, half a million people were ordered to evacuate and there were 45 deaths. In October, flooding in the south of France left 13 dead. Towards the end of August, another typhoon in the South China sea left 15 dead. Those are only some of the extreme weather events in 2018 alone.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) tabled urgent questions on our return from the summer recess to try to debate the issue, but he was unsuccessful. When Parliament is not sitting in the summer, we cannot debate. It is vital that we understand the consequences today of world climate change.

To put that list into an historical frame, the World Meteorological Organisation claims that there was a 20% increase in extreme weather-related deaths between 2001 and 2010, which means that at least 370,000 people have died as a consequence of extreme weather around the world—an increase in the number of heatwave-related deaths from 6,000 to 136,000. Extreme heat in the Arctic, coral bleaching in the Great Barrier reef, increased wildfires in the western United States, extreme rainfall in China and drought conditions across South Africa are not just bad weather; they are costing lives, and an estimated $660 billion in economic loss, which is a 54% increase in the costs associated with extreme weather since 2001.

The issue does not just affect other countries; it is about Britain too. We have already heard about the increased number of deaths as a consequence of heat in Britain. The Met Office helpfully published a report in November that concluded that the extreme weather we are facing today in the UK is due to climate change. The report shows that it is hotter for longer in the summer and wetter for longer in the winter, with more rainfall from extreme weather events than ever before.

That is why we are building flood sea defences in Avonmouth in my constituency to prevent my constituents from being flooded by sea level rises due to climate change. It is also why I and so many of my constituents are trying to build renewable energy solutions, albeit without much luck to date on tidal energy, given the Government’s decision to pull funding for the Swansea bay tidal lagoon. My constituency has two islands in the Severn estuary—Steep Holm and Flat Holm—which means my boundaries include a big chunk of the second-largest source of tidal power in the world, but nothing is there to harbour its energy. The Government need to move much more quickly.

The National Farmers Union has made a clear case about the impact of extreme weather on British agriculture. Flooding on farms causes damage to critical infrastructure and property, loss of power, impassable roads and bridges, damage to farmable land and a cost of at least £70 million in direct losses to businesses, before the indirect costs of damage to infrastructure and regional economies are even considered.

In other parts of the world, people are having to live in the most unsatisfactory of conditions. Otto Simpson, a doctoral student from Oxford University, recently emailed me. He had partnered with a Swedish filmmaker to produce a documentary in Bangladesh that shows how women and girls are being disproportionately affected by climate-related displacement. It tells the story of an unnamed women, now 18, whose family home in Bangladesh was washed away by floods. She and her family moved to Dhaka to look for work but arrived in an overcrowded city already struggling to meet the needs of climate migrants, with no jobs to hand and a shortage of food for those looking for it. Today, forced into being a sex worker, she is the main provider for her family and brings home between $120 and $180 per month, which is merely enough to pay the rent for one room for her, her parents and her younger siblings. That is a direct consequence of the extreme weather—the flooding—in Bangladesh.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva estimates that more than 20 million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes temporarily or permanently due to ever more extreme weather. We have seen the official statistics today about the millions of people being advised to evacuate their homes. That may seem unusual for us in Britain, but we should pause and think about what that means. Imagine if the whole of Bristol or London were asked to evacuate. What would that mean for people’s lives? What would be the consequences for the way we manage cities and the country? Imagine if homes were flooded and we had climate migration in our country. The Government’s response would be significant and robust. That is happening around the world today, and as a global partner we have an obligation to ensure that this issue remains high on the agenda. We must not lose focus on the size of the challenge, the speed at which the change is coming and the impact on us and other humans across the globe.

The immediate challenge is to limit temperature growth to 1.5 °C. The Paris accord said that we must limit it to 2 °C or less, but the IPPC said we must meet 1.5 °C within the next 12 years. If we fail to stop global temperature growth, the world will radically change. Models published in the New Scientist suggest that a world that is 4 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels would result in the United States, South America, central and southern Europe, Africa, the middle east, India, China, Japan and most of Australia being uninhabitable—gone. A 4 °C rise means a world without the United States, China and India—that could happen within my daughter’s lifetime. We would be left with a world dominated by Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, northern Europe and the Nordics, Russia and whoever ends up owning western Antarctica, which would have thawed in the 4 °C model, and might be somewhere that people need to live.

Our ability to grow and ship food around the world would change fundamentally. The way in which we build our cities and live would change. The way we generate and distribute energy would radically change. If we think we have a problem with countries relying on gas from Russia today, imagine a world in which Russia is the main place to live and the main source of our food. The geopolitics would be very different. Climate migration would dwarf the demands of today’s immigration flows, which are caused by war or economic migration. If we think the immigration that Europe faces is a problem, imagine dealing with a world in which many countries are no longer places that humans can live.

We must do everything we can to ensure that that is not the legacy we leave to our grandchildren. This is not just about where we live, what we eat and our energy; it is about national security, defence and geopolitics. If Russia is connected to the United States because the ice in the northern hemisphere has thawed, the way in which defence is resourced in the world will change fundamentally.

The UK has a proud record on tackling climate change, but we must do more at home and, fundamentally, more abroad. What role is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office playing in ensuring that every country in the world signs up to the Paris accord? We are missing Russia, which accounts for 5% of global emissions. We are missing Turkey and Iran, whose oil and natural gas exports account for 77% of its carbon emissions—again, that is an example of why we need to move at speed to a world in which we are not reliant on oil. We are missing Colombia, which has 10% of the Amazon rainforest within its borders. Illegal tree logging accounts for more carbon emissions than transportation. We are also missing a handful of others.

This is not just about the countries that did not sign up to the Paris accord in the first place. The President of the United States has signalled his intention to withdraw the country’s support, and the new President of Brazil has threatened to do the same. Brazil, of course, accounts for 4.1 gigatonnes of carbon emissions due to deforestation.

I find this amazing. I am disappointed that this debate is not receiving the highest levels of attention and that the UK is not forcing this issue up the national and international agenda. I applaud the efforts we are taking with the clean growth strategy and investment under the industrial strategy and on our own carbon emissions. The previous Labour Government had a proud record: they instigated the Climate Change Act 2008, and the Energy and Climate Change Committee is very good, but the speed and breadth are not good enough. Of course, we can be as good as we wish in the United Kingdom, but if the rest of the world does not follow, we all suffer.

I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to help raise the volume, and I hope she agrees that we should have a proper debate on IPPC reports on the Floor of the House of Commons annually. Perhaps the first should be after the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s advice is received next spring. I hope she will set out the work being done across Government to ensure not only that this is a strategy in the energy team at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—as important as that is—but that it affects every Department. What requirements have been placed on the Department for International Trade to drive this agenda as it secures new trade deals around the world?

I also hope the Minister will set out how the Government will build on their current plans to significantly increase the speed and breadth of their clean growth strategy. I again remind her of the IPPC report’s words: it said that we need “unprecedented changes” in all areas of our lives. I hope she will confirm that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with all its diplomatic might and soft power around the world, is keeping this issue high on the agenda so that we bring every country with us on this historic and vital journey to a sustainable planet.

[Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. May I just say that it is usual for MPs to discuss terms of address with the Chair before the debate begins? I prefer “Ms Dorries”, “Chairwoman”—“woman” being the noun for an adult human female—or simply “Chair”, but not “Chairperson”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Darren Jones]

I thank the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), and the Minister for taking part in the debate.

The Minister’s response was a defence. It set out what the Government are doing but failed to admit the IPCC report’s findings: that we are not doing enough and not acting quickly enough. That admission needs to be made, on the basis of that evidence about us and other countries around the world. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister said, we must ensure that the matter continues to be raised in the House of Commons and throughout the country. I hope that our debate this morning will raise the prominence of this vital issue and allow it to be debated on the Floor of the House in a more routine fashion in the years ahead.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered extreme weather events related to climate change.

Ending Seasonal Changes of Time (Reasoned Opinion)

Darren Jones Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 General Committees

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his clarification. He raises an incredibly important point. One of the reasons that we are against the proposal is that we do not know what its impacts will be. The European Commission has not, as far as we are concerned, properly assessed them, and we have not been able to do so, either, in such a short timeframe. To implement this change in such a short timeframe would not be practical when we do not know the impact it would have across the country.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

If the EU proceeds with this proposed change but the UK does not, will the Minister confirm whether Northern Ireland and Ireland would have different times, and what would that mean for the people of Northern Ireland?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

That is why we are having this debate. The United Kingdom is working with member states in the negotiations, and others have joined us in opposing the proposal. Some member states have yet to give their firm position on whether they will accept the proposal. Responsibility for the time zone is, of course, reserved to Great Britain. If we ever needed to change the clocks, we would, obviously, consult widely within the United Kingdom before making any decision.

Budget Resolutions

Darren Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I also want to share with hon. Members the excitement in Bristol at the news today that one of Channel Four’s creative hubs will be relocating to our wonderful, creative and diverse city. We thank our Mayor, Marvin Rees, and his team for securing such a win for Bristol.

My reaction to the Budget is less positive, because it was a Budget of bad jokes and little else. It failed to recognise the biggest issues facing the economy—economic growth, Brexit, austerity and climate change—and then failed to set out what we were doing about them. On economic growth, it is a plain and simple fact that we have gone from being one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world to one of the slowest. We rely on economic growth to fund our public services, and many workers in Bristol are already taxed enough, at a time of stagnant or painfully growing salaries and a rising cost of living.

How do we grow investment in our economy and generate the growth to fund the public services that the British people expect? Private sector investment is significantly down, having been decoupled from the global investment cycle, whereas in the United States and Germany we are seeing much higher investment. In my constituency in the industrial zone of Avonmouth, I have businesses that are ready to invest in jobs and growth but unwilling to do so because of the risks facing the British economy. State-backed investment under this Government is a self-defeating spiral. They are borrowing more than £1 trillion—50% more than when Labour was in government—without having achieved any significant sustainable economic growth off the back of it.

That takes me to the next elephant in the room, which is Brexit. Never has a modern British Government implemented a strategy that has proactively sought to make us poorer and less powerful. The Treasury has already earmarked £4.2 billion to administer Brexit, and it has not secured agreement on our future relationship, which will create even more cost for businesses and workers. Our trajectory has proven the original forecasts from the Bank of England—that Brexit would make the economy 2% smaller and cost around £20 billion in available taxes to spend per year—absolutely right and nothing to do with “Project Fear” and has proven the promise of a Brexit dividend a fiction that many will not forget. That is why I and others have long supported a people’s vote. Now that the facts are becoming clear, it is right that the British people have their say on the incompetent Brexit the Government are bringing forward.

Finally, on austerity, the Prime Minister sold us a fiction, as we have heard time and again in this debate. The plain and simple truth is that austerity has not ended—it is not even on the path to ending. The Budget did nothing for police or fire services in Avon and Somerset, at a time of rising crime when many victims are being left entirely alone and without access to justice; it did nothing to help Bristol City Council to provide the statutory services that so many children, vulnerable people and older people rely on, in the face of £70 million of cuts since 2010; and it offended every single school up and down the country and in Bristol by giving them less money than they are giving for potholes so that they can buy the “extra things” they think might be nice, when we need teachers, teaching assistants and support for children with additional needs who are being failed. The NHS secured some additional funding, but it has already been shown to be a real-terms cut, funded on the punt that £13 billion of extra cash found down the back of the sofa this year will not be whipped away by the consequences of Brexit next year.

Fourteen neighbourhoods in my constituency are in the lowest 10% in the country for education, training and skills, and six of them are in the lowest 10% for employment. I come from those neighbourhoods. Week in, week out, constituents come to me facing the consequences of nearly a decade of austerity. Week in, week out, all I can say to them is that the Government are not good enough. That is why I say the Budget was a Budget of bad jokes and little else; that is why I say I am amazed at the Government’s incompetence in administering Brexit and their apparent lack of concern at its cost; that is why I say that the promise that austerity is over is a fiction that will not easily be forgotten by my constituents or the British people; and that is why I cannot support this short-sighted, incompetent, Brexit-driven, fictitious Budget that fails to recognise and deal with the challenges this country faces.

Brexit, Science and Innovation

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, of which I am a member, for arranging this debate today.

Members from across the House will agree that scientific endeavour—the pursuit of truths and the ability to support the people with the brightest minds and the energy to solve some of our biggest societal challenges at home and abroad—is something that, as a developed nation, we wish to pursue as much as possible both for our own economic and industrial purposes and for our contribution to the world. The UK, as we have heard already today, plays a significant role in world leadership.

The European Union, as long as we continue to be a member of it, continues to be the leader in the world, counting for a third of global scientific output—34% more than the United States. That is a huge contribution, and as a member of the European Union, we are the second largest recipient of the total funding that goes into research, accounting for €4.6 billion since 2014 and second only to Germany.

We heard on the Select Committee and indeed from universities in Bristol, which I represent, that we also lead a lot of these international collaborations. We are very successful at having the lead academic institutions in the world, which is something that has caused great concern for other European universities as a consequence of Brexit because our ability to lead and be part of Horizon Europe, the successor to Horizon 2020, is in question.

This is evidenced by the fact that 62% of UK research is now based on international collaboration. It is absolutely vital that we maintain our abilities to collaborate, to ensure our output. In fact, I want to focus my remarks today on collaboration—not least because the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) read all the briefings that we all received before this debate.

Collaboration was at the core of the Select Committee reports on both Brexit and immigration. We have heard time and again today that there are two groups when it comes to immigration. In this context, this is not about individuals; it is about academics, their teams and their support staff, and we have heard about the pay threshold that might cause problems in that regard. But this is also about families. This is, I think, the most expensive country in the world for these visa applications. The Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the cost of £21,000 for a UK visa for a family to come to the UK, whereas the French talent passport is £250.

The Committee heard from researchers in what I think was a Select Committee first—an open dialogue session with members of the audience, which all went perfectly well. One audience member said that their research funding does not include the cost of visa applications for them and their family. In many cases, individuals need to be able to pay for these visa applications, even if they have managed to receive hundreds of millions of euros for world-leading research.

This is not just about people from the European Union, though. The Committee visited CERN, which I was amazed to see is not only trying to discover the basis of the universe, but has solved so many problems—from positron emission tomography for better cancer treatments, to the touch screens on our phones—as a consequence of trying to figure out the solutions. Many British scientists at CERN in Geneva live in France as a consequence of being an EU citizen, so we really need some clarity from the Minister and the Government about the rights of British citizens in Europe post Brexit and whether they will be able to lead their lives in France and travel to institutions such as CERN.

An important point on the immigration system is the exceptional talent visa, to which the Committee referred in our report. The Government have set a cap—thankfully, they have increased the cap for exceptional talent—both for academic research and for technology entrepreneurs, but we are actually not hitting that cap: there are visas that are not being used. The royal societies told us that this is a consequence of the fact that the requirements are quite high; there are not enough Nobel laureates in the world to meet the number of visas that we are offering. The definition of exceptional talent needs to be broadened a little, to include not only people who are professors in their 50s, but young exceptional talent, especially in the technology space. There are so many inspiring entrepreneurs who want—and will, we hope, continue to want—to come to the UK to set up and scale up their technology businesses, which are an important part of our research base.

Industry research and development is vital for our economy, as it is for many of my constituents, as my constituency has advanced manufacturing centres, specifically in aerospace and defence, but also in quantum computing at the University of Bristol and in other areas. We are part of many funds in Europe. With my other hat on, as a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, I look forward to clarification of the Government’s intention to want to be part of each specific fund. For example, we do not yet have clarity on our future involvement in the European defence fund, which has a big industrial research component. In fact, the Government are apparently contributing to the European defence industrial development programme without knowing whether British companies can actually bid for it, which seems a bit nonsensical. We need some clarity on that.

The Erasmus project is an important European fund because, of course, we need students who are learning in the first place to become the professors of the future. The ability to collaborate and for researchers to see that collaboration as a normal part of their profession is vital. The European Commission has recommended a doubling of the budget for Erasmus in its next multiannual financial framework. As we have heard, if we are to be a third country, there is understandably an expectation from Europe that if we continue to get as much out of Erasmus as we do today, we probably need to pay more as we are currently getting more value than we pay for. It would be good to get some clarification regarding our future status in Erasmus and whether the Government intend to contribute to that project to ensure that we continue to be able to be a part of it.

The collaboration point is so crucial to this debate because, whether by perception or reality, the consequence of Brexit for many people around the world is that Britain does not want to collaborate any more—that we are drawing up the drawbridge and focusing on our navel and that people are not welcome here if they are not British. That is a great shame and it is a fundamental risk to the future success of our international collaborations in science and research.

We have to get through all the detail of budget allocations, which projects we want to be part of and fixing the immigration system, which I look forward to debating in the round when the Bill eventually comes to this House. However, I call on the Minister to say what more he is doing, perhaps with the Department for International Trade, the Foreign Office or others, to say to the world that we may be going through what the Government might like to call a period of change—people have different views, although everyone knows that I think that it is nonsense and that Brexit is a complete disaster—but that we are still open. We still wish to collaborate with the brightest and the best. We want people from countries around the world to work in our universities, to educate our students, to be at the forefront of our scientific and industrial endeavours, and we should recognise that the success of Britain and the role that we play in the world relies on that flow of talent, an openness to collaboration and a continuance in doing so.

Leaving the EU: Airbus Risk Assessment

Darren Jones Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend is right that any negotiation of course involves give and take. That is true on both sides, and it is important to remember that these observations have been addressed to the European Union as well as to the UK. My right hon. Friend talks about the time. As I said to the Chairman of the Exiting the European Union Committee, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), now is the time when we are moving on from discussing the terms of our withdrawal to what our future economic partnership looks like. This is precisely the time at which we will set out and agree, I hope, a long-term future in which Airbus and many other companies can prosper.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Airbus and its supply chain are significant employers in north Bristol, so will the Secretary of State set out what assessment his Department has made of the number of jobs that need to be put at risk, the number of families’ lives that need to be devastated and the amount of damage that needs to be done to British industry before the threshold is met for the definition of a duff deal on Brexit, and will he at that stage join me and others in calling for a people’s vote?

[Greg Clark]

I think the hon. Gentleman would be more productive if he engaged with the substance of the negotiation. We are leaving the European Union, and what is required is to reach an agreement that avoids frictions and tariffs. It is perfectly possible to agree such an accord with the European Union. That is our purpose, and we will faithfully implement it.

GKN

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend puts it well and succinctly. Any takeover bid will obviously involve some anxiety for employees with long service, but whether or not the bid had succeeded, this was always going to be a period of change for GKN employees. As a result of the commitments that have been given, they can have more certainty about a confident future than would otherwise have been the case.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

In the Secretary of State’s previous statement on this issue I asked two questions: whether the Government would ask Melrose for a commitment to the aerospace division of longer than five years, based on advice both from key customers and other stakeholders; and whether the Government would have a conversation with Airbus about the consequences of a short-term commitment of five years? Will the Secretary of State confirm to the House whether he asked Melrose for a commitment of longer than five years and whether he had a conversation with Airbus? If not, why not?

[Greg Clark]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, the commitment to five years is the longest that has ever been given and was not something that Melrose was willing to offer the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. In fact, the further undertakings that have been entered into on defence matters, which are of course in the aerospace division, go beyond that period.

I mentioned in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) that Airbus’s chief executive has not repeated the reports that were made previously. I have discussed the matter with Melrose and its intention is to develop a relationship that it hopes will prosper in the future.