Covid-19: Hospitality Industry

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP) [V]]

This pandemic has posed challenges for all of us and for every business, not least the hospitality sector. This very important but beleaguered industry—the third largest employer across the UK—will take some time to recover from this health pandemic. Parts of the industry are on the verge of collapse and it was a mistake for the UK Government not to provide the kind of sector-specific support that it so desperately needed. The VAT cut is welcome, but the industry faces a cliff-edge in September, which could prove a death-knell to those barely hanging on. The importance of extending the VAT cut until at least the end of the year must not be overlooked if we want to save as many businesses and jobs in the sector as possible. Many hospitality businesses operate on a seasonal basis, and therefore may have to wait until next year before their balance sheet starts to begin to look healthy again.

Despite my repeated representations, no consideration has been given to the unique challenges facing operators of hospitality businesses in island communities—such as Arran in my constituency, which has at times during this pandemic been subject to higher restriction levels than mainland communities—which are concerned that islands may not necessarily be able to exit the pandemic at the same time as mainland communities.

The Scottish Government are doing all they can with the limited powers they have, and their year-long hospitality rates relief remains more generous than the three-month relief offered in England. Indeed, Scotland has the most generous non-domestic rates regime in the UK, but we also need business interruption loan schemes to be converted into grants, something I called for last April, in order to save businesses and jobs. The pressing need for that grows by the day. From April the hospitality sector, already on its knees, will be expected to repay these loans, however gradually, and it is clear that many businesses in the sector will be unable to do so and will only add to the debt and job crisis that we face. So I ask the Minister: extend the VAT cut until at least the end of the year. Look at what additional support can be given to our island communities, given their unique circumstances. Convert business interruption loans to grants and continue furlough for as long as restrictions remain in place. The UK Government surely understand the need to avoid business failures across the sector, as well as mass job losses. That does not need to happen, and I urge the Minister to do all he can to help us avoid that outcome.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Thank you. How we wish we could really go to Ayrshire—well, at least I do. But now we go to Cheadle, and Mary Robinson.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome to Cheadle.

I am glad to thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for securing this debate and giving us the opportunity to reflect on the difficulties that hospitality has faced during the pandemic. Those difficulties have been particularly hard-felt by businesses in areas such as Greater Manchester, which were placed under local restrictions and in higher tiers during the autumn, and have suffered for longer. The Government’s unprecedented support has certainly been welcomed, with the bounce back loan scheme, the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme and the furlough scheme, which have been lifelines for many; but we must now look forward and ensure that hospitality recovers and thrives as we emerge from the pandemic.

The wedding sector in particular has faced—and still faces—unique challenges, and the end remains some way off. While weddings in non-exceptional circumstances will be allowed from Monday, only six people including the couple will be able to attend, and outdoor receptions with more than 30 guests and any indoor receptions must wait until at least 21 June. Even sporting events and concerts could get a head-start on them.

Couples have understandably been reluctant to confirm wedding dates, fearing that the 21 June date might get delayed, leading some wedding businesses to say that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. All this is causing a backlog of weddings, and a demand that will need to be accommodated. For wedding venues it is not just about getting back to normal; it is about going faster than normal, so that couples do not have to wait years for their big day.

One possible solution I would like to put forward is for more early weekday weddings. We know that Mondays to Wednesdays are traditionally less popular days to tie the knot, so, just like with the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, could the Government consider support to encourage early weekday weddings?

It is vital that we help this unique part of the hospitality sector recover from the pandemic because it serves such an important social purpose. Weddings bring together families and communities that for the last year have only been able to see each other and gather online; and the marriages they celebrate are the foundation of our families and our society. That is also why it is so important that when weddings come back, they come back for good. Large gatherings would be the first casualties of any resurgence in covid cases, so it is vital for wedding venues that we get this virus firmly under control. But I am confident that we will do so, and secure the future of our wedding venues. We must give hospitality and the wedding sector the support and certainty that it needs to restart and thrive.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We now go to Grahame Morris.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Oh, I am sorry. We don’t go anywhere. Grahame Morris is here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Selaine Saxby]

This is obviously the time of the evening when we should all be going to the pub or to our much-loved bars here in the House, where I probably owe colleagues who did not get to speak today a pint. I know they would have spoken with passion in support of their hospitality businesses and whetted appetites with their tantalising take-outs.

I thank the Minister for his response. He knows that a cold beer is on the bar whenever he wants to visit North Devon; I hope that the duty on it will reflect the calls made across the Chamber today. As the self-appointed one-woman tourist board for North Devon, I invite all Members to visit when the time is right. I hope that they will then understand why I am quite so passionate about ensuring support for the sector here, across the country and particularly in North Devon. I thank everyone for taking part today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The Question is as on the Order Paper. As many as are of that opinion say “Aye.” [Hon. Members: “Aye.”] I was looking for a more enthusiastic “Aye!” about pubs opening. Shall we do it again? As many as are of that opinion say “Aye!” [Hon. Members: “Aye!”] To the contrary “No”—the Ayes have it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered support for the hospitality industry throughout the covid-19 pandemic.

Uber: Supreme Court Ruling

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy if he will make a statement on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Uber.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Minister Paul Scully, who has three minutes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

I want to begin by making it absolutely clear that everyone deserves to be treated fairly at work and rewarded for their contribution to the economy with both fair pay and fair working conditions. This means that employers must take their responsibilities seriously, not simply opt out of them. If there is a dispute between the individual and an employer, as seen in the recent case involving Uber, the courts consider each case on an individual basis. The courts are independent and the Government do not intervene. As such, with the Supreme Court being the final stage of the appeal, its judgment is final and Uber will need to take action to align with the judgment.

The Government recognise concerns about employment status being unclear in some cases, and we are committed to making it easier for individuals and businesses to understand which rights and tax obligations apply to them. We have made good progress in bringing forward measures that add flexibility for workers while ensuring the protection of employment rights. For example, we have legislated to extend the right to a written statement of core terms of employment to all workers, making access to a written statement a day one right and extending the contents of a written statement. We have also banned the use of exclusivity contracts and zero-hours contracts to give workers more flexibility. This means an employer cannot stop an individual on a zero-hours contract from looking for, or accepting work from, another employer. We will continue to explore options for employment status that protect rights while also maintaining flexibility in the labour market. This Government have a proud history of protecting and enhancing workers’ rights, and we are committed to making the UK the best place in the world to work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

The gig economy offers individuals flexibility, and countless surveys have shown that the majority of people do like that flexibility—especially younger people and women. However, there is always more we can do to make sure that people understand exactly what they are signing up to, and they definitely must not be exploited.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Having been to Dudley South, we now go to Dudley North.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

The many unsung heroes of the pandemic include bus drivers, delivery drivers and taxi drivers, with many of the latter often taking medical staff and patients to hospital and back. While the employment status of Uber drivers is a matter for the courts to determine, will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to thank them—and, indeed, all taxi drivers in Dudley North and beyond—for their efforts during these difficult times and for the risks they take?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

There is support for some drivers, although I appreciate that some people fall between the cracks. There is the self-employment scheme for some, discretionary grants are available, and each local authority has had to come up with a policy for how they used that money, which could include drivers. Any further support will be subject to the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget next Wednesday.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I will now suspend the House so that arrangements can be made for the next item of business.

Coronavirus: Supporting Businesses and Individuals

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate. Today, I will focus much of my contribution on those who have fallen through the gaps in support—commonly known as the excluded.

Nearly a year into the pandemic, there are still 3 million people missing out on meaningful financial support. They are people who have lost homes, possessions and have had to close businesses or saddle themselves with a frightening amount of debt just to keep going during the pandemic, an event not of their making. This has inevitably led to an increase in destitution in our country. It will not have escaped the Minister’s attention that a report by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research found that, by the end of 2020, there were 220,000 more households living in destitution than at the start of the year. Destitution is defined as a two-adult household living on less than £100 a week and a single-adult household living on less than £70 a week, after housing costs. That worrying trend will continue, unless we direct urgent and significant support to the excluded.

There is a regional aspect, too. The Office for National Statistics has revealed that redundancies in Yorkshire have reached a five-year high, with 18,000 people being made redundant in the last three months of 2020—a 63% increase on the same time in the previous year. The all-party parliamentary group, Gaps in Support, has tried to help. We have offered schemes to the Treasury to bring the newly self-employed into eligibility for SEISS, a directors income support scheme, a targeted income support scheme and a one-off, taxable grant. They are not exclusive demands and we are certainly open to any fixes that the Treasury would like to propose.

I would like to focus on one group of people who have significantly missed out—pregnant women and new mothers. Women who were on maternity allowance throughout the period 20 March to 30 October will not have submitted a PAYE real-time information submission, which is required by the scheme, meaning they could miss out on furlough. That really needs to be rectified. The Government should also provide a system to backdate furlough payments to new mothers who have missed out due to insufficient government guidance.

We must also examine the proposals supported by the TUC for a temporary right to shared furlough, which would bring the commendable principles of shared parental leave into the furlough scheme, allowing families to make decisions based on what works for them and their children, because it is frankly absurd that self-employed mothers have no ability to discount their maternity leave from SEISS payments. Tens of thousands of women have been discriminated against and are out of pocket, against a background where women’s wages have already dropped 12%, double that of men; 48% of women have seen their disposable income fall; and women in the 25-34 age bracket are twice as likely to be made redundant.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady has significantly overrun her time. I am sorry I cannot allow her to make her final point.

[Imran Ahmad Khan (Wakefield) (Con) [V]]

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Treasury has taken unprecedented action. The support provided by Her Majesty’s Government to aid businesses and individuals affected by the coronavirus pandemic has been nothing short of extraordinary. More than 10 million workers have been supported through furlough schemes, ensuring that bills and expenses can be paid. Thus far, 1.6 million businesses have received loans totalling more than £70 billion. For most people and businesses, money was received in a timely manner and proved to be vital in preventing businesses from going under, protecting employees and employers.

For those on low incomes, additional support mechanisms have also been implemented, with a £500 test and trace support payment for those who cannot work from home and have been asked to self-isolate. Some businesses have repaid the support, totalling £1.8 billion, provided to them by the Government through a business rates holiday, including Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Aldi and Morrisons.

These support measures have been critical in shielding our economy during lockdown. This is the essence of conservatism—rather than seek to dominate and direct businesses, we seek to protect and support them. These measures are temporary and do not reflect a permanent transition towards increased Government intervention. The Prime Minister’s statement yesterday outlined the road map out of lockdown and a return to normality. It does not, however, spell the immediate end of support measures that businesses still need.

This Conservative Government have outlined further measures that will aid in rebuilding Britain and encouraging economic growth, such as the £5 billion of capital investment projects, which include the rebuilding of schools and maintenance of hospitals. Opposition Members may not be able to control their knee-jerk reaction to attack the Government for their handling of the pandemic, but without the schemes implemented by the Chancellor, businesses, individuals and local government would not have received the support they so desperately needed when, or in the quantity, required. I look forward to the Chancellor’s Budget statement next week and will carefully listen to his comments on the support measures available to businesses, including what additional provisions will be implemented to support and encourage the United Kingdom’s recovery.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for sticking precisely to the three-minute time limit and not being distracted by the fact that the clock was not working. That is quite the opposite of what we have seen from so many colleagues who pretend the clock is not there. I am sure that will not happen when we go to Sheffield—to Paul Blomfield.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]]

There is surely no more important debate at the moment than how we support businesses and individuals through the pandemic. Just last week, it was confirmed that the UK economy has suffered its worst slump in any year since we began recording gross domestic product after the second world war. This morning, we learned that the unemployment rate is 5.1% and that in my constituency of Edinburgh West, a relatively affluent area of Scotland, it is 4%, having increased by more than a third since this time last year. We have all the evidence we need that businesses and individuals need support.

For most people, businesses are about the individuals. The troubles we are going through will come as no surprise to thousands of shops, households, small businesses, retailers at airports, taxi drivers, cafés, pubs and restaurants—they are all suffering and they need our support. That is why we are all watching very carefully for what the Chancellor says next week. We are hoping—and trying to persuade him—that there will be a further extension of furlough. The summer is not enough; it needs to go at least until the end of the year. We need to give businesses time to recover and we need to give people certainty. We need to give them reassurance that the safety net will not disappear right away. The vaccine will need time to be effective and we will need time to recover. The Chancellor should bear that in mind next week.

I think we have all felt the impact through our constituents and the daily calls we receive. We know that there is nothing more important than supporting businesses and individuals through the recovery. That should be the first thing we think about every day: putting the recovery first. Sadly in Scotland, we have a devolved Administration who are not doing that. They are focusing on an independence debate that many of us feel is inappropriate at this time. We need the strength of the UK economy and we need the ability to work together. For example, we need the strength that comes from our tourism industry: 80% of tourists in Scotland come from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Businesses all need our support, they need certainty and they need the strength of the United Kingdom. That is what I hope the Chancellor and the Government will provide next week. I also hope that they will think about relief from business rates and VAT for small businesses that are losing money and going out of business through no fault of their own, because they are following the rules. We need to put their recovery and our recovery first.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We were going to go to Stoke-on-Trent, but the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) has to be dressed as if he were here in the Chamber. We will try to come back to Mr Gullis in due course, but we will go now to Chesterfield and Toby Perkins.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be pleased to see that I have all my clothes on.

This is an important debate as we head towards the Budget. As somebody who was formerly self-employed, I think it is incredibly important to recognise not only the importance of the self-employment scheme, but all the people who have been excluded from it. We need to recognise that people do not go into self-employment expecting to rely on the Government for help; they do it because they are willing to focus on their own abilities and to bring about the best outcomes for themselves. When self-employed people are left having to rely on Government, it comes very unnaturally to them.

We should remember that the majority of self-employed people were asked by the Government back in March to stay at home and not to go to work. They were told that there would be a self-employment scheme to support them. It has become transparently clear that so many of them have been missed out, while, simultaneously, other people who have continued to work have still been able to claim via the scheme. Just this week, I spoke to a constituent who has been excluded because, over the course of the three years, he has had periods when he has been employed; and he took a pension when he first became self-employed, to get him through. As a result he is unable to demonstrate, according to the Chancellor’s very arbitrary 50% of income rules, that he is self-employed. He has had almost 11 months during the vast majority of which he has been unable to work and unable to be supported by the scheme. At the same time, he has been working on building sites for people who have worked all the way through—have hardly missed a day—and have said, “This is wonderful: the Government are giving me money, even though I am carrying on.” We have schemes that have not worked as they should.

Directors of small businesses who have paid themselves through dividends have been excluded, and I am afraid that throughout the life of the scheme, too many people have been missed out. That was understandable back in March, as the scheme was being put together in a rush, but there really has been enough time to sort this out now, and the Government should get to getting it sorted out.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We are now going back to Stoke-on-Trent, where I observe that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) is now properly dressed. Lest anyone should be confused, when people are participating virtually they are appearing in this Chamber, the Chamber of the House of Commons, and therefore it is absolutely imperative that everybody taking part in these debates should be dressed in the way that they would be in the House of Commons.

Local Government Finance (England)

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

I beg to move,

That the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2021-22 (HC 1200), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to consider the following motions:

That the Referendums relating to Council Tax Increases (Alternative Notional Amounts) (England) Report 2021-22 (HC 1201), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.

That the Referendums relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) (England) Report 2021-22 (HC 1202), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.

[Robert Jenrick]

Among the many acts of heroism that we have seen over the past year, the quiet dedication, hard work and compassion shown by all who serve their communities in local government has truly shone through. I am sincerely thankful for their efforts. I am grateful to them for protecting the most vulnerable, including those who are shielding from the pandemic, and providing unprecedented levels of support through Everyone In to reduce rough sleeping, bringing it to the lowest levels that we have seen for many years. I am grateful to councils for their support for local businesses, enterprises and entrepreneurs; for keeping essential public services going against the odds; and for the part that they are now playing in the success of our national vaccine programme, ensuring that it reaches all communities and paving the way for our recovery as a nation later this year.

From the outset of the pandemic, we promised to do everything within our power to support local authorities during this most unusual and difficult time. Our local government financial settlement shows that we have kept that promise, with a real-terms increase in core spending power and a guarantee that no council anywhere in the land will receive less funding than it did last year. That stands alongside an unprecedented package of covid-19 support this year and next year, totalling more than £11 billion directly to councils and £30 billion in additional help for local councils and their businesses and communities.

The settlement strengthens social care, with councils able to access an additional £1 billion, comprising £300 million from the social care grant and a 3% adult social care council tax precept. It also supports children’s social care, helping councils to provide better services for the most vulnerable children in society, children in care and children with disabilities. Those vital services have experienced severe disruption over the last few months and will no doubt experience further demand as we ease lockdown and move forward as a country.

Balancing the contributions of national and local taxpayers, this settlement gives councils increased flexibility, with a 2% council tax referendum limit for most authorities and an extra 3% for social care authorities, which councils may choose to defer until 2022-23. I can inform the House that many councils, particularly Conservative ones, are indeed doing so. The council tax referendum principles are not a cap, nor do they force councils to set taxes at the threshold level. Councils should and must consider the financial concerns of local residents at this most challenging time, alongside the public’s support for action on keeping our streets safe and providing essential services.

Recognising the vital door-to-door services that councils deliver day in, day out to the most isolated, our settlement provides an extra £4 million to authorities in remote rural areas through the rural services delivery grant, taking the total to £85 million—the highest contribution to the delivery of public services in our rural areas to date. Lower- tier local councils will also receive a new £111 million lower-tier services grant, with main funding allocations for the full range of council services rising in line with inflation.

Finally, we know that the new homes bonus accounts for a considerable part of funding for many councils. We are therefore implementing a further round of the bonus allocations, with the same 0.4% funding baseline as last year and no new legacy payments on the new round. We will reform it over the course of next year to ensure that this significant amount of money is focused on the councils that are keenest to build, build, build and get the homes this country needs under way.

While these measures are providing confidence and stability, we know that councils will continue to face very unusual challenges as a result of covid-19 for quite some time, despite all the success of the vaccine roll-out, so today I am setting out further details of nearly £3 billion in additional covid-19 support for councils next year. We were able to provide certainty to local councils in December on allocations for £1.55 billion of unring-fenced funding, and I am now very pleased to confirm, on top of the funding already provided in the settlement, the final allocations for £670 million of grant funding for local council tax support. This helps local authorities to continue reducing council tax bills for those who are finding it hardest to pay.

We have also provided our published final position on the extension of the sales, fees and charges scheme from April to June 2021, a vital safety net for councils facing lost income as a result of covid-19, ensuring that everything—from the local car parks to our theatres, heritage attractions and all the things that local councils provide and which demand income to keep going—will have that guarantee of certainty and confidence to move forward until at least the mid-point of this calendar year. They will soon receive grant funding reflecting 75% of irrecoverable losses in their council tax and business rates income from 2020-21, with an up-front payment early in the financial year to aid cash flow. In both respects, we have listened to the sector, acted and provided them with the certainty and the resources they need. We made promises and we have kept them, and we are making sure that local councils can continue to deliver for their citizens.

We know that a handful of councils face serious financial challenges—some, it has to be said, due to very poor management, but others due to the exceptional events of the past year. There is quite a broad range, and today we are publishing details of the targeted support that we are providing to four councils unable to balance their budgets without some additional recourse to Government. This aid is provided on an exceptional basis, with these councils being subject to rigorous reviews of their financial positions, their governance and their ability to meet some or all of their budget gaps for the next year without Government funding. Taxpayer support of this kind is never provided lightly, and in return for the increased flexibility afforded to councils next year, we expect sound financial management, with residents shielded from unaffordable increases.

I wish I could say that here, in our nation’s great capital, the Greater London Authority is blazing a trail that others might wish to follow, but, sadly, the opposite is true. I have reluctantly placed before the House today a principle to allow for the Mayor of London’s request to increase council tax by £15 on band D properties without holding a referendum in order to fund transport concessions above the level available elsewhere. This brings the total increase in precept he is seeking from Londoners to nearly 10%. While the final decision on the increases rests with the Mayor, and with the Mayor alone, I would urge him to abandon this ill-judged pursuit of tax hikes and to behave responsibly at a time of great difficulty for Londoners.

We want to unite and level up our councils, as we do the whole of the country, and to build back better from this pandemic and stronger than before. That starts with holding local polls in May this year. We said that further delaying elections would require a high bar, and the huge success of our vaccine programme gives us confidence that we can and should now move forwards. More than ever, people deserve their say on issues ranging from safer streets to the level of council tax, and we are providing £15 million to ensure that our polls are made covid- secure. My Department and the Cabinet Office will do all we can to support local council officers and the brilliant staff and volunteers of polling stations the length and breadth of England with the hard work and challenges that lie ahead. We want to ensure that the process is as smooth as possible and, in particular, that as many schools as possible can remain open.

We know that there are challenges posed by the pandemic, of course there are, and we also know that the scars are likely to take time to heal, but we are not cowed by them. We want to work together to learn from our experiences and to solve long-term problems in local government, because councils will be the thread running through our response to each and every one of these issues. We will empower them to reboot and restart vital public services on which communities depend, from health to justice: making sure that vulnerable children get the care that they need; helping schools to see children returned safely and address lost learning, particularly in our most deprived communities; and increasing funding for social care to help tackle the backlog in assessments while laying the foundations for future reforms and a sustainable future for the sector for decades to come.

As we tackle those issues, we will help councils to grapple with the sharp drops in footfall that we have seen on our high streets, and the knock-on effects for local businesses. Our £3.6 billion towns fund and the urban centre recovery taskforce will ensure that our towns and city centres are renewed and become once again the vibrant places that we love and that we want to see people living, working and shopping in again, and attracting tourists from home and abroad.

Our £900 million getting building fund is integral to this work, kickstarting local recoveries and delivering the next generation of roads, bridges, 5G networks and full-fibre broadband, with more than 50% of the shovel-ready projects already started, creating thousands of jobs all over the country. Our £4 billion new levelling up fund will invest in high-value local projects, regenerating eyesores, upgrading town centres, breathing new life into local arts and culture and, above all, creating and sustaining jobs. We will be setting out more details on that shortly through my right hon Friend the Chancellor.

In each and every one of these endeavours, we see a very strong role for local councils, knowing their communities best and being at the heart of their future economic recovery. We do this while helping councils to seize new opportunities, particularly in technology. We do not intend to return to the way that things were done before by default. As we leave the pandemic, we want to ensure that councils build back better, build better public services and embrace some of the good things that have come out of this unusual period. Councils have rightly embraced meeting and working remotely, and we will build on reforms to digitise our planning system, utilise our local digital fund and ensure that local authorities fully embrace moving more meetings, services and processes online, transforming how they deliver for residents, for their staff and for the country.

We will work with councils to build back better from the pandemic, becoming a more prosperous, greener, safer and more neighbourly country. Local councillors will be a golden thread woven through the fabric of that better country. The settlement that we are debating today provides local councils with the resources that they need to plan for the future. It recognises the role that councils have played every day at the forefront of our response to covid-19, and we thank and salute them for the hard work that they have done on our behalf. This settlement places them at the heart of our national recovery. I commend this motion to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I should inform the House that the Order Paper notes that these instruments have not yet been considered by the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. I have now just been informed that the Committee has in fact considered the instruments and has not drawn them to the attention of the House. The Committee’s report will be published on Friday.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I start by echoing the Secretary of State’s praise for frontline council workers and others involved in delivering frontline public services, including volunteers. They really have done a tremendous, heroic job in supporting communities through the unprecedented circumstances of the past year.

Last November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told councils that he would

“increase their core spending power by 4.5%.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 829.]

The Communities Secretary followed suit, telling us that English councils would see a

“4.5% real-terms cash increase in core spending power”—[Official Report, 17 December 2020; Vol. 686, c. 431.]

What they did not make quite so clear was that those funding increases were based on the assumption that council tax would go up by 5%. To be clear, in the Treasury spreadsheets, that is an assumption, not an option.

It is hard to believe, but this Conservative Government have chosen to clobber hard-working families with a council tax hike after the Government’s incompetence left the country facing the worst crisis of any major economy. Household budgets are under pressure like never before. Millions of people are fearful for their job security. Millions have seen their incomes plunge. Millions more families are using food banks or going into debt just to survive, and now, thanks to the Government, families are being forced to pay the price for Conservative failure with a council tax hike made in Downing Street.

We know that Government Members have been coached to say that councils have a choice in this, but with social care by far the biggest factor driving up councils’ costs, there is no real choice at all. Councils that refused to implement the Tory council tax hike would have to cut social care for older people in the middle of an unprecedented health crisis that is primarily affecting the same older people.

Let us not forget that because a council tax increase raises less money in poorer areas, the Government are deepening the postcode lottery for social care, instead of ensuring that every older and disabled person gets the care they need, wherever they live. The Government are not levelling the country up, in the way the Secretary of State just described. Instead, they are pulling it apart.

We know the Government recognise that there is a social care crisis, because the Prime Minister admitted it on the day he entered No. 10 Downing Street. He boasted that he had a plan to fix it, but no one has seen a dot or a comma of it ever since. All we have seen are sticking plasters while the crisis rages on and more and more older people are denied the care they need and deserve. The Government’s failure is simply increasing the pressure on our NHS when we should be doing all we can to protect it.

Last March, the Chancellor told councils that he would fund them to do “whatever it takes” to get communities through the pandemic. On the back of that promise, councils set to work correcting the Government’s failures on personal protective equipment distribution, contact tracing, shielding and much more, but the Government did not repay those costs. Instead, they left councils facing a £2.5 billion funding black hole. That is not my figure; it comes from the Conservative-led Local Government Association. If the Government had not broken their promises, there would be no need to plug the gap now with a council tax increase.

Perhaps the Government could not find £2 billion to prevent a council tax rise because they had already stuffed the money into their friends’ pockets. Despite stark warnings from the National Audit Office last November, the Government have handed out £2 billion in crony contracts to companies with close personal links to senior Conservative party politicians. More than 500 companies were fast-tracked for covid-related contracts simply because they had relationships with Conservative MPs. That made them 10 times more likely to secure contracts than other businesses that could well have done the job better.

The chairman of Clipper Logistics donated £725,000 to the Conservative party. He was rewarded with a £1.3 million contract to set up an Amazon-style PPE distribution network. Instead of the next-day delivery service that care workers were promised, they had to wait so long to receive any PPE at all that town halls had to pay to go out and find their own. Then there is Randox, which pays the Conservative right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) handsomely to act as an adviser. The Government gave Randox a contract worth half a billion pounds last year to provide covid tests, but they were so defective that 750,000 had to be recalled.

Serco, of course, is responsible for the Prime Minister’s “world-beating” test and trace system, which is so world-beating that the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies described it last year as having only a “marginal impact” on reducing the spread of the virus. It never worked properly, but it cost £22 billion. Serco’s chief executive is the brother of a former Conservative MP and his wife has donated thousands of pounds to the Conservative party. The company counts among its former senior executives the current Minister for Health. The Government handed Serco a £108 million contract for a failing system that could have been run better by directors of public health for a fraction of the cost, and then Ministers rewarded that catastrophic failure with another £57 million contract for “management services support” at testing sites. This is not the behaviour we would expect in an advanced democracy such as our great country; it is the wilful incompetence and endemic cronyism that we would expect in a tinpot dictatorship.

The Government are simply wrong to force councils to hike up council tax after their own mistakes led this country into the deepest recession of any major economy. Not only is it unfair on the families forced to pay the price of Tory failure, but it is economically illiterate, because hitting people with tax rises in the middle of a pandemic makes them tighten their belts and stop spending, when we should be rebuilding confidence to promote economic recovery.

The Conservatives’ priorities are wrong, which is why Labour will not vote for their Tory tax hikes today. They should be helping families manage hard-pressed household budgets, not stuffing billions of pounds into the pockets of Tory party donors. They should be fixing the social care crisis, not forcing hard-working people to pay more but get less as social care is cut back even harder. They should be promoting economic recovery on our high streets, not choking off spending with tax hikes at a time when families are struggling simply to make ends meet. But it is still not too late. I urge the Government to think again, scrap Rishi Sunak’s council tax bombshell—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must refer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the Chancellor of the Exchequer or as the right hon. Gentleman, and not refer to him by using his name.

[Steve Reed]

I absolutely agree. I urge the Government to think again, scrap the Chancellor’s council tax bomb- shell, stop stuffing billions of pounds into Conservative party donors’ pockets and stand by their commitment to support councils and communities to get through this crisis.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry to have stopped the hon. Gentleman in his peroration, but it is really important in these times, when things are not normal in this Chamber, that we stick to the highest standards, and I thank him for immediately putting right his phraseology. It was not a great mistake, and I am grateful for his support.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We are not taking bogus points of order right now, because it is not fair for people who are not here in the Chamber. If the hon. Gentleman has a real point of order, I will listen to him.

[Mr Jones]

The right hon. Member does have a point, because what the Minister has just done is inadvertently misled the House—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. No, no—

[Mr Jones]

Durham County Council is not doing—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is a debate; there are, therefore, differing points of view on either side of the House—[Interruption.] Do not shout at me in the Chair.

[Luke Hall]

The Opposition motion calls on the Government to drop

“plans to force local councils to increase council tax”—

another complete misunderstanding of the system of local government finance. Decisions on council tax levels are, of course, for local councils themselves. We are allowing councils the flexibility to raise council tax up to the ceiling that we have set, with a 2% council tax referendum limit—a ceiling that many Labour councils have been asking us to raise—and an additional 3% for adult social care responsibilities.

We are also giving councils the flexibility to defer rises in the adult social care precept for next year, if that is what councils locally decide and if local circumstances require that. Vitally, we are also providing councils with £670 million of new funding to enable them to continue to reduce council tax bills next year for those least able to pay—a point that was made so well by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho).

We on the Government side of the House trust councils to make the right decisions on council tax; the Labour party cannot even persuade its own councils, which have been writing to us to ask for greater flexibility so that they can raise council tax even more. The Labour party cannot even persuade the Labour group on the LGA, which would see the cap on council tax rises scrapped altogether, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) pointed out.

Several Members made points about the Government’s record on council tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) put it very well: under the Labour Government, council tax doubled, it has trebled in Wales and the Labour Mayor of London wants to raise it by 10%, whereas under the Conservatives it has fallen in real terms since 2010. We have introduced council tax referendums, which put an end to the crude universal capping system of the past; we put in place voluntary council tax freeze schemes for five years, which helped to deliver the lowest average increases across England since council tax was introduced; we have introduced local council tax support schemes, requiring councils to set up schemes to help those least able to pay; and we have given councils flexibility over discounts and exemptions and helped them to better manage local housing markets through the introduction of the empty homes premium.

A number of Members raised the issue of social care and were absolutely right to do so. We are funding councils for social care into the future, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South pointed out. The provisional local government finance settlement for next year will provide councils with more than £1 billion of additional funding for social care next year, including £300 million of new grant funding. That is in addition to the £790 million that can be raised through the adult social care precept, if councils decide to. That is, of course, on top of the £1 billion social care grant announced last year, which is being maintained in line with our manifesto commitment.

I was surprised to hear the hon. Members for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne)—the former shadow Secretary of State, for whom I have huge respect—all talk about the social care precept raising money in the wrong places. They obviously have not studied the detail of the settlement, which says clearly that we have put aside £240 million to equalise the differences in adult social care precepts. I am afraid they just have not read the detail of the settlement. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) pointed out the pressures on household budgets, which are exactly why we have introduced the £670 million scheme.

The Opposition misunderstand and misunderstood the local government finance system. They cannot grasp the fact that it allocated over £1 billion more to local government than councils are spending in response to the pandemic. We take no lectures from a party that doubled council tax when in office and have trebled it in Wales. We are ensuring that councils have the resources they need to come out of this pandemic stronger, and that is why we are supporting councils with a £2.2 billion rise in core spending power and £1.5 billion of extra support to help with covid costs.

We are giving councils the flexibility to defer any increases next year if they believe it is right for their community. We are protecting residents from the sort of outrageous tax hikes that were so commonplace under the last Labour Government. Councils have done an incredible job of responding throughout the pandemic, and we are standing behind them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I should point out that in current circumstances, when hardly anyone is here, there is no question of my being able to decide this Division on the voices, as there are so few representative voices present. Therefore, I call a Division.

Question put.

--- Later in debate ---

The list of Member currently certified as eligible for a proxy vote, and of the Members nominated as their proxy, is published at the end of today’s debates.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I will now suspend the House for three minutes in order that the necessary arrangements can be made for the next item of business.

The Future of the High Street

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

It has been an absolute pleasure to listen to the passion that Members from across the House displayed when talking about the needs of their high streets and their hopes for them to flourish at a local level. Our high streets have a solid future, which will be born from the ambition and innovation that is taken forward by the diversity and strength of our local retailers, local businesses, local authorities and elected Members, who will work together in order to see their areas flourish and their high streets survive. They will provide community hubs and places where consumers, shoppers, visitors and residents want to spend their time. I believe that our high streets have a very prosperous future.

There is no doubt that the covid-19 pandemic has had a crippling effect on our high streets, small businesses and many sectors of our economy. It is only right that the Government have supported many of those retailers and businesses—particularly those on our high streets—in their endeavour to survive the pandemic.

I want to highlight a few things that the hon. Members for Croydon North (Steve Reed) and for Bradford West (Naz Shah) addressed. There was a lot of bluster and criticism of what the Government have done throughout the pandemic. The hon. Member for Croydon North talks about the fundamental business rate review, but it is this Government who have issued the call for evidence to look at the business rate review. That was not done by the Labour Government. This is not a new issue. Business rates are a perennial issue, and this Government are taking action. We will review that and listen to business up and down the country.

The hon. Gentleman talked about grants and money for local authorities to support our high streets, but the grants to local authorities given by this Government, representing nearly £12 billion, have supported just under 1 million SMEs. He talked about our not supporting councils. He knows that I respect him, as I have mentioned before, but it is a shame he did not take that attitude towards his own council’s reckless borrowing of £1.5 billion, which has put it in such a mess. That cannot be blamed on covid.

I want to quickly reflect on many of the points that my hon. Friends and hon. Members across the House have made. Business support has been a lifeline for many businesses and SMEs on our high streets during the pandemic. The Government gave a 100% rate relief for 12 months. I know that the Chancellor and the Treasury will be looking at what happens after that over the coming months, but businesses were being given—and are being given—a £3,000 per month grant, with an extra £1,000 for pubs this Christmas.

The £1.1 billion of additional restrictions grants for local authorities was also mentioned. Where that money is required has been down to the discretion of local authorities. Where that support is necessary, it is being delivered, and that is exactly what we want. We want high streets in thriving communities that are driven by the people who use them, and that is what we are doing. This Government are giving that flexibility and discretion, supporting our local communities to drive their centres forward.

That brings me to the Government investment that we are making through the future high streets fund and the town deals: 101 of the high streets that applied have got through to the next stage of the future high streets fund. That would represent an investment of potentially £831 million that this Conservative Government will be delivering through that competition, driven—I make the point again—by local people, local plans, and their ideas and dreams for their local communities to survive. That is what I want as a Conservative Member of Parliament and a Minister: to support local communities to deliver exactly what they want on their doorsteps. Through the towns fund, this Government are again making a significant investment—more so than any Labour Government, and certainly more in my area since I have been involved in politics.

I want to highlight a few other things that have been mentioned. I absolutely understand Members’ concerns about parking charges. I look forward to coming to the Champs Élysées of the north in the future, in my role as high streets Minister. I am also happy to meet with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), and other interested MPs, to discuss some of the issues that he has raised in today’s debate.

We are absolutely ready and prepared, and will continue to work with stakeholders, businesses and local representatives, to ensure that our high streets and our economy can bounce back as soon as we can move out of restrictions, which is something the Government are working very hard to deliver.

I want to pick up on a very important point that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) made about the VAT retail export scheme. The Government recognise the contribution that VAT RES had made to international tourism retail in the UK. However, there was not a choice of maintaining the VAT RES as it is today. The choice was between extending the scheme to EU residents or removing them completely under World Trade Organisation rules. HMRC has estimated that refunds cost around £0.5 billion, for around 1.2 million non-EU visitors, which puts the issue into context, in that only one in 10 non-EU visitors is using the VAT RES system.



We will survive this pandemic, and our high streets will survive with the determination and dedication of all the men and women who are working in our businesses and shops. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Do you know, I have never heard that before, in all these years. It was a very good debate on all sides, and all the better for short speeches—to the point, and many of them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of the high street.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman and I have known each other a long time, and if one looks at the record of Labour Members on the devolution settlement, and at everything that has happened over the past 20 years, I think we have absolutely shown fidelity to that devolution settlement in what we have done. [Interruption.] I will conclude because lots of Members wish to speak.

This not just a technical discussion about the Lords amendments; it is about a much deeper set of issues to do with what kind of country we want to be. We must be a country that is confident of our place in the world, and in working with others on the basis of shared democratic principles. We must be a country that stands up for the rule of law, and that recognises that we will be better governed if we share and devolve power, and do not hoard it at Westminster. The Bill achieves none of those things. Indeed, it undermines them. I am afraid that is a mark of cavalier government—cavalier with our international standing, cavalier with the law, and cavalier with the United Kingdom. Labour Members will fight for the values that our country needs, and I hope that as the Bill proceeds back—and, I suspect, forth—from the other place, the Government will listen and work with us in the national interest.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We will now have a time limit of five minutes.

[Sir William Cash]

When I read the account of proceedings in the House of Lords, I found that the Lords were very strong on assertion, but empty when it came to the question of argument. I found that rather disturbing, because, after all, they have potential power under the Parliament Acts. I also appreciate that, towards the end of the proceedings, in reference to the powers in part 5 of the Bill, and the clauses under discussion regarding “notwithstanding”, Lord Judge said:

“‘We may need these powers at some stage’. Maybe we will; I hope not.”

He then said that it would be

“open to the Government to come back to us, to Parliament, to put before us emergency legislation.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 October 2020; Vol. 806, c. 1431.]

The circumstances that we face could not be more important and relevant, and my view is that what he said effectively conceded the principle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

The hon. Gentleman may disagree with the right of the UK Government to intervene financially on all the areas that have been specified, but he cannot say that this amounts to us taking away a power from the Scottish Parliament, because that is fundamentally untrue, and he is in fact misleading the House when he does so. [Hon. Members: “Withdraw.”]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not misleading the House.

[Drew Hendry]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I could have come back with a different response, but I appreciate you intervening.

The hon. Gentleman tries to say that this is not a power grab—not taking back powers from the Scottish Parliament. What I am quoting is not SNP folks saying this, and not even the Scottish Government—it is other people, as we have heard from around the different parties, including his own, right across the nations of the UK, and across the world. What he says really does not hold any water.

On clause 49, the Lords amendment removes the UK’s Government’s attempt to re-reserve state aid. Lord Thomas noted that

“unashamedly, the Government want to use this legislation to alter the devolution settlements…They are trying to make state aid a reserved matter by the device of expanding or extending the competition policy reservation.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 November 2020; Vol. 808, c. 317.]

Lord German confirmed:

“Blunting and reducing the power of the devolved authorities is deemed to be a price worth paying so that the UK Government alone can determine the route they wish to follow in directing the new regime. Yet we do not know what this regime will look like.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 November 2020; Vol. 808, c. 319.]

Leading for the Government in the Lords, Lord Callanan confessed that

“Clause 44 reserves to the UK Parliament the exclusive ability to legislate for a UK-wide subsidy control regime.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 November 2020; Vol. 808, c. 325.]

I can tell the House that the SNP will not accept this brazen power grab. State aid must remain a devolved competence.

Lords Amendment 11 means that devolved Governments must either give their consent to regulations within a month, or the Government could continue but would have to explain to Parliament why they were proceeding without agreement. Lord Bruce noted that it

“takes the need for consultation but adds to it by saying that there must be a requirement to secure consent.”

That is absolutely what is required. He went on to say:

“That draws on the common frameworks principles, which suggest that every sinew should be bent to secure consent.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 November 2020; Vol. 808, c. 50.]

I stress: not consultation but consent.

On Lords amendment 57, Lord Thomas noted that

“the composition of the CMA should now reflect its different position and role under this Bill...it is critical that it commands the confidence of all the people of all the nations of the United Kingdom and therefore that it has representations from them.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 November 2020; Vol. 808, c. 103.]

Lords amendment 1 seeks to protect the role of the common frameworks from the Bill. When moving his amendment on Report, Lord Hope summarised:

“Not only does the Bill ignore the common frameworks process but it destroys one of the key elements in that process that brought the devolved Administrations into it in the first place: it destroys policy divergence. It destroys those Administrations’ ability through that process to serve the interests of their own people, and to innovate.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 November 2020; Vol. 807, c. 1432.]

Baroness Finlay warned that the Bill

“is not based on warm support for devolution but rather on hot resentment of the fact that the devolved Governments and legislatures can innovate at speed and take their populations with them.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 November 2020; Vol. 807, c. 1434.]

That is something that this Government cannot do.

Lords amendment 8 removes sweeping Henry VIII powers that allow the Minister to alter the definition of key requirements for the Bill and in each case rewrite those principles substantially in secondary legislation. In the Lords proceedings, the Government accepted the argument and removed the Henry VIII powers from clause 3, but refused to remove them from clause 6. Under clause 6, the Secretary of State can act without the need to introduce new primary legislation or to obtain the consent of the devolved Governments, taking power away from them. As I have said before, the UK Government’s offer to consult is meaningless. “Consult” is not the same as consent, which is what is required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Drew Hendry]

The hon. Member says “Rubbish”, but he knows that is not the case. We understand that the Tories have a very casual relationship with the truth, but we expect them to at least have a one-night stand with it.

This Bill confirms the contempt that the Prime Minister and his Government have for devolution. People in Scotland see this clearly. As I have said, 15 polls in a row are showing that independence is the only way to save our Parliament’s powers and the voice of the Scottish people, and as the Defence Secretary confirmed earlier, we can have that discussion in the referendum that is coming.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

There is a five-minute limit on speeches.

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

When I voted to leave the European Union, it was not primarily over concerns with immigration or concerns about how we would divvy up the money that came back from the contributions we would not be making to the European Union; it was entirely as a constitutional lever. I believe in the principle that the people who live under the law should have the right to choose the people who make the law. Incidentally, that also shapes my views on how the House of Lords should be reformed. However, that principle could not survive as soon as we had the direct application of EU law and the use of the ECJ. Therefore, for me that meant that there was only one choice, which was to leave the EU. I explained that to an American audience by saying that, if in the United States there was a court in Ottawa or Mexico City that could override the US Supreme Court and there was nothing legislators could do in the US, how would they like it? They said, “Absolutely, we would never ever accept it.” That, for me, is the key principle.

When I first heard of this internal market Bill, I was at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva and, frankly, I was shocked to hear that the Government were intending to break international law. That was until I came back and looked at the provisions themselves, and found out that nothing whatsoever was actually being broken in this Bill. In fact, nothing was actually being done in this Bill, other than setting out a set of contingency measures, which is of course a well-accepted legal principle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). I feel that if anybody has a chance in this place of persuading the vast ranks of angry Lords in the other place that my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) described earlier, it is him. Unfortunately, even he does not have much of a chance given the levels of consternation down the corridor at the clauses in particular that we have been discussing.

Unfortunately, to add insult to injury, this afternoon—while we have been debating—the Prime Minister has given the game away, because he has said that if the negotiations that we are all very concerned about are completed in a positive way, these clauses will not even be needed. I am worried about that because, as any parent knows, when it becomes clear that it is just a negotiation tactic and you do not really mean it, you have already lost. More seriously, I listened to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) describe the situation—he and I do not agree on much politically, I would think—and he said that, if these clauses are really needed, they are needed. If they are just able to be removed, depending on the negotiations, they are not really needed, and that is at the heart of the problem.

Their lordships have explained why the rule of law matters for its own sake. I am no great legislative or legal theorist, but I know why the rule of law matters for all our sakes. It is because of the terrible economic impact of the current situation that we all face. Unfortunately, the Chancellor, when he gave his statement last week, did not make much of it, but the OBR described it in all its horrendous glory—that on top of the gruesome impact of the pandemic on jobs and the economy of this country, the situation that we are facing next year with Brexit could be horrendous.

This matters, because this Bill describes exactly how economies function by common rules, by frameworks applying consistently to markets over space and time. They do that because there are institutions that police those rules, and therefore the institutions that we create matter, and the trust in those institutions matters. They matter not just for their own sake, but for the markets that they underpin, the jobs of the people who work in them and the fate of the people who are part of them. Every step that we take either builds those institutions or knocks them down. Every action creates trust or undermines that trust. Because trade is a repeated exercise, as others have mentioned, all of this debate makes it harder for us to agree new institutions, new frameworks and new rules in the future. That is how our reputation as an international party is won or lost. I know this: when we engage in this kind of madness, there is always a price, and not just some kind of theoretical, legalistic nicety of a price. There is a price in jobs for my constituents and there is a price at the shops every time my constituents do their shopping. So we can have no more of this.

Finally, on devolution, we have heard about the deep consternation among those in the devolved institutions about the clauses in the Bill that relate to them. It is about time we realised the connection between unpredictable and unreliable action from the UK Government, and the deep dissatisfaction in the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. I speak not only having heard those from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; I speak from Merseyside, where European structural funds made a profound difference to our economy. Why? Because the investment was predictable; it was possible to understand why that investment was being made; and it was possible to understand what would happen to that investment for the future. The European Union was a reliable investment partner. If the UK Government choose never to be reliable, the people in this country will pay the price.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

After the next speaker, the time limit will be reduced to four minutes. With five minutes, I call Andrew Bowie.

[Andrew Bowie]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern).

There is a distinct sense of déjà vu today. The House of Commons is debating Brexit legislation, and the Prime Minister is locked in talks with the President of the European Commission regarding our exit from and future relationship with the European Union, so hon. Members will forgive me if I break out into a cold sweat when the Division bell rings later today. It will bring back some rather tense memories for me in this place.

I will focus my remarks today on the devolution aspects of the Bill, but I want first to say a bit about the common frameworks. We know that there is still work to do regarding common frameworks. The Government and the devolved Administrations have already agreed the principles that will guide the development of common frameworks. Indeed, Lords amendments 1, 19 and 34 address the issues. However, I do not agree with those amendments, as they would have the effect of undermining the UK Government’s ability to set new rules and divergence through modifying appropriate exemptions to market access rules, and the power to ensure unfettered access for Northern Irish goods into Great Britain. That is why I will be opposing those amendments this evening.

Let me turn to devolution. It was a real pleasure to listen to the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). I believe him when he says that he is a passionate advocate for our United Kingdom. I remember him campaigning in the referendum in 2014. I disagree with him, however, because this is a very good Bill for the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I know that because the SNP is so vehemently opposed to it. If this was not a good Bill for our United Kingdom, they would of course be supporting it. This Bill is good for business, good for jobs and good for people, and it will bind the United Kingdom closer together. This Bill will deliver a significant increase in decision-making powers to the devolved Administrations. There will be no power grab, as we have heard time and again.

Points of Order

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Ah, further to that point of order—Secretary of State.

[Robert Jenrick]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would be delighted to respond to that point of order. The point that I was making was that the hon. Gentleman had implied that after he had raised it at our last questions session, it had taken four months to reply. As he can see, my private office—as soon as alerted to it by the hon. Gentleman at questions—responded immediately, so he was actually speaking in error himself.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The point of order is clearly not a point of order for me, but an exchange—a further exchange—between the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman. It has been satisfied, as far as I am concerned, in procedural terms. Whether it has been satisfied in political terms is not a matter for the Chair.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During the general election campaign, the Conservative party candidate for Weaver Vale shared an image on social media that referred to the significant investment going to Runcorn old town; it came from Conservative party headquarters. I would just like to clarify—and to ask for advice about how I do clarify—whether a mistake of geography actually benefited my good colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg)—it is actually in the constituency adjacent to mine.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising a point of order. As I have just said in reply to the previous point of order, what is said by hon. Members and the veracity of it or otherwise is not a matter for the Chair. What is said in election literature by candidates who do not subsequently become Members of Parliament is definitely not a matter for the Chair, which is a matter of some relief for any occupant of the Chair. The hon. Gentleman asks me how he can draw his point to a wider audience. I think he has just done so.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Does the hon. Lady wish to raise a point of order?

[Chi Onwurah]

indicated dissent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, the hon. Lady just wants to leave the Chamber. In order to facilitate the exit of the hon. Lady and all other Members and the safe entrance of those who wish to participate in the next item of business, I will suspend the House for three minutes.

Towns Fund

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) [V]]

Clearly, this issue is just as big north of the border as it is in the rest of the UK. If I look out of the window of my office in my home town of Tain, I can see many formerly prosperous businesses and shops that are now boarded up and gone. I would not be surprised to see tumbleweed blowing down Tain’s high street sometime in the future. May I ask the Secretary of State two things? First, is this going to be recognised by means of Barnett consequentials—that is, with the money going to the Scottish Government? If so, will he use his good offices to persuade the Scottish Government to spend the money where it desperately needs to be spent—that is, in the town centres the length and breadth of Scotland that are falling into ruination and disrepair?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I have allowed the hon. Gentleman to ask two things, but let me just point out that we must have one question per person, or else we will be here all day.

[Robert Jenrick]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall try to be swift. As I said in an earlier answer, the question of Barnettisation will be settled at the spending review, and hon. Members do not have very long to wait for the answers there. On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point, he is absolutely right. The challenges facing smaller cities and towns are consistent across the whole of the United Kingdom. That is the reason we set up the towns fund, and that is why we having been doing town and city deals in all parts of the UK, including a large number in Scotland.

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[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) [V]]

I support boosting towns. The Secretary of State talks about a robust procedure and fine balance. There are plenty of communities in Stockport that would be worthy recipients of towns fund money, including Reddish, so what instead attracted him to Cheadle? Was it its unemployment rate, at 3% below the north-west average? Was it its deprivation ranking, decile seven, making it one of the north’s least deprived areas? Was it its low shop vacancy rate? Was it his Department’s assessment ranking it the 535th priority out of 541 towns? Or was it the Tory majority of just 2,366? [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. No clapping from the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). If he wishes to make some audible sound, that is a different matter.

[Robert Jenrick]

Well, it is not a terribly good look for the Labour party to say that it does not want investment to go into Cheadle. I think that the good people of Cheadle will welcome the fact that they are part of the town deal, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) will be working very hard with her town board to bring forward exciting proposals for the place. We are working extremely well with Labour councils and MPs throughout the north-west, though perhaps not with the hon. Gentleman, to bring forward proposals, and we have just heard from one in Cheshire.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his responses so far. Secretary of State, it is my understanding that local enterprise partnerships—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman does not say “Secretary of State” to the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman has to say, “Madam Deputy Speaker, does the Secretary of State…” I am sure eventually I will achieve my ambition of having the hon. Member for Strangford use the third person and not the second person. He does not address the Secretary of State directly.

[Jim Shannon]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is my understanding that local enterprise partnerships and investment promotion agencies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were invited to submit nominations for the second round of the high potential opportunities scheme by 17 April 2020. I would be anxious to know the success of Northern Ireland applications for the towns fund.

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[Robert Jenrick]

No. The hon. Gentleman has a bit of a habit of saying things in the House of Commons that are not exactly accurate. Sixty communities were not chosen from the low priority category; 17 such communities were chosen. [Interruption.] From his sudden change of demeanour, I take it that he is apologising for his remarks.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Whether or not the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) is apologising for his remarks is not a matter for me, but remarks should not be made while hon. Members are sitting down and do not have the floor, especially not from the Front Bench.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have read the summary of the accounting officer’s assessment, and can also confirm that our report says that the permanent secretary

“was satisfied the selection process met the requirements of propriety and regularity”.

In King’s Lynn, we welcome the opportunity to benefit from £25 million of investment. Will my right hon. Friend visit King’s Lynn to talk about our ambitious plan to create more opportunities for young people and innovative businesses, for an enhanced town centre with more cycling and walking, and that builds on our historic court and waterfront?

Covid-19: Maternity and Parental Leave

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Welcome to the first sitting of Westminster Hall under these very unusual and temporary arrangements. I hardly need remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice to support the new call list system and to ensure that social distancing can be respected. As I look around, the Room is a picture of perfection—nobody is less than 2 metres away from anyone else. I ask hon. Members to sanitise microphones before using them and to respect the one-way system for moving around the Room. You will find in front of you a diagram that explains by colours where we are—it is self-explanatory.

Only Members who are sitting on the horseshoe may speak. That is because of microphones and so on, but it also helps us to keep the numbers in the Room manageable. Members may speak only if they are on the call lists. That applies even if debates are undersubscribed, although this debate is not. Members cannot join the debate if they are not on the call list. Members are not expected to remain for the wind-ups, because those in the latter stages of the call list, who will use the seats in the Public Gallery, need to move on to the horseshoe when seats become available. At the moment, you are all perfectly spaced and able to speak from where you are.

I remind hon. Members that there is less of an expectation that they stay for the following two speeches once they have already spoken. That does not mean that they can abuse the system by popping in and out again, which will be frowned upon, but obviously, we have to have that rule if we want to move people around in an oversubscribed debate so that some can leave and others can come in. Members may wish to stay beyond their speech, but they should be aware that doing so may prevent the Members in the Public Gallery from moving to the horseshoe. Does anyone have any reasonable questions about procedure before we properly begin?

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Do we move around the Room by passing behind you?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Yes, please—it is a one-way anticlockwise system. I call Catherine McKinnell.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dame Eleanor Laing (in the Chair)]

Order. We will start with a time limit of five minutes for Backbench speeches.

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[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I thank those hon. Members who have led on the issue for many months and set out quite a lot of achievable solutions. It is very clear that the pandemic has affected absolutely everyone in society, but new parents are experiencing particularly acute and harsh point-in-time impacts, because of the disruption to their plans and to services that they would have enjoyed, and because of lost opportunities to bond with family and people in the wider community, interruption to their childcare plans, and the financial hardship that many will experience.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and others outlined some of the feeling about the provision and communication of protections for pregnant women in the workplace and on furlough. I certainly endorse the recommendations of the Committee and, indeed, those of Maternity Action. Unfortunately, the negative financial impacts will have extended to self-employed women, many of whom have constructed their career in that way precisely for a better balance of home and work life. Of course, no account was made of lost earnings due to maternity leave in the qualifying period, and that has left a massive hole in the replacement income for many women, and has exacerbated the gender pay gap that already exists in the relevant part of the economy.

The threat of redundancy is, as others have said, an acute issue, and Members will know that working mothers are already deeply exposed to redundancy or job downgrading. The coming economic challenges, alongside the catastrophic effects on childcare, will sharpen the risk. The advocacy group Pregnant Then Screwed, which has been relentless on the issue, reports 11% of pregnant women being made redundant, or expecting to be made redundant, in the period in question. That is more than 20 times the incidence in the general population. More than half of those women believe that their pregnancy was a factor in the decision. The proportion made or expecting to be made redundant rises to 15% for working mothers, and 46% of those cited issues with childcare provision as a factor. That was already a marginal economic activity for providers and a huge cost for families, if they were lucky enough to be able to find a suitable provider. In that context, the period in which women can bring forward employment tribunal claims should be extended.

As Members have said, the most negative impacts may have been felt in the restrictions on attendance by partners at antenatal sessions and deliveries, and in the immediate postpartum period. There is no doubt about the pressures and challenges that healthcare providers are trying to balance, but the regulations are deeply upsetting for many women at an acutely vulnerable time. The Royal College of Midwives has said:

“Having a trusted birth partner present throughout labour and birth is known to make a significant difference to the safety and well-being of women.”

When the coronavirus is heightening anxiety,

“that reassurance is more important than ever.”

In particular, the changes in rules and their variation across trusts are creating even more anxiety. What women can expect when they are expecting can change more than once during a pregnancy. I appreciate that that is because of the ups and downs of pandemic advice in the community, but I believe such a crucial function should be protected as we are protecting the ability of small children to go to school. Restrictions in this regard should be among the very last to be made.

Women who have just had babies need support in many ways, to rest, to establish breastfeeding, in some cases to recover from major abdominal surgery, and of course just to figure out how to look after a newborn baby. Some women need to stay in hospital for care and specific support, and the rules about partners and visitors are forcing some to choose between hospital care and family care. Many will choose the latter and be discharged too soon, which will create long-term impacts. Midwives, health visitors and volunteer groups are, as other Members have outlined, next to angels in that period in the journey as a parent, with the monitoring, advice and reassurance they provide. It is tragic that that support will not have been available for many.

There will be long-term impacts from this year, for many people, and the isolation of new parents will be a big part of that. It will take imagination and resources to put in place the measures we can. We will not be able to do everything, because of the pandemic restrictions, but the Committee has outlined some measures. France, for example, has just doubled paternity leave allowance. We must make sure that we do the things we can within the restrictions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

After the next hon. Member, the time limit will be reduced to four minutes; but, with five minutes, I call Mr Tim Loughton.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a joy to be back in Westminster Hall. It is a joy to be the first bloke to speak in Westminster Hall after the lockdown, and it is a decided bonus to have you here in the chair and to see so many colleagues suitably “spaced out”, as I think you referred to us earlier.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing this debate and on the report from her Committee. It is no mean feat to have achieved over 230,000 signatures. I cannot speak with as much authority as can the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), being so close to having a four-month-old—I am rather closer to being a prospective grandparent—but I speak as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for conception to age two: first 1001 days, and I chair the charity the Parent-Infant Foundation.

Others have already spoken out about the need for greater flexibility for maternity leave and paternity leave, brought on by the particular factors and pressures during lockdown. I agree with much of what is in the report and with what the hon. Member for Newcastle North has said. It has been interesting that the report is very much informed by the personal testimonies of many parents, including many new parents. Parents are facing extra pressures: school closures, with many parents who already had children facing having those children at home as well as going through pregnancy, confusion for employers and employees about what they are actually entitled to at work and what is safe for them to be able to work during pregnancy given the coronavirus considerations, and mixed access to childcare, as the hon. Lady said. There is also the added stress of not being able to have partners at crucial hospital appointments and scans, and in some cases even at birth, and there are some really tragic cases. I quote the case of Emma Kemsley from Saffron Walden who could not even have a partner at a termination when she found out at her 18-week scan that the baby would not survive outside the womb. It was doubly tragic. These are exceptional circumstances. These are not ordinary times.

Babies have become the forgotten part of the population during the pandemic. Over 330,000 babies have now been born in England during lockdown. Many new family members and parents have been isolated from extended family members. They have not had the usual loving care and support of grandparents around them. There have been cases of babies now exposed to other babies recoiling because they are not used to babies. They have not been at those post-natal classes where there is contact with other babies, so they are just not used to them. It is going to take a lot of normalising when we can get back into socialising, which is such an important part of the life of a new baby and of a new parent in particular. The problem in respect of health visitors is that the only families permitted to have face-to-face contact with health visitors are those that have been deemed vulnerable. That is such an important item of support in those early days, and is also an important early warning system for things potentially going wrong. Many toddlers, children and new babies have not had those important early checks, and we hear that up to 70% of health visitors have been redeployed to other hospital community settings during the pandemic. That is a really false economy when the impact that those health visitors can have so early on—for new parents in particular—is absolutely essential. Every year, 106,000 under-one-year-olds are exposed to domestic violence, parental substance misuse or severe mental ill health, yet only 15,000 of them are supported by social workers.

The Parent-Infant Foundation, which I chair, produced the report “Babies in Lockdown” jointly with Best Beginnings and Home-Start UK. The report showed that almost seven in 10 parents felt that the changes brought about by covid were affecting their unborn baby or young child. Over two-thirds of respondents in the survey carried out by us said that, overall, their ability to cope with pregnancy or care for their baby had been affected by covid restrictions. Many families and young parents from lower income backgrounds and black Asian and minority ethnic communities had been hit harder by the covid pandemic. That is likely to widen the already deep inequalities and early experiences and life chances of children. In the report we recommended a “baby boost” to enable local services to support families that had a baby during or close to lockdown, and a new parent-infant premium providing new funding for local commissioners targeted at improving outcomes for the most vulnerable children.

It is essential that those new babies—and new parents in particular—get the very best start in life and the best attachment to their children so that when they arrive at school they are normalised, socialised, ready, greedy and eager to learn and to get on with their fellow children at school. It is a false economy not to be doing more.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The time limit is now reduced to four minutes. I call Sarah Owen.

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[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) for whom I am full of admiration. When we first arrived in Parliament, I remember wondering whether any MP had fought their first parliamentary seat so heavily pregnant. I do not think so.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on her work on this issue. She is right to highlight the issues that underpin this petition. Many of them have been drawn to my attention by an organisation in my constituency, Healthwatch West Berkshire. It touched on points including and most importantly the challenges facing new mothers during lockdown––I will define that as between March and July 2020––such as not being able to see close members of their family, meet their National Childbirth Trust groups if they were in one, or go to a family or children’s centre. The support that we would wish for new mothers was not there.

I would like to confine myself to the proposal in this petition, which is the right to extend paid maternity leave by a further three months to enable bonding and social engaging with other parents and babies through baby groups. I am not going to support the petition, and I shall set out why and what else I think should be done. The first reason is that I am not persuaded that this is the purpose of maternity leave. To look at the statutory purpose we have to delve back into European law. The pregnant workers directive was what kicked off the idea of maternity leave in 1992. Its essence was the wellbeing of the mother. It was about mandating member states to offer 14 weeks for the mother to make a physical recovery from childbirth. In 2009, the European Union looked at it again, and came up with firm recommendations that member states should offer 18 weeks; in fact, it recommended 24. It said that longer leave would have a positive impact on a mother’s health, and that its priority was to help women recover from giving birth and to create a solid relationship with their child.

Maternity leave, I say very respectfully, does not and has never existed for wider developmental purposes, and we should be wary about asking for it to do so, particularly in this country, where women have a statutory right to 52 weeks’ ordinary plus additional maternity leave. I fully accept the extreme limitations that were imposed by the lockdown, but the reality was that that would not have been the entirety of any woman’s maternity leave. To the extent that childcare provision and other services are still limited, I am not persuaded that their offering would radically change if we were to change the period by three months until Christmas, or even into the new year.

My other point is that I am very worried about mothers asking for a further three months’ maternity leave, knowing how vulnerable they are in the workplace. In my experience—I used to be an employment barrister—employers would find that an onerous requirement. While they may not make a woman redundant while she is on leave or even when she has recently returned, if she is caught in a redundancy exercise, say at the back end of 2021, she will find it very difficult to establish causation in an employment tribunal. I am concerned about that.

As to what the Government should do—and the conclusion I reached after 10 years of practice—I think the way to protect, enhance and progress women in the workplace is to embed flexible working practices. We have seen through this crisis how productive and effective people can be through doing their jobs at home. We have seen men doing it for the first time in jobs they never would have thought they could do from home. We have recalibrated our view of flexible working, which can also mean working reduced hours, flexi-working and job shares. My view is that the answer is not in extending statutory leave, but in embedding statutory flexibility in the workplace.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I should make it clear that there is no prohibition on interventions. We can have a robust debate; it is absolutely fine for that to happen.

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[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate the Minister’s response, but I think that the petitioners will be incredibly disappointed in it. He talks about the relaxation of lockdown, but he is talking to somebody to whom the additional local restrictions apply. Most of what he said does not apply to new mums in my area and in many parts of the country, who are increasingly affected.

I want to highlight a couple of issues that were raised in the debate. I loved how the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) challenged our report for not going far enough and not demanding enough of the Government. I very much agree with her campaign, but it highlights how we tried to be reasonable in the report and ensure cross-party support and deliverable asks of the Government, which makes it more disappointing that most of them have been ignored.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) made an impressive speech, but it seemed to ignore the reality for many working mothers, which is that they do not have the agency to negotiate flexibility. They are deeply anxious throughout their maternity period, during this lockdown, about the future of their employment situation.

I want to make one final plea. I did not mention it earlier, because it is not in our report, but I very much support the cause of all new mothers having the flexibility to take birth partners with them into hospital. I want the Prime Minister to respond, as he promised to at the Liaison Committee, more fully to our report, and to make the changes necessary to ensure that every mother can have the confidence of having a birth partner with her in hospital.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 306691 relating to the impact of Covid-19 on maternity and parental leave.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Thank you all very much for responding so well to the new way in which we are doing things in Westminster Hall. I shall just delay for a moment so that those who took part in the first debate can leave by the one-way system, continuing to stay 2 metres apart. Everyone is doing beautifully. As they do that, I hope that those taking part in the next debate will be coming in. I am taking things slowly to make sure that happens. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill).