Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts
Tuesday 6th February 2024

(1 month, 3 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nigel Huddleston Portrait Nigel Huddleston
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I am afraid that is a ridiculous characterisation. We on this side of the House care, including about our vibrant, important local councils. That is precisely why they just received an additional £600 million, and future spending will be a matter for future fiscal events.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
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I am a strong believer in fairness in taxation. Would my hon. Friend care to advise the House about who would bear the heaviest burden of taxation, should His Majesty’s Government choose to adopt the £28 billion spending commitment that the Labour party announced on the radio this morning?

Covid-19: Economic Impact of Lockdowns

James Gray Excerpts
Tuesday 29th November 2022

(1 year, 4 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Esther McVey Portrait Esther McVey
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My hon. Friend and near neighbour raises an important point. This House is about debate and questioning things, and I am afraid that that did not happen. As he rightly says, we should ensure that Parliament never closes down again, as it did under the pandemic. Even back then, the figures from the Office for National Statistics pointed out that lockdowns and anti-covid measures would lead to the deaths of 200,000 in the medium to long term, due to missed treatments, under-diagnosis, loss of jobs and tax revenue, with disadvantaged people suffering the most. Bristol University in 2020 put that figure much higher, at 560,000 deaths.

Debates are now occurring on the unintended consequences of lockdown, from the mental health issues suffered by our children, to increased deaths of dementia patients, and the lack of visiting rights in care centres and hospitals still happening, even now. A big thank you has to go to the academics and scientists who initially raised concerns in those areas, including Professor Townsend, Professor Carl Heneghan and Professor Robert Dingwall, who asked those all-important questions.

Today, however, our focus is on the economic consequences of lockdown: rising financial hardship; increased poverty levels in the UK; the hundreds of thousands of people since lockdown now classed as economically inactive; the impact on them, their families and local communities; and the economic impact on the next generation’s wealth and earning capacity. It is estimated that school closures and lockdowns will lead to £40,000 being lost from lifetime earnings for each individual. A report by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank finds that students now risk

“losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings, or the equivalent of 14 percent of today’s global GDP, as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures”

and economic shocks.

Let us look back at some of the economic shocks of lockdown. The House of Commons Library notes explain that

“The magnitude of the recession caused by the pandemic is unprecedented in modern times.”

GDP declined by 11% in 2020, the steepest drop since consistent records began in 1948 and, based on less precise estimates of GDP going back further, the contraction in 2020 was the largest since 1709. During the first lockdown, UK GDP was 26% lower in April than only two months earlier in February. More than 8 million workers were furloughed during April and May 2020, peaking at 8.9 million—roughly a third of all employees—in May 2020. Overall, 11.7 million jobs were furloughed.

In response, the Bank of England cut interest rates to 0.1% and more than doubled its quantitative easing programme by £450 billion, taking the total value of assets it owned to a peak of £895 billion by December 2021. The total amount of public money calculated to have been spent on tackling the pandemic ranges from £376 billion by the National Audit Office in June 2022 to £407 billion by the International Monetary Fund in September 2021. In 2020-21, Government had income of £794 billion in tax receipts and other revenues, which is £79 billion less than forecast, and spent more than £1,107 billion. The budget deficit was £312 billion, or 15% of GDP, which is a peacetime record. The financial cost for every man, woman and child in this country has been estimated at £5,500.

Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, writing in The Daily Telegraph on 18 November, said:

“Compare the modest financial hit experienced by Sweden, the only European country to see through the hype by which other governments sought to justify their measures. Sweden operated a largely voluntary system and refused to lock down. Pandemic-related measures cost 60 billion kronor in 2020 and 2021, according to government figures. This works about at about £460 a head, less than a tenth of the UK figure. Yet their results in terms of both cases and deaths were a lot better than ours.

We are paying the price of panic, populism and poorly thought-out knee-jerk decision-making. At least the current Prime Minister can point to his warnings as chancellor that lockdowns were unaffordable if extended over any significant period of time. Boris Johnson’s indifference to mere money ensured that the cost was not even considered. All that can be said in his favour is that, if the Labour Party had had its way, the lockdowns would have been even longer and more costly.”

Let us look at the inflationary pressures we are now suffering from. As the country and world opened up after lockdown, there were sharp increases in the cost of essential goods and energy as the world emerged unprepared for such rapid demand, putting prices up, from the fuel pumps to the goods on supermarket shelves.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
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I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her speech. Although I do not necessarily subscribe to all her views about lockdown, she is right to say that the hospitality sector in particular is suffering dreadfully from energy price increases. I bring to her attention a particular case in my constituency, where we have many pubs and restaurants that are suffering. The energy bills of a large country house, which is open to the public, have gone from £16,000 a week to £60,000 a week. That is entirely and totally unsustainable. Does the right hon. Lady agree with me that the Government have to do something now to ease the pressure on the hospitality sector?

Esther McVey Portrait Esther McVey
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I welcome my hon. Friend to this debate today. He might be one of those who voted for continuous lockdowns, but it is important that we are all together in a sense of open debate and conversation. The point he raised is correct. If subsequently, after the Government had intervened to close things down, there were effects on otherwise viable businesses, the Government had to step in and support them. Indeed, the Government have given unprecedented support, but I wish we could have had discussions beforehand so that when people voted for lockdown, they knew what would befall them. At the time, too many colleagues did not want to do that.

Rural Banking Services

James Gray Excerpts
Tuesday 20th July 2021

(2 years, 8 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Robin Millar Portrait Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
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I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. She could well be describing Aberconwy: it is beautiful and rural, and it has trouble with broadband and, unfortunately, the withdrawal of banking services. In my constituency, the experience of the residents and small businesses of Llanrwst is that first they saw banking and counter services withdrawn from the town and going down the coast to Llandudno, and they were told that they could travel to Llandudno. Now, they hear that the counter services in Llandudno are closing, at some banks, and moving further along the coast. These are areas that do not have the benefit of extensive public transport, so it is physically difficult to move from the valley to the coast—

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Order. Interventions must be brief. I call Fay Jones.

Fay Jones Portrait Fay Jones
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I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), too. I will cover later in my speech the issues that have been raised. They are common issues, and that is why we all need to work together. This involves not just the UK Government, but the devolved Administrations in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Northern Ireland.

This proves the point that cash is extremely important. The Lloyds group talks about a group of 3 million cash-critical people. These are not the people that we might expect: 41% of this group are aged between 35 and 54; they earn less than £20,000 a year; and they often rent their home or live in social housing. Therefore, we are not just talking about the elderly, the vulnerable and those who live on their own. We need to ensure that this extremely important group in society has access to cash.

Let me turn to my ask of Government. As I have mentioned, the Government have taken some really positive steps towards addressing the challenges, and there is currently a consultation open on access to cash. The proposals include the Treasury granting powers to require certain firms such as retail banks to provide deposit and withdrawal facilities for customers within certain distances, and the Financial Conduct Authority would have oversight for monitoring and enforcing those requirements. I very much welcome that. Those proposals suggest that the Government are introducing a legal guarantee for consumers and businesses to be able to withdraw and access their cash. That is absolutely what we need. I think that the point about certain distances will be critical for people in my constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire. We are the largest constituency in England and Wales—the constituency is bigger than Luxembourg—and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to bear that in mind as the consultation goes forward. I will certainly respond to it, but it is imperative to remember that miles are not the same in urban areas as they are in rural areas.

Brecon has four banks, and that is great news, but Ystradgynlais, the largest town in my constituency by population, has only one. Builth Wells has one. Hay-on-Wye, as I have said, has none. Crickhowell has none. Rhayader has none. Knighton has none. Since the mid-1990s, the number of bank branches in the UK has been falling steadily.

LGBT Conversion Therapy

James Gray Excerpts
Monday 8th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Westminster Hall
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James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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We come now to the second of these hybrid debates in Westminster Hall, which are actually being held in the Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House. From my point of view, they are an extremely good innovation.

Before we start our debate on LGBT conversion therapy, perhaps I can remind Members of one or two matters. Social distancing must be maintained in this room, as it has been already. Those who are here are expected to be here for the beginning and the end of the debate, including those who are with us virtually; please stay until the end. And those who are here physically should use a wet wipe to clear up their space after they have spoken.

With that, I call Elliot Colburn, who is appearing virtually, to propose the motion.

Elliot Colburn Portrait Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con) [V]
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I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 300976 relating to LGBT conversion therapy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. The petition is entitled, “Make LGBT conversion therapy illegal in the UK”. The prayer of the petition states that

“I would like the Government to:

• make running conversion therapy in the UK a criminal offence

• forcing people to attend said conversion therapies a criminal offence

• sending people abroad in order to try to convert them a criminal offence

• protect individuals from conversion therapy

Despite all major counselling and psychotherapy bodies in the UK, including the NHS, condemning LGBT conversion therapy, it is still legal and LGBT individuals in the UK are still exposed to this psychological and emotional abuse to this day. The very thought of this sickens me, and I would like to see it stopped one day.”

When the petition closed, it had 256,392 signatures, including 487 from my own constituency of Carshalton and Wallington.

I can think of few moments so humbling as opening this important debate today. II is a testament to the importance of this issue that the debate was heavily over-subscribed, and I know that many colleagues who wanted to get in could not do so. Briefly, I want to thank and acknowledge from my side of the House the campaigning done by my hon. Friends the Members for Darlington (Peter Gibson), for Bracknell (James Sunderland), for Aylesbury (Rob Butler), for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Watford (Dean Russell), for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), for High Peak (Robert Largan), for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham), and others.

In preparation for today’s debate and throughout my campaigning on this issue since being elected as an MP, it has been my absolute honour to speak to campaign and charitable organisations, to experts from the fields of health, religion, education, law and beyond, and to legislators from across the world, including Malta, Canada, Australia, Spain and New Zealand, where these practices have either already been banned or are in the process of being banned. Most importantly, I am grateful to the survivors for speaking out and sharing their stories. Their bravery in shining a light on these abhorrent practices will help to save countless lives in the future if we can secure this ban.

First, we must ask ourselves what conversion therapy is and why it needs to be banned. According to a May 2020 report by the UN Office for Human Rights, and indeed according to a definition from the Government Equalities Office, so-called conversion therapy is an umbrella term used to describe interventions of a wide-ranging nature, all of which have in common the belief that a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity can and should be changed. These so-called therapies can manifest in many forms, from pseudo-psychological treatments and aversion therapies to practices that are religiously based, such as purification or fasting. At the most extreme, there has been evidence that this practice can also involve physical and sexual violence, including so-called corrective rape.

I will share just some of the stories of the survivors who have bravely shared their stories with me and the world, in an attempt to help campaign for the end of this practice in the UK. The first is Joe’s story. As a boy, Joe grappled with his hidden gay identity before leaving for his year in a yeshiva in Israel—a highly significant moment for many young Jews. He sought out conversion therapy and began weekly phone calls with a so-called therapist. After a year this clearly had not worked and instead he sought in-person therapies, where a group leader would force them to process moments of homosexual attraction, only for them to be scrutinised, judged and shamed, leaving Joe with an immense sense of depression. Thankfully, after hearing other gay Orthodox Jews speak out about their own experience, he stopped his conversion therapy, but the experience has left a scar to this day.

Next is Josh’s story. In 2017, Josh went undercover for the Liverpool Echo to a Liverpool church that offered a cure for homosexuality through a three-day starvation programme. The assistant pastor told Josh to starve himself and not drink any water before taking part in weekly prayer sessions, referring to being gay as “the deceit of Satan”. In the prayer groups the assistant pastor would shout phrases such as “kill it with fire” and “die in the fire,” while members of the congregation were seen crying, shaking, sweating and appearing to speak in tongues. It is shocking that the assistant pastor was an NHS doctor at that time, and I can find no evidence that he is no longer an NHS doctor.

Finally, I want to talk about Carolyn. At 17, Carolyn confided in her local vicar her feelings of self-hatred and depression, and her suicidal thoughts, because she did not feel like a boy. Her vicar took her to a doctor and a psychiatric hospital, where Carolyn was strapped to a wooden chair in a dark room. As images of women’s clothing were projected on to the wall in front of her, doctors would deliver painful electric shocks, hoping to associate the feelings of being a woman with memories of intense pain. As with Joe and Josh, that experience remains with Carolyn to this day.

Joe, Josh and Carolyn are just three survivors I have had the privilege of speaking to, and they experienced a wide range of so-called conversion therapies. I commend them for their bravery in speaking out, sharing their stories and campaigning to end these practices in the UK. Sadly, they are just three of many. In 2018, the Government’s first ever national survey of over 108,000 LGBT people in Britain found that 7% of respondents had either undergone or been offered conversion therapy. Some 13% of trans respondents had undergone or been offered conversion therapy. Of those who had been offered it, 51% said that it was conducted by faith groups and a further 19% said that it was done by healthcare providers or medical professionals. As the Ban Conversion Therapy coalition has outlined, though, given the clandestine and deceptive way these so-called conversion therapies are offered—giving them different names or dressing them up as alternative treatments—the real number is likely to be a lot higher. Tragically, we will never hear the testimonies of many who, grappling with their own identity while being told how wrong they were through these therapies, were left feeling that they had no other option than to take their own life.

It is important to point out that we are not talking about harmful practices that occurred some time ago; this is happening today, here in the UK, right now. A UN report into conversion therapy last year summed it up perfectly when it concluded that any and all forms of conversion therapy are

“inherently degrading and discriminatory. They are rooted in the belief that LGBT persons are somehow inferior, and that they must at any cost modify their orientation or identity to remedy that supposed inferiority.”

So strong was the report that it called for nothing less than

“a global ban on conversion therapy.”

Here in the UK, the practice has received almost universal condemnation. In 2017, a memorandum of understanding on conversion therapy in the UK was signed by NHS England and 12 other psychotherapy and health bodies, charities and organisations. I thank Igi Moon for their time speaking to me about the impact this has had. In another powerful intervention, in 2017 the Church of England also passed a motion condemning these practices and calling on the Government to ban them—a call that has now been echoed by over 370 global religious leaders and organisations. I pay particular tribute to Jayne Ozanne and her foundation for her leadership, her courage and her tireless efforts in campaigning on this issue.

Finally, in the national LGBT action plan of 2018, the UK Government committed to bring forward proposals to ban conversion therapy—a call that has been echoed many times in the House since that commitment was made. We have the agreement, the commitment and the coalition of voices from all parts of society urging a ban to be implemented. What we need now is the action. With every day that passes, another person is at risk of being subjected to this degrading treatment. We risk losing even more lives of people who feel there is no other way out.

I have two final points to make today. On what the ban must include, the Government do not need to start from scratch. Highly praised examples already exist in places such as Madrid, Malta and Victoria in Australia. Learning from those examples, and in line with the UN report’s recommendations, a ban must cover both the public and the private spheres and all forms of intervention, no matter what they might be, whether that be healthcare, religious, cultural or traditional, and so on. It must cover children and adults, those who have been coerced and indeed those who consented to such conversion practices. There must be an up-to-date definition of advertising to ensure that it encompasses public, private, community spaces and online advertising. The ban must include the sending, or the threatening to send someone, overseas to undergo so-called conversion therapies. As well as investigative frameworks, a punishment framework for non-compliance must be established, and mechanisms created for support and redress to victims. Finally, it must truly protect all LGBT+ people.

The ban cannot be just on gay conversion therapy. It must cover degrading and inhumane interventions aimed at changing anyone’s sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression. We must remember that this is about the practice itself and about the fact that absolutely no one should be subject to such abhorrent interventions. To avoid confusion and to protect those delivering real and actual support to LGBT+ people, laws passed elsewhere in the world have introduced specific mention of what should not be considered as part of a ban, including safe and supportive therapies.

My final point is about the need for a timeline. We have the commitment, the evidence and the international working examples, so what we need now is a Bill. I appreciate that the Government have been gathering evidence, looking to understand this better and exploring options, but I hope that the Minister will deliver some good news and tell us when a Bill will be published, so that we may debate it on the Floor of the House.

To conclude, the evidence is clear. So-called conversion therapy does not work. There is no scientific basis for it whatever. Parts of every section of UK society have come together, united in their condemnation and calling for it to be banned. Since 2021 looks like a year of restarting, reopening and regrowing, let us add to that positivity by getting a conversion therapy ban on to the statute book this year. As a gay man and on behalf of LGBT+ people in the UK and around the world, I will end by saying, we are here—our existence is real, our lives are valid, and we cannot and do not need to be cured.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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It may help the House to know that some 50 people originally put in to speak in this debate, of whom Mr Speaker has selected 20. If we are to achieve that number, as a courtesy to each other, I suggest a maximum speaking time of three minutes—two minutes would be even better.

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Crispin Blunt Portrait Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) [V]
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I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on leading the debate so well, and I congratulate his Committee on securing it. I have two key points for the Government. The first is that we must legislate. Deliver the promise to protect in law. Use the work done in the Government Equalities Office before 2019. Use the examples elsewhere, particularly in Spain and the Australian state of Victoria, which have already legislated. Our common law system enables the drafting challenge of defining conversion therapy to be met. There is no need to overcomplicate this issue. The police, prosecutors and jurors will know conversion therapy when they see it. Most critically, the victims will know it too, and they will have been equipped with a defence mechanism.

Such a law is an important step as a declaratory statement, as it is as a legal tool. If someone is LGBT, the law says that the state supports them. It supports how they want to live their life. When victims find themselves under pressure that is improperly applied to convert them to something they are not, they will know that it is against the law and that they can call it out. They can say to the person or people who are the source of this—[Interruption.]

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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We have lost the sound, Mr Blunt. You are mute.

Crispin Blunt Portrait Crispin Blunt
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My apologies.

The law gives the victims the opportunity to go to the police and, therefore, to have a weapon in their hand against the source of a conversion therapy. The state is on the side of victims’ freedom—the freedom that that individual is trying to take away from them.

The second point I want to make is that such protection must include trans people. They are by far and away the most vulnerable group among the LGBT community. Identity around gender dysphoria is surely a much more challenging thing to meet than a minority sexuality, but all must be protected. The law must include trans people, and not only because they are the group who need it the most. In 2018, it appeared that trans people were on a trajectory to achieve their rights and protections to live their lives as they wished, supported by the Government’s comprehensive LGBT action plan, but all that now seems to have changed. Trans people are a community under siege. Organisations whose principle raison d’être is to attack and challenge the very legitimacy of trans people have come into being, and they appear to trans people to be firmly in the ascendant.

The lived experience of trans people reflects the awful paucity of services for them in the United Kingdom, as graphically illustrated by VICE News in January and November. They also see 250 articles a year attacking them in our newspaper of record, The Times. They see that groups such as the Conservative Women’s Pledge and LGB Alliance, whose purpose seems to be to protect cisgender women from trans women, have the ear of Ministers. They see reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 abandoned, and the principle of gender-neutral legislation was reversed only last week.

Gender is much more complicated than sexuality, and the drafting of the ban on conversion therapy will need to protect those giving informed, regulated and properly peer-reviewed advice to assist those on the path to reconciling their gender dysphoria. If the legislation does not include the protection of trans people, however, it will send to them the unmistakeable message that their Government do not want to protect them, do not value them and, at some level, do not really accept that trans is really a thing. That awful message would inadvertently make the Government themselves party to the practice of conversion therapy.

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Mike Hill Portrait Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab) [V]
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my colleague the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for his wonderful introduction to the debate. I have been contacted by many of my constituents about the petition, each of them as shocked as I am that the Government have still not acted to outlaw the practice of so-called conversion therapy inflicted on LGBT people.

The petitioners’ aims are not difficult to enact, nor are they asking too much. Their requests are clear and simple: they simply want LGBT people to live in dignity without having their sexuality or gender identity questioned. Every human being should have the right to express their own identity without the judgment of others. It is clear from the evidence surrounding this practice, compiled by the charity Stonewall, that that is not the case for everyone who identifies as LGBT in the UK. According to Stonewall’s figures, one in 20 LGBT people living in the UK has at some time been subject to or recommended for therapies that question their very identity. That number rises to almost one in 10 among young LGBT adults aged between 18 and 24 and almost one in five for trans people.

In a modern, supposedly decent society, that should not even be an option, and it certainly should not be legal. Many of the people subjected to such practices have them forced upon them by their families. In some cases, LGBT people are sent abroad for treatment by relatives who believe it will somehow cure them, when there is nothing—absolutely nothing—to be cured. The only result is severe distress and untold psychological trauma.

Every recognised medical and professional body in the UK has described the practice as dangerous. Many other public bodies have signed a common pledge against the practice. However, substantial evidence still shows that too many people continue to believe, despite the evidence, that sexuality and gender identity can be cured in some way. Enacting legislation to end these so-called therapies and ensure that no practitioner in the UK can consider them an option to which they can refer a patient would contribute greatly to preventing people from persisting in that belief.

I appreciate that the Government have previously made supportive statements on the issue. The Prime Minister himself described it as “abhorrent”, and as something that

“has no place in a civilised society”.

He made that statement last summer, but nine months on there has been no movement. There is clearly cross-party consensus in favour of legislating to outlaw this practice. Every day that the Government delay legislation, another LGBT person could be subject to this continued abuse. We have the power to act and the support to pass the legislation. All we need is the legislation to put our words into action. We can prevent further damage to the lives of LGBT people in this country, but only if we act quickly.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Physically speaking and back from her maternity leave, we have Alicia Kearns.

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Gary Sambrook Portrait Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

Conversion therapy, in many ways, is a manipulation. It is a manipulation of emotions; it is a manipulation of the coming-out process; and it is a manipulation of people finding themselves and understanding themselves over many years. I came out when I was 22, nine years after I probably realised that I was slightly different from the rest of the lads at school. People go through emotional turmoil when they are going through that process. Even when I started school—I am only 31—it still was not legal to adopt, and marriage was a distant, far-away thought. Until recently, the NHS still did not want my blood.

We go through this process, and it is incredibly difficult for people to process it, because we put ourselves under so much strain and pressure. For me and so many other people, the emotions that we feel—the emotions that are being manipulated by this conversion therapy—are emotions of shame, of not belonging, and of being selfish. These are the things we put ourselves through. We talk ourselves down and we end up convincing ourselves that we are doing wrong—that we are deliberately trying to behave differently from other people. The reason it took me so long to come out of the closet is that I did not want to tell my mum that she would not be a granny, because I am an only child. We put ourselves through this for years and years. I was very lucky, because I plodded on and managed to get through that very difficult period in my life, but so many other people can have those emotions manipulated. By allowing these conversion therapies to continue, we are opening the door for this sort of practice to continue.

I talk about gay and lesbian people, because I am gay, but I also fully support many of the contributions today that have said that this conversion therapy also needs to end for trans people; I am 100% behind that battle too. I want to send a message to the Government that it has been three years since this promise to ban conversion therapy. We have got to get on with it and make sure that we deliver on it, because every day is a delay; another day in which somebody else has their emotions manipulated; another day in which someone else’s life could be ruined forever by going through these highly traumatic experiences.

That could be any one of a number of us. Looking through these stories, we can see similarities in what we read. We can point them out and think, “This was me at one point during my life” or, “This was a friend of mine at some point during their life.” I look at the apology that was given last year by the University of Birmingham, where electric shock treatment was given to gay people in the 1970s, and think, “That could have been me.”

We owe it to all those people to make sure that we ban conversion therapy as soon as possible, because if we allow that door to be open for much longer, I fear the consequences for so many young people—and not necessarily just young people; it could be middle-aged people; people who are later on in their life who find themselves hiding things and make daily lies a normal thing, as I did, to try to cover their tracks. This sort of stuff puts people through enormous emotional turmoil, which is why it is so important that we ban conversion therapy as soon as possible.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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I apologise to the House. I inadvertently missed out the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy).

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Hannah Bardell Portrait Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. I can think of no better way to open my speech than where the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) finished, with a passage from Vicky Beeching, who gave me a lot of support before I came out publicly. In her book “Undivided: Coming out, becoming whole, and living free from shame”, she writes: “There was only one thing that had caused vast emotional shame in my life for years. I had known I was gay since I was 12 or 13. Keeping that hidden for two decades had been wrecking my heart and mind. Now, as I neared the age of 30, it seemed to be wrecking my body too. All these years I’d prayed and fasted, submitted myself to an exorcism, confessed to a Catholic priest, believed that conversion therapy could change a person’s orientation, read the Bible until my eyes were sore and never acted on my attractions even once. I’d done anything and everything to try and become straight or to shut down any desires for a life partner. My immune system, my adrenals and my sympathetic nervous system were all stretched to breaking point from years of living in fight or flight mode.”

If Members need any other first-hand accounts of how devastating conversion therapy is, a good friend of mine who wanted to remain anonymous shared this with me: “I had not known until today what they had endured. It’s only now, at almost 35 years old, that I even have some small level of strength to begin to deal with it. It cost me most of my teenage years and 20s. I still struggle with acceptance of my sexuality to this day, which has affected my ability to have any open and meaningful relationships. I went through years of really dark mental health battles because of this. The first time I tried to kill myself by suicide was at 12 years old, because I wasn’t who I was meant to be, and this was unfortunately the beginning of what was to become a very dark decade of self-hatred brought on because of these practices. It’s torture, and it has had lifelong debilitating effects that affect every part of my life. It has to stop.”

We should not have to choose between our religion and our sexuality, or between following the faith of our choice or the person we love. I might not be formally part of any faith, but I recognise what a huge part faith can play in many people’s lives and in our society. The national LGBT survey of 2018 showed that 51% of respondents who had undergone conversion therapy said that faith groups had conducted it, and 19% said it had been conducted by healthcare providers or medical professionals. As parliamentarians and legislators, we simply cannot allow such a practice to continue.

I was well into my 30s when I came out. Why I did not come out sooner will always be a mystery to me, but a big part of it was because I was from a single-parent family. I grew up in a loving family that I knew would accept me for whoever I was, but I did not grow up in a society that would accept me for whoever I was. I grew up in a society that said heteronormativity and having a parent of each gender was the ideal, and I could not face up to being a lesbian. Now, as the daughter of a single mother and as a proud out lesbian, I realise that they are my strengths, my superpowers, but that is not the case for so many in the LGBT community.

I know how hard it was to come out to a loving family and friendship group. I cannot imagine how difficult it is for people who are oppressed and subjected to conversion therapy, so we must draw a line in the sand. We must ask ourselves as parliamentarians, “What are we here for?” We are not here just to make grand speeches and gestures. We are here to bring about change, to change the law, and to outlaw that abhorrent practice.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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We have 50 minutes to go and six speakers. I call Simon Baynes

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Mark Fletcher Portrait Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I declare a brief interest, in that my husband works for a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender charity that works in schools. The hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) touched on the fact that society has come a long way. Some of that has been law led and some of it has been developments over time. Ultimately, the discussions around conversion therapy are really about acknowledging who we are—not who we want to be, not who society wants us to be, not who our parents or friends want us to be, but who we are as individuals.

To be different is still difficult. So many things have changed and society has improved, but we still live with tremendous pressures upon individuals, who still feel the need to deny who they are. One of the difficulties that I have had in listening to an amazing array of speeches from people from all parties—this is a cross-party issue and debate—is that we want to solve everything, and to say to every person in this country, “You can be who you want to be, and you can be proud and happy.”

We cannot do that as lawmakers because only so many things are under our control. However, one thing that we can do, and there is clear consensus to do it within this room and among all the people on all these wonderful screens in front of us, is to take a step in the right direction and end this “abhorrent” practice—not my words but the words of the Prime Minister—for which there is no medical justification. The hon. Member for Wallasey said it is medieval, and that term is absolutely right.

I stand here as someone who is openly gay and who came out at a comprehensive school in Doncaster. I am not religious, but I did not have the best experience with coming out, which I am sure many people can relate to. I want to say to all the boys and girls who know that they are a little bit different, whether they are gay or whether they think that something is just not quite right, that we have your backs. We will continue to push for this ban and we will continue to try to make your lives a little bit better.

In my last 30 seconds, I will just say one thing to the online LBGT community who have looked today and said, “Why should there be a debate? We should just crack on and end conversion therapy.” I understand their argument, but I question that arrogance, because there is always a need to win the argument, and there is always a need to keep advancing and making sure that the things that we do here and elsewhere are led by the best arguments, and that we continue to fight that fight.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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We have three more Back Benchers to speak and five minutes left.

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Jamie Wallis Portrait Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con) [V]
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on leading this very important debate and on making such a compelling and moving opening speech.

Conversion therapy is a damaging, degrading and discriminatory practice that seeks to correct something that does not need fixing—somebody’s sexual orientation, or their gender identity and/or expression. It causes severe physical and psychological suffering; it violates the human rights of the LGBT community; and it is considered by some to be a form of torture, and for good reason.

If we want to eradicate this insidious form of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic abuse, we need a legislative ban to make conversion therapy illegal and we need one as soon as possible. It is vital that this Government lead the way for our LGBT+ community and make history with an effective legislative ban as quickly as possible.

The national LGBT survey found that 7% of people had been offered or undergone conversion therapy. I should echo comments made in support of trans people, because trans respondents to that survey suggested that they are almost twice as likely to have undergone or been offered such therapies.

It is important to echo the comment that this abhorrent practice is taking place across Britain right now. As it is, the law does not protect my constituents from conversion therapy, despite how harmful and damaging it is.

In the short time I have, I will finish by saying that the Ban Conversion Therapy coalition’s ask for support for victims and survivors—whether through charities, faith groups or mental health practitioners—to help them overcome the trauma that they have endured and rebuild their lives is very important. I ask that it be included in any future services that are offered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington made some very good points about what an effective ban should include, and I echo his statements on that. A ban should prevent people from being threatened or sent abroad, it should protect people regardless of age, and it should support victims and survivors regardless of whether they were coerced into or consented to the practice. It must ban the advertising and promotion of said practices, both offline and online. These are the right things to do, and the sooner the Government take action, the sooner the UK can join the growing number of global leaders in LGBT rights who have taken such steps.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Very briefly, please, Alyn Smith.

North of England: Infrastructure Spending

James Gray Excerpts
Wednesday 25th November 2020

(3 years, 4 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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None Portrait Several hon. Members rose—
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James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Order. I do not intend to impose a formal time limit on speeches. Looking around the Chamber, colleagues will realise that if they keep their speeches to three or four minutes, they can accommodate one another.

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Jonathan Gullis Portrait Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
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I feel a bit of an intruder, because Stoke-on-Trent might geographically be placed in the west midlands, at the very tip of the midlands engine, but we very much see ourselves as the gatekeepers to the northern powerhouse. For too long, Stoke-on-Trent has been forgotten, stuck between Manchester and Birmingham, where money is being poured in, left, right and centre. Stoke-on-Trent is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom, but is sadly in the bottom 20% for social mobility and for level 3 and 4 qualification take-up. The average house price is £114,000. It is a city with plenty of brownfield sites, but, sadly, buildings are rotting away, because the negative land value means that, to developers, it is not worth investing.

When it comes to infrastructure, I concur with many of the comments made today. People are wary of “shiny” and “new” in our area, because they have seen vanity projects being built time and again which have resulted in no real, drastic change in their personal circumstances. Therefore, I am not asking the Minister from the Treasury to just build lots of shiny stuff; what I am asking for is a real focus on how we spend that money.

I build on the superb comments from my hon. Friends the Members for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), for Bury North (James Daly), and for North West Durham (Mr Holden), who talked about education. I have too many schools in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that are simply not hitting the mark. They are producing results that ensure that children stay trapped in a cycle of low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Education means free school investment. It also means ensuring that adult education—the lifetime skills guarantee—is applied in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, and ensuring the local college has the funding to deliver. People may not be aware of this, but 12% of my workforce have no formal qualifications—8% higher than the national average.

It also means homes—not just affordable homes, because as I said earlier, Stoke-on-Trent has those. What we need are the four and five-bed executive homes that can attract commuters to Manchester and Birmingham to the area, to help bring regeneration and wealth. However, that also means giving us money, as the Government did at the Royal Doulton site, where we knocked down the empty factory and managed to build over 200 brand new homes, each of which will have gigabit installed directly—pure gigabit, not the stuff that BT and others claim that they are inserting into the network grid.

We need to ensure improved transport. That means finally giving Stoke the transforming cities fund money that it truly deserves. It means ensuring the Stoke to Leek line that connects North Staffordshire is delivered, and ensuring that Superbus, which has been paused due to covid, is reopened, so we can have better and affordable bus routes, and a big push on the hydrogen bus idea in Stoke. The towns fund is an example of how this Government have been superb in ensuring that areas have a chance to level up, and to take ownership of what they want to see. Kidsgrove’s bid is in with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I am hoping we get our full £25 million ask.

The town of Tunstall was previously stuck in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, which meant it was excluded from the last round of the scheme. Stoke is a collection of six towns. Tunstall should not have to miss out. Burslem has the greatest number of closed high street shops in the UK; it is the perfect place for the Government to lead a pilot on how to repurpose and regenerate a high street with town housing, flats, office space and a mixture of small retail and restaurants—and, hopefully, some pubs, when we exit this lockdown. I hope the Government will add my shopping list to the long list of personal requests that I am sure the Minister has been making, and that they will ensure levelling up is a real opportunity for everyone we serve.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Before I call the next speaker, I congratulate colleagues on their self-restraint: we got 14 in Back-Bench speeches in the time available to us, which demonstrates that self-restraint works better than formal time limits.

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Jesse Norman Portrait The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
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What a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate you, if I may, on the extremely elegant and deft way in which you have managed the Back-Bench contributions to this debate, with a lightness of touch that has brought great joy to everyone. It has been a good-natured debate, and I thank everyone for the comments, questions and arguments that they have put.

I would particularly like to single out, on behalf of colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for hosting and calling this debate and for the fact that, in doing so, he has brilliantly selected a day on which the Chancellor himself will be stepping forward with some answers to the specific questions that he is putting. I must say that, as an example of influence in the Chamber, I do not think that is to be bettered; I am very impressed indeed that someone of such tender years in the Chamber and in this Parliament should be able to bring about such a state of affairs, so I congratulate him on that very much indeed.

I also congratulate colleagues across the House on the astonishing fiscal rectitude that they have shown, by and large. At this point, we are normally into the tens of billions in requests from my thrifty Conservative colleagues, as well as from those in other parties, so I am very grateful that they have managed to restrain their appetite—possibly because they are looking forward so intently to the festivities this afternoon.

As my hon. Friends and colleagues across the House will know, I am responding because I am the Minister responsible for the national infrastructure strategy, the National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure Projects Authority. If I may, I will come to many of the comments that were raised and talk a little bit about not just the what, but the how of infrastructure, because that has been well flagged in today’s debate.

I do not think that it needs to be stated too often, and it should not be forgotten, that the desire to invest for the long term and to level up this country is the driving force of this Administration. It is an absolutely central part of what the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and colleagues across the Government stand for. The advent of this pandemic virus has only strengthened and increased the appetite to push forward, and the urgency of that mission. To that, the quality of our infrastructure and the speed of its delivery are absolutely essential.

If I may, I will just rewind a little bit. Colleagues will recall that in the March Budget we announced historic increases in capital spending, setting out plans for more than half a trillion pounds of investment over the next few years. It is important to remember that that investment is not just public investment; it is also private investment. It is very easy to forget the central importance of private investment. This country—through the quality of its regulation, its rule of law, its openness, its ability to set up a business, its accessibility, its language and its culture—remains extremely attractive to international investment, as a place to put hard-earned cash, and rightly so.

In June, the Government explained how they plan to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure schemes. In July, they said they would be bringing forward £8.6 billion of capital spending, focusing on shovel-ready projects, and this afternoon we have not just the spending review statement, but the publication of the national infrastructure strategy and some ancillary documents around that. That will set out the plans for the ambitious acceleration of investment in our country’s infrastructure and, of course, its relation to the levelling-up agenda. If it does not perfectly address all the questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Southport raised his speech, then that is only because if he had given us a couple more days we would have been able to reshape the thing even more precisely.

Let me also talk a little bit about what has been achieved so far. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), whom I again welcome to her place on the Opposition Front Bench, talked about what has been achieved so far. It is important to flag up what has been achieved, and then we can talk about where we want to go. The first thing I would say is that there is an enormous amount of investment already going into the ground, particularly in the north of England. In his summer economic update, the Chancellor unveiled the great get Britain building fund. Already Mayors and local enterprise partnerships across the north have received some £319 million from the fund, to deliver jobs, skills and infrastructure. That money is pushing forward a range of projects, from the roll-out of electric vehicle charging points in South Yorkshire to a new garden village in Liverpool.

Colleagues will be aware of the towns fund, which is already under way and which, if I may say so, is a great example of collaborative cross-party local engagement, designed to liberate energies, bring forward projects that were not necessarily on local councils’ radar screens and bring them into a coherent, long-term relationship with each other and as part of a single plan for particular towns.

That fund is paying for infrastructure schemes that will unleash the economic potential of smaller communities across the country. It has been rightly said by colleagues that we should not be purely focused on cities. This is a very important aspect of that, and I commend it to them. I am delighted that the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Southport is among the places that are benefiting. We have also accelerated the issuance of some £96 million from the fund, to pay for the roll-out of even more projects that will fuel economic recovery after the coronavirus.

Of course, it is hard to think about infrastructure without thinking about transport. That will continue to be crucial to unlocking the productivity of this country, in particular in the north. That is why we are investing very substantially—indeed, record sums—into improving it. The transforming cities fund has provided city regions across the north, including Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Tees Valley, with over £800 million to make their transport networks even better and greener. At the last Budget, we also announced a £4.2 billion investment across eight city regions, including Greater Manchester, Sheffield and the Tees Valley, for five-year consolidated transport settlements, starting in 2022. In addition, we are spending billions of pounds on upgrading the north’s major strategic road network.

As colleagues will be aware, I negotiated the road investment strategy 2 with the Treasury when I was on the other side of the fence at the Department of Transport, with my hon. Friend—my beloved friend—the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). In RIS2, we were able to negotiate a substantial investment in roadbuilding on a strategic basis across the country, including a lot of schemes in the north.

That is not just about new roads, but about making our existing road network more effective and ready for electric vehicles and, in due course, autonomous vehicles. That is an important part of the development of our overall infrastructure. Those schemes include dualling the A66 across the Pennines and of the A1 from Morpeth to Ellingham in the north-east, and upgrading the A63 and Castle Street in Hull and the Simister island junction in Greater Manchester.

The same is true for investment in the north’s railways. As colleagues will be aware, we are going to publish an integrated rail plan that looks at the scope, form and phasing of rail investment in the north and the midlands. We will also seek to reverse some of the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, so that we can get more community connections in place.

I spoke earlier about the importance when we invest not just of the what, but of the how, and colleagues were absolutely right to raise that question. I single out the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who was right to focus on that. Through the national infrastructure strategy, which we are publishing this afternoon, and through the work that goes on around it, with the National Infrastructure Commission that we set up and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, we are thinking harder about how to choose, integrate and deliver schemes as best we can and better than any other Government for a long time.

I will give a little example that is close to my heart: the ministerial training programme that I set up for colleagues, who will be pleased to know that it is now in its second phase. We have taken the view that Ministers can benefit, as can senior civil servants and anyone who aspires to be in the senior civil service, from becoming better clients of major projects and better able to ask searching questions about timing, schedule and budget of delivery. That important programme is something that we have put in place. As colleagues will know, we plan to set up a new economic campus in the north of England, with a substantial number of civil servants and people from across the economic parts of Government, to give not just a local presence, but a change of mindset that responds to colleagues’ concerns.

If I may pick up on a couple of other points about the “how?”, colleagues will know that we recently established the northern transport acceleration council, which is designed to get those projects up and running more quickly. We are pressing harder on the devolution agenda—colleagues have rightly flagged that—and have just agreed a devolution deal with West Yorkshire for £1 billion of investment and a directly elected Metro Mayor from May next year. We fully implemented the Sheffield City Region deal, including £900 million of new funding, along with substantial devolved powers over transport, skills and planning. We intend to go further still through the forthcoming devolution and local recovery White Paper.

I am lucky that, thanks to your genius, Mr Gray—

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Don’t overdo it.

Jesse Norman Portrait Jesse Norman
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

—I have a bit of time left to spend talking about the specific comments that have been made, which have been extremely helpful and interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport was absolutely right to encourage us to look at rural areas as well as cities. He painted an almost garden of Eden-like picture of life in Southport, where people stroll airily from flower shows to comedy festivals to air shows, while striking a mean four iron on Royal Birkdale. I thought that an exquisite moment in his speech. He rightly highlighted the importance of railway, the stronger towns fund and the freeports, which he will know we have announced, and from which the north could benefit hugely in this competition.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) is no longer in his place but I thought that he was right to focus on devolution, which I touched on in earlier remarks. The point about the capillaries and arteries of infrastructure was well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) was absolutely right to focus on the short, medium and long term. As he will know, one of the great unsung heroes of transport policy over the last few years has been Sir Rod Eddington. His report was very much about managing smaller schemes—often enormously important and not to be forgotten—that move people, particularly in suburbs and areas of large volumes of traffic, by rail, road or other means, and it was absolutely right.

My right hon. Friend’s call for a new Rhine system of navigation in the north was optimistic, but I respect the intent and energy behind it. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (James Grundy) was right to pick up on light rail. When I was in the Department for Transport, we did a consultation on light rail, which has such great potential. It is extremely inexpensive compared with some of the heavier rail alternatives, and it could be a beautiful new industry for the UK to develop. We have a tremendous amount of relevant skills in the supply chain, and I very much look forward to hearing more about that from colleagues.

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Damien Moore Portrait Damien Moore
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank all Members for their spirit of conviviality during today’s debate. It is most refreshing when so many colleagues actually agree with one another. The debate was not confined to colleagues from the north of England, although every debate that involves those colleagues always has a Pennines, Lancashire and Yorkshire dynamic to it. It is important to recognise that infrastructure spending in the north not only benefits our communities, but the communities that they touch. The hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) mentioned communities in Scotland.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), a passionate campaigner, talked about the midlands and the northern links that we have there. It is often said that the north was built by people of enterprise, talent and ability, and I am pleased that we have seen so many of those attributes portrayed by the representatives of those areas today.

We await with eager anticipation the spending commitments today. I am sure we are even more eager for the Minister to get over to the Treasury to rewrite the spending commitments for all the things that we have asked for. Nevertheless, the commitments that the Government have to the north are clear and absolute, and I am sure we will be in this Chamber and the main Chamber of the House debating what we want to see for our communities. They are more than projects; this is about people.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered infrastructure spending in the North of England.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
- Hansard - -

I will suspend the sitting for three minutes.

Beer and Pub Taxation

James Gray Excerpts
Wednesday 5th February 2020

(4 years, 1 month ago)

Westminster Hall
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Steve Baker Portrait Mr Steve Baker
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous in giving way, and I know he wants to make progress, but will he help me put on record the sheer scale of the attendance at this debate? Clearly the Minister would be incredibly popular if only he cut tax on beer and pubs. With that, I will let my hon. Friend resume his magnificent speech.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
- Hansard - -

Order. The hon. Gentleman prompts me to comment that this debate is hugely popular. A lot of Members would like to speak—I have some 17 on my list. It is of course up to the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) whether he takes interventions, but constant interventions will mean that his speech is very long and that there may be time for only five to 10 speeches from Back Benchers. If we keep interventions a little bit under control, we can get more speakers in later on.

Mike Wood Portrait Mike Wood
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I will endeavour to follow your guidance, Mr Gray. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) makes the point extremely succinctly. I would like to pretend that I was the big attraction in this debate, which has brought so many Members from all parts of the House to this Chamber, but it probably has a little more to do with the quarter of a million people who have signed the Long Live the Local petitions. That has resulted in nearly 130,000 emails being sent from constituents to Members of Parliament, encouraging them to support our beer and pubs and to press for the kind of support that my hon. Friend was calling for the Minister to announce. I know the Minister will not feel too confined to his briefing and his mandate; I am sure he can go a little off-piste later.

It is not an exaggeration to call the pub an essential part of British life, but the link between beer and pubs is completely inextricable. Seven in 10 of the alcoholic drinks sold in pubs are beer, and beer accounts for more than half of a pub’s turnover. A thriving brewing sector is intimately entwined with successful local pubs. The statistics, the employment and the economic contribution are extremely impressive—including the £100 million raised for charity every year by pubs up and down the country—but there is so much more to beer and pubs than figures alone.

The great British pub is one of our most loved national institutions and is the heart of so many of our communities. We only have to think of the times we have stopped for directions in our constituencies. Those directions are more likely to be, “Turn left at the Old Cat and then go straight on at the Red Lion”, than to refer to street names. Pubs also make a huge difference on social issues. Loneliness and isolation are among the top social issues facing our society, and pubs do so much to help.

We have already talked about the many services that pubs offer. When the pub is the last service or facility in the town and it closes, it is not only a place to drink that goes, but all the services. Visiting Cornwall with the wonderful Pub is the Hub charity in 2018, I saw pubs that were home to convenience stores, hairdressers and jobs clubs. Last year, the all-party parliamentary beer group conducted an inquiry into unlocking pubs’ potential, which we should be publishing in the next few weeks. We heard evidence of the social contribution made by pubs in rural and urban areas alike, whether that was pubs providing meals for people with dementia and their partners, Christmas meals for the isolated and lonely, free meals for older people, yoga classes, literacy groups, or parent and toddler groups. Pubs are the original social network, bringing people and communities together. Unlike some more modern social networks, Facebook pays just over 1.5% of its UK turnover in tax; pubs typically pay about a third. That averages to some £142,000 a year a pub to the Exchequer.

A large part of that money is in the form of business rates. The recently announced extension of the pub-specific relief, which knocks £1,000 off the bills of pubs with rateable values of less than £100,000, will help a huge number of pubs—in particular, smaller ones—as will the 50% reduction in business rates bills for certain businesses. For pubs, the burden of business rates remains particularly acute because of the way pub valuations work. Pubs account for 2.8% of all business rates revenues, despite accounting for only 0.5% of rate-paying business turnover. That amounts to an overpayment of £500 million every single year. Pubs pay more in business rates compared with turnover than any other sector. That is a basic fairness issue.

Every extra pound on the business rates bill makes it harder for a pub to survive, while some sectors of the economy simply do not seem to be paying their fair share. We need the fundamental review of business rates that the Government promised in our election manifesto and a new system that reflects the realities of the 21st-century economy.

The other main tax burden on our beer and pubs is duty, and beer duty remains much too high. It is much higher than in any other major beer-producing country in Europe. In fact, someone who bought a pint in each of the five other major beer-producing countries—Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Poland—would still have paid less duty on those five pints than they would on a single pint in Britain.

Successive coalition and Conservative Governments have taken action to limit the impact of beer duty on pubs since abolishing—I have to call it this—the hated beer duty escalator in 2013. That has saved pubs and pubgoers millions of pounds, which can be seen in the change in the fortunes of many of our brewers and pubs. I hope the Treasury will go even further by offering support for British beer and pubs in next month’s Budget, because keeping a lid on beer prices helps to keep pubs viable. What is more, taking action to limit beer duty increases sends a positive signal to the quarter of a million supporters of the Long Live the Local petition, not to mention the 25,000 individual pubs backing the campaign. A cut or freeze in beer duty will appear on the Treasury’s books as a cost, but evidence suggests that keeping costs down for brewers and consumers leads to increased revenue.

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None Portrait Several hon. Members rose—
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James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Order. It will not take a genius to see that around 22 Members wish to speak in the 40 minutes or so before I call the Front Benchers, which would mean around two minutes per speaker. I do not intend to impose a limit, because I think that that sacrifices quality in favour of quantity, but I appeal to colleagues to limit their speeches, if they can, to two or three minutes, to allow each other in. I call Siobhain McDonagh.

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Marie Rimmer Portrait Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
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It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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Let us save time and not say that.

Marie Rimmer Portrait Ms Rimmer
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Pubs have always sat at the heart of our communities and our societies. I remember how my dad, at the end of a hard day’s work, would go to his local for a pint to enjoy the companionship and relax. If we look back at history, we see how many of our rights originate from people sitting down in the local and planning for a better world: democracy, workers’ rights, trade unions. All of those had many of their roots in this country in the local pub. Even today, pubs play an important role. They are where we celebrate our success in work, love and life. It is where we cheer on our nations in sport and mourn our losses in wakes, raising a parting glass for those we have lost.

Pubs remain an integral part of the St Helens, Whiston and Prescot communities. We have many fantastic pubs across the constituency, including the Cricketers Arms, which deservedly won the 2017 national pub of the year award, but we have seen dozens of pubs close. Many local pubs across the country are struggling under current taxation arrangements, which makes it extremely difficult for local pubs to compete with massive supermarkets and large pub chains. People in the UK pay almost 40% of all the beer duty in the EU, while consuming only 12% of the beer. If we compare ourselves to similar sized nations such as Germany, their beer duty is 11 times lower than the UK’s rate. We need to ask ourselves why our taxation rate is so much higher. Some will argue that it is to discourage people from excess drinking: an aim I completely agree with. It is vital we make sure that people drink responsibly.

If we look at the Green Budget published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in February 2016, we see:

“The current structure of alcohol duties is not well targeted at harmful alcohol consumption.”

In fact, because local pubs cannot afford to offer the same prices as supermarket chains, people drink excessively at home in pre-drink sessions. They feel under pressure to drink as much alcohol as they can before going for a night out at a pub or wine bar, where prices for drinks are higher than in supermarkets, partly because of the way in which our taxes are applied.

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Stephen Flynn Portrait Stephen Flynn
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The hon. Member makes an important point, which many hon. Members have also made. That is why we have to take a holistic view. We cannot simply say that taxes need to be cut without looking at the public health impact. Notwithstanding that, a pub is a much safer place to drink than the pre-loading we heard about earlier.

It is important to note that about 22 individuals die every week in Scotland due to alcohol abuse. That is a shocking figure that none of us can be happy about. There has been action on that in Scotland, through the introduction of minimum unit pricing, which is expected to save 392 lives over just five years. We certainly support the reform of beer excise duty, but we need to look at taxation holistically and in terms of public health.

The elephant in the room is the fact that great swathes of our hospitality sector rely primarily on the work of EU nationals. In Scotland, roughly 11% of EU nationals work in the hospitality sector. They are crucial to the success of our pubs, hotels and the entire hospitality industry. That is why Scotland needs freedom of movement, and why it is incumbent on Conservative Members to ensure that when the Brexit deal goes through, free movement of people from the European nations to Scotland continues.

James Gray Portrait James Gray (in the Chair)
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The hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), who was supposed to wind up for Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, apologises for being unavoidably detained elsewhere. I am grateful to Stephanie Peacock for standing in.