Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Mullan]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates my remarks. Whenever we say that, Opposition Members want to bring up differences in union law. The Government do not decide to make individual bits of legislation only if they match all the other legislation in a similar environment. This is a separate issue. Whether we have collective bargaining does not mean that minimum service legislation is or is not valid. You either think it is important to have minimum services, or you do not. Determining whether there can be a strike is completely separate from whether there are restrictions on the impact that a strike can have. I will not withdraw that remark; I stand by it.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Mullan]

No, I have given way a couple of times and I want to make progress. [Interruption.]

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[Laura Farris]

An experienced employment lawyer like the hon. Member for Middlesbrough will know the true mechanics very well. A union and probably the TUC and Professor Keith Ewing, because he did the last one, will put in a written submission to the ILO, and its committee of experts based at the ILO office in Geneva will respond in due course. It is not appropriate to say that something is the complete answer of the ILO because somebody has waggled a microphone under somebody’s nose at Davos. There is a procedure.

I hope my speech is not confusing the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), because I am not suggesting for a moment that what was sent to MPs this morning is a comment on the United Kingdom. It is the ILO’s statement of general principles on minimum service levels, and I will continue, if I may. The ILO says that the second acceptable restriction is where strikes take place in activities that may be considered essential services. It lists, at paragraph 135 of its 2012 report:

“air traffic control, telephone service…firefighting services, health and ambulance services, prison services, the security forces and water and electricity services.”

The report continues:

“In situations in which a…total prohibition of strike action would not appear to be justified…consideration might be given to ensuring that users’ basic needs are met or that facilities operate safely or without interruption, the introduction of a negotiated minimum service…could be appropriate.”

[Joanna Cherry]

What the hon. Lady is saying is very interesting, but does she accept that, as we are in Europe, any analysis of the legality of these proposals has to start with article 11 of the European convention on human rights? Can she point to any country in Europe with Government-enforced minimum standards that can lead to the sacking of workers on strike? [Interruption.] The Minister should listen to the question carefully, because the answer will be on the record. Can the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) point to any other country in Europe that has Government-enforced minimum standards, without negotiation and without arbitration—

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. and learned Lady will be trying to catch my eye later, and I do not want interventions to be too long.

[Joanna Cherry]

I was interrupted.

[The Chairman]

I know, and I was going to say that it is important that interventions are not interrupted. Has the hon. and learned Lady finished?

[Joanna Cherry]

Can the hon. Member for Newbury point to any country in Europe in which, as a result of Government-enforced minimum standards, without any negotiation and without any arbitration, a worker can lose his or her job, other than—wait for it—Hungary or Russia?

[Laura Farris]

The hon. and learned Lady is right that negotiation is required. I was shocked to find that, in France, the sanction for a person who refuses a requisitioning request is via the criminal courts. I did not know that, and I did not know it is the case in Canada, too. It may be that I have misread the legislation, and that it is a “life and limb” exemption—I am not familiar enough with French legislation.

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[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I begin by declaring an interest as a proud and long-standing member of Unite the union.

I rise to speak in support of amendments 91 and 92, which stand in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and others. These amendments reaffirm the principle that a trade union is a democratic organisation beholden to the will of its members, and not the other way around. That might be an alien concept to a Government who have spent the last year forcing through legislation that undermines the most basic rights of their citizens, but it is an article of faith for those of us in the labour movement.

These amendments are just two of the many brought forward by Members on the Opposition Benches, who have among them many lifetimes’ worth of experience in the trade union movement. It is a shame that that experience is so obviously lacking on the Government Benches, or else the Government might not have brought a Bill to the House that the general secretary of the TUC has rightly denounced for being

“undemocratic, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal.”

We must confront the uncomfortable truth that no amount of tinkering in Committee could ever hope to salvage this Bill. It is, frankly, rotten to the core and a grotesque affront to our most basic democratic principles. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) has written today, anybody who

“is concerned about individual liberty and freedom should be opposed to this attack on the fundamental right to withdraw your labour.”

Since the Business Secretary first confirmed on 10 January that he would be bringing forward this Bill, we have been subjected to a torrent of tedious lectures from those on the Government Benches about the responsibilities that key workers have towards the public. What right have a Government who have led this country into the worst recession of any G20 economy bar Russia, and who preside over the highest level of child poverty in a generation, to lecture the nurses, ambulance drivers and teachers who saw this country through its darkest days since the end of the war?

The Business Secretary has even had the temerity to tell the House:

“The British people need to know that when they have a heart attack, a stroke or a serious injury, an ambulance will turn up, and that if they need hospital care, they have access to it.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2023; Vol. 725, c. 432.]

After 12 years of Tory failures, that is not even a guarantee he can make to my constituents when there is no strike action. If he wants to know who is failing the public, he does not need to turn to the picket lines; he need only look in the mirror.

This Wednesday, teachers, civil servants and train drivers will take to the picket lines in what is expected to be the single largest day of industrial action in more than a decade. Whatever Government Members might believe, these are not radicals intent on the overthrow of the state; these are ordinary, conscientious public servants who, after a decade of real-terms pay cuts, simply cannot take it anymore.

Instead of electing to sit down and engage in good faith about the real issues that are driving public workers across the country to such desperation, this Government have instead opted to bulldoze through this House in only a week a Bill that will do lasting and irreparable harm to our democracy, without adequate scrutiny or reference to the devolved Governments in Cardiff and Edinburgh. I will be voting against the Bill in its entirety this evening. On Wednesday, I will proudly stand with striking workers exercising their democratic right to demand better in the midst of this Tory cost of living crisis.

[Joanna Cherry]

I rise to speak to amendments 115, 116 and 117, which stand in my name. The Joint Committee on Human Rights is about to commence our legislative scrutiny of the Bill but, given the Government’s timetable, any amendments that the Committee recommends at the end of that scrutiny will require to be laid in the Lords. I have therefore tabled these three amendments as a way of probing the Government’s intentions in relation to the three issues I raised on Second Reading: the fact that the Bill is not really about safety levels at all; the inaccuracy of claims that the Bill reflects current practice elsewhere in Europe; and the very real risk that these proposals are in breach of the United Kingdom’s obligations under the European convention on human rights and international labour law.

The Government’s ECHR memorandum acknowledges that the Bill engages article 11 of the ECHR, and that is where our legal analysis should start, not with the ILO. As I said in my speech on Second Reading, it is interesting to compare the ECHR memorandum for this Bill with the ECHR memorandum for the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, which I think probably has a slightly more accurate description of the law. I would love to know why the Government changed their position between the two memorandums. No doubt we will not be favoured with that information.

Article 11 protects the right to strike as an aspect of free association. It is, as Members have said, a qualified right, meaning that its protections are not absolute, but any interference with its protections must comply with the requirements set out in article 11(2). Any restrictions on the rights protected under article 11 must be in accordance with the law and must pursue one of the legitimate aims set out in article 11(2). The most recent ECHR memorandum states that minimum service regulations have the legitimate aim of

“protecting the rights and freedoms of others”

because of

“the disproportionately disruptive and harmful impact that strike action has on the public, on their lives and on the national economy”.

In contrast, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s press release for the Bill said that the new law would reduce risk to life, and Government Ministers and spokespersons have made much of that as a justification for the Bill—the Minister was at it again today. The ECHR memorandum, however, does not list public safety or the protection of health as one of the legitimate aims of the Bill.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I hope the House will appreciate that there are a lot of people who want to contribute. I want to give people the opportunity to do that in their own speeches. [Interruption.] If Members do not mind, I will turn to the detail of the Bill.

The Bill establishes a legal framework to implement minimum safety and service levels during periods of strike action. It will achieve that by amending existing legislation, the Trade Union and Labour Relations Concili —[Hon. Members: “Consolidation”] Thank you folks. The Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. I was trying get the word “conciliatory” in there for Opposition Members. The legislation will allow regulations to be made to ensure that specified services cannot shut down completely when workers strike. That is to maintain crucial and, in many cases, life-saving services. The relevant sectors specified in the proposed legislation are: health services; fire and rescue services; education services; transport services; decommissioning of nuclear installations and management of radioactive waste and spent fuel; and border security.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Can the Secretary of State help me with this? The human rights memorandum that accompanied the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill last October stated specifically that the Government’s legal advice was that it is not justifiable or necessary in a democratic society to have such restrictions in emergency and patient care services, in fire and rescue, or in education—only in transport. That does not appear in the human rights memorandum that accompanies this Bill. Has the Government’s legal advice changed or have they just changed their mind for reasons of political convenience?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. and learned Lady must surely have noticed that we have subsequently had disruption in the NHS, including in the ambulance service. What has happened in that disruption is that although the nurses have very sensibly provided a national level of safe service, unfortunately the same has not happened in the ambulance service. That is why this legislation is required in other areas at this time.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

[Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

rose—

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[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I would like to accept the invitation of the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who encouraged us to be respectful in this debate. I wish to be so. We have heard a lot from the Labour party this evening about how the Bill is an act of political violence and an attack on the fundamental freedom of working people, but we have not heard an answer to the fundamental question that the legislation poses: do the British people have a right set out in statute to a basic safety and security guarantee during periods of strike?

Let us start with the law. The right to strike is embedded in international law, most notably in article 11 of the European convention on human rights.

[Joanna Cherry]

The hon. Lady asks whether any of us on the Opposition Benches care about fundamental safety levels, and yes we do. She asked whether we would support legislating, but legislation already exists. On article 11, she knows as well as I do that the measures have to be “necessary”. The Government’s own memo with the last legislation said that the measures were not necessary in relation to the health service, education and fire and rescue.

[Laura Farris]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for her point, and I will assist her, because I was coming on to that point. The article 11 right may be restricted for two reasons—if the restriction is necessary, yes, and proportionate. The International Labour Organisation, of which the United Kingdom is a founding member, recognises that maintaining a minimum level of service provision can be both when it comes to essential services. Its committee on freedom of association has expressly set out the two circumstances in which it may be appropriate: where strike action would pose a risk to life, safety or health; or where the service is not essential in the strict sense of the word, but where repeated strikes would bring a very important sector to a standstill.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I will not be supporting this legislation, for three reasons. First, the Bill is not really about safety levels at all. Secondly, claims that the Bill reflects current practice elsewhere in Europe are inaccurate. Thirdly, there is the very real risk that these proposals are in breach of the United Kingdom’s obligations under the European convention on human rights and international labour law. As other hon. Members have said, the word “safety” does not even appear in the Bill. It is a Bill about minimum service levels, not minimum safety levels, yet repeatedly Conservative politicians have talked about minimum safety levels and seem very happy for confusion between the two concepts to be caused. I suspect that is because this is a deliberate attempt to hide from the public the real intentions behind the Bill.

Secondly, on European standards, most European countries, as others have said, have a very different model of labour relations from the United Kingdom, which, thanks to successive Tory Governments, has one of the strictest systems of regulations of industrial relations in Europe. In other countries, trades union rights are protected in their written constitutions. Labour law experts will tell you that in most European countries minimum service levels are established by collective bargaining and, in so far as legislation exists, it provides a framework for these agreements, rather than for top-down regulation. The Bill would enable the Secretary of State to impose sweeping regulations from the top on millions of workers in a number of different sectors.

That brings to me to my third point. As I said when I intervened on the Secretary of State, the measures in the Bill go considerably further than the minimum service levels envisaged by the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill published last October. The Government’s own human rights memorandum which accompanied the previous Bill set out in some detail, with reference to existing legislation, the reason their lawyers then said that minimum service levels imposed by legislation were not justified in fire services, health settings and education. Yet that is what they are now proposing and their human rights memorandum for the Bill is very different. I can absolutely guarantee to hon. Members across the House that as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I will be making sure we scrutinise very carefully the difference between the two human rights memorandums.

On compliance with international labour law, the International Labour Organisation has enshrined the right to strike in its convention, to which the UK is a signatory. It is true that minimum service levels are allowed, but not if they are imposed from the top down. They need to be set by negotiation or, if the negotiation breaks down, by an independent body, as happens in Italy. Only in European countries well known for flouting fundamental rights, such as Hungary and Russia, do we see Government-enforced minimum service levels leading to the sacking of workers and the bankrupting of unions fighting for fair pay and conditions. Yet that is exactly what the Tories want to do in the Bill. Perhaps we should not be surprised that, despite all their anti-Putin rhetoric, the Tories want to emulate Putin’s approach to striking workers. Perhaps it is not so surprising given that the Deputy Prime Minister told us he is not ruling out leaving the European convention on human rights and the Home Secretary is keen it should happen as soon as possible. Given that they are keen to be on the same side as Russia on human rights, it is perhaps not surprising that they are doing that in the Bill.

The bottom line is that key workers are striking because their wages have not begun to keep in line with inflation and because the interest rate hikes caused by Tory economic incompetence mean they cannot afford their rent or mortgage. The Government need to recognise the stark reality of those people’s lives and work with their unions respectfully to reach agreement.

Skills and Labour Shortages

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing this very important debate. She has given us an excellent exposition—referring to data, expert research and statistics—of the extent of the problem we face across the United Kingdom in relation to skills and labour shortages.

Like me, as a Scottish Member of Parliament, she has focused on the particular problems that the Scottish economy faces as a result of the loss of free movement, particularly because of our demographics. Her message was clear: we have lost a lot as a result of the end of free movement. What has replaced it involves far too much red tape for employers, and indeed for universities, which I will come to in a moment. That red tape needs to be cut. The British Government must not be prisoners of their own rhetoric; we need change driven by common sense. We in the SNP would like to have retained free movement. Our ultimate aim is to become an independent nation and rejoin the European Union, and again enjoy the benefits of free movement. However, while we are in our current situation as part of the United Kingdom, we would like the British Government to take a much more pragmatic approach to replacing what has been lost as a result of the end of free movement.

The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) made an important contribution on the importance of apprenticeships. I commend her and her cross-party colleagues on the work they do in the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships. We have a good news story to tell about apprenticeships in Scotland. That is not just the view of the Scottish Government; Liz Cameron, the chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, wrote in The Press and Journal just nine days ago that

“apprenticeships and the services delivered by Skills Development Scotland”—

the Scottish Government’s national skills agency—are

“a shining example of aligning with economic trends and industry demand”.

At the moment, 12,000 companies in Scotland are employing apprentices and 43,000 people are employed in apprentice training, so that is a good news story for Scotland.

Turning to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), it was very important that she reminded us of the need to look at the long term as well as the short term, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, we face an acute short-term problem. However, it is important to look at the long-term problem. It was good to hear what the hon. Member for Wirral West said about adult education, which was based on her experience as a former adult education tutor. We will all have experience of constituents or family members whose lives and working capabilities have been transformed by adult education.

Very importantly, the hon. Lady also reminded us of the contribution that trade unions can make to improving skills and addressing labour shortages. Indeed, the Labour spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), intervened on the hon. Member for Wirral West on that subject. It is important in this week particularly—when the trade unions are coming under attack from the Government, and the right of freedom of association and the right to strike are coming under attack—for us to remember what an enormous contribution trade unions make to the life of the nations of this Union, in encouraging people to move forward in their employment and gain new skills, particularly through their adult education programmes. It was good to hear something positive about the contribution of trade unions to our society.

Last, but most certainly not least, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about the difficulty of filling vacancies in the food production sector in his constituency. That is a familiar story across the United Kingdom for those of us who have those sorts of services in our constituencies. He also spoke about the difficulties faced by small businesses, such as coffee shops and those in the hospitality sector, which have a quick turnover of employees. I can speak from personal experience, as my constituency is in the centre of Edinburgh and contains a big chunk of the financial sector. There are lots of little coffee shops that face that problem, particularly now that they cannot employ expert baristas from nations in the European Union.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke passionately about an issue that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran: the need to let our asylum seekers work. I will say more about that in a moment. In my constituency of Edinburgh South West, we have faced particular employment problems in hospitality venues. I have met many business owners in the food and drink sector who are struggling to attract and retain staff. They are struggling with increasing wage bills, a lack of available staff, and increasing food and energy inflation, which all makes for a difficult situation. I am sure many hon. and right hon. Members will have had the experience over the holiday period of being unable to book a table to eat and then walking into a half-empty restaurant, only to be told that no tables were available because the restaurant was operating under capacity due to staff shortages. As a result of the pandemic, I have been holidaying at home a lot more, and I have noticed staff shortages in hospitality venues across Scotland and in the north of England, where I have been on holiday.

Heineken UK is headquartered in my constituency. Through its Star Pubs & Bars, it leases almost 2,500 pubs and bars across the United Kingdom. It tells me that feedback from its licensees is that staffing is a really big problem for them and that, in particular, a shortage of chefs is forcing many pubs and restaurants to close for one or two days a week, so that they need only one chef and one team to work for the other five days. That helps the business to survive, but it means losing one or two days’ trade per week. Consumers get used to fewer visits to the restaurant or pub, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and creates problems in the sector.

I mentioned the role of universities. I have two major universities in my constituency—Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Napier University—and many academics and administrative staff from the University of Edinburgh live there. I have had a lot of communication, particularly from professors, about how Government mismanagement of policies such as the academic technology approval scheme is preventing talented postgraduate students from overseas from coming to study in Edinburgh, which means that our universities are losing out on some of the best PhD candidates. That has a deep impact on UK skills and research. Often if those people come here to study at a high level, they end up working here. We need to be encouraging that, not discouraging it.

Another acute problem in Scotland is in the renewables sector. Obviously, the renewables sector is an integral part of the Scottish economy, and becomes more and more important as we attempt to make the just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy necessitated by the climate crisis. One of my colleagues recently spoke to Green Cat Renewables, a group of successful Scottish companies located in Scotland whose shareholders are based in Scotland. For the past 17 years, it has been servicing the renewable energy and low-carbon sectors, but in recent years its ability to grow and service that market has been significantly hampered by the availability of suitably skilled staff. It told us that it has been at the forefront of developing subsidy-free renewable projects, multi-technology projects, and behind-the-meter and private wire projects. Since 2019, it has been growing steadily. However, as the country has come out of the pandemic, it has seen an unprecedented increase in the number of inquiries for new business, which it simply cannot keep up with, as its growth rate has slowed because it cannot get the skilled staff it needs. That means that it may lose out to international competitors. It pointed out to us that Governments in other jurisdictions subsidise part of the salary of fresh graduates and the retraining of candidates while they are in training. The Government could also help by assisting with the cost of training, new software and other resources.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, the Minister will probably want to deflect away from Brexit matters and focus on the slowness of the recovery of the labour supply and economic activity since the pandemic. I am sure the Government will also say that they have responded to some needs through the health and social care visa and the seasonal agricultural visa, but the fact remains that the supply of labour is not keeping pace with the return to economic activity. The Government must not be allowed to use the pandemic or the war in Ukraine to deflect from the effects of Brexit and the loss of free movement on our labour market, particularly in Scotland, where we have the demographic problems that my hon. Friend referred to.

The Scottish Government do not have full competence in these areas, and do not have competence over immigration. We have asked for it. We would like to see immigration devolved. As my hon. Friend said, other countries that have federal or provincial systems, such as Canada, allow the provinces to have their visa. That is what we want for Scotland, and indeed across the UK, although ultimately we want Scotland to become an independent country, return to the EU and get all the benefits that freedom of movement brings.

Finally, I would like to say something about giving asylum seekers the right to work, about which my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Strangford spoke passionately. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair, took evidence yesterday afternoon about the rights of asylum seekers. We heard that they do not have the right to work while their claim is being decided unless they have waited more than 12 months. Even then, they can work only in jobs on the shortage occupation list. There is currently a campaign called Lift the Ban that aims to lift the ban on working and allow asylum seekers to work after six months, and not limit their opportunities to the shortage occupation list. The reality is that the majority of people who claim asylum in this country go on to get asylum, so they are going to be staying here. Why not give them the dignity of working and make them economically useful to the country that is going to become their home while they wait for their asylum application to be processed? Yesterday we heard that, as of October last year, 85% of the small boat arrivals who had received an initial decision on their application had been granted asylum or another form of humanitarian protection. That is 85% of the people who we are told should not be here at all. Many of them are bringing all sorts of skills that would benefit our country.

I was distressed to hear yesterday about the practice of dispersing asylum seekers and moving them from place to place with minimal notice, which means that their children often have their education interrupted. A child will have just got settled in a school and then his or her family are moved on. As well as being distressing for the child, it disrupts their education. That child will grow up to stay and live in the United Kingdom, and we need him or her to have a good education so that they can contribute to our economy.

The Government are not doing many things that they could be. Giving asylum seekers the right to work is just one glaring example that would save us a lot of money and contribute a huge amount to our economy. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran listed other examples, and I am looking forward to hearing some concrete answers to her asks when the Minister sums up.

Industrial Action

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The Bill is being introduced today. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about this. We have seen that the RMT has not put the offers to its members, which, as I mentioned before, is a real problem. When the TSSA put an almost identical offer to its members, it was accepted and the strike was therefore over. Any attempt not to allow members to see the full range of what is being offered is wrong. Because members have not seen the full offer, they will be unaware of the different elements of that offer. It has not been formally put to them—that is something the unions can change immediately. I very much hope that they do so.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I noticed a moment ago that the Secretary of State said that striking workers were in danger of pushing up interest rates. I remind him that many of those people are on strike because they cannot afford their mortgages or rent as a result of the hike in interest rates caused by his colleagues’ economic incompetence. I imagine that many essential workers are in receipt of the sort of wage that the Secretary of State would not get out of bed for in the morning.

On the legality of the legislation, the TUC general secretary has said that forcing workers who have democratically voted to strike to work and sacking them if they do not comply would almost certainly be illegal. Is that not right? Can the Minister really say that the detail of his Bill will comply in every respect with the United Kingdom Government’s obligations under both the ECHR and international labour law? On the detail, Minister, what is the position?

[Grant Shapps]

I do not know whether I am correcting myself or the hon. and learned Lady, but I was not saying—I did not mean to say, at least—that striking workers pushed up interest rates. It is inflation that pushes up interest rates. If we paid a 19% increase across the economy, we would have to borrow the money; we would then have more borrowing and more debt and, therefore, higher interest rates. Everybody would pay more on their mortgages and car loans. Businesses would pay more. That is the quite simple maths that I would have thought we have tested to destruction. It would not make sense to go ahead along those lines.

The hon. and learned Lady asked specifically about the ECHR, and I can confirm that the Bill is ECHR-compliant. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), who is no longer in her place, talked about employment law and how the Bill fits with the ILO and the ECHR; I have been able to sign that declaration. I can further confirm that there is proof of this, as many neighbouring countries already do exactly the same thing, which is also compliant with the ECHR.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

rose—

[Dean Russell]

I will come back to the hon. and learned Lady shortly.

As has been alluded to, some naysayers have asked, “Why is the Bill needed?” As a consequence of the oddities created by our previous EU membership, there are currently insufficient powers to make subordinate legislation to enable the amendment or removal of retained EU law from the statute book. The practical result is that standards do not get updated when they should be. Regulation, rather than adapting to support the needs of businesses in stable and emerging markets, ends up holding British businesses back. That is simply wrong, particularly when businesses and consumers face high energy bills and food prices as well as the many other challenges that we know are down to world events, and in particular the awful actions of President Putin. With our new-found freedom, it is important that we take the necessary powers to bridge the gap and reform legislation in a timely manner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dean Russell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. It is ultimately about ensuring that we are doing the right thing by people across the country. The truth is that the Bill is a framework, and this is not the time to debate the minutiae and the details as there will be plenty of opportunities for that in Committee, the future stages and statutory instruments. We should welcome the Bill’s framework, which is about taking back control for the country.

[Joanna Cherry]

The Minister said that the Bill is about doing the right thing by people. Earlier, I understood him to say that there will be no diminution in rights as a result of it. However, has he not looked at clause 15(5), which makes it clear that, far from creating higher standards, replacement legislation can only keep standards the same or lower them? That is the case, is it not?

[Dean Russell]

I very much enjoyed serving with the hon. and learned Lady on the Joint Committee on Human Rights and understand that she is incredibly focused on detail. There will be much time for her to explore that further if she makes a speech; I hope that she will. The point of the framework is to transfer EU law into UK law and make sure that it does what it should. If she is happy with EU law where that is retained, it will be written in UK law.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

[Dean Russell]

I will come back to the hon. and learned Lady in a little while.

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[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). I hope she will appreciate that I listened to what she said and responded in my comments.

We have all done it: we have all accidently hit “Delete”, broken something or not saved a document that we meant to save. Or, even worse, we have been in workplaces where somebody has done that and all that institutional memory and knowledge has gone. Then we face a choice: either come clean that all that information is lost, or try to pretend that it did not matter. In taking the latter option, the Government are putting at risk thousands of rights that have been the fabric of everyday life for all our constituents.

In opposing the Bill, let me be clear that that is not talking about Brexit. It is not talking about rerunning a referendum. It is not to argue that we must go back. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is not in his usual place—I am not sorry, really—because it is also not about supremacy. It is about sanity and the business of doing government. In the time that I have, I want to set out that I and Opposition Members will oppose the Bill because of both what it does and how it does it. I urge Government Members to look at how the Bill operates, because all the powers, promises and ambitions in the legislation cannot be achieved.

We do not really know what the Bill does, because we really do not know what it covers. I am sorry that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell), is not in his place—who knows whether he is still a Minister and whether, when he comes back, he will be on the Front Bench or the Back Benches—because being honest about the fact that we do not know the levels of European law is critical.

It is not just minor changes, as the former Secretary of State tried to suggest; there are serious, important pieces of legislation that many in the House, and especially those who care about environmental issues, have discovered are not on the retained EU law dashboard. The conservation of habitats and species regulation does not appear on the Government’s dashboard. Therefore, as a starting point, we have literally no idea which rules are being abolished by the Bill because the Government do not know—they have not found them all. That is what the parliamentary question admitted yesterday with its authoritative but not comprehensive list. Call me an old- fashioned democrat, but I would quite like to know what I was voting to abolish and be able to tell my constituents about that before being asked to do so.

It is also not clear how the legislation will operate in the devolved legislatures. Of course, that matters in making sure that laws are tenable if they are to cross borders, let alone for our colleagues in Northern Ireland who face multiple legislative processes—all that red tape that we were told we could get rid of by leaving the European Union.

Above all, the Bill asks us to play the worst game of “Snog, marry, avoid” that I have ever seen for any piece of Government legislation; in deciding whether something is kept, amended or simply abolished. Let us have a go at that and see whether our constituents really want to play when they see what is at stake.

Let us talk first, nice and simply, about those things that we probably want to keep. I presume—maybe I have misread things—that there will be general agreement across the House that it is a bad idea to have cancer-causing chemicals in cosmetics, so we should retain rules that keep those out. Again, we all think that insider trading is a bad idea, but the legislation will rip up all the rules on that. On airline safety—by that I mean literally the rules that require a plane to be worthy to go in the air—we probably agree across the House that having rules that ensure that planes are safe is a good thing, so we could take a bipartisan approach. Again, we probably all agree on preventing food manufacturers from making false claims about the nutritional content of their food, and on tackling illegal firearms smuggling. One question from many of us might be: when we have a cost of living crisis and a Government who are in chaos, why on earth are we spending time rewriting laws that, on the whole, we all agree with?

That is where the rub is in the legislation: what the Government want to avoid and abolish. They need to come clean to our constituents. They are asking us to approve powers that would let them get rid of the rules around a whole plethora of issues, including those that require major sporting events to be free to air. I was very troubled to discover at the weekend that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was trying to claim that was not the case. Clearly, Government Departments have not looked at the legislation on which they have depended. Disease control for bird flu is suddenly up for abolition, along with compensation rules for lost luggage and delayed trains. I guess if a Government are dealing with privatised rail industries and are unable to help them, they think that removing those basic consumer protections will somehow be good for them. However, they should be honest with our constituents if that is what they intend. The payout that comes if someone’s firm goes bust and the entitlement to 50% of their pension pot—let alone TUPE protections if their job is outsourced, paid holiday rights and maternity rights—are up for abolition through the Bill. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for North East Somerset is not in his place, because we could have a conversation about exactly how the EU protected women’s basic maternity rights against decisions by the UK Government.

On part-time workers’ rights, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane says she has had assurances from the Government. Well, I thought the Conservative manifesto was an assurance about what the Government were going to do, but that seems to have been ripped up. The Bill will give the Government carte blanche powers across 2,500 pieces of legislation and 300 policy areas. Can she really, hand on heart, be confident that all of those will be retained? She does not have in the Bill any recourse if those pledges come to nought, so she is taking a huge gamble.

Secondly, one might agree that all those things need to be up for grabs and that it no longer matters—I would love to see the referendum leaflet that said abolishing paid holiday leave would be a good thing; I will sit down if the Government can show me that—but the Bill hits delete through a sunset clause, abolishing everything all at once. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) says, that creates a power for Governments to abolish pieces of legislation just by doing nothing, with no judicial review powers if those rights are important.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) is not here. The Bill hands powers to those very Ministers who were in the Council meetings he objected to, to make those laws. In which case, we must all ask, “What help are they getting?” We have talked about 570 different pieces of legislation from DEFRA to be revised. At the moment, there are three DEFRA civil servants dealing with 570 pieces of legislation. It is the same across other Government Departments: two officials in the Department of Health and Social Care dealing with 137 regulations covering healthcare; nobody in the Department for Work and Pensions, which has 208 regulations to rewrite; and nobody in the Treasury, which has 602 regulations to review—snog, marry, avoid—in the next year and decide whether we will keep, or amend, them. The Department for Transport could not even confirm how many staff it had working on this issue. It does not even know who is responsible for it. That is not really a surprise. Of the 2,500 pieces of law that are being ripped up, on which we have been dependent for decades, 800 have no direct ministerial lead to even worry about whether we should keep them.

Ministers will decide what happens to those pieces of legislation—they can water down protections and any promises made to the hon. Member for Taunton Deane, or simply drop them without any form of scrutiny. I am disappointed that the right hon. Member for North East Somerset is not in his place, because those of us who are democrats believe passionately that the only people who are anti-democracy are those trying to take back control to Downing Street rather than to this place. It is simply not true to say to the British public that, through this Bill, Brexit is giving the House powers—let alone the trade war it could easily start, because we signed agreements in good faith with the European Union under the TCA that we would have a level playing field on areas such as food safety and employment rights. The Bill could lead to retaliatory tariffs.

What the hon. Member for Taunton Deane and her colleagues should reflect on most of all, perhaps, is clause 15, which enshrines deregulation. I would be with her in the Lobby on introducing higher environmental standards, but the Bill formally requires that that cannot happen. The direction of travel is only one way—to water down and reduce rights.

[Joanna Cherry]

The hon. Lady will have seen that I put that point to the Minister earlier and he said that clause 15(5) was just a minor detail. Does she agree that that is absolutely wrong and that it is absolutely central to the Bill?

[Stella Creasy]

Clause 15(5) is why the Bill is the anti- growth coalition. Businesses, consumers and environmental organisations alike are against no regulation. No regulation is a recipe for less competition. It is a recipe for a wild west. They want better regulation. Clause 15(5) rules that out and gives Ministers the responsibility not only of finding legislation, but then doing something with it without any scrutiny from this place. There are plenty of parliamentary mechanisms that could change that. There are many different ways that could work. It is not just about the sunset clause; it is about affirmative regulations. There are ways we could reduce red tape, but they are not written into the Bill.

The new Prime Minister says he will fix the mistakes of the past. He could do no better than to abandon the Bill and rethink it, because, as we all know, when we hit delete and do not save, it is a mess for all concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I listened to the new Prime Minister’s speech this morning, in which he promised to fix “mistakes”, acknowledged that work was needed to “restore trust” in the Government, and said that his Government would be marked by “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. One problem with the Bill, however, is that it will hugely remove the Executive’s accountability to Parliament. That is one of the mistakes that need to be fixed by the new Prime Minister, because it was prompted by ideology and desperation to point to some so-called Brexit benefits, when the overwhelming body of opinion—from business to the trade unions—says that it is a mess that will lead to legal uncertainty and more chaos. The author of the Bill has gone; I think the Bill should go with him.

Let us make no bones about it. The departing Prime Minister has left an almighty mess behind her because she pursued an economic policy that the vast majority of people, including the incoming Prime Minister, advised her against. The vast majority of people are advising against the Bill, including the majority of parties in this House, business, the trade unions, legal experts, all sorts of third-sector bodies and the devolved Governments. My plea to the Prime Minister, given the promises that he made this morning, is not to make the same mistake with the Bill that his predecessor made with the economy.

There are so many problems with the Bill that it is hard to know where to start. Other hon. Members have outlined some of them, but there are seven that I want to raise.

The first problem is that the Bill represents a huge transfer of power from Parliament to the Executive. That is hardly taking back control. Taking back control was supposed to be about the people of the United Kingdom and this Parliament, not the Executive. The Bill will give Ministers incredible powers to legislate on areas that affect our everyday lives without any meaningful democratic input.

The second problem is that the Bill means that if Ministers want retained EU law to fall away, they need take no action at all. The decision to take no action is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny, meaning that very important rights and protections could be lost, including the right to equal pay as between men and women—a pivotal change in our society—as well as food safety standards, which other hon. Members have mentioned, and workers’ rights such as a certain amount of paid holiday per year and a 48-hour maximum working week for road hauliers. Those are not the sort of rights that should just fall away, perhaps even by accident.

The third problem, which I raised in my intervention early in the debate, is that far from creating new high standards in our regulatory frameworks, the replacement legislation cannot increase standards; it can only leave them as they are or lower them. That is what clause 15(5) says. [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, but in my opinion that is what it says, and many other legal experts think so. It is not a minor detail; it is a major problem with the Bill.

The fourth problem is that reducing standards or allowing key pieces of legislation simply to lapse could risk the UK’s trading relationship with the EU at a time when we can ill afford it. I know that it was several Prime Ministers ago, but will the Government please remember the trade and co-operation agreement and their obligations under it?

The fifth problem is the fact that the proposed speed and scale of these changes—as we have heard, the Government’s retained EU law dashboard includes more than 2,400 pieces of legislation in 300 policy areas across 21 sectors of the UK—are completely unrealistic, and will inevitably result in mistakes.

The sixth point concerns the problems that the Bill poses for the devolution settlement. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) went into those in some detail so, given the constraints of time, I will not go into them in the same detail myself. The fact of the matter is, however, that in its current form the Bill will allow UK Government Ministers to act in policy areas that are devolved, and to do so without the consent of the Scottish Ministers or our Parliament, because secondary legislation does not need consent. Primary legislation needs consent, but that rule is more honoured in the breach than the observance.

[Jonathan Edwards]

As usual, my hon. and learned Friend is making a forensic speech. She will be interested to learn that more than 10,000 people marched for independence in Cardiff recently. I never thought that that would happen in my lifetime, but it is happening because of Bills like this. The people of Wales are seeing the British Government supplanting the devolution settlement, and are concluding that they have a choice between direct Westminster control and independence. That is what is happening in Wales, and I am sure it is what is happening in Scotland.

[Joanna Cherry]

Indeed, and I am pleased to say that I spent the weekend in Cardiff. It was my first visit, and I found it to be a beautiful city. I was attending the FiLiA feminist conference. I will certainly go back to Cardiff, and I should quite like to join one of those independence marches some time. Whether one is a Unionist or a nationalist, the fact remains that the mess that the Bill will create will only cause problems between Westminster and Holyrood.

That brings me to my seventh point, which concerns Northern Ireland and the impact of the Bill on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. The Government have not yet conducted a full and comprehensive assessment of retained EU law, and they have also failed to analyse which areas of retained EU law interact with or have an impact on the commitments made in article 2(1) of the protocol or, as I pointed out earlier, on the level playing field provisions of the trade and co-operation agreement. The removal of key frameworks for interpreting retained EU laws and settlement agreement legislation—including EU general principles, in clause 5, and retained EU case law, in clause 7—may have an impact on the “keeping pace” commitment associated with article 2(2). That is another area in which the Government need to go back to the drawing board.

As Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I can say that we will be scrutinising the Bill very carefully for its rights implications, and will table amendments. However, I must add that I think it is pretty much beyond amendment, and that, as I have said, the Government need to go back to the drawing board. I say to them, “Please do not pursue another dangerous ideological experiment at the cost of our constituents’ rights, and at the cost of their livelihoods.” The Bill will have a big impact on business and a big impact on workers’ rights. This is absolutely not about people, or this Parliament, taking back control; it is about executive fiat, and the sidelining of democratic scrutiny by this Parliament.

In his speech when he took office this morning, the Prime Minister said that he would put the country’s needs above politics. Well, the country does not need this, and, in fact, there is more than one country in our Union. The Government need to respect the wishes of Scotland’s voters, the wishes of Welsh voters and the wishes of Northern Ireland voters, as well as the devolved settlement.

My message to the Government is that the Bill is a mess. Yes, it is embarrassing to ditch Bills, but let us face it, the Government have had a lot of embarrassment recently and they are getting used to it. They have already ditched one Bill, the Bill of Rights; I believe it may be bouncing back soon as a result of the Cabinet reshuffle, but it is certainly possible to ditch a Bill at this stage. This Bill needs to be ditched, and the way in which we deal with retained EU law needs to be revisited completely.

Energy Prices: Support for Business

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Cold weather payments are not a responsibility of my Department, but I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman’s comments are passed on to the relevant Secretary of State.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Like many other MPs, I have spent the summer visiting small businesses and charities in my constituency. They all say that they need to be able to make forward plans. For example, Four Square, a charity in my constituency, runs a hostel for homeless young people and a women’s refuge, and fundraises through a large retail premises. Soaring energy bills may affect its ability to keep the homeless hostel and the women’s refuge open. It is simply not practical for Four Square to wait three months for a review; it needs action and information on the Government’s long-term plans before three months are up. Will the Secretary of State please seriously reconsider the timing here and listen to the voices across the House urging him to do that?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

We have acted extremely swiftly to provide support, and it is proper that it should be reviewed to ensure that it goes to the right people. The timeline is completely reasonable. It seems to me that people are looking for things to harp on about in a package that they broadly welcome.

Oral Answers to Questions

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

We are, absolutely, excited about the prospects for geothermal. I would be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss this. I was happy, also, to talk to my Cornish colleagues about this exciting new technology; it is something on which we are focused.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The pupils of Boroughmuir High School’s climate change society in my constituency have impressed on me that their generation is relying on us to take action right now, because by the time they are old enough to do so it will be too late for systemic change. Can the Secretary of State reassure school students in my constituency that his plans for transition have the requisite urgency?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

They do. I was very pleased to take up my office as Minister of State for Energy a month after the net zero legislation was passed, and for the last three years we have been resolutely focused on living up to the letter of the law, fulfilling our bargain and making sure we reach net zero in 2050.

Oral Answers to Questions

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

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

My hon. Friend highlights the amount of opportunities that are coming to constituencies such as his in Staffordshire. I would be delighted to meet him to talk more about them.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

T7. Community schemes such as Harlaw Hydro in my constituency provide 11% of Scotland’s renewable energy production. Our current energy crisis underlines the need to diversify energy production, so I was a bit disappointed when the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) asked about his Local Electricity Bill and the Government were not able to give it their full support. Will the Government now state for the record their full support for measures such as that Bill to make proper and full use of community energy projects like the one in my constituency?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I assure the hon. and learned Lady that we fully support the transition in the North sea transition deal and the oil and gas sector, whereas her party and the Greens are seeking to destroy it and destroy jobs. That is the fact that I want to raise here.

Reducing Costs for Businesses

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), although, unlike her, I rise to support the motion, which makes some good points and suggests some policy initiatives that I am happy to support.

However, when I first read the wording, I was reminded of Sherlock Holmes and

“the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Fans of Conan Doyle—or of Mark Haddon’s eponymous novel—will recall that what was curious about the dog was that it failed to bark in the night while a major incident was taking place. There is a major incident taking place in the British economy that is having a significant impact on business across the UK, yet the official Opposition have omitted to mention it in the motion, which sets out to describe the reasons for the strain business is currently under. Of course, I am speaking about Brexit, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) reminded us, is forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility to do twice as much damage to the UK economy as covid-19.

As we heard from another speaker, a maze of new customs bureaucracy has been imposed on business as of 1 January. Goods imported from the EU now need import declarations immediately, not six months down the line as before. Food and plant products need to be notified in advance and the tariff-free trade that the Prime Minister promised happens only if importers and exporters can prove that the goods were made substantially in the UK or the EU.

British exporters to the EU had to face all that bureaucracy last year and it has drastically damaged the seafood industry in Scotland. It has also damaged high-tech, high-value companies such as Coda Octopus in my Edinburgh South West constituency. Despite my strenuous attempts to lobby the Government, it has been forced to move its substantial business operations to the EU because of the UK Government’s post-Brexit red tape.

Problems with supply chains into the United Kingdom at the moment are not just covid-related; they are also the result of Brexit. They are affecting all sorts of businesses, from car manufacturers to supermarkets. It is often SMEs that are hit the hardest, as we have heard from the Federation of Small Businesses and other business representatives. Businesses need Brexit support now, because otherwise they will have to abandon trade or pass costs on to already hard-pressed customers.

Ultimately, only realignment with the European Union’s single market and customs union will undo the worst impacts of Brexit. However, rather than seeking solutions, the UK Government are basically agitating over the Northern Ireland protocol. Yet Labour will not talk about it. Labour does not have a plan for what to do about Brexit. It is an abdication of its responsibility as the official Opposition not to seek to tackle the problem of Brexit in this motion on business today.

Economic Crime

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for securing this very important debate. I thank them for all the work they have done over the years on these issues, and indeed on wider issues of fairness in the economic industry. I have had great cause to be grateful to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton for the assistance he has afforded some of my constituents through his expert advice from his experience on the all-party parliamentary group on fair banking.

The right hon. Member for Barking spoke very powerfully about the problem of money stolen from the Russian people being laundered in this country, saying that it impacts on our national security in a number of ways because it is spreading its tentacles through our society. She was intervened on by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who drew attention to the problem of money laundering through paramilitary, which unfortunately we still have as a result of the legacy of the troubles in Northern Ireland. The right hon. Lady made the very important point that that enables other crime, and that, in her words, if you cannot follow the money then dirty money triumphs.

There was an important intervention on the right hon. Lady from the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who told us that one third of crime in the United Kingdom is now economic crime but only 1% of police enforcement time is spent on that. I certainly know from my time as an advocate depute in the Crown Office in Scotland that there were often not really adequate resources for us to prosecute economic crime properly. It is decades since I was a prosecutor, but I know that a huge amount of work has been done in Scotland to give the Crown Office more powers to do that. Prosecuting economic crime is very challenging, and Government need to put a lot more investment into making sure that it is done effectively.

Importantly, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton explained why economic crime is not a victimless crime. He cited the tragic death of the 27 people who drowned in the channel trying to reach our shores last week as a good example of organised crime and economic crime taking a terrible toll on its victims.

The right hon. Member for East Ham outlined the need to tackle online fraud. He was absolutely right in identifying the online safety Bill as a missed opportunity do that. He rightly took aim at Google for its failure to take down a scam when it was well aware that it was there. As he said, that shows that the law must be changed. We are all well aware of the problem of the huge power of organisations such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, and it is really important that the Government put real teeth into legislation to make sure that they do not facilitate crime—particularly, in this case, economic crime. I was interested to hear that the Financial Conduct Authority has said that financial harms should be included in the online safety Bill.

It was also interesting to hear from the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell), who speaks from a career of some length in the regulation industry and therefore with some authority about what needs to be done and the challenges of doing it. He made a powerful point about the damage that has been done to our great cities as a result of the overinflation of the property market. In my own home city of Edinburgh at the moment, most people can no longer afford to be a first-time buyer. I know that is a huge problem in the great city of London as well. Tackling economic crime is one way that we can bring house prices down.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) spoke knowledgably from her lengthy experience in relation to these matters and drew our attention to the fact that, ultimately, Companies House is the front door to this problem, and existing corporate structures facilitate economic crime. She gave very good examples of the hoops we have to go through to do things such as getting a driving licence, but how easy it is for people to tell a pack of lies and misrepresent themselves in setting up a company. She raised again the issue of Scottish limited partnerships, which have been raised over the years by a number of Members of this House, most notably my friend and former colleague, Roger Mullin.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central put the question succinctly for the Minister to answer this evening: where is the urgency in dealing with these matters? We have had many debates about these issues in the six and a half years I have been in this House, and I know they have been going on for much longer than that. The Government have made a number of commitments, but why are they not honouring them? Where is the urgency?

Then there is the troubling question of who benefits from the delay to the Government tackling these issues. We know that some pretty dodgy Russian money has found its way into the coffers of the Conservative and Unionist party. As my hon. Friend said, there are wider political implications here. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) continued in this debate to raise the matters of concern that she has raised previously about the failure to properly regulate political donations.

Although we have had a short debate, it has been very knowledgeable, and the Members who have contributed have done so from a position of strength and of knowledge of this matter. The helpful briefing prepared for this debate basically tells us what needs to be done. It has three big asks for an economic crime Bill: creating a register of overseas companies that own UK property; reforming Companies House to ensure it can monitor, verify and investigate suspicious companies; and reforming corporate criminal liability laws to ensure that enablers are held to account. The question for the Minister is: when will that economic crime Bill be brought forward?