Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

It seems as if we are having a dialogue of the deaf, because that is not what I said at all. I said that the debate about the European convention is for another day, but the hon. Gentleman is saying that the decision of the Strasbourg Court in 2005 to confer upon itself, without seeking the consent of any of the signatories to the convention, the ability to impose binding interim injunctions on other countries is the right way forward and, indeed, that those injunctions should be able to be made at the eleventh hour, in the middle of the night, without giving reasons, without asking for our arguments and without even naming the judge behind the ruling. That poses very serious rule-of-law questions and is a reason why conventions such as the ECHR are increasingly out of step.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is, of course, right that it contradicts the long-established custom and practice that was the accepted basis for the rule of law in this country. He cites Lord Sumption and Lord Woolf, but he might also have cited the constitutionalist A. V. Dicey who, long ago, supported by Lord Denning and many others after, established that the relationship between the rule of law and this place is that a polity can make and change laws because it has the legitimacy to do so, conferred on it by the people. Frankly, that means this House is supreme. That in no way underestimates the significance of international agreements and treaties, but it affirms the significance and sovereignty of this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

My opinion of the hon. Gentleman has soared to an even greater height. I knew he was the best of liberals—that is not a great thing to be, by the way, but it is better than nothing—and he has confirmed it in that pithy intervention.

The crucial point about amendments 11 to 18 is that they rule out using sections 4 and 7 of the Human Rights Act. We know from experience that the good intentions of Governments, backed up by legislation passed in this place, have been routinely frustrated by what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham rightly described as activist lawyers abroad, and, I would add, dodgy lawyers in this country and deluded pressure groups; it is not just malevolent foreigners, but malevolent people here, too. I say to the Minister that the only way we will effect the policy is if we do not allow that kind of gaming of our system by those who come here. I entirely accept that there are among them people whom we should of course welcome. Of course there are people fearing persecution, and of course we should be proud of the fact that we provide a safe haven for people in desperate need—we always have and we always will—but people who are legitimate applicants for asylum are being effectively compromised by a system that does not adequately distinguish them from the very people I have described as gaming our far too lax system.

The Bill is an opportunity to put that right, but only if it is fit for purpose. The amendments are not designed to frustrate the Minister’s intentions or to allow the Prime Minister’s pledge to fail. On the contrary, they are designed to make his pledge real: to allow it to be effected. For if the amendments are not accepted by the Government, I fear the Bill will do just that: fail and disappoint the very people to whom we made that pledge to stop the boats.

Section 4 of the Human Rights Act deals with declarations of incompatibility and section 10, as I described it, deals with remedial measures. As it stands, they are not excluded by the Bill. That means that unamended, the Bill will allow a court to issue a declaration of incompatibility with the ECHR, which would effectively kill the Rwanda scheme. The Minister must know that that is a possibility at least—we would argue a probability —but even if it is a possibility, why would he not want to exclude that possibility?

[Robert Jenrick]

Perhaps I could just elaborate on the point my right hon. Friend is making. What is most likely to happen were the amendment not to be accepted by this place is that on Royal Assent someone will bring a case seeking a declaration of incompatibility for the Bill. That will then go through the courts. If the Supreme Court were then to rule, ultimately, that the Bill was incompatible with the Human Rights Act, it would then be up to this House and Parliament to determine what to do. But if the Prime Minister is correct that the Government of Rwanda would not wish to be a party to any scheme that was in breach of international law, the scheme would be dead.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend explains exactly the point I was making. The intentions of the Bill are put at risk by the failure to close the loophole. It is just that: an opportunity for people to exploit, in exactly the way he says, the absence of provisions that would strengthen, or in the Prime Minister’s word tighten, the Bill sufficiently to avoid such an eventuality.

Net Migration Figures

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

In recent years we have given thought to the concept of creating a more regional system, but it is difficult to create in practice—I would welcome ideas from the right hon. Lady’s Committee. As a general rule, we have maintained one single United Kingdom immigration system, but there are a number of visa categories that reflect particular issues facing different parts of the country. Those include the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, which is focused on rural England, and global talent, which increasingly takes individuals with a science or technology background and will impact those parts of the country with a science cluster. The system is able to support different sectors and needs of parts of the country.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Does the Minister recognise that many myths about immigration are perpetuated by the unholy alliance of greedy globalist corporate businesses and guilt-ridden bourgeois liberals? One of them is that immigrants bring only economic benefit and no cost. In practice, dependants of the kind he described bring more economic costs than benefits, so will the Minister immediately introduce measures to restrict the number of dependants who can come here? In doing so, will he recognise that we are relying on him to sort this out, because we know that he shares our concern that it is time for British workers for British jobs?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend and I are at one on this issue. He is right to say that there are two challenges: the sheer number of people coming in, and the types of people coming into our country. It is right that we make careful judgments about who will benefit our citizens and who will add to our country’s economy and skills base, and not simply allow very large numbers of people with low or, at best, mid skills. They are unlikely to add to our economy and, in many cases, will be net costs to the Exchequer. Those are the choices that we need to make to establish a more discerning migration system. I have already answered the dependants question, and we are carefully considering it.

Illegal Migration

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The Minister and the Home Secretary are to be commended for their crusade against devilish people smugglers, dodgy lawyers and deluded interest groups, but will he acknowledge that the bar needs to be raised for asylum applications? Far more applicants are granted asylum in this country than the European average. The standard of proof needs to be improved.

Does the Minister also accept that, while these improved numbers are to be welcomed, the asylum system needs fundamental change so that it is only for people in genuine fear of persecution, and so that economic migrants who just want a better life cannot come here using asylum as justification?

[Robert Jenrick]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. The Home Secretary and I are driven by two ambitions that must come together. One is efficiency in the system, and the other is rigour and integrity. We have to ensure that, as we process claims faster than ever before, we are rigorous in interrogating the evidence and weeding out those individuals who have absolutely no right to be here in the United Kingdom. We want to ensure that the UK is a place of refuge for those in genuine peril, but not a home for economic migrants. It has to be said that a very large proportion of the people coming to the UK are, in one form or another, economic migrants. At the very least they are asylum shoppers, because almost all of them come from a place of evident safety in France.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

If I may, I will give way in the first instance to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

That is correct. The law today is that a child can be detained for eight days for the purpose of examination—that is not routinely done by the Home Office. Today, a child is detained for 24 hours or less and, whether for 24 hours or, if the Home Office chose to make use of the power, for eight days, they are detained only in age-appropriate accommodation. It would be unlawful to house an under-18 in accommodation that did not meet the standard set out in law. I will come on in a moment to describe that standard.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am immensely grateful to my right hon. Friend for all the work he has done on the Bill and these amendments. He will understand that the matters he is discussing bring age verification into sharp focus. As he knows, I tabled an amendment on that, which the Government ultimately re-presented as an amendment of their own. Will he confirm that age verification measures will be obligatory and comprehensive so that we do not any longer get the nonsense of people pretending to be children in order to game the system?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend is right. We take age assessment extremely seriously. As he knows, there are some young adults and individuals who abuse the system. Indeed, some are not so young—as I understand it, the oldest individual we have encountered who posed as a child was subsequently found to be 41 years of age. That is wrong as a matter of principle, and it is also a serious safeguarding risk to genuine children and all the caring people who are involved in supporting them, whether they be foster carers, teachers or members of the general public. We therefore have to take the issue seriously. That is why the Bill retains the power to detain an individual who is subject to age assessment for up to 28 days. During that period, the Home Office or local authorities would conduct age assessment. Today, that is done through the Merton system, which is proving to take longer than we would like, but which we want to be conducted within 28 days.

We are now taking advantage of the powers taken through the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to begin to roll out scientific forms of age assessment. That will happen over the course of this year. Initially, it will happen concurrently with the Merton assessment. We want to ensure that that system is demonstrated to be robust and as swift as possible. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will unite in common agreement that it is important that we weed out cases of abuse, because they pose such a risk. I am afraid that we have seen some very tragic instances such as the murder that occurred in Bournemouth at the behest of somebody who had posed as a child. The state has to do everything in its power to prevent that from happening again.

Student Visas

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The Home Secretary and I are completely at one in our determination to reduce net migration. That is what our party stood on a manifesto to do and that is what we intend to achieve. The Home Secretary and I want to find ways in which we can tackle abuse and unintended consequences within the system, and the package of measures that we have set out this week will do so in this important area and, as Labour appears now to support it, in a clearly significant cross-party way.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As the Minister considers work visas, which have exploded, displacing investment in domestic skills and investment in modern working practices fit for the future, will he also answer this question: why it is right and fair for people studying a research degree to be able to bring their family into the country but not for people who are not doing primary research? Surely if those studying for MAs that do not require research cannot bring their family, no one should be able to do so?

[Robert Jenrick]

We said in the announcement this week that, with the Department for Education, we will launch a consultation with the university sector to design a longer-term alternative to the system that previously operated, which could be a more nuanced approach. But I think that the determination that we have made this week is the right one, which is that those people coming into the UK to study will be able to bring in dependants only if they are doing those high-value, usually longer-term, research-based courses such as PhDs, and those coming for short courses will invariably not be able to do so. That will cut out some of the abuse that we have seen in the system and will focus universities on their primary responsibility, which is teaching and education, rather than in some cases being a back door to immigration and to work.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank and commend right hon. and hon. Members from all parties for what has been a measured and thoughtful debate over the course of this afternoon. The Bill before us is probably the most significant immigration Bill in my lifetime; for that reason, it is important that we get it right. Today’s debate has centred on a number of significant issues. I will not reprise all my earlier remarks, having spoken then for the best part of three quarters of an hour and taken many interventions, but I will touch on the five principal areas that were discussed by Members on both sides of the House and attempt to provide any further reassurance that is required.

The first significant issue was the removal of minors. As I said earlier, the Government’s approach in respect of children is one in which we take the interests of the child extremely seriously. These are morally complex issues, and I and all the Ministers involved in the Bill’s preparation have thought very carefully about how we can protect children, both at home and abroad, as we have produced the Bill and the scheme that underpins it.

I hope that the ways in which we will approach the removal of children are now clear, thanks to the work we have done with several right hon. and hon. Members, including in particular my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). We will seek to remove unaccompanied children only in exceptional circumstances. As we have now made clear, the two principal purposes are for family reunion and for a child’s safe return home to the loving care of social services in their home country.

We have taken the issue of the detention of children extremely seriously, because we do not want to detain children. We will do so only in the most exceptional circumstances. The circumstances that we have now clarified in the Bill and in the debate, again with the helpful guidance and support of right hon. and hon. Members, are for the purposes of initial processing when children and families arrive irregularly in the United Kingdom in small boats or via other forms of clandestine entry, and then for the limited and defined purposes of removal from the country that I mentioned a moment ago. We understand the desire of many Members for there to be carefully thought through and limited time limits on detention. I hope that the amendment we tabled and my remarks today give reassurance that we will bring forward that regime and that it will be as short as practically possible.

There is a significant exception to that rule, which is, of course, for those cases in which there is a serious age-assessment dispute. In such cases, the undoubted desire to limit the amount of time for which a child is ever detained by the state has to be balanced against the equally important safeguarding issue of young adults posing as minors—indeed, not all so young, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) said earlier with regard to the recent allegation about a 42-year-old posing as a minor. We have to get the balance right so that young adults do not regularly pose as minors and create an enormous and very concerning safeguarding risk for our young people.

[Sir John Hayes]

I rise simply to say that the engagement we have had with my right hon. Friend and his Department throughout this process has been exemplary. It has been a model for how good scrutiny can improve legislation. I thank him and, in particular, the Home Secretary for the stand they have taken.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and return the compliment. It is important that we in the Government listen to the expertise we have among Members from all parties. I hope Members will agree that that is the approach we are taking to these sensitive issues, of which age assessment is certainly one. I do not want to see a situation in which young adults are regularly coming into the UK illegally, posing as children, and ending up in our schools, in foster-care families and in unaccompanied-minor hotels, living cheek by jowl with genuine children. That is an evil that we have to stamp out, and the approach we are taking in the Bill will help us to do so.

The third issue that was the subject of debate and, again, a high degree of unity—certainly on the Government Benches, but perhaps more broadly—is the approach to safe and legal routes. We want to stop the boats; we also want to ensure that the United Kingdom continues to be one of the most respected countries in the world for the way in which we provide sanctuary to people who are genuinely in need. We are doing that already, as evidenced by the fact that since 2015, half a million people have come into our country legally on humanitarian grounds. We have safe and legal routes today, but I appreciate the views of a number of right hon. and hon. Members, including most notably my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.

That has led us to the agreement that we will rapidly bring forward the consultation with local authorities that grounds the desire of this House to be generous with the reality on the ground in our communities and councils. Within six months, we will bring forward the report that will result from that consultation, and as soon as possible over the course of next year, we will set up or expand the existing safe and legal routes so that the UK can be an even greater force for good in the world. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) laughs at that—of course, Scotland could step up to the plate as well. Since she tempts me, I will just say that her and her colleagues asked for an extension to today’s debate, but as far as I am aware, only two spoke in it. Fewer SNP Members spoke in the debate than could fit into Nicola Sturgeon’s battle bus.

Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I respect the right hon. Lady and her Committee, but it is not as simple as my being able to set a date by which these hotels will close, because we have to be honest with ourselves about the challenge that we face as a country. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of young people crossing the channel on small boats every year. What we need to do is flow those young people as swiftly as possible into local authority care, but if local authorities do not have the capacity to take them immediately, we have to bear in mind that we can detain somebody for only 24 hours—or now 96 hours, with the recent legal change that we have made. In a relatively short timeframe, we have to have a short period of bridging accommodation. For as long as the challenge remains as pronounced as it is today, we will need that.

The task for us is twofold. The first part is to work with local authorities and provide the incentives for them to boost their own capacity. The other is to deter people from making the crossing in the first place. We are trying to do everything within our power to do so, including by making further legislative changes, but until we beat this trade, there will be young people placed in this position.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The particular vulnerability of children in distress touches our hearts and must move us to further action, as my right hon. Friend says. Will he tell the House when the legislation that he has described will come before us? Will he implore all those who share my compassion and concern for these desperate children to support that legislation without equivocation? Unless we deal with this problem at root, the sheer scale of it will overwhelm our capacity nationally or locally to protect these children. It is as simple as that.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

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

The Opposition called this debate today to divide us, but I do not think they have succeeded. What we have heard, time and again, across the House is a very high degree of consensus. Member after Member, from either side of the House, queued up to say that this country needs to build more houses. Some said we have a housing crisis. Some said we have a generational duty to help young people and those on low incomes to enjoy the dream of home ownership, which so many of us—the vast majority of people in this House—have already achieved and are enjoying. Member after Member, including almost every contribution from the Labour party, queued up to say that the current planning system does not work. Some made extremely good and important points. The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) said that the single biggest issue she hears from her constituents on is the planning system and how it is failing to address the needs of her constituents. Yet we also heard from the Labour Front-Bench team an argument that we should do absolutely nothing—that we should not take forward any ambitious plans to reform the planning system at all.

The shadow Secretary of State spoke for nine minutes but said absolutely nothing. All he has managed to achieve with this debate has been to shine a light on the Labour party’s own derisory record on housing. Let us not forget that this Government, back in 2010, inherited levels of house building at the lowest they had been since the 1920s. Those of us who are just about old enough to remember that time recall when John Prescott was Secretary of State in my Department and they recall his flagrant disregard for the green belt, the needs of local communities and local democracy, with his failed approach to regional planning, which we scrapped when we came to power.

Those of us who see what Labour is doing today see how damaging and feeble their policies are. If we look at Wales, we see that, despite the rhetoric we heard today, the Labour party is developing 12 council houses—for the whole of Wales. In Croydon, the Labour borough represented by the shadow Housing Secretary and run by his closest friends and cronies, the local council has gone bankrupt and its housing company, Brick by Brick, has taken tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and has failed to deliver a single home. Its social housing stock is so disgracefully Dickensian that the housing regulator has in recent weeks condemned it. What has the hon. Gentleman said? He has said nothing at all. His Twitter account, which he loves to use to criticise the Conservative party, has fallen as silent as that of Donald Trump—he has said absolutely nothing. So we will take no lectures from the Labour party.

We also heard from the Lib Dems, who have mysteriously gone AWOL now, at the end of the debate. Days after winning a by-election, saying that they would campaign to ditch the planning Bill, they could not even be bothered to turn up to the end of the debate. We have heard the appalling, rank hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrats throughout this debate. Their leader went on TV at the weekend to declare himself a “yimby”, but that is very different from what he was saying to people on the doorsteps of Buckinghamshire in recent weeks. It is better to describe him and his party, in the term of my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), as a “banana”—build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

Except in practice that is not what some Liberal Democrat councils do. The two Lib Dem Members who did turn up to speak in this debate, the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), both represent areas with Liberal Democrat councils that are building twice the number of homes that the Government are asking them to build. I do not criticise those Liberal Democrat councils for trying to build homes, but if anyone is objectively concreting over the green belt or greenfield land, it is those councils that are choosing to build twice the number of homes that the Conservative Government are asking them to build.

Of course, it was the Liberal Democrat leader who voted consistently for HS2 and, when we were in coalition, voted for every one of this Conservative Government’s planning Bills from 2010 until he lost his seat in 2015, so the speeches from the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrats were, I am afraid, just embarrassing. Nothing was more emblematic of that than the graphic put out by the Labour party this afternoon, which showed some properties in the Cotswolds that Labour had taken from an article in a newspaper with the headline “Why £10 million country estates are the new £5 million estates”. How out of touch is that? We on this side of the House do want to build homes. We do want to help young people on to the housing ladder, and we do care about homelessness and rough sleeping, and tackling intergenerational unfairness.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, a great deal united the House in this debate, and six themes emerged, all of which are fortunately the chapters—the pillars—of the planning reform Bill. First is our united desire to see greater environmental protection—our categoric insistence that the green belt must be protected, in a way that the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is doing more than any other person in this country to build upon the green belt, does not seem to understand. We will enshrine those principles in the Bill.

Secondly, we will ensure that the Bill means a massive improvement in the quality and design of properties. We will bring forward the ideas of Sir Roger Scruton’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, so that new homes in this country are built to a dramatically higher standard.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I cannot, as I have only a few minutes left, but I appreciate that my right hon. Friend is at the vanguard of this issue.

Thirdly, everyone in this country wants to see more infrastructure built alongside the homes—the GP surgeries, the hospitals, the roads, the parks, the playgrounds. We will bring forward an infrastructure levy that gets more of the land value out of the landowners and the big developers and puts it at the service of local people. That will mean more affordable homes being built in this country than ever before.

We will also ensure that we tip the balance away from the big-volume house builders and towards the small builders, so that local entrepreneurs—the brickies, the plumbers and the builders in our constituencies—get a fair shot at the system.

Planning for the Future

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I welcome the work my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister has done on this issue, and I will take that away. We want to work progressively with all the stakeholders. We have built an effective operation on ACM above 18 metres in recent months. We have named contacts for all the buildings, and all, bar a very small number, now have plans to remediate.

By opening the fund’s scope much more widely to other dangerous materials above 18 metres, we will have to put in place the same procedures for those materials to understand exactly where the buildings are, to understand who are the right people to work with us and to make sure that work is tendered for and that workers get on site as quickly as possible. That will be a very complex piece of work. At the moment, it can take up to six months to get workers on site to do ACM remediation, and some projects can take up to two years to complete. I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge, but I am keen to work with anybody who is interested to make sure it begins as quickly as possible.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

A sense of place informs our personal and communal sense of worth. As one of those who served on the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, I welcome this statement and, in particular, the Secretary of State’s commitment to a fast track for beauty. In considering these matters, will he also look at sprawl and out-of-town and edge-of-town developments, both in retail and housing? If we can revitalise and rejuvenate our town centres, it will refresh the spirit of our people.

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend is heavily involved in the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, and I commend its superb report to anyone interested in these issues. One point it raises, which we will now be taking forward, is the need to mitigate against the urban sprawl and the damage to the countryside we have seen over the past 50 or 60 years and more.

The answer to that is gentle density in urban areas, building upwards where appropriate—perhaps where there are existing clusters of high-rise buildings—and, building gently where building upwards is not appropriate. There are plenty of examples in the report of where that can be done in an attractive way that local communities could support. We need to ensure more homes are built in our town centres and around our high streets. The high streets and town centres fund that we have created through the £3.6 billion towns fund provides funding to many parts of the country to do exactly that.

Local Bus Services

Debate between John Hayes and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend will know that Nottinghamshire is dear to my heart; indeed, some would say that it is etched on my heart. He will know that the Trent Barton 141 bus, which runs between Sutton, Mansfield and Nottingham and stops at Blidworth, has been reduced, and that the N28 bus from Blidworth has a revised timetable and, outrageously, no longer stops at Newark hospital. Nottinghamshire county council—now under Labour control—has brought about that eventuality. Oh my goodness, how we look back with awe and regret at the passing of the benevolent county council controlled by the Conservatives under Mrs Kay Cutts, my former colleague on that council.

Benjamin Disraeli may have been prescient when he lamented

“how much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”

In trying to be correct, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) did us a service. He made it absolutely clear that, directly contrary to what the motion indicates, bus occupancy has risen and passenger miles on local bus services are up, yet the motion is predicated on the very opposite assumption.

We fully understand that buses are essential to many of our fellow citizens. We are of course conscious of the difference they make to access to opportunity. The shadow Secretary of State was absolutely right about that. When I heard the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) say that she lived in one world and I lived in another and that mine was the world of London, I thought she should come to South Holland in Lincolnshire because it could not be less like London. My rural constituents depend on buses to get to work, school or other facilities for their very well-being. The kind of people who depend on buses are those like my mother-in-law in Nottingham. She has never been able to drive and has used a bus all her life. Do not tell us that we do not know or understand. Not only do we represent people who rely on buses, but our families and friends rely on buses too.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that if the Opposition care so passionately about buses, they will encourage their colleagues on Labour-controlled Nottinghamshire county council, whom I am meeting next week, to reverse some of their striking cuts to rural bus services throughout my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer)? Those cuts are isolating people in rural areas, and they are finding it difficult to get to school and work—exactly the problems that Labour is trying to address.

[Mr Hayes]

I know that that Labour county council has cruelly cut the bus services to places such as Dunham-on-Trent, Egmanton and East Bridgford—villages that I know well and that are ably represented by my hon. Friend, who has made such a stunning impression since he was elected to this House. Buses are critical for people without access to a car. Some 49% of bus trips outside London are made by people with no access to a car—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and the Secretary of State, who spoke so ably at the beginning of the debate. A well-run bus service is crucial for older and disabled people, and I take on board comments from across the House about disability, and particularly about talking buses. I make a commitment to the shadow Minister that I will look again at that matter and do all I can to put right what is wrong, if further steps can be made.

The Government’s expenditure on buses reflects our commitment to them. In the 2013 spending review we protected bus spending until the end of the 2015-16 year, despite the pressure on public finances and tough economic times. Almost £1 billion has been spent this year on funding concessionary travel entitlement. Four rounds of the Green Bus fund have provided £89 million to support the purchase of 1,240 new low-carbon buses, and some £300 million in funding for major bus projects has been allocated in the past year.

I am almost embarrassed, Mr Deputy Speaker, to go on dismantling, deconstructing and demolishing the Opposition’s arguments. [Interruption.] Well, I did say “almost”. This year has seen the devolution of £40 million in bus service operators grant funding, which is now paid directly to local authorities rather than bus operators. Again, I hoped the Opposition would have welcomed that because it gives communities more control. As the Chancellor announced this week, in a move welcomed by some Manchester MPs, an elected mayor will be created in Manchester with strong powers in the city region, and they will—one hopes—be able to effect the sort of positive change that the Mayor of London has done for this great city. That is proper devolution, not mere rhetoric, and the Secretary of State described it as a massive and positive step to allow for a more integrated, co-ordinated transport strategy in the region.

I take the point made by the Chair of the Transport Committee that we need to look more closely at the integration of services—as various reports by that Committee have argued—and we hope that Manchester will be just the first of the major cities to take advantage of a greater devolution of powers.

Investment in technology, improved ticketing, new infrastructure, and concessionary travel—giving passengers more of what they want.

Let me conclude this debate in the spirit of Christian pity with which I began—I signal my conclusion so that the excitement can build as I move to my exciting peroration. I know that opposition can be a testing business and that there is a temptation to exaggerate. I appreciate that Opposition parties facing failure are likely to become less reasonable, but I cannot believe that Labour could not do better than the meandering hyperbole of this motion. It is a kitchen sink motion that has cracked and needs plunging. As the Minister responsible for maritime skills week, allow me to throw the Opposition a lifeline: don’t go down with the ill-fated captain on a sinking ship.