Income tax (charge)
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to be reasonably quick.
I pay tribute to the maiden speeches we have heard today, which were exceptional. In particular, I associate myself with the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Margaret Mullane) when she said that she stands for working class life and communities, and will do everything she can for them. That is how I have seen my 28 years in this place, too.
I think I am probably the only person on the Labour Benches today who was here in 1997, so I want to say something to the Government and to all our Back Benchers. I was there when Labour came into office—I was elected in 1996, so I was here in ’97—and the same lack of humility shown then by the Conservative party, which had been thrashed by the electorate, is being shown today. There is the same short-term memory of the failures their Government had committed under John Major and the other Prime Minister before that, and the same lack of remorse. There is a lack of remorse for what we have now: food bank Britain, with millions of people in poverty. Not a word from those on the Conservative Benches. There are millions of people on NHS waiting lists. No remorse from the party opposite for that. There is no remorse for the fact that our economy has not been properly invested in throughout their whole period in office. This country was the lowest investor in the whole of the G7. There is no remorse for all the other failures either, and no sense of humility when the public told them that they had made a series of mistakes.
Jon Trickett
No, I am going to try to be quick. I am not going to take any interventions.
All those matters, and others too, require us to make a change in the direction of our economy. That is what this Budget has begun to do; we are turning the page.
One final reflection on ’97. When Labour introduced the minimum wage, one of the great reforms of the century, the Tories kept us in the Lobby night after night after night. We were proud to do it. The arguments they made then have a parallel with the arguments they are making about our Budget today—that there will be job losses, an impact on profitability, small firms will be in trouble and so on. Let me say this. Eventually, they accepted the minimum wage because it was the right thing to do. There were no job losses and there was no impact on profitability. So, I say to those on the Government Front Bench: continue in the direction you are travelling, but move faster and be even more radical. I recommend that they have a look at Spain, where a socialist Government are in place. They have—I think I am right in saying—the highest rate of growth in the G7. They introduced a 0.5% wealth tax on estates worth more than €3 million a year and they are getting high growth. That shows that a determined Government restructuring the economy, as we need to do, can deliver change and not damage a country’s economic success.
I represent 23 villages, all former mining communities that were treated brutally by the Tory party 40 years ago. It is a distant memory for many, but I remember every single moment of the strike. They destroyed the mining industry and have done nothing to replace it in the last 40 years, so we have widespread poverty, as there is in all post-industrial communities throughout our country. They perpetrated a hoax on those communities by saying that they would level up. The levelling-up fund was not directed to where poverty was. In any event, it was a competition in deprivation between one area and another. My communities got nothing, yet we are struggling desperately to achieve growth. Levelling up was a great slogan, but it was used as a trick to persuade people to vote Conservative in 2019. What happened? People have learnt their lesson.
Let me come on to one point that I am worried about and then on to a general point. On transport, the differences in the distribution of funding for transport are extraordinary. The previous Government—that lot—spent £418 per head on transport in Yorkshire. In London, it was £1,200. That is three times as much per head per year spent on transport in London than in Yorkshire, and that leaves us with problems. I represent 23 villages—rural communities in many ways, deprived communities, post-mining communities. To get from one community to another, bearing in mind over 20,000 people in our area do not have a car and the trains do not work very well—the train service has left us without adequate public transport by train—the only option is the bus. Buses often do not start until 8 o’clock, but people begin work at 7, or leave home at 7. I have met women walking from one village to another in the dark on unlit streets because the bus service has not yet started. That is a problem the Conservatives created.
I regret this Government’s decision to raise bus fares from £2 to £3. I do not suppose there is anybody in this whole Parliament who does not have access to a car, but there are many people across the country who do not have a car because wages are so low. People are walking in the dark at 7 o’clock in the morning to get to work from one village to another. And for those of us who do have a bus service, it is going up by 50%. It will be roughly £6 a day to get to and from work. That is £30 a week and £1,500 a year in bus fares to get to work and back. Clearly, that gives us a problem. In my constituency, there are villages that are only seven miles apart, yet the bus takes one hour and 19 minutes to get from the one you live in to the one where you work. That is completely unsatisfactory. If we are going to raise bus fares—that is the decision that has been made, which I regret—we need to reform the way buses operate so that they are accessible to communities. The Government have made some announcements in relation to that already, which is welcome.
My final point is on the lack of investment the Conservative party presided over for years. I heard the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) saying today, “Okay, there might have been a black hole in the public finances, but we were going to cover it with cuts.” That is effectively what he said. The cuts were always taking place to investment and they were going to cut more investment. If we measure my constituency by GDP per head—a controversial measure, but the one we are familiar with—that lack of investment means the average worker produces £29,000 per year of GDP. Wages are pegged to productivity, as we all know, so we have low wages—less than £30,000 a year. But listen to this. In Camden—we know it is a different economy in Camden—GDP per head is £174,000. The regional differences between output, capacity and productivity are all the result of that failure to invest.
The Budget sets out to invest, and to invest big and go for growth, but I will be pressing, for all the held-back, post-industrial communities up and down our country— not only the coalfields but in the midlands and elsewhere —for the investment we achieve and the growth we deliver to be more equitable than it has been under the Conservatives.
With those few thoughts, and an encouragement to be more radical and even more bold for the future—let us bear in mind ’97—I wish the Budget well.
Infected Blood Compensation Scheme
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
I congratulate the Minister on the way he spoke to the House. He spoke firmly, with a sense of urgency and great clarity in his use of English, which was very much appreciated. The truth of the matter is that there is a deeply ingrained scepticism in the community we are talking about. Words, in the end, will not count; actions will. Of course, today we are taking significant action on the road.
When we reflect on the views of victims and their relatives, it is hardly surprising that there has been a breakdown in trust. It always seems to be the case that the British establishment’s first reaction when there is a disaster is to close ranks, deny the truth and not listen to the victims. It is only in recent times that victims’ voices have begun to be heard. With disasters such as the Post Office scandal, the policing of the miners’ strike or Hillsborough, the establishment always closed ranks.
The Langstaff report is very clear. First, it says—this goes to the root of the scepticism that people feel—that, from the 1940s, Governments of different parties were fully aware of the scientific opinion that these actions could infect recipients of blood transfusions. Sir Brian Langstaff says that the disaster did not happen by accident. He tries to imagine what it must be like for those suffering the agony of being victims, and then being refused the truth that a wrong had been done by successive Governments.
My constituent Katie has been in touch with my office. Her dad died in the 1980s when she was an infant. Imagine living life with a cloud upon you after losing your father when young, because of negligence by operatives of the state and the cover-up that followed.
The only way we can reduce the scepticism is for the payments to begin to flow through. In the meantime, there is clearly a wish for some reassurance from the Minister today. He has made some of these points already, but I will go back to them.
First, someone who lost her father in the ’80s when she was two will probably struggle to find the appropriate evidence, as she is not necessarily skilled enough to search for it forensically. Langstaff discovered—this is shocking—that documents were destroyed knowingly by the Government of the day because they thought that it might incriminate them. It was an establishment cover-up of some scale. How can victims establish that they deserve justice if documents have been lost or even wilfully destroyed? The Minister mentioned that, but we need to hear more from him about it either today or in the coming period.
Secondly, as other Members have said, civil society groups have the confidence of the victims—the Haemophilia Society is one, but my constituent mentioned Tainted Blood, of which the Minister is probably aware. It would be helpful if the Minister said that he and the Government are open to further conversations with civil society groups, which can speak on behalf of victims. It is important that the victims’ voices are heard, and because those groups have the confidence of victims, those exchanges and that dialogue would be very helpful.
The Minister referred to one of the central requests that have been made. We are dealing with people who do not necessarily have large resources to employ representatives such as lawyers and other advisers. The Minister indicated that the Government are open to victims having their own representatives. However, if the Government are to encourage the appointment of such representatives, it must be clear that they are not appointees of the Government; they must see themselves as representatives of the victims. Otherwise, people will not have the necessary trust in them.
That brings me to my final point. I can imagine the kinds of conversation that the civil service has had with Ministers about this matter over decades: “Minister, you may be dealing with billions of pounds. You have a duty to ensure that every single penny is properly spent, so please exercise care in any announcements you make.” I imagine that those conversations happen on most days. Of course we have a duty to protect money, and very significant amounts will have to be spent to compensate people properly, but equally there is a duty to deliver justice to the people who were treated by state actors in a shabby and disgraceful way over decades. When there is a lack of paperwork and victims are perhaps very ill or dying, how will we secure value for money for the taxpayer while delivering justice for people who have struggled for decades as a result of Government negligence? I leave those thoughts with the Minister and hope that he will address them in his reply.
Like other Members, I hope that as the scheme is rolled out and we establish confidence among the victims, the Government will organise opportunities for the Minister to come back to the House so that we can raise constituents’ questions and establish a more trusting relationship between the Government, who are doing dramatic work on this matter, and the people who have suffered for decades.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jon Trickett Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Nick Thomas-Symonds
The Government have been clear that we will not be returning to freedom of movement, but clearly we want economic and cultural ties to be far closer than they are at the moment—indeed, closer than they were under the previous Government. That is in the interests of the UK and in the interests of the EU. On the economic side, the Government have already set out their objective of a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement to achieve mutual recognition of professional qualifications to help our excellent services sector, as well as to ease the position for our travelling musicians around Europe, which is hugely important to our cultural soft power.
Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
The Minister without Portfolio (Ellie Reeves)
The Government will always aim to secure value for money in meeting their facilities management requirements. Our plan to make work pay is clear that we will call time on the previous Government’s ideological approach to outsourcing and ensure that decisions are based on robust assessments of value for money, service quality, social value and, crucially, delivering the best outcomes.
Jon Trickett
I thank the Minister very much for her response and I welcome the whole team to the Front Bench. The problem with outsourcing is that, normally, the outsourcers will drive down pay and conditions for the workforce, thereby creating a two-tier workforce; they are not properly accountable to Ministers; they are exempt from freedom of information requests; and finally, there is the question of public service centres. Will the Minister confirm that we will proceed with abandoning the previous Government’s ideological obsession with outsourcing?
Ellie Reeves
My hon. Friend is right that too many decisions about outsourcing were ideologically driven under the previous Government, without consideration for things such as social value or service quality. That is why we have said that we will do things differently. Social value and outcomes will be at the heart of that. Our new deal for working people will transform the world of work.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 year ago)
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John Glen
My hon. Friend obviously knows a great deal about this as a result of his distinguished 31 years of experience in the House, but pivotal role allowances have been in place for 10 years to help us to retain certain key individuals. A number of initiatives were introduced by my distinguished predecessor Lord Maude, the former right hon. Member for Horsham, and I intend to build on those, but I am happy to engage with my hon. Friend, because this is a serious issue.
In 2022, the last year for which we have figures, there was a 12.4% turnover from the senior civil service, and resignations were at 5%. We need to look carefully at what that means across different roles, and at how we can retain the specialisms for longer periods so that key Government programmes benefit from the sort of leadership that has enduring expertise at the table.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Government outlined wide-ranging improvements to transparency in lobbying in their policy statement “Strengthening Ethics and Integrity in Central Government”, which was published in July. They include revising guidance to widen the range of lobbying engagements declared by Departments, and linked reforms of the consultant lobbying framework.
Jon Trickett
If you are one of the tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises bidding for contracts from the public sector, you will be met with a wall of bureaucratic paperwork designed to prevent relationships between the contractor and the service provider. If you are an ex-Prime Minister, you can make dozens of phone calls on behalf of an interest in which you seem to have been involved, including nine texts to the current Prime Minister. Is it not clear that that was reprehensible behaviour, and that the lobbying rules allowed it to happen? When will the Minister tighten the lobbying rules properly to prevent people from being able to benefit from the old system of “It is not what you know, but who you know”?
Alex Burghart
I refer the hon. Gentleman to my previous answer; we have published a document called “Strengthening Ethics and Integrity in Central Government”.
On small and medium-sized enterprises, I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that the Procurement Act 2023, which recently received Royal Assent, will make life much easier for SMEs that want to do business with the Government and get a share of the £300 billion of public procurement this Government have to offer.
Oliver Dowden
As ever, my right hon. Friend raises an erudite question. My disposition, and that of the Government, is that open source AI is an important basis upon which we can build many world-leading applications. We can see companies in this country growing at a fast pace by developing innovative AI off the back of open source. Of course, there are risks associated with it, but there is a high bar to be met before the Government would start imposing additional regulatory burdens on open source AI, given the associated benefits for economic growth.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
Alex Burghart
Obviously, any contract of any size that the Government deal with—the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS in this case—goes through an extremely detailed and careful process in order to ensure that we get the best value for money for the British public, that we help our public services solve the problems they face and that national security is maintained. If the hon. Gentleman has a problem with a particular element of that contract, he should bring it before the House. Otherwise, I believe he is just scare- mongering.
British Steel
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Ms Ghani
Unfortunately, there is never a simple answer to these questions. Access to the grid is a challenge for many industries, let alone for the steel sector. We have been doing everything we can to increase access to the grid. British Steel’s proposal—negotiations will continue—says that it has chosen two sites over one, with its key site at Scunthorpe and a second site at Teesside to be closer to its manufacturing work. That decision has been made for many other commercial reasons beyond access to the grid.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
Yorkshire and the Humber is one of the great centres of steelmaking—in our area, there were more than 8,000 jobs in steelmaking, the last time that was counted—but how many jobs will be left when the Minister has finished with her cuts? Has she noticed that whenever the Conservative party is in government, it deindustrialises further? Unite the union—I declare an interest as a member—is saying that if the Government would commit to procurement of steel for all our relevant contracts, 8,000 further jobs could be created. What exactly does she make of that? Has she met representatives of the union to discuss that matter?
Ms Ghani
I meet representatives of the unions regularly, and I co-chair a steel council. The steel procurement policy note on increasing procurement in the UK was a personal ambition of mine. Previously, we did not calculate enough of the data on what was being procured and how we could continue to secure more contracts. Procurement has increased, with the value of contracts up by £97 million on the previous year. I want to go further; that is only the starting point. Earlier today, I was with the Minister for Defence Procurement, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), and I will continue to work to ensure that there is more UK steel in all our construction, whether rail, road, automotive, aviation or anything else. The reality is that last year it increased by £97 million-worth of work.
All-party Parliamentary Groups
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
This has been a fascinating debate—I almost used the word “delay”, but I would not dare to when speaking about the Father of the House. In the few minutes I have, let me try to make the case against a vote. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee has listened—we all have—and maybe some refinement can be achieved.
My hon. Friend might have made a stronger case if he had recalled to the House the distinction that his report makes between two types of all-party group. Many of them are benign, as we have heard. When I came to Parliament in 1996 through a by-election, they seemed relatively benign to me, but then I worked twice in Government—in No. 10 and the Cabinet Office—and then for 10 years on the Opposition Front Bench. Over the years, I reflected on the asymmetry of power between the people who have money and, as a result, access to power, including access to this place, and the millions of people around the country who also have interests but are not always heard. I therefore resigned from every APPG—I may be the only person here who is not in a single one. Maybe Members will say that I am not a very effective MP, but it seems to me that, if I want to speak to MPs, commercial interests, or private and civil society groups, I am capable of doing so without being in an APPG.
On the other hand, I would be happy to be party to many of the groups that have been mentioned today, which seem benign. However—and this is the point that I think sticks in the craw—commercial interests have dominated so much of our political life that that asymmetry of power and access to wealth and to this place is so profound that it is eating away at the body politic itself. We have funding coming from the arms industry, the tobacco industry, polluters, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, private healthcare and so on. They are all putting money into APPGs.
Members might ask, “Well, what’s wrong with that?” I am not against the arms industry—I am not a pacifist—but it is one of the largest beneficiaries of state procurement with taxpayers’ money. The private sector in health has an interest in trying to undermine the way in which the health service works. Tobacco is clearly regularly the subject of regulation. They all have access to the House and to Members of Parliament simply because they have the capacity to buy influence through the APPG system. I am not suggesting that anything about that is corrupt, but people outside, such as Peter, who I met yesterday in my constituency, where the local bank has closed—he is 88 years old and nearly blind—want to know that we operate on their behalf and not purely in the interests of large commercial operators.
Then there is the problem of foreign influence. The Committee made it clear in the report that foreign countries have not only attempted to influence our Parliament through APPGs, but succeeded in doing so. Some hostile countries, as we would define them, have sought to influence, but it is not just them. From the news today, we know that Britain was in competition with Spain over the location of a battery factory—I am glad we have got it for the UK. There is a Spain APPG, and I do not suggest in any way that it is malign, but foreign countries—allies or not—have an interest in understanding how our Parliament works.
I am glad that the Committee has recommended changes. If we can get through today without a vote against, the Committee can go away and reflect on the debate and tackle the malign aspects of APPGs. Parliament would then be in a much better place.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Johnny Mercer
I recognise the ongoing concerns about those who remain in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister has asked me to do what I can to get the Afghans who are currently in hotels into long-term accommodation in the UK. That will allow us to turn back on those flights out of Afghanistan. I recognise that there are still people there who should be in the UK, and I will, of course, look at the case my hon. Friend raises later today. That process of bringing people out of Afghanistan remains with the MOD, but it will have heard his comments and I will do everything I can to help him.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I return to the issue of nominations into the other place. Is the Minister aware that 27 members of the Lords donated £50 million to his party and that one in 10 Tory peers have given more than £100,000 to his party? Is that all just an unfortunate coincidence, or are we seeing a return to cash for honours? Would it not be simple just to say that nobody who makes donations to political parties can receive an honour in the future? Would that not be the simplest way of dealing with this utter scandal?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
We all remember the cash for honours scandal that happened under the hon. Gentleman’s party’s tenure, and we all know how many union barons are barons.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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George Freeman
Yes, I am absolutely delighted to do so. The Metro Mayors are key parts of our innovation ecosystem, and the three innovation accelerators that have we put in place are fundamentally co-created and led from the bottom up in Glasgow, Manchester and the west midlands. I am actively reaching out to work with the Metro Mayors, as well as with devolved Science Ministers, on extending our science investment to unify all regions of this country and strengthen those urban economies.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
But the problem is that in my constituency in the Yorkshire coalfield, there are 20 times fewer people employed in science and technology innovation than in Cambridge. We can be proud of what Cambridge has achieved, but why should areas such as mine be so left behind? There is no economic reason why the golden triangle between Greater London, Cambridge and Oxford should be preferred over the rest of the country, so is it pure politics?
George Freeman
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman could not be more wrong; it is quite the opposite. The truth is that the Oxford-Cambridge-London triangle is golden for a reason: it is home to two of the world’s top three universities and five of top 15. Our central mission is to ensure that we grow an R&D economy all around the country that nurtures and invests in research, including a fantastic cluster in Yorkshire: the Yorkshire bioeconomy, advanced manufacturing in Sheffield, and Doncaster. We are investing in all that, but one does not create the Oxford-Cambridge triangle overnight; it requires us to invest with local leaders, as they are doing across the north-east in County Durham and Northumbria, in the innovative companies of tomorrow. This is a historic moment for the former coalfields.
Public Procurement Processes
Jon Trickett Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I am pleased to speak under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), who has made a great contribution to the debate. I agree with him that the procurement of services and goods during the pandemic was a disgrace. It is hard to avoid the word “racketeering” when we consider what happened. There was a time when suppliers would meet on the golf course—perhaps at the 19th hole, as they used to say—to rig the prices for providing services to local councils, and there was debate about whether that took place in freemasons’ lodges and elsewhere; now, it seems that they just pick up the phone to a Tory Minister or MP and it gives them access to the VIP lane.
One pound in every £3 of public spending goes on procurement, and possibly more. It is around £300 billion, which is an astonishing amount of money. The OECD, the European Commission and the United Nations have all said that procurement carries the biggest risk of corruption or fraud in modern states. Of the £12 billion that was spent on PPE, £4 billion was spent on contracts that failed to meet the NHS standards—a third was spent on supplies that were not fit for purpose. Some £10.5 billion-worth of contracts was awarded without any fair or open competition in a seven-month period at the height of the pandemic. We understand that there was a national crisis and huge pressure on the NHS, but notwithstanding that, something went badly wrong; everybody must agree with that.
Peter Dowd
It is interesting that a Government publication said:
“Value to the taxpayer should lie at the heart of our procurement decisions.”
Does my hon. Friend believe that there was value for the taxpayer in that particular process?
Jon Trickett
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to ask that question. No convincing answer has been provided as to whether value for money was achieved. In fact, it is as plain as the nose on your face that there was no value for money, and I will come to that in a second.
In recent decades, there has been a presumption in favour of outsourcing. That was never the case before. Britain used to be proud of its public service and of the high standards of ethics in the civil service and in politics. It is hard to share that pride these days. The presumption in favour of outsourcing contracts and obtaining services from the private sector has gone through the leadership of all the political parties, and it is time it stopped.
There are seven separate reasons why one should be cautious about that presumption. I hasten to say, though, that there will always be a case for some procurement from the private sector—for instance, police motorbikes will not be nationalised in the immediate future, so one can see that there is a case there—but the presumption should end. Let me briefly refer to the seven issues that it is important to consider.
First, the Government Procurement Service is not as professional as it needs to be. It is possible to get a university degree these days in good procurement practice. That is a necessity to ensure value for money for every penny spent, but the service is under-resourced and not as professional as it needs to be. That is not to criticise the civil servants who do a difficult job in difficult circumstances, but they are in danger of being flooded by the provision of contracts.
I worked in the private sector, as a plumber in the building industry. We were monitored by the main developers to make sure that we provided value for money. Quite often, I confess, we would see whether we could get extras built in on top of the money in the original contract. It was for the quantity surveyors who worked for the developers and builders to make sure that we did not get away with anything. Can we honestly say that every single line in every contract is monitored in the same way as in the private sector? I do not think we can. The reason is because staff are under-resourced, and we are under-resourced because we are outsourcing as an ideological decision rather than anything else.
Here is my second point. More often than not, there is no public comparator. When I was the leader of Leeds City Council, I would ensure that if something was going out to the private sector, there would be a public sector bid made by the council, which would not have a slice on top for profitability. I would then see whether the private sector could compete with the public sector bid. That is one thing that might be done, but there are no public sector comparators under the present neoliberal economic settlement, which we regard with despair, to be honest. Therefore, there is no guarantee that a cartel or group of racketeers is not fixing prices between them to rip off the taxpayer. We cannot be clear about whether that is happening, although without a proper procurement service, I am sure that it is.
My third point is this. No evidence has been produced anywhere in the world that outsourcing is cheaper than insourcing. It has been looked at by the Public Accounts Committee and various bodies throughout the world. What is striking is that larger global companies are now insourcing. They were outsourcing, buying in accountancy and legal services and so on. That is stopping. Why are they insourcing? Because it is cheaper and more effective, and delivers better value for money. Yet here we are with a Government that seem hellbent on outsourcing, for ideological reasons rather than to protect the public purse.
My fourth point is that the private sector puts in prices, but the first thing it does when it wins the contract is to drive down the pay and conditions of the staff employed. Wherever one looks, that is the case. I have experience of that in my constituency. We had a service for cleaning a school a few years ago. The first thing the company did was to cut wages and try to get rid of some of the staff. The staff went on strike, which went on a long time, and the school was filthy. That contract was frankly a disgrace. We all know that that happens everywhere. We see wages falling as a share of GDP. What is the process behind that happening? There are a number of processes, but one is outsourcing, driving down wages in order to increase profits.
My fifth point is this. A service provided in the public sector is motivated by the single ethos of public service. It tries to provide a service to the public without a mind to delivering profits and dividends to shareholders. There are two contesting ethoses—if that is the correct plural—in play. One is serving and enhancing shareholder value as a private sector provider; the other is public service. Well, I know what I want for the staff who treat me, my family or my constituents. I want people who are motivated by one thing only: providing the highest possible quality service. That is what motivated people. The three women I just talked about, who were cleaners and went on strike, were treated in a really shabby way. Their greatest concern was the kids left in the school. The toilets were not being cleaned. They would talk to me regularly about their guilty consciences at being unable to provide the service. They were interested in only one thing: providing a service to those children.
Kirsty Blackman
On the point about wages, does the hon. Member share my concern that, although we have control of public sector wages, the Conservatives are not keen on negotiating fair pay settlements? That means that public sector wages are actually being reduced and done down, compared with where they should be.
Jon Trickett
I totally agree with the hon. Member. We are seeing a fragmentation of the labour market and the driving down of people’s incomes—particularly of manual workers and others—and I resent it, on behalf of those people. It is not right for the country; after all, if wages are in long-term decline, the economy itself will be in long-term decline as well.
My sixth and penultimate point is about pay and pay ratios. What happens in the public sector—although we would have to say, if we were living in a purely ethical economic environment, that certain public servants are probably paid more than they ought to be—is that pay ratios accelerate the minute a service is outsourced, to the point where we see people earning massive multiples of what the lowest paid in the same service receive. That is not congenial to providing a public-oriented service, which is what we would want to see. Pay ratios in the public sector are accountable through Parliament to the public in a way that they are not once they have been privatised. Indeed, once a service has been privatised—outsourced—it is no longer subject to all the constraints that the public sector has to operate under. Indeed, one further point to make is that if I want to understand why a public sector service in my constituency or the country is deteriorating, I can submit a freedom of information request or ask questions in Parliament. The minute that service has been privatised, we cannot do that, so it is not accountable.
My final point is about the impact on the local and national economy. If we do not control procurement in a proper way, we are unable to direct it to local providers of services in a way that we would expect to be able to do with taxpayers’ money. That has an impact, too, on the local economy.
For all those reasons, this is an important debate, and I am glad that it was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead. It is beyond the legislation that is before us. We need an ideological shift; we need a presumption in favour of the public sector, not the private sector, and I hope that I have contributed in a small way to making an argument for that.
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree. It is a further power grab, just like the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. We have an agreed settlement that was put to a referendum in the first place. We have the Scotland Act 1998, which gives the Scottish Parliament its powers. This is within those powers. It is our responsibility—a responsibility that our parliamentarians in Scotland were elected to carry out—and that the UK Government are trying to take that back means that people in Scotland are not getting what they voted for. They voted for politicians in order to direct this, but their politicians are unable to do so because the UK Parliament is trying to take back control.
Turning to the issues that have been raised today, I will touch first on the EU principles that have been written into the Procurement Bill, which concern transparency, equal treatment, non-discrimination and proportionality. We agree that we should remain as closely aligned with the EU as possible in this regard, and that keeping those principles is absolutely the right thing to do.
Jon Trickett
I wonder whether the hon. Lady agrees with those learned commentators who said that EU rules actually preclude the use of procurement to achieve social objectives, and that that was an argument for Brexit rather than for remaining in the European Union.
Kirsty Blackman
I think a number of other states have done procurement in a more flexible way even though they are in the European Union. It is not necessarily the case that the way the UK did procurement prior to Brexit is the only way to do procurement within the EU, as a number of states manage to do it very differently. We all have to work within the global procurement agreement. That is part of the World Trade Organisation, which sets rules that, similarly, the EU procurement rules abide by. I am not aware that anybody has suggested that we should step outside that global procurement framework; whether or not they support Brexit, people are still keen to remain part of that.
On transparency and the comments by the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) about the kind of ideological shift that is required, I agree that this is ideology. We can do procurement in a number of different ways—we can focus on external companies in the private sector, or we can reframe that and focus on the public sector. We can think about the best way to do it. On the basis that they are trying their very best to defund it, I have concerns about the current UK Government’s willingness to use the public sector, which seems completely ideologically opposed to what they would be keen to achieve. However, I agree that we should go further in that direction, on the basis that we can better implement and embed fair working practices because we have much more control over the terms and conditions of people who are directly employed by local authorities or other public sector bodies and we can be more sure they are employed in a fair way.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) mentioned Hikvision, which is involved in the Chinese Government’s detention camps and what is happening with the Uyghur Muslims through its facial recognition technology. Some 61% of UK public authorities use Hikvision cameras. That is not a small number. In Scotland, we have committed to getting rid of Hikvision cameras and ending our work with Hikvision, and the US has blacklisted it. The UK Government still have not chosen to do that, so I would very much welcome a commitment from the Minister that they will look at Hikvision specifically and consider what actions they can take to ensure that they are not supporting a company that is committing human rights abuses. It seems to me that the Procurement Bill fails to take into account some of those abuses, despite pushes by the Lords to make that happen.
Again, climate change issues are not embedded in the Procurement Bill. It does not take into account the climate change targets in Scotland, for example. Every Government should be focused on the impact that every single thing that they do will have on the climate, and on future generations as a result of the climate change it will cause. The UK Government should be leading by example by having that thread running through everything thing they do, but they refuse to. There is no point in just talking about climate change; we need to make sure that we are focusing on it in every single thing that we do. The UK Government are failing to put actions in place; they are only using words.
I am aware that I am short on time, so let me briefly mention the Supplier Development Programme in Scotland, an amazing organisation that was set up to ensure that local companies are linked with public sector procurers. It works incredibly well, so I just wanted to plug it briefly. I thank the hon. Member for Birkenhead for bringing forward the debate, and I thank all those who have made contributions.
Florence Eshalomi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) highlighted, key issues were raised in the other place that now seem to have disappeared from the Bill. That is one of those many areas, and I will come on to it later.
We have heard that procurement makes up around a third of public spending. If it is done right, procurement can have such a transformative impact on our whole economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead highlighted that social value should not just be an empty phrase. Social Enterprise UK found that between 2010 and 2020, the UK may have missed out on £700 billion-worth of economic, social and environmental opportunities. We are missing out on so much. That is a staggering amount of money. It is crucial that we address some of the problems in the Procurement Bill as it passes through the House.
As I mentioned on Second Reading, Labour supports the introduction of the Bill and recognises the genuine steps forward that it takes. That is why we want to work constructively with the Government to produce a Bill that is fit not just for today, but for the next Government and the Government after that. The Minister has heard my concerns about the Bill a number of times—we have sat through urgent questions and Second Reading—and we will be spending the new few weeks in Committee, which I am sure he is looking forward to, but I want to raise some of the problems that we see with it. I hope that he will think carefully before tomorrow’s deadline for tabling amendments and look at how he can make genuine improvements to the Bill. I am sure that he has had the chance to look at the amendment paper and that none of our concerns are novel to him, so I hope that he will be able to provide full and frank answers to the House on the issues that I raise.
First, I have deep concerns about the workings of the excluded, excludable and debarment systems in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth highlighted the practice of companies winning contracts and then doing down staff wages. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) highlighted the CCTV cameras that councils are sourcing from Hikvision and the fact that we should be worried about some of the companies we are seeking contracts for. Labour is clear that we do not want to see those who act improperly, who abuse their workers or who are a threat to this country being awarded public contracts.
We therefore welcome the purpose of the powers in the Bill, but we can see loopholes in the system, which must be closed while the Bill is before the House. It is concerning that references to excludable contracts seem to give the contracting authorities discretion about whether to disregard a tender. Can the Minister please explain why excludable suppliers are not automatically disregarded in the same way as excluded suppliers?
While I understand that there may be some need for flexibility on discretion grounds, there is no mechanism in the Bill to decide where that flexibility should stand. That is extremely troubling given that grounds as serious as national security can be discretionary—that is outrageous. Can the Minister assure us that companies that are considered national threats will be excluded from contracts under the Bill? Will he ensure that contracting authorities will never be able to bypass this judgment and not disregard such suppliers during the process?
A similar problem exists with the debarment list. In his letter to Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 4 August, the Minister in the other place, Lord True, wrote that
“the debarment list is intended to focus on the most serious cases of supplier misconduct, where suppliers may pose a significant risk to contracting authorities or the public. It is not the case that every supplier which meets a ground for exclusion will be considered for inclusion on the debarment list. Rather, there will be a prioritisation policy which governs how cases are selected for investigation. It is likely that only a small number of cases will be considered each year.”
However, the Bill outlines no such qualification for ascension to the debarment list. As it is currently drafted, the only firm qualifications beyond the Minister’s wishes are mandatory and discretionary grounds for exclusion. Given the merry-go-round of Ministers we have seen over the past year, does the Minister not believe that it is right to put a mechanism in the Bill to provide clarity about the scope of the debarment list?
Will the Minister confirm that the Government’s intention for the debarment list is as Lord True laid out in his letter to Baroness Neville-Rolfe? If only the most serious cases of misconduct go on the debarment list, how can it be fair that those put on the list for discretionary reasons are still treated as excludable suppliers? If the Minister believes that a supplier poses a significant risk to the public, that supplier must be disregarded automatically from the process as an excluded supplier.
I have a further concern about the 30-day payment period down the supply chain. On Second Reading, the Paymaster General said that
“we will be paying the prime contractor within the 30-day period. People in the supply chain will be aware of the contract under which they are supplying to the prime, and we expect that 30-day payment to trickle all the way down”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2023; Vol. 725, c. 347.]
Many small and medium-sized enterprises in all our constituencies rely on prompt payment to keep afloat; they cannot rely on expectations of a trickle-down effect. The Minister may say that it will call into doubt the contract of the prime supplier, but how long will this take?
Jon Trickett
My hon. Friend is making a strong speech, although I wish her good luck if she is trying to persuade this ideologically driven Government to change their course. She may recall that three Prime Ministers ago—not so long ago in weeks or months, but some time ago in politics—the then Prime Minister advocated Brexit on two grounds: state aid to industry and procurement. Does my hon. Friend think the Government’s procurement policies are doing anything to level up the country socially, economically or otherwise?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting that. I think again of the example of Scotland, where procurement issues are being decided at the whim of Ministers. If anything, that is not levelling up; it is levelling down. We need a Procurement Bill that highlights and recognises small and medium-sized businesses, which often do fantastic work, ensure that their staff have good terms and conditions, and recognise trade unions. They should be given a fair chance at bidding for Government contracts paid for by public money, as my hon. Friend highlighted earlier.
Given how long colleagues on both sides of the House have to wait for responses from the Government, what steps will the Minister take to ensure that instances of late payment reported to the Government are dealt with promptly? In many cases, that could be the difference for an SME that stops it going under and having to hand redundancy notices to its staff. Does the Minister agree that putting strong enforcement down the supply chain in the Bill is the best way to guarantee that no supplier goes without the vital funds that it needs?
The Minister has heard many concerns this morning and I hope he will respond to all our pressing questions. Of course, I will be picking up many of these issues again in Committee.
Alex Burghart
I hesitate to remind the hon. Lady why funding for local authorities was reduced, but it had something to do with the behaviour of the Labour Government up to 2010. We all remember the letter that Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), left for his Lib Dem successor.
The fact of the matter is that we have highly capable local authorities across the country that manage public contracts very well and which have worked with us in the construction of the Bill to ensure they have a legal framework that helps them make the decisions they want. I have no desire at all to talk them down. I have seen their capabilities up close, and I know that they are looking forward to taking advantage of the powers they will get from the Bill.
I would also very, very gently say this to the hon. Member for Hemsworth. I know that this is political knockabout, but the statements he made about PPE procurement could have been taken to insinuate that Ministers made the awarding decisions. That is absolutely not the case. Those decisions—
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman heckles me with a smile on his face, but the fact is that those decisions were made by highly capable and competent civil servants whose decisions have been upheld in court. It is wrong to suggest that they were in any way corrupt when they were trying to serve the country at a time of utter crisis in order to get, as every Member of the House wanted, as much PPE as possible when the NHS needed it most. I have listened on a number of occasions to Opposition Members speaking in such a way that suggests that Ministers handed out the contracts. That is not the case, and it would be much better for the public discourse if Opposition Members did not suggest to members of the public that that had been so.
Let me move on to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It has been a pleasure to be able to work on the Bill with people in Northern Ireland, and the Bill is stronger as a result. We look forward to businesses of all sizes in England and Northern Ireland, and in Wales, benefiting from the new procurement legislation.
The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) chastised the Welsh Government for allowing Westminster to legislate for them. Me and my officials have had the most productive working with the Welsh Government and these mischaracterisations imply that this is Westminster telling Wales what to do. This has been a partnership between Westminster and Cardiff and between Westminster and Belfast. It is a wonderful example of nations working together.
G20
Jon Trickett Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
I know that this is an issue of concern for my hon. Friend, and it is right that he raises it and champions the case. I am pleased to tell him that we have sanctioned those people responsible, and we will continue to make sure we provide whatever support we can to the people who need our help.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
In the communiqué from the G20, the words “food”, “food supply” and “food scarcity” are mentioned 54 times. It is good that Britain is taking part in the global community’s fight to make sure that food is properly distributed, but last year, before the Ukraine war, one in nine Britons were driven to use a food bank. Is it not clear that the problem was not disruption of food supply but poverty—poverty driven by No. 10 and No. 11 when the Prime Minister was in the Treasury? Is it not clear that for the poor of Britain, hunger is a nightmare created by Downing Street?
The Prime Minister
The Chancellor is about to deliver a statement that will ensure that our economy is strong, that we support the most vulnerable and that we have a clear platform for growth. I urge the hon. Gentleman to wait for it.