Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill (Second sitting)
Kevan Jones ExcerptsTuesday 6th October 2020
(3 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill 2019-21 View all Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 October - (6 Oct 2020)
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Q
The Chair
Perhaps, if the question is to everyone, we will start with you, Dr Morgan, in the room, and then go to Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin.
Dr Morgan: My expertise is in private law—so, tort law—and I imagine that we will come on to that later. There, you have time limits of three years, six years, one year. In my view, there is no ultimate principled way of defending a particular time limit. Five years is obviously some kind of compromise. Ten years was originally proposed; that has been reduced to five. There seems to be no logical answer, certainly, as to that particular time period. It is a balancing act.
Professor Ekins: I agree with everything that Dr Morgan has just said. All I would add is that I presume five years has been chosen with a view to allowing a sizeable period of time to pass during which—[Inaudible]—can be brought in the customary fashion. After five years, a somewhat different regime obviously applies, although it might be too strong to call this a cut-off period. There is always something somewhat arbitrary about procedural time limits. As Dr Morgan said, three years and six years are used in civil law; the criminal law does not tend to do this so often, so I do not think this is a salient number—to my knowledge.
John Larkin: I agree. There is no magic in the number five; that is a matter of policy choice.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: On the second of those questions, which is whether the Attorney General’s decision not to prosecute could be challenged in court, I think that, yes, absolutely there is a risk of that, and I think the Minister, in a letter that he wrote to the Defence Committee, accepted that that was the case, but expressed the view that the courts would have to take account of the context that it is a quasi-judicial decision, and that they should respect the Attorney General’s decision. But I suspect that it is very strongly likely that it would be reviewed. How successful that would be is hard to say in the abstract, but it could be challenged, in my view.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: Criminal procedure is not my area, but I am not aware of any others in UK law. There are references to limitation statutes in other jurisdictions. I think that the example given is that, in French law, there is a 30-year period, which is very much longer and which apparently does not apply to war crimes, so that is almost the mirror image of what is in the Bill.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: It says that only exceptionally will there be a prosecution, so it is not a total amnesty after the five years. But even having the presumption after a time period is, as far as I am aware, unique in English criminal law. When we are talking about tort law, which is much more my area, limitation periods are absolutely standard, but in criminal procedure it is much more exceptional. I think that is why this has received so much more attention, media attention and public criticism than the civil law proposals.
Professor Ekins: As Jonathan Morgan says, there are precedents elsewhere for statutes of limitation in the criminal sphere in other jurisdictions, but they have not been a feature of English law, although, of course, this is quite a soft statute of limitations in so far as it provides no obstacle or bar to prosecutions after the five years. It certainly does not stop investigations. In fact, if one were to make a criticism of the Bill, one might say that it places no obstacle on continuing investigations, which might be thought to be one of the main mischiefs motivating of the Bill. If there has been no investigation, the fact that there is an investigation, and cogent evidence arises of a crime, will tend to beat back the presumption against prosecution, if one wants to call it the presumption against prosecution. So it is not quite right to my mind to say this is putting the cart before the horse and deciding against prosecution before one investigates.
In relation to the Attorney General and consent to prosecute, there are two stages. One is the prosecuting authority deciding whether or not the prosecution is warranted, and the Bill looks at some of the factors that should be taken into account in making that decision. That might be one way to think about part 1 of the Bill—it is framing the determination by the prosecuting authority. In addition to that, the Attorney General’s consent is required. They are not necessarily the same stage or the same act.
As to whether the Attorney General giving or withholding consent—more likely the withholding, although I suppose either—will be challenged in the courts, I think, very likely, yes. How much risk is there? I think that is an open question. I think there must be some risk that there will be a Human Rights Act challenge arguing for a narrow and restrictive reading of the Attorney General’s power to give or withhold consent, and that might end up requiring the Attorney General to give consent in circumstances where one might not otherwise expect it. It is possible the courts will not take that course, but I think it is a risk that parliamentarians should be aware of.
John Larkin: Yes. I am in agreement with Professor Ekins. Classically, the decision of an Attorney General to give consent to prosecution has been subject to very light-touch review. Here, although it is described in the clause heading as “Presumption against prosecution”, it is really more the establishment of an exceptionality test, and that of course gives a handle to anybody seeking to challenge the Attorney General, because what is or is not exceptional will be a matter ultimately for judicial determination. I think that challenges are almost inevitable, but they are by no means to be regarded as inevitably successful. I think the approach of the courts—one can see that in the Supreme Court challenge a year or so back to the certification by the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland in the Dennis Hutchings case—tends to be associated with the bestowal of a good deal of latitude to the responsible law officer.
Mr Jones
Q
John Larkin: The law is full of operative presumptions, from time to time, but the precise model here is something that I have not seen either in the UK or elsewhere.
Professor Ekins: I do not think the UK has tended to legislate about the decision to prosecute. There are a great many statutory requirements for Attorney General’s consent before prosecuting, so that is by no means unique, but the legislating to frame the prosecutor’s decision as to whether to initiate the prosecution is unusual.
Mr Jones
Q
Professor Ekins: Not to my knowledge, but it is difficult to sever it from the point about time. There is a difference between a Bill that does what you see in part 1 from day one and a Bill that does so after a certain period of time has passed, which is why the Bill refers, understandably, to the importance of finality if you have an investigation and further evidence has arisen. Those are all considerations that a prosecutor might well take into account anyway; it is just that Parliament is requiring them to be taken into account, framing when and how—[Inaudible.]
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
Q
John Larkin: I possess no qualifications to judge the reputational effectiveness of the Bill and its impact on military operations. What I have said to Policy Exchange is that many of the criticisms of the Bill are quite misplaced. It is not a blanket amnesty; in fact, it might be regarded as a fairly modest, proportionate measure.
Peter Gibson
Let us have both approaches.
Dr Morgan: Okay. To start with the second one, it seems to me that the problem in this area is lawfare or the judicialisation of war—whatever you want to call it. The extension of the European convention on human rights into this area as a result of the European Court’s decision in Al-Skeini, and the decision of our Supreme Court in Smith v. Ministry of Defence, which confirmed that and extended the law of tort into the battlefield, led to the erosion of combat immunity. To me, that should be the priority for any legislation on this difficult and multifaceted problem.
The section of the Bill that partly deals with the issue is the derogation provision and the duty on the Minister to consider derogation. It is not a duty to derogate; it is a duty to consider doing it, which is putting into statute the Government’s policy. It seems to me that that is valuable, although it does not change very much.
In its consultation paper published in June 2019, the Ministry of Defence said it was going to look at restatement of combat immunity, hand in hand with a no-fault compensation scheme for service personnel to pay damages on the full tort measure. Those two things should go together. I regret that last month, in reply to the consultation, it said that legislation on the issue is
“not being taken forward…at this time.”
I think it should be. The priority should be to restate combat immunity and, hand in hand with that, to have no-fault compensation for service personnel on the full compensation measure that you get if you bring a claim in law.
If that were done, it would help with the problem about the shorter limitation periods for tort claims—damages claims—that was raised several times at Second Reading. The British Legion has been quoted several times saying that that breaches the armed forces covenant. I do not want to get into that particular debate, but there is no question that service personnel might, in some fairly unusual situations, find their ability to bring damages claims caught by the proposals in part 2 of the Bill as it stands.
If the Ministry of Defence took forward the proposal that it called “Better combat compensation,” to have full compensation through the armed forces compensation scheme, those worries would fall away. If there was full compensation available without the need to bring a tort claim or negligence action against the Government, any limitations on the time periods for bringing tort claims would be an irrelevant question for service personnel.
Those are two reasons why I would revive what seems to have been the Ministry of Defence’s approach at one point, which was restating combat immunity and ensuring full, no-fault compensation. If you want me to give more detailed comments on the provisions of the Bill I can do that, but I would approach the issues in a quite different way than in the Bill that we have.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: The proposal to make that switch is in the joint paper produced by Richard Ekins, Tom Tugendhat and myself that I mentioned at the start. We said in that paper that that there is a case for having a more generous strand within the armed forces compensation scheme applying to those soldiers who cannot bring tort claims at law. In other words, if Crown immunity in warfare were to be revived—the Government already have the statutory power to do that, they do not need an Act of Parliament—and it was decided that you cannot bring claims at all, there would be a case for having a more generous approach within the armed forces compensation scheme to those people. I would not necessarily say the whole armed forces compensation scheme should be upgraded—I am aware of how expensive that would be. If we are going to restrict tort claims of a certain sub-category of injuries to service people, then it would be a good idea to balance that out by having full compensation.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: Yes. I confess that I have not looked at the limitation rules of the armed forces compensation scheme. It certainly does ensure cover.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: It also gets away from what we see in Smith v. Ministry of Defence: the allegation that the Land Rovers were not the right ones. Once you go to court investigating that in a negligence claim, it is getting into areas that should not be dealt with by a court in a negligence claim, it seems to me. If you are going to stop people from bringing such claims, you had better give them at least as good a compensation scheme without them needing to prove fault. That was our argument in the paper five years ago.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Q
Dr Morgan: I was going to comment on Major Campbell; I read about him in the newspaper on Saturday. It seems to me that his case would not have been addressed by these proposals. He was prosecuted in 2006 about an alleged offence in 2003, so that would have been within the five-year period for bringing the prosecution. It is only in 2020, after 17 years, that he has finally been cleared. The point was made in the Second Reading debate by a number of Members that perhaps the real vice is not so much very late prosecutions but the continued investigations by the Ministry of Defence without necessarily leading to a criminal prosecution at all. If I have understood the facts of Major Campbell’s case, it rather shows how a five-year soft cut-off for prosecutions is not going to solve that kind of problem at all.
Mark Eastwood
Q
Dr Morgan: The only point that I would add is that the fact that what is being proposed is internationally unusual I think increases the risk. I probably agree with Mr Larkin that the risk is modest, but I think the fact that it is a five-year time period, which to my knowledge is not visible in any other signatory state of the ICC, increases the risk.
Professor Ekins: The ICC should be focusing on allegations of atrocities, widespread wrongs and so on, rather than on what you might call manslaughter or questions of where the allegations are much more fine-grained, such as excessive force and so on, but there is a risk that the ICC does not always observe the limits that we apply in law to its jurisdiction. There have been instances of somewhat politically motivated decision making. There might still be a modest risk of the ICC going into the kinds of case that are likely to arrive at a place where a decision is made that it is not worth prosecuting because of particular circumstances, a lack of evidence and so on. The risk is probably quite—[Inaudible.] This will only arise if after five years a prosecutor decides that the public interest in prosecuting is not really there. I think it would only be possible for the ICC to justify intervention if there is a sufficiently strong case that would result in a conviction, and disagree about the public interest. That would sound like a surprising ground on which to debate a disagreement on whether a prosecution is warranted. I think it is possible but not very likely.
John Larkin: My point is that genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are not subject to the five-year time limit, so if the evidence emerges at eight years, for example, the process envisaged by this Bill—exceptionality assessment—simply does not apply; it will be determined as if it had occurred last week. That is an important point that is lost in legal—[Inaudible]—the international—[Inaudible]—of the Bill, but it has not been sufficiently appreciated that part 2 of the statute of Rome makes an exception for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They will be prosecuted if the evidence exists domestically, and therefore the risk of a lance corporal being hauled in front of the International Criminal Court seems to me to be fairly minimal.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: indicated assent.
The Chair
I think you have to speak as an answer, Dr Morgan, because we cannot otherwise hear what it is.
Dr Morgan: Retrospection is obviously going to add a further layer of controversy on top of this. The question really is whether it should apply to Iraq and Afghanistan after this lapse of time. If you believe that the Bill is the right solution to the problem, then it seems to me odd that that is not being proposed, but I am not convinced it is the right solution to the problem, so I am not going to argue for it to be retrospective.
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Morgan: We have to wait and see what it says. It would be curious if the Northern Ireland situation and the Iraqi and Afghan situations were dealt with in a different way on that issue of retrospection, so I agree with your point.
Professor Ekins: I would question the premise of the question, because as I read the Bill, it does apply to actions taken in the past. It will not foreclose prosecutions or proceedings already under way. It is a procedural change; if the Bill were enacted, say, tomorrow, a prosecution brought the day after that, more than five years after the events in question, would be subject to the regime in the Bill. I think it will apply to Iraq and Afghanistan, save insofar as there are prosecutions that have been initiated or proceedings that are under way. It will not apply to ongoing legal proceedings, but it will be a question sometimes, if I wanted to continue proceedings, where it might apply.
John Larkin: The Bill is, as Professor Ekins has said, significantly retrospective. If one looks at clause 15(6), it says:
“None of the provisions of Part 1 applies to proceedings instituted before the day on which the provision comes into force.”
As [Inaudible.]—
The Chair
Sorry, I think you were looking away from the microphone when you answered.
John Larkin: Clause 15 makes it clear that the Bill does not apply where proceedings have begun or are under way before the day it comes into force, but if they are not under way—[Inaudible]—clearly defined rules can crystallise shortly thereafter, and—[Inaudible]—subject to the exceptionality—[Inaudible.]
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Thank you both. My colleague, Kevan Jones, wants to come in quickly on investigations as well.
Mr Jones
Q
Emma Norton: I do not think you can have a set time limit for an investigation. I think an investigation needs to take as long as it takes, as long as it is being conducted expeditiously. The problem with the original responses to allegations of really serious abuse overseas was that those allegations were not responded to sufficiently, certainly in accordance with our convention-compliant obligations, which are that they needed to be sufficiently independent, sufficiently well-resourced, sufficiently prompt, adequate—all those kinds of things. I do not think that setting an arbitrary time limit on what would be criminal investigations is necessarily helpful. If we think about how police conduct criminal investigations domestically, although there are time limits in terms of issues around police bail and things like that, there are no hard and fast time limits within which police need to complete those investigations, although obviously they should do them as quickly as possible, because otherwise the defendant is prejudiced.
Mr Jones
Q
Emma Norton: In terms of how that would function overseas, I can see the benefit. It may be that when you have sufficient levels of civilian input into those investigations or oversight into those investigations, or judicial oversight into decisions to detain in theatre, then that may not be necessary; you could inject that level of requisite independence in those ways. This is something that would really benefit from a wider consultation with experts in criminal law and procedure, who are experienced in criminal law and procedure but also in the challenges of having investigations overseas. We have not had that.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: I am sorry, I cannot comment on criminal matters.
Emma Norton: I am not an expert in international criminal law, but if an otherwise credible allegation of a war crime was not proceeded with because of the Bill, that by definition increases the risk that those matters would be taken up by the ICC. That is something, of course, that our Judge Advocate General Jeff Blackett has very real concerns about and has spoken about. I know a lot of others also have very serious concerns about that.
We have heard a lot about veterans and their understandable fear and anxiety. We have heard less from very senior and formerw members of the armed forces who are really concerned about these provisions—the criminal side of the Bill as well as the civil side—and feel they are not in accordance with the Army’s values and standards. The message the Bill will project to the rest of the world about how the Army wishes to conduct itself is really serious, and they feel quite despairing about it. I was speaking to a former brigadier this morning who served 36 years, and he said that he was really ashamed of the Bill. So I think there is a real concern.
Carol Monaghan
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: I am struggling, to be honest with you. As Emma pointed out, this is all about civil claims that are brought against the Ministry of Defence; it is not about civil claims that are brought against service personnel, so I am really struggling to find any advantage for service personnel. When you are stripping away their access to section 33 of the Limitation Act, you are ignoring those exceptional cases in which a judge may think, “You know what? This case is out of time, but there are really good reasons why we should proceed with it.” It may be for reasons of accountability, which we have touched on, or it may be because that particular claimant deserves some justice. When you start stripping that away and then start stripping away the protections under the Human Rights Act, service personnel are left vulnerable—more vulnerable than civilians, more vulnerable than prisoners. I do not understand what advantage they are getting out of this.
Emma Norton: I agree with that. I do not have anything to add to that.
Mr Jones
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: There are, sir. They are published by the MOD on an annual basis. The MOD split the figures according to the type of claim that is being brought. What you are looking for is what they term employer’s liability claims. The figures are available online. I am happy to provide them, but I am sure you have quicker access to them than I do.
Mr Jones
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: They do split them. I do not have them to hand, unfortunately, but they separate them out, so maybe you will glean more from that. I am sorry that I cannot assist further. My understanding is that the Bill will affect the vast majority of the civil claims that are brought against the Ministry of Defence, which are the employer’s liability claims. The main provisions that the MOD break them down into are non-freezing cold injury claims, which are a mainstay of civil claims that are brought, and are in relation to negligent cold exposures, and noise-induced hearing loss, in relation to negligent exposure to loud noises. The others relate to industrial disease—things like asbestos—and then they have a quota that is defined as “other”. With a freedom of information request, we may be able to dive a bit more into those statistics. I hope that helps.
Sarah Atherton
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: That is a very good question. It depends on what they agree with their lawyer. In the industry, the norm is to provide something called a conditional fee agreement. Where you can establish that a claim has good prospects of success, you may, as a lawyer, offer a service person’s family, in relation to your example, a CFA, where you do not charge them unless you win. It is conditional on certain terms. These days, there are a lot of rules that regulate how much lawyers can charge. Normally, for example, and taking a rule of thumb, they cannot exceed the damages that you recover for the individual. In the past, there were fewer constraints on the extent of lawyers’ fees.
There are lots of lawyers out there who are specialists and who offer no win, no fee agreements to service personnel and their families. The only way that service personnel or their families may be required to pay legal costs normally is that they sometimes have to pay a chunk of their costs, related to what lawyers would define as unrecovered costs, which are things that they cannot recover from the Ministry of Defence, but as long as the claim is successful, in this context, it would be the Ministry of Defence that pays the lawyer’s bill. I hope that answers your question.
Stuart Anderson
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: I would say, on average, in my own practice, probably between 70% and 80% of inquiries that come in will be rejected because they are out of time. Forgive me, that is anecdotal and off the top of my head. I was not expecting that question but, if it gives you an idea, the vast majority of the inquiries we get are from people who are frankly out of time.
Mr Jones
Q
Ahmed Al-Nahhas: It should not—it definitely should not. You are taking away legal rights from service personnel who already have fewer legal rights as it is. You really are stripping the tree there.
The Chair
If no other Member wishes to ask a question, I thank both our witnesses for their contributions to the Committee this afternoon. Thank you very much indeed.
Examination of Witnesses
Martha Spurrier and Clive Baldwin gave evidence.
Chris Evans
Q
Clive Baldwin: Absolutely. Particularly in the situation of crimes that may have been committed overseas, it is very difficult for victims to achieve justice, for many understandable reasons, in those cases. This makes it even more difficult, in that after five years it becomes the exception rather than the rule to prosecute. This is just focusing on part 1, the criminal side. It does run the serious risk of creating injustice.
Mr Jones
Q
Clive Baldwin: No, I am not aware of any international law or even system that has something like that. Some countries have statutes of limitations—absolute time limits for the prosecution of minor offences, or relatively minor offences. Certainly, when it comes to war crimes, as I have said, there is a very strong international law, under the law of armed conflict, that there should be no limitation period for war crimes.
As you say, this is quite a strange law. It would create a very strange situation and I think, as Martha was saying, that it will have a very chilling effect, not just on prosecutions but even on criminal investigations, because those doing the investigation will know that there will be a presumption against prosecution.
Mr Jones
Q
Clive Baldwin: Internationally, there are standards, as with the independence of the judiciary, that prosecutors should be independent and not subject to interference by politicians or Ministers on individual cases. Of course, Ministers may be at the head of the prosecution system. Some countries do this better than others, and there are very different types of systems. In the United States, for example, Attorneys General are elected, which creates its own political problems. However, the move has generally been very much towards making prosecutors, and that prosecutorial decision to prosecute or not, as robustly independent as possible.
One country that had a similar system to the UK was Kenya. When it had a major constitutional reform, it made sure that the Attorney General became a very apolitical, non-political position, because of the importance of the Attorney General in making these decisions about prosecutions.
Chris Evans
Q
Clive Baldwin: Yes. As an organisation that works very closely on international criminal justice, including with the International Criminal Court, I would say that this Bill, unamended, would probably significantly increase the risk of UK service personnel and others facing investigations from the International Criminal Court, or perhaps in other countries, on the principle of universal jurisdiction for international crimes such as war crimes and torture—universal jurisdiction being that principle that a crime like torture should be prosecuted anywhere. There is a duty under international law that countries have to criminalise, or make it possible to prosecute, or extradite, anyone suspected of torture found in their territory.
The Bill, unamended, would increase that risk because it does not exclude all forms of international crimes—war crimes and torture. The International Criminal Court and others will consider whether the UK is willing and able to genuinely prosecute such offences, and given that the Bill would include those offences, would create this triple lock and would create effectively a presumption against prosecution after five years for those offences, it creates the serious risk that the UK would not be considered willing to prosecute offences after five years. That would increase the risk that the ICC or other countries would seek to prosecute such offences.
Martha Spurrier: I agree. The phrase to remember is that, when looking at whether to prosecute, the ICC will think about whether the home country is willing and able to bring forward a prosecution. If you have a stated legislative intention from Parliament, with a triple lock and with a schedule that you have said you are not going to include torture and war crimes in, that telegraphs pretty clearly to the ICC and others that the UK Government and UK prosecutors are unwilling and unable, and therefore that those prosecutions would have to take place elsewhere.
Chris Evans
Q
Clive Baldwin: No, for the reasons you say. My organisation works a lot on these situations of violent conflict and the intersect between human rights law and the law of armed conflict, and we are seeing a breakdown in what is the beginning and the end of an armed conflict, what is the battlefield and what decisions are made in which country—you mentioned drones, but there are other decisions made within a country, and cyber-warfare is coming.
The artificial distinction of an overseas operation with a clear beginning, a clear theatre and a clear end is one that is very much breaking down. The distinction of when an armed conflict begins and ends is becoming murkier in many ways, especially non-international armed conflict. The idea of having one rule for overseas operations and one for domestic operations will be increasingly artificial, and that lack of clarity about the real application of such situations and such laws will be another danger of this Bill.
Martha Spurrier: The definition, as Clive says, is unclear but it is also over-broad. In my mind, there is no justification for including in that definition things such as peacekeeping missions. What the definition should be focused on is restricting those powers to active hostilities, which could then include, as you say, a future-looking way of envisaging modern warfare, but should still be restricted only to active hostilities. There is simply no justification for taking these extraordinary powers any wider.
Mr Jones
Q
Clive Baldwin: Speaking from personal experience in Kosovo and Bosnia, and from the experience of my organisation, the rules and laws that apply to overseas armed forces in these operations vary very much from time to time. You may have formal peacekeeping operations, where the armed forces have to act as domestic police officers and do domestic policing work, or you may have a strange and unclear overlap. To some degree, that was the situation in Iraq in the last decade, especially as the occupation formally ended after one year in 2004, although British forces remained for four or five years after that with special powers. Sometimes you have stated forces agreements between countries, and sometimes you do not, so it is very unclear. The actual criminal law, and crimes that have been committed by forces or that are alleged to be committed by forces also vary from war crimes in the battlefield to war crimes in occupation, but if you—[Interruption.]
The Chair
We cannot hear you, Mr Baldwin, because we have a Division in the House of Commons that requires the bell to ring. I am suspending the sitting for 15 minutes and we will come back to your answer to that question. The Clerks will remain in the room, so if there are any unexpected issues they will remain in contact with you.
Mr Jones
Q
Clive Baldwin: It is important to distinguish between the three types of investigation that the MOD and service personnel have faced in the last 20 years. One is public inquiries, which should be about the general situation and general problems. They should be for learning lessons and to find out the truth about what went on. There are then civil claims that are brought against the Ministry of Defence, sometimes by service personnel and sometimes by others who have claimed to be victims, some of which have been upheld and some of which have not. Then there are criminal investigations.
I am not sure about this Bill. Improving investigations would be better done in a wholescale reform of the military criminal justice system, which we hope will happen in the next armed forces Act and has been promised for many years, that is based on rights, fairness to the accused, those investigated and alleged or real victims, and some basic human rights principles, such as double jeopardy, which has already been mentioned. Generally, no one should be prosecuted twice, once finally acquitted or convicted for the same offence, and they should not face repeat investigations for the same offence.
Strengthening of those conditions and some fundamental principles, not just of human rights law but of English tradition, such as habeas corpus, having judges control detention and having every detainee brought before a judge, not only deters abuse but protects those doing the detention, because they can say, “We had a record and the judge controlled the detention.” Records made at the time make it much easier to investigate afterwards. There are a lot of recommendations for the justice system. They are probably better done in a military justice reform Act rather than in this Bill.
Martha Spurrier: I agree with Clive. There are plenty of good and constructive things that one could do to the military justice system in order to make it fairer for all concerned. This Bill does not do that.
There is a danger in saying that the way to cure the deficiencies in the Bill is to effectively add a section on investigations. That would deal with the fact that investigations are missing, but it would not deal with the fact that what you have in the rest of the Bill is a system being set up that creates a culture of impunity in the armed forces. It means that bringing criminal prosecutions for the most serious offences imaginable will become much harder. That is why I think both Clive and I are now saying that this simply is not the vehicle.
This Bill cannot be cured by adding things in about investigations. That is something that will have to be done separately. There is a real danger of losing focus on the egregious parts of this Bill, which will damage the standing of the armed forces abroad and damage the UK’s reputation as a leader in human rights. That is why you have seen many people, including people from the military, coming out with grave concerns about this Bill, whether you take Lord Guthrie or the Judge Advocate General. These are people with high standing in the military who have real concerns about what this piece of legislation could do to the integrity of the British armed forces.
Chris Evans
Q
Clive Baldwin: On the international side, which is what my organisation works on—I will be brief, because Liberty’s focus is on this—there are many reasons why claims, brought both by members of the armed forces and by others in different parts of the world, may take some time. We have seen them on rendition cases and others in the last year. It is partly because people may not be aware of damages in a case, or because evidence did not come out, as the only people aware of the crimes that may have been committed were those who suffered them and the persons who were responsible, or because other types of claims could be made. There are many reasons why, particularly for overseas operations, flexibility around time limits would be vital in order to secure justice.
On an international level, particularly when it comes to torture, there are quite a lot of international standards that say countries need to give an effective remedy to people who suffer torture allegations. It needs to be a fair system. Sometimes it is not possible to have trials—this has been mentioned about the Kenya cases from 70 years ago—but it still needs to be a fair system that has a degree of flexibility. Something that looks like a very hard time stop perhaps risks creating some severe injustice.
Martha Spurrier: As someone who has practised law and argued these kinds of cases before judges, equitable is the watchword. Bright-line rules, in the context of what are often extremely complicated textured cases, very rarely give out justice or achieve something equitable for either victims or perpetrators. The courts have a whole range of powers available to them, in [Inaudible] and beyond, to prevent cases from being brought—be it before or after a time limit—if those cases are unmeritorious or are being brought for abusive reasons. For example, you can have your legal aid certificate removed, or your claim can be struck out. You can have your funding withdrawn if any dishonesty offences are proven. There are a whole array of tools that judges can and do use routinely to make sure that justice is done, and that includes justice being done in a timely fashion.
The danger of putting a hard stop is that the kinds of cases that you have alluded to—whether you are talking about noise-induced hearing loss, some other complicated medical issue or an issue entirely beyond the control of any of the parties to the litigation. That case, falling three days the wrong side of that rule, would not be heard even it was a meritorious case. That seems to me to be arbitrary injustice. What should instead continue is judicial discretion over what is equitable for both parties. Of course, both parties will be represented and they can—and, believe me, they do—argue very forcefully on both sides, either to extend or not extend time limits. Again, it feels to me as though people speculate that this is a problem that exists in the justice system, but it is certainly not one that is statistically significant or that I have ever experienced as a lawyer.
Civil Service Appointments
Kevan Jones Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Michael Gove
My hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee, makes a very important point. David Frost has already appeared in front of Select Committees—the Select Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union and also the House of Lords European Union Committee—and I am sure that he would be delighted to take up that invitation. As my hon. Friend quite rightly points out, the building and maintenance of alliances are critical to projecting our interests and protecting our values globally.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Can I add my thanks to Mark Sedwill for his work both in security and as Cabinet Secretary? Mr Frost is a political appointment. He has been given a seat in the other place, but he is not a Minister; he is a special envoy. Picking up on the question that the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has just raised, will the ISC and other Committees that scrutinise his work be able to summon him before them to scrutinise what he is doing? That is important if we are going to have clear parliamentary oversight of his role. I think that needs clarifying, because the Minister in his reply to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee did not answer that question.
Michael Gove
I am sorry if I failed to provide the clarity required, but I am sure that for all Select Committees, including the very important ISC, David Frost will make himself and his colleagues available so that he can answer questions.
Local Government Finance
Kevan Jones Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will touch on that report later in my speech, but it highlights the impact of 10 years of cuts to our local councils and public services at a time of rising demand, particularly for adult social care and children’s services—the expensive people-based services. Given that the councils with greatest social need and the worst health inequalities have a limited tax base to make up for any financial losses, the problem is that the so-called fair funding formula could be what tips them over the edge.
I know that the Minister for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth, the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), will stand up and pronounce that the finance settlement that we are set to agree next Wednesday shows that he is investing in local services, but he is a lone voice in saying so. That shows just how detached the Government are from the sector that they are here supposedly to represent, because the truth is that since 2015—just five years—local government funding across England has fallen by 32%.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that local government is also fearful of last week’s rumours that the Chancellor will ask Departments to cut another 5% from their budgets?
Andrew Gwynne
That is very worrying, and I hope the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will stand up against it. Those of us who have been a Member of this House for some time will remember that the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Lord Pickles, was only too keen to offer up the maximum cuts from his Department, meaning that local government in England was the part of the public sector that was clobbered the hardest.
It is even worse than the 32% fall over five years because, since the Conservative party entered government in 2010, funding for local councils has been slashed by more than half. We have all seen the consequences of that neglect: the unrepaired roads, the uncollected bins, the cuts to adult learning and the closed children’s centres. Under Conservative leadership, almost a fifth of our libraries have been forced to close because of cuts to funding. One of the previous Labour Government’s greatest achievements, the Sure Start programme, has had its funding slashed in half, forcing as many as 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres to close since 2010.
Andrew Gwynne
As the hon. Gentleman states, the block grant is set by this place, so the Welsh Assembly Government have had to ensure that their spending meets the money granted by Westminster. I have been sent a budget briefing from the Welsh Government about their intentions not only to increase the adult social care budget in the year ahead, but to give a real-terms increase in local government spending. I welcome that overwhelmingly, because Welsh councils, like English councils, need good public services.
Mr Kevan Jones
Durham County Council has lost £224 million in core spending since 2010, and the Government’s direction of travel has been to move the expenditure on to the council tax precept. The problem for County Durham is that more than 50% of its properties are in band A so, irrespective of how much the council tax is put up, it will do nothing to plug the gap left by the reduction in core spending.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend is right on that. Councils cannot change their council tax base overnight. If their properties are predominantly in bands A and B, that is the council tax base for that local area. Governments of all political persuasions over the years have always recognised that not every council has the same baseline and the same ability to bring in enough money for basic, decent statutory public services, which is why we had the rate support grant in the 1980s and the revenue support grant from the 1990s onwards. Those things were in recognition of the need for a redistribution of funding to areas that cannot generate enough funding from council tax and business rates alone.
Andrew Gwynne
I reiterate what I just said: it is for the Conservatives to come forward with their proposals. We will view those in the round with other ideas and see whether we can reach a consensus. I know that there are different views on both sides of the House about a system of insurance, but I am not personally in favour of that. I think that actually the easiest and quickest way to resolve the social care crisis in local government is to make sure that we fund social care through local government.
I want to come on to the issue that could make the situation that I have set out even worse for many of the same local authorities that are already at breaking point. The research from the Local Government Association has exposed the so-called fair funding review for what it really is: a cynical plan that risks leaving more sick and vulnerable people without the care they need. If implemented in the way that the LGA has calculated—and MHCLG apparently told the LGA that its assumptions were along the lines that the Ministry is going—then funding for social care for older people is due to drop in London, the west midlands, the north-east and the north-west, while the south-east and the south-west will see an increase in many areas. For young adults, the largest decreases will be seen in the north-west, the north-east, Yorkshire, the east midlands and west midlands, while the south-east and east of England will see some of the largest increases.
This research from the Tory-led LGA has shown that many of the areas that voted for, and put their trust in, the Conservatives for the first time in 2019—the so-called red wall seats—will see some of the largest cuts to social care funding if the plans go ahead in the way that has been outlined. Indeed, three quarters of those red wall constituencies—the seats that gave the Prime Minister his majority—will see millions of pounds of funding diverted from their hard-pressed councils to another part of the country. The LGA Labour group estimates that that is £300 million of funding that will be funnelled from less affluent councils to the more affluent communities.
But even worse than both those factors is the effect that there will be on the most deprived communities. The 10 most deprived local authorities in England will see, on average, a 13% cut, while the wealthiest communities in England will see their budgets grow by 13%. This model was devised back in 2014 at the height of coalition austerity; perhaps it was then politically expedient for the Conservatives to divert funds to leafy Tory shires at the expense of more deprived metropolitan and urban communities. But given that the Prime Minister’s claim that austerity is over, divvying up an ever-shrinking pot differently is so last Parliament—in fact, it is so the last two Parliaments before the last Parliament—and it is certainly no longer politically expedient.
Last week, I wrote a letter, with council leaders, to the red wall Members on the Government Benches, urging them to speak out against a plan that will see cuts to adult social care—one of the largest cost pressures facing all local councils, particularly those in deprived areas. I know from some of the responses that Government Members have given to the press that the calculations from the LGA have been dismissed as speculation. I say to those Members that this analysis was produced by the cross-party LGA and was released officially to support councils as they plan their budgets in the coming years. The analysis that the LGA produced was also informally shared with MHCLG, whose officials privately confirmed that the assumptions in the analysis are sound.
This new research is also consistent with what we already knew. Last year, researchers in Liverpool warned that removing deprivation from the funding formula would see the 20% most deprived areas lose £390 million a year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that removing deprivation from the formula would likely hit councils in inner London and most other urban areas, like Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bristol and Kingston upon Hull, where deprivation tends to be not just concentrated but over-concentrated. The IFS states that
“proposals by the government to base assessments of councils’ needs for spending on services like homelessness prevention, public transport, waste collection, libraries, and planning on population only would shift funding from councils serving deprived areas to those serving more affluent areas.”
It has also warned that the evidence base to justify this decision is weak.
Mr Jones
It is not just about social care. County Durham, under the formula that is proposed, is likely to lose £39 million in public health funding, whereas Surrey County Council will actually increase its budget by £14 million. I look forward to my new Conservative colleagues in County Durham arguing how that can be fair to County Durham.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not just about social care, but the LGA has published the fair funding review calculations based on social care. It has also done the calculations for children’s services, for the foundation formula and for the public health grant. I would hazard a guess that they show exactly the same trends. He is absolutely right about County Durham, because the LGA’s analysis shows that the change in funding there since 2015 alone is already 29% down. The change in funding from the fair funding formula would equate to another 6.71% reduction—a £10,327,679 cut—for his constituency. Contrast that with Beaconsfield, for example, where there would be a 17.5% increase—nearly an extra £15 million of funding. That is not fair by any stretch of the imagination.
The issue is really straightforward for the Government. If they do not agree with the analysis, the response is simple: follow up on the promise made by the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), at the LGA conference in January and publish the exemplifications of the funding formula so that we can see exactly what the impact is. It really is that simple. If the LGA assumptions are now wrong, show us. Let councils, councillors and Members of this House see the exemplifications; we will then know how fair the fair funding review is to the different parts of England.
My worry is that what we know is just the thin end of the wedge. We know that the five least-deprived local authorities have, on average, seen their budgets grow—the least deprived local authority, Wokingham, saw its budget grow by 18%—but that has been gained at the expense of the most deprived. The top 5% most deprived local authorities face cuts of 22% on average. That is not fair. As I said at the start of my contribution, we know that those same local authorities do not have the same ability to raise income from council tax.
This is a scandal for those who claim to be one nation Conservatives. I genuinely believe that across all political parties not one of us stood for election to come to this place and introduce measures that will make life more difficult not just for the people we represent but for the poorest communities in this country. I like to give the benefit of the doubt even to Members from the Conservative party, so I hope that today Members from all parties will support our motion, or at the very least intensively and strenuously lobby Ministers and take a stand against what could cause misery for their constituents. This will be a major test of Conservative Members’ commitment to their constituents. I am sure that local people will not forgive or forget if they fail to stand up for those who put their trust in them at the election, knowing what we already know.
Finally, I say this to Ministers: be open, be transparent and publish the exemplifications. If they are anything like what the LGA, the LGIU and other local government experts fear, scrap the scheme and go back to the drawing board. A fair funding review that is genuinely fair will have our support.
Jake Berry
I am very pleased that we are making such good progress in south Yorkshire. The hon. Gentleman and I, along with many colleagues across the House, welcome that. He is correct to say that mayoral combined authorities have retained their 100% business rate retention for next year. Following the successful pilots, including in areas such as Lancashire—the hon. Member for Blackburn (Kate Hollern) and I have benefited from that—any further business rate retention will be part of the spending review process.
Devolution is particularly pertinent to areas such as south Yorkshire. Every deal so far has been bespoke, but as part of our ambition to level up powers we have written to every existing regional Mayor and asked them to take on new powers so that they can truly drive the ambition for the region. I am delighted to tell the House that one of the first to respond was Ben Houchen, the Mayor for Tees Valley. Not only has he made the Tees fly again, by saving Tees Valley airport; he is also making his economy fly again, by working with the Government on a suite of new powers to unleash the full potential of Teesside and everyone who lives there. In addition, the Government are talking to Cumbria, West Yorkshire, East Riding, Hull, County Durham and Lancashire about their ambitions for change in their areas.
Already, 50% of communities in the north have, to coin a phrase, taken back control through devolution. More areas want to be part of our devolution revolution, and we will ensure that they get that opportunity. Later this year, the Government will publish their devolution White Paper, setting out the Government’s ambition for full devolution across England. Through this White Paper, we will work with everyone in our local government family to ensure that they are truly empowered to be partners in growth.
As this Government unite and level up cities, towns and coastal and rural areas across our country, we acknowledge that our town centres are absolutely at the heart of a growing economy. They are the ground on which local jobs are created and small businesses are nurtured, and they inject billions of pounds into the local economy. That is why, through our £3.6 billion town deal fund, we are directly intervening in local communities. We are working with local areas and councils on more than 200 investment plans that have the potential to transform their economies.
The local Member of Parliament is able to sit on the town deal board in each and every one of our town deal areas. That ensures that Members of Parliament from across this House, whichever party they represent, have the opportunity to be an active part of the conversation in driving local growth in their communities. This is a new approach that I cannot recall previous Governments taking. It is about drawing on the talents of every single Member of this House with a town deal.
I now want to briefly mention the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn)—this will probably ruin his career. He attended his first town board meeting on 23 January. He then approached me just outside the Division Lobby, fizzing with enthusiasm.
Mr Kevan Jones
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I might be wrong but I thought this debate was entitled “Local Government Finance”. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) on the Front Bench made a very good speech about finance, but we have heard very little about it from the Minister, who has talked instead about devolution and other things to do with local government. Could I have some advice, please?
Mr Speaker
I think if we look in detail at both speeches, we will see that they are around the finance package and the delivery of different projects. I think there is an interconnection there, but I am sure that if we did drift too far the Minister would come straight back into line. For the moment, I am more than happy.
Jake Berry
If we double the council tax that is paid by local people, then I will start to take lectures from the hon. Gentleman about what we should do. He should remember his own record. He entered Parliament in 2005 and was here when all this was happening; perhaps he would like to recall that.
Taken as a whole, this protection will mean that we see the lowest average council tax rise since 2016, ensuring that taxpayers continue to receive the breadth and quality of services that they enjoy today without, as they had under former Labour Administrations, the imposition of crippling tax hikes and rocketing monthly bills.
As we look towards future settlements, the Government intend to conduct a full multi-year spending review. We are already putting more money in this year, but the spending review will give us the opportunity once again to look at pressures in the round and provide councils with the certainty they need. We have committed to a fundamental review of business rates. As part of that work, we will need to consider carefully the link between the review and retention by local councils. We will of course continue to discuss that and the future direction with our partners in local authorities.
Everyone in this House wants to refresh the way we allocate funding, so that it reflects the most up-to-date needs and resources of local areas. That is key work to achieve the agenda set out by the Prime Minister, because dealing with local government finance is part of levelling up our entire country. We have made good progress with the review of relative needs and resources—or the fair funding review, as it is known—and I want to take this opportunity to thank Members on both sides of the House, some of whom have made constructive contributions to the process. The direction of the review has been welcomed by many, including many in local government, but now we have to deliver a sustainable approach, and we look forward to continuing to work with the whole sector.
The review is a large and complex project. Expectations are high on all sides, which is why we are committed to sharing emerging results with local government as soon as possible. We plan to share significant elements for technical discussions in the coming weeks and months. That will include formulas in the review that represent a majority of local government spending. However, I should remind Members that needs formulas represent only a small aspect of the review. As the LGA pointed out, it is simply not possible to predict the overall outcome for individual local authorities or groups of authorities and therefore the extent to which funding may move between authorities. Of course, we will need to consider the review in the context of the outcome of the planned spending review. We look forward to working with colleagues and sharing those results with the sector and the House shortly. I also look forward to updating the House once we have finalised proposals for our new and exciting settlement for local government. Finally—
Jake Berry
I have more—I can keep going.
I welcome the subject of today’s debate, because it gives us an opportunity to look at the exciting programme that this Government have for devolution, levelling up and supporting our towns. However, it would be remiss of any Member not to take this opportunity to thank everyone who works in local government. I often feel that being a councillor is a thankless task, and I want to ensure that they hear a clear message from this House today that, on a cross-party basis, we thank them and support them in their work. Of course, councils are not just run by locally elected politicians. They have fantastic officers who support the work of the council and local communities. [Interruption.] While the Labour party seems to think it is funny that I want to thank people who work in local authorities for their work, Conservative Members think that it is important to do so.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) highlighted what has been happening over the past 10 years, which is that local government as a sector has taken the biggest cuts. Added to that, Departments might have to find another 5%, and no matter what the Minister says in his reply about levelling up and making promises to northern councils, it will be very difficult, because this Government and the coalition Government had a clear policy to move funding from more deprived to more affluent areas.
Interestingly, the Minister said in reply to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) that he was here because he wanted to make the point that he was the Northern Powerhouse Minister. With one sole exception, the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) has been the only new Conservative northern MP who has sat through this debate. We had a brief interlude from the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who stayed for about 10 minutes, and I did spot briefly the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). If this new army—supposedly—of new Conservative MPs want to argue for their region, they should be doing it in here and they are not setting a very good example. I will work with them to argue why the Government got it wrong on local government finances over the past 10 years.
It is not just me saying that: the National Audit Office and the Centre for Cities have clearly demonstrated that money has moved from northern councils—the more deprived areas—to the more leafy suburbs in the south-east. That has not been done by accident; it has been deliberate design and policy. If the Minister levels up the system and makes it fair, I will fully support that, but that would be very unpopular among some of his colleagues in the south-east.
We have a situation now, after the last 10 years, where County Durham has lost £224 million in grant. Core spending per dwelling in County Durham stands at £1,727, whereas the figure for Surrey is £2,004, so it is clear that deprived areas such as County Durham are getting less core spending, and that has been deliberately designed by this Government.
The cover for that is the so-called “fairer funding formula”. That is complete nonsense, because it is fundamentally flawed in two respects and it is a disguise to use the word “fairer”. It starts from the premise that the needs of every single area and council are the same, when that is clearly not the case; I will give examples later. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East highlighted, it also works on the basis that each council has the ability to raise local finance on an equal basis; I am sorry, but they don’t.
Mr Jones
I will give way in a minute.
They don’t, because, for example, in County Durham over 50% of our properties are in band A, so, no matter how much we put up the council tax, we will not—unlike more affluent areas, with larger numbers of Ds, Cs and even Gs in some cases—be able to bridge the gap that has resulted from the withdrawal of core funding.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am grateful. The right hon. Gentleman seems to imply that somehow shire counties are getting a better deal from central Government in terms of spending allocation than metropolitan areas, but that is absolutely the reverse of the truth. The reality is that the shire counties get less than half as much as the metropolitan areas allocated from central funds, and that is why our council tax is, in some areas, twice as much.
Mr Jones
Yes, but I have to say that in the hon. Gentleman’s area, North Yorkshire, the ability to raise council taxes is a lot better than in County Durham and others. I am not talking about a metropolitan council; I am talking about County Durham. In Surrey—Woking—and other areas in the south, the core spending has not been reduced at all. So the hon. Gentleman should be shouting from the rooftops about the unfairness of the current formula.
The other issue—
Mr Jones
I will give way in a minute; I know the Minister gets very excited when I make speeches.
The other issue is the ability of local councils to raise finance through, for example, the distribution of business rates. To be fair to County Durham, it is trying some ambitious plans for economic development to get business rates up, but Durham’s ability to raise extra funding through business activity is not at all comparable with that of, for example, the City of Westminster.
Jake Berry
I just wonder if I could recommend to the right hon. Gentleman’s reading the Government’s December 2018 fairer funding review consultation, in which we specifically deal with the point he has raised about differing council tax bases. So it is not correct to say that this is not dealt with in the fairer funding review. The relevant paragraph is 3.2.2 on page 50 of the December 2018 consultation document.
Mr Jones
The Minister says that, but then he actually has a situation such as the following one, based on the funding figures put out at the moment—I accept we have not had the final decision. Under the formula for public health funding—and I supported public health funding going back to local councils—County Durham was forecast to lose £19 million, or 35% of its budget, whereas Surrey will increase its budget by £14 million. I am sorry, but that just cannot be right when comparing the two areas in terms of deprivation and health needs. The Minister may say what he likes, but in the past 10 years that has been the direction of travel. If he levels it up and changes it suddenly as Northern Powerhouse Minister, he will have my 100% support, but I doubt whether he will be able to do that. The promises that he and others have made to northern councils are going to be very limited.
On the point about need, there are two areas with which all local councils have been struggling—adult social care and looked-after children. Again, to work on the basis that need for all councils in those areas is the same is to start from the wrong premise. For example, since 2010 demand for children’s social care has increased by £7.2 billion but central Government support has halved. That has pushed demand on to local councils, which have had to make very difficult decisions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said, these services are not optional—they must be provided, by law. If we look at the national figures, in 2010, 54 children per 10,000 of population were in social care. By 2019, that had risen to 65—an increase of 20%. If we look at the figures for the north-east, the figure is 101 children in care per 10,000 of population. In the south-east of England, the figure is 53, and in Surrey there are only 37 children in care per 10,000 of population.
The demand on councils such as County Durham and others in the north-east, and in other urban areas, is far greater than it is on Surrey. Demand for statutory services, which councils have to provide, is going up and they are very costly. At the same time, core funding from the Government is being taken away from some areas and redistributed to areas such as Surrey, which is not just flatlining but receiving an increase in funding. I am sorry, but that just cannot be fair.
I said at the start of my speech that the direction of travel has been pork barrel politics of the worst type, doling out money to people who vote Conservative in certain parts of the country. The problem for the Conservative party is that the pork barrel has got bigger. The big test will be whether the Government can actually spread that around the country and meet all the pledges they have made. I doubt whether they can, because this has not just happened in local government funding. On fire and police, the direction of travel has not just been cuts, but moving revenue collection to local taxpayers. For example, the Government announced an increase in the amount of money going into policing, but that has been moved on to local taxpayers. Councils like Durham County Council are less able, because of their council tax base, to raise that type of financing.
I do not like using the phrase “fairer funding formula review”, because I do not think it is that at all. I doubt whether the new system will be, either. A lot of promises have been made and we shall have to wait and see whether they will actually be met. I will work with anyone to ensure that County Durham gets a fair hearing. I am sad that my new Conservative colleagues are not here today to join me in demanding fairer funding for County Durham, but I will certainly press the case for County Durham to receive the fair funding deal it wants.
I will end with a point raised by the Minister. I came from local government. I was a councillor for 11 years. I respect, and am very grateful for, the work done by councillors of all parties. They are remunerated at a very low level for the amount of work they do. However, I find it a bit difficult to take it from this Government, who have demonised certain people in local government over the past few years and used them as scapegoats for decisions that have been taken—[Interruption.] The Minister says codswallop, but I remember—as I am sure we will witness again in the next few weeks in the local government elections—the Government using the issue of pay and so on in local government to argue that local councils were being profligate. Those are diversionary tactics to remove attention from the core issue, which is that the Government have decimated local government over the past 10 years. We shall wait and see happens in the review, but I shall continue to make the case to ensure that the people of County Durham get the funding and services they require from what is a very good council, and to ensure that the Government have a formula funding that is not only fair but equal across the country, and recognises need.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a privilege to wind up this important debate. We all believe in the power of local public services, but you can’t do it on the cheap.
May I congratulate Government Members who have made their maiden speeches today? The hon. Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), for Keighley (Robbie Moore) and for Orpington (Mr Bacon) all displayed a real sense of place and community.
May I also thank my fellow Labour Members for their contributions? My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) is, of course, the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which has done a great deal of work on local government finance and devolution in particular. He was very clear that unless we address the crippling pressure on adult social care and children’s services, there will be a £10 billion funding gap. He also commented on the real pressure on and costs for neighbourhood services, which we all see in our communities. Many of the services on which we rely have had to be removed so that adult social care and children’s services can be kept going.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) pointed out that the red wall Tories were all absent from this debate, even though the areas they represent—[Interruption.]
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) is waving, but he has not been here for most of the debate.
Jim McMahon
Better late than never. The hon. Gentleman has missed contributions highlighting the impact of austerity and cuts on many of the seats now represented by Conservative MPs. It is little wonder that the actual formula—the data, analysis and impact—has not been shared with the House at all. Why is that? The answer is that the Government realised that they need to go back—[Interruption.] I am going to continue, so that the Minister has time to respond.
Council tax increases generate very different amounts of money, depending on the locality and its funding base. A 5% increase in Wokingham would generate £5.2 million, while the same percentage increase in Knowsley would generate just half that amount, even though both areas have a similar population base. That is no way to fund adult social care. There is a genuine postcode lottery whereby house price valuations that are nearly 30 years old determine whether somebody gets looked after in their old age. I just do not think that is a fair way to do it.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on her fantastic maiden speech. What stood out in particular for me was the sense of the power of community. In spite of deindustrialisation and the real pressures faced through austerity, it is the power of people and place that binds and makes communities. The Government just need to be a bit more on their side in future, compared with the past 10 years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) highlighted that £300 million has been taken from his local authority budget, and noted that the fair funding review is far from fair. It takes money from areas of high deprivation and directs it to more affluent areas, which is absolutely the opposite of fair.
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) highlighted a £130 million cut and its impact on neighbourhoods. My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) highlighted the important role that councillors play in making sure that we have strong local leadership, but they need Government on their side. Far too often, when we ask the Government to step up and to do what is right, they are late in doing so, like some Members arriving in the Chamber. The example was given of the Government being far too late in responding to the cladding issues facing many tower blocks. I am afraid that that is just not good enough.
The truth is that the Government do not want to talk about finance. They know that they are not on strong ground on that issue. They certainly do not want to give any detail about the fair funding review, because it would highlight just how unfair the review really is. I am glad that the Ministers are sitting down, because this will surprise them: we are not going to accept the amendment tabled in the Prime Minister’s name. It does not mention finance; it talks about devolution. The Prime Minister wants to be able to pretend that his flavour of devolution is all about giving people power, but that is not what we have experienced.
Under this Government, many parts of this country have been denied devolution. There is no clear framework to enable local areas to know exactly what types of powers can be devolved to them. What we see with this Government is a flavour of devolution that goes from Ministers to Mayors, whereas Labour recognises that to give real power to communities, we need to start off in neighbourhoods and work up to the nation. Neighbourhoods and communities have not been central to the Government’s devolution agenda, and that has been the hallmark of all we have seen from this Government. I am glad that Labour Mayors are using their powers to ensure that the worst excesses of this Government do not filter down as strongly through to their communities they serve.
We have talked about the town centre fund. Clearly, all of us want to see investment in our town centres. We recognise their importance at the heart of our communities, and the decline that many have seen while retail has struggled to catch up with the online world. But frankly, we will never make progress if the Government are not willing to recognise that the business rates system is actively harming our high streets and town centres. It is not good enough to give just the local independents a boost. Of course that is welcome, but it does not go far enough. Doing only that massively underestimates the importance of anchor stores to bring footfall into big town centres.