Post Office Redress and Funding

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Specifically on what further action we can take to speed up the process, one of the reasons why we introduced a fixed-sum payment of £75,000 for those whose claims had been accepted as part of the Horizon shortfall scheme was deliberately to offer an option of faster redress for victims.

On the question of automation, we encouraged Nigel Railton and the senior leadership at the Post Office to look at what further steps they can take to speed up the consideration of claims under the Horizon shortfall scheme, where there is particular pressure given the numbers that are still coming forward. I welcome the fact that they are coming forward, but we need faster action to get through them and to support all those whose claims are being accepted to get redress under the Horizon shortfall scheme.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

Recently I met a couple of constituents—Tony Hibberd, a former sub-postmaster, and Colin Chesterton, a solicitor who is representing him pro bono. During our meeting, they raised concerns about the delays and inadequacies of the Horizon shortfall scheme. My constituent has waited in excess of four years since his claim application and 14 years since he was forced to lose his livelihood. What percentage of the claimants to the Horizon shortfall scheme have received an interim payment, and what percentage have had their requests settled in full?

[Gareth Thomas]

If the hon. Gentleman writes to me with the details of that case, I will happily look at where it is at. The Horizon shortfall scheme has been run by the Post Office for some time. Initially, it was closed and then it was reopened under pressure. All those who came forward in the initial tranche of claims have had them assessed and offers have been made. The majority of the compensation that was offered has been paid out. When the scheme was reopened, there was a substantial increase in the numbers of people applying for redress. Indeed, we are still seeing people coming forward now and we would expect, as a result of all the letters that we have asked the Post Office to send out to sub-postmasters who might have a claim, that there will be further substantial claims under the Horizon shortfall scheme. With the Post Office, we are looking at what more we can do to speed up the assessment of those claims.

The fixed sum payment that we announced in September of some £75,000, which sub-postmasters can choose to accept in full and final settlement of their claim, has been welcomed and accepted by a significant number of sub-postmasters. That is helping to speed up redress under the Horizon shortfall scheme. I accept that there is more to do, and we are looking at what else we can do in that regard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have to do more to help small businesses in particular, and businesses in general, to export more overseas. That is one of the key, but often understated, ways in which we can deliver growth for this country. As part of our work on a new trade strategy and a small business strategy, we are looking at further proposals to help our businesses export more.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

The Italian press has been reporting that the global combat air programme consortium, involving the UK, Italy and Japan, might be extended to include Saudi Arabia. Can the Minister confirm this press report? How would that affect any future decision to suspend licences to export arms to Saudi Arabia, as the Government decided to in 2019?

[Gareth Thomas]

We are looking at working with other GCAP partners. I was in Italy last month to discuss the further potential of GCAP, and other work that we can do with the Italians in this space, but that will not affect the issue about which the hon. Gentleman is specifically concerned.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

We are certainly looking at the issues that have arisen for the industry from the judgment. More generally on access to finance, I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will welcome our launch, at the investment summit referenced by the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), of the British Growth Partnership, which is aimed at unlocking investment in businesses that want to scale up.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

Economic growth happens when micro-sized businesses become small businesses. We learned yesterday that micro-businesses that employ up to four full-time workers on the national living wage will be exempt from employers’ national insurance. Yet small businesses that employ five workers or more will be subject to employers’ national insurance. How will that measure help small businesses in the south-west to scale up and bring economic growth to the region?

[Gareth Thomas]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes, I think, the measures we took in the Budget to raise employment allowance to help the very smallest firms. The Federation of Small Businesses said yesterday that it will be a very big help for small firms. On his wider point about the Budget, I gently say to him, as I am sure he knows only too well, that the economic inheritance the Government face has led to our having to make some very tough decisions. If he does not support the measures we have set out in the Budget, he needs to say how he would finance the extra investment in the NHS and in industry that we have set out.

Pub and Hospitality Sector

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. The south-west as a region has the highest number of pubs per capita in the UK, with 75 pubs per 100,000 people. As has already been rehearsed, they are community lifelines, social hubs and local landmarks where we form friendships, celebrate life’s highs and find comfort in life’s lows. Most contribute more than £100,000 annually to our local economy and support dozens of jobs, keeping many family businesses afloat. However, publicans in my area have been telling me about the razor-thin margins they are operating on and the difficulty they are having, as they burn through their remaining savings just to keep the refrigerators running.

I want to draw on the example of one pub in particular, the former George Inn in Chardstock, which was very much the hub of the community—the sort of place that was the living room of the village, where the local skittles team played and villagers met regularly. Owned by the Wellington Pub Company, it closed and the company was happy to just sit on the property as an asset—the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) spoke about that—and see its value inflate. While the company did that, it did not want to do any work on the place and certainly did not want it to operate as a pub. The George Inn Continuity Group in Chardstock has done a fantastic job of bringing the villagers out to campaign to reopen the pub. However, we really need to see reform of the Localism Act 2011. It was a good starting point, but we now need enhanced powers over community assets to help local authorities to protect pubs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Green Resource Engineering Ltd, a highly successful company in Willand, already exports £1 million of engineering business to South Korea every year and has done so for the last six years. The managing director, Richard Booth, let me know that exporting to Korea is already straightforward; by contrast, getting parts in from Europe has become a real headache. Rather than fretting about a free trade agreement with Korea, how are the Government monitoring additional red tape after having left the European single market?

[Kemi Badenoch]

We have the most comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU—more than with any other country in the world—so that should not be the reason for difficulties in bringing in components. If the hon. Member has something specific that we can look at, I will be happy to take a look, but we have been doing everything to ensure that trade—in auto in particular—continues to boom, and it is booming. We were able to stop the issue with rules of origin, which was going to have a deadline at the end of this year. In terms of specific components that are having trouble getting across the border, I will need a bit more detail to provide him with an answer, but that is not about leaving the EU.

Volunteers

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a privilege to serve under you as Chair, Ms Nokes—forgive me, I meant to say that it is a privilege to serve with you in the Chair. I should say first up that it would be tempting to just list the thousands of volunteers I represent in mid and east Devon. However, I will not do that because if I did, I know that I would miss some. Instead, I want to use a specific example that I know well: the Scout movement.

I am very grateful to Molly Taylor, who has done some research for all of us who wanted to speak in the debate on the Scout movement. I should say that I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) for applying for the debate, and for pointing out how some people have got out of the habit of volunteering. The pandemic had an effect: on the one hand, it was really good for some people because it got them involved in their communities and volunteering to support others; on the other, it meant that those people who had volunteered for decades were given the opportunity to stay away and reflect on the volunteering that they had done.

Looking at the Scout movement in particular, there were 155,000 volunteers—both adults and young people —in 2020, and that dropped to 140,000 in 2021, but it has now been partly restored to 143,000. For me, the real crying shame is that there are 100,000 young people on the waiting list who cannot join a Scout group for want of another 40,000 adult volunteers. I know from my own involvement in the Scout movement, both as a young person and as a volunteer, that it can be really transformative for young people. It is a movement that exists for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and all academic abilities.

For example, from what I have seen with Cullompton Scouts, we might find young individuals who do not perform particularly well in an academic setting, but once we put them into an outdoor environment, they really thrive and show their leadership potential, and that is really brought on by people who volunteer—people like James Buczkowski, who is the group Scout leader of Cullompton Scouts. I would like to give a couple of other examples as well: Helen Turner was the group Scout leader of Honiton Scouts and she has been recognised as an honoured citizen of Honiton for her 32 years in that role. I should say that, if one is approached and asked to volunteer for something like scouting, they might not anticipate that it is going to consume that much of their life. Actually, it is the pleasure of volunteering that keeps people in it and doing it for so long. James Bicknell, from Willand Scouts, is a former officer in the Royal Navy who has taken his public service ethos from his workplace into his time off, and he has really imbued that in the young people with whom he is working. Scouting can be really transformative for young people, and that gives a great deal of satisfaction to the adults who are involved.

Sometimes, the organisation and structure of some of the volunteer organisations that we have heard about today can lead others to suppose that the volunteers are in fact paid. That is certainly true for the Scout movement because it is uniformed and it all looks very formal. There is sometimes an assumption that there must be some remuneration in the background or even the payment of expenses. I was interested to hear about the idea that the mileage allowance rate should be uplifted, which strikes me as very sensible for all manner of workplaces. It probably would not affect everybody in the volunteer environment because a lot of the volunteers I know do not claim expenses, or will never have the opportunity to do so. That would probably detract from why they do it—the love of volunteering and the satisfaction it gives them.

It would very easy in this debate to talk about only the upsides and to shy away from some of the things that go wrong in volunteering. In lots of volunteer organisations, there have been incidents and accidents; there have been tragedies. For that reason, volunteer organisations now have quite strict health and safety safeguarding rules, and it is quite right that they do. Again, however, it is a tribute to the people who get stuck into such activity that they are willing to take on that responsibility, because their shoulders are broad enough to do so even though they do not get anything out of volunteering and are opening themselves up to greater liability in this age of litigation.

Why do they do it? I suggest that it is because of the outcomes. Again, if we talk to the people involved in scouting, they say that the paperwork might sometimes be a chore, but they volunteer because they see young people grow and thrive. That probably explains why when the Royal Voluntary Service polled people on what they get from volunteering, 49% of respondents said that they become happier, 52% said that they feel more connected to their community and 56% said that they feel more fulfilled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Absolutely. One of the difficulties comes when they end up with a memorandum of understanding, or some kind of contract with the local authority, or the local health board as we have in Wales—it is a different structure from England. They are then effectively part of the state sector, which makes them less flexible and less able to adapt to situations around them. That has been a worrying trend over the past 20 to 25 years. Maintaining that sustainability for them is the real challenge. That is one of the problems facing Valleys Kids at the moment: trying to make sure that they have a strong financial future.

There is also Sporting Marvels. Sometimes we refer to “charities”, which is quite a strict definition. But actually, lots of people volunteer for things that are not charities, but that, none the less, have a charitable end result, such as all the sporting bodies in my patch. That includes people who turn up as coaches on a Saturday and a Sunday morning for the football teams or for Ferndale rugby club. I will not go through all the rugby clubs in the Rhondda, but I am a patron of Ferndale rugby club, which has its presentation dinner in a few weeks.

So many of these organisations do not get any financial support from the state. Many do not even get charitable status and, for them, it is an even more complicated process. As has already been alluded to, the rules about what people can do—quite understandably, if they are working with children and so on—are onerous, complicated and difficult. Having done work on acquired brain injury, I am conscious that we want any coach working in football, rugby or cycling to have a full understanding of how the new rules and protocols work and when they should take a child off if they have had a concussion. All these things make people think twice about whether they should be engaged in volunteering. That is why the state sometimes has a role in trying to make sure that the process is as simple as possible and that the charities and all the different organisations have access to good, easy and readily understandable advice.

I will mention one other organisation, the Rhondda Polar Bears, of which I am also a patron. The charity teaches kids with a variety of different disabilities how to swim. I will probably see them later this evening at Ystrad sports centre, if I get back to the Rhondda in time.

[Richard Foord]

Given that the shadow Minister is a trustee of a charity, does he recognise that it can be beneficial for employers, including those in the private sector, to release staff for work in the voluntary sector?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Yes—the next word of my speech was going to be “trustees”. That is a very important point. Obviously, school governors, magistrates or reservists in the armed forces have specific rules about what they can expect from their employers. Many employers are absolutely delighted to be able to support the work of their staff, although it is obviously much more difficult for those working in small companies. However, the point is made about trustees as well.

I was actually going to make a slightly different point about trustees. For all I know, it may be easy to find lots of trustees who know how to deal with the banking system or charitable law or whatever in Surrey; it is more difficult in some of the areas that most need that support. That is why organisations such as the NCVO and the Prince’s Trust have been really important in providing mentoring and support in areas such as mine in the south Wales valleys, where we would love to have more trustees. We often end up getting the same people to be the trustees of all the different charities and organisations, such as the Rhondda Arts Festival, which is coming up at the end of June. I am a trustee of that as well. Although I do not have any financial interest in that, I should declare it none the less.

There are also the individuals. Stan Power is no longer with us, but he was a veteran—he served. He took it upon himself for many years, as a member of the Royal British Legion, to make sure that anybody with whom he came into contact who had ever been in the armed forces in the Rhondda knew of every single type of support that they were entitled to claim for. He did that entirely off his own bat, but obviously with the support of the Royal British Legion. He was an absolutely wonderful man who made life-changing possibilities for dozens and dozens of people in my constituency. The more we can enable a few more of those people in every constituency in the land, the better.

I want to refer to a charity that works across the whole country, because it exemplifies the kind of problems we have at the moment, as alluded to by others, and that is Headway. The Minister knows about Headway, which is a charity that works with people who have had an acquired brain injury.

One of the great things we have done in recent years, because of the Government’s brave decision in some cases to create major trauma centres, is that we have saved the lives of many more people when they have been in an accident, many of them with brain injuries. However, getting them the quality of life that we would be able to bring them if they had full rehabilitation is very difficult. All the different therapies in hospitals are very stretched, which is often why we rely for rehab on charities such as Headway, up and down the country.

Most constituencies will have a Headway group. Headway has 1,100 volunteers helping with rehabilitation, 500 more working at setting up branches and 400 working in the retail shops. That is an important part of the network that enables people to get back a quality of life, which is important for the whole of our economy. This is not a partisan attack, but unfortunately the Government do not know how many people in the UK are living with an acquired brain injury—it is just not a known fact. We reckon it is somewhere in the region of 1.4 million, and the charitable sector probably has a better idea than others.

Headway, however, is struggling financially. Many of its branches are worrying about whether they will be able to continue, partly because of a lack of volunteers, but mostly because of a lack of finance. Rehabilitation and the kit needed is often expensive. I hope that at some point we have a major review of how charities end up with their funding, and how we can ensure that they are sustainable into the future.

Several Members have referred to the fact that volunteering is good for people. We can certainly see that in Headway. Often, the person who takes someone to their Headway group will have had a brain injury 10 years ago, was looked after and had rehab, was re-socialised, found a family of people, and then volunteered, volunteered a bit more and a bit more, got a few days’ work, and now is the full-time staff employee. That is rehabilitation and volunteering at its absolute best. We could repeat that of every other kind of charity that we have been talking about.

Volunteering is good for people. It makes them feel useful. It allows them to gain skills, especially because they might have to retrain in areas where they did not have the skills at all in the past. It re-socialises people and makes them feel happier. I note the point made about people in their retirement—I am 62 and some in the room are slightly older than I am, and perhaps thinking about what to do in retirement—and volunteering is an important part of still feeling that we have something to contribute. Often, important skills can be fed back into the community by older people.

There are problems. The significant collapse in the number of volunteers has been referred to, from one in four people of working age to one in six in the past few years, and that is problematic. In 2022, 40% of charities reported that a lack of volunteers meant that they could not progress, could not grow or could not even commit to the projects that they were already engaged in. Some areas, as I said, have found that particularly difficult, because of the financial barriers. If someone is struggling financially and economically to put food on the table for their kids, then the cost of the bus or train fare—even if it is only £2.90, £4.60 or whatever—is prohibitive. Many people will feel reluctant to ask the charity for the money, so they end up not volunteering at all. I would love it if there were some form of bank where all that need could be met. Perhaps that is a project for someone for the future—a particular charitable venture.

Local authorities have been facing enormous financial struggles. In my own patch, Rhondda Cynon Taf has found it difficult to maintain its financial commitments, let alone increase them in line with inflation, as has been needed over the past few years. That has meant that lots of charities have struggled. On top of that, people are not using charity shops so much, which has also had a knock-on effect on their income.

As I think has already been referred to, the Scouts have something in the region of 100,000 young people on waiting lists. Would it not be brilliant if we could get every single one of them into the Scouts? I am a scout from many years ago—I have a few badges, which I will not go into. We would love it if we could have more troops in the Rhondda, because there are kids who would like to do it. The same goes for the Sea Cadets and a whole series of other organisations. Those organisations give kids a sense of purpose and an idea of themselves; they provide a set of extracurricular of activities that offer a different form of learning. They give them confidence. In many ways, they are very similar to some of the creative industries. I would dearly love for the Scouts to be able to recruit far more volunteers.

I have a few final points. The first is about philanthropy. I sometimes look to other countries. On Tuesday night, I had dinner with Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer and an absolutely wonderful artist. He said that in Canada, it is axiomatic that, if someone becomes a billionaire, they will become a massive philanthropist, set up a charity and give to a wide variety of different charities. That has not become the norm in the UK in the same way as it has in America, Canada and some other countries. There is still room for us to explore how we can incentivise that even more, so that it is part of our national psyche.

The second point is about companies. Several hon. Members have referred to the importance of companies being passionate about their local communities. They know that they derive their wealth from those communities, and if they want to incentivise their staff, they will want to play an important part in their local communities. Some companies have been financially strapped, because of energy costs and things like that. The more we can praise those companies that make a radical difference in their local communities, the better. Perhaps we need to think of new ways of badging and thanking them for the extraordinary things they have done.

My final point is about the role of the state in all this. At this particular moment in British politics, I sometimes feel quite depressed, because it feels as if so many parts of what we relied on in our past just do not work as well as they used to. Some people will say, “Let’s try to recreate the social fabric of the 1950s,” but I do not think that that works. The world has moved on: the internet, social media and so on have completely changed things. However, I do want to return to that sense of public engagement—the sense that we achieve far more by our common endeavour than we do by going it alone. I could make the party political point that, if we press the reset button in a general election, perhaps some of that will be achieved. But what is even more important—and politicians and the state play a role in this—is ensuring that the whole country feels engaged in the national project, and that the whole of the local community feels engaged in the local project. We cannot do that without people volunteering for the common good.

Antimicrobial Resistance

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) for securing today’s debate, for his contribution to the Department of Health and Social Care during his tenure as a Minister and, in particular, for his work on this issue.

This is a pivotal year for confronting antimicrobial resistance, because the emergence of resistant infections is relentless and, as my hon. Friend eloquently described, the pipeline for new antibiotics is running dry. The evidence is stark, not just domestically but globally: more than 1 million people die every year from infections that have become resistant to treatment. To put that number in context, that exceeds the number of people who die from HIV or malaria.

AMR is sometimes described as an ignored pandemic, but if we do not act, the cost of treating resistant infections could compare to having a pandemic such as covid-19 every five years. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that, if we were to walk outside this place, many of the people we talked to would not understand what AMR is or appreciate the consequences of not dealing with it domestically or internationally. That is why we are committed to addressing antimicrobial resistance.

My hon. Friend is also right that in 2019 we published our vision for antimicrobial resistance to be contained and controlled by 2040, and that date looms ever closer. That vision recognises that it is a complex problem. There are three tiers to the way we are tackling it. First, we must lower the burden of infection in humans and—my hon. Friend touched on this slightly—in animals: if you do not get the bug, you will not need the drug.

Secondly, we must use antimicrobials only when they are absolutely needed, and we should use them correctly. That is also true for both people and animals, as I will touch on in a moment. Thirdly, we must develop new antibiotics or new technologies to treat these infections so that we have more tools in our armoury as resistance emerges.

We can all play our part. I make a public health plea to everyone: we all have a responsibility to finish courses of antibiotics prescribed to us—often, we do not finish our course, because we feel better and think there is no need to take the rest of it, but that is a key way of developing resistance—and not to self-medicate after keeping the strip, which is equally harmful. There are bad practices in other countries, but we all have a responsibility to take our antibiotics as prescribed, and not to self-medicate, should we have some antibiotics looming in our cupboards.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) for securing the debate. On a brilliant Radio 4 documentary called “Swimming in Superbugs”, Dr Anne Leonard of the University of Exeter Medical School talked about her Beach Bums project and said that people who use the sea are three times more likely to have antibiotic bacteria in their gut. Does the Minister agree that we should not import human sewage sludge to spread on farmland, given that we think traces of antibiotic resistance material might have ended up in the sea?

[Maria Caulfield]

That goes back to my first pillar of reducing and preventing infections in the first place. We need to do that domestically, but internationally we are also doing huge amounts of work in that space to improve water sanitation. With animal health, too, we have done a huge amount of work, in particular on antibiotic use in food. Among animals used in food production, the UK has reduced by 59% the amount of antibiotics going into the food chain, which has a knock-on effect.

We are also investing in innovation and capitalising on our world-leading science, including phage therapy, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) pointed out. I had not heard about the Leamington Spa facility, and I am interested to catch up with him after the debate to see what more can be done. The National Institute for Health and Care Research is investing almost £90 million in that type of research, so if there is potential to develop that further, we are always keen to hear it. Our plan is cross-sectional, a one health approach, recognising the links between the health of humans, animals and the environment, and the spread of resistance between them.

We have a national action plan, which is not limited to activity in the UK. We all know that infections do not respect borders. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester said, we are therefore working internationally and taking a lead in many elements of that across the global community, with our UK special envoy on antimicrobial resistance, Dame Sally Davies, spearheading some of the effort. On updating my hon. Friend on the action plan post 2024, we are working it up as we speak and hope to make an announcement soon. There is an ongoing piece of work to drive forward some of the changes across the three sectors.

We are doing our bit here and are leading internationally, but my hon. Friend also touched on what is happening in other countries. Low and middle-income countries have to be part of the change so that we can safeguard ourselves against antimicrobial resistance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

If the hon. Gentleman sent a proposal to my office about what we could do on a visit to the University of Huddersfield, I would be very keen to take a look. We support our universities. If he has a specific business and trade angle in mind, we will see what we can do, if diaries allow.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Mr Hussein from east Devon, whom I represent, has effectively been robbed of £100,000, given that £40,000 of sub-standard building work has to be levelled and destroyed. The Federation of Master Builders has campaigned for a compulsory licence scheme for construction companies. The Domestic Buildings Works (Consumer Protection) Bill would outlaw cowboy builders, provide compensation for consumers and ensure that reputable builders were not undercut by unlicensed rogues. Will the Minister take a fresh look at that Bill?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Some of the most frequent correspondence that I get from colleagues from across the House relates to rogue builders. We are determined to ensure that this does not happen to our constituents. We advise them to use builders registered with TrustMark, which is a trusted scheme, to ensure that work is done properly. I would be very happy to meet him to discuss that potential legislation.

UK Accession to CPTPP

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

That is an excellent question. The hon. Lady may have seen a really good report produced by not our Committee, but the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, on 29 January 2024, which makes precisely that point. We need a better way of scrutinising trade agreements. The CRaG structure allows us to delay things, but not necessarily veto them. When CRaG was introduced back in 2010, it was an innovation, because in the past, that was something that Governments did without any scrutiny whatsoever. Now we are in a different kind of world, in which we are signing free trade agreements at, I hope, increasing pace. However, the House will still have to navigate when we want open trade, when we want to de-risk trade, and when we put economic security first and free trading second. These are dilemmas in which there is not an obvious answer. We cannot prejudge the answers to those questions; they will have to be debated case by case. It could well be that a Government will come to the wrong conclusion about that balance between open and free trade and maximising our economic security as a country, and therefore we in this House must be able to apply a brake —put a hard stop—to trade deals that we think are ultimately not in the national interest.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I represent a rural constituency in Devon. Farmers in the west country were alarmed at the sorts of concessions made in the Australia and New Zealand trade deal. Until yesterday, we thought that the UK and Canada were negotiating a roll-over trade agreement. Canada is a member of the CPTPP and it will be crucial, if the UK-Canada trade talks resume, for the UK to avoid paying twice, because we will want to avoid further market access concessions. Can the right hon. Gentleman offer any reassurance that, through CPTPP accession, we will not open up our markets to unmanageable volumes of produce that will damage British farming and put farming businesses in danger of going out of business?

[Liam Byrne]

The way that we approached our analysis was to look at food standards and whether they would be diminished by our joining the treaty. The Trade and Agriculture Commission looked at three questions, which are talked about in paragraphs 40 to 42 of the report. We reported the Trade and Agriculture Commission’s advice, which was that there would not be a diminution in the statutory protection of food standards in this country, and that we would, in fact, be allowed to reinforce some of those protections.

However, as the hon. Gentleman importantly flags, we are now finding that sometimes the devil is in the detail. Despite having joined CPTPP with Canada, we now appear to be struggling to get in place a free trade agreement with Canada. The Canadian Government are very clear that technical discussions have stopped. I understand that the Secretary of State, or a spokesman for her, told the Financial Times yesterday that discussions were ongoing, but discussions are not trade talks. If discussions were trade talks, we would be having trade talks with the entire world right now, because our diplomats around the world are in constant engagement with their counterparts in different parts of the planet. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to flag that issue. The reassurance that I can give him is that we do not see this treaty lead to a softening of the trade standards that we so treasure in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am glad that my hon. Friend read the report that I sent out this week on what we have been doing. However, I disagree that only two reforms of note have been delivered. We have repealed or reformed more than 2,000 measures. The Port Services Regulations 2019, which were not designed with UK ports in mind, are an example. We have also passed the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 and the Procurement Act 2023. I remind him that that list is what we are using the schedule for, and there are many other mechanisms in the retained EU law programme to deliver on that road map so that we improve our economy and make it more competitive by making sure that our laws are tailored to our economy.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

In support of economic growth, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) cut £235 million from Environment Agency budgets when she was at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Rather than bringing economic growth, that served to bring sewage growth: sewage discharge doubled between 2016 and 2021. I was delighted to hear yesterday that the Government will adopt my Water Quality Monitoring Bill, but will they also restore some of the cut Environment Agency funding to bring back powers as well as duties?

[Kemi Badenoch]

A spending review, where we can look at these things, will be coming up shortly, but I really have to challenge much of what the hon. Gentleman said. It is a misrepresentation to say that the issues going on with sewage are to do with the actions of my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). This Government have been taking reforms through the Environment Act 2021 to improve the situation throughout multiple Governments, including the one in which his party, the Liberal Democrats, participated during the coalition. So it is very wrong to make that case.