Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Lisa Nandy
I thank my hon. Friend for raising an issue that is so important to fans throughout the country. The Government, including my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, have acted decisively in announcing a consultation in order to consider how best to put fans back at the heart of ticketing, not whether to do it. We will say more about this imminently.
Football Governance Bill
Rupa Huq ExcerptsTuesday 23rd April 2024
(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
There is much to welcome in the Bill, which builds on the excellent fan-led review conducted by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch). It will give fans more of a say in how clubs are run and the wider premier league redistribution of broadcast revenues—what is not to like? The core of the Bill is financial stability. We do need an independent regulator to stand up for the interests of smaller clubs and the EFL against globalisation, which is seen in not just Americanisation but oligarchs and sportswashing. I welcome the Bill, but, of the Crouch recommendations, the Government have regrettably opted out of action on equality, diversity and inclusion.
Against a backdrop of Bury going under, a pandemic that no one predicted and the spectre of the European super league thwarted for now, it is notable that, since 1992, 16 clubs have gone into administration. How much will the Bill address? It is too late for Bury; will Reading, on the brink of extinction, be next?
We need a regulator with appropriate teeth to take away licences from rogue owners—those venture capitalists who think about balance sheets, profit margins, asset stripping and destroying clubs—because football clubs are so much more than simply businesses. I know that from the work done locally by QPR and Brentford, and the email that I got from Professor David Gilbert of Ealing. He described how his family have been Reading fans since 1871 and told me how Dai Yongge is not co-operating with the fans and has destroyed clubs in China and Belgium. After the pitch invasion against Port Vale, he said:
“I was at the game and the protests that led to the abandonment…I was watching from the seats that my late mother and brother watched from until they died…my grandfathers supported from the 1920s…I have been going since 1969. That experience is not atypical of supporters in many towns and communities across the country, who have little or no say in the fate of their clubs.”
The club may be saved—I think there is an American bid at the moment—but that is a perfect case study or a textbook example in the future of why we need more protections, because of the collective social and cultural heritage of our clubs. However, the relationship between the English Premier League and the EFL and the distorting effect of parachute payments, which have massively unbalanced the beautiful game, are not addressed in the Bill. Although there are clauses on regulatory powers to force a financial redistribution of revenue, the Bill seems to think only of broadcast revenue.
It would be easy to knock the Premier League for its hospitality towards MPs—it was in here late last night, wining and dining people—and its attempts to push the free market, but in recent years our clubs have done us proud in Europe, in all-England finals in 2019 and 2021, and in 2023. They have changed football’s reputation from how I first remember it in the 1980s, when it was synonymous with fans behaving badly, racism, hooliganism and violence. They have cleaned up their act. Football brings soft power and tourism, but I worry that the value of the FA cup, which used to be such a big thing, is being lost with all these European competitions.
We need some sort of transparency and consistency, and a clear system on points deductions: why are Everton falling foul repeatedly, and not Man City? Why the mismatch between different systems and different leagues? I welcome the focus in this Bill on the football pyramid, which often seems, as Diana Ross would say, “Upside Down”. My son gave me a figure of £1.7 million a day generated by Man United, but that is not finding its way down to the bottom of the pyramid.
As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford said in chapter 6 of her review:
“Football needs to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in clubs with committed EDI Action Plans”
regularly addressed by the regulator, but that is completely missing from this Bill. We know there are gaps in leadership, ownership and management—and who would benefit from reform? Players, parents and referees would benefit. The figures speak for themselves: the higher up we go, the boardrooms become almost a white male preserve. We know women’s football is increasingly expanding. We could also look at the issue of social class as well. How else will we Kick It Out, as the name of the racism charity demands? Even from a business point of view, in every other sector—civil service, local government, banks, wherever we go—EDI is central. It should not be seen as an add-on, with this patchwork of different systems and plans; we need a level playing field. Kick It Out figures show that racism and misogyny, offline and online, are all up. We need a proper regulatory framework for dealing with those, and I feel we have missed a trick.
The word “fan” appears only 16 times in this 140-page Bill. The Bill stopped short of the golden share veto power that the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford recommended. This legislation is fundamentally about finance, but we have heard about the ending of FA cup replays. Brentford, a local team, did well out of them a few years ago, yet now that they are in the premier league, they are all for banning replays. That needs addressing, because it is a big financial incentive to the smaller clubs.
There is also the problem of top teams in tournaments—and it is a problem. Let us not kid ourselves that the FIFA club world cup expansion did not have super league-style motives at its heart. Although that is gone, I think it is trying to come back in disguise, like the proposed champions league reforms. Those have been rejected for now, but let us be wary of all these things.
There will be resistance to change, but we need a truly independent regulator as the Football Supporters Association tells us. I welcome this Bill, but when we have Joey Barton saying women pundits should be banned from ITV, and the awful things that John Yems said, such as the N-word and “curry munchers”, there is a bit missing. The Sports Minister is excellent on this issue—he went to Qatar with a rainbow armband—so perhaps he could tell us in his summing-up what he will do to address it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
Like my hon. Friend, I am concerned that criminal sanction for TV licence evasion is increasingly disproportionate and unfair in a modern public service broadcasting system. Our review of the BBC funding model will consider whether a mandatory licence fee with criminal penalties is still appropriate. As the Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries mentioned, the BBC has recently published the findings of its gender disparity review and set out a 10-point plan of action, which we will be monitoring.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Sir John Whittingdale
I look forward to discussing this matter further with the hon. Lady when I appear before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in due course. The Media Bill is published in draft, with part of the reason being so that we can have a debate about the precise definitions contained in it. I am happy to look at that, but we remain committed to the prominence obligations that the Bill will put in place.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Julia Lopez)
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of terrestrial, particularly to the most vulnerable communities. We have committed to ensuring that it is in place until at least 2034, and we are supporting the continued use of spectrum for that purpose. We have also commissioned a study to ensure that we are fully aware of how TV habits are affecting this.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Ind)
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting this issue. The Competition and Markets Authority has already looked into that and was not concerned about competition issues in relation to some of the platforms, but we are looking at this as an intellectual property question. The relevant Minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and I will have a roundtable on this issue, to ensure we are fully across it and to highlight its importance.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Michelle Donelan
I echo the hon. Member’s sympathies. Of course, we will listen to all relevant voices, and I am happy for the hon. Member to meet with either myself or the Minister of State, who is responsible for this.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Ind)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
The UK was one of the first countries to remove the barriers to both domestic and international visitors, and set out a post-covid tourism recovery plan in summer 2021. An inter-ministerial group for the visitor economy was formed this year, and will meet again in December to discuss cross-departmental policy priorities in support of this important sector.
Dr Huq
With the axe looming over the English National Opera and the Donmar Warehouse—both national attractions that have helped the tourism the Minister has described to be a multibillion-pound industry for so many years—and local newbies such as the Ealing Project venue and ActOne cinema facing a tough environment with the post-covid footfall downturn and looming bills, could the Government, now that they are in reset mode, reconsider the impact of Arts Council cuts on London so that we can get tourism flowing through our capital again, from centre to suburb?
Stuart Andrew
The Arts Council is an arm’s length body; it makes the decisions and has done so very carefully. It is working with various organisations that will be leaving the funding. However, it is right that we share the funding around the rest of the country; I make no apology for that. I want people not just to come to London to visit our wonderful facilities here, but to go around the whole country and experience what a great country we have to offer for tourism.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Digital exclusion is not just a rural phenomenon. In parts of Ealing Broadway, despite the road being dug up and cable laid, businesses report cripplingly slow times to send an email or download attachments—basic stuff that is like running water or electricity in this day and age—and don’t get me started on people working from home north of the A40. Can the Secretary of State please give us a date for when all my constituents will be levelled up internet-wise? If not, will she come with me and speak to those businesses and homes, so we can hurry it along?
Ms Dorries
We were never going to go from 0% to 100% overnight. It has always been a roll-out programme. It is a huge infrastructure investment project, and it is not possible for network builders and telecoms providers to deliver everything at once. Priority is given to where the need is greatest—that includes the businesses she mentions and hard-to-reach communities—but I will take the hon. Lady’s constituency concerns away with me and raise them with Building Digital UK. I will get back to her as soon as I can with a response.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)
The rule of law lies at the heart of the UK constitution and the Law Officers have a particular role in respect of upholding the rule of law. Together with the Solicitor General, I take that responsibility very seriously wherever we are called on to give advice.
The Attorney General
The hon. Gentleman makes a valiant attempt, but he should be aware of the Law Officers’ convention, which means I am prevented from commenting on the fact or the content of any legal advice provided by Law Officers to members of the Government.
Dr Huq
From their early work on Prorogation to the now daily revelations about lockdown-busting parties, this Government have had a fair few brushes with the rule of law. I know the Attorney General cannot comment on an ongoing criminal investigation, but will she tell us whether, when the investigation is concluded and all the 50 email questionnaires come back, anyone found to have breached lockdown regulations, whatever their rank, will face the same consequences as Joe Public did? Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), if there have been breaches of the ministerial code, will there be resignations?
The Attorney General
The Prime Minister has made his position clear and I am not going to add any more in the light of the live police investigation. The hon. Lady mentioned the rule of law; fundamental to the rule of law is democracy. I am proud to support this Prime Minister, who has honoured democracy by delivering Brexit and is now leading not just the UK but the world in beating covid. Had the Labour party been in charge, it would have cancelled Brexit, not delivered it, and we would have been in more lockdown, not less. On the big calls, Labour gets it wrong.
BBC Funding
Rupa Huq Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Ms Dorries
The conversation has not actually started. Local radio is an important point. Someone made the point about local BBC news coverage. Many of us used to have lots of independent news coverage in our constituencies that is no longer there. Some might say that the dominance of the BBC locally helped to contribute to that. My hon. Friend has some very important points to make and experience on local radio. I urge him to be part of the discussion and help us frame what things will look like moving forward.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Growing up, my cousins overseas always told me that they listened to the BBC when they wanted to know the truth. I now represent somewhere known as “BBC borough”, as there are that many ex-employees, including myself, around. Will she tell all of us where exactly the change was in the Conservative manifesto? Already, people are seeing it as just a distraction for party gain. I also have fond memories of watching, in my constituency, the Secretary of State on Channel 4 reality TV. Does her trashing public service broadcasting apply to that channel, too? It is a great Thatcherite innovation.
Ms Dorries
Excellent question. I am not going to conflate Channel 4 with the BBC; I am here to talk about the settlement of the licence fee. The second part of question means that I cannot remember the first part, but the hon. Member made a really important point about the BBC World Service. The BBC, with the billions of pounds of funding—£23 billion—it is receiving, will still be able to meet its core mission and purposes.
Touring Musicians: EU Visas and Permits
Rupa Huq Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if they are coming on to the parliamentary estate. This can be done either at the testing centre downstairs or at home. Finally, please give each other, and members of staff, space when you are seated and when entering or leaving the Chamber.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered enabling visa- and permit-free working for musicians in the EU.
It is a great pleasure, Dr Huq, to see you in the Chair for this debate, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to the application for this debate from myself and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), who is chair of the all-party parliamentary group on music. That application had the backing of the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), and numerous MPs from all parties, from Scotland, Wales and every region in England. The concern is cross-party; the demand for Government action is UK-wide.
The music sector is important to the UK, both culturally and economically. It accounts for nearly 200,000 jobs and, at least before covid, it was worth £5.8 billion, £2.9 billion of which was generated in export revenue, with the EU being by far the biggest market. The finances of the sector—both of individuals and organisations—depend for a significant section of income on touring in the EU, with a survey conducted just before covid showing that 44% of musicians received up to half their earnings in the EU. Our music sector financially depends on touring in the EU.
Of course, we do not just look at this issue in economic terms. We have to recognise the role that music plays in the very quality of our lives, in the definition of our communities, and in our ability to engage with our emotions, and to understand ourselves and each other. Our music is precious and our musicians should be celebrated, protected and supported in their art. However, they face a great problem that is not of their making, which is the post-Brexit obstacle to touring in the EU.
A tour of Europe often needs to involve more than one country to be viable and sometimes many countries. The problem is that for British musicians to tour in Europe now there are 27 different work permit regimes, 27 different visa regimes and 27 different requirements for proof of the work that is going to be undertaken. That means hours spent on forms and certificates, downloading bank statements and acquiring certification and statements about the nature of the work; days spent travelling to and sitting in consulates; weeks spent waiting for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to process A1 forms to provide to employers in Europe; fees for applications; and further expense and time to obtain musical instrument certificates with expert verification that the instrument does not consist of endangered wood or ivory, with the risk of the instrument being confiscated if the paperwork is not in order.
Ms Harman
I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s point. We have to think of the impact of those coming into this country: we need them to be part of our music sector here.
I welcome the Minister to her place and I wish her well in her work. If she wants any help to get this sorted, we are all here to help and do whatever we can to back her up on this. I look forward to hearing from her this afternoon that she acknowledges the scale and nature of the problem, and that she will deliver on the Prime Minister’s promise. I know she will have to work with many other Departments. No pressure, but we are looking to her to deliver. We want to hear from her what progress she has already made, and what further progress she anticipates the Government will make in respect of which countries and by when.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
This is a very popular debate. In fact, my name is on the original list of people speaking in it. To allow the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), time to wind up, the first Front-Bench spokesperson will start at 3.58 pm. If everyone can keep within a five-minute time limit, everyone will get in.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
The good news is that with drop-outs, including myself, we have stretched the time limit to seven minutes. I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Julian Knight.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I will luxuriate in my seven minutes. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. It does not seem long ago that we came into this place and swore oaths next to each other. Here we are, only a few years later, two old lags—if I may be so bold.
Julian Knight
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) and the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), for securing the debate. I concur entirely with her speech, which was conciliatory and thoughtful. I hope that the Minister takes that tone away from the debate: it is not a party political matter, but a matter of looking after our constituents, our wider cultural impact and, frankly, global Britain. Without these industries, we are not global Britain anymore.
I will make some brief observations. We have heard about the enormous flurry of paperwork and the unworkable and patchwork system that is in place. The Select Committee has been aware of the issue for a long time. We invited Lord Frost to appear before us at the start of the year, but he refused. It was only after pinning the Prime Minister down in the Liaison Committee on 24 March that he said Lord Frost will appear and we will get this sorted. Lord Frost eventually appeared in June or July after avoiding the Committee for a long time, but in that whole time, there have been only four official bilateral meetings, one of which was on the morning of his appearance by some strange coincidence—that is one every two months.
I know that conversations have taken place, however, and that the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), was, after initially trying to get her head around the issue, committed to it. She told us some good stories about how she would track people down at conference and try to have conversations, but there was always a feeling that there was a road block in the shape of Lord Frost.
It seemed that the issue was being drawn into the general feeling of antagonism between us and the EU, which was unnecessary. This is not a confected row to bring about a Jim Hacker sausage moment in politics in terms of the Northern Ireland protocol. That should have nothing to do with this issue, which is about people’s livelihoods and our place in the world.
It is utterly farcical that we are 20 miles away from Europe and yet, in the case of at least six nations, we have the same rights of travel and access for brilliant creatives—not just musicians but whole swathes of people across industries—as people coming from the Cook Islands on the other side of the world. That is a ridiculous situation.
I say to the Minister that she is pushing at an open door. Provided that we keep the issue out of the mess that is going on with Northern Ireland, which I believe we can, there is an enormous willingness across the EU to talk to us bilaterally, because they also want our talent there—they miss it. We have such a fantastic reservoir of talent. They want people to be there and to enjoy that cultural exchange. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) spoke about opera. I was talking to a lady who is one of the world’s leading lights at the Vienna opera house. She is struggling to get work there. This is a person of such huge, global talent that she is called upon everywhere.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq, although it is a shame that you are not contributing to the debate because I know what a music fan you are. I do not think that I have to declare my membership of the Musicians’ Union but I will, although, as I always say on such occasions, I have no musical talent whatsoever, unlike some of my colleagues who are speaking in the debate.
The fact that we are here in November 2021—well over five years since the UK voted to leave the European Union—is a damning indictment of the Government’s failure to prepare for the consequences of Brexit. I think that is, in part, political. The Government just did not want to concede that there could be negative consequences to no longer having freedom of movement and to leaving the market. I have seen that in other sectors, too—the labour shortages in food and farming, for example—and the ostrich approach of burying our head in the sand has had real consequences for the people who are affected.
That approach has included ignoring the warnings from the industry. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) said, so many people from across the industry—not just performers, but road crew, lighting engineers, truck drivers and so on—have come forward to try to tell the Government that action is needed, but there has been a refusal to host anything by way of meaningful discussions. An EU official told The Guardian in January that when the EU proposed a standard range of travel exemptions,
“the UK refused to engage in our discussions at all”.
I know there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and trying to blame one another for that, but according the EU sources, by June, the UK had still made no approach to remove travel barriers for creative workers.
As well as being political, I think there is an element of incompetence to the Government’s approach. Quite frankly, that is a hallmark of this Government. It is also another sign of the Government’s failure to acknowledge the importance of our creative industries. We have heard about the statistics and the pound signs attached to those industries: we are the world’s second-biggest exporter of music, with an export revenue of £2.9 billion. The value of music, as others have said, is far greater than that. We not only have some of the biggest-selling music artists in the world, but some of the best—those are not necessarily the same thing.
I remember, when I was a student in what was then Leningrad, in the summer of 1984, being besieged by young Russians who were just absolutely desperate to find out more about UK music, which was a lifeline to them and their connection to the west. I remember being asked, on the beach on the bank of the Neva river, how many children Paul McCartney had. I must admit, I did not know, and it was before the internet, but that just shows the soft power connected to our worldwide reputation for music.
We also know that the sector has been incredibly hard hit by covid, which is all the more reason why the Government should pull out all the stops to get it back on its feet. To an extent, the Government have been saved by covid, because people being unable to tour has masked the impact of Brexit on the live music sector. Now that we have, I hope, emerged from the worst of the pandemic, it is absolutely vital that the Government step up the pace on progress.
I am pleased that we have made some progress on visas, although I think it is a bit audacious for the Secretary of State to try to claim credit for that. We need agreements with the remaining six member states, and we also need bilateral discussions, because at the moment, any work is still restricted over all member states to a total of up to 90 days in any 180 days. As we have heard, there is still so much bureaucracy around that.
I will mention carnets and merchandise briefly. We have heard about the costs of taking unaccompanied instruments across borders—those costs are just for the paperwork. We know that smaller and up-and-coming bands in particular do not have lawyers, agents and managers to do all that for them; they have to deal with it themselves, and it is a real deterrent. Tim Burgess from the Charlatans tweeted earlier this week that the band was unable to sell any merchandise during its recent Dublin gig. We know that so many bands rely on merchandise to make a living because of streaming and everything else.
I will finish by talking about cabotage, as I know that that is what is expected of me as a member of the shadow Transport team. UK tour trucks made up close to 80% of the EU market prior to 2016 and Brexit. The three-stop rule for UK trucks forces them to re-route back to the UK, which is incredibly costly and time-consuming if they bother to do so, but most do not, making UK-led tours impossible. The band Public Service Broadcasting recently had to book a German bus for their European tour—something that they described as maddeningly stupid and self-harming. Big US acts have traditionally started their EU tours in the UK, so they fly into Heathrow, pick up the trucks, road crew, sound, lighting, caterers—everything—here. Why would they do that now? They are just going to go to Germany or somewhere else.
We have seen limited progress. The small splitter trucks have been ruled exempt from cabotage rules, and cabotage easement has seen inbound rules suspended on EU-flagged trucks to help the HGV crisis here, but that makes things even worse for UK music hauliers, as it is not reciprocal. UK hauliers have had no Government support to relocate to the EU either—I do not want them to relocate to the EU, but that proposal was put forward by the Government as an answer to the problems back in the earliest stage of the negotiations—so they cannot get around the restrictions that way. The music industry is part of what makes this country great. Why would we want to throw out an integral part of that, and tell it to go and set up shop in France, Germany or Portugal?
UK Music is calling for a derogation from cabotage for all trucks used for cultural events, so I conclude by asking the Minister whether there are active discussions in her Department and the Department for Transport about this issue. When I have tried to talk to the DFT, it has told me that it is a matter for her Department, but when I have tried to talk to her Department, it has told me that it is a matter for the DFT. I rather feel that that has left a big, gaping void in which there are no discussions at all.
Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)
I call the only person I know who had an album out last week: Kevin Brennan.
Preserving Heritage and Statues in Cities
Rupa Huq Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Today marks a year to the day since the name Edward Colston first crossed my consciousness, and no doubt that of many millions of others, when his statue in Bristol was ripped down from its plinth and rolled into the waters where I imagine his slave ships once docked, in the wake of the brutal racist murder of George Floyd in the US. Events in Minneapolis reverberated everywhere and copycat topplings ensued. In east London, a statue of slaver Robert Milligan was pre-emptively removed by Tower Hamlets Council before any damage was done, and in Brussels King Leopold, who oversaw genocide in the Congo, was dethroned. Confederate generals fell in Birmingham—Birmingham, Alabama—in Portsmouth, Virginia, and in New South Wales, Australia; place names that give a twist to UK geography. The felling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 proved memorable because statues confer respectability and are highly symbolic. Nearly 40,000 individuals have signed three separate petitions on the gov.uk website, so we can see that people attach a lot of significance to statues.
As for Colston, a man who made his wealth from trading in human beings and the enslavement of Africans, putting them in chains, he was once venerated as a benefactor to Bristol, with a school and even a type of cake named after him. Where is he now? No longer imposing in the city centre, his watchful eye over everyone, but horizontal in a museum, in a graffitied, defaced state. Apparently, when the council fished him out of the river, the damage done to his pedestal was so great that it could not take the weight of his standing on it. If we think about it, in some senses it is far better now that he is an educational tool, an exhibit furthering teaching, than a statue everyone walked past obliviously.
The incident of last year and its postscript is history. Colston’s latest chapter parallels how the statue of Viscount Falkland just outside this Chamber, off Central Lobby, has been missing a foot spur since 1909, because a suffragette chained herself to his feet, and in the melee before security and the police escorted her off the premises —crying “Votes for women!” all the way—the spur snapped off. That missing spur has, unintentionally, become a symbol of feminism, giving people like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, me and the Minister hope that we might one day make it into this place. It is always part of the Rupa tour—the unofficial tour I give when taking constituents around. I also show them the DIY plaque that Tony Benn screwed into place down in the dungeon, with the help, I believe, of our former leader, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). The plaque commemorates Emily Wilding Davison, another suffragette. It is fitting that, like that snapped-off spur, the spray-painted version of Colston was not restored to its former glory. These one-time acts of vandalism have become matters of historical record.
There is also that larger-than-life Churchill passed by all us MPs when we come into the Chamber. It was going a bit green, because too many Conservative MPs were rubbing it for good luck. It now has a “Do not touch” notice affixed to it. Hon. Members will remember that a year ago the statue of Churchill outside in Parliament Square was first boxed up and then heavily guarded—people said he was the most guarded man in England—for fear of his being attacked by Black Lives Matter protesters. Yet it was only a week ago that that statue had “Chelsea” daubed over it. Chelsea had won some championship or another, and Chelsea fans, who I think are normally associated with the political right—remember John Major and the headhunters—took advantage of the fact that security’s eye was off the ball. That shows how we can sometimes imbue these acts with too much significance.
Granted, there could be a bit of evening up the score for womankind going on. It is shocking that it was only in 2018—quite recently, considering the first arch in Westminster Hall dates back to 1080, I believe—that we got the first woman commemorated in the environs of Parliament in the form of the statue of Millicent Fawcett. We could do better to even up the score, given that until then there had just been an unofficial plaque, not on public view, and a snapped spur to represent womankind in this Parliament.
The same is true of black and minority ethnic figures. I know that there was an almighty fight by a predecessor of mine, Lord Soley, to get a statue of Mary Seacole over the way at St Thomas’s. All these figures are quite complex. My late Dad hated the statue of Lord Clive on Whitehall because of Clive’s corruption and imperial butchery. At the same time, my dad was not a fan of Gandhi, who is one of the few colonial subjects who has a statue out there. I cannot quite remember why, or if I have misremembered, but my dad is not around to ask.
Another joke of my dad’s was, “The British Museum? That’s a funny word when all the stuff in there is nicked!” So yes, the British Museum.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I think that was an extra prompt, Madam Deputy Speaker, but anyway, the hon. Lady and I spoke beforehand.
I recently attended a meeting regarding the statue of Hans Sloane, the famous inventor of hot chocolate who was also responsible for advances in medicine. He was a son of Killyleagh in my constituency of Strangford. I find it incredible that his bust in the British Museum can be moved, especially considering the collection of 71,000 items that he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum in London. The fact that his wife was connected to a Caribbean plantation was enough entirely to discredit anything else.
Does the hon. Lady agree that we must not seek to remove or dispose of our history, but rather should allow it to have its place and seek to address where we as a nation are going as a matter of great importance? I congratulate her again on introducing the debate and on the way she has introduced it.
Dr Huq
No, it is the latest of many for the hon. Gentleman. This shows that I do not come up in the draw very often. He makes a good point, and I would say that we should not remove such statues, but contextualise them. Busts and statues are maybe not what people would use to memorialise today. They do seem a bit so last century, or even the century before. I know that Mrs Thatcher, God rest her soul, did not like the statue out there, so they are not for everyone, but we should keep them because they are part of history and they need to be put in proper context.
Statues are perhaps less common now because, with the passage of time, we see what reputational damage can occur to individuals. Take Winnie Mandela or Cyril Smith or Prince Andrew or Jimmy Savile—we might have made statues of any of those individuals only for them to turn out to be not what they seemed.
I understand that the Bristolians resorted to direct action because all the official channels failed, even though they had been trying for years. The Minister will recognise that all local authorities have much more complex and overflowing “in-trays from hell” in their inboxes nowadays, so statue reappraisal is probably not top of the list of things for councils to do. For example, pandemic management is an unforeseeable that has occurred in the past 15 months, although many councils are now reassessing. The London Borough of Ealing is doing that. I say fine, so long as it is not a distraction from real reform. To be fair, demolishing racism is going to be a lot harder than deracinating statues.
It is kind of simplistic to divide the world into heroes and villains because all complex characters, such as Churchill, had good and bad sides. History needs to be taught warts and all. We should not be blinded by hagiography, so we should teach, “We will fight them on the beaches,” and “their finest hour”, but also the Bengal famine and Tonypandy, rather than abridge or airbrush out one side.
I tend to feel that, recently, an atmosphere of hysteria prevails instead. An MP from the other side of the House held a similar debate to this in March, and it started with the alarmist claim, “Britain is under attack.” That was all because the London Mayor launched a statues commission to reassess past and present, as well as future, effigies. It does sometimes feel—I hope the Minister will allay my fears and put my mind at rest—that a confected culture war is being waged. Other elements include BBC bashing, obsessing about the Union Jack and how big it is in a Zoom call, laying into Meghan Markle and laying into taking the knee. Sometimes some of these straw men or bogeymen or targets are imaginary, including the banning of “Rule Britannia” at the last night of the Proms, which apparently was never a consideration by the corporation.
The edict that the Union flag should fly from all official buildings feels a little bit un-British to me, because it is the kind of thing that we witness in less self-assured recent states, rather than in a mature democracy such as our own. There was an old claim that this country has lost an empire and was searching for a role, and I feel that if we are having to whip out the Union Jack at every moment, maybe that claim is coming true. There have been news stories of Tory MPs insisting that citizens must love the flag and the Queen or move to another country, and even besmirching the internationally revered “Auntie Beeb” because there are not enough flags in its annual report. This seems to be going down the road of totalitarian edicts. After all, Churchill did defeat European fascism.
The prominence that statues have assumed in this war on the woke is seen in the way that they got additional protections in January this year in the rushed legislation to necessitate planning consent for anyone who wants to mess with them. The parallel was drawn that the minimum sentence for rape in the UK is five years—it is double that in India—but someone can get 10 years for pulling down a statue. That implies that dead white men, mostly, in bronze and stone are valued more than living, breathing women. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes the word “women” zero times in its 295 pages, yet it contains more mentions of statues, memorials and monuments than you can shake a stick at. Shall we say that the optics of that are bad? It is no wonder that one female wag, following the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, tweeted that she would just dress as a statue, because that way someone might take her safety seriously.
It is not just the lives immortalised by statues that are contested in this struggle. The crusaders who feel under threat, and who play to some imagined gallery of statue lovers who wrap themselves up in the Union Jack, are also promising a purge on progressives on boards. We know that the BBC has an ex-Tory candidate at the helm, but it seems a bit sinister that he is saying that he wants to silence contributors from having opinions on social media. We also know that the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport held a seminar in February for 25 organisations to set out the Government-approved version of Britain’s past. It was trailed in The Daily Telegraph, quoting the Secretary of State’s words that they must
“defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”.
Again, this sounds alarmist. Who does he mean? Chelsea fans? The meeting had a slight air of secrecy around it. The attendees, the agenda and the discussions were not published, and I know that certain people, including members of the Council for British Archaeology, the rank and file archaeologists, did not get an invite, so if it is repeated, it would be good to broaden the audience list.
It is a slightly unedifying spectacle when 50 MPs known as the Common Sense Group go on the offensive, maybe as Government outriders, attacking the National Trust and Leicester University’s Professor Corinne Fowler for their joint research uncovering the fact that nearly 100 National Trust properties had slave wealth behind them. That feels like an attack on academic freedom. It feels like the opposite of common sense.
Crucially, wider heritage assets also need protection, not from lynch mobs but from the developer’s bulldozer. Public buildings and land are increasingly being flogged off to the highest bidder by cash-strapped councils, meaning that we have vanishing community centres, libraries and playgrounds. Council houses that were sold off under the right to buy are now in the hands of private landlords who pocket housing benefit bills footed by local authorities, and the cycle of slum landlords that council houses were meant to end continues. It seems sad that what was founded for the public good is being turned into private profit.
When my office diaried in the Acton town hall opening for me, I had to explain to them that it is not a civic structure. We have this grand 1910-founded building where the Clash played, and it is being reborn as apartments behind the original facade. There were some add-on ones that did not quite work and some dodgy conversions, and I now get emails all the time about quite basic things like the waterworks not functioning. These are too big to be snagging. I marvelled at the refurb because it looked shiny, but at the same time I felt a twinge of sadness, really. So, if you are watching, OneHousing, sort it out!
Next on the hit list of lost municipal heritage in Ealing is a car park and an ’80s council office building set to be flattened and replaced by 477 mostly private sale flats in seven towers, the highest of which will be a most un-Ealing 26 storeys. We have an 1800s Gothic town hall, which is often used in shoots that pretend it is the House of Commons because it has got the same archy bits—the architecture is quite similar. Anyway, that will be overshadowed by this hideous thing.
There was a Times article at the weekend called “Our cities gained riches but lost their soul” on similar developments. It observed that there is always a statutory, separate affordable bit to such schemes, but it is “always begrudged” and
“bartered down by greedy developers”.
In this case, they are stretching the definition of “affordable”, because someone would have to be on £58,000 to get the three-bedroom, family-sized version, but those on £60,000 are ineligible. I hope that the Minister’s colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will exercise their call-in powers before our skyline is ruined forever.
There are many examples of where local authorities have been forced to do this. That same Gothic town hall will be leased to a hotel chain, because it will foot the repair bill. I feel that is, to quote Macmillan,
“selling off the family silver”
to the highest bidder. The end product is often marketed to overseas buyers, while Ealing has a five-figure council waiting list of local families.
Notwithstanding post-Grenfell fears of tall buildings, perhaps surprisingly, of more than 500 high-rise buildings in London that were granted planning permission or that began construction last year, a whopping 215—nearly half—are in outer boroughs. The current planning system, which incentivises high densification development in proximity to rail hubs, needs rethinking in the light of people choosing accommodation over location, with white-collar homeworking the new norm—at least for part of the week—as a lasting post-covid effect. In the meantime—I keep quoting Tory Prime Ministers—John Major talked approvingly about “invincible green suburbs” alongside warm beer and dog walkers as epitomising Englishness, and I feel that is in danger of being lost, particularly in somewhere like Ealing, which has been long known as queen of the suburbs.
Moreover, the Government have decided that London is not on the Tory target list, so levelling up does not apply. It is exempt from the towns fund, overlooking the fact that the capital is where inequalities are starkest, deprivation is deepest and poverty is at its worst in the UK. Between London’s constituent bits, there is enormous diversity within.
A decade of decline in local infrastructure has left scarring effects such as youth stabbings, with closed youth clubs. Sadly, at times, it feels like the Government are hellbent on an anti-woke crusade of knee-jerk, populist bandwagoneering. It looks like pandering, with the square root being what they think will deflect from any mistakes and win them votes. We have seen it again today with the aid cuts. I know there is a Standing Order No. 24 debate tomorrow—there is no vote—yet the 0.7% commitment, which, after all, Conservatives created and not only pledged in their manifesto but said was safe as recently as September with the Department for International Development and Foreign and Commonwealth Office merger, is gone.
The Culture Secretary vowed in his most recent interviews to have more statues erected to unspecified British heroes, blocking what he sees as a kind of Britain-hating, statue-toppling metropolitan bubble that controls cultural institutions. He wants to replace it with red wall voters in the latest “war on the woke”—or front, battle, cultural cleansing or whatever we call it. Again, it looks like Government interference in a traditionally independent sector motivated by electoral calculation. I think people are saying the same about today’s cricket controversy.
I have some asks for the Minister—it is a kind of top 10 —and she will be relieved to know that I will end after giving them. First, the expression “not set in stone” should apply in that we should not be afraid to revisit, reinterpret and re-evaluate what has been handed down by previous generations. Reputations have not proved foolproof, so it pays to future-proof. I feel that the London Mayor’s commission is a positive thing, because future monuments will be in sympathy with architectural surroundings and will not always be just creepy human forms. I understand that the holocaust memorial will be a geometric design. Sometimes the enormity of a situation outweighs one individual. On the other side of the river we have the covid memorial wall, and I know my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) and for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) are campaigning to make that permanent, which is a good plan—I make a plea to the Minister there.
The second point is that putting things in context, for example in museums with explanatory notes, is preferable to unthinking idolatry and the glorification of individuals. Thirdly, the public sector equality duty should be given due regard in planning decisions.
Fourthly, goodies versus baddies, London versus the red wall, and saints versus sinners is divisive and makes everything too binary. Richard III still has numerous statues everywhere, despite being a complete rotter with the princes in the tower. When his remains were found under a car park in Leicester, he received a lavish reburial, with the great and the good turning out, including Benedict Cumberbatch and people like that. That renewed Richard III’s memorialisation, and I would never protest against any of that. Heritage and history are crucially contested; there is not one version of the past. We need more emphasis on critical thinking in humanities and history, which of late seem to have been a bit disfavoured in the curriculum, in favour of numeracy and literacy.
Fifthly—I am halfway through—we need more flexibility, including a recognition that we do not have always to think of removal versus retention. There is also the option of relocation. Prague and Oslo have statue parks, so that people who like to look at such things can look at a whole load of them at once. Closer to home we have the fourth plinth, and such things are more adaptable than either “pull them down” or “stick them up”. Relocation and flexibility are other options.
My sixth point is to have fewer short-term reactive policies that are driven by the jingoistic stirring up of popular sentiment, and more cool-headed, longitudinal assessment. We need a recognition that London boroughs also need investment, and are not just places that are electorally useful for the current Government.
Point number seven is to reverse the wilful neglect of local government by Whitehall. Councils should not be forced into desperate measures. As I said, ministerial intervention on the planning issue that I flagged up would save Ealing’s municipal heart and legacy from being overrun by development. Forcing local authorities to be self-financing is unrealistic, given the range of services now at their door. The biggest of those is the social care bill, which is still missing the Prime Minister’s plan. We were promised that plan a long time ago, so if the Minister has any clues we would be grateful.
My penultimate point is that central Government leadership is needed on tall buildings to prohibit the over-densification of suburban locations, just as the green belt limited the overspill of cities into the countryside. Ealing, Brent, Croydon and Barnet have been the worst offenders of that “the sky’s the limit” attitude to tower building in recent years. Local communities should be genuinely involved in decision making. The Colston scenes were exciting to witness, and the episode was a catalyst, but better frameworks for public inquiry should exist to achieve that end result, including listing or delisting buildings.
Finally, we should never look at statues as being a substitute for tackling the real issues of inequality. That really would be levelling up, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Dr Huq
I totally agree with what the Minister is saying; I think we are at one on all this. We are talking about public space, place, purse, taste and all those things, so it is right to have these safeguards, but I wonder what she thinks of the 10-year tariff for defacing statues. A lot of women think that just looks really weird, and even the equality assessment says it will not result in one single more prison place. It just seems that that kind of thing is playing to the gallery. I wonder whether she has a view on that.
Caroline Dinenage
I am glad that the hon. Lady mentioned that. I am not aware that any of those kinds of sanctions have been handed out. That is a maximum sentence, and I am not sure that anything even approaching that has ever been dished out. When we measure it against the minimum sentence for rape, of course it seems obscene. Of course, the maximum sentence for rape is life imprisonment, so then it looks a little more understandable, but there is never any excuse for raping a woman, and of course human life and respect for each other should always take precedence over respect for statues and other man-made objects.
We have to be really careful about going down that track and making political issues out of something that is difficult. Really, what we are talking about here is memorials, and memorials do not just have historical significance. They are not just pieces of stone or marble; they are sometimes also very deeply symbolic, culturally or emotionally, sometimes to those who have died, and hold a huge importance to those who visit them. Thinking back to events around Parliament Square in 2020 and the pictures and reports of the violence and the vandalism at some of the protests that took place then, the public are very rightly concerned about the respect for memorials in those types of contexts, so we do have to take that into consideration.
In the past year, some in the culture and heritage sector have been subject to some really disturbing social media abuse because of the work of their organisations. There can be absolutely no justification for defacing statues and for damaging memorials and symbols of British history, but most importantly, while we do not always agree on the approach some heritage organisations take in dealing with controversial aspects, I absolutely condemn those who hide behind the anonymity of social media to make threats to the hard-working curators and heritage professionals who are simply doing their job. With my other hat on as Digital Minister, I am determined to tackle that via the online safety Bill, because nobody should ever be abused or attacked online simply because of the job that they do.
I hope that I have managed to convey to the hon. Lady how committed I am to the hope that through dialogue and improved contextualisation of the stories of those commemorated, we can arrive at a consensus as to how best to address contested heritage. Rather than tearing things down, we should work at building that consensus and at building a better and fuller understanding of our complex history.
Question put and agreed to.