Covid-19

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We will, of course, keep all these measures under review continually. None of them are measures that we want to bring in, but they are measures that we believe are necessary, and I am delighted that they are supported by the Labour party.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I accept the need for these restrictions, but the Prime Minister must know that they come at the worst possible time for hospitality and tourism in Cumbria, the lakes and dales and elsewhere, because furlough is ending just as the low season begins. He could back the targeted package proposed by the tourism industry and me to save jobs and businesses through these tough winter months, or he could cost the taxpayer billions in benefits and lost tax revenue by letting them all go to the wall. Will he meet me and tourism and hospitality industry leaders, so that we can find a solution and save jobs?

Local Government Finance

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

I will get on shortly to the issue of council tax referendum limits. We continue to engage with colleagues across our local government family, on both sides of the political divide. If we have not engaged directly with Gloucester yet, I will ensure that we do so as part of our discussions.

Building on the mandate given in December to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, I want to set out how we will unite and level up our nation. We will devolve more power, money and influence back to communities across England. We will restore opportunity to our towns through our £3.6 billion towns fund, and we will work with every single local authority to make sure that they are the engines for economic growth in their community. This will be supported by the most generous financial settlement for a decade, while always ensuring that they have the resources to support the most vulnerable in society.

This Government are proudly the father and mother of English devolution to our regions. In the past three years, we have seen the creation of powerful metro Mayors in Liverpool, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle North of Tyne, the West of England, the West Midlands and Tees Valley. Together, those mayoral combined authorities have access to £6.35 billion of investment funding, more than £1 billion of the transforming cities fund, and £1.5 billion of the adult education budget.

We understand, however, that it is not possible to measure how well devolution is working simply by looking at how much money is being received. The real power of devolution comes through putting power back in the hands of local people, and that is why devolution works.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am fully supportive—as we were during the coalition—of the Government’s plans to devolve power to the regions of England and to local authorities. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, though, that if this is about local people making local decisions, they should not be forced to accept a Mayor or, if they are a rural community, a particular urban-type structure in order to get those powers?

[Jake Berry]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will welcome the recent discussions that have taken place with local authority leaders across Cumbria. I know that he has influence over his own local authorities, and I am heartened by the open-hearted and open-handed way in which they have approached those discussions. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been clear that we should seek mayoral combined authorities across the entirety of the north of England. It is my view that if we want to truly empower communities, a powerful, locally elected, singularly accountable individual is the best way of doing it. I hope that we will shortly be able to progress further devolution deals and discussions across Cumbria.

As I have said, devolution does work. It is already paying dividends, with funding and metro Mayors delivering programmes that local people want. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish might want to listen to this. I am sure that the completion of the A6 relief road to Manchester airport in Greater Manchester has assisted him and his constituents to get around the north-west of England. I know it helps me. It was done by the Labour Mayor for Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.

In Liverpool, we are supporting new rolling stock on Merseyrail. That is important to me—I went to school on those trains and did not know that 35 years later people would be going to school on the same trains. There is a new train maintenance and technology training academy and the largest rolling stock modernisation facility in the country, creating hundreds of new high-quality, high-skilled jobs, in co-operation and collaboration with Steve Rotheram, the Labour Mayor of Liverpool. In the west midlands, the extraordinary Andy Street is investing £207 million to extend the West Midlands Metro system, re-opening railway lines and stations. That is all being done by metro Mayors.

Of course, those decisions could have been made in Whitehall but, I think as everyone knows, the process would have been slower, they would not necessarily have reflected local priorities, and crucially, picking up on the hon. Gentleman’s recent comments, they would have lacked the local democratic legitimacy of decisions made by single accountable elected individuals. It is precisely because devolution works that we intend to go further and faster. We will unleash the potential of all of our regions, delivering on the priorities of this people’s Government to level up everywhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I will characteristically endeavour to behave, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a massive honour to follow the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr Bacon). I hope that he is now feeling the relief that he was looking forward to earlier. The combination of Orpington and nerves rings a bell with me. I spent the night in Orpington before Blackburn Rovers won the league in 1995, and I could not sleep. I got the train back home, and the rest is history. I am also, by the way, the sixth-great-nephew, by marriage and adoption, of Charles Darwin, so it is a delight to know that I had a famous relative in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. It was also a delight and an honour to listen to the maiden speeches of the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), and to engage in some ginger solidarity with the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore). I wish them all the very best for their time in this place.

Turning to the matter in hand, local authority funding cuts are the easiest for any Government of any colour to make. They make the savings, then someone else gets the blame. It is a transparent tactic, but I am not sure that it is as politically risk-free as Governments tend to think it is. It has certainly caused serious harm to families and communities right across the country. In my time serving in this place since my maiden speech—which I think was recorded on Betamax—our county council, our district council and our two national parks, the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, have suffered significant cuts. It is worth bearing it in mind that national parks unofficially form part of the local government family, although they have no council tax-raising powers. The Lake District is the national park with the biggest population of any in the country, and it acts as a local authority in relation to some housing, planning and environmental matters for anyone who lives there. With that lack of ability to raise money of its own, those cuts are felt more keenly, to the extent that the Lake District national park is even talking about selling off iconic pieces of land.

Cuts are not without consequence. Our police service also has to live with the cuts that have effectively been imposed upon it. Our police and crime commissioner has been forced to raise additional council tax just to prevent the Conservatives’ cuts from getting any worse over recent years. Our police are left increasingly vulnerable, with a mere handful of officers—sometimes as few as six at any given time—left to protect my constituency, which covers an area the size of Greater London.

Owing to the Conservatives taking money away from our councils, most head teachers in South Lakeland have had to lay off staff, reduce teachers’ hours or merge classes. The Conservatives take advantage of the fact that heads want to be professional, disguise their financial hardship and protect children and parents, so those cuts are often safely hidden, but they hurt. They hurt children with special needs the most, but that is apparently okay so long as the Government can find a way to escape the blame and pass it on to local government.

Like the constituencies of all today’s maiden speakers, my constituency is stunningly beautiful, but it is also vast, and its communities are dispersed. Public transport is vital to keeping people connected, preventing isolation and loneliness, and ensuring that people can get to work, school or college or, indeed, go shopping. Government council cuts mean that Cumbria no longer has any subsidised bus services. We recently successfully fought to protect under-threat services in Arnside, Levens and Cartmel, but we should not have to fight tooth and nail to save every single route. We should have a settlement that underpins a vibrant, affordable and reliable bus service right across the south lakes and Cumbria.

The Government have even slashed funding in areas where they promised investment. Just over a year ago, having loudly proclaimed their commitment to preventive health care in the NHS long-term plan, the Government then cut public health budgets by £85 million within a matter of weeks. That means that Cumbria’s spending is now set to drop to just £36 per head. That is barely half the national average of £63 per head and ridiculously lower than the £241 per head per year that the City of London receives.

The impact of that has been tangible. With the loss of school nurses, children have been left vulnerable to slipping into bad mental, dental and physical health, and the Government’s cuts mean that Cumbria now spends only a pathetic 75p per child per year on preventive mental health. We know that proper investment in public health budgets would allow us to place a mental health worker in every school, which is key to young people being resilient and healthy and to ensuring that problems do not become so severe further down the line. This is also the Government who promised a specialist one-to-one eating disorder service to the children and young people of south Cumbria, but they have still failed to deliver that service four years on.

The motion rightly mentions both adult and children’s social care. As we speak, a 96-year-old constituent of mine has been stuck in a care home for more than 10 months because the council has been unable to put a care package together. At his advancing age, he is being denied the ability to live out his time in familiar surroundings with the ones he loves. Social care is now threadbare. A lady who had life-changing injuries, rendering her severely disabled, has sought my help on many occasions when carers have not turned up, leaving her completely unable to access food or water. It is, of course, always the most vulnerable who are hit first and hit hardest by the loss of services. The omission of deprivation from the Government’s calculation of funding seems to be a case of the Conservatives looking at the injuries that they have caused and then choosing to throw insult on top of them.

According to the usual metric, my constituency is not the most deprived. We have unemployment at less than 1%, although 2,300 children are living in poverty, which is a reminder of the growing number of people in work and in poverty, and other parts of Cumbria, especially in the west, will be hugely hit by the Government’s choice to ignore deprivation. But the Government have made a choice, and it is to be cloth eared to the needs of rural northern communities such as mine. Local government funding is not some dry municipal concern; it is about the people who need care, the children in our schools, and the safety of our communities. That is why fairness matters. The Government must do a U-turn on their cuts to rural northern communities, because Cumbria deserves better than this.

Brexit Readiness: Operation Yellowhammer

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I know how effectively my hon. Friend stands up for the fishing sector—the catching sector and the processing sector. I have been talking to the Scottish Government and the relevant Cabinet Secretary, Fergus Ewing, to ensure that we do everything we can. We want to remain closely in touch not just with the Scottish Government but with good constituency Members like my hon. Friend and local authorities to ensure that the resources are there. Of course, if specific concerns have been expressed by Aberdeenshire as a local authority or by individual businesses, I hope he will bring them to my attention.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The chief executive of the Dale Farm dairy co-operative, who speaks for 1,300 dairy farmers across the United Kingdom, says that leaving the European Union without a deal would “wipe out” all profitability in the dairy sector. Cumbrian dairy farmers know that too, yet there is not a single explicit mention of the dairy industry in the Yellowhammer document. Is that because the truth of how badly hit dairy farming in Cumbria and elsewhere will be is so serious that it is not even written down, or is it that the Government have overlooked the interests and needs of Britain’s dairy industry?

[Michael Gove]

No and no.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us have a single-sentence inquiry from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State oversee the innovative technology in radiotherapy that will be needed to meet the NHS long-term plan to diagnose more patients earlier?

[Mr Speaker]

Excellent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I first ask my hon. Friend to pass on my best wishes and thanks to May for her comments and to congratulate her on a long life and on the interest that she has shown in politics and in what is happening in this country. On the second part of his question, I simply say to him that I have not changed my mind. I believe that we should be working to deliver on the result of the first referendum, where we gave the people the choice and they chose to leave the EU. I continue to believe that we should do that with a deal because I think that is in the best interests of this country.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Q3. This logjammed and underworked Parliament could become one of the best if we chose to work across the parties to fix our broken social care system. Through free votes, good will and hard work, we could design and then enact a new deal for social care that would bring hope for the future to millions. So in her last few weeks as Prime Minister, will she agree to meet me and to establish a cross-party group so that we could bring this social care new deal to fruition?

[The Prime Minister]

We do indeed need to ensure that we can see a sustainable future for our social care system. That is why, at the earliest opportunity, the Government will bring forward a social care Green Paper, and it will be open to all across this House to be able to contribute to the consideration of that.

Leaving the European Union

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do indeed agree with my right hon. Friend that I think there are many people across this country who want to see us leaving the EU in an orderly way and with a deal. Indeed, that was the manifesto on which he and I, and those of us who sit here as Conservatives, stood at the last election. We stood to deliver the best possible deal for Britain as we leave the European Union, delivered by a smooth, orderly Brexit, with a new, deep and special partnership, including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement with the European Union. Those are the objectives that I have been pursuing. I have put forward today a new package that does change the situation that has been voted on previously. I hope all those who want to leave the European Union with a deal will indeed support it.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In 1992, the Prime Minister and I toured the working men’s clubs of north-west Durham and I was hugely impressed with her resilience in front of audiences that were as hostile to her as they were indifferent to me. [Hon. Members: “What’s changed?”] Indeed. But it turns out that the audience behind her is tougher still. She will fail in her bid in two weeks’ time because people behind her who are for Brexit refuse to vote for Brexit. That is not her fault, but it is her problem. For old times’ sake, I want to help her out. If she will agree to put her deal—to be fair to her, it is the only concrete version of Brexit we have yet seen—to the British people in a confirmatory vote, I will join her in the Lobby. Will she help me to help her?

[The Prime Minister]

May I say to the hon. Gentleman that I fondly remember those days in 1992 in north-west Durham? I also say to him that I think, if this House does not pass the withdrawal agreement Bill and if the House does not enable the treaty to be ratified, what this House is saying is that it does not want to leave the European Union with a deal. I believe that the majority of people in this House do want to leave with a deal. This is the vehicle to do it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let me say to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) that the Cumbrian steak and kidney pie, the merits of which he commended to me, was of the highest quality.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Mr Speaker, I am incredibly grateful to you for those kind words and for coming along to Cumbria Day.

Is the Minister aware that voters in my constituency, the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales cannot vote at all on planning and housing issues that affect them? What steps will she take to bring in democracy for those parts of our country that are under the aegis of a national park, which are not directly elected?

[Chloe Smith]

I am somewhat familiar with the issue because of my proximity to the Broads Authority in my constituency, but I suspect this question may be for a colleague to answer and I will ask them to do so.

Topical Questions

Leaving the EU: Negotiations

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Vince Cable]

I am perfectly happy to respect the referendum that we have had, but it is utterly respectful, and quite common practice in many countries, to have a confirmatory referendum when a Government have produced a deal. That is good constitutional practice and good politics, and Liberal Democrat Members argue for it strongly.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend will of course remember that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) proposed exactly the same course of action whereby one could have an initial referendum and another that confirmed it later on. Does he agree with the right hon. Gentleman?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

We are having a slight let-off from the hot weather, but it strikes me that we have become a bit of a cliché with our similarities to a Mediterranean country over the past few weeks. We have had incredible weather, we are good at football and we have chaotic politics. In the chaos of the past 48 hours, many things have been revealed, not least the fact that the now former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union spent a grand total of four hours this year negotiating the deal with Michel Barnier. I can inform the House that I have spent more time filling in my World Cup chart than the former Secretary of State spent doing his job.

I want to focus on our countryside and on the production of food. Cumbria and the Lake District won their own world title a year ago this week when the area became a world heritage site. We are very proud of that, and it was clear in the document that the world heritage site status that we were afforded by UNESCO was just as much down to the work of the farmers who maintain the landscape as it was down to the physical nature and the geology itself. It is massively important to recognise that it is not just the landscape that makes our countryside so beautiful, not only in the Lake District but in the dales and all the other beautiful parts of the United Kingdom; it is largely down to the work of our farmers.

The production of food is also of massive significance. I am sure all Members will share my concern that we have seen a massive rise in the amount of food that we import over the past 20 years. In 1990, we imported about 35% of the food that we consume. The figure is now about 45%. As the process of leaving the European Union trundles on, one thing that will undoubtedly have an impact on this country’s ability to feed itself will be the agriculture Bill that we are expecting to see, perhaps before the summer or perhaps shortly after.

It will also massively depend on what kind of deal we get. What situation will we face when it comes to tariffs or no tariffs on our imports and exports? That is why it is right, and respectful of the British people, to decide to engage fully in what kind of deal we get and to object if the Government present us with a shabby deal or if others in the Government wish to have a deal that is even shabbier than the one that the Government are presenting.

I am one of the 6% of Members of Parliament who bothered to go and look at the Brexit impact assessment documents in Whitehall when they were sort of semi-released earlier this year. Obviously I would not leak a single word of what I read—oh go on, since you’ve twisted my arm. One of the things that most struck me was the war-gaming that the Government had done for some rather terrifying prospects. For example, it is worth bearing in mind that, whether we like it or not, membership of the European Union has removed from this place and this country the imperative to debate whether it was right to subsidise food over the past 40 years, but by golly we have, and we will notice if we stop subsidising food.

Over the past 40 years, the average spend of a lower-middle-income household on food has gone down from 20% of the weekly wage packet to 10%. At the same time, housing costs have doubled. If we remove direct payments for farmers and/or if there are tariffs on imports into this country, the reality is that we will see a significant rise in the price of food on the shelves. The wealthiest people in this country spend 10% of their income on food, but the poorest spend 25%. I do not care how anyone voted two years ago or what they think about the Chequers deal, because they should care about impending food poverty on every street in this country. That is likely to be the most worrying aspect of what we get if we have a bad deal.

The Government are mindful of the problem, which is why they war-gamed what it would look like if the EU charged tariffs on UK exports into the single market, but the Government chose not to retaliate with import tariffs on EU goods. I can understand that the Government would do that to protect the interests of the poorest consumers in this country, but UK farming would be thrown under a bus. It would be decimated within a decade. That is why such issues matter. That is why the content of the deal matters. It is not anti-patriotic, anti-democratic or anything of the sort to question the nature of the deal, not based on esoterica about sovereignty or anything else, but based on the hard, visceral reality of whether people in this country can afford to feed their children.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman is correct about food poverty, but it is wrong to suggest that it is a construct of Brexit. Will he tell us what he did in government for five years to deal with food poverty? People in my constituency have been hungry for a long time, and that is not due to Brexit.

[Tim Farron]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what we did. Among other things, we forced the Tories to implement benefit rises of 5%, and we ensured that we raised the income tax threshold to lift more than a million people out of poverty. It is much easier to be on the Opposition Benches than the Government Benches, but I am rightly proud of the five years that the Liberal Democrats spent in government, preventing the Tories from doing their worst and ensuring that we did the best for our country. We know that the Government have war-gamed throwing farming under a bus, but they are also preparing to levy shocking increases in food prices on both the poorest and middle-income families.

The Chequers deal is interesting. It is worth saying that I think the Prime Minister is a decent person. We go back quite a long way, and I take her to be a decent person who is seeking a consensus where perhaps none is to be found, so I will give her the benefit of the doubt. Of course, the reality is that the Chequers deal is unimplementable, undeliverable and unacceptable to the European Union. It would mean effectively being in a single market for goods while not being in the single market, effectively being a member of the customs union while not being in the customs union, and effectively having freedom of movement while not having freedom of movement, and the European Union will say no to that.

My assumption over the weekend was that the most hard-line separatists within the Conservative party were accepting the Chequers deal, no matter how soft it looked, because they knew that the Prime Minister would present it to Brussels, Brussels would say, “Get knotted,” and it would then be Brussels’ fault that we did not get a decent deal.

[Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

The motion calls for a Government of national unity. How many Cabinet jobs will the Liberal Democrats look for in this new coalition? This time round, how many red lines will they agree with the Tory Government?

[Tim Farron]

If the hon. Gentleman is going to read out questions from the Whips Office, he should at least read them out properly. We will come to what it might look like in a moment or two, but there are bigger things on the plate.

I am quite sure the Government’s assumption is that Friday’s Chequers deal will be unacceptable to Brussels, and they therefore proposed it because it makes it look like they have been listening to businesses, farmers and people of moderate intent—compromisers from both sides of the divide. The Government presented it, and the most hard-line separatists went along with it, because they thought, “Well, it’ll never be accepted. It will then be Brussels’ fault and not ours.” That seems a dishonourable approach, but it could be argued that it is a politically savvy one.

It was all going very well until vanity struck. In the early hours of Monday morning, or late on Sunday night, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) had an attack of vanity and, as we found out in the hours that followed, vanity is contagious. That is the problem we have.

The motion seriously offers the idea of having a Government of national unity because the Prime Minister is beholden to people who are not putting the country first. They are not even putting their party first; they are completely and utterly obsessed with their own career and their own vanity. There is nothing honourable about that situation. Whether or not people like the idea of our leaving the European Union, and whatever variety of leaving the European Union they favour, it is not right that this country should be beholden to such pressure in this marginal situation.

Last night, because there was no World cup on the television, I decided to seek entertainment by heading over to the 1922 committee. I hung around outside with some friends from the press and, at that historic moment, it was interesting to hear the comments made by the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), the Conservative party chairman, who said, “Chequers stays. Chequers is the right path. We’re going to stick to it.” On the other hand, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) came out and said, “Chequers is effectively a betrayal and we cannot vote for it.”

The problem our country has is that, with no parliamentary majority, the Prime Minister has to balance those two extremes. All of us in this House, no matter which party we support and no matter our record on the referendum vote two years ago, should care about the future of our country. Is it right that our children’s future and their children’s future—the next half century and the next century—should be dictated by a Prime Minister who is having to balance the interests of the venal and the vain? That is why we should work together to make sure we deliver a deal that works for everybody and that allows the people to have the final say.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The Lakes line from Oxenholme to Windermere has seen 160 cancellations in the month of April and 72 cancellations in the first week of May alone, risking the potential futures of GCSE students as they try to get to school and are left stranded, people trying to get to work, and the hundreds and hundreds of people visiting what is Britain’s second biggest tourist and visitor destination. Will the Prime Minister join me in saying that that is an outrage; will she use her office to ensure that Northern has the franchise removed from it; and will she undo the damage to the Lakes line by keeping the Government’s initial promise to electrify that line?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary is aware of the issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised. I understand that the Department for Transport is working with Northern Rail to identify the nature of these issues and to see a quick resolution of them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Finally, I call Tim Farron.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That was not a very seasonal response from the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) from a sedentary position. I expect better of the hon. Gentleman.

[Tim Farron]

Thank you for your characteristic greeting, Mr Speaker. I wish everyone a merry Christmas, especially the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson).

The Prime Minister will be aware that NHS England has extended the deadline for its consultation on the allocation of radiotherapy services into the new year. Will she therefore take this opportunity to ensure that one of the criteria is shortening the distances that people have to travel—travel time has a massive impact on outcomes—so that people who live in places such as south Cumbria can access this life-saving, utterly urgent treatment safely and quickly?

[The Prime Minister]

We are of course all aware of the need to ensure not only that people are able to access the treatment that they need, but that they can access it in an appropriate way. We recognise that in some rural areas that means travelling longer distances than in other parts of the country. As the hon. Gentleman says, there is a consultation, and NHS England will be looking closely at the issues. I am sure that he will have made representations.